Eventually, the team arrived at a wide cavern, apparently a nexus of the tunnel network. They came under fire immediately from several fixed positions. Masey yelled at Kayla to hold where she was, before turning to snap off a few rounds, while Urtiga called in the contact to the Banshee, letting them know they had engaged the enemy.

While she waited, listening to the storm of gunfire that had erupted, Kayla thought she saw electricity sparking off the walls. Thinking there must be some loose or damaged cables, she was about to warn Urtiga when her confused mind caught up to reality. The sparks, she realized, were caused by bullets ricocheting off the walls, changing direction as they followed the corridor’s angle. Immediately she stepped away from the wall, and watched with fascination, as, moments later, bright sparks spat from the rock she had been hugging for cover.

The danger made her angrier, and she chafed at being made to sit back, helpless to engage in the gunfight. Her instinct told her to join the fight, but the risk of Urtiga’s stern reproach held her back.

The teams advanced, passing corridors blocked off with barricades of furniture and construction material. Certainly a prepared defense, Kayla thought, and she started to feel the alarmed sense that they were not in control of the battle.

“We’re being funneled!” Gucci snarled, her arm dripping with blood where a bullet had struck her.

“We’re killing them faster than they can retreat! Keep pushing!” Urtiga yelled back, before calling the same directive into her radio.

The lead squad rounded another intersection, leading onto a much longer, wider corridor. At the far end, two soldiers had set up a machine gun to cover their comrades as they ran down the vulnerable hall. Before they could fire, a Raider shot them both dead, then another killed the last soldier caught in the open before he could make it to safety.

“Watch our six here until we control the far end!” Urtiga called to Kayla, then raced forward to join the advancing squads.

Kayla dropped to a knee, carefully scanning the area they had passed through. Bodies littered the hallways, the gray and green of their camouflage contrasting sharply with the bright red blood that pooled around them. Kayla’s eyes came to rest on an upturned face, jaw frozen open in a rictus of fear. His eyes were wide—glazed white as they stared into infinity.

She shuddered, but a deeper, darker voice expressed only satisfaction that these men would never trouble Calderans again.

A whistle tore her attention away, and she looked around to see Masey beckoning to her. She got up to run. As she traversed the long hallway, she noticed she was approaching an odd circular space with a strange blue lighting effect. The distraction caused her to slip in a pool of blood and fall flat on her face.

“Stop screwing around—get down here!” Masey called.

Kayla pushed herself up to her feet. As she took a step forward, she saw Masey and the Raiders ahead of her flicker, then vanish.

The thunderous storm of gunfire was replaced with an empty hallway and an intersection that looked completely different from the one she had seen seconds earlier. Hearing nothing but her own heartbeat thumping in her ears, Kayla started to panic. At first, she tried to convince herself she must be having a vizor malfunction, and banged her helmet a few times.

But that didn’t change anything.

Shock began to take over her senses, and she began gasping heavily. She forced herself to slow her breathing and tried to mentally detach herself from the nausea that threatened to overwhelm her.

Eventually, she pulled her faceplate up and stared appalled at the empty space ahead. All of the Raiders had disappeared, leaving her alone in the tunnels.

The Vipers had advanced to within four hundred yards of the doorway, fighting confidently as the Shrike fighter overhead bombed the area to their front, forcing the drones back. Only a few Rangers had been wounded, as far as Thandi knew, though Tian had recovered quickly and was back on her gun.

Thandi had been sure that she herself had been wounded in the leg. A drone had gotten too close and fired both its spikes. Thandi dove into a crevasse to get out of the way while the squad poured gunfire into its body. After that, her leg stopped responding, hanging limp from her hip.

Bibi checked her over, but there was no blood or impact bruising.

“You’re fine,” she said, once she completed the examination. “Get back up and keep going as best you can.”

“But I can’t move my leg, it’s like a dead weight.”

“You’re not wounded; it’s hysterical paralysis. It’ll wear off in a while, trust me.”

Unauthorized duplication: this tale has been taken without consent. Report sightings.

“What?” Thandi snapped. “You think I’m making this up because I’m crazy?”

Bibi grabbed the younger woman by her arm, hauling her in close, so they could hear each other over the constant storm of gunfire.

“You’re not crazy, but it just happens. Your brain is overwhelmed with stress and doing weird stuff. Keep moving as best you can, and it’ll wear off.”

Thandi looked at her doubtfully, but there wasn’t much else she could do. She hauled herself upright and braced herself against boulders as she dragged her leg through the rocks. With time, she noticed that sensation and movement slowly began to return.

She felt ashamed of the experience and hoped that Bibi wouldn’t tell the other Rangers in her squad. After so many months of accomplishment, warrior training, and feeling like a badass, in the face of actual battle she felt stupid and ridiculous. Fortunately, her squad seemed to be unconcerned by her obvious failures, relentlessly pushing forward and assigning her fields of fire as they advanced.

The battle raged on as fiercely as it had begun. The Rangers scrabbled through a boulder strewn chaos, slipping and falling in their desperate efforts to maintain speed. They hunched themselves over to avoid the whistling bone spikes and hugged the boulders whenever the Shrike flew overhead. Though the thunderous booms of its bombs were welcome, they threw rocks and pebbles high into the air, to fall back as a terrifying hail that pounded their helmets and shoulders.

Thandi’s limbs burned with acid as she climbed over ledge after ledge. How long could she keep going before she collapsed? She didn’t know, but the months of physical torment at the hands of her instructors kept her moving. Watching her squad mates as they persevered without hesitation, Thandi thought she would rather step out in the open to be killed, rather than allow herself to fall behind.

A silhouette darted through her peripheral vision, and she stopped to sight her rifle before firing a pair of rounds. The figure stumbled before it disappeared from view. Thunderous cracks of gunfire erupted without cease across the valley, adding to Thandi’s sense of a maelstrom without meaning. It was so loud she could barely think, and she concentrated on staying close as she could to Lyna.

A cut off yell made her look around. In the next squad across from them Lance Corporal Michel, the French girl who had greeted Thandi and Kayla on their arrival to the battalion, had taken a spike through her neck and slumped to the ground.

Incredibly, the impact hadn’t killed her, and she sat there white as a sheet while the platoon medic worked on the horrifying wound. Michel’s fists clenched and unclenched repeatedly—she was obviously in great pain.

As she thought about the visceral image, it occurred to Thandi that had the drone’s aim been an inch to the left or right, the projectile would have killed her instantly. A gust of air at the wrong moment, or a slight imperfection in the spike’s surface, could determine if a person lived or died. The idea appalled her, and as she watched more deadly needles whistling past her squad mates, she was struck by the unfairness of it. The fate of her soul might be measured in millimeters or inches.

Shrugging off the dread, Thandi pushed the dark thoughts out of her mind and turned back to the work ahead of her.

Eventually they pushed through the valley’s bottleneck, climbing over the top of the steepest section onto flatter ground. The company began to spread out, slowing their advance. The valley had widened, and the drones continued to harass them, feinting, and attacking at every opportunity. As the battle wore on, the Rangers found them harder and harder to kill. They were adapting quickly.

Thandi stepped across to another boulder, and a drone erupted in front of her, shoving an arm right into her face. Yelling with fright, she fell backwards, jerking her rifle’s trigger so fast and hard she thought she might break it. Most of her shots flew wide, and she watched in horror as the drone stepped over her body.

Ray popped up from a crevasse, calmly switched her hands to her rifle’s underslung shotgun, and pumped a burst of shells into the monster’s head, which exploded off its shoulders.

The drone dropped lifelessly on top of Thandi, and she screamed as one of the armored spikes punctured her suit, driving through the flesh of her abdomen and into her stomach.

Ray pushed the body off her and grabbed her combat suit’s strap handle. “Don’t fraternize with the enemy,” she cautioned, as she pulled Thandi in behind a large protective boulder.

Kes appeared, radiating concern. “Who’s hit?” she asked.

“Thandi tried to flirt with one of them,” Ray said. She reached for a field dressing as Thandi gasped and writhed in pain. “You’ll be okay. Give yourself a few minutes off your feet and let it heal a bit.”

She poured a clotting powder into the wound, and Thandi groaned, thinking she was about to pass out from the agony as Ray wrapped a bandage tightly around her gut. The pain slowly went from excruciating to manageable, as her nanites went to work.

“That was something new, Kes,” Ash observed. “The thing crawled right up to us before jumping out.”

They were apparently not alone in this experience as the slow methodical patter of gunfire down the company line exploded into ragged bursts and yelling. Kes cocked her ear as she listened to the platoon radio, then her eyes went wide.

“Danger close—get cover!” she yelled, grabbing a distracted Bibi and pulling her downward. Other Rangers dropped down quickly, and Ray threw herself on top of Thandi, just as the world exploded.

High on the ridgeline, observing the battlefield from above, Elmira had been tracking the changing behavior of the drones, and had called in a warning to Captain Aguilar. The commander had given the controller the green light for a danger close strike from the Shrike aircraft. Toska came in at a steep angle, lining up on the three GPS coordinates Elmira had plotted fifty yards ahead of the Ranger positions, and dropping three bombs.

Thandi felt the ground sway beneath her. Overhead, a foot-wide knife of bomb fragmentation scythed inches past Ash’s head. Then the hail of rocks from the impact came crashing down on them.

Rangers raised their arms to protect themselves, and Ray cursed as a fist sized rock struck her in the back with a sickening thud. If her squad mate hadn’t jumped on top of her, Thandi realized, the rock would have hit her own abdomen, where it likely would have turned a survivable wound into something much worse.

“Thanks Ray,” she said gratefully.

“Yup. No problem,” Ray groaned as she pushed herself upright.

The strike worked as planned, forcing the drones to back off and regroup. They tried to shift positions and approach again, but the Rangers let loose another hail of gunfire. This time, the drones retreated back into the boulders and stayed there.