Thursday 17/2/2061, Location: 40.02426, 48.95799 Time 07:00

Tads awoke just before dawn, her body clock naturally rousing her to welcome in the new day. Yawning widely, she took a moment to centre herself, listening to the faint creaks and noises of the house. With a flick, the blanket was thrown back and she unfolded from her habitual tight ball, limbs stretching as they reached for the floor. Glancing behind her, she could spot the dent in the top half of the mattress showing where she'd lain for the last few hours, while the bottom of the bed was pristine and untouched. She hurriedly dressed and headed downstairs, spotting Naena in the kitchen making some bread. Tads shook her head as Naena pointed at the coffee pot, then let herself out of the back door into the yard. A very thin layer of frost coated the ground, and the crunching of the gravel echoed off of the house, magnifying the sound in the crisp morning air. Looking to the east, the sky was aglow as the sun rose, a pale pink hue that faded away into blues as she looked up, eventually darkening enough that she could still make out a few stars visible high up.

She headed to the nearest field, settling down onto her knees and ignoring the feelings of wet and cold that started to seep into her as her body-heat melted the frost and her trousers wicked up the water. Her eyes closed and she slowed her breathing, opening her mind to the astral realm and spreading her consciousness out into the world around her, revelling in the feeling of life and nature that surrounded her. It wasn't lush vegetation at the ranch, but there was life none the less – and Rusudan and his family cared for their home, which counted for a lot.

She concentrated on her totem, remembering the mighty Elk that had appeared to her – and her friends – before, and she muttered her prayers, renewing her oath to protect her tribe and the world around her, to uphold Elk's ideals and virtues and to attempt to use her gift wisely.

She shuddered, flinching as a powerful sensation flowed through her. Flinching physically as if someone had approached her from behind and smote her across the back, she arched her torso and her head flew back. Nostrils flared wide as the smell of burning trees assaulted her senses, and the sound of crackling timbers burning rang in her ears. Heat played over her skin and adrenaline shot through her system. While her heart rate shot up to over a hundred and forty within a few beats, her eyes flew open and looked around her frantically.

She saw the cold, dry, quiet landscape. Frozen dirt in the field, rough lumps in furrows that covered a few hectares. Rocks that permeated the loose sandy soil. The ranch, the barn, the helipad. Almost no visible vegetation bigger than a bush – certainly not the endless forest feeding the conflagration that had enveloped her only a few moments before. She sniffed – but detected only the sharp cold smell of the arid landscape – no pine resin or burning bark, no camp-fire smell or smoke. A few birds chirped, the wind howled across the exposed rock. One of the horses neighed in the barn, wondering when the kids would be along with breakfast. No crackles, no burning, no sounds of fleeing wildfire driven before a forest fire.

She struggled to her feet, disoriented by the sudden shift in perspective and perception, glaring around at the depressingly mundane world around her. In astral space her emotions were a distressed vortex, mana crackling and spitting out power that she had gathered ready to defend herself against a threat.

But no threat could be seen – either physically or astrally. As quickly as the vision had appeared to her, it was gone, leaving her disquieted and discombobulated. She headed back to the ranch, meandering slightly as she continued to look around herself warily, wondering if the strange portents would reappear. Back inside the kitchen was empty, Naena apparently having gone upstairs to rouse the children ready to start their chores. She grabbed a small freshly-baked roll from the wire cooling rack and moved to the table, pulling it apart and feeding it into her mouth absentmindedly while she concentrated on the emotions and memories of what she'd seen, trying to work out what it meant.

The kids came down the stairs and started noisily making breakfast, and Tads pushed the distressing images to the back of her mind, making small talk with them and trying to deflect their questions without piquing their interest. They were curious about what the team had been up to since they'd left the ranch, but she had no intention of telling them about their long hunt for the psychotic killers they'd faced in Tehran, nor their larcenous break-in, even if it was for a 'good cause'.

Aswon and Shimazu joined her at the breakfast table, and the noise level rose further, at least until the kids headed out to tend to the animals and start on their various chores for the day. As the parents got on with work around the ranch, or started teaching the younger children, the team finally had the dining room to themselves, and as Marius, Nadia and Marius Junior joined them, got to discussing their plans.

"I feel that it is time for me to meditate and turn my focus inward – and continue my journey towards further enlightenment and control of my body. The question I find myself facing though – is which path to take. Do I take the Path of the Spear? The offensive, more martial path?" Aswon gestured to where the spear rested against the wall behind his seat. "Or, do I turn my focus more to the path of self, the mastery of my own body. A path focussed more on defence and protection, or even utility – rather than offence and aggression. It is a question that I feel has no right or wrong answer – but I would value your counsel." He looked around the table, getting a number of blank looks and several shrugs. "Perhaps there is no reason to choose one – I could seek to attain mastery in both – though it would take much longer. Instead of a week, I would require at least a month, I feel."

"I have no issue with that. I could do with some downtime, and it would be nice to spend some time here, with Nadia and the baby."

"I wouldn't mind, either – I've got plenty of training to do and some research and stuff." Hunter scratched his flank to deal with an itch, then grabbed another of the freshly-baked rolls and slathered it in butter and jam before stuffing it into his face and chewing with obvious joy.

"I also wish to focus on my mastery – but of the sword. I feel that with sufficient time I could develop my skills and hone my abilities."

"Sure, Shimazu." Flecks of bread burst out from Hunter's mouth as he talked around his food. "Because your ability to behead people and bears and stuff just isn't good enough already!" Hunter licked the end of his finger and then squished it down on the three flecks of food on the table, sticking them to his extended digit and then shoving them back into his mouth, ignoring the scowls or shudders from the others. "Wot. It's nice jam? Not wasting it…"

"I could do with some time as well – I have a number of projects to look at. The first is trying to improve my stun spell, to make it more powerful. I think it needs to be stronger – some of the foes we're facing now are tougher than the gangers and mafia thugs we've faced before, and we need to make sure we can take them down when we need to. And I also want to get some spells designed – if we can afford it, and also buy some sustaining foci for some spells. But they're going to be expensive – tens of thousands of Nuyen."

"Hmm. Well, let's have a look at the credstick and see how much we've got." Kai was just about to put the communal credstick in the reader when Hunter flipped over a battered and dirty stick to him, informing him amidst another spray of bread and jam that it was the one they'd seized from Unsubtle. Kai slotted the stick and let his eyebrows rise in surprise. "Well, that's a nice surprise – I guess they got paid for delivery of the artwork, and had some stuff on there already." He transferred the funds over to their own stick, and then pushed the now empty credstick back to Hunter to recycle or add to his stash. "Looks like just shy of two hundred thousand – one hundred and eighty four thousand, nine hundred and fifty one, to be exact. That takes us to three hundred and twenty four thousand and change." He turned to face Tads, then gave her a smile. "So, I think we can afford a few new spells and things. What else did you have planned?"

"Well, with the sustaining foci, it might be worth casting one of my spells that can boost my…force of personality? I'm not quite sure how to describe it, but it can make you appear wholesome and trustworthy, just nicer. But anyway – it's very difficult to get cast on either myself or someone like you, Kai, but if I can get the spell to work – and hold it on the foci – it will make summoning the spirits a lot easier, and I can bargain with them for protection much more surely. I also have some protective spells in mind. The library that the dwarf mage had was mostly fire spells…" Tads gave a little shudder, "including one that covered the whole body in a fiery aura. Clearly that's not going to work – but I think I could re-work it to have the same kind of effect, but based on a different elemental type – it's all about how you align the mana, you see…" She looked around and saw people staring at her in confusion. "Instead of a fiery aura, I could surround someone like Shimazu with a crackling field of lightning – and anyone that hit him, would be damaged. And if he hit them, the lightning would ground through his sword and do more damage to them."

"Oh, I like the sound of that!" Shimazu grinned.

"Me too, I'd have to say – perhaps in terms of team effectiveness it might even be better cast on me than you. My spear doesn't have the same cutting power as your sword, but it's very good at punching holes in things and puncturing defences."

"True – though I'm hoping that if I can get to focus my studies over the next week or so, that I can channel energy around my body and for a short time, I can replicate the boost that those drugs gave me – the ones from Ludmilla. I mean, the muscles clearly have the potential to work harder, otherwise the drugs wouldn't work. So it's just a case of finding out how to do it naturally, myself."

"Hmm, intriguing. In which case, yes – it would probably be better on you, if you can do that. You'll be hitting as hard as a troll, for a limited time – and that's going to cut through anyone dumb enough to stand in front of you, unless they're wearing a tank."

"So yes, anyway," Tads reclaimed the conversation "I was thinking about a foci to hold that kind of spell, and designing the actual aura. And also learning a spell that causes agonising pain in the target – as long as you hold the spell up. But as soon as you stop, it goes away – I don't like the idea of hurting people, but it's very good for getting them to stop hurting us, and as soon as they're restrained or disarmed, I can just stop the spell. It's not like the stunball, where we have to wait for hours for them to wake up as well…"

"They all sound like worthwhile investments, Tads – and I think we're all happy for you to use some money to buy the foci, if they're going to help the team out, and to learn what you think is best to help protect us. Kai smiled at her, then turned back to Aswon. "So one path was the spear – I think I can work out what that involves easily enough. But what about the other one? What does that mean in real terms?"

"Well, it's more by nature of me improving the skills I already have. Running fast, leaping further, jumping higher – that kind of thing. Honing the abilities I know, to a higher degree. And possibly learning how to channel energy around my body more efficiently, so that I can use those skills even more adroitly. But then I also have a choice on focus – I could try to learn how to attune my body and mind to a valuable item – much like Shimazu has with his sword."

"So to your spear then, I take it?" Hunter asked.

"Perhaps – in fact that's certainly something that would be easier to do. But it doesn't have to be. I could also choose my rifle. It's something important to me, that I'm very familiar with and have a great deal of experience with, and being able to feel the aura of that as part of my own would help me a great deal."

" You can make a magical snuggle-buddy with that monster fifty cal? Hmm… wish I could do that with my Panther canon!"

"No, you heathen. Not the fifty-calibre rifle – that's a soulless machine with no artistry to it at all. I meant the Purdey – an elegant and stylish weapon, crafted by hand by a master armourer. That has an aura that I could work with!"

"Pfft. Whatever. But what's the other thing, then?"

"Well, I've been carefully monitoring my body when I was meditating, or trying to centre myself for an attack, and I've become aware of the passage of mana around my body, interacting with muscles and sinews, organs and bones."

"I'm sorry I asked. So, in English?"

"I can move power around my body, temporarily making something stronger. I'll be weaker afterwards for a while, but by then the fight should be over, because I was stronger in it."

"Right – you should have led with that. I reckon that one – being able to make yourself faster, or a better shot, or better at stabbing fraggers – that sounds more flexible than just attuning yourself to one thing."

"I'd agree with Hunter – at least based on that description. Being able to do something very well when you need to, when it really counts – that's a valuable card to have in your back pocket."

"I would agree also, with both Kai and Hunter." Shimazu gave a little shrug. "I would not give up my sword, but I would also not try to attune myself to my pistol. It just doesn't have the same meaning to me. You split your time much more between the Spear and your Purdey though. And the other gun as well. I feel you would gain more benefit from having better control of your powers in your body. Your skills define you much more than your equipment, so improving those makes more sense, I think."

Aswon weighed their words carefully, pausing for a moment in case either Tads, Marius or Nadia had anything to add. The silence was broken by a disgusting wet sound emanating from Marius Junior and a pervasive smell that indicated that biology was at work, and Nadia lifted him off her lap and moved away from the table to go and change him.

"Very well, I think I have decided. Thank you for your advice – I think I will take the path of self, assuming my meditation is successful, of course. So what about you two?" Aswon glanced towards Hunter and Marius.

"I'm gonna go on a load of route marches and runs in the hills just for general fitness, but I'm gonna work on my movement as well – wanna be able to move more quietly and subtly for doing recon work."

"And I will also be working on my fitness. Hunter and I discussed this briefly – while I am training and working out, he is going to be stalking me, and I will try to spot him. A game of tag, if you will."

"Well, it sounds like we've got our time sorted, at least for now. Let's get to it then!" Kai clapped his hands together, then pushed himself back from the dining room table. The others finished their drinks and last mouthfuls of food and tidied up, and the team split up to their various tasks.

After checking Nadia and Junior were ok, Marius got changed into some running gear and headed out towards the hills, doing alternate sprints and jogs along the track to work on his stamina and endurance, and then doing longer jogs cradling Hunter's massive cannon in his arms, working to improve his overall strength and physique – while Hunter spent the morning chasing him down and trying to get into ambush positions without Marius' keen senses spotting him. Kai tagged along with Marius, jogging and sprinting with him and practicing his Arabic, making Marius pant for breath as he tried to explain the structure of the language and the pronunciation of words to him.

Aswon and Shimazu headed out to find suitable places to meditate and focus their senses inwards, plumbing the depths of their magical abilities and seeking to refine the control of their own bodies and the environment around them to ever finer degrees. Shimazu had his sword with him, a glowing beacon of astral energy as he sought to bond ever closer with the master-crafted weapon, integrating his own aura ever more tightly with that of the weapon foci. Aswon meanwhile had his rifle to one side, spear to the other, but spent his time focussed on his own skills – acknowledging the power and utility of both of his weapons, but balancing them against his abilities learnt over the many years of his life.

Tads meanwhile grabbed one of the bikes and headed off to see Aslick, spending the morning haggling with him over foci, examining his collection of spell formula and checking over his magical materials stock, before retiring to the lodge set up in her trailer and starting the process of bonding the magical foci to her aura and preparing them to hold her spells and magical powers.

Around them the business of the ranch went on – horses were mucked out, the building was cleaned, accounts were checked and plans made for the summer season and the children were educated, bubbles of normality that orbited the activities of the team-members. They all met for lunch, gathering around the huge dining room table and sharing food together, while Kai told increasingly wild stories to the children that somehow still had an edge of plausibility to them, or Tads amused the youngest with simple illusions that made them giggle and laugh with joy as tiny elk herds thundered around the salt and pepper shakers and trampled across their plates.

More training filled their afternoons, until they retired to the ranch in the evening, slowly melding out of the darkness and gloom outside to the bright lights inside, where warm showers and fresh clothing revitalised them. Days passed, with slight variations on the routine – Marius and Hunter mixing things up to stop them from going insane with boredom, while Aswon and Shimazu stuck with their meditation doggedly.

A week passed, and they were all making progress – Tads had bonded her foci and was making progress with spells during the day, and with two of the team guarding her body had gone for an astral scout back to her homeland to check on things – finding no signs of forest fires or disasters to alarm her, though. Aswon had reached a breakthrough in his personal studies and was practicing with his new abilities, while Marius was showing distinct gains to his physique – though Hunter was now managing to sneak up on him slight more than half the time, much to his annoyance. They'd finished their evening meal, the younger children were in bed, and they were gathered around the trid-unit in the sitting room, watching a news show detailing the imminent return of Halley's comet later that year and the growing hype gathering around the mega-corporations and their stated aims to examine or even land on the celestial visitor.

"That is odd." Marius twitched, then sat upright, Nadia's arm sliding off his shoulder. "I am getting an internal alert." He fell silent for a moment, then resumed just before Nadia poked him in the ribs. "It is a diagnostic warning – stating that internal logs are at eighty percent capacity, and advising a data upload to purge the buffers."

"Huh… lemme guess – it wants to connect back to Ares HQ?"

"I would assume so, Hunter. The format is unusual though – it is an encrypted stream, but the processing rate indicates that the encryption is fairly simple – but it is compressed. Massively so. I did not realise there was this much capacity."

"Lemme grab my deck and some cables, and we'll hook you up then." He unpacked his deck, attaching the slender cable to his own datajack, and then connecting a second cable to one of the many jackpoints that had been installed onto Marius by the Eindhoven clinic. "Frag me, I see what you mean. There's… that's more than a thousand megapulses. Lemme clear some space on the chip – there. Should have enough to buffer it all now. And it's routing all over the place – not going to a single host, it's being split up into chunks and it's bouncing through at least four different Ares corporate sites. Guess that makes it pretty hard to spot the stream and decode it, if it's not complete…"

The upload took nearly an hour, maxing out the data connection from the ranch and distracting them somewhat from the probe race show, which was light on details and heavy on the speculation anyway – all the corporate space efforts being played close to their chest at this point.

"So what happens now?" Hunter scratched himself again and then examined the deck carefully. "It's confirmed the upload is complete, but then shut down the connection. No inbound traffic or messages."

"I guess we wait." Marius sighed and leant back in the seat, letting Nadia snuggle back into him. There was a slight squeaking noise as her skin made contact with his, and she frowned, but then settled back into him, declining to start that argument again.

"That Eiran guy – I reckon we owe him more than a sharp word if we meet him again. He never mentioned any of this stuff."

"And Damian Knight – don't forget him. Aswon!"

"Oh, I haven't, Hunter. But I reckon if we try and slap him, his bodyguards would mow us down in a second. Eiran didn't seem to have any, and we might get away with it!"

"Who is he, anyway?"

"A prince of the Tir – an elf, naturally, he's on their ruling council. Along with Marius's favourite dragon of course… so technically he's kinda royalty. But he plays it quite low key, does a lot of public speaking and appearances, works the book circuit and stuff. Seems to be very tech-focussed, as long as it's ecologically friendly."

"Dandelion-eater then." Hunter sniffed dismissively. "Anyway, seeing as we're not watching the trid anymore – I've been preparing a dossier on those wank-stains we took out. Combined the sensor footage and records we have, kept it discreet from us and scrubbed any personal data and our sensor signature from it. Was thinking about dumping it onto Shadowland – watch this and tell me what you think?" He played the short presentation from his deck, streaming it to the trid unit. Naena quickly found an excuse to go to the kitchen and find something to do, but Rusudan watched with rapt horror, sitting quietly at the back of the room. The sensor footage of the attack was like something from an action sequence in a Hollywood trid-movie in a lot of ways, though slightly less flashy and harder to keep up with, but had a gritty nature to it that made it much more visceral, and he reminded himself that it was real, not staged with props and computer graphics. The footage towards the end made his stomach churn as he saw the victims of their attacks in the desert, and then the final view of the bodies as the team examined them. Rusudan looked at the team as they watched the presentation, seeing that while most of them didn't enjoy the content, they didn't seem repulsed either, and he reminded himself again of how dangerous the world they inhabited was, and gave silent thanks that they were on his side. Or he was on theirs. He wasn't quite sure, but Kai and his team had remained solicitous to him and his family, and their fortunes had certainly reversed over the last few months…

"I'm not sure if we should release it, personally. We're certain they're all dead – but we have no idea how many friends they might have, or who might be interested in what happened to them, or come looking for answers."

"I don't think people like that have friends, Tads." Kai grimaced, then shook his head. "Hunter – there's nothing in there about the art dealer, is there?"

"Nope, no mention. I kept the report light on the details of why they were there, and what the job was. I think if you're hooked into the scene and have contacts you could work it out, but if that's the case you probably already knew."

"Ok, well, it looks fine to me personally. But that reminds me, we should report in to Germaine and maybe let her have the final say on whether it goes up or not. It might be that she wants to release it herself, as part of her message."

"If you get in touch with Germaine, I can put up a mindlink if she's willing – and let her see our memories of the assault, to get confirmation of the details. Do you think she'll want to get onto the art dealer and chase the painting down?"

"I don't think so. I'm still not sure what the deal is with the painting, or why it's so valuable – I've still not been able to find out much about it from any of my sources. So I think Germaine isn't massively bothered by it, not compared to being betrayed by the team anyway."

"That's good – otherwise I was worried that Germaine would be asking us to go to Germany next to recover it from the art dealer."

"Well, we might want to not jump to conclusions like that – we don't know that's where either he or the painting was definitely heading, or that Germaine would ask us to recover it."

"Well, I was just saying that wouldn't be good. I don't think Marius wants to get that close again, and he's the pilot." Tads folded her arms and got a slightly stubborn look on her face, and Kai grabbed his commlink from the table and rolled to his feet, choosing not to pursue the discussion any further.

"I'm going to call Germaine and discuss things, and let he know what's going on." Kai wandered out of the back door to make the call, leaving the rest of the team inside to return to the trideo show. When he returned five minutes later, Aswon muted to the audio so he could tell them what happened. "Well, she's very happy. I mean, she always sounds enthusiastic and loud, but I think she was genuinely happy that we've dealt with them. She says no problem dumping the data up on Shadowland, and that maybe that will remind people not to mess her about, so that side is sorted. She also said that she's sending a tanker down here tomorrow – apparently when she was here last she got talking with Nadia and found out about the fuel bunker."

"Yes, we discussed logistics and supply chains. She is a very knowledgeable woman."

"Hmm. Well, anyway, she's sending down a tanker with three kilo-litres of fuel to top off our supplies, to replace what we used in the job, and said that was her personal thankyou on top of the loot that we picked up from Unsubtle. I didn't mention that to her at all, so I'm not sure how she knew – and I'm pretty sure I didn't give anything away."

"Well, there's our reminder to never play Poker with Germaine!" Aswon snorted.

"Yup. But at the rate fuel is going for around here, we're talking about twenty grand's worth of fuel – so that's not bad. Not on top of the credstick we found anyway…" Hunter tapped a query on his deck and checked the fuel status. "That does replace most of what we used – we're still down, but not massively. And there's plenty in the fuel store, so we should be good to go."

The next morning Kai received a call, giving him a good excuse to break off from his current sprint and answer the commlink, gasping for breath while Hunter and Marius continued on their way.

"My lord Aden summons you to attend to him, with the device. Be at the place you met him last, at sunset tomorrow."

"What? Who is this?"

"My lord Aden summons you to attend to him, with the device. Be at the place you met him last, at sunset tomorrow. Do you understand."

"Well, what if we have plans tomorrow?"

The line disconnected and Kai stared at the device for a moment, pulling a frustrated face, then sent out a message on the team channel.

[Had a call from Aden. We need to fly to that mountain in Iran, near the smuggler stop. Arrival by sunset tomorrow, with the metal thingy Hunter ordered.]

He watched as the message delivery counter ticked upwards, checking that everyone in the team had at least read it, and once he had confirmation, he broke into a jog and headed after the others, to continue his run. Quizzed at lunchtime, as expected, he told them that he didn't know anything more, but considering who it was, he wasn't going to risk not showing up, and the team adjusted their plans to make sure they had time to prepare the tilt-wing and grab their gear the following afternoon.

They had been planning on doing more training on the Saturday, but with their flight to Iran in the afternoon, they cut back on their plans – apart from Tads. She seemed to be cramming in as many hours as she could in her lodge, trying to finish her spell designs off and learn her new formulas before they departed, and she looked as drawn and wan as Marius and Kai did after their week-long burst of physical training.

They took off about ninety minutes before sunset, heading almost due e ast over the scrubland until they hit the Caspian Sea, then gently arcing round to the south and heading down towards the Iranian coast. Marius bought them in not far above wave height, ripping across the narrow spit of land between the coast and the foothills in less than a minute before pulling back on the stick sharply to climb up into the mountains that separated the coastal plains from the desert plateau above.

There was no bizarre weather this time – no hurricane force winds or swirling clouds to obscure them, no drakes flying escort on them to force them down, just clear skies with Mount Damavand lit up in the last pale light of the February sun before it dipped below the western horizon. They landed on the west flank again, near the climbing shelter they had used before and waited on the mountain side, wrapped up warm against the dropping temperatures and stiff winds that ravaged the slopes of the mountain, sending swirls of powdery snow sheeting across the rocky mountainside.

They didn't have to wait long for Aden to appear, floating around the shoulders of the mountain from the north. His massive sandy coloured wings beat slowly and steadily, and the flight looked effortless and completely impractical – for the wingspan present, mighty as it was, there was no way the massive forty-metre-long body and tail should have been held up if you were just relying on the laws of physics. As he came in to land, the last rays of sun highlighted the bronze coloured ridge scales that ran down the spine of his back, glittering in the light.

[Where is the device.] The voice echoed in their head, arriving directly at their brain without bothering to use their ears at all.

"Here it is." Hunter pulled it out of a pocket, and held it on his outstretched hand, walking slowly towards Aden and stopping a few metres away. A huge draconic leg lifted and the talons moved swiftly but surely, gently pinching the device between two of the metre long scythes with absolute precision.

[Good. I will make preparations with this. Until then though, I have a task for you to perform. To the west of here, in the land you call Turkey, there is a military unit. A unit of artillery. I need it to be destroyed.]

"An artillery unit?" Aswon asked, looking confused. "I mean, sure. But why? You need a specific unit neutralising, or just any unit?"

[A specific unit. They have been launching attacks on the eastern part of the country, using new weapons. Abominable weapons. They scour the land of life, killing all nearby. They defoliate the hills and mountains, rendering them bare and corrupt. They will be bought to account.]

"Oh – we've seen that, haven't we?" Tads exclaimed, her mind flipping back to the horrible twisted areas they'd seen when flying across Turkey a while back, the land stripped of all living things and left as a roiling area of chaos in astral space and as barren as the moon in the physical realm.

[Then you know what you seek. Punish these people and destroy their weapons, and prevent them being used against my followers. Return to me one moon hence, here, when you have completed the task, and we will proceed.]

"Proceed? With what?" Aswon asked, trying to keep his voice respectful, but still wanting to find out more.

[So we can proceed with the device.]

"Can we ask what the device is for?"

[Yes.] Aden swung his massive saurian head towards Hunter and sent a message directly to him only. [Do not eat or drink for several hours before you return to me.]

"Um." Tads waited a few more seconds, then realised that the dragon was going to leave her dangling. "So what is it for, please?"

[It will make you stronger, for what lies ahead. You may go now.]

They looked at each other as Aden nimbly turned on the spot and then launched himself into the air, drifting effortlessly across the mountain and disappearing out of sight to the north, the strange metallic device held carefully in a clenched talon.

"All aboard. Wheels up in two minutes." Marius announced, heading back in and starting his pre-flight checks. The engines had cooled sufficiently since they'd landed that he had to do a full checklist, but he didn't waste any time in running through the tasks. His eyes flitted around the cockpit, checking instruments and readings, and occasionally looking up and out of the windscreen to ensure that the dragon wasn't coming back. Once airborne, they turned and headed back north, retracing their steps roughly – though Marius used a mountain pass thirty kilometres to the east of the first, just in case anyone was waiting nearby. Their stealth held though, and they made it back to the ranch ninety minutes later.

As they entered the ranch, Hunter's deck latched onto the local network and then pinged him an alert.

"Hey Marius – I've got an Ares flagged file waiting to download. It's… massive. Lemme just grab the headers and stuff and analyse it…." He moved to the table and set up his deck, then carefully analysed what he could see so far. "Right, it looks like a whole bunch of firmware upgrades for cyber-systems. There's scores of files, with an index list showing the install order and a bunch of parameters to apply to the installers to get a clean upgrade. It looks very adhoc… normally this stuff just comes in a nice neat installer – one click and it just works. But this looks thrown together…."

"Experimental, even?" Aswon enquired. "Maybe Kai and Shimazu should have a look over it as well, from a medical point of view. Just to be safe…"

They spent the next hour checking over the files and discussing the firmware upgrade, while more and more code downloaded onto Hunter's deck, once more requiring him to unload a bunch of utilities to make space for them to work in. The others got to see what he meant directly as he piped the output from his deck to the trid-screen, as he had to manually inflate the heavily compressed files, supplying additional parameters and chaining files together to form a complete upgrade utility. The code was all correct, with the file checksums intact and it all made sense – but it required a significant amount of knowledge on the finer workings of the deck's operating system to make sure the files opened and merged together in the right order, and without the serious amount of power in Hunter's deck, it would have failed spectacularly. It was about as far from a "public release" level of quality as it was possible to get – but somehow the code was all correct and working.

"Alright – moment of truth time. Are you ready for this Marius?"

"No. But continue. I am not sure I will be ready, without further information."

"Ok, installing first files now…" Hunter sent the mental command, and the first file executed, downloading over the fibre-optic link into Marius's jack and rewriting the firmware. It turned out to be whatever subsystem controlled the haptic systems of the hand, and they saw the thumb reach out to touch each of the fingertips in turn – cycling through the four digits several times at increasing speed. Then it flexed forwards and backwards, spinning at the wrist and then combined the motions together. A green tick mark displayed briefly on the screen, then the progress meter crawled up to 5%. Next the arm started to flex, moving from the elbow in all directions and going through a series of motions that made the muscles flex and twitch in turn.

The pattern continued, each of the limbs in turn twitching and moving, while Marius lay on the floor next to the table, staring up at the ceiling, experiencing his body going through a calibration and upgrade procedure, focussed entirely on the sensations and limited feedback available to him internally. The progress bar continued to climb, as one by one the systems upgraded successfully, and as the pattern repeated without incident, the team started to relax a little, cracking jokes and threatening to start balancing items on him in time-honoured fashion.

When the progress bar reached 80% though, Marius's voice cracked suddenly.

"Vision has gone. I am blind!"

"Ok, monitoring – yep, the eyes are upgrading. Don't panic."

"Easy for you to say, Hunter."

"Yes, it is. Just chill. And you're probably going to lose hearing as the nervous system reboots, so expect that as well."

They could tell when that happened, as Marius twitched and strained his head to the sides, suddenly robbed of all sensory input from his two primary senses. What they weren't expecting was for his chest to suddenly fall, then stop. They waited for a few seconds, then a few seconds more, while Kai reached down to check for a pulse at the neck.

"Pulse has stopped, no detectable rhythm. Get me the medkit. NOW." Shimazu handed him the Saviour kit, and they quickly worked to pull up his shirt and attach the diagnostic leads. Almost instantly the device made an announcement in a calming female voice.

"No pulse detected. No respiration detected. Cardiac event in progress. Charging. Charging. Charging. Stand clear of the patient."

"No! Kai, take it off! Just wait!"

"He's dying! He needs to breathe!"

"Just give it another twenty seconds. Just wait! The upgrade is still running!" Hunter was checking his deck, examining the code. "It's not stalled – it's just upgrading the code on his spinal column. Everything attaches to that – it's the core bus for his upgrade!"

"Preparing to shock. Stand CLEAR."

"KAI! Trust me!"

"Stand CL…" Kai hit the cancel button, staring at Hunter and then tapped his commlink, starting the stop-watch there and starting to count with it.

The seconds ticked past, Hunter confirming the code was still running, while Kai counted down the seconds.

Marius gave a convulsive heave, all of his muscles tensing as one.

"Heart beat – detected. Respiration – detected. Pulse 74. Respiration 15. Pressure 102 over 78. Monitoring. Monitoring. Monitoring. Systems nominal – no abnormalities detected. No treatment required. Monitoring." The unit continued to check over his vital systems, and Marius opened his eyes to look up at the concerned faces of the team around him.

"Everything ok?"

"Fine, Marius – just stay where you are for a minute or two though. The last upgrade was a doozy – cut off all your autonomic functions for about twenty to thirty seconds. How are you feeling?"

"Good. Everything checks out internally. I feel… energised? Yes. Ready."

Tads had been waiting at the end of the table, an almost imperceptible golden glow leaking from her hands as she gathered mana, just in case… As she relaxed, she caught the edge of her plate with her sleeve, and an oatcake slid off the plate, tumbling down towards Marius's face. His hand shot up quickly, intercepting the object before it could hit him, while his face scrunched up in anticipation of the impact.

"Well, I guess that was part of the upgrade!" Hunter grinned down at him. "Looks like your reflexes are a bit more optimised. Your brain thought that was going to hit you." He reached over and pushed another three cakes off the plate, sending them down towards Marius. He caught two, but the third landed in his eye socket, making Marius squirm in discomfort. "Ok, better, but not that good. Ow!" He danced back out of the way of the flailing fist Marius had sent his way. He darted in just long enough to pull out the cable from the datajack, then retreated before Marius could thump him again. "I think he's good to go."

They watched as he eased himself up off the floor, taking it steady and moving in controlled stages, just in case anything weird happened – but his body responded fine, and after testing out his movement around the kitchen, he went out for a jog around the house, then a run to the helipad and back, reporting no issues when he returned.

Aswon had grabbed his commlink while Marius was out running, giving Germaine a quick call. After exchanging pleasantries, he explained that he was calling to see if he could arrange the purchase of some ammunition for the team – casually dropping in that they'd expended a fair few rounds of their anti-vehicle munitions taking down the Unsubtle armoured personnel carrier, and that they had a new job that involved going up against another tough target.

"Well Aswon, that's not the easiest of stuff to get hold of, as you well know. I certainly don't have any stock or a supplier with stock at the moment, but I can make some calls for you. Let me see what I do have though. Hmmm." He heard the tapping of fingers on a touchscreen, her nails clattering on the glass as she checked her computer. "I do have some high-penetration twenty-millimetre cannon rounds I could get you, though?"

"To fit a panther cannon?" Aswon leant around to face Hunter. "Twenty mike panther rounds – armour piercing?" He got an enthusiastic thumbs up from Hunter. "Yes please, Germaine, we'll take… how much per round actually?"

"Four hundred, I'm afraid – it's just so hard to get hold of. I've got a carton of fifty."

"Hmm – ok, we'll take the lot then, thank you." Hunter gave him a big thumbs up and a grin, then pulled up the Megaflora matrix site and ordered Germaine a large bouquet of flowers…entering Kai's cred-stick details, just to confirm the order. "What else have you got, please?"

"Well, I can get my hands on a carton of grenades, anti-personal high-yield fragmentation, based on EF12 cores? I've probably got a couple of kilos of Compound Twelve, the same again of Four. Radio and timer detonators, of course."

"Great – we'll take the case of grenades please, and probably all the serious putty as well. Nothing in the way of armour-piercing ammo for the machine guns though?"

"No – though I'll make some calls. Oh – hmm. Interesting. Ok, I have a supplier that says he has some 'Great Dragon' anti-tank guided munitions. They're a little pricy, though. Let me see what price I can negotiate here for you… you have dealt with that troublesome little issue for me, after all. Right – if you're interested in them, I can get you all four boxed new, for seven and a half thousand."

"I think we'll take them as well – we may need them."

"My, my, Aswon. I do hope you'll all be careful, whatever it is you're doing! Right, let me get these arranged for you – delivery to the ranch tomorrow?"

"That would be perfect, thank you Germaine."

"And I'll make some calls about the other stuff. Ta-ta for now!"

Germaine texted him later on that evening, letting him know that she had managed to scrounge up some armour-piercing ammunition – in limited quantities. With only three ten-round boxes in 10mm, 5.56mm and 7.62mm, Aswon grabbed them all – never knowing when more was going to be available. She'd saved the best for last though, and let him know that she could also obtain a single one hundred-round belt of black-tipped armour piercing heavy machine gun ammo. Also attached was the price list, which made him choke slightly – but if they were going to take on an army unit, they needed to make sure they were kitted out. He sent a return message asking for everything, and indicated that Kai would be happy to pay cash on delivery to the driver, then checked over the balance on the credstick. At least it was only a sixth of their available cash…

He looked up as Kai and Shimazu both came into the living room from opposite directions, both on their commlinks. Shimazu managed to speak first.

"Everyone, it's my friend Saito. He's got a job offer – a recon mission, in western Asia. Long range surveillance, but it's on a hard-security target."

"Western Asia? That's a pretty big area…" Hunter pointed out.

"Yes – he doesn't want to say more than that over the line at the moment, and also without knowing if we're free."

"Hmm. And I've got Johanna on the line – from Maersk. She's having a problem with the oilfields, some kind of SK pest infestation. Want's to know if we're available to deal with it."

"Well, we are kinda committed to the current job first. You might want to let them know…"

"Saito? Yes, we're interested, at least in finding out more. Do you want to contact our decker and set up a secure meeting room to discuss further? But, we have to let you know, we're currently doing a job for a dragon. A big one."

"Excuse me? A dragon? Like… Ryumyo? That kind of Dragon?"

"Yeah, it's a thing. So we have to take care of that first, I'm afraid. But we're interested."

"Ok, I'll get something set up and advise you on the time-scales. A dragon… sheesh." Saito disconnected, and Shimazu turned to catch the end of the discussion between Johanna and Kai, which sounded to have gone along a similar path.

"Right team, let's huddle up. Sounds like we're back in business… Western Asia doesn't give us much to go on, but we've got an idea on where Johanna is likely to be looking at, and we know where the artillery strikes were hitting – so I'm guessing we can work backwards to see where they attacked from? Let's get a map up, please, Hunter, and work out the logistics on this…"

Hunter configured the roll-out screen and displayed a map of eastern Europe and western Asia, with small icons showing the ranch and the other fuel stops and smuggler way-stations they knew about, along with their various contacts, and they looked at the possible options available to them for work…