"Well actually Kai – there is one more thing I'd like to look into." Kai sighed and twisted his head around to face Marius.
"What's that?"
"Well, it's a fibre optic pentaprism system."
"What the hell is that?"
"It's a series of high grade optical lenses that are carefully attached to fibre optic cables through a series of reducing and focussing prisms, that route back to a central point and an optical switching system. That expands the image out, displaying one feed signal at a time, into a pair of viewing goggles with small receiver cups."
"Sounds complicated… and not entirely necessary. Don't we have decent enough video cameras and such like?"
"We do – but they're all electronic. The advantage of this system is that it's all optical. It's actual light – the image of what you're looking at, bent by science, but not reproduced. Which means, so I'm informed, that your astral vision works through it because you're not looking at a reproduction – but the original thing. And even better, is that if Tads is wearing it, she can actually cast magic at people through it. She can be sat in the back, but still look out of the front, sides or even underneath us, wherever we put the sensors. And if she can see it, she can hit it."
"Ahh – now that does sound like something very useful. But, the expression on your face says there's a catch. It sounds like a system with a lot of very precise parts – so I'm going to have a stab in the dark here and say it's complicated to make, and that makes it expensive enough I might cry?"
"Something like that. I've found a dealer that I think can get hold of one, but I'm still waiting on a price. But it's likely to be quite steep. Worth it though, I think." Everyone else in the group nodded – Tads wasn't the most offensive minded of casters, and as far as they knew she couldn't conjure balls of fire or bolts of lightning – but her stunballs were pretty effective most of the time as many Mafia goons and Siberian paracritters could attest. As could Hunter…
"Ok – get a price, but probably approved even if it's a lot. Too useful. Anyone else?"
"Well, now you mention it, I was thinking about warding some of the house?"
"Where do you think, Aswon?"
"Well, if we did half the guest rooms with a moderately powerful ward, we can advertise those rooms to people as being more secure, or offering additional protection. Big draw for some people and will help the ranch out no end."
"Alright, sounds reasonable. And shouldn't take us more than a day to do a bunch of rooms if we all pitch in."
"And I was thinking we should do the family rooms, or end of the house as one big blob, to keep them safe. Doesn't need to be as high, but enough to keep out the nuisance stuff."
"Ok, let's add that in as well."
"And the room Rusudan uses downstairs as his office? I was thinking we could use that as a meeting room – I'm sure he won't mind – and we could put up a really decent one in there."
"Sure, sure, fine. Wards for everyone!" Kai threw his hands up in the air. "Ok – so, a few days warding it seems. At least that gives this opti-prismic thingy time to arrive in the post. So, that's the lot then."
"Well, actually – I need a bit of time to do some research and get some colour patterns downloaded and made up." Kai fixed Hunter with a baleful glare.
"Some what?"
"Different colour and logo files. I want to get the top thirty international courier firms and get the patterns and colours they use on their craft, so we can program our adaptive colour system. It might help us pass off as a national courier or something when we're on a job. And maybe get some military markings to use as well, to pretend to be from a particular nation state. Oh – and the big mega-corps as well of course, and we might as well get some of the double-A's and nationals as well. Gonna take a while to match the colours, get the logos and translate them into the format and style needed for the onboard system."
"Ok, that sounds reasonable. So yeah, while we're doing the wards, and Marius is doing the prism thing, you can be getting on with that. Right – all sorted."
"And I need to go to Baku for the day, and probably bring you with me. We need to go to hospital."
"Hospital? Whatev… no wait. Medicine right?" Hunter nodded at Kai. "All your meds were in the fridge in the chopper, and probably spoilt in the heat, I'm guessing."
"Yep – I have a week's supply in the internal dispenser," Hunter tapped on his forearm in a particular place, and a section of his arm popped up, revealing a small auto-injector loaded with several compact vials surrounded by heat shielding and mini-coolant pipes. Tads shuddered as she looked at the machinery grafted into his arm hidden by the layer of synthetic skin. Hunter closed it up again, and continued, "I've got some more that I was keeping cool here, but I've got no real reserve, so I want to grab another month's supply at least. Which means I need someone to talk to the pharmacist and make nice noises."
"Ok – fine. Warding. Prisms. Colour schemes. Medical supplies. Done." He punctuated each point with a chop of his arms, trying to bring some finality to the discussion.
"Oh, and we could do with some gun racks putting on the roof of the tilt-wing I think – kinda like we have in the truck. That would be really handy given how cramped we are in there." Kai closed his eyes and counted to three before nodding as Hunter added another item to the list.
"And while you're in Baku, I'd like to come with you, and possibly Tads as well – we want to try and find another talislegger in town, so we're not as reliant on Aslik as we are at the moment. It might take a bit of time wandering the back streets and looking around the souk, but I think it will be worth it." Aswon added to the list, causing Kai sigh theatrically. He shrugged at his boss. "We don't have to – but if Aslik is ever out of stock on something, we're out of luck. I don't feel comfortable with that."
"Oh, and if you're going to Baku, can we go visit some of those car dealers, and maybe see about getting a dune buggy or some kind of quad bike – something narrow that will fit into the back of the tilt-wing ok and give us some range and local transport." Marius added. "And it wouldn't be a bad idea to get some motorbikes as well, so we can be generally mobile as a team."
"Will we have enough room in the back with the drones as well?"
The conversation dissolved into anarchy for a few minutes as various sketches were drawn showing the size of the cargo area and the various configurations of cargo, drones, supplies, bikes, all-terrain vehicles and passengers that they could cram into the back, in various different configurations. Marius sketched out a plan for some kind of ceiling mounted swing arm to hold a motorbike up and out of the way of cargo underneath at one point, which then segued into a possibility for installing a rail system that could handle palletised cargo.
Kai asked if that meant they could then drop cargo by parachute, which took the conversation on a whole new angle talking about the engineering challenge that involved. When asked why, he casually mentioned he was thinking about learning to parachute – just in case. Marius glared at him, then indignantly mentioned that he'd never lost a bird while he'd been flying, then turned on Hunter and wagged a finger under his nose before the inevitable comment, reminding him that the chopper had been on the ground when it had been destroyed, NOT in the air.
The conversation pivoted again, and before Kai knew quite how it had gotten there, it had been decided that being able to air-drop the team into a situation along with a palletised and parachute equipped drone was an awesome idea and they should all, as a team, learn how to do it. So, it seemed the whole crew would be joining him at the club he'd found west of Baku that taught the basics of parachuting. Kai knocked on the table, and then when silence fell, he recounted the list of actions as he remembered them. He missed a few, but Nadia coughed discreetly and slid a datapad in front of him where she'd been making notes and sorting out a timetable for him.
"Right – now that's all sorted, we can crack on."
"Well, there is one more thing. The transponder for the chopper is ruined, and the library of IDs we had went with it. So we're going to need some new ones. Milo should be able to sort us out, but I'm going to need some cred to sort him out." Kai rubbed his fingers on his temples, with his eyes closed.
"Sure. Whatever. Fine." Nadia reclaimed the pad and added a note.
"Oh, and if you lot are going to Baku, maybe see if we can find the local equivalent to that guy at the restaurant back in Constantinople. See if we can get hold of some military-style ammo?" Nadia nodded to Hunter and made another note.
"And we could do with a proper cred-reader. We'd have to get one attached to the charity and keep it synced up and stuff, but being able to properly verify payments onto sticks and stuff would be SO useful." Nadia smiled at Aswon as she tapped away, adding more detail to the 'to-do' list, while Kai continued to massage his temples.
"Actually – the system for Tads in the vehicle. I wonder if we can get a portable kit. I've seen them in electronic forms of course, but it follows that you should be able to use the same system with a portable version. Just think – if we can get a fibre optic cable pushed under a door so Tads can see inside, then we don't even have to risk breaching the door to take out the next bunch of idiots. We can just take them down from outside, and then get the door open, nice and simple." Marius seemed pleased with his reasoning, and he started tapping away on his pocket secretary, adding extra search terms to his query with the designer of the vehicle mounted system.
"And that's it right. That's everything?" Kai sounded despondent now, and still had his eyes closed.
"Well, no actually. I've got another thing. Sorry." Tads licked her lips and paused to see if Kai was about to explode, or just give up entirely. "I want to follow up on the issue with Neteri and find out what is wrong with her. We bought her and her children here from Shirvan, and I don't want to burden Rusudan with them. If there's something wrong, we should fix it. Or I should make sure it's fixed. Seeing as I caused the problem in the first place. So I'm going to want some time to chat with her, and I could probably do with Shimazu's help as well, so we need to factor some time in. And that will need to be somewhere quiet, and calm, and safe.
Kai opened his eyes, and stared upwards, his shoulders slumped in defeat.
"Ok. Just….ok. Fine. We'll stay a few more days then."
"Sorry, I wasn't done." There was an almost imperceptible whistle as Kai sucked in air through his teeth, his jaw muscles clenched. "I also think it's worth doing a few astral quests, if we have time – I want to try and obscure the astral signatures of Hunter to stop Zeta-Imp Chem, Marius and the tilt-wing to stop Aztechnology. I'll need to be in contact with the subject of the obscurement, so that's something probably best done overnight while they're sleeping to avoid too much disruption to the schedule.
"And that's it, right?" Kai's voice was barely a whisper now.
"No…" Hunter smirked at Kai, having timed it just right it appeared. Kai had to take several deep calming breaths to relax. "Nah, I'm just having you on. But joking aside, I thought I might tell you about my time at Zeta and why they might be chasing me. I don't know if it will help, but it might explain things. And… well, with what we've been through, you bunch of crazy ass individuals have had more than enough chances to make life tough for me, and you haven't. So trust needs to start somewhere, right?"
The mood changed a little, and the smiles on the rest of the team faded away as they listened. Hunter was normally ready with a joke or some sharp barbs of humour, but otherwise didn't talk too much about himself really. Even Kai managed to open his eyes and stop fuming, staring at the big orc.
"Right, well the simple explanation might be the 'ware stuffed inside me. As I'm sure you know from Tads and her reaction – there's a fair few upgrades tapped away inside here." He tapped the side of his head with a finger. "Now the corp invested quite heavily in me – I'm probably walking around with a couple of mill of installed tech, and no corporation likes to lose that kind of money."
"Maybe we should sell you back," Kai quipped.
"Ahah-ha. You're not funny. But also, not economically viable. They probably paid that much, but they're never going to get that back. You see the parts were all customised heavily, typed to my specific genome and even sized to fit specific muscles and areas of bone.
"You mean you're stuffed full of deltaware?"
"Don't feel bad, Marius, it's not like you were going to keep up regardless…" Hunter continued smoothly, before Marius could splutter a retort. "But yes, he's right – the finest quality deltaware, installed in a clinic far below a lovely mountain in Switzerland, custom-designed for me over a period of several months and manufactured in one of the most advanced nanoengineering labs in Europe. Not all of it, just some key parts were customised by my genetic code, the rest were just heavily customised. But that's how they managed to cram so much in without it disrupting me."
"While they were building the cybernetic parts, another production line were vat-growing the biological upgrades to be as compatible as possible with my lymphatic and neurological systems, again trying to make sure I was as good a host as possible. But that level of customisation cuts both ways. If someone was to harvest the parts from me, they're no good to anyone but an identical twin – too heavily customised you see. They'd actually be more disruptive when inserted into someone else, not less. So, practically worthless on the second hand market, and not really worth much, even to the corp. Not unless they have managed to come a long way with the nano-baths anyway. Which is a possibility… just not one I see as that likely."
"So what's the real reason then?"
"I'm getting there, Aswon, just trying to cover the bases. No, I think the reason they want me is because of what I saw, what I smelt… what I figured out. It's enough to cost them billions in revenue I think, and that's enough to make any corper sit up and take notice."
"I was working in Brunalm, a small town in Austria, high up in the mountains, doing some anti-espionage work. Been transferred in as a low-ranking employee with some skills on chips to cover me, sent to snoop around the place and do a bottom-up assessment. Work out if people were taking bribes, falsifying reports, doing low level espionage or other stuff like that. It seemed a bit odd, out of place to send me to do something like that, but I got a sense there was something going on, so I stuck with it."
"Chemical engineering – that's what my cover was. So I had good access to the processes and operations. The facility was built into a mountain, in an old coal mine – kept it out of sight, undercover and temperature regulated. Fairly big place it was, too – couple of hundred workers, just about big enough for you to not really know everyone there, made it easy to get lost in the crowd. Good for me, but good for whoever I was hunting, too – lots of cover." Hunter took a swig of his coffee and made a face as the cool liquid sloshed around his mouth.
"I'd been there a couple of weeks when I found out. Smelt something funny, you see. Followed my nose – just like we did when following Nadia. Followed it down a deep set of tunnels, further into the mountain than I'd thought was there. That's where I found 'em." He set his coffee cup down on the table and put his hands on his knees, moving them back and forth in small motions.
"There was a second part to the facility, covered by the main lab. They had their own rail line in that was hidden somewhere, never did find the entrance. But there was a large cavern with another score of workers in there, working on a special project. And a holding cell, big enough for perhaps twenty people. Twenty prisoners, gathered from I don't know where. Don't know what they'd done, or who they worked for – all I could see was that they had the bad luck to be caught or arraigned by ZIC. Disappeared." Tads wrapped her arms around her body, not liking where this story was going, and unnerved by the flat tone of voice Hunter was delivering it in.
"They used 'em. Plucked them out a few at a time, took them to the med-facility and hooked them up. Cycled the blood through them and into these large vats of chemicals. Something about the blood was reacting with this new chemical they'd developed, acting like a catalyst. Almost like a catalyst. You know what a catalyst is right?"
"A chemical that speeds or enhances a reaction between other chemicals, and can be extracted again afterwards."
"That's right Marius. The key being it can be recovered again afterwards, unchanged. Recovered or recycled. Almost a catalyst. See whatever this was, it did affect the blood, slowly broke it down and caused the red blood cells to weaken and decay. After a couple of cycles, their systems started to fail, and internal bleeds began. Their bodies just collapsed, from the inside out. They'd get as much use out of them as they could, then just unhook them and discard the bodies, getting another batch out of the pen and hooking them up. Over and over – I have no idea how many had gone before."
"But the kicker? Do you know the real sick thing about this? It was for a fertiliser. A fucking fertiliser. Raised the yield of crops no end, and the stuff they were pumping the blood into turned out to be much cheaper to make this way than another. Not that it couldn't be done – just that it was cheaper this way, by an order of magnitude."
"I gathered my data, managed to get a few samples and some intel from an unsecured workstation and got out. Made it back to my home office and reported everything. It should have been obvious really. Suppose that's the benefit of hindsight. I should have realised the guy I reported into was less than happy that I knew this. It wasn't horror of what was going on. I think it was fear – fear that he'd been caught. If word of this leaked out. Well, can you imagine what would happen if people thought their bread had been covered and grown in human blood? It would cause a riot, and people would be asking some hard questions, and heads would roll. Especially the head of whichever department or division decided to approve this. Someone was going to take the fall."
"Turns out that someone was probably supposed to be me. I didn't want to take the mission into the TCL. Didn't make sense. Not really any assets we have over this way. I mean, we've seen it – most of the Caucus Mountains are dirt poor. No reason to send a highly trained and outfitted espionage agent on some stupid ass mission against ridiculous odds. No matter how I might want to be James Bond, life doesn't work like that. I guess I was lucky that those Chechen rebels hit and took down our convoy before we headed down towards the Russian border. But that's how I ended up in that cage with you fine folks."
"So, that's probably why Zeta-Imp-Chem are after me. They know I've rumbled their little operation in Austria and know far too much. Or actually, it's probably a middle manager in ZIC that's after me, but he's got some pull, and can call in favours to cover his pasty white arse for the fuckup he's made. The company almost certainly doesn't know what's going on as a whole, but he's sold them a lie and he's inside. Besides." Hunter looked down at his feet, bowing his head, almost shamefully. "It's not like they're good guys. I've known for a while – they're ruthless, hungry and amoral at the best of times. Not a lot to be proud of there."
"Anyway. I thought you should know. Know what kind of people you're up against potentially. And I figure, while I'm with you, you're in the firing line too."
"You should go, Hunter. You should go. Away from us." Kai's voice was cold as he addressed Hunter, and several of the team turned to look at him aghast, thinking he was about to get rid of Hunter. Even Hunter looked a little stunned at the lack of emotion in Kai's voice. "You should go, to the house, and get a fresh pot of coffee. Mine's cold, and yours looked lacking, too." Some warmth had leached back into his voice as he relaxed his iron control on his voice box. "Gotcha, funny guy."
"You twat." It came out without malice though, and there was a twitch of the mouth to match Kai's expression. He lumbered to his feet, grabbing the empty cups and heading off from the hanger to the main house to get a refill, not even arguing that it couldn't be his round.
When he returned from the house with a fresh set of hot drinks, he walked in on the group talking about the situation. Someone had pulled up a map showing the area of Austria, not that it was particularly helpful. Aswon turned to him as he distributed the coffee mugs, asking for more details.
"So – where do you think they were getting all the bodies?"
"Honestly – I don't know. Maybe a deal with the local prisons. Maybe just rounding up people from remote area. Maybe people bought in from another country. Whatever it is though, it's not good, is it?" He shook his head, realising how fatuous that sounded. "I mean, corps kill plenty of people by being greedy, exploitative, profit-chasing sons of bitches. But that's like a low level of background evil. This is deliberate abuse, targeted on the destruction of people to fund profit."
"While you were grabbing coffee, we tried to work out how bad this could be for the corp if it got out. And honestly… it's pretty scary." Kai shook his head. "Far as we can work out, Zeta aren't big in any of the media markets. Huge in industrial chemistry, pharmaceuticals, agri-tech and stuff like that, but they're not invested in the media industry at all. So they've got very little influence or spin they can put out if a story breaks. I'm sure people have their pet reporters and so on – but that's different to just being able to craft the narrative you want."
"And because this product is going off their land and being used by farmers and growers all over the place, it's not covered by any kinds of extra-territoriality standing. In fact, it would count as all kinds of crimes for shipping across a border." Marius sipped at his coffee, then looked around the group again. "I think the other corps would throw them to the wolves on something like this. The corporate court would protect the big ten, who would all use this to try and crack the corp open like an egg. Demonise them to the public, make a massive scandal, while at the same time reassuring people that *they* would never do this. And I tell you right now – Saeder-Krupp would be at the front of that charge. Getting a chance to smash their number one rival in Europe for applied chemistry and engineering? Pah."
"So what do we do? I've got enough information to embarrass someone, maybe cause a massive investigation – but not enough proof to nail someone to the wall. I'm pretty sure my old boss is up to his neck in this shit, but that's based on him sending me out on a one-way mission. I've not got a smoking gun. I wonder if maybe getting in touch with my buddy Julius over at Ares might be the best thing to do – hand over the data to him and see if Ares can, and will do anything with it."
"Hang on a minute. Alright – we know that ZIC want you, and it's probably to do with these bodies and stuff. But what about the team in the desert? They were only after Hunter and Marius, right? We're certain this isn't tied together."
"No Kai, I don't think so. It's more to do with how evidence and information is gathered. Look, Hunter got tagged in that video of the fight, right?" Aswon raised an eyebrow and waited for Kai to nod. "Ok – so that video gets out, and facial recognition flags it up to someone at ZIC, and they confirm the ID. So, they have a location down to country level based on the host it was published from, along with a time. So, someone at ZIC decides to investigate, and authorises a trace."
"A couple of company deckers start infiltrating stuff like traffic-cams and businesses, working through video footage. Masses of data, but they just get the computers to do a lot of the heavy lifting. We used to do the same when searching for guerrillas and insurgents in areas we were under contract to. And say they get lucky – they get a hit of us at a checkpoint, or coming out of a shop. And that gives them another location and time stamp. Now they know we moved from one place to another, between two time periods. So they can start looking more closely at just the footage between those two spots, making it even easier to find."
"All the while, they are building up a dossier – how you look, what you're wearing, any new equipment, and most importantly, who you are with. All this doesn't go unnoticed of course – so other corps will be interested in what is causing all these data searches. That or they see the 'will pay money for information' that we were warned about on Hunter. So someone else runs the same searches, and gets the same info, making even more electronic noise."
"That's where I think Aztechnology comes into this – they're after Marius, but they found him showing or listed as an accomplice or person of interest in the search for Hunter. And it's probably even more worrying that Marius doesn't know why." Aswon waved both hands at Marius, stopping him before he could speak. "I believe you, Marius. Really, I do. I genuinely believe that you don't have a clue why these people are after you. But I also think it has nothing to do with ZIC. Aztechnology… or rather that guy in particular, is after you for some other reason."
"Which brings us back to what Tads was saying earlier. Doing some kind of ritual to obscure their auras from astral tracking is probably a good thing. Hmm – here's a thought. Are Aztechnology and ZIC good buddies? Politically I mean?" Kai scrolled through the information on the pad, looking around the group to see if anyone had any thoughts. "Doesn't look like it. It might just be that Aztechnology was going to scoop you up too Hunter and then give you to ZIC to get a bunch of black ops money from them. Stops them having to do so much laundering of their own."
"I think we just need to keep a low profile for a while." Marius moved his hand around to point at everyone in the group. "I don't think it would be unfair to say that probably all of us have something in our past that might be an issue of one kind or another. In this case, I don't think that the rot goes all the way to the top. If ZIC as a whole were after Hunter, they'd already have him. No, this feels more like someone far up the chain enough to have some resources and pull, but low enough that they can be sacrificed or disappeared immediately."
"Well, the little break we've been taking should help with that a great deal. We've all dropped out of circulation really, so the trail should have gotten a lot colder. Maybe it's time we did a bit of electronic snooping and info gathering of our own. It's probably long enough after the events that it won't tip our hand anyway."
"I agree. If we'd done this straight after the incident in Libya it would have tipped our hand. As it is, that blood mage must have been involved in lots of other stuff by now, so a search for him shouldn't point straight back to us."
"Fair enough, Aswon. I can contact Julius as I said, and they have a lot of resources they could throw at this. A lot more than us."
"Trouble is that if you hand this information over to Ares, then we lose control of it. Ares can do whatever they want, and we've got no way of stopping them. Once the genie is out of the bottle, we can't get it back in." Aswon frowned. "I agree they have a lot of power. But they'll also have their own agenda."
"Hunter – you've been talking about that Shadowland thingy. Can that be used to find some information?"
"Sorry Tads – I don't think so. I've got a little rep on there, but not enough to get at all the good stuff. At least not yet. But, I might be able to talk to someone who does. I can get some general stuff from there, and maybe find out if anyone recognises that blood mage at all, from anywhere else."
"That would help if we do go to any corporate source-" Aswon interjected "– it may give us a place to cross reference or corroborate information."
"What about going for some cosmetic surgery or using a spell to change your appearance. I don't have anything, but I could try to learn one?"
"Cosmetic surgery might not be a bad idea actually. Not so useful for me I would have thought – my height is a bit of a give-away. But especially on Hunter, that might help a lot. I mean, so many people would look and see 'just an ork' anyway, that even a few features changed might really help."
"Marius – if I was going to do a ritual to track you, I'd need an item of your clothing or equipment. Something from you would be even better – hair or blood. Is Saeder-Krupp likely to have that kind of thing?"
"I'm sure they would, Tads. They put my rigger interface in, and it's all part of the standard company package. I'd be very surprised if they didn't have a vial of my blood on ice somewhere, just in case. But the important thing to remember is that I didn't really bust out, or steal anything. I just saw an opportunity to stop working for them and decided to take it. I've not really done anything to upset them."
"Well, still probably a good idea to get some defences up. Ok – let's work out how to deal with this, then. Tads – get the materials you need to do at least three of these rituals to hide your astral trail then. One for you the tilt-wing. One for Hunter to cover him from ZIC. One for Marius to cover him against both Aztechnology and Saeder-Krupp. Hunter – you and Nadia do some computer research and see what you can come up with. The rest of us will work on the shopping list and the upgrades, and work to the schedule that Nadia will come up with. Gather when we're all done, and we'll head up to Baku and throw ourselves out of a perfectly good plane, ok? Right. Looks like we're here for another week, but let's not kid ourselves that this is a holiday, too much work to be done."
Tads headed back to the trailer and her main lodge, ate something, had a good drink and then settled herself down and opened her mind. She didn't let her conscious form leave her body behind as she did when she was scouting. She didn't turn 'inwards' in a way that would have had physicists arguing all day to head for the metaplanes. She just – opened her mind, expanding her thoughts to somewhere completely else, trying to find her totem.
And then she was at the edge of a clearing, in a forest somewhere. It felt vaguely like home, but looked different enough that she didn't think she was actually near her tribe. She jumped slightly as she felt something touch each of her hands, soft velvety skin rubbing against her palms. When she looked down a brown hand loosely grasped hers, leading to a small figure on each side. One seemed to be an Elk, or at least someone that embodied Elk. Quite why it had an arm and a hand didn't really bother her. If Elk wanted to hold her hand, that was quite alright with her. On the other side, there was a strange homunculus, with an aura of familiarity – the totem for their magical group. With a gentle pull, they both stepped forwards, encouraging her into the clearing.
Shafts of sunlight broke through the forest canopy, illuminating the clearing and the soft green moss. She saw a rabbit nibbling nervously on some plants to one side, insects buzzing around from flower to flower, signs of radiant life all around her. It felt safe, warm and welcoming, and all she wanted to do was curl up in the soft and springy ground cover in one of the sunbeams, basking in the natural world. But, her guides had other ideas. They turned her around, showing her the three paths out from this clearing, one after another. Without warning, they pulled her along the first, into the dense green tunnel of trees, bushes and bracken, guiding her along the path.
It wasn't far to another clearing, where they found instead of soft moss, a large pond covering most of the area. A few fish swam lazily around, nibbling at the growing weeds, but otherwise the water was still. As her gaze looked around, she realised that the sky and forest were not reflected properly in the surface of the water. The mirror image was wrong – not the forest she was in at all. Confusing! As she watched, a bolt of energy lanced down from her sky, striking the surface of the water. Instead of disrupting the water, the bolt seemed to reflect into the alternate image, changing colour and direction before bouncing off into infinity. She was trying to work out what it meant when she was pulled forwards again, ending up back in the first clearing after a few steps – but without turning any corners.
She was led down the second path until they found a young willow tree by a babbling brook, the leaves drooping down over and into the water, causing little eddies and swirls. As they approached, the tree rustled its branches at her, and a face could be seen in the tree trunk, two large round eyes and a groove in the trunk that looked like a wry smile. The tree lurched, pulling up its roots and swelling in size, before striding to a position behind them, branches laid down over their shoulders and forming a protective shield around them. They walked on, and suddenly left the forest, finding themselves on a mountain path, climbing towards a plateau. When she reached the top, there was a field of vegetables, growing in neat lines.
Taking care not to trample the produce, she crossed the field and reached the house, and on finding the door open, she walked in. The willow tree followed her in, continuing to wrap its protective branches around her. The room was spartan but warm, a badly-stuffed sofa pulled up in front of a roaring log fire, a mug of tea on a side table. It felt homely and warm. As she stepped forwards, she found herself back at the original clearing once more, the willow tree now gone.
Her guides took her to the third pathway, and they wandered along it, the plants forming a dense wall on either side. She didn't know how long she walked for, but it felt like a while, and the side of the path became denser and denser, more now like a hedge or maze wall than natural forest. Suddenly she felt the ground tremble. Standing still, she felt the tremble intensify, turning into a rumble and then vigorous shaking. As she glanced left and right, there was nowhere off the path to hide, and she wracked her brain to try and work out what to do. She remembered passing an opening or alcove, not much – but at least an opening in the sides of the trail.
Now she pulled on their hands, dragging along her two companions and running for cover. She made it with seconds to spare, pulling them both into the narrow space, a seeming alcove in the side of the trail. The thundering intensified until the ground was moving up and down vigorously – then the stampede of animals broke past them, channelled and guided through the path by the resilient sides of the forest.
The back of the alcove dissolved and once more she was at the first clearing. Her two guides released her hand and then pointed at the three openings, before calmly leaving her to go and curl up in a sunbeam for a while. She looked at the three openings, and muttered to herself.
"Ok, three options, three bits of knowledge I could try and get hold of. The first one felt like the reflection was the thing, so I guess it's a way to make spells bounce back to whoever cast it at them. On the other hand, a summoned spirit was normally only able to stay in the space where it was called, but having one that could move around a lot more, would be most useful. The third one seemed to be some kind of ability to sense danger. She wasn't sure if it was reading the stars or singing and dancing that would trigger the warning that something bad was going to appear, or if it gave her any advice on how best to help.
She thought for a while – all three paths lead to something nice, something useful. She wanted all three but guessed that she wasn't going to get that. She headed over to where the totems had laid themselves out in the warm and joined them, letting her stream of consciousness pour out of her as she tried to decide. After an hour of sitting in the sun, she rose, and headed down the second path, suddenly blinking as she arrived back in the lodge, alone. And yet – somehow she felt stronger. More powerful and more in tune with her ancestor. Testing the waters, she went out into the field and summoned a low force spirit to her, thinking all the time of the willow tree from her vision quest. As she summoned it, she felt a second drain of mana upon her, and the spirit changed. It wasn't bigger – but somehow it was more… powerful. More cohesive. And when she headed towards the house, it followed her happily across the boundary into the hearth domain, while a normal spirit would have stopped dead, and then faded into the ether.
The next few days were action-packed for the team. Marius managed to find a supplier for the prismatic viewing system and arranged for it to be express-shipped to them, then had the tricky job of setting it up. The twelve camera system was laid out and tested, and very carefully holes were drilled into the outside skin of the aircraft. It was a precision job, and Marius sweated with every extra hole drilled – aware that the glass optical systems were subtly changing the carefully calculated shape and refractive index of the craft, and potentially some serious harm might come to their electronic profile with every change he made.
Six of the twelve cameras were arranged around the horizontal plane, their sixty degree viewing angles covering almost the entire craft – almost. There were a few degrees missing, where he just couldn't get a camera to cover the spot due to the shape of the hull. With the remaining six cameras he decided to split them evenly over the ventral and dorsal surfaces, accepting that large chunks of the craft would not be monitored. The viewing angles were mostly concentrated around the vertical axis – he figured he could always climb or dive to bring targets into view if need be.
All of the fibre optic cables were routed back through the structure to the prismatic switch, which had to be carefully mounted in a vibration dampening mount, and then delivered to the viewing monocle on the end of another short fibre cable – this one sheathed in a protective flexible armoured covering. The lead would stretch over the length of the entire bench on that side of the vehicle, so at least they would be able to pass the viewer around between any of the other astrally capable team members to take shifts on the system.
He also called Milo, letting him know about their 'trouble' in the desert and their requirement for some new transponder IDs and paperwork for the bird. In exchange for a transfer of Nuyen, Milo got to work on arranging some new codes they could use, telling him they'd be ready by the end of the week.
Several of the team made the trip to Baku, only a few hours away. On one journey Marius and Hunter scoured the second hand car markets and eventually found a small off road buggy that was narrow enough to meet their needs. It had a cab, of sorts, with a roof but no doors, and only very basic controls, lacking even a datajack. But, it was electrically powered, and with the addition of a sun-cell on the roof, would have decent range, was quiet and had a moderate sized storage bed on the back of the chassis that would carry another pair of passengers or some cargo. They also picked up two dirt bikes that looked to be in decent condition.
Aswon, Kai and Shimazu spent the day scouting around the city, wandering the back streets and talking with some of the mobile traders or people that were clearly tied in with the underworld. Kai spent a lot of time patiently listening to people's stories, but eventually they caught a break and got a lead on a talismonger that would deal with them – a woman who was only known by the name 'Uuumas'. She worked – or at least could be found – at the Zoroastrian temple to the east of the city, just past the Bulbula Golu lake.
They made their way over, and carefully introduced themselves, looking around the temple with some interest and eventually finding her leading a small class where she was teaching what appeared to be some homeless people about 'Asha' – a force of pure good. It was apparently Asha that was to thank for the food and blankets they received, along with the care offered to them.
After waiting for the class to be completed, they introduced themselves and Kai enquired about making a donation to the temple, to enable them to keep up their good work. Uuumas seemed pleased with their offer, and showed them around the temple, explaining a little about the work they did here. The building was old – very old – and Kai spotted parts that he thought dated back at least two thousand years. After the donation had been banked onto their very old and battered cred-reader, they moved the conversation around slowly but surely to magic and made enquiries to the temple.
It seemed that they were in luck – the temple was indeed a place where some magical materials were stored – nearly all of it plant or animal based. It seemed that the priests and worshippers of the temple were mostly workers using "traditional" skills – agriculture, basic construction, stevedores – not necessarily low skilled jobs, but ones that had a long history. People bought offerings to the temple, and the priests refined them, seeking out the "good" and banishing the "bad". Most of the materials were used by the temple for their rituals to bless the people, but some surplus was available…
Once they had finished there, they headed to one of the banks in the centre of Baku and started the process of registering their fake IDs and the charity for a cred-reader of their own. It required a stupendous amount of bureaucratic hoop jumping to get it approved, and numerous checks and scans – each of which left them with their hearts in the mouths while the machine seemed to ponder on their fake personas. Each one was cleared though, and eventually they were cleared for a terminal – though the processing rate would be low until they'd built up a transaction history. Still – they could now at least take money legally from a regular person and their cred-stick, rather than having to rely entirely on certified sticks.
Hunter spent some time gathering colour schemes and logos, filling the photo-voltaic paint controller's storage until it was bursting at the seams with pre-programmed paint jobs, before moving onto some slow, painstaking work on getting access to Shadowland – the underground bulletin board system used by the international shadowrunning scene. He traded for information gathered in the last few months of travels, always being careful to make sure he didn't incriminate himself or the team.
Providing information on ground travel in Russia, the conditions of the highways in Iran, hinting at border crossing points out of the Trans-Caucus League, Russia, Iran and Azerbaijan, and giving information on the various people they'd met along the way, he gradually started to establish a rep on the boards, getting to be on digital nodding terms with some of the frequent posters there and gaining access to more of the systems and boards.
Resolving the medical issue was easy enough – Kai found a most agreeable technician at the hospital that had a pressing need to purchase some gold jewellery for his wife (or possibly mistress, Kai had sort of tuned out the sob story and really didn't care), and with that small matter out of the way arranged for another month's supply of anti-coagulants. Hunter snorted when he saw the ZIC logo on the bottles, but they went in the fridge none the less. Kai also managed to obtain a few more supplies, some sedatives and paralytics that he had some plans for.
Aswon made contact with Germaine and after ten minutes of listening to her extolling the virtues of her holiday and what 'charming lovely people' Rusudan and his family were and what a 'spirited and clever little gal' Nadia was, managed to convey his interest in getting some ammunition that was… non-standard. She put him in tough with Haseel Abdu, an engineer working at the refinery on the coast, near where the Maersk ship had dropped them off. After a little wrangling, they made contact with him and arranged a face to face meeting, as Haseel refused to even discuss his wares over the phone.
The meeting went well, Aswon taking the fifty calibre rifle in a bag to the meeting on the edge of the industrial area, to let the guy know they were serious about their requirements and resources. Kai handled most of the negotiations, but Haseel also seemed both fascinated by and slightly intimidated by Shimazu and his wariness, clearly pegging him as a bodyguard. He didn't have much in stock at the moment he told them, but he did have some Magna rounds for an assault rifle – a fiery explosive rounds that were good for frightening creatures and making the point very clear on soft targets. They picked up the rounds, probably paying over the odds for them but it was good to establish a working relationship with the man.
Tads, Kai and Shimazu made some time to sit down with Neteri and get to the bottom of her current malaise. It took a while, but with careful coaching and direction from Shimazu, compassion and empathy from Tads and a relentless barrage of charisma from Kai, they talked about her issues, the children and what was going on with life, until eventually she broke. Floods of tears and self-recrimination burst forth from her – the crushing depression of losing her eldest child through unknown means, the impact on her other children, the squalid conditions she'd been keeping them all in. It was like a burst in a dam – once the water was flowing, there was no stopping it, and she broke down completely. Between sniffles, crying and an enveloping blanket of shame she confessed to her drug habit, how she'd become hooked on the sleeping tablets and other drugs she'd managed to obtain from some friends in Shirvan.
They spent most of the evening working with her, counselling her and trying to build her back up and put the pieces back together, coming up with a plan for her to feel worthwhile and important, reminding her of her duty to her children but also that her children looked up to her, admired and loved her. It was difficult especially for Tads, who felt an almost crushing guilt over the situation, knowing what had happened to her son, Vusal. She almost told her – but a little shake of the head from Kai kept her quiet.
The plan for the sedatives became clear during the next visit to Baku when Kai visited a small manufacturing firm on the north side of town, who were making some very compact arrow heads for him, with a sturdy penetrating needle and an impact driven plunger system, affixed to slender aluminium flight shafts. They wouldn't fly anywhere near as well as a regular arrow, but offered some interesting 'less-than-lethal' options for silent takedowns.
Tads worked through most of the evenings with either the tilt-wing, Hunter or Marius, undertaking a quest to the metaplanes to build up magical defences upon their astral signatures, trying to obscure and disguise their location, and stop magical tracking. It sometimes messed with their plans for the day when they woke in the morning and found Tads still in a trance, one hand clamped onto an ankle as she communed in a separate plane of reality – but hopefully the protection was worthwhile.
The days went by with one small task after another – fitting gun racks in the new bird, changing the seats, fitting a mini-fridge for medicine, crafting a storage system to hold the bikes or buggy in place during combat manoeuvres – the list seemed endless at times, and by the end of the week they were a little cranky with the long hours put in. Hunter managed to get some time at the stick of the tilt-wing when they were testing the locking mechanisms put in place, under the careful scrutiny of Marius of course, but managed to get enough experience that he could go for a basic take-off, level flight and rough landing without too much trouble.
The parachuting course looked like more work to start off with as they went through the abbreviated classroom course, the instructor cramming information into them as fast as he could – at least everyone on the team was motivated and intelligent. Moving on to the attached double height room, they practiced doing parachute landings and rolls from ever increasing heights onto the crash mats, and got to practice hanging in a harness, steering and going through the emergency procedures for the main and reserve chute.
In the afternoon they got to fly up in a boxy and ungainly transport, modified to make tandem drops as easy as possible, and one by one the team were paired up with an experienced parachutist and made their first drops, with a variety of emotional responses. They had time for three jumps each in the afternoon, and by the end of the day were feeling pretty confident about things.
Kai treated them to a slap-up meal in the restaurant at the end of the day, and as they were drinking coffee and chasing the last of desert around the plate, cleared his throat and got their attention.
"This last week has been a bit pricy. I've been keeping an eye on the upgrades and costs for various things. The optical scanner worked out to be more expensive than we'd hoped for the full system – but should be worth it. Magical wards, vehicles, training, medical supplies… all told I think we've burned through about three hundred and fifty thousand Nuyen from Ludmilla's payment. So – we really do need to get back to work. I've contacted all the people we've worked with, and spoken to each of you separately about contacts you may have. If anyone calls, tell them we're available and looking for work, in the meantime though I'm going to be contacting Ludmilla, Germaine, Patrik, Kiril, and Vladimir to tell them we're available immediately."
"We've got a buffer of cash – but we know how expensive fuel is, so I don't want to drop below a hundred grand in our budget, just in case we have a long flight to get the job done. So let's find us some work people…"