After a little polite small talk, she let him hang for a while, occasionally offering eye contact and a warm smile. Rayker prowled frequently through the room, casting brief glances at Kolar, and Christie reminded herself not to overdo it.
As she watched the dark figure stalk away again, she escalated her apparent state of inebriation. Muttering something about the restroom, she stepped forward and jostled the unhappy looking Kolar, spilling his drink all over his badly fitted tuxedo.
“God I’m SOOO sorry,” wailed Christie, smothering the appalled man’s crotch with a napkin. “Come out into the air to let it dry.”
She dragged him, protesting furiously, out of the main room towards a quiet balcony. A pair of guards looked in on them, then moved away in embarrassment.
“We can’t go back in until it’s dried,” she declared. “What will people think? They’ll say we were—oh well you know.” She cackled.
Kolar stood helpless. “I wouldn’t dream of—totally unthinkable.” He stammered.
“Oh my deeeaaaar!” Christie cooed. “Are you saying I’m ugly?”
“Absolutely not, you are… very beautiful.”
Christie stared into his eyes with the most seductive expression of gratitude she could muster. Then she turned back to the dark mountains beyond.
“This is such a lovely spot, isn’t it?” she sighed, and took out her lipstick.
A furious looking Rayker strode out from the balcony’s doors.
“Doctor Kolar,” she snapped. “Please return with me to the main room immediately. Your behavior is entirely inappropriate. Leave this… this girl to make a fool of herself somewhere else.”
Kolar’s frightened eyes jumped from Christie’s sly grin to Rayker’s terrifying expression.
Out of options, Christie decided to go for broke. “God you’re such a bore, aren’t you, Ranky? Frigid old woman. Why don’t you let the fellow enjoy himself?” She reached a hand up to his shoulder and gave it a gentle squeeze.
Rayker’s lips turned into a sneer. “You pathetic, drunken—”
She froze, suddenly alert as her eyes snapped around the balcony.
Christie almost wanted to grab Kolar and haul him backwards into the void. Below them, the waterfall fell away down a thousand-foot cliff. Her nanite enhanced body would survive the fall, and if she positioned herself to cushion Kolar, maybe he would too. She would be hospitalized for months, but anything was better than letting Rayker take her alive.
But the woman lunged forward with impossible speed and seized Christie’s neck. “Luring me outside, is that it?” she spat.
Christie was thrown bodily back into the hallway inside. She fought to regain her senses, but the cold fingers wrapped around her throat again, and she screamed as loudly as she could. On the balcony, a pale Kolar sank to the floor in shock.
“I don’t know what you are yet, you little whore,” Rayker hissed into Christie’s ear.
Her hand came up, and the flesh of her wrist ripped open to reveal a bloody cavity, and a needle-sharp spike of bone, aimed at Christie’s forehead.
“But I think you’ll soon tell me everything I want to know.”
Christie screamed again, and tried to kick her captor. She probably ought to pretend to faint, but there was no way she could fool Rayker. What the hell had she seen to tip her off? How much longer before it would all be over?
A breathless guard raced into the hallway and stopped, going pale as he caught sight of Rayker.
“What is it?” she snapped impatiently.
The guard blinked, pulled his gaze away from the woman’s mutated arm and began to speak. “There’s—”
The lights went out, and they were plunged into darkness. Christie heard the distant whir of something sliding fast down a rope.
The pressure on her throat vanished and she collapsed to the ground, just as the windows exploded. Black shapes poured into the hallway. There was a whir, a wet thunk, and a cut off scream, followed by a clatter of silenced gunshots. Christie curled into a ball to protect herself, and out of the corner of her eye she saw something like a giant spider climb onto the ceiling before reaching out an arm.
A black weapon spat another burst of fire. There was a rasping gurgle and Rayker’s body fell to the ground.
Boots stomped back and forth in a chaos of movement. As her spinning mind’s revolutions began to slow, Christie felt a firm hand on her shoulder, gently pulling her upright.
Nearby, a black-suited soldier strode away. “Target secured,” it said, in the harsh rasp of a machine voice.
Christie found herself sat upright, staring into a bug-eyed metal vizor.
“Clear! Move to the main room!” someone else announced.
The vizor slid upwards to reveal the grim face of a woman she didn’t recognize, staring at her in concern. “Are you hurt soldier?” she asked.
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Christie shook her head. “I’m okay. Did someone…?”
“We have one casualty. Kolar’s secured, and Rayker is down for the count.”
Christie looked over and saw a blood-stained body in a heap in the center of the hallway. Two armed, masked figures stood over it, weapons aimed firmly. Nearby, the security guards had been bound and blindfolded.
By the balcony entrance, one of the Valkyrie had collapsed against a wall with a spike buried in her chest. As Christie stared at her, the facemask slid up to reveal the pale, gasping face of Urtiga, the Raider team’s senior NCO. Urtiga caught her eye, and winked through her grimace of pain.
Down the hall she could hear the steel-faced soldiers flooding the rooms, demanding, in robotic tones, compliance from the guests. There had been a terrorist attack in the area, they explained, but security had intervened, and the situation was under control.
Still confused by the adrenaline haze, Christie turned back to the woman checking her over. Had she spoken?
“I’m sorry?” she asked.
“I said, you did a great job,” the Raider said with a warm smile.
“Thank you,” Christie said, and felt like she wanted to throw up.
“All call-signs—Hera! I say again, Hera,” the radio in Kayla’s headset blared.
She punched the air as a rush of adrenaline and rage flooded her system. The operation was a success, and it felt great, but she still wanted to scream questions into her mic. Had anyone been hurt? What had happened to Christie? Was Rayker dead?
“Get some,” Ray said out loud, as others nodded.
“Stay frosty,” Kes snapped. “Watch your sectors. This isn’t over yet.”
Kayla silenced her mind and focused her eyes on the grounds of the nearby chateau. The perimeter formed by the Rangers was intended to keep Rayker from escaping. But there was still the possibility that rogue security or guests could have slipped through the control of the chateau’s assaulters. If anyone made it through the mountains and back to civilization, they would begin to spread word about an attack by an unknown force and rumors would quickly circulate in Helvetic society.
Kayla didn’t think this would be such an awful development. The Helvetic League was an imperial power, intent on subjugating every human world to their control. Her home-world of Caldera was already in their tightening grip. Though she had sworn her allegiance to an organization that protected all of humanity, she couldn’t help but question her choice. Did Valkyrie have to be so aloof? Weren’t there evils threatening to engulf the human race from within?
But she kept her doubts to herself, and only shared her agonizing with the eternally patient Thandi.
Something made her glance upward, and she saw a star moving across the night sky, visible through her infra-red vizor. At first, she thought it was a nice symbol to end the mission under, but it began to change direction. With a start, Kayla saw that it was much closer than she had guessed, moving incredibly fast, and heading straight for the chateau. She tried to key her mic, but, before she could speak, the object impacted the south wall, where the Raiders and Christie had taken down Rayker.
Kayla slammed her faceplate up, and watched in horror as bright orange fire blossomed into the night. The whole squad was transfixed in silence, before they were hit by a sonic boom from the object’s flight, followed by the boom of the explosion.
“What the—” Thandi began.
“Viper two,” Kes said into her headset. “Viper two-one. We just saw what looked like a missile strike against the objective. What’s going on?”
Kayla’s heart raced. Her vision darkened around the edges and she felt herself flushing with heat. Smoke belched into the sky, while flames were already reaching the chateau’s upper floors. Christie had been near the impact point, and Urtiga, her mentor, and the woman who had recruited her into Valkyrie. In her mind she saw them laying on the ground, unconscious, as fire crept towards their bodies.
She became vaguely aware that Kes had said something to her, but she couldn’t tear her eyes away. Thandi repeated the question, but Kayla shook her head, without knowing why.
“No,” she said. “No.”
And then the squad was behind her, fading into the distance. She was sprinting, legs pumping as hard and fast as her nanite enhanced muscles could manage. She raced for the chateau wall, ignoring the outburst of yelling in her headset that had become as meaningless as static.
Kayla ran until her lungs ached and her heart threatened to burst out of her chest. She covered the half-mile to the building in less than two minutes, and when she reached its walls she jumped for a first floor window frame. Outstretched fingers grasped at the smooth metal lining, but didn’t slip. She had been a strong climber since she had learned to walk, and the chateau’s structure, with its ornate façade and prominent stone slabs, wasn’t much of a challenge.
Smoke was billowing out from a hole in the fourth floor, and she moved as close as she could. She managed to haul herself over a balcony, and smashed through a locked door into a noisy haze. Guests were screaming in terror, while robotic voices yelled commands as the Raiders tried to get control of the situation.
Thick fumes made Kayla’s eyes smart, and she dropped her vizor, selecting infra-red. Further down the corridor, an intense heat source glowed through the hellish obscurity. Kayla headed straight for it. Wherever the other Valkyrie had been, she knew she had to go to the point of impact first. That would be where she would find the most severe casualties.
A sharp scream made her skin crawl, and she rounded a corner, only for her display to blind her with white light. She flipped her vizor to see a ghastly scene. The missile had destroyed the balcony and hallway, leaving a dark void visible through the ragged hole. Fire crawled up the walls, while black suited bodies carpeted the floor. Rayker was crouching among them, blackened with soot and covered in blood. She held one of her spikes like a dagger, ready to strike. With her other hand, she had seized hold of another, buried in a fallen body. She tugged at the needle and pulled it free, then stood to see Kayla staring directly at her.
Kayla shivered in her glare of manic rage.
In the split seconds that followed, years of training came to her aid. Before she could even think her hands were moving, ignoring the stun rifle that hung from her back, and seizing hold of the pistol in her leg holster.
She sidestepped as Rayker flung a spike towards her that buried itself several inches into the wall. Kayla’s gun, almost of its own volition, rose up to her chest and began to orient towards her enemy. Even before she was aware of the sights in her vision, Kayla was pulling the trigger, sending rounds down the hallway in a gradually tightening circle.
The flash and kick of the weapon appeared to pass in slow motion, but Rayker was already moving, darting away from the bullets. Kayla tried to adjust, but she was too slow, and watched helplessly as the most dangerous woman in the galaxy flung herself out into the night. She hung for a brief instant, like a high-diver, and then fell, straight down through the waterfall into the valley below.
Kayla felt a click, and shifted her eyes from the empty sky to see her pistol’s slide locked back. Then she refocused onto the pile of bodies before her.
“Hey?” she called. “Is anyone alive?”
She started to drag bodies as fast as she could away from the flames, hoping that someone had remained conscious.
“Kayla?” a soft voice called from somewhere out of sight.
Kayla wiped away tears and raced forward. She dug beneath an unconscious pair of Raiders until she found a pale, unprotected arm. Then she hauled, until a cursing, soot blackened and shaking Christie emerged.
“Jesus, are you okay? What the hell happened?” Kayla asked.
Christie coughed and spluttered but waved away the concerned and probing hands that were checking her for injuries.
“Call the medics in,” she said.