"Well, while we're waiting for Novatech to respond, we probably want to make some changes here." Aswon pointed up at the camo netting and the trees surrounding them. "We need to start weaving in some of the local material into the netting to improve the concealment, and further break up the outline."
"I'll give you a hand." Hunter rolled up to his feet and stretched, his spine giving a little popping sound as he decompressed from where he'd slumped to the floor.
"Good, thanks. Tads – we could probably also benefit from some more concealment, if that's possible. The stronger the spirit the better…"
"I'll see what I can do."
"Why are you so worried now, Aswon?" Kai peered at him curiously.
"Six and a half million isn't chump change – that's the kind of hole that is really difficult to hide on a balance sheet. That means someone will want answers, and soon. It's the kind of money that starts to justify things like high altitude recon flights or satellite imaging, or extensive drone sweeps. It's the kind of money that stops a promising career in management in its tracks, and makes someone very bitter about the people doing it." Aswon took a quick swig of water before continuing.
"But they also know that they got hit with a technical attack. The local tribes wouldn't have been able to defeat the lock – they could only brute force their way into the cab – and if they examine the wreckage, they're not going to find that. And they certainly couldn't interface with the rigger system in the crane, or be able to program in the movement. So they know they're facing a technically advanced team, which means outsiders – either corporate or Shadowrunners. So they're going to start looking for tech now."
"Right. I thought that's what you were aiming at. That crane – that's the one that you mentioned Hunter, the only one that big on the continent?"
"Yeah. Small cranes are really common, easy to get hold of. Still expensive, but not rare. The small ones we crushed or blew up earlier – two hundred thousand or more each, but every major city is going to have a crane company for construction jobs or something like that. As you move up to the hundreds of tons range though, things get really expensive and correspondingly rarer. Just the physics and engineering of lifting that kind of weight and the experience needed means there's a really sharp drop off in lift capacity and rarity. Getting over a thousand tons of lift capacity is really rare and VERY expensive. Like, I've seen some gantry cranes at shipyards and stuff like that with bigger capacity, but while they can move around a little bit on site, they're normally mounted on rails which limits where they can go. An actual mobile crawler crane with that capacity – super rare. So yeah, I reckon that was more than likely the only one that big, or with that kind of capability, anywhere in Africa.
"Which means they're going to have to deal with the leadtime for the manufacturer on a replacement – because that's probably not the kind of equipment that even an international corp like Liebherr have in stock – and then still get it shipped down here to the port by cargo ship, offloaded and bought up in sections, then reassembled. We're talking weeks at a minimum, and maybe a couple of months before they can replace that asset." Aswon grinned at them. "Construction work, like mercenary operations and armies are more about logistics than anything else. Getting the right stuff into the right place at the right time is most of the battle. Anyway, we need to get to work on this cammo. Come on, Hunter."
While the two of them started to hunt for foliage and material to add to their camouflage, the others bedded down, getting some sleep and recovering from the hike through the forest. Tads unsurprisingly was up again at dawn, welcoming in the new day, thanking the night spirits as they departed before calling and bargaining with the spirits of the forests to protect them for the day to come – before curling back up in her nest of blankets like a tiny mouse. At first they thought she was going back to sleep, but her astral form materialised in front of them a moment later as she projected out of her body.
"I'm off to the clearing to see if there's a message or update from Phoss and Ury." Moments later she was gone, travelling the distance in a blink of an eye. Ten minutes later she was back, looking a little concerned. "No sign of them, no spirits or presence at all."
"Well, maybe they had to lay low on the return to their camp, wherever it is. I don't think we should worry just yet – but if they don't check in tonight we may have a problem. But one missed check-in isn't the end of the world." Aswon shrugged, and looked to Hunter, who nodded in agreement.
"Yeah, sometimes you just can't make a call to report in. Hold off to the next one and explain why. Maybe they ran into a patrol and had to go to ground, or there were choppers looking for them. Could be lots of reasons."
"I also had a thought. About what you were saying, Aswon – from your mercenary days."
"What I said?" Aswon frowned as he tried to think back on what he HAD said, and why it would have struck a chord with Tads. "What did I say?"
"About it being logistics. We know the roads are bad over here. And they're not flying really heavy stuff in – Marius has made it quite clear in the past we need to be careful with weight limits and things, so I know flying construction material isn't a good thing. But that leaves either rivers or rail. And the rivers we've seen are quite steep drops and very narrow and fast flowing – so there's no room for barges or hovercraft…"
"So logically they're bringing it all in by rail. From the port – over the old, existing rail lines, that they're working on extending."
"Yes – and that already has to cross some ravines or rivers I'm sure, lower down. Probably not as big a problem as up here, but they had to do it. So why don't we head down towards the port a bit and blow up some of those bridges to stop them bringing in new supplies."
"I dunno, Tads – you'd potentially need a lot of explosives. Trains can weight thousands of tons fully loaded, so the bridges are pretty sturdy and well built. I mean, sure, shape the charge well, and find a weakpoint – I'm sure I can help with that. But it could still be a tall order."
"I know, Hunter, but tell me – if you built a bridge, and someone scooped a massive hole out of the foundations, so all the earth was gone…" She left the thought hanging, and it Hunter grinned at her – he'd seen her digging out the tunnels back at the ranch, digging trenches for pipe and raising the ground to make a landing area for the tilt-wing. There was no reason why she couldn't also use her earth-shaping spell to carve out a huge section of ground under the piers of a bridge or the support section on either side of the main deck – neither of which would do the structure any good at all. Even more importantly, it was the kind of situation that engineers normally worked carefully on with surveyors and construction crews to avoid, to make sure it DIDN'T happen to their bridge – instead spending more time on strengthening their design against other hazards.
"I think you're onto something there. And you can do that as a ghost?"
"Not a ghost, it's astral projection – but no. If I'm in the astral plane, I can't interact with the physical one – not unless there's something active in both. I'd have to physically be there."
"So you want to take all the camo netting down?" Hunter sounded exasperated after having spent the last two hours improving it all.
"No – I think I ought to fly down. Use one of my other spells and turn into a bird, and physically fly down there."
"Oh." Hunter screwed up his face a little. "But when we get there, we'll have no gear or nothin'. That's gonna suck ass." His mouth dropped open a little. "And no clothes! Count me out!"
"I'll go with you. I don't think you should go alone, and I'm probably the best placed to be able to help with limited equipment." Aswon glanced sideways at Hunter who was holding onto his assault rifle defensively. "After all, all I need is a stick with a sharpened point."
"To do what?" Marius asked as he arrived, steaming cup of coffee in hand.
"To help guard Tads. We're thinking of going off to cause some trouble on the railway."
"Oh? We are not leaving then?" His face fell in disappointment, as he looked around the three of them. "I would have thought that with the damage caused so far, it would be sufficient to disrupt their plans sufficiently to stop the project."
"But what if they push back." Kai arrived, nursing his own cup of hot sweet tea, taking a sip and savouring the flavoured soy flakes gently dissolving in the water. "What if they do something to the local area – dust the whole forest with defoliants or something to flush out the insurgents – because of what we've done. That'd be our fault, and we should be responsible – and deal with it."
"On that – we might want to relocate. We've been here a couple of days, and struck at two of the closest camps. If they do start pushing patrols out or devoting serious effort to investigating the attacks, we might be a little close for comfort." Aswon gestured up at the netting. "We can take all this with us, and if we're in a similar kind of environment it'll work just as well. Just need to find a spot."
"I can do that – I'm certainly not turning into a bloody parrot and flapping off!" Hunter responded sharply, forcing Aswon and Tads to describe their plan again to the newcomers.
"I had hoped that we would be finished with this job by now. But even if we are not – we need a break soon. We have flown a lot of miles and the aircraft needs a service. Is overdue a service, in fact – there is only so much we can do in the field."
"You mean like taking the engines apart, like we did in Hong Kong?"
"Of a sort. Not stripped down to that level, but the work will involve more than just the engines – it will be spread out all over the aircraft. So we need proper facilities, a roof, tools, things like that. A full repair facility would be nice, but causes security implications. The ranch would suffice. But we need to build in time for this – or bad things will start to happen with the systems."
"Alright, noted. Oh, did anyone ever get to the bottom of the situation up in the space port place? Baikon-wottsit? Specifically who was firing missiles at us?"
"No. And I don't think we want to either. Poking our noses into that is probably going to bring more trouble to our doors than we'd save. Sounds like a bad thing to do." Aswon responded seriously, his eyebrows furrowing together as he frowned. He moved around a little as Shimazu approached, sipping at a water bottle and rubbing sleep from his eyes. "Seriously – that whole jump stunk, and I think we ought to leave it well alone. I'm not sure it matters if it was the security team shooting at us, or locals, or another team trying to clean things up. If we poke around, and Saeder-Krupp catches wind of it, we're just gonna end up with too much unwanted heat."
"Who did we get that job from again?"
"Sato, Kai. But he didn't know anything about it. And he paid us in full, without issue. I don't think he was the issue, or knew anything about it." Shimazu responded. "He's a good man, and I trust him – I cannot see him being involved in anything that would endanger us in that fashion. Not beyond the risks of the job that is. If it was a double-cross, he knew nothing about it." His words were quiet but spoken with assurance and a cast-iron belief.
"Don't worry, Shimazu – I don't think anyone doubts Sato – and if there was a double-cross, it makes sense he would have been kept out of it. But it's not like that kind of thing doesn't happen, is it? That the fixer doesn't know the whole story, or the original contractor tries to tie up loose ends – or what they see as loose ends."
"No, it's not. But if I found out that someone has treated us, and Sato like that…" There was a creak from the haft of his sword as his massive hand clenched on the ancient rope bindings, and his meaning was entirely clear to the rest of the team.
"Anyway. Enough of that – so what are you planning on doing to the railroad?"
"Simple enough plan, Kai. I'll go astrally, and look for some likely spots, try and find bridges over rivers or chasms or something. Manifest when I'm sure there's nobody there to get a good look at how they actually are put together. Then come back here and show Hunter – get him to advise me on how they work. Then I transform Aswon into a bird, then myself – and we fly down there. Change back to normal, and then shape the earth around the bridges to destroy them. Turn back into birds, and get away."
"Can't you cast the spell while you're still a bird?"
"In theory, yes. But it's much harder… it's like trying to do something else while juggling, it's a distraction, and makes it much harder to concentrate. Much easier to only do one thing at a time."
"And hard enough its still better to have to take the time and difficulty to cast the extra spells to change?"
"Yes. While I'm trying to hold a spell up, there's a part of my mind that is constantly dealing with it, shaping and guiding the mana, keeping it doing what it should be doing. That's why I can't sleep, can't even relax properly while holding up an illusion or something. It just needs too much focus."
"Ahh, so that's why you keep going on about those foci to hold your spells for you." Kai saw Tads nod in agreement. "Well, ok – only you know what's going on in your head… but it sounds simple enough I suppose. And it will mess up their efforts to get supplies up here! So it sounds like a good idea. Just don't be too long. We need to be ready to move."
"Are we done here, then?" Marius asked hopefully.
"No. We need to be ready to move from here, this spot. Maybe to somewhere else on the mountain, maybe further away. I'm not sure yet."
"Oi, Aswon. Do you need to talk to your god and stuff?" Hunter glanced over while his little finger forced itself up one massive nostril and started to dig around, making the flesh bulge and ripple. When it was removed there was a large blob of nasal gunk impregnated with spores. "Bloody things clogging up my filters." Aswon shuddered and turned his face away while Hunter flicked the snot away and shoved the finger back in his nose, cleaning out the other nostril.
"What do you mean, my god?" He refused to make eye contact – Hunter might be a good man (or ork) to have by your side in a fight, and he had plenty of useful skills – but he did lack any kind of social graces at all, and seemed not to realise what kind of image he gave off to others. Either that or he was supremely indifferent to how he presented himself.
"God, y'know. The thing that sent you visions and stuff, and told you to come here."
"If by talk to my god, you mean my totem – then no. The totem…well, it doesn't work like that. And word won't have spread overland yet, not based on what has happened so far. So I think we'll need to wait before the shaman and our totem understand what's going on here. They probably don't even know the mountain is protected by a powerful spirit now, and may not know that for some time."
"So we have to wait a bit?" Hunter asked, getting a nod from Aswon. A sudden tirade of muttered cursing in guttural German made him turn to watch Marius stalking back towards the tilt-wing. "I think Marius wants to get out of here. Just some subtle feeling I've got…"
Tads meanwhile had found a comfy spot and had projected out of her body, zooming down the mountain in the blink of an eye to find the railroad as it wound its way up the foothills, cutting through the jungle like a surgical scar.
Way down the line there were four very large bridges crossing major rivers – but not only were the bridges huge structures that looked dauntingly big to try and sabotage, they were also a long way from their current position. Whatever bird she managed to turn them into would have to fly a considerable distance to reach there, and the longer they were away, the greater the chance for something to go wrong. But, closer to the mountain she did find at least a pair of bridges, one crossing a deep ravine and the other a fast-flowing mountain stream that was busy cutting a deep chasm. Neither were more than twenty metres wide, but both were quite high, and would require a significant effort to repair. She checked around carefully, then seeing nobody moving around, manifested and examined the bridges carefully, moving around to check on them from all sides. Once she had taken in as much detail as she could, she headed back to camp, reclaimed her body and grabbed Hunter.
It didn't take more than a few minutes for her to make an illusion of the bridges for Hunter to grab an image off, and import into his computer to create a model with, and then with a mindlink she was able to show him close up memories and views from the underside, top and even inside the bridge supports, letting him get an excellent idea of how they'd been constructed. He went to work, analysing the design and working out where the weakest point was in the two bridges, and established where the least amount of earth movement would cause the maximum destruction. Once he'd come up with some engineering plans, he walked Tads through them, highlighting the three-dimensional model to show what she needed to do to cripple the two bridges.
Once she'd absorbed the information, she found Aswon and they prepared, finding somewhere quiet and getting undressed. Tads still felt uncomfortable with her badly-mauled flesh, but Aswon had seen her before and understood her issues, perhaps better than anyone else on the team. He undressed facing away from her, keeping watch on the forest, waiting for her to cast her spell. She smiled at him, hoping that he understood her gratitude, then pulled in the mana from the surrounding area and channelled it into him, watching as his lanky form transmogrified into a large Imperial Eagle. Their hunting efforts in the mountains and the time spent with the creature before delivering it to the zoo paid off, and the change was relatively simple. When she'd completed the spell, she cast again, transforming herself. It was a little trickier, making sure the various other spell foci stayed attached to her body – if they broke contact, the magical link would be lost and the spell would fail. But, she ended up a moment later with the two rings securely around her legs, riding just above her large and brutally sharp talons.
With a cry, they took wing, gracefully flying out under the canopy into the brilliant sunshine beyond, riding a thermal high up into the sky before Tads broke off and led them west, picking up speed and soaring down the mountain. At least by choosing a large predator like this they were pretty much at the top of the food chain – short of being hunted by a metahuman, there would be relatively few creatures that would pose a threat to them.
They flew about sixty kilometres down towards the coast, Tads leading the way and Aswon following close behind her, their eyes scanning the terrain below for threats, but finding none.
Arriving at the first gorge, the pair of eagles circled twice, looking down at the area below before swooping down and landing in one of the largest trees in the area. Sitting next to each other on the topmost branch, they waited, letting a few more minutes pass by. Finally convinced the area was clear, they dropped down to the ground and Tads released the spells, transforming them both back into their normal forms. From there they crept forward to the edge of the trees and into view of the bridge, and Tads went to work. Mana flowed through her as she shaped the earth, pulling compacted soil and rocks down from underneath the pilings and moving it to the sides. The bridge creaked and groaned ominously as the foundations it was built upon were disturbed, moved and then removed almost entirely. Cracks appeared up the main pilings as the weight of the bridge shifted, placing strain on components that were never designed for that kind of load, and shortly afterwards there was an explosive noise as a concrete tie was popped open under the extreme tension. More cracks radiated out from the pieces that now lacked support, and the entire bridge started to sag. It wasn't the dramatic failure she'd been expecting, but the bridge's structural integrity had clearly been destroyed. She spent a minute slowly cleaning her spell signature away, then they ghosted back into the trees.
Two minutes later, the pair of eagles emerged from under the canopy, flapping hard to gain altitude and turned south-west, heading towards the second nearby bridge. This was a slightly different design, crossing the fast-flowing river that would eventually make its way down to the ocean. Once again they descended carefully, spent a minute or two observing, and then moved into position. The rocks were moved in a slightly different way, Tads wasn't sure why, but Hunter had been firm that the engineering stresses were very dissimilar due to the design used. Instead of the central pier foundations, this time she scooped out the earth and rock under each end of the bridge, weakening the structure there. Her spell didn't work on the concrete castings – only on the natural material, but eventually all of the bridge interfaced somewhere with normal earth and rock, and she could affect that. It took longer than the first, as she had to dig deeper – but the results when they came were much more gratifying and immediate. There was a similar set of groans and murmurs from the bridge, the noise of girders and concrete sections under immense forces. As she moved a large rock that had been underpinning the massive cermacrete foundations on the left side of the gorge, the bridge quivered and a large section in the middle popped up into the air. Neither she nor Aswon had any idea how much it weighed, but it had to be a lot – and she wondered just what kind of stresses the structure was experiencing to make it do that.
As it sprang up though, the carefully balanced and co-ordinated forces that kept the bridge together were disrupted. Concrete ties holding the rails together shattered in a series of bangs that sounded almost like gunshots, and the rails twisted and deformed as the stresses were transferred to them. The middle section of the bridge ripped further upwards, eventually sliding free of the two rising arches from the sides. With the keystone of the arch now removed, the two sides collapsed away from the bank, crashing down into the river below in a cloud of dust and a mass of shattered ties and structural beams, with the now unsupported middle section following a moment later. Water immediately started to back up behind the impromptu dam, the waters rising swiftly, while a few jets of water burst through the debris. The mounting pressure of the river behind them turned the tiny cracks into hoses, sending water streaming metres into the air, the jet of water breaking up and turning into a cascade of mist and forming half a dozen rainbows that filled half of their field of vision.
Tads was just casting the spells to transform them into Eagles once more when the watcher arrived on scene – catching her at exactly the wrong moment. Mid-way through shaping the spell, she hadn't masked it yet, and the aura of the spell was clearly visible around them. It screamed and shot off to the east, following the line of the railroad. She dropped the spell, and Aswon reverted to his normal form.
"Drek – follow it?"
"I can't go astral and leave the spells up – so no. I'm not leaving you here naked and alone watching my body. Let's hide!" She pointed towards the trees.
"They'll have a hell of a time spotting us from astral amongst all of that, for sure. Just the sheer amount of life… but let's go over there instead!" Aswon gestured to a stand of trees on the other side of the line, offset from their position. They sprinted that way, two naked people crossing the open land of the railroad and then heading for the line of thick bushes and grasses. Aswon disappeared into the dense vegetation. Tads paused for a moment and surveyed the scene, checking that she had managed to remove all of her spell signature, before she followed him. He managed to locate a massive leafy bush and had wormed into it from the far side, using the living material as a shield against astral observation and providing excellent physical camouflage as well.
A minute later two astral forms appeared above the ruined bridge, decelerating rapidly to a halt.
"One of those is the mage from the other night. I recognise his aura – the one that got hit with a blast. He still looks a little wounded from it. Other one looks fresh though, and more powerful," Tads hissed to Aswon.
"They have friends too. Elementals. Enough for the both of them." They did a quick count, trying to keep track of the whirling elementals as they appeared and disappeared from view, moving across the scene and being obscured by the cover.
"At least four air elementals, a bit stronger than our normal spirits – but they're not great forms. But the others I think belong to the new mage – and those fire elementals are quite strong. Stronger than the big spirit I normally call to guard the tilt-wing." They watched as the elementals formed up with the mages in a line and swept across the bridge and the gorge, moving slowly and examining the scene.
"Looking for signatures or clues as to what happened?"
"I think so, Aswon. Do we stay here?"
"Yeah. If we fly out, they could spot us and give chase. Best to wait them out I think, we're a good distance from them, and they seem to be focussed on the bridge itself. I don't think that watcher would have given them a good description of what it saw."
"Ok."
"If it comes to it, Tads – can you take them?"
"I'm not sure. Maybe if they rush us, and I can catch the elementals in a stun-ball, I can weaken them a bit. But it's not a good spell to use against magical creatures like that. I can call a spirit or two – but most of them are up guarding the camp."
"If you need to – leave me here to distract them – I'll run. You can get back to camp in a second, collect the spirits and be back here before I've left the area and hit them from behind."
"Let's hope it doesn't come to that…"
They waited and watched, observing as the two mages examined the scene carefully, looking for traces of the spells or effect used to bring about the destruction.
"Uh-oh."
"What is it, Aswon?"
"I can hear something coming… a train." It was another thirty seconds before her ears could pick up the faint sounds of the approaching locomotive as it laboured up the one percent grade of the line. It rumbled closer, and then one of the mages perked up, looking down the line and gesticulating wildly at the other. Aswon struggled to hear his voice as he spoke to the second mage, the one wounded in the attack, over the noise of the forest and the approaching train – but it sounded like a command to go and warn the control centre. Certainly the second mage blinked away in an instant.
"I don't fancy his chances of getting a message through in time…"
"Me neither. I hope it's a freight train."
"Nothing we can do about that, though. It will be what it will be."
When the train came approached, it was thundering along at seventy kilometres per hour, taking advantage of the level grade on the section near the bridge to build up some speed for the next climb. The enemy mage manifested, along with his elementals, waving frantically while the elementals span and bounced around, signal fires that definitely would have caught the driver's attention. The driver, though, caught the warning late, only throwing on the brakes when he was about a hundred metres from the bridge. Unfortunately the stopping distance for the train at that speed was closer to two hundred metres, and though the train had slowed significantly, it hadn't stopped when it hit the distorted section of rails. The wheels were thrown, and the engine lurched sideways, jumping the tracks and then arcing downwards into the ravine, pulling the carriages behind it along and over the edge, each one of them bouncing off the rails in turn and being thrown sideways as they hit the flexing rails. The carriages folded in a zig-zag, each one pulling the one behind along and over the edge of the drop.
"Come on, we should take advantage of the distraction." Aswon didn't wait, but squirmed out of the bush and took off at a steady lope, keeping to a pace he knew Tads could keep up with. He glanced behind him after twenty metres and saw her running along fast behind him, her face slightly ashen as she contemplated what had just happened. He increased the pace slightly, making her concentrate wholly on keeping up with him as he ran through the forest, crashing through bushes and leaping roots, concentrating on being away from the terrible sounds of carnage behind them and getting to somewhere they could transform back into birds.
The journey back took them much longer to achieve – flying a very indirect route that nearly doubled the distance flown, and that gave them a lot of time to reflect on what they'd done. Aswon wasn't especially pleased with the idea of that much death, but he'd seen plenty of destruction in his career, and he had very little sympathy for the people destroying his homeland. Tads, though – he was more than a little worried about how this might affect her…
They made it back to camp in the early afternoon, landing and transforming back into their human forms and getting dressed, then hurrying to the others to report in. The rest of the team had been doing maintenance on the tilt-wing and their equipment, studying maps, working out and practicing various skills. Tads pulled up a tri-phantasm and shaped it into the damage done at both bridges, showing the rest of the team what had happened and also detailing the arrival of the mages and their entourage of elementals, and then the train crash.
"Well, we have confirmation of their magical potential now. They've clearly got at least two mages here, and they're responding to alerts with a load of elementals to cover them. Maybe there was some sensor or something on the bridge that made them send the watcher out that spotted us. But they're responding with a big pack of power, and being ready to fight." Tads cleared the images away from her phantasm, and then showed one of her spirits at an arbitrary size, before placing the air and fire elementals next to it, showing their larger presences as a visual gauge of power.
At dusk, Tads headed down to the clearing again, looking around to see if there was a messenger – but still there was no sign of Phoss or Ury, and after waiting a few minutes she headed back to the team.
"That's two check-ins now. We might need to move." Hunter glanced around the rest of them. "If they've been captured or compromised, it might be a matter of time before they give up the location."
"Finally, we can get out of here." Marius headed to the craft and started preparing systems, but Tads held up a hand before anyone else could move. "I'm going to head back at least for a few minutes. Just in case." She headed out again, but this time took a significant number of spirits with her – just in case. Arriving back at the clearing she saw a watcher spirit circling the camp, muttering under its breath.
"Oh I'm late, late, late. Later than I was told. Oh this is bad, bad, bad. Late, bad, late, bad." The voice droned on and on, until she lowered into the clearing and coughed to attract it's attention. "Oh, you're here! I was worried. Late and worried. Worried because I was late. Which is bad. And late. Oh I was so worried!" It burbled on at her for another long rambling moment until she could interrupt it.
"Is there a message?"
"Oh yes. They want to talk. But they were held up, and sent me. But I was late you see. So very late. They told me to be careful, but maybe I was too careful. It made me late. Very, very late." That sent it off into a spiral again until she could float down and interrupt it, raising her voice to get through to the simple creature.
"Go and tell the people who sent you that I will be here, and I will wait for them. Go, now. Go!" She ushered it out of the clearing and it turned and fled. She blinked back to camp herself, forgoing the normal dogleg, and appeared in front of Aswon.
"They were running late. Coming back for a chat now. Will be back soon – but hold position for the moment." She saw him nod, then flitted back to the clearing, waiting. Moments later, Phoss appeared astrally, looking slightly ruffled.
"Sorry, we've had a busy day. Was concerned we'd missed you."
"Don't worry about it – we were a little concerned, but nothing to worry about. This is why we set up a place to talk, right?"
"Yes. We've noticed increased security at the camps – several of them have had air deliveries today, new personnel and gear. By the looks of things, lots of new electronics turning up. We've been trying to get a closer look – but we think we tripped off one of their alarms and had to evade for a while. By the details we did grab it looks like more electronic sensors and drones are being deployed, so you might want to be careful on approaching the camps now – there's probably going to be more sensors and trip wires and things to contend with."
"Ok, noted. I'll warn the rest. We've had a busy day as well by the way. Earlier on, Aswon and I…" she quickly detailed their damage to the bridges and the derailment of the train, and the likely impact on the logistics of the corporate forces, along with the additional elementals spotted.
"Excellent stuff!" If Phoss had any qualms about the potential deaths on the trains, she certainly wasn't showing it. "That will slow down their food supplies, spare parts, additional staff – that's really going to help out. The roads are shockingly bad up here, and that's going to hit them hard, and really stretch their air assets as well. That buys us more time. And the magical reinforcements aren't unanticipated. We'll have to adapt, of course – but we can continue to push the pace up here."
"That's everything from our side."
"Very good, Tads. We'll meet again in the morning – hopefully without being late." She gave an apologetic shrug, then turned and swiftly zoomed off, leaving Tads alone in the darkness. She waited a few more seconds and then headed back herself, taking an indirect route this time, just in case. Once she was back at the camp she quickly passed on the information, and much to Marius's disgust Kai issued a hold order, keeping them in place for another night.
Not long afterwards, one of the local hunters who'd been on perimeter guard appeared with a newcomer. He was from Surok's tribe, and their camp was closest to the top of the mountain. He headed over to Surok and spoke enthusiastically with her for a minute, before she turned and bought him over to the team.
"My hunter here was watching the camp at the top of the mountain when the attack went in. He had the foresight to take his commlink with him, and had found a position with a good view of the sight. He says the attack was… interesting, and has recorded it. I thought you might want to see."
"Yes, we've been very curious!" Kai grinned at them both. "Good thought, and thank you for bringing this to us." He gestured and the tribesman hit the playback button, and the screen lit up, but showed nothing but blackness with the occasional smear of light on the ten centimetre wide screen. "Would you mind if we took this? I have someone very good with computers, who might be able to improve the quality somewhat, and maybe play it back on something bigger." With a nod from Surok, he handed over his battered and ancient device and Kai in turn passed it to Hunter. He patched it into his deck and extracted the data from the file system, then started to analyse it, trying to boost the quality of the footage, adjust the exposure and contrast to make it visible and applied some enhancements to cut down on the camera shake.
"Guess you had this on maximum zoom, right. Were you up a tree or something?" The local nodded at Hunter, who grunted and then slipped the datajack into his port, and went to work with his programs. "Figured as much, lots of movement and jitter. I can do something about this, but don't expect trid-movie quality, right? Take me a few minutes to stabilise the image and re-render it, but I can do something. Gimme ten minutes…"
The team fed and watered the messenger, watching him gratefully accept the food and water. He'd been on the move all day, it seemed, taking a route through the deep forest to get down from the top construction site to the village, and then heading here, trying to avoid any open areas, roads or patrols.
Soon enough Hunter was ready, and he projected the footage onto the side of the tilt-wing, getting his deck to play back the audio. It wasn't great quality, but it was a lot better than the raw footage on the old device, and at least the screen was large enough now for everyone to see. He'd also managed to trim away the dead footage at the start of the file, and it launched straight into the action.
A small light-coloured blob appeared to the right of the image, rolling up towards the fence. The camp was a lot larger than those lower down the mountain, and they could see the posts were taller and sturdier – and it looked like a series of footings were in for a second fence a few metres outside the primary – a typical feature of many extra-territorial sites. The blob rolled into the fence, causing it to bulge and deform and the posts to quiver, showing up as dark blur on the image. The blackness of the night had become a washed-out grey as Hunter had adjusted the light levels to show detail, giving it a very grainy and slightly surreal look. For a moment the blob stopped, straining against the fence, until with a heave the fence burst open, a large section of the chainlink fence ripped down from the posts and laying on the floor, with a few arcs of electricity visible rising up the length of the exposed posts.
An alarm sounded, and a moment later searchlights came on, aiming in the general direction of the breach before homing in on the hole. The lighting levels changed, the sky returning to black as the light of the security systems gave enough ambient energy for the commlink to record data properly. The blob continued to roll forwards, heading towards a few large cylinders contained in a separate fenced area, moving slowly across the ground.
"Is that Pebble?" Kai asked.
"I'm guessing so. I mean at this kind of range, the footage is only one or two pixels wide, so there's no detail. But it was consistently detecting it as a source, so it's not some weird artifact of the camera. And it kinda fits." Hunter paused the video for a moment, and the view zoomed in on the blob, just revealing a bigger lump of brighter pixels.
"Can't you enhance it?"
"No, Kai. There is no magic 'enhance' button. You can do some stuff, sure – but you can't put in detail that was never captured."
"Rubbish. Obviously need to get you a better computer or something. Anyway, carry on…" Hunter scowled at Kai, recognising a humorous jab when he saw one and set the video playing again. The blob continued to move – or probably roll – towards the aircraft park, when a four wheel drive vehicle came speeding down the grounds, sliding to a halt broadside on to the blob and opening up with gunfire. Bright flashes from the muzzles matched the flickering motes of light as rounds impacted on the blob and bounced off into the ground or flew through the air. As the vehicle skidded to a halt, all four members of the security detail were pouring fire into the blob – seemingly without effect.
The ground erupted, bursting open and the blob raised up into the air. The picture shimmered for a moment, and the top and bottom of the image disappeared, collapsing in until only about a third of the picture remained, showing just how much the camera had moved in shock and surprise by how heavily Hunter had had to crop and stabilise the picture. A brutal column of black rock rose up, ten metres high from the ground. The searchlights hit the column, revealing dark, jagged rocks that thrust out from a central core, spines and shafts of razor sharp obsidian or basalt, clustered tightly in vertical lines, almost forming a ring of buttresses around the centre.
The car suddenly rocked as a finger of rock exploded out from the column, a flickering lash of stone arcing down and slamming into the vehicle like a falling axe-head. Shards of rock burst outwards, driving into the four guards and spearing into their bodies, sending chunks of flesh outwards as they were sliced into chunks by the mad motion of the rocks. It was like watching a blender being thrust into their bodies on the ends of a long shaft of rock, as each one of them was dismembered in a fraction of a second, not giving them time to react. The vehicle burst into flames as the methane tank was hit and a spark ignited the high-pressure gas, adding a wash of colour to the scene as blue flames danced across the ground, sending the back end of the vehicle spinning around as it was propelled by the impromptu jet engine. With all four of the guards dealt with, the finger of rock retracted, folding into the column once more and then the whole rocky edifice submerged back into the ground, leaving only the light-coloured blob on the surface, to resume it's unconcerned rolling towards its destination.
"A mighty pebble indeed," Aswon whispered under his breath, then repeating it a little louder as he turned to grin at the assembled shaman. "I apologise for doubting you. Clearly, the name is apt." All three of them returned his grin, clearly enjoying the show. As Aswon returned his attention to the displayed image, he saw the blob reach the fence and rip it apart just the same as the outer fence. More security forces were heading that way, the bouncing headlights of half-a-dozen vehicles closing quickly. They arrived just in time to see the column of rock thrust up again, high into the sky and then start striking at the buildings. As Pebble started to take fire, lumps of rock were flung from the core, shards of brittle rock striking the guards and exploding like a fragmentation grenade and even over the distance between the watching native and the fighting, their keening screams could be heard.
Fire was light and intermittent, with many of the guards holding back – and a moment later the team realised why as a spotlight strafed over to show more of the compound. The cylinders were the fuel tanks, laid out in a neat pattern with spaces between each one. The slashing rocks arced out from the spirit, though, slicing deep into the tanks and opening up large slits in the higher sections, sending sparks flying in all directions. A moment later, the first fireball launched into the sky as one of the sparks hit a critical mass of evaporating gas, and the screen almost whited out as the camera struggled to correct for the sudden influx of light.
The next few moments were scenes of rampant destruction as each of the tanks were breached one after another, the column of rock sliding across the ground like a bizarre shark's fin, seemingly attached to some massive force under the ground. The fireballs intensified and rose up into the sky, and the team realised exactly what they'd seen that had triggered their own attacks further down the mountain.
Once all the tanks were ablaze, the column of rock turned and raced across the ground, striking at each of the vehicles in turn. Now that the tanks were ablaze, the guards no longer held back, firing with all their might at the scythe of death that moved across their camp. Their bullets and grenades appeared to do nothing though, and the attack was relentless, destroying each of the vehicles in turn and despatching the crew with ruthless efficiency.
When everything was dead, the column descended once more, and they saw Pebble rolling towards the buildings further to the south east, directly away from the viewing position. It was hard to see now – the camera work was indistinct and blurry, but they could make out more signs of destruction as temporary buildings were bodily thrown into the air, split in half and upended and large machinery was left twisted and buckled. The rampage wandered all over the camp, seeking out any sign of foreign life and destroying it utterly. When it was all done, the column dropped once again, and the blob rolled back towards its starting point, wending its way around burning sections of car, wrecked equipment and dismembered corpses, all without a care in the world.
The playback ended, and it fell quiet for a moment as everyone absorbed what they'd just seen.
"You know… that's… well it puts things in perspective. I've often wondered how Aden managed to destroy Tehran when they declared their jihad against him. And now I wonder if he had a couple of spirits like that with him – well, I wonder why so much of the city is still standing." Kai shook his head. "I can imagine their bullets were bouncing off him, and even if they had some armour-piercing available, it wouldn't have done them any good." He whistled, then turned to Marius. "Cost estimate?"
"They lost six cargo choppers, probably one million each. I could make out four trucks, two cranes, two dozers and a set of three pile drivers. Probably at least another two and a half million there, at least. Add in the accommodation blocks, and probably some command and control facilities, security systems… I would say another ten million in costs for that attack, at a minimum."
"So with the first attack that Phoss and Ury did, our attack and then this… we're looking at around twenty million Nuyen I reckon. That's gonna sting!"
"It's also going to upset everyone in their corp. So, I'm going to open the door to the tilt-wing and we're all going through the ward. Including the shaman and the local hunters – just in case." Tads marched over to the tilt-wing and slid open the two side doors, and then started marshalling people through, forcing them to step through the unwarded door, cross over the fuselage and climb down through the ward on the other side and back to the forest floor. If anyone was in the middle of a magical ritual to try and find them, the trail should be thoroughly disrupted as their essence moved through the powerful defences.
They bedded down for the night, but this time one of the team stood guard along with the local hunters, keeping an eye on the situation around the camp. At dawn the next morning, Tads checked in with Phoss again, and she passed over a description of the attack by Pebble – much to Phoss' apparent enjoyment. Beyond that though, there was no pressing intelligence to pass on either way, so they headed back to their respective camps.
When she returned, she saw that the rest of the team were up and about, checking on their gear and equipment. Marius was fussing over the tilt-wing, and making a list of tasks to carry out when he had access to the proper equipment, while Aswon was working with the local hunters on spotting electronic equipment and sensor networks. Shimazu was training with Kai, trying to help him improve his skills with the blade, and Hunter was busy on his deck, doing something. Once she'd reported back that there was no real news, she sought out Malik, Surkok and Farik, continuing their training and showing them more of the fomulae she had learnt that were very easy to pick up.
Hunter unjacked from his deck a few minutes later and stared at Tads – or rather the back of her head. His jaw worked from side to side a little, as he played back the news report he'd seen while he was checking the matrix feeds that morning, wondering if he should tell her about the report on the train crash. The report indicated a major terrorist attack, with all kinds of hyperbole from the local reporters, and the news story was being played for all it was worth, milking the economic costs on one hand and playing up the human-interest side on the other, with emotive interviews with "family" members wailing and crying at the loss of their loved ones. The reported death toll was over five hundred, and was being firmly categorised as an 'atrocity', with the government pledging to hunt down the terrorists that had caused it. Hunter smelt corporate drek all over the report though – the footage shown was all very close up stuff, focussing on mangled bodies amidst the wreckage, and there was almost nothing shown from a wide angle to display the carnage – the only 'long' shots were from the tracks, showing the absence of the bridge and the buckled rails, along with some debris from the train bogeys. He suspected it was all corporate manipulation, so in the end he decided not tell her – she'd probably believe it hook line and sinker, and that wouldn't do them any good at all.
It did make him wonder though, so he grabbed Kai once he'd sat down for a break from sparring and explained his thoughts, and from the look on Kai's face, it seemed as though the team leader agreed with him. Enough so that he called a halt to his training (not that avoiding hard work took much effort to enforce where Kai was concerned), slipping on a 'trode net and joining Hunter into the matrix. Kai's avatar tagged along on his coat-tails as he plummeted through the neon landscape, descending into the hidden underworld of Shadowland, the distributed set of datahavens that catered to the seedy world of corporate espionage and mercenary operations.
They spent a while working through some of the special interest groups, the corporate watch files and followed up on some snippets of conversation, leading them down rabbit holes for seemingly unrelated gossip in various locations around the world. Kai felt somewhat uneasy here – the posters to the system had their own quirks and language, and his skills were not as effective as they normally would be – in fact he was shockingly surprised at how erudite and persuasive Hunter was here. His digital animus was smoother and much less offensive than the real-life meat-sack, and he seemed to have something of a reputation that opened doors to hidden parts of the network, or gave him access to people and resources.
What felt like days passed as they zipped around talking to people, but when Hunter guided them back to the satellite downlink and they could jack out, only about ninety minutes had passed. They spent another ten minutes going through their data, before calling over the rest of the team.
"Right. After last night being quiet, I was thinking about us heading off fairly soon – yes, stop grinning, Marius. But it looked like there wasn't much going on, and with the footage of the spirit attack, it's quite clear that he, or she, can go through the rest of the camps like a hot knife through yak's butter, and it doesn't look like the Novatech forces can stop that from happening. So if we're not needed any more – then our work here is done."
"I will get the engines warmed up."
"Not so fast Marius, I'm afraid it's not that simple."
"Yes, it is. The spirit is powerful. Novatech are screwed. We can go home – simple."
"No, it's not. Hunter – you want to explain what you found?"
"Sure. It's not certain, but digging around on the matrix this morning, we spotted a bunch of data. Nothing conclusive – lots of hearsay and rumours, but it's all pointing towards the same thing." He rolled out the screen and bought up a map of the world. "Right – Novatech HQ, in Boston. That's where Villiers is normally based, and a lot of their corporate assets are located, at least for the UCAS. Someone there leaked some information that there was a bunch of corporate activity there last night, with jets, tilt-wings and ground vehicles flying around all over the place. It's never quiet there – it's the HQ for one of the ten biggest companies in the world, operating in every time-zone. But they have regional HQs to counter that. But someone was burning the midnight oil there."
"Next, we've got some information about a whole bunch of really pissed businessmen and tourists, who got bumped off of a sub-orbital flight from Boston to Milan. Novatech Europe is managed out of London, but their second biggest office… is Milan. And it looks like someone flexed their corporate muscle to get priority seats for about half the capacity on that sub-orbital, boosting a whole bunch of people over to Europe."
"So next we check up on the Milan office, and guess what was happening there all night as well. Yup – lots of activity, including a whole bunch of freight shipments and personnel transfers going on, until early this morning. And when the sub-orbital lands, there's a big old convoy of taxis and corporate cars ferrying people from the international terminal to the Novatech facility, that some kind soul uploaded for us."
"A little while after that, there's some ELINT reported," Hunter paused for a moment, looked at Tads and cocked an eyebrow.
"Electronic intelligence?" She said past a screwed up face as she tried to recall some of the things Hunter had told her about.
"Right! Good, so yeah, ELINT reveals that Novatech have a Hawker-Siddley Skybus parked on the end of their runway at the facility. That's a big old bird for such a diddy runway – normally bulk-freight comes out of the main airport. But they've got this big-ass freight bird sitting on the runway, being loaded up directly. That kind of thing plays merry hell with schedules – so it has to be important. And a little later on, we have reports of a large freight aircraft taking off from the facility going over a residential area and breaking some windows – because of the take-off boost rockets strapped to the side. That means it's packed with gear and they needed the extra thrust to get off the ground on the short strip, and they've got a pilot on there who's cool as ice. And that means it was really important…"
"Let me guess. The aircraft was heading roughly south?" Marius sighed, and sat down heavily in his chair, his expression dropping.
"Yup – pretty much on a direct bearing from Milan south towards Abuja, an international airport with a nice long runway, about five hundred klicks north west of here, and a lot closer than the main airport at Lagos. Journey of four thousand kilometres from Milan, so easily doable for the aircraft, even with a max load of cargo."
"So we've got reinforcements coming?" Aswon stated. Kai nodded to him, picking up the conversation again.
"Yep. And from there, the comments got a lot more tenuous and non-specific, but they all seemed to fit a pattern. Pallets of bulky goods, heavy stuff. Management type staff, but lots of young, fit, lean people with short hair, too. You know, special operative types of folks. It looks like someone at Novatech is pulling out all the stops to get some reinforcements in-country and to stop us doing what we're doing. And I'm betting that in with those smart management types are a bunch of wizards, who'll be doing their best to deal with our little rocky friend."
"So, what do you want us to do?"
"I think we have to be ready to move, Aswon, at a moment's notice. Either to relocate to avoid detection ourselves, or to be ready to support Phoss and Ury, or to strike at a camp if opportunity arises. They're clearly not at the point of pulling out yet – they're reinforcing and pouring more money into the operation, and that's not what we want at all!"
There was a disturbance to one side of the camp, and one of the perimeter guards came in supporting another tribesman who looked fit to drop dead. His skin was scored with shallow cuts and superficial wounds, and his chest rose and fell rapidly as he gasped for breath. In someone who looked as fit and limber as Aswon, that was quite worrying…
Malik ran over to him, recognising him as one of his own villagers, and between lungful's of breath managed to get the story from him.
"The corporate men, turned up at our village with trucks and many guns. They started to question them, became angry. Then they started to shoot some of them. This is when he ran, to come and find us. It looks like they are going to kill my village. I must go."
"No, Malik – you stay here. Team – dustoff in 2 minutes!" Kai's voice changed, dropping in to a no nonsense voice of command that the locals had never heard before, and the team rarely enough. "We're responsible for these people, let's go sort this mess out."
Marius ran for the tilt-wing, already accessing the systems remotely and starting to warm up the electronics and run the pre-start on the engines. Shimazu, Hunter and Aswon ran to get the camo nets down, enlisting the help of whoever was in camp to assist with getting the netting down off the aircraft as quickly as possible. Tads meanwhile followed Marius, climbing inside the aircraft and then sitting in her seat, connecting up the restraining harness as quickly as she could. If Marius had taken off when she got back, getting into her body would be difficult – but it was worth the risk. She vaulted her essence out of her body and sped north.
With no exact location on the village, she zipped out on the bearing indicated by Malik, working on a probable radius of about ten kilometres. From the state of the runner, he'd been going flat out – but he was used to a hard life of physical exertion and moving on foot. So probably a thirty minute run, giving her a rough distance. Of course that was still a huge amount of territory – but it was a whole village, so she expected it to be a clearing somewhere, or at least open on one or two sides.
It was, it turned out, relatively easy to spot – partly because the village was out in the open, in a large clearing in the forest. But also because of the black aura of death surrounding the thankfully few bodies lying in the mud face down, with the back of their heads blown open. The warping of astral space surrounding the execution spots made them stand out against the generally pleasant astral background of the natural forest. Tads dropped down to tree level and moved in cautiously, aware that there was probably magical security about now.
Sure enough, she spotted two of the high-force fire elementals hovering over the clearing. Neither were physically present, instead maintaining a presence only in astral space, but presumably with orders to engage any astral activity they spotted or report any interlopers. She stayed hidden, and had a look around, trying to get in as many details as possible that would be relevant. Once she had the details memorised, she flitted back to her body, slamming into it with abnormal suddenness as the aircraft started to roll out from under the trees, the propellors already building up to speed. She listened for a moment to make sure nobody else was talking, then keyed her microphone.
"Found the camp, about ten kilometres north of here, not that far from one of the construction camps. Its in a clearing, roughly oval in shape, with a dirt road going through it, from I think north-west to south-east. About twenty huts, spread around the clearing, roughly even split north and south of the road. There are three bodies in the centre of the camp, executed, by what looks like a single gunshot to the back of the head. Two powerful fire elementals hovering over the centre, in astral, watching out for activity. On the ground were two of the big construction trucks, and I could see people being loaded into them tied up with wire or something – they're being packed in by the security forces at gunpoint. There's at least half a dozen off-road vehicles, and I counted at least thirty corporate security on the ground, all armed with guns – not as big as Hunter's, probably more like the one that Nadia was using. No sign of the mage, but that just meant they're probably in one of the vehicles out of sight. It's what I would do. No obvious sign of a leader or manager, but the security forces have the locals lining up in a big queue to tie them up and load them into the trucks."
The engines were screaming as Marius powered up to max, and with a jolt they lurched into the air, spinning rapidly on the spot and then accelerating quickly as the engines rotate forward. Each of them in the back felt their heads tilt to the side as they accelerated, watching the team member opposite them mirror their movements.
"ETA sixty seconds. At altitude in 3, 2, 1, now." The g-forces slackened off slightly as they stopped climbing and accelerating so rapidly, and they got to work. Hunter climbed over the cargo to the back ramp, unpacking his Panther cannon and then strapping himself in with his safety belt to the fuselage. When he was ready, he hit the control button, lowering the ramp and widening his stance as he stood on the exposed metalwork, the slipstream tearing at his clothing. Aswon grabbed his big rifle, making sure the anti-vehicle rounds were still loaded and that a round was chambered, moving to a position near the starboard side door. Shimazu stood dead centre of the aircraft, ready to fight out of either door if any magical foe was stupid enough to charge him down, while Kai moved to the port side and unlimbered the heavy machine gun from the stowage point. Tads remained in her seat, grabbing the viewing prism and jamming it down tightly over her head and blinking to clear her vision as she got ready to provide magical support.
"When we get there, what do you think? Take out the wheels, stop them getting the villagers away?"
"Sounds good, Aswon. You go for the precision stuff. Hunter – you can take down the security vehicles with that thing, right?"
"Afirm Kai. No problem."
"Kai – this could be an ambush. A lure to get us to reveal ourselves and to respond to them."
"You think we shouldn't go?"
"That's not what I said. I just wanted to let you know."
"Don't worry, Aswon. Even if it is an ambush, there's something they don't know!"
"What's that?"
"We suspect it's an ambush! So we won't be surprised."
"I'm not sure that's quite how it's going to go, but whatever. Hunter – for the love of god, be careful with your shot placement on that thing – we can't afford to have a stray shot land in the back of the trucks."
"Don't worry Aswon. These rounds are expensive, I ain't aiming to miss."
"Five seconds, starboard side. Three, two, one…"
The tiltwing roared into view over the village, sliding sideways through the sky as Marius wrenched the nose around, displaying the whole scene for the team in the rear looking out of the starboard door. Concealed by the stealth measures built into the aircraft as well as the concealing magics of the spirit, they were all but invisible to instruments mounted on the security vehicles, and pretty hard to spot visually – though the downdraft from the propellors gave them away somewhat. Some of the security goons on the ground turned and pointed their guns up at the general location of the aircraft, firing off questing shots into the darkness.
For the fire elementals it was a different matter – they could see the concealing spirit quite clearly in the astral realm, using its essence to hide the craft, and they turned and started to approach with arms raised. Fire burst forth from their burning extremities, sheets of flame arcing towards the craft. They didn't aim at the wings or fuselage, but instead at the engines. The flames probably wouldn't hurt the craft directly, but they did send the engine temperature soaring rapidly, making Marius twitch and sweat in response.
With a mental twitch, Tads recalled the spirits that were guarding the team and sent them a mental picture of the elementals, watching as they were met by a veritable flock of spirits that swarmed out of the craft towards them. Tads sent half of them after each fire elemental, trying to swarm them. Her spirits were smaller, only half the strength of the fire elementals they faced, and the first two that reached their foes were battered badly in the initial strike of their combat. But then the remaining three spirits caught up, and the fire elementals found themselves outnumbered four to one, retreating slowly through the sky as they were clawed and grasped at by the weaker foes.
"Got a good shot on the cab, hold us steady!" Hunter cried out, and a moment later his cannon kicked. The massive shell punched through the driver's side window, just on kinetic energy alone, not even arming the warhead initially. It was only as the round ploughed through the seat and slammed into the floor of the cab, that it armed, the penetrator blasting down towards the engine bay, the tungsten core driven by the explosive round to burrow into the engine and cripple it, while the rear explosive part of the shell filled the cab with shrapnel. Hunter didn't know how much damage he'd caused, but it was likely to have taken out the civilian vehicle, so he adjusted aim, looking for a shot on the second of the trucks.
One of the elementals was badly wounded by the three remaining spirits crawling all over it, but the other seemed to be doing better – maybe it was stronger or just luckier than the other. As the tilt-wing continued to fly sideways into the clearing, it came into short range and Shimazu turned to face it with his sword. Eyes gleaming with excitement he gathered energy into himself and then raised the sword over his head and bought it down in a slashing motion towards the enemy.
"HAIIII!" the exclamation burst from him as he sent a slashing wave of energy towards the target, slicing into the elemental and destroying it with the force of the magical strike. It was the first time he'd managed to use the technique in anger, and certainly so effectively. Unfortunately his excitement and focus on the technique left little attention for mundane things like physics. As his hands stopped and his attention focussed on the magical affects, the momentum of the blade carried it forwards, ripping it from his hands while his concentration was elsewhere. The blade shot out of the side of the tilt-wing and arced through the air, spinning end over end and descending towards the village twelve metres below. "Drek!" Shimazu hit the quick release on his safety harness and took a step towards the door.
Aswon saw him, saw the sword flying through the air and knew what was about to happen.
"Noooooo!" His arm reached out, long fingers grasping as Shimazu flashed past him, but his fingers just grazed down the back of his armour, grasping at nothing as the big man threw himself out of the aircraft after his sword.
Down below security guards gawped as Shimazu suddenly 'appeared' mid-air, arms spread like a squirrel as he tried to control his descent. Some of the quicker-witted started to track him with their guns, their eyes drawn to the movement, but his unexpected appearance and trajectory kept him safe from the handful of rounds that headed his way.
As he dropped towards the ground he twisted his body, rolling into a ball and absorbing the impact, converting his plummet into forward momentum. Caked in mud from the floor, he burst up from the roll and started to sprint, zigging and zagging towards the sword which had landed another ten metres onwards, the handle vibrating back and forth while the blade was impaled into the mud.
Shots rang out, increasing in intensity as more of the ground troops spotted him sprinting through the village, turning to engage him. They flinched though as a second cannon shot slammed into the cab of the second truck, rendering that inoperative as well.
"Aswon – find that mage, confirm he's dead. Tads, magic protection on Shimazu. I'll keep watch out of the other side in case this IS an ambush!"
The tilt-wing continued to spiral down into the clearing while Aswon hunted for anyone that seemed like a valid target, and Tads tried to wrap Shimazu in a protective barrier of mana to keep him safe from any magical attack – though there was very little she could do about the copious amounts of lead flying his way.
The ground forces recovered from their surprise somewhat, and the security forces started to fire at Shimazu with increasing accuracy. They could handle him – he was just one guy, right? Though they were still confused as to where he'd come from, or why it was so windy here all of a sudden….
