The dancing teacher smacked her baton against the wall as Rose stumbled gracelessly through another movement.

“Again, Rose. Again!” the older woman cried as she banged the stick,

The percussion reverberated painfully through Rose’s skull. She tried to stand, but her legs were too weak, and the teacher only laughed as she smacked the baton rhythmically.

“Again Rose! You’re too lazy today. You want to get lost in your daydreams like a child? Get it right!”

The vision faded out as she drifted back into consciousness, replaced with an even stranger scene.

She was upside down, hanging in the air by her harness from the wall panel above her, and it took her a moment to realize that the dropship had landed on its side. As the sensation in her limbs began to return, she reached up to unclip the harness, dropping herself with a painful thud onto the awkwardly shaped metal of the opposite door.

Struggling to breathe through lungs that didn’t want to expand, Rose tried to focus. Her head throbbed with what felt like the worst hangover she had ever experienced. Despite nausea and confusion, urgent signals were forcing their way through the brain fog, demanding to be heard. She had to get up; she had to move, and do… something—anything but stay still on the floor of the crashed ship.

Christie was strapped to the wall. She was held securely in her harness, still unconscious, but her cheeks were flushed, while the wound she had sustained from the missile strike had stopped bleeding.

“Hey! Everyone okay?” Rose called to the dark cockpit. Her voice was a weak groan, and she got no response.

She hauled herself upright to get a better look. A mess of blood and shattered glass covered the pilot’s and co-pilot’s bodies, still strapped into their seats. Rose checked their pulses, relieved to discover that both women were still alive, though unresponsive. As she looked around, uncertain of what to do, the rhythmic whack of her dance teacher’s baton began to sound more and more like distant explosions, and she realized she was listening to the sound of the battle.

Christie’s carbine was hanging off her body by a strap. Rose grabbed it and climbed out of the wreckage through an open hatchway.

She emerged into the cold mountain air and saw the warm rays of the sun beginning to creep into the gray murk of the valley. Moving around the wrecked craft, for a better view, she came face to face with their desperate situation. The dropship had crashed higher up the valley from the Rangers’ line of battle, near a saddle that linked to another valley.

What really alarmed her, though, were the muzzle flashes she saw in the dim morning light. The Rangers were shooting in her direction, which meant that the entire enemy force of drones stood between her and rescue.

There could be no doubt that they had seen the crash unfolding clearly.

Rose did not allow herself to react to this information. She had a problem to solve, that was all. Moving to get a better sense of the ground, she staggered forward a few yards from the ship, still limping as she tried to keep weight off her injured leg. She mounted a rise and found she could see a slope stretching away to the north. A path to safety. If she ran now, she might make it, even with her bad leg.

Of course, that would leave Christie and the pilots to the mercy of the enemy drones, so she crushed the idea immediately, and cursed herself for having even thought it.

A cacophony of blood curdling shrieks echoed through the valley, and Rose felt a bottomless pit open in her stomach.

The drones were coming.

She had no option but to stand and fight for as long as she could; until the Task Force could send help. How—or even whether—they could, was not her concern. Her only objective now was to defend the crashed ship, and the helpless women inside it until her last breath.

Rose returned to the dropship, looking for anything she could use. Scavenging around, she managed to locate some grenades and magazines, and even found a survival knife, which she clipped into her belt.

Another shriek rang out, much closer than before, and she jumped back out into the dirt, hunching against the wreckage for cover. She peeked out from behind the twisted metal to observe the boulder-strewn valley floor. A drone was marching towards her, accompanied by two soldiers. They were apparently not expecting to see any survivors, as they didn’t even have their weapons raised.

Without thinking, Rose racked her carbine’s bolt to chamber a round, shouldered the weapon, and aimed carefully at the leading man. She fired, and her target dropped dead—a bullet hole in his forehead.

The other man ducked behind a boulder, while the monstrous drone broke into a charge, running forward at a frightening pace. Rose squeezed off a few rounds at the boulder to discourage the soldier, then emptied her entire magazine into the upper body of the fast-approaching drone. As her rounds began to shatter its chitinous armor, it raised its arms to protect its head, before collapsing like a rag doll as one of Rose’s bullets penetrated its skull.

This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

Rose heard the survivor calling for help on his radio. Sensing an opportunity, she raced forward to a new position, grimly ignoring the lightning bolts of pain from her leg. When she rounded another slab, she had a clear line of sight to the hunched soldier, still desperately arguing through the radio with someone who apparently didn’t believe his story. He caught the movement in the corner of his eye, but looked up too late. Rose shot him clean in the head.

More shrieks rang out in the valley below, so she turned and raced back to the wreckage.

One hundred and fifty miles directly overhead, the command staff in the Banshee’s Tactical Operations Center watched anxiously as the drama on the ground unfolded. The vessel’s powerful cameras had focused in on the crash site, and the assembled officers watched Rose’s actions on the display in tense silence, helpless to do anything.

Smyrna raised Aguilar on the radio to discuss the situation, but the harassed captain had no good options.

“If the crash is drawing off enemy drones,” Aguilar said, “and we can assume it is, we can try pushing forward to keep them under pressure,” she explained. “But I don’t have any way to get over there.”

Zhang jumped in with an update. “The Quick Reaction Force launched from the forward refuel point and is orbiting at twelve miles,” she said, referring to a dropship containing fifteen Rangers, who were on standby for exactly this kind of emergency.

Smyrna rejected the suggestion. “The missile danger is too great. That will only cost another downed ship. Locate a landing site for them in an adjacent valley, so they can at least try to climb up to the crash site.”

“That will put them at least a couple of hours away,” Zhang pointed out.

Smyrna was silent as she stared at the image on the monitor. Rose again levelled her rifle, firing at targets off screen.

“Raven, Banshee?” the general called through the radio.

“Standing by Banshee,” came the immediate response.

“Can you well observe the crash site from your position?”

“Affirm. We relocated as soon as we saw the ship go down. The snipers took out a few soldiers in the vicinity of the missile launch, but we don’t know how many launchers they have, and these boulders offer a lot of hiding places.”

Smyrna inhaled slowly, conscious that she was about to make a decision that would have implications for the future of the whole organization. The only comfort was that she did not believe she had any reasonable choice.

She keyed the ship’s intercom. “Captain Demirovic, you must unshroud the Banshee and prepare the railguns. We will fire on the valley.”

“Yes ma’am,” the Captain’s disembodied voice replied. “Be advised, I have no civilian traffic in sensor range, but it’s only a matter of time until Rackeye control picks us up.”

Smyrna acknowledged and switched back to the ground link. “Raven,” she continued, “you must take care that fire is given justly between the crash site and Viper.

Aguilar cut in. “Give them priority—our situation is under control for the moment.”

“Copy that, Viper Actual,” Elmira replied, and began talking to the Banshee’s bridge crew.

Minutes later, the entire spacecraft shook as a two-thousand-pound carbon-coated tungsten pile was launched from one of the ship’s rail guns at a speed of over thirty miles per second. Soon after, a series of thunks followed as the remaining guns fired.

“I hope she sees the strike coming in and takes cover,” Zhang said, then wiped her lower lip. She had bitten it so hard her teeth had drawn blood.

The elongated needles streaking into Caldera’s upper atmosphere were capped with a thermally protected guidance head and fins, mounted for limited maneuvering. When they hit denser air, friction caused them to glow as brilliantly as meteors as they blazed down towards the battlefield.

Elmira had transmitted precise GPS coordinates to each pile, and once air resistance had slowed their velocity to a mere five miles per second, the strong fins began twitching to steer them onto their targets. The piles contained no explosives, but the kinetic force of dense material striking ground with so much momentum would produce an explosion as devastating as the most powerful bombs.

Rose stopped firing her carbine at the figures closing on her position when she saw a brilliant glow in her peripheral vision. Looking up, she felt a wave of terror as bright streaks of fire fell from the heavens directly towards her. Animal instinct took over, throwing her body behind the wrecked dropship, where she curled tightly into a ball.

The whole valley seemed to explode, and she was lifted into the air by the force of the impact, as a curtain of death fell close around her position. After she recovered, she clung tightly against the dropship’s wreckage as rocks rained down on her, ringing the hull of the small vessel like a bell. She hoped desperately that the shattered cockpit canopy would offer some protection for the pilots, but there wasn’t anything more she could do for them.

Once the lethal rain had passed, she emerged from behind the dropship to see the valley wonderfully free of movement. In the distance, the Ranger’s gunfire had reached a crescendo as they attempted to surge forward.

Technical Sergeant Cara Favre entered the Banshee’s TOC and waited patiently while Smyrna deliberated with the assembled officers. Fully outfitted with a combat suit and weapon as though she was ready to enter the battle at a moment’s notice, Cara stood out from the rest of the crew. But still, she found herself growing impatient, waiting to be acknowledged, and tried to catch Smyrna’s eye.

“General Smyrna,” she interrupted, after she had waited long enough, “Valkyrie is ready to drop on your order.”

Smyrna glanced around and looked Cara up and down.

“You are three, correct?” she asked, and Cara nodded her confirmation. “Show me on the map.”

Cara walked over to the holographic display and picked up a light pen, using it to trace a descending curve over the mountain range. “We will approach from the south, following the ridgeline towards the crash site. My team can descend behind that ridge, using it as cover from the missile threat. We can land here,” she said, highlighting a shallower part of the slope, “traversing the col to arrive on the target from the backside.”

Smyrna nodded gravely. “You accept you will be alone? No more support can be provided.”

Cara’s face did not so much as twitch. “Yes ma’am,” she said calmly.

“Then I leave the decision to you.”

“We’ve already made it, General.”

“May the heavens protect you.”