For a low rent outfit on a low rent planet, security was surprisingly good. It took Jocasta nearly sixty seconds to find an entry point in the network and another twenty to install her subroutine. This she did with the aid of sophisticated haptic implants which let her interface with the data nets directly. The process produced a faint luminescence in her eyes for a few moments which faded as she seemed to come back to herself.

 “Done? Did you loop the tape or something?” Markus asked.

 “Or something,” Jocasta replied. Looping a feed was a very old trick and most modern security systems were too smart to allow it to happen. Integral time stamps, ambient light sampling and other safeguards would flag it and alert even the most dim witted operator. Modern security systems were too smart for their own good. Literally. Instead of blanking the feeds, Jocasta simply used their excellent recognition algorithms to make sure the cameras did notice her and her new partner, and then simply fed a negative version of that perfectly preserved pattern into the image synthesizer. The camera saw everything, but to anyone viewing the feed, they were completely invisible.
 
“Ready?” Markus asked, unlimbering his weapon and pointing it at the door in preparation to breach.

 “Ready,” Jocasta replied, and stepped past the other mercenary and knocked loudly on the door. Markus swore softly but to his surprise the door swung open. A neat looking man in a flight suit and a optical monovisor stared at her through the portal.

 “Can I come in?” Jocasta asked, pushing her way into the building without waiting for a response. The interior had something of the appearance of a train station. A half dozen men sat around drinking energy drinks and eating noodles. They all paused as though caught in tractor beams as Jocasta stepped through the door.

 “What is she doing here, we aren’t supposed to order out for company till the job is done,” a gruff looking man with a long braided beard complained. The man at the door look chagrined then his eyes cut sideways to Markus, still partially concealed by the door frame, and widened in shock. Jocasta gave a shrug then drove a beaked fist into the man’s kidney. He staggered into the door jam but Jocasta was already diving for cover, rolling behind a large computer console and popping up with her pistol in hand. She sprayed the group with a rapid crack, crack, crack of high intensity las fire from her little pistol. Ceramic capacitor casing clattered to the ground and shattered as they emptied their entire payloads through the diamond cored barrel. The air shimmered with waste heat and the bite of ozone. One man went down screaming with a shot to his chest, another dropped his rifle with a scream as she took of three fingers of his right hand. Everyone was diving for weapons safe for one man who seemed frozen in shock.