Rise of a Valkyrie

Part 67

Buy the book now at your preferred store: https://books2read.com/u/bM2Nna

***********************************

Before long, three blacked out buses drew up, and the bulky soldiers piled awkwardly on board before settling in for a long drive into the dusk. They didn't chatter. Everybody seemed to be occupied with private rituals, though Kayla saw with jealousy that some Raiders had dozed off. She could barely keep her hand from shaking, and she hadn't slept properly since the mission briefing two days earlier.

The driver navigated the dark country roads with her night vision, flooring the accelerator on the long straights, so that every bump or pebble of the poorly maintained tarmac shook the vehicle. After a few hours of that torment, they arrived at the staging area in pitch darkness. It was a large field outside an abandoned farmstead, far from any other community.

The buses were met by Combat Controller Elmira Aliyev, whom Kayla remembered from her shuttle trip. During the previous night, Elmira had carefully prepared the isolated area to serve as a forward refueling depot and airfield for the task force's dozen dropships, including those that would soon carry the Rangers from the Banshee. Now she would join one of the Raider teams travelling into the valley.

As others began dropping their night vision vizors, Kayla did likewise, and saw that the field was already filled with small drop ships, each no larger than a truck. Known informally as 'Cicadas', they would carry four Raiders apiece to the planned landing zone in the mountains, from which they would begin their long hike into the target area.

Urtiga ushered Kayla over to one of the nearby Cicadas, sitting her next to Masey on a small bench bolted to the airframe. Gucci had to struggle to get herself seated, since her pack was larger and heavier than the others. She carried the squadron's command radio, from which Urtiga would direct the unit's operation.

There had been a problem with the radio built into Kayla's Ranger suit, however. Because it used Ranger encryption, Gucci hadn't been able to patch it through to the individually protected channels used by the Raiders. It had surprised them that nobody in the Collective had considered the need to have different suit types communicate with each other directly, instead of going through the command net.

As they waited for the rest of the squadron to load into their dropships, Kayla sat facing outwards from the aircraft, feet just off the ground. All around her women were hustling, preparing the dropships or stacking ammunition boxes for resupply. Kayla felt unworthy to be at the tip of a spear handled by so many people so much more competent than herself. She reminded herself that Urtiga certainly knew what she was doing, and swore that she would do as she was told and not screw anything up.

Looking up into the sky she saw the fire-scarred surface of Ran hanging in the blackness, and she shivered with disquiet.

Above her, the twin outboard engines of the dropship spooled up with a whine. Urtiga continued broadcasting and answering radio messages for some time until the fleet of vessels were ready to launch.

"All Cicada call-signs, green-light. I repeat, green-light," she finally announced, and as a single body the ships lifted in the air, span around to face the mountains, and raced into the night.

The flight took another hour while Kayla stared in awe at the terrain sweeping past thousands of feet below, tinted green through her night vision display. She had trouble connecting with the reality of what was happening—even tried to shake her head as if to dislodge a wiring problem. Try as she might, no rational thoughts helped her come to terms with the fact that she was flying over the mountains she had once dreamed about on the farm, on her way to destroy the source of the creatures that had killed her father. But there was so much to think about, from all the training she struggled to recall, to the strangeness of following a Raider team into unknown terrain.