Dust rose in the wake of iron like a second sea.
The desert, which had known only wind and silence, learned to taste the sound of engines, first a low rumble, then the steady percussion of tracks eating sand, an armored heartbeat that rolled across the plain in a line of shadow.
They called the machines Liberty in the yards and drafts of the factories; in the field the men named them by the way they moved and fought, big, blunt things with turrets like the visages of old gods.
They were heavy by the standards of the last age, yet their silhouettes carried a new law: a sloped breast catching the light, a stub of a gun that barked with a blunt, unforgiving voice.
On their flanks, painted clean and new, the hemispheric banner flew.
Captain Lyle rode atop the lead Liberty, the harness cut into the hatch, the sun burning the leather of his gloves.
The desert wind carved sand into the throat of his collar.
