Sayeeda kept her eyes open as they moved through the city. The place was filthy beyond easy description. Trash of all description littered the street. Bars and other establishments kept the front of their premises clear, if not clean, by paying the homeless to remove the trash. Where it went from there was a mystery, but Sayeeda was willing to bet that at even more dilapidated levels of the city, rats, or whatever the local pests were, roasted above fires of burning trash.

Grafitti was almost as omnipresent as trash. Sayeeda counted half a dozen gang signs which she saw mirrored in more precise renditions on the flesh of the numerous toughs and thugs which lurked in front of the seedier bars and eateries. She wished that they had left Taya with the ship, not just because the girl was clearly overwhelmed but because she attracted attention with her neat features and stylish blonde hair. Attention that fell on Junebug quickly slid aside as they took in the pistol and the submachine gun. Part of her wished she had bought a rifle also, but there was no percentage in carrying a heavy weapon where sight lines were likely to be so short. Even if it all dropped in the pot, shots of over fifty meters would be exceedingly rare in this warren.

Sayeeda didn’t like cities. She had grown up in a city on clean well administered *BLANK* but her childhood fondness had been quickly replaced after she went off to war. Andor had only taken contracts that required city fighting with extreme reluctance. The strength of armored regiments lay in mobillity, moving quickly to surprise the enemy and disrupt his operations. In a city every apartment block was a potential ambush site and every street funneled men and vehicles into predictable firing lanes. Even leveling a city with artillery or direct fire didn’t help, as the rubble remaining was even better for snipers and irregulars than buildings were. They had occasionally had to do it, but it had been mainly close action work for infantry and losses had been exorbitantly high.

The air was a faintly acrid fug. Ejecta of various sorts rained down from above, although it was aresolized by the time it reached this level. The smell mixed with stale beer, decaying trash and the unpleasantly oily smell of cooking meat. It wasn’t a pretty place. Still by the look of some of the denizens, hard men in cheap suits they imagined were fashionable and carrying large obvious side arms, there was money to be made here. It would be the ideal place for a criminal to hide out, strangers were obvious avoiding them was as simple as moving to a different level.

The arrival of Sven took her by surprise. It seemed unlikely that anyone who knew Neil would be here, but then again they were looking for one of Neils contacts and webs of association worked both ways. The fellow’s beard and bearing were certainly impressive, used to violence certainly but probably not a military background Junebug decided. SHe glanced around, noting a few of the armed locals watching with some interest as the fellow approached Neil, exchanged a few words and then suddenly grabbed Neil and lifted him into the air.

“Whoa, easy boys,” she said in a flat tone. Sven glanced at her with a look of anger and flinched slightly. The submachine gun was still hanging from the attachment point on her chest armor, but the pressure of two fingers on the butt lifted the barrel so that, quite by apparent accident, it pointed at Sven’s knee cap. Her fingers weren’t in the trigger guard, but they drummed a slow beat against the ceramic chest armor beside it, in subtle warning.

“I won’t claim I don't understand the impulse, but I don’t want to walk out of here right?”
[@POOHEAD189]