*Four Hours Later*

"I don't care what you say bitch, this is how we do it on Tiosinte. The Widow might say you are on this run but I am in charge here!" Miguel snarled, his eyes wide with rage. Judging from the boozy sweat oozing out of the swarthy gangsters pores, he had been hitting the bottle pretty hard the previous night and doubtlessly his hangover was not improving his mood. Junebug rolled her eyes and hopped down off the skirting of the six wheeled jeep walking back to a similar vehicle where Neil and Taya sat sweating. It was nearly midday and the scorching sun beat down relentlessly casting almost no shadows over the sunbaked landscape. They stood at the top of a shallow rocky valley, atwart a dusty road that stretched nearly twenty kilometers back to the city. THe buildings were invisible now in the heat haze and dust, though the distant crack of a starship sinking towards the port drifted over the desert.

"They aren't going to listen to me," Junebug told Neil as she climbed into the passenger seat of the jeep, unslinging her rifle and thrusting it butt down into a holding clamp between driver and passenger. She took a canteen of water from Neil and drank greedily before screwing the cap back in place and wiping her lips with the back of her hand. The approach that Miguel and the other score of toughs 'always' took was a poor one. The walls of the valley constricted movement and provided cover for snipers and ambushes in the rocky hillsides. The convoy consisted of six escort vehicles, three jeeps and three flat bed trucks with pintle mounts welded to the frame to mount heavy machine guns, and in one case, a reconciles rifle. Beyond that were three tankers, rusted and dilapidated things that carried the ethanol matrix that was used to transport the drug to market. Given the vulnerability of the tankers to even small arms fire, Junebug had to imagine that either attacks were rare, or the attackers were more interested in stealing the trucks than they were in destroying them.

"Yeah well I didn't think they would," Neil admitted, puffing on the cigar between his lips. Junebug took it from him and took a drag herself before passing it back.

"Are we really going to work with these assholes Junebug?" Taya all but whined. She was dressed in a set of Sayeeda's fatigues and carried a squat but powerful automatic rifle. During their training sessions on the Highlander she had performed well with the weapon though JUnebug was privately skeptical that she would be able to control her excitement if a real firefight broke out. She was uncomfortable with Taya being along at all, she was learning fast but she wasn't a soldier in the sense that she and Neil were. It might have been better to have her return to the Highlander and to bring Saxon, but she preferred to keep the Hex in reserve and hell, everyone had to cut their teeth someplace. It might as well be against yokels who couldn't hit the broad side of barn.

"A deal is a deal," Junebug responded, though her voice lacked any emotion whatever. People who hired mercenaries were very rarely people Junebug could personally like. It was part of the job that everyone had to get used to sooner or later. The universe could be an ugly place, and odds were, if you picked a life that centered around killing people for money, you weren't much of a prize yourself.

"They aren't even paying us," Taya bitched, lifting a set of binoculars to her head and scanning the ridge lines.

"Not in credits anyway," Junebug responded enigmatically. Taya opened her mouth to ask what Junebug meant by that but before she could do so Miguel shouted something and the jeep kicked up dust as it began its way down into the pointlessly exposed valley. The remaing vehicles of the convoy stirred to life, diesel engines roaring as they crested the slight lip and began the decent. According to Miguel the village they were delivering this stuff to was at the end of the valley, where a shallow river allowed enough irrigation for growing. Junebug slipped her helmet onto her head and keyed a patrol preset that carroted movement and threat. It wouldn't be great without a more sophisticated sensor package to tie into but it was probably better than nothing. She pulled her rifle from the clamp and laid it across her lap.

"Keep your eyes open," she advised as her dust filters clamped into place to stop her inhaling a lung full of grit and sand.