Two of the big guns left, she thought. Now the fire was noticeably lower than before, but the pounding abuse was starting to fray and tear at her compound skin. They were getting to her. Five hundred rounds of armor-piercing lead, each round igniting as it hit her skin. The few bullets that either just missed her or careened off her toughened shell slammed into the shed wall behind her. From the other side of the wall, her crouching silhouette could clearly be seen against the armored plate where she was pinned. With the massive rate of fire, they were starting to hit the same exact spots on her body two, three times in a second, and even her resilient armor was not able to recover in time. She screamed inside at the flood of machine pain.

Bucking under the blows, her mind was registering each and every hit, and updating her on her status. Fucking gnats! Fucking mosquitoes! I’ll kill you all, you fucking bugs! Beneath her woven skin, a layer of black superconducting shielding was starting to show.

In her mind, a portion of her anger was saved for herself. When the blinding flash beam had failed, she should have immediately changed tactics, she thought. But she turned her fury at her own complacency on her attackers and screamed, then selected another tactical option. Instantly her legs braced and launched her on a high-arching trajectory. The fire immediately subsided as the gunners’ target suddenly went airborne. The highly trained seals instinctively kept their guns on her as she jumped, but the machine guns were tripod mounted, and it would take precious moments to point them skyward. Even the few rounds still hitting her were enough to throw her body back as she flew, but she had accounted for this in her calculations, and her sharp angle still had her coming up in an arc to land amongst the line of seals still firing at her.

Then a wholly different round hit her.

Her machine mind informed her instantly, flagging the round that had just slammed into her chest, even as the impact stopped her in midair. At four thousand miles per hour, that last shot had been vastly higher in power than the others. Then another hit her from a slightly different angle and she slammed back to the ground not five feet from where she had jumped from.