I powered down the engine in response to his signals. As the engines' purr gave way to silence, the vehicle control rig began its shutdown sequence, relinquishing consciousness back into my meat body. A wave of aches and stiffness washed over me as the virtual world melted away into the real one. I stifled a groan as I reached up to activate the dome light and switch off the last few manual controls.
Unjacking the datacord from the vehicle, I slowly climbed upward and released the hatch lock. The hatch swung upwards, as the cool night air descended into the warm cabin confines. Climbing up and out, I pulled off my helmet, allowing my long auburn hair to fall freely.
"That was some crazy stunt ya pulled there, Jo-girl," rumbled a low voice from behind me. I turned around to look at my ork gunner, who sat on the edge of his hatch and stretched his gigantic arms. "Next time ya try sumthin' like that, lemme know first, so I can put on my swimming trunks, 'kay?"
"O ye of little faith. We're here in one piece, aren't we?" I teased. Phil grunted something unintelligible in return.
As I climbed down the ladder, the fuel truck pulled up alongside the t-bird. One of the men in the truck ran over to me, while the others pulled a hose toward the Banshee's fuel cap. I jerked my thumb over my shoulder back toward the Banshee. "Fill 'er up. While you're at it, check the tires and clean the windshield?"
In the dim light, I could almost make out a smile on the crew chief's face. "Would you also like me to check the oil?"
"Nah. I got a million-kilo tune-up next week, I'll check it then."
"You got it," said the crew chief with a mock salute. He then turned to attend to his crew. "Okay, you guys, let's move with a purpose! Lady's got a plane to catch."
"Hey Phil, I'm going to go find Johnny," I called out to my partner. "You hang around and check for battle damage. Oh, and see if we can get some heavier ordnance."
"Gotcha, Jo-girl!" Phil's voice faded in the distance as I made my way over to Johnny's t-bird.
I ran into him halfway there, as he was walking over to come see us. "I'm glad to see you're still with us, Josie."
"Yeah, so am I." I recounted to him our dogfight with the other Banshee. Johnny's brow widened as I told him what Phil and I suspected.
"Are you saying someone set you up?" Johnny asked incredulously.
"I'm just saying it's an awfully strange coincidence we got bushwhacked twice the same way," I replied evenly. As the newcomer to this crew, I wasn't in a position to be leveling accusations. "You don't work for anyone, do you?"
Johnny shook his head. "No, we're completely independent, like most smugglers. Most of my logistical contacts, like the guys refueling your bird, I've worked with for several years, so I can trust them."
"Well, to get that good a drop on us, twice, someone had to have known our route in advance. I hate to say it, but it's the only thing that makes sense," I concluded.
Johnny shrugged and changed the subject. "I gotta go over and pay the refit guys and talk to Phil. Have you gotten the latest navigation data from Clio?"
I shook my head. "No, not yet. Something up?"
"Clio just got off Shadowland and told me there's been a recent raid by Tir forces against Rinelle rebels around Seneca," Johnny noted. "That's a little too close to us, so I thought we'd take a more easterly route."
"I'll head over and download the mapchip overlay from her."
I clambered up the handholds on Johnny's Banshee to get to the turret hatchway. I could see a trio of ghostly rectangular eyes blinking randomly at me; Clio must be busy with the monitors in her cabin, and some of the monitors' illumination escaped out around the hatch window slits.
As my boots clomped on the t-bird's top, the hatchway opened and Clio emerged from below. The display monitors inside bottom-lit her silhouette, making her ascent like a restless phantom from its grave.
"I have new navigational data for you." Clio's voice had as much life as the ghostly illusion.
I held up my hand to interrupt her. "I know, I talked to Johnny. You have a map chip for me?"
"Wait a moment." Clio descended down the gunner's hatch in as ghostly a manner as she had risen. I glanced down the hatch and saw a multitude of consoles, far more than necessary for an ordinary gunner and making the normally roomy turret as cramped as the pilot's seat. I had already guessed that Clio served double-duty for Johnny as both navigator and decker. (Quite normal with most smuggling groups, who hack weather and navigational satellites, not only for the latest forecast, but also to spy on border activity.) Confirming my guess was the tricked-out Fuchi Cyber-8 sitting to the left of the gunner's seat, a deck with so many modern upgrades that belied its antiquity.
Clio's hand suddenly appeared in my face as she thrust a mapchip out to me. "Here's the new route overlay. It will take us through an area with high paranimal activity. You should prepare for opposition."
I took the chip from her. "Well, at least the paracritters shouldn't bushwhack us."
I couldn't see her face with her silhouette backlit, but I could tell that it had twisted into a frown. "What do you mean by that?"
"Hm? Oh, nothing." Clio's suddenly suspicious tone set off an alarm in my head, so I put on my best poker face.
Clio climbed out of the hatch to look at me. Her head cocked to one side as she tried to read me. "No, it's not nothing. What do you mean that the paracritters 'shouldn't bushwhack us'?"
I continued to keep up my stone-faced look. "Nothing. Phil told me about how Gonzales got geeked, but I don't think we have to worry about something like that happening again."
"Mmm hmm." It didn't sound like Clio believed that, but she didn't press the issue. She turned back and descended back into the turret. "We take off again in an hour. Make sure you're ready to leave by then."
Phil's voice cut in over the whine of the turbines. "I got something showing up on thermo."
"Yeah," I responded as I shifted restlessly in the pilot's seat.
The ork apparently wasn't reassured. "Hey, Jo-girl, don't go to sleep on me."
"I'm not." That much was true. Although it was way past midnight, I'd been jacked in for the past seven hours, which messed up my biological clock so I couldn't sleep if I wanted to. In fact, I was so keyed up I was flying on manual, with only the minimal simsense to keep us from ramming into the mountainside.
"Well, you want to do something about it, or should we just let it walk up and say 'hi'?" Phil was getting annoyed.
I glanced at the sensors. The contact was radiating in the far-infrared spectrum, not hot enough to be a vehicle. That must mean that it was a paracritter, and judging by the sensor feed, a pretty big one, too.
I reached up to my flight helmet and clicked on the mike. "Looks like a critter, Phil. I'm not getting a good fix on sensors, though. Can you scout it out on astral?"
"No probs, Jo-girl." As Phil's voice cut out, I felt a brief shiver up my spine and noticed a slight distortion in the forward visual sensors, probably Phil's astral form shooting forward and passing through me and the sensor dome. While technology and magic don't mix, I've always noticed some distortion whenever I watched magic through sensors, centered around the spellslinger. Not enough to interfere, but still enough to notice.
While Phil was having his out-of-body experience, I decided to slip into mine. I reached forward with my left arm to press a simsense-generated button floating in front, and the darkened view of the cabin interior dissolved into the green-tinted Low-Light view of the surrounding landscape. I could feel my pulse quicken slightly as the simsense translated the engine activity into bodily sensations.