“Chi, Sophie, where’re you going?” Urtiga called to two Raiders, who had been hurrying past on their way to the cavern.

  “Gonna go flush out Rayker aren’t we?” said one of the impatient looking women.

  “With carbines? When she’s got a long gun and the entire cavern to roam around in?”

  The Raiders stared at the strange group waiting by their master sergeant. It included a group of angry looking Rangers who had not taken part in the original assault, a handful of operators from all units, PJs, and a CCT; whoever Urtiga had so far managed to grab from what she considered ‘bullshit’ assignments. Finally, there was the youngster, who was apparently dressed for a day at the office, and had so far not been able to lay her hands on a weapon.

  “And what are you lot up to?” the Raider asked, a little more keenly.

  Urtiga grinned. “We’ve got a trump card. Christie here knows how to move us undetected to the teleporter, and we’ve found a techie who can get it linked up to the other sites. Mission success will result in the balance of Mountain battalion, plus Urban, arriving to reinforce.”

  Christie smiled nervously. She had only promised a hidden passage most of the way there, and she had so far been unable to pluck up the courage to mention that it would be crowded with spiders. The creatures were the main subject of conversation for the assembled team; specifically their disgusting nature and creepy movements. But they needed operators if their plan was to work.

  Now that Byoran’s delivery of a working key had been confirmed over the ingenious singularity-based radio that Urtiga carried, someone at this end would have to make a switch. Rayker was probably already in the process of trying to activate the wrong pair, and who knew what she would do when she discovered Byoran’s betrayal. The team would have to get to the teleporter mechanism as fast as possible, change the lock and then activate the device. Unfortunately, Rayker was expecting to make her escape that way, and so had withdrawn her remaining men to a defensive position around it.

  Christie had, thankfully, remembered enough about the new tunnels being dug by the spider-workers to figure out a route, but that was only half the battle. She had absolutely no idea how the teleporter worked. Even though she had tried explaining this hurdle to Urtiga, the experienced operator had waved her off with promises that they would ‘figure it out’ and ‘take it as we see it.’ While Christie was appalled for their prospects, the growing crowd looked quite enthusiastic.

  They thus succeeded in seducing the two additional Raiders, and were almost ready to depart, when a new individual arrived. She appeared, from her wide-eyed expression and awkward movements, to be a scientist from the Collective.

  “Track athlete,” Gucci called suddenly, and the new woman whirled around with an expression of fright. “Track, did you ding my scope on a rock?”

  “H-hey Gucci,” the woman replied. “Awesome to see you again. No, I don’t think that I—”

  “There’s a scratch that was not there when I gave it to you. You dinged it and handed it back to me without saying anything.”

  The now terrified scientist swallowed. “I really don’t remember… I mean, maybe I scraped it on this overhang when I set it up to shoot but it seemed okay.”

  “Maybe it is. Wouldn’t find out until I took a shot that my life depended on, would I?” Gucci snapped. “Which makes it useless. Idiot.”

  Urtiga cleared her throat. “Okay, everyone this is Doctor Mer—”

  “She is ‘Track’ until further notice,” Gucci insisted.

  Urtiga nodded. “Track is a scientist—”

  “Sorry, sorry, I’m actually an engineer,” the miserable looking Track said in a shakier voice. “Sorry.”

  “How can engineers be doctors?” a stocky ODT said. “I thought only scientists and medics are doctors.”

  “The quick answer to that question, Chiula, is that you’re dumb,” Urtiga said firmly.

  “Okay.” Chiula nodded her placid acceptance of this judgment.

  Urtiga continued. “Listen up. Our objective is to approach the teleporter through a defiladed route, then execute an assault on that position. Hopefully they won’t see it coming. Meantime, Masey and every other sniper except Gucci will be hunting for Rayker, keeping her attention on them. Christie is our guide, plus she’s seen the machine up close. Track will get it working. Questions or comments?”

  There were a few, mostly focused on the expected plan of attack once they arrived. Urtiga handled them deftly, and the group made their final preparations to move out.

  Chiula approached Christie and gave her a surprisingly warm smile. “You were captured, weren’t you?”

  This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.

  “Yes, I was,” Christie said.

  “The Rangers said she left them alone, mostly. What about you?”

  “I wasn’t so lucky.”

  Chiula nodded and took her hand. “I’ve been there too. Abuse and rape over several years. Come talk to me after.”

  Christie’s eyes welled up. “Thank you. I will.”

  “You don’t have a weapon?”

  Christie shrugged, so Chiula unstrapped her sidearm holster from her leg and pushed it into her hands. “I don’t care if you scratch it,” she said with a wink.

  They began to move in the direction of the cavern archway, and Gucci put her hand on Track’s back, pushing her to the front. “Track’s taking point. She’s a real honest to goodness Ranger, you know?”

  A wave of nasty laughter broke out as the woman turned beet red. Christie wasn’t sure what to make of the treatment. There was probably more behind the interaction than she understood, and Gucci had a very good reputation. In any case, she couldn’t put off drawing the operator’s fury on to herself any longer, so she collected her thoughts and strode to the front of the group.

  “Just be sure to leave the spiders alone, there’ll be a lot of them,” she announced. Then she turned on her heel and sped off, leaving a cluster of unkind reactions in her wake.

  Rayker’s scope panned slowly across the distant cavern wall. Conduits, pipelines and trenches crisscrossed the ground between her and her prey, who were using them to maneuver. They obviously didn’t know where she was, yet. But there had been a lot of movement in the last few minutes and she was keen to exploit a mistake.

  Something caught her eye and her crosshairs settled on a routing hub near a patch of dead ground. The edges of a moving figure appeared momentarily. Someone had managed to get a little closer and was probably hoping to make a dash. But where? Rayker scanned the ground around the position, and found a set of pipes that ran in her general direction. That seemed to be the likeliest path of her would-be stalker.

  Rayker again moved her aim point and settled on a patch of empty space near the hub. A bullet would find this hopeful assassin seconds after she broke cover. Rayker’s mind went blank while she filtered out all the unnecessary noise around her. Only the area of the target existed, and the rhythm of her breathing. The scope was dialed in, her finger had the trigger squeezed to its point of maximum tension, and her senses became razor sharp.

  The movement came, the trigger broke, the rifle bucked into her shoulder. She returned her aim to the target and saw… the figure still running. But how? Had she survived the hit? There was no blood on the ground. Cursing, Rayker adjusted her aim again and prepared to shoot before the distant woman could reach safety.

  A sudden jolt of adrenaline seized her nerves, and she recoiled away from the rifle, into the shelter of her improvised sniper hide. There was a loud crack as a bullet tore though the air inches away from her head. Rayker gasped for breath, in shock at the near miss. Several seconds passed before her mind calmed and she could make sense of her thoughts.

  They had set a trap for her. She had watched them running around for thirty minutes, memorizing their movement patterns and sprinting speed. And this… bait… had run from an obviously exposed position just slow enough to throw off Rayker’s reactions. Fortunately, her instincts were strong enough to see whatever clue had given away the counter-sniper. But her mind still couldn’t reveal what exactly it was, and that scared her.

  Real fear. How long had it been since she had tasted it? Too long, perhaps, because she had obviously become weak. These super-women—beings obviously like herself, and with a master like her own—were pushing her to her limits.

  Rayker snatched her rifle away from its perch beside a cooling array, and withdrew into the shadows. Anger warmed her muscles as she fled, like a whipped dog, to find a new position. But what good would it do her? She was one; they were many, and their progress across the cavern floor was relentless.

  She dropped into a trench and keyed her radio. “I expect to hear good news,” she hissed.

  There was a short silence, which meant that whatever followed would disappoint her.

  A man cleared his throat. “We’ve programmed in the key, but the connection isn’t going through. It was a complicated process, so we’re just going through each step—”

  “You’ve had plenty of time to get this right,” Rayker snapped. “Or do you want to die in here like your comrades?”

  “We’re going through each step,” the man replied, his voice betraying only a little anxiety, “to make sure. A small mistake would have been easy to miss.”

  Rayker wanted to scream at him, threaten him, humiliate him—but to what end? Her security force had been massacred. The last dozen survivors, with barely any training or preparation, were attempting to perform a difficult procedure, fully aware that trained, unstoppable killers were drawing closer.

  “We don’t have time for mistakes,” she said finally, and pointlessly.

  No response was forthcoming, and that too was another consequence of the disastrous battle. The men left were not easily cowed. They were the quiet ones who kept their own counsel and went along with her for the possibility of a reward. When she was in total control of events, they wouldn’t have questioned her, because they wouldn’t have gained anything. Now, even if they did get the teleporter working, they’d be as likely to leave her behind if it meant saving their own skin.

  All signs were pointing to the end of the road, and she knew it. Her escape route, formerly her trojan horse, was beginning to look more and more forlorn. What if the enemy had been one step behind her the entire time? Less than a week after the battle of Rackeye, and what had seemed like total victory, they had arrived on her doorstep, eradicated her defenses, and fought their way past two chokepoints within minutes.

  And so many of them? It couldn’t be possible.

  Rayker made her way back to her main observation point, nestled within the electronic pathways of the great machine. Several spiders were building a gantry around a cable junction, and a tangle of wires splayed into the air like hairs lifted by static. Here she was too far out of range to shoot anyone, but she could at least watch.

  The enemy soldiers advanced cautiously, with an eye for rigor she had never seen in enhanced individuals. And these weren’t individuals—they moved like a well oiled machine. Very few units had displayed such a level of professionalism throughout humanity’s history.

  Creations of her sister indeed. There was no other explanation. And the clue was so obvious it made Rayker want to beat herself—all of them were women. It was the telltale scar of the Jotnar’s most devastating act of genocide, taken against the rebels who plagued their efforts to form a humanity reborn.

  Rayker felt ill. Everything she had worked for over the centuries seemed to be crumbling apart in her fingers. Her benefactor, it turned out, was an incompetent, ignorant fool. He had failed ten thousand years ago, and he would fail again. Otrera, or whatever she called herself now, would win.