She motioned silently to follow, and they passed behind a tangle of thick cables. From there, she dropped to her belly and crawled. She didn’t feel the need to rush—any mistake would almost certainly lead to their deaths now that they were surrounded by dozens of enemy soldiers and Rayker.

Weslan managed to follow her movements exactly, staying quiet and knowing when to stop dead. With the bulk of the commandos chasing after the fleeing Ranger squad, the pair were able to sneak towards the control booth without any trouble. Once inside, Weslan grabbed a keyboard, keeping his head away from the main window while he accessed the computer.

Kayla took up a position to observe as Rayker directed the remaining Helvets. They had abandoned their planned transformation—though the prisoner was already sealed into one of the chambers—and were instead focused on coordinating the chase.

As men yelled into radio sets, Kayla watched her enemy, standing calmly in the middle of the chaos. She obviously felt herself to be in control of events, though she was tapping her foot and glaring impatiently at the men around her. Her arrogance stirred Kayla’s fury almost as much as her competence.

Kayla turned to look at the prisoner, huddled against the glass wall of the chamber, eyes staring listlessly at nothing. He had obviously not been fed well, and the filthy clothes he wore bespoke the uncomfortable nature of his captivity on the base. The man appeared to have lost the will to live; lost in who knew what kind of internal nightmare.

“Did you hack the computer?” she asked quietly, since Weslan seemed to be working confidently.

“I, uh… what?” He looked up, confused.

“How’s it going?”

“Oh… pretty well. It’s actually quite intuitive. The system gives me a full anatomical map of the target organism, and the layout of the modifications I want to make. All I have to do is figure out how to insert my new control structure.”

“Cool.” Kayla peered at the screen. “You can read that language?”

“No, but the interface is so well done that I almost don’t need to. I say almost, but I’m still doing some trial-and-error guesswork.”

He paused what he was doing, peeking out through the observation booth’s window at the miserable-looking prisoner.

“I’m afraid we’ll have to sacrifice that poor man’s life,” he said.

Kayla turned back to the group on the platform. The tall man named Reed, who she had seen earlier, strode between the others, barking orders, and occasionally stopping to confer with Rayker. He was obviously her second in command.

She glanced at the two empty chambers and set her jaw. “We’ll see about that.”

Weslan shook his head. “You can’t. I saw her… operate that machine.”

Kayla looked around and saw the pain flash through his eyes at the memory.

“The transformation is triggered from the platform—there’s a separate control pad up there. I can’t do anything from here.”

Kayla nodded. “I’ll take care of it.”

Weslan looked at her, shocked. “You can’t possibly want to go up there.”

“Can’t I?”

“It’s suicide!” he hissed.

Kayla ignored him, watching Rayker as she rested her hands on what looked like a control pad, her fingers idly stroking the switches.

“Kayla?” Weslan prompted her.

“You wouldn’t understand.”

“Because you really are crazy?”

“Because that’s a Calderan in that chamber.”

Christie sat helplessly by Rose, keeping the IV bag elevated and trying to talk to her whenever she showed signs of consciousness. With the Banshee’s return, kinetic strikes were landing again, so that she had to roll forward, protecting Rose from falling rocks with her body.

Cara was working hard on the wound, but it didn’t seem like she was making progress. Meanwhile, one of the other PJs had managed to extract the now conscious pilots from the cockpit. She treated their severe, but not life-threatening, wounds while the third fought back any creatures that tried to get close.

Eventually, Cara left Rose’s chest bandaged, and beckoned to her watchful teammate, moving away from the others to discuss the situation privately.

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“She’s urgent surgical,” Cara explained gravely. “There are lacerations and tears across both Atria and surrounding arteries. The nanites are barely preventing her entire heart from exploding. I’ve done all I can, but it’s not enough.”

The PJ nodded. “Yan says the others are stable.”

“What’s the tactical situation?” Cara had disconnected herself from the Task Force comms—she couldn’t have any distractions.

“It seems like the drones have gone to ground under the barrages. Raven isn’t seeing any movement, but they’re out there, somewhere. These boulders make for some great hiding places.”

Cara wiped her forehead. “The Rangers?”

“Moving slowly—they drop piles here and there, but there’s so much ground to cover, and every time they move forward, they just step on top of a group of drones and have to fight it out at close range. They’ve taken a lot of casualties, but they aren’t stopping.”

“How much time do you think they’ll need?”

“An hour, maybe two.”

Cara sighed heavily. “She has twenty minutes.”

The other PJ nodded and turned away. “I’ll be over there if you need me.”

Cara reached for her radio control. “Banshee, this is Valkyrie.”

“Speak,” the voice of Smyrna crackled.

“Situation on the ground is secure. I have three stable, and one urgent surgical casualty. I need a medevac immediately.”

There was a long pause on the other end. “Can you operate on the ground?”

Cara took another long, deep breath. Desperation sometimes prompted impossible requests from even the most experienced officers.

“Negative Banshee—she has extensive damage to the heart and surrounding arteries, and I need a fully equipped surgery table, or else I’m just going to make things worse.”

Another long pause.

“Cara,” said the quiet voice of Zhang. “We cannot locate those missile launchers on the ground. They’ve taken cover somewhere out there. We cannot put a dropship anywhere near that valley or they will shoot it down. The QRF landed as close as they could, but they’re an hour away at best. We have nothing else to offer you.”

“Copy that, Banshee,” Cara said, her stomach sinking. “I will keep her stable as long as I can.”

Now patched into the main radio channel, Toska listened to the conversation from her fighter with a growing sense of frustration. When the Banshee had passed below the horizon, she had managed a handful of strikes around the crash site, but a close call with a missile forced her to keep away.

Now she orbited the battlefield at a good distance, occasionally moving in close to try to provoke another shot, and hopefully reveal the launchers on the ground to the snipers on the ridgeline. But the watching officers on the Banshee kept yelling at her to back off. And that had used up a significant amount of her normally limitless patience.

“Banshee, this is Falcon,” she called in an idle tone, even as butterflies tried to smash their way out of her stomach. “I recommend we perform a high-speed flyby of the valley to see if we can bait another shot, over.” She spoke quickly, hoping to be misunderstood. Without waiting for a response, she spoke again. “Raven, would that help you locate that launcher?”

“Roger that, Falcon, if he decides to take the bait.”

“Falcon,” cut in the Banshee, “your intention confuses me. Repeat yourself.”

“Banshee, you’re weak and unreadable—I understand you acknowledged—out.”

“No, Falcon, hold your—”

Toska snap rolled into a tight bank that brought her around on a course heading up the valley, making her easily visible to everyone on the ground. As she raced closer, the radio messages telling her to wave off grew frantic.

“Ksssss wha- shee.. Ksssss—unreadable, over,” she said into the mic, as she held back a grin. She was fully aware of the penalty for recklessly endangering an aircraft, and happy to pay it.

The grey mountain walls raced up to meet her and flew past. In a matter of seconds, they were falling behind as she arced up into the sky—a perfect target. Her radar alarm flickered red, stayed lit for one endless moment, then went dim.

Toska thumped the canopy in anger—whoever was down there was as cool as a cucumber and was evidently not about to let themselves be drawn out. As she leveled off, she heard her radio buzz to life.

“Falcon, Raven; good effort, but no joy,” said the frustrated voice.

Then she received a barrage of angry calls from the Banshee, and tried her best to play innocent. “Sorry, Banshee, I lost communications there for a moment,” she said, ignoring the threats of a court martial, and wondering how long she would wait before trying again.

Wedged underneath a large boulder, Bell sighed in frustration as he watched the aircraft veer off over the mountains. It had been a perfect shot, but he knew without a doubt that if he took it, he would not live to make another.

The day had been terrible—already most of the men in his squad were dead. When the gliders had flown in, and his comrade Dellan had launched a missile at them, they hadn’t moved ten yards from the firing point before his head exploded. The snipers on the ridgeline were eagle eyed and punished any mistake instantly. Now Bell and his men could do nothing but crawl around between the rocks.

He shook his head. The things he was seeing ought to be impossible—no Helvetic command had such capabilities. The enemy soldiers were fast, relentless, and excellent shooters. Unlike the drones, they maneuvered with intelligence, and had dominated the battlefield even before death had rained down from space. He swore he had seen more than a few of them get up after sustaining wounds that should have killed normal men. Now, Rayker’s army of monsters was reduced to a mob, huddling, like himself, under the boulders, hoping not to draw the attention of the terrifying sky cannon.

Bell was beginning to dread that Rayker had bitten off more than she could chew. Half-remembered rumors came back to him from his youth when he worked as a smuggler. The older men talked about ships that went where they didn’t belong and vanished in space—about black clad, robotic super soldiers who climbed aboard frozen vessels, killing everyone they found. The Night Stalkers.

Now he knew the truth. The void was not empty, and mere mortals did not put their hands on hidden alien technology without the punishment of death descending upon them. This secret army, advancing slowly, but inevitably through the valley, would kill them all.

He had only one chance if he was to survive. The missile he dragged from hiding place to hiding place was his one guarantee they couldn’t land more troops, and he had taken the risk of painting the fighter with the search beam to remind his enemy of that fact. Now he had to move as quickly as he could, if he was to have any chance of escaping death.

Pressing himself tightly against the boulder’s edges, Kyellan Bell crawled, dragging the missile launcher behind him.