The team were heading down the narrow mountain road, aiming to get to the town of Quba. Marius, the driver, saw a fleeting glimpse of movement which fortunately alerted him - so he was ready to stamp on the (virtual) brakes as there was an explosion to his right and a large tree was dropped in front of the truck. A platoon of soldiers appeared from concealment all along the upward slope, armed with high tech rifles and a unique looking digi-cam pattern- their field craft was excellent, as nobody in the truck had caught even the merest hint of their presence. The truck skidded to a stop on the moist mountain road, stopping safely about two metres before the tree, and there was a second explosion as another large tree was dropped over the road behind them.
The soldiers had them covered – rifles pointed at the windows of the cab, their wheels and the rear door. Although the truck was solid and at least lightly armoured, at this range missing it would be unlikely. And if the enemy – whoever they were – were as good at shooting as they were at ambush concealment, they'd be able to seek out the inevitable weak spots in any vehicles armour.
"They have us boxed in, and pinned down. I suggest we move carefully!" Marius called over the speakers. Moments later a large troll, stepped out from behind a tree, his shoulder carrying some kind of rank patch of symbol, that perhaps denoted him as the platoon leader. He lightly jogged down the slope, moving with grace and poise that looked out of place in someone so big, and approached the truck from the uphill side. The truck was high off the ground, with steps mounted behind the door for crew to use to climb up to the door, but the trolls three metre height let him just reach up and rap on the window loudly, his toughened coarse hands making a solid noise as they struck.
"Everyone, out of the vehicle, or there will be trouble."
If two demolished trees and a horde of goons with guns didn't constitute trouble, they didn't know what did – but it was best to be prudent. And, when considered rationally, at least they weren't firing yet either. Given the totality of the surprise, if they had just opened fire, they would probably all be dead anyway. The team filed back out of the cab, through the rear compartment and grabbed an assortment of guns and weapons to take with them, as much for moral support as to actually use.
"I need to see your identification." It wasn't a barked order, or a command. Indeed, the troll didn't even raise his voice. It was a very matter-of-fact statement, with a weird sense of ponderous inevitability. Unfortunately of course, identification was something that none of them had.
"Well, I'd love to help you sir, I really would" Kai started, "but I'm afraid we don't have any. If we did, rest assured we'd present them to you at once. It appears though that the bunch of Chechen savages we escaped from didn't keep our personal effects in a place we could recover them from. Sorry."
"You escaped from Chechens?" Now the troll sounded interested, leaning in a little closer. Behind him the troops had slowly worked their way around to the rear of the vehicle, keeping them under the eyes of at least a dozen burly orks, humans and dwarves, all of which kept their rifles raised and locked onto the team. If Kai was nervous, he didn't show it, and he recounted the story about their capture and escape, detailing the gunfight at the camp and the slaughter of the guerrilla force at the hands of some unseen opponent.
"Ahh, I see. Then I must examine the back of your truck. Now." Kai watched as the troll crossed his arms, the massive forearms flexing and causing the armour plates in his jacket to crack and groan under the pressure. With a little sigh, Kai waved towards the door, and stood aside. It wasn't like he had a lot of choice, after all.
"The cargo container – that was taken from the camp." Kai nodded, watching the troll carefully. "That has our material in. We will take it now. Then you will be free to leave." With a nod of the head, he stepped backwards, clearing the way for two burly men to move forwards, slinging their rifles over their heads and swarming up into the back of the truck, so they could slide the crate towards the door.
"Well, that's fine. It might be worth mentioning though, that we're a team of um… relocation specialists. If you need anything moving, we might be able to help?" Kai looked up at the troll, who ignored him, focussing instead on the crate. "See, we found the crate, and thought it looked interesting, so we decided to grab it. But you know what else we found? A lovely little map, that appears to go with it…"
Kai's voice cut off abruptly as the troll turned on him with viper like speed. Whoever, or whatever he was, he'd received some serious cybernetic modification to move that quickly. A gnarly finger hovered just above Kai's breastbone and the trolls voice rumbled.
"You have a map too? I must insist that this be handed over as well." Kai opened his mouth to protest, but then closed it with a click and shrugged. He carefully opened his jacket and retrieved the map and codes, moving slowly so none of the watching troops thought he was trying to go for a weapon, and then handed them over to the troll. "Thank you for your co-operation." The voice wasn't full of warmth, but it was at least polite. "You have been most helpful. We will supply you with a small gift as thanks." The troll waved to someone up in the thick foliage above the truck, and another burly figure appeared and started to make their way down the bank.
The team saw they were carrying a large rucksack with them, and they hefted it off their shoulder and round to the front of their body as they approached, handing it off to Hunter as they got close. Next they unslung their rifle, unclipped their pistol belt and ammo pouches and handed those over too, before turning and starting to head back up the slope, all without saying a word.
"We will clear the road, then you will leave." Again the voice spoke with finality, a statement of events to come, rather than options. With a curt nod, the troll turned and moved to follow in the wake of the cargo container, which was being laboriously lifted up the slope, carried off into the thick vegetation. Troops swarmed back to the edge of the road, while two small teams headed to the trees, and started to unspool some cable and lay it over the thick trunks.
"Det-cord, I think. We should get back inside the truck. Going to be shrapnel all over the place." Aswon warned them, climbing up the ladder first and then turning to lift the rucksack and carry it inside. One by one the team climbed up and Kai swung the door closed behind him as he reached the top of the ladder.
"Looks like they gave us a pretty decent medical kit, looks like something a corpsman would carry into battle. Plenty of stuff for combat trauma anyway. A decent rifle with two spare magazines, an auto-pistol with two spare magazines, and a small survival kit. It's going to help, I'm sure." Hunter told him as he turned to examine their booty. Two loud cracks sounded outside, and the vehicle wobbled from side to side for a moment, and the sound of a million splinters bouncing off the toughened hide of the truck slowly faded away. Marius headed back into the driver's seat and jacked back in, starting the truck up and slowly driving through the remains of the pulverised tree, so he could continue heading down the narrow road.
As they came down the mountain road the weather broke, and they had to slow as they drove through torrential rain. Eventually they made it down out of the hills and entered Quba around midnight. They pulled up by the side of the road and checked their map, looking for somewhere out of the way to park up for the night, until they could find a garage to try and make repairs.
Shortly after they spotted a dog walker, and in broken Russian managed to ask about where they might find a garage. The figure shouted back directions, muffled by the thick hood and rain cowl he wore, and gave three separate spots on their map to go to. It sounded unlikely that a town this size would have three petrol stations, but they had to trust the man's local knowledge. They elected to go to the southernmost spot on the edge of town.
Turns out this was a set of garages for houses, not a petrol station / repair garage - so not what they were after – though possibly what they'd asked for. But, when turning the corner, their lights played across two men, who were carrying an unconscious woman towards the boot of the car. Tads let rip with a powerful spell, and dropped them all in the middle of the road, without a word.
"Did you kill them?" Aswon asked, head whipping around to look at her.
"No – it's a spell that overwhelms the conscious mind, just knocks them out for a while."
They climbed down out of the truck and the team moved out with weapons drawn, seizing the two men and their captive and then moved to check out the car. It was dirty and unkempt, full of blankets with noticeable stains, used condoms, trash and food wrappers.
After they had cleared the area and found nobody else, they spent a minute going through the men's possessions. Checking their wallets, they discovered they had 'Eldar Asgarov' and 'Gulnar Iravari' two local men.
"I think we need to get out of the area. Let's put her in the back seat. Who can drive?" Shimazu raised a hand in response to Kai's question, and grabbed the cars transponder key from the small pile of possession. "Great. Um… Tads, can you go with them? If she wakes up, it might be good to have a female there." Tads nodded and got into the car, but only after giving the seat a good wipe down.
They turned to leave, split between their truck, and the bad guys car. As they drove out, another car passed the truck, spotted the car and started to flash his lights, then leant on the horn, the sound echoing off the houses nearby and setting several dogs barking. Marius swung the truck around, and boxed in the second car, whilst Hunter vaulted down from his door, holding the new assault rifle and demanding he get out. Behind the window, he saw the driver starting to move, but then heard the driver calling someone on his mobile. After smashing first the window, then his face, he pulled the mobile out and hit the disconnect button, then powered the phone down. A few more moments and they dragged out the guy and loaded him in the truck too, also stealing his wallet, ID and credstick - adding 'Ferid Babyav' to their captives.
Driving away, they found a quiet road to stop on not far outside of town and woke up the driver of the second vehicle with some pungent chemicals from the medical kit and interrogated him. It didn't take long to confirm that he was a trafficker and had planned to sell the girl to the Chechens for use overseas. Brave he might have been when it came to abducting or selling females, when Hunter stood over him, wedging a pistol into his mouth, his bravado evaporated. The team drove up the mountain road a little, and unceremoniously shot all 3 of them and dumped their bodies a gorge, then drove back to the centre of town, and found an available space to park up in. Nobody mentioned the traffickers, and instead they argued about who was going to get the decent sized beds...
As they were just starting to settle down, Tads caught sight of Marius pulling up his shirt to reveal his hairless stomach, and then watched in horror as his fingers probed and pushed to one side, and a whole section of his belly opened up. He glanced up as she made a gagging sound, then smiled at her while he pulled out a compact satellite phone and a small credstick.
"You're not the only one with hidden talents." He winked at her, and Tads shuddered, disturbed by the concept of carving out a hole in your body and replacing it with metal and plastic. Marius crawled through into the cab and stretched out on the long bench seat across the front of the vehicle, fiddling with his phone, while Tads crawled into the bottom bunk and curled up in a tight ball, trying to think of something else.
About 5:30 a.m. the woman recovered consciousness, and understandably had a bit of a panic attack on discovering that she was restrained in the back of a strange vehicle and then started to get hysterical. Kai managed to calm her, and in a few minutes got some sense from her and found that she was also from the local town. In a shaky voice, she shared the details of her family, and using Marius's phone they called her father. He answered the phone almost immediately, despite the early hour, and Kai explained that they had found his daughter, and quickly assured him she was safe and would be returned. They got his address and went to meet him - discovering him to be in the local police force.
After being invited into his home for coffee and recounting the story of how they 'found' the bad guys and how they had 'accidents' the policeman. Kai was careful about what he said, making sure not to incriminate themselves whilst at the same time communicating to the man just how lucky he was to get his daughter back in one piece. The officer, Yusif Khalilov, assured them there would be no official inquiry, and he was just happy his daughter Leyla was home safe.
As realisation set in of what had happened, and the stresses of the last few hours caught up with her, Leyla zoned out. Shimazu and Kai checked her over, and found her pulse and respiration slightly depressed, and after a quick check of her arms found the tell-tale marks for an injection – probably barbiturates to keep her quiet and relatively docile. At least, with only a single shot and no more going into her system, they were unlikely to cause her any harm, and she more than likely just needed rest and time to recover. Yusif said he would help them out later, and would meet them in town at 9am.
Fearing an ambush, the team deployed on rooftops for the meet, but Yusif appeared with one more police car (which he told to look after Layla) and then escorted the team to the garage of Rhasad Aslanov. Here he introduced the team as "his friends", telling Rhasad not to screw them and treat them like other tourists. After some haggling, Marius was given access to the workshop and some spare parts, for the low price of 5,000 Nuyen. He spent the rest of the day working on the truck, fixing the damage from escape, checking the truck over and filling in the cosmetic bullet holes. The rest of the team went to the market with the funds from Marius, buying burner phones, clothing, wallets and cred-sticks.
After a brief discussion, they decided they were going to hike to the hospital next, while Marius worked on the truck, looking to get hold of some anti-coagulants to resupply Hunter, and make sure he didn't get ill.
