“Here we go, people.” A sharp whisper, for Jadwiga’s and my benefit.

The rest would already know, advised on the internal net in less time than it takes to form a conscious human thought. “Through the primary baffles. Move on my command.”

The self-propelled gun was past the little huddle of prefabs now. Lazlo and Kiyoka had taken up positions close to the river not two kilometres downstream of the base. The karakuri advance guard had to be almost on top of them by now. The undergrowth and long silver grass along the valley twitched in a dozen places with their passing. The rest kept pace with the bigger machines.

“Now!”

Fire bloomed, pale and sudden amidst the trees downstream. Orr, cutting loose against the first of the mech puppets.

“Go! Go!”

The lead spider tank staggered slightly in the water. I was already moving, a route down the rock I’d mapped out a couple of dozen times while I was waiting under the overhang. Cascading seconds, the Eishundo sleeve took over and put my hands and feet in place with engineered poise.

I jumped the last two metres and hit the scree slope. An ankle tried to turn on the uneven footing—emergency sinew servos yanked taut and stopped it. I stood and sprinted.

A spider turret swivelled. The scree shattered into shale where I’d been.

Splinters stung the back of my head and ripped into my cheek.

“Hey!”

“Sorry.” The strain was in her voice like unshed tears. “On it.”

The next shot went way over my head, maybe homing in on some seconds-decayed image of my scramble down the rock face that she’d stabbed into the sighting software, maybe just a blind shot in the machine equivalent of panic. I snarled relief, drew the Ronin shard blaster from the sheath on my back and closed with the mimints.

Whatever Sylvie had done to the co-op’s systems was brutally effective.

The spider tanks were swaying drunkenly, loosing fire at random into the sky and the upper crags of the valley’s sides. Around them, karakuri ran about like rats on a sinking raft. The scorpion gun stood in the midst of it all, apparently immobilised, low on its haunches.

I reached the gun in under a minute, pushing the sleeve’s biotech to its anaerobic limits. Fifteen metres off, a semi-functional karakuri stumbled into my path, upper arms waving confusedly. I shot it left-handed with the Ronin, heard the soft cough of the blast and saw the storm of monomolecular fragments rip it apart. The shard gun clanked another round into the chamber. Against the small mimints, it was a devastating weapon, but the scorpion gun was heavily armoured and its internal systems would be hard to damage with directional fire.

I got up close, slapped the ultravibe mine against one towering metal flank, then tried to get out of the way before it blew.

And something went wrong.