Arkady glances back at the armed light truck, and then says "Perhaps I should drive it, then. I picked up a trick or two before I was ordained."

Nate casts a thumb back at the second truck, with a nervous knight sitting in the back.

"I need you to drive the second truck, and keep our friend here from spooking. Felix is a better driver then I am, and I'll have him take over when he's rested up. Besides, if there's any shooting, you want me in the truck with the the machine gun."

Piper (still being carried by the Captain) reaches towards Arkady and tries to pull him closer. If he cooperates and moves close enough, he gets a kiss on the end of his nose.

Then she leans sleepily on the Captain's shoulder.

Sir Ulath, in the back of the truck, frowns at whoever's closest. "Tell me again why I shouldn't ride my trained and healthy warhorse? It'll save you a bit of space, and I'm not sure I can fight effectively from in here."

Nate wanders over to Sir Ulath.

"Because my friend, if we need to move fast, your horse wouldn't be able to keep up, and I'm sure you wouldn't want to abandon him in a place of danger, just as we wouldn't want to abandon you. He'll be safe and well cared for here while we're out galavanting about the countryside. As for fighting?" Nate shrugs. "Just think of it as fighting off the back of a chariot. People did that all the time and had great success with it."

Arkady adds "And if we do fight, there may be more explosions. Your horse might not be amused."

"If he couldn't handle a few loud noises in combat," says Sir Ulath, hopping off the truck, "he wouldn't be much of a warhorse. And I never trained in chariot fighting."

"That seems fair," Felix replies from his position next to the boxed up sections of turret he still needs to assemble. He's tapping his leg, obviously too agitated to sleep. Sitting up, he gets to work on installing it. "I'm ready to go whenever you guys are."

Sir Ulath rapidly mounts his mighty steed. The Baron and his men, similarly, sit astride their far less highly trained horses, and the Baron can be heard loudly wondering when the Terrans are going to bother to hitch their horses to their strange carriages (and where, in fact, the horses are supposed to go, as the trucks don't seem to have any obvious places to put them).

Felix ignores the Baron and his men and moves from the turret parts to the gasifiers, making sure they're in working order and that the wood he'd put in them some time ago was at the optimal temperature for the chemical reaction that'd turn it into synth gas.

Arkady double checks the supply of woodworking tools; axes, saws, dynamite, etc. After a check of his truck, rifle, and radio, he finds a decent place to prop his rifle while driving (so as to be ready at hand), and then gets in and fires it up. In English he asks "Shall I break trail, gentlemen? Or do we follow the baron and his mercenaries?"

"I say follow the Baron," Felix replies in English while fussing with the gasifiers on the trucks. "Don't think it matters, though. Anyone that tries to get in our way is in for a whole world of band aids."

Nate puts on a pair of sunglasses and starts up the technical.

In english, "Captain, we'll keep in contact, so if you need any groceries picked up, just give us a call."

"Tally-Ho, gentlemen."

The truck starts up with a growl and a roar. Sir Ulath's mount twitches one ear and looks at the trucks. The Baron and his men, however, have less well-disciplined mounts - their horses promptly bolt along the trail, fortunately headed in the right direction, but not by any means under complete control.

It seems the question of who leads the way is decided by equine skittishness. The trucks follow the Baron and his men along the narrow, winding forest path. Looking in his rear-view mirror as they leave, Arkady can see the Captain waving goodbye as well as he can while still holding little Piper, who appears to have fallen asleep in his arms. Sir Ulath brings up the rear for the first five minutes, but quickly brings his horse up in front of the trucks once he gets introduced to the concept of exhaust.

With the trucks revving and growling in their wake, the Baron's horses seem to be quite eager to cover ground as quickly as possible - even Sir Ulath's phlegmatic mount seems more than willing to hurry along. It doesn't take the group long to leave the confines of the forest, and head out into farmland. (There's a brief stop at the edge of the forest to gather more wood for the gasifiers and pile it in the trucks). The terrain becomes farmland, interspersed with grassland, with the occasional small copse of trees. You can see one or two other forests in the distance along the journey, but the road passes through none of them.

About mid-morning, Arkady finds that he's no longer alone in his truck's cab - Piper is seated in the passenger seat, looking out of the windows with apparent interest and not wearing her seatbelt. There's no sign of how she got into a closed truck cab while said truck was moving.

You stop at night to make camp - simple tents and sleeping bags having of course been packed in the trucks. The Baron and his men give you a very wide berth ever since you started up the trucks, but their occasional wide-eyed stares do you no harm.

The radio is made to work on the first evening. Actual reception is noisy and hard to make out (and it shouldn't be, what could be interfering with radio?) but, with care and time, you are able to communicate with the ship. With their two top engineers having left, they're a lot slower to build further improvements - and their progress is further slowed by an unexplained but sudden drop in power delivered from the windmills (though putting together another set of fuel cells alleviates this problem)

--------------

Eventually, after a largely uneventful journey, you reach the city of Cimmura. To modern eyes, it barely qualifies as a small town; but, to be fair, it is the biggest city you've yet seen. Its dingy walls are nonetheless sufficient to keep out both infantry and cavalry, and the gates are guarded by a couple of Church soldiers (like the Baron's guard) armed with long pikes. There's a small queue of people trying to get into the city and another small queue trying to get out; however, one look at your self-propelled trucks and both queues abruptly decide to use a different gate today, all turning about and hurrying away except one pair of gentlemen with a very large cart trying to enter the city - who give the strong impression that the only reason they are not leaving in a hurry is that their cart is too big and heavy.

While the gentlemen with the cart frantically try to persuade one of the gate guards that they need to go inside the city right now!, one of the other guards jogs along the road a few metres to meet with your group.

And, with a calm and relaxed journey over several days, it's time for a refresh. Everyone's back up to full FATE points, and Felix is no longer exhausted.

Along the journey, Felix attempts to find the source of the radio interference...

Felix: Engineering: +5 Roll: -2 Total: +3

After much inspecting of the radio and messing with antennae, Felix is very sure that the source of the problem is not in the radio itself, but rather in multiple sources of radio interference. He's not sure what they are, but there seem to be quite a few of them.

Felix takes hold of the problem to the exclusion of other problems. He fiddles, tweaks, and adjusts the radio equipment, hoping to find out more.

Spending one Fate point on Laser Focus, to reroll

Felix: Engineering: +5 Roll: -2 Total: +3

Felix manages only to confirm his earlier conclusions.

In his copius spare time after they've stopped for the night and gathered enough wood for the trucks, Nate idlely plays with the radio using a simple directional antenna, hoping to isolate the frequencies and directions of the interferance so they can be charted on a map.