The sky lightened above Kai as the bear moved, lumbering across the ground towards Shimazu. Kai's vision swam in and out of focus, a kaleidoscope of green and brown as his eyes tried to make sense of the trees above him. Breath came raggedly, with sharp stabs of pain from his broken ribs, and he felt blood trickling from his nose. Trying to lever himself upright, a lance of white hot pain told him something was wrong a moment before his right arm gave way, sending him slumping backwards to the slush beneath him, wincing in pain.
Two metres away, Tads felt the weight of the bear lift. The massive claws raking at her were not through malice, but just in an attempt to gain purchase and drive their owner towards the large man holding the katana who had just killed one of their pack. It joined the larger bear in roaring, a deafening reverberation of primal rage that reverberated through the forest, sending smaller animals and other hunters scurrying away from the source.
Shimazu focussed, watching the two bears as they turned and accelerated towards him. As his reflexes kicked into high gear, the world seemed to slow around him, his senses darting across the scene and picking up details in a world suddenly rendered in slow-motion. The trees around them, swaying now as the initial impulse of the bears throwing themselves off from their hiding place above made the trunks rock and oscillate, the way the pine needles were still falling in a splash pattern around the forms of Kai and Tads, showing the enormous impact of the bears upon them. A glint of muted daylight reflecting from the spear held in Aswon's hands as he readied himself on his flank.
Through it all flowed the focus and calmness of his training. He didn't look at where his sword was – he knew. With absolute certainty he knew. With an unerring sense of a weapons master, he just understood where the tip was, exactly which direction the blade faced. Where his feet lay, and what the ground was like around him. A horde of detail flooded his mind and set the scene for him, as he waited at the centre of his sphere of danger. In his mind he saw the area around him divided sharply in two – an inner zone that represented the reach of his sword, in which things lived only by his leave… and the outer zone in which he had to move first to enact his will.
Aswon readied his spear, adjusting his grip on the ancient weapon, his black fingers squeezing tightly on the textured shaft, feeling the indentations of the carved wood, the carefully crafted words of an ancient language painstakingly etched into the material by a master craftsman. Magic rippled through his body, and he felt the spear quiver in his hands, almost seeming eager to engage in combat.
Concern rippled through him as well, seeing the crumpled form of Tads still curled into a ball, rents in her armour showing blood and torn flesh from the raking of the bears claws. Kai, at least, was still alive – he could see him moving and crying with pain, so he was at least still somewhat with them – though his wounds looked severe as well. He pushed his thoughts for them to one side as the bears closed in, their huge forms lumbering through the forest as they ran in slow motion. Except of course, they weren't in slow motion – they were moving remarkably quickly and still accelerating, three quarters of a ton of angry, vicious critters that had seen one of their number slain and were both now angling towards Shimazu intent on dealing with him. A thought flickered through his mind for a moment, wondering if he should be upset that they were both going for Shimazu rather than one each, or both on him – but his ego wasn't that fragile, and he could see why they were going for the biggest target.
As the bears covered the ground between the fallen team members and Shimazu, the earth trembling as their huge bodies slammed into the compacted and frozen surface, the tip of Shimazu's sword angled and repositioned, getting ready to thrust and slice with a sharp, powerful motion. The blade waited for the optimum moment to strike, poised on a hair-trigger, Shimazu's entire form now subsumed into it, a blade with a bunch of muscles and sinews to drive it and direct it.
Aswon gave a gasp as he saw the bear ripple. The fur was a mottled brown colour with flecks of green, rippling in the light as it changed hue to match the colours behind it, and he suddenly realised why they'd not seen them coming at all – but then he realised what it was he was seeing. A burst of power, a subtle shift in the mana that flowed through and around the creature. A pattern he'd seen before, many times, a pattern that normally spelt death and destruction to their foes. The same pattern of mana, the same burst of power that allowed Shimazu to react with unfathomable speed and strike before an opponent.
He'd just never seen it from the other side.
He tried to call out a warning, tried to alert Shimazu – but of course, he couldn't. His thoughts were still forming, body still reacting, trying to parse what his eyes were seeing and react – but Shimazu had already jolted the mana through his body and his limbs were a blur as the sword moved.
And the bear moved with it, sliding under and around the thrust, knocking the blade to one side almost contemptuously while the other massive paw swung in towards Shimazu's neck. Aswon saw the bodyguard's eyes start to widen in shock as the bear blurred, muscles flexing as they redirected the blade, using the momentum imparted by the blow to whip around in a complex pattern and reverse the direction of the cut, looking to interpose itself between his body and the claws that sliced inexorably downwards toward his jugular.
Aswon fancied that he saw the eyes of the bear change slightly as well, whether that was a look of surprise or frustration, or perhaps something else – he couldn't say – but no doubt it was a shock as the blade did move, reacting swifter than it had any right to do so. Slicing back across the bear's body – impacting the paw and driving it downwards.
It couldn't stop the blow.
Nothing short of a tank was going to stop that amount of power.
But it did turn it slightly, moving it down to strike Shimazu's shoulder rather than neck. Redirecting some of the force into resisting the blow rather than striking at him. It slammed into him, hard.
Breath was driven from his body, an explosive burst of air erupting from his lips as he struggled to stay on his feet.
The armour disintegrated under the assault. Designed principally to stop high impulse attacks from bullets by redistributing force over a wider area, the huge claws slashed at the armour over an area equal to scores of bullet impacts. Chemical reactions triggered, trying to dump energy into neighbouring areas, but instead found that those neighbouring areas were already shedding energy of their own. Bonds broke down and the material crumpled, twisted and was torn, shredding and delaminating under the terrible assault.
Yet for all that, it did help – somewhat.
The claws broke through the underlayer and slammed into his shoulder, raking at the flesh and cleaving through it, digging deep gouges into the shoulder that penetrated to the bone instantly, cutting through muscles and nerves, sending spasms of pain through his nervous system that overloaded his ability to dampen them.
Yet it stopped there. His arm was damaged and non-functional, but his core was intact – and the blow that was aimed at decapitating him, hadn't.
Time still flowed like treacle, movements powered by adrenaline coursing through his system playing out with a smooth and graceful nature. His mind ticked like quicksilver though, surprise echoing through him, along with an element of desperation at having being outsmarted, and outfought by the bear.
A thought sprang into his head, of the auto-injector hidden nestled inside his forearm guard. Tucked away under the armour, pressed against the skin, waiting. A flash of thoughts went through his head – the wind and snows of the north, the whistle of shots flashing past his head. The feeling of warmth spreading through his system as the drugs went to work. The feeling of power and strength coursing through him. A feeling like being a god, untouchable. Without pain. A warrior without peer.
Part of his mind reacted with surprise as the feeling felt more real than memories should. Then reacted with surprise again when it realised why, figuratively turning to another part of his subconscious to glare at it, damming it for the precipitous action in clenching the muscles required to trigger the injector. And then a feeling of despair, but despair of another kind at sensing the lack of repentance, or guilt. And then all the guilt, or despair, or frustration was gone, replaced with anticipation, warmth and the feeling of butterflies in his stomach as the drugs coursed through his system. One massive dose of chemicals, sent speeding through his system, energising muscles, numbing nerves, accelerating thought processes – drawing deeply on his energy reserves, without thought to the future.
There was only the now.
He span in place, using the impact to turn and twist himself, flinging his arm out at first then tucking it in tight like an ice-skater, spinning like a top and then exploding outwards again, slashing across the bear with his sword. It should have been a killing blow, opening up the flesh across the chest and sending organs spilling out across the floor. But the bear was no newborn cub, either. Veteran of a thousand battles with the creatures of the mountains, it pulled back, drawing down upon its legs like a coiled spring, and the tip of the blade opened up only a shallow wound through the fur, so light that it was barely visible through the fur.
The two combatants had moved in a blur, barely visible to Aswon even with his enhanced reactions – but the moment seemed to have passed, and he felt his muscles react, even as the warning to Shimazu formed on his lips. He let the sound out in a formless grunt instead, thrusting forward with his spear at the creature's flank. It seemed pre-occupied with Shimazu, barely noticing him as he stabbed at it. The tip of the spear drove forwards, true and fast, heading for the flanks of the giant beast, aiming to rip deep into it's bowels and organs and send it crashing to the floor in pain.
'Thonk.'
It was a noise that would say with Aswon for some time to come. A noise that would send chills down his spine and a wave of fear through his mind. The sound of the spear tip hitting some armoured or bony protuberance located just below the skin, where it stopped. It had penetrated no more than a centimetre through the fur, and no matter the force of the impact, it appeared to be well enough armoured to resist his weapon.
The smaller of the two bears reached the melee and reared back, swiping down at Shimazu with both paws as it tried to rake him across the face and torso to send him crashing to the ground in a heap. Shimazu was having none of that, though. The fire of the chemical reaction was burning bright in his blood, and he saw the clumsy swipe coming, ducking under it and sidestepping adroitly before slashing down over the nose of the creature, severing the snout and sending teeth and tongue spinning off into the distance.
"My kill!" he snarled. Or at least tried to. The words came out jumbled and jittery, his lips mangling the phrase as they twitched and spasmed.
Back at the tilt-wing, Marius could hear the sounds of combat, and the cries of pain from team-members, along with the frantic laboured breathing and grunts of effort. He didn't know what was going on, but it was as bad as anything he'd heard since they'd been together, and he sent commands rippling through the deck, pulling out whole sections of the start-up routines and disabling safety protocols wherever he could. Engines screamed and howled, systems sputtered and warning lights flashed as he rushed the drone into the air. Every sensor and gauge was in the redlined area, and the logs started to fill up with a variety of error messages and anomalous readings as he drove the drone way past the designed limits.
It shot through the air on pillars of blue flame, leaving behind a trail of black smoke and a spattering of raw fuel as the engines failed to fully combust the mix being fed into them, still warming up and not even at take-off readiness yet. But, underneath the body, the gun system activated and the mechanism fed rounds into the chambers, ready to fire at his command.
Good enough.
On the floor, Kai managed to roll over onto his side, wincing as it put weight onto his damaged shoulder and side. His left hand flailed around a little, but then his fingers closed on the hand-grip of his taser and he extended his arm, trying to sight on the swirling melee ahead of him. Fortunately the bear's huge size and position meant that he couldn't even see Shimazu beyond it most of the time, and he took a single breath, trying to calm himself and aim as carefully as possible before firing. The darts zinged across the four metres between them, lodging into the rear of the bear, before a hundred thousand volts of energy rode the wires to the metallic prongs, deeply embedded into the flesh on either side of the bear's anus.
The roar of the bear was different, Shimazu noticed. Anguished, and with a deep element of pain to it. He didn't know why that was, and at the moment, neither did he care. But it was good to know that somehow the others were hurting it, even if he seemed to be having limited effects.
Tads, meanwhile, rolled up to her knees, and with a moment's thought dismissed the spell she had been sustaining – it wasn't going to help her now, and she needed all the concentration she could get. She saw the flashing blade of Shimazu flicking around the head of the grizzled bear, while Aswon was stabbing away at the flank, and she grabbed her staff firmly before swinging at the back of the bear. She doubted it was going to do much damage, if any – she was nowhere near as strong as either of they were, but she had to do something.
For a moment she wondered about her list of spells – perhaps a lightning bolt aimed straight at the rear of the creature? But her doubts got the best of her… she was wounded, and not operating at her best already, and her combat spells were weak. Elk was a protector, not a hunter, and that came with a price that she understood only too well. This though… she swung the staff as hard as she could, aiming for the bear's knee. This – Elk would approve of.
The staff cracked into the knee, making it flex a little but not really causing any noticeable damage. But, as the bear reacted by taking a shuffling half step backwards and sidewards, the other back leg slammed into the staff, almost tripping it up and making it stumble a little. The wood flexed under the impact, but held, as the bear almost caused itself to fall over. Concentrating as it was on the dangerous adversary to the front, it's remaining attention couldn't work out what it needed to do, and the legs flailed around ineffectually for a moment as they tried to push through the sudden barrier, without success.
Seeing the stumble, Shimazu darted forwards again, slicing down the side of the bear's head and severing one ear, leaving a flap of skin to hang from the side of the skull. The bear twisted in rage and tried to snap back at him, exposing its throat as it tried to savagely lunge forward and take his own head off, and he slid down into a crouch, drawing the sword across the neck as he did so, a fountain of hot blood spraying across the mulched ice underneath them. The cut was shallow but had nicked the artery, fatal to the bear, though not immediately. What sealed its fate though was the deep cut on the leg as the sword flashed through the end of the arc, severing tendons and smashing the bone. The leg crumpled under the weight of the creature, sending it crashing to the ground in a heap with another roar of pain.
With the smaller bear down and Shimazu fully occupying the attention of the larger one, Aswon took a moment to carefully aim, waiting for a breath and his heartbeat to synchronise, just like when he was shooting. When the moment was right he drove forwards again with his spear, the tip of the weapon sliding into the ear canal straight through the large furry ear, penetrating deeply into the brain and slaying the beast. The collapse almost ripped the weapon out of his hand, and he had to jerk back firmly to pull the spear free.
Shimazu let out a cry of rage and swung the sword down onto the smaller bear, hard enough that the blade cracked open the top of the skull despite the bony armour deposits. The head cracked like a melon, splitting open and the sword cut through the brain stem and most of the brain, finishing the second creature off as well. He glared at Aswon with rage in his eyes, and Aswon thought for a moment that he'd gone mad – unable to tell friend from foe. In the furious combat neither he, nor the other two had heard Shimazu claim the kill on the big bear – not that it would have stopped him from taking the opportunity, not against a foe that dangerous.
The moment passed, and Shimazu swivelled back around, taking up a high-guard position and watched the bears carefully. They'd encountered enough shape-shifters in Yakut and other critters that had the ability to shake off the most heinous of wounds as if they were mere inconveniences that they were careful now around fallen foes, especially those that were unknown.
A moment passed.
Then another.
The corpses remained still, no signs of movement or of the wounds closing, no tang of magic revitalising their wracked forms. Kai tried again to get up, managing to roll up onto one knee and stagger to his feet, one arm hanging limply against his torso. Tads relaxed her grip on her staff, knuckles slowly regaining their colour as she unclenched her hands. Aswon kept his spear aiming at the bears, just on general principles, but turned to check on Shimazu, watching as he stood in the guard position still, trembling violently.
"Hey, they're dead. C'mon – relax." Shimazu said nothing, just standing there quivering, arms and legs vibrating with unspent energy. Slowly it dawned on him what Shimazu had done, and he felt a sinking sensation in his stomach. "Oh drek… Tads – we're going to need…" he turned towards the Shaman and saw she was already deep in concentration, drawing in mana to herself and holding her arms up crossed over her chest, palms facing towards her savaged shoulders. He glanced between her and Shimazu, as the golden light slowly suffused her, casting a warm glow around the clearing. "We're going to need some help here in a minute or two when that stuff wears off. Assuming it's the same stuff as last time, anyway."
"I'll be with you soon." Her voice was somewhat detached and vacant, her mind concentrating on channelling the power down into her wounded form, slowly repairing the damage and knitting the flesh back together again. Aswon turned back towards Shimazu and watched with concern as deep bruises appeared on the sides of his neck and along his jaws. Moving carefully he approached from the side and gently pulled open his jacket and peered under the armour, watching the purple bruises spread and grow across his torso as well.
"Marius, you can back off the throttle. I think we're good here. Three tangos down, area appears to be secure at present. All four of us are wounded – Tads is patching herself up now, Kai looks pretty bad but is stable. I've got a couple of scratches and Shimazu's taken a beating – but he's also taken some more of the combat drug we got from Ludmilla. We're likely to be doing some first aid and healing on him imminently."
"Acknowledged. Hunter is still heading for the trees, I will continue to close and support."
"Roger Marius. Hunter – suggest you return to the bird. I don't think you can help here, and it's possible you'll run into lynx, wolves or something else in the woods that might fancy it's chances against a lone target. I think we're ok in the group, especially after fighting the bears – the scent is going to be all over the place."
"Gotcha. I understand, you just wanna hog all the glory…." Hunter sighed dramatically, but Marius could see him slowing and then turning on his heel to head back towards the tilt-wing, relaxing his pace considerably. Back in the forest, Aswon tried to think of a witty retort, but nothing came to mind so he instead switched his attention to the trees, checking the canopy overhead, branches and the bushes and foliage around them. He still couldn't work out how critters that big had crept up on them so effectively – but they clearly had, and it had very nearly gone horribly wrong for them. One more of the creatures, or a different choice of targets may well have done for the team. He felt a mild tremble in his body and smiled, almost welcoming the post-battle slump as his systems recovered after the frantic fight. It certainly wasn't the first time he'd felt it, indeed it had been a constant in his career as a mercenary, but it was a sensation only felt by the victors.
The golden glow started to fade, and Tads moved her arms tentatively, lowering them from her own shoulders. She still winced a little, clearly having some damage that was not put right, but she looked a lot happier than she had been, and after a deep cleansing breath, the pain appeared to fade from her face entirely as she took control of her body and emotions once more.
Aswon looked around once again, and when he still couldn't see anything moving within eyesight, and couldn't hear anything either, he moved over towards Kai to examine his arm. He rested his spear against his own body, not wanting it to be outside range for a quick grab and gently probed the dislocated shoulder with his fingers, making Kai wince. He stayed well away from the deep gashes down the side and back of the neck and covering the back and torso – Tads was better equipped to deal with those, but he could do something about this at least.
"Crud – is that another bear over there?" Aswon tried to sound as sincere as he could, and Kai's head whipped round to face the forest to his right, facing away from Aswon. The merc took advantage of the distraction and grasped Kai's wrist between his long and dextrous fingers and stepped back away from him, lifting the arm up and to the side, and then his right leg lifted and snapped out in a sharp front-kick, landing just on the upper inside portion of the arm, jolting it up and back into place with an audible clunk. Kai let out a shriek, as much surprise as pain and snatched his hand back from Aswon.
"What was that for! And what bear?"
"Oh, my mistake. But your shoulder's not dislocated any more. That's not something you want to have done when you know it's coming. Makes all the muscles tense up." Kai glowered at him, and then turned to face Shimazu, watching as golden light suffused him while Tads moved her hands over his trembling form. She either wasn't concerned or had chosen to ignore the quivering blade that was held above her head whenever she crossed in front of him, instead tracing her hands all over his body, easing the bruising and knitting flesh, bone, muscle and sinew back together.
When she was done, his flesh looked better, and all of the rents were repaired – though he still trembled and shook as the drugs continued to course through his system. She turned to Kai, taking a deep breath and once more drew mana into her core, channelling and shaping it to her bidding. Around the clearing small insects wandered around in confusion, having experienced the third sunrise of the last two minutes as the warm golden glow washed over them, sending them scurrying about in the cold and wet, completely disoriented.
When she was done, she moved to the side of the path and found a fallen log to sit upon, trying to keep out of the slush that covered the ground, and just sat for a few moments, face turned up to the sky and lips muttering a prayer of thanks to Elk for helping her heal and protect her herd. When she had finished, she gathered her power once more, putting up her protective wards and shields around the team, and then cast a simple spell to detect magic in the area. Nothing other than the weapons of the team seemed to glow or signal to her spell, no hidden spirits in the trees or magical critters lurking in the bushes, and she slowly examined the scene before her.
Aswon had already started to talismonger the bears, peeling off the thick skin and admiring the lustrous fur that rippled and shimmered in the light, before moving on to harvest teeth, bones, organs and other parts. Kai moved over to help him, his wounds healed enough that he moved without pain, though he still looked very aggrieved with the whole situation.
Without warning, Shimazu stood bolt upright for a moment, letting out a low moan of pain and frustration, before suddenly arcing over backwards, bending into an impossible looking crescent shape. His muscles locked, hands crushingly tight on the hilt of his sword and lips pulled back to reveal his gums, while tendons stood out like cables on the side of his neck. The final vestiges of the experimental combat drug coursed through his veins, before metabolising away, letting him collapse to his knees, breaths short and sharp as the sensation of pain returned to him.
He didn't flinch from his position when a hand lightly touched his shoulder, knowing exactly who it was, and what was going to happen. The roar of jet engines drowned out anything he might have to say, and on the sensors Marius looked down and watched as the visual feed recorded the golden light shining out from the trees, filtered through the pine needles into separate rays of light.
Marius stayed on station, orbiting with the drone while the team gathered all the materials they could from the three enormous corpses. He heard Shimazu claim one of the incisors from the grizzled bear, the largest of the three, and Aswon posit a theory about the fur of the critters, which even after death still seemed to shift in hue somewhat, though the effect got less pronounced as time went on. It was his theory that the fur could respond like the flesh of a chameleon – or the photo-voltaic paint on the tilt-wing itself – and adapt colour to blend in with the background almost perfectly, which along with the cover from the canopy allowed them to be surprisingly efficient ambush predators.
"I have an idea. It seems all quiet here now – and I think it's going to stay like that, given the scent of blood and death around here. I can't see anything short of a large pack of wolves or the like, making an approach. Do you agree, Aswon?"
"Probably. It depends how thin the pickings have been… but yes, in all likelihood. What do you have in mind, Tadibya?"
"Well, we came for the bears. We have some bears. As far as I am aware, we're not after anything else here, and there's no reason to stay. So, rather than trying to get all of this…stuff, dragged back to the landing site, which is going to take a while and weigh us down if we do get attacked, why not ask Marius to recall the drone, and bring the tilt-wing to us?"
"There's nowhere for him to land though!" Kai pointed out.
"Doesn't need to be. If he can hover over the trees for a minute or two, I can levitate each of you up, with a full armful of talismongered parts, onto the back ramp. As soon as they're onboard, I can do the next person. Shouldn't take long at all."
"It is a lot of materials…" Aswon mused.
"Can you do that, Marius?"
"I will be more than happy to get out of this place and back to civilisation, Kai. Returning the drone now."
Within seconds they heard the drone bank and head away, flying on a straight-line course back to the tilt-wing, along with some grumbling from Hunter who had to start work in the back of the aircraft, strapping down any loose gear and getting them ready for take-off on his own. Aswon took a few moments to climb up one of the trees to check for nests or anything else of interest, but found nothing more than the deep claw marks indicating where the bears had lain in wait for something to wander by on the trail below.
Twenty minutes later, the tilt-wing was hovering over the trees, the downwash from the rotors making the conifers sway and shake violently, and the team were levitating upwards smoothly, clutching bear skins full of dismembered parts. As soon as Aswon was up on the ramp, he swapped his spear for his rifle and crouched on the side of the ramp, providing overwatch for the party below. Kai was next up, and when his load was secure, he joined Aswon via one of the door guns. Shimazu didn't seem keen on leaving Tads down below, but didn't have much choice – and was soon lofted up to the aircraft, where he stood on the ramp, peering down into the trees, his brow furrowed until he saw the shaman rising up smoothly through the canopy, following a gentle arc towards the ramp, where she walked serenely aboard as if nothing odd had happened.
The ramp rose, the side doors closed and the aircraft slipped into forward motion, banking gently to the south and picking up speed, heading out of the valley and over the first pass Marius could find so they could start to make their descent into Slovakia.
"Marius – can you Georgi when you have a minute, let him know the job is done, and find out where we need to take this stuff. Ideally as quick as possible, it's not going to last long without stinking the place out."
"You had better scrub down the cargo area when this job is complete. I will not tolerate a dirty aircraft." Marius cut off the connection and contacted Georgi quickly, not wanting to give Kai any more time than he had to. Three minutes later, he activated the intercom again. "Kai – we are heading to Tbilisi. Or actually an area about ten kilometres to the north. But we need to refuel somewhere along the way."
"Checking the map, give me a minute." Hunter pulled up their travel log, and decrypted the system, then looked for locations they could get some fuel. "Ok, got that place near the airport in Bulgaria. We refuelled there when going to pick up the weapons for Patrick that were being smuggled down to the Kurdish militia?"
"Course and distance?"
"One-six-zero degrees, nine hundred klicks. Can we make that on the tank?"
"Easily."
The aircraft worked its way through the passes and canyons of the high mountains, and then started to descend, following the contours of the rugged landscape as they dropped towards thicker air below them. As they cleared a low ridge, Marius suddenly felt the questing strobes of radar and sensor beams lashing out at him. The signal was strong – strong enough that no amount of deception and radar absorbent material was going to stop it picking them up.
"Contact, sensor station, bearing zero, range…three kilometres! HANG ON!"
The tilt-wing accelerated as he hit the throttles, advancing them to full military power, and tucked the nose down. The ground seemed to rush up at them as he dived down the slope, until they were dropping like a speeding falcon, barely ten metres above the snow and accelerating past five hundred kilometres per hour. His threat receivers were blinking incessantly now, and warning tones sounded around the cockpit as the airframe started to vibrate as they exceeded their design speed.
The flashed over a low trailer parked near some structures and power cables that dove down the mountain, and just as suddenly the radar signal stopped. Marius twisted onto a new course, sending them slashing down a slope and in between two large stands of trees, following a twisting course down the mountain. Occasionally other large passes crossed theirs at a sharp angle, white lanes of snow crossing the mountain, zig-zagging through the forests.
Hunter smiled and sat back in his seat and let out a sigh of relief.
"Slow it down, mate, reckon we'll be ok. It's a ski-resort. Probably an anti-avalanche radar or something. I mean, no doubt it's hooked up into the border network, given the power of it – but that's why it came out of nowhere. I just looked back on the sensors, and those weren't power lines we crossed that nearly took the paint off – it was a chair lift."
In the back, Shimazu set back in his seat, gently nibbling on his lip and staring at the bulkhead opposite. He felt a light touch on his knee, and looked down to see Tads staring at him with concern.
"You took some more of the stuff, didn't you?"
"Yes. I had to, against those bears."
"And you want some more now, don't you?" Her voice was quiet – he was more lip reading than hearing her, over the sound of the engines. Yet he could still tell that she spoke from a position of concern rather than judgement.
"I don't want to take any more." A slight smile tugged at the corner of his mouth. "I just have to convince my body of that."
"I could help. If you're willing – I can try to fortify your willpower, influence you not to take any more. I'm happy to help, but only if you agree."
"No. No, thanks. If I need to have help, then I'm not worth it. I have to do this myself." Tads looked confused, but then sat back in her seat. Whatever she thought, she wasn't going to force the issue. There was something about this situation that made her feel wary – taking away Shimazu's right to choose was something she felt strongly about – perhaps because she really understood how slippery a slope that could be. Even though she wanted to stop him taking any more of the foul concoction, she didn't have the right to make that call for him, at least not like this.
Shimazu saw her sit back, her face going blank and wondered what was going through her mind. Whatever it was, she wasn't pushing the issue, for which he was grateful. He went back to doing the breathing exercises that Aswon had shown him, trying to ignore the feelings of hunger and longing inside him, the tickle in his brain that desired just a little taste of the power and strength that the drug bought.
Their journey down towards Burgas airport was smooth and uneventful, Marius crossing the border of Slovakia into Hungary, then Romania and finally Bulgaria at low level and moderate speed, aiming for areas where he could use the terrain to mask his presence, well away from industrial centres and towns. As they closed in on the sea-side town, Marius dipped lower and lower, keeping himself off the airport approach control's scopes. Kai had called ahead and arranged for someone to be there, and as they closed in on the area they started to cross the barren lands full of quarries and workings, huge rents carved into the earth for kilometres around. Just before the airport they crossed into Lake Atanasovsko, flashing across the lurid green waters leaving two large v-trails in their wake. Beyond the lake, as Marius flared for landing, they could still see the regimented pattern of holding lakes, squares with rounded corners, all flooded with a slightly different shade of water.
"Huh. Geological eye-shadow," Aswon commented.
"Probably from the mines and quarries." Hunter responded. "Used to wash out different tanks of ores and minerals. Reddish brown ones are iron oxides I think, the greenish ones more likely to be copper, each different colour will be from a different metal or chemical compound, dyeing the water."
"Well, whatever it is, it sucks on the astral. We don't want to go swimming in any of those, I can tell you that."
"I could have told you that! But heads up, movement down at the landing pad…"
Aswon flicked the viewing prism round, and gave the two men waiting down at the fuel stop a quick check over. They looked wary, but not alarmed, and didn't give any signs or indications of having intentions towards them. Marius bought them in for a nice smooth landing, and Kai hopped out with Shimazu in tow, paying for the fuel with his credstick, and talking with the men about inconsequential gossip while they refuelled the bird and topped off the extra tanks in the rear. Twenty minutes later and twelve thousand and sixty two Nuyen poorer, they were topped off, and lifting up into the air, heading south and away from the airport until they got clear of the tower's line of sight and could turn east towards the Black Sea.
Marius took a direct route across the sea, high enough to avoid any waterborne vessels, but low enough to stay out of most air-traffic routes, looking to cross back into the Trans-Caucus League a little way north of Batumi. The two-hour crossing was quiet, with very little traffic out in the chill February evening, and they made landfall around 18:30, slipping through the border just as effectively and quietly as they had crossed all the others that day.
"Heads up, everyone!" Marius called a while later. "Coming in for an orbit, we're at Saguramo."
The team watched the monitors or checked out the area on the prism, looking down at the dark land beneath them studded with lights from the isolated houses.
"Where are we headed exactly?"
"There's a farmhouse nestled in a clearing in the woods – that's our landing spot," Hunter called out, throwing up a handy marker on the map and super-imposing that on the sensor feed. They could see a long T-shaped house amidst some low trees, with a long driveway that stretched out past the woodland to another farm track, that in turn led to the main road. Two four by fours were parked at the house, one relatively new and modern-looking, the other much, much older and battered, both weakly illuminated by the outside lights that ran down the eaves of the house.
"Great stuff. Ok, doesn't look like anything we need to worry about. Take us in, please, Marius."
"Copy that, Kai."
They started to descend, carefully heading down for a clearing about thirty metres from the house, dropping down out of the darkness like a predatory owl, their spirit concealment masking them from onlookers.
