The communicator panel Salvator had on hand began to bleep and blink as its small glassy screen flashed alive. [b]IMMINENT MESSAGE: TRANSMITTING IN 10... 9...[/b]

The team in the valley had been attempting to make contact for a while now but they had been intermittent with the beeps. This was sudden and unaffected by radio static; the signal was strong, too strong, pulsating in a way that coincided with the hollow droning that emerged from the same carcass he had looted the shotgun from. It was a resonant, sonorous tone even as if intoned out from within a massive hallway yet emerging chant-like and deep. The carcass shifted, its armor plates creaking as the dying things that cowered within shuddered and twisted within, a half-torn head swiveling his way as connector joints and torn biomass tore itself to fac ehim.

And it was not the only cadaver that did not rest. The drone that Salvator heard was joined by a bassy thud, easy to mistake for solid impact on the soil itself but synthesized from sources not entirely digital. The very augmentations implanted in Ilshar's body picked up an influx of signals washing over them; a wave of biolectrical readings, the sort that were associated with targeting, radar, and mass-detection type systems. He'd made his way over to the cover but not enough that his enhanced body did not feel itself tingle and quiver, as if the many things hidden within now realized they were in the sights of an unseen threat.

The broken corpse scavenged by Kleo produced some sort of spherical objects tennis ball sized in shape and overlaid with a series of ridged rims, partially squeezable in her palms but with a satisfying weight behind them. They were some kind of tossable device, but it was difficult to tell if they were actually explosives of some sort. Some sort of priming system was around its top like a grenade but not a pin; a hole of some sort, easily wide enough for her finger to go in. It smelled of wet soil and leaves. 

Maybe that was from the spindly and glistening appendages now beginning to emerge from the cadaver; auxiliary limbs alive and well unlike their now deceased owner. Simple at first until the multi-jointed and angular protrusions began to split at their tips, revealing a mess of smaller manipulator-arms, sensor-antennae, and cutting implements. One of these limbs was larger than the others, easily bigger than any human arm as it jerked and twitched. The creature itself appeared to have had four limbs, this one appearing to have been hastily reattached into whatever part of its body it was torn from, yet the double-barreled underslung wrist-claw gun, while not aiming steadily, still pointed Kleo's way.

[b]8... 7... 6...[/b]

As the drone traveled, Echo would be able to notice the targeting beam move off of the drone and travel towards the rest of the team, before it abruptly flipped off. Yet it had been active long enough they would be able to trace it back, far back, past the large stones and through the fog to elevated, bushy ground at the outskirts of the area; near a series of heavy bushes and rubble piles.

If whomever was targeting them was smart, they would be focused on Echo. That coincideded with a hailing request over their coms; the source was vrexul, the IFF codes marking them as deceased, and signal tracing lead their multi-bodied sight to barely even a corpse. A scattered selection of armor chunks and limbs surrounding a crater, its severed insectoid head blinking with LED's as it attempted to communicate. 

So, rather than directly hailing them, their unknown watcher was doing so through the corpses. The pulse earlier had been some sort of radar scan.

[color=8dc73f][i]"Odd way for Zanos to be headed, platform."[/i][/color] The voice was garbled intentionally, yet it did not sound vrexul. Whatever was contacting Echo was speaking through the corpse but it was both firm and rigid. [color=8dc73f][i]"And so well dressed for the occasion. Is that human of yours your guide? She's very well dressed; that supplier just happens to deal in recent League antiques, don't they?"[/i][/color]

It was a closed channel yet it might be possible for the rest of the party to listen in or for it to be broadcasted. But at the same time...

[b]3... 1... 1...[/b]

The communicator panel's screen went black but the lights indicating a message was receiving came through. 

Or it would of anyways, if one of the withered trees still standing suddenly jerked. Burnt bark and wood chips burst out of a small human finger-sized exit wound in its back, a bullet cleanly passing through and whizzing past Kleo's side and smacking into the dirt.

Standard rifle cartridge, armor piercing, still smoking - enough to be a threat to medium to light augmented armor but Kleo was the only one whose armor probably would face any major issue from. 

The thing is, whoever had fired hadn't realized that that Echo's drones would be able to trace it... back to the rubble pile from earlier.

Not long after, the communicator panel spoke.

[color=8dc73f][i]"It is not often I grant leniency to swine, especially those bearing such [i]familiar[/i] kit. My squadmate is eager for action after what happened here hours earlier. Perhaps you should help me with that. Suspicious lack of markers on you... just new here, let's hope no?"[/i][/color]

This was an alien voice, charismatic yet almost hissed not with vitriol but from the mere nature of the voice. An accent that fit the English language yet slightly bent and strained its various syllables. Almost sounding Irish yet the words slurred together slightly with a sonorous tone. Likely gealtirocht, especially from the cocksure swagger it possessed.

The thing is, this one couldn't be so easily traced and somehow, it knew there was a communicator panel here. How exactly it had gotten into the system was anyone's guess. It appeared that for all the informant's talk of the communicator panel's "[color=00aeef][e]ncrypted secure coms[/color]", it had been bypassed in a matter of minutes.