Kayla packed her thoughts away into a little disturbed corner of her mind marked ‘Later’, and headed for the briefing. She entered the main hall of the workshop, caught a nod from Urtiga, and went to stand at the back of the crowd of soldiers.

The expansive monitors showed camera feeds of smartly uniformed women; including, from her unique uniform, the Captain of the Banshee, a few senior generals Kayla didn’t recognize, and the Commanding Officer of the Mountain Ranger Battalion. Information was whispered back and forth around the room as they waited to hear what would happen next.

Kayla found Christie, flashed her an excited smile, and gave her arm a squeeze. She was far out of her depth in the operation, and it was nice to have company.

“Is everyone present?” A woman by the monitors said.

She looked older, in her sixties or seventies, and was a head shorter than most of the others present. Kayla didn’t recognize her, but when she studied the name tag, she realized with a shiver that she was looking at Chieftain-General Symrna.

This was a human being who, if the rumors were true, had lived longer than entire civilizations. As far as Kayla was concerned, she had lived alongside the remnants of the creators of the very technology the task force was trying to destroy.

Her uniform was blank, with no medals or identification beyond the tag, and a small badge Kayla hadn’t seen before in the organization. She squinted as she tried to make out the shape, which seemed to be a pair of wings, with pinions that stabbed downward like spears.

Smyrna spoke again, with a thick accent that Kayla couldn’t place, and from the look on her face, she didn’t tolerate fools easily.

“I have only one thing to say before I let you begin,” she said in a cold voice. “Scientists from the Collective have completed their analysis of the remains you gathered. There is nothing else like it in our records—the sophistication of this creature surpasses anything we have previously taken from the Jotnar. But this is a colonized world, cleared more than a century ago. Who will explain to me how this kind of technology was shrouded from our scans?”

She turned to Jiao Zhang, who stood nearby, looking particularly ill at ease.

“Well, ah…General,” Zhang said, “as you know, we run high fidelity scans of all potential colony worlds before any humans attempt a landing. We look for any anomalous signals, uh… of any kind, really. Caldera was scanned in depth, and we have that historical data. There were no readings anywhere on the planet we would have wanted to investigate further.

“The Banshee,” Zhang continued, “has imaged every inch of the mountain range and come up with nothing unusual, so it seems logical to conclude that this base is underground, possibly built into a natural cave system. Right now, the crew are throwing every kind of undetectable scan we can think of at those mountains to try and get a return.”

“This soldier,” Smyrna nodded to an impassive Urtiga, “claims we must be dealing with an installation far more advanced than any Jotnar site yet encountered. They have already stayed hidden for so long—what gives you faith that our scans are ‘undetectable’?”

Zhang went white and turned to the monitor that showed the Banshee’s Captain as she drew her hand across her neck. Orders were quickly given. Someone in the main hall chuckled.

“I expect better from all of you,” said Smyrna, with an unwaveringly calm expression. “I see two of you I remember from centuries past. I see none of the old guard. The laughing soldier here is amused, is she?” She pointed directly at the offender, who looked down at her boots. “The joke is that the enemy might even now be alerted, I gather? And tomorrow kill more of our comrades?”

“No ma-am,” the woman said quietly.

“Guard eternal vigilance. Continue, Major.”

Zhang cleared her throat before she spoke again. “So, ma’am, as I was saying, our initial scans came up short, but that’s not unusual. We have occasionally seen other military installations that didn’t show up on planetary scans, and we were able to locate them by exhaustive analysis of various Jotnar databases. This location is not listed in any data from any previously exploited site.”

Smyrna was silent for some time before she spoke. “This is a troubling revelation. A matter for the Chieftains to discuss. Now, we must decide how to proceed. I await your thoughts.”

There was an awkward silence. Kayla was shocked to see that nobody, even the Raiders, wanted to speak first.

“Infiltration team,” offered Zhang. “We could have operators dress up like an exploration expedition, walk around, wait to get captured or find something—tap the panic button to broadcast the location.”

Urtiga failed to suppress a pained look. “Even if they were in the mood to take prisoners, that’ll take months,” she objected. “Rayker is capable of putting a lethal threat into the field right now.”

“Drone swarm into the mountains,” a Raider suggested.

This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road. If you spot it on Amazon, please report it.

“Yeah, who needs the element of surprise?” Gucci said, rolling her eyes.

There was more discussion, but nobody seemed able to come up with anything better. Kayla racked her own brain but couldn’t think of anything that didn’t seem stupid, dangerous, or physically impossible.

Christie nervously put her hand up. “Erm… excuse me.”

The room went silent, and everybody turned to look at her with expressions of incredulity. Kayla felt her friend trembling next to her.

“Are you for real with the hand?” someone asked.

“Your presence in the room grants you permission to speak,” said Smryna, impatiently.

“Well,” Christie began, “I was just thinking, um… the mountain range is sat near a fault line, and, well, you have a kinetic bombardment system on the ship.”

“If you’re talking about triggering an earthquake, let me remind you there are hostages on the site,” said Captain Aguilar, the Ranger company’s commanding officer.

“No, but you could use seismic mapping,” Christie continued, a little more confidently. “If you place seismic detectors in various locations in the mountain range, and you shoot a heavy pile into the ground—doesn’t matter where—you can use the shockwave data to get a map of the tunnels in the region. The enemy might think it’s natural seismic activity, from the fault.”

“And if they have observation posts?” Aguilar pushed.

“A meteor then. With the volcanic moon, shooting stars are an almost nightly occurrence.”

This was met with silence as the room digested the idea.

“That could work,” Aguilar admitted.

Kayla punched Christie in the arm and caught her look of grateful relief.

“But we’ll have to be ready to go immediately, because it will certainly put them on the alert,” the senior Ranger finished.

“Okay, check this out,” said Urtiga. “We put my people in four-woman teams into the mountains with detectors. We pound the rocks like Christie said, fix whatever cave system looks artificial, then we can displace immediately to that location and set up our assault.

“No need,” Aguilar responded. “Bravo company can wait on standby at a jump off point, maybe twenty klicks to the south. Your teams get the location, and my Vipers can be driving down their throat within minutes.”

Urtiga looked incredulous. “You want to bang on the front door with a company of Rangers and gunships?” She shook her head. “That is pure stupidity—this is a cave system, and there might only be one entrance. I could defend that all day with a rifle and a box of grenades.”

Captain Aguilar stiffened at the retort. “We can hit the front door with some pylons, to soften up the defense—”

“Yeah, no. We’re not doing that,” Urtiga said. “We have no idea where our hostages might be located, and you could collapse the entrance.”

“So what?” Aguilar sneered at her. “You think you can sneak in there?”

“Sure.” Urtiga’s expression remained blank. “If they’re looking at something else.”

Aguilar’s eyes narrowed. “I get it,” she said coldly. “You want my Rangers to be your distraction.”

Zhang stepped forward. “We know that Rayker has fully weaponized these… drones, and there could be up to two hundred of them. Wouldn’t it be better to lure them out into the open?”

“I just thought Rangers would be up for a fight,” Urtiga said with a shrug.

“We are always up for a fight,” Aguilar snapped. “I don’t want my girls being used as pawns in someone else’s hairbrained scheme.”

“Your Rangers will be appointed as the main effort, Captain Aguilar,” Smyrna interrupted. “If that assuages your concern?”

Aguilar eyed the older woman. As the main effort, the Vipers would receive priority for fire support and casevac lifts. It was a fig leaf, but an acceptable one. She nodded.

“My teams will wait for you to draw out the enemy drones,” Urtiga explained. “Once the shooting starts, we will maneuver behind them and break through the caves’ entrance. There will probably be some kind of defense, but if they just sent out an army, they won’t be expecting an assault. We will break through to the heart of that installation and destroy this device.”

She gestured to Masey and stepped to one side.

Masey stepped into the center of the hall and tapped a remote at one of the monitors. A video played of Helvetic soldiers engaging in training exercises while photos of young men flashed past on another screen, together with a series of unit crests.

“Based on my team’s work over the past year,” Masey said, “we think there are at least forty to fifty Helvet Special Forces on the planet, though where exactly is unknown. We spotted six or seven at a time in Rackeye, but couldn’t track where they went. We also saw no sign of support from their army or navy, and Zhang’s team was able to confirm that these men have been picked from a variety of battalions, apparently based on their prior service with one Captain Halloran Reed.”

A man’s face flashed on the screen. Kayla studied every detail and flaw.

“Personal loyalty. They are willing to betray the League, then?” Smyrna asked.

“That’s our working hypothesis, yes ma’am,” Masey said. “And whatever they are planning, they are certainly operating on their own. Expect small arms, maybe grenade launchers; only equipment that they could realistically smuggle through the Rackeye starport.”

Aguilar nodded. “They’ll lead the drones from the front, using the same tactics they learned in the Frontier War. We know their capabilities well enough.” She examined the holographic terrain map. “Good thing this operation is going to go down in the middle of nowhere, or we’d draw a lot of attention.”

After a pause, she turned stiffly to Urtiga. “Are you assuming there is a possibility of disabling these mutated drones using whatever device created them, Sergeant?”

“Allow me to introduce you to freshly minted Private Kayla Barnes,” Urtiga said with a gesture.

Kayla cringed as Smyrna and the monitor faces regarded her like a piece of uninteresting furniture. Fortunately, they returned their attention to Urtiga as she continued.

“It just so happens she grew up around here, and she knows some of the scientists. Once we get on site and clear out the bad guys, she will work with them to see if there is anything that can be done from that angle.”

“Uh… which team has to take her?” asked a Raider.

“Mine. Captain, I would say give us an hour, tops. Think you can hold them off for that long?”

Aguilar shrugged. “Give me orbital battery support and we’ll be policing up the bodies before you come back out.”

General Smyrna shook her head. “I cannot allow it. The Banshee will unshroud briefly for this seismic search, but to use its armaments will reveal us to watchers on the planet. A Shrike will provide you the protection you request, flown by Major Yakovlev.”

Kayla saw the familiar face of Toska on one of the monitors, who smiled and waved.

Aguilar grunted. A Shrike was a stealth multirole aircraft—well armed, but not nearly as powerful as the kinetic guns of the Banshee.

“If you are all in agreement, then the meeting is finished. Senior commanders will remain,” Smyrna said, and the small crowd began to file out.