All around Paul Kavanagh, men swore and gripped their armrests tightly. Outside, the wind howled like a legion of arctic demons. Each change in pitch sent the plane lurching in a different direction. There were eight new Blacksand employees in the plane’s passenger seats. From the rearmost one, Paul stared out of a tiny window. It was dark outside expect for the particles of white that beat against the glass. He couldn’t see the stars. He couldn’t see the ground. He couldn’t see crap and that was starting to make him hate this place. It was ten times worse here than northern Quebec. The Canadian Shield had been a rocky wasteland of snow, pines and the most ancient stones in the world. There had never been storms like this during his combat against the French-Canadian separatists. According to what the Blacksand rep had told the eight of them before boarding in Anchorage, the plane was likely north of the tree line by now. Beyond the tree line was the tundra, a land of ice, snow and blizzards worse than any Saharan sandstorm.
