Back in the control room, the furious clatter of keyboards was the only sound the Rangers heard against the exchange between Smyrna and Rayker.

  “I want to talk to her,” Rayker hissed. “She is my sister. Drag her out from whatever rock she crawled under.”

  “We do not know where she went,” Smyrna insisted. “She left us to finish the work.”

  “What pathetic lies you try to spin. She is a narcissist and a meddler, just like me. No, if she really did survive she is watching somewhere; pulling the strings.”

  “Not with us,” Smyrna continued, and Kayla heard an unusual strain in her voice. The General was telling the truth, and was afraid that it wouldn’t be enough.

  “Has she hidden herself in your ranks? Changed her appearance again, and lied to all of you?”

  The squads eyes turned as one to Ray. She gave them a disappointed look. “As if I’m in control of anything that goes on around here. Idiots.”

  “Rayker wants to turn us against each other,” Bibi observed. “This whole story is misdirection.”

  “It’s freakin’ true though,” Kayla said. “Listen to Smyrna. Her head’s going to roll when we get out of here and she knows it.”

  “It’ll be a revolution,” Ray added darkly. “I swear I didn’t know any of this stuff, and I’m as pissed off as you are. Everyone will be.”

  “What master do you serve?” Smyrna demanded again. “What is the point of your presence here? The pact is being broken, we must—”

  “I serve the interregnum,” Rayker spat back. “He is the master of all humanity, as far as you’re concerned. You are the real traitors, even if you don’t know it.”

  “Our mission serves the pact,” Smyrna replied, with a hint of desperation in her voice. “Keep the Jotnar weapons out of human hands so they can develop in peace.”

  Rayker’s cackle reverberated through the control room, made sharper by the acoustic limits of the loudspeaker.

  “Develop in peace? That was never the agreement. After I’ve destroyed your force here and all life on this world, I will stop at nothing to hunt down the rest of your rabble. The reckoning will come for all of you.”

  “You would let loose this weapon on an unsuspecting colony? The council would turn on you and your master. You would be hunted by forces more powerful than ours.”

  “None of the Elders are as powerful as the Interregnum, as you yourselves have seen. His bases outnumber the stars in the sky. What do you think he’s been doing for ten thousand years?”

  There was a short pause, until Smyrna’s voice came back weaker. “That… he could not have done this under the eyes of the Elders, they would know, they would have stopped him.”

  “You know nothing, obviously,” Rayker said, and her voice had regained its icy cold tone. “Perhaps Otrera really did abandon you, poor souls. She has more important schemes in play, no doubt. That at least sounds like the sister I remember. But I can be magnanimous. Tell me the name of your master and I will let your warriors live.”

  Kayla felt a cold dread settle in her gut when Smyrna didn’t reply. The weight of the lies had come crashing down on them, and she wondered how many Valkyrie were experiencing doubt. How many of them, including their general, would be tempted to take Rayker’s offer?

  Kayla cleared her throat. “So… Doc?”

  “Yes, I’m working on it,” Gilah snapped.

  Beside her, the other scientist looked up. “Did you check on protocol seven dash three?”

  “I’m looking at it now,”

  Silence returned to the control room.

  “Just going to put this out there,” Thandi said, when the tension became unbearable. “Maybe letting a bunch of strangers fill our blood with alien technology, or whatever, without explaining the whole story, wasn’t the smartest idea.”

  “You going to walk out?” Ray asked. “You can take the stairs probably. I doubt anyone would stop you.”

  “Nah,” Thandi said. “I mean, I might as well stay and see how it plays out.”

  The loudspeaker crackled back into life. “Rayker,” Smyrna began, with plenty of hostility, “every word that passes your lips is a lie. You leave my warriors with no choice but to fight to the death.”

  This story has been taken without authorization. Report any sightings.

  Rayker sighed. “You sacrifice them for a cause you don’t even understand. Won’t you let them speak for themselves? Determine their own fate? Are they your pawns to be disposed of as you will?”

  “They have sworn their lives to protecting humanity from monsters like you.”

  Kayla thought about this for a long moment. “Rayker’s not confident in her plan then, or else why is she giving this argument so much of her time?”

  Bibi cocked her head. “It’s more important for her to figure out who we are, maybe?”

  “Or maybe her doomsday weapon isn’t that good?” Kayla suggested.

  “Willing to bet your planet on that?” Bibi asked with a raised eyebrow.

  Another voice spoke out, and Kayla recognized Urtiga. “I am the senior warrior in this base, Rayker, and I can speak for the others. We hunt monsters and we always get our prey. Prepare to die, out.”

  In the silence after Urtiga’s last word, there was a barely audible double burst of static. Standby.

  “Hey,” Kayla said cautiously. “Did you hear—”

  “I too am a senior warrior,” the voice of Masey boomed. “The blood of our dead will be paid for with your own, Rayker. Make peace with whatever powers you believe in. You will meet them shortly.”

  “Have it your way, then. I need merely—”

  There was a snap, as would be produced by a supersonic bullet passing close to the microphone. It took a few breathless moments for the confirmation to come through the Viper’s channel. The sniper had missed.

  “Rushed her shot, probably,” Ray commented. “I bet Rayker was talking while on the move.”

  There was a sudden beeping noise from Gilah’s laptop, until she slapped at a key to cut it off. She let out a muted snarl and typed furiously.

  “But that can’t work,” the other scientist protested suddenly.

  The squad turned to watch her.

  “Yes it can,” Gilah answered, evidently referencing a silent message passed between them. “Because if you time the pumps right, the backpressure will damage the control valves.”

  “Uh… But where…?”

  “Pipes eighteen and five. They have a junction at exactly the right distance.”

  “Oh,” The scientist looked surprised. “Oh yes, that’s very clever.”

  “Doc?” Kayla said patiently. “I hope you’re not planning some kind of a meltdown?”

  Gilah smiled at her. “Actually, yes, though only a small one. Because all of these systems exist to protect the machine, fundamentally. So we will cause a power surge which will start a big fire, and we will simultaneously damage the coolant system. The spiders will be forced to fix that before they can do anything else.”

  Kayla looked thoughtful. “And Rayker’s… whatever they are?”

  “Giant spiders that can fly.”

  “That’s not even funny.”

  “I completely agree. However, they are also designed to intervene in case of engineering mishaps, so that will be their first tasking. There will be a horrendous explosion otherwise, haha.” She beamed at her audience, then turned serious when she saw their unhappy expressions. “But that’s part one. You see, Rayker’s plan actually depends on the arrival of the Barrochian guard regiment, who will lay siege to this mountain. When the spiders chase us out, they will identify them as part of the same threat group. We can count on the League to react impulsively, and… that will be that.

  “But, if we can keep them down here, that won’t happen. So, part two depends on the fact that the spider’s primary objective of destroying the threat can also be overridden by the secondary defensive system. Rayker hasn’t activated it, either because it will kill her too, or because it’s limited to the mountain complex itself.”

  Kayla didn’t like the sound of that. “What is it?”

  “A potent nerve gas,” Gilah said carelessly. “We can program it to activate after we’ve left the base. When the super spiders fix the meltdown, they will determine that all threats have already been eliminated and will return to their dormant status.”

  She beamed again.

  Kayla frowned. “Is there no way we can stop her from even activating these things before—”

  “That was the beeping,” the scientist said. “But no, there was nothing we could do.”

  Kayla wanted to yell at them both for ignoring this detail, but instead took a deep breath. They had, after all, worked a small miracle in very short time. “And what is Rayker doing while we leave her down here all alone?” she asked.

  Gilah’s brow furrowed. “Does it matter?”

  Bibi leaned forward. “‘Scuse me Doctor Gilah, but this is a big cavern. Exactly how long will this nerve agent take to propagate?”

  Gilah sighed and tapped at her keyboard. “Ten minutes, I suppose.”

  Kayla shook her head. “What’s stopping her from turning it off before it kills her, assuming it can affect her?”

  “I can assure you… well, no, perhaps best not to make assumptions. But I can run a program that can only be interrupted from here in the control room.” Her self-satisfied smile renewed, then began to fade when the Rangers exchanged worried looks.

  “What’s the matter?” Gilah demanded.

  Tian crossed her arms. “Dirty welds that haven’t even cooled yet?” she said. “No way.”

  “No, I get it,” Kayla said tiredly. “Okay.” She strode to the middle of the control room and stared at the metal panels they had hastily thrown up. For a brief moment, she had the urge to lay down and sleep, in the hopes that it would mean waking up outside the nightmare. “Okay,” she said again.

  “This will work,” Gilah insisted to the slowly chilling atmosphere while she worked. “I just need another… minute or so.”

  “Power conduit script is compiled and ready,” her colleague said.

  “Good, excellent,” Kayla said cheerfully. She strode over to the doctor and gave her shoulder a friendly squeeze. “Execute as soon as it’s ready.”

  She stood back and stared at the ceiling with a smirk. “You getting all this, General Dishonesty?”

  “I am,” Smyrna replied. Her voice lacked it’s usual authority. “Communications are going out on all channels.”

  “Great,” Kayla muttered. She didn’t really care what the rest of the force would do. Whatever they wanted, probably. Any concept of chain of command had been tossed aside. She only hoped that Christie would have time to get out.

  “That’s it,” Gilah announced, with forced cheerfulness. “The meltdown is in progress. What do you say we make a run for it?”

  “Head on up, Doc,” Kayla said. “We’ll follow in a moment.”

  “You… but you will, won’t you?” Gilah was almost pleading. Her gaze took in the suddenly confident smiles of the Rangers.

  “Yeah, but Vipers are rallying on this room to make sure we can count everyone off." Kayla tapped her headset. "Them's the orders. Get a move on, or you'll just confuse things."

  "Yes, yes of course." Gilah turned to go, but couldn't help glancing back nervously. Eventually, the other scientist succeeded in dragging her from the room.