As Marius started to pull away, he gave a massive yawn. Realisation struck him that really, it wasn't time to drive through unknown terrain for an uncertain number of hours – what it was, was time to get a couple of hours of rest after a pretty stressful ascent and descent over rough mountainous terrain.
They discussed for a few minutes, agreed on a plan and split up into watches and then rested. The truck sat in the grey and barren landscape, 4 sets of snores echoing from the back whilst two stayed on watch. Even in the middle of December, down on the coastal plains the temperature crept up, warming the metal skin and glass of the windows, and the digital readout crept up towards the 25 degree mark. The team slept through the conditions though, swapping out watches half way through the day and leaving Marius and Hunter to sleep undisturbed – their skills would be needed soon enough.
As the sun crept higher and reached its zenith, then started its decent to the west, the watch standers saw nothing. Not birds, not animals, not even a tumbleweed. Occasionally a strong gust of wind would lift some dust and swirl it around, but otherwise the area was desolate and barren.
After a good sleep, the team roused themselves at around 16:00, and started to prepare to move out, stowing sleeping gear and tidying away the bowls they'd made their porridge in.
Tads suddenly looked up in alarm, examining the sides of the vehicle carefully. She moved from side to side, and discovered that the external ward around the vehicle had disappeared. At first she thought they had come under some kind of attack, and checked around for spirits or astral entities that might be about to launch some kind of assault. As she looked around though and found nothing, the last vestiges of sleep were banished and she realised rather belatedly that the ward had just expired. Without access to the advanced knowledge required for a permanent ward and the thousands of Nuyens worth of warding materials to make it, her temporary ward had lost enough magical force to just blow away into the ether. She sighed, resigning herself to another half a day to putting up a new ward at some time when they were stopped…
Hunter had pulled up the charts by this point and was looking at the various routes possible to reach Tashkent – it mostly boiled down to two routes. Hack straight towards their destination, by a direct over-desert route and take their chances off road, and they could avoid a lot of attention, would be the most direct and shortest route, but could land them in a lot of trouble. Or, go via the roads and major settlements, accept they would be seen and may run into more official attention, but make quick time over decent roads with good access to fuel. Though the former was appealing, they felt they needed the time, and safety, of the second route. Hunter set to working out the journey
From their current location, they would take the M37 east, past Bereket to Ashgabat for the first leg, a total of 375km, then continue on through Tejen and towards the city of Mary, for a second leg of 350Km. After that they turned north east towards Turkmenabat and then on to Bukhara, another 350km for leg 3. Continuing north east towards Samarkand they changed to the M39 then on to Jizzakh with the fourth leg being 345km long. Finally, leg 5 was a short 175km drive to Tashkent – a total of nearly 1600km. As he was planning each morning and evenings drive, he did notice another opportunity – if they left the main route at Bereket, there appeared to be a fairly large train station there, with extensive sidings. Checking around the matrix, he eventually managed to find a price – they could get their truck loaded onto a low-loader, and freighted to Tashkent for about 500 Nuyen, but it would take at least 6 days, maybe more, due to the changes and timetables. The team decided to stick with the chosen route, and Marius once more put the truck in gear and drove north towards Kum Dag and the main road.
They found the rough track about two kilometres north of where they had paused over the day, and in the last light of the afternoon, turned onto the marginally smoother track and headed towards the smudge on the horizon that promised buildings, roads and at least a form of civilisation.
Shimazu and Hunter both barked an alarm, almost at the same time – there was a vehicle approaching them, hammering across the desert fast, approaching them from their five o'clock. Peering through gun scopes and sensors, it appeared to be a large four by four, open topped, with a number of individuals riding in it – all armed with rifles of some kind. Also on the vehicle was at least a pair of light machine guns, attached to pintle mounts – maybe even medium machine guns. The vehicle was painted a drab grey – no camo patterns – and appeared to have some kind of corporate logo painted on the bonnet. No matter how much the team squinted, they couldn't make it out though – the angle was too extreme.
They had seconds to decide – evade, attack, negotiate…. Kai made the call – "see if you can lose them". Marius turned the wheel, the truck bouncing off the rough track and back onto the stony wasteland, as he tried to find dips and undulations to mask the vehicle from the approaching hostiles. As he did so, his foot came off the gas, the truck slowing dramatically until it was barely doing 10 kph, but in turn the large dust trail thrown up by the back wheels dying away until it was barely visible. Tads drew a deep breath, concentrated on the vehicle and let mana flow through her, extending her spell around the vehicle to render it invisible. The truck faded away into the afternoon sunlight, and the desert appeared empty once more. The effect on the pursuing vehicle was immediate – two of the occupants rose and readied their support weapons, and the driver started to alter course, opening up a bearing on them.
In the truck, Marius could feel the questing beams of radar lancing out across the open terrain, and with a mental flick activated his jammers and electronic countermeasures. He felt the beams around him, occasionally brush over him – but never strongly enough to get a lock on his vehicle. The team watched as a satisfied smile spread over Tads' face, as the spell took hold – she was obviously happy with her efforts. Aswon was now pressed up against the side of the vehicle, watching the approaching vehicle through the powerful scope on his Purdey, and saw the front seat passenger stow his weapon and reach into a large box, throwing disks the size of a laptop computer in the air. As they arced into the air, they unfolded, and rotors deployed quickly, the memory plastic snapping out the shape of the skimmer drone from its stowed configuration, and they quickly hovered and then started to approach the trucks position. He called out a warning to the team, and felt Marius slew the truck through another radical course change. Tads called her spirit to her, and asked it to conceal the vehicle, watching as the zephyr worked to dampen down their dust trail and conceal their tracks, adding an extra layer of magical security to their disguise.
As the pace slackened off, Marius steered the truck gently and carefully, moving carefully to go around patches of loose gravel, trying to disturb the desert as little as possible. He'd already lost track of the drones overhead, their drab paint scheme blending into the sky above him. Idly, he tuned his radio gear, and picked up the frequency their pursuers were transmitting on. The undulating rising and falling hiss told him that the transmission was encrypted, so he bought his decryption gear online and set the computer to breaking the algorithm in use. Seconds later, the speaker echoed their communications.
"Base, base, this is unit four, south of your position. One contact spotted, now evading, lost sighting, trying to re-acquire". The team watched as their vehicle slowed, and started to search in a pattern, their sensors ramped up and trying to detect the invisible truck. Every time their steerable radar washed over the truck Marius flinched – but the invisibility and careful driving seemed to keep them safe. As the vehicle circled them, they finally got a good look at the corporate logo – "Maersk". A couple of them had heard of the big shipping combine, but they were not sure what they were doing driving around in the desert.
A hurried conversation took place amongst the team – should they try talking to them, letting them know their comms were compromised, should they just try to break contact, should they attack?
They spoke rapidly and decided on a course of action, with Kai grabbing the radio and waiting from the go-ahead from Marius. Marius lowered the power setting, almost to nothing, making sure their radio transmission would only reach a few hundred metres across the desert, hopefully only catching the other vehicle, and then gave Kai the go ahead.
Carefully pitching his voice, Kai called the other vehicle
"Maersk vehicle, this is your lost contact. Be advised we are independent contractors, just passing through the area. We are not seeking to stop, or carry out any work in the area. In fact, we're heading out of the area, and we'll be quite happy to just leave you and your base to the north well alone. We will comply with any requests you have for us to exit the area on a specific heading. Over."
The radio was quiet for a few seconds and then the same voice that had called in the contact report spoke.
"Do you guys want some work?"
The team exchanged looks… it could be a trap, or it could be a genuine offer. Maybe they wanted to speak more to try and locate the truck from the radio signal?
"Maersk vehicle, as said, we were planning on leaving the area to head for work elsewhere. But we're willing to listen."
"Unknown contact, be advised that multiple corporate entities operate in this area. We weren't sure who you were working for, which is why we investigated. But we are quite serious. Job opportunities exist in this area. Please advise."
Then another vehicle appeared. The team scrambled to positions, fearing an ambush, that the Maersk team had just delayed them whilst they called on a different channel for backup. Examining the newcomer though, they could see it was a very different vehicle – based of more of an SUV chassis, with a single larger machine gun centrally mounted over the cab. As it closed, they saw the change in posture of the Maersk vehicle, which swung away from them opening up distance to the newcomer, whilst the crew scrambled around to train their weapons at the SUV.
Marius swung the sensors around and zoomed in on the newcomers, zooming in as far as he could until he could read the logo plastered on the side of their vehicle as they charged across the desert towards the Maersk patrol. In bold letters the word "Dekita" was stencilled over a simple logo, repeated on the front and rear of the vehicle as well.
The Dekita security patrol activated their sensors and ramped up the power, trying to get a hard lock on the Maersk vehicle as it swung away from them. Whether that was for a missile lock or sensor enhanced gunnery of their 50 calibre machine gun, or just to let them know it was serious didn't matter – but all of a sudden, thousands of watts of RF power blasted down a narrow azimuth, painting the truck with enough energy to make the threat warning lights start to strobe, despite the cloaking spell, concealment and evasive driving. The effect was profound – but not in the way expected.
Marius reacted first, his gestalt with the vehicle letting him throw it around a small outcropping as if he was digging his heels into the floor himself. A fraction of a second later, the Dekita security vehicle ploughed a massive furrow as the big soft off road tyres dug into the loose ground, the back end of the vehicle wiggling as it fought to kick round and then it was heading away, kicking up a massive rooster tail of dirt as it accelerated madly across the desert.
The team realised how it must have looked to the newcomer – the obvious security vehicle turning to flee, sucking them into the ambush – they pursued, and just before it was too late, a lucky hit with their radar revealed a large apc or small tank, waiting to destroy them... They watched the Dekita flagged vehicle head to the horizon and disappear into evening, as they continued their journey north, now in some semblance of a convoy with the Maersk patrol, which got a whiff of them from time to time on their sensors – but not enough to confirm their position.
As they approached Kum Dag, a huge petrol station appeared on the right hand side of the road, clearly designed for heavy goods vehicles and long range haulers. They pulled in and Tads dropped the spell and concealment, finally revealing themselves to the patrol clearly. The security troops climbed out of their vehicle, removing face masks and goggles and examining the vehicle and team. They were mostly tall and blond, appearing to be Nordic in origins – backed up by their accents when they spoke.
The patrol leader complimented Kai on his truck, and especially his crew – saying his driver and mage were worth whatever he was spending on them. He again offered them work – explaining a little about the town. He worked for Maersk – obviously – and they patrolled various drilling concerns and operations in the area. They had a compound in town, a couple of blocks across. As he described, he pulled up a quick map of the town, sketching out the area of the Maersk Combine. He added an area to the north west of town for Dekita Oil, and a much larger area to the east of town for Espirit, and finally an area to the north for the labour exchange.
Kai was presented with a small business card for Johanna Bjorn, apparently the operations manager in town, and the person responsible for security, and suggested that the team might want to get in touch in an hour or two. They agreed on a codename – "katana", then the security troops mounted up and headed into town, back to their compound.
After fuelling up – and discovering the "shop" sold only bottled water – not even any munchies, but they did at least take Nuyen – they headed towards the edge of town and hit the main road, and took the east road away from town, making good progress along the reasonable one lane blacktop. Two hours later, Kai made a call, sounding out Johanna Bjorn. She sounded as Nordic as her name suggested, and was generally receptive to the idea of giving the team some work, sounding a little disappointed when Kai said they were actually on a tight timescale and they were headed east at the moment. They left the conversation that they would give her a call when back in town…
They drove into the darkness, the road winding around the scrubby plains to the north and the low foothills to the south, gradually bending from due east to a south easterly course. Over the next three hours they saw only two other cars, heading the opposite direction, with no traffic heading the same way as them either in front or behind. At around midnight they approached Ashgabat, a city of reasonable size, and found a small and seedy motel by the cloverleaf junction on the main road.
Pulling in, they woke up the receptionist, a youngish and very dishevelled looking man. Booking three rooms, they ticked all of the "optional services" on the booking page, throwing money at the man until his demands for proper IDs became muted, and then stopped. Asking about real food, ice, and other sundries, the man said he could "make arrangements", looking hopeful. He was rewarded with a transfer of cash to his credstick for his troubles, a pittance really, but obviously a significant amount for him.
The team viewed the rooms, quickly determining that they were flea and lice pits – but nothing that a quick blast of magic from Tads couldn't sort out for several hours. Though it seemed a little demeaning to use her rare and potent magical power to stun the crap out of the vermin, it did mean everyone would get a good night's sleep without interruption.
The team settled in to sleep, in real beds for the first time in a long while.
