Monday 28/3/2061, Location: 7.18113, 11.64264, Time 19:12

Shimazu headed towards his sword, which had landed point down into the mud, perhaps ten metres ahead of him. The village was mostly dark, lit up by the occasional strobe of light from the flashlights attached to the Novatech forces' guns, questing here and there, fingers of illumination that probed around the village. The large huts were scattered around the clearing with very little organisation, it seemed, creating a number of dark looming shapes that blocked his line of sight – and that of the enemy, too. Ahead and to his right, perhaps twenty metres away was the back of the closest truck, and he could see the line of locals stretching out from the back, guarded by two squads of the goons.

Arms pumping by his side, he ran towards the sword, watching as the hilt of his sword flexed back and forth like a metronome, working out where it would be when he reached it. Shouts of alarm had turned to anger, then orders could be heard around the camp.

"There's one!"

"Target, near the trucks!"

"Fire at will!

"GET HIM!"

Rounds punched through the air, slamming into the huts and sending gouts of dried mud and straw into the air as the primitive buildings were riddled with fire. He zigged and zagged as he ran, trying to be unpredictable and to throw off the aim of his attackers. Around him, though, the scattered teams bought up their weapons and took aim, some moving forwards and firing from the hip, others sprinting into position to cut him off, but worst of all, three separate teams of three were in direct line of sight, and they just took aim and opened up with their machine-pistols.

Four separate Novatech guards got a bead on him and hit him with a burst of fire each. Twelve 9mm rounds slammed into him, the snub-nosed bullets striking the hardened armour plates of his jacket. Two bursts of three rounds hit his chest, driving air from his lungs with the kinetic impact as the plates buckled and deformed slightly, absorbing and widening the impact and making it feel like someone had just jumped onto his chest with their full weight. One set of three rounds slammed into his upper arm and ribs, while the last burst of fire hit him in the back on his right hand side, rising up from his lower back to his shoulder and the last round caught him on the back of the helmet, sliding off the hardened material and spanging off into the darkness.

He lurched under the impact, but the widespread fire at least came from different directions, and prevented there being an overwhelming pressure from one side. The armour held, though the covering material was riddled with holes, and his sturdy physique ignored the fist-sized bruises that were forming under each of the impact areas.

He closed on the sword, his hand reaching out and snatching at the handle as he passed, grasping tightly onto the hilt and pulling it from the ground. If the mud made a slurping sound as it released its prize, he couldn't hear it over the hammer of gunfire that surrounded him.

On the rear ramp of the tilt-wing, Hunter saw the tactical lights on the guns spearing Shimazu in a spider's web of illumination, while the muzzle flashes around the clearing gave him a pretty, but deadly light show that confirmed just how many guards they were facing. He raised the assault rifle and fired a long stream of fire at the three closest to Shimazu, trying to take out the people who had the most immediate bead to his team-mate. Rifle rounds cracked out of the Ares Alpha and riddled the first guard, punching holes in his chest and sending him sprawling to the ground in a pool of gore, but his burst of fire missed the other two as they adjusted position unexpectedly, trying to keep Shimazu in their sights.

On the other side of the tilt-wing, Kai surveyed the terrain – splitting his attention between the night sky and the dense canopy below him. The intense crackle of gunfire on the other side of the fuselage concerned him, but he had people over there who were taking care of things, and he didn't want to crowd them. He knew he wasn't a natural shot – at least not with guns, and this didn't look like the right kind of fight to break out his bow. As his thoughts washed over his mind, he saw a flash of movement in a slight thinning of the canopy below the aircraft. At first he wondered if he'd imagined it, but then he saw another brief glimpse of something – something boxy and angular, pushing its way through the trees with enough force to shake the canopy and make the branches move.

"New target, south side of clearing, something boxy and big, heading towards Shimazu!" As he called out, he pulled back on the firing paddle, and the heavy machine gun spat a bunch of rounds down at the forest. His aim was off, but the bright glow of tracers at least let him see that he was off, and he started to adjust, pulling on the heavy duty arm that held the gun and angling it down and to his right a little.

"Roger that, Kai. Also a smaller vehicle under the canopy on the far side of the clearing, looks like an ATV." Aswon peered out into the darkness, using his superb body control to focus the muscles around his eye and zoom in to a degree that would seem impossible to most people. The vehicle was small, perhaps a trike of some kind, but it had a canopy or covering on all sides. It didn't look armoured – perhaps the covering was just to stop the rider getting branches in the face as they travelled through the undergrowth. Regardless though, it prevented him seeing if the vehicle was occupied or not.

The tilt wing flew on over the clearing, held rock steady by Marius as he controlled the engines with microscopic adjustments, barely thinking movements of the flaps and rudder, keeping the tilt-wing as steady as if it was sitting on runway. So far nobody was shooting at him, and that was just fine…

Tads adjusted her view a little, making sure she had Shimazu in sight and then summoned mana and channelled it down through the viewing optics. It was a little harder to cast this way, but it did mean she could 'see' all around the vehicle and stay safely tucked away out of sight of all the people down there. Mana flowed down to Shimazu, and a coruscating field of energy snapped into place around him, giving him an eerie and eldritch glow. It certainly didn't help with his attempt to go unspotted – though enough of the guards had torches on him that she didn't think that was much of an issue. Still, anyone getting close to him now was potentially going to get zapped, and that might keep people away from him!

Bullets continued to pour in from all around the clearing as guards moved around the huts or gave chase, intensifying in number and accuracy as the guards adjusted their fire. Shimazu's armour was holding – at least for now – but his body jerked and twisted as rounds continued to strike him, and it was only a matter of time before either something gave out, or a round hit a weak or unarmoured spot and did something nasty.

They saw him swerve violently, heading to the south-east now, and breaking off from his previous course towards the trucks, heading instead towards the closest huts. They wouldn't provide any appreciable protection if someone was firing through them – not with the construction being so primitive – but they would obscure him, and the guards were unlikely to hit him if they were firing completely blind. Hunter drew a bead on a group that was just about to round the corner of a hut and get into his line of sight and fired another burst, dropping two out of the three. One was a definite kill, while the other was likely to keep the target out of the fight until he received medical attention, but the third was a clean miss. At least he looked surprised at the sudden demise and incapacitation of two of the members of his squad – between the concealment of the spirit on the tilt-wing and the large amounts of gunfire around the clearing, the sound of the suppressed assault rifle clearly wasn't noticeable.

Aswon saw Shimazu swerve as well, and aimed the heavy machine gun at a group and snatched at the trigger, firing a long burst around them. The heavy rounds dug up huge divots in the group and chewed the side of the hut up near where they were standing, and though they didn't know where the fire was coming from, it had the desired effect – all three of them went running and diving for cover, trying to get out of the area – without actually knowing where the area was…

In the cockpit, the form of Marius was slumped in the pilot's seat, his mouth slightly open, eyes closed and cheek drooping to one side. For anyone that didn't understand a rigger, he looked like he'd taken a stray round and had quietly died without anyone noticing. Inside the rigger interface though, his mind was running at high-speed, monitoring hundreds of sub-systems on the tilt-wing, calculating trajectories, monitoring the engines and watching the battle unfold below him. The comms message from Kai flagged up as a priority task in one of the virtual windows over his heads up display and neatly translated the information gathered and assigned it a threat target. A small portion of his attention engaged the sensors and steered them down on the bearing that Kai had been shooting at, searching for targets. Moments later the delicate instruments on the craft detected a large metallic mass moving below the canopy, drawing a wire-frame image on the display as the radar and other systems fed back information and analysed the return signal. Course and speed were plotted, confirming an intercept course with the clearing in a very short period of time.

"Hunter, vehicle target, bearing 191, distance 200, closing speed 34 KPH. Probably an APC. Sending target feed."

"Roger," Hunter let go of the assault rifle, ignoring it as it fell to his waist on the sling, grabbing the large frame of the Panther cannon and racking a round into the breach. He adjusted position to look out of the other side of the rear ramp and watched his smartlink receive the telemetry from Marius over their private link. The targeting dot was through the fuselage at the moment, but moving slowly to the rear of the tilt-wing – in a few moments he'd have a clear line of sight, and he hefted the cannon in anticipation. Behind him, Tads swung her viewing prism around to keep track of Shimazu, calling one of her spirits back and sending it down to conceal him, trying to layer protection on his dodging form to keep him safe.

She saw a ripple of motion behind him and was about to shout out a warning, but realised what it was just in time. The line of villagers that had been behind the truck, waiting to be loaded in had thrown themselves flat when the shooting started. Now they saw the sprinting form of Shimazu heading for the edge of the village, and had collectively decided or interpreted his sudden appearance and direction as some kind of rescue attempt, and had started to slink after him. A long chain of villagers were crawling on their bellies now, forming a human caterpillar that flowed over the ground in the vain hope that this way lay safety.

The targeting carat moved past the end of the fuselage and appeared in the open air, and Hunter took a deep breath and held it, steadied himself and then fired. He still couldn't see what was down there – the Smartlink was just aimed at a set of co-ordinates being fed from Marius and his sensor suite. Hunter was certainly unused to this – normally it was him with his targeting laser that was providing a lock to someone else via his spotting system, router, GPS tracker and orientation system – but it worked both ways, it seemed. He fired, and his vision was obscured for a moment by the massive muzzle flash, but then a far larger burst of flame lit up the forest down below him, along with a loud explosion. He wasn't sure what he'd hit, but he'd definitely hit something. And when he compensated for the motion of the tilt-wing, the targeting point wasn't moving anymore.

"Got it."

A moment later the entire area around the explosion was whipped up into a storm as Kai aimed his door gun down that way and just sprayed as many rounds as he could in the general direction. If any crew were abandoning their vehicle, it was not going to be a good moment for them. On the other side of the tilt-wing, Aswon fired as well, but in shorter and more controlled bursts, taking out another of the ground forces that was chasing after Shimazu. The inside of the tilt-wing was getting slightly treacherous underfoot now as expended cases from the guns rolled around on the slick deck. Some plummeted out of the doors into the woods below, while others bounced off the feet and cargo in the craft on random paths, never quite making it to the edge before a change in motion sent them off on a new course. The team were definitely not going to be policing the brass on this attack – though it was also going to take a very significant effort to find them all from the other side as well, given the speed and area they were covering.

Strapped into her seat, Tads could feel an itchy throat coming on, and her eyes were slightly watery, despite being protected by the viewing prisms. She cursed quietly to herself, wishing she'd had time to don a respirator – but the scramble had given them too little time to plan ahead. As the reek of cordite built up in the air around her, she just had to try and concentrate past the annoyance as her body reacted to the pollutant. She spotted a group of guards on the west side of the clearing, far enough away from Shimazu and any of the villagers to be outside of the danger area and sent a massive ball of stunning mana their way, leaving them sprawled face down in the mud and unmoving. With a spare thought, she called another of her spirits to her and told it to go hunting for anyone who looked like a mage or shaman, as she still couldn't see anyone that looked like a candidate – and there had to be at least one here somewhere to control the fire elementals.

On the ground, the Novatech grunts continued to give chase to Shimazu. He was still the only target they had seen with absolute certainty, appearing in their midst to challenge their authority and then turning tail to run, triggering their rent-a-cop style training. A running man was a villain, a shoplifter or mugger, someone up to no good. And so they chased, firing from the hip for those less disciplined and spraying fire in his general direction, while those with a modicum of intelligence stopped and tried to aim slightly, or by good luck found themselves with a better line of fire. Rounds cracked through the night air, aiming at the dodging form of Shimazu. Many of the shots went wide as they failed to account for his speed – Shimazu was built like a bodybuilder, and looked like he should be a slow, lumbering mountain of muscle – but he definitely wasn't, and a large number of the shots fell behind him as he sprinted for the cover of the huts, still aiming towards the edge of the clearing.

"We've got about a third of them down, Shimazu when you get past the first hut, you'll break line of sight to all but one group, and I have that suppressed. Hunter has taken out a vehicle coming in from the south, Tads is dropping targets to the west. You've got two groups ahead, Shimazu, but coming in separately." Aswon kept up a steady commentary as he fired, trying to keep the team appraised of the situation and helping them make the best decisions they could.

Down below, Shimazu heard the changing odds over the sound of his pulse and gathered a breath, then leapt into the air, reaching the top of the hut with a single mighty leap. The thatched roof wasn't strong and started the buckle, but he let himself slide down the far side of the conical structure as he bought his sword round and raised it into a striking position. On the far side of the hut, the three guards Aswon had warned him about were moving forwards with guns raised, aiming at the spot he would have run into if he'd not diverted, at a range of no more than five metres. Even with their level of training, that would have been a hard shot to miss, and they would likely have riddled him with fire. As it was, he had two massive advantages – the element of surprise for one, as none of them saw his concealed form sliding down the roof towards them. The other was far more significant – and that was months and months of intense training with his sword, and a level of familiarity that turned the metre-long weapon into an extension of his own body.

As he slid down off the roof, the sword swung in an arc, slicing down with the force of his own arms and aided by the momentum of his body. It struck high on the first guard, slicing across his face and shoulder, opening up a deep wound and cutting through his nose and taking out both eyes – the cheap night-vision goggles he was wearing sliced open like butter. The sword continued onwards, falling slightly and opening up a deep sucking chest wound that exposed ribs and internal organs and caused a shriek of pain that ripped across the clearing over the diminished gunfire. His feet reached the ground, toes extended to impact first and then as his feet flattened his knees bent to absorb the impact, before pushing him back upwards. The strike had continued, the blade scraping down the side of the guard's weapon, sending a shower of sparks into the night air. As much by luck as by training, the guard lashed out reflexively with the back of the gun, catching Shimazu across the chin with the butt of the weapon. His helmet strap took some of the impact, but it still tilted his head to one side as the sword finished its slice and he bought it back to a guard position.

On the tail ramp, Hunter spun around to the other side and peered out into the darkness, his cybernetic eyes scanning on either side of the visible light spectrum and looking for targets. His orientation system laid a vector over his sight as he sent it a mental command, offsetting 120 degrees from where the vehicle he'd just shot at had been. Because of this, he was looking in exactly the right place when a boxy APC lurched out of the forest, tracks kicking up dirt and foliage. It looked to be about as large as the team's truck back at the ranch, but more heavily armoured, and he spotted a couple of large guns on the top. He couldn't tell from a quick glance what they were, but for the size and style of vehicle it was probably something like his own cannon or maybe a minigun – either way, it would be very bad for the team if they got into action. And even worse, with the likely sensor suite on the vehicle, there was a good chance of them being able to spot them even through the spirit's concealment and then lock them up for fire – and as he'd been able to damage or possibly destroy his target with a single shot, their weapons would do just the same to the tilt-wing.

"Contact, bearing 311, APC entering the clearing, heavy weapons. Marius, evade left!"

He felt the tilt-wing bank left immediately, altering course to head over the forest and break line of sight from the emerging APC – though it did turn them broadside on and present the largest possible view of them for a few moments. It also swung the back end of the craft around, giving Hunter a much better firing angle…

On the other side of the aircraft, Kai's world tilted and suddenly he could only see the canopy rushing past him. He blinked and shook his head while his hands automatically grabbed at the handle by the side of the door and the gun to steady himself. A wispy, ghost-like figure appeared by the port engine, and he blinked again as his brain questioned what he could see… but as he peered down, he saw the immaterial figure sliding down over the engine, ghostly hands grabbing on to panels while its legs flapped around below it.

"Um – we've got a spirit of some kind hanging on the edge of the engine, looks like it nearly fell off when we turned."

"What?" Aswon glanced back over his shoulder at Kai as he heard the unexpected update.

"Yeah, it's hanging on for grim death, looks like its got its fingers wedged into an access hatch or something."

"But they can fly? Through the air, however they want. Why is it…." His voice tailed off.

"Maybe this one can't fly. But whatever, it's out there, and I can't reach it. Should I shoot it?"

"No! If you miss you'll trash the engine – and you probably can't hurt it anyway if it's only manifested."

"I can see it." Tads's statement was interrupted with a cough that caught her unexpectedly. "It's a watcher, low force – you can't hurt it with your gun, Kai. I'll deal with it in a moment."

Down below, Shimazu had recovered himself from the jump down off the hut and bought the sword up in a slash that caught the guard under the chin, opening up the front of his face and sending a fountain of blood up into the air behind him as he used the momentum from his spring up to start moving towards the next hut. At that moment another group of three guards rounded the corner behind him, but their weapons were forgotten as they stood and gawped at the carnage before them – the three bodies of the guards slowly crumpling and falling to the ground accompanied by screams of agony amidst a cloud of blood, while a faint flicker of motion though the cloud was all that they could see of the deadly ninja that had caused it.

Hunter fired, his shot lancing down from the ramp and smashing straight through one of the tiny viewing ports on the front of the vehicle and into the interior. It burrowed down into the engine compartment and exploded, ripping into the fuel lines and hitting something essential that triggered a chain reaction – and a moment later the APC heaved convulsively, the top section ripping open and a gout of flame roiled out of the shattered hulk.

"Got it." He was already swinging to the east, looking for a third vehicle – if his instincts were right, and it seemed that way, the third vehicle of this little ambush should be somewhere over to that side, bursting into the clear about now…

Shimazu turned on his heel, his foot pushing down deep into the earth as he pivoted and then drove off his leading foot, reversing direction and heading towards the gawping guards. Their eyes widened in alarm as the shimmering figure burst through the rain of blood still falling, a demonic figure with a sword dripping in ichor. Once more the sword cracked out in a wide arc, cleaving through the air and striking out at all three guards. This time it angled slightly upwards, catching the first across the groin, slicing open the leg and opening up the major artery to spray even more blood up into the air, while the second received a long slash across the chest that peeled apart his combat vest and sliced his gun in half, while the third escaped with only a minor wound as the edge of the sword nicked his shoulder, opening up a superficial slash.

Hunter spotted the third APC, not emerging from the jungle as he'd anticipated but barrelling down the road at about forty kilometres per hour. It bounced up and down, the tracks spinning like a blender as it thrashed the ground beneath it to paste. But at the moment, it was heading down the road towards the clearing, and the tilt-wing was facing directly away from it on the same course – giving him a zero angle of deflection shot. He felt a moment of surprise as something punched his shoulder, until he realised it was the recoil from the shot, the subconscious part of his mind having recognised the firing solution and sent the command to his Smartlink without him having to think it about it.

"Got it!" The third APC slewed to the side, almost looking like it was going to flip end over end as something broke at the front and dug down into the earth. The back rose up in the air a good metre before slamming back down, and unless whoever was inside there was strapped in nice and tight, they'd just been thrown into the bulkheads hard enough to cause major injury.

"LET GO!" he heard, shouted loud and with the strange rippling harmonics that indicated that Kai was up to his tricks, distorting his voice box to mess with people's heads. He almost dropped his assault cannon in response, the hind part of his brain wanting to obey the command, but he managed to resist the imperative – just. Looking back over his shoulder to cuss at the team leader, he realised it hadn't been aimed at him – as he saw the watcher spirit obey the simple command and then flip end over end off into the darkness with a rising scream. A moment later it popped out of existence as Tads struck it with a blast of energy.

"Oh no. Not today!" Marius didn't realise he had transmitted his thoughts, as he picked up a scrap of encrypted transmission. Perhaps some of the reinforcements in the APCs had survived – or there were elements as yet undetected down there that had realised the ambush was no longer effective and were now trying to communicate. Whatever it was, he was determined to add insult to whatever injuries they had. A flick of one mental switch moved the power amplifier from standby to active, and then a flick of another began jamming, filling the frequency bands around the transmission with static. For anyone looking their way, they were now a huge bubble of electronic emissions, and no amount of stealth and concealment was going to hide them – but anyone within a few kilometres was going to find that all the electronic devices were now useless unless they could function without any external connectivity.

Unaware of the change in their stealth status, Tads swung the viewing prism around, blinking rapidly to try and clear her tear-filled eyes, and spotted two more of the groups of guards, still pursuing Shimazu, converging on a hut. She waited a few seconds for them to close a little more, and when they were all within a fifteen metre radius dropped another hefty stun-ball on them and sent them sprawling to the mud like pins in a bowling lane. She saw another ripple of movement, and watched for a second or two as the second mob of villagers broke towards the west, crawling away from the trucks and heading towards what she guessed was the chief's hut – certainly it was the largest in the village.

"That's the last of them, I think. We've got some badly wounded down there, but not combat effective – but Tads just dropped the last two squads." Aswon craned his head out of the side door and looked back towards the clearing, his afro catching the wind and condensing around his face.

"What about the mage?" Kai called over, leaning his head to look out of the side of the aircraft in a mirror of Aswon's manoeuvre.

"No sign of them – they may have been in the trucks all along and Hunter took them out in the first strike – but I don't think so, I think they're loose down there."

"Let's not give them chance to prepare another ambush or get away them. Marius, bring us back around, please, and set us down in the clearing. Aswon, Hunter – you go check out the little trike or bike thing we spotted, carefully. I'll meet up with Shimazu and we'll go check on the wounded and the villagers. Tads, magical overwatch still, Marius keep the engines hot and stay on the sensors."

A series of clicks, and acknowledgements came back as the tilt-wing banked around smoothly and headed back to the clearing, transitioning to a hover over the largest clear space and then descending smoothly. Tads pulled the larger spirit away from its concealment, making sure they were visible to the confused and frightened villages below – the last thing they wanted was to land on a child or older villager that didn't understand where the wind was coming from.

As soon as they settled to the ground, the teams headed out to their tasks. Shimazu and Kai checked on the guards, dragging the wounded but badly injured together and taking them under guard, laid out in a long line together while their weapons were moved away and piled up. Most of them were in shock and offered no resistance at all, and for the one or two that might have had any fight left in them it took no more than a cold calculating stare from Shimazu and a subtle shift in how he held his sword to make it abundantly clear that any kind of heroic attempts would be met with excessive and brutal violence.

Hunter made it to the vehicle, finding it to be a small ATV, a quad bike with a thin plastic shell around it that offered no real protection from impact at all – but would stop things like branches or bushes whipping the driver in the face or thrashing their legs as they drove through dense foliage. As he checked out the vehicle, a hand placed on the seat revealed that it was still warm.

"Aswon, someone was here for a while, and recently. Seat's still warm."

"Be there in a moment. Try not to move your feet." Hunter stood in place, scanning the trees and the area around him, but keeping to the same spot – presumably Aswon was going to be looking for tracks or footprints, and he didn't want to obliterate any traces with his own combat boots. When Aswon reached him, he moved carefully, examining the area and spotting something fairly quickly, moving in for a closer look and then pointing out a series of faint indentations in the soil.

"Tracks here, moving away from the vehicle. One set, someone running or jogging, probably not familiar with the forest at all. Heading directly from the clearing, probably on a course of around 045 degrees. Tracks are fairly recent."

"Wait one." Marius steered the sensors that way, filtering them to ignore geographical features and focus on an organic profile with a meta-human set of characteristics. He couldn't see anywhere near as far from down on the ground, but it was probably good enough. Moments later he got a ping. "I have one target, moving erratically, travelling at 3.43 kilometres per hour, course 050 from your position, range five hundred twenty three metres."

"We're on it." Aswon and Hunter hefted their weapons and set off at a sprint, disappearing into the woodline and covering ground quickly. Guided by Marius, they didn't worry about stealth at all and thundered outwards, closing the distance rapidly as they bobbed and weaved through the thickening undergrowth, closing in on the fleeing subject.

Tads climbed out of the tilt-wing and stood in the fresh air, her eyes red and running and her nose clogged up, once more regretting her life choices. Being in the fresh air helped a little though, and she moved to let the gentle evening breeze wash over her face, breathing deeply. It was the first time she'd been caught in the tilt wing while there was that much gunfire going on – and she hadn't expected the cabin to fill that quickly with gunsmoke or pollution, and her allergy had never kicked off like this before. She wondered if she could get a gas mask of some kind that would still allow her to speak normally and still use the viewing prism…

As Kai and Shimazu lined up the prisoners though, she realised there was something she could do to help the team, and moved in towards the ones lying there either unconscious or in shock to the extent that they'd pretty much shut down. Selecting a guard at random, she placed a hand lightly on his head and gathered mana to her, forming a connection with the man's thoughts and gently rifling through them. Once she had enough details on his rather banal life and thoughts, she dropped the spell and move on to the next – this one had been one of the squad leaders and he had a little more information that added some illumination to the Novatech plan. She worked her way down the line, collecting data and piecing together the fragmentary information until she felt like she had as much as she was going to get.

"Aswon, break left, target ahead fifty metres, slowing – they probably hear you. Hunter, break right, go to stealth. Good – target has stopped. Aswon you are forty-two metres from target, six metres to their west, Hunter forty-eight metres and seven to the east. Keep closing." Marius kept up a constant stream of bearings and distances, guiding the two team-members in on the target and bringing them in for a perfect pincer movement.

Aswon stepped out of the undergrowth with his spear raised and active – a beacon of energy on the astral plane that he deliberately chose not to mask. If the mage saw him with an active weapon foci, they'd also know that he was magically talented, and that might slow them down for a moment and give them pause. The mage was a fairly young-looking male, with typical western European or American skin colouring and clothing style, wearing some ill-fitting jungle fatigues. Wet hair plastered to the side of his face and he was breathing heavily – his run through the forest having quickly exhausted him and then realising he was being pursued had sent his heart rate skyrocketing.

"I am Aswon. Surrender." The spear raised before him, he moved out onto the path, confidently closing the last metre or two towards the target. He saw the man raise a hand, and a flow of mana rush in towards him as he prepared to cast a spell.

"And I'm his buddy. Do you feel lucky?" The mage froze as Hunter oozed out of the undergrowth behind him and placed the barrel of his assault rifle onto his neck, the circle of metal gently pushing in the skin as Hunter applied pressure. Aswon saw the mana swirl for a moment then start to leak back into the air around him as the mage gave up, realising that he might have enough time to make one attack, but certainly not two. Hesitantly the arms were raised, and then he spoke, his accent placing him somewhere on the east coast of the UCAS.

"Alright chummer, you got me. I'm valuable to the corporation though – they'll ransom me back."

Hunter snorted at the probably misplaced sense of self-worth and moved closer to the mage, pulling his hands down behind his back and quickly zip-tying them together. It wouldn't prevent him from casting magic, but it would make it more difficult, as well as drastically cutting down his mobility if he decided to make a break for it.

"Sure, let's head back to the village and put you with the surviving guards, and we can see about a ransom demand. Or something." Hunter pushed him gently with the barrel of the gun, and the mage started to walk down the path, his body language showing his dejection. Aswon moved around behind him and took over the position, his spear held ready and Hunter dropped back a few metres to provide longer range cover.

"I've found out what they were up to. At least pretty much most of it." Tads called over the team comms. "The guards here were a fresh force bought up from down near the port and the railroad marshalling yard, sent up by trucks to this village. They had instructions to round everyone up and load them into the trucks, bound together and then escort them to the remaining camps that hadn't been hit yet. They were going to split them up and make them sleep and live in the compounds, next to the machines and around some of the things like the generators. To use them as human shields to protect against any more attacks."

"That kind of makes sense – despicable as it is. But typical corporate thinking." Kai wrinkled his nose in disgust and any sympathy he had felt for the wounded and bleeding men laid on the floor before him was rapidly draining away.

"It is interesting through – it shows they think they were still dealing with local elements, or that they still had a strong influence on the activity. I don't think if it was local tribes performing the strikes that they'd carry through if they recognised people, and it would turn into a rescue instead – and that would probably go badly for them." Aswon stared at the back of the mage as they tromped through the trees on their way back to the clearing, working through the chains of logic. "But they don't think they're up against Shadowrunners. Mercs would probably also hesitate to kill that many people blowing the place up – really bad PR and collateral damage, although I can think of a few merc companies that do happily take on jobs like that. But they're not seeing this as Shadow activity from a rival corp, because they'd just come in and screw the camps over regardless."

"Well, most of the guards were happy enough to carry this out. They feel like bullies, most of them, angry people that regard the locals as almost sub-human. Feral beasts, that aren't like them." Tads' voice was cold and it was clear that she hadn't any sympathy for their plight either. "But they were also sending a message. There was a few here who knew more of the plan, that there was some kind of ambush force. The three vehicles waiting spread out around the clearing were some kind of reinforcements, with a squad of troops in, some kind of special operations team. They were expecting some kind of response to this, and they were deliberately loading the trucks slowly to make sure there was time to respond – and then if someone did, they were going to come roaring in and take out whoever it was. At least that was what they thought was going to happen. They seemed pretty confident about it."

"Want to bet that Mr. Mage here knows something else about the plan? I bet he's aware of any wrinkles and contingencies." Aswon watched the mage in front of him as he stumbled along the trail, shoulders slumped and aura dejected. He probably had some kind of glimmer of just how much drek he was in, and clearly wasn't looking forward to it.

By the time they made it back to the clearing, the villagers were up and about, and had freed their friends from the backs of the trucks. They kept a wide berth from the prisoners, but were moving around the clearing, gathering the dead and piling them up at the western road exit for disposal later. They'd also gathered all of the weapons that had been dropped during the fight or found on the dead bodies, and bought those over to Kai who worked through them and made them safe – they didn't want someone dying if one of the kids found a stray gun and thought it was a toy.

Kai headed over to meet them, greeting them with a nod and then turned his attention to the mage. He gave him a broad smile, and for a moment the mage straightened up, thinking that he'd found someone he could negotiate with for his own safety.

"I understand that you're a valuable corporate asset, and there may be a ransom for you?"

"Yeah, I have special training. The corp will pay handsomely for my return – intact."

"Well, that's good to know. Why don't you come over here and sit down. Maybe have a cup of tea. We can have a little chat, and you can tell me all about it…"

The mage followed Kai, gawping at the tilt-wing and the collection of dead and wounded laid out, trying to ignore the hostile stares of the locals. Kai led him over to a log and gently helped him sit down, checked the bindings on his hands and then stepped back.

"Now then, our mage is just going to come and have a little chat with you. I'm sure you don't mind if she has a little rummage around for information. I strongly suggest you don't resist…

The mage looked up from the smile and took in the cold-dead eyes of Kai, and any remaining resistance faded away as he took in the hopelessness of his situation, his stomach falling as he realised that any politeness and compassion from Kai was skin-deep at best.