Phosphorescent foam surged up over the hull in freezing sheets. Inez de Calavria, apprentice armsman of the league, gripped the safety line in one gloved hand and raised the repeater with the other. The bow of the Arxregnum plunged downwards and icy water rushed up over her waist, chilly even through a vacuum rated environmental suit. The winds, close to cyclonic, howled around her whipping the wave tops to ragged flume. The starship rose again, riding up the face of the thirty meter wave until it reached the crest.

Inez had a half a second to look out over a heaving ocean of wind ripped waves. The purplish sky above crackled with a skittish tracery of green lightning that parted the auroral ribbons like cracks running through stressed ice. The view held for a half second and then she was rushing back down into the trough, vision obscured by a storm of flying droplets.

“How is it going out there,” her communicator crackled, carrying with the fury of the permanent storm above.

“Stand by, I…” Tentacles as thick as Inez’ waist exploded from the front of the wavefront, slapping down heavily along the curved silver hull. Unlike its equivalent on Earth, the thing was covered with gripping cillia rather than suckers. A dozen more tentacles followed the first, grappling the ship with dozens of enormous limbs. Inez fired the repeater one handed, it kicked like a steer but she held onto it. A three round cluster, lead by a tracer snapped from the barrel, the explosive tipped bullets shredding a tentacle into hundreds of pounds of fishy offal. The beast went wild, slapping at its wounded appendage with a half dozen of its limbs like a man trying to put out a fire. Inez hurled herself forward, unclipping her line and snapping it to another stanchion. She slipped on the soaking deck and went over snagging up against the line as it drove her harness into her ribs. She sucked in a lungful of spray, half choked and scrambled for purchase. Her hand closed around one of the exterior sensors and she pulled herself to her feet. A tentacle hit her across the chest with the force of a medicine ball and she was punched upwards and away from the hull. Gelatinous tendrils held her as the beast heaved against the safety line. The woven beryllium line could have lifted the ship, unfortunately her bones and sinews had a somewhat lower threshold.

“Fuuuuck!” she screamed as the beast worried at her, trying to pull her towards it’s as yet unseen maw.

“What was that?” the comm cracked, “I cant hear…”

“Shut!” Inez fired, “the fuck,” she fired again, “up!” The last burst caught the base of the tentacle close to the wave front. It exploded in a geyser of spray and blood and the thing dropped her. Inez plummeted to the deck below. Pain exploded across her hips as she bounced off the steel plating and plunged into the frigid water. The helmet was sealed but it didn’t have external air, the filters snapped closed and her available air flashed amber.

“Is there really any need to swear?” the voice in her comm asked pevishly. Inez hauled herself upwards, using the buoyancy of a rising wave to drive her body upwards. Thank the Black Lady for the line because the glittering phosphor bacteria in the water made it impossible to tell up from down. She broached and scrambled up onto the hull. She ducked another slashing tentacle that carried away a secondary communications mast in spray of sparks.

“I have it under…” a giant tripartite beak hammered into the hull, dishing one of the plates in with shattering force. Inez rolled sideways, catching a sensor head between her legs and wrapping them around it. She tensed her screaming muscles and pulled herself upright the beak drew back, revealing three dinner plate sized eyes staring malevolently at her. She flicked a switch on the repeater, deactivating the explosive charges and switching to solid shot.

“Control!” she concluded and emptied the magazine into the things eyes. The fifty caliber rounds punched through the eye in a spray of jelly and blood, they smashed into the nerve ganglia, destroying the primitive equivalent of a brain that motivated the giant creature. Tentacles slashed and battered but the water was foaming with black ink as internal bladders voided, internal buoyancy failed and the thing slipped beneath the waters, washed clear by the next wave.

“It really dosen’t sound like it,” the voice complained. Inez pulled herself to her feet.

“Just open the damned airlock,” she replied, and half limped, half crawled her way back towards the lock.

@POOHEAD189

The lights transitioned from red LED to a more standard colored brightness, signalling the timer had begun. The commando moved without hesitating, FLM Shotgun shouldered and eyes keened. The course was littered with high rise obstacles, walkways, and dead ends, shifting through every iteration so the subject could not memorize a way to complete it. His feet moving in short, brisk steps, he stopped on a dime when a blackmoon mercenary stepped out of the next turn, holding a lasword. Two shells infused with plasma and fired by the FLM's in-built particle accelorator cartridge ripped through the mercenary before he could fire, ruining its holo image and revealing the grey training android even as it crumpled into a scrap heap.

Suddenly two mines sprung up from the floor, red lights flashing. The shooter somersaulted into another curve of the course just before they detonated, spraying lasers that would have failed him if they touched any vital areas on his person. He was on his feet, the cracks of his weapon erupting, punching through two more illusionary mercs as they turned the corner to aim at him. Another stepped off a high rise and leaped at him, staff in hand. He raised his gun to block the strike, taking the merc's feet out from under it before it even landed with a well-placed kick. It hit the ground, but couldn't complete a roll. The commando's foot planted on its chest and another slug was discharged, shattering the android's head.

A turret sprang up, its lasgun swiveled into his direction. He unhooked a small magni-charge from his belt, pressing his thumb on the release and tossed it. The explosive, now activated, spun in mid-air to stick into the turret's side even as he rolled out of its vantage point. A loud, incessant beep rang out before it exploded, shattering the turret and leaving it in two solid chunks of junk. The shooter started to sprint, noticing he was in a dead end. The walls were perfectly smooth and without handholds, but he kicked off the left wall and used it to boost him up high enough to grab the lip of the back wall, hauling himself up onto the platform at the end of the course.

A ring sprang up, indicating the course had been completed.

"Second best time on record." A monotonous female voice declared over the comm. "23.739 seconds. Placing the name Badrek Mal'Draigg in the system."

He reloaded the weapon, ignoring the annoying use of his full name with a small expulsion of air from his nostrils. If they were insistent, he guessed he did not care enough to argue. He racked the weapon with a satisfying clack, and stepped down the decline he was likely supposed to rush up in order to complete the run. He glanced up where Neb was awaiting him, and saw a taller figure with him, standing patiently. He was familiar, taking Bad over a second to remember who it was. He sighed, not in the mood to talk to solicitors.

The blue line that stretched across the floor lit up as Bad stepped over it, and the course reverted to red LED lights as smaller droids were dispensed to clean up the courseway. Bad placed the FLM shotgun on the stand, not even deigning to look the recruiter's way.

"Not bad, Neb. But it needs a bit more stopping power. I think I'll keep my RW, though I do need a few more cartridges." He said.

"You could have been gentler with it." Neb said, his mustache curling with the sarcasm.

"Sorry," Bad said, unzipping his pack and fishing around for his wallet. "Four florins for the run and the mags?"

Neb was an old friend. A soldier in his youth, he had been retired for twenty years, and he looked it. Bad had a difficult time seeing him as a field man, but he knew weaponry, and had a nack for supplying any mercenary that came his way. He had come here for seven years, and Neb hadn't led him wrong yet, though like now, Bad did test runs for new equipment Neb had received from foreign markets, making sure he hadn't lost on any investment. If things went well, Bad might get a discount on the weapon in question, but he wasn't in it for this run.

"I'll let you keep the florins if you listen to our friend here." Neb said, a glint in his eye. Bad raised an eyebrow, then regarded the recruiter, who had an implacable look of neutrality on his face. He had his hair cropped short, and wore a smart suit, with black spectacles that hid his eyes even under the light.

"You're with the league?" Bad asked, stripping the FLM into its various components so Neb could clean its entirety after hours. Unscrewing the cap beneath the barrel, checking the selector at the butt was at its center, unlatching the grip beneath the selector and stripping the butt on the table before he popped his hand against the grip, bisecting the weapon.

"I am. And I am well aware of your answer the last time we attempted to recruit you." He explained.

"And you're still here? Ok, what do you think might change my mind?" Bad asked.

"Well, we have remade the contract, and would like to offer you a temporary, freelance position. And I think you'll find the assignment more to your liking..." He remarked, producing a dataslate.
@Penny

The hatches cracked open and hissed down onto landing field of crushed gravel. The smell of baked lime, hot metal, and sea weed burned off during re-entry rushed in, mingling with the slightly cinnamon smell of the local jungle. Inez wrinkled her nose as she came down the ramp, her body stinging from the medical aplique that wrapped her from thigh to mid chest beneath the somewhat battered League arming vest she wore.

Lionel was typical of the out-worlds in the Pegasus Arm, an alien world habital by humans but as yet with little trade to entice the Merchant Princes of the League. It orbited an angry K-type star tha blazed at the high end of the sequence. Luckily the angry ball was far more distant, in relative terms, than Earth from Sol. The result was that even in the 'day' time a kind of eternal twilight existed. The ambient illumination of the nebula colored the light a greenish purple, which deeped during the night without significant decrease in luminosity. The local life forms bore a superficial similarity to ant forms from earth, though they primarily subsisted on the myriad varieties of local fungus which grew in vast, carefully managed forests. Their technological level was iron age without even the wheel, though like the Aztec of ancient Earth, this hadn't prevented them from raising monumental pyramids and other works of sacred architecture. Their society was based on a kind of religious clientage with varigated classes of priest serving as an aristocracy. The appearence of Captain Lionel of the Mars Engineering and Technical Consortium forty years ago had thrown them into significant agitation which was still working itself out.

Regardless of the native's feelings, the League had been able to set up a small trading post and an emergency maintaince depot for ships that got themselves in trouble far from more civilized worlds. The Arxregnum had spent the past six weeks gathering sea weed for the Solar Winds Trading Company, and had been doing quite well before what the crew termed 'The Kraken Attack'. The sea creature should not have existed according to the survey data which reported only plant life above the microbial, something some academic somewhere might someday write a paper about. The creatures sudden appearance, drawn no doubt to the warmth of the hull, had damaged several of the jump antennae that propelled the vessel into the supra-luminal band. She had taken a week to limp to even this out of the way place and would go no further until she was refited. Maynard had done well to get them this far, but they were short of crew and ready cash and it remained to be seen how repairs would be effected.

"Inez de Calabria," she declared to the bored looking Guild apprentice sitting at a table covered by a canvas shade. The apprentice scratched a red rash tha vanished beneath his doublet, a common reaction to exposure to proteins in non human biospheres.

"Good to meet you, frankly its good to meet anyone on this out of the way dung hill," he replied with a slight Martian accent.

"Your captain coming down, or is it hired guns only?" he asked. Inez laughed in response, a tired slightly bitter sound.

"I'm an indentured gun technically," she told him, "Captain Maynard will be down in a few minutes, as soon as he has the fires out in engineering im sure. Anywhere you can get a drink around here?" The apprentice, Walsh but the battered name tape, hooked a thumb towards a small pyramid a few dozen meters away.

"In there, that is where the other outworlders are too, if you care."
@POOHEAD189

The Sunbraela cantina had the look of a local dive, the walls built with fiber cement and textured to appear like unpolished wood. A quarter of the walls were covered in holoimages that gave the appearance of an open window, perfectly mirroring the tropical rainstorm that had been forecast for that day. Hookah smoke wafted languidly from Inez's left, the open table surrounded by off-worlders discussing business and smiling from an evident agreement. The air was filled with the pungent scent of alcohol, cipria smoke, and sweat. To the right by the billiard tables she heard glass shattering, and a curse followed. The clacking of the balls resounded along the walls. At the center of the building was a circular bar run by a surly xenos, with bug eyes and antennae on its dark blue head, four arms cleaning the counter and shacking a bottle, its tubular mouth opening and closing every heartbeat.

The music bopped with an assortment of drums and a lazy guitar from speakers high above the bar, making a drumming tune to the backdrop of dozens of conversations as barmaids walked back and forth with plates of samplers and alcohol.

Bad hadn't slept in a day, and though he wasn't much of a drinker, even he needed something to calm his nerves after accepting the contract back at Neb's. He drank his cheap stout, blinking and giving a yawn, arching his head to stretch his shoulders. It would look fairly average if he wasn't using his left arm in an arm wrestling match with a Plaxerran, the burly porcine xenos grunting as its neck flared, showcasing it was consuming more oxygen to gain a boost in strength. Bad placed his drink down, amused at the sudden burst of power. He grabbed the edge of the table, his necklace clinking against his chest as he put all his effort in the contest of strength. Slowly but surely, Bad bent his foes arm backwards until it struck the table.

The Plaxerran squealed, yellowed eyes narrowing as it got up, holding its arm and running away, knocking over a chair in its flight.

"Hey! What about our bet!?" Bad roared after him, but realizing he didn't care enough to follow. He would get paid soon anyway, if he lived. He sat back again, the back of his head and chair against the wall. His skin the color of bronze and his eyes and hair dark, he was built well, but his eyes were red from a trip in the void and his leg shook, though he did not appear nervous.

His stomach rumbled suddenly, and it seemed to wake him up, or at least perk him up a bit.
@Penny

__________________________________________________________________








On any planet visited by the descendants of Earth, the first building to be constructed was, without exception, a bar. After that came a brothel, though often enough the two were in combination. In her year and a half of indentured service to the League, and contract to the Solar Winds Trading Company specifically, Inez had been in plenty of both. This one was better than most, at least the walls weren’t sealed with stinking insect saliva the way they had been in the Miserable Mossie on Caldacot, or upwind of a sulfur processing plant like ‘The Stink of It’ on Mosul’s World. It had all the common characteristic denizens, the tag rag and bobtail sweepings of three centuries of human interstellar travel: Merchants, adventurers, scoundrels, thieves, cut throats and every combination of those categories.

Inez walked over and bellied up to the bar, leaning gratefully to take the stress off her injured core. She held up a hand to the alien bartender who paused from his somewhat desultory attempts to swab out glass with a rag to pull a bottle of beer from an icebox concealed beneath the bar. The bartender struck the cap off the beer against the bar with casual skill and set it down in front of her, dripping with ice melt and condensate. The green and gold check on the can identified it as Zap, a high quantity low quality brew from Earth, underscored by the surprisingly realistic motto Zap beer, all you can get out here. Inez licked the foam beginning to spill from the top of the bottle and took a long pull. Well, at least it is cold, she thought charitably as she set the half empty bottle down on the bar. The bartender grunted when she didn’t produce any currency, then reached into a pouch, produced a debit pad, and tossed it down beside her.

Inez sighed and looked out over the vista that was visible through the window behind the racked bottles of human and alien liquors. The bar was set inside one of the local pyramids, either abandoned with disuse or granted as a trade concession to the League. It formed one corner of a rectangular temple complex perhaps a kilometer wide and half again as long with a pyramid at each corner. The space in between must have started life as a paved plaza, but starship landings had reduced it to a crushed mass of gravel. Only two starships were on the ground at the moment, the Arxregnum and a tramp whose name Inez hadn’t bothered to learn. Differences in design aside, they were both long rectangular tubes of metal with secondary hull sections attached like ancient outriggers. Both vessels bristled with antennae, sensors and the various other avionics that allowed men to travel between the stars. Local vehicles, simple diesel powered haulers, moved around the two ships on their own errands, bringing supplies or people from the workshops and warehouses that had been built around the base of the largest of the four pyramids. A low stone wall, grown through with greenish orange lichen, surrounded the whole establishment, probably ceremonial as it was too low to provide an effective defensive barrier. Roads ran off into the jungle at a strange variety of angles, vanishing quickly in the greenery. Inez knew from the landing that several large local settlements were only a few kilometers distant, though the jungle was thick enough that no sign was visible from here. Judging by the muddy disrepair of the roads, there wasn’t much truck with the locals. Sometimes the best you could say about a place was that it was breathable, and that it kept the rad level manageable. That wasn’t nothing in a wide and hostile galaxy. Inez drew in a long breath that smelled of the tavern, the landing field, and the alien biochemistry beyond.

“What a shit hole,” she sighed philosophically, swallowing the rest of her beer and waving for another. The debit pad clinked up the charge, which would eventually be settled by Alrik Maynard as the operator of the Arxregnum. Maynard might or might not get on her case about charging drinks to the company but she figured after the incident with the kraken she had earned a little grace. Provided she didn’t turn up drunk off her face of course, which, to be fair, would be a job of work on nothing but Zap. As though sensing her thoughts the portable computer she wore at her wrist beeped.

“The Black Lady damn it,” Inez muttered as she opened the message with a few quick keystrokes.

Please collect local contractor for security duty. Ident and particulars attached. AM.

Inez sighed again and turned to scan the bar. Sure enough, a man matching the hologram was just concluding an arm wrestling contest with an alien. The various spectators were hooting and hollering as they exchanged credit chips to settle whatever bets they had placed on the combatants. She slid herself into the vacated seat as the group broke up, flashing a holographic copy of the contract by way of an icebreaker.

“Badrek? Is that a real name? It sounds like something you stepped in and have to scrape off your boot,” she asked, as diplomatically as she could manage. She wondered what hair brained scheme Maynard had in mind that he wanted an additional thug along. History did not suggest that the answer to this question would please her.



@POOHEAD189

As the crowd dissipated, a woman wearing the vest of an armsman marched over and sat down at his table. He knew he would be approached eventually. Bad had just been told to walk in and 'make himself at home' which meant a few hours of sitting, doing nothing, trying not to drink while he caroused with the locals. He had not expected a woman. Granted, he wouldn't have cared beyond curiosity. He had never worked with a female trooper before, but he wasn't prejudice. She carried herself well and looked fit.

Usually he gave as good as he got, but he did not feel great accepting the contract, and from the lack of sleep, he really didn't have the fight in him. Plus...

"I agree, just call me Bad. Or Privateer, I guess." He said, arms crossed on the table. "So, what do I call you?"

"Inez de Calabria." She said with an accent he couldn't quite pinpoint.

"Do you know why we're here?" He asked her, and when she shook her head, he reached down and grabbed his datapad. He unlocked the security on it, activated the application, placed it on the table, and slid it over to her. Text began to stream across the screen, and a map of the planet appeared before her eyes, before zooming into a small river basin two dozen kilometers from their current position.

Mission for Class D armsman and privateer.

A large shipment of manganese and tantalite is being transported from subsector A-34 to subsector A-76 to our refineries, through the Loxahar valley. Security has been found wanting. Three shipments lost in the last two standard terran months. Local forces inadequate or compromised. Evidence suggests attacks committed by the Cobalt Snake mercenaries, likely hired by local competitors wishing to monopolize the planet and repell tratta interests. Success is paramount. Double pay and access to better work if 90% of shipment makes it intact to destination.

-Councilor's Aide Theodora Nix (EC: 205983754)

The date indicated they begin tomorrow.
@Penny

Call me Bad. The Black Lady save me Inez thought. Next thing we will be Viper or Iceman or some other damn fool thing. Well, given that his parents were probably to blame, she resolved to try and cut him some slack. Inez sipped her beer and found it no better for her attempt to savor it. She wondered if the Sunbeala served food and if that food was anything other than the kind of warmed over rations which she might get on the Arxregnum. She gave it up as a bad bet as her eyes scanned the contract. So much for kicking back while the maintaince crew handled the refit she thought. Contracting her out was a better use of her time, at least from the credit pinching perspective of her League masters.

One thousand three hundred and twenty four Sols and a wake up she told herself.

Endeavoring to look on the bright side she considered the job at hand. She hadn’t known that there was any manufacturing on Lionel but she could see the logic of the enterprise. Processing trace elements into electronic precursors would allow the fabrication of electronics for the repair yard and, eventually, for export to the surrounding fringe worlds. Custom electronics were often more cost effective to manufacture close to where they would be needed, rather than sending all the way back to Sol. The enterprise would also encourage asteroid prospectors whose unfailingly run down ore barges would provide steady business for the expanding repair yard. Native laborers would be needed to work the forges, to construct rail or road connections to the port. This would require modernizing agriculture with tools to make up for the resulting shortfall of peasants. Wages would be paid, wages that could be spent on trade goods and off planet luxuries, and so on and so on. Thus the business of the League grew, interconnected rings of industry and trade, expanding forever towards the ends of the universe. Inez wondered if Aldrik was invested in the scheme personally or if it was a Solar Winds Trading venture. The two things need not be separate of course; all captains were given a certain amount of capital to invest in on the spot ventures and spur of the moment opportunities but she would have wagered that Maynard was up to his eyeballs in the scheme.

“Well, I’ve never worked with a Privateer before, whatever that is I suppose…” before she could suppose any further the ambient buzz of conversation died away and she craned her neck to look towards the door. A trio of natives were entering the bar. They were bipedal and man sized With thick torsos and three sets of powerful limbs, the middle set seemed to function as arms, with three opposable thumbs set against a serrated gripping surface. The upper limbs seemed closer to claws, heavy and muscular. Their entire bodies were covered with glossy carapace, a red so dark that it seemed black in anything but full sun. They had large eyes that seemed to glimmer with the suggestion of internal illumination, though Inez remembered that this was an artifact of the receptors that allowed the natives to see further into the UV than humans. All three wore nothing save leg wraps of some kind of pale local leather and access lanyards which indicated they did menial work in the starport. The largest of the three seemed agitated, and the lower half of his face seemed covered with a fine coating of something golden and powdery. The creature let out a roar, battle cry or curse Inez wasn’t sure, and charged at the two humans, emitting a continual string of clacking ululations. Inez and Bad sprang to their feet, Inez going for a pistol that was in her arms locker back on the ship. She snatched up the lightweight stool instead and swung it in an arc that intersected with the creature’s right claw arm. It caught the cheap extruded plastic and tore it free, pivoting and driving a powerful kick punch combination into Inez, sending her sprawling across a table at which two xenos were playing cards. Credits and chips flew in all directions as the bar descended into chaos. All was screaming and confusion, one of the card players hauled Inez to her feet and drove a fist at her. She twisted aside and snapped an elbow into his face, sending the alien stumbling back. The two natives who had accompanied the original attacker began to ululate the same weird war cry as the first and then charged into the fray. Inez kicked the table into the way of the nearest native sending him down in a tangle of limbs and clacking pincers, the latter quickly reducing the table to splinters. The porcine bar tender ducked down and reappeared with a riot gun, he wracked the slide and fired with a chemical crunch. Where he had been aiming Inez never knew, probably for one of the natives, but the swirling melee threw the creature who had arm wrestled Bad into his line of fire. The bean bag round drove the air from his lungs with a whumph and a spray of vomit. A bottle of liquor flew from the downed gamblers' companions to smash across the bartenders face. The piggish xeno screamed and dropped the gun which bounced of the bar and went off, spraying the back wall with the remains of a dozen shattered liquor bottles. The whole building rang with curses, cheers, and grunts of pain and the air was heavy with spilled booze and hormones.

There were no police in a place like this, but there were bound to be a few star port security types who would show up if this went on long enough. Inez dived across the melee, screaming in pain as medical appliqués tore free and snatched up the fallen riot gun. She turned to survey the melee. One of the natives was drawing back a claw to cold cock Bad. Two bean bags smacked into the alien, the first spinning him ninety degrees just in time for the second to smash into his face, pitching him over into the crowd. The melee closed in around Bad as Inez racked the slide only to feel a limp empty chamber. Screaming in frustration she reversed the weapon and charged into the fray wielding it like a club.

One thousand three hundred and twenty four Sols and a wake up. Some fucking days.

@POOHEAD189

Had he been fully awake, he might have dodged the punch. As it were, it seemed like the xenos had come out of the swirling melee like a fish leaping out of water, and he was decked straight in the face. Bad staggered back, his ass hitting the table. Luckily for him, the punch was enough to wake him up and clear his sinuses, and the native stupidly attacked with the same fist. A bottle rolled where the table was tipping, and Bad's training took over. He ducked under the swing, grabbing the bottle and shattering it on the table, and as the xenos went in to cut his throat with its claw, he already had the broken bottle poised, moving into the xenos' space and stabbed into the arm that thrust the claw forward, rendering it useless. The bottle shattered a final time, falling to pieces from piercing the carapace. But it was all Bad needed it for. He saw the other claw fly in, and he leaned back on the table, kicking his feet up, his left pushing against the inner arm to keep the claw at bay whilst the other slammed into the xeno's ugly face.

It half screeched, half grunted as it realized it was its turn to stagger back. Bad landed on his feet and waded in, landing punch after punch against its torso and face, his fists like machine gun bullets hammering into it. Even its carapace seemed a paltry defense, and with a hard kick to the native's left leg, it fell. Bad grabbed what likely passed for hair on the thing and helped its momentum, sending its face right into his knee.

Another local near had him from behind, but Inez's makeshift club knocked a chair aside. Bad gave her a grin in response, and they blocked and punched, back to back, moving as if they were one entity. Inez ducked under a metal pole while Bad caught it, Inez cracking the hand that held it with the butt of her riot gun. The assailant squealed and fell even as Bad, hands still on it, swung it end over end to slam into the head of a charging native on his side. Inez was hit in the gut, but she took it well, Bad lowering himself so she could roll over, across his back, kicking the neck of a human attacker before she hit the ground. On Bad's end, he gave the Xenos that had hit Inez an uppercut that sent it flying back.

It was over even quicker than it began. Bodies and painful moaning lifting into the air, glass crackling and chairs squeaking as people tried to use them to help them rise, before falling back onto the floor. Bad had accumulated a bruise on his cheek and a few small scrapes from flying glass, but otherwise he looked better than before Inez had walked in.

"You're good," He said, wiping the wood chips and glass off his broad shoulder. "I'd buy you a drink, but I think that ship sailed."
@Penny

One benefit of Lionel’s relatively low level of ambient sunlight was that even at ‘dawn’ it didn’t get very bright. The temperature did warm significantly though, and so the beginning of a new day was marked with heat and by a sudden explosion of activity in the jungle that seemed completely arbitrary to light dependent humans. The other benefit was that you didn’t get a brilliant light shining in your bleary hung over eyes.

“I’m not sure what in the name of all the Gods I did to deserve one of you, much less two!” Maynard raged as he stalked back and forth in front of Bad and Inez. The were in front of one of the warehouses from which a long train of native pack animals were emerging. Like the natives they were hexapods, with powerful jointed knees reminiscent of caterpillars. They clicked and croaked continually as the muscled panniers of woven wire filled with glittering manganese rich ore. Native guards with company lanyards chivvied them along with the points of spears. A few, very few, had breech loading trade rifles and were bestrung with bandoliers of brass cartridges that jingled as they walked. The League had long ago learned not to sell advanced weapons to natives on worlds there they wanted to operate long term, but they had also learned that you couldn’t cut them out entirely without black markets springing up to fill the void.

Inez endured Alrik Maynard’s fury stolidly. He was a handsome man if you liked them a little on the wiry side with radish blonde hair. He wore a coat of brilliant green shimmersilk atop collets of fine linen tucked into polished black boots. The golden seal of a Captain and a Factor of the League hung around his neck, marked with the insignia of the Solar Winds Trading Company. Inez’s head throbbed, the hang over had been largely purged by a judicious dose of booze-be-gone, but her head still pounded from where a boot had caught her during the fracas last night.

“You I expect this from,” Maynard snapped, thrusting a finger into Inez chest, “But you!” He whirled on Bad and stomped over to him, the rings on his fingers glinting as they caught the stray light of a light post on the perimeter.

“The ink not even dry on your contract and already brawling in taverns like a Gods-be-damned common drunk!”

“Sir,” Inez began.

“Quiet!” the captain snapped, “I don’t want to hear you, I don’t want to see you, the only thing I want is this cargo delivered to Loxahar valley without incident. Unless you want me to put the damages the bar owner is claiming on your account I suggest that you ensure this goes off FLAWLESSLY. Am I understood!?”

"Flawlessly..." Bad echoed.

The morning was still young, but the heat was already on the caravan like a heavy blanket, the air stifling and the humidity clinging to the skin. The radioactive sun, ever distant, still somehow felt oppressive. Avian lifeforms screeched and cawed, flapping intermittently above them as the strange beasts of burden chittered and clicked, their 'necks' spewing forth bursts of air from some gill-lick protrusions. Bad had never seen their like, but the locals had assured him they were docile and dependable, so they were good enough for him.

Unlike the night before, Bad was fully kitted. His pack was slung over his shoulders, and at his hip was hung his Sagax-saber. The Sagax sword designs were centuries old at this point, high carbon steel swords with a zenon-coating agent and depleted uraniam infused in the edges of the blade to help it cut through armor with greater ease than a normal sword. Privateers and adventurers had discovered long ago that in the close quarters of ships or in environs where ranged weapons could be damaged, a well made sword was as useful as it was back in the 17th century seas.

In his hands was his HKG155 assault rifle, with a short stroke gas operated piston and a cartridge of 50 rounds of plasma-infused shells. It was better than most small arms at piercing armor, but it still was no replacement for good old fashioned heavy munitions. He had four cartridges in his pack and held it casually, its long sling across his shoulder. The sun peered down, igniting his dark hair and black, form hugging shirt with light, merely advertising how black both were.

They had traveled four miles without incident, save for a few of the cargo handlers nearly having a fist fight over some argument Bad really hadn't had the curiosity to find out on. But once they got going, it was so far, so good. Soon, the sound of a rushing river grew audible over the rustlings and wind of the jungle. Bad remembered from the datapad that it was the first big obstacle, and given a two star threat level as a potential ambush sight. He placed the stock on his rifle and held it up, signalling for Inez he was moving forward to check it out, giving a small wave to indicate she could take the left if he went right.