It became quickly apparent that the human deployment had not gone unnoticed by the Scraegans.
After Colonel Hackley's scouts swept the area they remained on station, skiffs performing long looping patrols, scanning repeatedly for the tell-tale seismic readings that indicated a Scraegan force. It was a matter of minutes before they found them.
"SC-1 to all units," Hackley snapped across the wide-band. "Confirmed seismic readings. Three Scraegan patrols on station approaching the entrance."
"Copy that," Aggather replied. "Warlock, Thresher, deploy mines."
Ryke exhaled long and slow, acutely aware that he was about to plunge headlong into the biggest land engagement with the Scraegans in decades. They eased up onto the rise, flanking out from the two squadrons edging forward to drop their seismic charges on top of the Scraegan patrols to bring them to the surface.
Specialised mortar-like launchers fixed to the shoulders of several mechs thumped as they discharged, lobbing the whirling, sharp-toothed bombs in long arcs out onto flats of the base approach. They hit the ground and disappeared in spiralling whorls of churned sand and pulverised rock, the heavy teeth dragging them deep into the ground. Ryke kept his eyes locked on the dusty craters where they'd landed, counting down the seconds.
The detonations boomed outside the armour of his Hunter-Killer, sending a shockwave through the ground that vibrated up through the link skin and shook his bones. Geysers of smashed earth exploded into the sky and huge destabilising cracks spider-webbed out from the blast points. Seconds later he saw big dark shapes scrambling out of the shattered earth.
Sensitivity to sonic blasts was one of the few real weaknesses humanity had managed to exploit. Disoriented by the mines, the shaggy, armoured beasts dragged themselves into the light, roaring their guttural language to one and other as they tried to regroup. From his current vantage point Ryke could see over thirty Scraegans scattered cross the flats.
"All Goliaths," Aggathor roared. "Let's show the Scraegans how a Hunter-Killer knocks! I want that entrance turned to dust. All Raptors and Riots – move and engage, keep the enemy off our heavies."
Acknowledgements rattled through the comm in a crisp deluge from commander to commander, Ryke adding his voice to the list before switching to his squad-wide net.
"Everybody, watch your spacing," he snapped as his squadron joined the massive skirmish line of heavy mechs thundering down the rise towards the Scraegan force. "Keep it quick and clean until the Goliaths do their work."
A volley of bass thunder ripped from the top of the rise as the Goliaths opened fire, their stabilisers locked, allowing them to unleash the full fury of their shoulder mounted artillery pieces. An instant later a dozen massive shells slammed home against when they surmised was the door of the Scraegan complex. Massive sheets of rock disintegrated under the bombardment, the doorway sloughing off the shattered masonry like a mudslide. More shells followed, cratering the rock face as the Goliath pilots fired at will.
Tearing his attention from the bombardment, Ryke instead focused on the sizable Scraegan defence force that they were hurtling towards. The hulking betas in command of the packs bellowed and snarled at their subordinates, trying to reassert some kind of order, grabbing some of them and pointing towards the onrushing mechs.
Some of the Scraegans gathered their wits quicker than others, and pricks of blue light flared up and down the line a furnace cannons began to charge up.
"All Goliaths, give me one suppressing volley on the Scraegan line!" Aggathor shouted.
A fresh flurry of acknowledgements filtered through the comms and an instant later a storm of shells landed amongst the Scraegans. At this range the odds of a kill shot were extremely remote, but several were knocked down by heavy shells, their cannons firing at half-charge into the surrounding sand and grit. Plumes of pulverised rock burst into the air as other shells tore up the ground around them.
Only a handful of glaring furnace cannon blasts made it to full charge, lashing up at the charging Hunter-Killers. On open ground, however, the war machines were surprisingly nimble and their skirmish lines split apart, weaving around the balls of searing blue and leaving them to blast furrows in the earth. The human force opened fire, rotating cannons thrumming into life and spewing torrents of armour piercing shells into their adversaries.
Then the two sides met.
"HK-Rupture, on my lead!"
Ryke threw himself straight onto the beta leading the pack to the left of the skirmish line, his cannon pounding a trail of shots across the thing's right flank before he lowered his shoulder shield and crashed into it with all the force he could muster. Like a fifteen ton battering ram he hit the Scraegan on its right as it turned to face him, and the momentum sent the monster spinning with a frustrated bellow.
He planted a massive mechanical foot to abruptly halt his momentum, turning back and swinging his warblade free from is housing. The black blade locked into place as he lunged towards the reeling beta. It tried to rise, only for Ryke to hammer his blade its full length into the Scraegan's right shoulder, punching gaping hole in the small aperture where its armour plates met.
Another howl sounded, followed by an impact that rang his skull as the Scraegan swung its mallet hard into his shield. The sturdy construction of the Hunter-Killer rode the blow, however, and he was able to reset his feet, tearing his warblade free for a second strike, this one crunching into its throat. The first hit didn't penetrate the armoured mesh, so he twisted his body, jerking the shield on his opposite shoulder viciously into his opponent's face to keep it off balance.
With that precious window of time bought, he took a second swing at its throat. This time the armour and thick muscle gave way beneath the punishing force of the Hunter-Killer's servos, plunging deep into the Scraegan's windpipe.
"Lockjaw – your six!" came Jarrko's clipped warning.
Ryke saw the blip of the oncoming Scraegan flashing on his HUD display and threw himself sideways as it brought a colossal bar of ribbed metal smashing down onto the spot where he'd been standing seconds before. As he turned a spray of cannon shots forced the offending Scraegan backwards before Jarrko's fast-moving Raptor mech raced past, lashing a blade across the enemy's lower left leg as he passed.
Thick dark ichor belched from the wound and the Scraegan buckled, crashing to one knee with a bestial roar. Ryke took the second of breathing space to take a proper look at the HUD, taking stock of their state of play.
The decisive charge of the Hunter-Killers had blown a gaping hole through the surprised Scraegan patrols, and already Aggathor's squadron was pounding towards the entrance as Goliath shells continued to rain down. The three squadrons forming the right side of the line were embroiled in a brutal melee with half the surviving Scraegans, and closer to home he could see the mechs of HK-Rupture giving a thorough account of themselves.
"Skates, wheel and strike!" Ryke snapped, calling Jarrko back to help finish off the injured Scraegan. As he blasted at it with his cannon Jarrko swiftly turned his machine around, pounding the sand as he raced towards the Scraegan's unprotected back. With its attention focused in front of it, the beast never saw him coming and Jarrko hit it at full tilt, ramming his knife through its back plate with such force that it pitched forward face first into the sand, Jarrko's mech landing on top to keep it there.
Three more wild stabs left the Scraegan fatally wounded, its life-blood pumping out onto the desert earth. Jarrko extracted himself as Ryke added his weight of fire to the remaining chaos unfolding around him. Between them Thaye and Marylee 'Gutz' McCutter piled onto another Scraegan, leaving it a bloody corpse on the desert sand. Preese stumbled in a half-drunken dance with another, locked together and holding its blazing furnace cannon away. Before it could fire the other Raptor piloted by Scantlin 'Haze' El Vahari joined the fray, severing the tendons of the creature's arm with a surgical strike to leave the cannon dangling limp. It fired straight into the ground, partially charged with enough force to reduce one of the Scraegan's legs to a molten ruin.
"HK-Rupture, form up and wheel right!" Ryke shouted as he watched one of the northern squadrons on their flank of the battle getting bogged down, their first taste of Scraegan combat clearly a reality shock as two of their signals winked out of existence under a blizzard of heavy blows and furnace cannon blasts. "Hit them from behind."
"On your flank," Thaye said, swiftly forming up alongside him, snapping off cannon bursts left and right as she found targets. The others wrestled themselves from the worst of the combat, leaving a trail of dead and dying Scraegans littering the sand. Soon a fresh skirmish line of eight mechs from HK-Rupture swung to the right of the battle like a snapping jaw, slamming into the remains of the Scraegan patrols from behind.
They didn't run. The last dozen Scraegans were eventually bludgeoned into the dirt by the remaining Hunter-Killers. When the smoke cleared Ryke confirmed with a sense of smugness that his squadron had suffered no casualties. His amour's structural integrity remained nominal despite the handful of clanging blows their enemies had inflicted on him, and as he called for a check from his companions they were happy to report no major damage.
For all intents and purposes they remained at full fighting strength. One of the northern units had taken a mauling in the skirmish, down to six mechs, while the other Brekkan unit had taken a single casualty. On the HUD he saw the force to the right of the engagement driving off the last dregs of the Scraegan patrols, while Aggathor's HK-Warlock charged towards the main entrance. Half a dozen Scrageans lay butchered in their wake, and shells continued to scream overhead as the Goliath's kept up their relentless pounding.
"HKs Rupture, Thresher, Arcade and Savant," the colonel growled into his earpiece just seconds later. "Structural integrity of the entrance is failing. Fall in on my lead. All other units run patrol interference. Acknowledge."
"HK-Rupture – acknowledged," Ryke replied smartly and pivoted his mech towards the looming ridge of the Scraegan surface base. He didn't need to pass orders down the line. His companions turned with him in a single, crisp change of formation. As one they began thundering cross the hard-packed desert plain to join Aggathor, and his mind flashed back to what Parnell had said back in the Stamm Basin hospital: your first action has simply proved who deserves to be in a Hunter-Killer.
At the time it had filled him with anger, but now he found it difficult to argue with the logic. His new unit moved like they'd been born to it, fighting hard and manoeuvring with all the crispness of a veteran squad. No dead weight; no liabilities.
On the HUD he saw the other units picked for the assault peeling out of the battle line, leaving only the northern units to run interference on any Scraegan stragglers. Although he didn't want to disparage their comrades from the other cities, but Ryke couldn't deny feeling a little safer knowing that all the mechs going into the breach with him were hardened Brekkan veterans.
"Wonder what a Scraegan house looks like," Norville 'Sprocket' Bankspur mused idly as they raced to converge on the entrance, a brief moment of calm in the storm of comm chatter taking hold as the mechs repositioned. "Think we'll be allowed some souvenirs?"
"You reckon they've got some home brew stashed somewhere?" Preese chuckled. "They've got to relax somehow."
Ryke smirked. "I think any brew strong enough to twist a Scraegan would probably kill you."
"Clearly you've never had my old man's shiner. That could kill a Scraegan."
"Huh, maybe he should just invite them round for a drink and we can all go home?" Thaye chimed in wryly.
"Bring it up with Aggathor when we get back to base." Ryke grinned, partly enjoying the joke and partly beaming at the fact his squad seemed totally unfazed by the events unfolding around them. With a twinge of reluctance he brought them back down to earth. "But not till we get what we came for. Everybody make sure your mags are at full load and your blades are loose. Who knows what we're going to run into inside this place."
The acknowledgements snapped through one after the other. Banter or no banter, the members of HK-Rupture knew when to buckle up. With the other squadrons close behind, Ryke and his comrades joined Aggathor and HK-Warlock at the rapidly crumbling entrance to the compound, just as a fresh onslaught of shells came raining down on it. Several tons of rock had been reduced to rubble by the bombardment, revealing a thick arch of darker stone reinforced with gilded ribs of a shining grey metal. More than large enough to accommodate the ingress of several Scraegans at a time, there was no doubt they'd found the front door.
More shells fell, taking chunks from the archway and bending the very structure of the door inward as began to crack under the tremendous forces being exerted upon it.
"Princess," Ryke called up to his companion on the ridge. "This baby's about to break. Think you can land me a shell dead centre? Eight meters elevation."
"Seeing as they're not paying me for my fashion advice," Amelia replied with a mischievous edge to her voice. "Copy that – standby."
Yet another rain of heavy ordinance battered the collapsing doorway, but one shell landed a couple of seconds after the rest. Like a dart hitting a bulls-eye, the shot landed squarely on the middle of the fissure that ran from top to bottom.
The gate finally gave way. That one shell was the last proverbial straw, blowing a huge shower of shattered masonry in all directions. For an instant it seemed like the structure would hold, but then with the inevitability of a landslide the two massive slabs collapsed inward, their structures disintegrating in a rolling crash as cracks worked through them. Dust filled the air, caking the nearby Hunter-Killers as they waited. A few seconds passed; stray pieces of rock continued to trickle from either side of the chasm that had been opened in the mountainside.
"Assault units," Aggathor hollered. "On my lead!" And HK-Warlock surged forward through the opening.
With blood thundering in his veins Ryke needed no further urging. Gritting his teeth, he led his squad at a stampede and followed Colonel Aggathor into the depths. The dark of the Scraegan compound swallowed them and the Hunter-Killers began fighting their way into the unknown.