The team awoke with a series of grumbles and moans, silencing their alarms and climbing out of bed, bleary-eyed. Decent beds had helped, but it was not even 5 am, and they'd not got to bed particularly early. They gathered around the breakfast table in the main room, drinking black coffee and chewing on the soy-bars they'd found in the kitchen cupboards. Once everyone was on their second cup of scalding hot and strong coffee, and was feeling vaguely more alive, they discussed the plan for their stay. The morning was going to be spent at the ID manufacturers, being scanned – but after that they needed to follow up with the garage that Sofi had told them about and work on their plates, otherwise they were going to get hassled no end about the truck, it seemed. Tads explained that she wanted plenty of time to work in her lodge developing greater understanding of her spell library, but it was Aswon that stopped conversation around the table when he addressed Kai.
"I have an offer to make. We seem to have come together as a team, and some of us have formed a deeper bond. Although I am still a mercenary, I don't feel it is appropriate to bill you for our travel time. I am here now because I choose to be, not because I am paid to be. So, I would still expect payment for combat days, but there will be no charge for non-combat time."
Kai seemed surprised, but leant over the table and quickly shook Aswon's hand to cement the deal. The rest of the team looked on with curiosity mostly – they knew that Aswon had SAID that he expected to be paid, but until now, he hadn't been, as far as they knew. But this seemed to indicate that he would be paid, at some nebulous forward point.
Around five forty they filed out of the apartment and descended the stairs down to the main entrance, filing out to the truck. A few moment of work and the trailer was unhitched, and they left it behind under the watchful and unblinking gaze of the external security cameras, and headed south west. Even at this early hour, there was traffic on the roads, but it wasn't too bad yet. After a few minutes of driving, they found themselves crossing a large inlet via the Ataturk Koprusu bridge. There was a second bridge a half kilometre to the east, but nothing to the west for three to four kilometres. Come rush hour, these bridges would be rammed, and they could only imagine how long it would take to get anywhere…
They drove down the main boulevard as far as possible, keeping an equal eye on the early morning traffic as it raced and dodged around them and the houses and shops they drove past. The buildings flanking the road were a constant stream of service businesses on the ground floors, topped with three to five floors of residential property, with narrow streets and a confusing one-way system leading off to either side of the main road.
As they neared the location on their map, they had to turn off into a maze of thin and winding side streets, crammed with cars parked on both sides of the narrow roads. The buildings were mostly three or four storey apartment blocks, crammed together and overhanging the pavements, which gave the area a claustrophobic feel. The architecture was stark and uncompromising, slabs of concrete and plasteel with narrow balconies hanging off buildings, satellite dishes festooned over the edges of rooves and signs of age everywhere. Sometimes buildings were missing, evidence of some previous trouble perhaps, and smaller hovels had been thrown together in the space between apartment blocks, exposing their sides and sloppy construction. Some of the buildings had been tiled, while most of the rest were painted a variety of light colours, which lifted the mood a little and made the streets lighter than they would otherwise have been.
Marius threaded the truck carefully through the maze, following the directions from Hunter, until they found the right street and then pulled through an incredibly tight turn into a tiny courtyard in the centre of a block. The truck scraped under the archway and ended up in the dark and secluded space at the rear of the flats. Large bins were scattered around, and a couple of stray dogs peered out of the back porch of an apartment, growling at them while their tails pointed straight out behind them. The team ignored them, and followed Marius as he lead them to a plain and battered door, and then stood waiting for a moment. They wondered why he didn't knock – but then realised he was probably making a call from his internal com-link.
The door opened, revealing a grubby and squalid-looking kitchen, and they filed in silently, looking around them at the decrepit ground floor apartment. The lino was cracked and split, and the worktops had a layer of grime over them that looked to be years in the making. To their right, though, there was an abrupt change – the doorway led into the old dining room which had been knocked through into the lounge in a very amateur fashion. Metal props supported scaffold boards of dense plastic which held up the roof where the dividing wall had been taken out to make room for an extensive 3d scanner that was a mass of chrome and black plastic that was completely at odds to the plastic furniture and faded wallpaper of the room. Power and data cables snaked out of the scanner in various directions, to screens arrayed around the outside of the room and small control panels, and in one corner of the room a large and powerful-looking computer system hummed away with a couple of desk fans pointed at it to keep the airflow moving.
A young man in jeans and a t-shirt sat by the computer system, but didn't even move as they entered, just sat staring blankly at the wall. As they passed him they saw the florescent orange cable emerge from under his arm and connect to the host, and realised he was fully immersed in the machine. The decker's meat body sat in the chair, but his persona was projected via his neural interface and was running the computer systems, able to process information at speeds that manual operators could only dream of.
Once they had all filed in, and the door was closed behind them, the man spoke at last, welcoming them to his workshop. Marius introduced them to Milo, and identified the team to him one at a time. Milo was about 1.7 metres tall, with black hair and very dark brown eyes. A neatly trimmed beard and moustache covered his mouth and chin, but the sides of his face were clean shaven. A subtle datajack showed behind his ear, and he was dressed in a lightweight set of combat trousers and a large and baggy hooded top that was covered in apparently random numbers.
Milo explained the process to them – they each needed to strip down to underwear, and go through the scanner, allowing them to get a detailed set of body measurements for populating into various databases and to work up their fake medical and purchase histories for their fake IDs. They'd also be questions to ask them about their life and experience, skill sets and abilities to carry accents which would also be fed into the mixture. They'd need half a day for the initial measurements now, and another four or five half days over the next two weeks to refine the material and zero in on the perfect mix of stolen details, injected fiction and carefully crafted mistakes that would naturally creep in with any globe-spanning bureaucracy.
The team listened and nodded, and started to strip down. They cast a few glances at Marius and Nadia, wondering if there was going to be an issue from her Islamic upbringing, but she seemed happy enough to strip down to her bra and pants as the rest of the guys – it was in fact Tads that looked over at Milo and queried if it was absolutely necessary. Milo responded that it was, not even glancing at her as he moved about the equipment and calibrated the sensors. For a moment Tads looked unsure, but started to strip off her clothes just the same.
As she pulled her top over her head, Nadia let out a little gasp of surprise and horror, raising her hands to her mouth, blushing deeply as Tads looked over at her. The rest of the team looked up and stared at the shaman, and she looked back over at each of them in turn. Her lips were pursed together, and she silently watched them, her gaze flitting from one to another as she waited for one of them to speak. None of them did, though – they just stared at her torso and the mass of puckered and twisted flesh, knitted into tight whorls and patterns of stretched dermis. Tads shrugged and dropped her top, then pulled down her trousers, revealing the skin on her thighs and backs of her legs were equally scarred. Kai and Shimazu stared for a few moments, each of them examining the deep burns and scar tissue from a medical viewpoint, and thinking how lucky she must be to still be alive – the burns were deep, no doubt 3rd degree over significant parts of her body, and showed no signs of skin grafts or modern treatments. She must have been caught in a horrific fire at some point in her life, and from just above her knees to just below her collarbone was a mass of healed tissue.
Milo looked up from his scanners and caught sight of Tads.
"Oh for fucks sake. You didn't think to mention this?" He flashed a glance at Marius, who shrugged at him.
"I didn't know. First time I've seen her without clothes on."
"There's a reason for that, you know," Tads muttered. Nadia looked away, embarrassed by her reaction and not able to meet her eyes, and the rest of the team went back to stripping their own clothes off, finding bits of scanning equipment to stare at.
Milo came over, and then slowly walked around Tads. She watched him, but strangely enough, she didn't feel judged by him. His eyes flickered over her, and he took some measurements of the extents of her scarring, but he didn't show any awareness of his attention, and he gently poked at her without any shame. It was as if his focus was entirely on how difficult it would be to find a matching ID to steal and customise, rather than her value of beauty.
"Alright. We can still do this, but it's going to be tough on this one. But that's why you pay for the best, yes? Right. Ok, well first one please, into the scanner…"
As they waited, Aswon thought back to the time when Kai had mis-thrown the smoke grenade which had gone off in the truck, and Tads fleeing from the vehicle in a screaming panic, and the reason for that made a lot more sense now. It was certainly something to bear in mind for the future – if they ever found themselves in a situation where fire was involved, they would have to look after her.
They got scanned, one by one, moving into the machine and standing as still as they could while the laser head spun around them on armatures, sliding slowly down the body and producing an ultra-detailed 3d model of their body. It took hours, with people fidgeting and having to be rescanned, or needing to hold arms and legs out at unnatural angles to get satisfactory readings. They each filled in an extensive questionnaire as well, not without some discomfort from a few of them at the personal and detailed nature of the questions. They took their lead from Marius though, who seemed to have complete faith in Milo.
It was just after lunchtime when they were finished, and they agreed a schedule with Milo for their return, fitting in the half days he needed them physically around for follow-up measures or photos, or to answer questions for the backgrounds. They managed to get them spread out enough so they had several two-to-three day breaks, to allow them to leave town and go talismongering, or engage in some other business as needed.
They got back into the truck and retraced their route. What had taken them about fifteen minutes early in the morning took closer to hour on their return as they inched through heavy traffic and crawled across the bridge. Eventually though they made it back to the house, and dropped off Tads, Kai and Shimazu, then headed north through the crowded city streets towards Grey Automotive. According to the matrix site, it lay in the shadow of the main crossing of the Bosphorus Straight – but according to the information from Sofi, would be able to assist them with their issues without official oversight.
They were about two thirds of the way to their destination when they heard the distinctive whoop whoop of sirens from behind them, and saw the police patrol car flashing it's headlights at them. Marius took one look at the traffic around them, and realised that there was no way to evade, and slowed the truck, indicating over to the side of the road. The car followed them in, parking at a thirty degree angle behind them. Both doors opened and policemen appeared, weapons already drawn and aiming at the truck, ignoring the honks of traffic from angry drivers forced to detour around them. One policeman moved towards the rear of the cruiser and rested on the bodywork, aiming his pistol towards the front of the truck, covering his partner who approached cautiously.
In the truck, Aswon and Hunter climbed through into the back, and hid themselves under blankets and pillows, aware that they didn't have IDs that would pass official muster yet, leaving Marius and Nadia in the front. A few moment later there was a sharp rap on the door as the policeman used the barrel of his pistol to grab their attention. Marius opened the door slowly and carefully and with a broad smile looked down at the policeman, before quietly speaking in fluent Turkish.
"Good morning, officer? Is there some kind of problem?" He had twisted in his seat and bought one knee up onto the seat, and had laced both hands around it – making it clear that he had nothing in his hands and couldn't possibly make any kind of hostile movements. The officer looked up into the cab, and saw the blond man staring down at him. Clean shaven, neat and presentable, and with a young lady peering over his shoulder, with no weapon in sight or anything else that looked amiss, he lowered the barrel of his gun slightly.
"This truck has a warrant on it, for violent assault and theft. I need to see your IDs." The policeman spoke firmly, but the edge had vanished from his voice. He took one hand from his pistol and beckoned for them to get out of the truck, and then stepped back a few paces to give them room. Marius slid over towards the door and then turned away from the policeman and climbed down from the cab, slowly and carefully, making sure to keep both hands visible during the process. When he reached the ground, he stood where he was and raised his hands above him, and helped Nadia down from the cab too, almost supporting her entire weight as she climbed out, and turning around with her. Everything was carried out slowly and surely, and he kept his face calm and composed. When Nadia reached the ground, he grabbed his jacket in his left hand, and pulled it open, and then slowly reached in with just a thumb and forefinger, to reach for his ID. He passed over the ten centimetre long tube of his "Médecins Sans Frontières" SIN to the policeman, who took it with his left hand while his right held his pistol still aimed in their general direction. Marius noted however, that his finger had moved off the trigger and was now stretched out alongside the receiver…
The policeman craned his head to look through the open door of the cab, but couldn't see anyone else in the front of the truck. The angle made it difficult to see though, and he'd would have to climb through the door and up into the cab to do a proper search. For the moment, he turned his head towards Nadia.
"And your ID, miss?"
Nadia started to reach for her ID as well, and then froze. Thoughts flashed through her mind – if her dad had listed her as missing, there was probably a note tagged to her ID. That was back in Azerbaijan, and technically she was over the border in a separate country, but it wasn't a chance she was willing to take. Instead she tried to mask her initial movement, and moved her hands up to Marius' bicep and grasped him, leaning her head against his shoulder and looked up at him.
"I'm sorry officer, but it's not with me. We had to take it in to the government after we got married, and there was some backlog or something, and they said they needed to keep it to update the name and marital status. I'm not sure why, I thought it was all on the computer, but they told me I had to leave it with them." She checked her watch and then made an obvious 'counting in my head' expression, "they said it should be back with me either tomorrow or the day after. I can bring it down to the station if you need me to?"
The policeman nodded, and seemed to accept this at face value, and gave her a brief sympathetic smile at the ineptitude of the bureaucratic system. He glanced over to the car, and seeing that he was covered by his partner from behind the cruiser lowered his pistol and slid it back into the holster. Reaching behind him there was the sound of a pouch being opened, and he pulled out a small reader, which he keyed on with a thumb. A moment later the machine gave a two tone beep and he slid the ID into the port on the top and waited while the computer got to work. Two amber lights flashed rapidly on top of the device as it processed the ID and compared the checksums and ran through the integrated database of warrants and arrest orders. The lights paused for a moment, then it made a dismal 'hannk' noise and a red light glowed solidly on the display.
The policeman, who had been starting to relax at the friendly and compliant response he'd received so far tensed back up, and looked up at them suspiciously. Marius saw the light turn red, and fought to keep his expression under control.
"This ID is not valid. There is no record of an entry visa here. You will need to come down to the station with us."
Marius sighed and made a little frustrated noise, raising a hand to run through his hair.
"I can't believe this. The man at the border crossing promised me that his system was working properly! I told him that it didn't look like it had read my ID properly, but he assured me that it had." He turned his body to Nadia slightly and grasped both of her hands in his, "I'm sorry, I know I promised you a lovely holiday, I had no idea this would happen. First I buy a truck a month ago that someone has used for something illegal before me, and now this silly man at the border hasn't put my entry visa on…" Nadia looked at Marius and then turned her gaze on the policeman and looked at him. For a moment she wondered if trying to cry was going to help, but thought better of it, and instead just looked at him expectantly.
Marius took a step towards the policeman and lowered his voice.
"Look officer, there's obviously been a mistake. I obviously need to go to the Trans Caucasian League embassy and get this issue sorted out. I understand you're just doing your job, and it's not personal. Perhaps if I can just pay the fine for the visa not being valid, and then go and sort this out, before I get in any more trouble, and then it won't ruin our honeymoon anymore?" He raised an eyebrow at the policeman, hoping his read of him hadn't been wrong. The policeman looked at him for a moment and glanced at Nadia, before returning his gaze to Marius. He licked his lips and glanced back to his partner, and made a "wait" gesture to him.
"I can understand how these things happen. The fine is…. five hundred?" Marius winced internally, but nodded his head as if that was expected, and then slowly and carefully reached into his inside pocket again, and pulled out the stash of hard currency.
"Oh, you pay in cash?" The policeman looked at the sheaf of notes that Marius was fanning though. "There is a surcharge for administration. It will be six hundred." Marius nodded and added an extra note to the bundle and passed them over, his fake smile now veneer thin. He watched the policeman turn and walk back to the cruiser, and split the bribe between them. The other cop looked at him with surprise, but pocketed the notes and shrugged a little. The first policeman looked up at him and made a shooing motion, and Marius quickly helped Nadia back into the truck and climbed up after her. As he pulled the door closed, he called out into the rear compartment.
"We have to get these plates changed – or this is going to get very expensive!" He heard movement in the back as Aswon and Hunter emerged from their hiding places, but ignored them – concentrating instead on getting jacked in and the truck moving before the policemen changed their minds.
Another kilometre down the road, fortunately without incident, bought them to Greys. It was a wide building, with three large vehicle bays set back from a shallow courtyard and a small admin office built onto the side over two floors. All three of the vehicle bays were open, and they could see cars up on the ramps, being worked on by several employees in dark grey overalls. Marius looked for somewhere to park up, but couldn't spot anywhere that would be out of the way or not block someone in somewhere – so settled for the left hand side. By the looks of things, the clutch for that vehicle was spread out all over the floor, so it wasn't going anywhere for a least a couple of hours.
They pulled in and stopped, and a moment later Marius killed the engine. They saw a few of the staff look over at them, and a couple of them pointed, nudging their neighbours. The four of them exchanged glances and then climbed out of the truck and waited to see what would happen next. In only a few moments, one of the workers put down his tools, grabbed some cloth and walked over to them, wiping his greasy hands on the cloth.
"What's up?" He glanced over at the truck, looking at the tyres and the nose of the truck. "Something broke?"
"No, nothing's wrong with the truck. We're hoping to see Miss Grey. A friend of ours from Lionheart recommended her for being the person to do vehicle tune-ups in Constantinople," responded Marius.
"You got an appointment?" He saw them shake their head. "Ok. I'll go see, but we pretty busy at the moment. You may have to come back." He sauntered off towards the admin block, and disappeared from view for a couple of minutes. Whilst they were waiting, they watched the mechanics at work, and saw them repeatedly glancing in their direction.
The door swung open, and an attractive woman walked over towards them. She was in her mid-twenties by the looks of things, with long brown hair that reached the middle of her back and wore minimal, but very tastefully-applied makeup. She wore a pair of cargo trousers and a t-shirt that had been cut short and left little to the imagination, under a thick padded gilet – if she was bothered by the cool February day, she didn't show it. She approached the team and gave each of them a glance over, taking in their clothing style and mix of skin tones.
"I hear you're looking for some work on your truck? Ural 56-60, V8 Diesel by the looks of things." She squatted down on her haunches and glanced at the ground clearance under the truck, leaning forward as she did so and apparently unconcerned about the amount of cleavage on show. "Slapped a bit of extra armour on by the looks of things as well." She straightened up and looked back to the team. "So, what are you after?" Her English was pretty good, with just a trace of accent on some words.
Aswon stepped forward and smiled at her, then cleared his throat.
"The truck has been involved in illegal activities before we obtained it, and the licence information is compromised. I'm led to believe that you can help us obtain a transponder library, some false plates and new paperwork to disguise the origins of the vehicle?"
Sasha looked at him and raised an eyebrow, whilst Marius and Hunter both turned to Aswon with looks of shock on their faces. Nadia raised a hand to her face and quite literally face-palmed. For a moment, nobody said anything.
"Well my friend, it looks like your friend told you wrong. Certainly can't help you with any of that – it all sounds very illegal, and I run a fine, upstanding garage and wouldn't know anything about work of that kind." She glanced over at Marius, who was still staring at Aswon as if he'd grown an extra head.
Marius snapped out of his surprise, and looked over at Sasha.
"Of course not. My friend here was just joking, of course. Very funny. No, what we're really after is a bit of an engine tune-up, to let us do some off-road races. Nothing unusual, just need to balance things up and get the most out of what we have." Sasha folded her arms and looked at them, then grinned at them.
"Alright. Come on into the office, you lot. Not you though, Captain Boy-Scout. You can wait out here." She pointed to Aswon as she spoke, and watched him move over to the truck with a shrug of his shoulders, then turned and led the way back to the office block. As they walked behind her, Hunter watched her lithe and sinuous figure and the sway of her hips with obvious enjoyment. He flashed a look at Marius, who was studiously looking at the back of her head, and avoiding the dirty looks from Nadia. Hunter sniggered to himself…
They entered the building, finding themselves in a small waiting room with several sofas, a coffee machine and a stack of battered and cheap matrix access slates, mostly loaded with e-zines about cars and racing. There were no other people present, and after she had waved people to their seats, she started pouring cups of coffee for them and then perched on the end of one of the sofas and looked back at Marius.
"So. What is it that you're after then?"
"We've been together for about two months, and we 'acquired' the truck then – but it seems before that the person we got it from had been up to some fairly ruthless things. We've been pulled for it since entering the city, and that's going to get in the way of business if we're staying around here. We don't want to get pulled for something the previous owner did – we've been careful, and we've not done anything dodgy in the truck."
Sasha raised an eyebrow and glanced over the three of them.
"You've not broken the law at all since you had the truck?" She looked back at Marius with a smile. "I find that somewhat hard to believe."
"Well, ok. Technically you're correct. We've not done anything that we've been caught at…." Marius returned her smile, before continuing. "So, something needs to happen about the previous history. But, it's also pretty recognisable, which isn't always a good thing, so we're looking for some body kits or panels, something to change the shape and signature a little. And the last thing is that it would be really handy to be able to change the colour on the truck, so we're looking at getting a full photo-voltaic paint system applied. For…. Advertising."
"And you say you're friends with someone in Lionheart?"
"Well, the guy outside is – his name is Aswon, and he knows a Captain called Sofi from way back, they used to work together. Tends to speak his mind though and speak plainly."
"You don't say!" Sasha interrupted with a laugh, and watched as Marius gave a little shrug.
"But I've got a friend here as well that will vouch for me. Ever heard of Andre Koompli?" Marius saw Sasha nod, "Well, if you call him, he'll speak for me."
"Hmph. Ok, wait here… I got a call to make."
Sasha swayed out of the waiting area and into her office, moving over to the desk and grabbed a com-headset. She turned back towards them and stood watching them through the window as she dialled a com-code, and then touched the stuff at the side of the window, polarising the glass and turning it into a mirror from their side. Hunter and Marius sat back and grabbed the data slates, flicking through the information about cars and recent races, but Nadia sat still, glaring at the window.
A few minutes passed, and the Sasha returned from her office, and resumed her place on the corner of one of the sofas.
"Ok, you don't have much of a rep, but I've made some calls, and you're not working for the wrong people. So, sure – I can help you. The question is now – how's your cred. I don't come cheap, and you need a lot of help."
Hunter stirred for the first time, and laid the slate down on the arm of his seat.
"We've got cred, it depends just how much you're talking about of course. We've got a reasonable amount of hard cash, bearer bonds and other stuff if you prefer to keep things off the books." Sasha nodded and seemed to accept his statement, at least for the moment.
Sasha started to talk with Marius about the truck, and the dialogue soon became very technical. Hunter sat back and just watched them talking, with the occasional glance at Nadia who was becoming increasingly angry as Marius focussed all of his attention on the beautiful woman sitting over from him. Marius in turn was completely oblivious, having found a kindred vehicle geek to talk specs with.
After a long period of negotiation and discussions, it was agreed – Hunter would pay fifteen thousand as a deposit, and they would leave the truck with Sasha for the moment for initial surveys, and borrow a small MPV from her for getting around the city. They'd return for the truck in a while, and use it to bring the trailer up, so the same work could be carried out on that – but they'd warned Sasha that it might well have a Shaman in the back doing some "weird magic stuff", and she had the final say on when they could work in there, and would supervise them. Sasha would sort out some registration and ownership documents on the truck, and arrange for some new IDs, get a morphing licence plate that could adapt via computer control whilst they were on the road and would fit a small transponder library to give them a few different identities to use. They'd also measure up the truck and use some of the latest smart materials to make fairings and copings for the exterior of the truck.
Normally smart materials – advanced polymers that would change shape and form under electrical impulses were used at the design stage of hyper-cars and military grade tech, things benefitting from drive or fly-by-wire and ridiculous budgets, but could achieve superb results – it was a lot easier to corner at a hundred and eight kilometres per hour when your car would actually lean into the bend! However, they could use earlier generation and much cheaper materials, operating on a much simpler and grosser scale to provide changes to the truck's form and silhouette quite easily, and again it could all be computer-controlled while they were on the road.
Last of all, the entire surface of the truck except the windows would be covered in a fine layer of reactive paint with a delicate layer of electrical mesh embedded inside it, then sealed with strong polymer varnish. Once connected up to the onboard systems, the operator could send commands to make the truck change colours and even display simple logos – as long as the paint hue and shapes were loaded into the library.
"I'll have to make calls to ensure that the materials are to hand, and of course to start working on the ownership documents and the log book. I'll call you later, to confirm the final details."
"That's great, Sasha, nice to be working with a professional. I'll speak with our boss and get everything squared away on our side, and double check the arrangements with our Shaman."
Sasha looked uncertain about having a trailer full of magical 'stuff' on her premises, but was assured it was fine, and not going to cause her a problem.
They climbed into the battered old brown Ford, looking at the grubby and cracked seats, the broken plugs on the stereo and the ripped carpets, clearly not expecting much. It wasn't equipped with a rigger interface, but did have a data-jack, so Marius connected up and started the engine. It didn't look much, but the engine was in perfect order and roared to life, and Marius carefully steered them out into traffic and headed back to the house. The journey was uneventful, but slow going – and they started to get the impression that traffic was NEVER good in Constantinople unless it was very early, or very late.
They parked the Ford in front of the trailer, and took the lift back to the top floor. On arrival, Nadia marched off somewhere, but Marius, Hunter and Kai went to find Kai to brief him on what they'd arranged. Through it all, they kept hearing odd little shouts – not of alarm, but of exertion. After the third one, they questioned Kai.
"HAI!"
"What was that?"
"The hais? That's Shimazu. He's practicing some sword stuff, and apparently it requires shouting on the strike. He's also got bits of paper all over his room, and he's writing something, then shouting 'HAI' a lot, then writing some more. He's ok though, just very absorbed in it at the moment. I'd leave him be if I were you.
"And where's Tads? We need to talk to her about the trailer."
"She's out in the trailer, drawing on the floor in chalk. She's just as absorbed as Shimazu is. When I went to see if she was ok, she didn't seem at all happy to be disturbed. I'd wait until dinner before you interrupt her."
They were interrupted when Marius suddenly held up a hand and his eyes glazed over as he answered his internal com-link, routing the signal directly through to his brain, and answered the call from Sasha. She'd confirmed availability of the parts, and they agreed on a price of fifty thousand for all of the work, and about ten to eleven days to complete it, with the balance remaining to be paid on completion. After he hung up, he updated the other two on their progress.
Having nothing more to do at the moment, they split up, each heading off to a different room. Hunter headed back to his large and sparse room, and took his cleaning kit and went to work on his rifle, carefully stripping it down and cleaning it meticulously.
Kai went to find Aswon, and found him throwing knives into a sheet of construction material he'd found from somewhere, which he'd leant against the wall at the end of the room.
"Ahh, Kai – I need your help. You trust me, right?" Aswon gave a big grin to his boss and waited for Kai to nod. "Excellent, can you stand against that piece of wood over there. Then stand still. Very still."
Kai looked at him to be sure he wasn't joking, but then went and stood against the large sheet of plastiboard, then spread his arms and legs out.
"Like this?"
"Yes, exactly, now hold still." Aswon gave three rapid breaths, as if he was hyper-ventilating, and then breathed out explosively, emptying his lungs. At the bottom of the breath, when his lungs were empty and his diaphragm fully extended he flicked his wrist and the throwing knife flew across the room and buried itself into the material, about three centimetres from Kai's leg. Kai looked down at the knife that quivered from the force of the impact.
"Err, Aswon?"
Aswon wasn't listening though, and gave three rapid breaths, and another knife appeared in his hand… Kai looked at him and realised that he was almost in a trance – his concentration absolute and unrelenting. That was good, considering how close the knives were landing, but then Kai realised that Aswon was not only seeking mastery without, but also mastery within – and that he'd asked Kai specifically to help him, as a fellow member of their magical group. As Shimazu was clearly seeking to reach a greater understanding of his art and magical powers through the medium of his sword, Aswon was looking to master his body's abilities and focus this way.
Marius wandered along the corridor to the room that he and Nadia had claimed last night, and twisted the handle, then walked into the unmoving door, rapping his head and knee against the heavy wooden door in surprise. He muttered to himself in German, and then twisted the doorknob the other way, and tested the door again – but it still refused to open.
"Nadia?"
"GO AWAY!"
"Nadia, what's the matter?"
"I SAID GO AWAY! Why don't you go and talk with that slut with spanner!"
Marius sighed. He had no idea what to do, and he was in uncertain territory.
"Nadia, come on, open the door. Let's talk about this, whatever this is." Something hit the back of the door, but fortunately didn't make a breaking noise. For a moment, Marius was convinced he could hear giggling from the direction of Hunter's room, but the noise stopped before he could be sure.
"Nadia, come on, open the door – otherwise…" an idea came to him – risky, but worth a go – "otherwise you won't have time to get ready before we go shopping. I mean, I'll still buy you some nice new clothes, but I'm not sure the style will be exactly right." He listened for a moment, but there was only silence from inside the room. "And there's no way I'm going to make a guess as to what kind of shoes are going to be comfortable for you."
He listened for a moment, and heard someone walking towards the door, and then the louder and more obvious sounds of the old-fashioned key being turned in the lock, giving him time to wipe the grin from his face and look concerned before Nadia opened the door a fraction.
"I'm still very angry with you! I don't want you talking with that woman again, it was disgusting the way she flirted with you."
"Why don't we talk about it while we're picking you out a nice new dress to wear or something?"
"And shoes."
"Yes, and shoes. Come on." Nadia walked past him and headed for the lift, still refusing to hold his hand or touch him, and Marius sighed. This was also probably going to be expensive. As he turned to follow her, and passed Hunter's room, he looked in and saw the Ork concentrating on his rifle, scrubbing away industriously with a cleaning pad on the barrel.
"We're going shopping, Hunter, see you later." Hunter looked up, and Marius frowned at the huge smirk on his face, and declined to say anything more, and followed Nadia down the corridor and into the lift. The shopping trip proved to be just as expensive as he'd feared, and two dresses and three pairs of shoes later, diplomatic relations had been normalised to a point where they were talking and acting normally, as long as he didn't bring up the mechanic.
The team assembled for their evening meal quite late, sending out for some takeaway food and eating around the large table in the main room, before once more spreading out. Tads grabbed a few hours of sleep and then woke up before dawn, and continued to work on her spells in the trailer. Marius spent some time with his toolkit, fitting the recoil mounts for the weapons systems to the mounting plates on the drones, and teaching Nadia the rudiments of drone operations. Shimazu continued to work on his swordsmanship and documenting his techniques, pouring his magical expertise and process into written form, and Aswon continued to throw knives at Kai in his room, gradually honing the process and getting closer and closer to his boss each time.
Around lunchtime, Sasha called Marius. Fearful of Nadia's reaction, he redirected the call to an external handset and put her on speaker, carrying the speaker through into the Aswon's room so he and Kai could hear as well. Sasha confirmed that they had the initial readings on the truck sorted, and needed the trailer soon, and also laid out the schedule for when they needed to do work on the interior, so they could schedule this around Tads. Marius pushed the microphone and speaker towards Kai and then stepped back, so Kai picked up on the conversation – much to Marius's relief. Nadia frowned when she heard Sasha's voice, but she was talking with Kai, so she didn't get too angry.
Kai scribbled down the dates on his organiser, and then compared them to the times they had to be at Milo's to get their IDs worked on.
"Right team, looks like we have a plan…"
