Date Saturday 28/02/2060, Location 40.02419, 48.95808

The team split up, or settled into small groups. Aswon and Shimazu sparred against each other, spending hours trying new techniques, standing and watching each other, making small suggestions about foot positions or weight distribution, as well as watching badly jumping video over the narrow matrix connection. After putting up with this for a while, Aswon called Kai and told him they needed a better matrix feed sorting, so Kai had a word with Rusudan to get the wheels in motion. Rusudan was more than happy of course – the mafia that had plagued him having been decimated over the course of a few days, and enough money to keep the family going for a year having been given to him the previous night.

Hunter set himself up a target near the vehicle, and spent hours honing his skills with his throwing knives, while calling out to Marius in Chinese while he worked on the vehicle, Marius gradually picking up the basics as he did so. In the distance they could hear the regular crack of pistol rounds as Kai shot at another target set up in a small gulch, firing hundreds of rounds of the cheap and nasty ammunition they'd confiscated or collected over their travels. He wasn't going to get great performance out of them, but they were more than good enough for him to practice his quick draw, shooting and the dirty nature of the cartridges meant he had to break down and clean his pistol a lot more often, which in this case wasn't a bad thing.

Tads finished studying her spell formula, until she'd finally understood and memorised the incantations necessary to learn her spell, then set to creating her new lodge in the truck, listening in idly as Hunter and Marius chatted in Chinese around her.

They met up for an evening meal, chatting away and discussing their day with each other, talking with Rusudan and his family, and the new additions to the ranch. Vusul's mother – Gungul – was the most involved, while the two younger girls, Inje and Jeyran were quiet and withdrawn, still obviously uncomfortable to some extent with the situation. Rusudan and his family were doing their best to make them welcome, and both the young girls seemed to have taken a shine to the horses, which gave them something to talk about.

The following morning, they split up once again, and headed off to their chosen areas to work on their skills.

Tads entered the trailer, accompanied by a moderate size of spirit of the small area of plains-land that surrounded the ranch buildings. "Guard and protect my body and all people currently on this area of land, please?" The ethereal horse with grasses instead of hair nodded to her and wandered off to watch its newly designated herd until sunset. Trying to prepare for all contingencies, she straightened the loose body armour, settled herself in the harness, made sure all the clips were secure, and put on the mask and goggles which protected her somewhat from the noxious outpourings of her comrades' guns. As a finishing touch, she added the coms device, then a climbing helmet and elbow and knee pads then pulled on the cable that closed the lodge off from the outside, and tried not to roll her eyes. If the team had to move, well, she was about as ready as she could be, including waking up in a firefight. But hopefully not.

The team knew where she was and that it could be at least a day and maybe more before she was back in her body. She was within the hopefully safe confines of a powerful lodge to her totem, so that should help protect her from the random tracking attempts that she'd been picking up – it would take more power than the seekers had used so far to break through her lodge, and if they added that power now, there was nothing she could do about it. Not that there was lot she could do about it if they overpowered her defences whilst she was in her body, but at least she'd be there to know.

She attempted to settle into a form of meditation, quietly chanting the songs to call the reindeer as she thought through why she was doing this and what she wanted. Setting out on an astral quest without an idea of what you sought was a way to have an interesting life, and the less firm the idea, the more interesting the magic was likely to get. If you survived, it would give you what you sought, of course, but not necessarily as you wanted or in a way that you could understand. Of course, being very specific wasn't always much better, but being clear on why you'd gone on the quest or what you wanted could make interpreting the results easier. Certainly the questing she'd done in Constantinople whilst learning spells had mostly gone well because she had been specific about either wanting to understand the spells better by delving into how the magics within it wove together to make it work, or to by trading time in the magical plane to focus on the main magical thrusts of the spells to make them less challenging to retain and cast in the future.

This, this wasn't like that in almost all ways. With spells, she'd known and chosen how much magic to put into the quests. But now, she didn't know. It was up to trust and judgement. Had she understood her totem correctly, and performed the appropriate actions to make recompense for her mistakes? If she had, this might be a simpler quest. If she hadn't understood yet, and was getting it all wrong, this had the potential to be much more challenging. That was the first choice, how much power to put into the quest, and in the end that one was easy. Either she was doing it right, or she wasn't. Elk was the only one who knew, and would be or have already made that judgement. Elk would choose the level of the quest. If she wasn't getting it right, she'd find out, and better that than adding insult to injury by attempting to stroll in through a low-magic quest if Elk wanted more from her.

What did she want? Why was she doing this? She cleared her mind and focused on her desires from this quest. "I have offended Elk by misuse of their power. I have attempted to make recompense in the best way I know how. Have I correctly understood how I have caused offence so that I can avoid it in future? Has the recompense that I have attempted to make been appropriate and correct?" With these thoughts, she closed her physical eyes and let the magic take her.

To the Dweller, the keeper of the secrets on the threshold. Or the sharer of secrets if she had come with company. With her current team, that was not going to be possible outside some fairly unique circumstances, so not something she was particularly worried about. The Dweller knew why she was here and what she wanted and if she was firm enough in her intentions, could point her in the right direction. She wasn't sure about the significance of the Dweller's outfit this time – it looked like a very old-fashioned, sharp black suit, perhaps a century old in fashion terms, she guessed. He, in this time and place, had paired it with a hat that she thought was called a fedora, and was carrying what looked a smaller version of the musical instrument case that Aswon had used to hide the gun he'd given to Germaine. The antlers springing out of his hat might just be a little inappropriate, or possibly more than appropriate, but she wasn't going to potentially offend more cosmic beings any further by commenting on that! If he was being respectful to Elk, great. If he was being disrespectful of her reason to be here, then she deserved it.

Something that was undeserved, in Tads' opinion, was that he was about light up a flamethrower and torch what appeared to be a perfectly innocent patch of forest. She stepped forward with the instinctive, "No!" ringing out to protect the land – that was her charge as a shaman of Elk – help the people and the land grow the best she could. The Dweller certainly understood that, but he was a cosmic being of unimaginable power, at least here in his place, and when he turned to look at her, she breathed once and sought to control herself.

The shadows under the brim of the fedora hid the face, but she could sense the rising eyebrow in surprise/anger at her temerity to tell him what he could or could not do here. This was backed up by the sudden aura of darkness surrounding him, and a tide of unease that washed towards her, and that's where control and some self-preservation kicked in. Thankfully. "No?" rolled back out from him, deep with menace.

"I mean, I'd really rather you didn't do that!" She was little surprised at the higher pitch in her voice that made her words come out as a squeak and tried to get back to normal for the following words. "You know I'm an Elk shaman – we protect the land – what else would you expect me to say or how else could I have reacted?" She breathed again, feeling the darkness and unease recede somewhat. "What I said obviously came across very rudely and I apologise for that, but that's the instinct, and I really would much prefer that you didn't destroy any patches of forest unless you really had to, real, unreal, or magical. Please?"

He gave the appearance of having rolled his eyes, returning to the unthreatening figure she'd encountered first, before the flamethrower and the trees. "Those instincts may still be right. Would you do better in future to follow them rather than others, huh?" He stepped away, gesturing for her to head into the forest. Tads thanked him, and stepped past, glaring at the flamethrower as she did.

The forest was somewhat familiar. Since this was magic, it very likely was, but whether it was a forest that she should recognise or simply that it had a feeling of familiarity, she might never know. Within the magic, it appeared familiar enough that she knew which trails would lead her back to the village where she was born, and that seemed to be the way to go. If Elk wasn't at the village, and as a loner, he might not be, something would point her in the right direction. She hoped.

She headed along the trail. This was her quest, what was here, was here and supposed to be, so she didn't bother to hide, or check for more than obvious tracks, and thus was a little surprised when the quiet whistle – of an arrow – her brain reported – came from ahead of her. Approaching more rapidly than she had time to react to, and – oof! She swore in forest Nenets. Good thing her shamanic furs were thick and appeared to cover the armoured vest which had come with her, else that would have hurt. It'd left a hole through her furs anyway, as the vest had deflected it.

Around a tree up ahead popped a head of a young man, no more than 40 seasons as Nenets counted, or 20 or so in outside terms, with a worried expression on his face as he came out of cover. "I'm sorry, Tadibya!" he called in the same language. "I thought you were one of them."

"One of whom?" was the obvious question for her to ask, so she did, and he explained about the outsiders who had come and were razing areas of the forest for some mineral underneath. Apparently they'd tried to buy the land for some insulting low price, and with no consideration of where else the tribe might want to go, and been rather upset when their generous offer had been turned down by the elders. Part of Tads shrugged, able to settle almost comfortably into the role the magic had given her here – protector of the land was what she was. The other part remained a little detached, cataloguing the workings of the magic for a normal quest versus one like this so that she would be better prepared for the challenges ahead if she could guess what area of magic each challenge might be based on.

She followed the hunter back to the village, and headed for the meeting place of the shamans. As she entered the village, she stopped and shuddered as her vision swam over the tanning hut. Her stomach flipped and she shuddered as a feeling of dread ran down her spine, unwanted memories crashing over her. She smelt the familiar odours of the tanning fluid, of the hides and the coals and ash used to preserve the furs, and her footsteps faltered as she remembered the night. The coals roaring and the bowls of fluid catching fire, of tripping and getting entangled in lines. Flames roaring high, the walls ablaze and the murderous heat searing her. Her body twitched and spasmed in memory and her pulse skyrocketed as the night she nearly died came flooding back.

She overcame her fear though, fighting down the panic, and turned away from the innocent looking building, heading out of the far side of the village to the shamans lodge, set in a position of respect by the great tree. She requested entrance and blinked at the two figures within once entrance had been granted. One was old, clearly senior and probably one of the elders, too, but no woman she knew. The much younger shaman, he seemed familiar, and she didn't think this was just the magic. As he smiled a greeting, she recognised the dimple in his left cheek, and took several breaths to steady herself. However many years in the future that she would be born and live in the tribe that this was the magical representation of, she didn't not know what to call this young man who would grow into so much of mentor to her and others that he would be known as Iriko, Grandfather, to the whole village in her time. Who he had been prior to that, who he was now, she did not know. Maybe she could get away with using the honorific of 'shaman'. She hoped. The downside of magical apparent time travel amongst a people whose names change depending on various factors. She knew she'd need to change hers when she went back north, but her current team really did not seem to understand.

"Elder, Shaman, greetings. I spoke to a hunter out in the forest and he said you were having issues with interlopers. I was passing through and would like to offer my help. Can you explain what has happened, please?"

The two local shamans told her and it was as the hunter had said, but the scale of the depredation was worse, and bigger than she had realised. The Nenets tribes had been trying to find ways to fight back, but their choice of a non-technological life was a disadvantage against the high tech machines who could destroy as much forest in an hour as the tribe could in a week – assuming they'd ever want to. The resistance had meant that armed guards were often sent with the machinery, and it was becoming much harder to find safe ways to slow down or stop the invaders.

There was discussion between the three shamans. What could they do with the magic available to them? What was it right for them to do with their magic? Correctly applied (and where was Marius when you needed him?), a lightning bolt could at least turn off the electronic engines of a machine. Fireballs too, yes, but for Tads, just no. But was that fair or right to have the lightning or heat carry through to harm the operator, who was just doing the job they were paid for? The same broadly applied to most physical active resistance – shooting the poor joe driving the backhoe might stop the backhoe until they hired another joe, but the corporation could afford the joes and then the guns to protect them and as Tads was here to demonstrate, there were only so many Vusuls, people who were doing the best they could in a poor situation that you could kill with magic before most totems would get a bit irate. It was the high-ups, the bosses that needed to be stopped. Cut the head off a snake…. Sometimes it is getting to the snake that is the issue, which they agreed.

A call came from outside, a report that some of the earth-movers are on the move. Tads shrugged at the shamans, and bade them at least a temporary farewell to go look things over and see what, if anything she might be able to do. She followed the signals and crested the ridge outside the village, looking down a long slope towards the coast. Down there used to be… was a small fishing village and cannery. Except that in this time and place was a much larger port facility with many more warehouses and garages, seeming to almost overflow with mechanical life-that-wasn't. More vehicles were being unloaded from ships, and the lack of life, of care from there, compared to the happy fishing village she knew brought bile to her throat. How long would the land need to recover once these machines were gone? Poor Marius, who didn't know anything but these machines.

Some distance away, she could see two earth-movers and a truck much like Marius' begin to head upslope in her - and her village's - direction. The distance was great enough that the snap of the first great tree that was broken by the machines only just carried up on the sea breezes, but carry it did, and Tads was off down the trail towards them. She might be wrong (again), but she felt that she was here to stop the destruction of her people's lands. How to try and stop them was the question. In a normal astral quest, there were a number of different general types of challenge that could be between the questor and their goal. Although every quest was unique, they could often be recognised as a certain type of test – of moral fibre, or courage, strength of arms or magical prowess. She did not expect to face a spirit here, for example, unless the invaders had brought a magic-user with them. No way to tell until she got there, obviously, but it seemed most likely to her that this was a challenge she had to talk her way around. They'd just discussed how inappropriate it was to harm the underlings, and that was what had upset Elk in the first place, she thought, indiscriminate killing of people who were just doing the best they could. Might not be a good job, and deforesting someone's life certainly wasn't, but what other choice had these people been given?

Faster than should have been possible, she was close enough to see into both the earth-moving machines, and see the drivers. She couldn't see into the truck, and that would be where the leader sat, in all likelihood. The truck that Marius would be horrified by the battered state of, but probably drool over the huge long gun in the roof-turret. She could see a man there, sticking out of the turret with the controls for the cannon, who had at times mown down the bigger trees with a hail of bullets so that the giant earth-movers could crunch them up. Time to talk. Tads stepped out from the trees ahead of the machines and called out to them in Russian to stop, to leave the forest alone.

Apparently this was not what Elk had in mind, and she'd gotten it wrong again. The bullets coming from that gun felt almost as big as the ones Aswon used for his rifle. Not that she'd been or wanted to be shot with his rifle, but oh, this hurt, this hurt, this hurt, as she was flung backwards by the power of the bullets not only impacting on but also penetrating the armour under her furs. She landed some distance back in the undergrowth, gasping for breath and aware that a number of bullets had grazed her by the pain and the warm dampness that was her blood spilling from the wounds to soak her armour and furs and the ground.

On the bright side (there was one?), she was familiar enough with guns now that her subconscious had picked up on the quiet whirring as the gun had prepared to fire and had been trying to move her out of the way. Her reactions against the speed of the bullets hadn't been much, but it had been just enough, she suspected, to save her life. Maybe if she'd been expecting a fight, and not sure she should talk her way out, then she'd have hurt even less. Three people had been visible for a stunball spell. But that was the one she'd been wary of casting since Elk had told her no. Perhaps now had been the time to cast it, and because she'd thought that this was the place to talk and not the place to fight, she'd been shot. A lot. Ow.

On the other good side, it didn't appear that getting shot triggered her allergy to the thing they called cordite, unlike inhalation. Tads thought she could have lived without finding that out. And that they'd stopped shooting when she'd stopped moving. If this was the place to fight, maybe they'd not fire again if she didn't move, much. One thing she did know – she couldn't survive a second hail of bullets from that machine gun – she knew just how lucky she was not to have died from the first one, and a stray passing thought hoped the blood that she was sure was dribbling from her meat body didn't obscure too much of the lodge's foundations and weaken the protection.

She was not in good shape, but she wasn't dead, and that meant that she could still complete this. If she was very, very lucky, and her wounds didn't completely incapacitate her. She groaned, quietly, and pulled herself to her feet, screened by bushes and the tree next to her, which was now scarred with bullet holes. She patted the tree in thanks, then gave up and used it to hold herself up, since she was going to need that energy for something else, very soon.

She peered carefully around the tree and looked back down at the six blurry and overlapping earth movers and three blurry and overlapping trucks. She sucked in a breath, and began chanting in her head, since breathing hurt and external noise might get her shot again. The familiar cadences helped her focus and the vehicles steadied back out to two earth movers and a truck-with-gun. The vehicles hadn't stopped, sadly, and that also suggested that she wasn't here to talk since they weren't appearing receptive to it. Unfortunately, she would never have been fit enough to fight the machines directly, and stunball wasn't a spell that Elk liked anyway, and casting it in this state was unlikely to work.

What could she do? Breathing through the pain, she focussed on her unhappiness at the destruction of the forest and how wrong it was, then channelled that to the driver of the left-most earthmover through an influence spell. It was a strain, through the physical waves of pain which felt like they were ricocheting around her body with each breath, but she held it long enough that she heard his machine stop, then she released and tried to breathe enough to get the spots in front of her eyes to go away. She knew from experience that the edge of headache from the spellcasting would take longer. The man she'd influenced was now being harangued by his colleague, and it looked to be developing into an argument between them. Still, it had stopped the destruction, at least temporarily.

Temporarily seemed to be the key, as the truck opened up and a man in some sort of modern business suit appeared. The head of the snake, perhaps? Okay, Tads knew it wasn't, but it was the head of this bit of snake…would that make it a hydra instead? She realised her mind was wandering, losing focus from the pain that coursed through her. She tried to focus, working out if she could stop this for now… Maybe. Chanting again in her head, she let her anger about the destruction of the natural world kindle the flames of passion within her.

She let her shame over the oil pollution she really shouldn't have been involved in shape her fury. Although she hadn't been there, she'd seen enough corporate types now that she could imagine the conversation the tribe had faced when the negotiator came to buy their entire village for a few Nuyen. The anger at the inevitable ignorance of their tribal way of life, their refusal to worship the almighty Nuyen. In her mind she saw the conversation as the tribe offered to mine the rocks, whatever they were – but using ancient methods, working by hand and respecting the land. The refusal of the corporate types to accept anything less than massive open cast mining, and the destruction of her habitat. Her fury rose as she knew, not guessed but KNEW that they would have refused to be reasonable, and would instead have viewed their non-acceptance of the deal as an excuse to being an armed assault, to effectively declare war upon them.

She funnelled this anger towards the snake... er, the senior person, putting much of her heart and feeling into it – if this was what she needed to do, she would accomplish this. She might not be fit for anything more afterwards, if there was more to do here, but she could do this. This was the challenge Elk had given her, and she. Would. Not. Fail. The headache ratchetted up significantly as the spell both powered through her and took from her, and she remained leaning against the tree as the spell affected the suited man, and when her vision cleared enough to look up, the vehicles were turning around and slowly heading back to the port complex. No more destruction here, just yet. It might not have been how Elk wanted her to do it, but if she'd accomplished Elk's aims, would it be enough?

She found herself slowly sliding down the tree to a sitting position, and blinked away more spots as the solid ground below her and tree at her back wavered into nothing and left her dangling in a climbing harness with blood dripping onto the floor as the inside of her lodge and trailer wavered in and out of focus. She swung gently in the harness, her arms hanging limply by her side with blood gently trickling down them staining her arms before gathering at the fingertips for a moment. Plop, plop, plop. Blood dropped from her fingertips into a pool on the floor of the trailer. A worryingly large pool. She tried to put together enough breath to groan, and with a painful movement tried to depress the transmit button with slick fingers, but there was no response on the communication device. Typical.

Her hands fumbled for several minutes to get the right grips to unfasten the harness without dumping herself on the floor and adding more bruises. Then she leaned towards the door of the trailer, bodyweight pushing it open and gripping the handle enough that the ungraceful fall out still left her mostly upright. What would normally take her seconds instead took minutes, and she felt lightheaded and drained. Blood was splattered everywhere now, and she thought that was probably a bad thing. She glared around her, bleary eyed and vision wandering from side to side, trying to focus on her surroundings.

Still at the ranch – which was a good thing, she thought groggily. She'd probably be dead if they'd been on a highway somewhere when she'd fallen out of the trailer. Movement to the right. One of the children. Child, running and yelling – too loudly – ouch! But soon, Kai and Shimazu and a first aid kit, gentle hands holding her up and movement to a clean room somewhere in the ranch, and blessed physical relief as they used anaesthetic and stopped the bleeding. Pity mundane healing couldn't do anything about her magical headache, but she knew that in some hours, that would ease and vanish, and then she could apply her magic to her physical body and try and reduce the damage further.

She wasn't sure how long she'd been away, and until she stopped hurting, she didn't really care. She simply lay for several hours, breathing through the slowly clearing headache until she felt at least mentally normal again. Ready to try and apply her healing magic to herself, despite the challenges implicit in the situation, it wasn't as if anyone else could heal her, and the two medics had already done all they can. At least she wasn't full of nasty machines like Hunter and Marius. Healing them was awful as there was so little human to carry the magic. Dep breaths and it was done. Still slightly injured, but a good night's rest would have her functioning again, and since everyone was so interested in her totem and what she needed to do, she could tell them all the story over dinner, perhaps?

She'd done what Elk wanted her to do, learned the lesson, and now she also had to design a spell to look into people's minds and see why they were doing what they were doing so that it didn't happen again. Hopefully.

Outside the room, the rest of the team assembled, with a mix of concern and resignation on their faces.

"She's going to be fine – she's just pretty wiped out from whatever the situation was she was involved in. Once we got a handle on the internal bleeding and sorted that out, she was out of the woods. Going to be stiff for a week or so I think though." Kai spoke with authority, Shimazu nodding in agreement.

"It must have been a difficult dreamwalk, for her to have sustained so much damage. I hope she considers it worthwhile." Aswon mused, a look of respect on his face as he stared at the closed door leading to the room Tads lay in. "Still, she was victorious I am sure, and this bodes well for us!"

They split up again, returning to their training, although Kai and Shimazu kept popping back to check up on Tads through the afternoon. Towards early evening, Tads awoke, looking more alert and less befuddled, though still wincing in pain from the physical wounds. She summoned her energy, laying her hands over her abdomen and guiding the magic through her fingers – the golden glow lit up the room as her hands roamed up and down her torso, slowly repairing the damage done to her and leaving only a faint stiffness and discomfort behind.

Over the evening meal that night, Tads described her quest in detail. She wasn't a natural storyteller, but none the less the families from the ranch listened intently, imagining a world they would never see or truly understand. As night fell, the team went to bed along with the two families – there being little entertainment yet once the sun had gone down.

The following morning, Tads seemed better, and returned to her studies as if nothing had happened. The rest of the team followed suit, continuing their efforts and concentrating on their training, making the most of the short daylight hours. This pattern became the norm – rising early for an hour's exercise and warm up before breakfast, then training hard in the cold winter air around the ranch, before convening again for a light lunch. More practice in the afternoon, occasionally watched by the children from horseback as they toured the ranch, then all gathering for the evening meal and chat around the long dining room table, before heading to bed to recuperate from a day of hard work.

On the Friday, as the week came to a close, Shimazu touched Kai lightly on the arm as they were heading to the table for their evening meal.

"Had a message from Sato by the way. Says he has a contact in need of a team, and he's passed on my details to them so we can expect a call, to find out if we're available. Sato says he's checked on the guy, and the rep is good."

"Ok, we'll see what the job is then when, or if, they call."

They sat down for dinner, passing around the bowls of food and bread to everyone around the table. Over the course of the week Gungul had settled in well, and had become very friendly with Naena, and between them they'd produced a wide range of dishes from the kitchen (assisted by the selection of foods magically created by Tads). Of the two girls, Jeyran, the youngest, had bounced back the quickest. She was about five, and was busy describing her magical adventures of the day on horseback, and recounting the numbers of evil djinn she had slain with her magic wand to anyone that would listen, a constant burbling stream of child imagination pouring out of her mouth without pause, or apparently stopping for breath. Inje, who was perhaps just entering her teens was still quiet and withdrawn, having a somewhat haunted look about her. She was quick to respond if directly spoken to, and sounded normal when she did – but if she wasn't engaged would quickly withdraw back to a brooding silence.

They were half-way through the meal when Shimazu's commlink buzzed, the screen flashing up and showing 'unknown caller'. He looked down at the commlink for a moment, then his eyes flashed up to Kai, who nodded and waved towards the seating area.

The team pushed back their chairs, leaving the family at the dinner table and moved into the other half of the room, sitting themselves down on the long settee, clustered around Shimazu in the corner seat. He hit the accept button, and then put the caller on speaker.

"Hello? I am looking for Shimazu?"

"Yes, this is Shimazu, go ahead"

"Ahh good. I am in need of some people to move something for me, to get it safely to its destination. A friend of mine suggested you might be a good person for this?"

The team listened intently to the caller. Hunter pulled out his screen and attached it to his tablet, and started tapping away and notes started to appear. The caller introduced himself as Patrick Van De Baas, a weapons dealer and exporter based out of Rotterdam. He described that he needed a team to go to the port of Sochi on the Black Sea, to collect eight cargo containers there, each measuring half a metre wide and high and a metre long, weighing about 150kg each and transport them to Brigadier Vasiliy Cherkenov in a military base located just outside the town of Samara, about 1300km to the north-north-east of the port.

Eyes flicked to Marius who gave a thumbs up, then watched as he added a note to the screen 'we will need the trailer though, but weight, size and distance no problem'. Shimazu looked at Kai, offering the commlink to him, but Kai shook his head and pushed it back towards Shimazu, indicating that he should continue the negotiation.

"That sounds ok, we can do that no problem. So what is the pay for the mission?"

"Well, I can offer you twenty thousand Nuyen for the transport, along with a chit for use at the base. The chit will allow you to purchase fuel for your truck, and basic ammunition for your weapons at cost price, in whatever quantities you require – up to 12.7mm calibre."

While this was being relayed, Hunter had pulled up the map, highlighting both Sochi and Samara, and showing the general direction of travel. It was internal to Russian territory the whole way, but crossed some fairly remote terrain and wild areas, and ended up near the border with Yakut. Kai checked the border areas, but nothing seemed too troubling or difficult, and he nodded in approval. Hunter also gave a thumbs up, indicating that he was happy with the general concept.

Shimazu licked his lips nervously, and spoke to Patrick again.

"Ok, we've had a little look into this – I think it should be no problem, and we can definitely do this for you. However, the price is a little low. With the distance covered, and the weight of the cargo – we need to look at something more in terms of payment to cover our costs on this one." His eyes watched Kai nervously, but Kai nodded and smiled encouragingly.

"Hmm. Well. Ok, I suppose. I can go to thirty thousand then for the run, and give you an improved chit. This will allow you to purchase some specialist ammunition too – things like tracer, flechette and boomers. Oh, and grenades."

Shimazu agreed quickly, glad that he'd not messed up the negotiation and happy with the increase in pay offered. Patrick sent over a docket, containing some information to them on their acceptance of the job, and then politely excused himself and hung up. The docket showed that they would be meeting a ship, the "MV Autumn Leaf" in seven days time at Sochi, and they were to show up on the dock to have the cargo transhipped directly to their vehicle.

Rusudan saw that they had finished their call, and bought over the remains of their dinner, letting them pick at the food while they began the planning for the journey.

After a lot of discussion, they decided to wait for four more days at the ranch, continuing their training and practice. In the four days, they would shop at the local town for any supplies they needed to top up the truck, and Hunter and Marius would download the digital patterns in use by the Russian forces at the moment to use on their truck, if needed. They were going to allow three days to move from the ranch, up through Tbilisi and to the border between the Trans-Caucus League and Russian, and for the border crossing itself. Sochi was not far over the other side of the border, so that section of the journey at least should be quick.

Marius also revealed that he had two friends – "good friends" in Sochi, that they could probably call upon for help, assuming he could get hold of them. Hunter looked at the roads, and starting planning routes along both highways and byways, giving them a number of options. The fastest route, using as many highways as possible took them a little out of their way, but gave them a total time of just over twenty four hours driving to cover 1800km of roads. The 1300km figure mentioned by Patrick was the direct route – in fact so direct that not even air travel would have been that efficient.

Several of the team pulled out their commlinks, making quick calls.

"Germaine? Hi, it's Kai."

"Oh darling! How are you! If you're calling about the holiday, I'm afraid it's just not possible yet. I'd love to get away, but there's just too much to do at the moment!"

"Don't worry, it's not about that – although we are busy sprucing up the place to get ready for when you can come. No, it's to let you know that we're going out of town for a bit. We're heading up north a ways, so we just wondered if there was anything you needed taking, or fetching?"

"Well, North is a bit of a broad term dear, and takes in a lot of the world. Could you be a teensy bit more specific?"

"Of course, we're heading to a lovely little fishing port called Sochi first, then heading north, north east from there towards the new silk road. We're not actually following it, more crossing it, and heading further north than that."

"Oh, that is interesting then. I have a DEAR, dear friend in Novgorod, that I sometimes do a little business with. If you're not too far from there on your way back, maybe you could swing by and I can put you in touch?"

"Of course, we'll work out the logistics, and I'll send you a message then. It may be we're not nearby though, so I'll look into it and let you know." Kai was careful to be clear, not wanting to make the same 'mistake' with his communications as Aswon had.

Meanwhile, two seats over, Marius was making his own calls.

"Hola!"

"Georgi? Is that you?"

"Of course it's me. Oh, Marius, hi. I'm learning Spanish!"

"Oh, ok. Sorry, you sort of threw me there."

"Hey, no worries. I've not got far yet. I can say 'hello', and 'I want to buy a cigar' so far. Best to cover the important things first, right?"

"If you say so. Anyway, listen…. We're heading north of the border on a little job..." He outlined the journey, much as Kai had done, but Georgi didn't have anything to follow up, telling him that he was laying low for another week or two, after having moved the golem on, just to let things die down a little.

Aswon called his friend Mr Hu, catching him apparently just before bed with a steaming mug of hot chocolate. He frowned, then mentally worked out the time difference to eastern china, and apologised for disturbing him so close to bedtime. He too described the journey, and Mr Hu said that he might be interested in a pickup – but was the team heading towards China as their next destination? Aswon informed him that alas no – they were heading south afterwards, returning to the League. He followed up with a call to Spook, aware that the time in Hong Kong wouldn't be that much difference, but caught her still up and about – she was more of a night owl.

She didn't have anything for the team to move either, but she did ask if they could record any stamps they got on their travel visa or IDs as they went across border checkpoints, and forward her a copy so she could study the encryption and formats. Aswon agreed, as this didn't seem too difficult, and their deck should be able to record any electronic checking well enough for their purposes. He explained to Kai that of all of the people he knew, keeping Spook happy with him might benefit the team most, as she was a people person, able to put them in touch with all kinds of interesting people with a wide variety of skills.

Marius was back on the phone with someone else by now. They heard the familiar conversation – the person on the other end having though he'd disappeared, and had been killed or eaten, and Marius saying that no, he was very much alive but didn't want people in general to know.

"So, Risa – we're heading your way, sort of. Do you want anything shifted?"

"That depends, how much do you want to get involved my friend?"

"Well, I AM your friend, so I'll help out if I can?"

"The sort of thing we really need moving, is thermobaric rounds into Russian defence pillboxes, but that never really struck me as your style. "

"Ahh, right, I see. No, we'd rather not be involved quite that….vigorously. We'd be happy to move the ammo around from one place to another though – that's what the crew I'm with are currently doing, you see. We're based down in the TCL, and we're working on a little business, moving things around from A to B, without people interfering. Not so much trying to get in people's faces and getting shot at. I know my limits, and I'll leave that to people braver and better than me." There was a snort from the other end of the line, and a moment's pause before the response came.

"Oh right, I see. So, are you near the coast?"

"Yes, we are. Not too far off where we are now, and only a little way to Baku."

"Baku? Oh right, east coast, not west. Shame. Well, if you're doing much near the west coast or the Black Sea, give me a shout. I'm working on setting up a new pipeline, coming in through Odesa. Might be some work for you there."

They chatted for another minute before Marius hung up, then tried a third number, scowling as he got put through to a voice mailbox and hung up.

Kai looked around the group with a sudden start.

"Oh, just to check – nobody has any outstanding warrants or issues with the Russian government do you? No issues with being in Russia?" He looked around, seeing heads shake and a chorus of quiet denials.

They finished up, taking their plates and cold remains through to the kitchen to be dealt with, and headed to their rooms, taking stock of personal gear and anything they might need for the coming journey.

The next morning, Tads, Aswon and Shimazu headed to the windmill in the forest to see Aslick. Aswon waited in the car, knowing that for some reason he made Aslick very nervous and quite hostile, and deciding that now was not the time. Tads and Shimazu were in the windmill for quite some time, emerging about an hour later with a couple of big bags and baskets of supplies.

"Got everything?" the tribesman asked, with an edge of sarcasm to his voice.

"Yes. We got a load of warding materials for the house, so we can keep it safe while we're away. But Tads bought some new spells, and we had a good talk about enchanting while we were there, and the ways my sword could be improved upon." Aswon seemed mollified, and as they headed back to the ranch they discussed this further – the main stumbling block was that Tads would probably need a full lunar month working in a workshop to properly craft any magical reagents or materials, and though it might go faster, they couldn't count upon it. Shimazu also said that he'd spoken with Aslick about learning more about discerning magical patterns and feelings, and that he'd offered to put him in touch with someone for training. It wouldn't be cheap, but he came very highly recommended, and that might allow Shimazu to gain some real insights into magical devices and creatures.

When they returned, they found that Kai had been in touch with the policeman in the local town, and had given them a quick brief on the takedown of the Mafia don, letting them know that they were pretty much off the hook now – but making it clear that Kai considered that they'd been given a second chance, and it was their job to look after the town now. Hunter meanwhile had caught up with Jules, and had told him about the Iranian phone left at the scene of the shooting, and the name of the Mafia overlord for the TCL, to add to their information.

Marius was also on the phone with someone very loud and belligerent sounding, who kept calling him "little brother" and insisting that the vodka would run like water, and they were going to have a party. It turned out this was his contact in Sochi, who had also thought him dead but was happy to be proved wrong. More usefully, it seemed he was in with the local crime boss in Sochi, and had suggested that a 'pass' be purchased for doing business in the town, and that while offering five hundred Nuyen for the pass would be sufficient, an offer of a thousand would smooth over a lot more wrinkles and potential issues.

While they had been out of the ranch that day making arrangements, it appeared that Azerbaijan communications had sent an engineer out, who had fitted a new dish to the side of the house, running a cable down into the front room. The microwave link to a tower nearer Shirvan gave them a good solid matrix feed with a bandwidth far in excess of their cell links, and Hunter was quick to start consuming bandwidth as they downloaded data and information on their route and conditions in Russia.

They also caught the evening news, which had information on the forthcoming special election that had been called following the assassination. There were five candidates standing, of which two were acknowledged as the more likely choices – one nationalist from the same party as Aliyev, considered his number 2 man, the other a more global player, who leaned towards mega-corporate co-operation. His campaign was ramping up, and there seemed to be a lot more buzz about him than the first candidate.

"You notice how his election campaign has some new graphics, much better animation and music. Almost like he's got some new backers with deep pockets and a vested interest in seeing him elected?" Hunter pointed out to the rest of the team – not that anyone was surprised.

Shimazu and Aswon spent the next day working through the house, using up the ritual materials to put a series of reasonably powerful wards up over the whole building to keep astral intruders out. Afterwards, they sat down with Rusudan and Naena, explaining what they had done and showing them adverts for other corporate retreats and holiday homes with similar features, pointing out that they should copy the text and descriptions for the magical defences, to add to their own adverts for the ranch to make the place more desirable.

On the morning of the 4th of March, the team came down for breakfast, and found Hunter quietly swearing at the computer. He was trying to sort out tourist visas, using their new identities crafted by Milo in Constantinople. The matrix site seemed a massive nest of bureaucracy that almost felt like it was designed to stop anyone actually getting anywhere. In the end they had to transfer his session onto the sat-link and set off from the ranch, and he continued to fight with the automated systems, redirects, requests for information and pointers to forms that didn't exist in departments that only opened alternate days in legal jargon that defied translation.

They drove to, and through Tbilisi, then followed the road west to the coast, joining the main highway north of Batumi. Where before they had turned left and headed to the town, this time they turned right, heading to the border. Finally, as they were about 100km from the border crossing, Hunter raised his hands in victory.

"Yesssss!" Several of the team jumped as they were startled by the outburst, jerking awake in one case. "Right, I have got the visas sorted. Tourist only, for all of us, based on the new legends. Marius and I have permits for the cyber-ware, but there's nothing on the magical side. But we're covered to legally enter."

They continued along the road, getting a few kilometres shy of the border before hitting a sizeable lump of traffic. They waited a few minutes, then checked the news and local reports, worrying that they'd been a crash or some kind of other accident, but couldn't find any reason for the delay. Eventually they asked another person in the queue, and found out that this was normal for the border crossing, and it usually took a few hours.

Four hours ticked by, as they slowly started-stopped-started again and crawled closer to the border. At least it gave them plenty of time to go through the truck with a fine tooth comb, ensuring that everything that was remotely dodgy looking was hidden or concealed. Tourist clothing and other items appropriate to their cover IDs was left hanging noticeably in view to add to the veracity of their story.

Eventually it was their turn, and they pulled up at the border, where they were scrutinised by a couple of guards holding AK series assault rifles along with ill-fitting body armour and fatigues. A harassed looking clerk demanded their ID sticks, and slotted them one after another, checking names and faces against the team, getting thumbprint reads and matching them against the stored data and doing a cursory check of their back stories. The process seemed quite quick to them, and he swiped their sticks again, encoding them with an entry certificate and keying the visa start date to the current date and time, ensuring that it started to slowly click downwards for each of them.

They were waved on, and as they started to pull away, they heard the next person having to justify their work visa and a whole series of additional questions being asked and a check on their vehicle starting, in what seemed to be a much more long-winded process. They soon put this behind them though, accelerating down the quiet road away from the border crossing and towards Sochi.

Hunter and Nadia did some quick checking, and now they were safely across found them a small family run (at least according to the matrix information) family hotel – the "Rusallina". It was cheap, but appeared to be of an acceptable quality, and unlike any of the international chains would be less likely to have top of the line security and computer systems to track their movements or record their activities.

The journey to Sochi passed smoothly, and they arrived at the hotel a little before 02:00. A rather grumpy looking man came out into the courtyard, frowning as the truck and trailer was parked over six adjacent car spaces – but the car park was nearly deserted anyway. Kai and Marius went to talk with him, apologising for their late arrival and blaming the border checkpoint for their inconvenient timing. As they handed over their IDs to check in, Marius folded a few notes of paper currency together, left over from their bribery slush fund for the trip to Constantinople, and passed them over quietly.

"We're sorry to have kept you up so late, we'll try to be good guests and we appreciate your patience." The money disappeared smoothly into a pocket, and the hotelier nodded in appreciation, guiding them to their rooms. Marius and Nadia had a small double room, while Tads and Shimazu, had a twin. Aswon, Kai and Hunter had a third twin room, with a temporary cot set up along the front wall. After the long day of driving, and the week of acclimatisation to daylight hours, the team soon drifted off to sleep, alarms set for 08:00 to see what delights Sochi would bring to them.