Rise of a Valkyrie

Part 62

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After a non-stop five-hour drive through the night, the team returned to the workshop safe house, where Raiders ran out to meet them. Helping hands pulled Zhang out of the truck to take her for medical treatment, while others crowded around the monstrous corpse, eager to inspect their new enemy.

The medics in the squadron carefully extracted the spike from Zhang's shoulder, and she could be seen wearing both a sling and a scowl, as her injury excluded her from taking part in the eagerly anticipated assault.

Kayla saw with surprise that much had changed at their makeshift base. Working with Jack, the squadron had arranged for a large amount of equipment to be delivered, trading corkboards for clusters of digital displays and discreet antenna arrays. They were already holding regular teleconference calls with various officers in the wider organization.

A new briefing told her that a stealth frigate—the Banshee—had entered orbit around Caldera to support the operation. To her delight, she learned that the Mountain Ranger battalion's Bravo company had been deployed and were now stationed on the ship. Thandi was only a few hundred miles above her head, though she couldn't find anyway to get in touch with her, and she was scolded by Urtiga when she pushed for communication privileges.

"We're not here for an ice-cream social—get your head out of your ass!" her mentor snapped.

A different approach was called for.

At night, blacked out dropships flew in carrying additional weapons and equipment. While she was helping to offload a box, Kayla seized a chance to thrust something into the pocket of a distracted crew chief.

"Thandi Khawula, second platoon. Make sure she gets it."

"Clear the landing area," snapped the annoyed woman.

Part of the drop included Kayla's combat suit and rifle, which she eagerly disassembled, cleaned, oiled and painstakingly reassembled. Then she checked over her suit's systems; radios, environmental controls, night vision and infra-red vizor.

But the busy work didn't quell her growing excitement, which was even costing her sleep, so to find distraction, she pushed Christie to spar with her more often. Now that the intelligence gathering phase had wound down, they spent most of their off-time practicing Jiu Jitsu. This pleased Kayla immensely, because it was one area in which Christie was weak.

"Tap early, tap often," she teased, as her friend writhed helplessly in a shoulder lock.

"It's not fair," Christie pouted as they got up off the mat. "You're much faster than me."

"Don't beat yourself up," Kayla said with a wink. "Jiu Jitsu is known to be the most intellectual martial art, so I'm sure you'll get good at it, eventually."

Christie fixed her with narrowed eyes.

"You need to practice the basics more," Kayla went on, enjoying how much she was getting under her friend's upper-class skin. "You spend too much time planning moves like it's a game of chess, and you can't even pull off the holds that you want."

"I would probably be able to practice those moves," Christie snapped, "If you didn't spend all day pestering me to spar with you!"

Several days after the team had returned, the wheels stopped turning and the task force assembled into a cohesive whole.

A woman walked around the workshop repeating a loud summons: "All hands in the main hall for the briefing at eighteen hundred tonight!"

Then, to Kayla's surprise and apprehension, Masey showed up, grinning like a kid at Christmas, having hitchhiked her way down from Rackeye.