For a better view, she raised Pirate from his squat behind solid granite. The raiders were about three klicks out. A hovertank with a horrifyingly long gun cut through the tall grass, heading for her left, sending dirt and rocks flying as it made S-turns. A tall ’Mech with small wings trotted at the Wilsons. A shorter, ugly thing with scads of rocket launchers on its elbows was headed straight for her.

Someone with McCallester fired off one of Mick’s bazookas. The tank in front of them vanished in a sheet of smoke and flame. A ragged cheer was cut short as they realized the tank had fired a salvo of its own rockets. The tank was already out of the smoke cloud and gunning for the foothills when the rockets started hitting. One smashed into the boulder Brady was hiding behind. The rock shattered, sending shards in all directions. The miner’s ’Mech fell back on its ass. Count on Brady for slapstick. McCallester brought up the rocket thrower on the left arm of his MiningMech and fired. The rocket went wild, corkscrewing for parts unknown.

Grace held her breath, expecting the next salvo from the tank to shred both ’Mechs, but the tank suddenly lost interest.

A Navajo appeared as if from nowhere and tossed a satchel charge at the tank. The explosion blew the tank sideways but didn’t seem to faze it. The tank’s minigun cut a slash in the valley floor as it went for its attacker, but the Navajo had vanished back into the ground and another was up, shooting a rabbit rifle at the tank. Even at this distance, Grace heard the shot ricochet off the rocket launcher. Damn, even the missile boxes are armored. Don’t those things have any weak spots?

Before the tank could draw a good bead on its tormentor, others were up, shooting, maybe running a few steps, shooting again, then vanishing. Other shots came from nowhere, like a rocket round that went straight but fell short a few meters.

The tank charged in a shower of dirt and dry grass just as Grace spotted a pattern. Had the tank driver realized what was being done to him? A Navajo would appear, attack, and disappear as another one, a bit farther to the left, jumped up, got a shot off, and drew the tank farther toward Falkirk. That was the last thing Grace wanted. The tank’s miniguns couldn’t be let loose among the homes of her friends. Some folks—old, sick or just too damn set in their ways—had refused to flee to the hills.

Grace tapped the throttle and edged Pirate around the boulder that hid her. The attack on the tank seemed to hold the ugly ’Mech’s attention. Maybe she could do something the raiders would remember. MiningMechs often needed knee joints replaced, so maybe BattleMechs had the same weakness. She toggled her Gatling gun to full power. Mick said a light squeeze would send a few rounds out. “Good for ranging, me girl. When you got ’em where you want ’em, squeeze that trigger hard and that gun will cut them a new one, yes she will, a nice big new one.”

Grace nudged the joystick until her crosshairs were right on the BattleMech’s knee, squeezed off a few rounds, and watched as they cut the grass behind the BattleMech.

“Damn!” Grace grumbled as she walked the stream of high-powered 7.6-millimeter rounds into her target.

“Damn it, Godfrey,” L. J. snapped, “don’t play with them, boot them in the ass.” How often had his uncle growled that at Loren as he learned the fighting trade? Now L. J. watched his sergeant’s enthusiasm for the chase turn into a wild slalom. If he did any damage to the gnats that bit at him, no bodies were evident.

L. J. turned his ’Mech to face Godfrey, the better to give him a blistering dressing-down. At that moment the dirt and crud flying from the blowers that held the tank on a thin cushion of air took on more substance. For a second L. J. thought he was seeing rocks and chunks of earth flying out from under the tank.

Then he realized the truth.

The tank had charged into a section of the valley that wasn’t there. What had looked like solid ground a second ago vanished as the hover turbines sent woven grass mats flying. The tank hung in thin air for a second, like some cartoon critter Loren might have laughed at when he was four.

But this was not a cartoon, and L. J. was a detachment commander, and a hovertank may hover a few centimeters above the ground but not over the middle of a deep gully. The tank’s nose dropped. It smashed head-on into the dirt bank ahead of it, then flipped over, coming to rest with a screech of tearing metal and ripping armor. For a moment longer the blowers kept working, sending a cloud of dirt shooting into the sky as if to mark for all to see the resting place of this armored marvel.

“Damn,” L. J. breathed. They’d never get that tank out without a retriever, and this detachment was budgeted on a shoestring. Maintenance truck, yes. Retriever, not on your life.

Then he felt the thud of bullets hammering into his ’Mech’s knee.

“Damn!” he repeated, turning his attention back where it belonged. Slugs ricocheted wildly, but here and there a tiny bit of armor went with them. That ’Mech MOD on his front had some sort of multibarrel gun, and while its slugs might be tiny, it was enthusiastically sending them his way. Slightly off to the right of that tormentor, a second ’Mech MOD with an infrared signature stood up. Then things really got hot.

A river of fire curved toward L. J. It fell short, not even showing on his temp readout. He started to chuckle at these poor jokers’ attempts, then swallowed it.

The fire might have landed short, but it hit a clump of those green shrubs with yellow flowers, and they caught fire like an open gas tank. The morning calm was gone, and the wind now drove the fire right at him. Maybe it’s time to be somewhere else. L. J. turned away from Sergeant Godfrey’s mess, snapped off four salvos of short-range missiles to encourage the locals to mind their own business, and aimed himself at a bit of good level ground well away from the yellow-and-green fire hazard.

The jump was good, right up until the landing.

His entire ’Mech groaned as the gyros struggled to balance him on just his left leg. He overrode the gyros and let his ’Mech settle, left leg bent almost double, right leg deep in a hole that woven mats had concealed a moment earlier.

L. J. tapped his mike. “All hands, watch your footing. This plain is pockmarked with traps.”

“Now he tells me,” came Godfrey’s dry drawl.

L. J. ignored him and concentrated on his own problem. The enemy right was running; Godfrey’s shots had put fear in them. Webrunner was herding the left up the hill. Still, the locals were making good use of folds in the land, and stopping to return fire with single-shot SRMs and two of those dinky miniguns.

L. J. snapped off another volley of SRMs in the general direction of the center of his opposition and got his leg out of the hole. Limping off to the right, he eyed his tormentors.

His first salvo made gravel out of the rock that the minigun was hiding behind. The fire-throwing ’Mech and the infantry were retreating but still firing as they backpedaled. The minigun slashed out at him from behind a new and larger outcropping. Without thinking, his hand worked the joystick to center the crosshairs where he wanted them. Fast as he could punch them out, he salvoed three of his four SRM quad-packs, reserving the fourth in case the first three blew a hole through to his target.

For a moment L. J. thought he might have gotten the joker, but as the dust begun to settle, his BattleMech’s damaged left leg was taking fire again from another boulder. He sidestepped to the right. When that didn’t throw the minigun off, he mashed out another full salvo at his attacker, turned in place, and throttled up to quickly cover the quarter-klick back to where a fold in the land hid his leg. That guy sure is a leg man!