The images from the Hunter-Killer mounted cameras were chaotic, no matter how good the resolution was. Some part of him wasn't ready to look at this so soon, memories of the carnage beneath the Scraegan mountain still raw.
But that wasn't a part he was going to listen to.
Forcing his misgivings to the back of his mind, Ryke focused on the images, trying to abstract himself from the mayhem that played out on the screens. The flash and blast of furnace cannons and armour piercing rounds strobed across the bank of displays in the modified briefing room, punctuated by the clipped radio messages that flashed between pilots through the fighting. Nine screens were arranged in a square, with eight smaller ones surrounding a larger central monitor that could be focused at will by the attending technician.
Around him a host of senior officers involved in the engagement were gathered, along with Colonel Hackley, several black-clad Scout Cadre specialists, General Theikvaal and half a dozen of his senior aides. They'd given the Hunter-Killers a day of rest after the operation, but now it was time to reap the rewards they'd spilled so much blood over.
Ryke had no idea what success – if any – the interrogators at the Forge had achieved with their captive. He couldn't begin to think how you went about extracting information from something like a Scraegan. Still, that wasn't his job. The other side of the coin came from the wealth of video footage that for the first time shed some light on the Scraegan world beneath his feet.
He tried to pay closer attention to it as the battle played out in more detail than he could ever have remembered. His eyes roved, trying not to concentrate on the Scraegans themselves but on their surroundings, on the honeycomb of tunnels that infested their mountain stronghold. In the course of the battle he'd seen no evidence of machinery and found himself wondering if the Scraegans even needed machines. They moved through the earth somehow, but it looked like the passages in this place had been there for years. Did they live there? Somewhere in the depths of the mountain was their some Scraegan equivalent to living quarters? He had no idea.
Then again, he reasoned, the Hunter-Killers hadn't exactly been exploring. They'd cut their way into the heart of the mountain like an axe, wasting as little time as possible in the unfamiliar environment.
"It's like a bloody ant-hive," the commanding officer of HK-Thresher grunted, shaking his head. "We could have spent days down there."
"No real defences though," Ryke said as the playback continued. "They didn't have barricades – no defensive emplacements, nothing."
"Probably because they've never needed them," Hackley mused. "This is the first attack on a Scraegan target. That worked in our advantage. They never saw it coming. The layout of the place is very simple from the modelling. You were able to run straight and true, down to the central chamber."
He shifted uncomfortably in his seat. "I don't think we'll be able to do that again."
"We'll cross that bridge when we get to it."
Then the leading camera from one of the pilots in HK-Warlock took centre stage as the attack reached the huge chamber where they'd encountered their eventual captive. Ryke took a deep breath as the thing loomed large on the display, almost as frightening now as it had been when they first met. It turned; unleashed its thunderous bellow. The displays on every camera flickered with static for an instant, the audio growling into an unintelligible mess under the beast's vocalisation.
"Freeze it," Hackley snapped.
The technician complied instantly with a flick of her finger, time-locking the moment where things had spiralled totally out of control.
"That was more than just a challenge," one of the Cadre specialists put in. "You can see the interference on the cameras – the Hunter-Killer auditory filters registered a spike more than one hundred and sixty decibels. If you hadn't been protected by the filters that shout would have blown your eardrums to pieces."
"It did more than mess with the cameras," rumbled a deep voice. "It overloaded our comms too. It stopped us communicating, long enough for that thing to attack."
Ryke glanced furtively at Lieutenant Andre 'Reaver' De Lunta, the pilot who until recently had served as Colonel Aggathor's second in command in HK-Warlock. He was a big man, perhaps in his mid-twenties, with skin the colour of brass, a shaven head and a thick goatee around an unsmiling mouth. He exhaled a slow breath as he watched the scenes unfold onscreen.
Ryke wondered dimly just how much the loss affected him. Taking command in the heat of battle was one thing – the man was a seasoned soldier and undoubtedly used to losing comrades in the war – but now that events had time to embed themselves in his brain he couldn't help wondering if the Aggathor's death took a bigger toll than the man was letting on. Right now his face remained calm, composed, the picture of a soldier.
"This thing," Hackley said. "Whatever it is, it's not an Alpha."
"It doesn't look like an actual combatant," Thiekvaal interjected, rubbing his chin in thought. "No furnace cannon, no armour plating. The mace looks more ceremonial than anything else."
"You wouldn't be saying that if you'd been in that room," Reaver grated, his eyes not leaving the screen. Ryke tensed, amazed that the Lieutenant had taken such a tone with their commanding officer. "That thing killed Aggathor."
Thiekvaal, however, read the mood of his subordinate in a heartbeat and inclined his head slightly, keeping his voice level. "I know how you feel, lieutenant, but we need to remain objective. This is a very different look to any Scraegan we've encountered. We have a duty to understand it. Is that clear?"
"Yes, sir," Reaver said, sinking into his seat with his jaw clenched tight.
"We'll have them back for Colonel Aggathor," Thiekvaal continued with an edge of viciousness creeping into his voice. "You have my word on that."
An uneasy silence lingered in the air, some of the other pilots exchanging looks as they waited. Eventually Colonel Hackley cleared her throat, addressing the technician.
"Zoom in on that medallion," she instructed quietly, indicating the immense silver dish hanging from the beast's golden chain.
The shot from this angle was slightly blurred, but the technician went to work, two fingers of her right hand resting on a small sphere that she rolled within its housing. With the other hand she keyed instructions, a cursor flickering over the silver circle and sharpening the lines etched into the object. The computer bleeped at them. Ryke barely remembered seeing the thing, the events in that chamber having blurred together in his mind but now, on closer inspection he could understand Hackley's interest.
Emblazoned upon the silver surface was a hideous snarling head, a creature neither human nor Scraegan but crafted with excruciating detail. It showed a deftness of touch that couldn't have been more at odds with everything he knew about the Scraegans. They were murderous brutes, bordering on mindless with their savagery, but here was proof of another side to the species, something almost artistic.
Almost. He was reluctant to call the thing on the medallion 'art'. It was a head roughly triangular in shape, with shovel-like snout and a bizarre double-jaw hanging down in an other-worldly gape. Intricate scales had been worked through the snout and on the four parts of its lower jaw a forest of teeth had been worked. It didn't seem to have any eyes, at least in this artist's impression. Wreaths of what looked like flame coiled up around both edges of the medallion, ringing the beastly head.
"What in the Everflowing River is that supposed to be?" HK-Arcade's sergeant exclaimed, her brow furrowing in confusion as she leaned in for a closer look.
Hackley pursed her lips. "We don't know, but whatever it is, it's extremely significant to the Scraegans. That means it's squarely at the top of our shit-list."
*
Replacing people was quickly becoming the thing Ryke hated the most about being a squadron commander. It seemed like after every operation squadrons had to be carved up and reshuffled to keep them at fighting strength.
Only five of Squad Green – now HK-Rupture – had stayed together from their first steps onto the training field: Amelia, Brigg, Thaye, Preese and himself. Marylee and Scantlin both now had some much needed time and experience with the squad, but with Norville hospitalised in the medical centre for the foreseeable future, he was still left with the task of integrating yet another three fresh faces.
Squaring his shoulders, Ryke walked quickly across the Stamm Basin concourse, a data slate with the assigned duty rosters in one hand and an uneasy feeling in his gut. There would be no more veterans joining them on their next outing. Sergeant Mulrough and Corporal Malewicz between them organised the assignments of new pilots, and reorganisation of squadrons that had been badly mangled in the fighting.
A twinge of jealousy pricked at the back of Ryke's mind as he ran his eyes over the rosters, noting that some of the other squadrons that had seen action in the assault had been gifted several proven pilots, while he had to make do with three untested rookies. None of them had been on more than a shadow patrol; none of them had seen a Scraegan in anger.
He ran his eyes over the profiles of the newcomers he would soon be meeting, unable to shake the sense of injustice. The first was a seventeen-year-old Brekkan native named Calhan Amarai, a swarthy young man with a thick mane of dark hair and angular features, narrow dark eyes staring out of the data slate with intensity; good test scores across the board but cleared for active combat less than a week ago.
Then came another refugee-turned-pilot, Kim Lassange, a willowy individual from what remained of Alldeep with close cut dark hair and olive skin dashed with freckles. She'd been cleared for only a little more time than Calhan and certainly sporting a large axe to grind with the Scraegans. Whether that was good or bad remained to be seen.
The final newcomer was another Brekkan named Koral Traeder, barely old enough to be in the Hunter-Killers at all, blond hair snarled into thick war braids, her pale face a mask of determination with a black-ink tattoo of a roaring dragon that coiled across her right cheek and down the side of her neck. She looked a little crazed – a perfect fit for the HK-Corp, one might have thought.
On paper there was nothing tangible that should have set any alarm bells ringing but he just couldn't shake the feeling of unease as he walked. He wanted some answers from the men responsible for these assignments that he was sure would lead to him leaving more bodies out on Rychter's blasted sands.
Mulrough, as always, was hard at work, bellowing orders at a fresh crop of Hunter-Killer trainees sweating under the burning afternoon sun. Ryke approached him, data slate in hand.
"Sergeant?" Ryke pulled level with the man as he strode back and forth observing the current crop of recruits. "Can I have a word?"
Mulrough glanced at him; his eyes lit up with recognition. He quickly snapped out an order to one of the other trainers to take over for the moment, then guided Ryke aside, far enough away to be out of earshot.
"Vannigan," he said gruffly. "Something I can do for you?"
"I..." Ryke hesitated. While him and Mulrough were technically of equal rank it was hard not to think of the drill sergeant as his superior officer. "I had a question about our squadron assignments."
"I'm not surprised." The grizzled instructor nodded. "Looks a little nasty on paper, doesn't it?"
Ryke shrugged. "One rookie pilot I could see, but three? That's nearly a third of my squad and none of them have had a sniff of combat."
"They've got to learn in somewhere, son," Mulrough replied.
"Shouldn't they be in their own squadrons? Shadowing other units? If we keep getting assigned these heavy duty ops I need to know I can trust my pilots."
"You can trust them. We don't pick squad assignments by throwing bloody darts, Sergeant!"
Ryke blinked. "But... well why my unit?"
"Alright, you really want the line and the letter?" Mulrough stopped sharply and turned to face him, jabbing a finger into Ryke's chest. "Because you've got a knack, son. Since you and your little crew deployed to Alldeep it's been pretty obvious to all of us."
"A knack for what?!"
"In Alldeep you took control of an untested squadron on a fly and damn near saved that town single handedly. The rookie pilots you've had reassigned since have integrated into the squadron without a hitch and you gave a damn fine account of yourselves last time out. You can take something raw and turn it into something dangerous." Mulrough inclined his head to the data slate in Ryke's hand. "And you might want to eye the test scores. The three greasers you've got are top of the class, high scores in marksmanship and close combat and they'll take orders as well as anyone else."
He glanced down at the three names again, shoulders sagging with a sigh as he tried to get to grips with Mulrough's words.
"So I get the 'best' new pilots? Sarge, we both know that test scores are one thing. They've still got to prove themselves in the field."
"That's the point, Vannigan." Mulrough grinned and clapped him on the shoulder. "As part of your unit we think they might actually live long enough to do that."