“Of course there’s time,” said Roland. “We’ve got a solid ninety seconds until they’re here. Might as well get high.”

The kid rebuffed his offer. Roland would’ve been a little hurt if he hadn’t secretly hoped they’d turn him down. It took a lot of pot to get him high. One whole blunt was about the right amount for where he wanted to be.

Thump-thump-thump-thump-thump.

Bigsby opened up with his heavy machine gun. A vague worry started to grow inside Roland. The armored Martyrs had moved faster than anticipated. Am I going to have time to finish smoking? He was thankful that he’d at least loaded up on painkillers before reaching the front.

The machine gun was joined by the sharp crack of Nadine’s sniper rifle, and the rich bellow of Azime’s auto-shotgun. It sounded like she was firing tungsten-core penetrators rather than the explosive Dragon’s Breath rounds she’d loaded during the assault on Roland’s shack. That was probably smart.

“Are you going to do something?” Sardar asked. Roland could smell as fear wafted off him like a fine mist. He heard the heavy hum of a suit-mounted rotary chaingun, and then another. Incoming fire. A few rounds arced and ricocheted off the body of the APC. Sardar and Pedro dove for cover and pulled Ryan with them. Roland didn’t move; his hindbrain had plotted the trajectories of the errant rounds as soon as they’d left their barrels. There’d been no danger. Well, no danger to them. By the sound of it, the power armored Martyrs had pinned Bigsby down. Roland could smell Nadine’s blood in the air. She was alive, but injured.

Will started to fire, and pumped a steady stream of explosives out in a high arc in front of the Martyrs. Roland felt as the men scattered. He also felt the footfalls of dozens of normal infantry, two hundred meters behind the power-armored vanguard. He heard the rich “thunk” of recoilless rifles being bolted into the ground.

Roland puffed on his blunt as he considered the tactical situation. Bigsby and his team seemed to have knocked out one of the armored Martyrs. But they were alone and unsupported. The SDF was in full retreat, and the small squad didn’t have the firepower, or the chrome, to hold off what was coming.

Roland did.

But he very much disliked the idea of murdering several dozen brainwashed idiots. These kids weren’t responsible for anything beyond buying into artful propaganda and lofty promises. He didn’t see them as worse than any other gaggle of armed eighteen to twenty-two-year-olds in the history of war.

“Hey Sardar, you got a wrench?” Roland asked.

“Wha–…yes?” Sardar replied.

“Can I borrow it?”

“Um,” the young mercenary raised an eyebrow in confusion.

“It’s not a sex thing,” Roland assured him.

“I, ah, never assumed it was,” Sardar said.

“Then can I have it?”