After the debrief, Hunter made his way back to his position, crawling through the brush and trying to slide noiselessly and without sign back into his observation position. Despite being only a few hundred metres away, it was a long, slow and arduous manoeuvre, but eventually he was back with eyes on the target.
Meanwhile, back at the truck, Aswon came up with a plan first – how about he and Kai just wandered into their camp, as if they were genuine explorers – Kai the corporate exec, with a wanderlust, Aswon as his guide. Maybe if they found some game first, they could turn up with a boar over the shoulder, and see if they could talk their way into camp. Well, they could see if Kai could talk his way in, whilst Aswon gave moral support, at least.
Whilst they were weighing up the options, Marius was disturbed by an electronic signal – then suddenly dived into the front of the truck, jacking in rapidly and shutting down the remote platform still monitoring the next valley over. The team looked to his sprawled body laid over the seat, waiting for some idea of what was wrong.
His voice came over the speakers, filling the cabin with his clipped and precise English. "EM surge, a big one. At least a few kilometre range, broad spectrum sensor sweep. Then the platform reported that it was being locked up by some kind of weapons system, maybe something like a HARM."
A few of the team looked blank, but Marius must have anticipated this. "High Speed Anti-Radiation Missile – it homes in on sensors. So we, need to be careful about using active sensors, or giving away our position with electronic noise."
Over in the valley, Hunter watched as some of the other team busied themselves with their work. They moved a couple of large crates around, then opened up a selection of them, removing some kind of machinery. The troll and the orc spent about twenty minutes assembling and checking over the large drone. It was the size of a one-man ATV when complete and looked somewhat similar – large balloon tyres at each corner and large coil springs would give this drone good mobility. Hunter sketched down some details, making a note of the large Ares logo on the front armour plate, and the word "Arbiter" stencilled down the side. Where a person might normally sit in an off-road vehicle, there was a squat turret with a fixed gun of some kind - perhaps a light machine gun, though it was hard to tell from this range and angle. After it was assembled, they two technicians stood back, and the drone slowly crawled in a full circle around them, then headed down valley at a faster rate, and started to patrol back and forth in an arc.
Back in the truck, a lively discussion was in process – what to do about the sensor array at the top of the crest. Should they try and recover it, and risk being spotted? Were they laying a trap? If they removed it, would the other team get more suspicious because there was nothing there that could have given off a signal earlier?
After some time though, they agreed upon a plan. First of all Aswon and Shimazu got together a "care package" of materials – blanket, warm fleece layer, food, toilet roll, water bottle. When this was ready, they climbed the hill and as they approached the top, crawled the last fifty metres, taking care not to skyline themselves as they crossed the ridge. Working slowly and keeping low, they recovered the sensor pod, dragging it back down off the ridge, and then once clear, swiftly moved a hundred metres to the south, before slowly working their way back up and over, positioning the pod in the best cover they could find. At a signal, Tadibya called her spirit to her and gave it one of the metallic survival blanket, and instructed it to go to the ridge as subtly as it could, and then let the blanket get caught in a bush. The flapping material would create a visual and sensor target, and would explain what might have been seen to anyone who came to investigate.
Hunter watched as a second Arbiter series drone was assembled and tested, and then sent into the valley near the first. As it came on station, the first drone moved its patrol path slightly, until both were sweeping large arcs including sections of the hillside.
On completion of the drones, the two opened up further crates, and began to assemble what could only be heavy machine guns on sturdy tripods, with battery packs, actuators and sensor pods attached. These were laboriously carried down to the area by the patrolling drones, and then firmly wedged into position. Once the sentry guns were emplaced and some self-tests were completed, the troll hefted on a large backpack with a cylinder of some kind of hose attached. Approaching the sentry guns, he sprayed rapidly setting foam all over the gun, encasing it in material. As he moved on to the second, the orc tested the first, and then started to spray it with grey paint, flicking up moss and leaves and bits of dirt to weather the surface. About an hour later, the two sentry guns were fully disguised and very hard to spot.
Once the sentry guns were complete, the riggers must have taken control of the mobile units, as they were called back to the main camp. One rolled onto an induction charging pad, topping up its batteries. The other patrolled around the opposite side of the camp to the sentry guns – the side nearest Hunter's position. It shortened the path considerably, and would make sneaking up the camp very difficult indeed.
Meanwhile the ork and the troll had set up a series of trestle frames with a track running along the top. Opening yet another crate, they assembled some spotter drones, and fired them off into the air from the track, where they quickly rose to just under the level of the illusion spell. One headed north west, the other south east, and they took up station keeping positions, their hydrogen balloons keeping them floating against the grey overcast sky.
Hunter's attention was drawn to the temple entrance then, as six of the other team emerged. They headed back to the large central gazebo, and Hunter quickly trained his laser microphone on them, searching out a surface that would resonate and pick up their speech. He listened carefully whilst they discussed what they had found in the first level of the temple, the obstructions and cave-ins, the amount of loose debris and choked passages, the first trap they had found, a stone slab that when moved had trigged a fusillade of darts fired from a concealed opening – and perhaps most importantly, the fact that there was a magical ward across a corridor, that had not been defeated yet.
Whilst he was writing up his notes, Shimazu slid down into his position, having spent the last hour crawling down the hillside, trying to remain as covert as possible. The care package was slid over to Hunter, and the notes taken were passed back in return. Shimazu waited a while, as Hunter finished annotating the conversation that had just taken place, and took another look over the camp, trying to make sure that all of the details he could see were written down to pass back to the team. Shimazu grabbed the paperwork, checked over his gear to make sure everything was strapped down, and then started the slow and tedious crawl back up the mountain ridge to break line of sight to the valley.
Eventually he made it back to the truck, and met up with the rest of the team, who spent a while pouring over the notes that Hunter had made. It soon became clear to them that Hunter had some considerable talent in this area – the notes included all kinds of strange details and descriptions that might at first glance appear superfluous. Yet when combined with Marius' sat phone and a computer search, the detailed definition of the type of muzzle break and layout of the equipment provisions soon revealed that those sentry guns were in fact Ares Firelance area denial systems – a defence system that included very competent sensor packages and an expert marksman system that could fire the guns fully automatic with a high degree of accuracy – providing the tripod system was properly configured and the recoil was absorbed.
They worked through the list and a pattern soon emerged. Ares Arbiter drones, with Ares light machine guns. Ares EIS-200 surveillance drones. Ares guns. Ares sensor packages. Ares brand tents and induction charging pads. Sure, Ares was one of the ten largest mega-corporations in the world, with fingers in every imaginable pie and a list of businesses and divisions longer than any one person could remember… but this felt like an Ares-sponsored mission, rather than a team that had brand loyalty.
The team paid particular attention to the discussion about the temple, rewriting Hunter's recollection of the conversation into a report for their employer, and adding in all of their other observations to date. As they did so, the mood fell. The more they learnt, the more they realised just how much this team outclassed them. Their vehicles were top of the line, the drones were numerous and heavily armed and armoured. Spells were of a powerful nature and cast so well that even the most perceptive of them could not penetrate the illusion. And the sniper, seen just the once, was still out there. Despite hours of observations, Hunter and Shimazu had seen no further sign of them at all. On top of that, they were outnumbered ten to six.
They discussed the mission parameters again, reminding themselves that they were here to observe only – they did not have to engage, or capture, or steal anything. It was just an information gathering exercise. Even so, the pay which had seemed quite generous before, suddenly felt not so good… if this team spotted them, they figured it wouldn't be much of a fight.
As night fell, the weather grew colder and colder, and just before midnight, the first flakes of snow started to fall. The wind had dropped, and the air took on a stillness, sound deadened by the fall. Within an hour, the snowfall increased, the snow forming large flakes that quickly settled on the cold earth and built up into large banks. Nothing moved that night, and those on watch in the truck spared a thought for Hunter, making do on the mountain side, exposed to the cold and wet.
When morning broke, the snowstorm was just petering out, having dropped a good hundred and fifty millimetres overnight. The team checked around them, seeing nothing but a white blanket dropped over the entire mountainside and valley floor – crisp, fresh and undisturbed. Shimazu quickly realised that it would make his sneak up and over the ridge line a whole lot more difficult, as the tracks he was bound to leave would be visible to anyone observing from the right angle. They quickly worked on stripping some branches from an evergreen and making a brush that he could drag behind him to try and smooth out the snow. It looked like the crawl to the observation point would take even longer this morning.
On the slope overlooking the temple, Hunter roused, and worked slowly to unwrap himself from the blanket which he was cocooned in. He took a handful of the fresh snow and shoved it into his mouth, letting his body heat melt it and getting a trickle of icy cold fresh water to slake his thirst. He was a little tired, having been up most of the night, but he wasn't that cold – the amount of work he'd done had kept him more than warm enough – so warm in fact that he'd had to open a few layers to ensure he didn't sweat and then freeze later.
He sat in a little bowl that was remarkably free of snow. Primitive wood spades and makeshift tools were pushed to one side, and the snow was banked and compacted around his boulders very carefully. From the outside, it looked like a large mound of snow collecting around a few rocks. From inside it was a 70% complete igloo, blocking lines of sight to his side and rear quarters, with a curving approach tunnel. He still had a gap between the rocks that opened up a vista of the valley below him, but he was now exceptionally well concealed to the sides. That worked both ways of course – he could now be approached much more easily than before… but there were no free lunches in recon work. The snow arced over his head, cutting down on the wind and providing some insulation, keeping the temperature hovering around zero in his nest.
He saw the first of the team stir, the Aboriginal female tagged as "Wee Woo". As she came to the entrance to the tent, she stopped and stared at the blanket of white spread about the valley floor. She stood perfectly still for nearly thirty seconds and then disappeared back into the tent, out of sight. Barely a minute passed, and then the brightly-dressed figure appeared in her tie-dye robes. She, too, stopped at the tent entrance and looked around, then gave an obvious whoop, and raised her hands in the air and started to run through the snow, kicking up big clomps of powdery snow into the air. Wee Woo stood in the entranceway and stared at her, as she cavorted around the camp.
The brightly-dressed figure tripped on something hidden under the snow, and was sent sprawling. As she fell, the bracer she wore on her left arm sprang free, falling by her side.
Aswon stared down into the valley from his observation point on the ridge with surprise, as the illusion spell suddenly dropped. He scanned over, spotting the tents, truck, drones and the lone brightly-dressed figure. She scrambled in the snow and grabbed the bracer, then hurriedly fitted it around her arm again. Equally as fast, the spell flicked back into existence, replacing the actual valley floor with the image of an empty valley, bereft of snow, just like it was the day before. Then, it slowly changed, layers of snow building up over the landscape as the illusion was manipulated to match the physical surroundings.
Once again, Aswon, and all the team above the illusion spell could see nothing but what the other runners wanted them to see.
Hunter, of course, was below the spell barrier, and could see everything as it truly was. He saw Wee Woo hesitantly come out of the tent and encounter snow – apparently for the first time in her life. Along with her skin colouration and dress sense, it made it very likely that she was from some interior part of Australia. That might affect her outlook and abilities somewhat… he made some more notes and continued watching.
The camp below roused and get into their morning routine. Several of them cleared snow from items like the induction pad and launch track, and made sure the drones were charging and checked over the sentry gun positions. They apparently had breakfast stood around under the gazebo, whilst their leader, Rocket, detailed assignments for the day. Hunter listened carefully, confirming names and details and finding out more about their skills from the tasks assigned to them. After perhaps a half hour, they split into two groups.
Rocket, Digger, Wee-woo, Blaster, Slapdash and Geo headed into the temple with spades, picks, ropes and a bunch of other equipment.
Mamma Bear, Spotlight and Spangles – and presumably Topshot, stayed in camp.
Over the next few hours, Spotlight and Mamma Bear assembled two more drones – Ares R series utility units. Equipped with a load storage area and two powerful arms ending with claws, drills and other equipment, they were sent trundling into the temple after the dig team. Not long after that, the drones started to appear at irregular intervals and dump loads of stone and broken masonry to the side of the temple entrance.
In the early afternoon, the dig team resurfaced, and headed back to camp, accompanied by both drones which spent a while recharging on the pad. Over lunch they discussed what they had found – centring on a number of arches and vaulted ceilings in poor repair that were at great risk of collapse. Digger appeared to be the acknowledged expert on the process and briefed them on how they were going to shore up the areas and make them safe for further exploration.
After lunch, the drones continued their excavations, though after a while they changed their actions – and started taking selected stones and rocks back in. It appeared that they were now making repairs to the sections at most risk, using the materials at hand.
The explorers returned to the surface at tea time, as the light was fading away. Hunter heard an annoyed set of questions from Rocket, questioning Spangles on how busy she'd been sorting out their magical defences that day. Spangles assured him that she'd been hard at work, and they were on track. The reason for the question became clear shortly afterwards, when chuckles turned into belly laughs from several of the team. Apparently, there was now a large snowman on the far side of the gazebo, staring down the valley. It had a large stick over its shoulder, smaller ones at the waist, and from the conversation bore some passing resemblance to Rocket in physical appearance.
They ate, chatting about various odd things. Hunter made notes where he could, but much of the conversation was difficult to decipher. They were clearly talking about previous jobs and tasks, but doing so with a common frame of reference – so much of the detail was left out, or glossed over.
After they had eaten though, they changed routine. A call from Rocket, and conversation stopped, as they listened to him calling out positions around the site. The team focussed in, and moved swiftly to their position. Hunter noted that they were nearly all armed now. Rocket had his launcher hefted in his hands, Blaster had a full gyro-mount harness on with a machine gun floating on the recoil arm, moving with strange grace as he strode across the undulating surface. The others held rifles or sub-machine guns mainly, weapons with some reach at least. The only ones not armed with firearms were Spangles and Wee-woo – but presumably they had more than enough firepower in their fingers.
They fanned out around the site, roughly-spaced but covering all angles of approach. They crouched or lay in the snow, rested against boulders or tree stumps or in Blaster's case, just stood with his legs widely braced and the heavy machine gun held tightly.
With a low rumble, the generator built into the truck started up, the reverberations carrying through the still mountain air. It was quiet – in the city it would probably not have been heard over the noise of traffic – but out here it seemed very obvious after the stillness of the day. Lights brightened in the tents as the generator provided a surge of current to wherever the batteries were stored, and various lights and devices could be seen by the reflections they cast on the snow as they powered up and recharged. All told, they ran the generator for about fifteen minutes, with the team holding a quiet overwatch in case the noise attracted any attention. After it powered down, they stayed in position for another five minutes, watching the valley carefully, before they relaxed and stood down. Returning to the gazebo, they slung weapons and pottered about a little, tending to the equipment and ensuring all the charging was complete.
As night fell, Hunter heard Shimazu approaching, dragging a fibre optic cable with him and some lashed together electronics in a plastic bag. Marius and the team had come up with a plan to try and make the information gathering easier. The interface would mate up a small pocket secretary with the fibre optic cable, transmitting the data a hundred metres up the ridge. There, another converter would link together the fibre cable with a transmitter, with the power turned down to the absolute lowest level. They had calculated that this would reach – just – the top of the ridge, where Shimazu could then wait and receive a data dump from Hunter electronically, without having to risk the daily climbs up and down the ridge in view of the dig team. By moving the transmitter up the ridge, the signal should not reach back down into the valley far enough to be detected by the dig team either. It wasn't perfect – ideally they needed another couple of hundred meters of cable to get clear up and over the ridge – but they didn't have that. Apparently it had been added to the shopping list for when they got back to town.
Hunter settled in for another night on the mountain on watch, whilst Shimazu returned to the truck with the latest information to transcribe into their report for their employer.
Night fell in the valley, with nothing visible moving.
