Any target, no matter how proficient, no matter how paranoid, eventually made a mistake. It was axiomatic among spooks, that if you waited long enough, the enemy eventually slipped. Of course, that cut both ways, and it was far less comforting when you were on the receiving end. Kade Saraswati hurried through the crowded the streets of Pinacra as quickly as she could without attracting attention.

Pinacra, like all cities on Panopontus, was half sunken into the vast limestone beds which generations of open air exocoral had lain down. Far above her a dome of hexagonal rad resistant steel closed the city in. When the colony had been settled, one hundred and twelve years ago on the downslope of the receding edge of Terran Expansion the dome had been clear. Kade had seen aging tourist holos where one could see the vast colorful coral forests beyond through glittering domes that hardly seemed to disturb the photons passing through them. That seemed a relic of a bygone age now. Years of corporate governance and the war with the Cappelian’s had strained Panopontus. Transparent steel was expensive and darkened under the assault of the radiation laced winds that stirred the ethereal coral forests. Successions of first Colonial and then Corporate governors had found regular steel to be a more economical choice for repairs, if they were forced to do repairs at all. The result was that the soaring geodesic dome now had the appearance of weirdly digitized storm cloud, each panel its own particular shade of gray.

Kade was unconcerned with the aesthetics. She moved through the crowded streets, ignoring the hawkers selling meat of dubious provenance roasted on charcoal stoves, brightly appointed shop fronts where trays of exo coral were laid out for inspection by would be prospectors, sleazy pawn shops and repair services that were stuffed with rad suits and cutting gear. The whole panoply of the world boiled down to sight lines and escape routes in her mind. Being hunted was a hell of a way to shut out distractions.

Panopontus had seemed the perfect place to liquidate some of her assets. The coral forests were useful in the manufacture of all manner of pharmaceuticals and provided an easy way to launder money, there was no Terran fleet elements based here and the SID viewed the place as of marginal importance, a view they expanded to most of the Persian Marches. Unfortunately those same elements that made it an attractive place to do business for her, made it attractive for her enemies as well. She wasn’t certain who the dark clothed men following her through the crowded streets were. A decade in covert ops made the list lamentably long. Corporate Head Scramblers, Karvalan Pirates, Yipayan Death Cultists, the Bempagi Free Militia, it didn’t really matter right now. What was important is that they had recognised her, and the snatch was in progress.

Gripping her service pistol in the pocket of her synthetic leather jacket she wove a confusing trail through alleyways, in and out of stores and through narrow turn abouts. It made her a challenge to follow, but home ground advantage and manpower, as well as a degree of dumb luck was proving too much for her to overcome. Since she had spotted the tail ten minutes ago they had been pushing her, deliberately or not, further and further from the spaceport district she needed to reach in order to escape. All it would take was one wrong turn, one dead end she didn’t predict and this was going to get bloody. She needed to go to ground. A brothel would have been best. Suspicious bouncers, private rooms, angry customers, but most of the flesh pots were clustered around the now out of reach starport. A bar then. She spotted one across the street and stepped quickly across. With practiced easy she shucked her coat, thrust the pistol into her fatigue pants and ditched the coat in the mouth of an alleyway. Her appearance at least a little altered, she ducked into the bar and hoped for the best.

There were downsides to going freelance as a mercenary. Staying in the Navy would have meant promotions and paperwork, beureacracy and boring shit like that, but at least it would have been something to do. When she was between jobs out here in the Marches, she could find herself sitting in a bar or whatever the local merc hangout was and she could be there for days on end.

Pretty sure this is still better than paperwork, at the end of the day. Amy laid down a card on the table in front of her, "And I call," she said to the four others - all mercs, like her - who were gambling with her. This game wasn't much of a challenge, but there was no one here who wanted to play any of the more interesting games of skill that existed out here in the Marches. Her favorite was a strange sort of chess derivative that used holographic pieces and an overcomplicated board. But there just weren't a lot of people into it. So she was stuck playing with cards instead.

Smirking, Amy laid her cards down on the table and watched the sour faces on the other players when they saw that she'd won the hand. Luck had given her the best hand, but it had been skill that had seen her get everyone to bet so much. Across the table from her, a scarred woman, maybe a few years younger than Amy, all but growled in anger at her loss... and her dwindling pile of money in a half-dozen currencies.

Amy flagged down one of the harried waitresses, "Perhaps a round for the table?" She handed the waitress a few coins, and the prospect of free drinks seemed to mollify the other woman for a moment.

"You keep winning, Novarian, and people are going to think you're cheating," the scarred woman added, even as she seemed to settle down. "Free drinks don't put the money back in my pocket."

"No, no they don't. Might actually hurt," Amy agreed, "But if you think I'm cheating, you really need to prove it. Or we could take this outside." She patted her sidearm at her waist in what had to be a cliched gesture, but it got the point across.

The merc considered it for a long moment, then muttered to herself angrily, then, "Fucking deal," she told one of the other players, as Amy readied herself for another round.

The sound of the doors opening and someone new coming into the bar drew her attention for only a moment - a slightly harried looking woman. Not a merc - didn't have the bearings for it. Looking to hire, then.

There were informal rules about how these bars worked - mercs didn't approach the would-be clients. Bartenders kept track of the mercs looking for work in their establishment... assuming the would be client knew a thing, they'd talk to the bartender first, pay them a small cash 'gift' and get pointed to the mercs that could do their job.

In the meantime.

"I match your raise, and raise you two Barsholian Dinars," Amy said, as she turned her eyes back to the game, sliding two large, solid platinum coins from the other end of known space across the table.

A merc bar. That was good, lots of backs that were easy to get up. Lots of guns itching to go off. Of course the utility of that might change if one of them plugged her, but you had to work with what you had. Kade had some experience dealing with mercenaries, the SID used them occasionally as deniable assets and as ready muscle. If she still had access to the black accounts she could have turned the whole bar into a death trap for her pursuers. Of course she wouldn’t be here in the first place if she still had access to those kind of resources. It was a perennial problem for rogue operatives and burned spies, that while they had valuable information, selling it was tricky. Afterall if you sold information about pirate arms caches, the client was within their right to wonder what other useful information you might have, and how it might be a good deal cheaper to snatch you off the street and hook you up to a nerve disruptor until you were feeling more generous.

She slipped across the room to the bar. A tall human woman with an intricate series of facial tatoo’s and an improbable shock of pink hair turned to regard her, a professional smile splitting her vulpine face.

“Help ya honey?” she drawled. Kade placed the accent as native to the Marches though probably not to Panapontus itself. She drew a handful of mixed currency from the pocket of her black fatigue pants.

“Whiskey, cut with Stripe or Xax if you have it,” she ordered. Every bar in the human universe had ‘whiskey’ though it was just as likely to be industrial ethanol with a dash of yellow color and a cheap flavoring agent. That wasn’t a problem, Kade drank as a professional skill rather than as a personal pleasure. The bartender leaned down and produced a glass and filled it with a few fingers of golden liquid from a dispenser head, then changed the dispenser head and filled the remainder of the glass with a red liquid with a metallic sheen. She slid the handful of plastic notes and credit chips across the table.

“A big tipper?” the bartender asked with an amused glint. The woman had shockingly pink iris, clearly synthetic and ringed with nano inscribed lettering apparently some poem or personal credo. It was attractive in its way and Kade took a moment to appreciate the effect before replying.

“Sure, but I’m hoping you can help me find some friends,” she explained. The bartender nodded knowingly and made a small gesture to the bars occupants.

“We are all friends here honey,” the woman purred.

“Need two or three for uhh... personal security concerns,” Kade told her, taking the tumbler from the bar and knocking back a mouthful. Whatever it was cut with wasnt Stripe or Xax but it had the warm prickling buzz of a stimulant, which was close enough.

“Mmmm… card table,” the Bartender purred, “I’ll put their round on you.” As if by magic a tray of drinks appeared before Kade including, she noticed, another of the metalic red tumblers she was drinking?

“On the house?”

“Look me up later honey,” the bartender said with a wink and turned to another client with an artful twitch of her hips. Despite the situation Kade grinned in amusement, then picked up the tray and stepped over to the card table. Two tough looking males, one former TEF judging by the tats, the other self taught or gang taught by the odd slug thrower and the custom pistol tucked into his belt. Two women, one scarred definitely planetary militia gone pro and a rather striking woman with red hair with a vibrant purple streak, a black tattoo on her forehead. Kade thought it was vaguely religious in nature but didn’t have enough data to go on. The woman was harder to place. Her instincts said marines but then changed to navy, maybe vacuum comandos.

Behind her she heard the door bang open and the clatter of men and women entering and spreading out. In the reflection of one of the mirrors above the bathroom she caught sight of a half dozen toughs, most wearing some sort of body armor and all carrying weapons. Kade took her seat at the table.

“My friend at the bar suggested you might be interested in making a little money,” she said quietly, trying to keep the attention of the searching party away from her. The various denizens of the bar were watching the newcomers dubiously. More than one hand swept back a cloak to reveal a holstered pistol or other concealed weapon. Most of the serious pros just went quiet and looked expectant. Kade smiled a wry grin at the table and sipped her drink.

“I have a little problem as you can see, and I need... consultants.”

"So I can see," Amy chuckled. "But I don't really think you have much time to dicker with us about the price." Whoever this woman was, ad whoever was chasing her wasn't really super-relevant to Amy. What was relevant is that the half-dozen body armored toughs were clearly fucking idiots, to sweep into a merc bar, openly carrying their weapons. All it took is one merc with a bit more booze than sense - very common - or bumping into the wrong, angry guy and then weapons were free.

The body armor was of a model Amy didn't recognize, but the look of it and the composites she could pick out in it suggested it was effective and expensive. The weapons the toughs carried looked to be of Conrad-Voshnikya make, which didn't surprise her. C&V made sturdy, reliable and rugged weapons that could handle just about any environment and pretty much never broke down. They weren't cheap, but they weren't expensive either, and they had quite a few factories out here in the Marches, taking advantage of the lack of labor or environmental laws, the cheaper raw materials (also extracted without labor or environmental laws) and of course, the steady market for their guns in a place like this.

So they have money to throw around, but they're probably mostly local. On the rare occastions a government from outside the marches sent soldiers into the Marches, they carried different brands. Unless they were trying to blend in, but then they shouldn't be walking into a merc bar with their weapons on full display, so Amy's analysis was probably correct.

"Two hundred Batavian Dollars, each," The scarred woman Amy had beaten murmured, looking around at the table as she made her suggestion. "Seems fair?" Amy and the others nodded.

"Or equivalent, in whatever currency you have on hand." Out here, you got used to currency conversions, with money from a dozen major nations and hundreds of piddly little nothings (not to mention various kinds of corporate script), and most mercs especially had a pretty good idea of it offhand, and when they didn't, they could look it up quickly on a device.

Batavian Mining & Refining Inc. was a pretty common employer out here in this part of the Marches and they had a regional headquarters on Pantontus, making their 'Dollars' a common enough currency to judge value by on planet.

"Acceptable. Half now, half when they're dead," the woman said, taking out the equivalent of five hundred Batavian Dollars in credits, setting them on the table. As the closest one to them, Amy took the credits and handed them to the rest of the mercs, keeping all the money in the open so none of them would - incorrectly - accuse her of trying to steal from them. Once they all had their money, hands went to weapons. Amy flipped the safety off on her flechette pistol - each one propelled to unnatural force thanks to micro-gravity generators - and slowly pulled the weapon from her belt as the toughs drew closer. Their client hunched over a little more, hiding her face as best she could, and then-

"Now," Amy murmured, jumping to her feet and firing her gun, the metal spike flying out of her pistol into and through the neck armor of her target, leaving one of the toughs gurgling and pawing at his neck as he tried to breathe. There was a chance the guy could survive, so as the rest of the mercs started shooting, Amy fired again, hesitating only for a few breaths as she nudged her gun to the left slightly, accounted for the man's movements and then -

The spike this time embeded itself in the man's eye, punching all the way through his skull and flying into the floor almost exactly where she'd intended it to.

The toughs that survived the first rounds of shots started to shoot back, and Amy ducked to avoid a spray of plasma bolts that burned through the air just above her. She rolled under the table as she heard one of her fellow mercs get hit and peeked out from under, firing right into the chest of another tough. Next time, wear your armor in the bar, Amy.

The whole thing took less than a minute and a half - two of toughs were left, but as the rest of the bar had reacted to the fighting - no doubt mostly just wanting to not get shot in the crossfire - the two had found nearly every gun in the taproom pointed at them, and they weren't stupid enough - apparently - to keep fighting at that point.

The bar hung in a moment of frozen silence broken only by the trickling fall of powdered masonry where a plasmabolt had shattered one of the cinderblocks. Small fires burned in a couple of places and the air was thick with the stink of ionized air, chemical proplents, sublimed metal and even more exotic scents of weapon fire. Beneath it was an even more unpleasant smell of cooked meat, blood and the waste men voided as they died.

Every hand in the bar gripped a weapon, with even the pink haired bartender pointed an electromotive shotgun in the general direction of the interlopers. Kade gripped her own electromotive pistol, a Lymar IV, favored by spies and insertion types for its customizable muzzle velocity, though the sleek grey plastoid weapon was unfired.

With commendable care one of the intruders, a heavily build man in olive drab and black battle dress, lifted a hand slowly to his face plate and pressed a stud. The reflective visor hissed back into the helmet to reveal a hatchet sharp face, distinguished by a serpentine tatoo that coiled up his cheek and over his left eye. Internal lighting, probably from a HUD in his helmet lit his face with sinister red light.

“My name is Grex Pan, and I’m with the Cartel,” he said identifying himself as a hitter for the group of corporate interests that informally governed Panopontus.

“I’ll pay whoever kills these three…” he started and Kade opened her mouth to shout him down. Before she could interrupt a piercing whistle shattered the artificial silence.

“I don’t care who the fuck you are,” the bartender snarled, “take your shit out of my bar.”

“Madam…” Grex began to interject but the pink haired woman racked the slide of the shotgun and leveled it at Grex’s face.

“Out. Side.”

Kade and her companions backed towards the rear exit of the bar.

“Get me to the spaceport alive and I’ll pay a bonus,” Kade said.

“The Cartel takes a pretty dim view of anyone who takes down their thugs.”

"Hey, I'll take a quick job to shoot Cartel thugs dumb enough to risk pissing off Janna," One of the mercs gestured to the bartender, "but I'm not interested in picking a fight with them." The scarred woman shook her head as well, mentioning something about having a larger client arriving in a few minutes, after she checked her chronometer. That left Amy and the other two. But they two made their excuses, apparently uninterested in the bonys. So that really just left Amy.

Amy had no real attachement to Panopontus, nor did she especially fear the Cartel. Besides, fights involved in getting this woman to the starport might actually be interesting - ambushes usually were, if only because of all the directions they could come, especially in a crowded, public space.

"If we're going into more active combat, I'm going to need to put on my armor and get the rest of my weapons," Amy said, but she nodded. "But it sounds like fun. If you can spare a few minutes- may as well follow me." Amy went into a back room, unlocking a locker with her handprint and sliding a coin into a slot. She removed a rifle - this one firing plasma bolts, rather than flechette spikes - and her armor, collapsed for storage. Normally she'd put not wear it over her casual wear - if her knockoff Naval Uniform counted as such - and unstead were underarmor, but she didn't really have the time. She slid the compact arm and leg armors on, letting them expand, the fit her torso pieces on, letting them click together with her arm and leg pieces as well as eachother. The armor, black with purple accents, was made of a number of lightweight composits, mostly designed for dissipating plasma and other energy based weapons from burning her. Stopping flechette or other gravity based weapons was much harder - the armor would reduce the power of the impact, true, but hardly stop it. For that, she had low-energy shields that didn't stop incoming projectiles so much as slow them down. She only turned them on during a fight, because they were power intensive, and her armor could keep then going for ten to fifteen minutes at a time before the system risked overheating.

It wasn't the most defensive armor on the market, but it was good for her needs, with a great deal of combat analysis and target assit working into the visor with a holographic display lens to go over one eye.

Kade nodded impatiently as the mercenary geared up. Grex and his men withdrew from the bar, sensibley realising that a blood bath might result if they refused to comply with Janna's demand to leave. Men like Grex didn't have a moral objection to blood baths of course, provided they were on the winning side. They might be forced to leave, but it was unlikely they had gone far and it was certain that he had called for back up.

It was natural for spies and other covert operators to default to subterfuge and deceipt, but their were times, like now, when there was no substitute for firepower. The mercenary finished belting on her gear. Suddenly Kade felt decidedly under equiped in her nondescript dark clothing and concealable pistol.

"We need to get moving before they can bring in more men to lock the place down," Kade began, unconsciously switching into the tone she had used when briefing strike teams with the Tee-Sees.

"Thanks to your handywork back there Id estimate they have no more than a squad outside," she went on. It might be more like a half squad, but there was no point in assuming the enemy was incompetent. Men like Grex didn't get to their positions by way of incompetence.

"Once we break through the perimeter, we can go to ground in Undertown and get the lay of the land, It will be too obvious that we would head for the spaceport," she explained. They moved to the rear exit behind the bar. The flow of conversation was starting back up when they headed back into the main bar. Kade knelt beside the thug whom her new friend had shot through the eye and stripped him of his chest plate, a sub machine gun and a pair of grenades of unknown function. She opted to leave the helmet given the amount of brain matter splattered across the inside of it. Other enterprising mercs were already starting to strip the dead Cartel soldiers, a pair of them were even tossing one of the corpses into the garbage recycler.

Kade glanced out the back door and took stock. The rear entrance opened onto an alley that bent in an long L shape. Dillapadated habs loomed over one side and associated detritus lay in the street.

"There is one at the end of the alley behind that low wall," she told the mercenary, "another on the catwalk the other way, both covering the door."

"Okay, so you were in the service," Amy responded with a chuckle. "I've had less professional briefings from the Captains I served under." Amy fiddled with her combat visor just a little, syncing her armor and her eyepiece together. The tactical data feed was essential to how she fought, and if they were going to risk ambushes, she especially needed it. Only way to handle so many combatants with just her and her client - who at least had a gun and looked like she probably knew how to use it.

"I don't especially care who you are or where you served - or with what faction, nation, group, whatever." Amy added, just in case the woman thought her comment was an attempt to draw that information out. "But I will need a name to call you." After a quick check on her rifle, she was ready to go, mentally checking the woman's suggestions against her own familiarity with the city's layout, and deciding that not only was her suggestion a good one, but the woman had a better idea of how to get around this city than she did. Which didn't especially surprise Amy. Most planets she went from starport to merc bar to a place to sleep - inn, flophouse, hotel, whatever - and wherever the client sent her, not much more than that, unless the planet actually had something resembling cultured entertainment or some sort of public access scientific area.

"May as well take the alley entrance now. Come on," Amy gestured for the woman to follow her close behind as she stepped into the alley.

"We can do full introductions later," Kade said as she checked the load on her pistol. She took two exceedingly deep breaths and then two short ones. Implanted glands triggered at the oxygenation spike and began to flood her system with epinephrine and a cocktail of combat stimulants. Her eyes dilated slightly.

"First we need to get out of here before the Cartel has time co close the noose," she said keyed up and ready for action. Cutting edge genetic implants could work wonders but there was nothing without a price. An hour or two from now she would be crashing hard, but she had to live that long first.

"Go, go, go!" she yelled and threw herself into the alley. There was a momentary hesitation before gunfire lit the confined space from above and in front. Tracer fire skipped off the stone walls and blasted apart random garbage in a spray. Kade had a moment to be glad that her opponents weren't using plasma weapons, the trash and refuse that packed the alley would have been a smoldering firestorm within minutes. She had taken the closest target for herself, a thug in grey black armor on a overlooking walkway. The man was fumbling with a grenade as she fixed him in her sight picture, she went down on one knee in an academy firing stance and fired three shoots in quick succession. The electro-motive pistol cracked loudly, sharper than a chemical round, as the electromagnets ripped the slugs up the bore. The first shot went high, blasting a divot of masonry from the wall above his shoulder. The second and third rounds hit him in the chest. Cheap armor shattered and blood gouted from the thugs mouth before he tumbled into the street, crashing down amongst bags of garbage.

"If I'm supposed to be your escort, woman, then fucking don't go in first!" Amy snapped at her client, before diving to the left and firing a rapid burst of plasma into another thug that came around the corner, her suit and eyepiece warning her even before she'd really noticed him. The plasma hit him on the chest, burning through his armor, melting some of the composites completely and burning right through his skin. Amy fired off two more shots into his left leg, crippling him in case he managed to survive - she'd seen it happen - and then lowered her rifle as the sensors in her armor checked for more approaching.

There were plenty of people around, but her armor was picking up two more people with the same armor composites coming their way.

"Into the Undertown now, woman!" Amy snapped, pushing Kade towards the wall, then simply grabbing the woman and shoving her over it, following right behind and taking cover behind the low wall as plasma flew over their heads from the new attackers.

Kade landed in the trash with a graceless thud but rolled to her feet with a haste that would have given even her most dour instructors a momentary smile. She let her new found ally deal with the incoming attackers and instead wrenched at a grate that covered a large opening in the ancient streetway. THe metal was old and brittle but stubbornly refused to budge. With a snarl of frustration she pulled a six inch cutting bar from her belt, thumbed the device to live and slashed the grate open with a shower of sparks and a metallic clatter.

"Going," she snapped to the mercenary and then slid feet first into the opening. Undertown was composed of a network of old tunnels and cabling substations which had been part of the original colony. Over the years though, the expanding needs of the corporations had made the old infrastructure redundant and new conduits for power and other such necessites had been laid, leaving the old to be stripped by scavangers. When their was little left of value it became a haunt for the homeless, for gangs, and for those who for whatever reason didn't want to be found. Tunnels had been added, excavations made, until it became an unmapped warren that coperate security didn't have the faintest notion of how to approach. In short, it was the perfect place to hide out.

After a particularly heated exchange of fire her mercenary ally slipped into the tunnels behind her. Kade hurridedly clamped a laser tripped stun grenade to the inside of the tunnel wall and they were away, twisting and turning through the depths of the city. After a while they came across habitations of sorts. Ragged men and women cooking meat on open fires, slack looking drug addicts slumped in the larger corridors, even a few rudimentary shops. Kade found the shop she was looking for and slipped inside. The room must once have been a hydro station but the rusted pipes had been painted in a variety of strange murals. Junk equipment of all sorts lay scattered around in haphazard piles. Along one wall a shallow bar shelter the proprietor who watched to make sure no one absconded with the trash without payment.

"Thank you for getting me out of there," she said when she was sure they were beyond earshot.

"My name is Kade."