With a shouted curse Sayeeda spun from the concealment of the pillar. Pain flared across her arm as a piece of a ricochet drew a line of blood across her forearm. It hadn't been an aimed shoot, but in any fire fight there was enough death flying around that you could get greased just as easily by blind accident as by a snipers calculated strike. Taya's sonic assault had men tearing at their head sets. The armored men were better off, millitary grade gear having cut the feedbak to save their hearing.

Sayeeda dropped two of the struggling men with single shots to the chest, running on a sharp diagonal across the hangar. The barrel of her sub-machine gun shimmered with heat as another near miss plucked at her shirt scorching the fabric with the heat of its passage. She fired another three rounds at one of the black armored foes but he ducked behind a supply crate. One of the slugs hit the top of it with a clang casting firey sparks in all directions. Desperately Sayeeda threw herself behind the fusion bottle, her shoulders striking painfully against the transport pallet. She just managed to pull herself into cover before bullets began ringing off the reinforced steel. With a practiced motion she pulled the magazine from her weapon and checked the load. Only three of the twenty plastic rounds remained. Long odds with more than half a dozen enemies gunning for her, and no way to get out of the hangar without taking a round in the back. She wished she had some grenades, but then, if she were getting wishes perhaps a battalion of tanks would materialize. 

Suddenly the air seemed to crackle with static electricity and several voices cried out. Sayeeda recognised it as the energizing sequence for heavy flextion plasma cannons. Sometimes when she had been pulling maintence she had felt such a sensation when they main gun coils were spooled up.

"Get clear he will torch the whole hangar if he fires!" someone shouted, clearly having had some similar experience. It certainly was true that firing a 30 centimeter plasma cannon in a hangar was a terrible idea. The weapons would have been too heavy to mount on even the largest ground vehicles, the flextion field alone would probably junk any unshielded electronics within fifty meters. Unconciusly she fingered her mastoid implant.

"No one would be that insane!" a shrill voice shouted in something close to panic. Sayeeda forced her self to laugh, the sound harsh from inhaling the vapors of expended cartridges and ozone. 

"Clearly you don't know my pilot!" she yelled, slotting the magazine home and working the action. A sudden quiet decended over the hangar.

"Captain Cykali, we would like to offer our surrender on standard terms," came a calm voice, clear and commanding. It had an offworld accent, although Sayeeda couldn't place it. She blinked for a moment in confusion. Standard terms was an expression mercenary outfits used for a fairly universal set of rights and obligations. Adherence to them was enforced by the community as a whole, no one wanted loose cannons running around making life harder for the real professionals. Junebug wasn't sure that you could surrender on 'standard terms' to a private individual, but she wasn't going to stand on ceremony if it stopped the shooting.

"Are you insane! I forbid..." the shrill voice cut off with a gunshot and the sound of a body hitting the floor.

"What about it captain?" the offworlder inquired.

"I accept your surrender on standard terms. I'm coming out. Neil, if they shoot me, vaporize the lot of them." 

[@POOHEAD189]