Sayeeda rushed through the foliage, hoping against hope that none of it was actively poisonous. She took them on twists and turns around outcrops and gullies, but the integral compass in the helmet allowed her to keep a more or less easterly bearing while putting as much cover between her and an Terrans. It wasn't so much their weapons that she was worried about, although those certainly were a danger, it was the sophisticated optics their strike team would have. It would be the work of moment for them to realize that the rebels were dead and their intended target, Drake she assumed, was gone. If they weren't far enough away by that point they would be able to use infrared to track the trio through the forest far faster than they would be able to flee.

Fortunately, whether by luck, good judgement, or the simple mass of thermal signatures in a tropical rain forest the sounds of pursuit fell away quickly. Sayeeda kept them running for another ten minutes, at the end of which Drake was wheezing like he was going to die at any moment. Reluctantly she allowed them to halt by a small pond, clicking her own visor into thermal and scanning behind them before allowing herself to relax. Adrenaline still burned hot in her body from the earlier firefight and the pursuit.

"You are even dimmer than you seem if you think the Terrans don't know what Hatcher had for breakfast," she sneered. Sayeeda herself had only a vague knowledge of Intelligence work, she had done a semester at the academy and gotten a certain amount of insight on the job, but she didn't doubt the Signals Sections on the destroyers could crack any encryption on this dirt ball like an egg.

"Also you owe us a new land drifter," she added as an afterthought, doubtless the Terrans had overflown it on the way in and would waste little time in securing both vehicles. For a moment she just leaned back against a tree and let her racing heart steady.

"Alright, spill, whats so great about this research that it has everyone all hot and bothered?"

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