[wavehawk]

Still working...

It was about 4pm when I finally got word of her.

By then, I was already half out of my mind trying to figure out the possibilities--It was easy to find out how far a 2nd generation IS could fly before running out of energy, but energy capacity was something we hadn't yet tested on <Shenlong>.

Oddly enough, it was a much calmer (but still royally pissed) Sam that got back to me via my mobile. Apparently, someone from the country and wine valleys up north reported something "like a flying Yowie" screech past them not fifteen minutes earlier.

"Get up there, and I don't care if you have to have your head cut off, just get her back!" Sam's delightfully worded order was.

The Yarra Valley was out country, not desert, but definitely away from regular civilization. There were only three things you could find out there: wine-growers, farmers, and animals.

I sudenly thought of the Wallabies and took a wild guess.

There were quite a few tourist-y places in this area, just beyond the Dandenong mountain ranges and across the Wineries. Hidden little locales where they served food and showed off tame versions of the local wildlife. There were also more pofessional places like Healesville sanctuary, but I doubted Linyin would turn up there.

So I started looking up some of the smaller bed and breakfasts, ones that had either tame wallabies and kangaroos, or else had access to wildlife reserves. I went through thirty different calls--all of whom yelled at me because I enquired if they'd seen a flying girl in gigantic powered armor.

The thirty-first call was a bit different. The second I mentioned that I was with ASIO, the woman on the other line suddenly inerrupted: "Are you looking for that little chinese robot girl?"

So I filled up my car's tank. For good measure I asked for an extra gascan of fuel and put it in back.