Challenge #02327-F137: That's a Lot of Samples

An Exploratory Team stumbles upon a Pirate Hideout and gets ambushed. The scientists make peace with their imminent demise and the pirates begin to prematurely celebrate....Until the ships human shows up, very very angry. -- Anon Guest

They had been excited to see smoke. Specifically, controlled columns of smoke. That meant controlled fires. This, in turn, meant that there was intelligent life present. Science Team Four proceeded cautiously. They didn't want to pollute a starter civilisation with sightings of alien life.

Their Human had taught them well. Tread softly, keep low, and never look directly at your quarry, they had said. Stay downwind if you can and disguise your scent if you can't. Fortunately, livesuits didn't have much in the way of scent, but they took caution to roll in some of the more pungent local flora anyway.

A starter civilisation on an assumed uninhabited world. This was scientific gold. Anthropological fields would be celebrating all over Allied space. The opportunity to study infant civilisation was rare and any scientist would leap on it with avaricious intent. What they found, unfortunately, was not a starter civilisation. It was a hide-out camp. For pirates.

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