I smiled. “Hiding in plain sight, I love it.”

The hovertruck had been decorated also, with hand-painted wooden signs proclaiming it to be a float created by the United Farmers for Good Food. More bunting and garlands softened the vehicle’s outline. Golden flowers strung in a wire mesh and lots of green streamers transformed the heavy machine gun into a large ear of corn, which prompted Falcon to note proudly, “It’ll be popcorn tomorrow.”

Had I not told Handy I’d leave the help alone, I’d have dropped him for that one.

Everyone was a bit giddy that night, but we retired to our pallets and tried to sleep. Letitia ended up writing a letter to someone—by hand, on paper. She entrusted it to me, since I’d not be in the vehicle. Steve checked things one more time, and Falcon ate through his nerves. Jiro meditated and, as a consequence, appeared the most energetic the next morning.

I mounted up in the ’Mech we’d all nicknamed Digger—hardly original, but decidedly functional. On the secondary monitor I brought up the local Tri-Vid feed with some of the glamorati doing play-by-play on the parade. Once we saw Reis in his open hovercar reach the intersection of Grand and Independence, we started to move. By the time we got into position, he’d be in the grandstands watching folks troop past.

The hovertruck cut a course parallel to mine, on a road that I couldn’t take. Digger moved out fairly quickly and Letitia held the hovertruck back to keep me in sight on cross streets. I took a ’Mech route, which worked out very well, since the pressure sensors under the roadbed would switch traffic signals to give me a straight shot through the town. On occasion, when a ’Mech moves through a city like that, some hotshot in a small sports-hover will dart around and take advantage of the clear sailing. All it takes, though, is one careless kick and the sports-hover will do a tumble and roll that is far from pretty and hurts a lot.

The entrance to the garage was on the south side of the precinct building and I was coming in from the north. I cut along a side street going south, leaving half-meter-deep tracks in the roadbed. Digger handled easily enough that I made both turns without much effort. As I mashed my thumb down on the righthand joystick, the digging claws started their rotation with a loud whine that devolved into a wonderful grinding noise.

One stroke and the ferrocrete sidewalk came up in chunks that bounced into the street. The claws trenched the roadbed a meter deep with ease and the debris was sufficient to cut off traffic from the east. Nothing was going into or out of that garage.

The hovertruck pulled up on my left as I brought the digging claws up and stabbed them at the precinct house. I started burrowing in at the southeast corner and cutting west, looking to open up the evidence room and the armory. Once I had the building open, I’d lift Steve and Jiro in, they’d load, and we’d go.

Unfortunately, that was when things started to go bad.

The digging claws jammed and froze before I’d done much more than cat-scratch the building’s ferrocrete. I keyed the radio to the tactical frequency I shared with the hovercar. “I have a fault, might have to restart the software.”

Letitia remained calm. “Claws look clear from outside.”

“Roger, give me a second here.” I raised the grinding arm and smacked it down on the sidewalk, hoping to unfreeze it. I felt the jolt on up into the cockpit and it did the trick. The digging claws started again, but I wasn’t ready for it. The claws slashed deep through the sidewalk and yanked Digger forward and to the right. They slashed through a water main, sending a geyser into the air, which washed over my ’Mech and shorted out the auxiliary power unit, since it had the lights plugged into it and was exposed.

“What are you doing, Donelly?”

“No names, idiot!” I stopped the digging and yanked the blade free. I twisted around to look at the hovertruck just in time to see Falcon angle the corncob up and rake the second-story windows with bullets. They shattered glass and spanged off ferrocrete. I didn’t see him hit anyone, but other windows burst outward and we all started taking fire from within the building.

And a lot more fire than we should have been taking.

“Move it! Go, run! This op is busted. They were waiting for us!” I raised the digging arm and used it to shield the hovertruck, but saw Jiro blasted off the back of it. He rolled for a bit, leaking a lot. More bullets chewed up the road near him and his body jerked with impacts.

Letitia whipped the hovertruck around and jumped the far sidewalk to work around the debris I’d tossed up. As she sped east, two Constabulary vehicles tried to cut her off, but she nosed the truck right between the two of them, sending them spinning off into a couple of boutiques. The hovertruck slew around through a 360, but she got it back under control. Somewhere in there she lost Falcon. I didn’t see a body, but there was a smashed glass window in a china shop where he could have been flung.

Constabulary vehicles began to close in on me. CDRF officers hung from every running board and out every window, peppering Digger with submachine-gun fire, which the ’Mech didn’t even feel. I stabbed the digging blade down at the geyser and redirected a flood toward the nearest hovercar. The water knocked it askew and I started moving west. A quick cut north would bring me to the ’Mech route and I’d be able to move faster, just because the roadbed wouldn’t give.

It was really the only escape route I had.

And Lady Janella Lakewood managed to figure that out.

Moving in from the west, she brought a Centurion into the intersection. As BattleMechs go, it’s a fine-looking machine. Humanoid in configuration, it has a huge cannon for a right hand, and a missile-launching rack built into the left breast. It sports a laser in the torso and moves fairly quickly. It outmassed my MiningMech, and definitely outgunned it.

I flicked my radio over to the emergency frequency. “Op Nine was blown, team broken. Get going.”

I got nothing back from Handy, but I really didn’t expect to. A light began to blink on my console, so I punched it, which flicked me over to a frequency Lakewood was using. “Got something to say?”

“Had intercepts not told me who you were, the insolence would have. Give it up, Mr. Donelly.”

Had it not been for the condescension in her voice, I might have just shut Digger down, but I couldn’t. Without replying I cut west. Now, if you’d been reading closely, you’d be wondering why I would go west when there wasn’t a roadway there. It was precisely because there was no roadway there that I chose to go that way. While there wasn’t a road, there was a wide alley used for deliveries and I started charging down it as fast as Digger could go.

It really must have been quite a sight. The ’Mech’s shoulders scraped sparks from the buildings on both sides. Metal fire escapes screamed as Digger ripped them free, and clotheslines added more fluttering decorations to my ’Mech. In one of those very weird slice-of-life moments, I saw a man in his underwear, the T-shirt creeping up over his belly, watching his Tri-Vid set as I raced past and carried away his wooden balcony.

He never even batted an eye.

While the dash into the alley surprised Lakewood, it doomed me. The ’Mech’s holographic display managed to condense 360 degrees into about 160, which showed a narrow alley behind me, and a Centurion turning to stab its autocannon muzzle at my back. Hemmed in as I was by buildings, I could do nothing but watch.

Light flickered, spent cannon shells arced; then Digger’s left leg jerked. It somersaulted foot over knee further into the alley, bouncing off one building, crushing a Dumpster, then wedging tight. Digger’s next step, which would have been with that leg, jammed the severed knee joint into the ground. It punched through the ferrocrete and stuck fast, slinging the ’Mech around to the right before the whole hip assembly shrieked and popped free.