Alien Diplomacy

were ricocheting everywhere. “Stop shooting, you morons! You of all people should know bullets won’t work!” They ignored me, but they ran out of ammo fast and went back to running and screaming.
    The metal monsters were well programmed. They had the three humans surrounded, and they blocked every exit. I’d only gotten in and out because of the hyperspeed. Which I hoped meant they weren’t programmed for it.
    I jumped away from the supersoldier I’d run into. It turned away from me and went after Adriana. “The remotes!” Adriana yelled as she rolled and dodged. “They control them! Do something!” I hit some more buttons.
    Not a good choice. Whatever I’d done flipped the “Fire Now” switch. I ran and grabbed Adriana and managed to turn us so that instead of running into a wall, we zoomed around and ran into Amy and Caroline. We all went down in a pile, and the remotes flew out of my hands. I realized I’d dropped Cartwright’s Glock where I’d left Marling. I had no idea where my skirt was. I wasn’t exactly batting a thousand, though my wrap and fancy handbag were somehow still with me.
    “There’s one coming after us!” Caroline shouted.
    There was, and it had everything aimed at us. It fired—and the projectiles slammed into a shield.
    I looked up to see Naomi and Abigail, holding hands and clearly concentrating. Adriana and I scrambled to our feet, I grabbed Amy, she grabbed Caroline, and we trotted to the Gower girls. You only had to teach me three or four times—I didn’t want to knock the Gowers over.
    “Can you stop them?” Adriana asked.
    “No, I lost the remotes.”
    “That means you’re not safe anymore. They seem programmed to not harm the one holding the remote control.”
    “We have limited range,” Naomi said, sounding like talking was taking a lot out of her. Not a good sign.
    “Okay, let me out or whatever. I’ll be back.”
    Abigail nodded. “Hurry.”
    I breached the shield and ran for where the remotes had gone. Sadly, Bryce was diving for the one nearest to me. No problem. I slammed into him and didn’t worry about hitting a wall. Once we stopped I hit him in the face, just for fun. It hurt. And he didn’t go down, though he seemed a little dazed.
    I pulled the wrap off, wrapped it around his neck, and tied it around an exposed piece of pipe. Then I kicked his chin, which sent his head back into the wall. He sagged, and I took off.
    Unfortunately, Marling wasn’t where I’d left him, nor was Cartwright’s Glock, and neither Bryce nor I had grabbed the remote. I sighed and trotted back at human regular speeds.
    Marling had one remote and Leslie had the other. Not good. They had all the supersoldiers firing on the girls. There was no way the Gowers were going to be able to hold a shield against this onslaught for long.
    I went for the weaker link and tackled Leslie from behind. Happily, she lost her grip on her remote, and it skittered across the floor. Unhappily, a supersoldier I was fairly sure was Spiky stepped on it.
    This caused the supersoldiers some issues, which Marling had to handle. I couldn’t really give this any attention, though, since I was busy discovering that Leslie was actually not weak in any way.
    I wasn’t sure if she’d ingested a Surcenthumain cocktail, but I should have been able to beat the crap out of her, and it wasn’t happening. “Did you do something special to yourself, Leslie?”
    She smiled—a weird smile. “No. I didn’t do a thing.”
    She hit me in the gut, and I went flying. I landed on the skirt part of my dress that I didn’t even remember dropping. I grabbed it and scrambled to my feet. Leslie faced me and seemed to ready herself.She cracked her neck, and it didn’t look or sound like a human neck cracking.
    “You’re not really Leslie, are you? I mean, not in what I’d call the human sense.”
    She ran at me as fast as any A-C. But I didn’t think that’s what she was. Titan had made some real leaps in technology with the supersoldiers. Who was to say that they hadn’t also been working on androids? Amy’s dad had been trying to create a zombie army that looked like every guy I knew, after all.
    As she headed toward me, I used my skirt like a bullfighter. It worked. She missed me. “OLE!”
    She skidded to a stop, spun, and went for me again. I used the skirt, but she was smarter than the average bull, because she hit it. I wrapped it around her head, twisted, did a spin, and let go.
    She and my