[@POOHEAD189]

The volume increased as the night cycle wore on. Mercenaries shared tales of dire adventures, boasted of places they had been, women they had known, and rich contracts they had completed. They compared hardware with equal enthusiasm with weaponry from half the arm, displayed, debated, and dissected as each man or woman tried to justify their own personal preference. The serving bots and serving women plied the company with alcohol and stimulants. This close to Brayden, tobacco was favored in the form of cigarettes or cigars but other drugs, kesh, synth-2, and kobal added to the flavor of narcotic haze. Despite the heady mix of drugs, alcohol, and firearms, there were no accidents. Accidentally firing a weapon was a good way to get yourself killed in a place like this and this crowd were the survivors of culture which quickly weeded out the careless or unlucky.  
 
The music changed as a voluptuous lounge singer took the place of the original band. She began taking up the tune to a sultry synth-jazz number, much to the appreciation of the assembled mercenaries. As though timed to this momentary distraction, a woman slipped through the holographic camouflage and into the bar. Her face was concealed by a slim fitting full face visor that glowed with the soft green phosphor of an integrated HUD. She scanned the room, literally given the nest of sensors built into her expensive body armor, and settled on her target. Quietly, unobtrusively, she drifted across the room towards the lone merc at his table. She moved neither quickly, nor directly, seeming to move in and out of conversation naturally so as not to draw any attention to herself. Her path took her to the mercenary’s, Markus according to the various pheromone sniffers and aspect readers in her helmet, unguarded back. Here she lingered for long minutes, watching him drink, studying his body language, waiting for her moment. A minute after he started his third drink it was time. A neural impulse extended a tiny hypodermic needle from her glove. The tip, tiny by any standard, was invisible as a wisp of hair in the dim light. It contained enough neuroblock to put down a raging Cythonian bull. Grinning beneath her helmet she leaned back to strike.
 
The synth-jazz ballad cut off in mid stanza as the singer ceased her gyrations leaped from the stage, mic stand in hand. A collective gasp of disbelief went up from the crowd as the airborne singer, rotated the metal rod and extended it like a spear. She crashed down atop the visored woman knocking her sprawling with the full force of her body behind the microphone stand. The acoustics screeched with the force of the blow before the automated cut off kicked in, sounding for all the world like the cry of a striking hawk. The visored woman was knocked sprawling, the hypoderm snapping off against a table as she scrambled for purchase. With a digital snarl and a hiss of parting air she extended a las knife from her gauntlet and rounded on the unexpected attacker. The singer whipped the microphone stand around like a bo-staff, thrust one end at the visor in a feint, and then knocked the visored woman’s feet from under her, sending her clattering to the ground. With a keening cry the singer drove the mic stand into her opponents chest, once, twice, and then drove the butt of it into the visored woman’s face, bouncing her head against the floor with enough force to crack the plasteel. The woman slumped and went limp.
 
Jocasta Ap’Glynn pulled the microphone from the stand and lifted it to her lips. Her formerly blonde hair and red lipstick both began to flush a bright synthetic green. Excitement and sweat sheened her beautiful face as she blew a stray lock of hair out of the way and tugged her sheer sating gown back into place.

 “and ever moooooooore,” she sang, completing the stanza she had interrupted when she leaped from the stage to intercept the assassin. The bar was silent for a long moment and then erupted in cheers and applause as the unconscious bounty hunter was dragged away by the bouncers.