Krenn stepped forward and touched her arm. Kayla glanced up, then over to Gaz, who nodded. She drew back, holstered her weapon, then moved behind the table. Her limbs were trembling, while lightning coursed through her nerves. After a moment spent struggling to think, she stepped out of the conference room into the open lobby beyond, where she gulped in oxygen.
“Hey,” Ray said behind her. “You okay? It got a bit intense in there.”
Kayla shook her head as she flushed with heat. “I didn’t even realize how deep I got. Honestly, I was ready to kill him.”
“I didn’t doubt it.” Ray cocked her head. “It’s your first time, isn’t it?”
“First time what?”
“Talking to a rapist.”
Kayla hesitated before responding. She couldn’t doubt the fire that had roared through her mind, but the rational part of her still had questions.
“Is that what he is?” she asked. “What if Milani really did want to be with him?”
“Of course he is,” Ray said firmly. “She was fourteen when she met him. She has no idea what right or wrong is, which makes her easy to manipulate and control. Wherever she is, her mind is in survival mode. Every day she’s making up a new reason why everything’s fine, because she has no choice. Self-deception is how the mind deals with trauma, you know? Tensall is an expert abuser, so he knows how to feed that response with glitz and glamour. For a teenager from a middle-class background, it’s as overwhelming as the drugs.”
“I guess. I respond to trauma with violence, to be honest.”
“Yeah, that’s one strategy. But you, me and Milani have this in common—two months into a normal life, and we’ll hit the wall.”
Kayla gave her a lopsided grin. “Gee, thanks, Ray. I can always count on you for a morale boost.”
Ray shrugged. “I wouldn’t worry about it. Just do like me, and never leave the organization. Haha.”
“Oh, I get it. They’re our abusers.”
They both snorted with laughter at the dark joke, and Kayla’s emotions started to settle.
“How can someone be like that?” she demanded. “Destroying innocent lives for fun?”
“He’s likely a victim of abuse himself,” Ray said. “Rather than face his own trauma, he can normalize it by passing it on to others. And then his society enables him, because he’s a conduit for power and influence.”
“It’s like child sacrifice for their insane worship of the ‘common good’.”
“I tell you what, the one thing I love slash hate about this job is that it shows you the gruesome reality of human beings.”
“Of Helvets, you mean,” Kayla said darkly. “Tell me again why we can’t just destroy them all?”
Ray only arched her eyebrows.
The conference room door opened, and Gaz emerged. “Everything okay?” he asked.
“Sure thing,” Kayla said with a smile. “Just processing the horror.”
Gaz nodded. “Happens to all of us. You broke the man, though. He admitted he planted a tracker on Milani, and we’re setting up a connection now. Good work.”
“Thanks,” Kayla said, before her face screwed up in disgust. “A tracker? How is that thing even called a human?”
“No reason he has to be,” Gaz said.
Though his eyes appeared to rest on empty space, for a brief moment, the fire of a star reflected in them.
Kayla wondered what was going through his mind, but her thoughts were derailed by a chirping in her ear.
“Viper two-one, flash traffic, how copy?” an unfamiliar voice said hurriedly.
She tapped her ear, and Gaz gave her a nod before ducking back inside the conference room. Kayla keyed her mic.
“Viper two-one, standing by to copy,” she said, as her heart began to thump faster. Flash traffic meant emergency news.
“Viper two-one, this is Raven three. Be advised, large numbers of enemy combatants are moving on your position, ETA imminent.”
Without even thinking, Kayla switched her headset to squad comms. “Everyone, stand to, we might have a fight on our hands.”
Ray’s jaw dropped, but she turned and started to run for the roof.
On Elmira Aliyev’s tablet screen, a bird’s eye view showed dozens of vehicles flooding through the streets in the direction of the operations office, and the Ranger squad holed up inside. The live feed showed her the view of a covert Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance drone circling high above them. For the previous hour, she and her fellow Combat Controllers had been watching the slow and seemingly random movements of identified police vehicles throughout the city. Without warning, they had all suddenly begun to converge in one direction, accompanied by another group of unidentified vehicles, assumed to be VennZech security. Now, they were only a matter of minutes away from their target.
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It had been a long two days for the Combat Controllers of element Raven. They started the operation setting up and managing a makeshift airfield for the operation’s airborne assets in a secluded valley, twenty miles north of Rackeye. Events the next morning seemed to be progressing as planned when they lost signal with every drone simultaneously. A short while later, the automated aircraft came back to land, following their return to base protocols.
Fortunately, whatever jamming had cut off the task force in the city didn’t extend to the airfield, and many tense radio calls passed between Raven, the Banshee, and the Ghost Fortress site. A hasty plan was established, and a group of engineers sped out to take over the airfield, while the Combat Controllers raced into the city.
Heading for the nearest battle, they quickly made contact with one of the Raider QRFs, and spent the afternoon on their guns, helping them destroy Rayker’s mechs. Once that job was complete, they worked to track down the scattered Ranger elements, in some cases fighting off law enforcement as the task force struggled to break contact.
As soon as the jamming was disabled, the drones were sent back over the city, and Raven split up with Raider or ODT partners. Their new mission was to track the movements of the hundreds of agents and officers hunting them and their friends while keeping an eye on the landing ships of the Augustine, and the thousands of soldiers that would soon deploy into the streets.
Now, perched on top of a skyscraper near Rackeye’s industrial zone, Elmira feared that the worst-case scenario was developing in front of her. A Ranger squad, cut off, and facing the might of the Helvetic League all on their own. Nearly two dozen vehicles were forming a tightening perimeter around the operations office, and there wasn’t much anybody could do to stop them. For all the organization’s need to maintain secrecy, the choice was about to be taken away from them.
She activated her mic. “Banshee, Raven-three.”
“Go ahead Raven,” said the tinny voice after a short delay.
The cloaked warship was holding position behind Caldera’s volcanic moon, relaying their communications through a widespread cluster of satellites.
“Do we have any word on those Shrikes?” Elmira asked hopefully.
“Still waiting, Raven-three,” the voice replied after an endless pause.
Elmira cursed, drawing a concerned look from her Raider partner, Gucci.
The Shrikes—stealth multi-role fighters—were easily the most effective solution to the problem. They could drop bombs from high altitude while even the watchful Augustine would be clueless to their presence. Unfortunately, the small craft lacked the range to operate over the one hundred and fifty thousand miles that separated them from the surface of Caldera. The trip would take them an hour, after which they would have some loiter time to help support the Rangers. But then they would have to land at the small makeshift airfield, which had only stockpiled enough resources for the drones.
In theory, fuel could be manufactured by the Jotnar installation on the planet, and tankers could be scrounged by some of the women in the city. Of course, it was only a matter of time before the League’s own satellites or drones detected such a logistical chain, and tracked it to the airfield, if not back to the mountain site. If that happened, only wishful thinking would keep Valkyrie from being revealed to the world.
The window of opportunity was fast closing as the Augustine settled into a holding orbit high above their heads. It would soon begin to disgorge dozens of landing craft, leaving the task force with only two options; try to vanish into the shadows, or go to war against the League itself.
After fifty years of experience in Valkyrie, Elmira knew that any such decision would be put off until the last possible moment.
Gucci, long gun braced tight into her shoulder, was peering through the scope at the activity around the VennZech complex.
“Looks like they’re going to try an assault,” she observed calmly.
“Think we can get closer?” Elmira asked.
If she was going to drop bombs on a populated area, she needed a better vantage point. Even the drone’s-eye view didn’t tell the whole story.
Gucci’s rifle swiveled. “There’s a construction site two miles from the complex. We could get up on the cranes, though a swift exit would be out of the question. Everything else over there is too low for good overwatch.”
Elmira considered the suggestion. If the pair were compromised, their options for escape from such an exposed position would be minimal. On the other hand, the Ranger squad trapped in the distant building were facing the same problem.
“Let’s do it,” she said.
Glass exploded across the lobby as Sal and Leod ran for cover. A truck had stopped a hundred yards short of the building, where a handful of men jumped out and sprayed bullets from automatic weapons.
Sal pulled Leod’s body low as they scampered away from the desk into the safety of the offices beyond. Kayla dropped down from the floor above and caught up with them as they skidded into an empty corridor.
“You okay?” she demanded.
The two men checked themselves, then nodded as they caught their breath.
“What the hell are they thinking?” Kayla said, to no-one in particular. She shook her head in frustration. What kind of absolute morons unloaded into a building that, as far as they knew, contained civilians?
Sal’s radio burst into life with calls of incoming fire, and the repeated request to shoot back. Caught by surprise, he only managed a quick “wait one,” before he looked with wild eyes at Kayla.
“What’s your squad going to do?” he demanded impatiently.
Muffled, but still audible, the staccato crash of shooting continued from outside.
“I... I don’t know,” she said helplessly, and was about to return the same question.
“Kayla, it’s Ray,” her earpiece buzzed. “It’s just four guys dumping their mags. They drove in ahead of the other vehicles, so I think they might have their own agenda.”
“Copy, stay quiet,” Kayla replied, and looked back at Sal. “I think it’s VennZech guys trying to escalate the situation. They don’t want us walking away and talking to anybody.”
“What the hell?” Leod yelled as his body shook with adrenaline. “Do they want to kill all of us?”
Sal narrowed his eyes and raised his radio. “Everyone, sit tight until further notice. They’re trying to goad us into a fight.”
Teams across the building confirmed the order, and then added that the expletive-labelled individuals out front had already run out of ammunition. Tires began squealing in every direction, indicating that the rest of the vehicles had caught up, and were probably setting up a perimeter. No more gunshots rang out.
“Okay, I’m going to check in with Gaz,” Kayla said. “Leod, can I get you to go and keep your co-workers calm?”
“Uh… no?” Leod snapped. “They’ll call me a traitor.”
“No worries,” Sal said. “I’ll take care of it. Leod, go set up a computer somewhere safe and get us the camera feeds back.”
The terrified engineer nodded, and scampered off down the hall. Kayla turned and headed for the maintenance staircase on her way back to the conference room. That hallway let out onto the main lobby, so she low-crawled until she reached the door, then ducked inside.
“Guys, here’s the deal—” she panted, then stopped dead.
Blood was pooling across the conference table and onto the floor. Thick rivulets streamed into the carpet, soaking it black. Tensall was leaning to one side, his head lolling lifelessly. A red hole just above the ear marked a bullet entry, and the opposite side of his skull was missing.
In the corner of her eye, Kayla saw the camera’s red light blinking in record mode. Weslan was slouched in his chair, staring at the floor as tears ran down his cheeks.
Gaz stood beside the executive’s dead body, a gun in his hand, and the same empty expression on his face.
“What’s up?” he asked casually.