“The Guardian?” David asked. “You want to climb up there and wave your arms or something?”

“Or something,” Evan said, turning back the way they’d come and pulling his friends after him. “Come on. We need to beat them to the Grand Arch.”

Ritter Michaelson heard shouts of “the training grounds!” and knew that the situation was about to get a whole lot worse. There were two reasons for rioting students to storm the Conservatory’s training grounds. Weapons. BattleMechs.

That was where the students had first taken control in 3128. Security was tight there, but all it took was one cadet officer with a few access codes and eventually you’d have everything hot, walking and ready to fire. Cooler heads had to prevail before then, before the students caused permanent damage that could not be forgiven. Or at least pardoned.

Grabbing together a small cadre of students and civilians, ones with enough military bearing to respond crisply to orders, he had veered around the larger mob and formed a buffer between the fury of the riot and the fleeing security detail. The gap had narrowed dangerously over the last fifty paces.

“Let them go,” he suggested now, jogging up next to the policeman and two infantrymen carrying the stunned speaker. Two campus police hustled along another man, collared when he took a swing at them. “Pick them up later.”

The j˘ı ng-chá merely sneered. One military man half shrugged. “A little late for that now, we’re thinking.” He pushed along for a few more paces. “Besides. We’re nearly at the Double-V.”

A VV1 Ranger, not an uncommon sight on the Conservatory grounds, had been the second-closest vehicle. Closer had been a standard-issue truck with green “turtleback” shell to protect passengers sitting in the bed. It had waited, invitingly, door open and motor running.

And they had watched as the truck suddenly pulled away, with a burst of speed that belied its fair size, an impressive powerhouse under the hood.

A fast-thinking Conservatory cadet, no doubt, at the controls.

“You and you.” Michaelson tolled off two students who had some brawn to back them. “Double-time for that Ranger back there.” He sent them ahead, to make certain the security force would not find themselves stranded. A rifle-toting infantryman peeled out to jog with them. Going for the Ranger meant pushing deeper through knots of rioting students, but most of cadets knew a losing fight when they saw it and veered away from the organized cadre.

One group did not.

“Free Liao!” a large man shouted, brandishing a short length of broken pine board. He dressed civilian and carried himself in a very nonmilitary slouch, but still he led seven others forward in a push to get at the two prisoners. Most of them were good-size, even the one woman among them. And all knew hand-to-hand.

Which only made the fighting that much more desperate.

“Grapple only,” he shouted to his small band of followers, hoping to stave off anything worse than a strained shoulder or broken arm. He made the call automatically, leaping into the front and putting himself between the stick-wielding leader and the collared protestor. Wrestling moves ate up time. Grabs and throws did not raise a killing fever as easily as elbows and feet might.

Splintered stakes, however, were a whole different matter. The civilian did not brandish it as a club, but instead thrust the broken end at Michaelson’s face. This guy was street savvy and had good weight behind him. Michaelson barely deflected the blow in time, turning a stab at his eyes into three bloody, parallel stripes down the side of his chin.

Reacting on instincts more than thought, Michaelson fell back on Ezekiel Crow’s training in close-quarters combat. He wrapped an arm up and over the thug’s, trapping it, then applied pressure at the elbow with his other hand. The armlock twisted the man toward the ground, and he dropped the improvised weapon from suddenly numb fingers.

But this guy wasn’t without a few tricks of his own. Faking a kick at Michaelson’s groin, gaining just a bit of slack, he twisted his arm enough to bend the elbow and thrust his entire weight forward. The head butt was off mark, catching Michaelson in the side of the mouth and not the nose, but it was enough to knock him back several paces.

The two men circled each other with much greater respect for the other’s skill. Other students ran by, at times cutting in between them as the main body of the riot moved dangerously close.

“Greggor, c’mon.” Another street-dressed civvie ran up and pulled the larger man away by the arm. He said something else, which might have been a code word between them. It sounded like “cursed.” It was enough. The tough dodged back into the crowd and most of his followers with him.

Some of Michaelson’s people stretched across muddied ground, but none seemed permanently hurt. The security force gathered at the Ranger and a second truck, piling in, transferring their prisoners into the back of the Double-V. Putting a man in the turret.

“No!” Michaelson sprinted forward. He leapt up onto a sideboard just behind the passenger door as the driver threw the large machine into gear. The Ranger growled forward into a tight, tire-squealing turn. Holding on, dangling out over the blurring avenue, Michaelson reined himself in to the vehicle’s side and beat on the ferroglass window.

“Get that man out of the turret,” he yelled. “Do not fire on these people.”

The military had greater discipline than that. The double-barreled gun swung around to threaten, but never spoke once in what would have been a deadly chatter. Even so, the effect was not lost on some of the more furious cadets who ran to other vehicles, forcing doors and shattering windows in their attempt to commandeer new resources of their own.

But they would be too late, Michaelson knew, hunkering down in the small space behind the cab, leaning his head out and squinting into the breeze as the entrance to the Conservatory grounds approached. The driver was hell bent on making good their escape, and students in between the Ranger and the arched gateway seemed to know this, and dove out of the way. They had nothing to stop them

Except for the ConstructionMech that stepped into the avenue to bar the Ranger’s path.

Evan Kurst had recalled the work being done at the university’s main gate. The new Great Arch, with its new attribution: The Republic Conservatory. A small work crew had narrowed incoming traffic to one lane while a pair of ConstructionMechs manhandled new stonework into place.

The ConstructionMechs!

He filled in David and Mark on the run across the grounds. They circled behind students and cheering civilians who crowded around the Guardian’s base, holding it like some kind of military objective against all comers. That lasted until someone in the crowd spotted the fleeing security detail that carried Mai Wa and another student protestor. As if controlled by a group mind, the main body surged forward.

Evan let them go, hoping that Hahn was still free to act and that his friend could regain some control over the rabble. He had to get to the construction site ahead of any other protestors with a sudden thought for heavy augmentation.

Close enough. A few dozen people pressed in around the construction workers by the time Evan and his friends arrived, but they were more intent on stopping the work than taking a proactive stand. The workers hefted large metal tools or wielded sharp utility blades. The operational IndustrialMech fended for itself, but its driver was reluctant to step forward into the crowd. It managed a kind of guttural roar as the operator gunned his diesel engine loudly, belching thickened plumes of dirty soot into the air.

Evan ran for the second machine parked by the Conservatory’s outside wall, grabbed the iron rungs, and swarmed up the side of the yellow-painted monster. A worker saw him and moved his way with a very heavy wrench. David and Mark took him down from behind, one tackling high and the other low.