[center][h2][b]Ilshar Ard’sabekh[/b][/h2][/center] The soil on this world smelled good. Lately, Ilshar had found himself jumping from one dry, dusty planetoid to another, a grainy film clogging his sensory glands with an annoying taste he was only now fully getting rid of. The humid wafts of boggy, unsettled earth that Zanovia had greeted him with had been a more than welcome change. It did not quite smell like home - nothing ever really did - but it brought back pleasant memories of boundless tropical peat fields under a hazy sun. The only irritants were the persistent smells of battle, still too fresh to have settled into a comfortable decay, and the smokestick of the human riding along with him, to say nothing of the transport itself. He gnashed his teeth as the vast creature lurched ahead under his feet. He was still not wholly used to the idea of a living thing so tightly woven with cybernetics it was almost a machine itself, let alone an intelligent one. The mass of mostly etherically inert metal made him uneasy, not faster than light travel had the first few times. Depending too much on machines. That had never been the Alazann way. Better the simpler, more straightforward things, like the gun weighing down in his hands. The guides’ chatter was at least a distraction from the strange mechanical colossus and its eeriness. [b]“Mercenaries?”[/b] he grunted in response to the tarrhaidim’s musings, [b]“Could say that. Business. Hate…”[/b] The lower rows of his ocular bulbs dissolved into his head, and new ones opened further up, looking at the sky between the trees’ canopy. [b]“Elsewhere.”[/b] At last the trudging ride was over, and Ilshar heavily hopped down, some wary eyes still trained on the giant - Echo, it had been designated? - as part of it detached to follow. Maybe it was a machine after all. He gave another grunt of acknowledgement as the group’s voidhanger moved ahead, snapped on his helmet and hefted his machine gun before following into the undergrowth. He smelled the sap now, the rotting plants underfoot. Nothing out of place, their guide was probably right about that noise. Still, they were in a warzone now. If time had taught him anything, it was that it paid to always keep every gland open. Especially early on, when nothing seemed to have gone wrong yet.