Nobody in the garage dared to make a sound after the announcement. Kayla kept her eyes shut, as she wrestled with what would probably be the end of her world, and the free colonist community.

Eventually, Gaz cleared his throat. “They’ll need a few hours before they can start landing troops,” he said. “If there’s anything we can do for your friends… we need to start moving.”

“They jammed our comms,” Kayla said without looking up. “If we could somehow find their emitters… that would be a huge help.”

“Don’t need to,” Gaz said with a confident smile. “Any systems they’re operating in the city will be controlled out of their operations office in the industrial zone. They can’t keep themselves from centralizing everything.”

The canteen door opened. “Kayla,” a voice said.

Kayla opened her eyes and looked over to see Tian, her eyes moist, and rimmed with red. In the two years Kayla had known the woman, she had never seen her get so emotional.

“We lost Kes,” Tian said, and choked up.

Kayla leapt to her feet and raced inside the canteen. The others were wiping away tears and staring at nothing. Even Ray was wiping her eyes.

“What happened?” she asked, as gently as she could.

Lyna was huddled against the wall with her head in her hands. She looked up and sniffed. “She inhaled too much smoke. Her lungs are clogged with ash. She’s had no oxygen since the crash. Nanites kept her alive since then but…” Her voice trailed off.

Kayla felt nauseous. The room began to spin. She fought for control, but it was all too much. In the space of a few hours the entire universe seemed to have started collapsing. As she struggled to breathe and fought back tears, she didn’t have long to wait until anger punched through the fog of despair.

“Goddamn Rayker,” she spat. “The road was completely empty. It had to have been shut down before the attack even began. She must have gambled that someone would be near the mill, and that we would try to take that route to the starport. We played straight into her hands.”

Tian closed the canteen door behind her as she stepped inside.

“We didn’t even think about that,” she said morosely. “Neither did Kes. We just had to get over there.”

Kayla shook her head. “Valkyrie has learnt to fight robots, not people. And we’re paying the price again.”

Another awful thought crept into her mind. What if other squads had been ambushed in the same way? Who else hadn’t managed to get out alive? What about the intelligence team? And Christie?

Gaz’s words came back to her. She jumped up and stormed out of the canteen.

“My friend?” she demanded “The blonde girl. Where did she go?”

A surprised Gaz shook his head in confusion. “Go? I don’t know. We didn’t see her again after the first reconnaissance.”

“She would have gone undercover in the company. Where? You must have heard something.”

He thought quickly. “Probably the operations office. That would make sense if she wanted to access as much of their file system as she could without looking suspicious. And then…”

“What?” Kayla snapped.

“Tensall works there. When i talked to your friend, we agreed he was important.” His face turned grim. “To uh… Rayker.”

“Can you get us over there? Even with the cops?”

Gaz looked at Sal, who shrugged his shoulders.

“Well, screw it,” Kayla said forcefully. “We’re going, even if we have to leave a trail of bodies behind us.”

“Kayla?” Lyna’s voice said behind her. She sounded scared. “What are you talking about?”

Gaz motioned to his team, and they moved to the vehicles to start preparing for the trip.

Kayla grabbed Lyna’s arm and led her back to the canteen. When she closed the door, she turned to find six pairs of eyes watching her.

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She took a quick breath. “If they have jammers set up throughout the city, they’ll be controlling them from a single building. If we can get over there, we can get the task force comms back online.”

“But we’d have to fight our way in,” Lyna said hesitantly. “We’d draw a ton of attention. All those cops… The Task Force will have fallen back on the escape and evasion protocol, and we should do the same. Isn’t the mission over?”

“You don’t know that,” Kayla said. “Other squads might have been ambushed like we were—Rayker could have prisoners.”

Tian cleared her throat. “But isn’t that for the QRFs and other companies to worry about? Aren’t they supposed to come and rescue us?”

“Yeah, I think so,” Lyna said, and her voice carried an edge of desperation. “The operation is compromised. We can’t start a fight we aren’t trained for and risk the whole galaxy turning on us.”

Kayla shook her head. “No, without comms we can’t expect any help to come. Command has no clue what is happening down here, and they’ll want to move carefully.”

“But haven’t we exposed ourselves enough?” Lyna continued. “We need to stay in hiding and figure out how to get off the planet. Those were our orders.”

Kayla crossed her arms. She wanted to slap the woman, but that wouldn’t help anyone. Instead, she inflected her voice with a little more anger. “That’s not good enough, Lyna. Fight on to the Ranger objective and complete the mission, though I be the lone survivor. Remember?”

Lyna’s voice began to sound desperate. “But… but you just want to find Christie. There’s nothing we can do for her. That was the risk she chose to take.”

Kayla felt heavy gazes resting on her. Judging her. Waiting to decide how far they would follow her; creeds and training be damned.

She stopped closer to the wretched looking woman and grabbed her by the shoulder. “Rangers are out there right now, fighting on their own. They need our help. I need your help, Lyna.”

Then Thandi was at her side, “As do we,” she said gently, and took Lyna’s hand in her own. She led her unresisting over to a pile of gear in the corner, and held up a plate carrier. “Let us finish the day’s work, before we can rest.”

Lyna sniffed and nodded, and took the straps in her hands.

Kayla turned to the others. Their eyes had brightened and narrowed as they prepared to start moving.

A flash of inspiration dawned in her mind, though it hurt her to contemplate.

“Rackeye is under attack by terrorists,” she said. “That’s all the world knows. No matter what we do, that’s all they’ll see—as long as we aren’t captured.”

Ray stared at her skeptically. “And you’re okay with that?”

Kayla shrugged. “No. But what choice do we have?”

There was a knock on the door. Kayla opened it to see Gaz, already dressed in tactical gear.

“Whatever you’re going to decide, you need to do it quickly,” he said. “Our group is going over there with or without you. We’ll never get another chance to find Milani. But we need to move before they start landing troops.

Lyna stepped forward. “Our friend’s body stays here. We will come back to collect her, and if she’s gone, we’ll burn your entire business down.”

The older woman appeared behind Gaz. “I’ll look after her,” she promised. “She won’t be disturbed.”

Kayla made eye contact with Ray, and motioned for her to follow.

Gaz led them to a city map pinned up on the garage wall. He talked them through a route that entered the industrial zone through the train station, and brought them to the main building via a side street.

“Our watch-teams are confirming that VennZech’s security force is scattered throughout the city,” he explained. “Apparently, they moved a bunch of employees to the headquarters in the canyon. They won’t be expecting this, so there shouldn’t be much of a fight.”

Kayla’s gut knotted up. Did that mean Christie? There was only one way to find out.

“We have some idea of their security systems,” Gaz said. “If your team can control whoever’s inside, we’ll disable the alarms.”

“We need to cover our faces,” Ray said. “We don’t want to be identified.”

Kayla nodded.

“And you’ll want to find the most senior employees you can,” Sal added. “We’ll need their access to get into their computer system and locate this jamming network.”

“You can’t just hack in?” Kayla demanded.

Sal glanced at her in confusion. “Hack… what? What do you mean?”

“Ignore her,” Ray said. “She watches too many movies.”

Once they had managed to scrounge face scarves and balaclavas, the squad started to mount up in the beat-up old vans. Ray grabbed Kayla and pulled her to one side.

“Who’s Milani?” she asked.

“A kidnapped teenager they’ve been looking for,” Kayla said impatiently. Why did this matter?

“So that’s their agenda? And what if they don’t care how many people they have to kill to find this girl?”

“We’ve been over this,” Kayla replied testily. “If we’re terrorists—”

“It’s one thing to use a cover to break into a building,” Ray hissed. “But we have no idea what these people are capable of.”

Kayla stared at her while she tried to think. “It’s not like we have an alternative,” she said eventually.

“Just keep your eye on them, alright? Stay suspicious.”

Kayla blinked and nodded, though she had no idea what Ray was getting at. Saving the task force and rescuing a trafficking victim seemed like a clean win.

Kayla went to sit up front in the lead van with Gaz. She nodded to him, and he drove them out into the street.

“Do you think we’ll find Milani at this place?” she asked casually.

Gaz nodded. “According to our information, yes. And I don’t see why they would have moved her with the other employees.”

“And what if she’s not there?”

“Then I’ll keep following the breadcrumbs.” He glanced at her. “I’m not expecting you to do the same. Your people and your mission come first. I was a Marine; I know how it works.”

Kayla met his eyes. “I’ll do whatever I can,” she promised.

“And if there’s anything I can do to help you save your home, so will I.”

Kayla smiled. Of course she could trust Gaz—they seemed to agree on most things. Ray was just being overly cautious, which made sense. She obviously didn’t understand how dark and brutal life could be under the League’s boot. Their new allies did.

Kayla felt a little warmth return as the convoy sped through the city towards their new target.