Getting shot from a distance is a strange sensation. First, there's the impact, or the crack of the passing bullet. You have time to register it. Only then do you hear the gun firing.

  I dropped to my knees and ripped two threads of force from the world around me, up-tuning my armor wards, raising my rifle.

  Bad position. I was exposed, a dark brown lump on a reverse slope. Nowhere to hide, either. The hill was very even here, almost like parkland. Even the craters were absent where I stood. I scanned the opposing hillside through my scope.

  Lots of grass. Their camouflage was good. Nothing on the IR either, so they had to have heat diffusers, meaning they were well-prepared.

  And firing at me.

  A bullet cracked by, followed by the clang of metal on metal from behind me. Something whined, a de-accelerating turbine noise.

  Another bullet, this one passing by as I twisted to look up-slope.

  A quadcopter, a small one, wobbled in the air, its armor flashing as another bullet struck it, this one penetrating the right rotor, ripping away pieces of black biopolymer.

  Definitely a drone, an oval shape less than a meter across. Four rotors in what looked like armored housings. Active camouflage, an image of the sky and hillside shifting on the carapace.

  Big gun.

  What kind of a crudmucker put a gun on a drone? A close assault gun, looked like, big muzzle statically mounted, no swivel. You'd have to aim with the entire drone. Forty, maybe fifty millimeters. The recoil would knock the drone out of the air.

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  Grenade launcher, then. The drone tilted down, spiraling, trying to get the barrel pointed toward the bunker.

  No, toward me.

  I jerked my legs in, beneath the hem of my coat, pushing my conjured threads into my wards, flaring them.

  The grenade launcher fired with a distinct burping noise, its grenade bouncing from my wards and digging into the ground next to me. The soil stopped most of the explosion, my wards twinged where a few pieces of shrapnel struck them.

  Being an envoy was turning out to be really useless in New Millet space. Nobody respected you.

  Well, they'd respect firepower. I swung my rifle around, sighted, let loose a four-round burst. Crudmucking combat drones. Crudmunging operator. Nobody used combat drones.

  The bullets struck the drone as it charged toward me, less than thirty meters away, ripping thin furrows in its camo revealing gleaming metal beneath. The drone tried to pivot, the muzzle wobbling wildly. I adjusted my aim, firing a burst into the exposed back rotor, my bullets ripping it apart. The wobble intensified. Another burst, and the drone flipped over, crashing almost within touching distance, three of its four rotors destroyed.

  It exploded.

  Self-destruct. Whole magazine detonating, shards of armor plating whizzing by my head, striking my hat and coat. One of my wards cracked, a sharp pain in my mind, but the rest held. Everything went silent as the wards in my stockman cut in to protect my hearing.

  Smoke rose from my drop pod, thick and black, billowing from the open hatch. The one that I hadn't bothered to close, because envoy.

  And the drone had lobbed a white phosphorous into the pod. Or thermite, or any other fire-starter hot enough. But if the pod's coms and launch control wasn't slagged, I might be able to restore enough power to get back into orbit. Maybe.

  Something exploded with a muted thump, and the pod leaned over, still burning. My ability to get back into orbit had just vanished. Crudmucking drone.

  Another explosion tore a big chunk out of the side, and I dove for the grass, pulling my stockman down around my ears.

  Who uses combat drones anyhow?