Date 14/12/2059, Location 35.93722, 52.02906

The man continued to stare at Kai, saying nothing. When Kai looked down at the bottle, then back, the man nodded at him encouragingly, giving a little smile that revealed crooked and yellowing teeth.

"Alright, I'll drink some," said Kai, then raised the bottle to his lips and took a deep drink. The man watched without comment, peering intently, and Kai drank some more.

The strange man seemed happy now that Kai had drunk, too.

"So, where are you going?"

"We're heading north generally." Kai responded, giving a wave in the general direction without being too specific.

"Well, I have one piece of advice for you – avoid the lands to the north east, further up the slope and towards the mountain. Instead, ahead when the river turns and heads North West, you would be best to travel that way instead. Stay on the lower ground, and only travel up over a ridge if you absolutely must do so." Hunter checked the map, and the course looked reasonable, though it was going to be a very sharp climb and descent at the end.

"And now, as you have been so kind, I will allow you to pass." He gathered the yoke up onto his shoulders, and then straightened his legs, a little tremble passing through him as he lifted the weight. He turned towards the truck, and then placed his hands on the heavy duty grille covering the radiator, and started to clamber up, grunting and straining as he swung a sinewy leg up into a foothold.

"What are you doing?" Marius exclaimed, having just about had enough of crazy old men on the mountainside. "Get down off there!"

"Life is about how you deal with obstacles. There are those that go around them, and those that conquer them." He strained and then lurched forwards, the buckets swinging wildly and impacting on the trucks hood as he continued to clamber up until he stood on the heavy armoured plate triumphantly. Without pausing for breath he took the two paces to reach the windscreen, clambering up there next to rise to the top of the cab. With that summit achieved, it was only a short step up onto the boxy rear section, and he strode along there to the back of the truck.

Aswon gave a sudden start and ran to the back of the truck, along with Tadibya and Shimazu, as they realised there was no ladder or climbing holds on the back – and how as the old man going to get down with his yoke from the three metre height? With visions of broken legs and hips in their minds they skidded around the back of the truck to find the old man standing waiting for them on the road, his yoke set back a little. Both his hands were on the back of the rear door.

"I'm ready when you are. I'll give you a little help along, to get you started."

They stared at him for a moment, wondering just how he'd gotten down from the roof without injury, then backed off a little and waved for everyone to get back into the truck. Clearly something weird was going on, and this wasn't just an 'old man'.

Marius started up again, and moved away slowly until the man stopped pushing (where he'd made no discernible difference at all to their forward motion). They drove off into the night, lights highlighting the rough, barren and uneven terrain. In the rear sensors, Marius saw the man walk back down the mountain the ten metres or so to his buckets, then pick up the yoke again and continue his trudge uphill.

Leaving the track they dropped into the river, Marius slowing until they were proceeding at not much more than an amble, as he picked his way through the boulders and rocks littering the riverbed, the raging white waters barely rising halfway up the wheels. They progressed for several hours, crawling along the water course, getting higher and higher as they wound around the mountains and highlands, heading in a generally northward direction. They saw little movement – the odd bat or bird flew through their headlights, but nothing larger, and the hours trickled past. Tadibya got some sleep, swinging in the hammock strung up in the back, but it proved elusive for the rest as the truck bounced and lurched over the rough terrain. The higher they rose, the more the air thinned, and the engine struggled for air, gradually but perceptibly losing power and Marius had to push the accelerator down further and further to maintain their forward motion.

After hours of monotonous crawling, with the first glimmers of faint dawn light starting to show, Hunter suddenly realised something was wrong – the light was dead behind them, not to the right – they'd veered off course and were heading west, having gone too far up the river and "missing" their turn up into the mountain. He alerted Marius, who spied a flatish area off to the side of the riverbed that he could swing around in. The truck pulled out of the riverbed and started to turn, ready to descend back the way they had come for the last two kilometres or so, to correct their path.

As they got into the turn, several of the team spotted something odd in the grey pre-dawn light, with the mountain off to the south. It appeared regular, flat and uniform, without the random undulations of its surroundings. At the same moment, a strident buzzer sounded, shattering the silence in the cab, half a dozen warning lights illuminated on the dash, and Marius flinched as LIDAR, RADAR and a number of other sensor platforms from some hidden source lashed at the truck, locking it up for some fire control system – despite the protective concealment from Tadibya's spirit.

A voice sounded over the radio, clear and loud, despite low power settings, indicating that it was from somewhere close

"Unknown vehicle - stop immediately or be destroyed. You are now locked up by a Javelot XC34 missile system. You have ten seconds to comply."

Marius started to jack out immediately, fearful of what a missile strike would do to their vehicle – and more importantly his brain, if he was connected to it via his vehicle control rig. The others started to scan the outside, looking for their attackers, but Kai just cocked his head and listened to the voice. As the voice continued to threaten them with doom and the vehicle slowed to a half, Kai keyed up the radio and responded.

"Hi there. Please fire immediately. We are armed and hostile, and quite short-tempered as we've not had breakfast yet." The others looked at him in amazement and despair as he goaded the voice on the radio. Muting the mic, Kai sounded much more jovial as he explained to them.

"Whoever was on the other end of the radio really isn't serious, you can tell from their voice… Can't you all hear? They're pulling a fast one."

Moments later, two carefully concealed turrets popped out of the ground, and their doubts solidified, as the threatening profile of anti-armour autocannons trained smoothly on their positions. Then Marius and Hunter, staring out of the right side of the vehicle both gave a snort, almost in unison. Whether it was fear heightening the senses, visual acuity or just a bit of luck was hard to say – but they both saw that the turret uphill from them was resoundingly solid and professional looking indeed, but the barrel sticking out from it was nothing more than a painted cardboard tube. Kai continued to tell the voice on the other end of the radio that he wasn't going to fire, whilst the voice proclaimed in ever more excited terms that he would, and demanded that they get out of the truck, right now.

Kai agreed, and whilst several of them climbed out, Hunter took advantage to sneak out of the side and creep towards the turret, sliding along the rocky floor like a leopard prowling. The voice came back over the radio, its timbre and tone changed, asking just what the person creeping up on the turret was doing? Kai waved Hunter to a halt, calling out of the team tac-net that this time the voice wasn't bluffing, that he knew what was going on…

After a few seconds, a figure appeared out of the darkness, striding down the slope, carrying a medium calibre rifle carefully in his arms. The figure was close to two metres tall with a medium complexion. A scruffy mass of black hair with a large white whorl indicated that he'd been roused from sleep, and dark brown eyes stared at the team, with curiosity rather than hostility. He was also dressed "Western Style", in high-performance mountain trekking gear, warm and close fitting and worn and battered enough to indicate long use. He greeted the team, asking them who they were, and what they were doing on the mountain. Kai spoke to him, fencing with him for information, and finding that he was definitely not the voice on the radio – this man was far too calm and collected. After agreeing that all of them would much prefer not to get shot, or have any unpleasantness, they agreed to go with the man. He led them back up the slope, motioning for the vehicle to follow. Hunter followed him up slope, whilst the rest of the team got back in the vehicle and reversed up the incline.

As he got closer to the shape and could finally make out some details, Hunter realised that he was essentially looking at a number of enormous camouflage nets strung up between two peaks, over the valley between them. Under the nets were a set of thermal baffles or blankets, blocking light and heat equally well. The figure lifted the edge of the netting and then with Hunter's assistance propped up the edge with two large rods, creating enough room to back the truck under. Inside the area protected by the awning was at least five hundred square metres, with a large geodesic survival tent pitched to one side, a number of smaller tunnel tents alongside, and a mass of cargo crates and boxes scattered across the area. A rugged jeep and a small chopper with a large bubble canopy sat towards the rear.

As they stopped the vehicle, a smaller man burst out of the geodesic tent and sprang into a combat position, straight out of an action show – feet splayed wide, hips open, SMG set ready to spray fire across the ground. Several of the team sniggered, and struggled to prevent open laughter at the man. Examining him, he was a shade over 165cm, also black haired with a dark complexion and large, bushy beard. He, too, was dressed in mountain trekking gear, rather than traditional dress.

Kai and the newcomer spoke, and the team listened in, as they each established their positions. This was the voice from the radio, and he seemed quite belligerent and hostile to begin with - until Kai calmly and quietly informed him that he'd seen through his deception and knew full well that not only was the threat hollow because he wasn't the type to attack like that, but that the threat didn't exist at all. The man seemed to deflate, dropping the weapon from his hands and rubbing at his face, before nodding in agreement with Kai.

In a dejected voice, he explained that they'd panicked when they'd seen the truck coming up the valley, thinking it was the army – and had tried to run a bluff on them. Kai continued to chat away, encouraging the man to talk as he worked out where the conversation was going, and then actually started to negotiate. The man introduced himself as Rasheed, his friend Javad with the rifle, and his wife Nasrin – she had to be almost dragged out of the geodesic tent to meet them. Slightly smaller than her husband, she wore a mix of traditional and western clothes, she also had a dark complexion, black hair but with striking green eyes. However, the most obvious feature of her appearance was the ruinous mass of scar tissue that covered about 90% of her face, the flesh rippled, puckered and twisted in a series of craters, ridges and blisters. She obviously was incredibly self-conscious about this, and moved as soon as she was able to, to stand behind her husband and out of line of sight. Several of the team made concerted efforts not to stare at her, trying to put her at ease.

As they spoke, and gradually each side relaxed with the other, the team learnt more. Rasheed and Javad had known each other for many years, growing up together. They had worked in a ski resort further east in the mountains, one of the few places that still actively encouraged tourists and visitors in the land, bringing with them much foreign currency. They lived in a small village near one of the resorts, but following a series of strange occurrences in and around the village, they were forced to flee. Although it was not explicitly mentioned, the team quickly realised that these "strange occurrences" were centred about Nasrin, and the general feelings about magic prevalent in Iran. They fled from the resort, bringing with them everything that wasn't nailed down, determined to set up a new life.

Taking everything that wasn't nailed down, they'd found this valley and decided to set up camp here, trying to set themselves up as a stopping point for the smugglers they'd heard used this area to transit from the ruins of Tehran out and across the mountains to the north and east. They didn't know much about the business, other than the sensationalised reports from the trideo and news casts, but figured that with their experience in running the resort and keeping things operational in the mountains, they had the right skill set to make do – and it let them stay out of official sight and off the books.

They had an eclectic mix of equipment, including some quite unusual devices – such as the sensor system that had 'locked onto' the truck – which was designed to search for people trapped in snow storms and avalanches, and the authentic turrets which had been supplied as part of a themed area for corporate management teambuilding courses. But, along with the weird and wonderful, they had a whole bunch of sky and mountain climbing supplies and equipment that had let them set up a fairly comfortable camp that had sustained them well for several weeks.

During the discussions, at several moments, Rasheed seemed to lose focus, his eyes rolling back slightly and his voice pausing, before he then spoke about a new subject. Marius and Hunter quickly realised that he had at least a rudimentary skillwire system implanted, with a variety of subjects loaded onto a skillsoft secreted somewhere around his body. The cybernetic system allowed him to load a chip encoded with information gathered from hundreds of experts on a particular skill or area of knowledge, along with recordings of people performing tasks – which the user could then replicate. While he had the chip loaded into the processing unit, Rasheed could wire up a generator, repair a ski lift, fix the hotel Wi-Fi or matrix system, repair or maintain a vehicle or do anything else that was programmed on the small optical storage medium. The downside being, that as soon as the chip was popped out, and replaced with another, the knowledge and ability was gone, and he had to rely on his own experiences and skills.

Tadibya spent some time with Nasrin, talking to her female to female, and after several hours had determined that she was indeed magically active, but had no training or understanding of what was going on. Whatever effects took place around her were purely as a result of focussed will and desire, and subject to little control. She spent a while explaining what spirits were and how they could react to people calling them, trying to explain a little to the terrified woman about how she could control the things happening around her.

The rest of the team helped Rasheed and Javad with the camouflage netting, inserting new poles above the wire strung from peak to peak, making the surface less smooth and making new peaks and troughs in the surface, breaking up the flat outline that had triggered their sensors.

Examining the jeep and the chopper, Marius discovered that both of them had been fitted out with a high altitude kit. Discussing with Rasheed, he found that he had a spare kit – but wouldn't part with it for less than the cost price of 2,500 Nuyen. Offering to pay, they ran into another problem – Rasheed wasn't connected up to the matrix, and couldn't actually accept electronic payments.

Later on, Marius managed to persuade Javad to take him for a short ride in the chopper, examining the base from above, and checking out the terrain and local area. He confirmed their route – though it looked like a very hazardous climb and descent, there really wasn't much of an alternative.

The team stayed over during the day, Marius awaking once to spot Javad doing some maintenance on their truck – checking air pressure and wheel nuts – but generally getting a solid day of sleep in. The most gratefully received help came in the form of a herbal tea brewed up by Nasrin – which seemed to greatly assist with the assimilation to the thinner air.

By the time sunset approached on the second day, several of the team were itching to be on their way, and looking to Kai to see if they were pulling out that night…