First Contact Fallout

out of here.”
“I have men in the field nearby. You’ll have to tag along until I’m finished with my mission.”
“What is your mission?” she asked without complaint.
“Personal protection. There’s an Era’tran in the jungle that escaped from the Zor’do that must be kept alive.”
“What priority?”
“So high I’m not allowed to tell you,” Mario’topa said, admitting a little more than he should have said.
“He won’t fit in here.”
“I know, but the other Zen’zat will and we can provide air cover assuming this ship doesn’t break down.”
“I’ll do a damage analysis while you fly,” she said, moving to the nearest of the visible holes while Mario’topa went back to the cockpit and got them moving, using the gunship’s sensors to look for his own people who should have still been cloaked. He didn’t want to risk a high powered broadcast, but he did set up a short range transmission good for 8 miles or so. Hopefully he’d be able to cross over the path of where he expected his people to be and find them without drawing any unwanted attention, but he had no way of knowing if the other gunship had reported the conflict before it went down.
If it did, and they had more aerial assets to spare, then he wasn’t going to be left alone to search from above for very long. He’d much rather have this gunship to use than not, but his ability to hide was now obsolete, for this model did not have a cloaking field of its own. It had the standard stealthing material built into the hull that would make it difficult to detect at range, or even at all for less advanced sensor technology, but it was nowhere as good as a null field, and any units operating nearby would pick it up easy if they were looking for it, visually or otherwise.
Fortunately his first guess was correct, and with only a few minutes of flying he was able to pick up the first return blip from one of his people not wanting to risk an open comm, but sending a quick location signal for him to come to them. Once he got Ben’ra onboard he went after the others, but before he got to them more trouble popped up on the horizon…

6
Jo’ra was too far away and too deep in the jungle to notice the enemy dropship fight, but he was getting close to dead drop #4 which Mario’topa had instructed him to scout. If Tu’vac was here then he’d link up with him. If not, the Zen’zat needed to load up on as many supplies as they could carry and there was no way to know where they’d be going in the coming days, or how long they’d be roughing it.
Jo’ra was still stealthed as he moved more to the east so he could come in low to the dead drop. There was a bit of elevation on the west side cradling the location and he didn’t want to come up on it too quickly. Better to scout it from range just in case others had already found it, friendly or otherwise.
Apparently someone else had thought the same thing, for an armored body was standing on a mid level branch some 5 meters up where they could get a decent view in to near the dead drop…and the armor was not V’kit’no’sat.
Jo’ra kept cloaked and slowed his run, fortunate that his footsteps were muffled by the cloaking field, otherwise this individual might have heard him. The closer he got he realized he was seeing part of Zan’for armor, one of the very light and agile scout races the Zak’de’ron employed. It was a biped with four thin arms, none of which were good for landing blows with, but they did make for excellent climbers and all around lurkers. They were not known to have cloaking devices, and this guy was doing his best to stay hidden amongst the vegetation as his gaze was directed…
There. Jo’ra saw it now. There was a tent partially visible through the trees. A big one too. Zen’zat wouldn’t erect something that big, and their emergency tents were scalable. That meant there was probably an Era’tran in there, or had been. He couldn’t see anyone outside or pick up any movement sounds. A lot of trees were in the way, but he could already see a lot of the smaller underbrush had been knocked down and dragged to the side where it was piled in brush lines. They served to both clear the footing and create obstacles at various approach points, all of which still occurred underneath an intact canopy, leaving it invisible to flyers overhead.
And this Zan’for was camped out here watching the location. As soon as Jo’ra got a little closer he was going to find out why. He needed closer proximity to do a good Ikrid hack of his mind, but as he reached out to gage the necessary range he couldn’t find one. The Zan’for was completely blank to him as far as Ikrid went, making him immediately suspicious of a decoy, but his Pefbar did register the individual as being there rather than a hologram.
Psionic protective armor? he wondered.
Jo’ra hadn’t seen much of that during this war, and none on scouts. It was hard to make, but not impractical unless the individual wearing it needed to use their psionics. Zan’for weren’t known to have any, so there wouldn’t be a conflict there, but the Zak’de’ron didn’t equip their people with really elaborate armors. Not for the masses, anyway. So did this guy really have full armor? Was he an elite scout that Jo’ra had simply crossed paths with accidentally? And why wouldn’t an elite scout have a cloaking device?
But there was another possibility, so Jo’ra slowly walked up to the tree the Zan’for was standing in and crossed beneath the