“The sacrifices I make to be fashionable,” Jocasta observed dryly. As directed she had changed into the livery of the foe. Predictably the garments, a pearl tunic of gray white and fatigue pants, were too large, she solved the first problem by tying the tails of tunic behind her to snug the garment up. The trousers she simply melted the excess behind her and tucked the excess into her boots. She slung a cape of camocloth over her shoulders to cover the worst of it. The over all effect was a little comic opera, the way a holo-comic might depict a female mercenary, but it would probably serve.
 
“Well at least you don’t have to swab blood off the floor,” Markus replied, spraying the mess down with a flocculating sealant which congealed blood and dirt into a mess with the consistency of fruit leather, which could then be pealed up and thrown away. Jocasta contributed by gathering up weapons and ammunition into a duffel bag.

 “Well he who lives by the sword, dies by the mop,” Jocasta added philosophically. Markus opened his mouth to offer a rejoinder but they were interrupted by a squawk on a boxy communication terminal that had luckily avoided gunfire. Jocasta sat down and quickly entered a few commands.

 “It is a hard line to the Sharks,” Jocasta said, “they are on their way.” She tapped a few keys and a grainy hologram appeared of a heavily fortified building. Gunfire licked at the surface of it from the streets beyond as the more direct and violent mercenaries tried to force entry. A spurt of smoke leaded from an alley as a shoulder mounted rocket leaped across on a tail of fire, detonating on the front of the building in cloud of fire shot smoke. Mercenaries surged forward toward the breach, one or two of them toppling to the rubble as they were hit. A second later, the side of the building erupted outwards in a spray of masonry that scythed down half a dozen of the over eager attackers. A bull dog assault transport exploded out of the dust cloud, gun pods blazing. Streams of brilliantly white light cut down any survivor who wasn't in cover in a matter of seconds. The thing had three tracks and a paired set of six wheels which propelled its sharp angular shape across the rubble in a series of staggering hops. It hit clear ground and smoothed out as the wheels alone made contact, and raised away still firing. 

Jocasta's hands were flying across the keyboard as she input code as quickly as she could conjure it. First she had to access the internal log of the previous speaker, then use an algorithm to morph her own voice in real time to match the speaker. Even so it wouldn't pass close scrutiny, not without time to correct the idiosyncrasies but it would probably pass in all the confusion.

"Roger," she replied to the last transmission, "ready for delivery and extraction." Markus was looking over her shoulder and she put in a few more commands to bring up security feeds from the city. The bulldog was racing along, having ceased firing. Every now and then it swiped a ground car or obliterated a street sign in a spray of sparks. She pulled up a map of the streets and overlaid the transports progress. It would be here in less than a minute. In fact, she could already hear the roar of the twin jet turbines that drove the thing screaming as the driver pushed them to the limit. 

"They should be here in thirty...." there was a screaming sound as light flashed down from above. A series explosions lit one side of the bulldog and it flipped over and careened down the pavement on its roof, turning in a slow turtle of screaming, tortured metal. The concussion shook Jocasta and Markus where they stood, even through the wall. A gunship dove in above the upended transport, flaring nose up to counter its speed. The moment it reached stasis men were jumping from the back of it, they plunged towards the earth for a second before rocket assists on their belts lit, breaking their falls enough for them to land on their feet. Stun beams began to lick across at the crew as they crawled from the shattered bull dog.

"They aren't going to make it," Jocasta observed. Markus threw open the door and the noise and smoke hammered in with stunning force. He took aim and fired, dropping one of the jump pack mercs as the surviving members of the Shark's extraction team crawled clear. A whir like gods own dental drill ripped the chaos as a chin mounted pod on the gunship opened up. The whole building shook as hyper velocity rounds shattered its facade in a spray of smoke and gravel. Markus ducked back into cover a moment before fire spurted through the doorway. Jocasta ducked under the table as ricochet spattered the interior walls. She grabbed her fusion beamer and forced herself to the door then leaned out and took aim. The fusion beamer fired. Unlike a traditional las weapon it produced not a bolt, but a continual stream plasma. The weapon was capable of producing a three second continual beam before the magnetic focusing array melted and was ejected by a jet of liquid nitrogen for replacement. Jocasta let out the entire burst in a single long trigger pull. The beam struck the gunship's left air intake and it seemed to snuffle the nuclear fire and then sneeze, the particulate of the sneeze was pieces of engine, bearings, and flight controls. The gunship staggered sideways and down clipping the side of one of the high rises before detonating in a massive fireball. Thousands of pounds of glass were ripped from the walls of the buildings to either side of the street and rained down like silvery confetti. Jocasta saw at least one of the jump pack men literally cut to pieces by the avalanche of jagged glass fragments that poured from the skies. Even over the roar of explosions and the boom of weapons the sound was like someone had dropped a bell foundry from orbit.

"Coming though!" One of the surviving Sharks roared through a face concealing helmet with a built in vocalizer. Three of them had broken away from the main group, two supporting a third man between them. He was making some effort to help them but was clearly dazed by the violence of the last few seconds. The trio raced through the door, and Markus slammed the door shut behind them, cutting of the sound beyond. Everyone's ears rang in the sudden relative silence.

"Going up!" Jocasta said, slinging her fusion beamer and half leading, half shoving the stunned mercs to the orbital elevator. The exhausted and shell shocked men didn't argue with their apparent allies, merely piled in beside them as Jocasta slapped the controller that started accelerating them upwards towards the orbital and away form the wreckage below.