“How are you doing?” Mateo’s voice sounded in my head. “We’re a few floors in. We haven’t run into anyone, but there are definitely vampires.”
“Busy,” I said. “Two people in powered armor so far. Might be more.”
“Got it,” Mateo said. “Don’t be afraid to retreat or call for more help. We’ll keep you inford of what we’re doing. Do the sa.”
And with that, he closed the connection and I stopped listening. The two figures in powered armor were tailing and gaining—which didn’t surprise . I’d designed the V4 armor with the idea that it would be bigger and stronger than the Rocket suit, but spend less ti in the air.
I wasn’t going to outrun them. The V4 suit’s flight system was designed to help in hand to hand combat. So, despite the suit’s size, the new armor beat any powered armor I’d seen in agility—probably. The system was based on a combination of anti-gravity, inertial dampers, small rockets for directional changes, and making use of the speed of my thought by using the implant for the controls.
In short, it was a complex, untried, experintal system that had the potential to go horribly wrong and this was its first big test.
The people facing on the other hand? A spray of the suit’s sensors showed that they were using Rocket tech.
I recognized design elents in the knee joints, the rocket pack on the back, and the shape of the body. What struck as strange in the mont was that Syndicate L’s designer hadn’t copied my grandfather. He’d copied from . Those design changes were from the last two years.
Giving the suits a closer look, they still seed to echo Syndicate L designs that I rembered—wide, transparent face masks for maximum peripheral vision, and the organic look of the underarm automatic rifles.
Peppering with bullets, the pilots gave the latest of many illustrations of the fact that getting distracted during combat was a bad idea.
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I’d learn that lesson soday.
In the anti, bullets were hitting my armor, most of them bouncing off. Then a series of three hit my leg and exploded, setting off error ssages as the suit started to repair the damage.
I felt the heat. At least one of them had penetrated the suit’s outer layer—which was not supposed to happen.
I needed to end this fight before they blew my leg off or, given the size of the V4 armor, my foot.
Turning around with a speed that should have turned to paste or at least hurt , I found myself directly in front of the first attacker.
Through the transparent face mask, the man’s eyes widened, and I knew why. When I’d been testing the tech, I’d watched the early versions of the armor move. They made quick movents that included jerky, stuttering stops.
It didn’t look natural.
I don’t know if it helped my punch. I threw it forward as I finished my turn, the suit’s strength assisted by directional rockets and my opponent’s own montum.
I hit him at the joint of his right shoulder—my intended target—and pulled back before the montum from my punch threw him sideways.
As he moved into upward and to my left, twirling and out of control, he only missed the suit behind him by inches. The second suit dodged to the right avoiding him. For a mont neither of them were moving in my direction, giving ti to flashback to details that I thought I’d seen, but wasn’t sure.
First, I’d smashed the shoulder joint. He shouldn’t be able to aim his rifle much at all.
Second, the pilot had a grey complexion and elongated canines but otherwise appeared to be in his forties. He flew well enough that had to have been recently turned.
Even as I began to wonder how I’d stake a vampire wearing powered armor, the second suit shot toward , firing away. I weaved around, dodging to the degree that I could, but better, weaving enough that I ca at the second suit from its side, firing my paralysis weapons and finding that it didn’t show any effect.
So, I punched it, knocking the armor backward and getting a good enough look to notice that the pilot was a female twenty-sothing with short hair and elongated canines as well.
It was a good punch. She flipped over a couple of tis and hit Book Tower, smashing a statue of a naked man.
The statue’s remains dropped toward the sidewalk 38 stories below, shattering, but not hitting anyone. The sidewalks were empty this early in the morning, but that wouldn’t last.
“What is my goal?” I asked myself and answered in my head. I was trying to distract whoever was inside from Mateo and Vincent so that they could get up the tower and we could take Barrington out.
Winning this fight was optional. What I needed to be doing was pissing people off.
I might be out of EMPs, but I had additional missiles and it was ti to use them.
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