The bar hung in a moment of frozen silence broken only by the trickling fall of powdered masonry where a plasmabolt had shattered one of the cinderblocks. Small fires burned in a couple of places and the air was thick with the stink of ionized air, chemical proplents, sublimed metal and even more exotic scents of weapon fire. Beneath it was an even more unpleasant smell of cooked meat, blood and the waste men voided as they died.

Every hand in the bar gripped a weapon, with even the pink haired bartender pointed an electromotive shotgun in the general direction of the interlopers. Kade gripped her own electromotive pistol, a Lymar IV, favored by spies and insertion types for its customizable muzzle velocity, though the sleek grey plastoid weapon was unfired. 

With commendable care one of the intruders, a heavily build man in olive drab and black battle dress, lifted a hand slowly to his face plate and pressed a stud. The reflective visor hissed back into the helmet to reveal a hatchet sharp face, distinguished by a serpentine tatoo that coiled up his cheek and over his left eye. Internal lighting, probably from a HUD in his helmet lit his face with sinister red light.

“My name is Grex Pan, and I’m with the Cartel,” he said identifying himself as a hitter for the group of corporate interests that informally governed Panopontus. 

“I’ll pay whoever kills these three…” he started and Kade opened her mouth to shout him down. Before she could interrupt a piercing whistle shattered the artificial silence.

“I don’t care who the fuck you are,” the bartender snarled, “take your shit out of my bar.”

“Madam…” Grex began to interject but the pink haired woman racked the slide of the shotgun and leveled it at Grex’s face.

“Out. Side.”

Kade and her companions backed towards the rear exit of the bar.

“Get me to the spaceport alive and I’ll pay a bonus,” Kade said.

“The Cartel takes a pretty dim view of anyone who takes down their thugs.”