“ ‘Scuse me, Mr. Johansson,” Tiger Pansy said. “Where do you want me for the attack?”

“I think, dear lady, you would be safest here with Qatux.”

“Hey, no way. That’s not what Qatux wants. The action is with you guys.”

“I see.”

“She can come with me,” Olwen said. “I’m driving the second armored car. It’s as safe as anywhere’s going to be today.”

“That’s really kind,” Tiger Pansy said.

“All right then,” Bradley said. “Let’s go. May the dreaming heavens welcome all of us.” He took out his pendant, a small clear stone with a tiny turquoise glow at the center, and kissed it before tucking it down into his armor again.

Behind him, Qatux hooted softly. Tiger Pansy was giving him a strange look. “Cool,” she crooned.

Bradley pulled his helmet on, and told his e-butler to seal the collar. The armored car’s engine was growling as he settled himself into the forward passenger bench. He pulled sensor images from all three armored cars out of his grid, then opened channels to both Cat’s Claws and the Paris team. The image that filled his virtual vision was looking down on the Starflyer convoy, which still hadn’t moved. All around it, the clan warriors were withdrawing, widening the circle.

“Everyone ready?” he asked.

As the confirmations came in, he checked on the motiles. Their vehicles were now only eleven kilometers away. Eighty clan warriors were riding fast toward them.

“Stig, Olwen, Ayub, fire the zone killers, please.”

The armored cars rocked slightly as the delta-shaped weapons burst up out of their launchers. Sensors briefly captured the three of them tracing a fast arc through the sky above Highway One. Distorted, superheated air churned in their wake.

Kinetic cannons mounted on the Land Rover Cruisers tracked around to the vertical and opened fire. They were answered by a massive barrage of ion rifle fire from the encircling band of clan warriors. Dazzling blue-white pulses sleeted in like a constricting noose of sheet lightning. Hyper-rifle shots and Alic’s particle lances ripped down from the top of the rise.

“Focus on the Starflyer,” Bradley yelled. Fire lines swept inward toward the MANN truck and its shiny capsule. A hundred meters above it, three zone killers detonated. The triple cataracts of emerald twinkle-points descended with slow grace to submerge all the convoy vehicles in a translucent corona. For a second they lay entombed within the glowing shroud like insects in amber.

The ground exploded. Huge gouts of soil and rock streaked up into the sky, obliterating all sight of the convoy. Fireballs from ruptured fuel tanks bloomed within the undulant dirt, to be snuffed out almost immediately. Bradley felt the blast wave strike the armored car, rocking it slightly. Dozens of Charlemagnes bolted, oblivious to the riders clinging to their backs, several toppled over. The cloud of pulverized rock fragments and gritty soil began to dissipate.

A section of Highway One three hundred meters long was completely missing. The ground around it had been reduced to a concave circle of raw smoking soil. Right at the center of the blast maar, the MANN truck sat completely intact; cloying dust motes slithered down its force field as the sunlight returned to glint off its shiny aluminum capsule. Seventeen Cruisers had also survived the zone killers, their force fields glowing like radioactive bubbles around them. Scraps of wreckage from the other vehicles were scattered across the pulverized earth, flames chomping eagerly at their plastic elements. There was no sign of any bodies.

“Dreaming heavens, doesn’t anything touch it?” Stig demanded.

“Go!” Bradley told him.

The armored car lurched forward to race down the remaining strip of road, gathering speed.

Morton had been surprised when the debris plume swirled away. He really hadn’t expected to see the MANN truck intact. His hyper-rifle had fired shot after shot at the stubbornly resistant force field cloaking the silvery capsule before and during the zone killer strike. He’d fired two HVvixen missiles into the melee. Beside him, Alic’s twin particle lances had boomed away, splitting the air with incandescent energy.

“Holy fuck,” Rob spat in amazement. “We never even scratched it.”

“That’s why they call them juggernauts,” the Cat told them with her usual peppy humor.

“The Starflyer gave the Commonwealth force field technology by all accounts,” Alic said. “Looks like it kept the best bits for itself.”

Bradley’s shouted command filled the general communications band. The armored cars began to drive hell-for-leather down the gradual slope. Morton took off beside them, body angled forward, moving with a simple fast loping movement, allowing Far Away’s low gravity to carry him in short arcs above the road between each footfall. His hyper-rifle folded back into its forearm recess while he was on the move. Accelerants began to fizz into his bloodstream, sharpening up his thoughts, binding the interface with his suit even tighter. Nerve strands lost their slackness, contracting to taut conduits that provided instantaneous responses, so tight he could hear them humming. The tactical display in his virtual vision graded up to an even faster refresh rate. Suit sensors showed him the clan warriors reeling their blast-spooked warhorses back under control, and turning back toward the remnants of the convoy. Cruisers opened up with kinetic rapid-fire guns. Long lines of soil in front of the charging horses were ripped up as they ranged in, then the lethal wall of projectiles was chewing through flesh and bone. The front rank of horses died as their legs were triturated beneath them, dropping their bulk into the horizontal fire plane. Their mortal screams seared straight into Morton’s electrified nervous system as they vanished beneath swirling plumes of blood and gore. Inside the scarlet fog, force field skeletons flared amber as riders tumbled to the ground. The second rank rode onward over the steaming gobbets of meat. Morton’s sensors pulled in a swift sequence of images, flicking along the remaining riders to capture faces contorted with rage, hanging on to reins with one hand while they fired off wild shots with ion carbines and lasers. Then they began to fall as the Cruisers continued their fusillade.

“Call them back,” Morton screamed into the general channel. “Get them out of there!” He deployed two plasma carbines and started bombarding one of the Cruisers with pulses. They broke apart into energy flares that whipped impotently across the translucent boundary.

Mortars fired by the McSobels began to land amid the Cruisers, disrupting their fire as force fields hardened temporarily against the electron squalls. Loiter missiles sailed overhead, waiting for the moment when the kinetic fire resumed to slam down hard.

The Barsoomians opened fire. Streaks of violet light hammered into the Cruisers, almost invisible against the sapphire sky. Morton’s tactical software couldn’t classify the weapons at all. The force fields began to glow a perilous rose-gold.

Short-range defense X-ray lasers on the armored cars opened up. Stig and the other drivers coordinated their attack, concentrating on one Cruiser. Morton’s aim shifted with accelerant lubricated precision to join the barrage.

They were halfway down the slope now, ranged at four hundred seventeen meters from the MANN truck. Thick clouds of diesel gushed up out of its vertical exhaust pipes behind the cab, and it started to rumble forward.

“Don’t go,” the Cat yelled at it. “That’ll make me cross.”

The Cruiser they’d been concentrating their firepower on exploded. Morton watched in dismay as the Guardians continued to ride into the kinetic guns. “They’re being slaughtered,” he shouted accusingly.

“We are where we’re meant to be,” Scott replied levelly.