I ducked into a cleft between two rocks. If they hadn’t seen me yet, I might be able to pick some of them off before they could pinpoint me. The bright side was that Marauder “partners” weren’t usually well-trained—little more than expendable thugs; With my Aegis combat training, I should be equal to at least five of them. The question was whether I could keep the fight down to that many at a time.

As I thought, they were homing in on Sweeper. The leader waved six of them off to establish a perimeter—which meant those six weren’t looking in my direction. As the other four passed near my rocks, I opened fire with my trusty .357 P226 .

The first three rounds took out the first three thugs—at that range, I could hardly miss—but the leader dived and rolled and I missed. I dived out the other side of the cleft as bullets spanged off the rock around me.

On the bright side, if I survived this and could get him rebooted, Streetsweeper would have plenty of repair material. Now all I had to do was survive.