*
The snowmobile’s nuclear fusion engine could send it up almost vertical mountain faces like they were just bumps in the road. And that was despite the weight of its weapons and mountain rescue equipment. On its flexi-steel caterpillar tracks the snowmobile was tearing through the avalanche ravaged forest, the recently felled trees being cleared by the powerful grader out front. The two occupants of the snowmobile were brother and sister and were wearing the dark blue uniforms of the Alpine Special Forces. They had the same blonde hair and light blue eyes. The sister was at the steering wheel and she was making towards the man whose infrared image was on her console screen. He was under a metre of snow.
‘Activate the retrieval arm,’ she instructed her brother.
‘Sure, sis,’ he replied. The retrieval arm went straight to work, unfolding from its roof mount and plunging into the soft, freshly settled snow. Kaptu Z was the man being pulled from his cold, white tomb. He was conscious and remained calm as the arm did its work. Snow fell away in clumps and he shook out his hair. He was lowered through a hatch into the back of the snowmobile.
The female driver looked back at him. ‘Welcome aboard. I’m Giselle and this is my brother Mischa. Are you injured?’
‘I’m ok,’ replied Kaptu, carefully removing his backpack and inspecting Blast’s vital signs on the monitor panel. ‘We both are.’
Giselle again had the snowmobile screaming across the mountain. ‘Great, but this isn’t a rescue mission. We would have left you to one of the Search and Rescue crews if it was.’
Kaptu looked over the two siblings, noting that they were both heavily armed. ‘So why did you bother?’
‘We are going after Mas and if anything happens to us, it will be up to you and your dog to avenge us,’ said Mischa fastening armour plating to his chest. ‘We’ll take you to the edge of town. From there it’s a ten minute walk to the train station. It will be a good way to warm up. Report to Central Police Station in Zurich. They’ll be expecting you.’
‘Alright.’
‘Sorry we can’t have some of our people take you. We can’t spare anyone.’ With the plate fastened, he set about recharging an laser-acid pistol. ‘We don’t take kindly to people who trigger avalanches in these parts. No better than mass murderers. So we have the whole mountain in lock down.’
‘Before we drop you off,’ said Giselle in the midst of her fast driving, ‘you can tell us some more about this poacher.’
‘There is not much to say. She had an eagle with a weapons system attached to its talons. I shot it from the sky. And she had a weaponised stealth drone hovering above the earth. Base has just blown that up. So, on the one hand, the poacher is more vulnerable than ever. But, on the other hand, you’ll find she’s in quite a nasty mood.’
Two black choppers roared by close overhead on the way up the mountain. ‘They’re Search and Rescue,’ said Mischa. ‘In these parts, we’re very good at finding people. Not so good at Search and Destroy.’
‘I’ll come along for the ride,’ said Kaptu. ‘That’s going to warm me up quicker than catching a train.’
‘You can try hitchhiking up the mountains, ‘cause you ain’t coming with us,’ snapped Giselle. ‘Your job is to be a dog handler. Or a dog bodyguard.’ She slammed on the brakes, bringing the snowmobile to a stop just above the town. ‘You can see the train station from here, but we’ll take you all the way to the platform if you think you’re going to struggle.’
Kaptu stepped out with the backpack. ‘I’ll manage.’
The snowmobile sped off in a vertical ascent, leaving him with more snow to shake out of his hair. He put on the backpack and turned his attention to the town. Nestled at the bottom of the valley with a snow fed river running through its heart, it was a hive of activity. Pockets of floodlights indicated where the police roadblocks had been set up. The centrally located train station was one of the most concentrated. Kaptu started walking that way. On his wrist computer, he saw that he had ten minutes to catch the express to Paris. It was his quickest way out of Par, was worth hurrying for.