>>5186188You are not looking great yourself. Having ditched your own attire during your failed impersonation of your evil clone (after spending so much time picking it too), you are down to just your Aelderi laspistol, a tire iron, looted briefs, and a long sleeved shirt that you wear with only one button closed and the sleeves rolled up, since the humidity here is even worse than where you originally landed. You also of course have the vox bead you stole, which seems to have ten default settings, several of which are in use by the enemy. The scratches and bruises you have taken during the past few fights are already healing themselves thanks to your enhanced body, but you still have a lot of grit clinging to you from when the Kijeck noble psychically sand blasted you.
You and Namara discuss strategy for a while in hushed tones, while Audrey stares blankly at nothing (it belatedly occurs to you that the ruin is poorly lit for someone without enhanced eyesight like yourself and Namara).
You decide your top goal should be to make contact with your allies.
There were about a dozen initial landings done at the same time as yours, but none of them are nearby (based on the rough estimate you have on your current location based on eavesdropping on the Thorakara). Now that von Krasman knows enemies are present on the planet in large numbers, he is probably dropping additional waves of junior officers, armsmen, and perhaps even levees from the enlisted crew. However, he doesn’t have many shuttles, and the enemy possibly have as many as several regiments worth of soldiers on the planet (albeit generally low quality ones). With the shuttles tied up, your best bet is to try and reach your Aelderi allies and masters and hope they send some skimmer vehicles. At the speeds such vehicles are capable of, it would only take an hour or three from even the most distance landing sites, and even one or two Aelderi could make quick work of the Thorakara currently present in the ruins.
Unfortunately, your vox-bead doesn’t nearly have the kind of range to reach a landing spot hundreds of kilometers away. And although Trys’ta has occasionally hinted she has some way of eavesdropping on you no matter where she is, you doubt she uses it very often given how often you have been in mortal peril without her taken any action despite being nearby.
As far as you can tell, your only real option is to ambush the group of Thorakara that has the command model vox caster. It is abundantly clear from your eavesdropping that it has global range, as you have heard them talking about communiques received from the far side of the planet via said device.
