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Hidden 4 yrs ago Post by Penny
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"So you have slept with every other convenient woman and you are finally working your way around to me?" Junebug snapped, unwilling to be reasonable in the heat of the moment.

"That's not what..." Neil protested, anger on his own face as he faced her down. Both of them were too hot under the collar for this conversation to be a good idea, and certainly not in the home of Neil's would be inlaws. Sayeeda held up a hand in warning to cut Neil off.

"Look all I want, all I've ever wanted is..."

It was perhaps bad timing that Saxon chose that moment to emerge from the bathroom where he and Sayeeda had been sharing the tub. Steam wreathed his reptilian form like smoke and his throat sacks were fully engorged and colored a vibrant red. His reptillian eyes narrowed as he beheld that Neil was in the room.
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Neil looked both horrified and disgusted, eyes wide and lips have involuntarily parted. He should have expected the one thing to go wrong in this situation would, and now that it was here he didn't know what to do or say. He started to say 'what the fuck' to Junebug, and she could see the beginning of the W on his lips, before he stopped and shook his head.

Saxon grumbled irritably. "What are you doing-"

Neil casually pulled out his revolver and pointed it at Saxon's head. "You're not going to speak. I don't want to hear one word out of you. If I hear you talk again, I'll kill you." He said, having never spoken so seriously in his life. "One more word. I don't care if you kill me. I will find a way to drag you to hell."

The Hexanagallion wasn't necessarily frightened, but in all of his long years chasing Neil, he had never heard him like this. It surprised him enough to where he didn't immediately respond, and Neil holstered his revolver and looked to Junebug. Neil could feel the rage inside of him, broiling in the pit of his stomach. But something happened. There was a layer of apathy above it, and Junebug could see that he had been broken in a way. He had none of his heart, silliness, or even the hysterical anger that he should have been feeling out.

He shook his head. "Is this what you want?" He asked her. "I won't stop you. But I aint taking this." The pilot seemed very far away. "I don't want any of it. I don't want Indra, the reward, the highlander." He backed up, breathing through flared nostrils. "I'm going to steal a ship and go back to ripping off mobs and fixing ventilation shafts on Ryloc. I can't! I CAN'T!" he made his way to the door, not caring if anyone outside questioned why he was in her chambers. But the door was sealed shut, and needing Junebug's voice command to open it. Likely because she didn't want anyone barging in on her and Saxon.

There was likely no guards out, as it was their feasting time. But still, it was alarming that Neil punched and kicked the door impressively loudly. "Fucking open!"

He still sounded done, but the door being closed made his actual rage surface. Maybe there was still some of him in there after all.
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Sayeeda might not have known who to handle the emotional roller coaster of the last few days but she knew how to handle a threat to her team, even a threat from within. Her anger and confusion froze instantly into the icy calm she felt in battle. In the blink of an eye she crossed the room, seized Neil by the shoulder, spun him around and slammed him against the door. The pilot outweighed her significantly but her muscles were whipcord strong and she had the advantage of position. Unfortunately the maneuver didn’t leave her any hands to secure her towel which fluttered to the ground to leave her completely exposed.

“Hey!” Neil snapped, his face pinched with a mixture of emotions Sayeeda couldn’t easily identify. She slammed him bodily against the door rattling and driving the breath from Neil’s body.

“HEY!” she snapped smashing Neil back against the door.

“Get your shit together Neil!” she snapped.

“Don’t tell me to…”

“Get. Your. Shit. Together!” she hissed, the vehemence of the words momentarily shocking the pilot to silence.

“You think they are just going to let you walk away after you deflowered their fucking princess?” she demanded. Saxon snorted.

“He is simply ashamed to have chosen a lessor mate. He…” Without letting Neil down she pulled the heavy pistol from Neil’s holster, half turned and shot Saxon threw the right kneecap. The Hex dropped to the floor hissing in pain and cursing, the report was deafening in the combined space and the concussion knocked a vase of flowers from one of the side boards with a spray of shattered porcelain. The Hex hissed in rage and lifted his arm to strike at her. Sayeeda put another round through the elbow he was using to prop himself up dropping the alien to the floor with a growl of pain.

“Get out,” she snapped. “If you get to the infirmary within ten minutes you will be fine.”

Saxon opened his mouth to snarl a response, but Sayeeda thumbed back the hammer of the weapon with an ominous click.

“Try it and I swear by the Goddess I will put out both your eyes and then improvise with the last two rounds,” she said in a voice of icy calm. Saxon hissed in a mixture of pain and what she read as excitement. She shoved Neil sideways into onto the bed and cleared the doorway.

“Open,” she commanded, stepping clear and keeping the gun aimed at Saxon as he scrambled through the door.

“Close,” she snapped, sealing the door and turning on Neil the gun still in her hand, the smoke of the pistol discharge wreathing her naked body.

“You were getting married an hour ago, hell you were probably screwing her an hour ago,i” she snarled, subconsciously gesturing with the barrel of Neil’s gun to emphasis the point.

“You don’t get to get pissy if I decide I need a little action and you sure as fuck don’t get to put Taya and I in danger because you have you're having a moment!”
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To say Neil was surprised was an understatement. He wiped something wet from his lip, and he found it was a blood droplet. He guessed her pushing him into the door broke the skin a bit. Well either way, he was glad Saxon was gone and it was fortunate they somehow had similar opinions on him at the moment, oddly enough. Still, her pointing his own gun at him (and his ears still rang) wasn't a scenario he planned on.

He honestly hadn't thought on how they would see Sayeeda and Taya after he had left, and truth be told he probably would have stopped himself from leaving if he thought they'd come to harm. "Look just because I bail doesn't mean they'd put you two in a conspiracy." He spat. Then her other words caught his thoughts and he was angry again.

"I haven't touched her!" He all but screamed at her. "I don't know if you've noticed but everytime we're together it's because she leaps on me!"

"Oh, poor you." She deadpanned, eyes as hard as Xarconian steel. She might be in her birthday suit but at the moment he felt naked enough to be on trial. To his credit, he didn't really flinch from the gun barrel. Be it because he knew that her killing him would complicate things more, he thought she wouldn't shoot him anyway, or he simply didn't care wasn't apparent. "You've been with how many women since we've met? I'm to think this one you didn't jump into bed with?"

The pilot leaped off the bed, and looked directly at her. "I already told you it's because you kept telling me no. Even last night was a no!" he growled. "But even past that, I've never lied about any of them, have I? I'm not lying now. I haven't fucked her. I don't want to fuck her. I only want to fuck you." Well, it wasn't exactly an 'I love you' but it was something. When she still didn't respond, he sighed and held his hand out.

"Can I have my gun back?"

Junebug snorted. "You were about to skip the planet a minute ago. No you can't."

"Oh where'ya going to holster that thing? You're the Captain of the ship, not my shit now give it back."

"I said no, and that's fina-"

Neil tackled her like a cannon ball, and the gun went off in the room and from the sound of it, ricocheted twice and broke something dainty and expensive that neither saw. The gun was now out of her hands on the ground, and the Captain and the Pilot were wrestling with all their strength, now entangled in a cacophony of sweat and emotions.
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Junebug rolled with Neil on the bed, wrestling for the gun. Neil outweighed her but she had more experience in hand to hand fighting, and whatever the Terran’s had done to her surprisingly dynamic. Neil also hesitated to strike home and was rewarded with a sharp blow to the kidney. He let out a pained shout and drove his elbow into Junebug’s sternum a heart beat before she smashed her knee into his stomach. Both of them grappled for the pistol but Neils larger hands made that a losing battle. Junebug squeezed the trigger, blasting a bottle of spirits on the side board to fragments before Neil got a leg under her and flipped her towards the wall, she twisted and let the flip bring her feet in contact with the marble wall, let her calves compress and launched herself back over the top of Neil’s sweating body. The gun went off again and plaster reigned down from the ceiling where the heavy round punched into the moulding. Her body weigh wrenched the weapon free and sent it clattering over the onyx inlaid marble floor, though for a miracle it didn’t go off. Neil caught her arm and yanked her back, demonstrating considerable strength to arrest her momentum, nearly pulling her shoulder from its socket. She aimed an elbow at his face but he got his forearm up in time to block the strike with a grunt of pain. Sayeeda rolled on top of him, pinning him with her thighs and drawing back her fist to punch down at his throat. Neil’s fist was cocked back to make the reverse strike and his other hand gripped her throat.

They both paused, shying back from the edge of lethal violence instinctively. Thick coils of powder smoke wreathed the room, in a logic dictated by the complicated air flow. A light mist of vaporized plaster continued to fall from the hole in the ceiling, and fluid gurgled from a punctured bottle adding the tang of some kind of high proof brandy to the tableau. Sweat sheened Junebug’s naked body and a drop collected at the point of her nose and dropped onto Neil’s chest. Her heart thundered in her chest and adrenaline burned so hot inside her she could literally trace the path of her veins through her limbs.

“This isn’t over,” she warned in a cold distant voice.

“Right,” Neil said though she couldn’t have said exactly what he meant by the affirmation.

Suddenly and without conscious understanding of movement, their lips were locked together in a passionate kiss. Junebug was unable to separate the rush of combat from the new circumstance in her mind but she didn’t waste much time trying. Neil, apparently as surprised as she was, seemed unable to decide whether to try to take his t-shirt off or to grip her. Breaking the impasse she gripped the collar with both hands and tore it free with a long riiiiip of parting fabric.
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Their sudden struggle was turning in a direction Neil hadn't really considered, and he responded into the kiss before he really thought about what they were doing. But as soon as he knew what was happening, all gears turned toward it, and any hesitation he had was lost when she ripped his shirt. It was as if she was tearing his last bit of hostility, as he felt a warmth in his chest from the blood preparing to rush across his body.

Even if indra's entire family and a deathsquad armed to the teeth entered the room, Neil wouldn't have paid them any mind as the two intwined their limbs and tongues, years of pent up sexual frustration being spent. Somehow, the pilot lost his trousers next. If you had asked him later, he wouldn't have even remembered how, only he was glad that they hadn't been ripped either.

They twirled, Junebug's legs around Neil's hips as they hit the bed. Neil groaned. "Put your goddamn back into it," he said, some of the earlier aggression still in him.

"I'll show you my fucking back," She promised, and the evening turned into the night as the two commenced for a timeless period of pleasure. Neil got back to what senses he had while the moon was full, his hair a mess and the smoke having wafted out of the outer balcony. He suddenly realized just how fucked he likely was, but you know, he realized he didn't give a fuck when he glanced over at Junebug.

It was worth it.



The Pilot and the Captain slumbered as hard as they had fucked, because the furious knocking went on for Gods only knew how long before both were coherent enough to realize there was a noise. Neil squinted, lifting his head into the warm sun of the window above, and he heard a very familiar voice.

"Captain! Captain, it's Taya!" The girls voice carried, slightly muffled by the closed door. "Captain! Wake up, Neil's gone missing!"
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Sayeeda’s eyes cracked open and she groaned. The hormones and adrenaline had burned off the alcohol she had imbibed. To be honest she was still half basking in the afterglow of the evening's activities. Unfortunately this simply made it easier for her to appreciate the gravity of the situation. She didn’t know for a fact that Indra’s family would react badly to this new situation, but she had dealt with enough planetary nobility to know that sleeping with their crown prince designee would not go over well. At the very least they might seize the Highlander and take the reward back. At worst they might face imprisonment or execution. Technically the marriage contract that Neil had with Indra did not involve her. She had agreed to undertake Gregorius’ mysterious errand but that was a separate contract. Satisfied in her own mind that she wasn’t reneging on a contract, she rolled out of bed and looked around for some clothing. Neil sat up in bed behind her blinking himself awake as Taya continued to hammer on the door.

“What the…” Neil mumbled.

“Shut up,” Sayeeda hissed as she grabbed a tank top and pulled it over her head.

“Junebug, Indra’s people don’t know where he is, will you let me in already?” the aristocrat called through the door.

“I’m not decent,” she called back. Taya snorted a laugh.

“Are you ever? I’ve seen you naked plenty of times Sayeeda,” she called.

“Can’t they find him with the security cams?” Junebug asked, finally managing to locate a pair of pants, pulling them on without underwear.

“Stars I don’t know, I don't know what their coverage is like inside the actual inner palace, would you hurry up and let me in?” Taya demanded. Junebug toggled the door but stepped out into the hallway, using her body to conceal the fact Neil was inside, closing it behind her but not before she flashed a fall back hand signal behind her back.

“What the…” Taya protested, her confusion visible.

“Junebug you aren’t even wearing any shoes,” the aristocrat protested. Sayeeda looked down at her feet in mock surprise.

“You are right, we need to buy shoes, probably clothes too,” Sayeeda agreed.

“You have all those things in your room,” Taya pointed out tactfully.

“Look I just made a hundred thousand credits, a girl can’t want to spring for new threads?” she asked breezily.

“What about Neil?” she demanded as Junebug took her by the arm and maneuvered her down the hallway.

“He is probably down at the Highlander, screwing around with a mech if I had to guess, you know how he loses track of time when he is working. We can check, after we get shoes,” she said with artificial brightness.

“Why are you acting so weird?” Taya demanded as they rounded a corner. It took a tremendous effort of will not to look back towards her room. She hadn’t had time to shower or anything and she was momentarily concerned that Taya might notice.

“Neil’s getting married in a couple of days,” she pointed out, “I can’t be a little weirded out?” Taya nodded sympathetically and Junebug managed a smile that was distinguishable from a grimace only by degree. This was really messed up. They rounded another corner only to be confronted by Saxon. The Hex was in his armor though medical units were clamped to his elbow and leg. He bared his teeth and then offered a sort of strange bow to Sayeeda.

“You are a fearsome warrior, I am honored to have mated with you,” he declared before striding off down the hallway. Taya gasped and gave her a shocked look. Junebug sighed. No. Now things were messed up.
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Neil recalled times when he had been late for work when he really needed the job, and he even remembered a few times back in primary school when he had been late to a particular class he was failing. He recalled being late to family events, dates, he even remembered a time when he had woken in bed next to someone who's husband had arrived back home unexpectedly early. But when Taya knocked on the door and Junebug went to try and distract her, he had never put pants on quicker in his life.

He wished his shirt wasn't ripped, but thinking back on how it got ripped, he didn't regret it necessarily but he'd need to come up with a reason why he had no shirt on. He stepped out onto Junebug's balcony, and used his strong hands and flexible body to scale the parapet and slide down the pillars that held it up. As soon as his boots hit the ground, he heard voices and saw the elaborate hats of two guards approaching from a set of outside stairs. He sprinted into the bushes and dived, hitting the dirt in a roll and laying suddenly still as they passed.

"Let's try to the hanger," he breathed, getting to his feet and making his way down the low rise mountain the palace sat atop, hanging on to roots and branches as he swung like a primate until he reached one of the higher rocky beaches. The strange reptilian birds of the planet floated above him in the wind, chirping their strange frills as they circled the water for schools of fish. Neil let them do their thing as he waded back into a small edge of the forest, lurking along until he found himself on the outskirts of the lower hanger.

Briefly he wondered how he could get in, before he decided to look below it, as it was erected atop the decline in the earth with pillars of steel keeping it erect. Sure enough, he found a ladder and a hatch that led into the structure, and he climbed up and made his way into the bay, where only a few mechanics milled about. Glancing back and forth, he wondered why Gredorius and the island needed such advanced air to orbit fighters, but as soon as he saw the Highlander, the question left his head.

"Thank the Gods," he breathed.

The next person that stumbled upon him found him covered in oil under the Highlander's power unit, sweat beading down his skin. He was glad there wasn't any hickeys to speak of. Once he was identified, minutes passed before a full squadron of guardsmen and Indra along with her mother made their way into the Hanger, wide eyed disbelief when they saw his face. "Neil!!!" Indra screamed, running to him. Her mother seemed exasperated, but clearly happy her daughter's husband to be was safe.

Neil held his hands out as Indra went for a hug, being the first of a long line of excuses not to touch him. "Whoa whoa, I've been working babe, I got all this shit on me."

"Where...why didn't you come back to your room? We asked where you were on the speakers, we've been looking all over for you!" She tried to suck in air but she continued to ramble on how he could have not heard anything and he realized he didn't have any real excuse. "Look, it's hard to hear anything from in the Starship, ok? I'm sorry," he said. "I was just so relieved to have the materials to fix it, I wanted to get into it right away."

Usually to someone he was royally fucking over, he'd feel guilty, and he did indeed feel some guilt doing this to Indra. But last night had been incredible and he wasn't about to fuck that up. Briefly he wondered if Junebug felt the same, or if it was a one night stand but he pushed those thoughts away. Now wasn't the time, particularly with Indra and her mother eyeing him up. "Well dear," he mother said at last. "At least he has a work ethic like your father. Now let's get him cleaned up. It's time for breakfast."
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“So what was it like?” Taya asked as Junebug picked out black dress jacket and slipped it over her shoulders. The seams were piped with silver and it had a vaguely military cut. After she had given Neil sufficient time to get clear she had circled back and taken a much needed shower. Taya had arched her eyebrows at the ruin of the bed and the several brass cartridges that littered the floor, but Junebug had declined to comment, happy to let the girl assume it was from the earlier tryst with Saxon. It wasn’t that she didn’t trust Taya. Not exactly, but the girl was young and she might blurt out something at an inconvenient moment if she knew the truth.

“What was what like?” Junebug asked, feeling a slight sting of alarm that the girl had figured it out regardless.

“Sleeping with Saxon,” Taya blurted, the words obviously costing her a great deal of effort. Junebug had been thinking about Neil, not about Saxon and it took her a minute to orient her mind.

“It was… different,” Sayeeda admitted.

“That is all I get?” Taya demanded as Junebug pulled on a pair of white trousers with a red seam and a pair of tall leather boots. She had taken a shower to refresh herself and was ready to eat and more importantly for caffeine. Neil hadn’t given her much time to sleep after all.

“There are a number of erotic holos you can check out,” Junebug said with a wry smile, blushing the girl to silence.

“I mean… is this going to be a thing? With Saxon I mean?” Taya pressed as Junebug finished lacing her boots and stood up.

“No,” she said a trifle more decisively than she had intended. Fortunately, she was save from further comment by a chime from Taya’s comm unit. The girl looked down, examining the unit.

“Neil turned up at the Highlander,” she said, relief obvious in her voice. Sayeeda’s face also relaxed with relief that Neil had made it safely.

“We are invited to breakfast, I guess the chancellor wants to discuss the job? Or maybe the wedding?” she asked. Junebug shrugged her shoulders, working hard to maintain her nonchalance.

“Well then we shouldn’t keep the chancellor waiting,” Junebug said dryly.
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Neil had been cleaned up in a fashion he could only describe as 'military' with how quick and precise it had been. Thirty minutes after he had been tossed into the bathing room with the groomers, he was out with clean hair, a fine shave, new cloths (a handsome indigo vest with a V opening at its center over a blue shirt with matching pants) and with only a hint of the scent of starship grease still permeating his being. It was a hard scent to get rid of in anytime under 24 hours, but it smelled like him so he didn't mind.

He, along with an escort of the same squadron that had found him among the ships, was marched to the banquet hall. No doubt for protection, but also to make sure he didn't disappear again likely. Once there, the guards had a very satisfying time ushering him forward before they all but pushed him into the room. He nearly bowled over Indra, who caught him. "Oh! You look wonderful!" she said with barely supressed glee. The room they were in was a stately chamber, small for the palace but twice as big as any moderately wealthy citizen's living room, with three elongated feasting tables and servitor androids moving about, setting down cups and plates in perfect order.

Among the androids were his crew, along with Indra's family. Saxon was nowhere to be found, but he supposed none of the chairs could fit him in this place. He also didn't mind over much. Saxon was a cunning beast, but still very much a beast in many ways. He didn't understand keeping his mandibles shut much of the time if information was drawn out of him casually. Of course there were also a few officials and unknown captains and dignitaries in the crowd, grabbing their food from the hotbar. Indra looped her arm around his and led him to the table on the left, having him sit across from his crew.

Neil and Junebug's eyes met for a brief, suspenseful moment before they looked away did their best not to make any more eye contact. "Hey uh, shouldn't I be up to get my food?" he asked.

"Don't worry, the droid will get it for you. Just tell it what you want." The young aristocrat said. "Some people simply go up there because they're indecisive." She cleared her throat as a servitor glided by. "Unit 347, get me two quardek sausages and some revlon ribs. Oh, and eggs please." The order was made with a dazzling smile, and it even looked like the droid with no face or soul to speak of beamed. It's midsection blinked red and off it zoomed. Taya clapped.

"I love these! My father never trusted servitors on Fornax." She confessed.

"No one should, after the God wars." Indra's father said, turning back from his conversation with a dignitary. "We only use them for menial tasks such as this. No weapons are automated on this planet. Now do eat up. We have much to discuss and you need a full stomach to appreciate what we must speak of."

"I've been wanting to know," Indra's mother said, looking at Junebug. "How was your night, Captain? Were the rooms accommadating?"

Indra nodded, curious. "Yes, how did you sleep?"

Neil decided it was time for him to make his order so he didn't have to listen overmuch of the current conversation, but he knew he'd hear it anyway.
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Junebug nodded to the two women, more to give herself a moment to think than for any need of acknowledgement. Her somewhat guilty consciences immediately leapt to the conclusion that they knew she had spent the night with Neil, although her intellect informed her that if that were the case this would be a very different conversation.

“I uh… don’t sleep much,” Junebug admitted. That much was true, combat fatigue, as the doctors called it, was always with you and many mercenaries relied on booze or drugs or a combination of both to keep the dreams at bay. Sayeeda wasn’t quite there, though she did sleep better after a little alcohol and she often woke during the night in a cold sweat.

“It’s just us girls here,” Graciella said with a conspiratorial smile, leaning forward to keep her voice low.

“The servants told us you did quite a number on your bedding,” she added.

“I’ve never known anyone who slept with a Hex before, so exotic” Indra said with a giggle. Junebug relaxed somewhat as the thrust of the conversation became clear and decidedly less dangerous. On many worlds it would have been bad form to ask, but sexual moraes varied dramatically from world to world. In a mercenary company graphic descriptions were all but expected the morning after.

“I can’t say I had alot of time for sleeping,” Sayeeda said, her voice warming at the memory of Neil’s athletic body entwined in hers rather than the previous encounter with Saxon.

“It was … different,” she said with a helpless shrug that bought a chuckle from both women.

“I dare say it was,” Graciella said with a wicked grin. Further awkwardness was averted when one of the androids arrived to take their orders.

Junebug sat across from Neil and Indra enduring the small talk of one of the officials who had also been invited to the breakfast. It seemed the purpose of such events was to expose the movers and shakers of Gregorious’ government to Neil as the future partner of his daughter. The fellow seemed to be in charge of controlling the fishing grounds that provided the bulk of the protein on this largely aquatic world, a topic in which he seemed unreasonablely interested to Sayeeda. She chewed mechanically on some sort of fruit that seemed partway between a lemon and a grapefruit. It was very sour but not unpleasantly so and the mild warmth she felt in her gums suggested that it had some mild narcotic effect also. Neil for his part seemed to alternate between uncomfortably returning Indra’s obvious and public affections and glancing at her. Once, when Indra was distracted, she winked at him, causing him to blush adorablely.

After a sufficient interval had passed and the first courses of breakfast had been cleared away by the android servitors. Gregorious summoned Neil, Taya and Sayeeda to join him at the high table. Although it appeared to be a solid sheet of worked soapstone, when the older man touched the surface a shimmering filled the air and the background conversation seemed to mute to a dull buzz. Noise cancelling devices varied in quality, but they worked on a principle of creating the inverse of the incoming soundwaves and broadcasting it at a commensurate volume but at a frequency too high for human ears to register. This one, like the table, was obviously of a very high order.

“Ah a little privacy,” Gregorious declared with his usual air of bonhomie.

“I think it is time we discussed the task we have in mind for you, I’m sure you ladies are eager to begin the wedding planning but business before pleasure as they say.” He reached forward and touched the table once more and a holographic representation of the surface of Cylonieka sprung into sharp relief. Junebug glanced around in concern.

“If you are worried about secrecy people can still see us,” she pointed out, though none of the diners seemed to be glancing in their direction.

“Your concern does you justice Captain,” Gregorious conceded, “but there is a holographic cancelation field also, all that our friends out there can see is six people enjoying breakfast.” Sayeeda nodded in agreement. She would still have preferred to be discussion mission specifics in private, but he was paying and so they would do it his way unless it presented an unreasonable risk. The map zoomed in to show a section of ocean. There current location was marked as were several surrounding islands also controlled by Graciella’s family. The whole area was shaded in green. Beyond the green area were other smaller islands and groups of islands, colored in blue for what Sayeeda assumed to be neutral. Further south towards the equator were several red islands and a number of what appeared to be artificial platforms.

“In a week or so Cyloneika will be hosting an open recruit to assemble a force of mercenaries,” Gregorius explained. Vanek had mentioned something to the effect back on Hahn now that Sayeeda thought about it, though she hadn’t given it much thought since they had escaped that parched desert world.

“The purpose of this recruitment is a preparation for an attack on New Cadiz, a planet a few days jump away that has been sponsoring attacks on our shipping in order to try to blackmail us into joining an ‘alliance’ it is setting up.” Junebug nodded along, planets with larger economies or simply more united leadership often tried to expand their influence to their neighbours, launching attacks on their merchant traffic was an effective and time honored way of convincing an enemy of the benefits of paying tribute. In theory a world like Cylonieka could construct a space navy to defend its merchant fleet but the expense of such an operation was immense and the process both slow and likely to provoke a confrontation sooner rather than later. Assembling an army and striking at the enemy planet wasn’t cheap, but it was cheaper than the alternative.

“Our house is, of course, contributing to the cost of this operation,” Graciella added.

“We are just one small ship,” Taya objected, “surely…” but Gregrius was already shaking his head.

“No, we dont need you to sign on as part of our invasion force, although that is certainly possible if you are interested in transporting supplies or troops,” he went on, his eyes making it clear he was speaking to Sayeeda and Taya and leaving his prospective son in law out of it.

“Unfortunately a highly placed agent of our has defected,” Gregorius said, tapping the keypad again to bring up a holo of a nondescript balding man in his late forties.

“Javier Pradec,” Gregorius identified.

“He has fled to the island of Canjar, to seek shelter with the freebooters and pirates that lair there,” Gregorius explained.

“We need you to infiltrate the island and kill Pradec before he can slip off planet and share his secrets,” the older man went on.

“And you need us to do this as opposed to your own troops because…” Junebug pried, something about the whole explanation seemed wrong, though she couldn’t quite put her finger on why. Gregorius sighed theatrically.

“If the other houses knew that Mr Pradec had defected, they might conclude that he had already shared our plans with New Cadiz, it would be a disaster for us, win or lose,” Greogrious explained. Sayeeda could see that the other Noble Houses would be quick to blame Gregorious if the invasion failed, or they might use it to try to cheat him out of his spoils if it succeeded.

“We just can’t take the risk that one of our people will open their mouths,” Graciella expanded.

“And you don’t mind risking the life of your son-in-law and crown prince or whatever to get it done?” Junebug asked. The question was a little beneath her, but it was early and she hadn’t gotten much sleep. Gregorious’ face hardened.

“When someone marries into our nobility, we judge a match based on the merits of the man or woman involved Captain Cykali,” the grey haired man explained, glancing towards Indra for a moment.

“While I would be saddened to see my daughter broken hearted, if Mr Edwards were to be killed completing this task, he is not the man we imagine him to be.”

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The feed showed the island in its entirety. One thousand, two hundred and sixty seven square miles of dense jungle and rocky crags amid the Cylonieka ocean, about one hour hard flight with sublight engines to the west. From the look of the highlander, it seemed like they had already fixed up much of it. Neil had been surprised when he had infiltrated in there this morning, but much of the outer damage and the power couplings had been repaired. They could potentially fly out tomorrow, if the hanger mechanics and Neil still worked on it.

"So no pressure," Neil said at the Admiral's foreboding words on his use as a man, diffusing the sudden grimness of the situation. Indra couldn't help but smile and Taya gave a lopsided one as well, familiar with Neil's way but ever amused by it. "What's one more dangerous situation among inlaws?" The Pilot patted Gredorius on the back briskly, as if they'd known one another for years. "Right pops?"

"Don't call me that."

"Got it." He replied, giving him the finger guns. To the casual viewer or the normal friend, people would believe he's just being himself. Stretching the limit of what was acceptable and being charming as he did it. But past that, he was actually taken off guard and trying to hide it. Not by the mission. He had been telling the truth. Dangerous situations was something he wasn't too afraid of anymore. It was Junebug. The way she looked at him confirmed that it wasn't simply a one night stand, which of course was what he wanted. But while he danced like a monkey for Indra's family, his captain gave him these looks which was torturous. Even now, she had a way of seeing into his head. While he joked he saw a smile curve on her lips as her eyes bore into his, and somehow he felt like he was the one staring.

"Neil?" Taya asked with concern, and the Pilot snapped out of it blinking. He looked around at the others and they were all watching him curiously. Except Gredorious and Gabriella who were whispering among themselves, likely over another matter.

"Yeah, what's up?"

"I was joking. I was asking if you were planning on spending the night in the Highlander again." She echoed, and rewinding it he did recall her asking that in the back of his head. Now it wasn't a joke, something awkward since he'd been zoned out earlier. Neil chuckled. "Hey, you know me. I eat, sleep, and sweat starship oil. Anyway, sir? Er... Gredorious?" He tapped the man on the shoulder, and he turned back, mustache edged like a blade and eyes just as sharp.

"What are we dealing with here. Can we get some more details?" He inquired.

Clearing his throat, the officer gave a small nod as if to acquiesce to being interrupted this time, as it was pertinent information. "Javier Pradec was an intelligence officer. He had the codes to some of our armament stations and when he defected, a number of small arms and two notable missile platforms went missing. You can expect them to be armed with such devices."

"Plasma weaponry?" Neil asked, and Junebug crossed her arms in agreement at the apprehension in his voice. Gredorious looked between the two. "About two dozen plasma based pistols, but much of it was slug and lasrifle equipment. Though he could have acquired other weaponry through different means. As you might surmise, those who buy and sell on the galactic blackmarket are not subject to the tariffs we are."

"How many hostiles?" The Captain asked, placing both hands on the display.

"Unknown. Three dozen men followed him from here, so I would estimate fifty or more. Now is that all?"
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“So the four of us against an unknown number of enemies dug in on their home ground,” Junebug said in a neutral tone. Gregorious nodded.

“If we could afford a larger footprint we would use a naval bombardment,” the Chancellor explained. He taped the hologram of Pradec, his finger distorting the hologram for a moment.

“We don’t need to kill everyone on the island, we just need Pradec dead and his files wiped,” Gregorious said. Junebug nodded, though she hadn’t been objecting per se. If she had been planning this mission she would have suggested a small team infiltration.

“I think we can handle it,” Junebug said dryly. The Highlander and her crew had certainly done tougher jobs for less reward. Gregorious nodded and made a flicking gesture, the screen blanked and a small PDA at the center of the table beeped in receipt of the transmission. Junebug scooped it up and tucked it into a pocket in the jacket she was wearing. Indra sat up looking considerably brighter now that the business discussion seemed concluded.

“Now we have wedding plans to make,” she said with a radiant smile. Neil smiled back though the expression seemed a little forced. Junebug coughed in polite disagreement.

“I’m sorry Indra, but I’m going to need my team to go over the tactical options,” she said, feeling a little guilty at the way the other woman’s face fell. The situation was complicated enough without her making it worse. Gregorious however nodded.

“A proper attitude for a soldier,” the chancellor nodded in approval. Graciella nodded also, though she gave her daughter a brief sympathetic glance. Both parents were clearly concerned that Neil would be killed and Indra’s heart would be broken. Well that was a reasonable concern.

“Also the armorers should be done with the plasma weapon by now, you should swing by and see them.”
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Needless to say, Neil found that he simply had to go with Sayeeda and Taya to check out her new weapon. Being alone with Indra and her parents was not something he was comfortable with at the moment, and so the scene shifted to the three of them down three levels below the crest of the mountain, under the Palace proper.

They were in a steel, utilitarian hall with blast doors being the only entrance and exit from the entire facility. It seemed the royal family had an interest in being innovative when it came to defense and warcraft. There was a long glass window, three inches thick. Within were vast hydraulic systems placing battle mechs and smaller spacecraft together as engineers welded steel and refitted various power units and weapons systems.

The unit of guardsmen leading them guided the group past the long hall into the next, smaller one toward the end of the corridor. Entering, the room was outfitted with overlapping layers of wall set into 'floors' with weapons fitted over each of them. In the center was a man dressed in a labcoat, though his face and head were hidden behind his protective headgear and goggles.

"Ah, I see our guests have arrived." He said in a peculiar accent, his voice modulated through some kind of breathing aparatus, and he seemed to move his hands as if using them for secondary expression, lifting them up in surprise. "So, who is this lovely-" and he traced the outline of the gun with one gloved hand. "weapon for? We will need a small DNA sample from their blood to place in the weapon's feed to grant the third action of the gun. Once we complete that, you may test fire it if you'd like at our experimental range."

One of the guards turned and nearly jumped back, pointing his rifle at Neil. "Hey! Put that down!" he ordered, and the others suddenly noticed the Pilot was holding a high-tech Grenade Launcher, retrofitted with a 3x scope and 8 chambers for varying types of grenades. Neil looked from the gun to the guards. "Hey whoa, this isn't loaded. I just had to admire it."
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The lancet stung Junebugs finger as the tiny blade sampled her blood before a tiny drop of sealant sprayed over the damaged capillaries. There was a whirring click as the palm sized unit sequenced her DNA and then printed it onto a small chip the size of a fingernail. Another technician bought forward a shock proof metal case and opened it with a key that hung around his neck from a lanyard. Inside the case was a boxy looking rifle. It was a little shorter than most assault weapons she had handled but thicker around the barrel, with standard holographic sites as well as iron sights for emergencies. It had no ejection port that she could see but a number of integral heat sinks that looked like they could be manually expelled if the weapon got too hot, a design she had seen on some high end vehicle mounted plasma weaponry. It usually didn't matter too much as the kind of rate of fire one needed to maintain to fill the heat sinks was enough to melt and deform the barrel. A standard powercell was set forward of the trigger assembly as well as a bullpup style rear magazine behind it. The whole unit was sheathed in high density plastic rather than metal and coloured in dark green and gray.

“The ACR-18,” the technician said proudly, lifting the weapon from the foam insert inside the case and pulling free the rubber shock pad that covered the butt to reveal several input jacks and chip slots. He slipped the chip into the slot and clicked it home before replacing the cover and handing the weapon to Sayeeda. The weight was surprising especially given the plastic used in its construction. The technician nodded at her slight hesitation.

“We had to use plastic to keep the weight down,” he explained, “the early prototypes were too heavy to be easily man, or woman, portable.” Sayeeda ignored the feeble jest and bought the weapon to her shoulder finding the balance to be to her liking.

“The rounds are…” the tech began but Sayeeda was already stripping the magazine and thumbing one of the brass cartridges free. The round itself was light and to Sayeeda’s surprise hollow, with the rear section open. The interior was smooth and extremely shiny.

“The plasma generator creates the displacer field,” the technician explained with evident pride.

“The rounds simply serve as jackets to keep it contained till the arrive, once it hits the deformation will destroy the round and everything within about a five centimeter radius.”

Junebug bounced the little brass round on her palm for a moment and then fed it back into the magazine. It seemed to be a simply spring load which was a good sign. Humanity had developed a plethora of advanced weapons in the several millennia since the invention of gunpowder, but the cleverest idea in a lab tended to break down in the dust, mud and general hard use of a battlefield.

“Are the rounds just brass?” she asked as she clicked the magazine back into place. The technician nodded enthusiastically.

“Sure are, though any metal with a high enough reflective index will do the job, you can create the rounds using any basic metal fabrication unit,” he bubbled. Junebug nodded her understanding, pleased that the rounds themselves were easy to manufacture. Exotic weaponry was often hard to keep operational either because the parts or the ammunition was hard to come by. It sounded like the machine shop on the Highlander would be advanced enough to turn out ammunition.

One of the other technicians took the grenade launcher from Neil’s hands with a lofty expression.

“Better let him keep that,” Junebug told the fellow.

“This isn’t for public…” he began but Junebug arched an eyebrow at him.

“You can discuss it with Lady Graciella, I’m sure she will be interested to know that you are taking steps that decrease the likelihood her fiance will survive to reach the wedding day,” she pointed out reasonably. The tech paused and glanced at the leader who nodded. With evident reluctance the tech handed the weapon back to the pilot who offered him a sardonic bow.

“If you will step this way madam…” the accented scientist said with a surprisingly courtly gesture. The stepped through another set of blast doors and down a short flight of stairs to a long thin corridor, one wall of which was open at waist height to overlook a shooting range. The range ran about a hundred meters and was lit with recessed chemical light behind armored glass. Humanoid mannequins studded firing lanes at various distances, they seemed to be made of some sort of pliable plastic. Damage to the targets was evidently repaired by the simple expedient of replacing the destroyed material with moulds. Slight differences in the dye batches meant that despite the fact the targets were uniformly tan, they were covered in leperous patches that differed slightly from those around them.

Junebug stepped up to the range and flicked off the safety before pulling back the charging handle with a snap. What she had taken for a square of green plastic turned red. Apparently some sort of colometic diode, a better choice than an LED for situations in which stealth or concealment was necessary. A shot clock made of similar diode informed her she had a full thirty rounds in the magazine. Junebug sniffed with a professional disdain, any professional could judge the load in a weapon by the weight to within a round or two, but that was usually lost on civilians. The flicked on the holographic sights and took aim at one of the distant mannequins before squeezing the trigger. The rifle cracked, feeling similar to a chemical variant though there was a slight high frequency hum in the background. The head of the mannequin was suddenly missing a chunk the size of a large orange, excavating the right eye socket almost to its ear.

“Nice shooting mist..” the technican began but Junebug clicked the shot selector to automatic and squeezed the trigger in a long burst, the mannequin flopped to the ground cut in half from the mid section by the sustained fire. Several large perfectly circular divots appeared in the far wall of the range as rounds struck the stone wall, destroying them with as little difficulty as they had the mannequin. The air around the barrel shimmered slightly but the weapon didn’t appear to be having any difficulty with the sustained burst, none of the heat sinks even seemed to have adsorbed a charge.

“As you can see the displacer round has roughly the same effect no matter what it hits,” the chief technician pronounced proudly. Junebug clicked the safety back on and stripped out the partially expended magazine before she realised she didn’t have a fresh one to replace it with.

“Very cool,” she admitted grudgingly before passing the weapon back to the technician. He clicked the saftey off and then pointed the weapon downrange, squeezing the trigger. Nothing happened as the weapon refused to fire.

“The genelock seems to be working perfectly,” he said, “I do hope that when your mission is complete you can provide us with some images of the field test?”
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Neil whistled when Junebug discharged the ACR-18 for the first time. That device was a thing of unrivaled beauty, and Sayeeda wielded it like she was born to use it. It might not be the usual submachine gun, but it looked perfectly balanced for the type of fighting they were used to. The Pilot hefted the Grenade Launcher over one shoulder in a cavalier fashion as he motioned the lead scientist over with a wave of his hand. "Make sure you send the schematics to my holonet pad so I can make sure I have the correct instructions for the rounds."

"You'll make the bullets?" He asked, looking at Junebug and Taya. "I thought you were the Pilot."

"I'm a man of many skills, you'll find out. Now please, the schematics?" He asked, and the scientist suddenly realized once more that this was the future prince. He nodded and went off to retrieve them. As he did so, Neil examined the Grenade Launcher. It was different than the standard gas propelled models. It looked electromagnetically charged, which meant it could fire projectiles at a rate that gave them almost no arc unless realigned by a small switch on the side, like a secondary safety. The weapon itself was cobalt black, made from a FiberIron material native to this quadrant of the galaxy.

"Yo!" Neil called, and a technician approached. "This thing is made for firing Ion rounds isn't it?"

"Good eye. It's a multipurpose weapon. You can even put solid slugs in there. It's something we've been working on for awhile, though it took a backseat to the ACR-18."

"Neat-o. I'd ask to shoot it but I kind of want to be surprised." The Pilot said. He placed the strap of the weapon across his chest, settling it comfortably across his back. "I think I'd like some target practice though. Put up a few mannequins at about...say 25 yards? Make it six in a row." He said, and Neil took out his high caliber revolver, opening the chamber and loading it with practiced ease.

"With that relic of a gun?" The technician blurted out. "How does it even work?"

Neil took no offense, he just smirked. "It's simple. The basic idea of the gun is to cock the hammer back, line up a new cartridge in between the hammer and the barrel and then release the hammer by pulling a trigger. Once you pull the trigger, the spring throws the hammer forward so it hits the primer. The primer explodes, igniting the propellant, which drives the bullet down the barrel. Easy and deadly. Now stack up the targets."

The technicians did so, lining up the Mannequins with a press of a button each, and Neil stepped up to the firing line. "Scuse me," he said to his teammates and holstered his gun. Taya looked between Neil and the targets uneasily when nothing happened. "Should I...count?"

"Oh yeah, sorry I assumed there was a countdown. Go ahead."

"Alright...ready? 3...2...1...fire!" Taya cried, waving a small bandana. What happened next wasn't unprecedented, but still impressively fast as Neil drew his firearm and unloaded every shell as he fanned the hammer in what amounted to barely over a second, hitting four of the targets at center mass and a fifth one in the groin area. He slacked on the last shot and missed, only scraping it with the bullet."

Taya cheered, and the Technicians seemed impressed. Neil grinned. "They call me quick-draw because I can uh, cuz I have a q-..quick draw...?" The awkward moment was interrupted when the scientist finally returned, huffing and puffing inside of his suit. "Your royalness, I got the schematics and sent it to your holopad as you requested."

"Thanks bitch."
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A brief review of Cylonikean history had revealed that Indra was effectively a sort of hereditary constitutional monarch, although with more of the attributes of a monarch than a figure head. This particular honor passed down the matrilineal line and the women were expected to choose mates with useful genetic traits and skills. Graciella remained the reigning Queen until that point which meant that even if Neil married the girl, he would have a long time to wait before he was elevated to the position of Royal Consort. Of course that presupposed a lot of things, like Junebug not strangling the girl in the next few minutes.

“I don’t understand why you can’t just fly your ship to this island and be done with it,” Indra said, repeating the theme if not exactly the words of several previous questions. Indra wasn’t stupid, on the contrary she was quite intelligence, but the tactical consideration an operation like this were too far outside her experience to grasp more than the vauge outlines.

They all sat around a holo console that had been set up in the Highlander’s hold. Though there were comperable and better facillities in the palace, Junebug had claimed that she had specialized software on the ship, that that wasn’t the case. Primarily she had hoped to simply get rid of Indra who had been tagging along ever since they returned from the weapons range. A guilty conscience told Junebug that Indra suspected something and was watching the pair of them, though this couldn’t have really been the case. Unfortunately barring flat out ejecting the Princess of the nation hiring her from a planning session, Junebug didn’t have an easy way to get rid of her.

“Pradec and his men certainly have a sensor net deployed,” Junebug explained patiently. She touched a control and the hologram shifted to imagery taken by a communications satellite. It showed a vessel, a pirate vessel judging from its sleek design and heavy weaponry heading towards the island. As they watched great geyser of water erupted around it and the ship veered violently and raced away pursued by similar water spouts. With another touch of a control Junebug added in reciprocal courses that the computer figured from radar returns and analysis of the imagery.

“These are 18 or 20 inch shells,” Junebug explained, indicating with an extended finger to the origin point of the ballistic track, an apparently empty stretch of concrete outside of a dug in series of buildings in a shallow valley pointed south from the dormant volcano that formed the center of the islands spine.

“I don’t see any guns,” Taya interjected, though her tone wasn’t one of doubt.

“They have a holographic screen over them, the refresh rate from the satellite isn’t good enough to pick up the shells breaking the barrier.” It was actually a fairly clever trick, although the exact circumstances that made it work were rare. In Sayeeda’s experience the first thing any two hostile forces did was shoot down all the satellites.

“The take away is that they opened fire a few moments after that ship came into line of sight of the peak of the volcano, so its safe to assume they have a sensor station up there somewhere. We can't risk flying the Highlander or…” she trailed off, a sly smile lighting her face.

“Thirty Seconds,” Taya said over the intercom. Junebug settled the helmet over her head, engaging the holographic display. Neil and Saxon did the same, though in the case of the Hex it didn’t look like it fit very well, with his snout pressing up against the glass. Junebug gave Neil an appraising glance, though he was still grinning like a school boy. This plan was tactically sound, but it's audacity appealed to Neil more than the conventional alternatives. He shouldered the strange device he wore on his back. It looked similar to a surfboard case, eight feet in diameter and two across. All three of them wore a similar device as well as a bulging duffel bag of weapons and equipment strapped across their chests.

There hadn’t been a good time to talk with Neil since the previous evening, between Indra’s presence and the possibility of listening devices. Even now it probably wasn’t smart, but given the likelihood of dying in the next few minutes it seemed worth the risk. She reached out and squeezed Neil’s arm, her face unreadable behind the darkened mask of his helmet.

“I can’t ask you to give up living like a prince,” she said quietly.

“But I’m not talking the job with Gregorious, when we are done here I’m leaving this rock and I want you to come with me.

“Ten seconds,” Taya prompted over the intercom. Junebug turned and took her position at the top of the cargo bay. Neil and Saxon took up positions to her left and right, staring at the closed bay doors at the end of the hold.

“Sayeeda…” Neil began but she held up a hand.

“Tell me later,” she instructed.

“Run!” Taya shouted, the excitement and strain evident in her voice. All three of them sprinted towards the cargo bay doors. With a scream of protest the Highlander lurched out from under them, all four of her big thrusters firing in opposition to her current course. At the same instant the cargo bay door dropped open and all three of them were pitched violently from the hold. Ten thousand meters below the surface of Cyloneika glittered and shone. From this altitude she could see the day night divider hazily creeping towards what her helmet navigator informed her was their objective. The wind howled passed her as she tore through the air, fractionally below the speed of sound. Fortunately they were high enough and the air thin enough that the ejection from the highlander didn't smash them to paste. Spreading her arms and carefully twisting her body she lined herself up with the indicated safe zone on her helmet display and then slapped the deployment stud on her right shoulder. There was a sudden deafening WOOOSH as Polymer wings twenty feet in length sprang from the unit on her back, her careful angle allowing her to hold onto the velocity the Highlander had imparted to her without tearing her limb from limb. She gripped the two control sticks on her belt and adjusted her course minisculely, nosing down slightly to match the computers optimum projected aerodynamics. Neil had modeled the units of racing gliders he had seen in the past, but the goal in this case wasn’t speed but distance. The launch from the Highlander gave them enough velocity that they should be able to glide to the island several hundred miles away without enough metal on them to worry any ground based observers.

Clouds whipped by as Junebug continued her decent, whipping past in a white blur. Her helmet displayed her speed as something close to four hundred KPH, calculated terminal velocity was 423 KPH so she nosed down slightly to pick up speed. The computer refigured her vector and placed her in the green, marginally, for reaching the island. She couldn’t turn her head, and it was dangerous to use radios, but the two green beads, a result of a broadcast of broadcast from the Highlander disguised as innocuous weather data, indicated that Neil and Saxon had both, thus far, survived the jump.
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It might not have been a hoverboard like on Hahn, but he could make do. The wind was almost unbearable, and the air pressure would have crushed almost anything smaller than a human being. But this was where the pilot shined like a collapsing star. He might not have the same control and combat ability as Sayeeda, but he was expert when it came to agility and balance. High g, low g, no g, air pressure, tight rope, it was one of Neil's gifts. While the others were hurtling through the air, within seconds he knew just how to maneuver, and he took a moment to appreciate the stars above them. Cylonieka was truly a beautiful planet, much like ancient Terra from the holorecords he'd seen back in school. The sea expanded beyond all senses, the mountains rose out of the sea like trees, and the island they were set to land on appeared past a wisp of cloud.

Since he had taken a liesurely descent, he saw Sayeeda ahead of him by 100 meters, with Saxon a few meters behind and a dozen meters to the north of her. The Hex's bulk was likely helping him move faster without his complete consent, and for a single moment Neil had a dark thought of if he could cause the Xeno's glider to malfunction. Not out of any real jealousy, but because the monstrous humanoid had still promised to kill him someday. Then again, with Neil's luck the mother fucker would survive, and recently they had been able to at least work together. He pushed the thought aside and instead decided to make the best of the situation.

He might not hamper him, but he could fuck with him.

Increasing speed, Neil banked to the left. They had all begun to slow the second they left the Highlander, but Neil picked up velocity until he was .6 the speed of sound, easily encroaching upon the Hexanagallion's airspace. Once Saxon noticed Neil to his right, Neil couldn't help but laugh. The Xenos seemed even more like an asteroid upclose, heavy and going in a lumbering, straight route. "Hey Swamp water, need some help?" Neil called through the comm.

"Flee my presence, whelp" Saxon growled back, but Neil instead decided to scoop into an ascent before incredibly spinning, end over end over the Hex to steady himself on the other side of him. "Sorry, can't hear you! This wind is so loud I can barely think. I guess that's how you feel most of the time, eh?"

The Hexa lurched at him, only to lose balance for a moment and sink a few meters, before he righted himself. Neil had dodged expertly, then waved at him from above. He cupped his hands, even though the mic was still on. "You're getting the hang of this!" He called, and turned off Saxon's garbling curses as they were merely a mile and a half above the island. It looked to be a seashell, a near circle of mountains with an abrupt end at its eastern edge, likely where much of its sea-going vessels were held. Each member of the squad began to slow their flight, and the beacon on their radar was located at the southern edge of the jungle just between the mountainous beach and the inner island.

"See you guys ground side!" Neil called to both of them.
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Junebug dived towards the water following the navigation line in her HUD. Her attention was too focused on the task to worry overmuch about Neil and Saxon’s bickering. Most of her experience had been with skimmers and flying did not come naturally to her, she had to fight her instincts to get close to the ground and prevent the smallest possible target. The three gliders dropped to nearly sea level for the final approach, racing over the water low enough that Sayeeda could see the turbulence from Neil’s wings whipping a white line across the green gray waters. They were actually on a slight upward trajectory now, using drag to slow them down as they raced toward the island while staying low enough to stay out of line of sight. The white gold sand raced toward them as they zipped over reefs and shoals at breakneck speed. Junebug had initially been in favor of inserting undercover of darkness, but Neil had reasonably argued that neither she nor Saxon had any experience with this kind of jump and complicating it by doing it in the dark only increased the risk without significantly improving their chances of avoiding detection.

By the time she crossed over the sand the airspeed was down to about thirty meters a second, still fast enough to kill her instantly if she made a mistake but almost languid compared to the near supersonic speed they had started out with, she lifted her control surface slightly and zoomed up over treeline and let the air break her until, at the last minute, she pulled up into a climb which killed the last of her speed and she fell the five meters to the ground. Her wings hit the jungle canopy and inevitably tangled, suspending her three or four meters above the jungle floor. It wasn’t exactly quiet, exotic birds cawed and other creatures yowled as the morning sunlight warmed the jungle, but compared to the almost deafening windrush of the past few minutes it seemed oddly serene. There was a crash somewhere off to her right as Saxon landed less gracefully than she had managed, crashing through the canopy to the ground. Junebug reached out and toggled the release catch on her chest harness, dropping the equipment bag to the ground below with a heavy thud. That accomplished she wrapped her legs around a nearby tree branch and unbuckled her wings before dropping gracefully to the leaf covered canopy below. There was no practical way to recover the wings and little likelihood anyone would stumble across them in any case so she abandoned them in place. Reaching the ground she removed the jump helmet and harness, stripping down to the cotton undershirt before opening her equipment bag to retrieve her own breastplate and weapons.

“Neil are you down ok?” she asked over her low powered mastoid radio. The weight of the ceramic breastplate was comforting as she slipped into it and closed the seals with deft snaps. She slung her rifle and checked the load before pulling on a web harness with a dozen pouches hung from its belt and H-straps, ammunition, explosives, and other equipment they were likely to need for the job.
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Neil saw Saxon's crashing descent, but with any luck they were far away enough from any ears to have it go unnoticed. Mere seconds later, Neil lowered into the canopy and unbuckled his harness just as the wings were getting caught on the branches. Unfortunately, the ground and the height of the trees had remained obscured to his vision, and when he was suddenly flung forward, he found himself with an extra 2 meters than he predicted before he hit the ground, with a tree in his was. In a reaction, he placed his feet in front and kicked off of the tree like a ping pong ball, hitting the ground more or less safely. "That was close," he said to himself, and picked up Junebug's question on the radio.

"Yeah I'm good babe," He replied, kneeling down and unzipping his pack to retrieve his equipment. Fuck, he wished he had a personal forcefield, but those costed more than the reward Gredorious had given them. He pulled out his carapace fla-jacket, slipping his arms through and latching it up. Flexible, light weight, and could stop anything short of a shotgun shell at point blank. Next he grabbed his belt, fully loaded with the various tools he needed to infiltrate or to hack into any systems the rebels might have.

He took out three weapons, ready and able. His pistol he kept holstered, his new grenade launcher with various different types of grenades located along his belt, and a battle carbine with a 3x-6x holographic scope he'd been assigned with for tactical missions like this. He honestly would rather go in gun blazing with him HMU-350 but he knew that likely wouldn't work in the end. Plus they had Saxon, and that was pretty much the same thing.

They were supposed to rendezvous at the mountain base behind them, but seeing as they were all past the drop location, he saw the beacon on the HUD of his half helm that Junebug wanted them to move forward until they reached some crags in the middle of the jungle, close to the base. He acknowledged, and hefting his carbine, he moved forward into the thickets. The only visible part of Neil in the gloom would be the light of the three moons reflecting off his visor every so often. Something hissed to his left, but he never got a visual on the creature as he moved forward and trusted they would have told him if he had any fauna to fear in the jungle.

Stepping over a fallen log entwined with red vines, he found himself as the rendezvous spot before the others. A few small boulders in the pattern of ridges along a lizard's back stretched for around 30 meters to the south, cutting right through the jungle. In the distance through the optic lens he could see the edge of the tree line just barely, and he placed the scope of his carbine before his eyes to see if there was any movement.

For a brief moment, there was nothing. Followed by the barest flicker of something on the scope, and Neil remained perfectly still as he watched. A figure was in his line of sight, and he recognized it as a patrol man walking the path outside of the trees, looking positively bored. A grin widened on Neil's face.

The party was about to begin.
@Penny
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