Turning away from the cavern, Rayker steamed in her impotent rage. How had it happened? A traitor, obviously, but whose? There was no other way they could have found the Omega site, much less arrived so quickly. It was possible one of the civilians had brought a tracker, but the Augustine controlled all traffic on the surface…or did the treachery extend throughout the entire league?

  In any case, the speed of their arrival meant that they must have been waiting nearby, guided by information taken directly from her benefactor. She had always assumed he had many servants, but none at her level, and none whose failures could affect her own operations.

  But why wouldn’t they move first? Why leave their sisters to be massacred in the city? None of it made sense. The spy had told her nothing. Worse, against all probability, the girl had managed to turn Milani when she should have been broken.

  Milani, a victim that she had taken in and nurtured, who had grown from subdued slave to excited student, poisoned against her? Lying to her, to assure her own escape? Rayker’s rage burned so fiercely that she began to sweat.

  She glanced back towards the teleporter. Had Kieran betrayed her too? Was the infant spy such a genius that she had seen through the trojan horse? There was only one way to find out.

  “Well?” she demanded into the radio.

  The response was immediate. “It’s not working. I don’t know what the problem is, but we’ve tried—”

  Rayker tore the headset off and threw it away. The game was over. There was only one move left to play, and, though it would guarantee her total victory, that meant nothing. She had failed in everything. She was a fool; a worthless psychopath, good for killing and nothing else. Just like they had always said. The truth poured down her throat like acid, dissolving her insides into black, rotting, hatred.

  To hell with all of it. Within the hour the entire battlefield would be reduced to ash, and there was only one piece of solace to extract.

  Rayker felt tired as she climbed down from her perch to the cavern floor. Her muscles felt like rubber, her body heavy, her skull clouded with fog. A communications terminal rested a short distance away, and she moved towards it a slow pace, dragging her feet. A little rewiring patched the stored handheld device into the command net. She lifted it to her lips and pushed the talk button.

  “This is Rayker. I am about to activate this site’s emergency lockdown protocol. Put me in contact with your senior office.”

  A long silence followed. After several minutes, the micro speaker chirped into life.

  “Rayker. You lost again, huh? That must be getting irritating.”

  Rayker’s lips curled into a smile as she recognized the voice.

  “Kayla Barnes, I assume? I asked for an officer, not a child.”

  “No, forget about that,” Kayla insisted. “Come and meet me out in the cavern, just the two of us. Nobody will shoot, I promise.”

  “I’m sure that settling whatever pathetic grudge you hold against me can wait until later, if you can survive what I am going to unleash. But I have one last request before I kill you all.”

  “Hmm, they’re working on it. Comms are tricky, ya know? But we have time for a quick punch up. I’m getting thumbs up from all the girls, by the way. We can make this happen.”

  “What a pathetic band you must be part of, that they would entertain a petulant temper tantrum. You’re a... what? Pack mule for the real warriors, no doubt. And I’m supposed to believe they would let you fight me? What contempt you have for my intelligence.”

  Kayla scoffed. “Suit yourself, bitch. Why don’t you sit tight and wait for those real warriors to show up? Your connection has given us your exact location.”

  Rayker sighed heavily. How could this possibly be her enemy? “Obviously,” she said slowly. “Have someone educated cross-reference it with the base’s secondary power conduits so they can learn what I have in store for you. ”

  This time there was no reply.

  “Come on, doc,” Kayla insisted. “Not that I don’t enjoy being humiliated in front of my peers.”

  She turned from the console to see that Gilah, eyes fixated on her screen, had turned pale and was struggling to speak.

  “Uplink completed,” the other scientist announced. “Smyrna’s on the line.”

  “Patch her through to this room,” Kayla ordered. “Doc, what is it? Breath deeply, let’s go.”

  A case of theft: this story is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.

  Gilah let out a strangled croak, inhaled, then exhaled. “It’s a… well, they will mine resources and multiply until they have exterminated all life…”

  “What will?”

  “The spiders. They’ll have help. Oh these things are monstrous…”

  Kayla’s brow furrowed. “All life on the mountain?”

  “The planet.”

  Kayla got to her feet and strode over to the struggling woman. “Hey, look at me. You’re a Valkyrie Ranger. I need you to find out everything you can about this… system, and how it works. We need that information as fast as you can.”

  Gilah nodded her head. “Yes, yes.” Her hesitation wilted under the force of Kayla’s insistent expression, and she turned back to her laptop with renewed focus.

  The voice of Smyrna boomed through the control room’s speaker. “I have heard enough. Connect me to her.”

  After a few keyboard taps, she spoke again. “Rayker, this is Smyrna. We have never met, but I fought with Otrera before history was written. We fought the Jotnar together, when humanity lived as gods—when they created you to do their foul work. That era is long gone, and we must serve the goal of galactic peace, whether we agree with it or not. Now you know why we have hunted you, so tell me, what being do you serve, that seeks to reignite the old war?”

  The silence that followed was broken by Kayla’s voice, dripping with sarcasm. “Oh hey, Thandi, how’s your day going? Oh me? Nothing special, just sat here listening to our freakin’ boss share more information with an enemy of mankind than she has ever shared with us. Work bullshit, ya know?”

  She turned and kicked a nearby monitor across the room, which exploded against the wall and left a small dent.

  Urtiga whirled around when she heard Rayker’s voice ring out across the cavern, emanating from multiple speakers. She didn’t hesitate for a second before launching herself into a sprint.

  “Hey,” Gucci called behind her.

  “She’s off her scope. Screw caution, let’s go,” Urtiga yelled.

  The team charged forward through the long tunnels that wound around the machine. They ran, and as they did, listened to the unfolding conversation. When Smyrna’s revelation came, they cursed and ran faster.

  Once Christie, gasping and struggling to keep up, finally indicated the last turn, Urtiga paused at the tunnel exit and waited as the runners assembled around her.

  “Okay Christie,” she said as she panted lightly. “Tell me this, yes or no—will her men find out that their teleporter connection isn’t working?”

  Christie raised her thumb as she sucked in oxygen.

  “So, is that defeat I hear in her voice a likely result of her believing that her plan failed?”

  “Y… yeh,” Christie managed.

  “Okay team,” Urtiga continued, “what we need to do… why are you looking at me like that?”

  Around her, the expressions had turned to cold hostility. Urtiga felt her skin crawl. In her entire career, no Valkyrie had ever given her that look.

  “Urtiga,” said one of her Raiders. “Otrera. Kind of similar aren’t they?”

  “I was just thinking that,” one of the Rangers said. “And, by my reckoning, this bitch has a lot of questions to answer.”

  Urtiga’s thoughts swam in confusion. “And... this weak-ass cover name is the best you thought I could come up with?”

  The atmosphere changed subtly. Rising anger gave way to uncertainty.

  “What the hell is this bullshit?” Gucci snarled. “You all know Urtiga. She’s solid as a rock. No way she’s been lying to us this whole time. Shame on all of you.”

  “Alright, hold on,” Urtiga cautioned. “There’s no sense jumping on each other. Everything is going sideways, but we have a clear objective. You want to throw mud—let’s do it afterwards. Right now, we’re taking that goddamned teleporter, how copy?”

  The others nodded, but avoided each other's gazes.

  "Okay—Jesus Christ. Where's Track?"

  A hand went up, and the terrified-looking engineer stepped forward.

  "We need to straight up charge the objective while everyone is freaking out. You stay in the middle of the pack with Christie. Everyone else: these guys might be having second thoughts about further resistance now that their psycho boss is talking about killing everyone. You see a raised weapon; shoot to kill. You see a dude hunched over a console trying to make two plus two equal five, try to take him prisoner."

  "They likely will have learned useful things about the system, so I want to endorse that instruction," Christie chimed in.

  "The eggheads are precious cargo," Gucci intoned severely. "Catch bullets headed their way."

  Satisfied with the plan, the group moved forward. As they topped the rise out of the tunnels, several Raiders dropped to the ground and fired. Two distracted guards fell dead, and Urtiga charged towards the opening in the cavern wall. She rounded a corner into a crowded space beyond, where confused, but armed men shot to their feet.

  “DROP ‘EM NOW,” Urtiga yelled. “OR I WILL KILL YOU.”

  Her orders were joined by a loud chorus that continued until all the men reluctantly laid their weapons on the ground and knelt in submission. They were cuffed and hauled to their feet, then pushed forward to serve as hostages as the team advanced towards the teleporter.

  “Your escape route is shut,” Urtiga called to the remaining guards working on the consoles. “Rayker wants us all to die down here. Don’t be stupid.”

  The final surrender went quickly. Caught between exhaustion, desperation and doubt, the VennZech security guards lost their appetite for resistance.

  “That one,” a man said, nodding to Christie. “Byoran brought her down here to gather intel. He sold us out, didn’t he?”

  “Yes,” Christie replied, as she strode towards the access panel she had previously seen opened up. “But only because I manipulated him, so I would appreciate getting the credit.”

  “Okay, fellas,” Gucci said with a wry smile. “Real talk. Anyone who wants to leave and rejoin Rayker’s spider army out in the cavern is free to do so. Disarmed, obviously.”

  Nobody moved.

  “Oh no,” Gucci said in a whining voice. “We’ve made a terrible mistake. Please nice ladies, don’t send us back to the mass-murdering psycho. We promise to be good, don’t we?”

  A few laughs broke out when some of the men nodded sheepishly.

  Urtiga shrugged. “I dunno, she’s pretty hot. I wouldn’t kick her out of bed.” She caught the looks around her. “She’s drugged and tied up, in this scenario… I’m not stupid.” Her brow creased. “Oh no… wait—”

  “No it’s cool, you’re just a rapist,” Gucci said.

  “Urtiga fishing for a sexual assault prevention class after the mission,” a Raider commented.

  Laughter bled the stress from the room. As far as they were concerned, the killing had finally stopped. If only they could get the teleporter up and running again, they might all survive.

  “We tried everything,” one of the men said, while Track pried the hatchway open. “That key doesn’t work.”

  “No,” Christie said firmly. “But somewhere in there is one that will.”