"I think," Junebug said, toggling through thermal imaging on her visor, "that our friends would be sad if we started the party without them. It took her a frustrating heartbeat to make the interface do what she wanted even though she had modeled it after her normal combat helmet. It probably wasn't the best idea to have her first live fire run in the armor be in combat, but she would feel like a real sucker if she got killed with this thing still in the bay of the Highlander. Besides, as the old saying went, there was no kill like overkill. Ahead of them, pointing guns nervously from the lip of a gully, were thirty or so gang members from the Stingers. Presumabley these were something of an elite, picked for the raid on the drug warehouse. An icon blinked in her visor and she opened it with a flicker of her eyelash. It was a video feed from a camera that had been placed in the main street of town by Taya. All was quiet there, which was an obvious difference from the normal chaos of the drunken night time revel. Things were going to kick off their soon and the locals could sense it in the air.

"We supposed to wait all night for you big shots?" A dirty looking gangbanger with an assault rifle asked as Neil pulled the jeep to a halt. He had obviously planned the speech before he had seen Junebug and his eyes were wide with shock, giving his voice a whining quality. Not, Junebug thought, that he would have been intimidating under normal circumstances. She steeped from the Jeep making the struts squeal as they let off pressure.

"I mean you guys look like you could handle it without our help," Junebug observed. She thought her voice was devoid of emotion, but a snicker from Neil let her know that the insult hadn't been missed by at least one of those present.

"Hey," Another said looking at Saxon, "didn't you say it was a Hex what whacked our guys out in the village?" Junebug made a dismissive guesture, she had wondered if anyone was clued in enough to notice.

"Its fine, he is with us," she explained, though that didn't make any sense it wouldn't matter so long as it didn't become a discussion.

"The Stinger didn't come herself?" she asked, the light enhanced vision having already confirmed that was the case. The leader, Junebug decided to call him Paco, shook his head and thrust out his chest.

"Nah, she is too important for this kind of stuff, she sent me instead," the thug bragged. Neil snickered again but Junebug refrained from comment.

"So what is your plan Big Shot," Paco asked. Junebug squatted down with a slight hiss of hydraulics and touched a control on her arm. A small hologram shimmered up from her arm, depicting a map of the area made from the Highlanders cameras when she had landed. Paco goggled at the technology for a moment and then closed his mouth, all of the gang bangers closed in to ooh and ah. Stars it was a good thing the opposition was a crappy as these losers Junebug thought.

"There are two bunkers guarding the entry to an old quarry," she said, touching two rectangular structures at the entry way to what had once been a rock quarry. Calling them bunkers was a stretch, in reality they were block houses made from unfished timber that had been sprayed with layers of industrial adhesive and gravel. It actually wasn't a bad improvised fortification given the relatively low level of technology here, better than concrete or another composite which could have been shattered by sonics. 

"There are two machine guns in each bunker, positioned to sweep the road," Junebug explained. "There is razor wire and some anti vehicle spikes to stop us from just rushing in."

"Probably there are only a half dozen guys in the storage facility other than those guys who are probably drunk or stoned or whatever anyway," she explained. Junebug suspected there were a good deal more than that, she had told the Spider the Scorpions were planning this raid and while most of his thugs would be preparing for the assault on the Scorpion Compound, doubtless his security here was keyed up.

"We can't face down machine guns!" one of the thugs all but shouted. Junebug rolled her eyes, though it was invisible to anyone but her, and she shouldn't have done it because it screwed her interface up for the moment it took to reset it. Another bug to work out.

"It won't be a problem," she assured them, "Ill take out the gun pits, and you guys move in as fast as you can, clear the wire and keep moving, once you are through the gates, the facility is yours, you can start loading drugs onto the trucks."

"Won't they call for help?" Paco demanded. Junebug shook her head.

"We are jamming all comms, we should be able to clear this place out before anyone is the wiser." That was a lie also, it would probably have been possible to do so, but it seemed a waste of effort. Paco and his goons ate it up though, a real life covert operation.

"Get your men ready and get inside as quickly as you can," she told him.

Fifteen minutes later everyone was in position. Neil had unslung a grenade launcher and Junebug crouched just out of sight of the bunkers, her body shielded by a shallow depression. Paco and his thirty desperados crouched behind them. It was a miracle none of them had given the game away by accidentally letting off a shot by accident, but even amatuers got lucky she supposed. Besides, they were an elite afterall. 

"What are you laughing at?" Paco demanded. Junebug shook her head, watching Taya's video feed. Headlights were coming on and the lens vibrated slightly from the roar of engines. The Spiders were bringing up their vehicles.

"Alright Neil," Sayeeda said and stood up. With ease of practice she hefted the rail gun and aimed it at the bunker nearly a hundred feet away. There was an electric whir and a crack before an explosion converted the right side of one of the bunkers to blazing white fire, the plasticizer and the gravel both burning under the kinetic impact of a glass bead accelerated to near light speed. Neil's grenade launcher banged against his shoulder and a white flash lit the inside of the second bunker. Scream tore the night, sounding tinny and washed out by the railgun blast as fingers of white phosphorus belched from the bunkers windows. Junebug fired twice more blowing the first block house to pebbles that rained down on them even out here. Machine gun ammunition cooked off, roiling the smoke and giving color to the violence without adding to the destruction. The old quarry echoed and doubled the explosions till it sounded like a tank battle rather than a few shots.

"Go! Go! Go!" Junebug yelled, grabbing Paco and thrusting him towards the mouth of the quarry. In her haste she forgot the power assist and practically flung the man through the air. He lost his feet and sprawled on his face a moment before a burst of gunfire ripped out of the smoke. One of the rounds ricocheted of Junebug's chest plate, she targeted the blob of heat, an enemy soldier who had been unreasonabley lucky and pulled the trigger, ending his luck for the night and forever. Paco's men surged forward firing more or less at random although there were no targets. Still that was the right reflex. The reached the razor wire and began cutting at it with powered cutting bars pulling it aside as they went. The screams of pain that echoed back indicated that at least a few of them had cut themselves, but then they were through and into the facillity. Niel raised the grenade launcher and fired three rounds with a tap tap, pause tap. One of the grenades sailed into the doorway of the facility, the other two crashed into the rocky sides of the quarry, one on the east side and one on the west.

"Well that was easy," Neil observed. Both of the rock penetrating rounds detonated with a thunderous roar that doubled and intensified as thousands of pounds of rock was ripped appart and slid down to bury the entrance to the drug warehouse. A great cloud of dust roiled out, coating them with a spray of grit. A static charge kept Sayeeda's visor clear though Niel merely reached into his pocket and pressed his sunglasses down over his eyes. It was night time, but Junebug had to admit it looked awesome.

"You wasted a shot," Saxon hissed, irked not to have been involved in the fighting so far. There was a third boom, this one hollow and bass enough to rattle Junebug's chest even through the armor.

"Nah, just timed it right," Neil snickered. The third charge had been a bunker buster, the force of which had been sealed in by the collapsing hill side. Anyone inside the facillity whould have been pulped by the overpressure.

"Hot," Junebug observed as the rubble settled once again. There was a moments silence.

"I was promised a chance to kill," Saxon hissed, somehow contriving to sound sulky. Junebug turned and headed back towards the car. Judging by the video the shooting was just getting started in town.

"Don't worry, no more tricks, and plenty for everyone," she said with a smirk that only Neil could hear in her voice.