The team ran past the sentry gun, flinching as they did so despite their presence of their screamer tags. All it took was one little mistake in the program, one error in the sensor suite…. But no. Their tags were interrogated, and they were found to be "friendly", and the robotic brain held fire. Not so a scant moment after Shimazu, last in the line, cleared the line of fire. With barely a warning whine from the motors, the gun suddenly kicked in with a long burst of fully automatic fire. A stream of bullets spat through the air and pummelled the creature that was rounding the corner behind them, propelled on a host of spiny legs covered in barbs, propelling the nebulous bulk of the creature forward like a millipede. The heavy 12.7 mm rounds punched into the carapace, their heavy weight and massive kinetic power defeating even the thick chitin and otherworldly defences of the creature, and it began to ooze acidic orange blood that marred and dissolved the stonework around it. More importantly perhaps, the force of the rounds impacting on it drove it back against the far wall, impeding its progress towards the team. Alien screams echoed off the damp walls, sending the team scurrying for the stairs.
As Shimazu ran through the archway, he almost bumped into Mamma-Bear, who was carefully counting people out onto the stone steps. Her large hand physically clapped him on the shoulder.
"Twelve, I make you last one out, that right?" she demanded of him
"Yeah, no one behind me, from either team," replied Shimazu. Mamma Bear pushed him round her with a heave, onto the stairway, then turned back to the archway. Shimazu was about to complain at being manhandled, but then he focussed on what she was doing, watching her for a second as she pushed a series of igniters into the large square blocks of plastic taped all around the archway. There were at least thirty of them, about twenty centimetres long and at least ten centimetres deep and high, all the same slightly sweaty-looking blocks, with wires trailing from igniters pushed into the ends of each block. All the cables trailed back to a digital readout showing a glowing red "30". Mamma Bear pushed the last pin in, and her hand started to move to the single button next to the readout.
Shimazu saved his breath for running, and bounded up the stairs, not taking long to get caught up with the back of the main group, about three-quarters of a turn up the stairwell.
"MOVE IT! FIRE IN THE HOLE!" he bellowed, gratified to see everyone immediately pick up the pace. He pushed and cajoled them forwards, helping to support the weight of Geo and trying to propel her faster. He heard loud footsteps behind him, as Mamma Bear pounded up the stairs behind him. She caught up, just as they exited the stair well into the main corridor and started to run to the exit, the team trying to hold weapons and kit, and propel the rescue victims as well. They were almost to the door when a thunderclap echoed through the temple, and the ground heaved explosively. They staggered, hitting the walls and flinching as dust flew past them, propelled up and out of the passageway by the enormous blast wave rippling up the stairs. One side of the corridor split, the rock shearing from floor to ceiling and revealing the fractured bedrock behind it. As the aftershocks died away, they all continued to move towards the entrance, trying to avoid any small falling rocks, and casting fearful glances at the walls of the temple.
Nothing further happened though, and they burst out into the valley and the cold morning light. Shambling forwards, they half dragged, half pushed the rescued team with them, away from the entrance, until they were past the waiting sentry guns, still tirelessly watching the entrance.
Aswon passed over his charge, and then dropped to a knee, laying the bronze spear beside him and grabbing his rifle, which he trained on the entranceway. He looked like he meant to stay on over-watch, presumably to try careful aimed fire at particularly vulnerable spots of the creature, whilst the heavy guns kept it busy. The rest of the team pushed on, moving towards the gazebo and getting the former prisoners sat down in chairs, ready to be examined.
Tadibya moved over to Blaster first of all and examined him closely. The emergency blood transfusion had done its job, propping up his failing cardio-vascular system and keeping him alive until now. She didn't think there was much more that the medics could do for him, his body being as weak as it was, and he still looked touch and go. Taking a deep breath, she started to gather the mana from the valley around her, glad that it wasn't some toxic zone or barren land with tainted mana. As she gathered her power, she glanced at his body on the astral plane, noting the dark and sinister looking patches of cyberware in his head and chest, some in his arms. The 'ware was unnatural and lowered his wholeness, making it harder for her to channel the healing energies through him to where they were needed, much like a plastic case covering a copper wire prevented electricity from flowing through it.
Golden energy flowed out of the palms of her hand, floating across the short gap between them as a series of coloured streamers that ebbed, flowed and twisted as if being blown by the wind. They sank into his flesh, making it fluoresce briefly as the energy vitalised and renewed his body. Skin glowed more brightly and the shallow breathing became deeper, steadier and more wholesome. His lips, which had taken on a distinctly blue tinge, became ruddy again and filled out slightly. Tadibya staggered back a little, breaking contact, and a bemused look crossed her face, swiftly followed by a frown and a wince. She shaded her eyes, and sat down with a heavy thump, graceless and with little comprehension of the situation around her. Spangles came over with some painkillers and a small bottle of water, handing them over to her. She looked at them confusedly for a moment, then her mental faculties caught up, and she downed one, then the other, with a murmur of thanks. Spangles gave her a look of sympathy, and then moved back to examine Blaster, who was now merely asleep with exhaustion, but looking more wholesome and normal than when they had found his form.
The rest of the team were gathered around the rescued dig team, along with Spangles, Wee-woo, Mamma-Bear and Spotlight, examining the soporific forms of Rocket, Digger, Slapdash and Geo. Kai asked who their medic was, and snorted when several of them pointed at Digger and Geo, before he and Shimazu started to examine the four runners. They quickly realised that all four of them had an identical wound, just above the breastbone – a puncture wound, about three millimetres across. It was located in an identical spot on all four of them, and was the only visible sign of injury other than a few scrapes and bruises that from the colour and character had clearly been caused by the flight from the temple.
They examined the puncture would carefully, feeling a little on edge and uncertain. It appeared to go right through the outer dermis and tissue, and was starting to scab. A little clear fluid seeped from each one as they were examined, but there was no bleeding. The wound looked quite deep, but there was tissue at the bottom of the wound.
"Have you checked over the team before, magically I mean," asked Tadibya, as she turned to face Spangles. "Would you recognise something wrong with their aura if you saw it?" Spangles considered for a moment, and then nodded, then turned to face Rocket and peered at him. She stared for a few seconds, her eyes taking on that familiar glassy look of someone staring at something not quite normal – then abruptly gave a shriek and jumped back a pace. Her hands were raised towards him, and she almost gibbered.
"There's another thing in there with him. Something else alive. All coiled up inside him, wrapped around him. Touching him… his shakra I mean. Merging with him." She shuddered and paled, looking as if she was going to be sick for a moment as her gorge rose in her throat. "I've not seen anything like that before, but that's definitely not what he should be like. She examined the others, and confirmed that they all appeared to be the same – some kind of parasite had entered through the puncture wound and was now wound around their organs.
Kai put his head on one side as he considered the situation.
"Well, we can't leave them in them, and we can't magic them out, can we?" He glanced over at the mages, who all shook their heads at him. "We could try and get them to a hospital down in Tashkent, but I'm not sure how good it would be, and if they can be trusted to keep their mouths shut."
Mamma-Bear raised herself up to full height, and started to stride towards the truck, glancing back over her shoulder as she did.
"Give me five minutes… we might have something that will do the job, quite nicely."
Sure enough, she returned a few minutes later, and beckoned for everyone to follow her, including bringing the four unresponsive team members. They were guided or carried over to the back of the truck, and Mamma-Bear climbed into the load area, which was still fairly full of boxes, all of which carried an Ares logo somewhere. Sitting about half way down the trailer was a large and complicated-looking device, with a host of display modules, servos, readouts, keypads and jacks festooned all over the outside. Marius looked over and whistled – recognising the Valkyrie module immediately. He turned to the others and explained about the tele-surgery module, the robotic controls and expert system that was capable of performing minor surgery on its own, or acting as an assistant whilst a remote surgeon controlled the mechanism via an implant – able to perform surgery from a continent away.
Digger was loaded into the module, and the machine entered the diagnostic cycle. A few minutes later it spat out the output, much of it flashing in amber or red, indicating severe or life threatening issues to do with blood chemistry, brain wave activity and respiratory distress. They tried selecting from the menu options to get the expert system to deal with the parasite, but the inbuilt limitations prevented the pod from working solo due to the nature of the injuries and potentially lethal nature of the surgery. Kai and Shimazu exchanged looks, and realised they were going to have to do this the old-fashioned way. They'd delivered a baby, and that went ok, how hard could it be to remove some alien parasitical creature that had infested a body anyway?
The answer was "quite hard, thank you very much". It took nearly an hour for Kai and Shimazu to control the robotic module and drive the device in through the wound to slowly cut away and pull out the strange worm-like creature. Several of the legs or cilia were tightly wound around nerve endings, parts of the lungs, or were inserted into the spinal column, and it was painstaking work to remove it cleanly with no residue left behind or damage caused to the host.
Whilst they had worked, Hunter had asked Mamma-Bear to get them some kind of sealable container to put the creatures in. She returned a short while later with a resilient looking plastic box, treated with some kind of coating, and a large carboy of liquid.
"Nitric acid. Should do a number on'em."
Hunter raised an eyebrow, then remembered that she'd not seen the creature down in the temple, spraying the concentrated acid it used as blood. He shrugged. It would either work, or it wouldn't – and if it didn't, he had a blade with a good edge on it…
Finally Kai and Shimazu were done, and extracted their tools and probes from the body, dragging out the half metre long worm from the body, and transferring it to a set of tongs. Mamma-Bear carried it over to the acid in the container.
"Maybe we should keep it, whatever it is. Might be worth something. Pay for a lot of lost gear and injuries I suspect… " People turned to look at Shimazu with a look of horror on their face. "Hey, it was just a suggestion!"
Tadibya peered at it astrally, trying to determine what it was – and regretted it almost immediately. The thing was alive, alien, and felt voracious. She felt it questing towards her, tendrils of something evil trying to latch on to her mind. A nameless fear paralysed her, and she could not bring herself to break the link between them. She felt it touching her head, the cilia stroking and soothing her, trying to find a way inside.
Hunter had his hand on his blade, and a handspan of steel showing, when Mamma-Bear snorted and opened the tongs, dropping the creature into the nitric acid. It frothed and started to dissolve almost immediately, thrashing back and forth as the fluid attacked it.
Tadibya slumped, a trickle of blood seeping from her left nostril. The efforts of healing Blaster must have drained her resolve more than she had thought, and this mental attack left her feeling weak and even further drained. She stumbled away to sit down, furiously rubbing at her temples. The others checked on her, and she described the feeling of malevolence given off by the thing, and how it had tried to reach into her mind. Her words put paid to any notion of keeping the creatures alive.
Over the next four hours, the remaining team members were operated on, one after another. Each followed the same pattern, finding the creature infested into the person and wound around their lungs and spinal column, requiring a delicate touch to remove. As they were working, the level of drugs in the module dropped rapidly, and by the time they got to the last patient, Slapdash, it was out of several key substances, making the surgery even harder. Kai and Shimazu persevered through, and eventually it was done, and they watched the last of the beasts dissolve into the acid bath, joining its fellows.
Tadibya had recovered her senses after a couple of hours rest, and the painkillers had done their job. She moved from one of the patients to the next, and the golden light of her healing spell reached out to each in turn. Digger and his 'ware were somewhat difficult to heal, but the worst of the damage knitted together under her hands and the ministration of her magic, leaving him sleeping naturally with only minor internal bleeding. Rocket and Geo were slightly easier to treat, and her healing left them only lightly wounded, the puncture wound nothing more than a fading patch of new pink flesh. Slapdash was the easiest – the adept having no foreign substances in his body and nothing to impede the flow of magic. The golden energy engulfed his whole body and all of his wounds were healed, leaving him whole and untouched.
When the healing was complete, she summoned a watcher spirit and asked it to try and go down to the temple and check on the sentry gun. The small spirit pranced towards the dark opening, its simple mind too fearless to realise the danger of what had been asked of it, and she watched it disappear into the depths. With that job done, she moved away and found a patch of earth and sat for a while, trying to regain her centre and contemplated what she had seen.
Topshot had appeared during this process, and had recovered her ghillie suit from Aswon – not without some longing looks from him. They had chatted for a few minutes, before she had come back to the truck to check on her boss. Rocket was sat up in a chair, still looking a little pale, but with much of his character back. He made a rolling motion with his hands as he looked at the rest of his team, and then said "One hour." Seeing some of them moving stiffly, either with pain from the recent surgery, or fatigue from the rescue mission, he changed his mind it seemed, "Best make it two, and let's go steady". He watched for a moment to make sure that everyone was ok, and then turned his attention to Kai and the team.
"So, you came back. Guess that's a good thing for us… but why?"
Kai recounted the arrival of Spangles and Wee-woo, after their spirit had found them, and their impassioned plea to come and assist. As he spoke Rocket cast a look over at Spangles and a warmth touched his features. The warmth faded as Kai described their exploits into the temple and the horror of the creature they faced. Hunter slipped forwards and played some of the footage captured during the rescue. It was jerky, and of poor quality – given enough time it could easily have been faked up by any halfway competent graphics team. But Rocket knew they had not had the time for this kind of thing – and the footage also had a raw and visceral quality to it. Unless they were all fiendishly good actors as well, the screams of combat and the yells of fear were too real to be a fabrication. Rocket let his glance flit from one member of the team to another, regarding them steadily for a moment, committing faces to memory – and high density optical storage - before turning back to Kai.
"I guess thanks are in order. And some kind of reward probably wouldn't go amiss either, I think."
The rest of the team stepped back discreetly, giving Kai and Rocket some room to negotiate. They spoke for about ten minutes, ending their conversation with a handshake. Rocket rose, a little stiffly, then moved to help his team pack up their base, whilst Kai returned to the team. They looked at him expectantly, waiting to hear what he had negotiated.
"Seems these folks work directly for Ares – sort of a given based on the amount of their stuff they have. One of the Ares mapping sats noticed the earthquake and the temple, and asked them to come in and take a look around, on the quiet side. Rocket works with most of them directly, but Digger and Geo were sort of retired, and Wee-woo and Blaster are new it seems. Anyway, they thought they had enough for a simple recon mission, but got a little caught up in the investigation. Either way, they've probably got enough footage and stuff from the first level of the temple to get paid, but that's not going to help us."
Kai held up a hand as he finished speaking, watching as several of the team went to speak.
"However, after a little chat, Rocket seems to think they're going to be in such a rush to pack up their gear, they may get a little clumsy and accidently leave some behind. They'll probably be able to expense it back in, but he thinks it might be useful stuff. Practically kicking himself he was, about how clumsy they can get."
The conversation was interrupted as Tadibya zoned out, listening to something that no one else could see. They watched for a moment, to see what was going on, and then her eyes refocussed.
"Good news, I think. My watcher spirit can't find a way down to the bottom level – too much earth and rock in the way. That means that whatever is down there probably can't get out either – not without astrally pressing through tens of metres of rock and such like, which could take most of a day. So, I think it's trapped in there." Kai nodded in thanks to Tadibya.
Rocket's team moved efficiently and quickly, even with their injuries, and had the camp broken down, their gear loaded and their supplies back into the back of their cavernous truck in just over two hours – but there was a noticeable number of crates and boxes left in a small mound in the centre of the valley. They climbed aboard their truck, and the engine started, but a moment later, Rocket climbed back down, and approached the team with a large plastic case. Walking up to Hunter, he lifted the case up in both hands, and extended it out to him.
"Want you to look after this for me. Treat her right, though."
Hunter took the case with a neutral expression. It weighed a good few kilos, and looked like a transit case for a gun. The Ares Macrotechnology logo was imprinted in the plastic on both sides, so it seemed like a good bet anyway.
Rocket walked up to Marius next, and then reached into his inside pocket, pulling out a small plastic card, like a playing card, sealed in a clear bag.
"This is for the team, but I think you'll figure out what to do with it. Hope it covers things."
Marius took the proffered card, turning it over in his hands to examine it. It had a bright blue border, and a picture of some kind of jet fighter plane, along with various technical details – and on the back it proclaimed it was a "top trump card" – whatever that was.
Rocket shook Kai's hand, bade the team farewell, then returned to the truck and climbed into the passenger side. Without any more fuss, the truck pulled out smoothly, trundling down the valley bottom and towards the road at the bottom. The team waited and watched until they were out of sight, and then turned to examine the pile of loot left behind. The first thing they did was to check over it with a bug scanner – just to be sure. They didn't find anything, so they worked on cataloguing the goodies.
First up was one of the R series utility drones. This medium sized crawler had a pair of strong hydraulic arms and a small load bay at the rear, capable of carrying a reasonable weight of equipment. It would be useful for carrying gear to support the team, or to be used as a general utility bot – much like the other team had used it – for construction and excavation and the like. Unarmed and unarmoured, it was a fairly simple drone chassis, but looked like it had been upgraded somewhat to have a larger carrying capacity, and was probably worth about twenty thousand Nuyen.
In the next box was an EIS-200 drone, a small surveillance package attached to a set of thrusters and a large but currently deflated blimp. It looked like the equivalent of the popular "Condor" series of surveillance blimps, and the top spec one at that. If so, this little electric drone was probably worth just over thirty grand, and would provide long-term and subtle surveillance options to the team.
Next up was an Arbiter drone – looking like a smaller version of the more widely known Ares "Guardian" drone, this was an unarmoured vector thrust jet fuelled drone – perhaps the Ares version of a Cyberspace Dalmatian. Faster and better handling than its bigger brother, this drone could handle more weight or a larger weapon – but lacked any kind of resilience. It had a bracket already mounted on it that would accept an assault rifle it seemed, and Marius thought it was worth another twenty thousand.
The fourth box had a warning label on it, and proved to be good news – inside was fifty bars of explosives – one kilo each, of C12 plastic compound with a slightly greasy look to them. Also included were a dozen simple timers with a mechanical twist mechanism and four remote radio detonators. With the right permits, this stuff wasn't expensive – but it would help immeasurably with their strike against Dekita. Stashed down the side of the box was ten metres of det-cord – incredibly fast burning rope made with the same materials as the explosives that could be used to link together several charges to detonate all at once.
A small plastic bag contained nearly a dozen carved pieces of sandstone, etched into weird little faces. They were given to Tadibya to investigate, and she announced that they were expendable foci, tied to illusion magic. If she used one when casting one of her spells, she could add the extra power contained within to her spellcasting to give her an influx of extra mana to shape, greatly increasing the chance of the spell being successful. She examined them further, and told the team that using one of these would probably add between twenty five to fifty percent more to the chance of a spell working. Tads muttered a quiet thank you under her breath to Spangles, who she was sure was the donator of this little treasure.
Hunter opened his case next, discovering it was a large gun case, with laser-cut foam padding an assault rifle carefully inside. It was of course an Ares rifle, and appeared to be an Alpha Combat Gun. Favoured by Special Forces in the UCAS, it was a sturdy, well-built, reliable and high performance rifle, with an underslung mini-grenade launcher that added a lot of flexibility. This one though looked different in a couple of ways. First up, rather than being a semi-matt black slick finish normally used on top line combat weapons, this was a dull grey plastic finish, rough and quite strongly textured. It felt strong, and seemed to be sturdy and well crafted – just in a very unusual finish. The other glaring difference was a complex looking piece of electronics mounted on the top of the rifle, in the position normally taken up by the top rail and sight.
Carefully checking the weapon out, Hunter gave a broad grin – the top unit was a rangefinder unit that would integrate with the SmartLink-2 system built into the main weapon. With it, he could select a range with a mere thought, and have the grenades launched by the weapon explode mid-air, rather than on impact. It meant he could fire a grenade through a window, for instance, and have it explode just as it passed the window to catch someone sheltering in cover, rather than hoping the grenade hit the far wall of a room and bounced back. The rifle also felt quite heavy in his hands, as if there was a certain degree of internal bracing and reinforcement going on – maybe enough to use it as a club in combat? He certainly didn't want to think about that much through – this was far too nice a weapon to be wasting as a cricket bat!
The last item as the "top trump" card, given to Marius. It seemed to be some kind of military jet, from a pre-crash era. The picture showed a sleek jet craft banking hard through the air, and it was labelled as a "SU 35 Flanker". There were several rows of data printed underneath, showing the speed, take-off weight, cost, maximum ceiling etc. As Marius studied the card, his brow furrowed, and he read through the details again, out loud.
Max speed 2,780
Range 3,600
Max takeoff weight Kg 51,237
Max altitude 57,579
First flight 28/06/88
Cost 43,5000,000
Maximum take-off weight fifty-one thousand kilos or near enough? That didn't seem right… He explained to the others, who seemed equally confused. Tadibya came up with a suggestion – maybe the card was a miss-print of some kind? Some printing error that made the card rare or valuable to a collector? It might be a way that Rocket could pay them in funds that were not electronically traceable?
They considered this, and it seemed to make a certain amount of sense, so the card was returned to the plastic packet and stashed away safely, for future research. With a great deal of effort they managed to stash the three new drones, large box of explosives and their other gear into the back of the truck, and got their own equipment stashed away and got ready to move out.
As they rolled down the mountain back towards the main road, Shimazu got on the phone and called up Odemoyd. He told him that they had new information on the Temple, and that it was important. Odemoyd arranged to meet them at the t-junction where the mountain road they were on met the main road south of Tashkent – obviously not trusting the security of the cell phone that much.
They wound their way down the road, past the mine and the dam with no more than glares and watchful eyes from the two security forces, and were soon rolling through the lower farmlands. When they reached the main road, they saw Odemoyd leaning against the front of a battered car, smoking a cigarette and with a pair of shot glasses and a bottle resting on the bonnet. He greeted Shimazu and Kai, and poured a welcome drink for them.
Back in the truck, Tadibya checked Odemoyd out, letting her astral senses wash over him and looking for signs of deceit or excitement that could be the warnings of a setup. She felt his aura, probing at it gently and found the subtle data jacks attached to his nervous system, a small compartment in his side… and a black malignant cancer in the middle of his chest. She pulled back suddenly, and pondered what to do. The only way she could warn him was to let him know she'd been prying – which was generally considered to be an unfriendly act. She called over comms to Shimazu, and tried to get him to ask Odemoyd about being willing to submit to a scan – for some made up reason.
Shimazu had been speaking to Odemoyd, and had filled him in on the general state of the temple and the nature of the magical threat, trying to keep a fine line between revealing information to their employer who had treated them pretty well and not betraying the other team and the confidences they had shown. At the end of his description, he told Odemoyd that he recommended that he get magically checked out – just to be sure,
Odemoyd, who was adamant at first that he was fine, and didn't want to be hurt, thank you, refused the offer at first. Reassured repeatedly that the process was not painful, and with it explained that they were worried about what they had found in the temple and this would show if he was in danger, he grudgingly agreed to the process. Tadibya climbed down and made a big show of performing the "magic", before him, and then told him that he was fine as far as the magic from the temple – but did he know that he had cancer?
Odemoyd took a deep drag on his cigarette, and blew out smoke from his nose. Was she sure? Yes? Oh. What could he do? Kai advised him that nanites could be programmed to go in after cancerous cells, target the disease and eradicate it – but they were fairly expensive. Odemoyd considered for a moment, and then brightened. It was ok… all he had to do was find someone with the right tissue type, in good health – and he would send some boys round. A few shots to the kneecaps wouldn't hurt or stress the lungs any, then he could just get a straight swap done.
Tadibya returned to the truck, feeling a little sick that she may have just triggered a hunt for and death of someone, for no other reason than he was unfortunate enough to share a tissue type match with Odemoyd…
Once their business was concluded, they got back in the truck, and set off back towards Ashgabat – again. Their journey was slower than last time, but filled with less white-knuckle cornering and strained sounds. Hunter and Marius split the driving, and the kilometres passed uneventfully. By lunchtime the next day they had made their way back to the city, and found a fuel station to top up at. Their truck guzzled hundreds of litres of fuel into the cavernous tank, costing them over three and a half thousand Nuyen to replenish – but with that done, they were good to go for another long journey. They turned their sights once again towards the oil fields of Dekita.
