The automaton that controlled her body took over. Wide beam flash laser first: blind assailants. Bang, bang, bang. The machine mind turned her head, spreading her white hot laser flashes in a wide coverage arc. Not hesitating a moment, it then focused the laser’s beam and ramped up the power, simultaneously initiating her sonic punch. Starting with the machine gunner lying where her head was already facing, she braced her stance and fired, blanketing the prone man with blistering heat and a powerful shockwave. The unfortunate man and the two men holding assault rifles either side of him were thrown back, their faces ablaze with laser heat, all of them dead before their bodies came to a halt, but as she annihilated the first machine gunner, the others opened fire. They had not been totally unprepared, it turned out. They were wearing heavily polarized goggles to protect them from the flash beam.

Twenty assault rifles and three machine guns roared at her, and a wall of lead rammed her against the shed behind her. Lana was stunned as the bullets hacked at her torso and upper legs. As she hit the wall of the shed, the fire continued, thudding into her like hail into a sandbag. Though the bullets were not doing her significant damage, the rate of fire was massive and unrelenting, and she flailed under the blows, trying to bring her weapons systems to bear on the remaining attackers. After two seconds, she had been hit by over three hundred rounds, each travelling at over a thousand miles per hour. Her human clothes were shredded. Her human analog hair blasted from her head as she raged against the punishing blows.

Her reactions were absolutely perfect though, information cruised through optic fibers in her body at the speed of light as she used all her phenomenal muscle power to focus her weapons on another of the big machine guns. As the first wave of the assault rifle team exhausted their magazines, the rate slowed almost imperceptibly before the second wave took up the slack. But in the millisecond gap, she was able to get her head round, and as her vision blurred across one of the remaining M249s, she fired immediately, blasting the placement and killing the gunner and three other seals standing near him.