I rose to see a kid.

  He couldn't have been older than twelve or thirteen years, a scraggly kid in a too-big, camouflaged helmet. Passive camouflage, bits of dark grass and turf stuck to what looked like a standard nano-poly mold. Dark gray on the inside, splotched reddish-black on the outside. Likely no use against drones. Nano-poly dispersed impacts, not heat signatures.

  The kid had rushed out on a light motorcycle. Electric, low-slung, small but wide tires, fat battery pack beneath the saddle. No armor, no wards. Gutsy, driving around in the middle of a war zone.

  "You alive?" the kid said by way of greeting. He had a heavy, large-caliber submachine gun slung over his shoulder, a boxy frame anodized black. Wooden grip screwed to welded-on holders. The barrel had originally been longer, bright steel showing where it had been angle-ground off. Looked unwieldy, like it's been cut from a vehicle mount. Maybe it had. The kid would need hands of steel to fire it with any accuracy.

  "I'm standing," I told the kid, doing just that by way of proof. He didn't seem impressed. Looked more like he'd wanted to put a bullet into me. Then again, other than getting grenaded, I hadn't given him any reason to trust me.

  I shifted my slimline off to the side, making it clear it wasn't pointing at him. He hadn't unslung his rifle, and I didn't want to give him the idea that I was hostile. Or anyone watching him for that matter. The kid's gun was much too high caliber for the dinky sound the previous gunfire had made.

  "That don't say much," the kid said. He had freckles across his nose, enough of them to look like hives, but they were covered with a layer of dirt. "You company man?"

  "I'm an envoy," I said. "Do you know what that means?"

  He shrugged, as if it didn't matter.

  "Company envoy?" he said.

  "What company would that be?" I said.

  Again, the shrug. Either there was but one company, or only one that mattered. I got the feeling that if I'd been talking to Hao, she'd have raised an eyebrow at me. The kid gave off the same kind of vibe.

  Suddenly, I missed her. Great, thirty minutes away from the Bucket, and I was homesick. Better complete my mission and get out before I broke down and cried.

  "Any chance you could tell me where Rasczak's Roughnecks are quartered?" I said. I didn't think the kid would, but it never hurt to ask.

  "Not telling, company man," he said, flicking a connector on the handlebars of his bike and leaning over in a powered turn, letting the rear wheel spatter me with clods of dirt.

  "Hey!" I yelled, but he was already heading downhill, leaving the high and mighty envoy behind.

  So much for sacrosanct position. Being an envoy was turning out not to be worth the energy to transmit the code.

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  Still, the kid hadn't shot me, merely showered me with wet earth. Why had he come out at all?

  To get my gun. That had to be the explanation. Or to see that the drone was well and truly destroyed, which was the scarier explanation. A force that had self-assembling drones would be hard to destroy with plain guns.

  Except that the New Milletians did have an edge. Self-assembly relied on specialized coms. All it would take to stop them was for the Milletians to use their mages to disrupt them.

  Magic, the great equalizer.

  Not great enough. As I squelched onward toward the Cant City hill, I could see the craters all around it. The craters were too large for something in the fifty-millimeter range. More like a hundred and fifty, or more. Not plasma. Artillery fire, or rockets.

  Who used heavy artillery?

  Someone who couldn't use a bombard to wipe the city from space, that's who. The Fed quarantine was doing that much, at least.

  The kid's bike passed through the marshier ground between the hills and started up toward Cant City. I followed, cursing occasionally as my feet slipped in the soft soil. At least it wasn't wet enough for my boots to sink deep enough to fill. The water they pressed up smelled like salt and industrial waste. Didn't seem to do the grass much damage, though.

  I kept slipping, too much to be explained away by the ground. My legs felt weak and I kept glancing up, expecting an artillery shell to land on me at any moment.

  My wards might stop a hundred-and-fifty mil round filled with Trilex and ball bearings. Might not. Nothing to do but walk, and hope I made it to Cant City without being shot. Crud.

  I got all of two hundred meters up the hill, leaving the wet ground beneath me and skirting muddy artillery craters, when a pair of camouflaged pits opened on both sides of me, two assault rifles poking out at me at point-blank range.

  The troops holding them, a young man and a woman so grizzled she could have been cut from concrete, didn't look happy.

  "Hi," I said, raising my hands out from my body in the universal I'm-no-danger-please-don't-shoot-me gesture.

  It worked, because they didn't fire. I wondered if that was on behalf of my envoy status or my winning personality.

  "You company?" the woman said in a tired voice.

  "No," I said. I figured it would give me more of a chance than I'd had with the kid.

  "You from the outside, then?" she said.

  "Yes," I replied. "Santa Kylie envoy. Mind pointing that gun somewhere else?"

  "Don't listen, Rennie," the young man said. His voice quavered just a bit, unsure or tired. Or both. They looked like they'd spent a long time in those trenches, skin covered with dried mud, eyes red and irritated. The smell was bad, too. Offal, and that acidic spoiled vinegar smell. Maybe they lived in those trenches.

  "You be quiet," the woman, Rennie, said. She lowered her rifle and rubbed her eyes with the back of her hands. All that accomplished was to spread the grime more evenly. "Take 'im to the commander."

  The young man nodded, giving me a tough glare. I didn't fall for it. He looked about ready to fall over, thin and pale. The gun was steady, though.

  "Gimme your rifle," he said.

  "No," I said, pulling back the edge of my coat to show him the butt of my M3, and letting as much cold into my voice as I could. Winning personality was well and fine, but I was getting more and more attached to the idea of having my guns ready at all times. "I'm an envoy. Look it up on your coms. You want my guns, you come and take them."

  He tried to up his glare, but I gave him back one so full of ice that it made him recoil.

  "Stop messing," Rennie said. "Get 'im up to the commander."

  "But Rennie," the man started.

  "But nothing," Rennie said, her words lacking venom. "Man's an envoy."

  "Maybe he wants us dead," the man countered.

  Grizzled Rennie huffed. "He wanted us dead, he ha' brought mechs," she said. "Man wants to talk."

  "Mechs?" I said, thinking furiously. The kid's over-sized gun could have come from a mech.

  "Mechs," Rennie said. "Not telling you any else."

  "Let's go," the man said, waving me on with the muzzle of his rifle, and we began walking up the hill.

  More questions, but I was heading toward the answers. If only I could find the Knife's kid, and a way off this crudmucking world, I'd be happy.