"Do you have something lined up, Kai?" Aswon enquired.
"No, not yet – but I'm going to start contacting people and see what's available."
"Just remember not to take any free work, then! We've got bills to pay and stuff on the shopping list to save up for!"
"Well, sometimes it's worth taking a loss-leader to get your foot in the door!"
"I know. But we need paying work. Maybe give Germaine a call?"
"We could… but she's crazy, right? You do know that?"
"She very rich, and English. That makes her eccentric, not crazy."
"I'll bear that in mind. Right – I'm gonna send out some messages then to a bunch of people, letting them know we're in the TCL right now, but available and have a bunch of lift capacity, and are looking for work."
The team finished breakfast and cleared up, then started work on their own projects and tasks. Tads was still doing quick journeys up to her homelands to check on the situation there, finding it progressing nicely as the Russians settled in as guardians now, rather than conquerors and the shaman got to work on combining their new source of orichalcum into their enchanting supplies to manufacturer magical equipment. Hunter spent time with Shimazu practicing with his new sword, trying to pick up some tips and techniques. Marius was still tinkering with the new aircraft, getting familiar with it and spending some quality time with his wife and child. Kai worked through the two families at the house, giving everyone there a thorough health check, adding in their details to his medical database and making sure everyone was in good health with no niggling complaints – though he did seem to spend a lot of time on the data entry, cross-referencing his results.
With the start of the new week, three separate groups turned up at the ranch to stay, occupying the new chalets that Nadia had installed. All were family groups from the Baku area, foreigners here to work in the oil industry that had relocated with their families. That kept Rusudan and his family busy, and the team tried to stay out of the way and make sure they didn't interfere with the operations of the ranch, watching as the families went on hikes and made use of the archery and rifle ranges, played laser-tag in the arena and went out on horseback onto the hills behind the ranch.
Nadia was still working on the underground facility for the team, and Tads had some excavations to do for her in between her trips up to Nenets' lands, digging tunnels almost effortlessly and expanding the base and tunnels significantly, while labourers came in to shore up the work and make the tunnels safe.
Late that night, after dinner had been served and the visitors had been fed, the team gathered around the kitchen table getting a bite to eat themselves while the ranch wound down for the evening. Kai's commlink rang, flashing up to alert him of the inbound call from an unknown caller.
"Hello?" His voice was guarded, wondering who it was.
"Good evening. I'm led to believe that you are available for hire at the moment. I have been told to contact you to arrange for some work to be done."
"Sorry, I'm not aware of who you are. How did you get this number?"
"Ahh, I represent Mr. Kulkerchev." Kai looked up and around the table in confusion for a moment, then gave a little 'ahh' as Marius mouthed the words 'cable car' to him, jogging his memory.
"Oh, yes, of course. Mr. Kulkerchev, in… Batumi." He nodded to Marius again as he highlighted the town on the map. "With the lovely house at the top of the hill. We very much enjoyed his party. So – how can we help you?"
"Mr. Kulkerchev is in need of some people to collect some items for him and deliver them back to his residence. There are several object d'art to be conveyed, and he would like to enquire as to your availability."
"Well, we're available now – depending on where it needs to be collected from and what pay is offered, of course."
"Very well then. There are six objects to be collected – one statue and five paintings. They will be available to collect in six days, from a location not far from Kabul, in the southern part of Turkestan."
"How big is the statue in particular? And do you know how much it weighs?"
"It is a life-size replica of a human male, standing atop a small plinth, in marble." There was a pause for a moment. "I do not have the specific weight, but I was informed that your vehicle would be more than adequate for the task."
"Right, hold on please." Kai said as Marius waved at him and pointed to the commlink. Kai pressed the hold button, muting the conversation and looked over at their pilot.
"He is making an assumption that we are still operating in the truck, I believe. That is what we had when we last visited him – he was the one that held up the work until we agreed to do the little job for him. So I guess he thinks we still have it. If so, the time would be about right – to give us six days to drive over Iran and through what used to be Afghanistan to Kabul would be tight, but doable. He does not know that we can fly there in about six hours!"
"I'll let him know that it shouldn't be a problem, then…" Kai started to reach for the commlink and both Marius and Hunter's voice rose as they told him to stop.
"He DOES NOT need to know that. Better to keep it in reserve. Just find out how much the job will pay!" Kai sighed, but then hit the hold button again to resume the conversation.
"That should not be an issue. We can arrange a box large and strong enough to hold the statue safely, I'm sure. Wouldn't want it to get broken driving over any bumps, now would we? So – how much is Mr. Kulkachev offering?"
"He assures me that seventy-five thousand is more than sufficient to cover your transportation costs and bribes at the border." Hunter and Marius blinked and then gave a little sigh of relief and a thumbs up, with Aswon joining them a moment later.
"Then I think we have a deal. Please send over the dossier or details, and inform Mr. Kulkachev that we'll be happy to bring his artwork to him."
"I will send that over to you now. Goodbye." The call disconnected, but a moment later the commlink dinged as it received a data slug from the same number. Kai forwarded it on to the team and Hunter fed the information into his deck, then smoothed out the screen onto the table.
"Right – this is Turkestan then, and the bottom bit here is where we're going. Used to be Afghanistan until the unification – for what that's worth."
"What do you mean?" Tads asked.
"Good few years back, lots of countries all merged together – Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan, Kazakstan, Afghanistan, and some of the very furthest parts of western China – all becoming a super-country called Turkestan. They thought it would give them more control and bargaining power against the corps, and other countries. Turns out it just invented a massive bureaucracy with massive corruption, massive borders with massive smuggling opportunities, massive holes in the budget and massive problems."
"You said massive a lot there?"
"Well, yeah. But the country is nearly six million square kilometres. Most of it barren wasteland, inhospitable deserts, steep mountain ranges, polluted rivers and barely viable settlements. The whole area is a seething mass of local warlords and political rivals all vying for control." Hunter adjusted the map out to show the extent of the Turkestan Confederation." Like over here, this area we know was controlled by the 'Turkmen Horde' – our friends who tried to eat us that one time. They run a lot of the area to the west of Tashkent, it seems. And to the north is the Kuchek horde – I think those are the ones that had all the airships and the flying caravan we detected on the way to the cosmodrome. There's a bunch of other 'hordes' that each have laid stake to a bunch of the country and control it with violence. And from what I understand, the area around Afghanistan is a real piece of drek. Remember we got offered to do a job to run down to the Kabul Mafia with some stuff from Tashkent and we turned it down? Well, that's where we're going now…"
"Where exactly, and when?" Aswon asked, studying the map intently.
"According to the slug, it's a black market meeting – guessing something like the one we went to in Tehran – and it's on Sunday the 3rd. Location is near somewhere called Paghman in the hills to the west of Kabul." Hunter checked the information again and then zoomed in, cursing the low resolution maps of the area. He quickly jacked in and looked around for something better, trying to piece together some information from the official matrix sites, tourism information and other reports on the area.
"Ok, best I can get right now, this place looks like it's on a little finger of land or a ridge that comes out of the mountains to the west. Ground drops off sharply on the north, south and east sides, lots of clear views – so pretty defensible in some ways. Looks like a big fancy house and gardens sprawling across the top. I'd put good money on that belonging to the local warlord…"
"What's the distance from here to the location, Hunter?"
"Straight line, about nineteen hundred clicks, Aswon. Easy enough to do on a tank now, though we need to refuel to come back."
"And if we went from here to Tashkent, then down to the location, and back. Or detoured that way at least?"
"Twenty-four hundred clicks…"
"Remember we had that contact, at the restaurant over in Tashkent. We sold him the dire-wolf corpses from when we did the temple job? I'm just wondering if we're heading over that way anyway, if we can detour and do either a drop off or delivery for him. It's a bit more distance, sure, but if he's paying for a job it might help us make more profit on the overall journey?"
"Ahh. Borgein Restaurant."
"Thanks, Marius – knew you'd remember the name. But yeah, I mean if he offers to pay us a few thousand for a delivery of something, or to courier something, that would more than cover the extra fuel?"
"Good idea, Aswon. Do you want to contact them and find out?" Kai gestured to Aswon and his own commlink, and saw the mercenary nod and start tapping away on his keypad as he composed a message.
"Can you show me the location we're going to again, please, Hunter?" Tads craned her neck over the screen, looking at the mountains and trying to figure something out. "Ok, zoom out a bit please. And go left. West… yeah, that way. Bit more… bit… oh, that's why. I know someone over there. Zoom in a bit on that valley with the really wide river bit, can you? Yeah – I stopped there for a while. Found some people had been trapped in an earthslide, lots of injuries. Helped out for a bit. Made a friend there called Mary-Pat."
"You want to stop in for a social call, Tads?" Aswon asked as he tapped away on his message, not even looking up at her.
"Well, it might be nice to see her again. And it doesn't look far."
"It's not. Less than a hundred and seventy-five kilometres by the looks of this." Hunter checked the distances and the routes. "Though if we were on the ground, you can add a lot more than that – the roads are… well, pretty much non-existent around there. And some big old mountains to get in the way,"
"Well, I would like to stop if we're passing. Take some food, blankets, that kind of thing. The people there were very poor."
"Should we get some boxes and put a ward thingy on them, in case any of the artwork is hot?"
"Good call, Hunter. I don't think we have the materials to hand at the moment…" Aswon looked over to Tads who shook her head, "but we can put up a temporary one, no problem. Probably can get something that will last for several months without too much issue, actually. We just need some boxes to actually ward."
"I'm on it. Should have something here in the morning. Working on five containers big enough to put some big-ass pictures in, including the frames – like the one we got for Germaine. And then a bigger box for the statue, along with a load of wadding and packing material, and some ratchet straps to hold them in place."
"We might have a bit of fun with the language. From my understanding we should be able to get by with English for a lot of people's second language, but we're likely to find lots of the locals speaking a dialect of Afghan, depending on what regions we land in or go through. So we may need you on translation duties, Tads, depending on what's going on." He glanced over at her and she nodded in agreement.
"When we get to the market, if it's like the other one we went to, do we leave the aircraft invisible?" Tads asked.
"Why would we want to do that?" Kai responded, looking around the table.
"Well, because it's a very restricted military aircraft only in use by one country in the world? At least as far as I can work out?"
"Oh. Alright, that's a fair point, Hunter. Maybe we should. Will the batteries last in it? I mean, does it have a battery that can do that, or does one of the engines need to be on?"
"It does have a battery system, and it can hold the system up for a while – but you are correct. It will drain the battery without at least one of the engines running. We may need to ask Tads to provide magical concealment or disguise while landed. Or work out something else…"
"Something to consider for the future, then. For the moment, let's work on Tads doing a disguise with a spell, or hiding it with a spirit – or both."
"Just remember that you're asking her to concentrate on holding that spell up for an extended period of time then, and not to sleep." Aswon warned Kai, and reminding everyone else around the table.
"Ok, noted. Right – if we're going to the market anyway, Hunter – can you find out what they need? I mean the people in the area?" Kai glanced over at Hunter as he snorted, and raised an eyebrow at him.
"The people? Safety. Security. Not being shot resisting arrest? Replacement hands, maybe? People over there ain't gonna have crap, and can't afford what we could ship. What we need to do is work out what the warlords want – and that's probably guns, money, power… stuff that we're not really in the market for."
"Is that maybe something we can work on, then? Providing transport, I mean. Could we broker out services for dropping in troops somewhere? I mean, how many troops can we fit in the back, at a pinch?"
"Are you sure that's something you want to get involved with, Kai?" Aswon stared at him for a moment, his eyes fixed and intense, lips pressed together tightly. "Getting involved in merc operations is a new set of risks and factors. You will end up on someone's drek-list if you start ferrying troops around. We will run the risk of getting shot at. And inviting a platoon of heavily armed troops onto your plane potentially runs the risk of them stealing it out from under you…"
"Well, we'll be careful?" Kai didn't sound particularly convincing, and Marius shot him a dirty look.
"I'm serious, Kai. Getting involved in mercenary operations is not something to take lightly. Hey, think back to how Sophie and the other Lionheart Security operatives were treated by the locals back in Constantinople. Often you end up going places where people hate your very existence – and that spreads to the people that brought them there as well!"
"Hmm. Perhaps not such a good idea. Hey – maybe you could talk to that guy? Bounce the idea off him?"
"Sure, I'll give him a call in the morning. Probably a bit late now…"
Not long after the team headed to bed, settling down for the night and relaxing, planning their activities for the next day.
In the morning, they gathered around the breakfast table at mid-morning, waiting for the ranch visitors to be out trying the activities before they grabbed breakfast themselves.
"Ok – what's the status? Hunter, let's start with you."
"Boxes are ordered and should be here in the next few hours at the latest. I'm guessing that should leave enough time to do your mumbo jumbo on them as we probably won't be leaving until nightfall?" Hunter glanced at Marius, who nodded at him. "Otherwise, I've done a bit of research, and the impression I get is that the market we're going to will be very similar to the one we went to in Tehran – lots of stalls and people selling stuff, meeting spaces for brokering deals, lots of different crews. So, we need to keep our wits about us, but it shouldn't be too dangerous if we keep together and don't do anything stupid."
"Why are you looking at me?"
"No reason, Kai. No reason at all…"
"Right – moving on. Shimazu?"
"I called Sato – he's settled in fine up near the Baltic coast and is working on his network. Starting to broker deals again, and things are ok with him. No work for us at the moment, but he knows we're still around, and I think he's still pleased with the job we did on the rocket. Otherwise, all good here."
"Tads?"
"I tried to call Mary Pat, but the commlink was awful – there was lots of delay and echo and it was really hard to understand her. So I went over astrally instead, and found her in the valley. She seemed very surprised to see me, but I mentioned that we might be coming by with blankets and things, and she seemed happy enough – though a little confused. She made it clear to me how poor they all are over there. But I mentioned that we can probably afford things like some food, water, and other survival gear. And everything is still going well up north – they're making the first batch of magical items right now, and they're still collecting orichalcum from the sea."
"Marius?"
"The aircraft is ready, fully fuelled and all systems are nominal. We have loaded all of the supplies on, though I think we will need to adjust things as we go to take advantage of the new layout. But we have the cargo space for the art and plenty of room otherwise."
"Good – Aswon? You look upset this morning?"
"Yes, a little. But I'll get to that. I called Borgein, and while he's happy to look at purchasing any critters we might find, there's nothing he wants ferrying out at the moment. He does have something he'd like bringing in though, if we can get it – and that's a bunch of freshly refined opium."
"How much are we talking?" Kai sat back as he considered the idea of running the drugs, trying to work out the potential issues it might cause.
"He says he's willing to buy up to a kilo – I don't know anything about opium, or how big that is. The only thing I've ever had to do with it is being issued and handing back Combat-Morph ampules, when I was doing merc work. Powerful stuff, addictive as hell."
"So people really want it once they've had some. Hmmm… Ok, what did you tell him?"
"That we'd look into it, but wouldn't make any promises as we didn't have a contact in-country to set up a deal. He laughed and told me that it's still their national export, and he couldn't see us not being able to arrange a supplier…"
"Ok. Well, we will have to see, won't we? Anything else?"
"Yeah – I called Sophie. Took a little while to get through to him – he's in hospital, looks to be torn up a fair bit. Says he got caught up in a car-bombing. Half his face is plastered in bandages, and he's definitely in a ward somewhere – I could see all the hospital equipment lined up behind him. So once we're done with this one, I'd like to head over to go see him and check up on him."
"Ahh right – ok, that makes sense. Can't see a problem with that. Right – so we're waiting on boxes and things, and then we need to do a bit of warding. Otherwise we're ready to go tonight, after dusk?" His glance around the table saw a lot of nods. "Right – in that case, Tads, if you've been over recently, can you fill in Hunter and Marius on the location of this friend of yours so they can plan the landing and approach?"
"I will. Assuming you're happy with a mind-link, I can 'show' you where it is easier than looking on a map." Hunter and Marius barely paused before nodding, despite their general misgivings about magic.
Once Hunter and Marius had been given a 3D mental tour of the area, it was easy enough for them to map out the location and approaches to the village and start planning their route. By midday, the packing boxes and survival supplies had arrived from Baku – the delivery drivers now giving them smiles of recognition as they handed over the large number of boxes. Once all the blankets, purification tablets, and other gear was packed in the Broadsword, the four magically-active members of the team set to work on warding the boxes for the artwork, putting up a moderate force ward on each of them.
By dusk, they were all ready, and after a last hug with Nadia and Marius Junior, Marius headed to the cockpit and started up the engines. Tads used a spirit to try and conceal the noise from the jets to avoid disturbing the holidaymakers in the cabins, and soon they were a shimmer in the air as they lifted up under stealth, turning to the east and heading for the coastline.
As they neared the eastern shore of the Caspian Sea, Marius turned hard to port, realising that they'd located the Esprit Oil Terminal, adjacent to their massive oil field – and after their experience trying to get a drone into the Dekita oil terminal some time ago, didn't fancy testing the stealth systems quite that soon. Instead they turned north, crossing over the coast a little south of Kum Dag, and then almost tracing their route taken previously towards Ashgabat – though travelling considerably more swiftly now than they had done previously when they were driving the truck.
A thousand kilometres into the journey, and they diverged from their previous route as they crossed the tiny village of Tejen, continuing straight on rather than turning left towards Samarkand and then Tashkent. The land grew wilder beneath them, the rolling deserts giving way to hills and scrubland, and then the lower ranges of the mountains. The ground became a crumpled mass of valleys and peaks, the earth a continuous series of folds like badly scrunched-up paper, a mass of twists and turns. It was desolate and had a feeling of abandonment to it, and the ground was an almost uniform black – no electric lights, no villages, no campfires, no vehicles moving about – just what seemed to be an endless series of tiny valleys and sheer ridges, boulder-strewn slopes and rough escarpments.
As they flew on, there were a couple of tiny flickers on the sensors, possible contacts, the faintest glimmer of a signal that seemed to fade away almost immediately. Hunter plotted them in the database, wondering if they were black-sites from corporate research arms, wandering nomads, smugglers or terrorists, all busy trying to avoid attention. Marius kept them at a reasonable height, taking advantage of the almost desolate area with no electronics emissions to make good time as they flew eastwards.
As they closed in on two in the morning, they entered the area around the village that Mary Pat lived in, and headed towards a fork in the valley floor, looking to set down in the adjacent valley to the one containing her village. It left them with a kilometre walk to get there, but also meant they weren't going to wake every single person up in the village with their engine noise, and neither would they run the risk of blowing their flimsy dwellings down with the jet wash or turning the loose floor of the valley into a sandblaster that could injure or kill any livestock they might have.
Landing proved to be somewhat tricky, just like their previous landing in desert terrain, as the jetwash kicked up a sandstorm around them. Marius had practiced plenty though by now, and also had Tads and her spirits helping him, keeping the muck out of the engine intakes and letting them settle to the ground quickly and chop the power to the engines as soon as the landing gear touched the ground.
The cacophony of jet thrust faded away, leaving just the plinking sound of the metal cooling to echo around the valley, and in the cool mountain night, even that faded away soon, leaving just the quiet mournful sound of the wind as it rose and fell over the sharp peaks.
"Right, standard watch rota – let's grab a couple of hours kip, before we head over with some supplies to go play nice with the locals."
They got their bedding set up, and settled down for a bit of rest, waiting for the sun to climb up over the eastern mountains and bring a new day and some new adventures…
