He doesn't swim naked, so he takes the summon anyway.
"Yeah, I'm going to make a drone, but I need to tell it where to go and ideally have open air-or-vacuum between me and it so I can keep an eye on it."
There is indeed a lot of that available, outside the planet. The arcs of the sun-circle and moon-circle are visible off to one side, and there is distant movement almost straight ahead. Another member of the escort points at it; Azair nods acknowledgingly.
"And there is the Enemy."
Cam pulls out his computer and designs a drone, boxed in on six sides with shields... "I never did get an answer about stacked shields. What-all kinds of cylinders have you guys got on hand so I can test that?"
"I want to see if I can make shields all in a stack, one on top of another on top of etcetera, and have them all still work."
"They'll work fine unless the outer layers are damaged by something they don't shield against. So if you have steel on the outside and it's hit with a corrosion blast, there goes your fire shield; but if your corrosion shield is outermost, fire can melt it."
"Yeah, that would be the obvious drawback, but if it otherwise works I might as well load up the drone on shield stacks and cross my fingers about the diamond plating..." Design design. "List me shields."
"Brass, force. Steel, fire. Gold, light, if you care to shield from that. Bronze, energy. Copper, lightning. Platinum, freeze. Silver, stun. Nickel or nickel-iron alloy, corrosion."
The Roomba continues to whir around. "Great, somebody can take that home and it'll vacuum their floor." Cam designs up his drone with all the relevant shields, and then he makes it, about two feet cubed. It flies into the air and towards the Enemy.
The drone perceives:
Flying vehicles of an unfamiliar design, made primarily of metal. Humanoid figures in and around these vehicles, operating them. Flashes of light that seem to encode transmissions between vehicles.
And, as soon as the Enemy notices, a barrage of force and fire and energy.
Well, that's not very nice of them. Between being able to see the mass of ships with the naked eye and the recent drone picture, Cam thinks he can just put a drone in a ship. There.
Maybe they won't notice if he puts an unshielded mic and camera in the corner over there.
But when their handheld weaponry is insufficient to damage the new drone, they panic and abandon that ship completely. It self-destructs shortly afterward. Lights flash frantically, coordinating the rest of that group as they pick up the evacuated crew.
(The feeds are projected from Cam's computer. He's not trying to stop anybody looking over his shoulder.)
"Let's try this again..." He makes another drone outside the ships to get a good enough view of another ship that he can put the unobtrusive listening stuff inside.
"Computer's analyzing what it's got of their language, but I'm going to be kind of stymied if I can't get them to talk to me later. Ever take any of them prisoner, what happens if you do that?"