Human Edge

A CDA-3C mech strolled through the highlands in a large, lazy loop as Gillian Chow explored the area around the Calico's emergency LZ. She gave the local villages a wide berth to avoid creating an incident, but paid special attention to high vantage points and woods that might give enemies cover someday. Inside the mech's cockpit, Gillian licked her lips and applied a pencil to paper as she made a makeshift chart of the area.

Thomas shifted in his seat, the hot seat of a mech was a tight fit for the young soldier, even when not wearing armor.

"Anything interesting?" He asked peeking over Gillian's shoulder at the drawing she was making. His seat didn't give him the best view to be of much help.

Moving to the Cicada's left was the more humanoid form of the COM-2B Commando. Inside her own cockpit Andrea cycled between all the little tasks one goes through to pilot a multi-ton walking death machine. Right now she was watching the sensors.

Clicking over to the radio, "Chow, this is Andrea, my screen is clear. Anything showing up on yours?"

(There are a series of ruins in the distance, sitting atop a hill, and heavily overgrown. There is also, far to the east, a series of rocky outcrops that are scrambling sensor readings, perhaps indicating a highly metallic deposit near the surface, or some other anomaly. Once you all decide on a direction, you can roll either Investigation/Perception or Computers(Sensor Operation)/Perception.)

"There's something weird going on with those rocks to the east," Gillian replied over the radio. She pointed them out to Thomas as well. "It's throwing off my sensor readings. I'm going to check it out." After hastily penciling in the ruins on her chart as something to check out on a future patrol, she turned the Cicada toward the rocky outcropping to the east, approaching cautiously.

"Alright...east it is," Andrea says to herself then flicks on the comms, "Following your lead."

She turns her attention to the sensors and checks again for anything unusual.

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Inv/PER for sensor sweep. D1. TN unknown: 4d10o10k3 15

There wasn't much that Thomas could do from his position, he could help a little though and it helped that Gillian was so tiny. Not that she likely appreciated the big solider looming over her shoulder.

"Is that something there?" He asked gesturing towards one of the consoles.

Investigation and perception for looking around edge, cause why not: 4d10o10k3 22

"Yeah, I think I see it," echoed Gillian. "Whoa, what is that?"

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1EA Scouting, Investigation/Perception unknown TN: 4d10o10k3 26

It was...

Something.

The sensors were still singing a merry tune, claiming to detect metal and radioactive signatures... and now it was clear why.



It was a vehicle graveyard. It looked like a full armored company had been left here. There might have been some sort of shelter at some point, as the vehicles weren't totally decayed, but they definitely had seen better days. Sensors insisted there were at least two fusion engines among the spires of rock and scattered vehicles.

It was hard to know why they'd been abandoned like this... a mystery lost to centuries of decay.

"Huh!" Gillian said into the comms. "Andrea, I'm going to circle around the site, try to figure out how big this thing is. Keep an eye out if you don't mind. It's probably not an ambush, but ... you never know."

Pushing the throttle forward she swung the Cicada in a loop around the vehicle graveyard, attempting to determine its extent before charting it in pencil on her makeshift map. A few taps of her fingers caused thermal sensors to play over the ruined hulks, searching for any heat signatures.

"We oughta radio back about this," she said at last. "You wanna check it out at ground level, Thomas? A lot of it looks like old junk, but there might be something intact enough for salvage. Or do you think we should wait for backup?"