Saturday 16/10/2060, Location: 42.33466, -82.99549, Time 23:45

The doctor sighed, giving Kai a very long-suffering look, but declined to answer. Instead he pulled out a datapad and started to browse.

"How about numbing agents?" The doctor hit the page advance. "Or hair pluckers?" A deep sigh. "Or tooth whitening chemicals?" A tiny tremble in the thumb as it hovered over the tablet. "Or a chemical that lessens the whiteness if you used too much tooth whitener?" Kai continued to ask, for more and more inane things, while the rest of the team watched, wondering either what he was doing, placing mental side bets on when the doctor would explode, or studying his reactions from a psychological point of view…. On and on the questioning went, getting more and more bizarre. "What about cream to make your hair soft and luxurious… down there. You know, in the private areas…?"

"No! We don't have any of that!" The doctor keyed furiously at the tablet for a few moments, then jumped to his feet. "If you'll come with me I'll take you to some more comfortable quarters while you wait." He headed to the door and scanned his ID card to open it, then stood outside, waiting while the team gathered their things together, Hunter bundling up all of Marius's gear under his arm. The doctor led them back into the maze of corridors, taking them about three sections away before turning into a larger room with a double door entrance. It was set up like a break room, with several comfy looking couches and armchairs, along with some dining tables and upright chairs. Vending machines lined one wall, while washing and heating facilities were spaced out on another, the third wall having a number of large displays for watching trideo on.

"I don't suppose you have a shamanic lodge down here I can use for a while do you? I have some research I could be getting on with."

"No, we do not!" The doctor snapped at Tads, then closed his eyes and took a deep breath, trying to regain his temper. If he was sorry about it though, he didn't apologise, instead heading over to a wall terminal and slotting in a card before tapping away again on his tablet. A moment later he pulled out the card and handed it to Aswon. "Here, this contains some credits for food and drink. Please be comfortable. We will bring your friend to you when he's completed the tests." With that the doctor turned on his heel and left, swiping his ID card to open the doors and let him back out into the corridor.

The door eased closed behind him, cutting off the fading sounds of footsteps from the corridor and leaving them in the quiet room with nothing but the faint rumble of the chiller units and the sound of gentle air currents wafting through the air vents. The walls were painted a faint and slightly insipid shade of green that could have been taken from any number of hospitals or prisons, and was just as soul-destroying here as it was in those facilities, while the furniture was a pale pastel pink that no doubt was designed to try and evoke feelings of calmness and tranquillity – but instead managed to look nauseating. Kai wandered past Aswon and plucked the card out of his unresisting fingers and headed over to a vending machine, popping the card into the slot and querying the balance.

"Hah! At least he's not being stingy. This thing has three hundred Ares-dollars on it!" He frowned in puzzlement for a moment, then turned to look at the team. "Is that a lot?"

"Don't know – how much is a chocolate bar?" Hunter wandered over to check over the menu panel.

"Um, says here the normal bars are sixty Ares-cents, but the mega-bars are a dollar. Excuse me an Ares-dollar."

"Probably about a hundred and fifty Nuyen equivalent then, at a rough guess."

"Cool. Who wants what then?" Nobody asked for anything specific, so Kai just started ordering random snacks and drinks, piling them up on the table between two of the couches and creating a smorgasbord of Ares branded junk food to graze on.

"So – bearing in mind that we're in a secret underground facility, and that Ares is almost certainly recording and listening to everything we say…" Aswon glanced around to the rest of the team, face serious as he reminded them to be careful on exactly what they said, "what the hell do you think that stuff was we saw in astral space? And how do we deal with that?"

"It wasn't nice, whatever it was. It wasn't even background count – not like any I've ever seen anyway. It wasn't a corruption of astral space, it was more…" Tads waved her hands around uncertainly as she tried to find the right words for what she'd felt, before she realised it was more what she hadn't felt. "It was more like Astral Space wasn't there at all – that there was just a void. Nothing living, no life force, no echo of creation…just…nothing."

"Created by all living things, binding the universe together," Hunter murmured, a wry grin on his face. The others looked over at him, wondering where he'd received such a pearl of wisdom and he shook his head at them, declining to explain its origins. They'd only be disappointed if he told them it was from a revolutionary war film anyway.

"But certainly I can't see us using magic to defeat it. Just being magically active near it hurt – I can't imagine it being affected by a stun spell or something. Maybe a fireball would do the job…"

"Isn't that just magic, too?" Hunter asked

"No… it's a fine line, but a very important one. A spell like the stun blast that Tads uses is what we'd generally call a combat spell. It's a magical blast of force that hits a target, and everything she can see around it, depending on how much effort she puts in. That's why if we stood behind her, out of her line of sight – even if she cast the spell at someone only a metre in front of her, we'd be safe. She can't see us, she can't synchronise her power with our aura, it won't affect us."

"Riiiighhht?"

"Well, things like lightning bolts and fire balls and other damaging spells like that – they work in a different way. Rather than a blast of power that appears directly at the target location, these spells work by manipulating elemental forces."

"Totally different, right." Hunter flicked a peanut at Aswon while he shook his head in confusion. It sounded the same to him…

"It is – and it's an important distinction. If Tads was to cast a fireball, she actually summons into existence a big ball of fire – flames, heat, fuel… and then propels it to her destination. It travels – not just arrives. So she can cast her stun spell through a window or a Perspex screen without it being affected – but a fireball would hit it."

"Oh, ok – that makes a bit more sense. So that sucks then – why not just use something that teleports and can't be dodged."

"Not teleported – that's… well, that's not something magic can do. Lots of people trying to find out how it works or why it doesn't – but I've never heard of anything that can make you disappear in one place and reappear somewhere else." Aswon frowned as something nagged at his memory – but he couldn't quite work out what was bothering him. Shaking his head, he continued to explain – something he'd had to do a number of times before to people in his mercenary unit whenever they'd had magical support available.

"Yes, if you create the ball of fire, it can be blocked by barriers. And you can dodge it. But the big bonus is that it has a physical effect." He pointed to the couch opposite where he was sitting. "If you were on the other side of the couch, laying down taking cover – Tads couldn't hit you with her stun spell. If she cast a fireball though on the floor just behind you, the fire is there, physically – burning and exploding outwards. And you'd cop for a faceful of burning death."

"Ahhhh! So it goes round corners! Why didn't you just say that! Always with the mumbo jumbo and trying to make things complicated. So what you're saying is that even though the whatever it was you saw in the corridor was mystic nonsense, you might be able to just burn it up, and a fireball might work 'cause you'd be doing magic where you were, not where it was."

"Yes!"

"Could have just said that at the start." Hunter threw another peanut at Aswon as he smirked at him, watching as the tribesman snapped it out of the air and crunched it. "Or then, grenades or something like napalm might do the job as well. Or C4 I guess."

"Perhaps. But we should be cautious if we ever encounter something like that ever again. It was….unsettling, to say the least." Tads nodded in fervent agreement with Aswon, shuddering slightly as she recalled the feeling of utter emptiness and pain that she'd experienced. "On slightly less of a dismal note, I have had another idea – I think it might be worth asking our hosts if we can get a flight plan filed from here to New York. It would make life a lot easier if we were covered as a legit Ares transport."

"We can ask – I don't think it's going to cost them anything really." Kai nodded as he thought it through. "I mean, they have to account for us taking off if we're on a local radar system or anything, so it might even be easier. We'll ask whenever we see someone next."

They settled down in the room to wait, exploring the selection of food and drink, flicking through the various channels on the trideo units and skimming the Ares catalogues that were scattered around the room. They noticed that while a massive number of channels were available to choose from, there were absolutely no current events, news channels or anything with a live feed or time reference available – nothing that would mark the passage of time in the outside world.

Hours passed, and they dozed as best they could in shifts, surrounded by the even lighting of the institutional room, listening to repeats and reruns of vapid entertainment shows and chewing on soy crisps and kelp-shakes, until the door was opened again just after 05:30. The doctor entered the room with Marius, who looked like he'd not had the most comfortable or pleasant night either…

"Hey, Marius – was the lube cold?"

"Shut up, Hunter." He held out his hands and Hunter threw him his bundle of clothes, grinning from ear to ear.

"The process was successful, and all the required measurements, scans and tests have been completed. Initial bloodwork is promising and we feel we can start synthesis and nano-construction." The doctor read through his notes again briefly and looked up at them with a professional smile – broad and welcoming on the surface, but completely without empathy. "We can press on with construction, and we should be able to get all systems completed in six to eight weeks and ready for implantation. Then we just need to get the patient back in for the actual surgery."

"Back here? Here, specifically?" Kai asked, pointing a finger down at the floor.

"Well, yes? Is that a problem?"

"Maybe – we're actually on our way to Europe for some business."

"Oh. Well, we could possibly transfer the equipment over to one of our facilities over there to implant. Denmark or Italy… ahh no. No Class V lab. Hmm." He scrolled down a list, then stopped and moved back up carefully a few places. "Ahh, Eindhoven. Can you get to the Netherlands ok?"

"That should be much easier to arrange, yes."

"Good. Well, here are some notes on the procedures and possible side effects, along with a quantity of drugs – mostly to modify the immune system and ensure we don't get a stage one rejection issue." He passed over a small container of pills and a chip to Kai, who examined them briefly before they were snatched out of his hand by Marius.

"Thank you, doctor. So, I guess we're all done here? If so, we were hoping that once we're back to our plane we could rely upon your staff to get us our flight plan filed to New York, to avoid any complication or issues that might lead back here?"

"I don't know about that – not my department. I can speak to someone though. But yes, we're done here. If you'll follow me, I'll take you back to the lift." He swiped them through the doors and started to lead them down the corridors, leaving behind the small mountain of wrappers and empty bottles from the team's picnic.

"How long will the surgery take, when it's ready? And I presume you have staff on hand during and after the process to provide magical healing?" Tads asked. She listened for an answer, but had most of her attention focussed around her, keeping an eye out ahead and down the side tunnels for any more of the whatever-it-was they had seen before.

"I believe the normal duration is eight to twelve hours, depending on complications and risk factors, and yes, we have a very capable magical team to provide expert monitoring and care. And Eindhoven should have a similar team."

"So I take it the recovery time will be relatively short." Aswon responded. "Do we need any specialist facilities during that time, to aid the recovery?"

"Recovery should be very short, given the patients existing systems and experience, and other than your existing equipment there's no particular need for anything special – not at this stage anyway."

"Is what you're putting into him illegal?" Kai asked

"And more importantly, is it detectable?" Aswon added.

"No, not as such to answer the first, and it should be difficult to detect from a scan to the second – though things like the interface ports will be obvious, depending on placement. But you have that already…"

They arrived back at the entrance checkpoint and were relieved of their ID badges.

"Oh, one last question – is there a list of compatibility issues? Is there other cyberware we need to avoid. Or foods, or anything like that?"

"No, nothing like that. Into the lift please, thank you." The team squeezed into the same lift and the doors slid shut before they rocketed upwards, arriving once more into the broom cupboard in the corner of the underground parking facility. There was a limo waiting for them, but a different escort. Dressed in much the same way as the first, he was a slightly darker shade of blond, with a wider and chunkier face, but the same polite mannerisms and protocol. Holding the door open for them, he encouraged them into the car, ensuring they were all in and seated comfortably before he closed the door and circled the car to the passenger side. As the car started, moving slowly towards the bottom of the ramp, the team heard a tell-tale hissing sound in the back as Neuro-Stun gas was pumped into the back. It appears that the blackout hoods were not an option this time.

"No … inflight….movie….?" Aswon managed to get out before his head, like that of all the rest, lolled to one side as the gas went to work, rendering them all unconscious. Hunter didn't even bother switching to his internal tank – he knew that Neuro-Stun worked just as well absorbed through the skin as it did when inhaled, so he'd not get any benefit from it.

The car hit the top of the ramp, turning away from the airport and starting a slow and gentle drive around the city while in the back the team sprawled in their seats, dreamless and vacant.

Aswon woke first, sitting up carefully and pushing Shimazu off his shoulder into an upright position with some effort. They were stopped, and appeared to be pulled up outside a hanger – presumably the same one they'd been collected from. He undid his seatbelt and started to work around the rest of the group, gently shaking them and trying to rouse them. Grabbing some soft drinks from the mini-bar he passed out the refreshments to the team as they each awoke, somewhat groggy and disoriented. When they had their wits about them, they opened the door to find their escort waiting for them, standing at a sort of parade rest position.

"Good morning. Your aircraft is inside, and is ready for departure."

"Can we talk to someone about a flight plan?" Marius asked.

"Your flight plan has been filed and approved, and you are cleared to Newark Liberty."

"Ahh, thank you." Marius headed over to the tilt-wing and started to check it out – everything looked fine, and he couldn't see any obvious signs of tampering. The rest of the team climbed aboard and Marius nodded at Hunter who was already running the bug-scanner over the cockpit and starting to work his way back through the hull.

A few minutes later the engines were started and they were rolling gently down the taxi-way, Marius communicating with the tower to receive runway clearance. The radio operator this morning was slightly less formal than the previous, but still professional and efficient, and two minutes later they were rumbling down the runway and building up speed. When they hit a hundred and sixty knots Marius gently rotated, pulling back his control surfaces and rising smoothly into the dawn as they rose up towards the scattered clouds.

Kai pulled out his pad and checked through the details given to him by Khaki back at Crate City. Once he had the number to hand he dialled out, making sure the microphone was set to noise cancelling mode and that his speaker was firmly wedged into his ear.

"Yeah?"

"My name is Kai. I have a delivery for you, from Crate City. We are heading to New York now, and I want to arrange delivery. We can be there in approximately…" he glanced up, realising he didn't know, and then spotted the screen lighting up opposite him displaying a map of the UCAS and their route plan, along with an ETA. "We can be with you in approximately ninety minutes."

"No."

"No? Is there a problem?"

"I need time to arrange delivery. Four hours minimum." There was a pause, then the voice came back again. "Eleven this morning. Port of New Jersey, dock twelve. Look on the quay just south of the Expressrail terminal. Wait – how are you getting here?"

"We'll be flying in, we have a stealthy tilt-wing, needing about thirty metre square to put down in."

"Fraks sake!" The voice sounded exasperated and annoyed. "Alright, eleven. We'll have a landing spot. And that's eleven sharp – not five to eleven, not five past eleven. Eleven. Got that?" There was a hint of anger and malic in the voice, and Kai wondered just who he was dealing with – but he agreed politely and hear the person at the other end disconnect.

"Well, they didn't seem thrilled at the idea. Ok, Hunter – port of new Jersey, dock twelve. Something about a rail terminal and we need to be south of that? What have we got?"

"Checking now… ok, got some imagery, but it's not great quality. Punching it through now." They examined the screen carefully as the map of the UCAS was replaced with a slightly blocky and low-resolution picture of the docks. On the left hand side of the screen they could see the edge of the airport, leading down to an extensive series of docks and quaysides, jetties and piers, then a large expanse of water leading to another island or spit of land, jammed full of housing blocks and properties that in turn led to more piers and jetties. A red box was drawn over one of the piers to the right of the image and Hunter started to fill in more details.

"Looks to be about ten clicks from the airport, on the eastern side of this bit of land which is apparently Jersey City. Looks like a container port terminal – there's a bunch of large cranes and containers stacked everywhere, and the rail terminal to the north of it. Lots of warehouses around to the west, and good transport access. Looks like a reasonable place for a handover."

The tilt-wing headed over Lake Erie, flying high and making the most of the clear air, controlled by Cleveland ATC and slotting in with all the other commercial traffic, just one more flight chartered to a mega-corp. It felt a bit odd to be flying with an active transponder, squawking their ID for all to hear, but it did have its benefits – the journey was smooth and trouble free, and the distance ticked down as they headed east towards New York.

"Right, I'm going to call Johanna from Maersk, warn her that we're going to call in that favour. Just in case she needs to activate it or anything."

"Don't we want to do some research first? I mean find out more about the port and what's going on there?"

"I don't think so – It'd be really annoying if we missed a ship that would have gotten us home fast while we were looking around – and all I'm doing is letting her know we're going to be there soon. You never know, she might have a contact that could help us out."

He placed the call, routing through the tilt-wing's systems and the sat-uplink to make sure he didn't lose the call as they overflew changes in cell-towers or hit a rural area. It took a few extra seconds to connect and the call could be a little laggy at times, but overall it was still better than dropping entirely.

"Hi Johanna, it's Kai."

"Ahh, Kai – good evening to you." Kai looked at his watch and then imagined the picture of the world that Hunter had dug out for him a while back, and imagined how many coloured bands there were between himself and Turkmenistan…. He lost count but it seemed like a fair few.

"I'm glad I caught you – hopefully not delaying your work?"

"No, unfortunately not. We may have lost a competitor in the area, but that's not made business much easier – just a little more direct."

"Well, if we're back in the area some time I'll give you a shout and see if we can be of further assistance."

"Ahh, I take it you're not in the area, then?"

"No, we're over in New York actually." There was a pause – more than could be accounted for by the sat-lag.

"Then good morning to you – an early start?"

"A very late night really. But we're on the way to New York harbour, and we're looking to cash that chit in with you – hoping to get across the Atlantic, and possibly across the Med as well. Just thought we'd get in touch to check if there was anything special we should do or could do to make things easier?

"Oh. Well, there should be no problem. Let me just have a look on our scheduling database. Bear with me…" The pause this time was longer as she logged into her systems and ran some searches, looking for available shipping. "Ok Kai, I have two options for you from New York in the next ten days."

"One moment, let me just grab a map and stuff…" Kai patched through the call into the team tac-net so everyone could hear the details. "Right, go ahead."

"Very well. On Wednesday 20th the Mary Mearsk is due to depart from New York heading for Bremerhaven. She's a container ship with a nominal capacity of 18,278 TEU, overall length of just under four hundred metres, and a beam of sixty metres, draught of twelve and a half metres. Journey length is 6,725 kilometres and at 12.2 knots cruising speed we're looking at a transit time of about three hundred hours. But your truck should fit on there no problem at all."

Hunter flashed up the map showing the German port of Bremerhaven, which was quickly overwritten with the word "NEIN!" repeated several times.

"Ahh – just to let you know we're not in the truck anymore. We've upgraded somewhat – got ourselves a nice little tilt-wing now, so we're looking for something with space for that. But also Bremerhaven isn't an ideal port for us as a destination – do you have anything else?"

"Well, the next one is Monday 25th, the Eugen Maersk. Same length, deeper draught and a slightly shallower beam. Roughly the same capacity but she's a little faster – however she has a destination of Oman, so a total route length of 13,847 kilometres, and a rough sailing time of 475 hours."

"Oh – that's more interesting." Kai leant forward and squinted at the map that Hunter was displaying, showing the journey and highlighting the northern end of the Suez Canal, and the proximity to their home base. "Yeah – that sounds like it's really interesting. That should do us nicely, I think."

"Let me send over some contact details for our factor in New York, then. Contact them and submit your authorisation code, and they'll be able to arrange everything from their side."

"Excellent! Thank you, a pleasure as always."

The call dropped, then a message appeared, carrying the contact details for Rusty Laker, the Maersk Dockmaster in New York. Kai saved the details to his contact list and then tucked the commlink away and relaxed.

The tilt wing flew on, flying high across the patchwork quilt of land below them. With the loss of much of the most fertile land in the "bread-basket" to the NAN, the UCAS had been forced to seize many of the former state parks, stripping them of forests and using the land for forced agriculture to feed the millions of mouths still based in the mega-cities on the eastern seaboard.

As they entered the final leg of the journey, Scranton regional control passed them over to New York approach, then on to Newark Liberty tower. Each tower controller became more brusque and short, their speech short, clipped and rapid fire and brooking no argument or casual conversation. As they started to descend the sensor screens became more and more cluttered, filling with hundreds of aircraft, thousands of drones and a complex web of corporate airspace that was just as confusing as Seattle's had been – but where the Seattle metroplex was hemmed in on all sides by the NAN and had room for only one international airport, New York had sprawled and amalgamated into a dozen surrounding areas and had three international airports along with a host of smaller regional landing strips and hundreds if not thousands of helipads and VTOL facilities.

They came in on runway zero-four-left, bouncing around in the wake of a large passenger jet that was barely above the minimum interval before them – but with the usual level of skill shown by Marius, they were on the ground moments later and clearing the runway at the first possible taxi-way, turning hard to the left and taking the taxiway south towards the corporate goods area – soon spotting the Ares hanger nestled near the UPS, Fedex and other major corporate shippers.

When they arrived the Ares ground crew rolled out to meet them, bringing over a fuel bowser to top off their tanks. It hadn't been arranged, but none of them wanted to look a gift horse in the mouth, and they opened the fuel hatch to take on fuel to replace the seven hundred and seventy litres used to fly from Detroit. Presumably the ground crew were just treating them like any other charter flight that had been rented or leased by Ares to carry goods, and weren't asking questions.

Kai popped over to see them, checking that everything was ok, Shimazu by his side. Whilst there, he enquired about getting hold of a taxi or rental vehicle – and was disappointed to learn that all of those kinds of facilities were right up at the other end of the airport, a good three kilometres away. Unsurprising really – there wouldn't normally be any call for their services near the freight terminals. A moment later though and Kai realised that it wouldn't have been a good idea to drive to the meet anyway – they'd need a monster rental truck to carry over a thousand kilos of ammunition, and besides – their contact was expecting them to fly in, not drive and the last thing he wanted to do was annoy them any further.

He mentioned this to the team when he was back aboard, and Hunter showed him the tracks he'd been plotting with the help of Marius, showing the hundreds of air-cabs, delivery trucks, private air vehicles and general purpose drones that filled the skies. Only the larger commercial traffic was allowed near the airport, but outside their flight zone the skies were crammed with streams of traffic, interlaced at different altitudes in strictly controlled corridors that were the only way to keep traffic segregated and under any kind of rational system.

"If we're here for a couple of hours yet, waiting for the dropoff – Marius and I can start to have a look at the air-cabs and stuff. I'm sure we can spoof a transponder if you give us a bit of time. God knows there's enough of them, and if we're covered in that lot, it's going to take a while for someone to unpick us as we move in and out of the pickup area."

"Sounds good, Hunter – let's do it." Kai nodded in approval. "So, it sounds like we've got some sort of plan – a few hours here, then head for the dropoff location. Do the sale, then we wait until the 25th and meet up with the Maersk ship and head over, looking to disembark at the north end of the Suez, and fly home from there."

"So what are we going to do in between now and the 25th?"Tads looked around and saw a couple of shrugs. "I'd like to be somewhere settled if possible, and definitely on the ground – there's spell research, design, learning and formula I can be working on. I don't know if there's skills for the rest of you, that you can be practicing – but I could do with the time to concentrate."

"I'll see if I can find us a local airport we can get berthing at – not one of these big ones, but something a little way out of the city. Much less attention, and a lot less cramped. And if we've got time, I can crack on with some work on Shadowland, I'm sure."

"I think most of us could fill the time with something. I can practice my meditation, do some drill with my spear. I'm sure Shimazu can practice with his sword. So finding somewhere to relax for a while shouldn't be a problem. If we're out of town and somewhere gunfire isn't going to be an issue, then even better – but that's not required."

They poured over the maps for a few minutes, finding after a little research the small town of Monmouth about sixty kilometres south of New York, which had a small airport, local flying club and a nice setup – the airstrip was a good way out of the town, surrounded by a number of industrial uses, so noise was less likely to be an issue and there shouldn't be too much of an issue with curious neighbours. Hunter got to work on filling in the flight plan and getting it registered against their local admin centre, continuing with the same transponder codes they'd used to get here as that should be registered in the local flight databases as legitimate – at least as far as arriving here and being properly authenticated against their Ares flight plan.

Working through the mountain of paperwork took a good while, and once it was reasonably obvious that it was doable, Kai called ahead to the airport and booked them a place in the hanger for the eight days, giving his name as Zunduin Khangal and stating that they were on a small layover from a conference, before heading back to Europe. Zunduin was his 'political speechwriter' legend, built for him by Milo, back in Constantinople, so it wouldn't be out of place for them to be travelling this far.

As he finished, Hunter called back to him from the cockpit.

"Admin is finished – we're all booked in. We are going to need an excuse to deviate from the plan to land at the handover location though – have you thought of that?"

"Oh – no. Um…. Any suggestions?"

"How about a loose load?" Kai looked over to Aswon curiously. "We just tell them that one of the cargo straps wasn't done up right – or maybe even broke, and the load has shifted. We need to set down to tie it back down in position so it doesn't damage the plan or cause a crash. Few minutes on the ground, then we can lift off and re-join our flight plan."

"Sounds good – let's go with that unless anyone has anything better?" Nobody did, so they agreed to go with that as a plan, and settled back to relax for a while longer, doing some general maintenance and busy-work while they were stopped. Kai fired off a message to Anahita Parsi, his art dealer friend in Tehran, letting her know that he was in the New York area for the next few days, then taking a slow boat back towards Europe and to let him know if there was anything small she wanted bringing over with them.

At ten forty-five, Marius started the engines and began his pre-flight sequence, getting them inserted into the VTOL queue for departure. Avoiding the main runways made things a lot faster, and they had fuel to spare thanks to the Ares top-up, so the extra used on the VTOL liftoff wasn't a factor. At ten fifty-three he taxied over to the pad and reconfigured the tilt-wing for vertical take-off, lifting smoothly into the air and following the narrow corridor prescribed for them out of the airport controlled zone, sticking to the local flight speed limits and altitude corridors. It nearly doubled their flight time, but Marius had accounted for that, and taking four minutes to cover the ten kilometres rather than the two he could have taken in a straight line really wasn't an issue. As they reached the turning point for a course correction and flew on instead on a straight line he waited – counting down mentally until a harsh buzz sounded on the radio as the automated systems noticed him drifting from his course.

"Flight one-one-three-Alpha, you have left your flight corridor. Turn to one nine zero at once, maintain speed and altitude."

"Negative tower, we have a small issue on board. Standby."

"One one three Alpha, are you declaring an emergency?" The voice asked, noticing the altitude of the tilt-wing starting to fall.

"Negative at this time. We have a loose load, some kind of restraint failure. We are going for a VTOL landing to make safe and secure."

"Be advised that there are no public facilities to support this on your current heading. All land is private, and we cannot grant you landing rights."

"Roger that, tower. We won't be on the ground for more than a few minutes. We will take this on our own responsibility, and your warning is noted."

"Roger that." The voice relaxed slightly, having made their lack of corporate responsibility clear and logged for the record. "Notify us on takeoff, frequency one thirty-one decimal four and we'll slot you back into the queue."

"Confirm, one-three-one point four megahertz. Will notify you on takeoff. One-one-three-alpha out."

They flew out towards the Greenville channel, spotting the massive finger of land built out into the water – two kilometres long at least, stacked with tens of thousands of containers, huge towering cranes running alongside the berths while a hundred vehicles moved around the port, stacking and moving containers painted every colour under the sun in a complex shuffle.

"I believe I have located our target site, Kai. Feeding you an image now." Marius shunted the picture from the forward camera to the screens and they all saw the hollow box that had been constructed amid the huge cargo area. Twelve point two metre double-length containers had been laid end to end, three on a side, stacked four high to make a ten metre high wall around the concrete dock.

"That's what we need on the ship!" Aswon took a screen grab, checking to make sure it was sharp and in focus before saving it onto his commlink. "I'm going to forward that to the dockmaster when we get in touch. Or rather you should, Kai."

"No problem. So how are we… ahh – I see. Look on the south side, the bottom layer. One of the containers is only half as long, so there's room to get in underneath. I think I see a car or something there."

"Bringing us in to land." Marius slowed and adjusted his attitude with finicky precision, then dropped neatly down into the cleared area. He kept a careful eye on the readings from the various sensors, keeping them exactly centred as they dropped down inside the temporary structure. It wasn't the tightest landing spot he'd ever had to land in – that was still probably the crazy temple place that Chun owned over in Hong Kong, but there still wasn't that much room for error.

As they touched down, he backed the engines down all the way to idle, but kept them running and all his systems hot – sensors sweeping over the area and his controls ready for an immediate liftoff.

"I will hold here, ready for dustoff. Please make the transfer quick."

Kai, Shimazu and Hunter dropped the back ramp and strode down, Shimazu with hand hovering near his sword while Hunter carried his assault rifle on its sling. They followed Kai, one on each flank as he headed away from the tail of the craft to meet the man who was busy climbing out of the SUV nestled under the shipping containers. A dozen dock workers were also stood in the shadow of the container wall, carrying huge prybars, metre-long wrenches and lengths of chain. Several of them had suspicious bulges inside their work overalls that looked very much like the kind of distortion a concealed heavy pistol would cause.

"Ok, so they're armed, too. Well, hardly surprising." Kai muttered as he paused a few metres from the plane, putting on a smile of welcome.

"If they try anything, it's not gonna go well for them." Hunter sent a mental command to his rifle via the Smart-link and saw the selector flick over from semi-auto to fully automatic. He was confident that he could take down three to four in a good long burst, despite their armoured overalls – they were probably optimised for the impact of loose machinery and other slow but heavy impacts rather than the high-speed projectiles from his rifle.

"Standing ready, but let's try to keep it friendly, eh?" Aswon waited by the ramp, rifle to hand, but making sure to keep it firmly aimed at the ground and not at anyone in particular.

"What the hell?" Hunter peered at the man emerging from the shadows, the man who had climbed out of the SUV. He was about two metres tall, and wearing black slacks and polished black shoes – and a white short sleeved shirt that was loose over most of his body – all apart from the right arm. And that was because the right arm was a metal monstrosity… Most cyberware designers these days took the time to try and disguise full limb replacements, making them with a number of options to allow a skin substitute in a wide variety of colours to be layered over the top of the cybernetic replacement. This one however, was as obvious as could be – a shiny metal arm with visible servo hatches and equipment access ports. It was also huge. "I think that was designed for a troll, not a human – that's way out of proportion. He's got to be packing some spine and rib reinforcements as well, or that thing's just going to rip out if he uses it in anger."

"Hey yoos guys. Yoos got a delivery for me?" His accent was thick and distinctive, and along with his olive skin, slicked black hair and style was probably part of a carefully cultivated image.

"We sure have – why don't you come on over and we'll sort out business." Kai called out, having to raise his voice over the sounds of the idling engines. The man seemed to bristle, and planted his hands on his hips – one normal and one massively over-size, glinting in the light.

"No – yoos guys bring it over to me."

"Kai, careful." Shimazu sub-vocalised. "He looks like a bully, image issues. Don't press him in front of his men." He kept his face impassive, but took a few deep cleansing breaths, making sure his body was ready for action. "We just thought you should check the cargo, before you accepted it!" He called out loud, wondering if a little reverse psychology would work.

"I'll check the fraking cargo when and how I want, gook. So why don't yoos bring it over!" Clearly he wasn't quite that green…

"No problem, we'll just grab the containers now and bring them over." He lowered his voice for the team. "Ok, let's just dump, get paid and head out." They headed back to the ramp where Aswon had already started to slide the ammo cases down to meet them, coming down with the last one to help carry the boxes. With each coming in at a hefty two hundred and fifty kilos, it was still a struggle to carry them between two and took two short trips to ferry the containers over to the waiting man.

"Here you go – we just didn't want to keep you waiting was all – you're clearly not someone to mess about." Kai displayed a nervous smile, and gave a little head bow as if he was sorry for something, which their contact seemed to take as his due.

"I guess you do want to check them, though?" Shimazu asked, wondering how he'd take the question.

"Of course I wanna check it – why wouldn't I check it. Have yoos done something to it? Are you trying to pull a fast one on me?" The voice rose a little and the accent became more pronounced, and Shimazu saw several of the dock workers taking a tighter hold on their improvised weapons, and wondered if he'd perhaps pushed a little too hard.

"No no, nothing like that – we were just told that you're a real professional, not a man to screw around with. We'd have to be crazy to do that – but we got told you like to do stuff properly, and we respect that. So – which one do you want to check?" Kai laid the charm on thick, wondering if he'd just hear the world 'respect' and not think too much about the context. Apparently the show of deference was enough to make the guy at least willing to discuss things further.

"Open that one – third one." He gestured at a box, watching as Aswon flicked the catches open and pulled off the lid, revealing box after box of armour piercing discarding sabot ammunition stacked up inside. He started to move his hand down the row, looking up at their contact as he did. "Stop - that one. Open that one." Aswon pulled out the box, and kept it in plain view as he stood and took a step towards them, then opened the box and pulled out the cardboard inner, then opened that too and fanned out the rounds in his hand to display. "Ok, looks good. Put it away." Aswon complied, and the man nodded, apparently pleased with his obedience. He did a quick count on the inner containers, then tapped a few numbers into his phone. "Ok, I gives you seventy-five for the lot."

"That sounds very reasonable – but as a counter-offer, how about seventy-eight, and we throw in our business card with that so you can make use of our services for your organisation next time we're over this way? Helps us cover our business expenses, and you get a reliable courier out of it too?"

"Yoos not from round here at all, then?"

"No, we're normally based in Europe, but we're expanding to cover work over here too, where it's needed."

"Hm. I give you a better offer then. Seventy five, you give me your card and when you're over next and need a boat or some work, we hook you up."

"Deal!" Kai watched as the man spat on his hand, offering the huge metal construction to 'shake'. As he expected, when he reached in to shake, his hand was squeezed hard, to the point where it quickly became very painful. Rather than trying to hide it, he let his pain show, bending slightly at the knees to take a subservient position and act like a beaten man. The thug held it for a moment, then relaxed his grip, having shown dominance and assertiveness in front of his men and no doubt fuelling some story later on about how he'd 'shown them' how to do a deal.

Kai pulled out his credstick, and slotted it in to the man's terminal, swiping his fingerprint over to receipt and authorise the transfer of seventy five-thousand Nuyen onto the stick, nodding and saying a thank you as he retrieved it. He turned and headed back to the craft, not looking behind him – knowing that Hunter was almost certainly walking backwards and keeping his eyes on the contacts as dock workers headed over to pick up the boxes and carry them over to the truck.

Once safely aboard and the ramp closed, Marius fed power to the engines and started to lift off, calling tower control as he did so.

"One-one-three-Alpha to ATC. Load is secure and we are taking off, permission to rejoin the pattern."

"Roger, head one-niner-zero, speed one zero zero until waypoint Charlie, then accelerate to two hundred."

Marius checked his sensor feeds and saw the gap they were slotting him into, slowing down to fall behind a large cargo lifter carrying bulk supplies and then neatly slotting in behind it in the narrow-cleared area before the next air-taxi behind him. A few minutes later they reached one of the major turning points and broke south, rapidly clearing the city and accelerating away from the massively congested airspace.

Landing at Monmouth was easy – the runway was free and quiet, and they had a smooth descent, guided in by the local operator who was a lot more relaxed and friendly than the controllers at the International airport had been – though they probably only had as much traffic in a weekend as the international guys did in an hour, so that was hardly surprising. Once on the ground, they followed the single taxi-way towards the large hangers, spotting a few that were open with people working on their small Cessnas and other private planes, tinkering and doing routine maintenance. Several of them turned to watch the sleek tilt-wing as they rolled past, no doubt with envious eyes.

"Ok, this next one Marius, hanger three. That's us for the next week. Let's get snugged away in here and get the doors closed, then work out what we're doing next."

The tilt-wing rolled into the wide hanger, turning neatly on the spot, and started to power down the engines, while the team got ready to disembark.