Another angle-hummer!

And now a beam of steady consonant tones: a chord with two much lower false notes. And now that he's thinking about phase, he notices that the phase of the false notes shifts as they cut across the beam. Something else for navigation? Implying that Exodus expects there to be aircraft within the beam... He directs them to go back into it.

And there's another navigation beam! This one is for vertical position and points down, but there aren't any warblers down there... and now they're past it. Probably fine, but time to land soon? He catches Audron's attention and points down.

By now they've been seeing a lot of the aliens' lights for the last while. They're lighting up large stretches of the ice field with miniature suns, spilling white across the ground. It's hard to tell much detail, but there are large boxy shapes down there, and what looks like figures in orange heavy clothing like the one Miguel was wearing. There are strings of lights on poles obviously working to define a road, or rather, several roads in diverging paths. There's enough light around here that you can even see the shape of the terrain from what spills out, faintly. Visible in a valley is a series of distant structures festooned with more lights... One of them is trailing a thin stream of steam into the air, leaving a white trail over the drydark.

It's exciting and beautiful.

Audron looks around for a good spot to land and immediately spots one in the distance. A long road of lights, two sets in a line, far up ahead. He turns and flies towards them, descending gently. (They're soon above the ILS's path, the lumbering orbital shuttle having a fairly steep glide slope compared to a biplane lifted by magic.)

He's trying not to act too alarmed but, also, this is objectively kind of alarming. He finds Lucy's office, at the jog.

"Lucy. There is a biplane with aliens in it approaching the colony."

"...You finally decided to grow a sense of humor?" She asks hopefully.

"No. I'm dead serious. We can see them on the tower RADAR we set up for shuttle operations. We can see them with telescopes."

"Okay. You'd never bullshit me about this. Aliens, fuck. I suppose it was a possibility..."

She makes a call on her tablet.

"Mary, please come to my office right away. There's something you need to see."

"Yeah, I'm aware, boss."

What, did you think she didn't have a guy reporting to her from the shuttle team? What do you take her for?

"Uh, this is gonna be all over the colony in an hour."

A warbler is now shouting directly at the biplane.

"Attention unidentified aircraft, Nivis flight control. You are flying without ground contact. If you can understand this, please respond. Over."

"Attention unidentified aircraft, Nivis flight control. We are clearing the runway for you and emergency teams are on standby, please acknowledge. Over."

"Attention unidentified aircraft, Nivis flight control. Do you need assistance? We count six souls on board. We can help you land if we can understand you. Over."

And so on.

They're talking in English! He can't tell what they're saying, though.

(He does not mention anything.)

"There's a nice long flat strong area below us now! It goes on for a while!"

Which Audron can probably see with his eyes, but just to be thorough!

Hestlierre waves and flashes in Morse code: HELLO EXODUS

Morse code?? He does actually know morse code, as ancient as it is. Some quick scrambling finds the spotlight controls.

DO YOU NEED HELP

And then a bit later:

YOU ARE FREE TO LAND

WELCOME TO NIVIS

"Is there somewhere a little bit isolated from the main colony or anywhere sensitive we could bring them to?"

"Sure, we've got a good amount of room thanks to all the Modules. There's some empty storage areas and a conference room down on the first floor of Seven-C."

They still lost a whole bunch of Modules, but a lot more of them survived than it first looked like.

Dr. Montero knocks on the office door and says through it, "Hello. I'd like to offer my presence in a xenobiological capacity."

She has a headache. She listens to the feed from the flight control tower.

"They know English, apparently. And morse code. What the fuck... Dr. Montero! You might as well come in, you clearly know what's going on."

"They know English, apparently, and appear to be humanoid and come in several varieties. If you know anything about theoretical xenobiology you know how strange this is."

"I have no idea what to think. Let's just... Wait for them to land, see what they say, and go from there. I'll head over to Seven-C and start, uh, organizing for it, I guess. Mary... Post some guards. Armed. We don't want people bothering our guests. Or them getting lost."

"As you say, ma'am."

"If you make first contact while armed, just be aware that is what you're doing, Navigator."

"I'm going to review the charter to see what exactly we can and can't do to keep people away from the aliens. And what you can and cannot order us to do, ma'am."

"I understand, and that's all reasonable. But let's get to it and hopefully get some answers?"

The plane coasts to a stop on the runway and its jet engine (from the sound of it) winds down. The aliens hurry out the back, with the two who are on fire blocking the wind for the others. There are ten of them, five humanoids and five birds, and they seem eager to follow directions into the conference room in Seven-C.

They're a little bit smaller than human-average, with the exception of the giant beetle, and the birds, who are large for birds but less than four feet tall.

The people with the fire have, well, feline features. They take it easy on the fire once they're indoors, showing that one is all-black and one is black-and-white. They're not wearing much more than cargo shorts.

The person with bat wings and very fine brown fur stays at the back of the group, looking around. She's wearing high-waisted pants, a grey cape, and an orange balaklava which she pulls off - the tips of her 'fingers' seem adequately dextrous - and tucks under one wing.

(She does not examine the room with echolocation. If they've never heard of vampires they might have secrets on the other side of the walls.)