The walker had a blocky cockpit where the pilot was seated, mounts for two sets of missile launchers, and articulated arms that were equipped with shovel-hands instead of the autocannons Jim had seen in the vids. But the armored body and sturdy legs were the way he remembered them.

With the exception of the machine’s cockpit, which was painted dark blue, the rest of the goliath was red. A unit number was visible on both sides of the cockpit, and four dropship-shaped silhouettes had been painted onto the area just below the front canopy, along with that of a Hellhound—the Kel-Morian equivalent of the Confederacy’s Avenger fighter craft. The mech was relatively clean except for a thin patina of dust, and the flags that had been flying so proudly a few minutes before hung motionless as if drained of spirit.

Trace Raynor’s truck rattled as the engine shut down, the door opened, and he jumped out. He had a shock of gray hair, a neatly trimmed beard on a face so weathered it resembled a topographical map, and a body without an ounce of fat on it. His brown eyes were bright with anger as he came over to stand next to his son. “First the bastards raise our taxes so high we can barely pay them—and now they send a machine to trample our crops! They might as well shoot us and put us out of our misery.”

Jim understood his father’s resentment, but wondered about the wisdom of saying such things out loud, especially if the goliath was equipped with external audio pickups. But the thought was preempted as servos whined, and the canopy above what was painted to look like a snarling mouth opened to reveal the cockpit within. A uniformed marine rose to wave at them. “Good morning, folks!” his much-amplified voice said, booming through twin speakers. “My name is Farley … Gunnery Sergeant Farley… . I’ll be down in a sec.”