Judging by his increasingly demanding comm calls, Miguel was both confused and irritated by Sayeeda’s new passenger. She made no reply to his transmissions simply staring out into the desert, which was probably unprofessional as he was technically the representative of her putative employer. At one point Miguel went so far as to swerve toward their car. Sayeeda reacted to this simply by laying her rifle across her lap, casually, but in a fashion that pointed the weapon at the Spider commander’s jeep. The disrupter rifle was a formidable weapon but, as she had seen on Cylonikea, it lacked penetrating power. The solution had been to attach an underslung grenade launcher that she had stripped from an assault shotgun. The lancher was configured to fire self forging penetrators, copper discs seated against a small charge of explosive that would forge the plate into a spearhead of hypersonic metal. The weapon was designed to threaten light armored vehicles and would certainly gut a soft skin jeep like a rifle bullet opening a can of soup. Miguel probably didn’t realize exactly what the weapon was, but it would be obvious to a fool that being on the other end of it was contra-indicated and he made a frustrated gesture and swerved away.
 
“What are you thinking?” Taya asked, clearly uneasy with the situation. The young woman had the most visceral distaste for the bandits but she was obviously determined not to be caught napping.

“For right now we are going to finish this job,” Junebug said glancing sideways at Neil. The pilot didn’t appear to have a reaction, which might be because he was thinking along the same lines as Junebug. The convoy rolled up out of the valley and over the low hillock at the end. A broad valley spread out before them, incongruous green due to irrigation channels that gathered a shallow river into weirs and canals that radiated outwards from the water like the bones of a fish. Small huts stood at intervals along the canals surrounded by a greenish orange crop with thick succulent leaves like beach grass. The hutts appeared to be made primarily of sheets of extruded plastic, often printed with the logos representing beers and soups and other canned goods. Judging by a half destroyed hutt on the edge of the town, the locals packed mud between two layers of the stuff to provide some insulation from the heat. Small kitchen gardens surrounded the huts, mostly beans, tomatoes, and other crops which could be trained to climb wooden lattices. Here and there, scrawny chickens wandered pecking at bugs and other fare among the plants. The locals toiled in the fields, picking the leaves and tossing them into woven wicker panniers or scooping buckets of water from the canals to pour into pvc piping that served as cheap drip irrigation. At the end of the village where the much diminished stream turned away to the west was a large shed sided with corrugated iron. Judging by the pile of picked leaves at one end and the barrels of transport matrix stacked haphazardly at the other, that was the … facility might be to grand a term, that the spiders used to stabilize and transport the narcotic leaves. Beyond the shed was a banked dirt road which followed the river. Along the top of the bank were a series of stakes, perhaps a half dozen, each decorated with a corpse in various stages of decay. Some were merely blackened skeletons but the latest one was ripe enough that the sound of vehicles cresting the ridge startled a swarm of flies into the air, though they returned just as quickly.

“What the fuck?” Taya exclaimed, pulling out her binoculars to get a better look. Seeing it up close didn’t please her any more and she gagged slightly.

“You bastards did this!” the kid beside Taya snapped in a voice that clearly verged on tears.

“They shoot anyone who they think grows too much food and not enough drugs, or anyone that dosent grovel enough and they stake them up there,” he spat. Junebug’s mouth compressed into a frown but she didn’t speak.

As the small convoy pulled up in front of the shed a dozen bored looking Spiders ambled out into the midday sun. Some of them looked like they might have been drunk or drugged, others scratched and swatted at insects but all were heavily armed. Miguel hopped from his jeep and started to stalk towards the trio of mercenaries. Before he could open his mouth however a woman in a dirty white dress let out a shout and rushed across from the nearest field.

“Rodrigo!” she shouted arms opened wide.

“Mama!” the sniper, apparently Rodrigo, shouted and tried to hop out of the car. Unfortunately the woman’s run brought her past Miguel who grabbed her by the neck. The woman whipsawed in an almost comicbook fashion and let out a strangled squeak. Rodrigo let out a scream and grabbed for his rifle but Neil slapped his hand down on the weapon to prevent him from pointing it. There was a general stiffening as men grabbed for their own weapons.

“Looks like I get to wipe out a whole family of useless scum,” Miguel commented, sounding very much like the cat who ate the canary as he drew a pistol and pointed it at the womans head.

“Hey,” Junebug called, “they aren’t paying us to shoot women and children.” 
 
“Shut it bitch, they aren’t paying you at all! We know how to keep order in our own territory and we don’t need no advice from snooty off world putas!”
 
“Funny,” Junebug observed, “that wherever you go in the universe you will find someone willing to call you a bitch and a whore. Some things truely are universal. 

“Junebug we can’t just let…” Taya began but Junebug chopped the air to silence her as she vaulted over the side of the car and landed facing Neil, Taya and the boy.

“This train is about to start rolling kids,” she told them in a quiet serious voice, “if anyone wants to get off, now is the time.” Rodrigo stared at her in mute terror his eyes darting between her and his mother.

“You know I’m always ready to dance babe,” Neil replied with a wink.

“Junebug… there are thirty of them…” Taya began, clearly not wanting to look afraid but also cognisant that they were out gunned to an almost ludicrous degree. 

“Thirty seven,” Junebug corrected, then turned and walked over to where Miguel stood. She had her rifle but she kept it pointed out the ground, her manner nonchalant and the thugs seemed to relax.

“Please spare my son!” the woman wailed imploringly, Miguel responded by clouting her with the barrel of his pistol hard enough that the gun came away bloody. There was a strangled shout from the car and Miguel grinned evilly.

“So goods delivered, jobs done right?” Junebug asked, her voice so casual that despite the tense situation the guards seemed to relax another degree. Miguel frowned as he clutched the moaning woman, clearly taken aback by the apparent non-sequitur.

“What are you talking about?” he demanded. Junebug made a gesture that looked like a shrug with her rifle.

“I mean, we have delivered the goods so the job is complete? Right?” she asked, making the same gesture with her weapon.

“Of course the job is complete you stupid…” 

Junebug’s left hand came out from behind her back and tossed something small and hard at Miguel. His attention had been on her disruptor rifle and so he was taken by surprise. The grenade hit him in the mouth with a clack of breaking teeth and then exploded in a blinding white light that made the midday sun seem like a distant candle. The blast was literally stunning to anyone looking at it, which she hoped wasn’t Neil and Taya, but her helmet’s sophisticated combat AI was able to blank her visor and harden her hearing protection to resist the concussion. It didn’t protect her from the overpressure of the blast, but between her battle armor and years of experience she was still able to move.  Sayeeda leaped towards Miguel tackling the woman to the ground a she caught her around the waist, the weight of her gear and armor bowling her over effortlessly. Gunfire erupted from all points as the gangsters tried to shake off the effects of the flashbang. Junebug picked the woman up and tossed her bodily into the nearest canal and then leaped after her, landing in the hip deep water in a spray of mud before whipping her weapon up to rest on the edge of the improvised trench and opening fire.