As Dugout hunched behind the stone wall, firing from his rifle, I moved to pick up the rifle that Flashback had dropped. It was long and deadly-looking, but I’d already found where the weapon manuals were stored and skimmed them at lightning speed. Not that there was much to them; Marauder grunts tended to be too stupid to understand anything more complicated than “point gun, squeeze trigger”.

I leveled the gun at the weak point where Dugout’s spine met his hip chassis and let him have it with a full blast. He never knew what hit him. I tossed the rifle aside, fell back, and waited.

It didn’t take long for the two remaining Aegis automechs to move up to find out why the firing had stopped. They were both built along the slim lines of sports cars. From Botnet’s database files, that made them couriers or scouts, not front-line battle units. At a guess, this was a very impromptu raid. I could use that.

My ventilator fans revved as I “took a deep breath,” then I raised my hands and stepped into the open.