Darlene familiarizes herself with the various protocols at the same time as she explores the device's functions, both physically and via her implanted Image Link.

As she once again hears the mysterious voice in her head, she whips her head around in search of the source. Her eyes automatically seek out the silent soldier from before, but she narrows her eyes in confusion, and a little disappointment to find his attention elsewhere.

As she turns to the pack containing the wet-gear, the lieutenant experimentally attempts to deliberately form a sentence in her mind. *What do you mean I can use your 'chute?*.

Meaning I usually jump without it. , the mental note says as Sylph gives the Lt a wink and grin. I'm so full of hot air that I tend to float down instead of fall, you'll see.... Sir.

Demitri can't help but bust up laughing at that one. Satisfied with his gear, he kicks back and sips some bottled water, waiting for the flight.

Fingers goes through her kit making sure the dry suit is intact. Then its on to he personal kit making sure all is still packed correctly and all components can be found blind folded.

Walking over to the Capt. She check all her team mates prepping the small detail. Talking in a muffled voice to the Capt.

"Capt, you have a spare BT for me. I have still not requisitioned one from stores as yet."

This was an on going thing with Fingers not getting a Battle Tac issued from stores.
Much to the fact she would rather get security equipment than a battle tac.

Not quite finished with her discusion with the Capt. " What are your sentiments on the jump?"

Kincaid is used to going over the backup 'chutes and is immediately at the Captain's side when he is is called to look over Lt. Madigan's pack. After checking to make sure everything is in order, he goes live on the BattleTac system. Listening to Demitri's commands from within the network is second nature, he barely registers the motions necessary to run the system diagnostics as his body glides into action from the command sets.

Demitri frowns at Fingers and hands over a unit. "Get this taken care of as soon as we get back... As far as the op goes, we need to make damn sure that Darlene is covered. Twice. Without her we're pretty blown."

Eidolon began looking over her weapons. The Predator and HVAR were, as per her usual standards, in perfect working order. She moved to the 'chute and double checked to make sure everything was there and in good working order.

"Anybody needs me to check their sidearms, let me know now."

She activates her Cyberlink and smiles as everything comes into view. Gotta love the things, they tell you anything and everything you could ever need to know. Well, in battle, at least.

"So. Who wants to put some bets down to how many CalFree slotheads they're going to ventilate? I'm feeling lucky."

She presses a small button on her left forearm, the Biomonitor display flickers to life. Right as rain and good as gold, as usual.

Fraiser shakes his head at the display of bravado, a half smile on his face, while securing the last of his gear. He offers up a prayer to the spirits and hopes they get through with no lose of life.

Darlene's eyes go wide for a moment, before catching the seemingly ever-silent Warrent Officer's wink. She smiles widely, and for just a moment her nervous chuckle becomes a real laugh.

Nodding her thanks to Kincaid as he gives her parachute the once-over, she stands aside to experiment more with the BattleTac Link, while still taking in the rest of the team's preparations.

Sylph grabs his gear along with the Chute, OxSys Gil, and the underwater propulsion unit. Walking past the Lt, he disappears into thin air as he follows Captain Reynolds. He quietly slips into the jet behind the Captain, grabbing a comfortable looking chair, and storing his non-standard gear in an overhead compartment above the chair, and keeping his pole beside his chair. Turning on his Transceiver by plugging it into his datajack, he sends a Transducer Broadcast out on the encrypted channel. Testing one two tree. Channel Operational?

Being the communications officer, Linx goes through testing everybodies battletechs against his own master unit. Pulling a small watertight box from his pocket he opens it up and switches the mini drone thats been placed carefully inside it. Once everyone has registered on the system. He gets out the satalite dish and links it up with the signal booster and vidlink, doing a quick test by filming everyone through the vidlink he makes sure that the line is clear and working.

Looking at Darlene, the usually quiet rigger says to her..."So I take it youve not done many jumps before then?! Trust me, its the secound biggest adrenaline rush you will ever get! The biggest is flying with at the controls!" and with that an ever-so-slightly evil laugh creeps into his voice! and as the massive planes engines start warming up he shouts over the noise "TRUST ME...YOUR GONNA LOVE IT!"

The massive twin propellers of the cargo plane ramp up their rpms drowning out all but the loudest yelling. The flight crew disappear into the forward cabin leaving only the team and the Master Loader in the cargo compartment. The grizzled old loader buckles himself into his seat right before the stairs up to the cockpit. He places his head phone over his ears and quickly nods off.

The plane accelerates slowly out onto the tarmac. It jostles and bumps a few times as the wheels find uneven spots on the civilian runway.

"Allrighty folks," The Pilots voice came over the coms. "It looks like we are next in line for take off so expect it in about 10 minutes. After that we will be climbing to a cruising altitude of twenty-five thousand feet. Our flight time is approximately eight hours to the Lone Star State."

As promised a few minutes go buy and the plane begins it's take off. The engine noise climbs to a crescendo and the plane lifts off. Once in the air it tilts back to a thirty degree angle and begins it's hour long ascent.

When Demitri takes his seat, he plugs a dataline into his seat, accessing the plane's sensors. They flood the BattleTac with data. With the sensors, GPS, and Orentation System, he is able to put together a nice map of their surroundings, along with projections on the drops site.

Fraiser opens himself to the astral space around him. He softly chants in Gaelic and weaves the flows of mana through and around him. With three sets of chants, he concludes each by touching the sun charms on the necklace around his neck before tucking it back out of sight.

It may be an old cargo crate...but that didnt stop Linx wanting to have a go at flying her. He put his headphones on to listen to some hard rock.

Kincaid moves through his pack and pulls out the backup detonators for the officers. They were in case he went down after the bombs were set but before he pushed the button. So far they had never been necessary but he wanted to be careful.

That finished, he leaned against his 'chute and tried to relax before the upcoming jump and mission.

Sylph watches as the rest of the team enters the old jet, taking up seats in various parts of the cabin. He takes in a deep breath, and closes his eyes as he begins casting spells on himself. First he casts Nutrition, then Fast, to avoid energy loss or hunger; Then he lets the breath out slowly as he begins to get his mindset in for extensive physical effort. Slowing his breathing down to the slowest level he can achieve, Sylph drifts off into sleep before the plan even begins to move. He has his headphones on, playing techno music stored in his Pocket Secretary, loud enough to drown out all other noises. He sets his pocket secretary to awaken him in 4 and a half hours time, which stops the music and tells him to wake up. For the remaining 3 and a half hours, he'll go over the blueprints he's kept of the water drainage system, and discuss with the rest of the team the plans.

Fingers relaxes in for the first hour, while altitude is reached. doing the last precheck on weapons and security countermeasure equipment. Finally to the point that fingers checks every round that se reloads in the magazine that there press depth is reached those those that look incorrect she places in the last magazine, as a last resort of use.

those 5 hours pass quickly. As 2 hours from the jump she reallises that the time she feared has come near.

As the second leg of their journey began, Vathiel settled in to test the access codes that had been sent to her, and see what information she'd be able to gather.

Kincaid watches the beautiful decker's body slump over as she falls into the realms of cyberspace, hoping that something good would come of the search. Filled with nervous energy, he rises and begins moving from one team member to the next double checking the 'chutes he didn't look at before.

The aircraft rocks a little as it pushes it's way through the warm Japanese air. An hour passes by as Valathiel continues to deck her way through the San Fran mainframe.

Out in the middle of the ocean the netscape was bare. Just the occasional sign of satellite connections from planes and the occasional oil rig. Hitching one of the datastreams, she made her way to the satellite. From there, she sorted out the path to San Francisco out of all the options.

Entering the base system, she found herself reguarding a bleak military installation, complete with fully outfitted guards. Pulling her wand out of the pocket of the blue gown her faerie icon wore, she wove a spell of illusion, leaving her resembling a superior officer. She walked past the guards, but could feel the instability in the weave, threatening to expose her.

But it held, and she continued on to search for the blueprints of the base. She traded her officer guise for a simpler cloak of invisibility. The schematics weren't hard to find, but when she downloaded them, "Intruder Alert" came over the loud speakers. Cursing her carelessness, she went in search of the alarm controls. Finding them, she cut the alarm, and set up a backdoor before continuing on in silence.

The security details was another easy search. The info on the nuke required a bit more persistance. Her search for the nuke drew her on to a secret passage. Heading on down, she found a tank sitting in front of a blank wall. She had a feeling that it would do a good deal of damage if she wasn't careful. Gathering her spell closer about her, she slipped by the tank, and quickly unsealed the passage behind it.

Further on down, she found herself in a laboratory. A search of the room didn't turn up much besides the location...and the fact that it was operational. Heading back up, she could feel the spell slipping away from her. The tank should be turning to fire. But it didn't. She made it out of the room, breathing a heavy sigh of relief. From there, it was only a matter of walking past the guards to the exterior, and jacking out.

*********

Back in the real world, she looked to the others. "Well that was informative..."

That gets Demitri's attention.

"What have you got for us?"

"I got the layout for the base...at least the R&D portion of it, which is the one we'll be dealing with." ::pulls up said schematics:: "Our sewer entrance will come up here, at sublevel one. The nuke is down here, on sublevel four, in a vault like room that is guarded around the clock. There are ten guards on a twelve hour shift. Five are in the building at any given time. They have a full time security rigger, and base mages provide magical security. Oh yeah...the nuke is operational."

"Thats just fraggin' wonderful. Give me a copy of the maps you pulled so I can plug them into my Orientation System."

::makes a copy for Demitri, and anyone else who requests it::

Taking the chip, Demitri plus it into his chipjack and copies the data into the memory stored in his arm. A moment later he plugs the data into his Orientation System and routes it into the BattleTac network, looking for the best routes through the building.

Fingers retinal display lights up with a icon that flashes twice. "Battletac update." quickly scanning the new infomation she studies the map make notes of the guard routes and post points as she would see it. With that she scans through the schematic to check hardline and security monitoring points. Resetting her schematic. and saving it as an overlay of possible surprises and unnoticed security measures.

Once finished she save the templete. Shortly after transmitted the overlay of the templete to Demitri for a review of possible surprises.

Once Sylph awakens, he takes his copy of the layout and plugs it into his head memory. For the remainder of the trip, until it's time to jump, he spends going over the details of the schematics. Most of his time being spent thinking about how he'd change things if he assumed someone had this info, and the best reaction to those changes, Plan B. He then takes measures for how to react if they assumed Plan B would be attempted, making for a Plan C. 15 minutes prior to the jump, he finally moves from his position, stretching out his limbs while sending a telepathic message to Fraiser, "These Mages going to pose a problem for you or us?"

The datafeed runs across the BattleTac network through Kincaid's image link.

"Well, we certainly live in interesting times. With the nuke online this becomes a little more entertaining. The five guards aren't nearly as much of a problem as that sec-rigger is going to be or the magical security." Knowing that he is stating obvious opinions, Rhys looks to his captain for their marching orders given the new intel.

Darlene quickly hides a slight smile at the decker's words. She leans forward to accept the datachip, then slots it into her p-sec and sits back to review the new information.

"well if we take out the security rigger first then we it will work for us and we can control the rest of that side of the base. just means we need to keep our heads down until either A) we can can out his meat body or B) I steal the network from him and dumpshock the bugger!!"

Fraiser looks over the new intelligence and commits what he can to memory. He perks up when the thought enters his mind. I can cover myself and 3 others and make it almost impossible for their spells to stick. I was going to focus on defense and let the rest of the team "geek the mages". How about you?

Telepathically to Fraiser, "Well, as you already know, I lack any combat spells personally, we'll need to take out Wards ahead of time if we intend to stealth past the mages. Maybe you should sneak ahead, once we hit land, and test for Wards or Barriers via projection. Then, if we find them, you could work a spirit to the surface to create a distraction. Hopefully one powerful enough to destroy a ward and bring in the calvary. I can't bring Elementals into it, as we won't have time to summon them. However, if we do it right, and use the spirit as a distraction, you and I could ambush any projectors or spirits which act as calvary. My concern, of course, isn't if the mage will pose a threat to us, but rather how quickly we let the world know we're there.

I think an astral scout is excellent idea. I think I'll bring up some watchers to help provide support in the astral and spirits are a definite go. Fraiser continues to review the new blue prints.

The pilots electronic voice fills the air.

"Allrighty folks, we have got a bit of a tail wind so were a little ahead of schedule. We will be coming up on your drop point in about thirty minutes. You might want to double check your wetsuits, water tight duffles, and get those Oxygills ready."

"You heard the man, lets get ready to roll."

Demitri gets out of his seat and heads back into the cargo area, where he checks everything a third time, then squeezes into his wetsuit and preps for a swim.

Lt. Madigan follows the Captain to the back of the plane. She takes note of his preparations, and does her best to do the same.

Having an eye trained to lead, Demitri spots Madigan's efforts and when he finishes with his own items, comes over to offer an assist to her.

"Turn around, your zipper didn't snap properly."

In no time flat he's got her perped and ready.

Blushing slightly, Darlene smiles in a vain attempt to cover her embarassment. "Thanks Sir. I guess all this has become second nature for you by now."

He gives her a good pat on the back, "Don't worry about it, the best thing you can do for us is trying not to get in over your head. If you are unsure of something, ask. Cause if you don't, it could mean the death of not just yourself. Got me?"

"Y...yes Sir, I understand you." She pauses and casts a wary glance at the packed parachute. "Ah, Sir? If it isn't any trouble ..."

He grins and hefts the pack up to help her climb into it.

Suiting up, Rhys moves to help Fraiser lift his pack and straighten his lines. He watches the interplay between the captain and Darlene with casual interest. Ensuring that his lab partner is ready to go, the demolitions expert passes through the plane to the rear where they would be jumping from.

"Captain, where'd you want me in the rotation? I can jump with Madigan if you'd like."

Sylph strips down to his skivvies, placing his scuba gear directly over. He then rolls up his jeans and T-Shirt into a nice tight bundle and places them in a side pocket in his duffel. Folding his leather jacket up nicely, he packs it into a box already preset to be sent to his PO Box. He checks over the rest of the duffel, making sure his computer is safely inside along with his pocket secretary, pats his armour pieces, counting to make sure it's complete, and then pulls out his Oxsys Gill. Closing the bag back up, he checks his chute, placing it on his back. He then grabs his duffel and walking stick, and gets in back of the line. Only then does he notice the predictament with Lt Maddie. First time jump, and carrying a duffel bag in hands is a doozy, he reaches over, grabbing her Duffel for her with a telepathic message, "I'll get this Sir, less rooms for mistakes if your hands are free." With that he quickly ties 2 handles together on the duffels, slipping his walking stick into the knot as he does so. Lastly he checks the filters, then slips his Oxsys Gill on.

"Man...I hate jumps..." Vathiel complained to herself as she traded her exterior layer of clothing for the wetsuit, which combined with the formfitting armor, only further served to accentuate the lines and curves of her body. Ensuring her deck and other equipment were in their appropriate waterproof containers, she moved on to the parachute and the oxygills. Ready as she was going to be....

Rhys can't help but smile to himself at the beautiful decker's comments. The thrill and exhiliration of his first jump is what drew him back to earn certification as a Master Jumper. Now it seemed that jumping out of airplanes was natural for him. Shaking his head as he pulls the Oxysys Gill over his head to hang on a strap around his neck, Kincaid watches each team member do their own tasks and try to make Madigan's part of this assignment easier in their own little way.

Somewhat startled by the unexpected and still-unusual voice in her head as much as by the sudden disappearance of the duffel, Darlene seems to struggle not to panic. "T...thanks, I appreciate that."

Visibly bringing herself under control, she looks around at the assembled team as they finish their individual preparations for the jump. "That goes for all of you. You really won't need to b..babysit me too much. It's just the j...jump itself. I...I'll be fine after that."

Fraiser goes through the same drill of gearing up. His mind clearing for the work ahead. After gearing up in the wetsuit, he checks the seals on all his medical gear. Satisified he makes eye contact with Demtri. "Going to call up some extra support Sir."

Moving to a clear spot, he quickly kneels and begins to chant prayer after prayer in Gaelic. The air shimmers around him as the mana gathers. His face begins to glow brighter and brighter as his face is consumed in an image of the burning sun. He beckons with his hands to the space before him as his prayers peak and with a rush of air that ripples through the space, a small swirling ball of mists hovers there. Fraiser's face dims to normal, suffused with joy.

Thank you for coming. My friends and I need your help. We will soon travel through your realm and must not be seen. Hide us from the sight of others and shield from any misfortune that may happen upon us till we reach the water below. Lastly, should any of us fail to slow before the waters I ask that you slow our fall as much as possible. Do these things and then return to skys above with my thanks.

The spirit gives a reply, a movement of air and carrying the scent of the sea as it expands and shifts. From the astral, it cradles each member of the team in it's form.

Going through the same routine as everyone else, Linx preps the gear again and double checks all seals and chutes, stripping off he gets changed into his wetsuit while making sure that the form fitting armour is snug underneath. With just one little earphone in his ear, he checks the walkman/communication headset is working. Looking down at himself... he laughs "Mmm... I love rubber!!" he says with a voice dripping with sarcasm!