5 KM east. That's all it would take, and it would make all the difference in the world. Instead, the few moments Shiriki gets in free fall before entering the blizzard are comparatively peaceful compared to the chaos that follows. The clouds close up above him, and he's falling in the dark, buffeted by the wind, and left with nothing to navigate by but the compass display in his cyber eyes. A gale-forced wind hits and knocks him end-over-end and what must be about 150 meters straight sideways. Shiriki knows he needs to get lower before he can effectively navigate himself, and so he closes his legs and brings his arms to his sides, falling like a stone. Well, like a stone weighed down with plastic explosives, a couple surveillance drones, another combat drone fitted with enough stick-and-shock to make the first UCAS battalion twitchy, and his regular combat kit.
Two hundred meters more or less straight down, and Shiriki opens his wingsuit and heads toward the UCAS border. He's still tossed about like spare detritus, but the course is easier to maintain. He hits a momentary break in the clouds, orients himself, and sees that at this pace he will indeed overshoot the farm house. Dipping his right hand, he tries for a turn, but another gust pulls his feet out and to the side, and he's falling again woefully off course. For a moment he doesn't fight it, and lets the wind have its way, while he rubs some ice from his goggles. He recalculates his approach, uses his arm wings to stabilize himself, and then spreads his legs again to push his body forward. His speed catches, then accelerates, and he's on the right track, if barely. He holds off on opening his shoot, probably no more than three seconds, but he knows it's three seconds that he's going to feel. When the shoot opens, he detaches the rotodrone, and hot-sims it down among the trees while his body breezes about limp and alone.
Now, this is more like it. Due to the ice, the propellers protest for a moment, but once they're going, he dives the rotodrone straight down and pulls up hard just above the tree line. After setting the autopilot to their rendezvous point, he rejoins his meat body just in time to tuck before impact. If it wasn't for the snow, he's sure he would've broken something, but instead he only wrenches his ankle against a fallen tree, and then he's cutting himself loose and limping toward the farm house, while checking the feed on his combat drone.
"Ah, frag me," he says to no one in particular, as he spots some fading thermal impressions leading up to the farmhouse. When he makes it to the porch, he kicks off his boots against the railing, which gives out unexpectedly. He tries to right himself, but Shiriki does so by grabbing a shutter which tears off in his hand and sends him stumbling off the porch and into what was once probably a blackberry patch. He stands, rights himself, and carefully approaches the cabin a second time, boisterously proclaiming, "Well, that'll wake ya up in the mornings, chumps," before seeing that the mood inside is much more somber than he predicted. He does a quick head-count. Yeah, all here, so what's the. . . oh great. The apparitions of two anglo farmers and their trusty pooch stand staring down Dan-Dan. He's stopped dead in his tracks, and waits for orders from the CPT.
