This is my entry for round 6 of @Ooorah's SFSD-X. The topic is 'First Contact', and I had to use six of the prompts, including the first one. Here are the prompts used (and how they are used):

314 (Time on watch)

Tron (Mech pilot suit)

Man in Window (Protagonist, opening),

Aliens & Cavemen (referenced painting)

Foggy Street (protagonist, last day on Earth)

Giant Mech on Ice World (obvious)

First Contact

He stood at the broad window in his office. The lights were off to eliminate the glare. He stood with his hands behind his back, staring out at the cloud-covered city. The darkness before him mirrored the mood within him.

Why did that bitch have to call the SEC? Didn't she realize it would mean she gets nothing? He sighed heavily, a bit melodramatically; I guess it's true that hell hath no fury like an ex-wife with a bastard lawyer.

He could hear the footsteps in the corridor approaching his office. He knew it was the feds, coming to take him into custody. Lucas looked at his watch; it was 3:14 p.m. Odd that they're early; they aren't supposed to be here until 3:30. His lawyer was supposed to be there as well, but the prick was late; Lucas knew his own bastard lawyer would bill him double if he had to hurry to catch up.

Shit, what if he's not coming? What if the court won't free up the funds to pay him? Then I'm royally...

There was no knock on the door; it just opened. Lucas turned, expecting to see Federal Marshalls with batons and handcuffs. Do they still carry batons? Instead, he found a very tall and very black woman wearing a Mars Air Force uniform.

Forty Days Later

With his career down the SEC shitter; he'd never be allowed to own, let alone trade shares ever again: on Earth, on Mars, or on any of the Galilean moons. The SEC dissected his multi-planetary real estate corporation; then they liquidated all its holdings and sold off everything else within five short weeks. All the money went to pay back the investors in Europa Condominiums, the poorly executed project that led to Lucas' downfall.

Lucas Welkinshlepper XXIV stood at the end of his driveway, looking from side to side along the residential street. He stepped over to the garbage can and deposited that last of his life's detritus. For Lucas, today was the culmination of everything that could go wrong, actually going wrong.

Today was to be the first day of a future that offered, he hesitated to say 'freedom,' an alternative to prison. He looked around the street full of early morning fog one more time and then trudged back into the empty house. With Carol gone, the divorce papers signed, the house sold, his fortune dissolved ... all that remained to prove he had lived for thirty-seven years was his one suitcase and one carryon bag. That's all that he was allowed to take to the Mech School at Trivium Charontis, on Mars.

Forty More Days Later

"Sonofabitch!"

"Sorry! Sorry!" Evelyn ran over to pull the wire leads away from his skin.

"Really? Evie? Again?"

The power unit leads had come disconnected and zapped his hip, for the fifth time. The black suit was usually inactive until he interfaced with the mech. Today he and three of his classmates were walking around with three kilograms of portable power around their waist. The latest suit upgrades needed the pilots-in-training to be lab rats before the update would be authorized to interface with the behemoth's systems.

She fiddled with the connector points, and after a moment he felt, rather than heard, the click of the connector. This time, she held it in place.

"Only two more tests Luc, you don't have to move around, these are strictly COM tests."

"Fine, but I swear Evie, you zap me one more time, and you're going to be going to Beta Hydri in the mech, not me."

He heard a ripping sound and looked down to see her tearing some duct tape with her teeth. She used it to keep the electrical leads together, so she didn't have to hold on to them.

"Okay, Luc, go ahead. The rest of you, power up your suit as well."

Each of them thought the power-up sequence commands. Within a few seconds, all of them had blue lines running along their torso, legs, and arms. The blue lines amplified the individual pathways of the massive neural network used in their bodies. All the lines terminated in the black headpiece that also had blue lines, but these simply indicated power status. Twenty minutes later, the emergency COM interface was vetted, the suit's powered down, and Lucas was on his way to the infirmary to deal with a hip covered in small electrical burns.

And Another Forty Days Later

Transit time to Beta Hydri, roughly 7.46 parsecs from Mars, was about eleven days, old reckoning. Lucas and Setya, the woman from his class with the funny hair, traveled as a pair. The research station in the sector would provide final oversight, but the giant forty-story mechs had been designed to operate autonomously in most situations. In fact, most of Luc's training had been concerned with first contact protocols, as well as biological and geological assessments. The mech's themselves were fairly intuitive to operate. Once you were plugged in, they did what you did.

The mechs had a small living space and lots of stores. That was part of the reason for their size. They were to be autonomous as their mission parameters did not include support infrastructure. Mars Air Force, being at the forefront of interplanetary exploration, developed the mech program so that the researcher-pilot would have excellent protection ... and also scare the absolute bejeebers out of any hostile races they encountered. The whole 'boldly go where no one has gone before' crowd had started pissing themselves after the events on Mars, back in the 21st century, and hadn't stopped five centuries later.

After converting from interstellar configuration to landing configuration, the mechs reoriented themselves for a feet-first approach. As Lucas descended through the nitrogen and oxygen atmosphere of the planet's northern hemisphere, his AI informed him there was a life form at the target landing site. Looking at the long range visual, Lucas could see a humanoid sitting on the back of a creature. As he got closer to landing, the humanoid looked very much like a Humanesh, and the creature looked like a ... An equine? Out here?

As the descending behemoth approached the ground, it must have looked like a god from the heavens. The humanoid was staring up at it, not moving. Luc kept an eye on the pair, realizing he was going to be landing very, very close to them.

Bloody great. Everyone had studied the Sundusquit painting about the Vesna first landing on Earth and encountering our cavemen ancestors. Experts surmised that the depicted encounter set back homo sapiens advancement by at least 12,000 years. He sure as hell didn't want to be responsible for stunting the growth of a new civilization the way those tantaloid bastards had.

Through his interface, Lucas had little control over the descent, but he could adjust trim. He did so, slowly edging the great mechanical monster further and further from the local and his thing-that-looked-like-a-horse.

At the last possible moment, the equine bolted, with the humanoid hanging on for dear life. The equine, obviously not being very bright, ran directly towards the mech's landing point, and directly under its left foot.

Lucas closed his eyes and sighed deeply. "I really, really hate Tuesdays," he mumbled as the large mechanical exploration robot made first contact.