Breaking through the last of the offices, Kayla and Naima emerged into a network of hallways, some of which lead towards the central corridor, while the others ended with stairs descending into a maintenance

  area.

  “Hold up, here,” Naima instructed, then tapped her headset. “All Vipers do not, repeat, do not approach the main corridor. That is Tiger’s kill zone.”

  “So where the hell are the bad guys?” Kayla demanded, not taking her eyes off the distant openings.

  Naima tapped her headset again, listened for a moment, then nodded. “Okay, so it looks like Rayker is managing a retreat through these access ways.” She pointed to the maintenance areas ahead.

  “They drop down to the big cavern.”

  “Let’s do it,” Kayla said, and began to move forward, until Naima’s hand grabbed her arm.

  “Not so fast.” A survey drone’s going in first, and we are to approach with extreme caution.

  “You mean let them get away?”

  “That is an acceptable outcome. Be assured, a plan is in motion.”

  Kayla was about to complain, but Naima’s expression brought her up short.

  “You didn’t wonder why we’ve had it so easy?” the operator said, patiently. “Tiger was Rayker’s biggest threat, and that’s where she was fighting. They lost four

  dead to clean headshots from a shooter nobody could detect.”

  “Christ,” Kayla lifted her goggles and rubbed her eyes.

  “Yeah. She’s more lethal with guns than she is with those spikes. We wait for the drone.”

  An unpleasant silence filled the air.

  Kayla cleared her throat. “Do you know uh…” She hesitated, unwilling to finish the sentence.

  Naima shook her head. “No names will go out until later. All I know is it’s some of my friends.”

  Kayla felt her skin crawl. Some of them she might have met, though only briefly. But she couldn’t imagine have to go on without knowing something like that about the women she worked with every day.

  Naima, however, wore the same, focused and alert expression she always did, as though she could ignore that part of her mind. In some ways the woman, and the others in her unit, were almost machines, and Kayla didn’t

  know if she could ever be as strong, or dedicated.

  All she did know was that Rayker was going to die before the day was finished, no matter what it cost her.

  The drone arrived quickly, and shot down the maintenance stairs. There was a pause while Naima brought up its feed in her headset.

  “Alright, let’s go,” she said eventually. “But carefully.”

  With Rangers in tow, Kayla followed her down a staircase that cut through an array of cables and pipes. They dropped down a ladder, then turned down a tunnel that sloped into a darkness even their low-light

  sensors couldn’t handle.

  “I’m going to hit the lights on the drone up ahead,” Naima explained. “But that’ll work for the enemy too, obviously. Move as fast as you can, but stay close to cover. Drop

  the second you see a thermal signature.”

  When the shape of the tunnel resolved itself, they took off at a run. A narrow steel walkway ran alongside the pipes, and Naima stuck to. Kayla vaulted over the handrail and managed to keep herself stable

  on one of the curved surfaces below her feet. Nobody would be expecting her to do that, and if someone shot at her, she could easily drop through the gap into the tunnel space below.

  Ahead, the slope of the tunnel leveled out. From her lower perspective, Kayla was the first to see a flash of bright light on her goggles, so she dropped to a knee and fired immediately. The signature flared,

  and she stepped to the side, slipping deliberately on the pipe and dropping into the tunnel like a sack of potatoes. An object the size of a baseball sailed overhead and detonated with a small, but powerful explosion.

  “Back up, back up,” Naima yelled at the others.

  A few single shots pinged off the metal work, but the tunnel quickly returned to silence. Heart thumping like a jackhammer, Kayla worked her way under the gantry and climbed up towards it. An arm reached

  down for her, and she grabbed it to haul herself back up.

  “Thanks,” she said gratefully.

  “Don’t mention it,” a smiling Thandi responded, and got a fierce hug in response.

  “Did you hit anything?” Naima asked.

  Kayla shrugged. “Maybe.”

  Naima patted her shoulder. “Alright, no worries. We gave them some pressure, and that’s all we had to do. This place is a death trap anyway.” She turned away. “Hey, LT, can I get

  you to post some security at the top of this tunnel and send your other squads back up?”

  “That is the approach I have been informed of by your superior, Sergeant,” the Ranger officer replied, though not unkindly. “If you wouldn’t mind leaving things in my hands from

  here onwards?”

  “Yeah, you got it, uh… Lieutenant. Listen, I really appreciate you, and all the Vipers. You did great work, and you’re great fighters. You girls can come drink on me any day.”

  “Consider the offer mutual, and thank you for your guidance.”

  “Barnes,” Naima beckoned, and led Kayla up the tunnel as the lieutenant began assigning new responsibilities. “Listen—I wanted to say that I think you’re alright. You ever

  want to come on over, I’ll put in a good word for you.”

  “Come over?” Kayla asked, still a little dazed from nearly getting blown up.

  Stolen novel; please report.

  “To the unit. It’s where you want to be, I can tell, and to be brutally honest, Orbital Demolition is way overrated.”

  “Oh,” Kayla said, suddenly at a loss for words. “Um… thanks.”

  “Anytime,” said the operator, then turned and loped away into the darkness, as though her battery was still at maximum.

  Kayla was ordered to reform her squad in the control room, recently secured by Masey and her ODTs. She and Thandi didn’t take long to locate the others as they retraced their steps back through the

  maze of corridors and passageways. They hugged and cried, then exchanged what little news they had managed to hear during the chaos of the previous hour.

  “It was Eter,” Ray said grimly, when Bibi announced that one of the Vipers had been killed. “Walked straight into a shotgun barrel.”

  “Oh god,” Kayla said quietly. “I thought for sure we lost someone during that first ambush.”

  “Luckily not, but there’s seven or eight wounded, including Jess,” Bibi remarked.

  “Do you know where she is?” Ray demanded.

  Bibi nodded. “A medic told me she was up and moving, so, hopefully she’ll be in the control room.

  They were thrilled to find that she was. The young Ranger looked haggard, and rose gingerly from a chair to greet them with weak smile. Kayla seized her in a gentle hug until the girl groaned with pain.

  Everybody ignored the view through the wide open window on the cavern beyond.

  “Sorry,” Kayla said. “You look alright.”

  “Yeah,” she said softly. “I am, more or less.” She lifted her shirt to show two horrible welts across her ribs where the bullet holes were starting to heal. “Center mass. Guy

  was spraying blind from behind an overturned desk, but he got lucky.”

  Kayla winced. “How about Shiva?”

  “One clipped her head, but she’s stabilized.”

  “Before yesterday,” Tian said “I didn’t think anything could hurt Raiders. But Rayker’s already killed four of them?”

  “None of us are made of metal,” Kayla said sadly, and pulled up the arm of her shirt. “One in the shoulder, and one scraped my side close enough to burn the skin.”

  The others compared wounds, with the exception of Thandi and Ray, who had managed to stay unharmed.

  “Maybe I should have prayed after all,” Bibi quipped as she rubbed her hip.

  “No,” Thandi replied quietly. “That is not how it works.”

  They turned expectantly to Ray, who had already taken the opportunity to lounge back in one of the comfortable controller chairs. “Well,” she said thoughtfully, “It’s probably because

  we’re just better than you.”

  “Oh, yeah, that’s it,” Kayla said, as she too leaned back on a desk. “I forgot how you… oh my god, it feels so good to sit down.”

  “You can shoot me if you want to make it even,” Ray suggested, as the others collapsed around her.

  “I’ll make a note of that.” Lyna said. “By the way, is there something we’re supposed to be doing right now?”

  “What?” Kayla asked tiredly.

  “Well, we didn’t win, did we?”

  Kayla, now fully laid back on the desk with her eyes closed, waved a hand. “I literally just got comfortable, and you want me to get up to go find trouble?”

  “Don’t bother, Kayla,” Thandi said. “Bibi has a questioning mind. She can go find out what the plan is.”

  Kayla laughed tiredly.

  A long silence followed, against the backdrop of muttering from the other soldiers in the control room. The priority of work was already shifting to the traditional mode of exchanging gossip, then grabbing

  shuteye.

  “Barnes.”

  Masey’s stern voice broke the subdued atmosphere, and recalled Kayla to her duty. She sat up to see the woman stood impatiently above her. Where her face wasn’t black from soot and grime, dried

  blood caked her skin while dark brown stains ran all the way down her clothes. Two ODTs stood beside her in a similar state, their expressions suggesting that they didn’t need to take a break, and didn’t respect

  those who did.

  “Chief Laukannen,” Kayla said, respectfully. From the look of her, she had been through a lot worse than anything the Rangers had.

  “I’ve got a mission critical assignment and your Lieutenant whatsherface recommended your squad.”

  “Kuiper?” Kayla said.

  Around her, the other Rangers were sitting up with guilty, but alert expressions.

  “Sounds right. It’s like this; Rayker is out in the cavern with a long rifle, while the last of her guys are holing up by the site teleporter. We have a contingency plan going into motion—apparently

  the techies can link us up with reinforcements, if they can get past those last defenders.”

  “Okay.”

  “But Rayker is a crack shot, impossible to pin down, and thus is completely dominating the terrain out there. So I’m bringing someone in here to work the computers and see what she can learn

  about this base. Understand me clearly; that is a threat to Rayker, and she might try and get back in here. You are to defend this position until your last breath, or relief arrives—which ever comes first, how copy?”

  “Solid copy, Chief,” Kayla said hesitantly. Were she and the other Rangers being sidelined from the final confrontation?

  Masey evidently picked up on her suspicion. “Pull your head out of your ass, Barnes. I did not just hand you an excuse to sit on your hands. I want this place locked down. All possible exits and entrances.

  This Doc coming down could find the key we need, so consider yourselves to be her meat-shield.”

  Kayla nodded. “You got it Chief, consider this room a strong box.”

  “Outstanding,” Masey said, and turned to leave.

  “Uh… Chief?”

  The senior NCO stopped and looked back. “What is it?”

  Kayla’s guts knotted up with a fear worse than anything she had experienced throughout the day. “Did you hear anything about um…”

  “Oh yeah, of course. We have located Christie Stirling and most of your missing weapons squad. Corporal Smith was killed by Rayker some days ago, unfortunately.”

  “Are they…”

  “Healthy, I’m told. Ready to get into the fight.”

  Kayla nodded as she gulped back a sob. “Thanks chief.”

  Thandi seized her in a hug while the ODTs marched out of the control room.

  “She’s scary,” Tian noted, to nobody in particular.

  “Old Flashbang? Yeah,” Kayla said. “I’m glad—she’s going to take Rayker head on if she gets the chance. Come on then, girls, let’s figure this out. What have we

  got to work with in here?”

  Groans turned to acknowledgments, while muscles unwillingly accelerated their movements. Eventually the squad was darting back and forth across the control room, sealing the doors and access ways. An ODT

  brought them a welding kit she had managed to scrounge, and Tian knew how to use it.

  They paused only to welcome Doctor Gilah, who arrived with another scientist and greeted them with a heartwarming smile, before thanking them profusely for doing so much to secure the installation. She

  spoke in a low whisper, which Kayla found to be odd.

  “How was the hike up?” Kayla asked.

  Gilah recoiled subtly. “Oh, very pleasant,” she said. “I believe you know Gucci? She was kind enough to accompany us, for our safety, of course.”

  “Speak up,” Kayla said, only slightly annoyed.

  “I said it was a nice hike,” Gilah said, with some effort.

  Her colleague snorted with laughter, but said nothing more.

  “Think you’ll find anything on these computers?” Kayla asked, as the two women placed laptops on one of the desks and plugged into connectors.

  “Plans of the base, I expect. Then we shall have to search for subsystems we might be able to access. I don’t think we can hope to control this…” she trailed off as her eyes rose

  to focus on the distant machine through the control room windows.

  “Say what?”

  Gilah gave her a grin and a thumbs up, and that made Kayla at least feel confident they had what they needed.

  “See if you can control the blinds on these windows,” Kayla suggested, as Gilah flinched away from her again. “I don’t know how good the glass is. Rayker could shoot through it and

  I don’t want my brains gunking up your fancy equipment.”

  Her request was answered with a terrified smile and a nod, and Kayla decided she should leave them to it until they could remember how to talk properly. A matter of minutes later, a loud whir filled the

  room as metal plates descended to block out the view beyond.

  Kayla joined Thandi, who was staring through the closing gap at the cavern.

  “Christie’s going out there isn’t she?” Kayla said, unhappily.

  “Of course she is,” Thandi said. “She knows Rayker and the base.”

  “While we’re stuck in here babysitting.”

  Thandi gave her shoulder a squeeze, and turned back to the task awaiting them.