As the clock rolled over to 18:00, Kai's commlink lit up as Musa sent a message through, a single emoji of a gift-wrapped present.
"Musa's here – let's get the door open!" Kai led the way over and they slid open the large hanger doors, letting Musa slide the vehicle inside as soon as there was room, the doors reversing and closing behind him while he turned the vehicle around, parking with the nose just shy of the doors again.
"I have your items, as requested. See, Mr. Musa delivers!" He gave Phoss and Ury a long considering look, which they returned with interest. Kai thought for a moment about introducing them, but decided against it.
"Let's see, then. Toolbox, really big one – that's for you, Aswon. One for you, Marius or Hunter, for your tech gear. And…ah-ha, overalls. Lovely!" The started to unfold them and open them up, working out what size they were and then throwing them over to the team member they were going to fit. "Thank you, Mr. Musa, excellent work. Let's sort out payment so you can be on your way – I'm sure you have other things you need to do tonight!" He pulled out the credstick from his pocket and held it up for Musa to scan with his reader, before the team started to slide the doors open again. Musa, to his credit, understood the situation, and just gave Kai a curt nod and then pulled out without a word, heading off into the gloom and leaving the team to examine the gear behind him.
"Glad he didn't want to hang around. Right, so with this gear – are we good to go? Everyone happy with the plan and the amount of info we have?"
"Yes, I think so. We're unlikely to get any more information in the time we have available, and the more digging we do, the more chance there is that Novatech will find out that something is going on." Aswon pulled out his shotgun and started to work out how to fit it in the toolbox, adjusting the internal dividers until there was room inside for it to fit, provided he shorted the stock as far as possible. With a thought, he pulled out the clip and made sure the chamber was empty, then started to bag up the ammunition in press-seal bags. "Just in case we go near any chem-sniffers on the way in. These rounds are massive compared to a pistol, and they're not as well sealed as standard 12mm ammo – so I don't want to set off any alarms."
"I've cleared as much room on my deck as I can in case we find paydata or we need to record stuff, and I have disposable data storage to add to cameras for looped footage and such like, along with plenty of scrap cables and gloves for running bypasses and such like…" Hunter tapped his bag, bulging with the deck and all his miscellaneous supplies.
"I have my electronics tool kits, general tools, sensors, interfaces and my rigger deck ready to go." Marius tapped the top of his toolbox.
"I'm ready." Tads was empty handed, but that didn't surprise anyone – she rarely used magical components or expendable fetishes, preferring to rely upon her own skills and the blessings of her totem to get the job done. "What time are we going in?"
"I'm thinking stupid o'clock in the morning is our best bet – the usual story. Catch the guards at the lowest point of the night, right where their circadian rhythm is hammering them."
"For the initial insertion, I was thinking we should try to match with the shift change – around midnight. If there's a lot of activity with a bus load of new shift workers coming in, and then a bus load going out, all around that time – there's more chance of our scans going unnoticed amongst the noise?" Aswon looked over to Marius, wondering if he was going to agree. "That's assuming of course that we're actually going in through a door, and not just levitating in over the wall."
"I can only realistically levitate two people at a time, and I need to be able to see where they're going to make it work well. So that complicates things. And it's also not very fast."
"Don't sell yourself short, Tads – I've seen you levitate people around, and you can move them about as fast as most people can sprint. Maybe not some of us, but it's not slow. It just depends on what kind of scale you're talking about though. If we're going to levitate from the roof of the hanger here all the way down, then maybe it might not be fast enough. But from just outside the wall? I mean, how far is it anyway…"
"From the front wall to the tower is the shortest distance, but that's the one under the highest level of scrutiny and with the least cover – that's about three hundred and fifty metres or so." Hunter pulled out the screen and pushed over the map image, along with the superimposed data they had already gathered. "From the back wall is about six or seven hundred metres, and from the sides we're talking nearly a kilometre. It depends on the height and how you're doing it, but I don't want to be hanging in midair while we slowly fly a kilometre at a height of two hundred metres, that's for sure."
"There is no limit on the height is there, Tads? Practically I mean?"
"No – I can take you high enough that you'll pass out from lack of air or cold, before we start hitting the edge of the manasphere."
"So what is to stop us going three thousand metres up, and then floating in hidden in a cloud, and then come straight down on the top of the tower?"
"Nothing. It'll take me time to get you that far up, and that far down of course, but I can do that. I just need to do it several times to get the whole group over there."
"What about cancelling the spell when we are above the tower, and just recasting it when we are near the tower top? I get the impression we can fall and hit terminal velocity, which is faster than your levitation speed?" As Marius said this, Aswon had a sudden flashback to a night back in the Trans-Caucus League where Tads had done exactly that, and the momentary terror he felt as he tumbled out of the sky, grimly holding onto his sniper rifle as he accelerated towards the ground. She'd managed to stop him, perilously close to the ground, without harm. And while he trusted their shaman implicitly, it still made a little animalistic shudder of fear go up his spine.
"I would rather not stress our shaman to that extent. She would have to cast the spell under strenuous circumstances, more so if she was actually falling at the same time, and get it right the first time, without issue. Several times in a row. That strikes me as very high risk, and adds complications to the plan." He noticed Phoss looking at him with curiosity, but declined to elaborate.
"I have a suggestion." Phoss looked carefully at Tads. "I don't see any reason why it wouldn't work, based on what I know of you – but there may be something I'm not aware of…"
"Go on?" Tads gave her a smile, and beckoned with her hand.
"When we're doing an infiltration, I get Ury set up to have me hanging from his harness, and then I cast my spell on him. The combined weight makes it more difficult – but not massively so. And then I only have to concentrate on one spell, not two. From what I've seen of the spirit you conjured, if your spellcasting ability is as strong as your spirit-wrangling, I think you should be able to do the same quite happily."
"Well, we do have climbing gear and strong ropes. And we got everyone really sturdy belts made up for securing into the door guns on the tilt-wing, so I'm sure we could give that a go. Hang on a second…" She started to work around the group, totting up their approximate weights in her head. "Ok, we're probably talking about six hundred kilos all together, by the time we factor in clothes and tools and things. That's going to be pretty tough… like, hmm. Maybe twice as hard as normal. Maybe even worse. But as Phoss said, I only need to get the spell to work, and then it's only one spell. Though we're going to be a big target if we're all together and tied onto one person…"
"If we go in on foot, and use the RFID tags to get through the security gate though, and move up to the bottom of the tower, or somewhere nearby that gives us some concealment – then we can tie up together there and use the spell only as long as we need to reach the roof. Ten stories, about forty, forty five metres I would guess? How long to get that high, Tads?"
"Not that long, Aswon. Maybe ten, fifteen seconds. I would think. I suppose that's not that long. It just makes me nervous."
"If we can be in a concealed position in any of these spots," Aswon gestured to the map and the three closest houses to the west side of the tower, away from where the chopper had crashed and set fire to the buildings on the eastern side, "then I think that's a pretty small window of vulnerability, and gets us well up into position with no room for slips when climbing, and no need to penetrate the towers at the ground level where the defences are likely to be strongest."
"The RFID scans should get us through the gate ok. And if not, there is always the option to mess with the mind of the gate guard, is there not?" Marius asked. Tads shrugged, looking a little uncomfortable.
"I guess so – as long as I can see them. If they're behind armoured glass though, we're in trouble. And casting that close to the perimeter may attract the attention of the elementals on patrol, or mages in the tower. That's a very definite risk!"
"If we go in during the middle of the night, the elementals are likely to be an issue to watch out for still, but I would imagine most of the mages will be tucked up in bed. As the 'elites' I doubt they get stuck with the graveyard shift, so they'll only be up if they want to be up. At least that's my thoughts. I've seen it loads operationally – it's the grunts that get the night shift."
"We have enough of the tag things for one each, right?" Tads asked, and Hunter nodded quickly.
"From my experience, even if a tag read is duplicated or goes through a door twice, it's unlikely to trigger an immediate alarm. Most of the time it will go in an exception log, to be verified later or cross-referenced." Shimazu suddenly spoke up. As usual, the rest of the team stopped talking – Shimazu didn't speak much, but when he did it was usually worth listening to, and he tended not to fight to make himself heard. If you didn't want to listen to him, he wasn't interested in making you… "It happened quite often when I was body guarding people in Japan, in the before times. Sometimes people would all walk through a door together, and the sensors would get overwhelmed and only read a few of the tags, then throw a fit if you tried to leave the room as you'd never officially entered. That's annoying when it's the coffee boy, but disastrous if it was the CEO that wasn't scanned properly. This is a while back, when such systems were still fairly new, but because of problems like that, they relaxed the software a lot. We'll get flagged I think for investigation towards the end of the shift, or if the problem happens a lot – but we'll get some leeway until then."
"Thanks,, Shimazu….so we've got Hunter and Marius making some tags now, to get us through from a technical perspective – we just need to work out a plausible…cover…story….." Kai's voice faded away as he looked down at his commlink, and a smile started to form on his lips.
"What Kai?" Aswon said, voicing the suspicion everyone suddenly felt – while Phoss and Ury looked around the team wondering what was going on. "What have you thought of?"
"It's ma birthday!" He grinned at them all, then elaborated. "Ok, so we stop off in town, and find somewhere that sells wrapping paper, cards, party hats, streamers. Wrap the toolboxes with 'Happy birthday' paper, maybe get a big cake box, some take-out bottles of booze. We schmooze on up to the gate in 'high spirits' and just bimble on through. I mean, what kind of security guard is going to insist on your unwrapping someone's birthday present out in the street while the birthday boy is watching?"
"That…. That could work, I suppose. It's not the worst plan you've come up with. And if we got some 'party clothes' we could probably get them loose enough to fit over the top of our maintenance overalls and form-fit. Something sparkly and a bit gaudy, as if we're out on a stag night or something equally tacky. It's a way of approaching the gate and also being a bit wobbly and uncooperative as well, I suppose."
They had a think, but nothing more likely to work came to mind, so Hunter did a quick matrix search and found a supplier in town that would still be open that would sell the supplies they needed, and they ordered a large mini-van taxi to pick them up from the airport, then hurriedly got their gear together and headed out to the front of the airport to wait for their ride. The taxi driver gave them a very funny look as they lifted a large barrel into the back of the van, but Kai explained that it was a big keg of home brewed alcohol for a friend's party, and slipped over his credstick, tipping the driver an extra hundred Nuyen to not ask any further questions.
The journey into town was still not the most pleasant – no amount of suspension could negate the poor state of the road, but it was a lot better than the bus journey would have been, and considerably quicker as the taxi headed around traffic and squeezed through gaps. Once they'd arrived in the centre of Port Harcourt just around the corner from the address Hunter had found, they moved the chemical drum over to a side alley and then covered it over with a bunch of rubbish from the side of the street. Phoss and Ury headed off to secure transport for it and some kind of delivery method, leaving the team to head into the shop and purchase their supplies. Another few hundred Nuyen later they all had an agbada in a fine selection of prints. The agbada was a four-piece robe that was originally from the Yoruba peoples of South-Western Nigeria and was topped with a large and free flowing outer robe called an awosoke – which hid a multitude of sins underneath it, in this case including heavy pistols, extendable batons, knives and illegal drugs.
Now looking like an explosion of table centrepieces, they visited a local store and purchased several bottles of alcohol, and then headed off to a restaurant nearby and found themselves a table. A large meal followed, along with what appeared to be a generous amount of alcohol – though most of the team managed to nurse their drinks and gave away much of the booze to several of the neighbouring tables. It passed the time well enough though, and let them wait out the hours until midnight, when they settled the bill and headed towards the pedestrian gate in the western side of the compound. Along the way they passed the drop-off point, noting that the chemical barrel was gone now. Hopefully that meant that Phoss and Ury had secured an appropriate vehicle and were ready on their stage of the mission…
"Ok, it's go time." Aswon checked his watch, and nodded. "I'd suggest Tads and I go first, wait a few metres then Kai and Shimazu in the middle, and have Hunter and Marius bring up the rear with most of the boxes. If they're going to get a sniff on the chem sensors, it's probably going to be me and the shotgun, so the sooner we know that the better. Then the birthday boy, can come up behind us and press for us to get through – and once we're through, there's going to be social pressure for the last two to get cleared holding the presents."
"Sounds like a plan." Kai nodded. He took a deep breath and then concentrated, and his skin darkened slightly and his features shifted as he focussed all of his control on the muscles around his face, distorting his features and changing them to become somewhat more 'local' in appearance. "Ok, let's go."
Tads and Aswon pushed themselves out into the main street, walking towards the gate at a steady pace. The outer gates were open at the moment, and they could see into the gatehouse section. Two large black windows lined the walls on each side of the walkway, no doubt one-way glass from the security offices, while a large slab of plascrete stretched over the top, forming a solid roof. The far end of the tunnel had a solid gate leading to the interior, which was firmly shut. As they closed up into the tunnel, Aswon saw that the glass had a distinct texture to it, a set of repeating diamonds that rippled through the entire surface. He 'accidently' let slip a bottle, and then crouched to catch it, giving a brief shout of surprise as he did so. While bent double and with his face pointing towards the ground he subvocalized a message to the rest of the team.
"Glass is heavily reinforced, blast proof. Got a wire substrate running through it. Guns aren't gonna touch this stuff." He straightened up. "Guess I must be happier than I thought – nearly lost that one!" He let out a belly laugh, or something he hoped was close enough, and then kept walking towards the inner gate.
"Hold it right there!" The speakers blurted out, filling the tunnel with the voice of the unseen security guard. "Turn to the left please, face the glass!" Aswon felt his stomach drop and his reflexes cranked up at the sudden bark of command. None the less he swung to the left and smiled, waving a bottle in the air. A moment passed and he could see Kai and Shimazu entering the tunnel too, with Kai 'weaving' slightly, supported by Shimazu as he 'guided' the party boy home. A sudden flash of light made Aswon's eyes contract slightly, and then his enhanced hearing heard some muttering and complaining coming from ahead of him.
"Is there a problem?"
"Yeah, the flash just bounced off the glass. Gimme a minute." There was a buzz from the inner gate, and the doorway popped open, revealing a sliver of the inner compound to them. "Come on in! Quickly now!"
Hunter and Marius had to move swiftly to get through the outer doors as they swung shut rapidly, responding to the unexpected over-ride of the inner doors, but they made it through the security barrier before they slammed shut. Aswon led Tads through, standing slightly in front of her and trying to obscure her, in case she needed to cast any spells, while Kai and Shimazu headed over them, with Kai throwing his arms around Aswon dramatically.
"Thanks for this mate, it's been a fab party. What we stopping here for, though?" He neatly obscured the other half of Tads, letting her peer over his shoulder to get line of sight if she needed it, but otherwise covering her as best as he could, while Hunter and Marius moved in to be near them as well. Somewhat to all of their surprise, the inner door closed behind them, and then the door leading into the security booth opened, and a smartly-dressed guard stepped out, holding a camera in his hand.
"You know the drill – all birthday parties go up on the social feed for the site! Now come on, stand together, that's it, turn and face me… and on three, say 'Novatech!' He aimed the camera in their direction, waiting for them to form an orderly line, telling them to lift their faces or push their hats back so that he could see them clearly. He didn't appear suspicious, but he was clearly intent on getting a decent quality photo of them all, and that was likely to cause complications later.
"One moment, sir! Aswon turned around to face the team, having his back to the security guard, and gave the team a thumbs up and then an OK signal, while berating them loudly for being a disorganised rabble of a birthday party – all they had to do was stand in a line, look at the camera and smile!" The team did as they were told, not without reservations – but as Aswon moved back into position, he briefly flicked into astral space and glanced left and right, making sure that he couldn't see any of the elementals they'd discovered. As soon as he saw the coast was clear, he told the guardian spirit that Tads had assigned to him to use its powers to break or disrupt the camera the guard was holding, then turned on the spot like it was a snazzy dance move and smiled for the camera.
The guard focussed, framed the shot and then hit the button on the camera, lowering it as soon as it beeped, and then rolled it over in his hands a little, looking at the slot in the front of the housing. A moment later a small white rectangle started to edge out of the slot, accompanied by a high pitched whine from the mechanism inside. The colours on the paper were splotches of primary colours though, great big blocks of distortion and lines, stretching across the paper as the micro-print head inside the housing was fed a garbled signal that generated random noise. A moment later the feed mechanism accelerated and spat the half printed plastic card out of the slot and into the air, closely followed by a second. The guard gave a cry of alarm and frustration, and then desperately tried to grab at the sudden stream of cards as they were ejected at high speed from the mechanism as the remaining 'shots' were spat from the instant camera system in rapid succession.
"Oh no, my friend! It's broken! We must be too drunk for it! HAHAHAH! Kai started the laugh, and the others tried to join in, except Marius who was having none of this level of inanity. Kai leant forwards and read the security guard's name tag, and gave his face a quick intense look, trying to commit his features to memory. He was quite anglo in appearance, most definitely not a local, that was for sure. "Darryl, that is so unlucky. We will send you a photo later though, I promise. But for now – here! Have a bottle!" He thrust an unopened bottle into the guard's hands, and gave him a very big, and apparently very drunken wink. "We never gave you that though, obviously – you're on duty! But enjoy it later!"
"I really shouldn't – there are rules about that kind of thing."
"Exactly! Good rules. But there's no rules against birthday presents, is there? I mean, later on, when you're off shift, and back home – what harm will it do, eh? Just one little drink…" There was a slight change in resonance in Kai's voice, a subtle insidious hint that wormed its way into Darryl's mind. "Just take it." The three little words sunk into his brain, implanting the suggestion almost like a command.
"I… ok, I guess there's no harm in that, is there." Darryl took the bottle and smiled at Kai, who rewarded him with the full thousand-watt response.
"You're a legend! You guys don't get enough credit, working so hard and keeping us all safe! You enjoy that drink. I mean, some random drink that you found in your house later, and is NOTHING to do with us. But in the meantime, we're going to go home and get even more drunk! You have a good night!" He turned and pointed down the road, away from the security gate. "Onwards!" He stepped forwards and started to veer to the side, and Shimazu hurriedly moved forward to apparently support him and guide him along the road. Aswon shrugged at Darryl and moved to the other side, and the remaining three members of the team turned and scurried after them, leaving the security guard standing outside the booth holding a bottle of third rate vodka and surrounded by an entire cartridge worth of ruined 'insta-card' photographs.
"We need to move out from here, quickly – there's no telling when one of those elementals is going to show up." Aswon lengthened his stride, leading them down the road and taking the first turning they came to. His caution proved to be unnecessary, though, as they quickly realised just how different the compound looked at ground level. Their over-head views from the drone had skewed their perspective somewhat, but down at a more normal observation height, it was very different. The careful sculpting and landscaping broke up their lines of sight on all but the straightest of roads, and most of the time they couldn't see more than a hundred metres. Even more telling was the efforts they'd gone to with the perimeter wall. The long double row of conifers planted inside the wall pretty much obscured the wall in its entirety, blocking the view of the grey plasteel monstrosity with living branches and greenery. Likewise, every house was separated from its neighbour with a row of trees and dense bushes, while carefully sculpted earthern berms built up sound-dampening baffles.
Compared to the outside environment, everything was clean and fresh, and felt so…'alive' it felt like another country. The astrally-active team members felt the relaxing effect of the environment, the purity of the astral realm preserved not only by the general cleanliness of the area combined with the huge amounts of lush vegetation, but also by the overwhelming sense of contentment in the compound. People here had lives, not just existences, their jobs were fulfilling and meaningful, and they had hope and aspirations. Even Hunter and Marius picked up on the mood of the area, looking around and feeling themselves relax a little. They caught glimpses of the houses through the foliage, with warm yellow lights illuminating verandas and porches, reflecting off children's swings or playsets in the back gardens, or illuminating BBQ pits and comfy chairs. It was as if someone had been told of a perfect suburb and how impossible it was, and then said 'hold my beer'…
They kept to the shadows as much as they could, working their way through the compound and heading for the tower in the centre. As they moved through the quiet streets, the took the occasional moment to conceal themselves in bushes as a vehicle quietly whirred by, the electric motors barely disturbing the quiet night air. During one of these periods, Hunter stood on something that sounded odd – hollow and just 'wrong'. He whispered to the team and then investigated, and found the that rock he was standing on was a carefully disguised manhole cover, sculpted to look like part of a rockery, but concealing a small pit that contained a dense mass of fibre optic cables and relay equipment – apparently a telecom and matrix node for the street.
They moved on, more aware now and started to spot more and more of the artfully hidden service areas – a tree trunk made of fibreglass and painted to match the rest of the surrounding trees but containing radio repeaters or Wi-Fi antenna, a bush that concealed a service tunnel and ladder that descended five metres down to a small box room that gave access to water and sewage pipes, an ornamental statue adorning a fountain that also had a concealed set of steps leading down to a power relay.
None of them gave way to a network of underground tunnels as they'd hoped – in fact they all confirmed Hunter's earlier research that under the compound was an absolute mess of tiny ducts, pipes and buried serviceways far too small to make use of, criss-crossing the area at multiple depths in a maintenance nightmare.
"Do you think these matrix links feed into the tower? Is that a possible way in for Hunter?" Aswon mused.
"They probably link up, but they're going to be firewalled to buggery. Technically part of the same system, but the access is going to be nearly as tough from here as from completely outside I'd say, so probably not worth it." Hunter paused for a moment. "Not unless we got into someone's house while they were already logged into their systems and just stole their access. But then we'd have to deal with the body…"
"Well, at least some of these might make a good temporary bolt hole. If we do trigger an alarm, the deeper ones leading to the sewers – I think we could all just about fit in there, hanging onto the ladder. There's no room to go anywhere or do anything, but we could at least get off the street and out of sight. If we're being hunted, it might be enough of a hiding place to let the search pass over us and look elsewhere, then pop out and change directions."
"Or long enough to patch up some bullet holes…" Hunter added dryly.
"Or that, too. But I'd prefer not to need it at all. It's just worth bearing in mind."
They moved on, slowly closing in on the tower, taking their time to keep to the shadows and approach obliquely. Whenever they detected any movement they went to ground, hiding until the perceived threat had gone before resuming their quiet approach. Fifteen minutes later they were close to the tower, hiding in the edge of the garden of a large house that no doubt belonged to some vice president or senior executive. But from here it was open terrain, just a carefully manicured set of bushes and hedges between them and the edge of the tower. Close up now, they could see very faint variations in the glasswork, a subtle shift in the luminosity. Hunter zoomed his vision in, examining the patterns and checking distances, his cybernetic eye checking angles and sizes and feeding the data into his spatial recogniser and mapping processor.
"Ok, that makes sense. The tower looks like it was made in a fairly standard way – slabs for each floor, columns holding it up at frequent intervals and a solid core for the lift and stairs, along with the utilities. Though the entire thing is clad in glass, there's sections where the columns are running up the outside, just hidden behind the facia. They've done a pretty good job hiding them, but there's a slight variation in the heat dissipation and light reflection index."
"Which means what?"
"Which means Kai, that eighteen metres in from the corner, there's a solid strip of plascrete nearly a metre wide, behind the glass. So if we float up along that line, we're not in front of a window from the inside, and can't be seen."
"Ahh, right. We should do that then!"
"You don't say…"
The team gathered around Tads, pulling out the short lengths of rope and tape slings, attaching karabiners and hooking themselves together, until they were an uncomfortable flesh mass. Hunter formed the central node, with Shimazu standing uncomfortably close to his front, while Tads stood to his rear, Aswon and Kai to his right and Marius to his left. It wasn't perfectly balanced, but they had slung the tool boxes onto the ropes as well, and it should be balanced well enough for the short trip.
"Everyone ready?"
"Go for it, Tads." Kai looked around and didn't see anyone shaking their head, so he gave the all clear, then made sure the safety gate on his krab was screwed tightly together.
Tads concentrated and cast her spell, pouring mana into it from the air around her, focussing the energies of the astral realm into Hunter and gradually reducing his mass, lifting him into the air and taking up the slack in the various ropes and slings until the rest of the team were pulled in underneath him. As the load increased so did her efforts, pulling in more and more power into the spell. She was glad the area was so nice, as it certainly helped with her efforts and one by one the rest of the team lifted off the ground, until eventually even Aswon's lanky legs lifted up and left him dangling on the end of his rope, swaying slightly from side to side and turning his head away from Hunter's buttcheeks.
"Everyone secure and safe?" Tads sounded slightly distant as she concentrated on the spell, focussing the magic and keeping them perfectly still. There was a quiet chorus of approval from the team, and once she was sure nobody was slipping she looked up into the grey clouds above, letting the scattered raindrops splatter onto her face and rose into the oncoming rain. Silently the blob of people rose into the sky, accelerating until they were rising up at an angle, quickly crossing the open ground between the house and the tower, aiming for the spot on the side of the building that Hunter had identified. As soon as they closed on the side, Tads adjusted their angle and they shot up vertically, rising at about ten kilometres per hour, swinging slightly from side to side in the gentle wind. They felt horribly vulnerable, strung together like chickens on their way to slaughter, but nothing seemed to notice them and they rose up the side of the tower, climbing to meet the roof. As Hunter drew level with the roof space, he got a good look at the layout and noticed something that triggered his senses.
"Keep going up Tads, five more metres at least!" he hissed, and Tads kept them rising up, leaving them exposed and hanging in the air. "There's some kind of faint beam running along the top of the parapet. Infra-red I think." He craned his head around and checked the corners, spotting a tiny sensor and emitter pair pointing along each edge. "Yeah, think it's a sensor to spot anything coming over the parapet. Like the hook of a grapple gun, or someone climbing over the top of the wall."
Tads moved them horizontally, checking down below her to make sure that Aswon's dangling feet were well clear of the parapet, and not going to trigger whatever invisible beam Hunter had spotted. She moved towards the centre of the building, aiming for the helipad which rose as a large and obvious lump on top of the structure.
"Does that roof look odd to you?" Aswon asked.
"What do you mean?" Hunter responded, glancing down. "Looks just like gravel and moss to me. Pipes, conduit, electrical stuff. HVAC. Usual."
"Look at the moss. Not you guys – sorry. Shimazu, Kai – look at the moss. Is that… shimmering?"
"Yes, it looks alive, that's expected. But there's something strange about it. It's like it's vibrating or something?" Shimazu sounded as confused as he did.
"Yeah, I see the same thing, now you've pointed it out. What do you think?"
"I'm wondering if its some kind of astral countermeasure. Something that reacts to astral presences like spirits or spells. Tads – keep us up off the roof please. I think if we touch that stuff, it's going to be bad."
"What will it do?"
"I don't know, Kai. I've never seen this before. But at a guess it might be engineered to glow brightly when something astral touches it. That's not harmful to us directly – but there's probably a camera or sensor out there that is programmed to report changes in glow as an alarm, and that WILL summon the guards."
"Crap – so how do we get around it? Does Tads have to just stop the spell and let us drop?"
"That solves one issue – but then we set off any pressure or noise sensors out here. Maybe we can just land on the helipad?"
"What about the roof of the lift building – Tads, take us over that way please?" Kai pointed with his free hand, the motion making him sway and start to twist a little."
They floated over towards the lift doors, Tads lifting them a little more to keep clear of the roof, and a quick survey showed that whatever moss or plant life was growing on the roof wasn't to be found on the roof of the lift.
"Interesting design – normally at the top of the lift shaft there's a motor room or some kind of equipment space. There's not room here for that, which means it's either lifted from below by hydraulics, or is a wall climber. Not that it makes that much difference – but the top of the lift shaft is just below the roof here, there's no space to get in-between – that's the important bit for us. Checking for sensors on the roof there." They paused and waited, which the roof was examined closely, and when Hunter, Marius and Aswon all reported that it looked clear, with none of them detecting anything in the infra-red, ultra-violet or ultrasound bandwidths, Tads carefully lowered them down onto the roof, with only the quiet scraping of their shoes on the felt betraying their presence. They quickly untied from each other, letting them spread out and move freely, and examined the space around them.
The helipad was roughly in the centre of the roof, raised up nearly two metres on sturdy I-beams and criss-crossing support ties, forming a large octagonal platform, the durable surface painted a high-contrast green and with a massive H emblazoned across the centre, along with various marking denoting the weight limits and aiming points for various types of aircraft. A mesh guard ran around the outside apart from one section, which was instead the wide steps leading down towards the lift. Under the helipad was a dense mass of machinery and support equipment, probably fuelling mechanisms, fire suppressant systems and overspill HVAC kit from the rest of the roof. The path leading down towards the lift entrance was perhaps ten metres long, and as the team peered down they could see it too had the same weird astral fluttering going on. The roof appeared to be made of a fine grillwork, with stone chippings embedded into the grills, but seeded throughout was this strange moss-like growth covering the entire roof area as far as they could see. Here and there patches had died off, normally in front of a heat-exchanger, probably as a result of a chemical spill, but otherwise it was wide-spread across the roof.
The lift doors faced the helipad, and were covered by two cameras, spaced widely on either side of the building and angling down to cover the door area, while two more cameras were positioned adjacent to the first ones, aimed up and across at the helipad, each angled outwards slightly to cover the centre and one side.
"Do you think these cameras are fully secured? It would seem strange to go to the expense of a full anti-tamper protection system up here, with no surrounding buildings to glide or zip-line down from."
"I'm not sure, Marius. I got the impression that this building is modelled from a fairly standard template, and is the same in other places – so I'm thinking they're probably issued with a security budget and gear that's in line with other locations as well. Probably best to assume that it's fully tricked out, until we know otherwise. I have a horrible feeling it will be…" Shimazu responded. Marius made a face, showing his disappointment, but nodded and started to gather his tools together.
"I can create an illusion in front of the cameras of the current scene when you wish, to let you move down and round to work on the door access. I just don't think I can hold the illusion up while I'm touching the floor – that's likely to set off whatever this moss stuff is. And for the record, I'm not sure what it is either, I've not seen it before. But I agree with Aswon that it has to be some kind of defensive measure. And that probably explains why we didn't see any magical activity up here, and the elementals stick to the perimeter."
"Can you just disable the lift controls entirely?" Hunter asked. "Give us a secure route up and out, that they can't block?"
"I can almost certainly do that. But it will register as a fault with the building rigger, and that will trigger a response. Probably not an alarm, but it would raise an incident in the building management system, and probably trigger a work order for a maintenance crew. It might even be somewhat urgent or time-bound given the nature of the VIPs that use the helipad. So, yes we can, but it might cause us trouble."
"Alright – if you're ready, Marius… Tads, cast your spell, please." Kai shuffled out of the way and Tads moved over to the edge of the roof, crouching down over first one then the other camera, getting as close as she could to looking 'down' the camera axis so she could create an illusion as close as possible to what they should see. Once more she drew in power, creating a trid-phantasm in front of the sensors of the scene exactly as it was. She waved Marius forward, and he carefully moved to the edge and turned around, lowering himself over the rooftop and then dropping lightly down to the ground. He didn't glance up, but instead pulled out his toolkit and went to work, examining the case of the security system.
Moments later he'd identified which type of security screws were installed and selected the correct driver, then started to unscrew the case, checking the pressure on the screws as he did so. One of them felt a little weird, so he set up a small sticky pad on either side of the screw hole, and put in a bridge over the top, then much more carefully continued to unscrew the fastener. When it felt like it was almost out, he pulled out his tweezers and a magnifying lens and adjusted the bridge into position, tautening the small strap between the two pads and bringing it down level with the surface of the case. The last few turns had to be done excruciatingly slowly, pushing the bit of the screwdriver through the fabric of the bridge, only just biting into the grooves on the screw head – but as he hit the last turn, the screw tried to jump out of the hole, pushed from inside by the anti-tamper plunger behind it. The fabric bridge caught it, holding it in place and preventing the plunger completing the circuit and triggering the alarm.
With that one done, he managed to get the case off relatively easily, spotting another plunger on the other side of the case that was much easier to deal with, and then he settled down on his heels to examine the circuit board within. A lot of the circuit board was shielded with foil that had been sealed down to the board itself, making it difficult to access the connections and jumpers, but this was fairly standard practice. A few squirts of solvent and a gentle application of heat from his toolkit let him pry one edge up, and then it was just a case of slowly working the probes in under the edge to clip onto a few pins on the logic board and apply some jumper cables. With a quick shunt to the power bus, he bypassed the mechanism and the lift doors shuddered open a thumbs-width, while the display remained steady.
"Ready, cracking the doors now." He reached in and hit the manual release cable, then slid the doors open the rest of the way, revealing the lift shaft beyond. He suddenly felt a touch of fabric on his arm as Shimazu brushed past him, giving a start at the unexpected contact. "Please do not do that, Shimazu. Warn a man first!" Marius still didn't understand how someone the size of Shimazu could move over sand or snow and leave no trace, and no amount of explanation of magical control or somatic influence would change his mind.
"Sorry." Shimazu ghosted forward quietly and examined the lift shaft, staring down into the stygian blackness below. As they suspected, there were no cables running from the top, but they could see four toothed rails, two on each side of the shaft, attached to the walls. Presumably the car had some kind of mechanism that could climb or descend on the rails, just needing to be fed power. On the back wall of the lift shaft was a ladder, also embedded into the wall. With a lithe jump, Shimazu crossed the three metre gap, landing on the ladder without a sound, then slowly climbing down a little to make room for the next person.
Hunter dropped down next, but waited outside the lift, for Aswon to lift Tads over the edge and lower her gently down into his arms. He took her and then leant out into the lift shaft, getting her most of the way to the ladder and letting her jump the remainder, scrabbling to catch the ladder while Shimazu was ready in turn to catch her. Aswon studied the moss at Hunter's feet, watching for any change in colour or activity – but it remained inert. Either it didn't work that way, or they'd managed to keep Tads and her spell far enough away from it that it hadn't triggered. He followed her down, joining her on the ladder, followed by Kai. Kai and Tads climbed down the ladder a little, shuffling to be side by side and level, so Shimazu didn't have to move down as far. Aswon made the jump over, and then hung onto the ladder, reaching back as far across the shaft as he could, while Hunter started to pass over the toolboxes. Between their respective reaches, they made the job look easy, and soon the tools were attached by the slings again to people on the ladder. Hunter jumped next, making the rungs reverberate a little with the impact and then it was Marius bringing up the rear. He triggered the door release and jumped over, Hunter's meaty arm sweeping him up as he approached and bringing him in for a giant hug, holding him in place and preventing him from falling while he found his grip on the narrow ladder. Behind them the doors slid shut, cutting out the night and plunging them all into absolute blackness.
They waited a moment, listening. Other than their own breathing, there was a very faint electrical hum, and the quiet thrumming of the air vents – but no other noise nearby. Out of the darkness, Kai's voice rose up the shaft.
"Let's move out."
