The Human woman was still angry, and overall distressed, but Voira’s response had at least served to validate her anger towards the AI enough that she was content seething in silence. For most of the passengers on the shuttle, any stress created by the brief shouting match was eclipsed by worry over the approaching craft, even more so when the entirety of their convoy on the ground and in the air suddenly stopped. Fortunately, when the gunships came into what would have been attack range, they did not fire, nor show other signs of hostility. Instead, half of the gunships, which seemed to have been outfitted for cargo transport, landed next to their ground vehicles. Turian soldiers emerged from the transports and, from what Avatar could gather through the external cameras, seemed to be moving the supplies and people from the ground transports onto the gunships. It was a process that took half an hour to complete, during which time no information was given to any of the civilians aboard the other shuttles. 

After the gunships were loaded, the shuttles and their gunship escort took off at as high of a speed and as low of an altitude as they could sustain, leaving all of the now-empty ground transports behind. Presumably, they were evacuating to safety, but Avatar could not any prediction with reasonable certainty as to their destination. There were no official allied military bases on record on the planet, and indeed, no settlements at all along their current bearing. They had two full hours of low altitude flight above largely unexplored sections of the planet before their aerial convoy finally slowed its pace to an approach velocity over a thick, tropical jungle.

For those that could see of the windows, their destination finally became clear. The Turian cruiser [i]Intrepid[/i] was before them, sitting atop the fallen trees it had crushed in its emergency landing. However, even a cursory visual observation revealed that its structural integrity was nothing short of critical. On just the side of the ship facing the shuttle, Avatar counted fourteen hull breaches of sufficient size to cause the loss of pressurization in multiple compartments, and an indeterminate number of smaller breaches. If the other side of the ship possessed a similar level of damage, then the ship’s energy shielding system would not have been sufficient to completely retain atmosphere. The largest of the breaches which were visible cut the lettering of the word [i]Intrepid[/i] written across the side of the vessel in half, and stretched across multiple decks. Avatar could not accurately estimate the extent of the ship’s internal damage, but the probability of the vessel still being capable of operation within a vacuum was less than 0.5%. 

On their approach, their shuttle’s pilot finally spoke up over the shuttle’s speakers to address his passengers. “Okay…I’m being told that we’re going to land in the ship’s hanger, but that we should all stay put in the shuttle until one of their people can get to us and take us where we need to go.”