"Sir, Mokuzai-Roku is reporting difficulties," Ryoichi reports over the radio.
"What difficulties?" Aquila sighs. Though at least I can take some solace in the fact his collar is making him more subservient already.
"Driveshaft failure," Ryoichi explains. "They've been forced to stop for repairs."
"Then leave them behind," Aquila commands. "We cannot afford to delay ourselves."
"As you wish sir."
"Any other issues I need to know about?" Aquila asks Ryoichi and the other Grand Masters; he receives a series of reassuring negatives. One vehicle down. It shouldn't make much difference; I just need to slightly tweak Mokuzai's initial deployment… actually, Ryoichi's smart enough to sort that out himself. "OK. Ryoichi, your forces will need to deploy differently to compensate; I trust you are capable of handling that yourself?"
"Aye-aye, sir," Ryoichi confirms.
"Good." Aquila shuts the radio off and turns his attention to the surroundings the Jade convoy is thundering through; in the far distance, sees a brief flash of light from the top of a grassy knoll. Odd, I didn't send any recon units forward… Aquila turns to the peregrine stood next to him. "Agent Hayabusa, I need you to fly ahead and check for any lookouts; if you see anything, report back to me immediately."
Hayabusa salutes, then takes off and flies ahead of the convoy; as he nears the grassy knoll the flash came from, he spots four figures riding away. "Hayabusa to Ryu," he radios back to Aquila. "I see four vehicles: two motortrikes and two ATVs; they're riding on ahead, faster than our convoy can manage."
"Who's riding them?" Aquila demands.
Hayabusa accelerates; a moment later, he's almost directly overhead the four vehicles. "A silver hare, an olive lynx, an ochre badger, and a steel blue wolf."
Aquila curses violently under his breath. "Do not let them out of your sight! I want to know where they're going!"
Even though Rob, Maria, Danny, and Xander are pushing their vehicles to maximum speed, Maria cannot resist looking behind them; spotting something in her peripheral vision, she looks up. "We're being followed!" she yells over the roar of the engines.
Rob risks a look over his shoulder. "There's no-one behind us!" he yells back.
"Not behind, above!"
Rob looks behind again, but this time he looks up too. "A peregrine!" he yells. "Scatter!"
As the Scarves scatter and head into the trees, Hayabusa increases altitude to try and track all four of them. "Hayabusa to Ryu," he radios to Aquila. "They spotted me and have scattered; I'm trying to keep track of all four of them, but it's not easy."
"You let them spot you?" Aquila bellows in reply.
"The sky doesn't offer many hiding places," Hayabusa explains.
It takes a few moments for Aquila to respond. "I shall ignore your insolence, this time," he hisses. "On one condition: you tell me where they're heading."
"I cannot say for sure, but if they continue on their current heading, they will reach Shang Tu before we do."
This could be a problem. I really expected them to work out the clues quicker, then they would have been in the Gotoshi, and we'd hit Shang Tu unopposed. Aquila ponders his options for a few moments. "How fast are they going?"
"They're capable of twice our speed, sir."
They may be faster, but they can't ride all through the night… "Fall back," Aquila commands Hayabusa; he then opens a radio channel to the Grand Masters. "We have a slight complication; it appears the clues we left for that infernal vixen's friends were a little too cryptic. As a result, they have spotted us, and will beat us to Shang Tu. Therefore, to minimise the amount of time Shang Tu has to prepare, we must drive through the night. Do not let me down."
Aquila shuts off the radio without waiting for affirmative replies. Run while you still can; those Crystals are mine, and there's nothing you can do to stop me.
