As Hunter headed back over the ridge, Aswon's attention was drawn further down the valley as he spotted the drone rising above the layer of the illusion, like a shark fin rising above the water. The drone was sleek and angular, with a rectangular body that did not look in any way aerodynamic or streamlined. Four small thruster jets, one in each corner propelled it through the air using brute force, though it was not particularly noisy. A large machine gun of some kind was fixed into the weapon bay, the heavy muzzle break and perforated barrel thrusting from the midline of the drone.
Aswon quickly thought about the situation, and reasoned that if they were launching additional drones, they'd either seen something or thought they had seen something… in either case it made sense to show them something obvious. He grabbed his pack, slung it over his shoulders and then walked down the spur of the mountain towards the road to the north, acting like a mountain hiker out for a stroll. He waited until the drone was close enough to him to be so obvious anyone could have heard it, and then made a show of obviously spotting the drone, examining it for a few seconds, shrugging, and then resuming his progress northwards, leading it away from both the truck and Hunter's position.
Marius and the rest of the team scrambled to get the truck packed and ready to move, jamming bikes, drones and bits of Dire Wolf packed in zip-lock bags into the back of the truck, scouring the site for evidence they had been there, and then rolling down the hill, trying to keep the noise to a minimum and the truck obscured by ridges, boulders and scrub from the drone. Tadibya relaxed and flew out of her body, heading up to look at Aswon and examine him for magical tails. She had a good look around, and headed back to her body, content that he was in the clear…. unfortunately she didn't spot the ethereal form of a watcher spirit, bouncing along the ridge after Aswon in the form of a rabbit. Once she was back in the cab and had synced her astral and physical form she reported back that Aswon was ok, not being pursued and would be down to the road in a while, but would appear east of their position. Kai called for extra protection on the vehicle to help out, and Tadibya asked her spirit to conceal them. The spirit of the mountain muted the sound of their passing, and their trail faded away behind them, leaving no sign of them ever having been here.
They got onto the road at the end of the valley, turning west, and rolling down the hill slowly, putting distance between them and the other team, but trying to limit the speed and not get too far away from Aswon. Shimazu subtly adjusted the air conditioning, blowing cool air past him, trying to keep the smell of Hunter's unwashed body away from him whilst Marius had his attention glued to the sensors, monitoring audio and visual spectrums and radar, looking for trouble.
The sound of a high revving engine alerted both Aswon and Marius, and a moment later the light strike buggy power slid around the ridge into view, before accelerating hard down the road. There were four occupants in the vehicle – Mamma Bear was driving, with Rocket in the front seat, holding his launcher across his chest. Blaster and Slapdash were in the rear, both stood up and braced against the structure. Marius alerted the rest of the occupants, and Tadibya quickly adjusted her vision, looking into astral space. The mountain was bright in astral, relatively clean and pure, and full of life sources. She could see the grey blob of the strike buggy, with the four life forms glowing brightly. Hovering over their heads though, was the astral form of Wee-Woo, accompanied by a swirling vortex of mist that writhed and pulsated at her side. She studied it for a moment, discerning the power of the sky spirit as she assensed its nature. She spoke as she studied, putting out a warning over the radio link that they had astral backup. She gave a cry of alarm as a watcher spirit suddenly appeared in the windscreen, having been over the truck somewhere. It manifested – the astral form solidifying and becoming visible to people on the mundane plane – and then started to shriek at the top of its voice.
"They're here! They're under me! Aim here! Well, not right at me! But under me! They're HEEEEREEEE!"
Kai glanced at Tadibya with a frown, and was answered with a shrug, before she explained.
"Magical concealment and invisibility works fine against those in the real world, normal people and cameras and things. But it makes you glow like the Northern Lights in the other world. No way to hide a spell there…"
The light strike vehicle slewed around Aswon, and then cut him off, sliding to a halt in front of him. Momma-Bear and Blaster faced down the hill towards the watcher spirit and the still-concealed truck, keeping their eyes open. Rocket and Slapdash faced Aswon, who had pulled up by the side of the road and was standing ready and alert, but trying to not to stand in an aggressive manner.
Rocket spoke first, looking Aswon up and down as he did so. He was calm, and not aggressive, but he spoke with a certain amount of self-confidence.
"Hoi Chummer. You wanna do this the easy way, or the hard way? I'd much rather do the easy way, if it's null sheen with you, but I'll go for whatever I need to."
Kai on hearing this, called for the truck to stop, told Tadibya to drop the concealment and then climbed out of the truck as it rolled to a halt. He started to walk back up the rough track, heading towards the strike vehicle and Aswon, his hands swinging loosely by his side, obviously not carrying any weapons. As he walked up, he spoke quietly, calling for Aswon to head back to the truck, and for the team to keep an eye out, and look for others trying to outflank them – they had no idea where Spangles, Digger, Spotlight, Geo and Topshot were, with the latter being a particular worry.
"Boss is coming, probably better that you talk to him, to be honest," said Aswon as he gestured towards Kai. Rocket nodded, and Aswon skirted the buggy, and headed down the slope to the truck, passing Kai a few yards away.
Kai approached the strike vehicle, looking at the chunky tyres, massive springs, open frame and equipment, then giving each of the occupants a quick glance and a once-over, before turning his attention to Rocket.
"Good afternoon. What can I do for you?" he asked in a relaxed English drawl.
"Well, you can tell me how long you and your team have been observing us, what you've learnt, and who you're reporting it to. That's the easy way. The hard way probably involves my mage ripping the memories out of your heard or dosing you with truth serum. Personally, I'd prefer to use the easy way, leaves less hard feelings. But it's up to you, the clock's ticking, and I'm not messing about." Rocket spoke in a calm tone of voice, but his eyes stared at Kai, examining him carefully. He appeared to have absolute focus on him, and nothing else – trusting the rest of his team to keep him safe.
"Would you like a nice cup of tea? I'm sure we can get the kettle on and discuss this like civilised people."
Back in the truck, Tadibya peered into the back at the little kitchenette in the corner, wedged in behind the scrambler bikes, bits of wolf, herbs, loose-packed kit and partially assembled drones.
"Kai – you do remember the back of the truck is full of stuff right? Do you want us to start unloading?"
"Ahh, just been told, no tea. Sorry, not off to a great start. Hardly surprising though, we've not long been here you see. We've only just started really, so we haven't see very muc…."
"That's your first and only warning," Rocket interjected, watching the eyes and seeing some faint micro-expression that made him doubt Kai's words, "I suggest you try that again."
Kai stalled, repeating his innocence, his hands spread wide, trying to convey with his body language and stance his open and honest nature. Rocket just stared at him, and then depressed the transmit button his radio mike.
"Plan Alpha."
With lightning fast speed, Blaster bought up a pistol sized weapon in his hand, aiming at Kai from the hip and firing. Instead of the sharp retort of a pistol though, there was a "zing" as the two prongs trailing the capacitance wire were fired across the distance by the compressor. Kai let one of his knees buckle, throwing himself frantically to the side in a wild lurch, watching the two darts slide past the side of his chest as if in slow motion. Blaster adjusted aim, following the movement of his body, and the next two rounds hit Kai's chest with a solid thunk. A microsecond later Kai gave a spasmodic jump as thousands of volts arced across his chest from the two probes. Darkness pushed his vision into two tiny tunnels as he fought to remain conscious from the massive blast of power.
Marius slammed the truck into reverse and twitched a mental muscle. With a roar, the truck leapt backwards, accelerating at a frightening and unsafe rate, heading straight towards the strike vehicle on a collision course. Shimazu and Hunter hung on as hard as they could and tried to retain their positions and keep a bead on Kai's position, readying weapons. Aswon burst into a sprint up the side of the mountain, trying for high ground where his rifle and scope could come into play.
A moment later a shimmer in the air and then an image of an empty road snapped into place between the truck and the strike vehicle. Spangles was obviously concealed somewhere in sight of the road, and had re-modulated her spell, now using it as a vertical wall rather than a horizontal cover. The team squinted and strained, but they still couldn't penetrate the spell– it just looked real, with no fuzziness or inconsistencies to clue them in to what was on the other side of the illusion.
Marius continued to roar up the hill, straining the engine and sending gravel and rocks flying down the valley at high speed as the massive engine thrashed and drove the wheels across the loose surface. The truck accelerated past forty miles per hour, transmission whining in protest at the demands made on it. Mentally Marius though about the position of the strike vehicle, thinking about the turning radius and where it would be if they had pulled forward and turned as tightly as they could, and then adjusted the truck slightly onto a new course.
A loud bang reverberated through the vehicle, and a shudder as one of the tyres exploded violently as the wheel hub disintegrated under the impact of a perfectly placed sniper round. The axle started to deform and tear itself apart, but Marius used the active suspension to raise the remains of the damaged wheel from the road and cut power to it, and then slewed the truck back onto course.
In the strike vehicle, Kai lay across the back seat, head shoved to the side with aftershocks still making his limbs tremble. After Blaster had shot him, Slapdash had reached out to him quickly, grabbing him firmly and pulling him onto the vehicle and then kneeling on his backside, holding him in place as the buggy shot backwards up the road. Mamma-bear rocked from side to side in her harness as her consciousness fused with the machine in the same way that Marius merged with the truck. They actually had exactly the same riggerware control system – a Rheinmetall Präzisionssteuerung 2b, giving them the same integration with their vehicles. But the two vehicles were very different. The power to weight ratio for the Ares strike vehicle was nearly six times higher than the truck, and the top speed was higher. The buggy leapt up the mountain road, accelerating and weaving hard and throwing up two large rooster tails of dirt and stone behind it.
They made it into the temple valley, wheels spinning as they whipped around the ridgeline. Through dim vision, Kai saw the camp and the truck ahead, and realised that if they got much closer, he was in real trouble. He gathered his breath, fighting against the twitches and then exhaled a command, putting everything into it he could.
"Mamma-Bear, STOP!" His words carried the unmistakable echo of command, but there was a strange and deep harmonic to it too. The sound was almost primal, a rolling resonance that seemed to claw at the driver's consciousness. The acceleration stopped, and a look of confusion crossed her face. A tentative noise escaped her lips as she seemed to seek clarification…
A hand descended onto Kai's forehead, slapping it firmly. The round disc adhered to his forehead and the drug infused glue leeched into his skin, finishing what the taser had started. This time the shock engulfed his vision, the light receding further and further, until all that was left was blackness.
In the truck, Marius realised that he had missed where he thought the other vehicle was, and snarled over the intercom, his voice taking on a guttural clipped tone as he concentrated on the speeding vehicle and trying desperately not to lose control on the rough road, driving with reversed controls. Aswon meanwhile had reached a vantage point and was now scanning the opposite ridge, looking for the concealed sniper. He was half-torn – if she fired again, he might spot the muzzle flash – but then it was almost certainly going to mess the truck up or take off the head of anyone stupid enough to be outside.
Tadibya threw herself out of her body, and vaulted into the air, looking down at the mountain side studded and speckled with life forms. She plummeted through the air with a thought, closing on the mountainside and scanned it carefully – ah! There… a patch of life with a strange slit underneath… like someone hiding under a blanket made of moss and lichen. She wasn't certain, but it was more than likely that was the sniper. She looked up and saw Wee-Woo and the spirit closing on her, and her elation turned to fear as she accelerated back towards her meat body and her teammates – narrowly making it to the truck before she was engaged in combat.
Marius had turned on the radio, and was using it to try and triangulate to Kai's earbud, using that to guide him through the illusion. He got the system tuned, just in time to detect the slowing arcing movement as they entered the valley, right in front of the machine gun nests. The truck brakes bit hard, and the vehicle slid to a halt, leaving long bare furrows on the road. There was no way the truck would stand up to continuous fire from a heavy calibre weapon – he'd just get the rest of the team killed.
Tadibya was about to speak and reveal the location of the sniper, when Marius relayed his tactical assessment to the team. Instead, she called on the mountain spirit again, and sent it forth, with a mental picture of it stopping the air intake on the buggy. It flew south east, over the mountain ridge, with Wee-Woo and her spirit in pursuit, but it had the initiative and knew where it was going – reaching the buggy, it extended its powers and made the engine splutter and die, before flooding the engine. It continued to arc around the valley at speed, evading capture from the pursuing mages. Aswon, realising the truck was getting further away and out of his engagement envelope, grabbed his rifle and started to run down the slope, his spell keeping his feet sure and safe on the loose surface. He was in full view of the enemy sniper, but everything he'd seen said that these people were not the type to kill for fun. He made it to the bottom safely and ran to the truck.
The team paused as Aswon covered the distance to them, and looked at each other, wondering what to do. They'd only known each other a few weeks, but there was still a feeling of dismay at losing one of "their" team. They had no idea what he was going through, or even if he was still alive.
There was a ripple in the air uphill, and suddenly twelve of the sand buggies appeared. In each, Mamma-Bear drove, and Rocket held on to Kai in the front seat – Slapdash and Blaster were absent. The buggies drove out from the valley a little, then stopped, and all twelve Rockets pulled out the unconscious body of Kai and laid it on the floor, before remounting. Carefully, they all backed up and started to drive up the way they had come, turning into the mountain pass and vanishing around the corner. Then the illusion snapped down again, revealing a single body, off to one side – probably about where the third "virtual" buggy had been.
Marius backed up carefully, watching the angle on the valley and trying not to get close to where the concealed machine guns would have a line to him. When they got to the last few yards, a few of the team jumped down to grab Kai's body – and realised there was a cheap data-slate laid over his chest.
They picked him up and got back in the truck, and Marius started to head back to town, this time at a more sedate pace, leaving the other team and their temple behind them. Hunter keyed on the data-slate and snorted, then turned the screen so that everyone else could read the single message displayed in a large bright font on the middle of the screen.
"Next time, choose the easy way."
The team continued down the hill, and finally pulled off the road when they were in sight of both the mine and the dam, and got to work changing the wheel. It was difficult work, and took the best part of an hour with the damage to the axle – but at least that also gave Kai a chance to come around. Both the mine and the dam security drones headed over and kept them under surveillance (and probably each other too) – but that suited them just fine and gave them an illusion of safety.
With the truck roadworthy again, they continued to drop down the mountain road and back to the valley and Tashkent. As they drove, Aswon called his friend Spook from Hong Kong, describing to her the nature of the beasts they had encountered, and asked her if she had any contacts who could assist them. She advised that should would look into things and be back to them shortly.
Spook did call back, just as they were approaching Tashkent, and started to fill Aswon in on a talislegger she had knowledge of, when Aswon mentioned in passing that they had to make a report to Odeymoyd first, then they would go and follow up. Spook interrupted him, and confirmed the name, before letting out a sigh.
"Good job you mentioned the name. Next time, mention you're working for the Mafia, before I send you to a Triad Talislegger. That would….not have been a good thing. I will make further enquiries, but it will take time."
The team thought about heading to the university again, but the cramped conditions and the knowledge that they would be displacing two entire families made them reconsider. Instead they found a low quality motel on the edge of the Silk Road and booked in for the night.
Once in the room, by almost unanimous decision, Hunter was sent to the bathroom with a change of clothes and told he wasn't to come out until he was clean, even if it did use up all of their hot water…
They settled down for the night to give Kai a chance to fully recover before they called their contact and handed in the final intel gathered during the last day or so.
