“Look out!” Thandi yelled.
Kayla was thrown forward as though a freight train had hit her, sending her sprawling onto the concrete. Then Rayker was on top of her, pinning her to the ground. She started to smash her fists like hammers as Kayla raised her arms in a useless attempt to protect herself. The blows rained down, each as hard as a strike from a steel bar, and she wondered how long she could survive the onslaught.
The pain stopped, and a hand grabbed the back of her head, dragging it upright.
“Look me in the eye you pathetic little brat!” Rayker spat at her, and her free arm came up.
Kayla couldn’t look away, as the flesh ripped open and the bloody tip of a spike poked out from the woman’s wrist. Rayker brought it up under her chin.
“When I’ve killed you, I’ll transform each one of your pathetic friends and make sure they serve me,” she hissed.
A gunshot rang out, and Kayla flinched as Rayker collapsed sideways off her. She lay still, a huge red welt forming on the side of her head. Outside the observation booth, Thandi lowered her pistol.
“That’s it—program set!” Weslan yelled.
“Move Kayla—hit that switch!” Thandi called.
As Kayla watched, the inhuman woman that had killed her father, and so many of her countrymen, began to move her limbs.
Kayla staggered to her feet; fully aware she would never get a better chance to avenge those she had lost. A painful ache filled her chest as she turned away from Rayker’s collapsed form. Wiping the blood out of her eyes, she moved over to the chambers’ control panel, confirmed the switch for the third chamber containing Reed’s unconscious body, and pushed it.
Reed was beginning to stir as the gas surrounded him, and Kayla found herself morbidly curious to see how the process would unfold. But there was a scream of rage, and a blow came from nowhere, knocking her onto her hands and knees.
“For that, you piece of human trash, you die,” Rayker said as she stood over her.
Kayla, now completely drained, waited for her death. At least she had defeated her executioner. Nothing that Rayker could do now would save her drone army from Weslan’s new program. As she stared down at the blood-stained alien metal, waiting for the blackness, she wondered if Thandi was right—if she would meet her father again. A new cacophony of gunfire erupted in the hall, but she didn’t care. She shut her eyes.
“Clear!” a voice yelled.
Arms shaking as she spit out blood, Kayla pushed herself upright. Her left eye had swollen shut from the beating she had taken, and through her one good eye, she saw armed soldiers spreading out through the lab, moving purposely. They were helping the Rangers, and closing in on the dead bodies of the Helvets. Then Urtiga was in front of her, helping her up to her feet, and calling for a medic.
“Rayker?” Kayla breathed.
“I shot her, but she got away,” Urtiga said. “She’s insanely fast. No worries—I sent a team after her.”
Kayla nodded, her heart aching painfully as she tried to make peace with the decision she had taken.
“Where did you go?” she asked, as one of the unit’s medics arrived and began to check her over.
Urtiga grimaced. “Let’s just say there’s a lot more to this place than meets the eye. It took us some time to defeat those soldiers, and then we had to figure out the teleporter. Sorry about the delay.”
With a hiss, the nearby chamber cracked open, and a drone emerged. The Raiders raised their weapons, but Weslan, rushed forward, waving them off.
“Don’t shoot!” he yelled. “It’s one of ours!”.
They watched as it looked around itself dreamily, ignoring them completely. Then it stomped forward, heading towards the valley entrance.
“Every drone it meets will turn docile, and then spread it on to the next drone, and so on,” he explained.
Kayla shut her eyes. She wanted nothing more than to sleep. “Get this guy out of the chamber,” she demanded, gesturing to the wide-eyed prisoner watching them.
Another woman quickly cracked the chamber door and helped the hesitant man to his feet.
As he was led away, Kayla scanned the carnage of the lab, devastated by explosions and bullets. There was no elation of victory, or rush of success—only emptiness, as though all the fight had drained out of her. She wandered over to where Thandi was watching helplessly as Raiders strode confidently through the area where, moments earlier, bullets had swarmed.
“I shot that woman in the freakin’ head, Kayla. In the head,” Thandi insisted. “She must have a bulletproof skull.”
“What are we supposed to do now?” Kayla asked in a daze.
They turned to Ash, who was gathering the other squad members.
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“Gather your kit,” the Lance-Corporal instructed. “We’re heading back out to the valley to rejoin our platoon.”
Kayla emerged from the valley’s main doorway, blinking in the sunlight. As she scanned the boulders, she fought back the urge to duck behind something. The vulnerability of standing upright in the open made her cringe. She tried to ignore the instinctive fear, hoping it would wear off before too long.
Everything in sight was covered in the dust that hung in the air like a fog; the residue of the fierce bombardment. Up the valley slope, the crashed dropship was just visible amongst the rocks, and Kayla was filled with anxious dread as she wondered what had happened to those inside.
Another awful thought entered her mind; she didn’t really care who it was, as long as it wasn’t Christie. Pushing aside the shameful hope, she followed Ash, who had received a message from Lieutenant Akane to move immediately to the crash site.
The drone that had once been Reed wandered placidly through the boulders. When it had entered the valley, it had disappeared into the rocks, searching for its fellow drones while the women of the Venomous Vipers held their fire. Soon, drones could be seen standing up and moving around at the same, slow, carefree pace.
They followed a chemical scent to locate their comrades and pass them the good news—the activation of a permanent oxytocin drip straight into their brain stems that made them dopey, benevolent and obedient.
Captain Aguilar watched, appalled, as nearly fifty drones emerged from hiding spots right next to her Rangers, many of them hidden in cracks behind the same boulders the women were using for cover. Eventually, the company was able to advance through the valley towards the downed dropship, watching carefully for any signs of Helvet soldiers.
When their squad arrived, Kayla caught sight of Christie. She was heavily bruised and caked with dried blood, and the sight of her was shocking enough to make Kayla stop and sit on a boulder. One of her best friends had nearly been killed, and she had been powerless to do anything about it.
But she was alive, and that was all that mattered anymore. Kayla let the shaking in her legs subside as Thandi raced over to embrace Christie. She immediately burst into tears and for a moment, Kayla thought that the two women were arguing. She watched in dismay as Thandi’s face took on a rictus of shock, and she wrapped her arms around Christie.
Finding the strength to stand, Kayla hobbled over to join them.
“Christie are you okay?” she asked anxiously, fearing the worst while Thandi wept.
“She’s okay,” Thandi sobbed. “It’s Rose. Rose was killed.”
Kayla nodded gravely. “That’s terrible. Rose who?”
Thandi stared at her as she blinked back tears. “Rose. Our Rose.”
Almost drunk with fatigue, Kayla dismissed this. “She’s in the hospital, Thandi, I think you’re getting confused.”
Thandi shook her head. She sat Kayla down, putting an arm around her shoulders as Christie explained the wild story. The reality sank into Kayla’s gut like a ball of molten lead, and she felt herself going numb. Suddenly, everything around her, Weslan, the Rangers, the Valkyrie, even her friend Thandi didn’t matter. A terrible dark fog clouded out the world.
“Kayla?” Thandi asked, looking concerned as her friend seemed not to react to the news. “Are you Okay?”
“I don’t know,” Kayla said, staring into the distance. They got up, and Thandi led her over to the body, while Christie followed. Kayla sat down next to the sheet, where a pale hand stuck out in the dirt. She reached out with her fingers, and found it was cold and dusty, like the dead rocks around her. She sat there for some time, seeing nothing and hearing nothing.
“Viper Actual, this is Banshee.” Captain Aguilar’s radio buzzed with Zhang’s voice, as she stared tiredly at her Rangers moving through the valley.
“Go ahead Banshee.”
“A Calderan traffic control radar pinged our position. Security ships are moving in, and we need to bug out until things quiet down. Can you manage for a few hours?”
“Copy that, I’m already organizing patrols to check for any squirters,” Aguilar said, referring to the real probability that Helvetic commandos had escaped into the mountains around them. “We’ll be here for a while, mopping up.”
There was a pause, and Zhang’s voice was replaced with Smyrna’s.
“I mourn the loss of your Ranger, Brunilda,” the general said.
Aguilar furrowed her brow. She had diligently checked the casualty count with her medics, and nearly collapsed with relief to find that, by some miracle, none of her company had been fatally wounded.
“Thanks,” she said, “but it was one of the dropship crew, not one of mine.”
Smyrna paused. “There must be some confusion—we will speak on this again. For now, we will shroud and return when we are able.” She signed off.
Aguilar approached Cara, as she assisted with the pilot’s injuries.
“Sergeant,” the captain said, “I want to thank you and your team for everything you did. I tried as hard as I could to get up here in time, but I failed.”
Cara glanced at the blood-soaked bandage wrapped around Aguilar’s arm, and the dried blood smeared across her face. She shook her hand. “I know you did, Captain. You could have burned out the whole valley and ran up here, and it wouldn’t have made a difference.”
Aguilar nodded, grateful for the reassurance, and turned to the recovering pilot. “I’m sorry for the loss of your crew,” she said somberly.
The pilot looked at her in confusion. “She wasn’t a member of my crew. I thought she was a Ranger.”
Aguilar stopped, taken aback, her mind racing through the reports of that day. “No—all my Rangers are accounted for.”
“Didn’t you have one with a broken leg who had to stay behind?”
“Absolutely not, if they had broken a leg they wouldn’t have been on the Banshee.”
They stared at each other uncomprehendingly, until the pilot shrugged. “I don’t know who she is,” she insisted.
Aguilar looked around, seeing a soldier standing near the body—obviously grieving.
“Ranger,” she called gently, and Thandi looked around.
Aguilar approached her respectfully, gesturing to the body. “Is this your friend?”
Thandi tried her best to wipe away tears and nodded.
“It’s okay, I just want to know who she was.”
Thandi stammered her way through the story, explaining how Rose had been confined to Tyr city’s hospital, not assigned to any unit, and had managed to slip out to try and join them there. As Aguilar listened to the unbelievable chain of events, she felt a lump lodge in her throat.
“We found the bodies of two soldiers, five drones, and two other creatures around the crash site.” Cara filled in. “She really gave them everything she had.”
Aguilar looked across the crash site, at the saddle leading into the next valley, and made her own conclusions. She nodded. “I see.”
In one movement she reached up to the blue and gold flag of the Mountain Ranger badge on her combat suit, and ripped it off. She inspected it for a moment—a coveted badge, given only to Mountain Rangers once they had proved themselves in combat. Wordlessly, she knelt by the body to place the badge on top of the sheet.
Looking up, she locked eyes with another young Ranger, the one that had gone in with the Tiger Teams. The dead-eyed young woman returned her gaze in silence. With a nod of respect, Aguilar stood up and headed back down the valley, to deal with the endless work of securing the underground complex and surrounding mountains.