His final piece was the power and control pack that detached for ease of suit up, but without which Evan was going nowhere. “Switch on!” one tech called. The suit hummed to life, flexing and settling around Evan in a smothering grip, charging the mimetic armor with its chameleonlike ability to blend into its environment. His helmet lit up with a soft green glow as the battlesuit computer painted a head’s-up display across the inside faceplate.

Someone rapped knuckles against the side of his helmet. Dull, gonging sounds. “How’s it feel?”

Like wearing a giant bandage wrap, then being shoved into a suit of ancient steel armor. The bodysuit bunched and pinched, and Evan could tell he didn’t fit the shell quite right. His arms felt awkward and heavy moving them around—carefully—to test his range of motion. His palms were sweaty. How did he feel?

“Great.”

Well, what was he going to say?

His first steps, though, convinced him that he could make it off spaceport grounds. The Purifier’s internal computer corrected most of his awkward wobbling. The armor flexed where it was supposed to, and went rigid as necessary to prevent Evan from listing too far to one side. The effect was accomplished through negative feedback—thousands of sensors arranged over the inside of the suit. When he pressed in any direction, a power spike moved the suit’s artificial muscles in the same direction to relieve pressure. Evan might pick up strained muscles and more than a few bruises, but he’d also come away with a fresh suit of battle armor for the cause.

He stomped over to the large hangar door—still closed, locked, and rigged with an alarm his people could not bypass.

“Everyone ready?”

Some operatives slipped out the side door, stepping over William’s unconscious form. A few others, living in the moment, hopped aboard one of the idling hoverbikes, straddling the forward-mounted machine gun. They’d ride out in style.

Evan raised his right-arm claw and struck it down hard against the locking mechanism. Once. Twice. An alarm would be going off somewhere by now. Again. The housing cracked open, which let him thrust his laser into the housing. He clenched his hand and then stabbed it straight out. The triggering mechanism interpreted his actions and fired a bright, ruby spear of energy deep into the door’s lock.

A light flashed from red to green. There would be no power for rolling it open by remote, so Evan clawed into the metal facing and shoved, rolling the door back several bowlegged paces. Enough for the hoverbikes to slip through.

Evan stepped outside, out of the way. “Joy ride,” he said, his voice picked up by the suit’s internal mic and translated into a powerful broadcast.

Four hoverbikes screamed forward on thrusters, quickly breaking into wildly different directions for their separate egress points. Only Evan knew where all four were heading: two for wilderness on the far side of the spaceport, where narrow paths had been cleared to allow them to pass; two more for breaches that would be blown in the fencing in less than thirty seconds.

Evan pointed his HUD compass east-nor’east and set out in a loping stride that ate up the ground meter by meter. The Purifier ran at a top speed just over ten kilometers per hour and could leap in controlled jumps at forty—maybe sixty—meters at a time. Fortunately, he had the shortest distance to go, striking out for a place where the spaceport perimeter was walled off instead of fenced.

This was going to work.

Or not.

Hope that had barely begun to flare inside Evan’s breast died stillborn as his HUD painted a target icon moving to intercept. He hadn’t figured on anything larger than a light hovercraft, but the identity tag read PK-H9R. A Pack Hunter BattleMech!

There was no beating the light ’Mech to the wall, not when it pounded forward at better than one hundred ten klicks per hour. Evan slowed, hoping to gain some stealth effect from the mimetic armor. If the Mech Warrior inside wasn’t alert… wasn’t watching very carefully…

Evan lost the Pack Hunter behind the customs warehouse and put on a burst of speed to try and reach the wall. The Mech Warrior was ready for him. On twin jets of bright plasma the BattleMech sailed up and over the warehouse, leaning into a long, flattopped arc that angled in between Evan and safety. It landed in a ready crouch, arms spread wide and the shoulder-mounted PPC aimed right for him. The red-and-gold columns of the Fifth Triarii, Liao’s garrison, stood out very clearly, the insignia centered right over the Pack Hunter’s right breast.

Evan slowed to a walk, then a stop. With numbers on his side—even with the scattered hoverbikes—he might have stood a chance attacking the eight-meter-tall machine. Alone, he’d be vaporized by the PPC’s hellish energies or simply crushed underfoot. He readied himself for a suicide dash. Evan would not—could never—be taken prisoner as a member of the Ijori Dè Guāng. He knew too much, and they would find a way to drag it out of him.

The Pack Hunter straightened to an easy stance, swiveling at the hips so that the Mech Warrior could directly survey the nearby grounds through the cockpit’s ferroglass shield. No call to surrender. No warning shot fired. Near as Evan could tell, no call for reinforcements. The way the BattleMech had moved—it had come in fully ready to meet resistance. Expecting it. Instead, it had found a lone Purifier, running for the wall. Not much of a threat.

What was going on?

Slowly, so slowly Evan could count every rivet running down the outside of each leg, the Pack Hunter stepped back and turned away.

Evan took one cautious pace, watching for any sign that the Mech Warrior might change his mind. Then another. The BattleMech stayed facing away, an obvious invitation. Another closet Capellan? Maybe one who had kept his sympathies hidden, or had been placed in the military after his academy years, but never to rise higher than the local Triarii garrison. Evan raced back up to full speed, heading for the wall. Did it really matter, the why of it?

It did, but not right now.

Thirty meters from the gray slab of high wall, Evan leapt up into the air, pointed his feet at the ground. Barely a few centimeters above the tarmac, his jump thrusters cut in, burning reaction mass as they rocketed him into a ballistic hop. They carried him over the ferrocrete wall, and into the woods beyond. Evan tried nothing fancy on landing, letting the suit absorb most of the fall as he snapped down through tree limbs and sprawled full-length upon landing.

Bruised, but far from dazed, he struggled back to his feet. He burst through a thicket and crossed a stretch of train tracks, entering the fringe of Lianyungang’s industrial district. An abandoned factory stood dark and decrepit nearby. Evan went through an old door without pausing, shattering it into an explosion of splintered wood. Waiting for him in the cavernous interior was an old moving truck with back door rolled up and ramp extended.

It was the work of a few moments to climb into the back, shed the power armor, and seal the truck up. Two minutes after that Evan was driving into light traffic, the spaceport and the authorities behind him, lost again among the people of Liao.