Rose was sat up in her hospital bed, smiling ear to ear as Kayla entered. She fidgeted around while they talked; a sign, Kayla realized, of the frustration of being trapped in a bed for weeks with nothing to do.

“How much longer do you have to stay here?” she asked.

Rose pulled a face. “Another month. I keep telling them I can walk around just fine, but they say the fracture is still fragile. And they don’t let me outside. I’m going crazy in this place, honestly.”

Kayla winced. “I can imagine. Did they assign you a unit yet?”

“Nope. A bunch of slots got filled while I was out, so I’m just hanging around… waiting to hear my fate. How’s the Mountain Battalion?”

“It’s so awesome,” Kayla gushed. “All we do is shoot, and climb, and train. They push us really hard.” She rolled her up sleeve to show off the blood-red streak beneath. “Check that out.”

Rose scrunched up her face. “Gross. It sounds great—I hope I get a unit like that.”

“You will. They know to send girls to the right places,” Kayla assured her. “Speaking of which, did you hear anything about Christie?”

“She stopped by a couple of days ago, but wouldn’t say what she was doing. She’s getting all mysterious these days.”

Kayla laughed. “Yeah, I bet they stuck her in some super-secret spy program, and now she’s living her dream.”

Rose smiled mischievously. “Shut the door.”

Kayla couldn’t repress a grin as she did so. Rose sounded like she was going to break a rule, and Kayla was eager to see it. She took a seat on the bed, eyes wide.

“I promised I wouldn’t say anything,” Rose said, “but I do know that she’s going to be on Caldera.”

Kayla raised an eyebrow. “Oh, really?”

“She said she was going to get an up-close view of your ‘fascinating culture’.”

Kayla took on a condescending expression and mimicked Christie’s accent. “I am, of course, your intellectual, moral, and spiritual better, but please know that I do think of you as a friend.”

They both laughed.

“I can’t wait until we can all hang out again,” Rose said, then looked away as her cheeks flushed.

“Yeah, that would be great,” Kayla said, but the awkwardness remained. Something was bothering her friend, and she needed a way to lift her spirits. “Thandi is excited to visit you on her way out,” she tried.

Rose’s eyes moistened. “I can’t stop thinking about… about how I treated you, Kayla,” she said quietly. “I’m so sorry.”

Kayla was stunned. Hadn’t they put that behind them? She put a reassuring hand on Rose’s shoulder. “Hey, come on, it’s over—lost to the past.”

“No, I just—now I’ve had time to think about it… We should have been friends. We were almost friends.”

“I know, but you were caught up in your world, and I was angry all the time, and we were just kids. Kids are dumb,” Kayla said and laughed.

Rose looked down. “They gave the presentation that first night, and it changed everything for me. Whatever the flaws of Helvetic society may be, I genuinely believed that it was my duty to make the world a better place, whatever it took. Maybe that’s why I was so cruel, because—” she sniffed. “Because I thought we had to get rid of people like you. That’s what they wanted me to think.

“But now I know that our worlds—our civilization—wouldn’t exist without a group of people ready to sacrifice themselves for it. And they aren’t the most wise, revered types; they’re just ordinary people.”

Kayla shrugged. “A little on the crazy side, maybe.” She nudged Rose and smiled.

Rose looked up and smiled back. “I thought that I didn’t deserve any of what I had been given, or maybe that I had to pay it back somehow. That’s what drove me through bootcamp.”

Kayla looked down at her feet. “I was being an ass, too. Sorry—you know I get stupid when I get angry.”

Rose gazed at her warmly. “You’ve changed so much you don’t even see it.”

“So have you.”

“Maybe once I get out of here, you can take me to the village you grew up in. Byford, wasn’t it?”

This book's true home is on another platform. Check it out there for the real experience.

Kayla’s jaw dropped. “How did you remember that?”

Rose shrugged.

“Maybe you can take me to visit that opera you were always pushing on me. The one about the dancer who loses her leg in an accident?”

“I’d like that.”

Kayla paused, hesitant to say what she had to. “I’m going to meet Wes in Rackeye during my leave. Is that okay?”

Rose sighed and looked away. When she turned back, she wore a surprisingly earnest expression. “I don’t know what you want to hear from me, or what you’ll reject,” she said. “Please know I wouldn’t do anything to deprive you of happiness. But I will tell you that you can do better than Weslan Genny—a lot better.”

Kayla didn’t know what to say. She’d always thought that everyone, especially Rose, liked Weslan. “Okay.”

Rose grabbed her hand. “No matter what happens, I’ll be there for you. For anything.”

Kayla hugged her and thanked her for the advice. As she left the room, she paused and was overcome by the need to take a photo of her friend. But she dismissed the thought as childish. There were better places than a hospital room to make memories.

The shuttles in the Tyr-city starport looked unremarkable to Kayla, but one of her flight companions explained that they were anything but. Together with cloaking devices and sensitive anti-tracking detectors, they used advanced engines that allowed them to slip in and out of the heavily trafficked space lanes without drawing attention.

The trip passed with comfortable ease as Kayla spent the hours chatting with the half-dozen passengers who were also headed to Caldera. The shuttle-expert introduced herself as Elmira Aliyev—a combat controller. Kayla listened in fascination as the woman explained that she was trained to create an entire makeshift starport out of a barren patch of alien landscape, to allow Valkyrie vessels to land, refuel or rearm. She was also a battlefield air-traffic controller, able to manage bombing runs from dozens of spacecraft at a time.

“You must be ridiculously smart,” Kayla said, wide eyed with fascination.

Elmira waved a hand. “It’s all just a bunch of skillsets in the end. You can learn anything you want in the organization once you figure out your path.”

“I think I’m more of the gunfighter type. I’m too dumb for the nerd stuff.”

Elmira smiled and winked. “You’re young and trying to maintain some humility, I get that. But Combat Control means gunfighting alongside the highest-level operators. Don’t dismiss it as all nerd stuff.”

Kayla shook her head in disbelief and made a note of the unit’s recruiting office on Tyr. It would be a useful experience for whenever she needed to deflate her ego.

Before long, Kayla walked out through the private embarkation lounge in Rackeye’s starport, struggling to contain the butterflies in her stomach. Jack was waiting in the arrivals lobby, and she ran over, grabbing him in a bear hug so tight that he yelped. She lifted his whole body up a few inches, then dropped him down before anybody noticed.

“You cheeky scoundrel!” she scolded playfully. “You knew the whole time, and you didn’t give me a single hint!”

Jack wheezed, rubbing his sides. “Easy there, girl, I’m not a young man anymore,” he complained.

They took a taxi to have lunch in a quieter part of the city, and Kayla told Jack everything that had happened since her first day. She tried to avoid giving away suspicious details that might be overheard by a passer-by, and mostly succeeded.

“You jumped out of an airplane?” Jack asked, incredulous.

Kayla grinned. “Yeah, that was awesome. I mean, not at first—at first it was terrifying, and then really, really painful. But then later it was okay.”

He shook his head. “That’s a tough group of women over there for sure. I didn’t doubt you belonged with them.”

“Thanks, Dad.”

Jack raised his hands. “In my defense, I didn’t really know that much. I knew Urtiga was something else, but… I couldn’t have told you anything that would have helped to prepare you.”

Kayla waved a hand dismissively, then leaned forward. “How did you meet Urtiga?” she asked.

Jack explained that he used to work for Rayker. She’d used him to smuggle a Jotnar super weapon, until Urtiga intercepted him, explained what was really going on, and convinced him to help Valkyrie get the weapon back.

Kayla listened with rapt attention, stunned to learn how adventurous Jack’s life had been before Caldera.

“Is Rayker as bad as everyone says?” she asked.

“As brilliant as she is cruel. Worse than you can imagine.”

Kayla sat back and ran a hand through her hair. “That’s insane. And she’s here right now?”

Jack smiled. “Your friends know what they’re doing. I trust them to handle the situation.”

“God, I hope so. I always knew Urtiga was a badass, but after what you just told me… now I feel ashamed of how cocky I’ve been around her.” She laughed. “Sure was nice of her to get you out of that situation, though.”

“I bet they do it more than you think,” he said. “I bet there’s a bunch of guys out there in the know, calling in tips and so on.”

“Maybe we can meet up with her sometime,” Kayla suggested hopefully.

Jack nodded. “Rolf would be so proud of you, Kayla,” he said, and she saw tears running down his cheek. “He always thought you could do anything—his little huntress.”

The thought filled her with such pride that her own eyes welled up.

They talked more about Caldera and the things that Kayla had missed. There were more problems with Helvets pushing their business out into the farmlands and stirring up conflict with the locals. Kayla wanted to know about the families she’d grown up with; who had gotten married, who had moved out, who had passed on.

“What about the attacks?” she asked, eventually.

“Oh, they stopped completely,” Jack said. “Not long after you left, actually. It was quite strange, but maybe the creatures got thinned out too much. That happens sometimes—the wild ones are all killed and only the shy ones remain. But these past few months it’s something else. Always something on this cursed planet.”

Kayla’s eyes went wide. “What happened?”

“People going missing. Not around our area, but further west, closer to the mountains. Lots of people. It’s getting serious.”

Kayla cringed, then clenched her fists. She didn’t know how, but Rayker had to be involved. “That sounds awful. Is it some new type of creature?”

“Not likely—they always leave bodies. Could be one of the cartels trying to move in, or just a bunch of psychopaths. Honestly, I don’t know. I’m glad you’ve gotten away to something better.”

“Yeah, well, I’ll probably be dead in a few years, with all the stuff they’re telling me.”

Jack grimaced. “Don’t joke about that, please.”

“Sorry.”

“What else are you going to do while you’re here?”

Kayla inhaled slowly. “Oh, I thought I might visit a friend.”

Jack raised an eyebrow. “I thought you didn’t have any friends in Rackeye?”

“We’ll see.”