The morning was bright in the forest. The storm had done its work over the past week, leaving everything lush and green. Zandith walked with Four to the edge of the forest, just outside of visible range of the rest of civilization. They were fully suited in their power armor. Zandith had made sure they had more than enough crystals stored to have a safe mission abort if something forced them to stop the heist.

“Target will be within striking zone in roughly fifteen minutes,” Three said on comms.

“Copy that,” Zandith replied. He looked at Four who was gazing at the skies. The pilot must have been fond of the skies deep down, even in trance three. Zandith had considered pushing him down into trance four or five, but going that deep would likely cause Four to stop moving entirely. Trances that deep were only good for when Zandith wanted to have direct manual control over Four’s actions. In trance three, Four would obey commands without question, but it was more difficult to control his actions directly.

“How do the skies look?” Zandith asked Three.

“Air traffic is relatively clear,” he replied. “There should be only a few aircraft visible during your flight. The speeder is in position and ready to engage.”

“A good news streak of one. Let’s see how long we can keep it going.” He activated flight mode, and a pair of jet wings swung out from the back compartment. Four’s did the same. They went under their invisibility illusions, but their armors were linked, so they could see a green outline of the other. They looked at each other for a few seconds, then Zandith pointed. “You first.”

Four took a couple steps away to a spot where there were no branches above. The turbines in his suit spun up as he crouched, then he took an enhanced jump up through the canopy. His jets fired and he accelerated upward. Zandith went to the same spot on the ground and performed the same maneuver.

While testing the armor flight functionality, he discovered that taking off directly from the ground was a bad idea because it left scorch marks and could catch things on fire. He also tried to forgo the wings, but that would force him to put more thrusters on the torso of the armor. In the end, the extra weight was worth it. It might be slower than the alternative, but it was far more efficient. He had other methods of survival if he was ever chased while flying.

He located Four in the air and pitched over to follow his flight. A map of their location popped up in his viewport. Fortunately, they had a direct path from where they were to the shipment. Domrik’s place was far enough out of the way that they didn’t need to take a detour.

They flew low over the hills and valleys, only a couple hundred feet. The red exhaust of the engines was also cloaked. All it took was extending the illusion a dozen or so feet behind the armor. Zandith saw the occasional dog look at them curiously, but because they had cloaked the deafening sound of the engines, the owner of the dog never suspected anything. He just hoped that damned Jase wasn’t out scouting for Domrik again.

The flight was quick and uneventful. Zandith had kept Four in front of him the entire time, just in case he started doing something unexpected. They slowed to a hover as they approached the highway. The big white trucks were just merging into the traffic from the on-ramp at the base of a hill.

Zandith and Four waited until the trucks were out of sight of the small town surrounding the hill. Still cloaked, they landed on the highway a quarter mile ahead of the trucks and scattered a bunch of small, sharp metal objects in the lane. The stood to the side of the road and extended the invisibility to the objects on the road.

The trucks continued onward, completely oblivious to what was in front of them. The first truck shuttered slightly as its front and back tires popped in quick succession. The driver immediately panicked and pulled the truck off the shoulder of the highway onto the surrounding dryland. The same happened to the three tucks behind him. Zandith and Four stood back and watched as the trucks passed them. With a bit more effort, they extended the invisibility to the trucks so that passing cars wouldn’t be aware of the heist.

“Bring in the speeder,” Zandith told Three as he prepared the tranquilizer on his armor. “We can’t spend much time here.”

Four gripped the hilt of his Aether blade mounted on his belt. “It seems we aren’t alone.”

Zandith turned on his infrared sensors. “Shit, I didn’t want to get our hands bloody. Three, halt the speeder and resend it on my mark.”

Instead of the drivers getting out of their trucks as he had expected, each of the back doors opened to reveal one squad of the Eredore Guard per truck. The inside of each truck glowed intensely red. That meant Zandith and Four had to face thirty-two of the nations’ most fierce fighters. They jumped out in pairs and prepared their guns and shields. The magazines of each gun glowed red with Aether energy. The shield generators were no more than a silver disc with a handle on the bottom. The soldier spread into circular formations facing outward and activated their Aether shields.

Zandith withdrew two of his own Aether blades and walked with Four. “They knew something like this might happen. Three, why didn’t you tell me this was going to happen!?”

“This wasn’t on their preparation plans,” Three said. “This must have been a last-minute decision.”

Only a couple dozen feet away from the first group, Zandith smiled at Four from inside his armor. “I bet I can take more.”

Four hardly acknowledged him, extending his arm to the side and igniting the Aether blade. A fine red outline shimmered just beyond the blade’s cutting edge, but only for a moment before Four made it invisible too. “We will see.”

Four charged at the first group while Zandith leapt over the other three. He hoped to eventually pack all of them close together so the mission could be completed sooner. There was an electric explosion at Four’s group. They were firing about, but couldn’t hit him because they couldn’t see him.

Zandith looked to the soldier nearest him. He had seen it all before countless times. That frightened look penetrating the attempt to conceal it. The fear that defeat was inevitable.

Just like old times. Zandith pondered as he ignited both his Aether blades. The first bolt they fired in his direction missed completely, and the next two he deflected with two quick shields. Those were lucky shots. In one quick bound, he converged on the nearest soldier and stabbed through the red shield. The resulting explosion threw everyone to the ground.

Zandith bounced off his arm back to his feet. He flicked his wrist. His Aether blade spun into the first soldier’s chest, sending back to the ground for good. He blocked two more bolts as he retrieved the bloody blade. He rolled under another soldier’s shield and cut off both his feet simultaneously. He spun off the ground. Before the soldier could even fall to his knees, he didn’t have a head.

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Zandith spawned several identical illusions of himself in power armor, each one arranged to form a circle around the soldiers. The energy of the new illusions made him drop his own invisibility, but he was able to maintain his focus. Now the soldiers were firing at the illusions, which were doing their own evasive maneuvers. The illusions couldn’t do any damage, but they made movements to attack anyway, making their opponents flinch.

Both the squads in the middle had gone to aid the squads closest to them, though they didn’t fire too many shots. The illusions, plus the risk of firing on their own soldiers, stayed their full engagement. Zandith used their hesitation to his full advantage, finishing off the soldiers of the first squad by throwing a few of his own bolts.

As the last two soldiers’ smoldering bodies crumpled to the ground, Zandith dispelled his illusions. The bolts from the second squad began flying. He ducked low to the ground. With a wide sweep of his arm, he sent a wave of Aether thundering against their shields. A couple shields dissipated, and those soldiers were immediately taken out with a pair of Aether bolts from Zandith.

The others tried to fire at where they thought he was, but he rolled far to the side. He took a moment to check on Four, but he didn’t do it by looking. He closed his eyes and felt. There was his own feeling of physical energy which was barely depleted, and there was another feeling somewhere in Four’s direction. He was doing just fine against the Eredore Guard squads, though he wasn’t making as much progress as Zandith.

Returning to his own fight, he clenched his armored fist and created a gauntlet of pure Aether. He leapt over more enemy fire and delivered an astounding downward blow to one of the shields. The force of the attack was enough to not only pierce the shield but also smash the soldier to the ground, smattering the dirt with blood. The soldier’s friends stared at the body in horror, and after a couple more flicks of Zandith’s blades, they were on the ground as well.

He turned to Four’s fight. There were three illusions distracting the remaining soldiers. Four was picking them off one by one. Zandith extended his hand toward them, palm toward the sky. The tips of his fingers shimmered with red energy, then tiny bolts flew out of them to the soldiers. The last four bodies dropped.

“I win,” Zandith bragged. Four deactivated his blade, saying nothing. Zandith glanced at the drivers of the trucks. They weren’t armed with anything and they cowered in their seats. He concluded they weren’t worth his time. He checked the highway to confirm there were no bystanders. Their fight had gone completely unnoticed.

“Three, send the speeder,” he said.

“It’s on its way,” Three replied.

Zandith had started toward the nearest truck when he noticed police sirens in the distance. He looked with dismay down the freeway to discover several police cars speeding toward them. It would only take them less than a minute to arrive, but the invisibility illusion would make it difficult for them to figure out what was going on.

Far off from the freeway, a dust cloud was being kicked up. The speeder was on its way. Zandith leapt into the back of the truck and started tossing rolls of crystals onto the ground. Four did the same in one of the other trucks. The speeder couldn’t carry all the crystals kept in even one of the trucks, but each roll of crystals acquired was a success in Zandith’s eyes. If most of his plans worked out, then this would be the last heist he would need to do.

Once Zandith’s armor connected to the speeder, he checked its status. The cloaking mechanism was malfunctioning slightly, causing it to consume more power than normal. The speeder had remained cloaked in the field for a number of days, far longer than it had ever done in the past. He looked at the speeder directly. Besides the dust cloud, there was nothing except for a rippling distortion of the background trees and shrubs. Hopefully the police would mistake it for heat distortion.

The ground rumbled as the speeder approached. It slowed to a quick stop without skidding, thanks to the enormous off-roading tires. The sleek black design was flickering in and out of existence. Zandith immediately deactivated its cloak. It was already within their invisibility illusion.

“Get all the crystals in the trunk,” Zandith told Four. “I’ll take care of the police.”

“Yes, sir,” Four replied.

“And keep us invisible,” Zandith commanded as he closed his eyes. Seconds later, the police cars scattered. One ran into the median, two collided into each other, and the others skidded off the shoulder of the freeway. All because they thought they saw a giant semi driving down the wrong side of the freeway. For the police cars that kept approaching, he created an illusion of an enormous brick wall in front of them. Fortunately, they managed to stop before passing through the illusion.

Four was working at an inhuman speed aided by his armor. He filled a good portion of the enormous trunk before Zandith dropped the distant illusions and bounded back to the speeder. Both cockpit windows opened vertically. As Zandith got in, his armor magnetized to the back of the seat. Four landed in the passenger seat. The cockpit windows swung shut and sealed. Zandith changed the mode of the speeder from remote controlled to piloted and hit the accelerator.

The speeder jerked forward, accelerating to over the highway speed limit in seconds. Once they were far enough away from the massacre they left behind, Zandith shrank the invisibility illusion to include only the speeder.

He was just about to cut off a bunch of cars when he saw police cars lining up in the other direction. The cars on the freeway were already slowing down. He decided to stay on the dirt so that he could pass around the police car blockade. Only when he was a quarter mile away did he realize they had lined up right at the edge of an artificial lake. The speeder was not waterproof.

“Dammit, why do the police have to be so annoying?” Zandith growled. He made a hard turn to the right at the last second. Spikes poked out of the speeder’s tires in order to get extra traction. Zandith and Four leaned against the harsh change in momentum. He slammed a lever forward. The engines on the back on the speeder roared to life. The ground in front of them became a blur of motion. Zandith pressed a button on the lever and triangular wings sprouted from the underbelly of the speeder. After a few moments the rapid bumping of the vehicle stopped as the tires left the ground and tucked themselves away.

“Suck on that, bitches,” Zandith muttered. Once he was high enough in the air, he banked to the left and looked out the side of the window. The police had gotten out of their cars and were looking in his direction, confused. The dust cloud made by the speeder wasn’t cloaked, so Zandith knew the police could see the general direction in which he had taken off. Fortunately, he had to make a very wide turn in order to head back to base. Knowing this, he relaxed a bit and took off his helmet.

They were only flying for a couple minutes when the system picked up a trio of fighter jets heading in their direction. At first, Zandith thought they had gotten lucky with the direction; The speeder was still cloaked. After swaying to the right and watching them adjust their course slightly, his eyes grew wide. “What the fuck? How?”

“Infrared sensors?” Four offered.

“But we’re cloaked!”

“Not the heated air behind the craft.”

Zandith stared at the control panel in front of him for a moment. The fighters were a mile away and catching up. Each one appeared as a horizontal line on the rear viewport. They would be within firing range in a few seconds.

He hit a few buttons, activating the reactive shields, and not a moment too early. Each of the three fighters shot two red bolts each. Since they were firing using line-of-sight, he didn’t have to take any evasive maneuvers. Only one of them caused the red shield to pop up behind the speeder.

He eyed the range meter on the map, watching the three chevron-shaped ships cross the boundary line. The moment they did, he closed his eyes and extended the invisibility as far back as he could, almost to the fighters themselves. A turret popped up from the top of the speeder and swung around. It fired three quick shots within a split second, rotating slightly in between each shot. There were three explosions, and the smoking fighters fell out of the sky.

Zandith pumped his fist. “Hah! Aim bots, gotta love ‘em.”

Flying wasn’t an option anymore. If they tracked the heated trails of air left behind by the speeder, they would be able to find his base. He hoped they didn’t extrapolate from the direction he was traveling. He found a safe place to land without making too much of a dust cloud. He kept the car cloaked until they found a place to enter on a road where there weren’t any cars.

The speeder was longer than normal cars, so he needed an illusion that would keep other cars from hitting his. He changed the illusion to that of a limousine. Now all he had to do was drive a bit slower and make wider turns. That turned out to be more difficult than he thought, not because the speeder couldn’t handle that way, he just liked going really fast.