Legacy by James H. Shmitz, Science Fiction, Adventure, Space Opera (Hardcover)

Half a block from the shopping center, a row of spacers on planet-leave came rollicking cheerily toward her. . . . Trigger shifted toward the edge of the sidewalk to let them pass. As the line swayed up on her left, there was a shadowy settling of an aircar at the curb to her right.

With loud outcries of glad recognition and whoops of laughter, the line swung in about her, close. Bodies crowded against her, a hand was clapped over her mouth. Other hands held her arms. Her feet came off the ground and she had a momentary awareness of being rushed expertly forward.

There was a lurching twist as the aircar shot upward.

SHE'S ABOUT TO ENTER THE MYSTERY OF HER LIFE -- IN LEGACY

Ancient living machines that after millennia of stillness suddenly begin to move under their own power, for reasons that remain a mystery to men. Holati Tate discovered them -- then disappeared. Trigger Argee was his closest associate -- she means to find him. She's brilliant, beautiful, and skilled in every known martial art. She's worth plenty -- dead or alive -- to more than one faction in this obscure battle. And she's beginning to have a chilling notion that the long-vanished Masters of the Old Galaxy were wise when they exiled the plasmoids to the most distant and isolated world they knew. . . .