Shortly after they’ve crossed into this new area, a large lizard strikes from the trees; it’s not clear whether it’s climbing through them or flying, but it hurls itself at the truck. The team is alert, and Diamond (shooting its eye) and Stephen bring it down with gunfire before it can get any attacks in. It has a bony neck frill like that of a Triceratops, but it’s otherwise long and sinuous like an oriental dragon, covered in blue and red scales.

There’s a drone overhead, and the team looks up to see a light plane heading north. It circles slowly a couple of times, then turns back to the south. Over the next few hours the team sees two more planes, one heading south, the other the first one heading north again.

Travel is rather slower in this area, and it’s some hours later when the group passes through the wreckage of a small town to find a barricade across the road. They pull up some yards short of it, and Thorfin stands up in the back of the truck and calls out to the presumed observers.

They reply with gunfire, which takes out all four of the truck’s tyres. Diamond and Stephen throw themselves out and start heading towards the shooters, staying in cover from the rubble of destroyed houses; Thorfin follows, and gunfire tracks all of them (as well as David, who’s lying in the truck bed out of sight, but takes a couple of rounds to the armour). Stephen’s able to identify the weapons at 9mm sub-machineguns, not Uzis or MP5s.

Diamond moves in on a commercial building with two shooters on the roof and another in a window; she’s able to tackle them one at a time by moving out of their sight lines. They’re wearing heavy armour, and she ends up shooting them in the face.

Stephen and Thorfin approach a supermarket, and Stephen’s rifle fire overcomes the armour on the first ground-level opponent. Thorfin smashes the gun-hand of the other with his mace, and Stephen rushes to the stairs to tackle the others on the roof; David has shot one using his smartgun camera, and as he arrives he shoots the other from behind.

Diamond moves on to the shooters in the school building and town square and kills a couple more, but they soon break and run; Stephen takes a last shot at two of the fleeing attackers, but misses.

The bodies are all in US military uniform, with an unusual shoulder flash in the shape of a classical Greek crested helmet. The survivor explains that his team’s received orders to take out the terrorists, with a description of the team and their vehicle. Dave Welsh is a Spartan, an agent of the Delphi Council, and clings to his chain of command… but Thorfin explains what the group has been up to, with details of their own Delphi contact, and he undergoes a sudden change of feeling.