Aswon led the way, probing with his spear through the soft snow and taking slow deliberate steps, moving at 'mountain time'. Take a step. Probe with the spear, left, then centre, then right. Take another step. Probe again. It wasn't fast, but it was safe - both from a point of view of slipping and ending up hurtling down the mountain or causing an avalanche, and also from preventing sweat from over-exertion. They were all wrapped up in multiple layers to protect them against the biting wind and pervasive cold, combining with their armour vests and other protective gear to make them well-padded and insulated. Unfortunately, that meant an increased likelihood of sweating. While never pleasant, it took on a whole new danger at this kind of altitude, where the damp clothes would quickly freeze, then start to suck away at the heat from their cores, numbing the flesh and making them liable to frostbite and causing cold-burns on their skin.
So Aswon took it steady. Step. Probe. Step. Probe. Stop and survey the route, confirming he wasn't walking into danger. Step. Probe. A rope was attached to his waist with a quick-release knot, trailing back to Shimazu a few metres behind him. He kept pace with Aswon, shuffling along slowly on top of the snow and ice as his magical powers let him walk without disturbing the snow at all. His head swivelled like a metronome, looking out for danger. Hunter bought up the rear, scanning from side to side and checking their trail, then taking a step forward into the broken snow left by Aswon. The three figures trudged up the mountain, crawling up the vast snow plain like ants, three small creatures alone in the vast open space.
The howling of the wind over the exposed rocks created a strange melody of undulating tones, disturbed only by the crunching of two sets of feet and the occasional loud exhale or grunt of effort as they climbed up a rock step or pushed across a patch of ice. The cloud was gathered around them, limiting their vision to no more than thirty metres as the near-freezing water vapour swirled around them, adding to the danger of exposure and frostbite.
They'd climbed no more than a hundred and twenty metres from the tilt-wing when a shape appeared out of the cloud ahead of them. Dark and craggy, covered in black blisters, it oozed and rolled down the slope towards them, coming to a halt and starting to transform. It extruded a funnel from the centre of its body, swiftly dilating at the base and revealing a core of brilliant yellow fire.
"Contact front! Three!" Aswon called as he saw additional forms oozing out of the cloud ahead of him, looking like the first. He tugged on the spare end of the rope, yanking out the quick-release knot and started to run, his powerful long legs driving into the snow whilst his hand twisted the spear from use as a probe to a weapon set to charge. Reflexes kicked into action and time dilated, appearing to slow as he pounded up the slope towards the adversaries. Behind him, Shimazu detached from the rope too, drawing his sword from the scabbard and started to run as well, arcing to the left to aim for the spirit furthest west and opening the distance between himself and Aswon.
The lava elementals seemed to bulge in their centres, as if taking a deep breath, then they pulsed and heaved, ejecting a mass of molten lava out of the funnel and sending it arcing through the sky. They moved quickly, surprisingly quickly, giving the team insufficient time to dodge as the gobbet of liquid rock sizzled through the cold air, flash-heating it to steam. The mass of rock burst open, sending a shower of molten material bursting out in a cone more than twelve metres across. One was aimed at each of the team, but thanks to the headlong charge by Aswon and Shimazu, none of them was struck by more than one burst.
As the lava blast engulfed Aswon, his spear activated and sent a cascade of scales shimmering across his body, forming a shield against the worst of the damage. The frozen mist from the frigid clouds steamed and sizzled, but his armour took the rest of the hit without failing, the outer cloth layers burning and singeing but the ceramic plates holding firm against the assault.
Shimazu was more fortunate – or perhaps just a little faster – but the gobbet of lava aimed at him arced past him and struck a rock, exploding and showering the space where he'd been with shards of red and yellow cooling lava that struck like a shotgun blast, sending a rolling wave of heat after him.
The third struck Hunter as he was bringing his gun to bear. The ork had just enough time to raise an arm and cover his face before he was hit with the searing blast of heat and debris. Rock pounded into his armour, sizzling and burning, worming its way through the protective layers as it gave up its energy in a destructive blast. Hunter wore the heaviest armour of the three though, layers of Kevlar and ceramic plates bonded together to form a barrier fit to stop most hand-carried weapons. Heavy and ungainly, only his impressive physique let him move with some semblance of normality.
The steam from the lava-blast was drawn away by the howling wind, revealing a singed and slightly charred-looking, but essentially uninjured ork, staring up the mountain at the spirit that had engaged him. The gun barrel adjusted minutely, then spat out a long burst of automatic gun fire, explosive rounds hammering up the mountain at super-sonic speeds. The gunfire hit the elemental, bullets striking the hard rocky surface and ricocheting off in all directions without seeming to cause any damage to it at all.
Down in the tilt-wing, Marius picked up the sounds of combat on his vehicle sensors, while Kai heard the report of gunfire even through the howling winds.
"Sounds like trouble! Gunfire up the mountain." Kai looked around until he could spot the med-kit and started to move towards it.
"Vadim, watch over the people here, please." She didn't wait for a response, instead just grabbing her staff and then letting her body slump, her astral form vaulting from her body and then springing up through the skin of the tilt-wing. The astral form of her weapon foci was in her hand, as solid here as the physical object was in the real world. She spun around to face the right direction, orientating herself to face towards the climbers.
Back up the slope, Aswon and Shimazu continued to run, arcing around towards their targets, arms and legs pumping, not worrying about sweat, ice patches or the chance of slipping – all of which came a distant second to the risk posed by the belligerent lava elementals who seemed intent on destroying them.
As they ran on, each of the elementals modified their form, their bodies extruding more mass around the weird funnel-like protuberance, elongating and narrowing the channel. They spat again, this time the lava being constrained and focussed into a tighter ball, the lava compressed and tightly packed into a searing red ball of heat that flew through the air just as quickly as the first.
Aswon tried to sidestep and dodge out of the way, but the attack came too quickly for him to fully avoid the impact. It was a small explosion when it struck, but seemed more intense than before. Once more the scales covered his body, nullifying much of the heat though it did little to stop the shards of rock from striking him. Most of the physical effects were soaked by the armour plating, but enough got through the weak areas that shards of sharp rocks sliced into his skin leaving him with a score of minor wounds and lacerations.
The western-most elemental spat at, and missed, Shimazu jinking left and right and sliding underneath the blast as he continued to close at breakneck speed. The central elemental changed target, ignoring Hunter who was swearing and changing the magazine on his gun to slap home some armour-piercing rounds regardless of what Aswon had told him. Clearly it had decided that the big ork was no threat and it turned to fire into Shimazu's flank, catching him with a direct blast as he jinked to avoid the previous elemental. The impact rocked him, almost sending him sprawling and he slid across the snow and ice several metres from the force of the strike, burning rocks shedding from his armour as he continued to move. He'd managed to roll with the impact, absorbing the brunt of the attack and using it to move him closer to his target, but it was a close thing and as he ran he could smell wisps of hair burning and feel some of his flesh blistering.
Tads accelerated up the mountain, opening her senses wide and feeling the hostility and belligerence roiling through astral space. She wasn't sure what was the root cause of this irrational and unreasonable hatred of them, but she felt that there was such antipathy towards them that any chance of diplomacy was futile and vain. As she travelled up the slope in a blink of an eye, she could just feel what she could only describe as 'evilness' drifting down towards her, and it hardened her resolve.
Shimazu spun and rolled, using the momentum from the lava blast to push him the final few metres towards the western spirit then sprang towards the elemental, sword raised and ready to strike. The creature morphed large rocky limbs out of its body, raising them to try and club at him, striking at him with glowing red limbs that radiated heat and made the snow around it boil and evaporate. The sword struck home, but wasn't the killing blow he sought – the creature moved remarkably quickly and was very tough, his blade slicing deep into the core of the rocky creature but not clean through it.
Aswon reached his target too, thrusting forward with his spear and watching as the tip sliced into the lower part of the creature, magical blade proving more than a match for the otherwise impervious volcanic rock and stabbing through until the blade emerged from the rear of the glowing body. It wailed, a rasping bubbling sound as superheated air vented through the wound and the funnel, waving frantically in the air as it tried to keep track of the tribesman that had struck at it.
Another burst of gunfire slammed into the middle elemental, already turning to engage with Shimazu and continue to try and roast him alive. The tungsten penetrators proved to be no more effective against the magical creature than the explosive rounds had been, and went tumbling off into the air, deformed and battered by the impact with the hardened armour of the creature, having no effect upon the world other than to make Hunter's mood worsen further as he contemplated how much that burst of gunfire had just cost him…
Tads closed on the scene at her fastest speed, travelling at roughly four kilometres per second, crossing the hundred and twenty metres in less than the blink of an eye. She didn't so much as attack the elemental, as simply fail to stop in time, and as her weapon foci impacted the elemental at over fourteen thousand kilometres per hour, it disintegrated under the impact. She hadn't planned for it to happen, but fate and fortune favoured her and as the world dropped into focus around her she caught the remnants of the elemental as it was ripped apart and dissolved back to the metaplanes and the look of shock and surprise washing over Shimazu's face as his target evaporated before him.
Aswon pulled the spear back and struck again, stabbing deep into the body of the elemental and once more driving the blade through and out the other side. The magical energy holding the creature together was disrupted, and it too collapsed, being drawn back to the metaplanes.
The last of the elementals was now at point blank range and the funnel tightened even further, until it was barely the width of a few fingers. Shimazu's sword swung high and sliced down through the air, trying to destroy it before it could strike again, but the shock and surprise had cost him vital time – time he didn't have. As his blade bit down into the creature, white hot actinic fire erupted forth, slicing across Shimazu, a lance of molten rock that ate through his armour, cut through the flesh and seared him down to the bone. It robbed his blow of much of its power, and he staggered back in pain, twisting as the lance of lava continued to spew forth, cutting into the mountain behind him. Agony tore through his body, sending shockwaves up and down his nervous system, while the creature before him shrieked in turn, rocks grinding against each other as lava and flames bubbled out of the wound he had caused.
Tads struck out, her staff swinging around in a huge scything arc, and she finished the job Shimazu had started, the foci slamming into the creature and shattering it into shards of magical power that faded and decayed, drawn away from the world and back to the realm of spirits.
Shimazu dropped to his knees, sword falling from his hand as they raised to the crippled flesh that rose from his hip towards his shoulder. The flesh was pitted and scored, a deep burn that exposed his ribs and pulsing organs, bubbling and continuing to cook with the residual heat. Slumping forwards he collapsed face down into the snow, driving the pristine frozen water into the wound where it mercifully cooled the deep burns, wicking away the heat.
"I'll head back, Kai was getting the med-kit. We'll be up as quickly as we can." Tads shot back down the slope, travelling a little slower to make sure she didn't overshoot. Aswon and Hunter moved over to Shimazu, standing to either side of him and watching their flanks, just in case any more of the elementals appeared.
"If any more of those things appear, you're on your own. I can't hurt them. I even loaded the hot ammo."
"I told you it wouldn't work. It's not a matter of the ammo, it's… well ok, it is, a bit. But it's the raw power of the gun. Below a certain threshold, it's just not going to work. You need a pretty huge round, maybe even an anti-tank gun. But something powerful."
"Like your fifty calibre."
"Yes, that's probably got enough punch to do it."
"So can I borrow it? One of the others can bring it up." Hunter looked around and saw Aswon tense for a moment.
"It's heavy. And cumbersome. But if you can use it, and hit with it, then sure. But you're responsible for it."
"No problem." Hunter hit the transmit button, broadcasting down to the team. "When you bring the med kit up, can you bring Aswon's really big gun too?"
Down at the tilt-wing Marius had finished unpacking his Doberman, a large, tracked drone that was heavily armoured. Squat and imposing, it trundled down the rear ramp of the tilt wing, tracks cutting through the ice as Marius directed it through his rigger-link.
"Are you going to be able to get up that mountain in that?" Kai asked, somewhat suspiciously
"If I am careful, yes. It has wide tracks, and reasonable grip. We will see, though. Load up the rifle on the top." The drone paused long enough for Tads to put the large rifle on the top of the drone and lash it down with the strap, then slowly accelerated uphill, leaving deep tracks behind it of compacted snow with the distinctive tread pattern embossed upon it.
"I'm going up as well, Kai – it sounds like they need healing. Vadim can look after the tilt-wing, I'm sure, and if he needs help, I can be back here in less than a second. It should take something at least that long to get through the ward."
"Alright then – if you're sure. Vadim, close her up, we'll be back soon!" Vadim nodded and hit the button to close the ramp, sealing himself and the body of Marius inside, then watched on the headset as Kai, Tads and the drone currently being controlled by Marius started to work their way up the mountain, closing on the rest of the team.
There were a few moments that were a little dicey, where the tracks started to spin and Marius had to back up and find an alternate route over icy rocks or a narrow defile, but otherwise they managed to head up the side of the volcano without too much trouble, following the tracks of Aswon and Hunter which were already filling in with snow blown by the incessant wind. It was easy to spot where the battle had been – snow had been cleared from the slopes by the bursts of lava, and the shards of rock made unmistakeable blast patterns. When they reached them, Kai pulled out the medical kit and started to attach sensors and diagnostic pads to Shimazu, though it wasn't as if he needed to work out what the cause of injury was in this case. Still, the expert program included in the kit would monitor his vitals and choose when and how much of each drug to administer to keep him stable and help him recover, and that was one less thing for Kai to worry about.
While he got to work, Tads examined Aswon, looking over the superficial burns and charring of the skin, tutting as she gently moved his arms around and found patches of burnt skin all over his body where the armour had soft spots for mobility. The golden light of her healing spell lit up the mountainside for a moment as she soothed away the pain and triggered the cells into a manic period of hyper-activity, and thirty seconds later the flesh was smooth to the touch, though a different colour. Aswon nodded his thanks to her, then resumed his watch, looking out for any more of the elementals that might decide to attack.
Kai's ministrations took longer, but his treatment cleaned out the deep wound that sliced across Shimazu's body and dosed him up with antibiotics and healing agents, checked for toxins and viral loads and ensured that his vital organs were all functioning as needed. A few minutes passed as he worked away, trying to ignore the howling wind and spray of ice and snow – though Marius helpfully moved the drone up next to him to act as a windbreak.
"Ok, short of going for surgery, I think I've done most of what I can here. Tads – can you assist?" The shaman crouched down by the supine form, spreading her hands wide so that one was at each end of the deep gash. Thankfully his body was pure, unsullied by cyberware – she shivered for a moment thinking how hard this would be if it had been Hunter lying here instead. The golden glow lit up the mountainside once more, and the skin slowly eased itself closed, following her hands as they moved towards each other as if she was pulling a giant invisible zipper.
The light faded and Tads stood carefully, taking deep slow breaths as she dissipated the mana back into the area, carefully channelling the power through her and trying to avoid losing control. She was definitely better at this than she had been only a year ago – as there was nothing more than a mild urge to sneeze now. She smiled, then made sure her weapon foci was ready to use and moved away from Shimazu, looking out and around for any foes.
Shimazu sighed, and his body relaxed as the pain faded away, nerves calmed and restored by the healing magic. One hand reached out blindly, then clasped the hilt of his sword, grabbing it and renewing his link between soul and steel. The other hand opened slightly, revealing an auto-injector that had been clenched tightly there, so tightly that the seam of the plastic hand-grip was impressed into the flesh as a white line. Hunter, Aswon and Kai recognised the device, and looked confused for a moment.
"I thought he used his dose, when we had that fight after getting hit with the EMP weapon?" Hunter said.
"Maybe that's not his injector then. Look – the seal's still intact. It's got drugs in there." Aswon pointed at the clear plastic cover on the injector port.
"He'd better not have nicked my dose!"
"If he has, then we have an issue. But that sounds like a medical problem – and that's your area, Kai." Aswon smiled at him, happy to be able to delegate upwards for a change.
"Well, we'll sort it out later. Halfway up a volcano is not the right time. Let's just get up there, plant this token and get the hell out of here, before any of their mates turn up."
"Roger that. I'll take point." Aswon turned and moved out, forgoing the rope now that Tads was here – knowing that if anyone started to slip or fall, they'd be levitated up and away from danger within seconds. The rest of the team shook down into order, and started to climb, following along after Aswon and trying to keep a balance between being close enough to support each other and far enough away to avoid being caught in the same area by one of those nasty lava attacks.
Whether they had actually driven off the elementals, or cowed them with their quick and rapid response, or whether they just weren't seen – the team was unable to tell. But they made it up the volcano without further incident and got to a good spot, well inside the drop radius and found a suitable location to wedge the token into, hiding it in a narrow crack between two large fractured rocks, wedging it in on its side. After placing it, Hunter stood back and looked around the barren, windswept slopes, his eyes flitting from one rock to another, mounds of snow, sheets of ice – a million and one places where it COULD have been put. Whoever was coming out to find these was going to have a hell of a job, especially if there was a rival team out here as well trying to find the same thing…
The descent was just as quiet, though considerably more stressful – both in terms of a mounting fear of an ambush at any moment, and trying to descend the icy slopes and keep their weight in the right place, riding the thin line between falling forwards and backwards. It took them considerably longer to get back down the side of the volcano than it had to climb it, but eventually they made it back to the tilt-wing and got the drone and themselves back aboard. Aswon stared at Kai until he had his attention, then let his eyes flick from Shimazu to the viewing goggles and back again a few times.
"Marius, soon as you're happy, take off please and get us on the way. Shimazu – if you're fit, can you jump on the optics again, and err… oh, you know. Look out for those elementals. Yeah."
As soon as Shimazu had put the goggles on and adjusted them to fit, Aswon held up a finger to his mouth, then pointed at Hunter. When the ork turned to watch him, he mimed using an autoinjector, then pointed at Hunter again, then at his own eyes, then back at Hunter. Hunter nodded – then started to quietly reach over towards Shimazu's jacket and carefully go through the pockets, looking for any more of the drugs. Aswon meanwhile got up and went to stand between Shimazu and Kai, and started to talk, asking Kai's opinion on the route they should be taking to get down to Cal-Free. Playing along Kai came to move next to Shimazu, occasionally swaying into him and talking by his side, providing a number of distractions to cover Hunter's search.
"Well, there's a fairly well known Smuggler route called 'The Big Dance' that starts up at Seattle, but heads down through Denver. It cuts across Salish quite far to the east, near the border with the Sioux Nation. But it crosses into Ute in some low mountains, lots of valleys and passes for t-birds and such like to use. Hard to patrol because of the terrain and there's got to be dead-spots. But it does take us a fair way to the east."
"Ahh yes, I see." Aswon did actually pull up a map, looking at the terrain and trying to get some useful work done as well as providing the distraction. That'll add about two hundred kilometres to the journey if we go that far, each way. How's that going to leave us for fuel, Marius?"
"Short. We will have to land and use the reserve tanks. If we go direct we can just make it on our primary tanks, as long as we do not run into trouble."
"If we go across at the crossing point we had originally marked out though, that puts us fairly close to the Tir border – I'm not sure I like that much either."
They discussed the route, eventually agreeing to cross near the old town of Burley, near Interstate 84 – or whatever remained of it now it was being run by the NAN. Marius replotted his course and they started to head east, dropping down into thicker air as they descended away from Mount Rainier and deeper into the Salish nation.
As they dropped down out of the Cascades and to the plains below, they got close enough to a town that they got into cell range, and Kai's phone buzzed as he received several messages and data packets. He checked the messages, listening to them one after another and then checked out the attached files, before keying up his comms again to talk to the team.
"Good news and bad news. Those computer twins have come through with some IDs for us that we can use to get across the Ute and Salish border, covered as a local air unit. Bad news is that it's a crop duster, which we look nothing like, so a visual inspection is going to go wrong really quickly."
"And I have yet to ever see a crop dusting aircraft that could travel as quickly as this."
"Is that a problem? Can we go that slow?"
"We can. It will increase our fuel usage though, and we again will have to stop somewhere and refuel. But it is possible."
"Can you run the border without the ID?"
"I believe so. The Salish and Ute nations are on friendly terms I believe, so border security should not be that high."
"Ok, let's sneak across – and if we get spotted, or think we do, we can slow and pop the transponder on and use this ID. That works, right?"
"Probably. As long as they do not check us over visually."
They flew eastwards, flying over mostly rural landscapes as they headed towards the Snake River and their turning point. There were towns around, much smaller now than they had been when it was the United States – but the combined effects of the VITAS plagues followed by the Crash of 29 that had wiped out the Internet, the forerunner to the Matrix had caused such massive upheaval and changes to the world population, that nothing was quite the same as it once had been. Now most of the Salish preferred to live in small homesteads and ranches, sustainably-built and fitting in with the nature around them, or concentrated in the redeveloped cities around key high-tech industries.
Along the way they passed over ranches, farmsteads, huge amounts of pasture land that had animals grazing, areas set aside for meadows and wildflowers, floodplains cleared of developments and returned to nature. It wasn't all natural though – they also saw glittering lakes that didn't show on the map at all, only realising as they closed that it was hundreds upon hundreds of acres of photovoltaic generator panels, reflecting the sunlight and shimmering like wavetops. Hunter did a quick check and discovered that one of the Native American companies was called Geatronics, and had facilities all over the nation gathering clean power like this, using it to fuel their own economy and selling the excess to the power hungry neighbours like Seattle.
The land was generally clean though, much restored and natural compared to the depredations of only sixty years ago, and they saw nature spirits moving around the land, sometimes moving through trees from branch to branch, others swimming through the rivers as they chased after fish, revelling in the land around them. Other spirits flitted past from time to time, watchers or nature spirits bound to a shaman, carrying out some task as they zoomed from place to place.
Marius kept fairly low, able to relax a little as they flew across the low-tech mostly agrarian region. He probably startled cattle and sheep as the buzzed the farms, but by the time anyone looked up to see what had caused a herd to run, they were over the next hill and away, moving far too fast to be identified. As they hit the Snake river where it cut through the hills, he turned south, still skirting around the border of the Tir and headed towards the Wallowa and Payette Forests.
In the back, Tads caught sight of the empty auto-injector that Hunter had found earlier, the one used by Shimazu back in the EMP crash, and it gave her an idea.
"Say folks. Combat drugs and things… they all generally make you feel good when you take them, but then really awful afterwards, right?" She missed the sigh from Aswon and Kai as she bought up the subject, oblivious to Hunter's search earlier and their efforts to avoid alerting Shimazu to their concerns. "Well, I have an idea. I'm not sure if it would work though, and we might need a lot of drugs. Like… um. Well, I don't actually know. But a lot!"
"What's the idea, Tads? And yes, generally speaking, any drug give to someone in combat will give them a high for a while, but then they have a down afterwards. We tended not to use them too much in the merc companies I was in, because you can't afford to be in a combat area when you're suffering. They're fairly common in some police forces though, where they might have to deal with rioters or cyber-enhanced criminals, but they're not far from backup."
"Well, just say if we had a lot of drugs. What kind of drugs are there, though?" Aswon smiled as she tangented her own sentence, and dredged through his memory.
"There's new drugs coming out all the time. But you get things like Kamikaze, which makes you stronger and somewhat faster, and helps you ignore pain. Or another one is called Jazz, that makes you very twitchy and hyper-reactive. Or Long-Haul, which lets you stay awake for days on end – but when it wears off you need to sleep for about as long, and gives you incredibly vivid dreams and hallucinations."
"Oh, so maybe not the last one. But let's say we got hold of lots of the first two, ok? And if we got down into the temple through all the rubble, and got close enough to that horror – could we give it all the drugs. ALL of the drugs. And then run away for an hour. Let it go mad and be all super for an hour or two, or however long they act for… then come back when its feeling awful and having hallucinations and things, and can't fight as well?"
"That's… that's actually an interesting idea. I mean we have no idea what kind of alien physiology it might have, but if it's even vaguely the same as us – after all it probably needs to eat, and breath, and survive in the same environment as us – then maybe it's compatible enough. And if it is, it might have the same effects. Though if we went back in and it was still hyped up, that would be bad. Really, really bad."
"Yeah. But maybe we can do something along those lines. Something to help even the odds and make it easier to fight."
They flew on, the team falling silent and relaxing, either reflecting on their own thoughts and concerns, or watching the relayed sensor images from the tilt-wing that Marius piped through to the screens in the rear section. It was close to four in the afternoon when they felt the tilt-wing lurch a little, dropping down and starting to be buffeted as Marius lifted them up over trees and buildings, or banked around hills and other obstacles as he approached the Ute border.
"Marius – do you want us concealing?"
"Negative, Tads, but if you can be ready if called. I would prefer not to draw any magical attention, and I believe I can get past the local radar."
In the cockpit, Marius felt a tickle as a radar pulse washed over them, plotting the path and mentally updating his map file with the location of the sensor array. The area was pretty featureless, gentle rolling prairie with isolated stands of trees and the odd house, but nothing major to hide behind, so the chance of evading the sensors completely was slim. The craft was stealthy though, and he was ready to engage his systems if needed. Another pulse passed over him, then moved away – only to return sharply and quickly. Something had caught the edge of him perhaps, not enough to identify him but enough to appear as a faint blip on someone's display. He engaged the electronic deception gear, sending out micro-pulses of energy to simulate all manner of returns from buildings to flocks of birds.
A more powerful pulse headed past the craft as the operator tried to boost power and get a better signal or return. Just as Marius was about to call for a spirit to back them up, he felt another tickle from behind him, more fingers of energy stroking down his back. He sent out a jamming signal to his rear as well, then slowly adjusted course, getting the two signals lined up. The Ute border system sent another powerful pulse down towards him, hitting him with a signal strong enough to detect that something was here, but getting enough confusing signals back that it had no idea what. But it also sent enough power that the signal reached the Salish border sensors that lay astern of him, sending a hash of power to their receiver and lighting up all kinds of warning signals. They in turn upped their power, 'zorching' the Ute systems right back. Within seconds both sides of the border were now convinced that they were being electronically blinded by their neighbours, and ramped up their power again. Marius concentrated hard, dropping down until he was mere metres above the ground, skimming underneath the fringes of their signals and slipped sideways, gradually opening up distance between the electronic game of Pong going on overhead.
Suddenly another blast of energy came in from his right, to the west. Presumably the Tir had detected the signals bouncing back and forth, and some kind of aerial platform had turned its sensors this way, too. The range was long – too long to be a ground based set, so it had to be some kind of patrolling aircraft that was watching the borders with the two countries. As the Tir systems pumped a multi-megawatt pulse down towards them, both the Salish and Ute signals abruptly swung around, aiming up at the Tir and returning the favour.
Marius smiled – or at least he did mentally, his body remained inert, strapped in the pilot seat with no physical change – as the situation got horribly complicated for the sensor operators of all three countries as they kept pinging each other, wondering if one of them was staging some kind of border war game or was doing something to cover a raid or infiltration. The signals bouncing back and forth were confused now by the overlapping pulses of energy and random reflections, only added to by the complex deception measures that Marius was using, and with every passing second they slipped further over the border, changing the aspect ratio of the engagement and slipping further away from the locus where they'd detected some kind of signal.
As dusk fell, Marius banked to his right, slowly swinging around to a westerly course, leaving behind the complex interplay of signals and wondering if aircraft were now closing in on the respective borders to do a check, just in case. Either way, they were clear across the border, and he couldn't spot any pursuit, so he concentrated on their flight towards the Cal-Free border. As he flew over what used to be Nevada, he discovered that there were huge series of hills and ridges, a hundred kilometres long or more, stretching out in a southerly direction. The valleys formed between each ridge were wide, twenty-five kilometres or more each, and that gave him lots of room to work with. Soon they were scorching down one of the valleys, below the ridgeline to either side and invisible to any long range sensors. As he found a suitably dark and remote area he'd pop up over the ridge just high enough to miss the trees that topped them, before sinking down into the next valley over, crabbing to the west and remaining hidden from any casual observer. It also gave him a ride like a roller-coaster and let him do some really fun flying – though less fun for those in the back who kept finding themselves experiencing brief moments of zero-g with very little warning.
Aiming for the gap between Carson City and Reno, he worked through the hills there and crossed the border into Cal-Free, keeping a careful look out for sensor posts and radar nets, but actually finding the border remarkably porous. A quick check on his fuel gauge showed that to be a good thing, and as he calculated the route ahead and balanced that against his remaining fuel he discovered they'd be arriving with just over a hundred litres still in the tank. That was a little too tight for comfort, and would give him very little room for failure – so they may well have to put down somewhere in a hurry. He called back to Kai on the intercom.
"Kai, we have crossed into Cal-Free. Estimate twenty five kilometres to location of smuggler stop."
"Thanks, I'll warn them we're inbound." He checked his phone, ensured he had signal and jacked in the microphone and engaged the noise cancelling systems, then dialled the number for the stop, hoping that Iceman66's data was good.
"Bust." A voice stated, dispassionately.
"Bust?" Kai responded, somewhat confused.
"Yeah. Bust."
"Um – I'm Kai." He decided to start again. "We were given these co-ordinates and number by a fixer friend of ours, up in Anchorage. He said we'd be able to land, buy fuel, that kind of thing. So we're coming into the area, and just wanted to make sure you were open, as it were."
"What are you carrying?"
"A really weird random mix of stuff. Bits and bobs. We have got some fresh food though. Maybe looking to buy more than sell."
"Sure. Ok, call when you're about here." The line went dead as the other side hung up.
"Ok Marius, head to the location – they know we're coming!"
Marius followed the waypoints on his map, watching as the terrain shifted again underneath him. The hills grew steeper, the valleys deeper and the contour lines exploded in a mass of squiggles around them, twisting and turning in all manner of directions. He remembered hearing something about Cal-Free, and how it was on a major fault line, one of the tectonic plates slowly being ground up against another and causing a huge number of earthquakes and tremors. That would certainly explain the crazy terrain he was seeing!
He worked up Carpenter Valley, carefully checking his position and the sensors, slowing down and taking it steady in the unfamiliar environment. The valley walls were steep, rising up over a kilometre on either side of him – so at least he didn't have to worry about long range sensors at all! He ran another sensor sweep, spotting the raging river that flowed down on the valley floor and the stands of conifer trees that lay across the floor and walls of the valley. The trees were widely spread, plenty of bare rock between them, but not so clear that it would have provided a comfortable landing spot.
Suddenly, the foliage changed, and all he could see was oak trees, rising up in a dense wave of green, the trees close enough that they now obscured the ground below them. The waypoint marker drifted into view at the top of his screen and he slowed again, looking down into the apparently constant sea of trees below him. A moment later he called Kai, telling him he needed final approach instructions. Kai in turn dialled the number again.
"Bust."
"Kai – we're here, so my pilot tells me. Where do you want us to land?"
"I will light an area." The call disconnected again.
"There's going to be a light, Marius – aim for that. I hope that works, because our host doesn't like conversation it seems."
Marius checked down below, an edge of tension to his movements as he watched the fuel gauge dip down another mark, the alarm light flashing just a little faster now. As he flew along the valley floor though, he suddenly saw a glowing light ahead, lining each side of the river with a pale blue glow that rippled and twisted, illuminating the water and grassy banks. He angled down, dropping speed further and dialling up the sensitivity of his visual sensors, looking out to try and spot the runway or landing area.
As he slipped down lower, he suddenly spied a chasm to his left – no, not a chasm, just a void on the visual systems. He cycled through his vision modes, quickly trying to paint in the gap and work out what he was looking at, then realising that it was a huge gap in the trees – at least in the lower part of the trees. The canopy was huge, growing over the area and intermingling with the trees on the other side, but the lower branches must have been chopped down or trimmed, creating a massive space underneath – big enough for the tilt wing, to be sure. He slid inside, carefully sticking to the centre of the area and aiming to put her down quickly as he saw the flashing light of the low fuel alarm increase another beat.
The tilt-wing touched down on the bare ground underneath the huge oaks, gently settling on the suspension and the engines stopped at once – Marius didn't want the fuel lines to run dry, as re-priming them was a real pain. The propellers slowed quickly, the noise of their beating blades fading away, replaced with the rushing of water and the gentle swaying of the trees in the wind.
A troll appeared at the edge of the clearing, broad but not especially tall. In fact, as the team studied him, he appeared to be only a little taller than Aswon – positively short for a troll. He was also magically active, and carried some kind of foci around his head. Shimazu gave him a careful examination, then called out to the rest of the team.
"He's definitely magically active, I think a Shaman. Not as powerful as Tads, but he's not hiding or masking his powers. Either that or he's very powerful, and he's showing us what he wants us to see. But I think he's got some kind of spell woven into his head. Not on it, but in it. It's a bit too far to see clearly. And he's got some kind of spirit on his side, something unusual. It looks like a walking tree."
"May I see?" Tads asked, then took the proffered headset when Shimazu stripped it away from his own face, blinking at the sudden brightness of the interior lights. "Ahh – it's a manitou. A wood sylph. I wonder… normally they are associated with Wujen. That's… unusual. At least I would have thought so. But it doesn't look hostile."
Kai checked his appearance, making sure he wasn't carrying any visible weapons and shrugged off his winter coat he'd be snuggled in since leaving Mount Rainier. In his more normal clothes he looked a lot less assuming, and more importantly perhaps clearly didn't have room to conceal a weapon bigger than a fruit knife. He nodded to Shimazu, then headed for the side door, sliding it open and jumping down to the woodland floor below, making sure he had his friendly smile in place.
As he hit the ground, he saw the troll start to move forwards, ambling towards him and taking a reasonably wide berth around the engine.
"Hi I'm Kai, and this is our bird, and our team."
"I am Trogdor, and this is Bust. Welcome. What do you have to sell?"
"Like I said on the phone, we have some bits and bobs, but mainly we have some food that we can offer to you, as our host."
"That sounds like a free dinner. Why not come to the fire pit. You have time? You're staying the night? I prefer not to fuel at night, if we can help it."
"Yes, that's fine, thank you. We'd like a nice quiet night of sleep, and then maybe move on in the morning. Just before we do though, are there any special rules here? Any customs we need to follow, or things we must or must not do?"
Trogdor turned and looked at him silently, staring at him for a good twenty seconds without response, eyes pinned on Kai and ignoring Shimazu as he stood just behind the elf, hand on sword as was his custom.
"Don't damage or pollute the area. Don't be dicks."
"I think we can manage that. I'll call the team over, if that's ok?" Trogdor grunted in approval, and Kai called for everyone to pile out of the tilt-wing and seal it up, then follow them over. As he followed the troll, he spied two large fuel tankers, the kind used to deliver to fuel stations on a highway or shopping mall, each capable of carrying tens of thousands of litres. That probably covered the fuel situation at least, and he pointed it out to the rest as quietly as he could over their comms.
There was a glow ahead, visible now through the trees, and as they crested a small rise, he looked down into a bowl of depressed earth, spotting a large fire pit at the bottom. Steps were made from logs pinned into the grass bank, held in place with wooden dogs, and as they descended he could see that the entire bottom of the fire pit area was actually lined with stones, not just the fire pit itself. Large slabs were laid out in banks, forming a set of circular seats that would be slowly warmed by the fire, reflecting much of the heat back into the middle area. Trogdor waved for them to sit, and reached down behind a large slab of stone to bring out a pitcher and several wooden goblets. He poured water and passed them around, then filled up a large tankard for himself.
"What is this place, if you don't mind me asking?" Kai asked, looking around with wonder. The trees around the top of the depression seemed quite dense, but also tall, the crowns rising up far above him and the branches were densely interwoven, forming an almost solid mass above them.
"It's my grove." Kai's eyes narrowed, and he glanced around on the astral plane, spotting Aswon, Shimazu and Tads doing the same. They spied no ward or lodge though, so whatever he meant by grove, it wasn't an active magical circle.
As they looked around though, a few of them did spot something interesting – down near the fire pit, on the side closest to where the troll was sitting, was a large pile of ashes and a few sticks, the ends fire-blackened and seared. And the pile of ashes had been raked and pulled out, covering a large flat stone. And if you looked at the pattern in the ashes, with your head titled just to one side, and perhaps a little squint, the shape might charitably look something a little like their tilt-wing. Or it might just have been coincidence. But from the considering look on Aswon's face and the careful scrutiny he was now showing towards the troll, that wasn't a bet that anyone sensible would have put money on.
"So – you mentioned something about food?"
Tads smiled, and drew in some mana, then produced a thick juicy steak, white veins of fat marbling visible through it and carefully passed it over. Trogdor smiled, and jammed it onto a stick, then wedged it in the crack of a stone so it dangled over the flames.
"Excellent. I think we're going to get along just fine…"
