“Getting people out of the way,” Haley said. “That’s what we’re doing.”

The woman in the Eagle suit was standing up, but not doing anything yet. I pointed my arms in her direction, saying, “Don’t move!” The Rocket suit's PA system made sure she heard me.

I was about to tell Kid Biohack that as long as he was getting civilians out of harm’s way, he might also watch for Alden. He was the only one of us with a realistic chance of catching the guy.

Out of the corner of my eye, Vaughn floated in the air and in front of him, but not closely, floated force field guy. The man toppled head over heels without ever touching the ground.

With Alden out of sight, and the energy flinging woman gone with him, it was possible that this was over.

I never got to say anything. Eagle suit had decided not to listen to me. She raised her left arm, aiming the wide barrel beneath it at Vaughn, and firing a series of black globes at him.

They hit Vaughn, but rather than enveloping him in black goo, the globes expanded, sticking to him and to each other. Vaughn struggled to keep himself upright. Two four foot wide balls had changed his profile, and he wobbled in the air, the balls threatening to flip him over.

That wasn’t all of it. Alden reappeared in a blur, running across the grass. Just behind him, the woman I’d called the “woman in red” flew, blasts of energy flying from her hands, all of them aimed with more precision than I liked.

She started by blasting at me, but the Rocket suit held even if the blasts nearly caused me to tip over. As I struggled to avoid firing off in whatever random direction her blasts pointed me in, the Eagle suit joined in.

The Eagle suit, however had automatic weapons—high caliber and tipped with who knows what alloy.

They didn’t break through my armor, but that was only because my armor was made of the best ceramics I could imagine in combination with what I’d managed to learn from similar alien tech.

The force of the assault did knock me back though, and I decided that I’d be better off on attack than defense.

Aiming myself downward toward the Eagle suit, I fired off a string of explosive bots. They hit the Eagle suit, covering spots in black soot.

I landed on the tail of the bots. I had a few killbots on me, and even without them, I had the laser I’d added to the Rocket suit after destroying my guitar. Capable of slowly cutting through the hull of a battleship, I had no plan to use the thing unless she attempted to kill somebody.

You could argue that the bullets she’d just fired were an attempt to kill me, but it wasn’t that simple. She hadn’t fired them at anyone else, and my armor had taken the shots without much complaint.

More to the point, she’d stopped firing them as I flew downward, almost as if she wasn’t willing to risk firing them where they might hurt somebody.

Running across the lawn, I heard thunder and energy blasts from behind me. I also heard Kid Biohack’s voice along with Haley’s. Not having time to think about it, I concentrated on the problem ahead of me.

The woman in the Eagle suit didn’t stand there and wait for me to hit her either. As I got close, she jumped to the side, forcing me to slow and change direction. Now she was standing in front of a metal walled building and I didn’t have the main fight behind me.

Instead we were parallel to the line of buildings with seemingly infinite corporate lawn in front of us and behind us. Something in my brain recognized that as a warning sign at about the time that a panel popped out of the side of her arm and started firing missiles.

I fired off a cloud of bots as three missiles shot from her arm. Not all of the missiles hit me. My bots did their jobs, taking out two of the missiles before they even reached me.

The third missile hit hard, setting off a series of damage notifications centered around my upper chest.

I felt the hit—not directly, but the hit was solid. It knocked me off my feet and onto my back while simultaneously exploding and causing flame to fill my vision.

Because of the suit’s composite view, the smoke didn’t stop me from realizing that the Eagle suit was running straight for me.

I rolled to my side and up to a standing position. She stopped, pointing her arms and the guns that hung under them in my direction. “Nice job with the suit. Those missiles have taken out tanks.”