Friday 11/2/2061, Location: 55.10681, 10.25202, Time 10:30

The vehicle was somewhat a-typical, in that it didn't have the normal one-way glass installed in the windscreen or side windows. That made sense really, as it was also open-topped, so it didn't make much sense to try and block the lines of sight through the glass when you could just look through the part of the vehicle with no structure… but that at least meant that they could see the people in the vehicle as it approached. The driver was wearing a white shirt without any visible logos, while a second man sat in the passenger seat, a beige jacket over the top of a brown sweater setting off his brown hair and moustache nicely if he was stepping off a porn-set, but otherwise making him look somewhat dated. In the back seat, though, was a pair of cops – their uniforms clearly visible even at this range.

The vehicle stopped a good twenty metres away from the tilt-wing, and the passenger was first out of the vehicle, striding purposefully towards them, with the two cops climbing out swiftly after him. Shimazu squinted and peered at the cops and muttered his thoughts over the team net.

"They look a bit pissed – with the guy as much as with us."

The driver was out as well now, and they could see his black trousers and smart shoes as he also started to walk swiftly towards them, flecks of frozen mud and slush collecting on the mirror finish of his black leather shoes. He made a bee-line for Kai, who had climbed down from the tilt-wing and was walking in their direction with a broad smile.

"Hello gentlemen! I'm presuming you'd like to see some identification and suchlike?" Kai's voice carried clearly across the airfield, and they saw the driver nodding, a distinct look of relief blooming on his face. They also saw the two cops who had moved into flanking positions around the driver neither relax or share his smile – in fact, both of them had their hands resting on the top of their side-arms, their faces stern and fixed upon Kai. One of them glanced over at the guy in beige as he continued to walk towards the team, and his neutral expression turned into a distinct frown.

Kai stopped, and then carefully reached into his pocket to pull out his ID, keeping his smile broad and fixed upon his face as he watched the cops – whose body language indicated that they really weren't happy about something. He held up the stick, clearly displaying it between finger and thumb and tilted it towards the driver in an unmistakeable offer. Kai's eyes slid sideways though, as the man in beige walked past him, heading towards the aircraft.

"Err – I wouldn't go over there! There's a chance of infection! Please – stay away!" He was still looking back towards the team as he called out, so he didn't see the reaction of the cops directly – just the team's reaction to what they saw… not that it mattered, as their alarm was echoed in the shouted commands a moment later.

"GET DOWN! NOW! HANDS ON YOUR HEAD!" Some of the words were accented, but they were still perfectly clear and unequivocal. Kai immediately raised his hands above his head in the still universal signs of surrender, his head snapping back to the front to face the cops, noting that they'd both drawn their weapons and were pointing them straight at his face. He slowly sank to his knees, keeping his eyes fixed on the driver of the vehicle, making sure that the ID stick was still visible in his hand.

Back in the tilt-wing, Aswon and Shimazu were in the doorway, and they saw the look of regret wash over the face of Mr. Beige. A split second later he was muttering something, too quiet to hear – but it looked like some curse words from the tenseness of his expression.

"I mean, one of my team has just had surgery! They are in recovery, and are prone to infection, so we don't want strangers near them." Kai grimaced a little as he replayed what he'd said and wondered if they'd taken the warning the wrong way…

The man in beige had stopped, only a metre or two from the side door of the plane, and he glanced back towards the driver, two cops and the kneeling form of Kai. Shimazu could see his expression clearly, and he seemed more worried about the cops behind him than the complete strangers in front of him – even though both he and Aswon were both definitely not a normal physique or appearance, especially not in this part of the world. Next to him, Aswon watched as the man shuffled a step to the side, realising that in doing so he'd put himself directly behind Kai, from the cops' point of view. He wasn't sure if he was using Kai's body to somewhat shield what he was up to, or if he'd positioned himself there to potentially put himself at risk if they shot at Kai – even a hit at that short a range might penetrate his body and continue onwards towards them.

"They've called Politiets Efterretningstjeneste, you need get out of here!" The team recognised his voice at once – the pilot instructor who had taken over talking down the stricken plane. That he was here, instead of dealing with the distraught pilot was an interesting fact – but none of them knew what it was that he'd said. It sounded bad, though. Aswon switched to Russian, and started transmitting.

"Marius – we may need to get out of here in a hurry. You might want to get ready for an emergency takeoff. Tads – I think we may need to deal with these policemen. Ideally in a non-lethal way."

"I don't like the idea – if we do have to takeoff at once, I'm leaving my spell signature behind for people to read!" None the less, she moved out from her seat to come and stand next to Aswon, taking over the space Shimazu had been in as he jumped down from the tilt wing, landing lightly on the runway below. One of the cops swung his gun over to aim at him, shouting at him to stop.

"Listen. You don't want to do this. We don't want you to do this. But you REALLY don't want to do this. What's going to happen is that my friend here is going to stand up, turn around and climb back on the plane. Then we're going to leave. You don't want to interfere, or at least one of you is going to die." He spoke calmly and in a flat voice, no excitement or emotion leaking through, while he stared intently at the policeman aiming at him. He could see the very slight tremble in the end of the barrel as the cop gripped the gun tightly, his index finger white as it maintained pressure on the trigger.

Up in the cockpit, Marius had run through the abbreviated checklist, and hit the engine start button, keying in the over-ride sequence to bypass the pre-heater and other procedures normally used to ease the engine up to speed and go for the main ignition process. The whine of the engines filled the air and the propellor started to turn, gauges flickering all across the cockpit as he went into the emergency start-up sequence.

The shot rang out across the airfield, the cop squeezing the trigger as much by reflex as conscious thought, stirred into action by the sound and motion of the engine. A flash of light and cloud of exploding gasses erupted from the barrel, driving it upwards with the recoil energy as the bullet rumbled over the short distance towards Shimazu. The bodyguard twisted to the side, already dropping away from his previous position as the world slowed around him, his reactions flashing into high gear as his magical powers energised his body. He gave a grunt of pain as the bullet slammed into his shoulder, just catching the top of his body-armour as he continued to dodge out of the way. The synthetic fibres absorbed the energy of the impact, hardening and tightening as their chemical structure reacted to the sudden inflow of energy, dissipating the force of the shot over a larger area and lowering the impact energy to something that merely bruised his flesh rather than penetrating and wounding. His hand was on his sword hilt, yet didn't draw the blade – his hyper-energised reactions already feeling the welcoming embrace of Tad's magical protection as it dropped over him. He had a pretty good idea of what was coming, and mentally gritted his teeth, preparing to resist the blast of energy that was heading his way.

Sure enough, a moment later the stun-ball spell hit. The blast of mana had been building up in Tads' hand as Shimazu had given his speech, letting her draw in the power and focus it, building up to a level that proved irresistible to her foes. The driver and both cops collapsed to the floor, landing with a dull thud on the frozen grass. Even the man who had come to warn them staggered back – despite Tads having done all she could to protect him as well. Kai had evidently known what was coming too, as he bounded up to his feet as soon as the spell hit, and turned, heading back to the aircraft. Shimazu walked forwards, letting Kai pass him as he closed to the position of the policeman, and grabbed at each of their firearms, clearing the chamber and engaging the safety before turning to head back himself.

Kai approached the man in beige, and lightly grabbed his shoulder, spinning him around and making him focus.

"Aksel? You are the man on the radio? Did you say more police are coming?"

"Yes. Police. Special police. Thank you! But go – quickly!" Aksel clearly was having a hard time focussing – Tads' spell had confused and battered his mind even past the shielding she had protected him with, and he was having a hard time putting his thoughts together. Kai reached into his pocket and pulled out a business card, and offered it to the instructor. Before the confused man could take it, Shimazu's hand reached out and plucked it from him.

"Aboard the plane, now." A firm shove emphasised his request, and Kai scrambled aboard, quickly followed by Shimazu. Aksel had enough of his thoughts together that he recognised the dangers posed by the engines, and he staggered and snaked away from them, heading back towards the jeep in a haphazard fashion, clutching at his head to try and combat the thumping headache that raged through his mind.

"Unidentified flight - you don't have permission to take off, power down immediately." Marius ignored the radio and started to rotate the engines, watching the power curves and fuel status, pushing the engines to maximum performance as he sought to shorten the take-off sequence as much as possible. His sensors pinged as another vehicle entered the grass surrounding the airstrip – a police car that drove towards them at high speed, fishtailing across the frozen grass as the driver put his foot down. A crack sounded against the fuselage as the passenger in the new police car leant out of the window, aiming his pistol at them and firing off several rounds. The armour was more than sufficient to deal with the lightweight pistol ammo, and Marius snarled at him, wondering how many photo-voltaic cells would need replacing after the pointless attack. A moment later, he saw the engines were spinning fast enough to generate the lift required, and the plane surged into the air, spinning neatly on the spot and then heading down the runway, gathering speed with every passing moment.

He flew over the crashed Cessna, using it as an obstacle to distract the policeman trying to pursue them. For a moment he saw the fire-fighters in the appliance off to one side aim the water-cannon mounted on top of the vehicle up at them, but the fireman may have just been turning to watch them with the controls slaved to his viewpoint – whatever it was, he didn't engage, and they continued their flight down the runway, rapidly leaving the police car behind them.

In the troop bay, the team rapidly strapped in, getting ready for evasive manoeuvres. Tads concentrated hard, calling forth a fresh spirit of the skies to wrap around their craft and conceal them from view, before then working on replacing the personal spirits normally allocated to each of the team, refreshing their magical defences. Up front, Marius engaged the electronic deception measures and stealth features of the aircraft, disabled the transponder and radio response systems and within a few seconds the craft disappeared from the sensor scans of the airport and the Danish monitoring systems, the blip on their screens fading away to nothing more than a ghostly blur, before that, too, dwindled to nothing.

"Hunter, new colour scheme please. Green-grey, something that looks like the seawater below us."

"On it, Marius. Presume you're going… ok, yeah you're going low. Look, I'm not telling you how to fly or nothing, but we're getting spray on the windows, ok? You do know that right?" Despite his 'worried' voice, he grinned, watching as they rocketed over the edge of the cliffs and dropped down to sea-level, skimming across the waves only ten metres above the choppy surface, leaving behind two conflicting v-trails, one behind each engine.

"I can put up an illusion over the top of us, as a flat plane if that will help. I just need a moment to… ugh. Never mind. I can see the filth ahead of us. It's just going to eat the spell, if we keep heading that way. Though it's also going to throw off any magical tracking or pursuit…"

"I do not wish to alarm anyone, but there is a fighter above us, still quite far back. But he has his air-search radar operating, and with lots of power. I think… yes, he is definitely getting at least something from us. I keep getting a warning on our sensors – but he has not got a firm lock."

"Can't you outrun him?" Kai asked.

"No – he is doing in excess of two thousand knots. Speed climbing – ah, he has engaged afterburner. Trying to close with us and burn through the deception. His sensor suite is very capable. Going evasive."

They lurched to one side as Marius made an abrupt change, swinging thirty degrees to starboard before settling onto a new course. A few seconds passed and they lurched the other way, moving twenty degrees to port as Marius started to add random zig-zags to throw off the pursuing vehicle.

Overhead, the interceptor aircraft raced along on full afterburner, closing on the unknown target that was proving to be most elusive. It swung around, and headed away at ninety degrees before reefing around in a tight turn that was going to be compressing the pilot down into his seat and making them grey-out, before approaching from a different angle, trying to get a read on their side rather than rear aspect. Once more the sensors reached out, trying to lock up their aircraft enough to get a missile acquisition tone, but once more the radar absorbent materials and deception measures built into the special-forces craft managed to deflect just enough of the energy to prevent them being bracketed.

The fighter made two more passes, as Marius furiously jinked and evaded below, never quite managing to firmly identify them whilst still getting just enough of a return to be sure that there was something down there. Two more blips appeared on Marius's sensors as the ready fighters that had been scrambled from some airbase closed in on the initial aircraft, racing towards them at over Mach 3.

"We are in trouble if all three aircraft approach. Their combined coverage will be almost impossible to evade!" Marius looked at his position and swore silently to himself, and then pulled the aircraft over and went to max power himself – heading directly for the German border.

Just as the two tail aircraft were approaching effective range, the first abruptly peeled off, heading on a straight line course back towards Denmark. The afterburner flickered out, and the plane settled into a shallow dive, all control surfaces locking into a neutral position.

"Hah. I think someone has possibly used a little too much fuel on their search for us, and is now bingo. That will make things easier!" Marius grinned, and then turned himself, running down the line that marked the border – at least according to his map – between Danish and German airspace. The two newer interceptors continued to close for a few seconds, but then broke off into a long sweeping turn that let them run parallel to him for a few moments, before breaking back to the north themselves. "Most fighter radars are optimised to search for targets in a cone ahead of the aircraft. It is much harder to find things to the side – so unless they want to do a high speed run directly at the German border, I think we are safe. At least as long as there is no response from the German side…"

They flew east, and as they put Denmark further and further behind them, they gradually pulled up to a safer and saner altitude – though Marius still kept them relatively low to avoid most of the sensor coverage of the area around them. Whilst they were flying, they had a quick discussion amongst themselves, trying to work out if they had any useful contacts in the area – but nobody had anyone that was particularly trustworthy in Poland that might be able to offer them useful skills. The closest they had was someone Kai knew who was reputed to have contacts themselves spread out over Europe that could arrange a safe house or rat-hole, but while this was useful in its own right, it wasn't really going to help them here.

Instead they flew on, with Aswon and Hunter collaborating over the maps and the data on the critter chip, trying to work out where in the country they could find their prey. After twenty minutes of discussion, they fed some co-ordinates through to Marius, who adjusted course and started to turn south, heading for the bottom parts of the country.

"Ok, this is what we've learnt so far, and what we're guessing is the best plan." Aswon zoomed out on the map and glanced over at his notes, then continued. "The country is a real mix of environments. With the Russian invasion, a lot of the Polish economy was devastated, and much of the northern part of the country was ruined. I'm sure we're going to see that when we cross the coastline, but the info we have is that a lot of the extraction and processing industry was based up to the north, and that was either destroyed during the war by enemy action or guerrillas, or fell prey to environmental disasters over the years. Combat has reduced a lot of the cities to ghettos, and there wasn't much wilderness up there to start off with, and nearly all of it has been polluted or ruined over the last three decades."

"To the south, the country was a lot more rural, with fewer exploited resources, and as a result there was a lot less damage or conflict due to the war, and in turn there's less of an issue there now. On the other hand, we're going to be out in the boonies and so unlikely to find much in the way of resources or help ourselves. Now, down right on the southern border of the country, where it crosses to Slovakia, there's part of the Carpathian Mountains called the Tatras. They actually form the border, with the northern facing slopes in Poland and the southern parts in Slovakia – they're pretty significant as a natural feature."

"Can we get high enough up there?" Kai asked.

"Yes. They're significant not so much in the height – the biggest peak is around two thousand five hundred metres – so nowhere near as high as some of the places we've been, but they're very steep. They also act as a massive weather trap, and catch a load of storms, so we might be in for some very high winds and fierce changes. According to one report Hunter dug up, there's parts of the mountains that have a typical snow coverage over one hundred and forty centimetres. And that comes with some bitterly cold weather, too – we could see outside temperatures down to negative forty, so we'll need our warm weather gear for sure, and we may have to help Marius with maintenance on the bird, depending on how long we stay."

"Remind me why we want to go here again?" Shimazu asked lightly.

"Well, it's not certain, but it's the most likely spot we can work out for Carpathian Bears. Given their physique and an inbuilt fur-coat, they're not going to be too bothered by those kinds of conditions, and it's likely they'll have ranges that give them plenty of prey and room to move."

"Makes sense I suppose. What about locals? Is this the kind of place with remote mountain villages?"

"Normally yes, a few. However, Hunter found some news articles from the back of last year – they had a massive storm, bordering on a hurricane – which really shouldn't have been possible this far inland apparently. None of the weather analysts could work out how it happened anyway, but the storm completely trashed the area, destroyed several tens of thousands of square metres of forest and cut off scores of villages."

"I'm pushing some of the images up now." Hunter called out, interrupting Aswon's explanation. He sent over a small slide-show of pictures, showing large areas of the mountain with trees scattered like matchsticks, uprooted and tumbled together into a complex interlocking pile of lumber that rose several metres high. The next picture showed a village with every house visible devastated and abandoned – most of them having trees up to thirty metres tall that had been thrown into, or in some cases through, the houses, massive pine trees that impaled the properties like nature's javelins."

"Thanks, Hunter. There were a load of people killed in the storm, and a load more died from malnutrition, dehydration or infection afterwards, as the area was cut off. As a result, there's a lot of places up there that are abandoned and empty." The picture changed again, showing a high lake nestled amidst a series of mountain ranges, steep-sided slopes covered in scrubby grass that abruptly changed to dense evergreen forests at some significant altitude change. "That's the kind of terrain we're looking at – it's quite pretty, as long as the weather is decent. We'll probably head for a flatish area by one of the lakes – there's hundreds of them up in the mountains – as that makes it easier for us to get water, and it's likely to be used by the creatures in the area. If not the bears, then whatever the bears eat. And it'll give us good sight-lines and hopefully not be too bad a position to camp in."

"Cool. Can you show me the big map a minute? There's something nagging at me…" Kai waited for the picture to change to the rough map of Poland, and then traced a finger down the screen, looking at the proposed route. "Ahh – right. When we get to the southern part of the country, you probably want to head east and detour around an area. Let me mark it up…" He dragged a finger over the screen, drawing a rough oval to the south of the country, not that far from their destination mountains.

"What's there? Oswiecim? Never heard of it?" Aswon queried, looking at the map carefully.

"It's not that town, but it's close by. Place called Auschwitz. Some legacy from before the crash, something to do with a war. But the place is haunted – like massively haunted. They had to ban mages from going there, I seem to remember, as they kept either going mad or getting possessed." He thought for a moment, then nodded to himself as he found a comparison. "Supposed to feel a bit like that place in Japan we flew over – Nagasaki? Same kind of level of historical importance, apparently. So, we might want to add a few kilometres to the journey and go around that, unless we want to land and go hunting for some of the artifacts from the things that happened there. There's a thriving trade in telesma for combat and death spells, so I recall…"

He watched as their route was updated quickly, Hunter adding a note on the map and creating a fifty-kilometre exclusion zone around the town and adding it to their map data.

Soon enough they crossed the coastline, and found the situation was as expected – the war-torn country was surviving, but hardly prospering, and the aftermath of the Eurowars and the Russian occupation was all too obvious. The only new construction belonged to the corporate enclaves, and pollution had fouled the land and surrounding countryside, turning it into a grim and sad place. The towns were crumbling in some places and burnt out in others, and many of the areas reminded them of various 'barrens' and other corrupted areas they'd encountered in the various countries they'd visited. Things cleared up a little as they flew south, with the corporate land still being the best maintained and newest, though still belching pollutants out with no regard for the local environment, but with less overall damage to the infrastructure of the country.

Finally, though, they started to climb up into the mountains, rising up until they were one and a half kilometres above sea level, and slicing through mountain passes covered with deep drifts of snow and ice, until they located the valley which Aswon and Hunter had identified. Marius circled several times while he evaluated the rocky landscape below, before choosing a spot that seemed flatter – or at least less rock-strewn than the rest – before gently setting the tilt-wing down. All of his former finesse seemed to have returned and the cyber-ware seemed to have replicated his older gear entirely, at least as far as his control over the vehicle was concerned.

The higher slopes around them were cloaked in snow, dark patches of rock thrusting through the thick coverage in places, while the bottom of the faces were a mix of snow, ice, rock and scree, interspersed with the occasional burst of green vegetation, some hardy scrub that refused to acknowledge the presence of winter, or thrived because of it. There was more of the greenery scattered around the lake which was an odd shade of grey – until they realised that the perfectly flat and calm water was just reflecting the grey clouds above them. Those clouds hung to the mountain peaks, slowly undulating as the higher winds pulled and toyed with them, wisps of mist constantly twisting and changing around the peaks, tendrils of weather slowly caressing the mountains.

They landed, and Marius reported the outside temperature – a brisk negative twenty. A quick discussion was had, and a small team headed out to go and recover some of the fallen timbers still littering the edge of the forest from the storms of the previous year. The sheltered nature of the valley had spared this area of the worst of the weather, but there were still plenty of trees laying around, enough that firewood was certainly not going to be an issue. Tads surveyed the area and thought about using her earth-shaping spell to build up a wall or berm around the tilt-wing again, but decided to hold off until they were certain of staying in one place – she didn't want to change the landscape if she didn't have to. She did create a smooth area to the side of the back ramp though, creating just enough space for them to sit in comfort and shelter.

Once they had some firewood and had deployed some of their tarps on the windward side of the tilt-wing, they built up a roaring blaze on the leeward side and settled down for some lunch, it being just past one in the afternoon, and relaxed into the area. It was quiet at the moment, with just the fluttering of the tarp in the gentle wind, no other sounds carrying through the mountain air, and the team slowly acclimatised themselves to the slightly thinner air and natural stillness, attuning their senses to the rural environment.

Once food was done with, they headed down to the lake, carefully picking their way through the boulders and rocks that littered the landscape and looking for signs of their prey and other critters. Shimazu noted with a snort that the hard-packed ground allowed the rest of the team to move with very little sign of their presence – duplicating something that he often relied upon when hunting or moving stealthily. It also meant of course that the creatures of the area were also unlikely to leave as much of a trail as they might normally do, making any attempts at tracking correspondingly more difficult.

"What kind of spirits will you be able to summon here, Tads?" Kai stood with his hands on his hips, looking up at the mountain peaks, his slow exhales sending little puffs of warm moist air out ahead of his face.

"Well, right here we can certainly call a lake spirit, for sure. Mountain and sky everywhere around here, I would say, and once we're close to the woods a forest spirit. I'm not sure if they'll answer in the felled parts, I've never experienced that before. I mean, technically it's still a forest, even if it's knocked over? I just don't know if the spirits will be angry or hurt, given what's happened to their domain."

"Err. Ok. Well, maybe we can test before we need them in a hurry?" Kai cocked his head to one side. "Is that like one of those 'if a tree falls in the woods and nobody is there to hear it, does it make a noise' kinda questions?" He glanced over at Tads who just looked at him blankly. She was considerably more educated and aware of the world now than she had been a year ago, but having grown up in a tribe that spent most of their life not far from the Arctic Circle, their philosophical questions mostly revolved around things like 'what's for dinner' and 'is that enough firewood to get us through the storm' and other more basic fundamental questions of human survival. "Can the spirits be used to help us hunt down the bears?"

"That depends. If the bears are magically aware or active, they may have a pact or relationship with the local spirits. If that's the case, they might side with the bears and lead us into an ambush. If that's not the case, then perhaps – though I'm not sure Elk would approve of me using the ppirits like that. To guard and protect us, I think would be fine. To hunt creatures to slay them, just for getting money – not."

"Well, we'll just have to see then. What I do know is that it's bloody cold out here, so let's get back to the camp. Maybe Marius can do some scouting for us with his drone."

"I can," the voice cut over the comms, as Marius sat in the cockpit monitoring the situation, "but the flight time will be vastly diminished. The batteries will not last long in this weather. Cold is very bad for electrical storage, and they will drain power just by being here, even if they are not used. The solar cells may not get much charge either, depending on the cloud cover."

"Perhaps Tads can help with that – it will mean having to hold a spell up, which will curtail what else you can do, I know, but that spell you learnt back from the Native shaman near the Tsimshin border? What was his name?"

"Kutara?" Marius suggested, the name floating into his conscious mind without effort.

"Yes, that bloke. He taught you a spell to change the temperature, didn't he?"

"Yes, Aswon. I don't know how much I can adjust the temperature by, but I might be able to get it up to freezing point. Will that help?"

"A great deal. The power coefficient is a not a linear relationship with the temperature, there's a significant curve to it. Raising the temperature like that might double our endurance."

"Ok, that sounds positive. So, if Tads can do her stuff and make the drone last longer, and we try to keep the drone flights to small and short flights anyway, that will hopefully let us make the most of it. It does have thermo sensors, right, Marius?"

"It does. They are not hugely sensitive, though. It is only the basic sensor package on the drone, so they lack fine resolution. But they should spot something the size of a bear moving around in the woods."

"Ok good. Now, I've got no phone signal up here, but that's not surprising. I presume your sat-phone is still good?"

"It is."

"Great, so we're not entirely cut off. But that also means I presume that if anyone else is up here, they'll need the same tech to call out."

"Even better, Kai", Aswon added. "If Marius powers down the systems he doesn't absolutely need, we can keep a sensor watch and look out for other electronic systems. We'd have no chance in a more built-up area – there's too much background noise. But up here, even basic electronic equipment will be radiating noise, and we might be able to detect intruders by that."

"Ok, that sounds good. Can we make that happen? Right… so if we do go out bear hunting, who's involved? I'm guessing Shimazu and Aswon, myself… what about you, Tads?"

"Yes, I will come. If only to make sure I can try to defend you effectively."

"What about you two?"

"I will stay and monitor the sensors and the aircraft, and control the drones. If need be, I can launch the second drone and be with you relatively quickly to supply fire-support."

"That'll ruin the kill though, probably?"

"I am aware of that. I would suggest that you would rather have a ruined kill though, than a member of the team dismembered by bear?"

"You do have a point there…"

"Hunter?"

"You're all right thanks, Kai. I'll stay here thanks, in the warm. You won't want me shooting the stuff with my rifle anyway, so I might as well stay back here on guard."

"Fair enough. So… we've got some time left today. Shall we go hunting?"

"No, Kai – I think that's dangerous. It's going to start getting dark in about two hours probably, even if the weather holds off that long. Once the sun gets a little lower, just the height of the mountains will bring dusk incredibly fast. Likewise dawn for us is going to be later than normal, as we wait for the sun to climb over the peaks. And we don't want to be caught out in the open, overnight. I'd suggest we spend a little time sorting out our camp, and let Marius do the initial scouting and get us a better map of the area, and plan to go at first light tomorrow, and make the most of the daylight."

"We can all see pretty well in the dark now, though?" Kai's eye flickered over to Shimazu, who returned his stare impassively.

"Yes, but so can the bears, probably. And all the other predatory animals. And this is their turf, so let's not give them any advantage we don't have to…"

Kai nodded, and they headed back to the tilt-wing, where Marius was already done with getting the surveillance drone ready to launch. The lifting bag had proved to be hard to inflate, requiring a lot more power and gas than normal, and was another factor that they'd have to take into account up here. Tads concentrated, pulling the mana towards her slowly and steadily and then channelling it into the area surrounding the batteries and motors on the drone, raising the temperature by fifteen degrees.

The drone lifted into the air, rising up a few hundred metres and then slowly turning into the wind and heading towards the forested area that cloaked the lower slopes on the far side of the lake, flying in a quartering search pattern over the dense conifers. Marius piped the output of his systems to Hunter, who set his deck up to receive the streamed data and cross reference the shapes, sounds, thermal signatures and glimpses of movement to check against the data they had on chip and whatever they could add personally from watching the screens.

Over the next two hours they saw a few bears, a pack of wolves, some lynx, wildcats, Tatra chamois and even a small herd of bison who were making their way over towards the next lake in the valley, ponderously plodding along while tearing at the hardy shrubs.

"Marius – you might want to be careful as well with the drone. Are all the sensors underneath?"

"Yes, they focus downwards. Why?"

"Well, I've just had to send up an air spirit to fend off some kind of bird. I think it's an eagle. Just made a run on the top of the drone. Not sure if it's trying to eat it, drive it away or mate with it, but I'm guessing that some claws to the bag will ruin it?"

"Yes, that will make it crash very quickly. Can you keep it safe?"

"Yes, I think so. The spirit is just confusing the eagle, making it veer off at the last minute. But it's going to have to stay with it while it's up, I think."

"Very well. I think I'll bring it back now anyway. The batteries are ok, but I would rather keep a higher level of power in reserve than normal, given the conditions up here."

"No problem. I'd suggest we do another quick scout in the morning as well then, just to confirm what we've learnt now and see how far things have moved overnight?"

There were general murmurs of approval and agreement from the rest of the team, and they started to prepare for their overnight stay, pulling out all of the clothing they had to layer over their inflatable mattresses or to lay over their sleeping bags. The temperature slowly dropped as night fell, but the team managed to stay relatively warm in the tilt-wing, and apart from whoever was on watch, soon fell asleep, bundled up snuggly in a mound of spare clothes, blankets and sleeping bags, filling the air with gentle snores.