Dark Places

Emmett and Tirana dodge, but Y'breq takes 3 damage.

Bump for actions from Emmett, Turana, and Y'breq.

Emmett comes out of a low crouch into a lunge, trying to plunge his long blade into the next insectoid nearby. A thought flashes into his mind, reminding him that unless he keeps an eye on the rest of his group, they could die.

A pair of the ones in the center drop, from Jaz. Lyle hits another and he falls back into the crates, knocking over their cover from the Craadians, and then Emmett who turns his blow to slay that one. The one remaining is the numb armed one, who is fiddling with its weapon trying to use it with one arm.

Turana swiftly dodges the shot of the singleton that she has neared and prepares to hit it.

As if by some mental command they all drop their weapons and lie prostrated on the ground, completely defenseless in the most absolute kind of surrender you've ever seen.

Jaz is going to look around for any Craadian to help restrain the captives. This is really their battle after all. It's much simpler for us to hand over the captive, to just be assisting.
Though maybe some payment, parts from the invader's ship maybe, may be in order.
He'll mention the idea to Emmet and anyone else nearby."Seems fair right? Not like they loose anything and we gain. Maybe they'll touch up our ship after thay landing, but I'm not sure. I don't negotiate."

"Yeah i guess, i think they must have figured that we are on their side"
Turana sighs as she realizes she cant attack someone that had surrendered and dropped weapons.. no matter how ready she was to smash the club against the Insectoid... Anyway she keeps a firm grip on her club still "I'll keep an eye on this insects... they might have a sort of hive mind and it might be pretending to surrender to surprise us later..."

If the Craadians don’t disarm the insectoids then Lyle will carefully and systematically collect their weapons- keeping his weapon at the ready in case of shenanigans.

The Craadians come out and cover the insects, kicking the weapons away. They don't aim anything at you, but it's easy to see that they're hesitant. Did they trade one trouble for another, or did fortuitous help come in the nick of time?

Binding wire is employed to tie the aggressors up.

Then, you're staring at each other. One speaks a few words in the Craadian language.

After knocking down one of the insectoids, Emmett turns to discover the action has stopped.

"That...it?" he pants. He has the ability, but his body has gone a long way since he was a young man running around the countryside defending his home. "And here I was...just gettin' started."

After a moment catching his breath, he realizes the awkward silence. "Oh. Blazes. Uh...We got a package for you?" He hooks a thumb back at his craft. Without making any sudden moves or trying to look away, he calls back through the craft's open door, "Hey Adiutor, you hear me? We could use some of that translation work from before!"

The artificial personality uses external speakers to translate your last words.

The Craadian responds, which gets translated as "We have been expecting you. Your timing was impeccable." It points at a side wall. "If you would unload your crate, some of those parts are critical. These scavengers were attempting to steal even more of our parts."

Emmett leans his polearm up against the side of the ship and moves in to grab a crate. He comes out shoving it along the floor, grunting with the effort. "Why'd they want your parts, anyhow? And for that matter, what are you fixin' with 'em? Damn things are heavy..."

After a brief exchange between the Adiutor add the Craadians, as the parts are unloaded, you learn that the Craadians operate these isolated outposts, mining and living their lives mostly independently. Many years ago, they had a more robust central trading system with each other, but pirates have killed off or driven much of the traders to ground. Now, some of the independent colonies trade with each other those parts they can spare in order to remain alive.

The parts that you have delivered will in part allow them to keep their power reactor online for several more years. In addition, other equipment they have that is less critical but still failing requires maintenance.

"Well... Why don't you make some defenses? An autogun would have cleaned up pretty fast a bit ago... " Jaz pauses and turns to Y'breq. "Y'breq do you think we could help them set something up or design it? We might be able to trade more services"

Y'breq looks relieved that she can put her skills to good use. "Absolutely. Just tell me what you ant it to do and I think I can make something."

Emmett grunts as he sits on the ground next to the ship, resting after moving the heavy crates. He watches the general bustle of the room for.a moment before waving over one of the Craadians. "One your compadres from another rock let slip that one of you rock miners found some kinda strange portal buried away. You heard anything about that?" He draws a child-like doodle in the dirt. Hopefully it resembles the portal he saw in the mine.

The Craadian spokesbeing replies to Jaz, through the translator, "We had a laser weapon placement, but scrounged the apparatus for parts to keep our hydroponics lab fully functioning."

To Emmett, the ambassador says, "That was on Pysche. This rock does not have such an ancient device. We would give much to have such a thing. In fact, if we had one, our colony and the one on Psyche would become important trade hubs for the entire belt. We could safely move goods millions of kilometers in an instant, safely without predation by pirates."

"Hm, if you know where we can get some replacement parts, I can get it back up and running for you."

Jaz gestures to the weapoms they just confiscated. Let's start with what we have.

Lyle makes himself as useful as possible, assisting Emmett with hauling the crates and helping Y’breq if she needs anything.

Turana kept looking to the surrendered insectoid while hearing the conversation, it seems that she was the only one still worried about them so finally she relaxed her muscles and rested her club on her elbow as she started to considering the different options thrown, although their initial target was to bring the portal ship back to earth, knowing more about other lifeforms and technology seemed way more interesting, at least for the moment.. she decided to address to Aduitor in order to get her words translated to the Craadians "I guess these insectoids are not the most terryiing creatures you encountered then.. Do you think we could encounter greater threats in the way to our homeworld... or maybe some of your ....people? you know.. fellow colonists . we could all benefit from any advice you can give us" She did not reveal they were from earth just to test if craadians recognized their
homeworld