Another explosion sounded, shockingly close. She closed her eyes against the dirt and debris. When she opened them someone she didn’t know was wrapping a tourniquet around Jian’s upper arm.

“I’ve got him!” the woman yelled, and started pulling on Jian, started tugging him away, back, towards somewhere.

Zhi Li heard a crushing, crashing sound, and couldn’t stop herself from coming up to a knee and looking. Tanks were pushing forward, into the barricade they’d made of junk, doused with fuel. The tanks were pushing the flaming mass in places, climbing over it and crushing it in others.

“Fuck them,” she heard someone say. Yuguo. He had something in his hand. Like a slate, but not. He jabbed at it.

She looked back at the tanks, and they were frozen, stuck still, exactly where they were, their turrets unmoving.

She saw soldiers, climbing out of hatches, putting their hands on huge top-mounted machine guns.

“FOR CHINA!” Someone yelled near her.

Lu Song!

She turned, and there he was, standing, his giant frame towering in clear view, a huge target, his arm cocked back, a lit Molotov cocktail in it.

They were going to kill him. She could see it about to happen. See that they were about to blow him to bits like they had that boy down there!

“Lu Song!” she yelled, fear overruling all else.

Then the Molotov was out of his hands, hurtling forward, and the heavy machine guns were firing. He was down on the ground next to her, panting. He was bleeding from his brow. And then he smiled.

Pride rushed through her heart at Lu Song’s courage. Love of such intensity she wasn’t sure she’d ever felt it before.

Zhi Li kissed Lu Song before she even knew what she was doing, then she peered back over the crowd. There was fire, fire atop one of the tanks, a machine gunner engulfed in fire, screaming. She gasped in horror, then remembered that this man would’ve shot them, would have killed students in the crowd.

Her lover had killed him instead.

And then other guns opened up, further back.

Guns in the hands of soldiers. Hundreds of them, on foot, with their shields and armor and assault rifles, firing into the crowd as they advanced.

Damn them! Zhi Li thought.

Tanks or no, the Army was coming.

Bai squeezed more nutritional goo from the ration pouch into his mouth. Just a few hours left. Just a few hours and they’d see if the Su-Yong on the cube was any better than what they’d encountered so far.

Before then it would be time to put the chameleonware back on, time to gear up again, time to prep for heavy action.

“Incoming, incoming!” Peng’s voice came across all their radios. “Tanks moving. Troops opening fire!”