Date Wednesday 20/04/2060, Location: 55.88864, 38.05461

"Well, we'll just have to be careful I guess, and try to keep a low profile." The others looked at Kai, who just shrugged. "There's nothing we can do here realistically, except try to stay out of sight, relocate and drop off the radar, is there? So we do what we can, and don't worry about what we can't."

Hunter looked like he was about to interrupt, so Kai continued quickly.

"I don't mean we don't worry about the situation. I mean we don't worry about things that are completely out of our control, and that we can't affect. We worry about the things we can do, and we DO something about those. Like laying low, and getting to Africa quietly, and spending some time in the desert where there's nobody around but scorpions that won't rat you out to the corp. Yes?" Hunter nodded, grudgingly.

"So, with that in mind – what do we need to do to fix up the chopper for the next mission, or in general? Marius?"

"Well, we need to get a cargo hook installed, I think – something that we can use to suspend a load beneath us at the minimum, and ideally something with a winch or some ability to raise and lower loads and drop them off remotely."

"And a toilet!" Aswon added. "And ideally a shower too. But definitely a toilet."

"And if we're taking out the truck module, can we put some beds in – something with a decent size would be nice." Shimazu looked at Hunter for confirmation, and the big orc nodded emphatically. "Something you can actually turn over on would be nice, and big enough so you can sleep without your chest touching the bunk above."

They discussed their options, working out how much of the cargo hold to sacrifice on amenities to make life more bearable and pleasant against the inroads into their carrying capacity and potential profits. The toilet would have to be an airline style one with a high pressure system to avoid unpleasant water leakage during combat operations, but the shower could be something a little less high tech and more off-the-shelf, and the bunks would be relatively easy to get and attach to the original fittings designed for the folding bench seats down each side of the hull. Kitchen fittings and such like would have to come later, they all agreed.

The conversation went on to the journey back to the ranch, trying to decide who would fly and who would drive, and what routes would be taken for both vehicles. Kai suggested that after the truck had been dropped off at the ranch, the occupants could make their way to Baku relatively easily on the east coast, and then catch the train across the country to Batumi.

"Why Batumi?" asked Marius.

"Well – we've been there before, so we're aware of the lay of the land. But we know the guy at the top of the hill is into the shadow scene, and will be open to negotiations. I'm sure he can grease palms or make arrangements for us to get the chopper refilled at the International Airport nice and easily, and that saves us having to hunt around." Aswon frowned at Kai as he spoke, but waited until he'd finished before he spoke.

"I'd much rather we file a flight plan and just fly down there, and not involve the crime boss personally. I'd prefer not to involve him at all."

"Ok – but I worry about the legitimate flying. Every time we do, we leave a paper trail and electronic footprint behind us, and tie someone's ID to one of the transponder IDs on the chopper, and both a start and end location. I just think that's bad."

The rest of the team considered this, seeing both sides of the argument. It was always going to be a fine balancing act of course – trying to remain covert and off the radar, without making things too hard for yourself, and avoiding setting off scanners and sensors by having no legitimate identity at all. In the end though, they realised that for now they would have to risk flying a few properly filed flight plans as the chopper was just not stealthy enough. Maybe once the electronics and avionics had been upgraded, they could do something – but until then, no.

"Oh, don't forget about the island stop those smugglers gave us – the guys we met in Constantinople. They should be good for getting us some fuel and a place to stop." Tads reminded them. "And hopefully we can work out a route that will tie in to how far we can fly each day as well, without wearing Marius out."

"Or not more than Nadia already does anyway," Hunter added quickly. Both Nadia and Marius shot him a glare, but Hunter looked unrepentant. At least he seemed to have cheered up a little, if he was making quips again.

"Alright, alright… so let's see… how much do you reckon we need to spend on getting some toilet and washing facilities, beds and some storage stuff and the hook fitted to the chopper? Any rough ideas, Marius?"

"I'd have put it around 25-30K, at a guess. Please tell me we have that much?"

"Oh yes, after Ludmilla's paycheck, we're a touch over 230K in the team slush fund. So, let's go for 30K, which leaves us 200k left. How much fuel do we need to get us there and back?"

"Allowing for some flying around down there, and non-direct routes, I think about 110K." Everyone winced as they thought about the voracious appetite for fuel the massive chopper had. It was going to constantly eat away at their profits, making life very difficult unless they could do something about it."

"Ok, that's not great, but there's nothing we can do. So – let's see. Shimazu and Hunter to drive the truck, with Nadia and Aswon. If Shimazu and Nadia do days, and Aswon and Hunter do nights, we have someone astrally aware all the time. Works?" Everyone nodded as he looked around, though Nadia didn't look thrilled, knowing what was coming.

"Once the truck is back at the ranch, Nadia, you're to start work on setting up base facilities and getting things ready."

"Yes. How much money are you giving me?" She fixed Kai with a very direct look. "This will not be cheap, and you will get only what you pay for."

"Will fifty thousand do for starters? That leaves us with forty to cover emergencies and equipment while we're away?" Nadia nodded, pulling out her tablet and starting to make notes about things she needed to sort out.

"I've got another idea. It might sound a bit silly, but bear with me…" The team looked at Tads, wondering what kind of crazy she might come out with now. "Belts. We should all get belts, really good ones."

"Belts?" Asked Aswon quizzically, "What's wrong with the ones we have now?"

"I was thinking if anyone ever ends up working near the ramp or doors, while we're mid-air – say if we're escaping from somewhere, or being chased by security or thunderbirds…. Having a belt that you know can take your weight, and that you can throw a clip around might be the difference between life and death."

"Surely a harness would be better?"

"Oh yes, of course. But sometimes we don't have time to plan, and to climb into something like that – you need to get some firepower on the target straight away. I just thought it was something easy we can do that might really help." There were a few smiles at the thought, but they generally agreed that wearing a good sturdy belt might indeed make all the difference.

The rest of the evening passed quietly – Hunter and Nadia planning the routes and working out details for the ranch, Marius doing some research on modules for the chopper and Tads repeatedly summoning batches of magical food to put in the truck, concentrating on non-perishable food that would keep the ranch supplied well. Several times the three researchers had to venture towards the opening of the tunnels to get a signal for their devices and download the next set of results or articles to read offline, back in the comfort of their pod – but they made generally solid progress.

On Thursday morning, they team managed to snag the base repair team early on, and secure their services for the day. With the tool trucks, some mobile lifting equipment, the UAZ and a lot of straining, grunting and effort, they managed to pull the living module out of the chopper and into the pod, then lift it and get it secured back onto the chassis of the 6 X 6. The remounting took a lot longer than they thought it would – lining up the mating points for the long securing pins proved to be very tricky, and there was considerable swearing involved before they managed to mate the components back together.

By lunchtime though, the truck was ready to go – loaded with the supplies to take back to the ranch and some travelling gear, while the rest of the equipment was reloaded back into the chopper. Tads looked over at Marius and smiled at him.

"Hey, just want to check. I presume that when they get the truck dropped off at the ranch, that you're ok with Rusudan and Naena using the truck to run errands around the farm?" Marius looked at her sharply and was about to speak when she continued. "Oh, and there's a thought. They could use it to teach Eteri and Vardo how to drive. I mean, they're about the right age to learn, and it won't matter if they hit anything after all. That'd be fine, wouldn't it?" Marius turned a funny shade of mottled red as the concept of teenagers learning how to drive in his precious truck sank in.

The sniggers from the rest of the team covered his very determined and abundantly clear thoughts on Tads' proposals and demands that the truck be locked, sealed and declared an exclusion zone from anyone that he hadn't personally vetted and approved. Shimazu, Aswon, Nadia and Hunter grabbed their personal weapons and mounted up, turning the truck around in the pod and waving goodbye to the rest, while Marius continued to shout at them demanding they look after the truck and ensure that neither of the youngsters were even allowed IN the truck, let alone to drive it…

They left the quarry, heading down the main highway and towards Volgograd and merging in with the general goods traffic travelling down the New Silk Road. Shimazu drove at a steady pace – slower than Marius generally travelled, but he was still not as used to handling the large truck and without the direct connection to the truck's systems via the rigger implant, his control was less precise. Hunter grew noticeably nervous as they passed through Volgograd, but they stayed well clear of the ZIC plant that sprawled down the Volga, and with the tinted windows and powerful ward on the vehicle, the actual threat was minimal. The traffic was chaotic in the city, but after some fits and starts, they made it through unscathed and headed south west on the A153.

They were about 150km past Volgograd when Shimazu called out to the others, an edge of suspicion in his voice.

"Hey, look at this. There's traffic on the horizon, all braking. And I can't see any traffic on the other side of the road." Nadia looked up from her tablet and checked out the road, while Aswon and Hunter squeezed through from the back into the cab to look as well. The road was wide but only a single lane on either side here, faded double white lines marking the centre of the cracked and rough highway. The plains stretched out on either side of them, flat and featureless to the horizon with the odd barn or farmhouse sticking up from the endless acres of soy-crops. Ahead of them a shallow rise was studded with a small thicket of trees, guarding the crest of the twenty metre high hill that stood up from the plains like a pimple.

Shimazu slowed, and as they crested the hill, Aswon gave a sharp intake of breath. Ahead of them, spreading across the landscape was an angry roiling cloud of twisted chaos, the astral realm torn and disrupted by some horrific power. In the physical world, far in the distance a few vehicles had stopped, scattered across the road or crashed to the side – and others were slowing or had already come to a stop.

"It's too soon for that storm cloud, isn't it? That was in a valley, much further down the road?"

"Yeah Shimazu, a good way down." Aswon checked the map. "Yup. It might have moved of course, but often these things follow mana lines or areas fairly consistently. But this is far worse than that. It's not a storm, it's a rift."

Hunter and Nadia looked at the two magically active team members, waiting for one of them to remember they were there, too. After a few seconds, Hunter coughed, just to jog their thought processes.

"Oh, sorry. Um – how to put this easily." Aswon pondered for a moment while Shimazu let the truck drift to a halt on the loose gravel and scrub to the side of the highway. "Where the world is horrible, either polluted by things we have done to it, or where humanity has committed evil acts, it twists the astral realm. So where a factory spills toxic waste into a river, or a family has a vicious argument and it spills over into a fight, it leeches through the barrier between planes and affects the astral realm. Sight becomes clouded, manipulating mana becomes more difficult, spirits become angry and more difficult to bargain with."

"Yeah yeah, we've heard this bit before. And listened to Tads complaining about it."

"No – this is important. It's all relative. If that toxic stream stays like that for years, or the fight becomes a fight with knives and someone is killed, the astral realm twists further, becomes even more affected. I've heard Hermetic mages refer to it as a background count, a way they can factor in how it will affect their magic, as if they can put numbers on everything. But the more violence is done – either to the world or each other, the worse it gets."

Hunter nodded impatiently, waiting for Aswon to get to the point. As far as he could see, there had just been a car crash, and there was nothing more going on – except that it had spooked both of the adepts.

"There are some things that have happened, that are so strong, or so violent that they don't just twist the astral realm – they shatter it. The camp at Auschwitz. The site of nuclear weapon strikes. Mass war graves in Bosnia. The Chicago Shattergraves. Magic doesn't just become difficult, it becomes almost impossible. For someone who has talent, just being in the area causes them to be affected and magically drained, their blood vessels rupturing, their organs failing, their brain almost frying in their skull. They are affected by the psychic death echo of the act that has taken place."

"Ok, that sounds bad. I can see that."

"Well, whatever has happened here, is on that scale. I don't know what has caused this, but there is a pall across the land from one side of the horizon to the other. "

"Won't the magic ward thingy stop it? It worked great with the storm."

"Oh, it will protect us – for a while. But it's a thing of magic too. It will be drained and attacked, fed upon and slowly diminished until it fails. It buys us time – but when it fails, whatever the cause is, will affect us, too."

"What do you mean the cause?"

"Something must have caused this. Something we can't see. I'm torn between a massive release of FAB-III or something like a radiation leak or toxic gas release."

"FAB?"

"Fluorescing Astral Bacteria. It's like bacteria that causes infections to a normal person – but it feeds on talent and infects mages and shamans – and yes, adepts. As it grows stronger, they grow weaker until they die, and it moves on to the next host. If it gets strong enough, it splits into two, and the cloud gets bigger and bigger."

"Well none of those sound good. The truck's ex-military though – isn't it sealed against stuff like that?"

"It is, and the doors and windows have seals yes – but it's also quite old, and I don't know how much I trust them."

Nadia was looking ahead, and pointed at a motorbike that had decided to drive on ahead. It swerved around a truck that had stopped, and accelerated down the road. Aswon and Shimazu watched as it approached the edge of the cloud, and as the rider entered there was a flash. This time the gasp of indrawn breath was from the other two.

Hunter and Nadia watched as the biker seemed to wobble for a moment, and then just explode – as if someone had inflated them suddenly and cataclysmically. They expanded and a split second later there was just a red mist of rapidly accelerating gore exploding outwards from the motorbike, which wobbled for a moment and then heeled over to the left and ploughed off road into the scrub before tipping over falling to the side, belching blue smoke as the engine revved wildly and the rear wheel spun in mid-air.

"Ok, I vote we go nowhere the fuck near that, whatever it is," murmured Hunter, slightly aghast at the suddenness of the messy death.

The other three nodded, and looked around them.

"Left turn, Shimazu – time to go off-road and see how far this goes. Without getting any closer I think."

"I think this is as close as any of us wants to get Aswon". Shimazu pulled off to the left, the truck lurching through the shallow drainage ditch and started to churn through crops in the field bordering the road, running south east and parallel to the edge of the storm as the team kept a careful eye on it, wondering just what had caused it and how far it went.