[Outpost, Tau Ceti IV — 2893, mid-cycle, approximately 14:30 local. Atmospheric haze. Broken skyline of prefab colony structures, most partially collapsed, all of them bearing the particular quality of abandonment that is not decay but erasure. The UESC has been through here. Things have been moved.]
The first thing you see is the drone.
It comes around the corner of what used to be a supply relay station — one of those flat-roofed prefab structures the New Cascadia colonists built in standardized lots, now stripped of anything worth stripping and partially caved inward at the north-facing wall. The drone is small, about the size of a double-fist, its casing matte white with a single thread of purple indicator light tracing its underbelly. It moves with an unhurried intelligence. It is not sweeping for threats. It is looking at you specifically.
It stops approximately three meters from your position, hovers at head height, and the camera aperture at its front end adjusts with a mechanical precision that suggests whoever is on the other end of the feed is getting a good look.
Then a voice comes through on your comms, low and without preamble.
"You've been in this sector forty minutes and you've opened two containers. There are eleven more in the structures behind you that you haven't touched. The high-rarity signatures on three of them register through my visor from here."
A pause. The drone does not move.
"I'm not asking for a split. I'm telling you there are two UESC patrol units cutting from the southwest in approximately ninety seconds, and the fastest exit from this zone threads directly through those eleven containers. So you can either spend the next twenty minutes clearing this sector alone while I watch, or you can keep up."
The drone pivots and moves, smooth and deliberate, toward the eastern corridor between two collapsed relay structures. It does not wait to see whether you follow.
From the roof of the supply station — you catch it only because you know to look up — a figure moves along the ledge in complete silence, grapple already extended to the next anchor point, white armor catching the haze-filtered light of Tau Ceti's sun. She has been up there the whole time. She was watching before she ever sent the drone.
She drops from the ledge and is already moving, backpack loaded, grapple retracted, and the gap between her position and yours is closing at a pace that makes it clear the invitation has an expiration date.
