High above the planet, Toska sat in her Shrike fighter, admiring the stars, and waiting to descend towards the vast dark mass of the planet below.

The radio buzzed. “Falcon, this is Raven.”

At the highest point overlooking the valley, one of the Tiger teams had settled in for a long stay. Elmira Aliyev—call-sign Raven—surveyed the battlefield, so she could direct Toska’s bombs to where they would most be needed.

“Standing by Raven.”

“You are cleared to descend to twenty thousand feet. Once you’re on station, commence your approach from the south on bearing three-one-six degrees.”

Toska flipped the stealthy fighter over, burning her engines against the direction of travel to shed orbital velocity. The craft slowed, and its trajectory curved down into Caldera’s gravity well.

“Roger Raven, do you have some targets for me?”

As she fell towards the planet, Toska flipped her nose back over and prepared to enter the upper atmosphere.

“More than I can count, Falcon. Be prepared for multiple turnarounds,” Elmira said, meaning that the fighter would have to return to the mothership several times to rearm and refuel.

The delay was the main weakness of the Shrike fighter, but a necessary tradeoff in order to keep the whole operation secret.

Toska brushed a finger along a sticker on the inside of her canopy that read, ‘The objective is an eighteen-year-old with a rifle. Everything else is support.’

“Copy that Raven, I’m easily bored so make sure and keep me busy,” she joked to the woman, who for the next several hours would be her sole connection to the events unfolding on the ground.

“AIs don’t get bored, you know?”

Toska laughed.

The first sign of trouble that caught Thandi’s attention was a distant dragging sound, followed by falling rocks. Then she caught sight of movement between the far-off boulders, which immediately disappeared.

“Hold fire,” Kes said calmly. “We want them in close.”

Thandi thought that was the last thing she wanted, but kept her finger off the trigger. It was a hard decision.

The squad had nestled into positions among the boulders with effective sight lines, watching for the slightest sign of movement in the rocks above them. Though the Rangers had thought they would be surprised by an enemy lying in wait, the mutated drones seemed to show no aptitude for stealthy movement, nor patience for setting an ambush. They simply advanced straight towards the waiting soldiers as though they were ignorant of the danger.

Eventually, the boulders were crawling with movement, and Thandi saw something horrific lumbering along within a stone’s throw distance. The figure was black in her night-vision, clearly visible against the green rocks. She stared at it, fascinated by its ugly face and bristling spikes.

Without warning, Kes’s rifle barked, and the world exploded into noise and light. Thandi tried to sight something squarely, but creatures were dropping too quickly. In the end, she settled for aiming at every gap in the rock and squeezing off a few rounds at each.

As she went to change a magazine, Kes called out, “Fast air going in—stay down!”

A terrible shriek ripped the sky open, followed soon after by an intense burst of light, and a blast wave that hit Thandi like a truck. Rangers whooped and yelled as they cheered the fighter, already circling around for another run.

Ash smacked Thandi’s helmet. “Keep shooting!” she yelled over the raging storm of noise.

Thandi sat up quickly, aiming and pulling the trigger as fast as she could. She had no idea if she hit anything, since between the noise and half glimpsed shapes, the battle was a chaotic blur. After a while, the drones seemed to have hidden themselves because the firing subsided, and Kes yelled at the squad to cease fire. For the most part, the valley had gone quiet, though sporadic shots rang out here and there whenever someone spotted a drone trying to approach closer.

Kes was quiet as she listened to the radio before addressing the rest of them. “Okay, time to take the initiative,” she called. “Let’s push forward.”

Ash took point, bounding with two others to the next boulder ahead before stopping to scan carefully. Then the rest of the squad moved forward, taking up new positions and covering each other.

“Two o’clock, two o’clock!” Ash yelled, and squeezed off a burst of rounds into the rocks.

Thandi’s head snapped around, but the shadow had already vanished. She leaned out from behind a protective slab, scanning carefully for a target, but every time she saw movement through the impenetrable mess of rock, it was gone too quickly.

As she turned her head again, she felt a whoosh of air, and a high pitch whistling sound. Not really sure what had happened, she grabbed her neighbor.

Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.

“What’s up?” she asked Bibi.

“What?” The Ranger stared back in confusion.

“You just whistled for me?”

“No.”

Thandi heard another whistle from behind her, so she turned back to see Ray.

“Ray, why do you keep whistling at me?” she demanded.

Ray returned her stare incredulously. Then a blur passed inches in front of Thandi’s eyes, whistling as it struck a rock and bounced off into the night.

“They’re shooting spikes at us—keep your heads down!” Ash snapped to the bewildered Rangers.

Ray leaned out from her boulder and fired a chain of shots, ducking back as a flurry of supersonic projectiles whirred through the space she had just left. She glanced up to see Thandi’s stunned expression.

“Don’t overexpose!” she yelled with a grin.

Thandi laughed—the idea that monsters were shooting spikes at her seemed ridiculous, and she sensed herself getting giddy with adrenaline. She tried the same move, ducking out, shooting, and slipping back in time to avoid a shrieking needle. The thrill of it was exhilarating, and she laughed again as a spike struck the rock she was hiding behind, shattering into hundreds of pieces. Without really knowing why, she reached down to grab one of the fragments, and placed it carefully in a free pouch.

When she looked up, she saw a woman in a neighboring squad get hit. One moment she was firing her rifle, the next she had been knocked off her feet, squirming in the dirt, with a half-meter spike sticking out of her thigh. Another Ranger grabbed her harness, dragging her behind cover as a barrage of needles turned the bloody patch of ground into a pin cushion.

Thandi felt a cold chill wash over her. The fun was over. She could easily be killed if she wasn’t careful.

The monsters moved through the rocks with astonishing speed, though they had learned quickly to back away from the lethal firepower of their enemy. They began to spread out across the valley. From better vantage points, they began to scurry from spot to spot, popping up to fire an arm spike before ducking away.

Even through the dampening of her headset, Thandi cringed at the level of noise. An endless orchestra of thunder and fury raged around her. Voices became distant and tinny, and squad level communication was achieved only by screaming at each other at close range.

A flash of movement caught her eye, and she looked around to see three drones moving swiftly along the side of the valley. They had to be trying to move around the flanks of the Ranger company. Without a thought, she snapped a few rounds at them, and they darted behind cover.

“There’s… drones…over behind those… rocks!” she gasped, shocked by the effort to put even simple words together as her mind stumbled over itself.

Then she realized what she had just said and nearly slapped herself for the stupidity of it.

Kes was by her side in a moment. “Stop. Take a breath. Try again.”

Thandi inhaled, then exhaled. “At our two o’clock, moving to three—a hundred yards. Three drones, near the rock that looks like an anvil.”

“Lyna!” Kes shouted, and the Ranger hefted her light machine gun and hauled herself over to them. Kes passed her the directions, and soon the weapon was chattering with short, controlled bursts. Thandi and Kes joined in the firing until a few flickers of black movement reassured them the drones were retreating.

“Keep your eyes on this sector,” Kes told Thandi. “Two or three rounds at everything that moves. Don’t fixate on trying to kill one that keeps popping in and out of cover. Got it?”

Further away amid the rocks, Tian let out a scream of pain and Kes rushed off to help her. Thandi could see a broken fragment of a spike sticking out of the woman’s hand, though she looked more angry than hurt.

The anxiety that Kes’ presence had kept at bay quickly returned. Her calm voice had been a balm against the chaos. Fortunately, Lyna seemed just as controlled and focused as she engaged targets, and Thandi offered a silent prayer of thanks that she was surrounded by people who knew what they were doing.

Up on the ridgeline, Elmira was having trouble identifying clusters of drones fast enough before they dispersed. On several runs, the Shrike jet came in, firing a burst of heavy caliber bullets from the nose mounted chain gun, but failing to hit anything other than rock.

“They’re swirling around like a cloud of hornets,” Elmira called over the radio to Urtiga. “But they sure aren’t paying attention to the cave entrance.”

Urtiga agreed that their route looked clear and called to the other Tiger teams to begin their descent of the valley walls. Then with a quick gesture, she stepped forward to the edge of the ridge, with Masey, Gucci and Kayla close behind.

“Follow me!” Urtiga called, and she jumped, hitting a steep incline, and sliding to a stop against a rock a hundred feet below. Kayla looked down at the appalling drop and felt the same sense of giddy fear that she remembered standing in the plane at the end of Ranger school.

But this was no time to hesitate. She threw herself into the void, sliding hard before smacking painfully into an outcropping. They descended the ridge in this fashion, sliding or hopping, falling and impacting against a natural barrier, then readjusting, and jumping again. The impacts were so painful that Kayla wondered if she would be able to walk once they reached the bottom.

When they finally hit the valley floor, the team took cover amongst the boulders. Thunder and light from the battle raged further down the valley, but there didn’t seem to be anything moving between their position and the doorway.

They ducked and crouched between the rocks, moving as slowly as they could to avoid drawing any attention until they caught sight of movement ahead. Weapons shot up, and Urtiga stopped to check her radio, when one of the figures flashed an infrared strobe.

Tiger four had reached the doorway ahead of them and were already stacking up to clear inside. A tall drone stepped out into the night, and its carapace exploded as bullets tore through its body. The creature resisted long enough to turn and face its attackers, but fell dead as it lunged towards a Raider, ripping claws missing her by inches.

Once the remaining Tiger teams had assembled on the doorway, they tossed in grenades and made entry. As the command element, Tiger One waited outside while the others engaged the handful of soldiers taking cover inside the entryway. Then, when the clear signal was given, they followed in behind.

The teams moved through the dark tunnels with precision and purpose, covering every angle, stacking up on corners and spreading out to cover open spaces. The movements were similar to the techniques Kayla had learned in Ranger School, though while she struggled to think through her actions, the Raiders moved with such easy, fluid precision that they might have been born doing it.

As they advanced, one Raider slapped discreet antennae behind crates or wall fixtures where they would be hard to see. The signal boosters allowed the teams to maintain radio contact with the task force, even underground.

Kayla found it strange that they hadn’t encountered many enemy soldiers yet, but decided to keep her opinion to herself. Her job was to cover the rear of the group with her carbine, making sure nobody snuck in behind them, and she gave this her full attention. Urtiga knew what she was doing.

A maze of tunnels descended deeper into the mountain, and soon Kayla caught sight of huge bilrust crystals that took her breath away. She had only seen the smaller chunks of them, and the discovery made her wonder what else was left to find on her largely unexplored homeworld. More wonder? More unimagined terror? Catching herself with annoyance, she shut away the intrusive thoughts and focused on the mission ahead of her.