If Corvayne had been alone, he'd let his cape flutter behind him as he sped over the endless flat desert. He instead felt Wick on his back, possibly sleeping despite them being hammered by wind. He glanced in a mirror to make sure Hari was still back there, and then went back to steering. It wasn't strenuous as there were few hills, no trees, and no buildings of any kind. It was just desert speeding by and the sensation of being blasted by wind. He had looked into the desert while trying to find his home and it was one of the most desolate places on any inhabited planet. That was good for what they were doing as Corvayne could navigate by moons alone. At least when there were hills to see. The endless flat segments sped by ten feet under them, falling away when Corvayne raised them into long arcing jumps.

He wasn't pushing the bike hard. If they had a true shield generator like the two invaders were packing, he could go five times as fast. But he was pretty sure he'd trash the bike otherwise. Even loosely following the road it would be a long walk and a hell of a story to try to get a ride back to Cascadia. He swallowed his fears about climbing a hill and seeing his village. Once the thought happened it stuck with him for hours until Hari kicked his foot to tell him that she needed a break. They took a moment to drink water, pop the plugs out of their ears, maybe run to the other side of a rise to pee, and most importantly stretch. Corvanye was stiff as hell from just sitting in on position for hours.

Wick was too. “We still following the road?”

“You can see it when we crest our jumps. It's about five or six miles north of us right now.”

Hari was walking around trying to steady herself. “I wish we could just take a horse. A horse is nice and slow, no big hundred foot jumps. You fall off a horse? A good one stops and waits for you.”

Corvayne looked at her. “I thought you looked happy when we hit the open desert...”

“I was screaming! Half the ride!”

“Not that long, I had to slow down and remind you to put the mask on.”

“I was still screaming you just couldn't hear it.” She pouted.

Wick shrugged. “Corvayne's a pretty good driver, I got a nice nap in.”

“How sleep?” Hari was back to speaking Wick's language. She understood it better then she spoke it still, but she was getting better by the day. He really should remember the name but as he understood it, there were lots of dialects and he just called it 'Cascadian' since he could remember that.

“Might as well rest now. Also Corvayne makes a pretty good pillow.”

“Switch place!” Hari said much more forcefully.

“Fine. Quiet as a mouse then suddenly all bossy.” Wick hopped on the back. Corvayne reminded the grabby elf to keep her hands around his waist and to strap herself to the vehicle too, then off they went.

Blasting across the landscape for another hour Corvayne crested one last hill and saw the warm glow of the company town at the edge of his view. The next few minutes of driving he could make a concrete wall, as well as the metal buildings that reminded him of the warehouse. Corvayne lifted the bike for a better view and he saw that the mine itself was a deep hole in the center of the compound. He could also see that there was a bonfire and people milling about. He slowed the bike down and eased up to the wall. He pocketed his earplugs then heard the distant din of people shouting, laughing, and talking.

Corvayne stopped the bike, then amped the antigrav and peeked over the lip of the concrete to make sure he wasn't going to alert anyone with his landing. He spied a nice open dirt patch behind a corrugated steel building. Shady, out of the way, and quiet compared to the ruckus he heard elsewhere in town.

“Sounds like a party... I thought this place was supposed to be dreary.” Wick noted. Indeed, as he touched the bike down and pulled the key out, he heard what sounded like whooping and loud music. “Hey! This could be a good chance. People get loose if they are drinking.” She nudged Hari, who must have got it because she frowned.

“I am not drink.” The elf stated with a little huff.

Wick continued. “Okay, so let's find someone who's a little tipsy, not completely sloshed, and get them to spill the beans on what the party is about, if they've seen those two aliens, and so on. If we can't get anything solid, then we head over to the mine and infiltrate that... with Horton's help I can probably crack an ID.”

Corvayne mostly agreed with the later part of her plan. “I think interacting with the locals might give us away. We should project an air of knowing exactly what we are doing.” He took his spear as he talked and tied a shirt around the point, making it a walking stick as he had done in the past.

Wick nodded. “Yeah. DUH. Sneaking 101 Corvayne!”

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“I'm not confident on this plan.” They had started walking to the outskirts of what looked like a miner mosh pit around a bonfire. Everyone had on the same orange jumpsuits that Corvayne and company was wearing, some stripped down to reveal undershirts as the miners were drinking and yelling around a bonfire. Someone had supplied a lot of booze: Corvayne saw several kegs, tables full of bottles, and even a truck with the back open for the miners to pillage at will. Wick orbited around the main throng as another song started up from speakers on a rooftop. Much like Wick had predicted, they saw a few people who were talking a little too loudly while sitting on the porch of a run down looking bar. Two guys and a woman just blabbing. Corvayne assumed they were going to just wait to hear some juicy details but Wick pushed Corvayne forward. Alarms started going off inside his head. This was not his forte!

Wick, oblivious to Corvaynes discomfort, pointed forward “Ok Corvayne, go act a little drunk and tell them you can't believe this party.”

“Why not you Wick?” Corvayne turned his head. Hari obviously couldn't go. She was busy working on another banana anyway. Thank you for eating it mostly normally this time, Hari.

“Well if I show up the guys will hit on me!” Wick had her hands on her hips.

A small flare of jealousy turned him back to the miners. “All right. I hate this.” Corvayne couldn't remember the last time he willingly walked up to more then a single person to talk to them. He approached casually and waved, then forced himself to pretend he was just acting the part of a half drunk miner. Pretending he was playing a role made things easier.

Corvayne waved. “Hey great party! Can't believe they put it all together.”

“I know! Big bonus for all the jasper selling!” One miner laughed and held up his beer.

Corvayne looked around nodding as if he was impressed with everything then said, “They should do this more often.”

“I hear you man! After the last three weeks I'm glad the fuckers recognized they were pushin us too hard.”

Corvayne decided to push his luck and walked around the bar, grabbing an empty bottle as he slid up to another group hanging at the edge of the party. He thought about the newbie adventurers from the tower's inn, and the way they would walk and talk after a few drinks.

“Can't believe it man, all that jasper sold? And this party?”

“Yeah buddy, the new management rocks!”

He walked up to another group as he rounded a corner to what he guessed was the front door of the bar.

“New management rules!” He held up a bottle.

“Hahaha, yeah man. Thought they were jerk-asses but they are all right!”

“Remember when they first got here?” Corvayne offered, seeing if he could get creative to dig something up about them.

“Glad they recognized they were pushing us to dig too hard. Though...” The miner lowered his voice. “I'm still worried. The new section of the mine has had a lot of accidents. If they put you on it, I'd recommend trading shifts if you can. ”

He walked around another corner into a darker alley. There were two people sitting at a card table and eyed him with suspicion. Corvayne looked both ways, and nodded at the two men.

“Hey, you guys think this is too good to be true?”

Both men looked at each other and nodded. Corvayne leaned against the wall then stood again.

“I wonder... what the real reason they threw the party is.”

One guy was glaring at him, the other nodded. “No free lunch. I don't trust the mercenaries that replaced the guards either.”

The more guarded one looked over at his buddy then at Corvayne. “The guy with the weird weapon smells like blood. It's all too sudden.”

“Yeah... stay safe.”

He kept walking and turned the last corner back to Wick and shared what he got. She looked stunned. “You got all that in what... two minutes? Three?”

“It was YOUR plan! Why are you surprised it worked?”

“It wasn't a great plan?” Wick shrugged. “Anyway, we don't need to hang around here. Let's go break into the mine and check out that new section.”

Hari grabbed her shoulder but spoke to Corvayne. “We should ask where the guy with the weird weapon is. If that miner was particularly worried about him... we should know what they look like.”

Corvanye nodded. “I think getting a look at him might help.”

Wick shrugged. “Ok, but how are you going to find one person in a city full of drunk miners?”

A little later, after asking about a dozen people if they knew where 'the guy with a weird weapon' was, Corvayne learned the unnamed man and the new guards were unloading booze from a truck, then were directed over to shipping docks. Those docks were little more then prongs of raised concrete above the black top, open to the and topped with the same corrugated steel as most of the buildings. There were a few trucks set up for loading or unloading. A pair of miners were making out in the gate that let vehicles in and out of the loading area, but aside from that the docks were empty of activity or people, save for one truck that had men hauling a large piece of machinery out. He would need a closer look to see what they were up to.

Wick and Hari both got what he was thinking as he motioned to move behind a truck and followed him, crouching.

“I wanna take a closer look. Something about this strikes me as... off.”

“You mean like EVERYTHING?” Wick folded her arms. “I'd have heard about a public sale of the company, and Cascadian Jasper hasn't had a price spike in three years. So either the miners independently lied about two things, or the guys buying everyone drinks are lying about everything. You know what? I bet you 200 credits the guy's weird weapon has some type of sawblade.”

“I am not going to take you up on that bet.” Corvayne whispered back. “You know what free booze tells me?”

Hari seemed to have followed enough of what Wick had said to nod at Corvayne. “This party is a distraction.”

Corvayne nodded, and used his cloak to blur into the same color as concrete. Staying low he peered at the guards. It looked like they were unloading dune buggies, driving them across a ramp and onto the raised dock. The guards in question looked to have assault rifles but one stood out in particular. He was dressed in some sort of custom armor, and had what looked like a sawblade with a wire strung to it on his back. Probably a version of a 'Hell's Yoyo'. The kind of dangerous weapon where someone trying to use it untrained would injure or kill themselves.

Well, unless there were two men with sawblades in this group, he found who murdered the manager back at the cabin. So the idea that there was some sort of takeover at the mine going on seemed increasingly likely. As the last buggy rolled out Sawblade guy pulled out a complicated orb about the size of a microwave with a steel framework that nearly made Corvayne do a double take.

Corvayne wasn't able to just magic what any given box with tubes on it was but the watchers had made sure that anyone who picked up a spear quickly was able to determine what a weapon was if they saw it. It looked like a containment unit but had no obvious plugs. There was also hints from how the thing was handled: Even the guards not touching it gave it an extra foot of room. When the people hoisting it spun it and he saw that it had a certain yellow and black marking on it Corvayne frowned as his gut reaction to what was being unloaded was confirmed.

He was pretty sure he had just watched them unload a nuclear bomb.

Corvayne crept back to the girls. “Okay I have good news and bad news. The good news is I'm 99 percent sure we got the guy who killed that miner and thus knows something about the crate.”

Hari asks. “You said you had ill tidings as well?”

“The bad news is he has a nuclear weapon.”

Wick nodded. Then stopped. “What?!”

Corvayne looked around the truck they were crouched by to make sure no one decided to jump off the dock and find them snooping. He looked back at the raised dock and saw the sawblade guy drive past, top of the nuke visible in the back of his buggy.

“I don't know if the nuke was what the crate was or this is a response to it, but I'm not going to let him blow up the miners.” Corvayne stood. “If we get separated, meet up at the hovercycle.”

Wick had a death grip on his arm, shaking him a little. “We are rapidly getting out of our wheelhouse! They got a nuclear weapon!”

“It's Okay. I've got a spear. Let's see who trained more.”