The creature laid dead infront of Megaera. She rolled it over on its belly to see if the bullet got through, but the carapace seemed intact.
"Might need to use armor piercing rounds to punish these things more effectively..."
She holstered her handgun and noticed that her wound lost a moderate amount of blood, but nothing life threatening. The trees were quiet again and Meg didn't bother checking her scanner anymore. The dead creature infront of her was not bigger than a moderate sized dog and the tail was twice its lenght. Megaera decided to take it with her for further study back at base camp and carried it with her by the tail. It was surprisingly lightweight. The tail of the other creature was left behind.
It took Mi some good 15 minutes until she had something on the scanner herself. Upon closer inspection it appeared like a heat signature pulling something almost as cold as the surroundings with it. Mi took out her blaster and with careful steps got closer to it. Soon she could hear footsteps and hid behind a tree. Were there others around? Was this Meg? Mi sighed quietly, why didn't they get the idea to stay in contact via radio!?
Mi flinched but sighed when she heard Meg's voice. "I am.. still a little clumsy since that crash. I am sor-!" She had been walking up to Meg but then saw the corpse. "What the hell... is that thing? And.. wait, your shoulder.." She shook her head and gave Meg a smile. "So much to my doubts about agressive wildlife down here."
She lowered her gun when she saw Mi. They both looked at the creature that laid there as Mi walked up next to Meg
"This is some sort of cold blooded reptilian creature. Has great agility and excellent camouflage for its surroundings. Its main weapons seem to be its claws and tail, which is unlikely to be poisoned. The carapace could be strong enough to stop a bullet, but when I shot it, the impact in the chest might have slowed the bullet enough to cushion the impact against the chitinous exteriour. It is basicly a dinosaur shrimp"
Mi inspected its body closely, such a weird creature. But just as Meg stated, perfect camouflage. She raised its tail and gave the spikes on it a closer look. "Nasty thing. Good thing you managed to kill it. There are probably many more of it, right? Gaia is surely a paradise.. for flowers and predators." But even in this situation Mi couldn't hide a small chuckle. Meg was seemingly alright and they could finally get back to the camp and finish the actual preparations! "Well, let's get that thing back to the ship? Might be interesting to keep.. your shrimp thing!"
Meg picked up the body of the creature and walked after Mi
"Only two so far. This one and the other one is missing a tail. You can find it along this trail if you keep going the way I came from. So, what are you doing here anyway? I thought you were preparing our base camp. And you could have called me by radio instead of me almost shooting you.
In other news. No signs of human life in the area, but these heat scanners do not work for those dino shrimps. We will need to think of another counter measure."
"Well, the ships are camouflaged. Didn't really prepare much of the rest so far.. and uh, you sort of don't have your radio with you, do you? I mean, could also be my device which is not playing along." She looked back at Meg, smiling weakly. "And when the heat scanners don't work, well, we will figure something out. Let's just get back to the camp and lean back a bit, hai?""
"Turn it back on then!" She replied amused. But her smile ceased when she faced Meg's accusation that she entered the ship! She put on an obviously faked innocent face. "Y-Y.. Your ship? I could never, no, no way!"
