The scorpion gun lurched sideways. Weapons systems on its spine woke to sudden life and swivelled. One massive leg flexed and kicked out.

Intended or not, the blow grazed my shoulder, numbed the arm below it and dumped me full length into the long grass. I lost the shard blaster from fingers gone abruptly nerveless.

“Fuck.”

The gun moved again. I got to my knees, saw peripheral movement.

High up on the carapace, a secondary turret was trying to bring its machine guns to bear on me. I spotted the blaster lying in the grass and dived after it. Combat custom chemicals squirted in my muscles and feeling fizzed back down the numbed arm. Above me on the self-propelled weapon’s bodywork, the machine rifle turret triggered and slugs ripped the grass apart. I grabbed up the blaster and rolled frantically back towards the scorpion gun, trying to get under the angle of fire. The machine-rifle storm tracked me, showering ripped-up earth and shredded undergrowth.

I shielded my eyes with one arm, threw up the Ronin right-handed and fired blind at the sound of the guns. Combat conditioning must have put the shot somewhere close—the hail of slugs choked off.

And the ultravibe mine came to life.

It was like a swarm of autumn fire beetles in feeding frenzy, amplified for some bug’s-eye experia documentary. A shrilling, chittering explosion of sound as the bomb shattered molecular bonds and turned a metre-broad sphere of armoured machinery into iron filings. Metallic dust fountained out of the breach where I’d slapped the mine. I scrabbled backwards along the scorpion gun’s flank, unstrapping a second bomb from the bandolier.

They’re not much bigger than the ramen bowls they very closely resemble, but if you get caught in the blast radius, you’re paste.

The scream of the first mine cut off as its field collapsed inward and it turned itself to dust. Smoke boiled out of the massive gash it had left. I snapped the fuse on the new mine and pitched it into the hole. The gun’s legs flexed and stamped, uncomfortably close to where I was crouched, but it looked spasmodic. The mimint seemed to have lost directional sense of where the attack was coming from.

“Hey, Micky.” Jadwiga, on the covert channel, sounding a little puzzled. “You need any help there?”

“Don’t think so. You?”

“Nah, just you should see—” I lost the rest in the shriek as the new mine cut in. The breached hull vomited fresh dust and violet electrical discharge.

Across the general channel the scorpion gun began a high-pitched electronic weeping, as the ultravibe chewed deeper into its guts. I felt every hair on my body rise at the sound.

In the background, someone was shouting. Sounded like Orr.