Four days later, I watched Phoenix Company’s first ‘full strength’ training session.

Sergeant Banner had been pretty clear in his instructions - whether combatant or support, every Guard recruit had to go through the same basic training. What they’d done earlier had been a simple training exercise for a single mission, with pre-programmed steps and only a few minutes of actual combat.

An alien defense was a completely different beast.

Thirty-two Phoenix Company recruits, Nanocloud, and Agni, all fully kitted in Nanofibre Weave combat armor, were learning this the hard way. I couldn’t understand why Banner was so insistent on teaching the recruits to crawl through mud, or try to do push-ups, but the obstacle course and rappelling down the side of a building made sense.

Of course, all the suits had a grappling hook built into them, powered by a tiny Power Pack attached to the belt, so both rappelling down and zipping up the side of a building were a breeze. Banner almost lost it when the Guards shot up the wall in three seconds instead of twenty.

In appropriate drill sergeant fashion, he insisted that they all do it without the hooks after that.

The second attempt took a lot longer.

The jogging and marching also made a lot of sense - we’d have to do a lot of walking in London. Most of the Guardswomen were in fairly good physical condition - which hinted at how long Daisy had been planning this, since you can’t build that kind of physical endurance overnight - but nine of the trainees lagged far behind.

My sister, unfortunately, was one of the nine.

Anne was in good shape for her age - the emphasis being, for her age. Despite her bravado - and her results at Liverpool - she wasn’t an adult yet.

Strength 8, Vitality 9, against an adult average of 10 in each, and a minimum of 12 for military personnel.

I’d started checking on this after Avi Goldman and Shapiro’s observations, and nine out of ten soldiers had 11s and 12s - or better - in strength and vitality. None fell below 10.

Phoenix Company all had 10s and 11s, or better. Donna’s strength clocked in at 13, tying with the Lagos-born Imbiana for the strongest.

Watching the Guardswomen going through the training also yielded a few interesting insights. First, the higher their STR scores, the longer they could run in the armor without getting tired; second, the better their DEX and PER numbers, the more accurate their shooting was; and finally, the highest VIT scores also corresponded with the best endurace.

Unfortunately, Nanocloud was close to the bottom on all scores - both Attribute numbers and actual performance.

Agni - or Nina, as we called her - was close to the top.

In the first run, ‘Nina’ had left her more experienced colleagues behind, both in speed and in endurance. Banner had beamed at her, praised her for ‘exceptional hard work’, and promptly assigned her as squad leader.

Which had led to protests and grumbling, to the extent that Daisy had to step in and explain to Banner that ‘Nina’ was a specialist, not a line combatant.

Which had led to another round of awkward questions and arguments, until I’d finally stepped in.

Fun fact? Banner could tell that we were trying to pull a fast one. Fortunately, he decided not to press the matter and accepted my explanation that ‘Nina’ would be operating a ‘special weapon’ that I had already ‘calibrated’ for her.

Which resulted in my having to make a less than useful ‘Heavy HEPAR’.

Simply put, it was a normal HEPAR with three Medium Power Packs instead of one. In theory, better magazine capacity, in practice, extra heavy. Waste of three perfectly good packs, plasmium, an array and a focusing crystal, on a cover story...

After that, Agni made sure her performance was ‘middle-of-the-pack’. No more standing out.

Banner was a bit more lenient in Nanocloud’s case, since she was supposed to be sitting in the support tent. After giving her a detailed set of instructions to build endurance and a list of strengthening foods, he advised her to stick to a detailed exercise regimen and ‘build some muscle mass’.

While the Phoenixes got familiar with basic conditioning and combat techniques, I had my own practice to attend to.

Specifically, with the Greyhound Armour.

I’d decided to bite the bullet and ask for advice. So I’d sent the suit’s specifications to Doyle, along with a video of my performance at Brahampton, with a request to help work out what tactics and techniques would be most effective against the aliens.

Three days later, I’d gotten a reply:

Dear Mr. Belessar,

Thank you for reaching out to us on the performance capabilities of your suit.

We have compiled the following tactical manual for you. The data is derived from studies performed on 435 different engagements involving powered armor suits used against different species of aliens, and takes into consideration the unique capabilities of your suit.

Please contact us in case of any questions.

Colonel Humphrey Stone

U.S. Army Command and General Staff College

The ‘tactical manual’ ran for a hundred and fifty pages, detailing out different scenarios, situtations, and maneuvers for using a ten-foot-tall battlesuit against the aliens.

Frasier let slip that the Colonel had been pressured by ‘someone’ (cough! Cough! Xavier!) into putting the document together in record time, so he’d had almost thirty officers working on it. That represented a great deal of work.

The least I could do was practice the maneuvers.

I hadn’t spoken about my own skills, of course - that was still a secret known only to me, Anne, and Paul. The maneuvers, however, were elegantly crafted to use the best abilities of the suit.

Military officers seemed to be pretty good at coming up with tactics, even for tech they’ve never used themselves. Who knew?

Honestly, the maneuvers described reminded me of the katas Mr. Saito had taught me.

Less than a year ago…..

Armor katas.

That’s what I would call the maneuvers. Armor Katas, in honour of the lessons Mr. Saito taught me.

My power seemed to like the idea, too. The first Armor Kata I performed triggered a notification:

NEW SKILL UNLOCKED: POWERED CHARGE.

SMASH INTO THE ENEMY, USING YOUR ARMOR LIKE A BATTERING RAM. REQUIRES EQUIPPED POWERED ARMOR.

DAMAGE = 4 X (STR+DEX+VIT). SMALLER ENEMIES KNOCKED BACK. NO AP COST.

Neat, an upgrade to Bodycharge that did 200 damage. A little less than Boar Charge, which would deliver 210, but that skill, unfortunately, was tied to Boar Armor.

Each of the maneuvers seemed to have a simple objective behind it, but only a few met with the approval of my power and earned themselves a named Skill.

NEW SKILL UNLOCKED: SNAPSHOT.

WHILE IN MOTION, LOCK ON TO A TARGET, SKID TO A STOP, AND SHOOT THEM. LOCK ONTO THE GROUND TO HANDLE THE RECOIL, AND FIRE A SINGLE SHOT WITH 100% ACCURACY UPTO YOUR WEAPON’S RANGE.

COST: 100 AP.

Snapshot sounded deceptively simple, but combined with the Mass Driver rifle, it meant I could move into range fast, shoot for massive damage, and then scoot out in seconds. A promising combination, especially if I was to go up against a Carnotaur.

NEW SKILL UNLOCKED: AFTERBURNER.

WHEN EQUIPPED WITH POWERED ARMOR, DRAIN THE ENTIRETY OF A POWER PACK'S ENERGY IN A SINGLE BURST, ACCELERATING RAPIDLY. DESTROYS THE POWER PACK UPON USE.

COST: 250 MP + 1 POWER PACK.

An expensive way to get up to speed, but there were probably some tactical applications.

NEW SKILL UNLOCKED: SHATTERING STRIKE.

OPTIMIZE YOUR HAMMERBLOWS TO SHATTER ARMOR.

SOME ARMORS HAVE SPECIAL PROPERTIES THAT REDUCE DAMAGE OR BOOST RESISTANCE. SHATTERING STRIKE IS THE COUNTER TO THIS. EXPEND 100 AP AND 100 MP TO REMOVE ONE SPECIAL PROPERTY FROM ENEMY ARMOR FOR A DURATION OF 15 -150 SECONDS, DEPENDING ON ENEMY LEVEL.

COST: 100 AP + 100 MP. INFLICTS STATUS EFFECT 'NEUTRALIZED' ON ONE PROPERTY OF ENEMY ARMOR. NO DAMAGE.

WARNING: EACH USE CARRIES A 3-70% CHANCE OF DESTROYING YOUR WEAPON, DEPENDING ON ENEMY LEVEL.

Special properties.... Like the evasion AP reduction from Nanofibre Weave.

SKILL UPGRADE: JAVELIN STRIKE.

LEVEL 2: YOU CAN NOW LAUNCH JAVELINS FROM A MECHANICAL LAUNCHER. COMBINE WITH POWERED ARMOR FOR DEVASTATING EFFECTS.

MECHANICAL LAUNCHER BOOSTS DAMAGE 700%. COST: 50 AP.

Considering how often I used Javelin Strike, the upgrade was welcome. A single Fullersteel Pilum would now be enough to take out a Sarnak trooper.

And of course, I could now build Fullersteel Javelins. A single dose of Hypercaffeine was enough to push me past the 700 MP barrier, for long enough to forge a javelin every thirty seconds. The main limitation was the raw materials - each needed four kilos of Fullersteel - but by now I had enough stockpiled.

The Mass Driver rifle, by contrast, didn’t require ammunition that heavy. The ammunition was a steel core covered by a jacket of boron carbide, making for a compact, hard bullet which weighed about 190 grams.

Much heavier than normal rifle bullets, unfortunately.

Which brought me back to my single biggest challenge with any suit of armor:

Weight.

The maximum weight of ammunition, weapons, etc. that I could carry on my own was 54 kilos. The maximum with the Greyhound Armour - after factoring in my own mass - went up to 150 kilos, but that was it. Any more and the armor’s performance would start to degrade.

So I needed to figure out what was the most efficient mix of weapons, Mass Driver pellets, battery packs, javelins and explosives to carry with me. And keep backup stores on the Gladiator - which couldn’t afford to be far behind, because a single engagement could see me run dry.

For weapons, I’d decided to go with three:

One HEPAR. Twelve kilos, fully loaded.

The Mass Driver rifle. Another ten kilos.

And my trusty Lightning Hammer. Three kilos.

Twenty-five kilos just for weapons.

Add in ten javelins - forty kilos. Five small power packs, each weighing a kilo. One hundred mass driver rounds - nineteen kilos. Ten Fullersteel Pilums, each a half-kilo themselves - five kilos. Grenades and serums rounded out the rest, along with four packets of protein bars for emergencies.

Overall, I was carrying nearly a hundred kilos of gear in ‘loaded’ condition.

Moving in the Greyhound armor with that much weight needed practice. At present I weighed nearly half a ton, so even the simple movements required hours and hours of trial and error to get right.

So I practiced, and practiced, and practiced.

London was coming up soon.