As Duarte died, the mob’s roar faded, then resurged, a rolling wave of sound echoing across the plaza.Dev watched, horrified, as Duarte’s bloody, headless body sagged backward, legs still caught in the strider’s open dorsal hatch, outstretched arms dangling over the Ghostrider’s hull above the primary heat exhaust manifold. Almost automatically, he replayed the instant of Duarte’s death in flashing, freeze-frame images fed from his Scoutstrider’s AI to his cephlink RAM; a trained portion of his right brain calculated possible vectors for the explosive shell based on the snap of Duarte’s head and body as the projectile struck.The round had come from that direction, high and to the right. Dev pivoted his upper body, enhancing the visual scan image, zooming in on row upon row of windows.Infrared. Overlay.Smeared colors, warm reds and yellows, cooler greens and blues, blurred his vision. Literally hundreds of shapes were visible in or behind those windows, people watching the mass demonstration below.
