"You totally knew, didn't you?" Stab grumbled quietly, and Unlucky moved off.

"You couldn't tell from the height?" Feltain replied with amusement.

"I was lying down! And I haven't met too many kobolds and... Wow, he's just gone!"

"Yep. What did you expect?"

*	*	*	*	*	*	*	

Unlucky slunk quietly into the curtained-off area. At this point, there was not too much point in being invisible. Visual scatter was all well and good, but at the end of the day, there was a reason cloaking did not work in atmosphere; not even super high tech cloaks.

Invisibility was one thing. The Aotrs even had a stealth tank, the Wraith Hawk, with what was charitable called a "cloaking device." In practise, this was just stealth technology, with an improved visual scatter coating that also difracted further into the infrared. It was not, ultimately, a cloak, and for good reason. First of all, cloaking did nothing to hide your sound. You could muffle sound with technology, and magiclaly you could, of course, use silencing spells. Which, against low-tech or nonmagical opponents, worked. But neither of those things were effective against scanners or sensors, which you had to actively block away. (And in the case of magic, just the use of it meant you could DETECT the magic.) In space, the very emptyness of it meant that you could do that (so a given value of how effective your cloak was verses their scanners) and the distances so large that unless you somehow knew deliberately where to go, you were never going to have something accidently get inside the cloaking field. 

But in atmosphere? No amount of cloaking fields could hide the fact that, ultimately, YOU WERE STILL THERE. If you had a high-tech cloak like the Shardan or the Lazerblasters, sure, you could certainly hide everything in the field... 

Right up until the point you had to MOVE. Or it rained, or was windy or there was anything at all that moved outside the cloaking field, because cloaking only worked - ever - up to whatever was [i]inside the field[/i]. So, with modern scanners, the heat left by your engines, the displacement of the very air (let alone water or plant material) as you moved gave you away the moment your field stopped covering it, just as certainly as an invisible rogue standing in a cloud of flour a foot deep in water. 

(Unlucky had has this happen often enough to him personally, with his luck...)

Ground-side stealth packages and "cloaking" devices were, then, really just a way of making you hide [i]better[/i] electronically - but they did not, as with proper, space-based cloaking device, obviate the need TO hide.

(Granted, you could SLIGHLTY more plausibly get away with using a cloak on a stationary facility if you set up appropriately, but it never a garentee.)

Which is why Unlucky didn't bother trying to become invisible via technological or magical means (the latter of which would, of course, potentially set of any magical sensors). He relied entirely on his own phenominal mundane stealth skills to reach the Yellow encampment.

After slinking around enough to get a general gist, he retreated to a small space for a momentary pause. 

The vehicles were, perhaps the least surprising. Transforming vehicles were uncommon, but hardly unknown, especially when technology or magic was advanced enough (or circumstances mandated it enough) to require it for aetherics or some other purpose. Heck, the Lazerblasters and, from what they could gather, the Yrgynela both naturally had vehicular transformative abilities (the latter more sophisticated, though with the advancement of their technology vastly outstripping their natural resiliance, it was almost a forgotten aspect). Actually, come to that, it was not unlike his own shapeshifting talent, when you got down to it.

The computer was interesting, but did not look especially hackable, at least not with any degree of surreptitiousness. Unlucky did know, in his massive repatoire of spells, a few various translation spells (and a universal translato device squirreled awayd for good measure), so there was a passable chance that if he could snag a folder (or see one looked at), he could read it.

The artefacts suggested to him they contained some sort of highly active magic. His initial though was that they were perhaps containing something deleterious - he thought of the KPS Division. Though it could also be they had friendlies or civilains contained in a preservative fashion... Perhaps keeping their souls from going on, or survivors of some catastrophy.

Or, they could be some sort of highly volatile weapon or tool.

Those warrented his attentions, since he was pretty sure he wasn't going to get chance to do everything, as his luck would run out immediately. (Other people might have said "eventually" but Unlucky was nothing if not self-aware.)

Still, the place was quite busy, so getting all the way up to one to have a very close scan might be more difficult. (Unlucky was not going to touch one, since that ABSOLUTELY garenteed that the moment it did, something would break off it and at the EXACT same moment, he'd be spotted, because that was How Things Worker.)

So, hiding in plain sight was perhaps plausible option. The alien's desire to constantly shift might work in his advantage. Illusion spells - or in particular, DISGUISE spells, were in his repatoire too. 

(Along with almost all of the High Command's, who occasionally wanted to move around in living socities. Though they'd never been able to break Yeller out of the idea that doing so somehow made everything into a cheesy spy movie, though and distressingly, the universe seemed to agree, to the inevitable delight of "Lance Thrashnikoff.")

He patiently observed the aliens for  few more minutes, to get a better feel for a disguise phsyiology. Then he very carefully and quietly cast both a translation spell and [i]Facade V[/i], which would last for tens of hours and would cover sight/sound/feel/taste/smell - those were only the senses he KNEW to emulate with the spell of course - at at only level 14 had a very low signature by design. It would only make him apper to be something within a fifth of his own size (he went for larger, being quite small himself, despite his height advantage over other kobolds), but that was close enough for the job, he hoped.

Waiting for a moment where his appearance was unobserved, he stepped out and moved towards the artefacts - not to quickly, not to slowly, but as if he was going there because he had something to do.

Something would Go Horribly Wrong of course, he could feel (centuries of experience had given him a sixth sense of his own when his titular ill-fortune was going to interfere), but at least he was as prepared as he could be.