GM IC:

The contacts closed the distance like lightning and the ground rumbled like thunder. The clouds thrown up represented thousands of years of undisturbed dirt, thrown skyward by something moving [i]up[/i] just as much as forward. Earth parted like water in before it, and within a few moments the sensors overhead were throwing metallic readings. The dust was too thick for visual penetration and the air too confused for thermals but the data [i]definitely[/i] pointed to something metallic; and big.

[i]<<Pilots,>>[/i] The COO’s voice crackled with command on the line, her first intervention since they launched. [i]<<The shuttle is withdrawing from this zone. Keep it covered until it leaves effective combat range. As of this second I am confirming a Case Siberia, and your RoE changes with it. Don’t start anything if you can help it but you are [i]not[/i], I repeat [i]not[/i], expected to let them take the first shot. If they look nasty you are cleared to engage.>>[/i]

Far above her frown deepened, because she was hearing the chatter from the bridge unlike her pilots below. Communications started picking up something [i]strange[/i] as soon as the plumes appeared, and she was feeling [i]very[/i] much like they’d dug up something they shouldn’t have. If the UN wanted to bitch about her putting the trigger for interstellar war in the hands of the units on the ground they shouldn’t have given her that call. 

[i]<<[/i]Explorer[i] One I’m reiterating that you are to get your [/i]asses[i] out of there. Right [/i]now[i], Dr. Harding, you can take readings while you [/i]leave.[i]>>[/i]

[i]<<Confirmed, Pandora, beginning exfiltration now.>>[/i]

The science team was buckled in, for the most part, but Dr. Harding pushed her way to the cockpit to watch the instruments. The pilot relaying their status to [i]Pandora[/i] might have protested to anyone else… but the doctor was going to do what she wanted. And what she wanted was to man the sensors. Withdrawal may have been a necessity but the shuttle had been outfitted with the best scientific sensors on the market and it would be a long while until they were out of sensor range. She could watch, listen, and record anything that might be important; with how quickly things were taking a turn it might be [i]very[/i] important later on. 

[i]<<[/i]Explorer One[i] requesting a babysitter until we leave the zone, if someone wants to play meat shie->>[/i]

Whatever he was going to say trailed off abruptly as the contacts breached the surface. The Orbitals scouting them out got a good look first but no one could miss them. Not at that scale. The two were half again, maybe closer to twice in some cases, as tall as an Orbital with arms too long and hands too big. It made them look top heavy, an impression their hunched posture reinforced. Their feet matched their hands with long, digitous digits that ended in points to better distribute their mass over the loose surface. The mechanoids (for their surface was undeniably metallic) were smooth and seamless, lacking even the limited part separation visible on the alien Orbital. Smooth, curving spines of an unidentifiable crystal crested over either shoulder and as they took another step seemed to top the machines’ digits as well. Their heads had broad, flat ‘faces’ with green optics that stretched back over too little neck to end between their spines. A long tail of sinuous metal rested in the ground behind them.

And the humans had plenty of time to look; they simply stopped moving upon reaching the surface. They neither shifted nor made a sound in the hushed silence, only waited with unerring patience as they drank in the scene before them. Their optics seemed to settle at first on the alien Orbital, but then passed between every construct before them. The field seemed almost to have been split between them as their heads moved in opposite directions with perfect synchronicity to rest briefly on Orbital in their ‘zone’...

Then stop and snap to the same point in unison as the sight of Gypsy Soul. 

The now oppressive silence shattered when their ‘mouths’ opened with a sound like splintering metal, issuing forth a harsh, mechanical chattering that seemed to come over the comms as much as resonate through the armor of their machines. And as one entity they fired a pair of long disused energy weapons sending bolts of sickly golden light lancing through their air towards Gypsy Alexandros’ Orbital.

Not that the others were forgotten; one of the mechanoids turned at once towards Volana and advanced again with unnatural speed seeming more to use its hands and feet to stabilize flight induced by means unknown than to run. 

At Volana’s feet the alien machine’s surviving optic flared to life and issued what could only be called a rasping, desperate screech from eons passed. Long dead joints scraped and ground as servos tried and failed to fire, a macabre spasm of life from a machine long still.