Inez signaled her understanding and unslung her repeater, her eyes and fingers moving over it with autonomic familiarity. The native laborers clicked at each other in their own tongue as they set the heavy crates that they carried across their backs down by the side of the trail and took a moment to rest. It occurred to Inez that she hadn’t asked what was in the cargo before they left the encampment. Her eyes drifted to the heavy wooden boxes, ungainly burdens for the ants to carry, not that the natives seemed to mind. They were standard 1x2 meter crates that might have contained anything from machinery to pharmaceuticals. There was no holographic crest on them. Inez frowned. Ordinarily any goods they were moving would carry the Solar Winds seal, or at least the seal of whomever they had been purchased from.  There were League laws against certain kind of trade with undeveloped societies: modern weapons, certain types of addictive drugs, ships and starfaring tech and the like, though this didn’t stop unscrupulous traders from moving things, Inez herself had been on her share of what she was pretty sure were gun buys, but it was unusual. A-POW policed these statutes with their usual indifference but the real beat cop was simple economics. Few undeveloped societies could afford armored vehicles, much less the logistic trains that fed them, and what was true for tanks was true in spades for spacecraft. League traders were not above supplying guns or drugs, or both to destabilize a situation though, if it served their long term interests. Were these crates part of some kind of ploy, was Captain Maynard running goods off the books.


“Far side looks clear,” Bad called back and Inez guiltily looked up from her thus far unrewarding inspection of the crates. She gave him the a thumbs up and made a ‘move it along’ gesture to the locals. With much clicking and clattering the crates were lifted onto backs, and secured with the third set of limbs. Without hesitation the natives began to splash down into the muddy water of the stream, hauling the cargo across like ancient coolies.  Inez watched them struggle across the river, zipping up her bodysuit only when the last native was halfway across. Part of her delay was a tactical judgement to provide a rearguard, partially a reluctance to go back into the water so soon after fighting the kraken, and partially, she had to admit, it was the hangover. Whatever the reason she was perfectly positioned to spot the natives bursting from the treeline on the opposite bank. There must have been twenty of them, all were painted with some kind of ochre paint and carried weapons. The weapon of choice seemed to be a pair of short axes, though some held trade firearms, paired pistols or single shot rifles. They surged down the bank onto Bad and the porters in a chitonous mass. Without conscious thought Inez found herself prone, her rifle laid across the top of a boulder. The holographic sight picture filled with one of the attacking natives as he leaped into the air, twin axe raised high. It’s chest exploded in spray of greenish gore and it clattered to the river bank like a broken toy. She swung her sights onto another and punched it through the chest a heat beat after it decapitated one of the porters. The scene disintegrated into a tangle of alien bodies in which it was impossible to tell friend from foe. Inez fired again, whinging one of the attackers as it attempted to stab Bad from behind.



“Bad!” she shouted, cursing as one of the porters obstructed her next shot. Black powder weapons went of with great gouts of smoke and a shot, quite by luck, whinged of a rock three feet from Inez.

“Bad get out of there!”

[@POOHEAD189]