Date 29/01/2060, Location 41.64054, 41.6523

Hunter and Marius woke early, and headed out to carry out their various tasks around the city, with neither returning to the hotel until after lunchtime. Tadibya, Kai, Aswon and Shimazu, having been up most of the night, slept in – even Aswon, who normally got by on two or three hours of sleep a night, was out like a light, sprawled across the bed with a hand resting gently on his spear.

Nadia got up and ate, watched a bit of trid, and then did a few turns around the communal living room.

"Bored. Bored, bored, bored." She sighed, and looked around for something to do…

When Hunter and Marius returned, they headed into their respective rooms, and performed almost identical double-takes, stopping dead as the door swung shut behind them. Each of them surveyed their kit, and found things amiss. Stuff was not where they'd left it, was piled up differently, or had just been moved. Hunter was the first to react.

"Naaaadia?" Moments later, she pushed the door open and looked at him, raising an eyebrow. "Have you moved my stuff? The guns and things?" Nadia nodded, and with confirmation, Hunter pressed his lips together until they formed a thin line. He didn't care if she was Marius' girlfriend – he was going to tell her that she wasn't to mess with stuff. Just as he was about to speak however, she disappeared out of the doorway. He followed her, back into the common area, and was just winding up to have a go at her, when she found the dataslate she had been looking for.

"Ahah! Here. Right then. Here is a list of all of the weapons you have seized so far, along with the country of manufacture, details on calibre, magazine size and a link to the original manufacturer for parts, cleaning kits and supplies, and two or three after-market alternatives. Although some of them I only found the original parts – mostly it seems because they're too cheap and nasty for anyone else to bother."

Hunter paused, his mouth falling slightly open, as Nadia highlighted each column as she described it.

"This sheet here shows all of the ammo you have on hand, again broken down by calibre. For each size, I have split and bagged them into three tiers – Asian, Indian and Russian, which tend to be the lowest quality, then Eastern European which tends to be better and quite reliable, and then Western European and UCAS, which are generally regarded as the best. We have a large number of rounds falling into tier 3, and a significant amount in tier 1 and 2. My recommendation is to ditch the tier 3 stuff, or repurpose it."

Hunter found himself nodding along with her as she worked through the data. He wanted to be angry still, but this was actually useful stuff, and might help them out.

"Last of all with your stuff, I went through the various armoured clothing you have found or obtained, and traced back manufacturers where possible, or technologies where not, and then put them in categories for maintenance and repair, detailing the chemicals or processes needed to keep them functioning. I didn't do the weapons, as I don't know enough about them yet, but I was planning to speak to you when you returned."

Marius was leaning against the door frame, listening, and looking slightly more relaxed now. Having heard what Nadia had been up to, he had a fair idea of what had happened to his stuff. As she finished describing what she had done, and Hunter finally managed to close his mouth and nod at her abruptly, he sniggered at his teammate's obvious desire to have a grump, despite the work done.

Nadia turned towards Marius, and flicked over to a fresh document.

"And I've checked the specs on the truck, found the original manuals, though they're all in Russian which I don't speak, and the only translations I've found are awful. However, I've set up a planned maintenance calendar that interfaces with the telemetry on the truck, and depending on the distance travelled against time will warn you of impending oil changes and preventative work. I've also downloaded a number of utilities that track wear and tear, and some other systems we used on our trucks for logistics tracking and repairs."

She continued to babble on, describing what she'd been doing for the last few hours, as Marius gently took her by the hand and led her back into the room. He waited until she was finished, and then made sure to praise her for her initiative and efforts, saying that it would no doubt help the whole team out. He saw her tense, sensing the "but" coming, and tried to make sure he phrased it carefully.

"Everything else – pretty much anything really, there's no problems with you doing whatever you want with. This though, my deck – please don't do anything without checking with me. It's not that I don't trust you, or that I think you'd do anything wrong – but I plug this into my brain. It's deeply connected with… well, with everything. I know where every utility is, every control menu, every file. In the middle of combat, I'm not thinking about things – I'm just reacting, and this translates those thoughts. So it's essential that everything is exactly where I think it should be – even if that's not the most optimum place for it."

He saw her nodding in understanding, and thankfully – acceptance. Just as he was about to speak, he heard a shout from the direction of Aswon's room.

"Who touched my Purdey?"

He smiled, and looked over at Nadia.

"We have got to get you some other things to do to occupy you. You're quite clearly underutilised. Come on, let's go calm him down…"

Shortly afterwards Aswon had also calmed down, once it was clear that Nadia had actually just counted and quantified his ammo loadout, and had left the gun well alone. She'd also gone through all the plastic explosives, and had weighed it out into five hundred gram blocks using the kitchen scales, then carefully wrapped each piece in greaseproof paper, labelled it and stacked them neatly in a sealed box. Aswon was considerably more forthcoming with praise than Hunter had been, and suggested that with her logistics background, maybe she'd be good at working on route-finding and travel plans for them?

He was interrupted though by Marius announcing that he and Nadia were going out shopping, and maybe having a spot of dinner, and that they'd be out later. A few minutes later, she had changed, and they both left the suite, for the short walk into the centre of town.

It didn't take long for them to find what Marius was after, and soon Nadia was sporting a new commlink, with the teams numbers all programmed in and ready to go. The next stop was a store branded as "Aktive Fashion", which turned out to be another way of saying "practical and flexible clothing with limited armour". Nadia was soon kitted out in a set of imported and quite expensive SecureTech clothing – but it was a brand that Marius had heard off before, rather than a local knock-off copy. It was not anything to be charging into a gunfight with – but at least she had a good chance now against stray rounds.

They shopped a little more, but Nadia didn't seem to be "typical" and enjoy the experience of shopping – she didn't like browsing, and instead identified a need, and then went to solve it in the shortest and most efficient route possible. If anything, Marius found that it was he that was distracted and caught window shopping, whilst Nadia waited for him. With the shopping completed, they found themselves wandering past a trid theatre, playing a feature film about a bunch of desperate criminals sentenced to death, unless they performed a corporate black operation for a shadowy cabal. The plot sounded weak, but promised explosions and action, and they soon found themselves with tickets and were queuing at the concessions stand.

Finally Marius discovered a bad thing about Nadia. It appeared that she had a monster sweet tooth, and his offer of "whatever you want" was taken with no hesitation. Soon he found himself having spent about quadruple the price of the tickets on food and drink, and trailed after Nadia into the theatre with the bags of shopping, whilst she juggled the supply of junk food. Still, the presentation proved to be suitably loud and impressive, though the plot had holes big enough for them to get the truck through – sideways – and 120 minutes later the criminals had bonded together into a team of super spies with a bucket full of clichéd one-liners and had defeated the cabal.

Back at the hotel, Aswon had found the bags of tier three ammo, and had grabbed the small amount of leftover plastic explosive that hadn't made a round five hundred gram block. He spent a while trying to build a grenade, using the rounds to decorate the plastic, like a pineapple. It looked like a simple process, but after an hour or so of fiddling and trying it turned out to be much harder than it appeared. After the second attempt broke in half he realised he definitely needed better tools, and gave it up as a bad job. He cleared up and got changed into his running gear and went for a run with Hunter and Shimazu.

Kai was left alone in the hotel suite, studying his Russian vocabulary. He looked up at the end of the page, wondering why it had gotten so quiet. He called out for the rest, then shrugged, got himself a drink and then went back to studying. Mid-afternoon, he got himself a snack, and took something down for Tadibya, who was still hard at work on setting up her lodge in the trailer.

They arrived back into the suite in dribs and drabs, with Marius and Nadia causing a bit of a stir as they deposited a massive shopping bag full of junk food and snacks into the kitchen. Soon the trid was on and they were sitting back and relaxing, eating bad food and watching bad TV. Suddenly Tadibya piped up, making a general announcement to no one in particular that she might have to change her name. There was a pause, whilst everyone waited for someone else to speak, then Aswon cleared his throat.

"Ok, what are you going to change it to?"

"I have no idea. It depends on the circumstances."

"What circumstances?"

"I don't know, it depends what we find."

"Um, ok. So when will you change it?"

"I don't know. It depends where we are and what we're doing."

A note of exasperation crept into Aswon's voice, while the rest of the team just kept looking from one to the other, like some bizarre game of tennis.

"So will you tell us before you change it?"

"Umm... I can try. But if I need to change it, I'll just have to."

"So what you're telling us is that at some random moment, sometime in the future, you're just going to change your name to something completely different, potentially without telling us, and without any warning."

"Well, if you're going to put it like that… well yes, I suppose."

"Right. Well you do know we're just going to keep calling you Tads until you tell us otherwise, don't you. I mean, why are you even doing it?"

"It's a cultural thing."

"Oh. Well that's all right then."

Everyone else stared at Aswon, with obvious surprise on his face. They seemed to feel that as the designated spokesman for the group to establish what was going on, he'd been doing really well, nearly got to the goal line, and then just given up. But apparently, the explanation of "it's cultural" was all it took to make perfect sense to Aswon. They went back to watching the trid, occasionally flicking through the channels trying to find something they all agreed on.

They cycled past some low-budget action flick, with badly-choreographed martial arts sequences, and Nadia asked some question about why they were making funny noises. Several of the team started to explain their various takes on Chi, Ki or focus, Nadia probed further, obviously interested in some aspect of martial arts, and Shimazu offered to show her a few moves.

The moved to the other end of the room, clearing the meeting table out of the way and creating a clear space to work in. Shimazu showed her a simple release to start off with, demonstrating how to work against a joint and force someone who had grabbed you to let go. Nadia practiced a few times, and seemed to get the concept readily enough. Her body was somewhat stiff and robot-like, and she had no familiarity with the movements – but her basic level of fitness and the suppleness of youth carried her a fair way.

They practiced, and soon were being watched by the rest of the team, offering advice and sharing their pool of different martial art styles and techniques, telling anecdotes of bar fights in a dozen different countries. Nadia was a quick study, and was soon pushing the pace, attacking Shimazu in a flurry of strikes and punches. Shimazu, it turned out was pretty world-class with a blade, and not someone to take on with any kind of blade in his hand – but was less of an expert in Ju-jitsu. He was not inexperienced, and was a competent and dangerous fighter, but he didn't have that level of expertise that a seasoned instructor had. He was forced to fall back on learned reactions and muscle memory, and his counter move went in hard and fast. Nadia found herself rattled by a swift slap to the head, and then propelled into a wall at moderate speed by a joint lock. Shimazu managed to release when he realised what was happening – rather than driving through with the attack, but she still hit the wall with a thump, and reeled away, stunned.

There were a selection of winces and indrawn breaths from around the room, but amusingly Shimazu's gaze flitted over to Marius, who had come halfway out of his chair in automatic reaction. There was a moment when their eyes met, and Shimazu wondered if he'd crossed a line with that hit. Marius however shrugged a little, his eyes switching to Nadia and checking she was ok. His eyes widened, which gave Shimazu just enough of a clue that something was going on to turn and look at her – and cop straight for a slap to the face that drove him back a step or two, as Nadia followed up in a flurry of blows.

After the third time that Shimazu had counter attacked and hit Nadia hard enough to leave obvious bruising even past her skin tone, Aswon interjected, grabbing the mop from the kitchen and offering to show Nadia a few moves that were good with spears or improvised pole weapons. They continued to train for another hour, with Nadia soaking up the instruction like a sponge, and ending up dripping with sweat and moving stiffly – unused to the pace of the exercise as well as the rapidly developing bruises.

As she stopped, gasping for breath, Marius approached, and gently took her hand, leading her off to the room where he'd run a nice deep and almost scalding hot bath for her to soak in, with a mountain of bubbles from the half tub of muscle relaxant he'd added. The rest of the team slowly put the room back together, replacing the cushions on the furniture that they'd been using as impromptu training mats, and trying to scrub away the blood stains from the walls.

They settled back to watch the trid, finishing off the supplies of junk food purchased earlier. Examining the packets, Hunter with his newly acquired skills with Georgian managed to translate the ingredients, and told them exactly how much artificial sweeteners and flavourings were in each one – which probably explained why some of them were feeling a little hyperactive.

Aswon heard a noise, and his head perked up. Years of training and intense physical conditioning, augmented with the control granted by his magical talent kicked in. Muscles twitched and moved, changing the shape of his ear lobes and canal, subtly shaping the sound to be better heard. A gasp, of pain? Then another noise, then Ohhhhh! He reached over suddenly, almost knocking the drink out of Tads' hand, and grabbed the remote, swiftly turning up the sound.

In the room behind them a bottle of wine lay empty on the bedside table with Marius and Nadia stretched out onto the bed. Relaxed by the alcohol to be comfortable in a state of undress, Nadia trembled as Marius gently rubbed some cream onto her bruises, smoothing aching muscles with firm but tender motions of his fingers. Nadia arched her back, and her arms covered with goosebumps that had nothing to do with the temperature. She stared into his eyes, and her lips parted slightly as she made little moans of pain and pleasure as he rubbed at her body. Tentatively, she leant forward to kiss him, finding him receptive and responsive to her advances. Slowly and carefully their hands explored each other's bodies. Soon, events became… intimate, and the two youngsters found themselves – despite being from very different cultures and upbringing - to be entirely compatible.

In the lounge, Aswon concentrated on not hearing anything but the trid, and the conversation around him. Sometimes, it seemed, magical talent could be a bit of a curse, as well as a blessing. After a few minutes of hearing soft moans and other noises at the edge of his hearing, despite his best efforts, he pushed himself out of his seat and announced he was going for a quick walk around the hotel, to get some fresh air. Hunter got to his feet too, but the rest of the team stayed where they were.

As they stepped out into the hallway their attention was caught by the hotel bellhop approaching them, holding an envelope in his hands. He smiled as he saw them, extending his hand towards them. Then envelope was medium-sized, cream and had a woven texture. As they examined it, they could see it was actually paper, not a plastic film… very old-fashioned. The bellhop seemed confused at them not taking the proffered item, and again tried to give it to them.

"Whoa there… where did this come from? Who gave you this?"

"A man came to the front desk. A wide man, in a suit. Said this was for 1205."

"Describe him for me."

They listened as the bellhop did his best to describe the man, but it became clear that he was nothing unusual and had no distinguishing marks or characteristics. He'd turned up in a black car with tinted windows, climbed out of the passenger side, and then come to the front desk and delivered this single message.

Hunter took the envelope, and gently opened the seal, making sure to face it towards the bellhop – just in case. Inside was a single sheet of parchment paper, covered in hand-written text. The paper was thick and textured, too, with the odd wisps of fibre coming off the sides. The text looked to have been written by someone used to writing with a fountain pen – or a very good computer that varied the pitch and spacing of text to make it look hand-written. There was gold leaf in an intricate pattern top and bottom, in some kind of crest of arms.

Aswon tipped the bellhop a few Nuyen, and watched him scurry away back towards the lifts.

"What's it say, Hunter?"

"It's addressed to 'The residents at 1205', and invites us to attend a garden party and dinner at 'The Castle', 20:00 tomorrow. Says black tie and…" his voice trailed off and Aswon could see his eyes scan over the line again. Then again. "Black tie and discreet pistols only. Signed, on behalf of Mr. Kulkachev". They shared a look. What kind of host put on a party and then told his guests they could only bring small guns to it? They abandoned the idea of a walk, and instead went back into the suite, standing in front of the trid display until they had everyone's attention, and then relaying the contents of the note.

"Do you think we should get Marius and let him know?"

Aswon adjusted his hearing slightly, then shook his head.

"Marius has other things on his mind right now. I'm sure we could disturb him, but unless we need to drive somewhere, I think we should leave him be for the moment."

Kai examined the note, rubbing his fingers across the paper, sniffing at it, and examining the flowing calligraphy carefully.

"Well, Mr. Kulkachev likes buying expensive paper, that's for sure, and that looks like decent gold leaf – he's certainly not a poor man. But I know what you're going to say… we've got a mission, we should concentrate on that. So let's do some research on Mr. Kulkachev, Hunter if you'd be so kind, just so we know who we're avoiding. Otherwise we carry on as normal, we collect the truck tomorrow, and we're out of here and on the road to Constantinople." There were relieved looks from some of the others, but they nodded. Hunter connected his datajack to the computer, and started to line up some search bots, firing them down the VPN to start crawling through websites around the world to see what they could dig up.

Sihmazu excused himself and headed down to the ground floor, and headed to the kitchens. Sliding through the door and ignoring the "Staff Only" sign, he headed towards the rear of the kitchens, where he found what he was looking for – a bunch of staff mostly finished with the clean down for the day, clustered around the fire exit having a crafty smoke. He coughed discreetly, and was rewarded with a moment's panic as the smokers thought they had been caught by the shift manager, then recognition that it was a guest – one of the guests from the penthouse suite. A couple of the staff were more skilled in English than the rest, and respectfully asked him how they could help – and did he not see the "Staff Only" sign? Shimazu ignored them however, relying on the fact that they'd been very generous with their tips to the hotel staff on arrival and during their stay.

"There's a property, up on the hill. I think people call it 'The Castle'. Owned by Mr. Kulkachev. I'd like to know more about it…"

Shimazu returned to the suite some time later, and pulled a chair round to face the others, sitting just to the side of the trid. Kai hit the remote and paused the feed, so he could speak, and they listened as Shimazu relayed what he had learnt from the hotel staff.

Mr. Kulkachev appeared to run the local mafia, and had his fingers in pies all across town. A number of businesses were fronts for his criminal empire, it seemed, and he was involved in prostitution, drug and gun running, slavery, kidnapping, extortion and blackmail. Shimazu relayed a few of the stories he'd heard, where people had been rounded up by his heavies and had fingers broken for minor disagreements, or arms and legs for more serious infractions. Several of the staff had admitted working with his agents in the past, thought they all claimed that none of them had relayed any details of the team to him.

Shimazu shrugged at this point, and told them that he did actually believe them – none of them had seemed especially shifty, and one of them had said he'd heard about the team due to the amount of money they had spent on their vehicle – word was all over town that some foreigners were here, and they were rich, and if you gave them instant service and whatever they wanted, they threw lots of money at you…

But, it appeared that Mr. Kulkachev was certainly a big deal in the town, and someone to be careful around. Hunter looked around with a scowl as Shimazu finished his stories and pushed his computer away from him in disgust, pulling the jack out of the discreet slot behind his ear.

"Well, that's a lot more than I got, which is approximately nothing. Our Mr. Kulkachev doesn't appear in any public databases or indexes that I can see, and isn't referenced in any news or media articles. He's got no matrix presence at all, that I can see – which is suspicious as hell. Someone has to be managing his data for him."

They digested this information, and shortly afterwards headed to bed – all of them a little more worried about this invite and local crime lord, with the exception of Nadia and Marius, who were still blissfully unaware and still very much enjoying the moment.

As the sun rose on the Friday morning, Kai headed over to the garage to pay the instalment on the truck repairs, whilst Hunter, Aswon and Shimazu went for their morning run. Tads was already down in the trailer, hanging dreamcatchers and writing on the wall whilst munching on a slice of toast. Nadia and Marius were still in their room, not having been seen since last night.

When the three runners returned, they found Kai searching through the directory of town services on the hotel matrix link, looking for a shop selling or renting black tie outfits. Kai heard them return and turned to face them.

"Right, get yourselves cleaned up, we need to go and get some gear for the party tonight. I went to the garage to check on the truck, and found them all sitting around doing make-work. Turns out that there is a delay in the parts coming, that they need to fix the last bits. They said they were very upset by this and regretted the delay, but that wasn't evident from their body language. But right after I'd finished talking with them about the parts delay, they mentioned that they'd heard we'd been invited to the castle for the party, which must be very exciting for us. So exciting that perhaps we had neglected to respond to the invitation."

Kai saw the change in demeanour of the three, and nodded.

"Yeah, that's what I thought, too. So I told them of course we were going, in fact we were spending today to make sure we had some nice clothes so we wouldn't insult our host, and we were looking forward to it very much. So, that's why we're going shopping for new clothes."

Marius emerged from his room, disturbed by the conversation, and Kai ran through the details again, getting the same response from Marius as from the others. A few minutes later, they had found the one place in Batumi that did formal evening wear. It didn't look good – with only one shop, they were likely to be a bit stuffed getting clothes to fit Shimazu and Hunter, who were both on the large size.

They pottered around, doing some small work to get ready for their journey. Marius fitted two of the better assault rifles into the conversion kits he'd obtained from the shipyard, ready to mount into a drone later on, whilst Hunter started work on their route map, looking at the coast road and likely trouble spots. Around lunchtime, the team assembled – rousing Nadia from her bed and pulling Tads out of the trailer, and headed to the tailors.

'Pieters' was a medium-sized store in a small arcade, flanked with other speciality shops selling touristy knickknacks on one side, and crystals, geodes and homeopathic remedies on the other. Inside there was actually a decent selection of suits and formal wear, available both to hire and to purchase. Getting long sleeved cocktail dresses for Tads and Nadia, along with smart tuxedos and trousers for Kai and Marius was straight forward enough. Aswon required a few minutes work, selecting a larger suit and quickly taking in the waist and lowering the hem on the trousers as far as possible to account for his height.

Shimazu and Hunter waited patiently, getting ready for the bad news – but here they were surprised. The owner took them to the back of the shop, where there was a rail dedicated to "Unusual" according to the label. There were clearly garments here sized for oversized Humans, Orcs and Trolls, in a variety of sizes – and both of them found that there was a suit available to fit them with only the most minor of adjustments. There wasn't any choice – but there was at least something to wear.

All of the clothing looked to be of decent manufacture, and was made of sturdy fabrics designed to resist light impacts and shrapnel. It wasn't something to go into a gunfight with, but it was better than nothing. They also had some cufflinks, belts, bowties and other accessories to finish off their outfits. They debated the cost of rental versus buying, but Kai cut short the conversation and just pulled out the credstick to buy all seven outfits.

"Look everyone, we're going to need these again some time, they're useful to add to the wardrobe. Let's not mess around." He put his thumb on the authorisation pad, and then flinched as the sampler built into the reader fired and the needle shot into his digit to extract a drop of blood to confirm his DNA. Fortunately the reader stayed green – the ID check held up and the transaction was authorised." Only when he turned back did he see that he'd just authorised a payment for thirty five thousand Nuyen – but by then it was too late.

He was saved from further conversation when his phone rang, and he took it quickly before anyone could interrupt. He listened carefully, speaking only a few times.

"Yes…. I see. Ok. Yes, yes. Oh that is good news. Yes, a happy coincidence. Ok then."

He put the phone away and turned to the rest, nodding his head to the outside. They scooped up their packages, and headed out into the narrow thoroughfare then clustering around Kai.

"It seems that they have managed to find an alternative source of parts, so they can start work on the truck again. They've been delayed by this a bit though, and instead of finishing at 17:00, they'll be done about midnight. To make up for the inconvenience, they're not charging us extra for the labour overtime… but they understand that we're going to be up at the castle at the party, so we can collect the truck on the way back from there. Isn't that lucky."

They all recognised that it wasn't actually a question, and headed back to the hotel with their purchases. As they walked through the town, they looked around at the various businesses, workers and shoppers – wondering which of them were reporting back to the elusive and unknown Mr. Kulkachev. Suddenly the town didn't seem so innocent and benign as before.

They got ready as evening fell, putting on their smart gear and working just what counted as a "discreet pistol". Most of them ended up leaving their decidedly heavy pistols or hand cannons behind, settling on just decent knives or batons instead. Tads was waiting by the windows for the guys to finish arguing about the size of their gun barrels, and saw a shadow cutting across the stars. She called out to the rest, pointing up into the sky and asking if anyone knew what that was. It took a few moments, but then someone else saw it, too – or rather, saw the patch of occluded stars, where they were not displayed quite right.

"Big, whatever it is. Moving at a reasonable speed too. I'm not getting anything on IR or UV either – it's definitely been stealthed up." Marius stared at the shape, trying to estimate range and size to factor against speed.

"Wow, ok. That's why it's so hard to spot. They've got a spirit riding with them, I guess concealing the vehicle. Looks moderately powerful, too. So they've got a shaman somewhere in there." Tads dropped out of astral space and squinted at the shape again, along with the rest of the team. Under intense scrutiny they made out a few more details and worked out that it was a zeppelin of some kind, with a large gondola slung underneath the massive lifting bag. As it went past, they also saw a wash of heat and exhaust, indicating that it was also jet-powered. And as they watched, it seemed to be making a beeline towards the hill to the east of town, with the castle on the top… curious.

They walked down into town, to the address on the invitation, and found the ground base for the cable car. It was an ancient structure, made of painted wood and wrought iron, and looked like it would be more at home on a Swiss mountainside than in a sea-side town. Yet, here it was, lit with equally ancient electric lights, casting a warm yellow glow onto the street outside. And unlike the average cable car station, this one had a length of red carpet rolled out of the door, and brass poles carrying a thick braided rope making a walkway to the nearby car park. As they arrived, they could see a number of large and heavily-set gentlemen, crammed into suits – suits that looked to be exactly the same style and fit as the ones Shimazu and Hunter were wearing. They were also quite blatantly armed.

Aswon got a good look at the firearms, and then turned and stared out at the city centre surrounds. Facing away from everyone around, he spoke quietly, knowing that his voice would be transmitted to the discreet earpieces that the rest of the team were wearing.

"Shotguns, Frenchi-SPAS22s. Nice bits of kit, pricy, but well regarded by mercs. Good feed mechanisms and very reliable. These look like they have the extended mag versions, with an underbarrel laser, additional recoil springs in the stock, and a triple pictinny rail. They also look to have a smartgun fitting, though I'm not seeing an external link or induction pads on the heavies. But they're not cheap bits of kit, and these have been tricked out by the looks of things."

They waited their turn in the queue, rubbing shoulders with a bunch of city officials and businessmen, it seemed. As they approached the front of the queue, they were checked over for weapons by one of the goons with an expensive-looking weapon scanning wand, and then asked for their names.

"It's Mr. Kai, and party, from suite 1205". The heavy nodded and checked off an item on his pad, before he dropped it back onto his little security desk and then opened the door of the waiting cable car. They shuffled in, with half a dozen of the other visitors too, and found that inside the car was another pair of guards – also with the SPAS22s, but this time in sturdy armoured clothing in a discreet woodland cammo pattern. The door closed and with a lurch, the car left the station and started to climb on the journey up and out of the city. As they pulled out, there was a flurry of messages over the net, murmured as people turned to stare out of the windows.

"They just left the guest list on display, on the side. Dead easy to scan the names of the others."

"They were all looking at the same people, too, very little combat awareness, no-one covering the other zones."

"Those guns – they'd been fired, but not much. I'd say minimal range time. Very little pitting or scoring, but no wear on the grips or handles either."

"Those guys – they're big, but they're not well defined. Definitely look more like hired thugs than mercs."

Kai engaged a group of the other visitors in conversation, and soon found himself the centre of attention – giving the others plenty of time to talk and observe. There seemed to be a cross-section of people coming to the party according to the gossip, and it seemed that this was *the* social scene for Batumi. You knew you'd made it when you got an envelope with a hand-written invitation. All of the people seemed to know each other to a greater or lesser extent – so having new people from out of town was a novel thing for them. Shimazu watched over his back, studying the crowd carefully, but saw only curiosity and interest, with no hostile intent at all.

Nadia studied the other women in the car, and tried to copy their body language and blend in, putting her arm through Marius's and listening attentively to what was going on. The locals seemed to speak English pretty well – at least at this level of society – and politely spoke that near the team, apart from a few whispers.

Aswon was at the front of the car, standing next to the guard there, and he pointed at the gun and complimented the guard. The guard's English was very basic, so the conversation wasn't going to flow well, but Aswon was able to get over that it looked very big and scary. The guard started to babble at him in a weird mix of Georgian and English, swapping in and out as he struggled for words, but Aswon kept nodding in an encouraging way, and the guard continued to show off the "features" of his gun, giving Aswon a very close view of his kit. He was surprised, though, when the guard turned to him and told Aswon to punch him. He clarified, and was again told – yes, punch. Making sure his adept powers were not engaged, he threw a deliberately weak punch, hitting the reinforced plate and gel pack embedded into the jacket. He made a big show of rubbing his knuckles and wincing, whilst the guard slapped at his chest and flexed his muscles.

As they neared the top of the cable car run, the front guard turned and peered up at the approaching station, taking his attention from Aswon, who turned away and keyed his microphone.

"These guys are definitely packing decent combat armour – lots of ballistic weave and Kevlar lining in here, with a ceramic inner plate at least. Unless you can aim for the face, if you shot any of these guys with a 'discreet pistol' it's not going to do anything to them."

They arrived at the top station, which mirrored the bottom loading station. There were more armed guards here, again all with the SPAS22 set fully tricked out, and were shining their blue laser sights around on the floor. The team and the other guests were shown out of the top station, and shepherded towards the building at the top – a large two storey house with distinctive wings on either side of the main body.

On their left, however, was the hill looking down towards the town. They could see the lights of the city centre clustered below them, the cooler and brighter lights of the shipyard off to the north, and sparser and more orange lights of the housing areas and suburban streets to the south. The hill itself was completely barren for nearly a hundred metres or so, scoured clean of all vegetation and cover – a horrible killing zone to charge up and over. At the top, there were fence posts every few metres, but nothing seemed to be strung between them – which was normally incredibly bad news. Large sensor pods were also mounted on the top of a number of the posts, with various lights and antennas in evidence. Whoever lived up here was definitely keen on keeping the place secure and private, that was for sure.

They followed the curving path and went through an archway into a narrow and dark passageway, then out the matching doorway at the other end into a large courtyard, lit by coloured lights embedded into bushes and planters playing up onto the walls. Large gas burners dotted around the periphery burned away, keeping the cold at bay, and a number of white-coated waiters circulated through the crowd with silver trays, collecting empty glasses and returning with drinks. An elderly gentlemen in a black coat held out his hand for the invitation, and after briefly checking it announced, "Mr Kai, and associates," in a loud and clear voice, cutting through the chatter in the courtyard and directing all eyes towards them.

A number of statues were placed around the courtyard, lit by the uplighters, and Kai moved to examine one. He peered in closely, and muttered into his comms microphone as he did so.

"Good quality fakes by the looks of things. Impressive if you don't know much about the art world."

The team spread out, mingling around the courtyard. Aswon headed for the curving steps leading up to a roof terrace, and took position about half-way up, where he could look out over the crowd below. Hunter moved to the middle of the courtyard east wall, standing next to the fountain with its large coppery-coloured dolphin sculptures spitting water in an arc. Tads moved to the far side of the courtyard spying a selection of growing vines and bushes in some kind of ornamental garden, preferring to stand near the natural environment. Marius and Nadia found a corner near a gas burner and took refuge there, whilst Kai and Shimazu mingled in the main part of the courtyard.

As the team split up, each found themselves the centre of a growing knot of locals. People drifted over in ones and two, drinks in hand to examine the newcomers. As with the cable car, there was no hostility or ill-intent present, at least none that they could detect. All the other guests seemed to know each other, and they guessed that the local scene was quite insular – so "visitors at court" were interesting, and bought news of the outside world. Of course, if anyone was manoeuvring for advantage it only made sense to study the outsiders and find out how they would affect the political balance.

Aswon found himself surrounded by a group of people who seemed fascinated with his skin tone and hair, and was soon discussing which part of Africa he hailed from and what tribal life was like. After a few minutes, one of the locals respectfully, and somewhat hesitantly, asked if they could touch his hair. Guardedly he agreed, though he warned them to be gentle, and the couple gently touched his dreadlocks, as if handling some kind of dangerous exotic creature – which wasn't that far from the truth. This kicked off a new way of excited conversation, which further intensified when Aswon smiled and they caught site of his lion-fang implants. That started a whole new discussion, and it became clear that very few people in Batumi had much in the way of body modifications or implants – not from any bias or issue with them, but mostly due to a lack of GDP. The crowd here mostly sported datajacks, but then they also represented some of the movers and shakers of Batumi.

Tads ended up talking with some people about plants and horticulture, working the angle that she was a medical researcher with the team, with an interest in natural remedies. The people talking with her listened politely, but didn't seem to engage with the "strange hippie" to quite the same extent.

Over in the corner, Marius and Nadia were approached by a few people, noticeably several of the couples. They started to engage in conversation, asking where they had come from and Nadia started to respond, then paused as Marius frowned. He smoothly took over the conversation, but caught an angry look from Nadia. When one of the other couples started to talk, Marius opened up a side channel just to Nadia, using his internal commlink. He subvocalized a message, inaudible to anyone but her.

"Sorry, didn't want to talk over you. But we don't know who is a spy here, so just wanted to say that we should try and be subtle and not give information away. But feel free to take the lead in the conversation now, ok?" He saw Nadia nod, and the frown disappeared. Hopefully the situation was resolved now – he'd hated to talk over her, realising that she'd had a lifetime of men interrupting her and talking over her. She moved around and slid an arm around him, smiled up at him and then answered the question raised by the council member about their route from Tbilisi, describing the beautiful views afforded by the mountain route.

Hunter found himself grabbed by a few people who asked what his name was, to which he responded in Georgian – asking if his pronunciation was correct? They seemed surprised by his skill with the language, and switched to their native tongue, and started to chat with him. Every time they asked him a direct question, he deflected, asking them to clarify one of the words they had used, or querying a tense or their sentence structure – making sure to give nothing away while pumping them for information.

In the centre of the courtyard, Kai was giving a critical appraisal of one of the statues. Drawing on years of experience, he was spinning words into silk, describing the artistic merits of the pieces, and ascribing all manner of values and traits on the person who had collected them. The little crowd of hangers-on listened attentively, and seemed to be impressed with his travels and experience.

They mingled for another ten minutes or so, chatting away with the various guests, and getting a handle on their roles and positions. There was a mix of people here – two members of the local council, several bankers from the branch office of the bank of Tbilisi, a couple of senior businessmen, a cleric from the local Orthodox church, a policewoman, a couple of lawyers, the human resources manager from the shipyard and so on. They all seemed happy to chat away about their chosen professions, but had nothing bad to say about their host – their expressions going through a range of emotions from barely disguised fear and trepidation through to shows of admiration and praise for his wise business practices.

At eight thirty, the centre patio doors opened, and the man in the black jacket that had announced them stepped over the threshold from the house into the garden and cleared his throat conspicuously.

"Ladies and Gentlemen. Your host, Mr. Kulkachev, bids you welcome and invites you into his home to share a meal with him. Please, step this way…" and with a flourish and a half bow indicated that people should enter the house. The team met up in the centre of the courtyard as people started to drift in, took a deep breath and then followed the small crowd into the house.