​     BAM! BAM! BAM!

     Everybody fired their weapons all at once. 

​     BAM! BAM! BAM!

​     Adam knew that he got hits on all three of the attack vessels. He just wasn't sure he'd done any damage, but then...

​     Just like that. 

     All four attack vessels, Adam's included, came apart. The blast of it blew Adam up and away from the debris the four vehicles created, still holding tight to the now uselss control panel. Good. That was a lucky break. His biggest lucky break, though, was that he emerged from the whole mess relatively unscathed. A gash here. A little bleeding there. That was it. He couldn't hear worth a damn for the moment, but that was all right. It would return in time. Meanwhile...

     Forwarder kicked the control panel away from him while still rising. That didn't last long, though. Adam eventually slowed, stopped in mid-air, then began to fall quickly back towards Earth. He looked below him. He wasn't the only survivor of the mid-air battle. Adam saw the tops of four parachutes drifting slowly towards the Earth. 

​     He went into a diving position and aimed himself for the parachute directly beneath him.

     He wound up diving right through the chute and right into the guy himself...

​     landing on his neck, killing him instantly. 

     Adam grabbed onto the guy so that they both spun wildly​ towards the Earth and wrapped in the chute Adam'd just sailed through. It took Adam a good twelve seconds to free himself from the now useless chute. It was a second chute, the dead guy's emergency chute, that Adam concerned himself with now.  

​     And, still, they were very, very high up in the air. 

​     Adam used his laser to separate the chute from the corpse, then kicked the guy away. He opened the emergency chute, then held on tight. He just about lost it as the parachute completely opened, he dropped so fast. The parachute billowed and fought the winds for several seconds before finally billowing enough so that Adam floated rather than plummeted.

     Then, as he was able to relax a little as he swayed back and forth through the sky:

​     "Claudia, you're going to have the crank the volume way, way up. I've had my ears blown out again. Where am I? What can you get to me?​ A boat? A submarine? Anything?"  

     She responded, but Adam just barely heard her. Boy, his hearing was way out of whack this time. After all of this was over, he was going to...

     He felt something just barely graze the bridge of his nose, like a fly or something.

     A bug this many thousands of feet above the Earth?

     He looked to his left.

     Whoa!

​     He was being shot at!

     By an associate floating in a parachute right next to him!

     Then,  

     Zing!

​     He turned to look the other way.

     Damn! Someone floating from a parachute shot at him from that direction, too!

     He couldn't have that. He'd never in his long life allowed himself to be a target, and he sure didn't plan on starting anytime soon.

     He grabbed the cords on the left side of his chute and tugged hard, which sent him flying at the guy who first shot at him. He tugged on his cords to keep from getting hit, and Adam missed him with that first try. They swung around each other in the sky, Adam fighting to get ahold of him, the man fighting to keep from getting held.

      The associates still fired wildly, hoping to catch Adam with at least one of the shots. Then, ping! he heard a shot from another direction. He turned completely around to see that a third man shot at him from behind. 

​     Damn!

     He was surrounded by firing men in parachutes.

     Damn!

​     "How much trouble are you in, Adam?" Claudia asked.

​     "So much trouble that I can't really talk right now. I'll get back to you as soon as I can, okay?"

     Bullets zinged all around him, so many bullets the associates began to hit each other. He watched one associate twitch with pain as a stray bullet caught him in the shoulder. The associate's weapon flew out of his hand to land in Adam's like it belonged there. Yeah!

​      BAM! BAM BAM! He shot in every direction, hoping to get a quick feel for the weapon. BAM! BAM! BAM! The associates weaved frantically to keep from getting hit. Good. Keep them on the defensive. Adam figured that was the best way to...

     BAM! BAM! BAM!

​     Damn!

                                                    CONTINUE