Far to the west, a desert tan painted shape flew across the gently rolling dunes at high speed. Delicate optical systems amplified the ambient light five hundred times over, turning the black night to a light grey, showing the dunes as a series of rolling shadows marching to the horizon. Immensely powerful computers analysed the scene, predicting the height and size of the dunes, sending a thousand adjustments a second to the control surfaces and guiding the plane into a series of hard and jarring ascents and descents, keeping it close to the shifting sands.
In the cockpit, the pilot flexed his hands inside the leather gloves, examining the cracked knuckles of antique garments. A gift from his grandfather, who had also been a pilot, they had been awarded to him the day he had graduated flight school. A proud day for him, being awarded his wings and having his family watched him swear his ceremonial oaths to the corporation and country. And now he had let them down. Shame burned within him, remembering how only a short while before, he had lost sight of the intruder in the desert, how easily they had evaded him.
His teeth ground together, and he took a calming breath, forcing his jaw to unclench and his hands to stay clear of the flight controller. He didn't want to disturb the ground-following systems from their delicate task. Instead he checked the weapons systems one more time, then turned to look at the sensor readouts.
It hadn't taken more than three minutes for someone to pull the ANR-32 sensor package from the storage bay when he'd rolled up to the taxiway. Even before the canopy had fully risen, he'd been shouting orders at the ground crew, his angry voice carrying clearly across the flight line. He'd managed to forestall his commander's wroth by unleashing his own fiery temper, laying a continual string of abuse upon his hapless ground crew and blaming them for the lack of sensor capability on his bird.
By the time they'd refuelled his tanks, one of the ground crew had snapped open the covers on the wings, pulling the counter deception and air-to-air defence matrix modules out and ramming home the modular sensor systems. The other half of the crew were standing to either side of the cockpit, pulling out the large central snap in module for the threat receiver and plugging in the matching sensor analysis screens.
He was rolling down the runway two minutes later, building up to take-off speed while the systems were still finishing the diagnostics and boot sequences, when he heard the squadron commander on the radio, wishing him good look and telling him that he looked forward to receiving the confirmation that the targets had been dealt with. The message sounded friendly but the subtext was clear – he was being given one chance to rectify his mistake, or there would be trouble.
Far to the east, the scorpions scuttled down the gulley, their legs a blur of motion just visible through the magical concealment. In the darkness, it was a fear-inducing sight, a concealed dark mass, propelled across the sand by a rippling motion, pincers held high and the deadly tail arched over the back, stinger pointed towards their prey.
Aswon adjusted his grip on the camouflage netting, getting ready to throw it at the approaching scorpion. He sensed Hunter by his side, also holding a net. They were by the right hand side of the UAZ, spread out a little so they had clear sight lines, but close enough to support each other. Shimazu stood on the other side of the vehicle, holding his taser in one hand and the large ballistic shield in the other, peering out into the darkness. His lack of enhanced vision put him at a disadvantage compared to the others, and he felt wary about the coming conflict. Kai was in the vehicle still, window wound down and with his taser in hand as well, ready to lend what aid he could. Tads was standing in the rear of the cab, leaning against the cabin, breathing heavily after the exertion of throwing her stunballs.
They watched the two scorpions approach, then gasped as the one on their right started to sink into the earth. It didn't dig, or burrow with its legs or claws, it just…sank. It left a furrow in the sand behind it, as the body dragged through the loose particles, and then with a whispering of sand, it sunk out of sight entirely. A moment later there was a strange gravely pop, and a dome of sand appeared in the spot where it had disappeared, as if the ground had burped after swallowing. They didn't have time to contemplate on this though as the one on their left continued its approach, speeding up as it charged towards Shimazu.
Aswon swung from the waist, his body whipping around and accelerating the net as he flung it towards their foe. The selection of rocks he'd gathered and tied onto the camo net helped stretch out the material, and it arced through the air. The scorpion sensed the movement and both pincers and tail struck into the air. The net collapsed around and over the pincers, the fabric conforming to the structure of its exoskeleton. The stinger actually slid through the netting, striking at a sensed target and unprepared to hit something so diaphanous. As the net fell over the scorpion, the barbs on the legs designed to tear into or secure prey became a millstone around its neck. The net caught in a dozen places, and as the leg scurried back and forth, started to entangle the net further and further.
Shimazu tracked the frantic motion for a moment, then fired as the thrashing shape rolled out of the darkness, a mass of legs, pincers and floating leaves snipped in half and ripped from the net. The taser struck the front of the scorpion, bedding into the soft areas around the eyes and thousands of volts discharged from the massive capacitors, sending electricity arcing through the creature's head. It stumbled, further entangling itself into the net, the limbs moving slower and more awkwardly the more enveloped they got. The stinger thrashed and struck at what the scorpion felt on its back, pulling back again when it made contact with its own shell, striking over and over again until a barb on the stinger entangled on the netting, pulling it up and straining two of the legs back.
It gave one last struggle, then flopped onto its side, the net wrapping around it further and further while the pincers continued to cut at the loose elements of the netting and turning them into olive drab confetti littering the desert around it.
Marius lifted the drone higher, extending the cone of coverage from the sensors and trying to spot the one that had burrowed down below them. Concerned by the obviously magical nature of the creatures, Tads extended her protection over the team, wrapping each in an ethereal weave of mana to protect them against magical attacks. Hunter gave a wry smile as adrenaline coursed through his system, and spread his feet slightly wider, shifting his balance back and forth and trying to be ready for what he felt was the inevitable lurch as the creature burrowed up underneath him.
They paused for a moment, watching and listening. The entangled scorpion continued to thrash and strike, slowly digging itself into the sand as the now hopelessly entangled legs flicked back and forth in reflexive motions. Shimazu moved a couple of steps closer, his eyes straining to see through the dark, and Kai swung his taser around, covering the area behind him, in case a new foe decided to take advantage. A wry smile tugged at the corner of his mouth as he realised that there were no footsteps behind Shimazu, who clearly was exerting all the self-control he had to avoid giving any trace of his passing.
A flash of motion to the rear of the vehicle registered in their peripheral vision, and both Kai and Tads turned to face there. Shimazu twisted a split second later, his skin covered in goose-bumps as some sense of movement conveyed itself to him. They saw a smaller scorpion rise up out of the ground with the same unreal smoothness with which the first one had descended. As it rose clear of the desert and started to scuttle towards them, there was another reflexive desert burp, and a dome of sand appeared behind it.
Kai and Shimazu were still swinging their guns to bear when the scorpion rose up into the air, the legs accelerating madly to no effect. Its movement was slow and steady until it was about a metre up, and then it rotated around an invisible point, like a hog on a spit, flipping over onto its back. As the paler belly faced the night sky, the scorpion seemed to flop slightly and lay still, the legs curling up underneath it and only the tail continuing to move, writhing sinuously as it groped for the floor.
Tads had her arm outstretched, and despite the cold night air, was perspiring freely. It had been an automatic gesture, cast without much time to think, but had required copious effort to actually push through the swirling morass of mana in the area. The pollution of astral space from the crater was still bad here, making her work much harder than usual to achieve what should have been a fairly simple levitate spell.
"Heads up team, another group coming in from the west, I count at least four of those sand domes in the rocks, and can catch glimpses of movement heading your way." Marius figuratively leant in close, his attention focussed on the output from the surveillance drone as he tried to mount a decent overwatch for the team. So concerned was he about spotting all the targets in the gulley, that he didn't spot the momentary fuzzy signature reported by the chopper's systems. It wasn't much of a report – a slightly nebulous patch of background blur. Certainly not much in the grand scheme of things.
The sensor pod on the fighter detected the metal fuselage sitting in the desert ahead, and locked in the shape. The systems scanned through silhouettes and targeting data, searching back through archives and libraries until it found a match, then sketched in targeting data for the pilot. The massive bulk of the helicopter was large enough that it had been divided up into sections, with key areas highlighted upon it. A gentle caress of the acceptance button locked in agreement with the computers suggestion, and a pale green box locked in place around the tail boom of the Mi-6. Moments later the fighter lurched as an air-to-ground missile dropped free of the rack and accelerated clear of the jet fighter, dropping down behind a dune and following the terrain much tighter than its launching craft could, unhampered by the requirement to keep its fragile meat-sack pilot conscious through high-g manoeuvers.
The pale blur of data cleared on the sensors, disappearing from view as the jet dropped back behind masking terrain, and Marius continued to coach the team, none the wiser.
In the gulley, Hunter flicked his wrist, gently throwing the net into the air.
"Aswon, here." He trusted the tribesman to make the catch, and shrugged his hips and shoulders, sending his assault rifle sliding round towards his front while his arms dropped to meet it. They grabbed the reassuring weight of the rifle and bought it up into a low guard position, and the electronic systems in the hand grip matched up with the induction pad built into his palm.
Ahead of him the desert was laid out in a flickering wireframe, the tiny ultrasound emitters implanted where a tear gland should normally be sending out pulses of ultrasonic waves so the detectors built in a ring around his iris could detect the returning bounces. The signals fed down through the optic fibre cable into his router and were quickly shunted into the spatial recogniser module, a featureless plastic box implanted in the space just behind his collarbone. It processed the image and added motion-sensing and analysis routines, feeding the image back up to his brain.
Coming the other way, data from the SmartLink system on his gun measured the temperature of the air, the wind speed, humidity, elevation and air density, along with historical data on the number of rounds fired through the gun, state of the barrel and temperature of the breech, crunching the numbers with a speed that matched computers that had taken up the same size as a suitcase only thirty years before. Now they fed a constant stream of data through the induction pad and up into the same router, which neatly combined the two streams of information.
Overlaid in his vision was a targeting reticule – a floating cross that neatly and precisely indicated exactly where the rounds should fly. There was no need to raise the gun to his shoulder or sight down it – he was as accurate firing from the hip as he was in any other position.
Consequently, as the northernmost scorpion lurched out of cover from the sharp rocky spines of the gulley side, the computer systems had it identified, mapped, rendered and locked onto before the last of its legs had hit the sand. Hunter made a small movement, more of a twist, and the reticule neatly dropped over the face of the beast as it scuttled towards him. He didn't even have to squeeze the trigger – much like Marius was tied to the chopper, he was tied to his rifle. A mental wink and a three round burst of Ares' finest armour penetrating rounds spat from the front of the rifle at 1250m/s.
They were, if anything, over-specced for the job. They would have done him well if he'd been forced to shoot through the armoured exoskeleton and take his chances on penetrating the sloped and thick plating. But his rounds struck the soft flesh front plate of the head, and they penetrated with a sickly sound, like a knife being thrust into a pouch of soup. They started to tumble immediately they met the denser contents, and ricocheted down the internal structure of the creature.
Between the exquisitely-designed gas venting system built into the rifle's barrel and the prodigious strength of the ork carrying it, the barrel hadn't moved a millimetre from the first round being fired and the third. All three of the Teflon-coated missiles struck in a group no more than 40mm across, and then only because of the movement of the scorpion itself. They tore through the organs like a blender, carving a path down the length of the creature that liquefied it passed through.
The rear end of the creature was subjected to a shock wave that nature had never anticipated as it surged ahead of the bullets. Quite literally, the back end of the scorpion blew out, like a tyre stretched beyond its limits, spreading liquid scorpion over the area behind the body in a sixty degree cone. With the widespread destruction of the nervous system, it didn't even continue forward for a few steps – it just stopped dead, collapsing to the ground.
To his left, Shimazu had swung back to face the same direction, assured that Tads had the one to their rear secure. His taser prongs darted across the desert, striking another of the small scorpions as it rushed towards him, before sending enough voltage down the incredibly fine wires to disable the creature and leave it twitching spasmodically on the fine sand.
In between them, Aswon caught the net arcing through the air and then flicked his arms, swinging the net through the air and trying to use the momentum to send it out over the desert towards one of the two still remaining. The motion wasn't as smooth as it should have been though, and despite his best efforts, the net tumbled as it flew through the air, the balance off. It arced to the side, missing the scorpion narrowly and landing in the rocks where it disappeared into a shadow.
Another set of subtle barks rang out across the still night air, as three more rounds from Hunter's rifle punched through a second target, replicating the effects of the first. Another section of the cold desert sandscape was decorated with an image that Pollock would have been proud of, and that would lead to some happy, but confused feeding at dawn. Seeing that there was only one left coming from the flank and that Aswon was already heading that way with his spear, Hunter left him to it, and turned around and dropped into a crouch before exploding upwards into a springing jump, landing on the front of the UAZ. His size 12 boots deformed the hood, leaving clear boot print impressions, but it gave him a better view of the area.
"Gott im Himmel!" Hunter wasn't sure if Marius was upset about the boot dents in the hood of the vehicle, or if he'd seen something, so he had a slow and careful look around, pushing his vision to the maximum range he could.
To the south east he saw a worrying sign. There was another scorpion closing on their position, but something nagged at his brain. It took a moment to realise what the issue was – and then he caught up. The scorpion was twice as far away, and not mapping at all clearly on his ultrasound sensors which was why it looked odd. But it appeared to take up as much of his view as the others… which meant it was twice as large as the first pair they'd seen, or four times as large as the batch of four that had sprung up to the west…
Kai jumped out of the rear door and grabbed one of the pet carriers, then ran away from the huge scorpion now heading their way, and headed for the supine one still floating under Tads levitate spell. Though combat wasn't his preferred option, he wasn't a coward – but clearly the best thing he could do at the moment was take the strain off the rest of the team and free up their resources to deal with the remainder of the live foes.
Aswon raised his taser spear and thrust at the last of the small scorpions that had come rushing towards them, determined to recover from his disastrous throw with a decent contact with his spear. The length of the weapon at least allowed him to keep it at range, and it seemed there were more than enough scorpions around that he didn't have to worry about keeping this one alive – though he certainly wasn't going for the kill. The years of fighting with a spear or staff made the taser-prod feel natural in his hands, and guided him to unerringly strike at the low and fast moving target, giving it a sharp rap to the face. Between the blunt impact from the end of the plasteel shaft and the embedded taser prods, the scorpion collapsed to the ground, a wisp of smoke and burnt flesh rising from the site of the taser prong impacts.
Marius surveyed the scene, watching the large scorpion advance over the sharp ridges towards the vehicle and the group, now arrayed mostly to face it. From his estimate it was easily three to four metres long – a giant creature in every sense of the word, with large pincers and a tail that could strike several metres in every direction. He was just about to call another warning, when he saw the legs suddenly scramble and the creature slowed. Instead of being propelled forwards, it now appeared to be clinging onto the rocks, trying to drag itself…downwards? He suddenly realised that Tads must have thrown another of her levitate spells at it, and it was now fighting to try and stay in contact with the ground, cutting its horizontal movement in half at the minimum.
Kai had made good progress across the soft sand and was approaching the quasi-dormant scorpion, wondering how best to approach it. He wanted to move quickly, but not hastily – the last thing the rest of the team needed right now was to have to try and deal with him being stung. He bought up the pet carrier from underneath, getting the tail and stinger inside first, then squashing it up as he raised the carrier up and over the rest of the critter. It started to stir as the carrier enveloped it and it could feel things around it, but being on its back still seemed to confuse it.
The large scorpion had reached the edge of the rocks, and the front legs were now questing ahead, finding only sand before them. It stopped its advance, apparently stymied by the lack of something firm to grab hold of. Pincers snapped angrily in the air, and the tail flicked back and forth angrily, but the team were still too far from it to strike.
Shimazu raised the taser towards it and fired on the run, hitting the scorpion squarely. The taser gave its distinctive clicking sound, but the creature seemed unaffected, though it rapidly focussed its attention on him instead of Aswon.
"I think I've pissed it off!" he called out. He slid to a halt, suddenly trying to work out in his head how many times he'd fired in the last few seconds – the taser only had enough juice in the capacitors for four shots normally, and he couldn't work out if he still had a shot left or not. The idea of getting in close without a shot spare didn't appeal to him…
Overhead, Marius examined the scene. The four to the west had been dealt with – two exploded with concentrated bursts of fire from Hunter, two tased and battered into unconsciousness by Shimazu and Aswon. One to the north west now boxed up by Kai, who was heading back to the vehicle with the carrier held carefully. One still horribly tangled in netting and thrashing about, several metres clear of anyone else. And one large scorpion struggling not to be flipped over like the other one and having Aswon and Shimazu advancing on it carefully, weapons ready. The situation looked to be in hand, and there was no further enemies in sight – so he guessed it was time to bring up the chopper and help them get the live prey into the reinforced habitat.
He pulled his consciousness out of the drone, sending the recall order to the rudimentary auto-nav to direct it back towards the chopper, then started the engines up. As the jet turbines rumbled into life, his attention scanned the sensors and surroundings out of force of habit, and his stomach lurched.
The fighter lurched up again, perhaps ten kilometres away, emerging from behind the last of the high dunes from the open desert and starting to enter the rocky terrain of the hillside. As it emerged, the pilot abandoned stealth, and instead lashed the chopper with X-band radar and got a firm targeting lock. His screen lit up, identifying the chopper clearly as it sat on the soft sand before him, a sitting duck.
Despite being jacked in and his normal body functions being limited by his RAS override, designed to stop him flailing around and hurting his meat body while his spirit was tied into the machine, Marius blanched, the colour fading from his already pale complexion. The engines were still warming, and he shouldn't do anything with them – but there was no choice, and he had no time to do anything else. He dumped fuel into them, and hit the power – hard, while simultaneously trying to leap forward into motion. The wheels lurched through the sand, the massive engines straining to move the enormous bulk of the chopper, digging it out slowly from where it had sunk under its own weight.
The fighter closed, flashing across the intervening distance quickly – too quickly for Marius. But while Marius had seen the multi-ton bulk of the fighter closing, his sensors hadn't spotted the missile, travelling ahead. The two metre long projectile was well ahead of the fighter now, arrowing down towards the tail boom of the chopper. The radar picture was firmly set in the seeker head and like a determined dog that had spotted its prey, it aimed unerringly towards the target. The rotating laser in the nosecone started to get a return from the chopper's metal skin, and a microsecond before the missile slammed into the hull, the explosive warhead detonated.
The explosive warhead created a fireball as forty kilos of military grade pentaerythritol tetranitrate were ignited, forming a rapidly expanding shockwave that struck at the chopper and ripped the tail rotor to pieces, peeling back sections of metal and exposing the innards of the aircraft. The blast wave also created a compression area just behind it, and the copper and molybdenum liners were compressed by the explosive forces into a thin lance of superheated metal. Designed to defeat modern composite vehicle armour, the regular surface of the chopper already perforated by the leading edge of the blast wave and the thin Kevlar lining of the ballistic weave protection were no match for the penetrating power of the explosive round. Propelled by the momentum of the missile's rocket motor, the remaining fuel and the rapidly-vapourising body of the rear half of the missile slammed into the hole created by the first stage, adding further explosive power and materials.
The tail section of the chopper disappeared in the explosion, a burst of red and yellow flames expanding outwards and upwards punctuating the night air and sending a roiling column of smoke skyward. Inside, the fireball expanded towards the cabin, constrained somewhat by the frame of the aircraft. As it was channelled through the boom, it blew out sensors, wiring, controls, hydraulics and a host of other systems. A third of the control panel just went dark as the auxiliary power unit was incinerated, another third flashed up the red of severe battle damage. Marius was glad he wasn't 'jumped in' to the chopper – the wave of pain he would have felt from his surrogate body would have been debilitating. But, in that split second, he realised the chopper was doomed. Without the tail rotor to stabilise them, they would be unable to fly with any form of success – and certainly not to survive any kind of combat with an agile attack craft.
Hunter saw the flash of light reflected from the rocks and figures ahead of him, but resisted the urge to turn and see what it was. His cybernetic link fed him some of the sensor information from the chopper and he knew they were under attack, but he also knew he was out of range of anything useful to do, and there was a threat right in front of him. The light was distracting, but he focussed, remaining locked in on his target. The creature didn't, and it paused for just a moment – just long enough for him to send the mental command to swap his rifle to semi-automatic fire and for him to send a round through the base of one of the pincers. He didn't know what he'd hit, but it had a dramatic effect – the pincer flew open wide and stayed there. Perhaps it was a tendon or ligament of some kind, or a nerve that controlled the snapping motion, but whatever it was, the shot took out a third of its attacks.
Aswon followed suit, despite the sense of dread that overwhelmed him. He could only think of one thing that would explode in that direction, and unaware of what was going on he assumed that there had been some kind of accident. Just like Hunter though, his years of experience let him keep his mind focussed on the foe in front of him, and he struck while the creature was distracted. Unlike the small ones, this one seemed to be much more resilient to damage. Partially as a result of its greater size, he figured the armour was also thicker, and it would follow that any magical protections would also likely be better developed. He got a good hit in, his spear weaving a pattern through the air and then striking past the remaining pincer to strike on the side of the shoulder, near the joint for the 'good' pincer.
Shimazu couldn't help but turn a little, seeing the fireball race into the air. The rumble of the explosion washed over them less than half a second later. Realising his mistake, Shimazu focussed, driving magical power through his limbs and making it react to his mental commands. His turn had swung the shield around, out of position and opened himself up to attack – so he raised the Yamaha Pulsar and pulled the trigger, hoping that he'd not lost count of the shots he'd fired.
He hadn't.
Illuminated by the light of the explosion, Shimazu got a good shot in, aiming for the reflection in the beady little eyes that had fixed upon him. The prongs struck and then the last charge of power coursed through the fine wires, travelling from prong to prong. The intense current flowed from one eye to the other, zapping the creature's brain and rendering it insensible. As the body collapsed, the rear legs lost their purchase on the rocks and it rose into the air, nothing remaining to fight against Tads' levitate magics.
To the north, the chopper lurched, the aft end of the craft being slammed to the side by the force of the impact, while the engines and the slowly turning rotor dragged it forwards. The rotors were starting to build up speed, but as they did so the rotational forces also built up and in accordance to the laws of motion, the chopper tried to counter-rotate as well. Marius tried to use the motion to crab out of the way, clearing the line of fire of the fighter, but he knew it was too late – the fighter was too close and he was too slow.
The nose-mounted cannon opened up and fired on the centre of the chopper. As the fighter pulled out of the very gentle dive and the chopper lurched and juddered forwards, the rounds impacted just behind the cockpit and stitched their way up and aft, tracing their way towards the engines and transmission. Thirty millimetre explosive shells also made short work of the vehicle hull, penetrating the airframe and ricocheting around the internal volume, smashing equipment, puncturing fuel tanks and destroying personal equipment. More of the chopper's systems failed as the long stream of fire almost chopped the airframe in half and severed wiring, fuel lines and hydraulic systems. Several fires were started as the explosive rounds hit combustible material, further adding to the chaos.
The jet flashed overhead, performing a victory roll as it did so. The few remaining sensors struggled to lock onto it with so much damage, following the contingency commands in the local computer and clearly identifying the jet as a 'threat'. Once clear of the chopper, the pilot pulled out of the roll and stood the fighter on its tail, then kicked in the afterburner. The manoeuvre generated massive g-forces and he felt the flight suit clamp down on his legs, pushing blood towards his torso. Without thinking about it the pilot tensed and made a 'hyungh' type noise as he tensed his muscles, doing a crunch in the cockpit to further drive blood upwards towards his brain. Despite that, his vision tunnelled in, greying around the outside as he went from a horizontal direction of travel to a vertical one.
He pulled the move off though, and as the fighter rose skyward on a column of flame from the burners, chaff and flares shot out behind him, illuminating his craft. He'd deliberately turned flat on to the chopper, displaying his maximum profile and giving a very obvious target. If Marius had had any remaining weapons functional it would have been an easy shot – but the pilot clearly felt in control of the situation, and gave his prey the airborne equivalent of the middle finger as the fighter rose up into the air powered by the twin engines. Once he'd gained a thousand metres in height, he rolled out of the climb and headed west, overflying the chopper once more before heading off in the direction he came.
Marius seethed and mentally pounded at his systems, but nothing was working. The nose-mounted machine gun couldn't have elevated to the target anyway, but the controls to it were down, and power was failing all over the craft. More and more lights dimmed, and there wasn't a system that didn't show severe damage now. Around him the chopper was dying. He jacked out, and as the normal world reasserted itself he could hear the crackle of flames, smell the acrid tang of electrical shorts and could see the dense and possibly toxic smoke cloud slowly filling the cargo area. He struggled to his feet and charged aft, to survey the damage and see what could be done. As he did so, one part of his brain froze on the last image his sensors had recorded before they'd failed. He saw the plan view of the fighter, clearly framed against the black night, illuminated by the flares. Printed across the fuselage was the aircraft ID – AZ40291. The image burned into his memory, filed away in the special place allocated for people who one day were going to find out just how cold a dish revenge could be.
Further up in the gulley, the team paused for a moment, scanning the area carefully. Kai had finished depositing the first flipped scorpion into the back of the UAZ, and had the second pet carrier out to recover the one hit with the taser spear. The big one was held levitated a metre of the ground, and was unmoving – though as they watched they could see a drop of liquid drip from the stinger down to the sand below. The poison sack behind the stinger was huge, easily the size of a large watermelon, and it pulsed gently, each pulse pushing another tiny dribble of venom down into the stinger. The one they had first netted was now making feeble movements, having exhausted itself with the effort of trying to break free. Nothing was moving except them, and they couldn't see any more foes.
"I'm going to go check on Marius," Hunter checked his magazine then turned and loped off. His normal smirk was absent, and as he ran the rifle was kept cradled in his sinewy arms, aiming into the darkness ahead of him, ready to fire.
The others spread out and secured their prey, getting the second stunned one in the carrier and on the vehicle. The big one was clearly too massive to be moved practically or to fit in the enclosure, so they secured it as best they could. Aswon secured the stinger of the large beast to a leg with some cable ties, keeping the stinger under control and in a predictable place rather than flopping around, and they worked around the rest tying legs together to prevent movement.
"Hey, does anyone know how to sex scorpions? Ludmilla wanted a breeding pair – it wouldn't do to take her two males…" Aswon hesitantly approached the back end of the scorpion, looking to examine the area where most creatures had their genitals. His research into scorpions in general had taught him to look for spiny pectines in the males, along with a shape like a chevron, while barbed openings were more prominent on the females. It all sounded very unfriendly…
Back at the chopper, Marius found that his problems were just beginning. Some of the rounds had punctured through the fuel tanks, and he was leaking fuel internally and externally. Several fires burned in the cargo area, and electrical cables sparked and flashed all over the hull. He had very little time before enough of the jet fuel vapourised and turned the chopper into a giant bomb.
He scrambled to the engineer's station and quickly slapped all of the fuses out of the panel, pulling connectors from top to bottom and isolating the batteries. With the auxiliary power unit destroyed and the main batteries isolated, the sparking stopped, removing that as a source of ignition. The small fire extinguisher in the bulkhead smothered two of the fires in foam, choking and smothering them before it ran out of charge.
Hunter rand towards the chopper, and stared at the scene as he closed. Fires littered the area outside and he could see a cone of debris stretching off to one side where the tail had exploded, scattering shards of metal and composites in a cone. The craft was at an angle, the port side landing gear having crumpled and collapsed, giving the chopper about a ten degree list. He closed, and saw the holes punched through the side of the airframe, massive rents in the metal with petals of jagged material peeled back leaving holes he could put his fist through. There was no sign of Marius, and fearing the worst, he ran to the forward-most door into the cargo area, letting the gun swing on its sling and using both hands to wrench open the door.
Marius spun around as the side door was ripped open, hands dropping to his hip before he realised he didn't have his pistol to hand. Hunter's face appeared in the door frame, and despite a face that only his mother would have loved, Marius was relieved to see him.
"Sand! Quickly! Fuel leaks and fire, the extinguisher is empty now!"
They worked swiftly, scraping sand into a plastic ammo container and then throwing it over the fires, racing against time. Hunter monitored the concentration of jet fuel in the air using his olfactory booster and gas spectrometer, racing back and forth and wincing as the levels rose dangerously high. At least the number of holes in the fuselage also let some of the fuel dissipate out into the desert – but there were still things burning out there as well. It was a close run thing, but working between them they managed to douse the fires before anything sparked an explosion, and then turned their attention to the holes in the fuel tanks. The needs of the situation over-rode any concerns about personal gear, and they grabbed clothes and material wherever they could find it, tearing or cutting them into strips with stabs of their combat knives, then rolling them up to form bungs they could wedge into the holes.
More sand was thrown into the mix, soaking into the fuel and making a thick slurry which slowed the leaking further, and with the fires out, they could spare a moment to actually think rather than just blindly reacting. Soon they were using some expanding foam and repair tape to seal up the holes, or using sheets of flexible plastic and instant bonding glue to seal the larger rents in the tanks. As they were working, Hunter keyed up his microphone.
"Hey you guys, chopper is a mess, but it's under control. Sort out what you have to up there, we're going to start doing an eval down here."
With the reassurance that they weren't needed at the chopper, Kai, Shimazu, Aswon and Tads examined the scorpions carefully, working around the corpses and the unconscious ones and looking for defining characteristics. After a few minutes they came to the conclusion that they were looking at some mutated form of critter – they certainly didn't seem to be either clearly male or female, and might possibly reproduce asexually. Either way, they had a good chance from what they could see to achieve their goals with the two scorpions they already had crated up.
"If we're leaving the rest, I'd suggest we take some of the pincers from the ones Hunter shot – if they're in a good state. Possibly the tail stingers as well – the might make good materials for enchanting. And we have to decide what we're doing with the incapacitated ones too. I don't like the idea of leaving them around to recover and chase after us."
"I agree Tads."
"If we're going to dispatch any of them, perhaps you should do it with your spear – hopefully it will preserve any magical value if we slay them with a weapon that is attuned to your magical essence?" Aswon nodded firmly in agreement.
"But first I'm going to take some pictures of them, I think some people in the shadow community would be very interested to see them." Aswon pulled out his phone and activated the camera function.
After Aswon had finished with his photos, he grasped his spear firmly and looked at it. It still felt a little odd, almost like he was trying to bond the weapon to his aura still. But when he hefted it, he still felt the link between himself and it, the subtle magical intertwining that joined his power and the items together. So if he'd already bonded the weapon to him, why did it feel like it wanted more of his essence? He'd never heard of such a thing…
He sounded out the words, muttering them quietly and hoping he wasn't butchering the pronunciation.
"Medaron Speren mes Bele se'Farad, we have foes for you to slay. They are captured at the moment, but too dangerous to release, too dangerous to take chances with. I hope this does not bring you dishonour, or tarnish your legacy – but we need to bring these creatures with the powers of the Awakened Earth to an end, in a swift and measured blow." He moved around the creatures and stabbed them firmly, through the eyes and into the area behind, hopefully giving them a swift and painless death. Nothing happened with the spear – no feeling or change, on either the physical or astral plane.
Once they were dealt with, Tads moved in and worked carefully to neatly separate key parts of the body and place them into bags, taking the stingers and venom sacks from the two smaller scorpions, and a pincer from the larger one – on close examination the tip of the stinger appeared to have been damaged at some point, and though the physical damage was slight she knew from experience that magically even a tiny flaw could have massive consequences.
With the area scavenged clean of live captured scorpions and talesma, they grabbed their gear and headed back the half-kilometre towards the chopper, re-joining Marius and Hunter who had started to go through the gear and separate out damaged and undamaged equipment into two piles in the sand next to the chopper's fuselage. The damaged pile was distressingly large, and growing minute by minute.
They moved in to help, and the work proceeded much faster, and soon they had the most important of their gear – armour, weapons, survival kits, desert tents, clothing, first aid supplies – all sorted through. Some of the kit they managed to cannibalise, such as two broken or damaged items together to make a whole, but it was clear they'd taken a big hit on the equipment front.
Shimazu kept an eye on Marius who seemed to be struggling with the situation. Most of the time he was working with the quiet Germanic efficiency they were used to, carefully appraising the situation and taking the most logical steps to resolve a problem. But Shimazu could see the set of his jaw, the tremble in his hands and the occasional look up and to the west. When he did so, the body language changed and he could see the rage bubbling to the surface, almost incandescent. He worked around the team, quietly telling them that Marius was struggling with the damage, and probably needed their quiet support – but not pity or sympathy. He needed to be busy, and to fix things and make them better, to work through this his own way.
Nobody was in a laughing or joking mood anyway, and as they sorted through the wreckage they came across another problem. The explosion that had destroyed the tail of the chopper had skewed the scorpion habitat and ripped open the back end, the blast twisting at the hinges until a couple of them had given up and the back plating had gone hurtling through the air, forming a guillotine blade that had sliced a five centimetre hole nearly a metre high clear through the port side of the chopper.
Aswon and Shimazu got to work on assessing the damage, working out if they could repair the pen or if they would have to come up with some ad-hoc solution. Most pressing was the fact that with the panels ripped off, the pen was no longer a contiguous space – one of the key elements in terms of defining a ward. The magical protections had been ripped open, and now it was just a fancy folding metal box. They didn't have long before the scorpions would wake up, so they immediately set to work in putting up a strong magical ward over the pen, using the new end as the barrier between 'inside' and 'outside'. Having seen the creatures descending and moving through the earth, they knew there was potent magic imbued into them, so they needed a strong defence.
Tads was helping sort through the gear, and waved to Hunter as he bought out another armful of stuff to deposit next to her.
"Hey Hunter, I've got something I'd like you to do for me."
"What is it, I'm kinda busy here?"
"I know, I know!" She held out her hands in front of her, making a conciliatory gesture. "I just want you to take a minute, once an hour to go sit in the jeep. Maybe go in there with the doors and windows all closed, have a drink, close your eyes, have a think about something, take a minute and then go back to whatever you were doing."
"Why the hell would I want to do that?"
"Because if you're being magically tracked, then getting into the jeep puts you behind a ward as soon as you close the door. And if they're in the middle of a tracking ritual, all of a sudden it might throw off the tracker, or make the group fail their ritual, or it might stop them dead."
"Oh – I see. Yeah. Ok, yeah, I can do that. Wait, won't I be safer in the chopper?"
"No – it's too full of holes, and rips and things. The magical protection is shredded and there's no way to patch it up. You have to be in something with intact edges." She gestured over towards Aswon and Shimazu. "That's why the guys are busy with that."
They worked on, sorting out the gear until they had as much as they could get out of the chopper. Fortunately the jerry cans of fuel for the UAZ had made it through the attack and they topped off the tank, giving them a good operational radius – not that there was enough room in there for the whole team, let alone their cargo and supplies. That seemed like a problem to be addressed in the morning, though.
Tads had a quiet chat with Marius when he seemed to be reasonably calm (or hiding it very well), and made a suggestion that she repeat the spell they had used in the helicopter graveyard – letting him catalogue all the items near to him and find out what might be good in the chopper without having to tear open all the access panels.
Whilst he started to do his survey, Hunter dug a firebreak in the sand, trying to deal with the patch of ground that had soaked up hundreds of litres of jet fuel. In the darkness it was hard to tell if the fuel had been absorbed and was no risk, or if there might be a pool of sodden but flammable sand, just waiting for a stray spark to cause them yet another problem.
With the magic spell helping him, it didn't take too long for Marius to complete his survey, and call the others around for a quick situation report.
"So, the tail is gone – that much is obvious to all of you. It might have been possible to fly without the rear rotor, but it's hard work, will slow us down and make the engines very fuel inefficient. But when the tail was blown, it sent a number of surges through the systems that are far more serious."
"The hydraulics ruptured in a number of places – so we've got no control over the rear ramp, we can't shift pitch on the wings, and we've lost a lot of control over the pitch of the rotors. Along with that, the avionics system is a mess, a lot of it shorted out, and several of the key elements literally burnt out entirely." Marius took a breath and swallowed, then sipped at some water before he raised his arm and pointed up towards the top of the chopper.
"Three of the rotors have severe fragmentation damage along their length, while the other two have what appears to be mostly cosmetic damage. The three though we could not rely on to hold together in the air, and could fail at any time. The vanes controlling the pitch of the rotors are all damaged, as a result of the damage to the hydraulic system. They are probably fixable, but they're one of the really important, but small bits. If they fail, rotors start to flip and we lose control."
"Last of all, some mixed news. The engines both seem to be fine. The armour and design of them functioned as they should, and both seem to be ok from what I've seen so far. There's a chance there's some internal fractures or stress though, given what a pounding the airframe took. The gearbox looks ok too, though there's a lot of fragments and debris around it – it's possible we've got metal in there, which would quickly degrade them and cause a catastrophic failure. If we were at a proper base, we'd pull both of them for a rebuild with this kind of damage."
The others looked around, looking glumly at each other. Marius spoke in a very direct fashion, and there was no effort to manage the delivery, and they could feel what was coming next. "The chopper is effectively disabled. We lack the resources to fix it here. We need a full workshop and lots of parts to get it airworthy again, and we don't have that."
It was quiet for a moment or two, then Tads spoke up.
"We do have a shelter though. A place to keep out of the sun. Something to create shade. Something to hide in if there's a sandstorm. Something to keep us out of the wind. All of these things might be the difference between life and death out here."
As she counted off the points on her fingers, the others nodded, even Marius – though somewhat reluctantly.
"And you've still got your recon drone right? So we can put that out for surveillance of the area?" Marius nodded at her, then his eyes widened for a moment and he headed over to the drone rack built into the tail section. One half of the rack was in the remains of the main fuselage, and contained the Doberman. The structure of the aircraft and the mechanism of the drone rack itself had attenuated some of the damage, and the Doberman itself was heavily armoured. The tyres were ripped and torn, and several of the sensors and other outside parts were broken or degraded, but it was mostly functional when he recovered it from the wreckage.
The crawler drone was found in the section of tail that had been blown clear off and into the desert. With no armour to protect it, it had been seriously damaged, almost wrecked, and they were unsure if it was in a usable state at all. The surveillance drone was at least fine though, and with careful use and monitoring could be kept in the air almost indefinitely – the solar panel that covered the top easily recharged the battery used during the hours of darkness, and if it had to only keep station on their position, the power usage was minimal.
They moved the scorpions over to the jury-rigged enclosure at Tads' suggestion, and opened the doors. Both of the creatures bolted out of the plastic cages, diving into the sand and disappearing under the surface, With the makeshift door and barrier replaced, the team checked under the chopper body, making sure that their magical powers didn't let them burrow straight through – but the pen seemed to keep them contained.
Kai had been setting up the desert tents, and looked around in confusion when he was done.
"Hey guys – where is that solar still we had?" They shared a quick look of contemplation, but it was Shimazu who remembered first.
"We set it up next to the chopper when we got back the first time, just to see how it worked. Then we got buzzed by the jet, and we just got on-board as quick as we could. I guess its still out there out there, along with the chairs and the cushions and stuff." The others realised he was right, that they'd abandoned an amount of gear there in their hurry to get airborne. Other than the solar still though, none of it was vital.
"I'm going to move out about three or four hundred metres, over that way," Aswon gestured towards the edge of the rocks that broke up this part of the gulley. "Get myself tucked up under a camo blanket, with my rifle and some supplies and keep an eye out. Call me if you need me." He assembled his gear and headed out, finding himself a good hide position and setting in. He hoped that between himself able to look magically and the drone watching the physical world, they should have warning of any further bad news.
Marius and Tads found themselves working side by side in the chopper again as they stripped out equipment. Tads was dismantling her lodge, recovering the materials that she could so she could try and rebuild it elsewhere – assuming they got out of here. Marius was pulling electronic components, looking to build up some supplies of spare parts, or systems that could be repurposed to do other jobs.
Inside half an hour they'd finished, and the team slowly settled in to their tents or what remained of their bunks in the chopper. Overhead, the panorama of the Milky Way turned above them, clear in the dark night sky with no pollution or artificial light to dim the majestic sight. None of the team paid it any attention however, as they pondered on what they were going to do, and how they were going to get out of the desert and back to civilisation – and then back to their base.
Time ticked by, the earth spun, the stars continued their graceful journey, and one by one the team fell into restless and troubled sleep, awaiting dawn and wondering what a fresh day would bring them.