Thursday 30/9/60, Location:57.29336, -133.81481, Time 18:11

The first fifty kilometres across the sound was pretty easy – open water until they hit the shoreline, without any major settlements in sight. Hunter leant over the map and zoomed in a bit then looked up with a smirk.

"Looks like we're going up Stephens Passage."

"Yes?" Kai responded, looking at him quizzically.

"Right up his passage. Until it gets all twisty and turny." He grinned, displaying his wonky teeth and making his nose wrinkle and flare. It was not a pretty sight. "Look how thin his passage gets. And we've got to fit right up it."

"Do you think he'll mind?" Aswon asked, realising where Hunter was aiming, and deciding to join him in the gutter. Kai looked even more confused, and then did a mental translation and realised how childish they were being. He made a duck bill shape with his left hand, and then aimed it for a circle made with his right thumb and forefinger.

"Could be a bit tight going up his passage, mind?" Hunter sniggered, a little bubble of snot forming at the end of his nose, while Aswon grinned broadly. It seemed to trigger a spate of comments as most of the team discussed the way they would penetrate his passage and how that might feel. Tads and Marius remained uninvolved, and certainly unimpressed.

"So, once we've gone up the inlet…"

"up his passage"

"Shush, Hunter. Once we've crossed the water, we're hitting this fjord or inlet, and the ground rises gently at first until about five klicks in, then it's a pretty steep climb, rising up to over a thousand metres in the next four or five klicks. Then it shallows out for a bit, until we're about two thousand metres up after twenty kilometres."

"Yep. We hit some kind of upland plateau then, a series of plains all between two and two point two thousand metres in elevation, separated by some hefty ridgelines – real steep climbs. I've plotted a course around them." Hunter sobered, and hit a few keys, showing an illuminated flight plan that wove around the mountains, gradually working their way closer to the target site. "At least it'll give us really good cover on the way up. I estimate we can reach this point here…" A flashing icon appeared, surrounded by an irregular red shape. "which is a little below our max altitude – but from what I can see it'll be a sensor deadspot. We're in the shadow of some good peaks, in a cove or basin of some kind, approached through some narrow canyons that will keep the worst of the weather off us hopefully, and keep us safe from everything but direct overhead observation. And that's not a worry based on the weather we have coming in…"

"So, do we go now, or wait until after dusk? I'm personally in favour of waiting here for dusk, and letting Tads resummon her spirits to protect us. The last thing we want is for us to be resummoning halfway up a mountain in the middle of a storm, suddenly losing our protection against magical critters. At least that's what I think. But I defer to you, of course, Tads."

"No, Aswon, that makes sense. It's likely to be a lot calmer and easier to do it down here than up there. Though we'll get different spirits, of course – but they should do the job…"

They settled down and got some food and drink while the light slowly faded, then spent a few minutes going through the cabin and cargo area and lashing everything down, knowing they were going to be not only flying into the teeth of a storm but also through some narrow and challenging terrain that was likely to see them manoeuvring hard. As the last of the sun's light faded behind the horizon, Tads felt her control over the daytime spirits fade away, and started to work on summoning replacements, calling the spirits of the night to her. Rather than detailing the spirits out to everyone as normal, she kept them under her own control, until she reached the larger and most powerful spirit which she detailed to protecting the craft as normal.

"I'm keeping them all together to start off with, in case we run into any magical phenomena or creatures – if I have to go out astrally to deal with something, I want to take a whole bunch of backup with me to make it one sided – I hope." The others nodded in acknowledgement to her. "Ready when you are, Marius, thank you." No sooner had she spoken were the engines starting up and systems that had been waiting on standby while she chanted and swayed to summon the spirits spooled up rapidly, getting ready for take-off.

Less than two minutes later, they powered up and rose away from the island amidst a storm of debris that was quickly blown away by the increasingly fast winds approaching from the south east. The sky that way was a thunderous and bleak grey, and they could see sheets of sleet high up in the air obscuring the peaks, caught by the sun's last rays at the higher altitude. Marius banked over and they headed out over the water, gently swooping around to head towards the mainland and the rows of serried peaks that lay beyond.

As they closed on the shoreline they could see the rocky outlines of hills and mountains rising sharply from the deep water, steep slopes that rose up fifty or more metres sometimes in near vertical climbs. The occasional chunk of ice floated along the shore, broken off from a glacier further to the north and now slowly making their way out to sea with the current. The rocks were dotted with patchwork spots of green as hardy mosses and vegetation clung to ledges, crevices and scrapes in the faces, while small flocks of seabirds wheeled around the water line, occasionally diving down into the water in search of fish. Despite the life evident in the area, it felt desolate and remote, and the team realised that from where they were, they could see not a single structure, nor any sign of humanity's presence – a rare and unusual scene in the sixth world. Even in the steppes of Russia they'd been old logging roads or radio masts visible on the horizon – but the rugged and broken landscape here prevented that.

They angled up, suddenly climbing at a fifty-degree angle as they neared the end of the inlet and Marius climbed up to match the landscape. He and Hunter were fine in the cockpit seats, tilting back into the cushioned embrace of the flight chairs and held in place by the five-point harnesses. In the troop bay they were less fortunate, being bent sideways with the waist belts digging in around their bodies whilst gravity tried to pull them down towards the rear ramp. Fortunately, the time spent tidying the bird up before they'd launched prevented them from being pelted with debris. The climb seemed to last for far too long, but in reality was no more than a minute, and they breathed a sigh of relief as Marius levelled out at two thousand one hundred metres and started to snake back and forth as he followed the flight plan Hunter had laid out. The tilt-wing shuddered and lurched as the winds plucked at them and battered the hull and Marius was reduced to flying on instruments only as snow and sleet battered at the windscreen. When he was flying into the storm directly it looked like he was entering hyper-space from a sci-fi series, just white streaks swirling towards him in a tunnel, but flying across the wind was no better, the visual sensors just showing streaks of white flashing by like strobing lights.

They followed the plateau for the next few minutes, gently arcing around the spurs of higher ridges and working closer to Mount Ratz with each turn.

"Stand by. Entering the upper canyons." The voice had that flat and detached aspect to it again, Marius sparing no more than a fraction of his attention to warning the team whilst the rest of his focus was on the steadily narrowing landscape as the rocks closed in on either side of them. In the back everyone checked their belts carefully, then grabbed hold of anything close by to try and help support their bodies and ease the pressure.

Rocks and snow flashed by as the tilt-wing dove into the canyons, slicing between the rocky passes and flashing by in a blur of light. Marius had slowed considerably from their maximum speed, but with the proximity of the rocks he still had very little time to react and the margin of error dropped lower and lower as the free space on either wingtip dropped from hundreds of metres to tens, and then sometimes to only ten or less. They banked from side to side, sometimes rising to a forty-five degree angle as he turned to follow a tight shift in the terrain, before swiftly reversing his roll to continue around a bend.

In the back, Kai, Aswon, Shimazu, Tads and Vadim were thrown backwards and forwards with no warning, either being pressed back into the stiff and uncomfortable seats or dangled over the far side of the fuselage with just their seat-belts keeping them suspended in the air. As they progressed up the canyon network, the manoeuvres became tighter and more frequent, throwing them back and forth until they were regularly pulling three or four g's. They were all fit and healthy – which helped – but weighing four times as much as normal was a strain on everyone, and the pressure of the waist belts became intense as they hung over their fellow team-members' heads as if on a particularly sadistic fairground ride. All of them found it hard going, and were soon breathing heavily and giving grunts of exertion as they tried to clench their cores to deal with the stresses and strains – but Tads seemed to suffer the worst, and her arms were flailing around with each change of direction, her eyes struggling to focus as she developed tunnel vision.

In the front, Marius's physical body was flopping back and forth in the seat to the limit of the webbing, his head restrained to the seat by the straps of his rigger harness. If he had been 'in' his body there would have been a grin plastered across his face that would have surprised the rest of the team no end – but while he was jumped into the machine, his body was an empty shell, unresponsive whilst he lived in his metallic body. The tilt-wing danced under his gentle touch, flying at the edge of its performance envelope as it rocketed through the canyons. Marius knew that he was a single mistake away from killing himself and every other member of the crew, just one twitch away from slamming into a mountain wall at two hundred kilometres per hour. In a way it was good that he was experiencing life in the machine – otherwise he'd have been in danger of having some blood in his adrenaline stream….

He rounded a corner, easing out of the tight bank and a flicker of his attention watched the G-metre from 3.47 back towards 1 as he levelled out – and then the world went mad. The starboard engine just shut down, all electrical responses from it stopping in an instant. At the same moment all input from the starboard sensors spiked to the maximum, send a jolt of pain through his cortex before the filters kicked in and started to moderate the input. Lightning bolt? Zapper missile? Some kind of critter power? Thoughts sleeted through his head before he shoved them firmly to one side – it didn't matter what had caused it, he just had to deal with what was happening.

In the co-pilot seat, Hunter's eyes widened in alarm as half the lights and displays on the cockpit ahead of him either just went dark or flashed and strobed red indicating critical issues. The gyro rolled madly, airspeed indicators showed temperature readings and the door sensors showed as all open, while some lights he'd never even seen before started to display. He felt the bird start to yaw to the left as the controls glitched and froze on the starboard side, and in a momentary gap in the snow saw the canyon wall approaching, thousands of tons of uncompromising rock that had survived millions of years of erosion – and would certainly survive the 'mild abrasion' of their craft impacting with minimal damage.

Marius could feel his left side ok, but the right side of his body was numb and unresponsive. And he could sense the terrain around him, but only on the left and centreline. He leant into the working side, and instead of trying to compensate to the right, he tightened the turn the craft was already spiralling into. A flicker of thought deployed the flaps and air-brake, another thought tilted the engine back a few degrees to further slow and slew them around. They dug into the flat spin, and the G-metre spiked up towards five as they almost pivoted on the spot. Their tail brushed past the canyon wall, collecting a green patina of crushed moss and a few small vines caught into the movable surfaces before it danced away again. Marius reversed the engine pitch and retracted flaps as they pivoted round back towards their original course, letting them fly forwards another thirty metres until the nose drifted past the course indicator once more.

Again he threw the controls over, whipping them around into a crazily tight turn to pivot around, thankfully this time with a little more clearance from the rockface. Hunter could see it coming and braced, but in the back the team were once more violently thrown around. All of them saw spots in front of their faces now, grunts of exertion being ripped from them. Spittle and drool flew from their mouths as muscles struggled to control their faces, ripples of flesh forming under the immense forces. Shimazu discovered what it was like to weigh over five hundred kilos, and didn't enjoy it one bit, and the others fared no better – each of them having to cope with the effort of supporting themselves as their apparent mass increased by a factor of five. The grey tunnel that Tads had been looking at the world through tightened as blood shifted in her eyes, until all she could see was tiny pinpricks ahead of her.

They went through another spin, Marius expertly powering up and cutting back on the throttle to keep them on course despite half their systems not working as they span down the canyon into the cove that Hunter had spotted. Just as they entered the wider area and Marius thought they'd make it, the craft lurched violently as they struck something – something that hadn't shown up on the sensors at all. They tumbled and yawed to starboard, onto his 'dead' side, and there was almost nothing he could do to stop it.

"BRACE!" His warning was raw with emotion and frustration, but ultimately useless to the passengers in the back, who were already doing whatever they could to brace themselves from the previous acrobatics, or were in no position to do anything about it anyway. He cut the engines and disengaged the gearboxes, letting the propellers just rotate freely. It might help prevent some damage, and make repairs a little easier once they hit the deck. Beyond that, he deployed all the flaps he could, using the rudder and every other surface that could give them some kind of movement at the last moment to try and right them before they slammed into the ground still doing fifty kilometres per hour.

Snow exploded upwards and outwards as the bird slid into the dense snowbank that covered the rocky floor of the cover. They dug in, sending a huge wave of snow gushing out ahead of them, plowing their way through the surface and digging deep – but the snow slowed them, gave way before them and acted as both a cushion and a brake, decelerating them until they slid to a halt at a precarious angle – the starboard wing just impacting onto the rock below them while the port side pointed up into the air at a sharp angle. Kai and Aswon were bent forward, handing down over their waist belts as they looked down on the starboard side, while Vadim, Tads and Shimazu were pinned against the starboard side facing up. All of them were stunned, while Tads looked to be unconscious, but the safety systems and Marius's superb skills had bought them down without apparent injury. Up in the cockpit, Hunter was in much better shape with the pilot harness having kept him in much tighter contact with the cushioned seat. He looked out at the blizzard raging on the other side of the cockpit glass, and estimated they were at a good forty to fifty degree angle – the gyro display was currently showing the level of fluid present in the toilet, and clearly couldn't be relied upon. He popped the release on his harness and turned to look over at Marius, checking the body out for injuries, but finding none.

The engine noise died away, replaced with the howling of the wind, but inside they had a moment of quiet calm as the situation seemed to stabilise. Ragged breathing echoed around the cabin as they all struggled for breath, re-oxygenating their systems after the frantic efforts of the last thirty seconds. Aswon flexed and managed to release the pressure on his seatbelt, then dropped down to the opposite side and gently cradled Tads by the head, checking for injuries. Her eyes fluttered and tried to focus on him, her pupils mismatched and unfocussed, but she gulped in a breath of air as her system slowly recovered from the trauma of the 5g spins.

Explosive noises shattered the moment as a series of bullets slammed through the port side wall, low, down near the deck plate. They slashed through the air and impacted near the starboard roof. Two of the three embedded into the fuselage, while the third struck a reinforcing rib at an acute angle and spanged away, ricocheting around the bay until it impacted something soft and pliant – that fortunately wasn't any of the team.

"Contact! Port side!" Aswon yelled by reflex. He jumped up and grabbed the wall/ceiling with one hand, then released his rifle from the straps with the other before dropping back down to the wall/floor below him and starting to shimmy to the back ramp. "Marius! Back door!"

"I'm on the port gun!" Kai tried to duplicate Aswon's feat of athleticism, but fluffed the first two attempts to get unlatched, succeeding on the third attempt. Jamming his foot into the fold of the chair, he struggled to deploy the gun from the stowage area to the side of the doorway and swing it into position, working against the unusual angle.

Shimazu popped his belt and dived to the cargo area just behind Aswon, looking for his helmet and ballistic shield. He figured that if the enemy were firing rounds that could punch through the side of the aircraft he wanted as much armour as possible to prevent that. Hunter meanwhile looked round from his position, having established that Marius seemed ok physically and called into the back.

"Tads… Tads? Crap. Ok – Vadim! Astral scout will you?" Vadim looked around at him wide eyed, then licked his lips and nodded, before projecting and leaving behind his limp body. In the cockpit, Marius remained in communion with his systems, checking them out and seeing if there was anything he could do to get them back in the air. He heard Aswon's cry from the rear and managed to disengage the rear ramp systems, the ramp clattering open as the hydraulics cycled open. He'd have to bleed the system and repressurise things later to get them back in operation, but the team needed to get out and engage whoever was attacking them now, not in fifteen or twenty minutes.

Aswon slid down the ramp, scrabbling for purchase on the metal deck due to the sharp angle – fortunately it put the ramp between him and the direction the bullets had come in, and should give him a moment's cover. His hair was already covered in snow, the wind having found a way through the opening and dumping sleet in the gap already and he felt the biting cold seeping through his clothes. They'd all layered up before taking off from the bottom of the fjord – putting up with the sweaty and constraining clothing in the relative warmth as the temperature hovered around zero, but now he was glad – the temperature up here was certainly way below zero, and the windchill from the storm was probably going to drop the apparent temperature down significantly – he'd be surprised if it wasn't below negative forty out there…

The wind accelerated past him in a sudden gale as Kai managed to get the top door slid open, providing a clear route though the tilt-wing. Snow and sleet swirled in through both doors, quickly sucking out any vestiges of heat generated by the crew, and the inside quickly started to turn white in the corners as snow settled on the surfaces.

Aswon squinted into the darkness, his eyes fully dilated as they tried to soak up all available light. Having left just after dusk down at ground level, their journey up the mountain had chased just behind the sun's rays, and the sky still held a little light making it past the curvature of the earth – but that didn't factor in the storm. While the light did hit the clouds, the dense snow soaked up a lot of the light and it was almost fully dark down in the cove, with what little light made it out of the tilt-wing mostly serving to illuminate the snow as it flew past his face at close range. Very occasionally a swirl in the wind gave him a brief moment of respite where the snow came down vertically rather than blown across him horizontally, and it was during one of these that he saw a shape about twenty or thirty metres ahead. Or at least he thought he did. It was hard to say, but he got a distinct feeling that there was *something* out there. As he threw himself prone onto the side of a big snow drift he carefully concentrated, filtering out the howling of the wind layer by layer, trying to listen for any other sounds that might be out there – in this kind of weather, it was possibly going to be the best chance of finding something he had.

In the tilt wing, Kai had managed to get himself up to the edge of the door and had clipped his belt onto the edge of the door frame, leaving him swinging just below the lip. With a grunt of effort he swung the gun up on the gyro-arm and deployed it out of the door, racking the cocking handle on the heavy machine gun with a reassuring 'cha-chunk'. He aimed down and quickly discovered that the angle they had landed at was going to be an issue – he could depress the gun only so far over the edge of the chopper. At a quick guess he could probably shoot anything more than about fifty metres away… but anything closer would be below his line of fire. Still, it was better than nothing, and he peered out into the darkness, just like Aswon, looking for any sign of what was out there.

Still strapped into her seat, Tads struggled to regain her composure. She'd not experienced anything like the crazy G forces before in her life and had been singularly unprepared for the experience. She didn't have any experience before the team of driving in a fast car and feeling the pressure of acceleration forcing her back into her seat, let alone the feeling of being in a commercial airliner on takeoff or landing. She hadn't even imagined there could be a feeling like that. But as her vision started to recover and her inner-ear settled, she grasped that there was a situation. She called on her sprits, then started to give them an order to go and assist the others – then paused for a moment and realised she didn't know what was going on. Blinking a little she figured out a way that should be helpful. Hopefully.

"Spirits, hear me. Go outside the aircraft, and find guns that are not being carried by my team. Make them malfunction." She sent the spirits out and swallowed, concentrating on her breathing as she tried to recover and come to her senses.

There was another random gust of wind, some artifice of the weather swirling around the peaks above them, and for a moment the winds cancelled each other out, and the snow cleared slightly. Aswon looked out and saw two faint shapes in the snow, perhaps twenty metres ahead of him. Unfortunately it seemed they had seen him as well, and he threw himself to the side as the distinctive muzzle flash of an automatic weapon flared in the darkness.

He rolled as he pushed to the side, feeling rounds punching through the snow and the sounds of the hypersonic rounds screaming past him, painful to his augmented hearing. He almost got out of the way, but a couple of rounds impacted on his chest plate, slamming into the armour and driving the wind from him. The Kevlar fibres and ceramic plates did their jobs though, slowing the rounds and robbing them of much of their energy, and the bullets barely penetrated the skin - not that it stopped the wounds from hurting of course.

The sound of gunfire was unmistakeable, even over the noise of the storm, and they heard Aswon's cry of surprise and pain. Shimazu stopped wrestling with his shield and dived for the backdoor, shouting as he did so.

"Conceal me!" He hoped Tads had recovered enough to do so, otherwise he was going to be in trouble. He slid down the ramp and landed at the bottom, feet impacting with the snow without leaving a dent in it. With his powers fully active he sprang to the right, heading towards the sounds of the gunshots and running into the blizzard, questing ahead blindly as he looked for enemies to fight.

Aswon continued to roll and slide, putting space between himself and his previous position. He heard rounds continue to spit out from guns to the west, impacting on the deep drifts of snow and figured they were firing blind now – just spraying the area with speculative fire, knowing that there wasn't much in the way of cover. That meant that speed was his best defence and he concentrated on moving, heading south as quickly as he could without abandoning all efforts at concealment, trying to clear their cone of fire.

Another burst of gunfire ripped through the air, slightly deeper than the previous ones. The unseen firer managed to hit Shimazu, the rounds stitching across his chest and knocking him from his feet with the impact. Shimazu rolled with it, taking the dive and using the momentum to clear the line of fire – he hoped – as he slid and scrambled across the slope.

Aswon spotted the muzzle flash again, lower this time. The brief afterimage burned into his sight, and he could see the silhouette of a man standing with some kind of crew weapon, a light or medium machine gun on a gyro-harness. He swung his rifle round, working from memory and lined up where the figure should be, then gently pulled the trigger, sending the rifle round hammering out into the darkness. He didn't wait for the sound of the impact, breaking off into a run again to the south as soon as he'd fired.

Kai had also heard the gunfire and decided to try and help a little – he couldn't see any targets, and didn't know if he had the angle to them at all, but he might be able to affect them psychologically. He pulled the trigger and waved the gun back and forth, sending a long burst out into the night. The heavy machine gun barked with a low punchy sound that cut through the storm much more than the lighter fire, the dak-dak-dak sound echoing around the cover. Whoever was out there should be aware that someone was returning fire, and hopefully that would give them pause or make them more cautious.

Hunter had followed along after Shimazu, but instead of descending the ramp decided to wedge himself into the corner, raising his assault rifle over the edge and then starting to look for targets from behind the barricade formed from the back of the vehicle. He cycled through his vision mods, trying to find the best vision he could in the swirling maelstrom of snow, settling on thermo in the end. Spotting a heat bump ahead of him he fired off a long burst of aimed fire, feeling reasonably sure that he'd hit the target with at least some of the rounds.

Overhead, Kai caught sight of the same strange lump that Aswon had seen and managed to shove the back end of the machine gun up just enough that he had the depression to hit it, hearing the metallic sounds of destruction as the heavy 12.7mm rounds punched into something.

Tads felt something brush past her legs and opened her eyes, watching as Marius squeezed past her and started to examine the Steel Lynx. The heavy tracked drone had good armour and significant firepower and would be a considerable force multiplier for the team, but as Marius checked it over he realised it was resting just as much on the outer fuselage as the deck, thanks to the extreme angle they were at. There was no way they were getting it out of here quickly, so he quickly abandoned the idea and instead looked up at the aerial drone stashed above it. It wasn't anywhere near as robust and was much smaller – but he should be able to get it outside into take-off position. He grunted and heaved, managing to bring the drone down off the storage rack and tottered to the back ramp, squeezing past Hunter who was looking for his next target.

Outside, Shimazu had made it back to his feet and ran silently and without trace to the north, looping around and heading for the area that Kai had been shooting at, while Aswon was forty metres to his south, mirroring his actions. With his rifle in hand he breathed deeply and rhythmically, calming his own systems and controlling his body, tuning out the nagging pain from his wounds and readying himself for action.

Feeling somewhat more with the situation, Tads called her spirits to her and projected out of her body, leaving behind the slightly battered meat-shell and soaring up into the air. The astral form of the snow was just as distracting as on the physical plane, obscuring her vision as the flakes fell, each teaming with microscopic frozen bacteria, making her feel like she was swimming through static. Below her she saw one of the enemies appear in a sudden patch of calm in the storm, then drop to the ground and slide backwards a metre across the snow leaving a stream of blood behind him as Hunter drilled him with another burst of fully automatic fire.

Shimazu slid forward and the hulking form he'd glimpsed before slowly appeared and he realised what he was looking at – a large attack helicopter which had been covered and concealed with a camouflage net, which in turn had been covered with a light dusting of snow. He could make out several large holes in the engine housing through the gaps in the netting, courtesy of Kai and the heavy gun.

"Kai, cease fire, cease fire!" He didn't know what it was, or how it worked, but he was pretty sure it was both expensive and stuffed full of components that made flying possible. If anything on their bird was broken, it was possible – perhaps – that they might be able to jury rig it with stolen components from this. If he could get Kai to stop destroying it!

Two figures appeared out of the snow to his left, clad in white armour and carrying either large sub-machine guns or small assault rifles. The range was short, perhaps only five or six metres, and both fired as one, sending out burst of fire that hit Shimazu on the side. The 9mm rounds were just regular ammo fortunately, but that was still bad enough. His body armour slowed them, but couldn't stop them entirely, and he felt the white-hot lance of pain as they punched through the flank into his torso, forcing a cry of pain from his lips. A moment later more fire hit him, from a target he couldn't even see in the snow. The 7.62mm rounds were sleeker and more powerful than the sub-guns' 9mm, and they penetrated the armour with much more energy left, slapping into his intestines and sending another spike of pain through him.

Tads swooped down, having caught sight of the bulge of grey material in astral space and quickly checked it out, not spotting any ward and then sliding in through the canopy of the attack chopper, recoiling slightly at the reek of death and fear she encountered. She manifested and the reason became clear – when the chopper had gone down it had landed nose first, and some of the structural members of the chopper had broken, flying backwards and slaying the pilot, leaving him pinned in his cockpit like an insect pinned down for an entomologist.

Shimazu knew he was hurt – he was ignoring the signals from his body as his mentors had trained him to, but some of the pain was still leaking through. He thought about turning and charging for a moment, but while he could take out the two in close range pretty easily, he had no idea where the third was, and that worried him. Instead he put on a burst of speed and dived around the front of the camo net, trying to put the bulk of the chopper inbetween him and his opponents. As he ran, his hand fiddled with the front left pouch on his armour, ripping open the fastener and grabbing the small auto-injector inside.

To the south, Aswon had seen another flash of firing, and realised that the target he'd shot had shifted and was aiming to the north, firing off to support his comrades. He slid to a halt again and once more aimed at the flash of the muzzle break, then adjusted aim… one minute, two minutes, another half minute… breath, breath. The rifle barked as his finger pulled the trigger, timing it perfectly between breaths and heartbeat, and the high-velocity round shot out into the snow, hitting something a split second later with the sound of a large branch landing on wet sod.

Hunter felt a bunch of rounds impact him, as the enemy team did to him what Aswon had just done to them – as someone fired a burst back at the area of his muzzle break. All three rounds hit in a tight group, square in the middle of his chest plate – fortunately. Though getting shot was never a good thing, armour designers knew that most assailants were always going to shoot for 'centre-mass', and the armour over the vital areas was thicker and tougher as a result. The inbound fire from the SMG would have probably killed him if it had hit a third of a metre higher, striking his throat or face. As it was the rounds smashed into the thickest part of the ceramic plating and disintegrated into fragments that were caught by the ballistic weave of the covering, giving him nothing but a bruise on his breastbone.

"Right, you fucker…." Hunter elevated his rifle a few extra degrees and fired the second trigger using his smart-link. With a 'thonk' sound, the grenade launcher fired off an aerodynamic grenade towards the location he estimated the firer was in. The grenade disappeared into the snow and the tiny display superimposed into his right eye counted down the thousandths of a second until impact…

The Ares Arms underslung grenade launcher was top of the line, firing some of the same company's finest aerodynamic grenades. Designed after tens of thousands of hours of research, testing, prototyping and development, then tested in Desert Wars and a number of conflicts around the globe, it was a quality piece of workmanship. What it was not however, was a miracle worker, or a magic wand. Nobody had ever sat down with the design team and said 'oh, by the way, it needs to deliver a grenade with pinpoint accuracy in the middle of an Alaskan snowstorm with winds gusting up to 120 kph.' Mostly because if someone had tried to do that, it's possible the design team would have lynched them. So it was unsurprising that the lightweight grenade drifted away from the designated impact point, landing a good seven metres away from where Hunter had intended. The IPE-AP grenade bounced, and was about four centimetres from the ground when it exploded. The 'improved' explosive was a very fast detonating compound, combusting inside the grenade casing and generating a huge amount of heat and pressure, that transformed the walls of the grenade into a dense cloud of anti-personnel flechettes expanding outwards at hundreds of metres per second.

The two soldiers who had shot at Shimazu had no idea the grenade had landed in-between them, about a half metre behind their feet. Even if they had, they wouldn't have had time to react. But as it was, they died pretty much instantly as hundreds of steel fragments were driven through their bodies, destroying or damaging their spine and skull, turning them into exploding bags of bloody meat.

Hunter saw the large flash, and frowned slightly as it registered off to one side of him, but heard cut off screams and the sounds of tearing canvas. He also could see a split second later the exploding wave-front as snow was driven out from the explosion in a globe, riding the shockwave from the detonation. A blast of hot air distracted him from the scene ahead, and he ducked back out of the way as Marius ignited the drone's vector thrust engines, sending plumes of steam in all directions as the thrusters vapourised the snow beneath it and it rose into the air unsteadily, fighting against the horrific wind-shear. It shot up into the air and Hunter swung back into position, blinking rapidly and resetting the filters on his cyber-eyes to try and counter the after-images from the drone's thrusters.

Tads slid out from the cockpit and manifested next to Shimazu, then rapidly spoke to relay what she'd found.

"Pilot inside, dead – looks like the impact killed him. Rest of the chopper is empty. Can you relay to the rest?" Shimazu didn't answer her, instead pulling out the small plastic tube, and raised it to his neck, tilting his head to one side. With a swift and decisive action he slapped it down, feeling the top of the tube crumple and deform, driving the plunger down and releasing the spring loaded delivery system. The needles plunged into his skin and squirted the drugs into the blood vessels of his neck, sending them rushing around his vascular system. "Shimazu? What was that? Shimazu?"

She saw him standing stock still for a few seconds, and then suck in a massive breath. The tendons down the side of his neck bulged and veins throbbed, and his lips pulled back into a rictus grin. His eyes dilated, the pupils engorged to the point that she could barely see any colour around them. As she peered closer to him, she could see all the hair on his face standing on end as goose-bumps spread over his all of his flesh. He let out a weirdly distorted grunt, almost a whine, and then jerked into motion, striding around the nose of the chopper, further away from the tilt-wing and extending his sword ahead of him. As he faded into the snowstorm, she swore she could see the sword blade vibrating in the air.

"Or, you could just wander off and ignore me. Whatever…." She sighed, and then rose up into the air to see if she could spot anything. She heard the barking retort of the heavy machine gun as Kai fired off another burst, aiming up into the air for psychological effect now it appeared following Shimazu's radio message. To the south Aswon continued his move around the flank whilst Hunter kept up his overwatch position and Marius continued to fight against the winds with his drone.

Another flash of movement through the snow drew a long ripple of fire from Hunter, who wasn't sure if he'd hit anything or not – but certainly he didn't seem to draw any return fire, which boded well. Tads realised that she could barely see anything in the snowstorm, and certainly wasn't being much help out here and decided to head back to her body – that way she would at least be available to perform magical healing more quickly.

Aswon was due south of the enemy chopper now, and turned in, slowly making his way forward over the snow and peering into the storm, looking for targets. He made out a target, and took a few seconds to confirm it wasn't one of the team before putting a rifle round through the side of it's head, sending another body crumpling to the ground. He saw a glimmer of movement as he continued to move forward, and spotted Shimazu striding out of the snow in a somewhat jerky and robotic fashion, then a moment later a figure rising up from cover at the rear of the enemy chopper, turning to face him at point blank range. His rifle came up, but the shot was poor and he had no idea if the rifle round would punch straight through the enemy and into Shimazu…

Shimazu saw the enemy too, and his sword rose – but not before the enemy had raised his submachine gun to point directly at his face. Time was running like treacle for him, and he could see the barrel of the gun aimed squarely between his eyes, the gloved finger tightening on the trigger, his own reflection in the snow-goggles worn by the enemy. He heard the metallic click – but nothing happened. No stream of 9mm slugs burst from the gun, turning his face into so much mush. He had no idea why, and wasn't looking in astral – he couldn't see the handful of Tads' spirits that were busy interfering with the gun's operation, having found a suitable target to carry out her wishes.

His muscles tensed and the sword slashed down, cleaving through the body as if it were butter. He felt tearing in his arms, rips in his own muscles as they were driven beyond their safe capacity and pain flashed up both limbs. None of that mattered as a fierce rush of exaltation surged through his body and he gave a tremble all over, shuddering with delight.

Shimazu's fierce and warbling warcry cut through the storm, attracting the attention of the last of the enemies – but also fixing his location for the rest of the team. The unfortunate last man standing went down under the combined assault of Aswon, Hunter and Marius, his body spinning in the air as he was hit by fire from three separate sources. The team didn't know he was the last of their foes of course, and it took them another two minutes of careful searching until they were pretty sure there were no more foes waiting for them amidst the savage snowstorm.

They gathered at the enemy chopper, examining the sleek lines of the attack bird and the extended troop bay. It was fitted out for the pilot and a squad of five men, and they'd accounted for five enemies, so they were at least reasonably happy they'd found everyone. Once they were more sure that nobody else would be waiting for them, they detailed off individual tasks and split up. Kai had bought his med-kit over and started to check Shimazu over who was trembling like an excited puppy, while Hunter went out to scavenge the bodies, Marius checked the chopper itself, Aswon dragged all the bodies together and Tads waited for Kai to announce his prognosis. Vadim turned up a few moments later, reporting that he hadn't found any other signs of life outside the cove, or any further reinforcements moving to intercept.

Kai pulled the door shut on the chopper, sealing himself and Tads in with Shimazu, and then gave him a physical examination. Despite the cold, he was sweating profusely, and they quickly stripped him down and dried him off before the moisture sapped all of the heat from his body and gave him hyperthermia or frostbite. Once the bullet wounds were exposed, Kai went to work extracting the slugs and cleaning the wounds out, sealing the skin around the entry wounds with his dermal patches and staples, before injecting some antibiotics and coagulants to help move things along. During his work he had to shout at Shimazu several times to be still, as the bodyguard literally sat quivering like he was about to burst. Tads checked his aura out, which was a little disturbed and atypical, but at least wasn't showing signs of degradation or malaise – whatever the drug was it appeared to be purely chemical in origin and wasn't some kind of weird magical parasite.

Hunter gathered up several magazines worth of armour piercing ammunition from the enemy – it looked like they'd had mostly regular stuff loaded when they'd started the assault, apart from one of the team who was running hot, and the pace of the conflict hadn't given them time to swap over. Three of the enemies were carrying large and bulky sub-machine guns, a fourth had an assault rifle and the last of the team carried a light machine gun mounted on an articulated frame attached via gyros to his backpack. None of the guns were particularly high quality, though most seemed to be of Japanese manufacture, so he left them with the bodies for Aswon and the spirits to drag about once he'd salvaged their ammunition and grenades.

Marius checked out the cockpit, finding it to be a disaster site. The enemy had presumably been hit by the same kind of electrical attack they'd suffered, but their pilot hadn't been as lucky, or good, as he had. He'd managed to land the chopper nose first into a massive boulder, which had destroyed pretty much all of the avionics and control systems – the bird was clearly not going to fly again without a substantial rebuild. The only functioning system still on their craft was the emergency beacon, squawking away with a wide-band distress call. Marius almost pulled out his gun and put a round through it, but then realised that the signal was unlikely to be making out of the area they were in, let alone back to the base or anywhere else with human habitation. The rock formations and topography that turned this area into a sensor dead-spot worked just as well for signals trying to get out, as those coming in.

His examination of the cockpit was suddenly bathed in golden light as Tads cast her healing spell in the rear section, finishing off the process that Kai had started and restoring Shimazu to full health, though still jittery and hyper-active, a far cry from his normal restrained self. Aswon slid the door open, letting in a fresh wave of sleet, to make his report.

"Looked like a squad of local militia or police. Tsimshin troops, paramilitary. All on comms, and they looked to have pretty good tactical gear, solid winter style armour. It looks like they crashed not too long before us – long enough to get the camo netting out and get themselves sorted out, not long enough to relax and start assigning watches. But we're pretty sure we have them all, Hunter has all their ammo and demo gear. Oh – and there's one interesting thing you probably want to see…"

He beckoned them out to the area under the tail boom where they'd laid out the bodies. Despite the dense camo netting and the body of the chopper, they were still rapidly being covered in snow, and he had to wipe away the fresh fall to reveal the face of one of the troops, and the crescent shaped scar by the side of the nose.

Fortunately Shimazu was jittering and staring off up into the snow, his eyes tracking individual flakes as they flew across his vision, and not paying attention to the bodies below – at least not at first. It was only when the bright light from the flash of the photo being taken reflected off the chopper that he turned to look down, seeing what Kai was doing. Kai had just taken the second photo when Shimazu's hand cannon descended to hover just over the corpses face and the body exploded violently as the heavy-weight shot annihilated the cranium, sending blood and fragments over everyone.

Kai, Tads and Aswon recoiled back, covered in bloody slush and bits of brain, but Shimazu seemed to stop again for a moment, the broad smile plastered across his face whilst bits of sinew and bone stuck to his face. He let out a sigh, as if deflating, and the smile slowly faded away. His gun fell from his fingers, and both arms wrapped around his chest, hugging himself tightly whilst his knees started to buckle. As he started to fall, and the others leant over to try and grab him, the movements reversed sharply. Both arms flung outwards and he arced backwards, spine curving almost to breaking point. Legs shot out and they heard the distressing crack as bones fractured in his shins as the calf muscles tightened explosively. Every single muscle in his body tensed as one as the chemicals gave up their final effects, and he fell back to the ground, head and feet on the snow but the rest of him arced up like a gymnast forming a bridge. Pain rippled through him, and they saw blood trickling from his mouth as his tongue ripped against his teeth, eyes bulged and throat constricted until he started to turn blue.

Then, mercifully it was over, and he collapsed into a crying heap, exhausted and spent. Tads quickly assessed him and realised he'd torn open muscles all over his body, had numerous green-stick fractures and pressure damage to his joints. This wasn't something they could easily fix with conventional medicine, so she pulled mana out of the air around them, casting her healing spell once more. At least she didn't have to worry about being spotted or leaving a signature behind – nobody was going to find them in this muck.

The entire area glowed under the golden light, snow racing through the rays of warm and life-giving energy, swirling around in a complex dance as she poured power into him, slowly fixing all the damage the combat drugs had inflicted upon him. She took her time, sending the energy all through his body and ensuring that every last bit of damage was repaired, before letting the golden energy fade away.

Aswon and Kai helped him up, and together the four of them made their way carefully over towards the tilt-wing, still laying at a sharp angle.

"That's going to be an issue…" Aswon muttered, words almost lost beneath the howling of the wind.

"No. Surprisingly easy…" Tads called more mana to her, slowly shaping the rock and earth beneath the fuselage and carefully altering it to right the craft, bringing it level without shaking it or causing any damage. "Barely an inconvenience."

They piled back inside, sealing the doors and setting the spirits to guard them, powered the heaters up to full and made sure everyone got changed into warm, dry clothes as they settled in for the night to wait out the storm.