Sayeeda and Neil moved through the line of mercenaries. They were a scruffy looking bunch up close. A few had the look of hardened killers, the sort of men who Andor’s Armored might have recruited to fill combat losses, but just as many seemed to be locals. These men seemed to be drawn from desert tribes rather than the more cosmopolitan inhabitants of the city. Their eyes shone with the eerie light of fanatics and they fingered their weapons as Neil and Junebug passed by. They snarled curses and growled like animals.

“Boy he sure can pick them,” Neil observed as they climbed a set of carven stone steps towards the fourth floor. Sven’s men had secured each landing of the stairs, their weapons pointed down the long corridors. Sayeeda tried to think of what she would do if she were the commander of the palace guard. Probably ascend to the room and push down the stairwell to secure the top floor then hold what she had until backup arrived. It was vanishingly unlikely there was anyone in the Pasha’s guard who would be either willing or able to execute such a tactic.

A trio of mercenaries stood before a large door on the forth floor. The doorway itself was of a desert stone with veins that ran from gold to almost purple, the slabs had been polished until they shone with a jewel like radience that was far more beautiful than anything Sayeeda had yet seen within the luxurious palace. Aiden could take lessons. Beautiful though the door was Junebug had to admit that it was somewhat marred by the nights events. A large golden door handle had been blasted aside with a shaped charge which had cracked the stone and crazed the surface leaving the door hanging open. From inside a stream of invictive issues forth in an unbroken torrent. The curses were creative but appeared to be running down to a core message of ‘fuck you’ and ‘I’ll kill her”.

“You should not be here slut!” one of the mercenaries, one of the desert nomads, snarled in barely understandable galactic. He took a step forward and raised his weapon. The butt of Junebug’s rifle caught him across the temple with an audible crack. It wasn’t a matter of strength, not really, merely momentum and precision. The rag clad guerrilla let out a weird mewling sound and dropped to the floor, blood running from his nose. 

“Any further questions?” Junebug asked acidly. Another of the mercenaries, armored in gray ceramic and sporting an impressive mustache began to laugh. That unlooked for sound stilled the stream of cursing from beyond the shattered portal. The other mercenary, of a type with the one Junebug had just brained, looked simultaneously furious and impotent. Junebug strode past him and pointed her freehand at the man, finger extended and thumb raised like a childs impression of a pistol. She winked at the furiours looking dervish and mouthed the word ‘bang’ without actually making a noise. The mustachioed mercenary, clearly with a similar opinion of the lower class hirelings as Junebug, redoubled his laughter.

A room was a cyborgs clinical description, but the chamber beyond the portal was vast. Thirty meters atleas and easily half that wide with high ceilings that hung with intricately worked brass lanterns that housed modern illuminators. The floor was made of tiles of polished stone similar to the door save where large plush looking rugs lay over it. Expensive artworks and sculptures were scattered about along with numerous divans and couches. At the far end of the room stood a large bed that stood before a balcony which looked out over the starlight city. A slight shimmer of a static displacer danced in the portal, expensive tech on a backworld like this one even if all it did was keep dust out of your bedroom.

“If you take one more step ill kill her!” shrieked a man half crouched behind the foot of the bed. He was half dressed in silk robes though his turban hung comically from his head and his tunic had been buttoned up out of alignment. The pasha was not a impressive man, he might have been handsome once but age and dissipation had swollen his face and his fingers to the point that the many jeweled rings that bedecked them probably couldn’t be taken off. He held a modern looking pistol into the back of a weeping slave girl. As Sven had stated she was chained at wrist and ankle and around her neck. Even in the moonlight she was physically impressive, a voluptuous goddess who appeared to have stepped from an erotic holo through her eyes and face were stained with tears. Given the intricacy of the chains she had clearly been restrained when the attack started, though the reasons why weren’t something that Junebug wanted to pursue.

“Go ahead then,” Junebug invited, arching an eyebrow in contempt at the ruler of the city. The Pasha appeared momentarily nonplused. He jammed the pistol hard against the womans ribs, eliciting a pained squeal.

“What?!” he gaped.

“Shoot her then, if you are going to,” Junebug invited, hefting her rifle to indicate the woman.

“We only have a few minutes and Id rather not waste it on threats.”