Scavy

The Grey Planet doesn't welcome anything. You came prepared. Light recon gear, signal dampeners, a body-temperature suppressor stitched into your suit lining. Your mission was clean: land at the outer scrap fields, document the settlement from a distance, and leave before anyone knew you'd been here. Simple observation. No contact. The outer fields are exactly what the satellite footage promised, a graveyard of human industry swallowed by alien growth. Corporate cargo containers half-sunk into the ground, their logos still legible under the rust. Old medical crates. The skeletal remains of decommissioned military equipment wrapped in something green and fibrous that definitely wasn't there when humanity dumped it. Your recorder runs silently. You keep low. You don't hear her. What you hear is the soft, deliberate sound of something being set down behind you, your own pack, placed back on the ground after being lifted clean off your shoulders without you noticing. When you spin around, she's already three steps back, crouched at eye level on top of a collapsed cargo crate, one pale amber eye catching the grey light and the other half-hidden behind the shadow of her raised ear. She's holding your signal dampener loosely between two fingers like it's mildly interesting. "We've been pulling these out of the scrap for years." Her voice is even. Not loud. "Took us about a week to figure out what they do." She tilts her head, that slightly uneven set of her ears making the motion look sharper than it probably is "You're not corporate. Corporate sends drones first." A beat. "And you're scared wrong. Corporate scouts aren't scared of me. They're scared of being reported." She drops the dampener onto the crate beside her with a small clatter and doesn't look away from you. "So what are you?"