Hunter crawled up to the ridge line, and then lay sideways, gradually worming his way up the last few centimetres until he was close to the top, and could raise his head just above the ridgeline to spy on the situation, before rolling back down and sharing what he saw with the rest of the team.
"The dune stretches down about fifty metres horizontally, dropping perhaps twenty-five metres to the flat area beyond. Then we're talking a good six hundred metres of open sand until you reach the aircraft – no cover at all for any of us."
"The area of greatest risk is probably crossing the ridgeline itself. At the highest point, and silhouetted against the sky, the sensors would have the easiest time picking you up. Although, being fair, crossing open terrain for that kind of distance, you're not making things difficult for the systems on the craft, no matter what type they are." Marius frowned, working through the various types of sensors in his head, and thinking about how likely they were to pick up whoever made the assault.
"So, if we go in under invisibility for the whole team, that should defeat a bunch of the sensors right?" Kai looked around for confirmation.
"Which two are going in? Or me and who else? I can't, just can't reliably cast that spell that number of times and keep it sustained, not with any chance of reasonable success. Or I could go in alone, which makes it a lot more manageable."
"You're not going alone, Tads – you've got to have some kind of backup." She frowned back at him.
"If we had some stun grenades, I'm sure I could manage fine. But we don't. And I hope I can drop them both straight off with a stun spell, but if they're anything like Marius, they'll be strong-willed and might resist. But at least my magic won't leave any holes in the ship."
"No holes! No damage, or who knows how and when we'll get out of this place. So yes, make sure there's no weapons fire in there at all." Marius held up his hand as both Aswon and Hunter looked like they were about to speak. "I know – you wouldn't damage the controls or the systems deliberately. But we can't risk damage at all – not on a strange craft, in the middle of a hostile desert. We need this. We need it intact."
"Shimazu? How well do you do without your sword? Do you rate your skills as a martial artist?" Shimazu shook his head at Kai, feeling slightly disappointed. It wasn't like Kai was a westerner – but what was it with people assuming that everyone that came out of the lands of China or Japan had trained under some mythical martial arts zen master? He pulled out his taser and brandished it in the air.
"If we're going for no holes – I'd use this."
"Well, ok then. So – Tads, you're going to do the magic. Shimazu, with the taser…and Aswon I think. Your height and the reach on your stick might intimidate them into giving up, and that's worth a go."
"In that case, I will leave my rifle with Hunter. Hopefully a single shot may be all that is needed to stop a situation if it comes to that, and a precision rifle will allow that to be most carefully placed." Aswon lifted the huge 50 cal rifle off his shoulder and handed it over to Hunter who looked at him in surprise. But as Hunter grabbed the handgrip, Aswon didn't release the rifle. "I know you'll take care of it, and treat it well. As if it were your own."
"Don't worry, I'll try not to use it at all. But if I do, I'll be the perfect gentlemen and treat her right." Hunter smirked at him, and Aswon released his grip on the rifle, staring at Hunter for a few more seconds.
"When we get to the airplane, it would be really handy if we could get a distraction of some kind to make them look forwards, out of the cockpit. Is that doable, Marius?"
"I think I can come up with something, Tads. If I send one of the drones around to the other side of this depression, I think I can get it to peek out from behind a dune, just enough to give a really fuzzy signal that's hard to lock up. Should be enough to get their attention."
"Oh, ok. That's good. I just want to make sure that they're looking the other way when I drop the spell to cross the ward over the back of the ramp. I need to be as uncluttered as possible to try and take them down in one go."
"I still think it's a risk – they're likely to have good sensors on that thing, I think, if it's a troop carrier. And they're not all visual sensors."
"I know – that's why we're going to try and cover things with multiple layers of magic. The invisibility spell will cover us again them watching or glancing out of the back, and any visual cameras or scanners. But I'll also call on a spirit and ask us to use its power to conceal and protect us, to make us fade into the background of the desert. It should help keep us from showing up on the other kinds of sensors and add even more difficulty to a visual pickup. So, I'm hoping that between our efforts to move swiftly and carefully, we should be ok."
"Hmm. Very well. I'd actually suggest approaching at about a five degree angle to the side of the craft. That will hopefully strike a balance between being visible out of the back ramp, the top-mounted systems and any of the sensors deployed laterally, where you'll be right on the edge of their viable arc."
"So, we approach at a brisk walk. I think. A compromise between stirring up too much sand and making noise and limiting our exposure time. I'd suggest that I go first, then Tads and finally Shimazu. You might stick out a bit to the sides, but if someone does see anything, they may only see me at the front and might take a chance on an attack, not realising that we outnumber them. Or at least, even if you put everything into the spell and need time to recover, myself and Shimazu will have a fair numerical fight on our hands."
As the others nodded and agreed on the plan, or discussed minor cosmetic tweaks, Tads calmed her mind and summoned a spirit to her, calling on the desert to hear her. A subtle shifting in the desert sand at her feet made a complex pattern of swirls and shifting shapes, letting her know that the spirit had agreed to aid her. She tuned back into the conversation, and found that Aswon was describing a route to the plane that avoided a few patches of sand that he thought might shift under their feet or have some other risk associated with them.
"Here, you should take the jammer with you as well. If you can get close, it should stop them calling for help – at least until they realise and manage to route the signal through a power amplifier or something. But if they're doing that, they're not defending themselves." Marius handed over the box, double checking the charge level on the battery before he let it go.
"We'll turn it on as soon as we get to the back ramp and they're distracted – that might make them think it's your drone doing the jamming, and should make them concentrate on their instruments. When we get to the back of the ramp then, I'll give a signal to start a countdown – we won't want to risk our radios."
"If it does all go off on one, how about throwing some smoke grenades into the engines? Make it look like they've been taken out without causing any damage?" Kai lifted up a pair of smokes, and waved them about. Behind him Tads shifted uncomfortably and crossed her arms over her chest protectively.
"I don't think so. If they're both riggers, despite any visual alarm, they'll have the sensor feeds directly from the engines – they'll know there's nothing wrong." Kai looked a little sad and put the grenades down, much to the relief of everyone around him. "Best that we keep it simple, and rely on speed, precision and carefully applied violence, I think. Surprise is the key element – that will be a huge force multiplier for us."
They checked their equipment, making sure the tasers were ready to go and all loose equipment was off their bodies, then the three of them carefully climbed up to the top of the ridge, while Marius fired up his drone and started it moving, skirting around the outside of the dunes to move around the basin to the opposite side.
They got to the top of the ridge after some scrambling, and then stopped, waiting for two minutes for their heart rates to drop back to normal and to give Tads the best chance she could of casting the spells.
When she was ready she wrapped them in a concealing blanket of mana, obscuring them from sight and then called the spirit to further conceal them, before they carefully moved over the ridge and started to descend down the slope on the other side. Aswon picked the route carefully, leading them on the most direct route that he could while avoiding the bad ground. His long-legged stride carried him swiftly over the intervening distance, but he still felt his spine crawl and sweat prickle on his forehead that had nothing to do with the temperature. Knowing there were enemy in the craft ahead was bad enough, but he knew that if the positions were reversed he'd be up in the dunes somewhere, looking down through a scope and waiting for the perfect moment to shoot.
Nothing moved, however, and they made it to the back of the ramp without any sign of alarm, crouching down and taking a moment to listen carefully. They couldn't hear anything over the sound of the wind, so Aswon raised his arm and gestured back towards the dune, making a chopping motion, then counting in his head. When he reached ten, he lightly tapped Tads on the shoulder twice.
She moved forward and took a deep breath, then released the active spells she was holding before concentrating and then sliding through the ward carefully. Once inside, she moved quietly up the ramp, rising up until she could see down the length of the craft clearly and into the cockpit. There were both occupants, checking over the instruments quite intently – hopefully they were distracted by Marius. She heard a cry of alarm – that would be Aswon with the jammer – and just as they started to move again she let rip with a massive ball of mana.
Tads gave no thought to how she was going to channel it safely, and instead focussed on dumping raw power into the spell – this had to work, first time. As she flung the mana towards them, she muttered under her breath at them.
"Sleep now…" The spell hit her targets, and the mana scrambled their conscious minds in an instant, shutting down their thoughts and any higher functions, leaving only their autonomic systems working.
She watched them collapse onto the floor, and then focussed on managing the magical backlash that she expected to follow, yet strangely she felt calm and serene, and the headache she expected to descend upon her like a hammer strike felt more like someone tickling the end of her nose with a feather. She muttered a silent prayer of thanks to Elk, and then called out to the others.
"Two down, good to go." Shimazu and Aswon swarmed up the ramp and grabbed a body each, pulling them out of the cockpit and swiftly securing them with lengths of rope and plastic tie wraps from their pockets. Tads headed to the bottom of the ramp, just inside the ward and then gave a thumbs up sign followed by a beckoning gesture, hoping that Hunter was watching through the rifle scope and would understand her.
By the time they had checked on the two pilots and ensured they were safely restrained and were not injured they could see the UAZ heading over the sand dunes towards them, bouncing from one sandy dune to another. It approached the ramp at speed, slamming on the brakes at the last moment and sliding to a halt amidst a spray of sand, and Hunter emerged from the driver's side, looking at the back of the tilt-wing.
"This ain't gonna fit in there. No way." He moved away from the vehicle a little and looked intently again, and double checked, moving forwards a little to stare at the UAZ as well. The feed from his eyes was piped into the spatial recogniser module, and the processor broke down the scene into a wireframe, establishing the size of the UAZ and comparing it again to the size of the ramp leading into the tilt-wing. The answer came out the same again – thirty eight millimetres too big.
Marius extricated himself from the passenger side, holding his deck cradled in one hand and a bunch of loose cable in the other, remotely controlling the drones to their location as he hopped between focussing on each of them, while Kai got out of the rear of the UAZ and headed into the tilt wing to assess the situation. He met Aswon coming back the other way, heading for Marius.
"Might have a problem here, Kai. Everything in the cockpit is written in another language. Looks like Spanish to me. Not sure if Marius will be affected by that."
"I shouldn't be – not if I can jack in. I might not understand the language I'm working in, but gear coming up or the flaps adjusting will feel the same regardless. It's mostly a matter of listening to my body and interpreting the feelings to make it work. At least until we can get the system reset. And if need be, Hunter can translate for me."
"Right, everybody, shut up a minute. This truck. Will not. Fit in there. Capiche? Comprendai? Not gonna happen. And don't Kai – yes, I'm sure. I've measured three times now. Not gonna happen." Hunter frowned at Kai, who decided to carry on anyway.
"Not even if we breathe in?"
"Hah.. funny. No – even if it did fit, there's no room to open the doors and get out or anything. We're not going to be able to take it with us."
"We could always leave it with some food and water and put the two pilots in it? At least once they wake up and get free, they can get to where the soldiers are or out of the desert and back to the airbase. Keeps them safe and alive without us having to take prisoners?" Tads looked around at the others while they considered the options. "And I can sterilise the vehicle once we've got all our stuff off of it, so we're not leaving any evidence. Or any more evidence, maybe."
"Good idea Tads – ok, let's do this. Marius – you and Hunter get in there and find the transponders and disable them however you need to. The rest of us – we get all our personal gear off the jeep and into the plane, fast as we can, then move the drones in, and the scorpions last of all – ok? Ok. Let's go!"
Hunter and Marius moved into the cockpit and examined the systems – where Hunter confirmed that yes, everything was in Spanish. He worked across the cockpit from left to right and top to bottom, reading out or identifying each of the controls one after another while Marius patiently listened and repeated them back, committing the positions and functions into memory. Once they had worked out where the controls where, they both plugged in their respective decks, and went to work bypassing the lockouts. This involved dragging one of the pilots back inside briefly for a thumb scan so they could authenticate a logon – but they soon worked out how to bypass the security once the console was unlocked.
The rest of the team offloaded the jeep as quickly as they could, bringing the equipment in and stacking it all down one side of the cabin and securing it with the cargo netting that hung from the walls. A series of flip down seats lined both sides of the fuselage, but with two people up front, they'd only need the seats on one side to fit everyone in, so they could use the other half of the troop compartment for their personal gear, leaving the cargo area free for the drones and pet carriers.
As they were jogging down the ramp to get another armful of cargo, Kai jumped as a spirit materialised right next to him. Similar in form to the one they had fought at the chopper, it appeared right by his side, and started to speak to him in a hissing voice.
"The master says be careful. They are not at the camp, they may be coming – wait. You are not… "
The delivery of the message and the realisation that all was not well wasted a few vital seconds – seconds that the spirit would regret deeply. While the spirit and Kai looked at each other in shock, Aswon bent forwards and lowered his right shoulder, almost looking as if he was doubled over in pain. The magical spear was slung over his shoulder, a fabric sling cinched tightly around the top and bottom of the shaft, with enough slack to hook over his torso. As he bent and rolled, it slipped forwards over his shoulder until the tip was about to hit the floor.
With an explosive grunt, Aswon flipped his body around, pivoting off his left foot and explosively straightening his leg, while his right leg arced around him, almost like he was trying to perform a spinning back kick. That wasn't what he was after that – what he was trying to do was to control the spin and impart as much energy as he could into the twist. His hands had grabbed the spear, pulling it in tight to his core, and then as he rotated around to be behind Kai, he straightened his arms, driving the spear forward with his entire bodyweight behind it. The slender head of a spear thrust over Kai's shoulder, missing his ear by scant millimetres, driving into the neck of the beast and splitting the flesh, driving onwards through the body before rippling out of the far side. Aswon pulled back and thrust again, this time at an angle as his rotation carried him across behind Kai. His second strike taking the creature in the other side of the neck and opening up the flesh there as his wiry muscles propelled the magical weapon through another violent strike.
Blood exploded out of the creature as both of the jugular veins were rent, along with most of the muscles controlling the neck and head, and it collapsed to the floor writhing as the fountain of blood sprayed around the swiftly dying creature.
A second spirit materialised, raising arms to attack Kai and was struck in the chest by the two darts from Shimazu's taser, and a split second later the spirit writhed in pain as the current jolted it. Shimazu fired again, and another pair of darts took the creature in the face, and a second shock ripped across the face, the current arcing through the interior of the skull. The effects crippled the spirit, the physical body reacting to the electricity regardless of the wishes of the summoned entity, and the spirit collapsed to the floor, writhing around in agony for a few moments before it seemed to liquefy and then burst, sending blood splattering all over the desert sand.
The fight was over before it had really begun, and Kai stood frozen to the spot as killing blows were administered around him. He saw both Aswon and Shimazu get that slightly dreamy expression on their face that told him they were looking into astral space, checking for more spirits or astral entities lurking around. He flicked his foot, sending a globule of… well he wasn't sure what it was, but he knew he didn't want it on his foot – arcing off into the sand.
"I think we need to pick up the pace. They're obviously aware we're not at the chopper now, and I'm guessing from these that they're from the same mage or organisation. He turned and raised an eyebrow at Tads, who was just lowering her hands from her traditional 'squeeze it until it goes pop' position. "Ahh – that explains the exploding bag of goo. Thanks."
They did indeed pick up the pace, concentrating more on getting the equipment in and piled up rather than secured neatly or in any logical order. As they were securing a load, Hunter appeared at the doorway and headed halfway down the fuselage, checking a boxy pillar next to the sliding troop door on the starboard side.
Pulling open a panel, he grabbed a small lever and moved it from the downward stowed position to the upper position, and then watched with a smile on his face as the entire boxy section opened up, pivoting outwards on some internal hinges. A large machine gun floated out on a complicated looking mechanical arm, then flopped downwards, striking the door. Hunter grabbed it for a moment and lifted it vertical and then slid the door open, before letting the gun fall again. With no external force applied, the arm supported the gun in a firing position, roughly half way across the doorway and just above waist height.
Grapping the rear handles, he could swing the gun through a wide arc left and right, and also angle it downwards easily enough, and it looked like it would make a good weapon system for securing a landing site. The gun wouldn't track upwards – but that made sense, as the wing was directly above the doorway. He guided the gun back into position and pulled the lever, and the arm retracted, neatly pivoting and folding back into the space by the side of the door before the reinforced door folded shut again.
"One that side, one by the back ramp, too. Can't see any other weapons systems on here, so it's no air to air fighter, but good for providing cover fire for troops." He smiled at them, then turned and headed back to the cockpit to report to Marius on his findings, leaving the other four to continue their manual labour in the stifling heat.
It felt like longer, but they had the jeep stripped in about fifteen minutes and the cargo moved to the plane. Tads moved into the jeep and cast her spell, sweeping her arms around the interior and sterilising the vehicle down to the microbial level, removing forensic evidence and magical tracking material with a sweep of cleansing mana. That done, they stacked the still unconscious pilots in the back and kicked the door shut, then headed inside the tilt wing. Aswon found the ramp controls and hit the close button with his palm, and did a quick head count.
"Marius – all aboard! Let's go!"
The engines started up, having been primed ready for the signal, and the rotors started to spin. Thirty seconds later the ground was obscured as the sand was kicked up by the two massive turbofans, and the tilt-wing shuddered as it hit the critical power level. Slowly Marius lifted off, testing how the vehicle felt and relying on instinct as much as training – trying to ignore the bombardment of informational messages that appeared in his 'vision', all in Spanish.
He got about thirty metres up and cleared the ground effect zone, holding the craft there as the screens cleared, before slowly 'leaning' forwards. The engines rotated, and they transitioned to forward flight, transforming from the vertical lift chopper mode into the more conventional airplane mode.
"Gear is up, flight controls normal, flaps retracted, instruments online. Fuel looks to be at about ninety-five percent. Heading towards the coast." The thoughts translated to words, appearing on Hunter's deck through the temporary lashup they'd constructed. It appeared that the craft didn't have the same speaker / microphone setup that their chopper and the van had, so Marius was unable to communicate directly with them, but this would suffice for now.
Hunter checked the data coming to him, and then looked at the maps and his best estimate of their position from what looked like the GPS module. Before typing in a bearing to the interface program, watching the computer transfer his input to the rigger systems and Marius. The craft banked slightly as Marius followed the new heading before settling down again. The engines rose in pitch slightly as they accelerated, the desert slipping past faster and faster as Marius acclimated to the new craft and got happier with his controls.
It was noisy – as noisy as the chopper had been, so again they had to communicate in deliberate shouts to each other to get enough volume for their comms to pick up over the background noise. At least the system had enough processing power to do a good job on blocking out most of the background noise, but it still felt like that special voice you had to use to talk to people at a loud party or over nightclub music.
"Good work everyone! Hunter? Once we're over the water, can you lay in a course to the island we stopped at on the way down – it's the closest place we know with a workshop if we need one, fuel and a friendly bit of ground. I take it we've just taken the transponder offline so far, rather than taking it out?"
"Yep – gonna have to open the avionics bay and do a bunch of work to get at the physical device I think – but it should be electrically isolated as long as the program holds."
"Ok, cross that bridge later then. Let's keep the jammer on for now, let me know when we're about forty-five minutes from the island, and we'll turn off and call ahead, make sure it's clear. Tads – are you in a good state to call a spirit to protect us or something?" Tads nodded and started her summoning rite, calling upon the spirit of the winds around them to conceal the craft like the desert spirit had concealed them, and to try and keep them safe from attack.
Marius meanwhile had started to drop, slowly, edging closer to the ground until he'd just started to kick up sand behind him from their passing, then easing back up a metre. The tilt wing raced across the landscape, thirty-two metres up in the air and hugging the undulating terrain smoothly as Marius adjusted to his new body. It felt lean, graceful and athletic compared to the chopper – a winger rather than a bruising centre forward…no – a stiletto rather than a war mace. The chopper had been a blunt force and was typical of Soviet engineering. Just apply more power and brute force until you could solve the problem. This craft took a very different design philosophy, and was a lot more elegant.
"Marius? What have we got on here?" Aswon was clearly wondering about their new vehicle, just the same as Marius.
"He can't communicate directly – we're working on a temporary lash-up at the moment, we wanted to make sure we got the flight controls online first, then the transponder. Hang on, I'll relay through to him and tell you what he says." There was a pause as Hunter transcribed the query and got the response, and started to feed back the results.
"Ok, he says we have adaptive camouflage on the hull, with a dozen different patterns programmed in – we know what we're doing with those. He's saying it handles ok, much like the chopper overall just in a different way. Not as big, but having the two rotors to balance and twist independently makes things fun. I think that's some kind of joke, it's hard to tell over the text. Um… yeah, the door guns – but you've seen those. It's pretty quick too – not like fighter jet quick, but quick enough. "
They heard the glugging of water transmitted over the comm network as Hunter took a drink from his flask before he continued his description.
"Electronic counter-measures installed on the avionics system – and apparently all of the control surfaces have a distributed processing system attached, giving active feedback. Says it makes the whole craft more responsive in a fight and able to resist damage, seems very happy about this. Oh, hang on. He's gone quiet."
They waited, and the seconds stretched out. Just as they were getting worried that somehow the guys up front were being attacked, Hunter spoke again.
"He's saying it's got EDS."
"What's EDS?" asked Kai.
"Oh we are so fucked. So so fucked!" Aswon shook his head, his dreadlocks whipping around him.
"WHAT IS EDS?" yelled Kai.
"ED. Electronic deception system. He probably said 'we've got E Deees' but it got mangled by the convertor," Aswon emphasised the letter sounds, trying make it clear. "They're like… I dunno how to simply describe it. A much better version of Electronic Counter Measures. But instead of just trying to mask your signal, they create weird false echoes and anomalies, designed to actively disrupt tracking attempts. Very high tech. Very restricted tech. Pretty much impossible to get outside the military without having either a metric fuckton of money, or compromising footage of someone."
"Well, that's a good thing, right? This ED thing will make us harder to track?"
"Yes – but it also means this bird is not just maybe-military – it's definitely military, and that means we've pissed off a nation state or triple-A corp by taking it. We definitely need to be careful!"
They sat in silence for a few minutes, then got a shout from Hunter.
"FEET WET!" They had crossed the coast and were now over the sea. Not that it really mattered technically, they would still get shot down if caught… but it was a seemingly meaningful psychological transition, and the team seemed to relax a little after their frantic escape.
Tads crawled over the drones to the rear of the craft then concentrated on creating some fresh meat for the scorpions. At least she could do this without opening the cages and risking their escape. Each scorpion received a hunk of steak magically created to land with a plop on their sandy back, which caused frantic thrashing and writing while they 'killed' the intruder and consumed it.
As she took a moment, she looked around the back of the craft at the subtle etchings that marked the edge of the ward, before calling out to the rest of the team.
"Hey everyone. We really should do something about this ward. Whoever put it up may be able to find it. And if we're doing something about this, maybe we should put up something of our own – at least a quick and dirty one, to try and keep us safe!"
They agreed, and Shimazu, Tads and Aswon did the best they could, working around the gear in the back. Destroying the old ward was relatively simple – they just found a section of the warding inscriptions that was reasonably exposed and easy to work on, then sanded down the metal until the faint engraving was gone – the ward failed with a sudden pop that reminded them of a soap bubble bursting. Putting their own ward up was tougher, and it was by no means a thing of beauty or quality – but it covered their section of the fuselage and the walkway, giving them enough room to grab Hunter and drag him through it often enough. Nobody was happy with their efforts but it would have to do until they could get the craft empty and ready to work on.
When they were about ten minutes into their efforts they heard Hunter calling out to Kai.
"Approximately forty-five minutes until we reach the island."
"What? We've only just crossed the shore!"
"I know. This thing shifts! We're doing a touch under five-fifty kph! I'm not sure we're going to get Marius out of this thing!"
"Ok – make the call and patch me in will you?" He heard Hunter tapping away on one of the multi-function displays, and shortly afterwards heard the bleeping of the carrier wave as Hunter keyed in the frequency and got the base equipment to respond to his hail. About thirty seconds went by before the hail was answered and he gave the passcode again, recognising Zoe's voice over the digital radio.
"Hi, we're on our way back, we'd just like to stop in for some fuel with you?"
"Sure – but you're not staying long, are you? That bird of yours is fracking huge, and it made a right mess. We can't work around a lump that big for long."
"Err, no – we have a new vehicle that we're in. Much more streamlined, you'll see. We're approximately forty minutes out."
"Very well. Approach vector one-three-five degrees, one hundred metres from ten kilometres out, squawk code Papa-Five."
"Roger that, see you soon." He waited until he heard Hunter kill the radio link, then turned back to watch the warding team and gauged their progress – the bird was quick enough that they would probably still be working on it by the time they landed.
"Hey Kai! I've been watching the fuel gauge on this, and there's good news and bad news. It flies further than the chopper does on the same fuel – that's good. Bad news is that we still have to make a couple of fuel stops on the way back. By my reckoning we've got about fifteen hundred to sixteen hundred kilometres in a tank on this, so a bit further than the chopper. But it's still two and a half thousand back to Ludmillas, one thousand nine hundred back to the quarry. So we'll need to stop somewhere at least once on the way back."
"How far back to the airport where we all met up at on the way down? Batumi?"
"About fourteen hundred klicks, from there we should make it pretty easily."
"Ok, start work on a route like that please, and see what we can work out."
Tads had been listening in, and while she was carving out symbols with chalk she called out to Kai, her sentences slow and drawn out as she concentrated on scribing the symbols and runes correctly.
"This new craft? Will we be able to land it at a proper airport? I mean, the chopper we had forged permits for I think. But it was also something that we could own as civilians? Can we own this? I mean legally? If we're going to try and use normal airports, I think we need to chat with Marius first and check."
"Hmm – you're right Tads. Let's wait until we're landed and not getting Hunter to have to translate this both ways, though."
They flew on, keeping low over the sea and well below radar coverage for anything that wasn't in direct line of sight to them, veering slightly to the east to meet up with the waypoint that Hunter had plotted, that marked the entrance to the approach corridor they had been assigned.
They flew into the island base over the bay, and Marius smoothly rotated the engines, slowing them and then bringing them into a gentle hover over the clearing. He was careful lowering them down to the ground, clearly still feeling his way through the controls. After the gear compressed, they heard the engines power down, and thirty seconds later the dust and sand settled, returning vision to the cockpit and their visual sensors just in time for them to see Zoe come out of the bunkhouse and head towards the rear ramp, where she waited with her arms crossed.
By the time the rear ramp had dropped and Kai made it to the ground, Leonidas had joined her, though thankfully Ibrratta was nowhere to be seen.
"Hi folks! Kai called breezily as he crossed over to them. "Thanks for the landing spot. We're just after topping off the tanks, and then we're heading straight off again – much though you're all pleasant company, of course."
"This is a little different."
"Oh, don't be concerned. It's still the same chopper underneath. Just a…really good illusion. Yeah. And some new decals."
"Suuuuuureeee. Whatever." Zoe rolled her eyes and then nudged the hulking cyclops next to her. "Run out the fuel line and grab the cred reader, will you? I'm going to go finish up." Leonidas grunted at her, glowered at Kai and then went to grab the fuel line, while Zoe nodded at Kai then turned and headed back towards the building.
Marius and Hunter were out now as well, and helped Leonidas get the external port unlocked and started to fuel up the craft. It only needed a little fuel, and the bill came to one and a half grand, surprising both Hunter and Marius. They tried not to show it though, passing over a certified credstick and watching the fifteen hundred Nuyen be deducted from the stick before it was returned to them.
They heard the others coming down the ramp, having finished their warding and coming out of the craft to stretch their legs and see what was going on. Kai quickly explained his plan to travel to Batumi, refuel there and then try to make it back to Ludmillas in one long hop.
"Batumi? What about that team of hunters, no not you, the ones that local spy called in? What if they're still hanging around the place? Isn't that kind of courting danger?"
"I don't think so – we'll be coming in with a completely different craft, different configuration and everything. If we can get them to handle the fuelling, there's no need to even get off and go outdoors. We can just fuel and go. And besides, the more direct we fly, the less we pay. We are running a little low on cash." The others frowned at him, and Aswon raised his hand to his mouth and coughed noisily.
"Shares. Sell Shares!" Kai stared at him for a moment and sighed theatrically, then shook his head. He was interrupted though by Tads before he could say anything.
"Whatever we do, I don't think we should call Ludmilla and tell her we're out of money. That would look really bad. Really really bad, especially after last time. So I think we should definitely avoid that."
"I'd agree. I'm pretty certain we can make it though. We just need to be frugal." Kai looked around in case anyone wanted to argue, but they all seemed to be generally ok with the plan. "Good. Then in that case ten minutes to go to the loo, stretch the legs and so on, then we'll get back in the air.
"Hmm – I was thinking of heading back to the chopper and doing a quick astral check around there. I'm a bit worried about Grandfather. Shouldn't take me long, and I want to check to see if those soldiers are there or not." Aswon and Shimazu had been heading to the bunk house to use the facilities there but they both stopped when they heard Tads speak, and were shaking their heads as they turned to register their disagreement – but they were beaten to the punch by Marius.
"Listen – I called for help when that fighter jet was strafing me and shooting at my chopper, and he wasn't there to help. So as far as I'm concerned he can rot in hell! Good riddance in my opinion, and you shouldn't go anywhere near that place."
"It's probably crawling with goons now and what happens if there are any more of those spirits, Tads?" Aswon called out from halfway to the door, "They don't have to be that strong if there's three or four of them. They can swarm you and wear your down, and then you're trapped there. No, I'm with Marius on this, though for different reasons. We should stay well clear of the chopper and move on."
"Eight minutes to departure, folks. If you need to go, go!" Kai shooed the pair towards the building and shook his head at Tads. "Too dangerous, I agree. Let's get rid of our cargo, get paid and get back to the ranch or somewhere safe. Once you have time to summon some spirits, maybe then we go back for a look. Otherwise, we need to keep our heads down. At least until we work out who these people are, and what they want with Marius."
Tads nodded, unhappy but accepting, and headed back into the cargo area to check on the scorpions and ready another stun ball in case they proved to be restless.