Kai headed away from the workshop, wandering down the road back towards the beach, mentally replaying the conversation with Marcello Giovanchi. He'd seemed honest enough when talking about Harley and Chun, and a little uncomfortable when discussing the Triad – presumably because he didn't want to get involved or find himself on the wrong side of any war or conflict. Kai snorted and pushed the man from his thoughts – he seemed to be a dead end.
As he looked up, his heart stopped for a moment, as he caught sight of Wa Fan facing towards him, a hundred metres distant. At least it looked like Wa Fan… He moved to the side of the road and found a doorway he could lurk in for a moment, then eased himself to the corner and looked around. She was still there, standing by some kind of park or open area, talking with someone, occasionally pointing up at the building.
Glancing around to take in a few more details and realise where his path had taken him, he called back to the rest of the team.
"Hey, it's Kai. I've just seen that Wa Fan woman, down in town, talking with someone."
"Where are you, Kai?" Aswon asked.
"I'm just in the middle of town, heading towards the beach. She's at the Shek O Mini-golf course. And it looks like she's wearing a uniform or business clothing, talking to another guy dressed the same."
"Weird. Unless it's a cover job or front. Maybe they're laundering money through it."
"Well, whatever. I don't think she's spotted me, so I'm going to wait here and keep an eye on her, see what she does. I'll keep you updated."
Kai looked around and spotted a shop with a set of tables and rickety chairs outside and headed that way, buying a coffee and setting himself up side on so he could keep a subtle eye on her while he pretended to work on his pocket secretary.
Back at the Academy, Shimazu settled himself down to the ground and carefully laid out the photos of Harley, placing one on his left knee, then fanning out the rest down one leg and up the other until the last was laid on the right knee. Spreading his hands wide, he let the little finger of each hand rest on the outermost picture, while his thumbs reached towards the middle, working to make sure he was touching a part of each of the pictures with his flesh. Slowing his breathing in the way taught to him by Aswon, he calmed himself and cleared his mind, focussing on the pictures and trying to open his consciousness to them, absorbing the feelings and emotions attached to them.
He jerked suddenly as a spike of emotion arced through him - A flash of fear, strongly tinged with doubt. If morphed into a giddy wave of relief. A thought popped into his head – 'He will listen'. A moment later, he felt another – 'He will understand'. He adjusted his fingers, pressing down more on one and lighter on another. Another flash of thought popped into his head 'He doesn't know we fear him. I fear him!' The thought faded, replaced with a memory of a place - no. Not a memory. The tale of a memory, a memory told as a story, heard by someone who handled the photos. A scene in black and white, gritty. Full of smoke. Someone who saw things there. A spray of blood, the stench of sweat. Baying, wild cheers. Emotions rolled over Shimazu, confusing, tasting differently, arriving in disjointed fragments without context.
He breathed deeply, adjusting his hands slightly, moving his skin over the photos and touching different places, trying to glean more information. Another flash - money exchanging hands. Violence. Harsh, brutal violence. A tremble ran through him as a massive rush of elation and pride coursed through him. A sense of power, great power. The feeling twisted and became bitter as he sensed a refusal to co-operate, and threats. Another thought popped in to his head, angry – 'We retreat'. For a moment all was still and calm, his mind blank, but then with a sense of petty spite, a new thought formed – 'But now we come back - now we have leverage'. He sensed a room full of noise, busy, active. Coins falling thick and fast. Him, bending to our will. Obeying. Now he understands, and we win.
He moved his hands again, but the feelings passed, his senses not revealing anything new. He blinked several times as the real world reasserted itself onto him, and he called Aswon, Hunter and the others over quickly, relaying what he'd felt in a jumble of words as he tried to relay the information while it was still fresh in his mind and he could feel the emotional content that had gone with it.
"That sounds like maybe they owe someone a lot of money? Could that be forcing them to do this, whatever this is? An act of desperation?" Aswon mused.
"I don't know. I kept getting glimpses of things, feelings that should make more sense. It's like…." Shimazu cast around, trying to work out how to describe what he felt. "I think it's like seeing half a dozen small parts of a picture, and trying to work out what the whole thing looks like. You know it should make sense, but without the other parts being visible, sometimes you can't see it…"
"Maybe I should ask Tads if she can understand it. Where is she?"
"She took Vadim to the bird. I think they said they were going to try some kind of magical tracking ritual, to see if they can find Harley that way. Took the hair samples and stuff with them."
They settled into tasks while they waited for Tads and Vadim to finish – performing maintenance on their gear, or joining in with some of the training in the academy for the most part, though Hunter threw himself into the matrix to see what he could dig up about the Blue Lotus Triad.
About an hour after they had disappeared, Tads and Vadim wandered back into the building, Tads settling Vadim down in a chair with a drink, then rushing off to her room to get some painkillers for him.
"Rough experience, Vadim?" Hunter asked as he jacked out of the matrix, catching sight of the soldier rubbing at his temples.
"Da. Difficult. Very difficult. Much concentration needed, then feel like slapped in face with a tree." He gratefully accepted the pills from Tads, throwing half a dozen down his throat and chasing them down with a pint of juice.
"Um Vadim – you're only supposed to take two of those."
"Is good. Works faster like this." Tads shrugged, then turned to the others.
"So, we tried tracking him, but it didn't work. I don't know if we're looking in too small an area, or we're not doing it right. What I'm hoping is that we are doing it as we should, but that he's hidden or concealed by a spirit, or behind a ward somewhere – like we do with getting people in and out of the tilt wing."
"So, what you're saying is that someone is being paranoid enough to keep him in and out of somewhere protected?"
"Not necessarily, Hunter – though if you know people are after you, it's not paranoia. But I think they're probably keeping him somewhere that is warded, and it's making it very difficult to find him. We need a bit of a rest, and then we're going to try again. Vadim was doing the ritual to make the link, and I was going to try and follow that link – I'm faster than he is at the moment, you see. But we'll try it the other way around this time, and see if a bit of extra experience helps with the linking side of things…"
"Well, I've found out a little bit more information, but it's not much to go on. This Blue Lotus triad is supposedly not that powerful – or at least they weren't. It seems they're on the up though, gaining power and prestige quite quickly. Making waves and shaking things up, and challenging some of the bigger players."
"Sounds to me like they might have had an infusion of cash. Something like that can really help with short term expansion, opening lots of doors and opportunities." Marius observed. "That might fit in with what Shimazu experienced. Tads looked over at Shimazu and then back to Marius in confusion.
"Ahh, I tried some psychometry on the pictures, while you were doing your ritual. I saw all kinds of weird stuff…" Shimazu covered the images and thoughts he'd experienced again, but it seemed that Tads was equally bemused by it. Indeed, with her own experiences of weird dreams and experiences at the hands of her totems, she was more reluctant to speculate on them, for fear of thinking herself into a false position.
"Maybe there's another way to come at this," she suggested. "Can we do a search on fights in the area, and then work out which he might be asked to fight in? If they're big public ones, then they'll have been arranged and publicised for ages, surely? It won't help if it's an underground fight, but we can see if we can find out about those, too?"
"We could, I suppose. But Chun won't be listed on the fights, will he – they only asked him yesterday!" Hunter exclaimed.
"Yes, I know that. But we could work out where he might appear as an extra unannounced fighter maybe? Or even just what venues we need to look at." Tads looked around. "Doesn't that sound like a reasonable idea? I mean, we're going to try and get Harley back, but if we can't, he's going to agree to fight, isn't he?"
"I actually think that in some ways it does not matter if we get Harley back." Marius held up his hand as people drew breath to speak. "Hear me out. I think that Chun is the kind of man that once he has agreed to do something, he will see it through. So in that sense, if he has agreed to fight, even if we rescue Harley, Chun will keep his word and fight. For his personal honour. So in THAT sense, it does not matter if we get him or not, as the fight will take place. It will still matter what he is fighting for, and what the stakes are, of course."
"I don't disagree," Shimazu chimed in, "but if that's the case, do we need to rescue him at all? Or can we just be on our way?"
"Yes, ideally if we can get him back in the next day, before she comes back to get Chun's agreement, we can take the pressure off of him." Marius put the tablet down, abandoning the logic puzzle he was most of the way through. "Unless there is anything pressing, I am going to go and do an hour of exercise, and work out the body as well as my mind."
"We're going to get back and give the tracking ritual another go. Come on, Vadim…" Tads led him back to the chopper, leaving the rest of the team behind.
"Alright, this woman, Wa Fan. She's the one putting Chun up to this, right?" Shimazu looked around at the rest, before continuing. "So why can't we just go and abduct her and get Tads to do the spell that looks in her head. Poke around and see what she knows, and get some concrete information?"
"That does commit us to action. It will very firmly put us on the Triad radar." Marius cautioned.
"Yeah, it does. But pretty much anything we do will do that. If we get involved, we'll be on their shit list regardless. So we might as well take the initiative and do something."
"Don't we just have to get in line of sight to do that? Let me go catch up with Tads and ask her before she starts." Aswon bolted from the room, and was gone for about two minutes, returning looking slightly annoyed. "So, there's good and bad news. The bad news is that Tads has to touch the target to be able to cast her spell, she says. So there's significant risk in getting her up close. On the good side though, she also has a spell that will alter what the person remembers – so if we do get rumbled casting the first spell, we can potentially erase that memory to reduce the fallout…
They trained, did weapons maintenance, planned and chatted with the students and instructors, trying to gain some understanding of what was going on in the local area. Another hour passed, then Tads and Vadim reappeared. This time it was Tads that appeared fatigued, grabbing a couple of painkillers and something to wash it down, then settling down at the table to rest.
"Well, that didn't go well at all. Same result as when Vadim tried. I think that they probably have a spirit concealing him, or he's behind a ward of some kind. Certainly it seems difficult. But, at least you know it's not you, Vadim!" She gave him a wry smile, then sipped at her juice.
"We didn't see any sign of a ward in the photos, though. So I don't think it's that…"
"We didn't, Aswon – but we only saw the inside. It could be the outside that's warded. If you were going to keep prisoners in there, that makes more sense as they can't scuff out the marks or try to disrupt the magical defences then." Aswon nodded in agreement as Tads responded. "We're going to give it another go in a bit, if you're up for helping?"
"How?"
"Well, I'm thinking if we both pool our efforts on the tracking ritual, we probably have a higher chance of success. We still need a spotter to follow the astral trail if we're successful though, which means someone with at least the ability to see into astral space and start to follow the trail."
"Oh, ok. But if the trail goes up into the air, or over a cliff or something – I can't follow it. And I'll be limited to whatever speed I can actually manage in the physical world. No way I can move as fast as either of you could."
"No, that's all true. But if we can get a car or a bike or something, you can move faster. But also, we have no idea where Harley is. But if we at least can get a trail, and you can start to follow it – then we know it's working. Even if you can't find him, proving that we've got the technique right would be a step forwards."
"Well, I see your point. Ok – let me go find someone then…" Aswon left the dining room to find someone with a car or bike they could borrow, while Tads finished her drink then started to gently rub her temples to see if should could ease the headache a little.
Aswon returned a few minutes later with Chun in tow, announcing that they'd got access to a small moped, belonging to one of the instructors – who would also drive them along while Aswon shouted directions. Chun waited patiently by his side until he was done speaking, then checked that everyone was ok. After a chorus of nods, he was about to leave, when Shimazu attracted his attention.
"This woman, Wa Fan, is asking you to fight in a tournament. Do you know if it's a public fight, or an underground event?"
"I've got no idea. I guess we'll find out tomorrow lunchtime, if you've not managed to get Harley back by then?"
"We're working on it still. Let's assume then that the fight is going to be off the books. Do you have any idea where a fight like that might take place, or what's involved?" Chun blinked at him for a moment, and then shrugged his shoulders. His body shifted subtly, his features tightening for a moment. Nobody else seemed to notice, but it made Shimazu suspicious.
"Well, could be anywhere really. But from what I understand, these things are often held in packing plants or warehouses – somewhere without many windows, in an industrial area so that there's no neighbours late at night. They clear a nice big flat area and then stack up boxes or containers or stuff around the outside to make steps or terraces, so people can see what's going on. They have a couple of fights, with bookies wandering the crowd to take bets, and people selling bottles of spirits and drugs to those that want them. Normally about half a dozen fights from minor fighters, and then a couple of bigger names to round out the evening." Chun licked his lips. "Or so I've heard, ya'know, from people. But, I need to go and sort some business out, so if you'll excuse me…" Chun smiled and left the room, with Shimazu watching him go.
"Interesting. He definitely knows more than he's letting on about the fight scene." Shimazu muttered, as much to himself as anyone else. He raised his voice a little as he turned back to the others. "Still, that gives us a better idea of what kind of thing we should be looking for."
"Perhaps we can question some of the other employees at the place in town? Maybe they have done work for Wa, and might know of some places. That could help us narrow things down a lot?" Marius suddenly stared out of the window as a though crossed his mind. "I wonder… perhaps I will look into the local laws and regulations regarding drone flights. We could maybe use that surveillance drone we picked up in Tehran, in the smuggler market – the one disguised as a child's toy. That might let me do some surveillance on the location where Kai is, and see what is going on there."
He dived onto his pocket secretary and did a search, trying to find what the local rules were and clarified that as long as he didn't stray onto corporate property or exceed certain speeds, heights or sizes he was ok. He headed back to the tilt wing to recover the drone, grabbed some different clothes and started to head down towards the beach to check things out.
Tads felt recovered enough to try again, so along with Vadim they headed back to the tilt-wing themselves to start their third attempt at tracing Harley, Aswon in tow and ready to follow the trail if they were successful.
Marius spent about ten minutes flying up and down the beach and buzzing over the heads of people, establishing his cover as a somewhat annoying tourist, then started to steer the drone more towards the town, flying in semi-random patterns around the area and watching the video feed on the controller. He spotted Kai lurking almost immediately, using him to get a bearing on the entrance and flying around the area slowly.
The entrance way led past a stand of trees and along a short curving track to the entrance of the mini-golf centre. As he flew around he could see a small course laid out, some of the holes crossing under or over each other and a variety of obstacles that animated across the routes or would send the ball off into traps and gullies. It looked pretty mundane, typical tourist trap activity, and he could see nothing suspicious. A few employees were wandering about, performing maintenance but he could only see two customers on the course.
As he flew around though, he spotted a set of steps leading down underground. The steps were at least four metres wide, with handrails on each side and down the centre, and were lit up with spotlights. Adjusting his course, he bought the drone down a little and skewed the camera until he could get some better detail on the staircase. A bold sign was strung over the top of the stairs declaring it to be the "Tenth Hole", and a quadruple set of doors lay at the bottom of the stairs, leading into some underground building.
He lifted the drone and flew around to the other side of the grounds, and found a smaller set of steps following a curving path that led down there too – by the looks of things to a back door or service entrance. Half of the curving path had a raised rib of concrete running down the steps, making a ramp that delivery drones could navigate if they had wheels set to the correct spacing. Now that he had an idea that there was an underground facility, he checked over the golf course again including the surrounding paths and service areas, and started to locate a number of air conditioning pipes and intakes. They weren't concealed deliberately – more they'd been made to blend in with the area reasonably well, so were not particularly obvious. He headed into the town on each side, flying around for a minute or two and swooping down over some of the houses or streets, making sure to study other places so as not to appear to be focussing on the golf course, before he bought the drone back over towards the beach and bringing it in to land just before him.
He went to the end of the beach and sat on a couple of rocks, apparently staring out to sea and ignoring the other people on the beach while he absentmindedly fiddled with the drone in his hands. Or that's what he appeared to be doing, he hoped. He was actually still monitoring the drones camera as he carefully played it around, zooming in on the people on the beach to see if anyone was watching or monitoring him. After about fifteen minutes he satisfied that nobody seemed to be spying on him, he powered the drone down and meandered back towards the academy, calling Kai to advise him that he'd done some recon and that he was heading back.
Once back he sat down with Hunter and Shimazu and showed them the footage he'd gathered, sketching out the size of the underground facility. It appeared to be a reasonable size, probably allowing a good size bar or nightclub to be located there assuming it was only one level deep. If it was more than that, who knew how big it could be!
Not long after Marius returned, Tads and Vadim appeared once more, both looking stunned this time, with a slightly dismayed Aswon following them along. He shrugged at the rest of the team, and described what had happened while the two mages went for a fresh drink and yet more painkillers.
"They tried pretty hard – or at least it looked that way to me. But no thread, no magical trail. Nothing to follow. I think Tads is right that he's definitely behind some kind of magical defence, and not knowing where to constrain the search to makes it even tougher for them. We definitely need more information…"
"Could she not call one of her spirits and use that to search for him?"
"She could Marius – the trouble is that the spirits tend to be less subtle about their tracking – it would be whizzing about and using its powers, and is far more likely to be seen and to alert his captors. It's a bit of a blunt instrument really, and likely to make them move him if it's seen or discovered." Aswon explained, Tads nodding along mutely as she sat at the table sipping her drink, her eyes closed to cut out the bright lights.
"In that case, could we instead use the spirits to look for places that match the description of what we are after? Is that a better way of doing things?"
"Hmmm. It would be difficult. Tads?"
"Possible. I would have to summon a reasonably powerful spirit for it to comprehend the specific set of things you are looking for." She blinked at him a few times, squinting and then gave up and closed her eyes again – it wasn't like she needed to see him to speak to him. "A spirit powerful enough to travel quickly and spot the type of locations will be likely to cause me some issues, and I'll have to rest for a good while afterwards. So possible, but there are some downsides."
"Team, it's starting to get dark, and I've not seen the target come back out. Think I'm going to head back soon. There's what looks to be a lady of negotiable affection in the square, that keeps looking at me. And I'm not sure if it's a lady or a lady boy… yeah, they're coming over to me now. Be back soon!"
They waited until after dusk, when Tads was recovered and ready to summon some new spirits. With her head clear and the pain from the earlier failures nothing but a memory, her bargaining went well, and she renewed the guardians for each of the team, making sure they were magically protected. With that done, she settled down and let her spirit drift out of her body, leaving it in the care of the rest of the team. Aswon and Shimazu had their weapons ready in case anything came back after her – or worse, tried to steal her body while she was gone – and she headed out of the house and down the beach to the golf course.
When she arrived, she took a careful spin around the course, checking it out and finding nothing out of the ordinary above ground. Moving to check the stairs at the front next, she descended slowly, making sure to avoid the couple walking down the stairs – though she was only present as an immaterial ghost, if their living souls passed through her form, it might be enough to give them a shiver or a strange feeling running up the back. Most people would just shrug it off as a spooky feeling, but anyone with security training might realise it was an astral traveller and become alarmed.
The couple's presence did give her an opportunity, though, to learn some information and she paused, watching as they reached the door at the bottom of the steps. Pushing it open, she saw a hazy grey barrier formed across the doorway, disrupting her sight beyond. She quickly examined the ward, and was a little surprised to find it a reasonably adept construction, certainly enough to make looking through it almost impossible. Warned now that the premises were magically protected, she started to work around the perimeter, checking the back door then the air vents, before finally starting to try and penetrate through the roof or walls and surrounding earth. Everywhere she went though, the ward covered, apparently with no holes or weak spots.
"Well, I guess we do it the hard way then…" she muttered to herself. She moved to the doorway and slowly pressed her head through the physical door, just enough that her eyes passed through and could see the magical ward on the other side. Her ability to mask her aura from other prying eyes had other uses as well, and she examined the ward, looking for the magical patterns and flow of power through it. When she thought she had the pattern worked out, she adjusted her own aura, generating the same pattern and aligning the two together. Slowly she moved forward, carefully positioning herself until her ghostlike form sleazed through the ward, perfectly matching the magical energies with a reflection of her own form.
Once through the ward she let out a small sigh of relief, then looked around. The room was quite large, and looked to have a dance floor in the centre, surrounded by a seating area and booths, with a long bar along the far side – that made sense from her scout of the area, it was the closest area to the service entrance. The emotions in here, though, didn't… much of the crowd gave off a happy vibe, positive emotions flowing off them as they enjoyed their evening, dancing, drinking, smoking, being with people they liked. But there were clusters of people who were a lot more serious or focussed, with darker thoughts and no joy in their life.
She moved around the perimeter of the room, trying to get a read on the place and looking around her in the astral. There were lots and lots of grey blobs or constructs against the outer walls, machines of some kind or other artificial creations, things with no souls or astral counterpart. Without manifesting, she had no idea what they were, and the room seemed far too crowded for that.
She moved around and checked out the rooms to the sides first, finding cloakroom and toilets, a cleaner's cupboard that was a weird mix in astral space – dead and sterile in some places where the bleach or cleaning chemicals were poured and spilt, but teaming with a bizarre mix of life in the form of a million different microbes around the corners, where dirt had accumulated.
The bar and stock rooms were unremarkable, but off to the side she found a couple of offices – including one containing Wa Fan. She slunk into the corner of the room and watched as Wa hammered away on a computer, working hard on some task. Her aura radiated concentration and focus, seeming utterly engrossed in her work. Tads looked around and couldn't spot any grey shapes in the corners of the rooms, and nothing else that looked like a security camera, so she decided to risk manifesting to get a physical look.
Her form appeared in the corner of the room, floating high up and rapidly gaining definition until she was fully formed. Appearing like a hologram, fresh sensory input flooded through her, now her eyes could actually see what was there, rather than their astral equivalent. The display on the calculator glowed brightly with numbers, and a mass of ideograms sprawled across the spreadsheet on the computer screen that had previously been just a grey blob. A cigarette sat in the ashtray to her right, burning slowly with a wisp of smoke rising up into the air to be sucked away by the air-con intake. Papers were strewn all over the desk, glistening sheaves of recyclable white plastic extruded from the thermal printer attached to the computer.
Tads looked around for clues, but couldn't spot anything obvious – at least not to her – amongst the mass of business paperwork that presumably ran the bar and golf course. She let herself fade out of the physical realm until she hung like a ghost again then settled in to wait. Wa worked diligently, entering data for a few minutes then stopping to finish her cigarette, tidy up the papers and move on to the next invoice or manifest. After ten minutes of observation, Tads headed out, giving the rest of the club another quick once over before once more attuning herself to the ward and gently pressing through, slipping back out in the night and heading out to sea for a few miles, her astral form racing through the breaking waves before suddenly stopping and turning to see if anyone was on her tail. After two more high speed dashes and no sign of pursuit, she headed back to the academy, slowing as she reached the room to enter much more slowly and give Aswon and Shimazu time to recognise her before she dived into her body.
She stretched, working out the kinks and jiggled her legs to get the blood moving, while she described the layout of the bar and the activities she'd seen. Based on the physical scout that Marius had done, Hunter already had a rough 3d outline blocked out on his computer to show the size of the structure, and now with more information he was able to add details, drawing in the approximate size and locations of the toilets, bar, offices, stockrooms and other details. It wasn't exact – Tads lacked the precise sensor data that the drones could download at the best of times, but he was also aware by now that her data tended to be much more emotional-based rather than precise mathematical values. But, he was getting to be a dab hand at adjusting the 3d models and moving things around to account for variances and overlaps, and soon they had a reasonably useful looking model of the Tenth Hole bar rendered on the screen.
"Nice Hunter. Does look like a fairly typical nightclub I guess. I wonder though, if they've got decent security. Might be worth trying to hack the local matrix provider to see if you can find their feed, and spot for traffic? Might be able to pick up some useful data?"
"I can give it a go, Aswon. This deck is pretty basic though, so while I might be able to brute force past some of the security firewalls, there's a good chance it'll set off the alarms. But I can try for some surveillance and see what we get?"
"Great stuff. That might take a while, so if Tads is ok, we can always try another tracking ritual? It's not long after dusk, and if they are relying on a spirit to conceal him, there's a chance it might not have been renewed quickly. Worth a go?"
"Sure, come on, Vadim. But this time, let's get a bottle of water and some painkillers to take with us…" Vadim gave her a pained grin, but moved to collect the supplies and headed back to the chopper with Tads and Aswon. The rest watched as Hunter settled down with his deck, connecting it up to the sat-phone and starting to run through the network, bouncing through a number of different nodes and systems to lay a false trail and disguise his movements.
Hunter's avatar worked through the global network, zeroing in on the local area MSP and then starting to probe around the edge of their security. Using his utility programs and custom made scripts he tested the systems, looking for weaknesses and vulnerabilities, eventually finding an exploit that allowed him to gain access to the node and bypass the restrictions placed upon normal users, and to tunnel down into the system administration files. Once he had access here he quickly identified the incoming connection from the Tenth Hole and could examine the traffic. A lot of it was fairly mundane, using a low end commercial encryption that he could easily crack to reveal things like the playlist for the audio system, the ordering system noting down sales of food and alcohol and the complementary matrix access fetching news on the latest K-pop sensations, pictures of cats and low-end porn.
He did spot a stream of data though that looked to be headed somewhere local, but was wrapped in a tighter shield of encryption that resisted his efforts to crack – at least not without a great deal more data to analyse. He could, though, see where it was going. As he watched the dense stream of data heading to its destination, he also spotted something else – a black growling mastiff, with huge fangs and red glowing eyes. The icon was sniffing around on the node, and suddenly lunged forwards, barking furiously. Hunter immediately triggered the logoff routines and headed out of the node, jumping from host to host as quickly as he could, his digital persona fleeing from the guard utility before it could lock on to his trail. Once he'd checked he was home free, he headed back and jacked out of his deck.
"Well, I got in and found the host, mostly garbage data on there. But I did find some encrypted stuff I couldn't read. Rotating cyphers and protected by some slick ICE."
"Dammit, so no idea what it said? Dammit, another dead end!" Kai scrubbed at his face in frustration.
"Not exactly. I couldn't read the data… but I could see where it was going. And it was all heading to the Shek-O country club, a few kilometres up the road. So there's definitely some link between the two."
"Ahh, ok. Good work, Hunter. So you can dive back in and check that out?"
"No – at least not yet. I also saw an enemy decker roaming around. Or at least his guard-dog utility. It was sniffing around and found some trace of my utilities or something, and was starting to get antsy. Don't worry, I logged off cleanly, so there's no trail to follow. But the system is almost certainly on alert now which will make it far harder to get back in, and they're more likely to have additional ICE running that could track me. So we want to leave it a good while to calm down and for the system to reset back to the normal vigilance level."
"And they'll do that? They won't just stay on alert?"
"For a while, probably. But running all those extra programs and utilities really hammers the system, so every public and commercial user on their service is seeing slower responses and degraded performance right now. They can do that for a while if they've got a breech or an intruder and can justify it – but not for long, otherwise people just bitch and moan. And if they do it long enough, they start looking for a new provider, and that hurts the bottom line. And we all know that if there's anything sacred to the corps?"
"It's the bottom line," chorused Kai and Marius.
They spent some time checking out the maps of the area and looking at the country club and the extensive grounds, reading through their matrix site and trying to get a feel for the place. When Tads, Vadim and Aswon headed back into the room, it only took a look at their slumped bodies and frowns to determine that their fourth attempt at tracking had been no more successful than the earlier rituals. At least they didn't look as fatigued from this one as they had earlier – the attempts had at least given them good experience in draining the magical energies they were dealing with.
While they sat and recovered, Hunter filled them in on his information gained from the matrix, and they showed them the maps of the area and pictures from the country club.
"So they're up on the top of some cliffs. Or rather a bluff probably – not very high, but plenty of room under there for some subterranean rooms or cells. And some of the cliffs face north and east, so that kinda matches what we can see through the window. At least we think so…"
"Maybe, Aswon. We can try and do some recon – I was thinking of heading over with the toy again tomorrow to do a similar thing as the surveillance of the town earlier."
"Not now?"
"No – the toy is a great disguise, but it limited the size of the sensor package that could be squeezed in, and it really needs decent light to function well. We might fly right past an unlit opening in the cliff and not see it, or detect it on the thermographic sensors at all. Not if it has the same ambient temperature as the cliffs around it."
"Won't the body temperature of Harley be enough to spot?"
"Perhaps if we had a direct line of sight to him – but that would require us to be at precisely the right height and angle to see him. Much better to do it at first light tomorrow. And I mean that literally – if we can do that as the sun is coming up, we will have the greatest direct illumination and probably the highest contrast.
"Well, I can at least have a quick look now – the light won't bother me at all. Back soon." Tads slumped as her spirit vaulted into the air and she sped off into the night, heading north east towards the country club. It took her moments to arrive, it being only half a kilometre from the academy itself, and she zoomed up high to get a good look around. Vast swathes of parkland lay before her, and as she studied the landscape she could feel a muted joy and satisfaction suffusing astral space. Someone cared for the land here, in their own way, and was proud of what they did. She didn't understand the concept of golf, but clearly it was a game played by wealthy people who could afford to put aside vast areas of good quality land for playing on…
She sped down to the buildings, giving each a quick tour as she looked for barred windows or signs of underground entrances. There were buildings that seemed to be at least partially underground, and more swimming pools than would seem necessary for any one place to have – but she couldn't find anything that matched the criteria they had. She widened her search, taking in all of the country club grounds and checked the far reaches of the estate including every small hut, outbuilding or storage shack she could find, without success.
"Well, I can't find anything there. At least not immediately obvious anyway," she said as she returned to her body. "I don't think it would help to check again in the light, but it may be worth a go."
"Do we know anyone that goes to that club?" Shimazu asked.
"Yes – there is one person. Marcello. At least that's what Kai said." Both Tads and Shimazu turned to face him.
"Yep, he did say that he was a member at the club." Kai thought back to the conversation, remembering how they'd been positioned and the details of his body language. "I got the impression that though they were both members, there wasn't any familiarity between them, and he didn't like mixing with her. The more we've found out, the more I think he's just someone that wants to keep his nose clean and out of Triad business. And I can't say that I blame him!"
"So where does that leave us? Is there anything else we can do tonight?" Aswon asked.
"Well, we did have the idea of getting a powerful spirit to go out and search for the cell. If Tads is happy with that?"
"I can. Probably. But if I do go for a powerful spirit, then it's likely to fatigue me considerably, so don't expect much more out of me tonight. In fact, if this is something we want to do, I can really go for it, then just head to bed to sleep it off?"
"Sounds like a plan. Let's go for it." Kai nodded. "Someone want to tell Tads what we've worked out?"
"Ok, so we're looking for a cell that is probably not south facing because there wasn't any harsh shadows or really direct light coming through the window. It has bars over the window space, four of them, made of metal rather than plastic. Has to be metal as we could make out rust on them. The walls are an unfinished concrete, and we're pretty sure it's on the top of a bluff or cliff, next to the sea." Aswon reeled off the things they knew or suspected from the photo.
"Well, that's reasonably specific, but doesn't narrow down the location much. But I think a sea spirit is probably the best option here, to work around the coast and look. So, who's coming with me to the beach?"
Unsurprisingly Shimazu volunteered to keep an eye out, and the pair wandered down to the sea-shore so Tads could summon a powerful spirit of the sea and explain her task to it. The summoning was successful, but difficult – Tads found herself bargaining with the spirit with a pad held over her right nostril to staunch the flow of blood, the backlash from the spell having been quite serious. Once her bargaining was complete, the spirit vanished back into the waves, disappearing to begin its task. Tads staggered as she made her way back to the academy, gratefully accepting the support of Shimazu and headed straight to her room to collapse on the bed as quickly as she could afterwards.
The rest of the team expanded their watches to account for her absence, and settled down themselves, spending another unexciting night in the academy, enjoying real beds and having room to stretch out compared to their normal cramped conditions. Given that they were potentially interfering with the Triads in their own back yard though, unexciting was just fine with them…
The Tuesday morning was dry and clear, scattered clouds high in the sky and a beautiful sunrise that made the sea to the east glow and ripple in a thousand shades of yellow, orange and red. Marius was up early, heading through the small town to the beach on the north eastern side and flying his drone again for a few minutes on the deserted beach, before steering it inland and starting to circle the buildings of the country club.
Monitoring the feed he could see the upmarket club with more physical clarity than Tads' astral scout the night before, but his findings meshed with hers. The grounds were immaculate, flower beds neatly laid and perfectly edged, pristine paths that swept through the grounds in gentle curves and neatly pruned bushes and well managed trees dotted around the lush grass of the greens and fairways. The buildings were equally well maintained, bright red terracotta tiles glimmering in the sunrise, while tinted windows reflected the view back out to the ocean. He could see the multiple swimming pools, tennis courts and a small archery range, parking for perhaps a hundred cars, and an equally large employee car park. He suspected that much like a luxury hotel, the staff list was large, giving plenty of people to look after the rich and wealthy.
He spent twenty minutes flying around, trying to keep his investigation fairly subtle and discreet, but found nothing to indicate a cellar or basement level that would match their criteria. Much like Tads the night before, he expanded his search, flying around the course at least once to get a wider view and some more sensor data, but just like her he found nothing of note, so he recalled the drone and headed back to the academy to meet the others.
As they had the previous morning, they joined the students for their beach activities, running through the surf with them and performing the group warm ups and stretches, racing up and down the sand in groups forming relay races, along with tiers of exercises that soon had them gasping for breath and hearts pounding.
At breakfast Chun approached them, sitting on a small wooden stool at the end of their table and looking around each of their faces.
"Well, Chun." Kai decided to pre-empt the question and looked down the table at him. "We spent a good while yesterday investigating, including attempt to magically track him, and following up on Wa Fan and her activities. Unfortunately, we haven't been able to locate him."
"Well, no, not yet. But I'm sure you mean you haven't located him yet, not that you can't do it. Right?" He smiled at them and nodded encouragingly. He looked down at Kai, eyes fixed on him, and his smile widened. "You don't mind helping me, do you? I mean, I'm very grateful for anything you can do to help."
Kai was pretty good at social manipulation and relied upon it to do his job a good chunk of the time. So, he recognised many of the techniques and linguistic styles in use, and part of his brain flagged that Chun was manipulating him. Unfortunately another part of the brain, the social part that was wired up to perform in a community had already opened his mouth and was speaking, on autopilot.
"Of course we will. I just wanted you to know. Don't worry. We'll sort this out. You can rely on us." Chun grinned and then clapped Shimazu and Aswon on the shoulders, those being the two closest members of the team to him. He stood and pressed his hands together in front of him, giving them a little bow and then wandered off to circulate around the room and speak with his instructors.
"What did you go and say that for, Kai?" Aswon asked, though in a somewhat resigned tone of voice. It wasn't as if they weren't used to him by now. "I mean, unless you happen to have a great idea?"
Kai looked down the table at Aswon, but was distracted for a moment as one of the students stumbled as he got up, before a hand shot out from one of the instructors to steady him. His eyes widened for a moment, then he turned to grin at Aswon.
"As it happens, I do. Marvellous plan – couldn't possibly go wrong. So, who fancies a game of volleyball?" The team stared at him for a moment, wondering if he'd completely lost the plot. Which again, them knowing him reasonably well by now was entirely reasonable as a solution.
"Ok, let me explain. Wa Fan has seen me and Shimazu, but none of the rest of you. But, we know where she is now, and where she needs to be, and when she needs to be there. So we can be pretty sure of when she's going to walk down the beach, right. So we set up a game on the sand. Hunter, Tads, maybe Aswon. Maybe some students. But not anyone she's seen, right? Right. And just as she's passing, having to detour around the game, we launch the ball at her direction. And we get someone to barrel into her, knock her ass into the ground. So, thinking about it, that probably should be Aswon. Sorry Hunter, we don't want to snap her in half…"
The big ork shrugged, not taking it personally. Kai did have a point – he wasn't exactly light, and if he had to fall on her there was a good chance of physical injury.
"So, once we knock her down, you scramble off her, apologising profusely, ham up the tourist bit. And Tads just happens to be there to offer her a hand up. And when you've been knocked down, and someone offers to help you up… what do you do? You let them touch you… so you can cast your spell, Tads. And she's just heading here for the meeting, so what she was going to say is going to be rattling around in the front of her mind, as she rehearses the scene mentally – so she's not even going to be suspicious to be thinking about it."
"That's…. actually a pretty good idea. Yeah, I think that would work." Aswon gazed at the wall, imagining the scene and how it would go down. "Yeah, and if she doesn't go for it we've not really lost anything. But I agree, she's mostly likely going to accept the hand up."
"You don't need to sound so surprised! So, I guess it's time to make a volleyball net and find a ball or something. And work out some teams…"
"We can work out some hand signals, and positions I expect, a bit of a game plan. Just like planning out an assault. Let me think about this for a few minutes, and come up with something…" Aswon grabbed some food and started to build a little scene on the table, working out how best to make the plan work.
"I have also been reviewing the drone footage of the scene outside the mini golf course. There are a number of cars in the car park that might indicate they belong to someone working in the local area, based on their positions and I think based on what we know of her so far, there are some that are more likely than others to belong to someone like Wa Fan."
He keyed alive his data pad and laid it down on the table so the others could see, scrolling through the shots and explaining the reasoning behind his choice.
"All of these I think do not fit her position as a manger or Triad member. Either the cars are too small, too old or lack style. My read on the Triad in general and her in particular is that appearances are important, and so is your reputation. She dressed up to come to talk to Chun – maybe that was out of respect, but I think more to assert what she represented. So, I think it will be one of these three."
"The first is this grey three-door coupe. An Audi, it has reasonable power and speed, is stylish and sleek and relatively expensive compared to the cars in the general area. The second is this BMW saloon. Larger, slower and more sizeable, it would be more suitable to carrying other people especially more senior members of the organisation. Again, pricy compared to the local market. The last one is this beast of a four by four. It looks to be a Chinese variant of a Range Rover. Probably the cheapest of the three in terms of pure cost, it is however possibly more of a status symbol, and may have utility in terms of being a practical vehicle, while easily matching the size and spaciousness of the BMW."
"It also happens that we have a number of trackers in the stockpile. If we could get someone to go and plant one on each of these vehicles, I think it likely that we could follow her movements if she needs to drive anywhere. Assuming my assessments of vehicles is correct, of course."
"I can go plant those. I presume it's a small thing I can put on the chassis, or hide in the wheel arch or something?" Shimazu looked over at Marius and got a choppy nod of agreement. "Yeah, I can just go for a wander in town. Short of Kai, I'm least likely to draw looks due to skin colour or general appearance probably. If you sort them out, I'll go down now and get them planted."
"Great! Let's get those sorted then, and ambush Wa Fan on the way over at lunchtime to get some more information – sounds like we have a plan! Kai grinned at them and snagged a grape from Aswon's tactical map.
"Hey! I was using that!"
"Sorry Aswon."