Or were those guys not considered 'borgs'?
… Or would they recognize his armor? This is a built up area in what had to be an inner colony city. There's no way they wouldn't be familiar with it.
Something in the back of his head whispered that wasn't the right answer.
No… that wasn't right. It shouted that wasn't the right answer. Nothing here sat right. Not a single piece of information he had available to him made sense. He had to assume this was a first contact scenario. If he was wrong, he'd look like an idiot.
It wouldn't be the first time.
His gaze drifted up from the slum to the bright, over-styled city. It would be next to impossible to sneak around a dense urban area without notice. This area would be his best bet to gather information under the radar.
Exposing himself to someone might be a bad idea if there are insurrectionists here. That didn't seem likely. He'd spent a lot of time fighting them. No Innie he'd seen or heard of looked like these guys. Especially not the ones that were now stalking away from the fight.
So he had two options. Stick around here for who knows how long until something makes sense, or go down there and try to sweet talk someone into giving him some information.
Unfortunately, he already knew the answer to that question. If he was going to do this, it needed to be controlled. One person, two at the most. Isolated so they wouldn't be interrupted. Whoever he chose couldn't report him back to the gang or pseudo-police he'd seen. At least, not until he was gone.
That last one would be hard to control.
I could always tie them up and leave them somewhere they'll be found after I'm out.
A potential solution but one he didn't want to explore unless absolutely necessary. These looked like civilians.
With a target, or at least rough criteria for one, he started scanning the slums again, this time looking for anywhere that might be isolated enough to have a private conversation. Getting into the slums without being seen would be difficult. Some of the buildings were close enough together, the walkways between them probably weren't wide enough for him.
So that meant somewhere on the edge. Most convenient would be right below him, where he'd seen kids kicking a 'ball' around earlier.
A kid might be a good place to start. Old enough to have some info, young enough people might think they're making up a story if they say something about me.
He was right above where they'd been playing earlier. It seemed like as good a place as any to start.
Problem was, those kids from earlier were gone. This was the only open space he could see. That meant it was likely used as a play area for them. It was also relatively isolated. Not many people were in sightlines of the 'arena'.
If I'm gonna do this, it's as good a spot as any. Now I need to wait for the opportunity, I guess.
So that's what he did. Time crept by as he watched the slums below writhe with activity. He'd seen bazaars and shanty-towns before. There were a few times he'd run security detail in outer colony worlds with hillside slums many of the locals would call favelas. It was a reference to the old favelas, slums over Rio De Janeiro in Brazil during the 20th-22nd centuries. This looked exactly like that. The slums themselves seemed to be alive.
No new information presented itself during his observation. None that was useful, anyway. After that fight had been broken up, this had calmed down. There were a few other incidents where it looked like something was about to get started before everyone went their separate ways.
His guess was no one else wanted to be the ones to bring those big bastards out again. Something told him they didn't like having to come break up a fight more than once a night. He knew enough about outer colony justice to understand how that works.
An hour passed. Then a second.
Time ticked by with an excruciating slowness. Not only was he sitting there, more questions forming by the second, but while he was doing this, his team was-
Well, he had no goddamn clue about what his team was doing. He didn't know where they were, what happened, or if they were even alive.
No, that last one was ridiculous. They were alive. He'd been through enough with them to know they'd be just fine without him.
The best thing he could do for them was figure out just what the hell was going on and where he was.