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Yria laughed. It was a bitter mirthless sound, like glass shattering. The music thrummed conclusively and the zero gravity dance above grew more intense. Sayeeda watched as items, dropped drinks and personal items floated to the sides of the zero g bubble and slipped efficiently into disguised collection tubes. Presumably they were stored somewhere and those foolish enough not to secure their belongings could collect them.

“Believe it or not there is little profit in double crossing you,” Yria said as she tapped her fingernail on a glass of some sort of fizzy liquor. The woman’s tone was slightly regretful. It was probably true, after the way they had marched into Gnorlaac’s lair and declared what they were offering. It had been a risky move, to let people know the treasure they carried, but it also meant Gnorlaac had to be careful about simply murdering them out of hand. It would be bad for business. There was no honor among thieves, but a certain ruthless practicality did prevail.

“We are willing to make the transfer provided you have the merchandise with you?” In lieu of a response Sayeeda hefted the case onto the table between them and cracked the lid. The precious mineral shone its soft glow. Yria lifted the lid slightly with a fingertip, revealing shaped explosive packed into the roof of the case. She arched and eyebrow at the pair of mercenaries.

“One can never be too careful,” Sayeeda said, her tone a touch defensive. Yria snorted and waved to one of her thugs who took out a datapad and began to type. Sayeeda felt a slight thrill imagining the money that was about to be deposited.

“The account number please…” Yria’s forehead exploded in a spray of blood and brains. A piece of bone traced a bloody line across Sayeeda’s cheek. The boom of a large calibre gun was deafening and people began to scream. One of the guards leapt to his feet upending the table in a spray of spilled liquor. Another grabbed for his pistol, pulling it free of the holster with a snap. Sayeeda swung the case by the handle, slamming into the temple of the would be gunmen. The thug collapsed to the floor a half a heart beat before three more booming shots ricocheted off the metalized floor nearby. Screaming panic spread through the crowd. A half dozen other concealed guns appeared from nearby guests. It wasn’t a coordinated ambush just other low lives who were able to beat the scanners.

“What the fuck is going on!” Sayeeda screamed at Neil as she pulled her own pistol from the bottom of the case. With a flick of the wrist she tossed the second weapon to Neil and dove sideways behind the low bar to seek cover.
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Neil hit the bar hard, holding the gun Sayeeda tossed him. It wasn't his usual firearm, just your average handgun, but it was better than nothing. He couldn't have seen what he just saw. It was impossible. He must have gotten brain matter in his eye or something. His face was covered with blood and bits of Yria. "Stay down, let me check something." he yelled to the Captain, and got to his feet in a crouch, before slowly lifting his head. As he did so, through the myriad of gunshots he heard three consecutive 'booms', as if a small cannon was being discharged.

The scoundrel poked his head over the counter to see over a dozen dead patrons and Gnorlaac guards limp and lifeless, strew across broken tables. Seven guards, a group of four to the north and a group of three facing their adversary were still alive. It was an opponent that was difficult to see, as if light blended around him and cloaked his considerable bulk. One of the guards fired at the near-hidden enemy, only to be suddenly lifted off his feet, and with a quick jerk his entire spine was shattered. "Better make that six." Neil said to himself.

The hail of lasers and bullets flying about hit something vital on the enemy's armor, and the cloaking device dissipated to reveal a Hexanagallion of ferocious proportions. It moved with the grace of a hunting cat, though it had the bulk of a bull and the armament of a light tank. Its ripper gun shot 11 millimeter long shards of durasteel shrapnel, collected in iron bullets that tore through men and most personnel armor. It shot through two barrels, tearing through every enemy in sight whilst it simply stepped on the closest foe, its sauren-like claws digging into their chest. But that wasn't the terrifying part.

The terrifying part was that Neil recognized this Hex. He dropped back down and hugged the wall, his face speaking volumes. "Wha-" Sayeeda began, but she was interrupted by shouting coming from deeper within the Cantina. "Never thought I'd be glad to hear more gangers coming our way." Neil said, and he grabbed Junebug's hand. "Follow me," he told her, both staying crouched as they moved around the circular bar to the other side. Once they got to the otherside, Neil hugged the next wall and clung to his gun like a lifeline. "Saxon is acting crazy, I think seeing me made him go blood-drunk because usually he's far more subtle."

Neil peaked out again and saw a man get tossed across the Cantina with inhuman strength, followed closely by the near impossible speed of the pouncing Hexa, breaking bones and tearing through the last remaining guards with finesse using Xarconian wrist blades. "We have to get to the back door. Now!" They began to bear crawl, moving past scantily clad dancers and drunk patrons huddled under their tables. The music was luckily still going. As they made it to the door, a roar reverberated off the walls, echoing Neil's surname before the door slid shut behind them. They were now in a deadend alleyway.

Neil wiped the sweat off his brow, slumped. "How is he still alive? Jesus Christ."
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“Jesus Christ?” Sayeeda asked as she glanced down the trash filled alley. It was cleaner than most she had seen on the Smuggler's Moon, but that was hardly much of a compliment. The barrel of her pistol shimmered with the heat of rapid fire and her hand gripped the case with white knuckles. Junebug was used to risking her own life, but the prospect of losing millions of credits worth of merchandise was a new one .

“Is that its name?”

The wall beside them shrieked like a diamond saw biting into hull plating. A billowing cloud of dust exploded into the alley moments before the wall exploded outwards in a screaming gush of masonary. The muted screams and gunfire from inside the club redoubled in volume as a six foot hole was ripped in the wall by a combination of gunfire and brute strength. The Hex leaped through the settling dust with a roar that shook the world. Junebug shot it twice in the chest, but either its body armor was sufficient to stop the pistols light slug or the thing was simply too tough to care. It swung its fist at her with deceptive speed and she just had time to raise the case to block the blow. The metal ceramic case crumpled like a crushed soda can and the force of the blow lifted Junebug and smashed her into one of graffiti covered walls. Her breath exploded from her chest as she fell among the trash. The pistol and the case clattered to the ground in opposite directions.

The Hex screamed something that might or might not have been ‘Edwards!’ and leveled its gun at the pilot. Junebug distinctly heard the screech of the mechanism jamming, but the Hex didn’t hesitate. It leaped at Neil, intent on tearing him limb from limb.
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"Sayeeda!" Neil cried, before his eyes went wide and he ducked in the nick of time. He kicked off the wall and slid between the Hex's legs as the massive Saurien slammed into the wall, causing bits of material to flake and fall. There was a predatory way he moved that set him apart from most Hexanagallion's. It caused a chill to crawl up his spine. Still, Neil knew Saxon and he'd evaded him this long. At the edge of his vision, he saw a brilliant glint. It was hard to shatter Aestimobium, but even if it was broken, the shards were still worth a fortune.

"Whoa, whoa big fella!" Neil said as Saxon turned, his massive fist leading. Neil had to squirm and roll out of the way, the fist leaving a dent in the alleyway floor. "If you rip me to shreds they won't recognize my body for the bounty, remember!?" Neil had rolled backwards and took out his pistol. FUCK, he didn't have his heavy revolver. He'd gotten that thing just so he could penetrate Saxon's armor!

Still, there were vital spots. Neil let off two rounds, but it only grazed the side of the Hax's snarling face. "Shit!" was all he managed before the Hexanagallion grabbed Neil by the shirt and shoved him against the wall, knocking out his breath and nearly breaking his collarbone. In fact Neil felt he had broken or damaged something. There was a coppery taste in his mouth.

There was a guttural snarl that escaped the mandibles of the brutal bounty hunter. "I'll break the bones in your arms and legs." The sound of him speaking sounded like rocks grinding against each other. Neil knew the only way to stall was to keep talking. Saxon never did like to talk but he still had to try.

"How the hell did you get off that rock?" Neil asked him. It was something he was very fascinated to find out about. The last time he had seen Saxon, the Hex was in the jaws of a Maw Worm on an asteroid, Neil having stranded him there. Saxon answered as eloquently as always. "Tore out of its stomach. Had a locator beacon."
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unebug lay in the pile of garbage. The leather coat had saved her from being torn to rags against the rough concrete. Nothing seemed to be broken but she would be a mass of bruises in a day or so. Assuming she survived of course. The pistol and the case were both lost in the detritus for now. Screaming civilians were pouring out of the club from which gunfire continued to boom. The Hex might had had a particular target in mind, but firing off into a crowd of which dozens were armed criminals was a recipe for disaster. Unsteadily Junebug pushed herself to her feet and then took a running dive at the Hex. She hit him between the shoulder blades, staggering but not knocking him from his feet. Her arm wrapped around his neck, in what, for a human would have been a choke hold. THe scaly flesh felt like she was trying to throttle a concrete pillar.

“Damnit bitch this is nothing to do with you!” the Hex snarled, raking back at her with its claws. Junebug coiled herself around its shoulders, fouling its attack with her legs and arms. She elbowed it in thead in an awkward blow that did little more than irritate it.

“The hell…” she began before the Hex whirled, smashing her against the wall. Breath exploded from her lungs but she held on, clinging grimly to its neck and upper back.

“It dosen’t…” she wheezed and reached down and plucked a grenade from the creatures belt. It was a dull gray cylinder with a red and grey stripe. Familiar to Sayeeda as a bunker busting fuel air model. She clicked the arming switch but held down the fuse release. The grenade would spread a mist of hydrocarbons through the alley before igniting with a secondary explosion which would probably be sufficient to bring the buildings on both sides down on the jellied remains that the initial concussion would leave.

“Now we are going to talk about this like civilized people…” There was a howl of drive fans from the end of the alley and a screech of metal on asphalt. A hover jeep screeched into the end of the alley, trailing a sheet of orange yellow sparks as friction killed the forward momentum against the roadway. The back of the jeep was packed with gunmen, all wearing Gnarlac’s colors.

“Its them!” one of gunmen screamed and began to swing a pintle mounted plasma cannon to face down the alleyway. The blast of the weapon would cook them all in a heartbeat and there was no way to dodge the bolt of ravening plasma. Even an incompetent couldn’t botch the shot badly enough that it would matter. The Hex growled his muscles bunching beneath her. Junebug tossed the grenade overhand, still clinging to the aliens back. One of the gunmen, a human with greasy blond dreadlocks caught the bomb in one hand, the other cradling an EM slug thrower and tried to throw it back. The gunman had seen too many holos, the internal accelerometers registered the attempt and the bomb went of with a crump, followed a half second later with and apocalyptic flash of heat and light.

Things were confused for a time. Junebug tried to put the fragments of the last few seconds, minutes, back together in her mind but was rewarded only with nausea and fragmentary images. Looking down she saw she was straddling the Hex. The alien’s tongue lolled and yellowish liquid, maybe blood, leaked from one of the things four nostrils. Her mind filled in a blank of tumbling through the air, still entwined with the Hex, smashing Neil to the ground like a bowler picking up a spare. The end of the alleyway was a collapsed heap of rubble and thick black smoke rose in an opaque pall. For a moment everything was silent save for a pattering rain of falling masonry, like ferroconcrete hail. A chunk the size of a fist hit the hex and the creature flinched, its slitted pupils irising wildly as it attempted to focus. She saw Neil brining himself unsteadily to his feet.

We have to get out of here. Junebug thought/said. The effort of communicating made her nauseous and she sneezed violently from the settling dust f the explosion. The air reeked of petrochem and the products of incomplete organic combustion. Gnarlac doubtlessly thought that this was some attempt to double him. A reasonable enough suspicion and one she had just reinforced by blowing a jeep load of goons into their constituent protein strings. The gangsters knew where they were and they knew where the Highlander was. It wasn’t a pretty picture.

“Taya,” Junebug thought, her mind forming the name with crystalline precision. There was a crackle in her mastoid, perhaps a response but nothing she could decode. The Hex was rising unsteadily. Gun fire thrummed froom the end of the alley, idiots emptying weapons into a two story tall pile of crumbled masonry. They would do better to lighten the load and send some jeeps over the top but then, if they were professionals, they wouldn’t be hired muscle in the ass end of nowhere.

“Taya we have trouble, seal the ship and let no one on board,” Junebug said, still unsure if she was transmitting. The Hex shook like a dog beneath her but she kept her balance with the unconscious grace of a veteran tanker. She should stand up or roll away but even the idea of such a radical change in motion made her vision dim. She dropped her jaw and breathed out equalizing the pressure in her ears with a painful pop. At least nothing vital seemed to be broken They were in a dead end alley with no obvious way out. Junebug looked upwards, it was a long climb even if the smoke provided a screen from shooters on the other side of the obstruction, an impossible one if they had optics that could pierce the smoke. She looked down a the Hex she still sat astride.

“Like civilized people,” she repeated, trying to figure out how to deal with the Alien if he didn’t see reason.
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Neil felt as if he had died, but after a moment, when the fog had lifted from his jarred mind, he realized death couldn't be this uncomfortable. His mind was too shaken, and his body was even worse. He found himself face down in the rubble, and what luck remained with him kept him from being crushed. Instead he felt nauseous and utterly weak. It was fortunate he had been a bit further away than Saxon or Sayeeda, but not by much.

Shakily, and pausing at least four times, he slowly pushed himself up. Meanwhile, the Hexanagallion gazed at Sayeeda with a fury. He was far weaker now than he had been, and a hunk of metal had been rammed into his side. But he was strong enough to shove Junebug off. The Captain hit the ground rolling, which only caused her to curl up and vomit. Unsteadily, the Xenos got to one knee, and then did his best to rise.

"Captain!" Neil called, his voice croaking at the effort. He crawled over to her, having gathered one of their lost pistols on the ground. He helped her sit up slowly. It was very likely Saxon sought to crush them both then and there, his incredibly durable biology letting him remain standing even after that. But shots rang out around them, missing them but ricocheting off the walls dangerously close to them.

Neil pointed his gun at Saxon. Normally it would do little to him, but the Xenos hesitated a second time. His armor and physiology had been torn up in various places. "Ah, ah, ah..."

The Hex growled, a guttural clicking sound that echoed off the enclosed rubble they found themselves in. "Where's your ship?" Neil asked him.

"Why would I help you?" Saxon demanded. "I should kill you."

"At the moment, we need each other in case you didn't realize." Neil winked at Junebug. The Captain having grabbed the other pistol she had strapped to her leg. Both of their guns were now on Saxon. To his credit, the Hex didn't seem scared. It only fueled what pride he had. "I've been escaped worse and lived." The proclamation fell on them like an anvil dropping, and an incredibly loud silence followed as the muted shouts in the distance grew somewhat closer.

"So that's it then?" Neil said. "You want us to kill each other instead of escaping alive?...You've waited to kill me for four years. What's another few hours?"

The Xeno's muscled went taut, and for a tension filled second, Neil truly believed the Hex was going to pounce. But he suddenly deflated somewhat. "My ship is in another quarter. We'll need to go to yours." The words were torn out of him by the strongest amount of restraint and will he could muster.

"Cap- krkrrrrrkrrkrrkrr nebug! Captain Junebug? Hello?" further static. "krrkr doors locked down, but krrkrkr help!"

As Taya's voice rang out over the comm, both Neil and Sayeeda to grimace at the sudden noise in their ears.
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Sayeeda picked herself up out of the rubble. Powdered concrete clung to her perspiration giving her a diseased grey look. Irritable she wiped at her face and then pulled a pair of shooters goggles from one of the pockets cunningly sewn into the hip of her skin tight leather bodysuit. The pressed them to her face and fastened the strap before powering them on. The system was far inferior to her helmet but it was better than nothing. A low level static charge kept the drifting concrete dust from settling on the lenses and the googles were capable of providing basic targeting information. Unfortunately the device didn’t illuminate any hidden exit from the situation. They were trapped in a dead end alley behind a two story pile of rubble. Somewhere beneath that rubble was forty million credits worth of rare minerals. It was nearly physically painful for Sayeeda to think about it, but one of the first rules of mercenary life was that no payoff was worth dying for. With a reluctant sigh she turned away.

“Ok snake, do you have any breaching charges?” she asked the Hex. If they could cut through the building to either side of them there was a fair chance they could get free before their pursuers could get organised. Gnorlac’s goons certainly thought that the Hex’s attack was a doublecross and even if they could have convinced him otherwise there wasn’t going to be a chance to clear things up.

“I am no snake, woman,” the Hex hissed in irritation. The whine of drive fans spinning up briefly overpowered the slackening gunfire. It appeared that even idiot gangsters could reach the right conclusion eventually.

“Uhhh… Captain, this is Saxon,” Neil said by way of introduction.

“Saxon, this is the Captain, err Sayeeda, or Junebug,” the pilot went on haltingly. Saxon looked around in confusion, nostrils flaring and contracting in what might have been an expression or might simply have been a reaction to the explosive residues in the air.

“Well which is it?” the Hex demanded. Sayeeda hissed irritation.

“Can we do the social thing some other time please?” Junebug shouted over the rising roar of the fans. Dust billowed around them though her goggles kept it out of her eyes. The charge kept the googles from clouding, but the air a millimeter beyond was opaque with dust. She tumbed a selector on the side of the googles and switched to millimetric radar. The simple processor in the googles through up a rough wireframe based on the radar returns.

“Breeching charges? Yes or no!” she shouted over the howl and the dust storm blowing down the alley from the back blast. Saxon barred his fangs and pulled a torn belt from his armor. Several smoke grenades dangled from the severed ends of the bandolier but nothing more substantial.

“Sssomeone blew it up,” the alien snarled.

“Ok, you really dont want to play the who fucked who the worst game today,” Sayeeda shouted. With a deafening roar an air cushioned jeep lifted above the rubble. The engines were redlining to carry the load of gunmen that had been crammed into it, far exceeding the safe lift capacity. Unless they had better optics tha Junebug credited them with the hired killers couldn’t actually see them through the smoke. They probably couldn’t even be certain that the trio had survived the blast. Sayeeda settled into a shooters stance and fired three rounds in quick succession. The car was above the rubble, exposing its underskirts to her fire. The first round sparked off the body work but the second and third rounds punched one of the nacelles to scrap. The sensitive mechanism seized for a moment and then blew one of the hydrogen cells in a flash of white fire visible even through the storm of grit. The concussion flipped the car like a tiddly wink, spilling gunmen and loose items a moment before the inertia of the blast drove it out of sight and into the ground with a rending boom that seemed unimpressive after the world ending crash of the fuel air charge.

“If we cant go through we will have to go up!” she shouted, shoving the pistol into her hip pocket. The leather smoked and charred from the waste heat of the barrel but the garment was already a write off. Without waiting for any further discussion Junebug grabbed a hand ful of bundled cables that ran up the side of the building in a loose conduit and began to shimmy her way up. If they could get high enough they at least had a chance of getting out of this mess. The smoke still billowing from the rubble pile as well as the dust that hung in the air provided concealment if not cover. Unfortunately the force of the blast had snuffed any secondary fires before they could break out.

“What are you doing?!” Saxon demanded, “If they have optics they will pick you off like Sindaran flies!” Junebug already ten feet up the uncertain ladder, looked back over her shoulder.

“You’re right we should probably stay here were it is safe,” she said sarcastically before taking another handful of cable and hauling herself another few feet towards the roof.
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The Hexanagallion gave a clicking growl, unused to such disrespect. It was then he realized he was now standing beside Neil, and the pilot realized it too. "I think we should go," Neil said, trying to change the subject, hoping the Hex would forget he wanted Neil dead. Unlikely he would forget, but still. "Maybe you should help one of us uh, get on top?"

The Hex's expression was unreadable. Well, usually it was unreadable due to his Xeno's nature, but it was unreadable even to Neil, who's had a few very uncomfortable encounters with a very expressive Saxon. Neil decided aid Sayeeda by pushing up on the soles of her shoes, hoisting her up top. She had to squirm a bit to get her weight atop the roof, but she had to keep her body flat to avoid any of the random gunfire, and the possibility of people using optics to spot her.

Neil was less fortunate. Junebug would see Neil being tossed out of the hole she had crawled out of, flying much higher and further than was safe. Neil was fortunate to not get hit by a stray bullet or lasbolt. He rolled almost violently across the roof to fall off the tertiary side in the opposite alleyway. Suddenly, two smoke grenades were tossed out into the streets, fog suddenly billowing out and blanketing the ground below the roof in haze.

Saxon leaped, his saurien legs giving him the strength to make good air but not good enough. His torso was above eyesight, and a series of spikes shot out of his armguard. He slammed the spiked device on the roof, and once the metal was stabbed into the tile he yanked himself up with a grunt. The roof grumbled under his weight.

"Where is your ship?" The brute rumbled.

"I need my pilot first!" Junebug roared back at him as the gunfire increased.

The gangsters on the streets were in the middle of the smoke, those without optics shooting at random thinking they were being attacked. Those that were shooting caused that belief to strengthen, and further shots were fired, curses and battlecries joining in. It seemed they were doing part of the work for them. Neil would have made a quip but he was nowhere to be seen at the moment.

"Where did he go!?" Saxon cried.

"You threw him over the side!" Junebug replied. "Fucking Lizard!"

"Ware your tongue or I'll cut it out!" The Xenos warned, slamming his fist into the roof tile. It was then they both realized the guns had stopped firing, and instead there was shouting.

Meanwhile below, Neil had gathered his wits and clung to the alleywall, hidden from view to the gangster and listening to them regroup. Luckily the smoke still permeated the area, so Neil was still cloaked even when he peeked out into the street. He saw silhouettes in the shadow, about a dozen men he guessed. They didn't seem to bulky, which meant they probably only had moderately powerful armaments. Still, with those numbers and optics, he wasn't sure if they could get out of this.

"They're probably still on the roof," one of Gnorlaac's goon's said. "We should circle around and surround them from all sides, wait until they poke their filthy heads out."

"That idea's horseshit." A voice replied from the smoke. Neil chuckled to himself and slid back into the alleyway.

"Oh, horseshit is it!?"

"I agree, it sucks, we need to take the fight to them."

In less than 15 minutes, Neil, Junebug, and Saxon had managed to make it out of there while the men still debated on how best to kill the would-be escapees.
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“I can’t tell for sure,” Junebug declared as she shimmied back into concealment between the two towering buildings. On the Smugglers Moon it was impossible to tell how many stories up you were, there was no objective ‘ground’ by which to judge. From Sayeeda’s position they appeared to be about three stories above the street across from the hangar where the Highlander was berthed.

“But there must be fifty of them out there,” she concluded. The three of them were in a gap between towers that must have once held cabling or plumbing, but had rotted away to an open semi cylinder of ancient concrete. Water, or at least fluid, run off had pitted and slicked the channel, but not to the point that it was impassable. Saxon crouched beside Neil his lips pulled back into a snarl that might or might not have been contempt.

“Why do they not storm the hangar and take the ship?” Saxon spat. Junebug exchanged a look with Neil. The Pilot had a lot of explaining to be do once they were safe, but it would have to wait. The tactical situation was fairly simple, the longer the gave Gnorlac’s goons to hunt for them the worse their chances of escaping became. Unfortunately charging through fifty armed men resulted in even worse odds.

“Judging by the heat signatures coming from the hangar, Taya is running the plasma motors so they cant get in,” Junebug supplied. It was a smart move, burning the thrusters at low output would fill the hanger with plasma discharge at a temperature of several hundred degrees. The hangar was built to survive such abuse, but lightly armed gangsters would not fare so well. Unfortunately the Highlander didn’t have fuel reserves to keep up such a trick forever. Even if the hydraulic lines were still connected, the thrusters would cut out eventually. The EM discharge was also blanking the comms.

“Let us tear our way through them!” the Hex snarled, flexing his clawed fingers menacingly. Sayeeda arched an eyebrow. It was difficult to judge if the suggestion was a serious one, or merely and expression of frustration. Gnorlac’s men had certainly taken Saxon’s ship already and there seemed little reason to hope they could take it back.

“We have two pistols and twelve rounds between us,” Junebug pointed out. The weapons they had brought to the meet had been for emergencies, not to fight a running battle in the streets. Saxon’s own weapon might have made such an attack practical, but it was hopelessly jammed and would require tools to repair.

“Also, I don’t have anyway to let Taya know to cut the thrusters, also even if she did the concrete is going to be heated to several hundred degrees, more than we can stand without more battledress than we have.”

“What do you suggest then?” the lizard spat.

“We need weapons, and we need to get a link to the Highlander, either laser or microwave, maybe if we could get onto the hangar roof?”


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They were up shit creek without a paddle. Any other day or time, if he found himself in a similar hell as this he would let Saxon go on a rampage. But unfortunately he was too damaged and too outnumbered to really make a difference. Their normal tactics of Neil playing the distraction with well timed shots as Sayeeda mowed them down from various positions wouldn't work either. "Think..." he breathed, speaking to himself. "Think, think, think, think, think."

Saxon growled at the mere sound of his hated quarry's voice, still wondering why he doesn't simply slaughter Neil now and throw the woman to the men below. Though the sound logic of teaming up rushed in to fill the void left by his irrational anger and he calmed himself. He was nothing if not patient. He had to be in his line of work.

"-think, think, think, think, think, think, think-"

Sayeeda elbowed him in the side of the head, subsequently knocking sense into him. Neil's head snapped to the side, and as if by an electric shock, he got it. "I can fix this..." he heard, and realized it was himself talking. "I can fix this? Wait I can." He just needed to call in a favor. Maybe it would make up for the part he played in all this, though he thought it was a little too unfair to blame himself for this entire farce, but still. Always good to cover your bases.

"You two go to the roof. I'll meet you there." He said, sliding back to fall off their elevated position.

"Neil, wait! What are you...." Junebug groaned when she realized he was already gone. Her eyes met Saxon's. "Sometimes I feel like killing him too."

Neil made his way into one of the many entrances to the hanger that led out into the greater Presidium. It was a bit less crowded than earlier, probably because of the recent violence by Gnorlaac's men. He was the big boss around here, so it made sense. Still, violence was the norm so the entire market square wasn't completely devoid of life or activity. But he only needed one man's help.

Sven's bionic eye gleamed for but a moment, identifying Neil before the pilot even knew he was there.
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Neil felt a sudden unpleasantly familiar pressure against the small of his back. One did not forget the feeling of a gun being pressed into one’s kidneys easily after all. No one in the crowd paid much attention to Sven as he stepped up behind his one time friend, concealing the weapon in the folds of his coat.

“I was just thinking I should by a jingo ticket, and well and behold a jingo ticket comes to me,” Sven said placing one hand on Neils shoulder to prevent him from pulling away from the gun.

“I don’t know what you assholes did to Gnorlacc, but whatever it is the bounty he put out on you is big enough for me to spend the rest of my life somewhere far better than this stinking shitpile.”

With deft motions he guided Neil towards the edge of the market, where a large garage, its sign large an neon but in an unfamiliar script sat, the open maintenance bay yawning cavernously.

“If you will just step inside…”

________________________________

“You’ll have to boost me,” Junebug said. The roof of the hangar was thirty meters away but a story beneath them. Saxon bared his fangs at the suggestion.

“Why should I help you, more likely this is a trick so that Edwards can escape my clutches,” the alien grumbled. Sayeeda placed her balled hands on her hips in exasperation.

“Oh yeah, this is all part of our master escape plan, Neil is probably on a tramp freighter out of system already.” The Hex spat onto the concrete, the warm fluid sizzled slightly and Sayeeda had the unpleasant impression that the things bite might be poisonous.

“He was always weak when it came to females,” Saxon rejoined, causing Sayeeda to arch an eyebrow. Whatever history Neil had with Saxon it was obviously more personal than she had imagined. Neil had told her that he had been a mech pilot in some war, he didn’t really seem old enough to have been kicking around the galaxy long enough to have that sort of history. Well if she survived she supposed she could ask.

“Whatever, just boost me,” she snapped, pulling open closures to loosen her leather bodysuit and gain a few extra inches of motion. The Hex glanced skeptically at the hangar roof across the street.

“You will break your bones,” he said, the assessment surprisingly neutral, as though voluntarily breaking bones were something that ought be considered but not necessarily rejected. Junbug moved back up the accessway to give herself a run up.

“Only if I’m really unlucky, and besides, its not like my options look that great otherwise,” she added. Saxon squatted down and made a stirrup out of his clawed hands.

“If you abandon me I will kill you as well as the pilot female,” Saxon hissed, his voice filled with menace.

“If I had a credit for everytime I heard that one,” Sayeeda said and sprinted down the accessway towards the hex. Just before she reached him she bounded into the air and bought her right foot down in his hands, the Hex uncoiled like an olympic shotputer and hurled her out over the street. For a moment she arched upwards on momentum before gravity reasserted itself. Spending years in speeding combat vehicles prepared you for that shocking second when the ground wasn’t there. You had to keep functioning, keep thinking, or else you were going to loose your vehicle in an unexpected gully or swale. Sayeeda twisted forward as she flew, letting her head drop. The street below rushed up and for a moment she thought she wasn’t going to make it. Then her hands struck the roof of the hangar and she let them fold slowly as she tucker her chin down and balled her body up. She tumbled across the ferocrete roof and slammed into one of the ventilation motors that perched atop it with a crash. The leather clothing she wore saved her from being torn to bloody rags by the stunt but the jolt she had adsorbed with her arms and wrists hurt like hell. Groggily she came to her feet waving at Saxon. It didn’t sound like anyone in the street had noticed either the airborne mercenary or the sound of her abrupt return to the ground, that wasn’t surprising, the steady thrum of the Highlanders plasma motors was enough to dull the senses of anyone this close.

“Now I just have to get in touch with Taya,” she muttered brushing at her now ragged clothing with irritation. The heel of one of her boots had torn away in the fall. Curse this planet and everyone on it.
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Junebug twisted the knob on the comm device, an archaic instrument Neil had left hastily that might be used to communicate with Taya if they got close enough to her. It was a third rate communicator but it was all she had. Realigning the antennae, Taya's voice rang out for but a moment as Saxon climbed the expanse behind her. Jingling the wire, soon she got Taya on the line.

"Captain?"

"Taya! Taya, confirm."




The tall, foreboding Sven stood motionless. Neil might be smart enough to run from Saxon, but Saxon didn't necessarily 'scare' him in the base sense of the word. Mostly because Neil often lacked a lot of worry about self preservation. Sven on the other hand...Neil knew him but he could never really read him. He had all of Saxon's simmering anger, with a coldness to him even the Hexanagallion lacked.

"You sure this'll work?" Neil asked him, still feeling some trepidation over the deal he made with him. He hoped Junebug didn't hit him too hard for this.

Sven simply glanced his way, unreadable past his malevolent stare and long Nordic facial hair.

"Alright, jeez." Neil replied, waving him off like Sven had threatened him physically.

"Just get into position." Sven growled lifelessly.

Neil didn't need to be told twice, and despite his second thoughts on making this deal, he knew he would enjoy this next part. Sven had lost his armies and most of his influence, but he was a maverick with machines, something Neil and he had a mutual interest over. On short notice, he had granted Neil access to the MH-350. It sounded more official than it was. Essentially a modified hauler mecha, like the one that stood dormant in the Highlander. This one had extra armor, fully covering the cockpit area, with a rotator gun that fired 300 (20 mm) rounds a minute. On the opposite arm, a large flamer, much like the one Neil had when he fought the Xenonids, was mounted. In addition, it was a better melee fighter, with swifter movement and blades upon the barrels of each gun.

Neil stepped over the cold corpses of the dead sentries Sven had murdered, making his way to the larger archway where the MH-350 waited. As he entered the cockpit, he switched on the comm that linked Sven to the mech. "Alright, ready when you are tall, blonde, and scary."

"On my signal." the grim voice replied back.

"Oh, this is gonna be good." Neil breathed, making a mental note on where every control and handle was. He felt around, instinctively knowing where the normal hauler controls were but having to designate based upon the wiring where the levers that controlled the extra modifications were. "And did he ever ask me if I knew how to drive a stick shift?"

Meanwhile, Sven's calculations hit an inner timer withing the cyborg that set off the mechanism in his brain. In his hand he held a small device, simple by the look of it. A cylinder with a three buttons and a handgrip. As soon as the 'timer' went off, he activated the device, and twitched as the custom electromagnetic pulse swept through the hanger and utterly devoured all optics and communications used by the small army that guarded the Highlander. In fact the devices exploded and burst into flames, shorting out and causing men to fall to their knees or jump in fright at the sudden electronic attack.

"Your move." Sven replied, taking out his own sidearm. A heavily modified handgun, among various upgrades the most obvious was a rebarreling of the gun to allow wildcat cartriges of custom make.

Junebug would suddenly hear a cracking thrum from below, and a reverberating boom as Neil suddenly entered the fray in his small mech, opening fire on the confused and wounded men that suddenly found themselves flanked and under intense fire by an armored opponent. Neil had stepped into the exit, and utterly sliced in half a dozen men with his first pass with the machinegun. Sven stepped out of the back end of the hanger behind the main body, shooting a merc in the head and snapping another one's head back by shoving his cybernetically enhanced fingers into the man's eyes.
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Junebug grabbed at her goggles as circuitry popped and sizzled. With a curse she tore the optics from her face smelling her hair burning as she clawed at her eyes. Unlike her helmet, the googles weren’t hard core millitary equipment and weren’t shielded, someone had just set off an emp that had cooked them. With a sick feeling she reached into her pocket and pulled out the smouldering radio transceiver Neil had given her, dropping the smouldering junk to the ground. Saxon hissed in fury as his own armor hissed and popped though it didn’t seem to impair his motion.

“Some idiot must have set of an EMP,” Sayeeda said as she pulled open a ventilaton panel and dropped into the shaft. In the close confines she could smell her singed hair even over the sharp scent of the roaring plasma thrusters. Grimly she crawled forward untill she came to a fan housing that looked down on the hanger. Outside came the booming echo of heavy calibre gunfire. Had they been spotted? Or were the gangsters making a move.

The interior of the hangar was a rolling hell of pale blue flame. Taya had turned the thrusters to maximum appeture, a setting designed to test the thrusters rather than generate any lift. All six thrusters spewed fire in a continuous stream that licked and flickered around the vessel like flames at a log. If there had been any equipment within thirty meters it had been burned to ash by now. Several loading jacks smouldered on the edge of inferno. It was a smart move, but between the EMP and the radio hash kicked off by the engines themselves Junebug had no way to contact the aristocrat. Harsh chemical byproducts stung her nose and made her eyes water as she tried to figure out someway to get in contact with the Highlander.

“I’ll have to go down..” she murmered. Behind her Saxon made a noise somewhere between a laugh and a sneer.

“You will be burned alive,” the alien said with calm certitude. Sayeeda didn’t disagree but it wasn’t as though staying here was a great option. The gunfire on the street intensified and a trio of holes suddenly punched in the wall below her. One of the slugs ricoched off the hull of the highlander in a spray of orange sparks.

“Well now or never I guess,” Junebug muttered and kicked the fan housing open with a blow of her boot. Before she could think better of it she dropped into the hangar falling the ten feet to the ventral hull of the ship. The heat rose up like a sheet as she hit the hull, grabbing at the housing of the foward turrent before her momentum carried her down into the flames. The hot metal burned her palms and her leather suit smouldered, her lungs burned from the hea to the air and hot plasma seared her throat and sinuses. Pushing herself to her feet she ran to the forward emergency hatch and pounded on it with her feet in rythmic sequence. If this didn’t work…. The hatch sprang open the instant she finished tapping out the access code. Without waiting to question her good fortune she dropped into the open hatch. Cool air filled her lungs and she let out a gasping breath. Hopefully Saxon hadn’t followed her, though if he had there were no clangs against the hull to indicate he had.

Taya turned and let out a scream as Sayeeda reached the bridge. Sayeeda looked around in concern until she realised that she was the cause of the girls distress. Taya clearly hadn’t been expecting her captain to materialize behind her, which meant it was a good bet that Lonny had been the one to open the hatch.

“Stars Junebug you scared the crap out of me, are you ok?” she asked. Sayeed looked down at her scorched hair, and blistered palms, pieces of her coat were actively smouldering. She shrugged.

“I’ve had worse,” she said matter of factly and began stripping off the burning garments.

“I’m sorry I didn’t know what to do! A bunch of thugs with guns tried to force their way onto the ship and…” Taya’s words tumbled out in a panicked stream and her eyes were very wide. Junebug placed a hand on her shoulder as she pulled her way free of her leather body suit.

“You did great Taya, really great,” she said as she stripped to her underwear, tossing the ruined and burning leather into one of the trash receptacles.

“Any idea what the firing out there is…”

The front wall of the hangar exploded into rubble as something that looked like an agricultural mech mated with a suit of power armor smashed its way through the steel reinforced feroconcrete.

“Uhhhh…”
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The mech slammed through the ferocrete wall with enough force to send the dense chunks of material flying out of the open hanger doors. The hydraulics and pistons connecting the MH-350 were far better than the pilot had expected. Neil was a good mechanic. Some might even say he was an exceptional one. But even he was impressed with the work Sven had done on the machine. The mech spun, planting its feet into the ferocrete of the floor like a spike to halt its momentum, and suddenly he found himself facing the wall he had just ripped through.

Liquid flame and bullets tore into the gap, and a cacophony of death and screams followed as Neil elimenated or scared off the last of the gang members. The whole thing was fun, but it had left a sour taste in his mouth. He wasn't a fan of slaughter. But he didn't know how else to describe what just occurred. Without any real armor piercing or anti-tank weaponry on the gangers, and without optics, Neil had practically been invulnerable. The only thing he had needed to watch out for were the occasional grenade or point-blank shotgun, and even then they were few and far between and the gang members needed to be in the right position for it to effect Neil in the slightest.

Once the flames and bullets had stopped, the MH-350 suddenly settled down, curling into a crouch before the monitor of the Highlander. The equilateral polygon of metal that shaped the top of the mech's torso opened up to reveal Neil, steam hissing around him as he stepped out of the machine. Behind him, Sven stepped out of the gap. His mechanical left hand held the neck of a limp corpse, dragging the body in a way that was somehow both menacing and casual. Neil saw the cadaver and stuck out his tongue in disgust, realizing the poor fool had probably lost his life due to slow suffocation.

The bay door of the Highlander opened, with Taya stepping out to rush over to Neil, only to stop before she even touched the hanger floor at the sight of Sven, not to mention the corpse. She had been disturbed by him earlier. His dead eyes and his wild, barbarian look made her skin crawl.

"My droids have reported the wreckage has not been disturbed yet. If we are to get the Aestominubum, we need to hurry. Our chances of retrieving the treasure fall every second we delay." Sven said to Neil, though his eyes remained fixed on Taya and Sayeeda at the bay door. "That uh..." Neil began loudly, then whispered harshly to Sven. "You know you could have waited for me break the news we'll share the treasure with you."

A growl emanated from within the next room, and Saxon stepped through. It gave everyone a scope of just how powerful the Hexanagallion was, for he was nearly as large as the MH-350 he now stood beside. Neil had the same reaction to Saxon that Taya had with Sven. He should have known that it would be on the filthiest planet imaginable that his past would come back to haunt him twice over.

Neil sighed. "Well now that we're all here..."
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The hangar floor still trailed smoke even after the plasma thrusters had been cut off. Though the concrete itself was immune to the fury of the ionized jets, dirt and impurities had been burned away by the sustained blast filling the air with a pungent reek. Stray ions prickled at the skin and tickled at the sinuses as Sayeeda came down the ramp to join the gathering. She had traded the ruined leather bodysuit for her customary fatigues and her full battle rig. It The ceramic chestplate was latched closed and her helmet was visor down and opaque as the crystalline heart of a star. Her webbing was hung with a variety of grenades and magazines for the heavy plasma rifle that she cradled in the crook of her arm. A quick spray of combat sealant, a mix of antiseptic, healing factors and artificial skin had salved the burns on her palms although they still felt tacky. Saxon stiffened when he saw her, clearly realizing that his armor wouldn’t protect him against her new found hardware, even if he was willing to chance it against Neil and Sven.

“Gnarloc has to think we still have the aestimobium,” she declared, cutting into the the silence with a clear authoritative tone.

“That is the reason we only had to deal with his goons, rather than the whole city.” The kingpin couldn’t put out a planet wide bounty on them if he were worried about the hunters realizing the potential fortune they had in their hands.

“But that's done now, if he dosen’t crush us fast and hard every other second rate ganger is going to smell blood in the water.” It made intuitive sense to Junebug, the basic strategy of an Armored unit was to hit hard and fast and keep hitting until the enemy collapsed, their actions had made Gnarloc look weak and he couldn’t tolerate that and hope to survive. Everyone spoke at once, voices gabbeling over each other in a confused mass of plans and objections.

“We need to retake my ship!” Saxon hissed, winning over Taya’s assertion that they should leave and Sven objecting that this wasn’t part of his deal by virtue of the bass his reptilian lungs gave his words. Junebug considered shooting the alien. It really did make alot of sense just to end the threat now with a hail of plasma bolts but if they were going to recover their prize they needed as many bodies as they could get.

“Unless you had some serious security Gnarloc’s men have already captured it,” Junebug said in a neutral ton.

“Even if he hasn’t moved it I doubt we will be able to recover it,” she went on, well aware that if the roles had been reversed she would have attempted to retake the Highlander against nearly any odds. Saxon hissed and cast a baleful glance at Neil, adding one more injustice to his already extensive list.

“Is your ship worth more than 10 million credits?” Sayeeda asked pointedly. Saxon bared his fangs but his posture relaxed slightly.

“There is 40 million worth of aestimobium and we weren’t negotiating very hard. Ten million each,” she said, making a broad gesture to incorporate the three men.

“I should get more of a share seeing my ship has been lost,” Saxon interjected angrily. Sayeeda swung the heavy plasma rifle to her shoulder, the 2cm bore pointed right at the lizards chest.

“What you should get are three million joules to the chest for fucking up our deal in the first place, but I’m feeling all generous like,” Junebug replied icily.

“I’m a bad enemy to have woman,” the lizard snapped, gums drawing up around his impressive fangs.

“No one is any kind of enemy when they are splattered across half a hangar bay,” Junebug observed in a reasonable tone. Sven laughed, a dry corpse like sound that made Sayeeda’s skin crawl.

“I’ll settle for a larger share if you want to kill him Captain, but we will all be settling for no shares at all if we stand around here for too much longer.” Saxon’s posture relaxed slightly in sullen acquiescence and Junebug lowered the gun to a patrol carry.

“Alright, get the mech into the cargo bay, does it have jump jets?” she asked, casting her eyes over the metal behemoth. Sven shook his head sadly.

“Afraid not,” he said with a bloodless grin, “maybe next upgrade?” Sayeeda nodded, assimilating the information.

“OK, Taya think you can handle a combat drop? We are going to need Neil in the mech. We will go in hard and fast, the Highlander will pull back to orbit and extract us when we have the goods.” Lifting the debris free with the mech wasn’t the best possible solution, particularly because the second they returned to the ruins of the night club it would be immediately obvious what they were doing, but the longer they delayed the more they risked that some random clean up crew would recover the priceless ore.
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"I'll put in the algorithms, you just need to direct them at the right time." Neil said to Taya, giving her a wink. She didn't seem entirely assured, but she had been piloting more than usual. Neil could tell she was getting the hang of it.

"I shall drop with you." Saxon declared, and turned to Neil. "Equipment?" he demanded. Neil knew what he wanted. The Xenos wished to repair his armor. Sayeeda seemed a bit skeptical that he wanted to drop with the mech. Neil knew he was stubborn enough and durable enough to do it, and that his wounds were already somewhat healed. The bullet wounds he had received would be scabbed over shortly after having spit the bullets out. He could survive most anything as long as he wasn't too riddled with projectiles or wasn't hit in a vital spot.

"I'll show you the way." Neil replied, giving faux excitement to the prospect.

Within the hour, Neil had risen the Highlander out of the hanger and into low orbit. By now the word would be out that the contingent of men Gnorlaac had sent had been decimated, but it would take some time to get out orbital sensors and to place any effective radar. The Bar they had met at, where the treasure was, was also not Gnorlaac's main stronghold and wasn't the main focus on defense.

Taya took the helm and Neil went into the cargo bay where the MH-350 was held, just beside the Hauler Neil had 'requisitioned' for himself those months ago. Junebug was helping Neil into the mech, helping him with the safety straps. He would need it to survive the drop in one piece. He expected her to give him good luck.

"When this is over, you have a lot of explaining to do." She said, yanking the strap hard and causing him to lose the breathe in his lungs. He coughed. "Yeah, I realize."
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The Highlander plunged downwards with only the occasional feathering of the maneuvering jets to keep it level. Wind howled through the open landing bay doors as the cityscape rushed up to meet them. The Highlander wasn’t an assault ship with proper hatches for this kind of work but she was sturdy enough and had enough power to weight ratio that flying with an open bay wasn’t a huge problem. Sayeed’s expression was hidden behind the opaque visor of her helmet, but her lips were pressed into a disapproving frown, her usual expression when circumstances were beyond her control. It wasn’t exactly that she didn’t trust Taya’s piloting, although she wouldn’t have agreed to it without Neil's pre programing the course and Lonny’s assistance, it was just she would much rather have had Neil at the controls for such a maneuver. The altimeter on her holographic display spun downwards in a blur. Their exit vector had been computed to look as though they were fleeing the system but suffered some catastrophic failure, a ruse designed to conceal their landing, but simulating a systems failure was a dangerous bussiness.

“Brace for a jolt!” she yelled by instinct and tightened her grip on the bulkhead stanchion. The Highlander’s plasma thrusters kicked on, driving the deck up through her boots as the sudden plummet was arrested. Neil was already moving, the mech stomping down the ramp before jumping the few meters to the ground. On que the ship rose and pivoted in a slow circle. Junebug leaped from the hatch as her HUD threw up her deployment point, she tucked and rolled into place, curling up into a ball as the plasma thrusters swept overhead, the rotation carrying Saxon and Sven to their position on the opposite roof. Rising she ran to the edge of her position overlooking the wrecked alley. There was a low concrete wall that rose to her waist providing good cover for an overwatching sniper. She rested the heavy plasma rifle on the wall, unsnapping a bipod with a flexible rotator mount to give her optimum stability.

Below her, Neil’s mech was already tearing through the crushed concrete and construction girders, digging for the box that was, hopefully, still buried somewhere beneath. A gaggle of people gawked and pointed at the sudden commotion. Sayeeda unslung her rifle though her helmet was yet to identify any prospective targets. If this went well, they would have the aesteimobium and be on their way before anyone could react. As though summoned by the thought a red carrot flashed on her HUD, she swung her weapon to the threat, lifting her weapon till a scarred human filled the holographic sight picture. He was drawing a heavy calibre pistol which he pointed at Neil’s mech. Junebug squeezed the trigger and the man was flung back as a bolt of blue plasma converted his chest to a gaseous explosion, the pistol sailed off to the right still gripped in the man's severed arm. The crowd of spectators surged backwards in a panic.

“Neil if you could hurry this up, it won't be long till Gnorlac or one of his criminal buddies figures out what we are doing here,” she said, sweeping the expanse of cityscape with her weapon, eyes keen for any further sign of trouble.
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Neil shifted gear in the mech, 'holstering' its weapons so to say and unhinging its claws to enable better grip on the debris he was moving. The mechanics of the machine was half motion, half toggle. It was tiring work for the pilot as well as the machine, but Neil was making good time. He tossed over a half ton rock, only to reveal the statue of a scantily clad Xenos that he assumed was female. He picked it up and tossed it over his shoulder, rummaging around as Sven watched from above, as still as a statue himself.

Saxon had disappeared. Though Neil knew he wasn't far. He had either decided to keep himself hidden in an alley akin to his predatory instincts, or he had fixed his cloaking device, which meant he could be anywhere and unseen by the naked eye as long as you weren't looking for him. Well Neil felt less exposed in this mech, and Saxon needed what he was digging up, or at least a cut of it. Neil shook his head. How did they end up scoring 40 million credits to not even scoring 10 and being hunting by the most powerful gang this side of the planet?

Well, mostly it was his past mistakes coming back to haunt him. But still, they could have come back at a better time, goddammit. He wondered what deep-space Gods he had offended to have this happen. Deep down he realized the shittiest part of all of this was ruining things for Sayeeda and the team. His hopes would lift somewhat when he saw something he always loved to see. Something shiny. "Hello there..." he said, pulling a few ferocrete chunks out of the way to reveal a third of the Aestomibium. He lifted it up and admired the indescribable precious metal for a few instances and then placed it inside the compartment of the mech. It gave speed to his search, and soon he found the other two thirds still attached together.

"I have it." he said over the comm.

Junebug would see people at the outskirts of the area, whispering to one another and loitering. Aliens and humans alike looked. Most were merely curious onlookers. They could understand people rummaging for scraps. Though this group was far more unique than usual junkers. "Gun barrel, 48 degrees to the left." Sven said in the comms for all to hear, though it was clearly meant for Junebug. She would see a glint in the crowd and a one eyed green Alien pointing a gun at Neil. A large caliber gun called an EMR meant to silence mechs.

Meanwhile, Taya did her best to fly the Highlander back around and complete her spin, trying to keep the thrusters low. Her heart skipped a beat when she heard the alarm go off at the right of the console. Somehow she had been spotted on radar somewhere. But that was impossible, wasn't it?

"Captain, we have a problem." Taya said, anxiousness in her voice. "I might need to do, eh, evasive maneuvers soon..."
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Even as Junebug swung her rifle onto the new threat she saw dozen more armed thugs swarming into the small plaza. It was an incredibly rapid response, one that Andor’s Armored would have struggled to have mounted. She fired the plasma bolt was aimed at center of mass but the alien’s shooting posture meant that the bolt struck the thing above its elbow. The plasma liberated its energy with a cyan thump and the alien staggered away burning as though doused in hydrocarbon. A detached part of Sayeeda’s mind theorized that the odd reaction might be because the alien’s blood was flamable.

Gunfire rippled out in almost random arcs. Even so there were over two score of shooters in the plaza now and probability meant that someone was bound to get lucky eventually. Junebug ducked back as rounds of a half dozen different varieties tore into the cement ledge that protected her. She crawled on her belly to a new position. With a sick feeling she realised what had happened. Every minor ganger had wanted to look like he had been ready for what had happened earlier at the club and moved his people into position so that they could tell Gnorlac that it hadn’t been them who had failed. Then, all unexpected, the target had reappeared ready for the taking. Oddly it didn’t make her feel any better that the enemy had caught them flat footed because they had been so incompetent it worked in their favor.

“Junebug, Lonny say we have multiple ships on an intercept course, what should I do?!” Taya’s voice was tight and terrified even over the comms. Sayeeda pushed herself to one knee, snapped off two shots and ducked before the return fire swept her position. Gnorlac had obviously put out the word that if the Highlander couldn’t be taken, it was to be destroyed. Dogfighting in a vertical city while trying to perform an evac would have been a strain for Neil and was no bussiness for a girl with a handful of hours of training.

“Bug out Taya, get to orbit and make a holding jump, Lonny can tell you how,” she said. A grenade sailed over the railing twenty feet from her and went off with a harmless crump. Making a holding jump required a precise insetion into the RIP with just enough way on to hold stationary against the prevailing currents. Once you were there you could stay in the RIP so long as your fuel held out without moving more than a few fractions of a light second, safe from attack. It was the sort of thing pirates did routinely, dropping in and out of normal space to scout for prey.

“What about you?” Taya asked, her concern for her captain not quite outweighing the relief at not being asked to attempt a suicidally dangerous maneuver.

“Drop out of jump every hour or so, we will let you know once we figure it out,” Junebug replied, cutting the call with a neural impulse. Taya would want more information, but there was a limit to how much her mind could process at one time and she needed to be in the firefight now that the ship was taken care off. There was a rumble of engines barely audible over the rapid fire of dozens of weapons.

“We have vehicles closing,” Junebug announed popping her head up to survey the scene. The gunmen were focusing their fire on the alley mouth where the mech had finished clearing the rubble. Across the plaza she saw three ugly looking monstrosities sorting into the chaos. One of the things might have been an old Dart T combat car but it was so heavily modified it was hard to tell. It bore a large old fashioned fusion cannon. The other two were clearly converted bulldozers, with extra blades welded on to act as side and top armor. One of the rusted clunkers bore a heavy duty assault cannon on a pintle mount. The kind of ten barreled weapon that might be used for air defense in a second rate mercenary company. The other bore a cylindrical ring of hypersonic rockets. What the gangsters had originally built the vehicle for she couldn’t guess, but any one of the tree was more than capable of shredding Neil’s ‘I cant believe its not a mech’ into so much tin shavings.

Without pausing to thinks she aime her rifle at the base of the rocket dozer’s pintle mount and fired a half dozen rounds. Steel sublimed in bright red flashes as the plasma gouged holes in the side of the armor. One of the rounds flew high and struck one of the rockets in its housing. With a roar so loud that it knocked half the gunmen down and engaged Sayeeda’s helmets audio dampers the thing vanished in a flash of white fire. Rockets whistled out of the inferno like fireworks blasting nearby buildings to flaming rubble. With horror Junebug watched a burning warhead hurtle towards her. It hit the floor below crashing through the concrete wall without detonating. Junebug jumped to her feet and started to run for the next roof, when a round smashed into her chest armor and sent her spinning to the floor gasping for breath. A moment later there was a tremendous explosion as the warhead below her went off, hurling her, and a giant section of the roof, skyward in a low tumble.

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Neil had expected everything to turn to shit, but he didn't expect it to happen this fast. He had felt a few 'tings' on the back of his mech and as suddenly as he realized they were small arms fire, it stopped sprinkling and began to pour. "Alright this is a little much," he muttered under his breath as he began to redirect the MH-350's systems and undo the cargo latch, opening up and taking the Aestimobium inside the mech where it's safe while his back was still turned to the growing mob of attackers. He turned when he heard the tredds scraping against the floor of the plaza, and finally drank in the army and the newly arriving armor.

Ironically enough, Sven had taken this time to disappear much like Saxon had earlier. While the Xenos on the other hand decided it was his time to make his debut, and a group of a dozen men who shot various lasbolts and traditionally kinetic firearms at Neil lost half their number in mere moments. Saxon had uncloaked his massive form and attacked from their flank, serrated blades of Xarconian steel protruded from his forearms as he literally butchered 4 men before they realized they were under attack. Neil still felt it wasn't enough. Sayeeda was already being suppressed from above.

His weapons had been mechanically 'sheathed' to better grab the treasure. It would take a few moments to redirect the systems to unholster them again and set them up. He knew he didn't have the time. Even if the vehicles hadn't shown up, there were enough gang members here to get a few bullets into his cockpit before long. He felt a sudden surge of frustration at everything having to go wrong so quickly. His mind worked without him realizing it, the mech reaching down to grab a sufficiently large enough piece of rubble. He locked the hand-like claw onto the stone and turned the propulsion of the MH-350's right arm at full strength, something you would only ever normally use to shove large obstacles at high velocity.

"Eat this, bitch." Neil spat, aiming on instinct and unleashing the energy of the mech's arm, launching the stone that probably weighed more than Neil's body weight flying like a bullet into the cockpit of one of the tractors. Needless to say the vehicle had lost its driver, though the machine still moved, turning as it did without someone to steer and ramming into 8 gangers, crushing them like so many twigs.

That was when the explosion happened, Sayeeda's expert shot having detonated the Dart T Combat car, though Neil could only watch as the aforementioned warfare was shot at Sayeeda's perch, shattering the building below her and sending her flying into the air. As if on cue, Sven's voice was heard over the comm. "That explosion will give you time. Leave her and go."

"Fuck you!"

Neil had already shifted gears and sped the Mech toward where he calculated Sayeeda would fall. He knew he couldn't catch her gracefully, controlling a high powered and modified cargo mech. But he managed to just catch her by her stomach, only her legs bumping into the metal of her arm uncomfortably, but not so much as to worry Neil at the moment. He had the treasure and the Captain, they needed to get out of there. He pulled the arms in and had Sayeeda close to the cockpit as he sped out of there through one of the main roadways, killing an unfortunate ganger who had wandered into the wrong direction by simply running him over.

"We'll rendezvous at the corner of Nicias." Neil replied over the comms and shut them off abruptly. On his rear camera, he saw the last tractor mowing over debris and in pursuit of him. It was about a 10 minute run before the tractor had finally lost track of the mech it had been chasing, the Ordellion Xenos with its tentacle-appendages wriggling back and forth already annoying its human companion in the passanger seat.

"You lost him. Now you'll need to explain this to the boss." The man said, or would have if his window had not been torn open and a mech's arm didn't unload a small canister of its flamer ammunition into the tractor, igniting the skin of the passengers before they could even scream. Neil didn't like having to kill to indiscriminately, but he had set an unconscious Sayeeda down a block away and had to end the pursuit as quickly as he could.

Once that was over with, he made his way back over to her and settled his mech into stand by mode, opening the cockpit with a 'hiss' and dropping out of it, lifting the woman's head up from the (relatively clean) pile of bagged waste he had left her sitting next to. "Captain?" he said. He patted her cheek hurriedly, pragmatism and worry intermingling. "Captain, come on. Don't do this to me." he breathed. "I know you like fucking with me but now is not the time..."
@Penny
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