After a non-stop five-hour drive through the night, the team returned to the workshop safe house, where Raiders ran out to meet them. Helping hands pulled Zhang out of the truck to take her for medical treatment, while others crowded around the monstrous corpse, eager to inspect their new enemy.

The medics in the squadron carefully extracted the spike from Zhang’s shoulder, and she could be seen wearing both a sling and a scowl, as her injury excluded her from taking part in the eagerly anticipated assault.

Kayla saw with surprise that much had changed at their makeshift base. Working with Jack, the squadron had arranged for a large amount of equipment to be delivered, trading corkboards for clusters of digital displays and discreet antenna arrays. They were already holding regular teleconference calls with various officers in the wider organization.

A new briefing told her that a stealth frigate—the Banshee—had entered orbit around Caldera to support the operation. To her delight, she learned that the Mountain Ranger battalion’s Bravo company had been deployed and were now stationed on the ship. Thandi was only a few hundred miles above her head, though she couldn’t find anyway to get in touch with her, and she was scolded by Urtiga when she pushed for communication privileges.

“We’re not here for an ice-cream social—get your head out of your ass!” her mentor snapped.

A different approach was called for.

At night, blacked out dropships flew in carrying additional weapons and equipment. While she was helping to offload a box, Kayla seized a chance to thrust something into the pocket of a distracted crew chief.

“Thandi Khawula, second platoon. Make sure she gets it.”

“Clear the landing area,” snapped the annoyed woman.

Part of the drop included Kayla’s combat suit and rifle, which she eagerly disassembled, cleaned, oiled and painstakingly reassembled. Then she checked over her suit’s systems; radios, environmental controls, night vision and infra-red vizor.

But the busy work didn’t quell her growing excitement, which was even costing her sleep, so to find distraction, she pushed Christie to spar with her more often. Now that the intelligence gathering phase had wound down, they spent most of their off-time practicing Jiu Jitsu. This pleased Kayla immensely, because it was one area in which Christie was weak.

“Tap early, tap often,” she teased, as her friend writhed helplessly in a shoulder lock.

“It’s not fair,” Christie pouted as they got up off the mat. “You’re much faster than me.”

“Don’t beat yourself up,” Kayla said with a wink. “Jiu Jitsu is known to be the most intellectual martial art, so I’m sure you’ll get good at it, eventually.”

Christie fixed her with narrowed eyes.

“You need to practice the basics more,” Kayla went on, enjoying how much she was getting under her friend’s upper-class skin. “You spend too much time planning moves like it’s a game of chess, and you can’t even pull off the holds that you want.”

“I would probably be able to practice those moves,” Christie snapped, “If you didn’t spend all day pestering me to spar with you!”

Several days after the team had returned, the wheels stopped turning and the task force assembled into a cohesive whole.

A woman walked around the workshop repeating a loud summons: “All hands in the main hall for the briefing at eighteen hundred tonight!”

Then, to Kayla’s surprise and apprehension, Masey showed up, grinning like a kid at Christmas, having hitchhiked her way down from Rackeye.

“Ahoy, landlubbers,” she said as she dropped her bag and winked at Kayla. “Rookie”.

Kayla nodded nervously. “Hello Senior Chief—”

“Ah, knock it off; you know I was just blowing off steam.” Masey punched Kayla in the shoulder—a little too forcefully. “I heard you’ve been slaying dragons and tracking the enemy. I guess you’re full of surprises.”

Kayla smiled ruefully.

“What’s the deal Mase? Come to defend the base while the ‘A’ team goes to war?” Urtiga asked with a cheeky grin.

“Uh, nope! Since you couldn’t protect your teammates, the Task Force deemed it necessary to provide you with a little adult supervision, in the form of myself.”

“Really?”

“I’m replacing Zhang on your team. I’m going out with you girls. You have no idea how many favors I had to call in to make that happen. Frankly, I think I’m owed it after you stole my operation. The rest of Team Four is borderline mutinous.”

Urtiga calmly lifted her cap off her head and smoothed away rogue strands of hair before replacing it. “Okay, we’ll just forget that tracking the animal attacks was my gig originally. You were only supposed to track Rayker. But, you know, it wasn’t my call.”

Masey sighed in frustration. “Yeah, I know. Smyrna has to have everything in its neat little box. We chase Rayker for years, but now that she is on a planet surface with hostages, suddenly we’re not ‘mission appropriate’ or whatever.”

“If you played the game a little better, you would get your way with the chieftains more often.”

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

“I hate that ass-kissing bullshit. Never been my style.”

Urtiga rolled her eyes. “Okay then. Well, we’ve got Kayla to carry the picnic stuff—I don’t know, maybe you can carry the beer?”

“Kayla, huh? Is that really necessary?” Masey’s expression soured. “Don’t get me wrong Kayla, I’m sure you’re not completely useless, but you are way too green for something like this.”

“I’m up one kill on you,” Kayla shot back.

“Her boyfriend is one of the scientists they kidnapped, and she has some familiarity with the others,” Urtiga explained.

Kayla reddened. “He’s not my boy—”

“So, it would be really helpful to have her interact with them when we make contact. Point two, her ability to deal with the locals is what got us this far in the first place. Point three, this is my task unit, so if you don’t like it, you can go attach with the Rangers or something,” Urtiga finished.

Masey wrinkled her nose. “Well, it beats sitting in cover cars in Rackeye waiting to see if Miss Rayker is stupid enough to take a taxi to the starport. Spoiler alert—she isn’t. Okay Barnes, I guess I’m your new babysitter.”

“I promise I won’t screw it up,” Kayla said earnestly.

“Oho! Miss big boots is making big girl promises. Let’s start with the basics. Did you remember to brush your teeth before bedtime?”

“Hey, just so I know—which one of your units is the best?” Kayla said with a sly grin. “I need to know so I can choose whose advice to prioritize.”

“You’re trying to stir the pot, aren’t you?”

“She’s a crafty one,” Urtiga agreed.

“I guess she is,” Masey said, “but for your information, Kayla, the correct answer is obviously Orbital Demolition.” She sighed and stared into the distance with a pained expression. “It’s tough, you know, setting the example and leading from the front, while lesser mortals strive for glory in your shadow.”

Urtiga nodded sympathetically. “That must be such a burden. All that weight on your shoulders added to the enormous ego you already carry.”

“It takes inner strength—you can’t fake it.” Masey laughed.

“But Kayla wants to know who she should respect the most, right?” Urtiga continued.

Kayla shrugged.

“Well, think about this.” Urtiga raised a finger. “We are both of us extremely well trained and experienced warfighters. We are going in with the element of surprise, behind the back of the enemy’s main force—if the briefing goes our way—to fight weaker, less well equipped, and unprepared human soldiers. You know who has none of that going for them?”

Kayla shook her head.

“Your friend Thandi. Because the Rangers will have to fight those mutated super soldiers head-to-head, and she, with the least training and highest vulnerability, will be right in the thick of it. She barely has any idea what she is doing, but she will be standing in the line with everyone else. So that’s where my respect goes.” Urtiga gave her a significant look.

Kayla wanted to agree because she had been worried about Thandi, but Urtiga’s words also made her glum.

“Sometimes,” she said, “I feel like I’m falling out of the idiot tree and smacking into every branch on the way down.”

Urtiga nodded. “Yeah, that was about how it went for me.”

“Same here,” Masey added. “The graceful ascent of the prodigy is for weak energy losers who care too much what everyone thinks of them and end up reading self-help books.”

“Right! They should drink their problems away like we do,” Urtiga said with a laugh.

Later, Kayla found herself alone with Jack in the garage. She had been avoiding him, but had been dispatched to grab a tool for one of the Raiders, and he was adjusting the suspension on one of the task force’s trucks.

At first she watched him in silence. On the one hand, as her adoptive father, he at least owed her an account of his relationships with the immortal super women she now worked alongside—or waited on hand and foot. On the other hand, the strangeness of it all was impossible to come to terms with. He was in his mid-sixties, while Gucci had the appearance of a woman in her thirties, which could mean she was hundreds of years old for all Kayla knew.

She didn’t dare approach the operator, anxious as she was not to be seen as a complete fool by any of the Raiders. Asking Jack also caused her a great deal of anxiety; she wasn’t sure how she would even resolve such a mind-bending problem herself, let alone explain it to a daughter.

Fortunately for her, Jack was a perceptive man, and smiled as he caught sight of her in the shadows.

He put down his wrench. “We’re not together, if that’s what you’re thinking.”

Kayla blushed. “It’s none of my business.”

“Of course it is. You’re my daughter—I owe you an explanation. I guess we haven’t had a chance to talk through all of this since the craziness started.”

“You never really talked about your old life. Before Caldera.”

“I know I kept a lot from you, and I wanted to apologize. But so much of it was caught up in stuff like this and…” He stopped, then walked over and took her hand in his. “Well, it’s not really an excuse.”

“I don’t hold it against you.” Though his hands were greasy, they were warm and strong and the feel of them made the whole conversation seem unnecessary.

Jack grinned. “Nothing phases you, does it? You get that from Rolf sure enough.”

Kayla smiled as both pride and grief welled up inside her. But, no matter how much her adoptive father told her he loved her, or how proud he was of her, she could never make that inner glow last. While she treasured their moments together, she couldn’t forget that she only mattered because she would make sure that what had happened to her never happened to any Calderan again. She didn’t have the right to fail.

Of course, Jack would try to convince her otherwise, but she knew too well how to switch off the parts of her mind that wondered if he might be right.

Jack’s eyes misted over as they focused on lost images. “Well, the truth is we were together for a while back in my youth, and no, I don’t know how old she or any of them really are.”

“It’s not really talked about in the organization either.”

“They certainly don’t like to put seniority before character.” He paused, lost in a memory. “Gucci’s a hell of a soldier, but it’s like she can turn it off and convince you that she’s a normal person—that you’re way more interesting than she is.” He shook his head. “I shouldn’t have said that. You’re all normal people, really.”

“Extra normal,” Kayla suggested.

“Right,” he chuckled. “Extra normal. She’s kind of awkward though, and probably just as unnerved by… our situation as you are. Don’t take it the wrong way if she’s short with you.”

“Uh… yeah sure,” Kayla said, conscious that most of the women in Valkyrie, including herself, looked up to the Raiders like they were seven feet tall and walked on water.

“But whoever they build a relationship with is shared with the job. That comes first and that will never change until the day they decide to leave—if they ever do. And are you about to tell me different?”

“No.” Kayla didn’t need to think about her response.

Jack gave her a knowing smile. “In the meantime, I was getting older, and she wasn’t.”

“Isn’t that a bit shallow of her?”

“That’s not what I meant. I think it changes you when you watch someone you care about age and realize that you’re not connected to their life. You’ll have to watch them die and then move on to someone new. Personally, I think that’s what scares a lot of women into getting out before they go too far.”

“But not the long timers,” Kayla observed.

“All I can tell you is that they put everything they have into everything they do, no matter how painful the consequences. But I wasn’t prepared to be the cause of Gucci’s grief, so I broke it off. We’re still good friends, but we don’t see each other very often.”

Kayla shook her head, unable to imagine the emotions that either of them must have been feeling. She tried not to think about what the future might hold for her. “After all this is over,” she said, “I want to hear about everything.”

Jack took her in his arms and squeezed with all his strength. “Just be safe.”