The drone had stopped a dozen paces short of the handcart and was waiting for the road to clear.

Beth Miller leaned toward the feed. The cart sat crosswise in the lane, loaded with sacks, one wheel caught in the gutter. No one was holding it. Past it, the street ran on toward the bend, where the lane narrowed beside a courtyard wall and Ellis’s people would be lying in the gravel, waiting for something to walk into them.

“Ellis, your ambush is going to be late. I’ve got a cart in the road.”

“It’s always a cart.” His voice came through flat and tired. “Last time it was a goat. Do you know how long we’ve been lying here?”

“Sorry about your gravel. I’m getting it moved.”

She flagged the obstruction to the range marshal at the street entrance and watched a man in a yellow vest walk up the lane. Behind him, the shopkeeper on the corner was stacking crates outside his door, the way he had the last time they ran this route, and the time before that. Across the street, a man stood in a doorway with a dish towel over his shoulder, watching the drone. Beth had seen him before too. She didn’t know either of their names.

Beside her, Lieutenant Rook said, without looking up from her own screen, “Boundary’s the east side of the street. It’s occupied the whole way.”

“Understood, ma’am.”

“Weapons?”

“Inhibited on all four units. Engagements simulated.”

“Keep it that way.” Rook glanced at the load panel, where the training load had been entered for all four units and for Ellis’s section: blank. She moved on.

The command vehicle sat at the mouth of the street. Ellis’s section held the courtyard farther up, behind the wall. The drones would come up the main street, and one would swing into the lane along the wall to flush them out. Beth had run it four times.

The marshal got both hands on the cart. Beth reached to release Unit Two.

She didn’t finish.

The noise came first, enormous and close. Then the floor tilted and the lights went out. Something struck her shoulder. Equipment slid across the console. Rook’s weight came down against her, hard, and stayed there.

For a moment there was only ringing, and the smell of hot plastic.

The emergency lighting came up dim. The rear corner of the vehicle had folded inward, and through a split in the wall Beth could see the grey flank of the heavy transport that had been trailing them all morning. Rook was slumped across the console with blood running from her hairline into her collar. Her eyes were open but not settled on anything.

“Ma’am. Lieutenant.” Beth got a hand under her shoulder. “Can you hear me?”

Rook said something that was not quite a word.

The screens came back one at a time. Command network: no connection. The local panel showed four units. Two feeds were live, one was frozen on a smear of sky, and one was blank.

A single shot sounded outside, flat and short. The street threw sound around, and Beth couldn’t tell where it had come from. Someone’s still playing, she thought. Somebody down the line hadn’t heard the crash.