‘I’m ASI!’ Saul yelled over the din it made, raising his hands slowly. His Agnessa, momentarily forgotten, clattered to the ground at his feet.

‘ASI!’ Saul screamed again, dropping to his knees.

Dear God, please let it have a human operator, thought Saul, wondering how many seconds he had left before the bullets started ripping into him.

The drone wobbled slightly, light glinting from one of its lenses as a genuinely human voice emerged from it a moment later.

‘Hey, you’re ASI! I’m picking up on your UP.’

Saul let his breath out in a juddering rush. ‘Fine, can I take my hands down now?’ he yelled up at the machine.

‘Wait a second,’ the operator replied, almost certainly speaking from some temporary command post deep inside the Newton Array. ‘I need to run further verification on your ID, sir. You could have stolen those contacts, for al I know. Please wait just there.’

There was a click and a hiss of static as the operator went offline, presumably so he could consult with some superior officer. Saul bent down to pick up the Agnessa, keeping his eye on the drone the whole time. He kept the barrel pointing downwards as he waited.

The operator came back. ‘Sorry, sir, you check out fine. If you want to rendezvous with a clean-up squad, you can—’

Saul heard the sound of running feet once again, voices calling to each other in Arabic. Ignoring the drone, Saul crawled underneath a bus parked nearby, before turning to look back on to the street.

Two armed men appeared around a corner, and the drone wobbled around to face them. One of the two dropped face-forward as the machine fired several rounds into his body, while the second leaped back around the same corner. Saul heard a subtle change in the sound of the drone’s rotors as it moved to follow the fugitive.

A moment later, he heard a sound like a pop followed by a hiss. Something slammed into the drone, as it passed into the next street, engulfing it in flames. It spun wildly, its gyros obviously damaged.

A second rocket struck the drone, shattering it this time, and sent shards of metal spinning across the rubble-strewn roadway. There were shouts of jubilation and, a few moments later, more armed men came running towards Saul along the street.

He crouched low, hoping to stay invisible, but one of the resistance fighters, brandishing a meat cleaver, spotted him and yelled something that Saul’s contacts translated as a promise to kill him if he didn’t hurry the fuck up out of his hiding place.

Then things got really bad.

First, there was a bright eruption of light, and a deafening bass boom that Saul felt more than heard. The façade of the building opposite came tumbling down, burying most of the men now gathered triumphantly around the remains of the drone.