Date 14/02/2060, Location 41.07049, 29.01756

Sasha headed back to her office, without a backwards look – though it seemed she put a touch more sway into her hips as she crossed the lot – just in case anyone was watching. Marius turned to speak to Nadia and found her staring at him, arms folded and lips pressed together so firmly they were a barely visible thin line. Her dark eyes appeared even darker than normal, and stared at him with gimlet ferocity.

Kai looked in from the back door, and saw the tense situation, and decided to interject.

"Ahh, good. Marius – can you check over the truck's systems and make sure we're good to go. Nadia, can you help with an inventory, please? We need to get ready to ship out sometime soon, so we should be ready and make best use of the time, I think."

Marius glanced at Kai, then back at Nadia. Deciding that this was a battle he just didn't want at the moment, he just excused himself and instead began a thorough check of the truck's electronics systems, updating the firmware and patch versions and calibrating the sensors – all useful stuff, but things that required his concentration and attention. Nadia glanced at Kai for a moment and glowered at him, but he just smiled at her as if he had no idea of what was going on, then turned to chat with Hunter.

Nadia stood in the truck for a moment with her arms folded still, and realised that no-one could see just how angry she was – which made it kind of pointless. Instead she decided to carry out the inventory – which was attacked with gusto, the sound of slamming doors and objects being put down forcefully carrying out of the truck front and back. The rest of the team stayed well clear…

Tads tucked herself back up in the trailer and continued her research into her spell formulae, whilst Hunter wandered off with Aswon to practice with their new throwing shurikens – finding a plastic container that seemed abandoned and drawing a rough bullseye on it before they started throwing the heavy metallic throwing stars at it.

Shimazu, meanwhile, headed off into the town centre via a taxi, with Kai tagging along, heading for the trade counter of a business that provided telecoms and construction equipment. He pointed at the objects he wanted in the catalogue, and got by mostly with pointing and smiling and the smattering of words that Kai had managed to learn – though they did have to call Hunter once to ask for a translation when the man wanted some details for his new account setting up. Once he had some details entered through, he managed to secure the two objects he wanted, and got a cab back to the garage with the object – two heavy-duty junction boxes designed for underground cables and equipment. His plan was to use at least one of the boxes to provide a nice sealed and stable environment to bury his magical thesis – keeping it safe and sound where nobody could find it.

Once they were back at the truck they found that the ice had thawed somewhat with Nadia – either that or she was just saving up a month of trouble for the next time she was alone with Marius. Nobody wanted to poke the situation though, so they let it lie and went about their business.

Tads and Aswon both mentioned the shares they had from the Steelworks to the east to Kai, asking if he had plans to sell them – but he gave the same answer to both of them. For some reason he wanted to keep hold of them until after they had finished the golem job. They both started to argue with him, saying that they wanted to get rid of them before the shares tanked when the safety issues were revealed, but Kai was adamant that they keep hold of them for the moment. They couldn't understand why, but it wasn't so important to them they needed to start an argument with him, so they let it lie. Aswon checked that his new gun was safely stowed, finding that Marius had fashioned a cage made of several layers of chicken wire that allowed the gun case to be slid inside, hopefully blocking any tracking signal or locator beacon that was secreted in the mechanism.

The evening wore on, and they got some food from a local takeaway and crammed into the van to eat, getting used to being in very close proximity to each other again after nearly two weeks of living in the large apartment. They slowly wound down, agreed watches and crawled into bunks or hammocks and soon the van reverberated to a variety of snores and snuffles as the team slept.

Morning broke, and Aswon and Kai ventured out to find some food from a local shop, returning to find the rest of the team still curled up and trying to sleep – all apart from Shimazu. He sat in the front of the van with a frown on his face, looking wan and pale.

"Wassup Shimazu, you got a cold or something?" Kai looked him over and sat next to him on the back step.

"Feel a bit rough to be honest. Cold and tired, and a bit of a headache. No shivers or temperature or anything like that – just feel like I didn't get any sleep last night at all really." He sat rubbing his hands, watching the flesh turn pale as he pressed on it, then very slowly turn back to a yellowy pink colour. He pressed again, harder now, and repeated his observations, before heading in to get a first aid kit. For the next five minutes he ran through the diagnostics and checked himself over physically, confirming that for some reason he was quite anaemic. He also gave himself a thorough checking over astrally, looking for anything wrong with his spirit – but thankfully finding nothing.

Kai returned to the shopping arcade he'd found the night before, and purchased some iron tablets for Shimazu. Shimazu peered at them, then threw half a dozen of the one-a-day tablets down his neck, following up with a mug full of water, then crawled back into the large bunk over the map table, pulled the sleeping bag over his head and rolled over to try and sleep some more.

Aswon and Hunter returned to their knife-throwing practice, and in the truck Nadia keyed up the truck's systems and started downloading patterns and shapes for the newly-installed photo-voltaic paint system. The electronically controlled smart-paint would be able to change colour to suit their needs, and display patterns and logos contained in the system – but it needed these to be coded in the proprietary format for the controller. It kept her occupied, though, while the others got on with their tasks, and allowed her to practice her computer skills. For all that the team had some strange ideas about how to do things, they were in no way sexist or restrictive on her jobs the way her uncle had been, and she was enjoying the freedom to exercise her considerable intelligence freely and learn new skills.

Kai grabbed a taxi back into the shopping area he had visited yesterday with Shimazu, and found the martial arts shop he'd spied the day before. He consulted his datapad again, and confirmed what he was after – three extendable fighting batons. He couldn't remember who wanted them, but they were on his list. He wasn't really sure what he was after, so he tried to explain as best he could to the shop keeper, who after a few minutes bought out a small metal baton and cautioned Kai to stand back. With a deft flick, smaller sections shot out and extended the staff, tripling its length, then another section sliding out from that, nearly doubling in length again. The shopkeeper, presumably some kind of practitioner swung the staff around him in a fancy pattern, and then rapped it on the floor, collapsing first one side and then the other, back into the handle. Kai smiled and nodded, then held up three fingers. After a few minutes in the back room, the shopkeeper bought out two more, then bagged them up for Kai, relieving him of six hundred Nuyen. Kai returned to the truck and showed the team his purchases, but looked immediately deflated when Aswon and Tads produced the extendable batons they'd bought previously in the shop they'd purchased the rest of the weapons in, back in the east. Kai scowled a little, then cleared off the entry on his slate and found somewhere to stash the extras.

By lunchtime, Nadia had programmed in the basics on the control module, and the garage engineers had finished the last of their work, replacing covers and hatches and finishing the diagnostics on all the systems. Having already paid, Kai wandered over and just gave Sasha a farewell wave, taking care to leave quickly enough that she wouldn't find a need to come to the truck – it just wasn't worth the aggravation with Nadia, that much he was certain of.

They rolled off the forecourt and onto the road, mixing in with the traffic and started to head east. Hunter bought up the maps and started to scroll around, highlighting the areas they had previously discussed as being good – in their opinion – to meet the team that were doing the actual steal of the golem. Marius got on the phone to his contact, sending him a message saying they were mobile and ready to proceed. A few minutes later he got a message back – and it wasn't good news. He called out over the speakers, and relayed the message on the screens in the cab as well.

"We have co-ordinates for our meeting – apparently the other team have already chosen them, We're to meet at 41.10371, 28.99294, at 21:00 hours tonight."

"I'm on it, one moment," said Hunter, entering the co-ordinates and watching the map scroll to the west and zoom in, crossing the eastern sector, the water, and some of the western sector before coming to rest by the football stadium. The cursor actually tracked into the stadium itself, coming to rest on the north eastern part of the stands. The team looked in confusion, then mounting dread at the location.

"They've got to be joking. We're not going into the stands of a stadium to do a meet – that's crazy!" exclaimed Hunter. The others nodded in agreement – thinking about the time it would take them to get to the vehicle from the stand, before they could even begin to head away. Aswon imagined the sight lines in an area like that, and how much damage he could do with a rifle and a concealed position up in the gantry-work and his expression soured.

"Let me go back to him and clarify this…." Marius fired up his comm-link, placing a voice call this time. A few minutes passed, then he activated the speakers again.

"Ok, it's not as bad as it seemed. Apparently the meet is under the stadium. There's a loading dock or area, underneath the bank of the stands. Open over 210 degrees with good sight lines, covered from overhead observation and in fairly deep shadow. Hunter, can you see if you can find their matrix site and pull up a picture of entrance 14, for the home fans. Apparently the covered area to the right of that is where we'll be meeting."

Hunter found the site and navigated through to the entry information, pulling up the gate number and displaying the image. They could see that the ground level area was overhung by the terraces, creating a large pool of shade, with concrete support pillars dotted around to provide a limited amount of cover. The area had a number of docks and service entries and looked like it was mostly used for staff and venue access. Hunter flicked through to another picture and saw the trid broadcast truck nestled in, surrounded by cables and equipment. He zoomed in on the display, blowing up the picture until it started to distort, and framed the view on the trid technician in his coveralls.

"Well, there's our cover story. Reckon we can find some overalls in the right colour in the next few hours?" he said. The others looked at the picture and the size and shape of the truck. It wasn't that close, all things considered – but perhaps the security staff wouldn't care if they were in the right colour scheme and logo.

"Right Nadia, can you find us the right shade and get the logo programmed in, please?" Kai asked, then turned to Aswon "Ok, can you and Shimazu go to that trade counter and get overalls?" He looked around for a moment. "Where is Shimazu?" Aswon pointed to the rear of the truck and the top bunk, where a mound of blankets slowly undulated in time with his breathing. "Well, it's time he was up. Let's get some physical disguises sorted. Hunter – I'm guessing the exit routes from here are pretty good, but can you work out some exit plans from the stadium back east." He looked around and checked everyone was happy and didn't have any comments. "Ok, let's go, then."

They each got on with their tasks – Marius driving them to the trade counter to cut down on their transit time while the rest worked from the matrix connection. Aswon roused Shimazu, who was looking better than he did after another five hours of sleep, and they managed to snag a couple of sets of overalls in approximately the right shade of grey. A visit to a mall got them some blue piping, and a slipped fifty nuyen bribe to the young man at the t-shirt printing booth got the right logo printed on their overalls. Returning with the material and freshly printed coveralls, they sat down in the rear of the truck and pulled out the work table, trying to sew the blue piping down the legs and arms of the coveralls in the right place. It proved to be trickier than they first thought, and under strong light looked more than a little ropey – but hopefully a glancing look or obscured view and it would be enough.

Hunter checked out the maps, studying them carefully and noting down the routes – but no matter what, the strait proved to be a horribly limiting factor. He raised this with the team, and their conversation flowed back and forth for a bit. The ferry was suggested, but rejected. Though it was not likely to be watched as well, or subject to as much security – if they were tracked or followed, they would be completely helpless whilst onboard and at sea. That left only the bridges, and the road leading directly from the stadium crossed the damaged bridge – with the worst traffic. It was a toss up, having seen the traffic around the city, whether they would actually save time by driving south to the bridge they'd used previously, as that meant driving through the busiest part of town. In the end they decided to go with the closer bridge crossing, as it had the virtue of easiest access and shortest distance.

Marius checked back with his contact, asking him if this was likely to be a hot extraction, but was informed that "cold to warm" was the most likely description. Cold was good of course, but he was then left wondering just where the dividing line was between warm and hot. He wasn't sure he could express that to his contact without sounding like they were too concerned about the job, so he kept his thoughts to himself.

Last of all, Aswon, Shimazu and Tads discussed the magical part of the job – just what were they going to do with the cargo and how were they going to protect it. In the end they decided that Tads and Shimazu would stay in the trailer, whilst Aswon stayed in the cab. Aswon could look around them magically, out of the windows, and hopefully detect any magical attacks or ambushes before they struck and give warning. Tads was best placed to deal with spirits or magical effects on the cargo, counteracting them with her own powers or spirits – though with the trailer being physically separate from the cab, and with there being no doorway between them, it meant that she couldn't physically reach them unless they stopped.

That meant no healing or spells cast against physical targets, and it also limited her ability to affect astral targets. She could divorce her spirit from the meat of her body easily enough, but her spirit could move at only two speeds – that which she could normally travel, and what the shamans of her clan called "dawnray", the speed at which the first rays of light flooded across the landscape each dawn. Different mages had different names for it – but regardless of what it was called, it was fast – thousands of kilometres per hour. But there lay the difficulty – there was nothing in between the two speeds. She could zip ahead of the truck, and lay in wait for it – but then she had fractions of a second to merge with her body as the physical form flowed through the space where her astral spirit waited. If she missed it, she would be left floating on the road as the truck barrelled down the road without her, unable to catch it at the best normal speed she could manage, unless she flew past it in the blink of an eye at dawnray. She could do it – had done it before – but it was hard and sometimes took multiple attempts, and if she was damaged or wounded, it would be far harder.

Of course, if she did have to go out of her body to scout or deal with a threat, then that left a magically receptive, but empty, body on the floor – next to an unknown magical artefact. They hadn't heard any stories about golems possessing people or inhabiting their bodies – but then they hadn't really head any stories at all about them. So, Shimazu would also stay in the back, to keep an eye on things and be a reassuring second line of defence.

Hunter had finished working out a number of routes – once out of the city their options dropped significantly, and the number of viable routes was limited. Sure, they could travel cross country, but their speed of advance would be low and if they were being followed somehow, it wouldn't be difficult to catch up with them. The thirteen hundred kilometres of distance between pickup and drop off grew to closer to seventeen hundred by the time they'd allowed for where the road diverted around hills and mountains, or headed towards cities and towns along the way. Still, unless they got the helicopter or aircraft that Marius kept wishing for, it was the best they could do.

As Shimazu was finishing their discussion on who would ride where, a sudden thought occurred to him, and he pushed himself up and over to the side of the truck. Peering at the three large jars strapped into the cupboard, he saw the diminished and pale looking leeches sitting there, with almost nothing else around them. They had apparently eaten the branches and twigs in the jars, presumably out of hunger – but the three jars were all still tightly sealed and intact. As they were still parked up at the mall, he got some money from Kai and went to the luxury food mart and purchased two large steaks – actual real meat, not flavoured soy protein. They were expensive, costing nearly fifty Nuyen each, which would keep someone going on soy products for a week. Back at the truck, he prepared one for himself and cut the other one into three, adding a piece to each jar.

Around 20:30, they pulled out of the mall, for the short journey to the stadium. Finding it was easy – it was well signposted from the highway and had a dedicated junction to deal with the match day traffic. They pulled around the sweeping bend that descended in a spiral to burrow under the highway, and drove along steadily towards the darkened stadium. They reached a junction, with the road sweeping round to the right into a car park, while the left hand fork lead to the stadium itself. This road was blocked by a simple mechanical barrier – a long arm coloured alternately red and white with a counterbalance on one end, and standing in front of it was a bored and lonely-looking security guard. As they turned towards the stadium, he perked up and turned his flashlight on, waving it at the truck.

Marius slowed the truck to a crawl and then jacked out, sliding across the seat to the door which the driver would traditionally have been sitting at. He slid open the door, nice and wide, hoping that the security guard wouldn't consider why he didn't wind down the window instead. He called out a friendly greeting to the security guard.

"Hi there, must be a lonely night out here!"

"Boring as hell. But stadium's closed… are you lost?"

"No, emergency call out." He gestured at the logo on the side of the van, clearly identifying them as being from the national telecoms company, the sponsors of the stadium. "Control room says the trid multiplexor isn't responding properly, and they're worried it's on the way out. Asked us to come and run a test on it, so if it is broken they can get it replaced before the next match. Otherwise there's going to be a lot of disappointed trid viewers." Marius was getting warmed up with his pitch, ready to supply all kinds of technical details about what they were here to do, to convince the guard of his bona finds. He was relieved, but slightly disappointed though when the guard spoke up next.

"Yeah, no problem, I guess you know where you're going. Can't stop the trid broadcasts!" And with that, he moved over to the barrier, flipping it up out of the way with one hand and waving them through with the torch in the other.

They drove in, heading for the north east corner and their rendezvous. Marius had the lights off, navigating his way through the concrete pillars using the truck's sensors, painting the area just ahead of them with ultrasonic pings and mapping the echoes into a 3d visualisation for his mind. He found a good spot, and swung the truck around, then backed it in towards a loading dock, as if it belonged there. They were in deep shadow, with the area around the truck fairly black, and with a number of pillars giving hard cover in a multitude of directions, whilst still giving generally good sight lines and options for direction.

Aswon grabbed his Purdey and scouted around the area, finding a rugged plastic ladder fixed to the wall next to a loading bay rising up to a concrete ledge just above head height. There looked to be a small service access at one end of the ledge, but it would make a great observation point for him and he swarmed up to it and made himself comfortable.

Marius and Hunter played the sensors around, mapping out the positions of the security cameras. The spot looked better and better to them as they examined the positions of the watching eyes, as they were all arranged "outwards" from just beyond their current location. Come match days there was probably a fence or line of guards that protected the team transports and trid units from interference, and the cameras were aimed at them, not the area they were guarding. So, whatever happened here would be unobserved. Mentally Marius apologised to whoever had set up the meet – the location was actually pretty good and gave them a high traffic location with excellent cover. He was willing to bet that the cameras here were currently on a loop as well, showing no traffic having arrived at all…

Up on the ledge, Aswon opened up his mind and sampled the area astrally. He blinked in surprise as a tendril of hope washed over him, followed by a lingering echo of sadness. It was quiet for a moment, then a small feeling of joy lit up the edge of his perception, and he had to stifle the urge to smile. A moment later he realised he was picking up the echoes of games gone by, the hopes and dreams of tens of thousands of fans, urging and rooting for their team, sharing the joy of games won, and the disappointment of defeat. The astral echoes floated around in waves, or tendrils of emotion. Not strong enough to cause an issue with his abilities, or to interfere with Tads' spells, but interesting none the less.

Marius gave a little start as a text message arrived over his link, displaying straight onto his vision courtesy of the router implanted into his head. *Security code – 4173, standby for arrival*. He called out to the others to be ready, and relayed the code to them over their tactical comms. Not more than a minute later, a dark-coloured van appeared out of the shadows, coasting forwards silently. As it got close it flashed its lights once, and Marius gave an answering flash.

On the ledge, Aswon saw someone climb up onto the roof of the arriving vehicle, having climbed out of the back door by the looks of things. The figure crouched, looking around it carefully as the vehicle continued to coast to a halt nearby. As it stopped about ten metres from their vehicle, position at right angles to the truck, the figure on top called out in a quiet voice.

"Security code?"

"4173," Aswon replied, giving away his position but also ensuring that the other team knew he was there. Hopefully there were on the level, and he was here just to keep an eye on things from a third party point of view – not because of a double cross. The figure looked up at him and nodded, and then jumped up and off the roof, going through a somersault in mid-air before landing noiselessly on the concrete. The side door and driver's door both also opened and two more figures could be seen. The one in the side door slid out to the ground, standing in the darkness for a moment and looking around him, with his weapon ready at a moment's notice.

The man who had leapt from the roof had a very similar build to Aswon, though he was rather more average in height. From the level of skill displayed, he too was likely a physical adept, with exceptional control over his body and some superhuman-like abilities. They had no idea what he could do, beyond apparently gymnastics to an Olympic level of smoothness, but he also carried a small club or sap at his waist in a holster – so he probably had some skill with blunt weapons.

The second figure was a heavy-set Ork, bulky and well-muscled and easily a match for Shimazu or Hunter. He cradled an assault rifle in one arm, the stock pressing against his arm, whilst the other hand kept a hold on the van door. He was dressed in dark clothing, that seemed to drink in the light around it, but his eyes burned a brilliant blue, glowing slightly in the darkness.

The last figure was a solidly-built human, who slid back and out of the driver's door on some kind of complicated pivoting chair. As he did so the reason became clear – he too was armoured, but he was also wearing a gyro-mount harness over the top, with a large machine gun clipped into the arm. As he climbed out of the vehicle he landed on the tarmac with a solid thud, indicating the weight of all the gear he carried. He looked at the team for a moment, and they looked back at him, in silence.

Tink…. Tink…. Tink….

It took a moment for them to realise what the noise was, but then it dawned upon them – it was the barrel of the heavy machine gun, shedding excess heat into the cold night air. Whatever they'd done, they must have put a couple of hundred rounds through the gun to get it that hot – and that meant it can't have been too far away, either. A sense of urgency overtook them, and the team moved into action.

"How heavy are the boxes… can anyone move them?"

The drive spoke, revealing a thick Russian accent.

"It depends on how strong you are. If you are puny, then no. The big box, is heavy. Very heavy. Even your big men, may take two. Puny people should hold the door open." They exchanged looks, then closed on the van, looking at the cargo. Inside were six boxes, plastic shipping crates that looked somewhat like the boxes the guns had come in. One was about half a metre to a side, forming a cube. Four were perhaps a metre in length by half a metre to the other side, and the last was a good one metre cube. They got the small boxes moved first, struggling a little with them – imagining the huge slabs of stone that might make up a golem leg or arm inside them. The large one took several of them to move, and considerable effort, but they got it slid into the trailer with only relief on the first attempt.

As they bought each box over, Nadia ran the bug scanner over it carefully, giving each a thumbs up as she did so. The transfer took only a couple of minutes, and was done in silence, each of the teams watching the surrounding areas and each other. As the last box was loaded in, the Russian and his crew mounted up in their van and started the engine, then pulled away without a word, looping back the way they had come and vanishing swiftly into the night. Shimazu and Tads climbed into the trailer and started to secure the crates down with cargo straps, whilst the rest of the crew climbed into the truck and they, too, pulled away, heading out of the shelter of the stadium and back to the highway. Marius drove carefully to start with, taking the bends smoothly and at low speed until he received the all clear from the trailer that the cargo was secure. As soon as they confirmed that everything was strapped down and wouldn't slide around, he accelerated hard and the truck rocketed forwards towards its top speed, the powerful diesel engine being pushed hard by the rigger.

Aswon sat by his window and looked out around them, dropping in and out of astral view and looking for any signs of pursuit, whilst Nadia watched out of her side, one hand resting against Marius' leg. In the second row, Hunter sat with the radio and monitored frequencies, looking for network traffic around them that might indicate a pursuit. Kai looked at the route map, and watched each of the others in a pattern, ensuring that everyone was focussed on their task and glancing out of his window from time to time.

In the trailer, Shimazu started to practice what Tads had taught him, drawing a complex series of ideograms around the first of the boxes. He opened himself up to the ambient mana stream and allowed the power to trickle down through him and infuse the characters with magical potential, forming a hazy ward around the perimeter of the boxes. It wasn't powerful, but it was something, and it was his first attempt.

Tads meanwhile made herself comfortable and sat cross legged and stared at the box. She opened up her vision, allowing the astral plane to flood over her senses, replacing her normal sight. The real world faded away and she stared at the ethereal white realm of astral space. In the corner of her vision she spied the brilliant glow of Shimazu concentrating on his work, watching the streams of colour coalesce around his body in a shimmering spiral and be channelled through his form and down into the characters, the random colours slowly separating into ordered streams and imprinting onto the marks on the truck bed and forming a multi-coloured shimmering dome over the box. Her eyes drifted over to the box, and it felt like she'd been punched in the chest. For a moment she forgot to breathe at all, as she stared at the raw power leaking from the box.

It was hard to judge how powerful it was, there was no neat scale or measuring stick – but it felt just as powerful as the emotions she had felt near the abandoned fun-fair, or the various murder scenes she'd been near recently. But instead of feelings of hatred, despair and fear, cold and malevolent twisted emotions of the darker side of humanity – this was different. Not good, but… she struggled to order her thoughts and quantify exactly what she was feeling. It felt calm, and orderly, a feeling of oldness or history, seeping through the boxes and spreading into the trailer. Even though she had not opened the boxes or seen what was inside them, she knew that they would be old – ancient, even – with stories through the age witnessed by the form concealed. Along with that there was a reverence, a feeling of spirituality about them. Not the animalistic shamanic nature that she took for granted, this felt more ordered and linear. She remembered passing through a cathedral in southern Russia before she had met up with the team, and it reminded her a little of that – a feeling of the institution of religion, of an ordered hierarchy and system of worship.

She withdrew from the astral, the glow of power fading until she just saw six plain plastic boxes strapped down with webbing in the back of the trailer, illuminated by a couple of cold florescent tubes with Shimazu drawing Chinese characters around the perimeter of one. The dull green plastic gave no sign of the power emanating from within, no clue as to the history of the contents, and she shuddered a little at the thought of what it must be like to wander the world and be ignorant of the power of mana that surrounded them all. She got on the radio, though, and warned the rest of the team.

"Everyone? The boxes are leaking power, quite strong power with a definite religious flavour to it. It should be fine contained inside my lodge, and I can't see it leaking out – but we should keep the door shut as much as possible so there's not a hole in the lodge that could be easily seen through. Shimazu is doing a ward around one of the boxes now, and I'll help him with the rest, but it's going to take a while to do all six."

"Maybe you should push all the boxes together "said Aswon over the comm-link. "Isn't that how it works? If it's only one thing, and you can do a line all around it, you can do it with one ward?"

"Does that not strike anyone else as a really bad plan? Putting the parts of the weird magic robot back together, right next to each other, so it can reanimate and go crazy and kill us all?" came the response from Marius. They exchanged looks for a moment. It wasn't that likely… was it?

"Do you know, on second thoughts – why don't we keep the parts far apart from each other, all separate. Just in case. Yeah – that sounds much safer."

The truck rumbled on towards the bridge, weaving in and out of traffic and making the best time they could manage. Hunter had the radio playing quietly on the speakers, listening in for any mention of crimes, police chases or "golem", but there was nothing happening in the news at all. As they neared the bridge, the traffic slowed, getting closer and closer together, until they were just crawling along as part of the giant metal snake inching its way over the bridge. Even this late at night the traffic volume was still high, and they found themselves trapped in the nose to tail queue.

They crawled onto the bridge, through the mass of cones and temporary road markings, directing them over onto the "wrong" side of the bridge. They were part of a single line of traffic travelling from west to east, with a single line running from east to west separated from them by a single line of orange cones laid along the roadway, weighted down with sandbags. Another row of cones to their right cordoned off the remaining two lanes of the bridge, which stood empty for no apparent reason, as did the four lanes of traffic on the other side of the concrete dividing barrier. They continued up the slope, crawling forwards in a stop-start motion that was frustrating in the extreme, with the team looking out of the windows anxiously.

They'd driven up the shallow slope and under the first of the massive towers that anchored the bridge on the west coast, and were halfway across the strait, about seven hundred and fifty metres over before they saw the reason for the delay. The massive suspension cables to the left dipped from the peak of the tower to the midpoint of the bridge, then rose again, climbing over a hundred metres into the air to the top of the eastern tower. On the right though, the cable dipped and vanished into the darkness, the lights cut out. The roadway too vanished, swallowed by an enormous hole in the tarmac, with the sea showing through far below, a ferry sliding across the waterway lit up with festival lights as it sliced through the water. The bomb had destroyed most of the roadbed on the far side of the bridge, leaving twisted metal and structural beams exposed and slabs of concrete and tarmac twisted up in all directions. Cracks ran over the first of the lanes on this side of the bridge, with a coned off area and flashing lights surrounding them. A variety of measuring devices were positioned on each side of the crack, monitoring the situation and no doubt feeding back to a control station somewhere. Emergency steelwork had been welded onto the enormous suspension cables, reinforcing them and adding structural integrity, and they too were covered in measuring equipment.

Aswon glanced into astral space, looking around for pursuit, but was overcome with a sickening blast of hatred and malaise that washed over him as they passed through the astral vortex around the bomb site. He felt sick and despondent as the uncaring and inhuman echoes of the bombers and their lack of care for life washed over him, the astral imprint of the act tainting the air around them. Shuddering, he gritted his teeth and turned away from the sight, looking out into the darkness and searching for threats – but fortunately there were none.

In the back, Hunter looked up from his radio and then froze. Delicately and slowly he reached forwards, and gently pushed the barrel of Nadia's gun up into the air with an outstretched finger. She scowled at him for a moment, then blurted out a cry as he hit the magazine release and worked the action to remove the live round.

"What are you doing? I need my gun, if we get attacked!"

"Yes Nadia. That may be so. But you were tapping on the trigger to the beat of the music, the safety was off, and it was pointing at Marius's ribcage. Have you no trigger discipline?"

"No. What's that?"

It suddenly dawned on them that they took their use of firearms for granted. But having grown up in a patriarchal environment, the most dangerous thing she'd probably handled was a knife. They'd all assumed that someone else had given her the basics on firearm safety – but it appeared that nobody actually had.

Hunter sighed and started to explain, and the others went back to looking out of the windows, as the ork explained first of all what a safety catch was, why it was a good thing, and why she should never, ever, put her finger on the trigger of a gun unless she wanted to kill something….

The vehicle crawled on through the traffic and slowly started to angle down, heading to the eastern shore. As they passed underneath the second enormous tower the road widened to two lanes and they picked up a little speed, following the road for another two hundred meters and then through a gap in the central reservation and onto the right side of the road. With four lanes now, they accelerated and started to pull past the slower lorries and heavy goods vehicles stuck in lane one, whilst they in turn were overtaken by a stream of cars being thrashed by their impatient owners. Marius soon had them up to a hundred kilometres per hour, and they stayed on the main road, heading south east and driving past the ghettos and slums of the eastern side of the city, back the way they had originally come.

An hour passed, with no sign of pursuit or sense of alarm being raised. Shimazu finished the first ward in the back of the trailer, and Tads checked it over, smiling and nodding at him in approval of the results. They still hadn't heard anything or seen anything that would cause them alarm, and had started to relax a little. Hunter snorted and pointed out of the window as they passed a large illuminated sign on the exit ramp that pointed towards Rest Stop 76, and they recalled the "interesting" time they'd had there on the way in to the city.

As they drove past, a truck drove down the ramp, joining the flow of traffic behind them. It drove along for a few minutes, then its headlights glowed brightly as the driver switched to full beams. Marius dimmed his rear optical sensors, and drove on, just thinking at first that the driver was being an ass, or had hit the controls by accident.

The truck closed in on them, beams still shining brightly ahead and dazzling through the darkness. Marius alerted the others, and they checked in the mirrors, squinting and trying to see past the bright lights to make out the shape of the truck. Marius narrowed the focus of his sensors, focussing on the truck now tailgating them and trying to make out the details. Switching through a variety of optical modes, he finally managed to find a setting that filtered out the intensity of the headlights and let him see at least some detail on the truck – including the logo of the courier firm.

"Oh crap. Yurtici Kargo vehicle – those jokers that thought we killed one of them. I thought we'd sorted this out!" He accelerated, but the truck behind him matched his pace, if anything closing the distance slightly. Marius still had power in the engine, but he'd have to redline a number of systems to use it, and there was a chance that something would break somewhere…

"Tads, we have a civilian truck following us," called Aswon over the comm-link to the trailer, "can you get a spirit to distract him or drive him off or something? We don't want to engage in combat, but we need him off our tail."

Tads concentrated for a moment and summoned a watcher spirit. The watcher was the easiest thing she could summon – with limited powers but unlikely to drain her mentally. She sent it off to go and distract the driver and make them stop following their truck, and it bounded out of the lodge to the rear to carry out her commands. She waited a few seconds and then called to Aswon to see if it had worked.

"Nope, he's still there. No change at all. Have you done it yet?"

She didn't answer, but instead sighed and steadied herself, and called upon a spirit of man instead, focussing her power to summon something far more powerful. The being that answered was a strange amalgam of philosophies. With a head that looked vaguely elk like, having ethereal antlers and large brown eyes that dominated the face, it clearly favoured her tradition. Yet the body was that of a section of overhead gantry, and it had traffic cones for arms and legs, clearly drawing on the nature of its domain. She sent it back to stop the trucker, by whatever means necessary. The eyes blinked once, and then the spirit was gone, flitting through the back wall of the trailer just like the watcher. This time, she only had to wait a few seconds, then heard Aswon keying up the intercom again.

"Ok, that seems to have done it. Swerving, shit swerving hard! Nearly into the middle barrier… now over to the hard shoulder. Oh crap! What did you do?" She heard the sounds of the crash faintly through the rear of the truck, fading quickly as they zoomed away along the highway. "He continued off the hard shoulder onto the bank, tipped up and then just ploughed into the hill. Truck's on its side, with cargo all over the place."

"You said to stop him?" Tads shrugged. She hoped he wasn't dead, but he shouldn't be – not from her instructions. Behind them, the trucker in his overturned cab screamed in fear and panic as the spirit plagued his conscious thoughts with horrific scenes from the demented mind of a horror trid-show. It continued to use its powers on the hapless courier driver until it felt Tads leaving the immediate area, and popped out of existence, its service completed.

The truck swept on into the darkness, heading east at speed, with the cargo lying in the plastic crates in the back, continuing to radiate magical power.