Sayeeda hit the ground hard enough that the breath exploded from her chest. The ceramic armor saved her ribs, though she would still have bruises to show for it tomorrow. Something blond and flailing hit her across the chest with a squawk, driving her into the ground. Instinctively, Junebug rolled over, covering the girl with her armored body as rock splinters and shell fragments rained down around them. The static charge on the helmet kept the dust of her visor but the air in front of her was essentially a sandstorm. THe radio crackled useless in an unintelligible hash of static. The air above still screamed with artillery and gun fire.

They were in a narrow metal lined cavern with stalac… no… Sayeeda’s shell stunned brain caught up with what was going on. The were in a massive shattered airlock. Piping, brown with a rind of ancient rust reached up towards the remaining fragments of the mesa. Not a mesa, a camouflage construction. Someone had camouflaged the starship. The Treasure ship was an orbital vessel, never meant to land in an atmosphere, but her pilot had brought her down using the thrusters against the pull of gravity. The star hot fusion drives must have melted the sand to lava as it landed, sinking the ship into a cocoon of crude glass that had been quickly covered by the blowing desert winds. All that had remained above the ground was this airlock. Somone, probably the original Terran crew had covered it with a crude concrete of sand, close enough to the sandstone mesas to fool even local wildlife into making a home of it. The crew must have left their hidden ship with the goal of returning to salvage her, but the desert or the RIP had swallowed them and their secret. 

Taya struggled under Sayeeda’s armored weight and as the last shells burst above she picked herself up releasing the girl. The submachine gun Junebug was carrying felt light and she glanced down to see that the barrel had been amputated two thirds the way along its length by a shell fragment that would have killed her instantly if it had been a meter to the right. Junebug tossed the weapon to the ground and drew the pistol from her belt. Above them the sound of gunfire was slacking as Canek and his surviving two vehicles retreated, gaining enough clearance from the shell struck mesa that their air defense systems could pot the incoming shells.

“Who are these people,” Taya asked shakily, she still had her pistol in her hand, though Junebug noticed the red led that indicated the weapon was empty was light.

“Another group of mercs,” Sayeeda explained, moving to the side of the airlock where a maintenance grating lay partially ajar. Her eyes scanned the rim of the artifical crater above them, though she could at least hope anyone that had been on top of the mesa had been blown to ragged meat.

“They must have found the ship but haven’t got the transport yet to loot it properly,” she conjectured.

“Probably set up a defensive perimeter while they wait for ships. Thats why they dropped the hammer on us when we showed up, they were already here to defend their prize,” Junebug explained.

“Well what do we do now,” she demanded. A figure appeared on the lip above them pointing a machine gun down over the lip. Sayeeda whipped her pistol up but before she could fire the man screamed as Saxon grabbed him from behind, lifted the man over his head and hurled him into the pit. The mercenary hit the ground with a sound like a cracking egg, the machine gun flying from his dead fingers with a clatter. Saxon jumped into the hole a moment before a burst of tracer fire ripped through his previous position, his long talons acting as a break as he dragged them through the sandstone to slow his decent. He landed heavily, adsorbing the shock by flexing his knees before straightening. He looked from the dead mercenary to Sayeeda, the pouches under his neck swelling. She had the peculiar impression of a cat laying a mouse at the feet of its mate.

“There are many more vermin approaching,” he hissed in his serpentine voice.

“I saw armored carriers coming across the sand, Canek flees like a coward,” he sneered. Sayeeda, an experienced tanker, knew that Canek’s only choice was to move out into open space where he could use his vehicles effectively. She doubted he was willing to give up on the treasure ship that easily.

“What do we do?” Taya asked, her voice quivering with fear. Neil, who had been working on the maintaince hatch with his multi-tool pulled the hatch cover off and let it fall to the floor with a clang.

“I guess we take a look inside.”