Junebug tried to stifle a snicker, but the events of the last couple of days caught up with her and she snorted out a peel of laughter at the dangling Neil. He hung from a snare wrapped tightly around his ankle looking distinctly unimpressed.

"If you're quite finished?" he asked acidly. With some difficulty she smoothed her face and grabbed hold of Neil's arm dragging him down towards the ground and bending the limb which had been cunningly bent to bear the weight. With a quick slash of her utillity knife she shredded the braided vines that wrapped the pilots boot and dropped him unceremoniously to the ground.

"Well I guess that answers the question of if we are alone here," she commented as Neil picked himself up on the ground. There had been no real heat signatures on the IR but that was only good out to a few clicks. Also it supposed that whoever had laid the snare was warmer than the ambient, which was likely but not certain.

"Maybe that works out in the long run," she added skeptically. Any society with a tech base that included snares was unlikely to run to starship repair but there was always hope. Perhaps a survivalist or a less advanced group on the fringes of a more complex society. Of course it also dramatically increased the chances that someone out there might be about to murder them, a frequent problem with people in general.

"We'd better get to work."

________________________

Junebug had not spent alot of time underwater in her career. There had been occasional insertions through swamps but the difficulty in keeping advanced weapons functioning made it impractical to attack through water. Consequently working underwater in the airsuit was not a comfortable experience. She pressed the structural plastic against the side of the gaping wound in the side of the Highlander and triggered the magnaweld. The strip flared briefly as it bonded the strip to the hull, patching the hole.

"OK fire up the pumps," she said over the comms. Raising the Highlander was priority one.