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Within minutes, the reason the assassins had bailed was clear. Tyrgani UAVs and aerocopters were swarming the area. Soon, the recruits were atop the aerocopter pad with their escorts.

"Well, this voyage is off to an auspicious start," Blackstone muttered bitterly. "Is anyone harmed?"

Catalena also answered in the negative. Her landing had not been nearly as graceful as planned and had resulted in a number of minor cuts on her hands and feet, but the cold combined with her knowledge of molecular biology had at least managed to minimize the visibility of the wounds, and they were not enough to keep her out of her high heels.
"We were each attacked individually?" she confirmed with them. "Someone knew where we would all be and why. How many people could have leaked this?" she asked the Ghoster. Suddenly, everyone on the aeropad was potentially a mole. It was not paranoia - it was acknowledging the danger of her chosen mode of existence. She could be betrayed at literally any moment.

“Hey, so all this spy thriller s**t is fine and dandy, but can we do it when we’re not in the <******** cold?” Pullman cut in. "Christ's sake, don't we have a ship to steal back or something?"

"Well, once our aerocopter shows up, we ca- Oh, of course," he trailed off as an aerocopter peeled off from one formation and hovered over the pad. "Everyone, clear the center of the pad," Blackstone commanded.

The aerocopter's primary propulsion was a large rocket that could rotate to face back or down. This model was not one of the fixed-wing ones; those were geared for strafing attack runs and deployment from airships - generally Devastators. This one, rather, had four smaller maneuvering jets and no weapon; the tail rotor spun the craft as it landed on the pad.

"Is that everyone?" The pilot's voice crackled through the intercom as the rockets died down. Blackstone walked over to it.

"I think we're missing one, but we're moving out now."

"All right, pile in." A hatch on the side opened. In minutes, they were cruising in the aerocopter across Citadel City, flying between spires and bridges.

In half an hour, they had cleared the city limits.

"So, is everyone familiar with why we're here?" Blackstone asked.

Catalena was by no means pleased with the overbearing number of Y chromosomes on the aerocopter with her. She had withdrawn into herself and contented herself with watching the sprawling metropolis around them through the window. Moving here had not been her first choice. Unfortunately, it was the best place to be for career advancement and had the added benefit of having almost no people whose skin color could remind her of her lineage.

It had taken her longer than she thought it should have to inure herself to the cold. Once it was done, the temperatures provided little challenge for her mental prowess, but training herself like those disgusting old men who went diving in the Arctic Sea and knowing that they at the time had a skill she did not had done nothing to stabilize her blood pressure. Therapists and doctors had explained to her she stressed herself too much on a day-to-day basis over her ego. She had explained to therapists and doctors creative methods of how to spend their free time with branding irons. Sometimes in close quarters.

She knew that her stress levels caused her to make mistakes, but she was a powerful and demanding woman. Not a woman. A goddess. It was her smoldering eyes and the venom in her voice as she calmly informed someone of her superiority that kept them in check; that prevented them from making the mistake of believing that she was an item, rather than their idol. A miscalculation here and there in the heat of combat of any kind was worth the impassioned satisfaction she felt at watching another human being crumble under her power and her knowledge.

When Petrachkov spoke, she was stunned nearly into speaking without thinking. She watched the faces around her. How many of them knew besides Petrachkov? "Was it misplaced?" she asked through a cold mask of calm. She had not had nearly the stress-free awakening she had desired and the following time had been spent drastically failing to improve her mood. Which idiot had allowed something like that to go missing?

"Essentially," Blackstone replied. "The Coven claims to have run into it recently, they're trying to sell us the information on what happened to it."

It occurred to Catalena that Tyrg was already at war with the Coven and they couldn't really make a much greater threat than that.

Blackstone grimaced. "If we reject their offer, we're going to be on a wild goose chase for months. If we accept, we're going to head to the last spot it was seen and work from there. The Dimensional Breach Drive wasn't functioning when we sent it out so it won't have gone far if we act fast, we can then scatter UAVs and other drones to scout for it in that locality." He then groaned, "But they're asking for complete surrender of a leyline to them. They know how important this project is."