A sudden gust of wind blew from the east, and Aswon gagged as the smell of rotten eggs washed over him.
"GAS GAS GAS!" His hand dropped to his belt, grasping for the respirator pouch that his muscle memory placed there from his training days, as his reflexes took over. His hands fluttered over the space grasping at thin air until his brain caught up, and instead he turned and pointed at the open door to the tilt-wing. "Everyone inside now! Get ready to seal the door!" Putting actions to words, he dived back through the open doorway, clearing the way for the others to follow him, pulling on the edge of his jacket to try and cover his nose and mouth as he did so. He wasn't sure what the gas was, but he was determined to breathe in as little as possible of it.
Tads followed him, grasping at the sides of the door frame to haul herself back inside, but then paused as she didn't hear any noise behind her. Turning to look over her shoulder, she saw Hunter standing facing into the wind, slowly inhaling. She was about to shout at him when her thoughts caught up with her memories, and she remembered the chemical analyser built into his cyberware.
Once he'd taken a sniff, Hunter turned and jumped inside, sliding the door shut behind him, and just catching the end of Aswon calling out to Marius. "…I don't know what kind of gas is out there, but there's definitely a strong concentration. Please tell me the chopper has gas-sealing."
"Nein. I have disabled the air ventilation for the moment to prevent us actively drawing in the outside air, but there's no proper sealing on the vehicle – remember what it was designed for. It wouldn't be worth the weight and cost increase on something that is going to have the doors open to provide fire support."
"I shouldn't worry too much. Well, not about the gas anyway," Hunter interrupted. "And I think I know what's going on – or at least I've got a good guess. I'm picking up much higher than normal concentrations of carbon dioxide, sulphur dioxide, hydrogen sulphides and hydrogen halides. And in the proportions I'm detecting, it's indicative of a recent, local, geological event."
"Meaning what?" Kai asked, still not clear on what Hunter was talking about.
"Well, we've landed ten kilometres away from a stratovolcano. Earlier today we felt an earthquake. Now there's gas in the air. I'll give you good odds that there was a minor eruption that has caused some outgassing, and that's what we're experiencing."
"Minor eruption? Felt pretty major to me, we were hundreds of kilometres away!" Kai exclaimed, and then gave a start as both Hunter and Tads laughed, almost in unison.
"Oh my. Oh no Kai – that's a minor quake. Nobody fell over, no houses collapsed, there wasn't a tidal wave. That was nothing. If it had been a major quake or large eruption, then we could have gotten here and found the entire area covered in molten magma and pyroclastic flows, the jungle on fire and the rain clouds being flash-heated to steam. Trust me, this is nothing."
"So, do we have to worry about the gas stuff then?"
"Well, not too much, as long as we're careful. So, carbon dioxide first of all – it's a colourless, odourless gas typically becomes diluted to low concentrations very quickly and is not generally life-threatening. However, because cold carbon dioxide gas is heavier than air it can flow into in low-lying areas where it can reach much higher concentrations in certain, very stable atmospheric conditions, which can pose serious risks to people and animals. Breathing air with more than three percent content can quickly lead to headaches, dizziness, increased heart rate and difficulty breathing. At mixing ratios exceeding about fifteen percent carbon dioxide quickly causes unconsciousness and death. In volcanic or other areas where emissions occur, it is important to avoid small depressions and low areas that might be traps. The boundary between healthy air and lethal gas can be extremely sharp; even a single step upslope may be adequate to escape death."
"Sulfur dioxide is another colourless gas but it has a pungent odour that irritates skin and the tissues and mucous membranes of the eyes, nose, and throat. Emissions can cause acid rain and air pollution downwind of a volcano, high concentrations of sulphur dioxide produce vog causing persistent health problems for downwind populations. During very large eruptions, SO2 can be injected to altitudes of greater than ten kilometres into the stratosphere. Here, SO2 is converted to sulphate aerosols which reflect sunlight and therefore have a cooling effect on the Earth's climate."
"What's a vog?" Kai asked.
"Volcanic gas clouds. Like fog, but with volcanoes."
"You're winding me up?"
"No, serious. I can show you the articles on the matrix later if you want. Anyway, moving on - hydrogen sulphide. Another colourless, flammable gas with a strong, offensive odour – that's the one that was giving the eggy smell that Aswon picked up on. It's sometimes referred to as sewer gas. Interestingly, the human nose is more sensitive to it than any gas monitoring instrument we have today, including my analyser… but its unusual in nature, so it made me check for the other stuff. Weird fact for you – in air mixtures with as little as one one-hundred thousandth of a percent of hydrogen sulphide are associated with a rotten egg smell. Unfortunately, however, our sense of smell is not a reliable alarm - at mixing ratios above about one hundredth of a percent, it becomes odourless and very toxic, causing irritation of the upper respiratory tract and, during long exposure, pulmonary oedema. Exposure to higher concentrations can cause a human to fall unconscious in five minutes and die in an hour or less. So the fact that we could smell it was a good sign, really…"
"Well that all sounds nasty – but what does that mean for us?"
"I'm not done yet – one last set of stuff I've detected, which are a variety of hydrogen halides. They're all pretty similar in a lot of ways, hydrogen bonded with either fluorine, chlorine or bromine. They're all toxic acids, formed when magma ascends close to the surface and liberates gas trapped in rocks and formations. These gasses have high solubility; therefore they rapidly dissolve in water droplets within volcanic plumes or the atmosphere where they can potentially cause acid rain. In an ash-producing eruption, ash particles are also often coated with hydrogen halides. Once deposited, these coated ash particles can poison drinking water supplies, agricultural crops, and grazing land. So, bottled water only for the moment, keep it covered or sealed, and don't eat anything local or that has been exposed to the air for a while."
"So what does that mean?"
"Well, all that is bad stuff, and potentially lethal – in high enough concentrations. But the fact that I've just spent five minutes telling you all that should let you know, that's not the case here. So calm down, will you? We're fine, unless things get a lot more concentrated or pungent than they are now. At least we're fine from the point of view of what we're breathing. What's probably less good is the damage to the chopper we've probably sustained."
"Marius, you didn't say anything about damage? What damage?" Kai called out.
"That's because the systems were going haywire. There's enough charge in the air that we had lightning coruscating across the windscreen – do you really think that all the instruments are working accurately during the middle of that?"
"And that is half the problem right there." Hunter added. "High temperature gasses ejected from the volcano are likely to carry significant charge, which contributes to their readiness to bond with water or elements in the natural environment. However, when meeting the fast-moving parts of modern equipment, ionic bonds are accelerated due to high static charges found in modern engines and avionics. Volcanic ash is hard and abrasive, and can quickly cause significant wear to mechanical systems like, oh, I don't know - propellers and turbocompressor blades, and scratch cockpit windows, impairing visibility. The ash contaminates fuel and water systems, can jam gears, and make engines flameout."
"None of that sounds like stuff we can do much about though," Aswon added.
"No – it's not. It's more a matter of trying to avoid it. But if the volcano erupted, and we hit the edge of the cloud when we were flying in, it would have been almost impossible to see, particularly with the instruments going crazy. The air would have been full of incredibly fine bits of pulverised rock and particulate matter, and those particles have a relatively low melting point, so they melt in the engines' combustion chamber then the ceramic mass sticks to turbine blades, fuel nozzles, and combustors—which can lead to total engine failure. On top of that, ash can also contaminate the cabin and damage avionics."
The team sat back in silence, thinking about their journey in through the hammering rain, flying purely on instruments that were dancing and kicking, not detecting the danger in the environment.
"Pilots can't see ash clouds at night. Also, ash particles are too small to return an echo to on-board weather radars on commercial airliners. Even when flying in daylight, pilots may interpret a visible ash cloud as a normal cloud of water vapour and not a danger—especially if the ash has travelled far from the eruption site. That's why once a volcano has gone up, flights are often routed away from them, and a big eruption will play havoc with flight routes for weeks after a blast."
"This is bad news. Very bad news. But it does explain the loss of power I was feeling as we were flying closer to here." Marius' voice had an edge of bitter resignation to it as he added the information from Hunter to what he'd experienced, working out what had happened. "The engines are very specialised designs, engineered for low observable output…stealth. So they have cooling systems built into them in certain areas to reduce the thermal signature. If we have ingested volcanic ash into the air intakes, then it is composed of fragments of rock, crystalline material, and volcanic glass. The glass component is going to have the lowest melting temperature—lower than temperatures inside the combustor of a gas turbine engine."
Marius rubbed at his head, and they could see his eyes flicker back and forth as he mentally followed the combustion cycle of the engines, working out the path the air and fuel would take through the system, and what components they would hit.
"Ash that finds its way into the combustor may melt. The combustor and turbine components are cooled, as the metals they are made of have lower melting temperatures than the gas temperature inside the engine core anyway, but particularly to keep the thermal bloom down. That means molten ash that touches these surfaces is likely to freeze, and accrete on the metal surface, probably forming crystals. The most sensitive surface is the high-pressure turbine nozzle guide vanes, situated immediately downstream of the combustor. The gas flow is choked through the vanes, and so the flow area through them is a controlling area for the engine. If this area is reduced due to an accretion of ash, a smaller mass flow rate of gas passes through the engine core. Reduced mass flow leads to the turbine doing less work. The turbine drives the compressor, which accordingly also does less work compressing the air. If the compressor can no longer contain the high-pressure gas in the engine core, the gas flow can reverse and flow out of the front of the engine."
"And that's bad, I take it?" Kai asked.
"Ja. This is known as an engine surge or a compressor surge, and is often accompanied by a ball of flame that bursts out the front of the engine. This surge is likely to extinguish the flame in the engine combustor, known as a 'flame-out'. Once the high pressure in the core dissipates, the engine should be free to restart. Restarting an engine at altitude can be difficult, due to the lower temperatures and pressures of the ambient gas, but is not normally a problem. The reduced flow area of the vanes can make it harder to restart the engine. But at a low altitude there is no time to restart – the loss of power will send you down very quickly. At the speeds we fly at, and the altitude needed for stealthy insertions, there is likely not even enough time to try and auto-rotate the bird down. We would be looking at a hard crash."
"And of course, on top of that volcanic ash carries significant electrostatic charge. Fine ash that enters electronic components within the engine or airframe can cause electrical failure—which poses an immediate hazard to the aircraft. So we could be on fire when we crash." Marius clenched his fist, his knuckles turning white as his anger mounted, with no visible target on which to expel it.
"Even if we avoid a flame out or engine failure, it will destroy our operational efficiency over time. Volcanic ash, as a hard substance, damages gas turbine compressors. It erodes by impacting compressor blades and vanes and removing material—and abrades by three body interactions between the rotating blade, ash particle, and compressor annulus. Changing the shapes of the blades and vanes and increasing gaps between blades and annuli both help reduce engine fuel efficiency and operability." Kai looked like he was about to ask what an annulus was, but Marius glared at him and he sank back into his seat. "Overall, it's going to reduce our range by some amount, and as the damage continues to worsen, our economy will tank and the range we can fly will drop further and further."
"Molten ash that sticks to cooled surfaces can block cooling holes. This stops cooling air flow and heats surrounding metal, leading to accelerated thermal fatigue. This process affects combustor and turbine components, reducing lifespan – and also making us glow in the thermal spectrum, destroying our stealth capability. Ash can also accumulate and partially block fuel spray nozzles, impairing air and fuel flow fields and mixture stoichiometries in the combustor. Such adverse conditions reduce engine performance and can create local hot spots that increase the combustor's thermal fatigue rate. All of which is a fancy way of saying, Kai, that the engine will break, and probably at the worst possible time."
"So what do we need to do about it?"
"Following exposure to airborne dust from an explosion or event like this, or from working in a quarry, our choppers would be downrated until they had gone to the maintenance shelter for a full engine strip and clean, and an x-ray examination of the engine structure is recommended to avoid further wear and damage, and to certify the engine as fit for purpose. Failure to remove particulate matter can cause increased wear and damage to components at an exponential rate versus time since exposure."
"So we need to do an engine rebuild, and the longer we leave it, the worse it will get."
"Ja. But we need to find somewhere with a vehicle handling facility to manage this – it is not a job you can do in the field. And I don't think we can look for maintenance back in Lae, now can we?"
"So, let me see if I got this right? We're near a volcano that's erupting, and we actually need to climb up the volcano to drop off the token, but not until after midnight tomorrow. There's gas around, that could be poisonous at higher concentrations. And we've got shit in the engine that we need to deal with, that needs a full workshop to sort out. Is that about the size of it?" The rest of the team nodded along with Kai as he summarised the situation. "Oh, that's ok then. For a minute, I thought we were actually in trouble…"
"For the moment, we appear not to be in that much danger, I agree," Aswon responded. "I actually suggest that we bed down for the night – we can't do any maintenance in the dark, and as you say, we do have to wait a full day before we can begin. We may as well rest."
The team started to break out bedding, struggling to find space around each other in the cramped confines of the tilt-wing now they had so much cargo on board. Sleeping outside wasn't an option – not so much due to the gas and ash as the incessant rain hammering down upon them and the risk of being washed away. Tads and Hunter went and sat in the cockpit for a while, trying to get some details on the area as they had some interest and knowledge on the basics of geology. Tads had learnt hers practically, learning from the wisdom of her shamans and tribal elders, while Hunter was much stronger on the theory side, but between them they seemed to cover a reasonable amount of knowledge.
It took forever to pull data down from the matrix – even with the deck and the sat-phone plugged into the power amplifiers and transmitter on the chopper, the atmospheric interference made getting a signal almost impossible. The error correction protocols kept trying through, eventually getting packets of data through, albeit at a very low data rate. They were able to confirm though that Ulawun was a "decade" volcano – one expected to erupt or undergo noticeable activity every ten years or so, which made this unfortunate timing, though not unexpected. With that done, Hunter turned his attention to the fuel sample that Marius had gathered, trying to analyse it and determine if it was good or bad. They were pretty sure now it was environmental issues that was the cause of their troubles, but it was best to be certain. Thirty minutes of careful sniffing as the fuel slowly evaporated and cross checking with the chemical composition of different grades and types of avgas, and Hunter had confirmed that while it was not going to win any awards for quality, the fuel from Gwok's was at least serviceable.
"So, Vadim. We should probably have a look around the place astrally, to make sure it's ok. As the only two full mages, capable of sending our spirits out of our bodies, that probably falls to us. So we need to decide who is going out for a quick scout. So, a quick game of hide, horn, hoof will sort that out."
"I have no idea how to play that?"
"It's simple. You make a shape on the count of three. Horn pierces hide. Hoof crushes horn. Hide covers hoof." She made appropriate hand motions.
"Oh, I see. So it's rock paper scissors!"
"No, it's hoof-hide-horn, and obviously much better."
"Well, either way, I think I should concede the game and let you go scouting. You're obviously far more powerful and experienced, and this is very important for the safety of the team. And besides, ladies first. Either way it should be you, though."
"I like him!" Hunter called out, and there was a chorus of sniggers from the others nestled in their piles of sleeping bags or blankets. Tads gave him a sharp look, but there was a small element of truth to what he said as well, and she made herself comfortable before projecting out of her body and scouting the area around the landing site, spending five minutes flitting back and forth, before returning back to report to the others.
"No signs of life – nothing above small insects anyway. I guess a lot of the animals have sensed or felt the eruption and fled. The area seems safe enough anyway, with no signs of threats, astral or physical. There is a sense of longing and despair out there though, around some of the huts and areas… I guess people used to live here a while back, but something happened. Made me feel mostly sad, rather than threatened, though. Further out there's some hazing over the plantation area – I'm guessing they use chemical weedkillers and herbicides and such like, to keep the crops under control. But again, nothing to worry us."
"I've been watching through the optics as well – agree with you, Tads," Kai added, "nothing moving, no threats, but a wistful feeling around the place. Nothing we need to worry too much about, though."
Hunter poured out a cup full of water and laid it on the deck next to him as he settled down for the night. He spent a moment drumming on the deck, watching the tiny vibrations dancing across the surface of the water, then settled down to sleep, happy that his low-budget seismograph was ready to go.
The night passed uneventfully, the crew sleeping as best they could, crammed into nooks and crannies, laying across seats or propped up against the cargo. The constant rain drummed against the fuselage, eventually lulling them into a light doze if nothing else.
As usual, Aswon was the most chipper in the morning, having made do with the few hours of decent quality sleep they'd managed to get, and he was sympathetic enough to the others to have a pot of coffee on the go and hot water to mix in with some powdered soy-milk to make porridge with as they started to stir. Glancing through the cockpit door they could see a grey miserable day with rain sleeting down across the landscape, visibility limited to perhaps half a kilometre and no sign of breaks in the clouds.
"So Marius – can we cover the air intakes to the engines to stop more ash getting in?" Hunter asked.
"We can, but it will only help a little. At rest, it would only be any ash blown directly in that would be a problem. In flight though, those engines are sucking in hundreds of decalitres of air per second, generating a static charge and operating at high temperatures – that is where the damage is going to be caused. And, having thought about it a little more, the effect is likely to be worse at altitude. We were probably lucky that we came in as low as we did, where the air is relatively clean. The higher we go, the more likely we are to encounter the ash cloud or ejecta from the volcano."
"Tads – or rather one of her spirits – may be able to help. What do you think, Tads? If you call upon the spirits of the winds to try and guard and protect the engine, could it keep the material out?"
"I think that should help a great deal, Aswon. It might not do everything we need, but it would be a lot better than nothing. And I was also thinking if we're going to be here for a while, I can call a spirit of the land, of the mountain peak perhaps, to try and scour the engine for bits of itself, to try and remove anything already in there. Again, anything it removes has got to be good, right? Though I think both spirits will need to be powerful ones, so they may be quite taxing to bargain with. Do you want me to give that a go, Marius?"
"Yes, please. Anything we can do to get the engines operational will be good." Hunter quirked an eyebrow at Marius, a little surprised at his willingness to accept magical aid… normally he would have bet on the stoic German preferring to do things himself rather than trust to magical aid… he must be really worried about the engines.
As they drank their coffee and ate the porridge, Kai floated an idea to the rest of the team.
"How about if we flew further to the east, towards the smuggler base we picked up info on further out. Whatcha called… rumble in the jungle, I think it was. Maybe we can go there for repairs, and get the engines patched up."
"Surely we don't want to do that though – the further east we fly, the further west we have to come back, and we'll just end up using loads of fuel for nothing."
"True to a certain extent, Aswon, but if we get the engines repaired, we're in much better shape and Marius is less likely to murder us all in our sleep. And as long as we can get from that place back to somewhere near Lae, we know we can use the fuel in the barrels to get back to Arkan port and refill there. That gets us back to Sarangani and we should be able to fill the tanks and refill the drums there, before we head further onwards."
"Hmm, I see what you mean. Do we know much about the rumble place? Does it have a repair shop?"
"That I don't know, so it's a bit of a risk. It may be we just put a bunch of extra distance on the engines, which won't be good for them."
"We need to find out if we can, before we risk the damage to the aircraft. On that matter – can we maybe make a screen or a filter from cloth, to stop things being sucked into the engine? Would that work?" Aswon glanced over at Marius.
"I do not think so. The engines have filters on them, but they were never designed to cope with this kind of situation. The difficulty is in having a filter that actually stops foreign bodies getting into the engine, while still actually allowing enough airflow, and not being sucked into the engine in the process. I'm not sure we could fashion something that would not make the situation worse in one of those ways…"
The team pulled up the map and had a look at the situation, working out what they needed to do next. They were settled into a clearing in a small wooded area, set into a horseshoe bend of a waterway, mostly isolated from anything nearby. Crossing the river and heading eastward, it was about ten kilometres to the base of Ulawun, a steep-sided strato-volcano that rose sharply from the island, a pimple upon the surface of the earth, primed and ready to explode. The map they had showed the bottom half of the volcano covered in lush tropical growth, while the top half was brown, a barren lifeless landscape of rocks and gravel.
"How old is this map?" Aswon looked in the corners, but couldn't see any date information.
"At least twelve years," Hunter replied, "It's the most up to date one I could get without paying through a corporate portal or running some hacks and trying to steal them from a portal. So who knows how accurate it currently is?"
"We need to drop the token within one thousand metres of the top of the volcano. Can you mark up the map to show that?" Hunter grunted at Aswon, then pulled an interface cable from the device and inserted it into his datajack so he could manipulate the map as requested. A dotted line appeared around the cone, well within the brown section of the volcano.
"There. And in anticipation of your next question, that is probably around the sixteen hundred metre mark, so it's going to be a solid climb. The best location I can see is here, to the south." Hunter gestured to the southern side of the volcano, where a ridge of land from a nearby hill ran to the volcano, covered with greenery. It was the closest point to the circle, and the least steep approach to the target zone – though when Hunter panned across, the climb up to the ridge looked difficult and arduous. "That way should shield the approach walk against a certain amount of debris and provide concealment for a good chunk of the walk anyway."
"You're thinking we should walk up there" Kai asked, eyebrow raised.
"No. Personally I think that's the way Aswon and I should walk up, while the rest of you stay here. We go up, with the token and find somewhere to drop it, having scouted out a good landing site. Then you fly up quickly and stop for the bare minimum of time to collect us and we get the hell out of here. We're the fittest, and the fastest of the team, so it makes sense we should go. And we're probably the quietest and stealthiest as well. Especially if Tads can whip up a spirit or two to help us."
"I dunno, Hunter. I reckon we're covering the best part of ten kilometres horizontally, and probably one and a half vertically. We're looking at a good seven to eight hour journey."
"I'm sure we can move faster than that Aswon!"
"I don't think so. Not wearing a sealed jacket and poncho, with a respirator. I'm not taking any chances with the gases you've described. We're going to be walking right up to where they're venting from – it's only going to take one bit of bad luck to come across a cleft or hollow full of gas that could cause us issues. So it's going to be miserable, hot, sweaty, tiring work, and I think we'll be lucky to get up there by nightfall."
"There isn't a road you can take to speed you up at all?" Kai asked.
"No – look, the road runs around the coast. Doesn't go anywhere near the volcano, for good reason. Too unstable." Hunter's finger traced the fine line of the principal road in the area, nothing more than a semi-permanent dirt track by the looks of things.
"I don't like the sound of how much walking you'll have to do, and how long it will take. Marius – do we have a practical alternative. Can you fly us up to drop off the token?"
"I can. But it will likely cause more damage to the engines, and we may run into the same problems as if the guys go on foot – except they will affect us all. We could fly over a plume of hot gas or disrupted air and get blown off course or flipped, or an engine full of ash and lave, or anything like that. We could run across a stream of ionised gas that makes the instruments go haywire. Who knows?"
"Hmm, ok. That does sound like boots on the ground is the way forward then, with a good scout to determine what the conditions are like. Ok guys, let's get you prepared and on the way as soon as possible. It sounds like you'll need to go steady to avoid overheating and to allow for plenty of stops to rehydrate and so on."
When Aswon and Hunter were ready, they set off through the woods – Aswon carrying his spear and rifle, Hunter with his assault rifle, both clad in the most chemically resistant outer layers they had, with the hoods drawn up and tight around their heads, sealing around the respirators that covered their faces, and with thick gloves over their hands. By the time they reached the river, they were sweating, despite their levels of fitness, and growing uncomfortable – neither looking forward to the hours of trekking they had to come.
Back in the chopper the rest of the team settled down, apart from Tads who sat with Vadim, talking him through the summoning process she was about to carry out. Slowly she prepared, describing all the steps she was taking slowly and carefully to him, trying to teach him as much as possible about what was going on, helping him to learn and improve his skills. She called forth a spirit of the sky first, asking it to shield their aircraft from the particles in the air and stop the situation getting any worse, then followed up with a spirit of the land, and described in careful detail the situation they were in, asking it for aid to clean the engines of the particles clogging them up.
Kai sat up suddenly, thirty minutes after the pair had left on their trek, then turned to Marius.
"Marius – your drone. Why don't we get that to fly up and drop the token off? We don't need to take us all up, do we? Why didn't I think of that before?"
"Because it will not work. The engine on the vector thrust drone would suffer the same as our engine would. In fact, it's a simpler engine, with fewer safeguards and protections, so it would suffer worse and fail sooner. Don't worry – I thought of it last night and dismissed it as a stupid idea, or I would have said something."
"Oh." Kai looked relieved, but crestfallen, that his plan didn't appear to have been a good one. "At least we don't have to tell the guys they didn't need to walk after all…"
Over to the east, Aswon and Hunter crossed the relatively flat land with low-growing trees, pushing onwards and determined not to fall off their pace until they reached the area where the land started to climb. As they walked across the fields and found some animal trails to follow, the looming bulk of the volcano slowly emerged out of the grey clouds and rain, appearing like smoke or an illusion at first, then slowly becoming more and more solid.
As they reached the foothills, their comms started to play up, and their frequent checks in with the chopper became patchy and difficult to decipher, as the growing range and amount of charged particles in the air played havoc with their electronics. Aswon quickly worked out a system with Marius to be able to send simple codes using the transmit button, a bastardised version of Morse code that should let them signal that they were ok, needed a pickup and by simple accumulation of clicks transfer a set of co-ordinates once they'd found a landing site.
With that arranged, they drank, rested for a few minutes, and then started to climb, slowing noticeably as they wound their way through the thick trees and jungle growth that cluttered the base of the volcano, the plants thriving in the thick black volcanic soil, rich in nutrients blasted out from the depths during an eruption fifty years ago.
The climb was tough, testing their fitness – but Hunter was correct in his assessment of earlier that day. They were the fittest and most hardy of the team, well suited to the task. They took turns breaking trail, hacking away at vines and undergrowth where needed, moving though the jungle without sign of their passage where they could. Hour after hour they climbed, slowing more and more as the ground rose and the terrain became more inhospitable. By early afternoon they both found themselves with weapons on their slings, over their backs scrambling up the slopes that reached sixty or seventy degrees at times. Again though, they were the perfect people for the task – Aswon using the power of his Gecko tattoos to stick to the slick wooden surface and pad up without slip nor slide, while Hunter extended the fine but razor sharp climbing claws from the concealed slits in his fingertips, climbing as a big cat did by digging into the wood and clawing his way up the slopes in powerful pulls.
Once they had made it to the top of the ridge, the going was marginally easier – they were still traversing thick forest, but at least the change in altitude was fairly minimal. They'd finished the five litres of water each had bought with them, and it felt like they'd sweated at least twice that much – though they both knew that wasn't true. Shoulders and legs ached from the punishing climb, and under the arms there were patches worn red raw from the constant chafing of the weapons slings and their clothing. But, they pushed on, heading east as the sun dropped in the sky behind them – or at least the lighter patch of monsoon cloud moved closer to the horizon.
Finally, they started to descend slightly, as they crossed the tiny headland between their ridge and the slope of the volcano. The plant growth here was lower and less dense, scoured clean more recently by some volcanic process, and they made slightly better progress. There were several spots here were the chopper could probably hover with the ramp close to an escarpment or ridge line – though it would take all of Marius' skill to do so in the winds that whipped across the slopes.
They were both breathing like winded racehorses now, gulping in air through the respirators with the eyepieces fogging slightly on every exhale. The air would have been appreciably thinner at sixteen hundred metres anyway, let alone with the difficulty of drawing in air through the filters that kept out the particulates and ash that laced the environment.
Having found a good location for a pickup, they collapsed down onto a fallen log, looking up the slope as they recuperated from their efforts. Hunter spotted a large lump of rock a good hundred metres further up the slope, sticking out in the middle of a small boulder field.
"Hey Aswon, how about putting the token on that. Looks like a reasonable place, and we can wedge it into something to stop it moving."
"Is it inside the zone?" Aswon panted in return, squinting at the large rock sitting on the steep slope. It was roughly the size of a small car, and looked to have landed hard – presumably having been thrown up into the air in a previous eruption. He glanced over as Hunter was silent, looking at his map and then staring blankly into space as he tried to get a decent reading on his internal GPS.
"Yeah, it's a good seventy-five metres or so inside."
"Ok, let's go check it out." They pushed themselves up to their feet and started to plod up the slope, moving slowly and carefully on the fine shifting sands. One foot forward, work from side to side, establish traction, next foot forward. Breath. Rinse and repeat, one after another.
They both flinched and gave a start as there was a sudden crackle ahead of them, and their heads snapped upwards while weapons were readied. Ahead of them on the slope a ball of incandescent fury popped into existence, a small roiling mass of plasma and lightning, hovering about a metre from the ground, rolling slowly down the slope towards them. A sudden arc of power shot out from the bottom of the ball and zapped a small stone below it, causing an explosion of sharp shards to fly out in all directions.
Hunter scanned it with his cybereyes, quickly switching away from thermal to avoid being blinded by the insanely hot ball of plasma, and checking it in ultrasound to determine if there was a core or mechanical device causing the phenomenon. Aswon checked magically, finding no signature or magical effect as a cause.
"I think it's just a natural thing – maybe due to all the particles in the air. Jeez – just think of the charge needed to form that!" Hunter murmured through his mask, slightly awestruck as he worked out the rough numbers needed for a static charge to ionise gas into plasma. "Ok, we need to stay the fuck away from that, or it's going to arc through us to ground!"
"Believe me, I had no intention of giving it a cuddle."
Unfortunately, the ball of plasma and lightning rolled down the slope towards them, slightly faster than walking pace. They split, moving apart to try and work around it or get out of the way, and Aswon watched in morbid fascination as the ball gently rolled and arced, swinging slightly to follow him. His tired brain told his body to run, to sprint off and outrun the incandescent fury of the ball lightning, but his tired leg muscles and labouring chest very politely told his brain to shut the hell up and get in the bin. Instead he raised his hands up and then bought them down in a smashing action, driving the hilt of his spear into the soft shifting rocks of the slope and then backing off, as he realised that he was probably carrying a two metre long lightning rod that was looking pretty attractive to random balls of highly charged particles.
The ball closed on the spear, rolling towards it and the hum and crackle of power intensified, as flickering fingers of charge danced between them. As it reached some critical threshold, the noise rose to a crescendo and the ball exploded, forks of power arcing over to the spear tip and racing down the shaft to ground as the lightning carved a path to the volcanic rock. A plume of dust and pebbled exploded upwards, and the massive flash of lightning made them both turn away from the blast.
A moment later, the sound and light was gone, leaving them stood on the steep slope of Ulawun, slightly shocked and bemused. Aswon approached his spear, looking over it for damage and surprised to find no burn or score marks on it, no sign of the massive burst of power that had just run through it. He reached forward to reclaim it without thinking through the action, then cried out in pain as the residual heat burnt through his glove, melting the fibre and raising weals on his palm within seconds.
Cursing his own rashness, he peeled off the glove, taking some of the blistered flesh with it and checked his water bottle – no where near enough to rinse the wound under tepid water as he should with a burn. He had to settle for holding the water bottle in his hand, wincing with pain and swirling the water around, trying to draw out the heat a little and at least keeping the burnt flesh in contact with a relatively clean surface that was smooth and non-porus.
He climbed up the slope to examine the large boulder, looking to distract himself from the stinging pain from his burn, and Hunter joined him, checking over the massive volcanic rock. They found a few alcoves on one side, easily deep enough to put a fist into, that would make an ideal spot for the token, keeping it out of the elements yet relatively easy to find. With that done, they backtracked down the slope, returning to the edge of the forest growth and getting under cover, then settling down to wait.
Slowly and painfully, they sent through the modified code signal to indicate they were in position one click at a time, indicating that they were ready and waiting until midnight to plant the token, transmitting the co-ordinates for their pickup location back to the chopper team.
The chopper team had had a quiet, but tense day, waiting for each check in and wondering if they were going to get the alarm signal indicating that something had gone wrong – or that the two climbers had been attacked. Over the course of the day the spirits had done their part, guarding and cleaning the engines, trying to ameliorate the damage done and prevent it from getting any worse. Tads and Vadim had been discussing magical theory all day, with her relentlessly drilling him on spell casting, over and over to get in the practice he needed to become proficient.
When the signal came, they checked the timing, planning to take off well after midnight, ensuring that the team on the volcano had plenty of time to plant the token after the challenge had started, and that everything matched the requirements of the job. The maintenance done during the day seemed to have worked – the engines started ok, and the instruments responded with few glitches or errors, though some did remain. Marius bought the engines up to power and they lifted up from their landing spot, the trees and bushes blown outwards as the massive rotors span, propelling them up into the air. It only took a few minutes for them to cross the fields and reach the foot of the volcano, starting to climb steeply.
As they did, Marius felt the winds picking up, unpredictable gusts blowing back and forth and the occasional sudden updraft as they flew over a crack or crevice that was expelling gas. Climbing swiftly, he felt the lack of power indicating that while the spirits had been at work, the engines were still not entirely right, and performance was down on the rated specification.
The higher he went, the more he had to fight the winds and unexpected thermal currents, the hot gasses spewing from fissures and vents reacting with the cold rain-laden air. Still, he was a masterful pilot, and with the advantages his rigger-adaptation gave to him, he piloted the chopper up the slopes smoothly and efficiently, clogged engines or not.
On top of the volcano, Hunter and Aswon had moved up towards the boulder, getting ready to plant the token when they saw the chopper arrive. Aswon had had to contend with another ball of lightning following him and his spear – this time he left the spear jammed into the ground for a good ten minutes after it was struck, allowing it to cool in the strong winds before he attempted to reclaim it.
"Ground team, ground team, stand by, on final approach. Coming in from the south east." They planted the token and turned to spot the chopper, finding it difficult through the rain and darkness. Marius had looped over the ridge and gone further east, and was now drifting back towards them, being pushed along by the advancing winds – but hopefully keeping any volcanic debris downwind of them. "Stand by, I see the ridge. I will have to turn and drift backwards towards you. It will take me a minute."
"Relax Marius. I've got this. Just hold us steady, please." Tads moved to the side door and pulled it open, then looked down at Hunter and Aswon crouched on the exposed surface below. She reached out with her hand and made a scooping motion, the symbolism helping her to form the right mental connections to cast her levitate spell. She concentrated, grunting a little with the effort of picking both of them and all of their gear up – but it was still easier to cast one powerful spell that could handle the extra weight rather than two or three small spells simultaneously. Hunter and Aswon gradually rose into the air, grabbing hold of each other to form a single mass that was easier to manoeuvre and control. She slid them across the space towards them, smoothly bringing them in through the doorway as they tucked their feet up to fit. Once clear of the door, Shimazu slid the door closed and called to the front of the chopper.
"All aboard, door secure!" Marius was already dipping the nose, having 'felt' the door closing, and pivoted to the south, heading away from the volcano across the prevailing winds, trying to limit the ingress of any further material into the engines, and opening the distance as quickly as possible.
"You plant it ok?"
"Yes Kai – found a nice large obvious boulder that had some niches in, placed it in one of those. Should be inside the stated distance and well protected from wind, rain or critters. As long as the volcano doesn't actually blow, it should be fine. And hey, if that happened, it was going to be over anyway."
"Good work, Hunter. You too, Aswon." The rest of the team moved to help Aswon and Hunter out of their clothing, peeling off the layers of armour and outer shell, noting the chemical stains and pockmarks in some of the surfaces, then fetching them bottles of water and some hi-energy food bars to recover from their efforts. Marius swung a good way south before slowly turning and bending to the west, heading back in the general direction of Lae.
"It will take us about ninety minutes to get back to the east coast of New Guinea. We need to work out where we are landing and make arrangements."
"What about the civilian airport. It's about forty kilometres inland from the port – far enough away not to be under the control of Gwok and his men?" Aswon suggested.
"Won't we need permits and such like, and flight plans filed, though. Like we did at the other airports? And I'll have to make sure I don't have any spells showing or spirits helping us, as we come in to land."
"We should probably do that anyway. But – I have an idea." Marius sounded much happier now that he was away from the volcano and flying over open skies, even through the persistent rains. "We do have a transponder ID we can use down here, and we just need to declare a mayday – we claim we weren't even landing at Lae, didn't want to go near it. But under aviation rules, an airport has to allow you to land if you've declared an emergency, regardless of where you were bound. And the volcanic eruption gives us a great cover story."
"Ok Marius, let's go with that as a plan. Get us flying along as if going past the airport on the way to the Philippines or something, then declare an emergency and we'll divert in and take it from there." Kai looked around and saw nods of agreement from the rest of the team, as they agreed with the plan.
"We were probably going to have to get close anyway before we could radio them – the dust plume must be starting to spread on the wind, as we're still suffering from reduced range on all our electronics and communications…."
They flew onwards, Marius following a course just north of the island before declaring his emergency, describing the issues with his engines and announcing his intention to divert to Lae Nadzab airport. He waited for a few moments, then a few moments more. Just as he was about to retransmit, assuming that his signal had failed to get through to anyone, a very shaky voice came back in heavily accented and badly broken English.
"Hello plane? You hear me? It is Iwatoo, I am cleaner. Am only one here. You broken?"
"Confirmed, we are losing power. Must land at your airport. Please confirm."
"I am only one here. No boss. No one else."
"Roger that, please confirm which runway and approach vector to use?"
"Um. Only one runway. I don't know what a victor is? You can land though, no other planes here."
"Is your runway lit?"
"There are lights, but don't know where switch is. I look."
Marius heard the signal go dead as the man in the tower released his transmit button and shook his head. He'd had a fair number of interactions with third world airports and facilities, but not anything quite like this before.
"Everyone, the landing may be interesting – but it might be good news. There's only the local cleaner on duty at the airport it seems. He is not even sure where the switch is for the landing lights. But it sounds like there is no official presence there, so we should be able to land without drawing attention and go from there."
"Hello plane? I no find lights. I leave note on desk saying you land for boss in morning. I need to go empty bins now."
Marius bristled, wondering what kind of person would do that after a mayday, even though it actually suited them very well – but he just couldn't fathom the kind of thinking that was being shown here. He took a few deep calming breaths, and then concentrated on flying, accepting he was going to have to make an unlit approach to a runway with no instrument landing system or flight assistance mode active, at night in the middle of a monsoon, on a bird that was actually suffering from lower than normal performance. Unseen by the rest of the crew, a faint smile pulled at the corners of his mouth…challenge accepted.
"Ok, let's work out how we're going to do this." In the back, Kai had grabbed their attention as he felt the chopper bank to line up with the runway. "At Gwok's, they saw myself, Hunter and Shimazu in the building, and then myself and Shimazu out in the town as well. So we should stay inside, hidden and not interact in anyway when we get there. You guys will have to pick up the contact arrangements and sort things out. We're on a fake transponder, and I doubt anyone will get too good a look at us to match the vehicle types anyway."
"Won't matter, as long as they're not magical. I've masked the vehicle – we look more like a small propeller driven plane now, with a different shape and style. They'll have to get very, very lucky to see through the illusion. But that does mean I can't go to sleep without dropping the spell." Tads looked pleased with herself, though a very faint sheen of perspiration glistened on her forehead betrayed the effort taken to cloak the entire vehicle in an illusion to conceal them.
In the co-pilot seat, Hunter checked the sensors, running a quick scan of the area as they came in to land, looking out for vehicles, life signs, facilities and anything else that he could spot. The area looked almost abandoned – a single runway ran east-west, about two and a half kilometres long, while a small building lay half a kilometre to the north, with room out the front on the apron for about three or four aircraft their size. He could only see three other buildings on his sensors, none of them powered or very large, and with no signs of life anywhere in range.
"It's a ghost town. Nothing moving at all, no signs of danger."
"Bringing us in." Marius took advantage of the runway length, flying in with the wind and bringing her down for a silky smooth landing, then rolling down the runway until he saw the taxiway heading north towards the terminal. He gently turned the nosewheel, bringing them round in a smooth arc and rumbling along the coarse concrete as they rolled through the night, looking for somewhere to stop that might give them some shelter from the incessant rain while they transferred fuel from the barrels to the tank.
There was nothing at the airport – no good place to stop, nowhere to shelter, so he settled for turning the chopper so at least the fuel port was on the leeward side, using the bulk of the aircraft to try and form a windbreak and to stop the rain being driven into the face of whoever was going to be working the hand pump. The clock ticked over to 02:30, as he started to power down the engines.
"Ok, we're here. Do we fuel now, or wait until the morning?"