Northeast they had traveled from Poznan, with the refugees from Warsaw who had joined. It seemed, for the first several days, they were two groups, or Claudia saw this in the treatment of those of one group to another. To her, they seemed to all be on one team which was hers.

      The first dangers they met were rain and small patrols of the Russian army from camp in Poznan. The rain could not be helped and so they stayed in their vehicles and wiped down the horses when they could. Avoiding the troops was a little trickier. Nearly all communications, whether audio or video, were transmitted by radio; be it site-to-site directly, or to receivers and hardlines, or to relay towers or stations. In addition, had a format for encoding data in the radio signal and then unencoding the radio signal for at the other end.

      It was simple technology really, the basis for learning the location of your vehicle while away from home or making a vidphone call. It was the way mobile computers talked to each other. But, this simple technology had many safeguards to prevent tampering or free use. The best means of security was sending the information in code, so that it was noise to everyone but those who had the assigned decoder built into their devices. But, of course, these decoders could be faked, even built from scratch, if one understood the principle. Trial and error was all that was really needed. Another safeguard was randomizing the narrow part of a wideband which actually carried the data during its transmission. This made simple scanners useless, as only tiny bits of a message could be picked up at once, making it like a jigsaw puzzle without its box. This security measure could also be defeated, with substantially greater effort. The entire band must be scanned at once, on all channels. Then, the algorithms used in randomizing must be figured. But it was possible.

      There were some transmissions based on laser lines and optical receivers, or on microwaves, but these were not in wide use. There were the physical hard lines, not easy to tap, but easy to be caught using the tap. Claudia had understanding of all this. She had used such information to program means of decoding devices from companies and organizations world wide.

Others who understood technology beyond being users, such as Robbie and Leonore were doing the same. Leonore made some amount of money building various scanners and decoders, which could provide information to her customers, even though they did not have her same knowledge or expertise. Leonore made signals accessible to users, for a price.

      Claudia had shared Robbie's car immediately after leaving Poznan, and suggested a complete sharing of knowledge. To show goodwill, she showed Robbie and Leonore both a list of codes she knew of to be current, and with which devices they were to be used. She explained her method of forging IDs, and threw in some of her tricks in disrupting target computer systems. She usually did not steal, change, or disrupt information for her personal gain, which Leonore did when selling black boxes; but Claudia had long done it for political or philosophical causes, which made her a cyber-terrorist, though "hacktivist" seemed a friendlier term.

      But being a notorious cyber-activist, yet uncaught, and having, as Claudia was aware of having, such a fine looking body in real life, was enough to make a certain type of operator loyal.

There were not that many European hackers, for want of a better word, much older than Claudia. Due to the whole socio-economic-political climate over recent decades. Nations had been in marked regression and decline. They lost innovators, and then they lost technicians, and finally even lost users. Technology, in parts of the globe, had become the domain of rare, obsessive hobbyists only. And some percentage of them were going to be mortal.

Things had been starting to improve, with Union assistance, which made the impending war a greater tragedy than mundanes could comprehend. Now, most people who understood technology in Europe were kids and many of them, knowingly or not, had caught on through some Darkling influence or foreign-aid to their schools.

Remove that influence and aid and they'd be even worse off.

But, things being as they were, teens were well represented among those who could hack technology. Being a hot teenager earned not a few bonus points on the scale of eliteness.

 Robbie and Leonore shared their tricks, a few of which Claudia had not thought of, but that was mostly due to disinterest, or having no past use for the application of such information. Still, she was of the mind that no information was entirely useless.  Soon, she was discussing with her new crew some of the thoughts she had not even shared with John.

      "I want to make some parameters for what the Goth is and is not," Claudia explained, "And, I want to find a way to explain what Goth is and isn't via some 24/7 net presence, so as to recruit over the net. I would like to find a way of giving a general location as we move, so that viewers can join us, but only if it is secure enough to avoid the known enemies."

      "Secret by reference?" Robbie offered. He spoke of giving a piece of information that was only useful if the receiver knew or could determine what the message referred to and then understand how this information was to be applied. It was low tech but useful in quickly relaying phrases to like-minded individuals.

      Claudia had used this in telling Robbie over the net that they put their trust in the Peacemaker. Robbie had already known that she claimed to be in Poznan. The Peacemaker was the name given to St. Casimir, a Polish saint fairly well known by all Poles, as he had been a Prince. If Robbie had used reference to St. Casimir and put it together with Poznan he could easily find record of a church by that name in Poznan.

      "Possibly," Claudia said. "I'd want to think it over first, but perhaps making reference in some way to battle fought in a certain place."

      "Goth battles?" Robbie asked.

      "Likely. Or perhaps something more variant. I'll think on it."

      Leonore had busied herself with getting her scanner to pick up useful military signals. The scanner itself was a bulky machine with antennae on the roof and many whirring drives inside to record the constant stream of noise or data from each channel and then she had connected this to a stripped down mobile with the latest processors and what might seem an overkill of memory. The system surely looked awkward, but Leonore explained that with Robbie's program, which had the computer process the information for relevant data — they were not interested in personal communications or couples having phone sex — they usually could pull in and store a good number of complete messages and identify the senders and recipients.

      Claudia watched Leonore, wearing specs, and tapping at keys and touchpads selected a specific recording. A voice played, definitely in Russian. Another moment's tapping and a panel popped up before them. On it a translation was printed in Polish. Leonore glanced over the top of her specs to see if Claudia could read it. "A Russian report confirming for superiors that those wanted from Zakopane and were among those in Poznan county, but eluded capture due to inclement weather," Leonore said. A moment. "Supervisors order the platoon back to the city of Poznan and offer assurance that the criminals last position will be given to other agents."

      Claudia nodded. Leonore went on working, giving to Robbie occasional town or city names to mark on the maps which his mobile contained. They were forming a very rough picture of the movement of the troops of several different forces. Claudia knew this was imperfect. Military commanders had nearly real-time displays which were much more accurate, but they also had government funding and large teams of specialists to do what Leonore or Claudia did alone.Her crew was doing well enough.

      When not occupied fully with the tribe's technical needs, the crew, which Robbie called Robot Dan, told each other about their past. Robbie had been playing with computers since a small child, and had always lived in Warsaw, where his parents traded in collectible toys. Leonore had lived in Krakow and learned many of her tricks from an older guy who frequented the same dance clubs. She had moved to Warsaw just a year before, to get away from an old boyfriend, and take a job with the IT security department of a non-profit.

      From what they had all heard, from their net contacts, the Southern cities like Krakow, Zabrze, and Wroclaw were very much under Russian occupation, though Wroclaw less so than the first two, being further west. Robbie figured they wanted Warsaw because it was the capital, and the Southern cities because they meant to cross Poland rather than cross the mountainous regions into Hungary or Slovakia. Poznan, they felt, had been chosen to be occupied by advance troops, because from there the Poles would most likely be able to move their own troops south to cut off the Russian column, if left unhindered.

      So far as they knew, the Darkling Guard, which was the militia of the Union, was along the German border, in the Czech Republic, as well as in Hungary and Slovakia. But, they were hindered by the same mountains. They heard only rumors of the Vampire City troops, suggestions that they remained in Italy, mounting troops behind the Alps for some manner of offensive. The only other purely Union military force was the Egypt Guard, who contrary to their name and usual function, had been sent from Alexandria to Greece, and were moving north. It was thought that the Egypt Guard were Human, as opposed to the Darkling Guard, but trained in fierce ancient martial arts such as to put down enemies more easily with hand, blade, or staff than firearms. This seemed no less strange than what they'd already seen happen with the Swiss Guard, after the Vatican had been taken.

      Regular news programs were the best source for the troop movements of other countries with in the union or the EL. Britain had sent some troops into France, but at this point, had not built up a large force there, and was slow in deploying. France could offer no troops of its own, having been many years wracked by internal conflict, and having lost the resources of its southern half, now the separate country of Gaul. Germany had officially renewed allegiance to the Union, and was in the midst of deploying troops, and building machines and weapons of war.

      No one but the most savage and fourth word terrorists ever used weapons of mass destruction such as bombs, though many forms of missiles were used to take out objects as large as a factory in many wars. And no one but these same sorts of terrorists would launch attack with the goal of spreading disease or substance that killed slowly and over time. The last major attack like that had been the Paris Riots, and Claudia didn't need a news report to tell her how that had gone.

 So, it was all reduced back to the land war, or air strikes, yet, few countries had air power in this century, being victims of some global recession. The so-called Back Ages. Air flights, commercial or military, were scarce and to and from a small select number of wealthy cities, most of which were not in Europe. In Europe, many towns did not even have motorcars. This was why trains and large road vehicles were targets. Denying a town or city mass transit to the outside basically gave an army control.

      Claudia had read about the Dark Ages and other periods of recorded history in which certain technologies or knowledge had been lost, if not to all the world, then to a large region that would only later communicate enough to learn what the rest of the world knew. There were gaps. A time after the fall of the Sumerian civilization, when much knowledge had been lost for centuries, and was preserved only in part by refugees going to India, Egypt, Hatti or Canaan.  There had been a time when Arabs did algebra but Romans could barely solve simple problems of multiplication. A time in Europe when no one could read but a few priests that knew a degenerate form of Latin.

      Well, the German people had writing, it was just that those who Christianized them considered their writing pagan and hadn't preserved it.

      Now, the real cause of this war, Claudia firmly believed, was that the countries in Europe were dissatisfied that the Back Ages that the Treaty of Alexandria had swept from the rest of the world still affected Europe for some complex combination of reasons. Claudia had her devices and understanding of programming languages and circuitry, but she was both wealthy, had lived in a very large city, and her father worked with Darkling.

      If you lost innovators, technicians and users in that order, you could not easily recover users without having some available technology to use, or technicians without technology to maintain. And, an innovator without a market was just a hobbyist. Claudia had met people who owned outdated pieces of technology but were such complete users they did not know how to repair the devices if they malfunctioned.

 It was likely they would write in future histories that it had all been about Darkling, but truthfully, it was very likely a means to a war-time economy. When no one was buying or making cars, factories would spring to life to produce tanks and soldiers would be trained to maintain and drive them. There would be factories to make uniforms, and all those workers would be paid. Then everyone would want to communicate with their loved ones in dangerous areas, and would invest in IT companies again.

      It was boring really. Claudia passed the rest of her time reading about the ancient tribes. The Celts, the many small German tribes, the Slavs, the Huns even...all had such interesting culture and such heroic characters in their history. Why Theodoric of the Ostrogoths had a life that read like a Romance novel, and his daughter a life like a soap opera. Alaric had been a Goth warrior king and fought many battles to victory. Claudia wished she knew more. The historians tended to record their battles more than anything but Claudia just knew that like modern people these tribes had done much more than just fight, only the historians were not certain what.

      They must have had religion, family groups, methods of building and craft. They must have had favorite colors and lucky boots, perhaps even interesting recipes. They must have had their own stories and history. She would make sure her new tribe had these things. They would not just sneak about avoiding battles. Not that Claudia desired battles, she desired more than the sneaking for her people.

      "We should have celebrations," she said to John one day. They were riding their horses then; it had dried up. "We should have bonfires where we camp and tell stories and sing songs, make culture. And if we see it is safe, we should stay in a place a day longer to see who lives in the area. We could discover lost members of our tribe."

      They said that now. They talked of discovering lost members of their tribe rather than making one up, yet they knew very well that there was no single tribe they had once belonged to, not in history. But, in myth, there might have been. It occurred to Claudia that the Hyperboreans or far northerners, spoken of in Greek texts referred to a people rather than many peoples. And whether it was true or not, it was romantic and improvable enough that Claudia thought she might as well claim it to be true.

      John touched his lips and blew her a kiss. "If it pleases you My Lady." They had all taken to doing that, and Claudia was not sure who had begun it entirely, though Alaric had been one of the first. Others had pushed it more: the chivalry aspect of ancient days. It made some sense. The time of chivalry was marked by conflict between various tribes that remained from even earlier times.

      Claudia only nodded to him. He did look handsome and heroic, riding Darkling and wearing some of his well tailored leather and wool clothing Joy had bought him. Another thought occurred to her. "You used to play music when Joy asked. Would you for us?"

      John nodded now.  "When will we stop next, then, and have this bonfire and troubadouring?"

      Claudia lifted her computer and opened it on her lap, a little awkward still with trying to look over the screen or type while on Cloud's back. "Do you know Choszczno?" Claudia asked, "We should be close."

      "We've been following along the highway, I saw a sign." John called more loudly for Elzbieta. She turned around from the back seat of the hovercar Robbie was then driving. "Drive into Choszczno, check it out. Find an area outside to camp."

      The hovercar sped away from the front of the line. They hadn't felt a need to stay to roads. Jeep and mini had all terrain tires and Robbie's car kept up well enough, as did the horses. The trailer was the largest worry; it was designed to be towed to camping grounds, but there was risk of getting stuck when ground was saturated or it was too weighed down. They were only ten in number, and hardly needed all the vehicles. Robbie talked of selling his car and using the money to chip in for other goods. The tribe had discussed the benefits of having an additional trailer of some sort rather than a vehicle to better manage cargo and sleeping arrangements.

      The hovercar returned before it was missed. Robbie circled the line and pulled along to pace the horses. "Looks safe," Elzbieta said. "It seems the west side will be suitable for camping. They have a decent grocer and I noticed an electronics shop and a coffeehouse. There's a petrol station at the south end."

      John made a signal of his hand in the air and called for the group to listen. "Get onto the road again!" he shouted for all the group to hear.

      The tribe pulled their mounts and vehicles onto the road, and met little traffic. It was midday, and not usually crowded, especially not in this area. The petrol station was as Elzbieta said. and Claudia left Cloud to use her card to pay for the gasoline for each vehicle. The single attendant did not leave his small sealed booth and hardly looked at them. Claudia had done a little research. The farther north they got the further they traveled into the lake country. There were cities here but more often small tourist towns and vacation spots along the many lakes as well as the lagoons and bay on the north shore. It would not be unusual to see trailers or loaded vehicles, perhaps not even this early in the year.

      They moved on into Choszczno, deciding to stop first rather than return after making a camp. Claudia had her crew check out the electronics store, sending Merideth with them to get the others to spend more time with her, and to encourage Merideth to learn more about available technology.

      For her part, Claudia found a tack shop and ordered horse feed. She thought John might overlook this. But, she went and informed him, in case he was less forgetful than she was assuming him to be.  He said he would go to the shop to look over gear for the horses.

      Claudia found Elzbieta and Karina in the grocer with Cyprian, who Elzbieta had known from Poznan, and Helena who had arrived with Robbie. Helena seemed to get along well with Elzbieta and Cyprian already, but Claudia, usually oblivious to such things, suspected this was based on the fact that Cyprian was thus far unremarkable in everything but for his tall dark handsomeness, and Helena probably thought she should make sure Elzbieta had no claims. It didn't matter really, Claudia approved of the tribe melding together. Soon they would have newer members, she was sure.

      They followed a list and budget, which Karina had been in charge of, and bought what food and necessary toiletries the store offered. It seemed well stocked and unaffected by war-time runs on goods.

      Claudia paid for these purchases as well. If they wished they could give money to her, or later she would ask them to buy certain things each. It was not a large concern, money.

      After shopping, Claudia sent some of the group on to begin camp. She kept Mikolaj behind, the younger boy who was Cyprian's brother. He had been waiting with the horses. She wanted to get him out from Cyprian's shadow; it seemed it was welcomed by both. The crew found them both in the coffee shop, drinking milkshakes.

      They sat down with her, opening their computers as she had and showing what small devices or supplies they had purchased. Merideth proudly showed some crystals Leonore had instructed her to buy. Claudia smiled. Marek, another of Robbie's crew, with smaller talent, had purchased an older mobile computer and Merideth had purchased a processor chip, Leonore an extra drive.

      "They will show me how they build a custom machine from various parts, and give me what parts are left for my machine," Merideth said.

      This wasn't as generous as Merideth seemed to think, but Claudia only asked, "You have a wireless card?" Claudia asked.

      "I already have a decent spare," Lenore said, "don't worry, we'll all pitch in, make sure Merideth gets a decent machine, much better than she has. Do you want to help?"

      "Sure," Claudia said. Maybe they were attempting actual generosity. She had so much to do and think about, but if Merideth showed interest, it was wise to encourage her. "Just how many spare parts do you have about? I might have a drive and some memory, perhaps an older processor. I know I have scads of various boards."

      "We have more than enough to make our new machine and then to get Merideth fixed up, but maybe not to make a really good machine."

      "Try to think what you would need to make another machine," Claudia said, "I would like to also teach Miko here to build, if not ever program. He's not too young to learn a trade."

      Robbie nodded. "Good idea, the more the better, and he's young."

      "You will teach me to use these?" Miko asked. He was trying to look at Claudia's screen but the saver was on.

      Claudia smiled down at him. "To build and repair even, and if you show good logic to program." An idea occurred to her. It happened sometimes, she would think of something she had been meaning to when she stopped trying. "I know how to get people to find us! A...silly virtual area, we can use photos of the camp to help in rendering. That plus spoken clues should easily do it. And we can teach Merideth and Mikolaj the most basic net apps."

      "We probably could create an entire virtual area and have at least one of us on at all times," Marek said, looked to Leonore to see if he was indeed correct.

      Claudia nodded, "And just the entrance room the camp. Each of us will construct a personal room, it will be our first assignment. Each will need graphics and scripts. We need something to pass the time and instruct the newbies. Besides, I have plans for us in the future and need as much talent as I can get."

      "That's too easy," Robbie said. "How about a virtual space that has to do with the tribe, or at least things Gothic, so as to give clues by reference."

      "Yes, perfect. It has to be Gothic. Each of you will be left to research what that might be." Claudia smiled, content with herself and her crew. When they got as far as Szczecin they would meet up with the BCG and then they would really have some power, if she could get two groups to get along again.