Date 15/02/2060, Location 41.74785, 44.86034

The gunshot was not all it seemed, however. Who it had been aimed at wasn't clear, but it struck a plascrete post by the side of the road, one that held the broken gate that at one point could have been used to close the car park. This was clearly no normal "bullet", though, as it struck the post and exploded violently, creating a blast of shrapnel that blew out debris for metres on either side. It put Aswon in mind of an RPG attack, and without consciously thinking about it, he took a few steps forwards, separating himself from the next nearest person. He wasn't in any better cover, but if someone hit him, the blast radius wouldn't affect someone else on the team either – and vice versa.

With the impact and the explosion, time seemed to slow for some of the team. Magical and technological abilities engaged, speeding up thought processes and reactions, and making it look like the rest of the team were wading through jam, their movements slow and ponderous.

In the truck, Marius remained slumped in the driver's seat, his body limp and unmoving. His mind however, was connected to the truck via the high bandwidth fibre optic feed that connected straight to the rear of his brain, and his consciousness danced through the rigger deck, interfacing with systems like quicksilver. In response to mental commands, there was a loud "thunk" from the roof of the truck as a box popped up out of the top surface, angling up at thirty degrees. A whine emerged from the top of the vehicle as something wound up to speed, and internally Marius ran diagnostics and checks, watching gauges ramp up from cold to an emergency start up system.

Aswon slid to a halt, and raised the Purdey to his shoulder, looking out over the lake and panning from right to left. He saw some shapes on the water, about five hundred meters out, bouncing up and down on the gentle swell. At this range his thermo-senses made them out only as blobs of vague heat, warmer than the air or water, but relatively shapeless. There looked to be three smaller blobs, and one larger one towards the centre, and as he spotted them he called out to the team with his findings.

Out on the water, a figure steadied himself against the hull of the medium-sized hovercraft, and focussed through his binoculars, studying the shoreline. He spotted the figure of Aswon, long barrelled rifle pointing straight back at him. The figure took a deep breath and concentrated his energies, and was rewarded at the sight of Aswon flinching backwards in pain and shock.

Aswon let go of the rifle, and it fell on its sling to his waist, and he rubbed furiously at his eye, where it felt for all the world like he'd just been poked with a bony finger, really hard. He grasped at his belt and pulled the smart-goggles on, adjusting them over his eyes quickly. He didn't bother attaching them to anything – but they would stop a mage from poking him with magical fingers in the soft tissue likely to be most vulnerable.

Hunter sprinted back to the van, jumping up in the air as he got inside the last two metres, grasping at the handle on the rear door. He managed to land his feet on the top of the ladder, saving himself precious seconds of climbing, and wrenched the door open, much to the surprise of Nadia who was crouched down next to Marius.

"Need my Ares rifle!"

"Isn't that your Ares rifle?"

"No, I need my OTHER Ares rifle!" Hunter dropped his rifle and started to tug at the gift from Rocket, pulling it free of the webbing that held it in place on the roof of the cab.

Back on the hovercraft, there was a loud "ker-klack" as the charging handles were racked, and the machine gun sighted. The gunner took account of the motion of the hovercraft over the waves, and the depressed the firing spades. A long stream of fire spat from the medium machine gun, the tracer rounds loaded every third round leaving the barrel with a fiery trail that etched into the night sky. The rounds spat across the distance to the shore, aiming to the left of the truck, straight towards Georgi, caught halfway between his van and the team's truck. Alerted by Aswon's shout, he threw himself to the floor as the tracers flew overhead, rolling backwards towards the cover of his van. The first two rounds punctured the collar of his jacket as he dropped, but the rest didn't track down quickly enough to cause him any harm.

Kai span on his heel, and moved towards the side of the truck, trying to get into some semblance of cover – but he faced away from the water. His eyes flitted over the bluffs and rises of the edge of the reservoir as he looked for a second team or the rest of the ambush. All was quiet and dark though, and he called out to the rest of the team

"Clear to the rear at the moment!" He continued to search the dark escarpment, just in case, his eyes searching for movement and odd shapes that stood out. His hand scrabbled with his holster and he pulled out his taser, clutching it tightly in hand.

Tads stared out over the water and squinted in the direction that Aswon had indicated. A momentary break in the clouds allowed a small scrap of moonlight to bounce off the turret mount, but it was enough to guide her in on the shape, and as she targeted her spell on that point of the craft, she let rip with a ball of power. She focussed plenty of power into the attack, but it wasn't an all-out assault – she had no intention of crippling herself this early in the fight with magical backlash. She felt the power hit, the ball of mana administering a massive slam of power to the living spirits of everyone in a wide area around the hovercraft – but at this range, she had no idea how effective it was.

The three smaller craft fired then, having aimed carefully and pulling the triggers as their craft were neutrally balanced between swells. Cannons fixed to the hulls bloomed, and 105mm shells smashed through the air, striking Georgi's van one after another. The first almost certainly disabled it, but the second and third finished the job for sure, sending parts of the engine and controls slicing into the back of the vehicle.

The armed henchmen that had accompanied Georgi spun out and fired into the darkness, furious that they had been attacked. Their shotguns had no chance of reaching out to the attackers on the lake, but most of them were too enraged to realise this, fuelled by adrenaline and pain from the disintegrating van, they had to attack regardless. A long string of angry Georgian filled the night air, punctuated by the booming of the shotguns as they fired at the shapes on the lake, slowly turning from half shadows into the shapes of vehicles as they got closer.

On top of the van, the sleek nose of the Dalmation vector thrust drone slammed up from the vehicle mount to mate with the slide launcher, the launching rail extending out of the main housing. The articulated wings snapped up into position, and the tiny jet turbine engines started to howl as they spun up to speed, the rail quivering with tension as the clamps held the drone back until the turbines hit the correct speed. During this process, he steered the radar and vehicle sensors out into a cone over the water, playing over the reported area of the hostile targets. Range data trickled in first, followed by heat blooms, and the start of some detailed sensor readings. More importantly though, he had a lock on their signatures now, and knew exactly where they were – even if he didn't know what they were.

To his right, Aswon stood still, taking slow shallow breaths and calming his heartrate. He looked through the scope once more, carefully aligning the optics with the goggles now protecting his eyes. He watched as the driver's head, visible behind the shallow windscreen on the hovercraft, bounced up and down as the craft powered across the surface of the lake. He got into the rhythm, timing the shot to match with the cresting of a wave, gently squeezing the trigger. The large round punched through the air, hitting the target on the side of the neck and punching through the flesh to explode out of the back of the neck. The pilot must have seen the flash and flinched slightly, as it struck the side of his head rather than the centre – and instead of immolating his windpipe or jugular, it ripped out a mass of muscle and sinew instead, still horrifically painful but not immediately life-threatening. Almost immediately, the craft started to turn, crabbing away from his position and back towards the far shore of the lake.

On the far side of the team's truck, Shimazu glanced around him, and couldn't see anyone or anything remotely in range for him to attack. With sword in one hand and pistol in the other, he flattened himself against the back of Georgi's van, trying to keep out of sight and kept his eyes peeled, looking into the darkness in case anyone else joined the assault.

The top hatch of the truck flipped open and Hunter rose into view like a demented and very lethal jack-in-a-box. The prototype Ares combat gun was clutched into his hands, and he was already raising it to his shoulder, snugging it into his frame tightly. He sighted on the hovercraft, and applied a little pressure on the trigger, locking the target into the designator. Immediately his smart-link went to work, interfacing with the weapon, computing trajectory and firing arcs. Normally at this point, a green crosshair would appear on screen, showing where his weapon was actually aiming, and he'd adjust until it changed to a solid red. This time though – there was no crosshair. He blinked, and caught sight of something right at the edge of his vision… and slowly raised his left hand, elevating the front of the weapon. From the very bottom of the edge of his vision the green crosshair appeared. He raised the front of the weapon, more and more, raising the gun until he was point up at nearly a sixty degree angle. The green cursor changed to a yellow, pulsing slowly as the computer worked overtime to zero in on the shot. With the fast moving target and random action of the waves, he was struggling to get more than a 60% chance for shot on target it seemed. He steadied himself, leaning against the edge of the roof hatch, and slowed his breathing, biding his time. The cursor started to firm up, edging from orange towards red…

Marius flicked a mental switch, and his consciousness jumped into the drone, leaving behind the van and its reassuring solidity. He shed the feeling of armoured solidity, the slow and ponderous body of the truck with the six massive wheels that would grind through most terrain. Instead he became a quivering engine, his metallic body unarmoured and fragile. The turbines raced and the thrust increased, crossing the safety line and he released the clamps, accelerating up and away from the truck. The turbines drove him along the launch ramp in less than a second and up into the night sky. He felt the wind rush past him, and with the slightest of twitches of his metallic arms or legs he felt the drone swoop through the sky. Instead of the bulk of the massive multi-tonne truck, now he was a skyborne predator, winged death slicing through the night on twin jets of flame. With another thought, the targeting cursors appeared in his view, the underslung assault rifles keying active in his systems.

To the right of the truck, Aswon twisted at his hip, keeping his feet planted in exactly the same place. One breath in. One breath out. Select target. Shoot. The round punched through the air, slicing through the body armour of the driver of the next hovercraft over, entering his ribcage about a handsbreadth above his heart. Almost immediately the round started to tumble, ripping through the soft flesh and tissue. The round nicked a bit of sinew and flipped, rising up and spinning until it exploded out of the top of the shoulder, with a flicker of blood and gore spinning into the cold night air in a dynamic curve. Again, the hovercraft swung almost immediately as the driver tried to flinch and steer out of the line of sight of the rifleman. For a moment Aswon thought he was going to flip the craft, but he backed off the throttle and it settled back onto the skirts and slowed into a gentle arc, turning away from the team.

In the truck, Hunter still had the rifle aimed up at an extreme angle, designed to lob the grenade out to the maximum possible range. He kept his sight locked onto the largest target, watching as the range dropped quickly. The hovercraft was being driven at high speed – in this case he thought it might have been as much as two hundred kilometres per hour – but that just meant they would be in range of his weapon that much sooner… the cursor hung over the centre of the craft, about a metre above the spot between the driver and co-driver's position, and continued to darken second by second as the data was refined by the ballistics computers.

Shimazu popped his head out from his concealed position, and dropped into astral view. The darkness of the night sky was swapped for the faint grey of the astral plane, the sky a wash of a single colour. The lake sparkled and glowed, ripples and eddies of wild colour moving and flowing back and forth as a result of the millions of bacteria, fungi, fish and animals making up the complex ecosystem. The truck was a stark contrast, as was the van he hid behind – dull grey boxes with no real details. Astrally dead, they were boxy and uninteresting, revealing nothing of their nature to his magical sight. A flash out of the lake caught his attention though, a sudden flash of intense white light. He peered into the distance, trying to refine the data and caught it again. A shape, metahuman – flapping around by the side of the flat grey parts of the target vehicle. He saw the target waver back and forth again, and realised it was a mage, being thrown around by the action of the waves, sliding in and out of view around the superstructure of the hovercraft.

"Mage, large target, left side midships. Watch out for spells!"

Maybe it was bad luck. Maybe the mage had seen him, too. Whatever it was, it was close. Shimazu sprang back into cover as a long string of fire stitched across the gravel of the carpark towards him, the tracers guiding the fire towards the target. Rounds ricocheted off the gravel, sending slivers of rock flying in all directions whilst Shimazu hunkered down, trying to get out of line of sight.

The light hovercraft fired at the truck with the monster cannon strapped down the centre line, but the pilot misjudged his speed over the chop, and the shell whistled over Hunter's head by a good fifteen to twenty centimetres.

Up above, the Dalmation vector thrust drone dove down at a shallow angle. With the advantage of height, the last of the smaller hovercraft crept into effective range for the standard weight ammunition, and Marius gave a mental smile. Barely a microsecond later, the twin assault rifles opened up, firing fully automatic bursts down out of the darkness towards the target. The rounds sparked and flashed as they hit the armoured hull, dancing across the top plate of the craft and creeping towards the driver's seat. Individually the 5.56mm ammunition was light and unlikely to do major damage to the vehicle. The two long bursts from the twin linked weapons, though, put lots of rounds in the air, and some of them found weak points or vulnerable areas. A couple penetrated the armour and hit something vital, and a thin plume of smoke escaped from under a cover at high pressure, blasting high into the air. The hovercraft lurched, and the pitch of the propellers dropped audibly. Like his companions, the pilot swung the craft around, turning it in the darkness to break off from the action.

With the three smaller craft now bugging out, Aswon turned his attention to the larger vehicle. He swung his gun over, looking through the optical sight for a target – aware that this was likely to be the location of the mage that had tried to poke his eyes out. He couldn't spot him from this angle, being on the far side of the truck to Shimazu, but he could see something nearly as good – the gunner. He was protected by a blast shield, two thick slabs of armour on either side of the gun. There was a narrow slit down the centre, allowing the gunner to peer through and sight on his targets, following the tracers to adjust his aim – it was only perhaps fifteen centimetres apart. Aswon snugged in the gun, and took a deep breath, and then as he breathed out, for just a moment, stopped his heartbeat. In the calm moment of stillness, he squeezed the trigger. The gun thundered, driving back into his shoulder and his heartbeat resumed, pushing blood around his system once more. The round hurtled towards the target at over nine hundred and forty metres per second, and struck the gunner in the sternum. The round tumbled and slapped him, driving the body away from the gun to flail backwards with the force of the impact, held in place only by the stabilising harness. Blood exploded out of the back of the target, having defeated the body armour worn on both the way in, and the way out.

It was at this moment, that the range had finally dropped enough, and almost without conscious thought, Hunter squeezed the secondary trigger. There was a "thonk" as the grenade launched from the stubby tube mounted underneath his Ares rifle. It sailed through the air, reached apogee and then started its descent towards the earth, plummeting faster and faster. The time spent aiming was justified, as the grenade tumbled through the air until it was directly above the centre of the hovercraft, a perfect example of three dimensional mathematical convergences. The grenade exploded, the high density charge turning the casing into thousands of shards of randomly twisted sharp metal, flying outwards on the blast wave. The lethal tide of destruction was propelled downwards in a cone over the top of the hovercraft, peppering the hull with fragments and sounding like a bag of ball bearings dropped onto a large drum. Whilst the fragments bounced off the armour, the crew proved to be softer and more absorbent, and both the crew up front in the driving positions, as well as all the passengers in the rear troop area found themselves being savagely beaten and scoured with the fragments. Body armour helped deflect some of it, but not enough, and screams perforated the night sky.

Not to be outdone by the shouting on the water, Kai shouted at Georgi:

"Get in the truck, NOW!" His voice had an unmistakable air of command, and also made a lot of sense, and Georgi hustled towards their truck, trying to get out of the open air. Tads hid in the lee of one of the massive front wheels, and waved him closer. On the far side of the truck, Aswon scanned around the area, also dropping into his astral vision to look for life signs and magical threats – just in time to see the group of elementals released by the mage streaking across the water's surface towards them.

"Elementals inbound!" Shimazu bought his sword up into a guard position and pushed himself away from the vehicle, giving himself room to fight and be most effective, whilst on the top of the truck Hunter jacked the slide on his rifle to the limit and back, popping out the expended grenade cartridge and loading another from the small magazine feed. The hot case bounced off the roof, and rolled down to the ground, landing on the gravel with a metallic tinkle.

The spirits crossed the three hundred metres in a flash, creatures of pure magical energy driven by their master to attack the team physically. The elementals appeared in the physical world, coalescing into their material forms – there were two large water elementals, swirling vortices of tumultuous water, rippling eddies and surges constantly in motion around their vaguely humanoid shapes, and two large earth elementals made from piles of rocks and boulders bound together with tendrils of magical energy. One of the water elementals appeared in front of Hunter, the other next to Kai, whilst the earth elementals moved to attack Tads and Georgi.

Aswon saw the movement out of the corner of his eye, and turned his head to see what was going on. As he took in the details of the creatures he broke into a spring, his long legs devouring the distance between himself and the truck and just like Hunter, propelling him up in a prodigious jump to meet the top of the ladder and the door into the cab. One thought dominated his mind – to get his spear. The magical nature of the weapon would be proof against any defences the creatures had, and would strike them to the core of their being.

Shimazu, finding himself unengaged, moved swiftly to an outflanking position and dived into combat with the earth elemental moving to attack Tads. He drove forward and swung the sword hard, driving the blade through the air with a slicing motion that impacted the elemental just below its waist area, cleanly severing the legs. Rocks scattered where they fell away from the body, and a small trail of earthy remains leaked out like blood from a severed limb.

Over the water, Marius circled the Dalmation, looking down at the carnage below. He saw movement in the craft, and fired another long burst from his paired guns, raking the craft from stem to stern. It did superficial damage, if any – but it kept everyone on the boat distracted and with their heads down, and that was valuable in its own right.

On top of the vehicle, Hunter gave a start as the elemental appeared in front of him at point blank range. Almost by reflex, he pulled the trigger, firing a three round burst directly into the creature, then another. The creature was a being of magic, and normally resistant to mundane weapons of man – but there was a difference between resistant and immune. One that was apparently lost on the mage, and the creature itself. The odd round, or a single pistol should could be safely ignored, being unlikely to carry the power needed to penetrate its defences. But a burst fired at point blank range, well, that was another thing. The rippling explosions of air drove into the watery body, whilst the elemental flashes of fire from the gunpowder ripped at the water. It would have been physically impossible for Hunter to miss at this distance, and the rounds slammed into the elemental, savaging it and greatly weakening it.

Tads smiled at the spirit approaching her, and then blasted it with magical power, engaging it in a contest of pure will and magical power that it was never going to win. She moved her hands to help focus her mind, and as she made motions to squeeze it, the spirit grew smaller and more constrained in the mental power she projected.

Georgi backpedalled furiously, sliding down the side of the truck while he fought off the elemental as it attempted to pummel him. The creature's long and powerful arms wrapped around his guard a few times, punching him in the head and driving the wind out of him with a blow to his midriff, but his backwards movement robbed most of the force from the attempt and he wasn't that badly hurt.

The spirit on top of the truck swung at Hunter, trying to engulf him and batter at his flesh, but the pounding it had taken had robbed it of much of its coherency and Hunter was able to fight it off with ease – though he himself was not able to damage it in return.

Kai aimed his taser at the chest – or what looked like the chest – of his opponent and shot it, the twin darts flying, trying and lodging into the surface of the creature. The massive capacitors whined and a bolt of power flew down the twin lines and arced across the surface of the creature, which roared in pain and flexed, trying to pull out the metallic prongs from its flesh. Whilst it did so, Kai fired again, catching it lower down now and giving it another unhealthy dose of electricity to deal with. The twin blasts were too much for it, and disrupted its form, and the creature collapsed in on itself, losing its shape and structure.

Out on the water, Marius swung around behind the larger hovercraft, sighting in on the engine and fired two more long bursts. Most of the rounds sparked and whined through the air, ricocheting off the armour and heavyweight engine, but a few got through and a cloud of smoke started to rumble out of the engine and the speed of the craft dropped noticeably.

Back on land, almost simultaneously, Aswon appeared out of the hatch, squeezing past the orc and Shimazu moved in behind the elemental attacking Georgi. Hunter leant over a little to make room, and Aswon thrust with the spear. The magically attuned weapon ripped through the elemental, destroying it, and the tall merc rode the momentum, rolling into a ball and sliding out of the hatch and down the windscreen, onto the engine cover, ready to spring off to the ground. Shimazu took a few steps forward, but had to reach to catch up with the fast-moving spirit – but his blow opened up a large and deep wound all across its back, rewarding him with a guttural cry of pain. The spirit moved to the side, turning to face the truck so it could just about see both Georgi and Shimazu at the limits of its vision.

A second later, Aswon rolled off the truck and stabbed at the earth elemental with his spear. It dodged wildly to the side with unthinking reactions – as fast as it could go. It managed to dodge the spear almost entirely. Unfortunately, it mostly dodged by impaling itself onto Shimazu's blade, driving the blade deep inside itself and effectively killing itself on his sword.

"Totally counts as my kill," Shimazu muttered, just loudly enough for Aswon to hear him. Behind them, Tads finished compressing her spirit to a tiny point of light that vanished with a faint pop, leaving her standing victorious in the cold night air. They looked around for any more foes to fight, but it was all quiet for a second, with nothing moving. Then there was another "thock", as Hunter fired another grenade, perfectly timed to burst just above the hovercraft and rain down a cone of anti-personnel flechettes. After the smoke cleared, nothing could be seen moving on the hovercraft at all, and it started to wallow in the gentle swell, smoke pouring from the damaged engines, while Marius orbited it from a safe height.

"Well done my friends! You fought them off!" Georgi let out a cry of excitement, and spoke loudly and quickly, apparently coming down from an adrenaline high. "Excellent work. I don't think they ever really stood a chance. Let me go and get your payment!" He moved to the back of the truck, and reached in for a bag, wiping it clean as best he could, then opened it and removed a credstick terminal, returning to Kai.

"Now, let's get you paid and get the goods transferred shall we…"