What was disappointing though, was how the force field regenerated before my eyes in an instant. Noticing that, I swerved to the right, whipping around her toward the wall behind her with the idea that I’d be able to go around her back.

For a change, an idea that struck me as questionable even as I put it into practice worked. The force field generated a pseudopod and struck at me except this time it missed, possibly because she didn’t have as wide a perspective in her helmet or possibly because I’d moved too quickly.

Either way, I whipped around behind her and came around her side, avoiding another pseudopod by going wide. As I came around, I noticed two men out of the corner of my eye. These guys stood near the back of the room next to the wall on the other side. One wore a flannel shirt, jeans, and a tool belt. The other wore a light blue shirt and black slacks. They had the doors open on a grey-painted metal box almost as tall as they were and half as wide.

Boxes of tools lay on the ground next to them. These must have been the people who were being shouted at to fix the teleporter when we came in.

I didn’t have time to do anything about them.

Daniel’s voice sounded in my head, I’ll see what I can manage.

We had that respect for necessity combined with an appreciation of the difficulty in common. I still had to figure out what I could do too, especially since I was coming around and Ana had to have something more to work with than slapping me with force fields.

She did. Even though it felt like she was moving in slow motion, she wasn’t. A collection of spots on the force field began to glow and shot forward like spears.

The Xiniti implant in my head offered up that the Abominators used force fields to puncture armor and that it was still used in the areas of the galaxy that they’d conquered.

I shut it up before it distracted me, dipping below the lines that had appeared in front of me even as more shot out, scraping against my armor, and sending more damage notifications. My abdomen had more than 50% damage though the repair was in process. Bits of ceramic littered the metal platform below me, reminding me more of chalk than anything else.

Spinning, I dipped below the spikes of force, realizing that force fields could thin to the point of being close to a monomolecular blade and that my defenses didn’t work as well as against my killbot tech.

The other thing I realized was that Ana was trying to kill, so I either had to come up with something now or let her go.

I let my momentum carry me away from her and out of range, but not too far away. In the main area of the room, flashes of light, shouts, and the blur of Jaclyn and Izzy’s movement. I didn’t have time to count, but it seemed as though there were more True as opposed to less but not due to lack of effort. Jaclyn and Izzy threw more than 15 out of the room through the now shattered windows.

That wasn’t the only fight either. As I centered my attention back on Ana, I saw that the Amethyst Archer was down on the ground, getting punched by Yoselin’s invisible fists.

Even as I noticed that I also noticed that Ana had turned toward Yoselin and begun to extend spears of force in her direction.

Activating the sonics, I targeted the spears with the smallest circles of force that I could manage while still targeting all of them.

The nearest spears shattered as the power ramped up and the farther ones disappeared once they were directly in the line of fire. Knowing that I couldn’t leave Ana alone for even a second, I decided to finish this now if I could.

Turning my sonics toward Ana, I amped up their power, concentrating the sound on two spots nearest me, roughly at stomach level. Then I turned off the rockets and dropped to the ground, letting power that (according to Kee) I was absorbing from alternate universes flow through me, concentrating it about a foot ahead of my body.

I hoped I’d be able to keep it going. While I’d managed to use the most basic of my abilities in combat, I’d only ever used this while meditating before now and the assumption that I’d “used” it was questionable. I'd been told that I could handle only a hundredth of the energy I needed to turn it into a tool.

As I stepped forward, sonics blaring, an invisible mote of malleable time floating in front of me, the Amethyst Archer glanced in my direction, eyes blinking as she tried to push Yoselin away, but almost as if she could sense something.

Not knowing whether that was a coincidence or if I should be terrified, I leaped toward Ana, the sonics continuous operation knocking her shield down even as it tried to reform.

In two long steps, I made it to her, letting the mote hang in the air in front of me, pushing it forward toward Ana’s chest plate.