Ryke was still recovering in the medical centre when the call came.
Three days had passed in a dull ache, but little by little it subsided, the bruising of his body deadened by a cocktail of drugs that the Medical Cadre pumped into his system. He felt a lot better, and also felt like a whole lot of dead weight just sitting there.
Visitors came and went; mostly from his squadron, although Kaydie Brackenshaw had taken the time to stop by and check on him. So to had his brother.
He still didn't know what to make of Kelso's status as an intelligence officer. They didn't talk about the specifics. Right now Ryke was just happy to have him around. His older sibling had come a long way from the bitter young man who'd been rejected as a Hunter-Killer pilot. His fierce sharpness had been weaponised in a different way; a way that made Ryke both proud and fearful at the same time.
The one person he never saw was Ivy. Her platoon was still off somewhere only the Riverlords knew, and the absence cut at him. He'd passed a radio message to one of the base's operators, but with the blizzard of much more urgent communications to field, he didn't know if it would even be sent, let alone whether she would respond.
All in all, it left in scratching in his skin, just wanting to get back out and do the one thing he knew how to do. The fighting continued without him, with fresh Crawler incursions creeping ever northwards, nibbling at the isolated flanks of the human army, like a predator feeling out the weakness of its prey. He needed to be out and fighting.
So when Preese came sprinting into the infirmary with an expression of disbelief on his face, Ryke couldn't hide his eagerness.
"What?" he demanded, sitting up straight. "What is it?!"
"You're not gonna believe this, boss," Preese replied, skidding to a breathless halt. "I just got word from Colonel Hackley – they need you up in the command centre, right now. Can you walk?"
"Everflowing, I can dance if they'll let me out of here." Ryke glanced around. None of the Medical Cadre staff were paying attention to him right now – he was out of danger, not an urgent case worthy of constant monitoring.
"Good, then get dressed." Preese grinned and tossed a set of casual Hunter-Killer fatigues onto the bed. "You're officially back on active duty."
"Thank the Riverlords." He was up out of the bed in an instant scrabbling to replace his loose-fit medical shirt and trousers with the familiar feel of his pilot's gear.
He peeled the link-skin over his body, ignoring the curious looks from passers-by as well as Preese's chuckle. He flung his jacket and black trousers on, followed by the black pilot's slip on shoes. Straightening out his jacket, he looked Preese in the eye.
"You still haven't said what this is about," he reminded him.
"Like I said, you're not gonna believe it."
"Try me."
"Reports just came through from the defences at the main front. There's a Scraegan pack at the front door," Preese explained,"and they didn't come here to fight."
Ryke stared at him for a moment, the implications sinking into his skull. The humans had sent him into the belly of the beast in an effort to communicate. Until now, every attempt at talking had been a one-sided affair, initialised by Brekka's colonists.
Until now.
Could the Scraegans have really sent an ambassador of their own?
"You're serious?"
"You're damn right I am."
"Then let's go," he said simply, and bolted off before Preese could even respond. His squad mate scrambled to follow, and an indignant shout from one of the Cadre nurses chased them both out of the infirmary doors.
They pelted through the corridors of the forward command base, twisting and ducking around surprised support staff who struggled to get out of the way. Racing through the open passages, Ryke led Preese to the stairwells leading up to the command levels, hurtling past officers, technicians and analysts flowing in and out of the human army's nerve centre.
Only when they reached the doors to the central command chamber did Ryke slow his pace, stuttering to a halt when confronted with a pair of red-liveried Rubicon soldiers with heavy rifles slung across their armoured chests. He stopped, waiting for Preese to catch up.
"Sergeant Vannigan," Preese panted as he stumbled to a standstill alongside Ryke. "Colonel Hackley... asked for him to come up... immediately." He made a spinning motion to the guards with one finger. "Check it."
The guard on the left pressed a hand to his ear and repeated Preese's words into his comm. Then he nodded, once to himself and once to his companion. They stepped apart and the armoured door to Marshall Llewellyn's inner sanctum swung open. Ryke lurched inside with his companion close behind.
What they found on the other side was a scene of tense silence, with the eyes of every officer and analyst in the room glued to the massive view screen at the front of the room. He saw Llewellyn, the newly promoted Colonel De Lunta of the Hunter-Killers, Colonel Hackley and Colonel Marrow, all standing in a rough semi-circle watching the display.
Normally the massive screen showed a tactical map of ongoing operations alongside the three-dimensional display of the main war-table, but now it showed something very different. Ryke's eyes widened as he stepped into the room, staring at what looked like a feed from a combat cam.
It had to be from the front line. At the sides of the visual he could see Hunter-Killers and tanks bristling with armaments, militia and Scout Cadre troops manoeuvring in the periphery of the camera view. Ryke's eyes, however, were drawn to the figures in the centre of the lens.
Five Scraegans stood less than a hundred yards from the human line.
They weren't moving, just standing fearlessly in front of the massed ranks of the human army, but it certainly didn't look like they'd come to fight. They were armed, but Ryke suspected no Scraegan warrior ever went out into the world without their weapons. The furnace cannons were dormant, clubs, hammers and blunt axes hanging loose in massive paws. They were waiting for something.
"They haven't made any threatening moves," the voice of Brigadier Vanyr shot over the loudspeaker, her comm link piping through the whole room. "In fact, they haven't taken a whole lot of notice of us at all. They're just standing there."
"And there are no signs of any other Scraegans in the area?" Llewellyn asked.
"Affirmative. Nothing on the long range seismics. They're out here all alone."
"Err, sirs?" Ryke piped up, causing heads to whip towards him. He gulped; saluted. "You asked for me?"
"Get over here, Vannigan," De Lunta said gruffly, beckoning him over.
Ryke scurried to obey, moving up alongside their commanding officer. Preese slunk along in his wake, standing a few feet back from the line of senior officers with his hands clasped uneasily behind his back as he gazed at the screen.
"Good of you to join us, sergeant," Llewellyn said, not taking his eyes from the display. "I'm sorry to have removed you from the infirmary before the medics cleared you, but I think you'll agree this couldn't wait."
"Not a problem, sir, I'm good to go," Ryke replied. He nodded to the Scraegans. "How long have they been out there?"
"They came into view above ground," Hackley told him. "They didn't burrow close and pop up. They wanted us to see them coming from a long way off. We've been tracking that group for almost an hour. They got this close and then just stopped. It's like they're waiting for something."
"Orders, sir?" Vanyr asked, and the camera zoomed in. "Bastards are making every gun in the line twitch. If they came to talk they'd better do it." Ryke realised belatedly that he must have been seeing the view from the brigadier's own command tank. He peered closer at the display, taking advantage of the zoom.
It was then that he got a proper look at the Scraegan in the centre of the line.
"Drown me," he murmured.
"Ah, noticed that did you," Hackley chuckled with a wry smile, inclining her head to the screen. "It's either one hell of a coincidence or this is the same Scraegan that dragged you out of that tunnel."
Ryke folded his arms and taking a step towards the display. There was no mistaking that brutal-looking horn of black metal that speared up from the Scraegan's armoured skull plate, nor its dark, stony-grey fur. A furnace cannon sizzled beneath its right arm, not primed to fire just yet. The hammer it carried in one blunt paw looked like it had been modified – or at the very least repaired – its shaft now reinforced with spurs of dark metal and its flat head now dotted with stud-like shards.
Four other Scraegans accompanied it, their armour and fur a blur of black and brown, long, brutish clubs and fire-scorched cannons clearly in evidence. He noticed that the largest of them carried some kind of backpack – a shell like bulge of canvas wrapped tightly to its broad back.
"What is that?" he asked, pointing. "What's it carrying?"
"No way to tell," Colonel Marrow grunted, shaking his head. "We can drive them off. No need to kill them, but if they're not going to make their intentions clear-,"
A sudden, coughing bark echoed through the loudspeaker, cutting him off. Ryke's ear's pricked up and the hair on the back of his neck stood up sharply. Silence descended on the command room for an achingly long moment. Then the bark sounded again. This time he saw the movement of the Scraegan Beta's jaw as it made the noise, it's bulky, blunt-toothed jaw struggling to get the word out in a form humans could understand.
He could understand it though. He remembered, remembered all those months ago in the cell with the Scraegan priest, when he'd make his first rudimentary attempts to talk to one of their hated enemies.
"What in the Everflowing is that?" Llewellyn muttered.
"That," Ryke interjected, almost laughing at the craziness of it all, "is what it sounds like when a Scraegan tries to say my name."
The silence returned again. The commanders exchanged dubious looks but no one spoke. None of them knew quite what to make of it. Around the room analysts and junior officers watched and waited with baited breath. Despite everything this was still a shock to the system for many of them, Ryke supposed. To fair, even he couldn't deny a level of disbelief. Seeing the Scraegans prove that they could use diplomacy stunned him and enraged him in equal measure. Maybe if someone had done what he'd done few decades ago thousands of people wouldn't have had to die.
"I suppose we've just figured out what they're waiting for, haven't we?" Colonel Hackley said at last, casting a sidelong glance at Ryke. "Well, I hate to say it, but I think this one's all yours if you want it, sergeant."
"Yes, ma'am," Ryke replied, giving her a firm salute. "Permission to deploy?"
Hackley nodded. "Permission granted."
*
Part of him wondered if it would have been smarter to go out on foot again, but the memories of his experience in the Scraegan tunnels were still raw. The sheer feeling of vulnerability, knowing that he could have been smashed out of existence in the blink of an eye at any moment, was not one he cared to repeat.
So this time he trudged out to meet the Scraegan Beta shielded by the imposing bulk of his Hunter-Killer.
The feet of the machine clumped dully against the hard-packed dust and grit of the badlands, accompanied by four other pairs of Hunter-Killer footfalls.
Matching the Scraegans one to one, he moved forward; Thaye and Brigg to his left, Preese and Kim to his right. The other five members of the squad hung back amongst the trenches and tanks of the human line, ready to surge forward at the slightest provocation. Ryke didn't want to spook the Scraegans by bringing a full squad with him, but equally he didn't want to be caught on the hop if this was all a trap.
He trudged forward until he was within twenty yards of the Scraegan, then stopped. The other Hunter-Killer spread out into an even line, each of them facing square on to one of the Scraegan warriors. Seconds ticked by but the Scraegans barely seemed to register their presence. The Beta cast its beady eyes back and forth along the line, hammer turning gently in one massive paw, as though trying to decide how much damage it could do before the heavy guns of the humans obliterated it.
Instead, it barked out he awkward, mangled verbalisation of Ryke's name again.
"Pissing Rivers," Preese murmured. "Y'know, it took me a couple of goes, but I can hear it now. That shaggy bastard actually is saying your piss-drowing name!"
"I know that, corporal."
"Well, why not?" Thaye joked, though Ryke didn't miss the undercurrent of bitterness in her voice. "They've got a long history of accidentally running into each other out there."
"I'm not asking you to like this," he cautioned. "But you keep your weapons cold unless I tell you otherwise. Do you understand?"
"Yes, sir." She sounded petulant, but the indicators on his HUD confirmed that her weapon systems were still spun down. The last thing he needed was for someone to run off half-cocked and wreck this thing before he had a chance to see it through.
Ryke took a deep breath, then stepped forward out of the line, keeping the cameras of the war machine's armoured head locked on the Scraegan Beta. He leaned the Hunter-Killer forward slightly, letting the head section dip in what he hoped would translate to a nod. It was hard to tell exactly how this would look from the outside – the machines were designed for war, not etiquette.
He straightened up under the Beta's watchful gaze. It's nostrils flared. Then it barked out his named again. He was about to repeat his awkward nod/bow when the Beta then made another gesture. It brought its paws together in front of it, and then made a motion as though it was prying a door open, paws pressing out to both sides. Then it nodded to him.
"The armour," Brigg murmured. "It wants you to open up."
"It wants to see that it's really me," Ryke replied. He exhaled through gritted teeth and closed his eyes for a moment, bracing himself mentally for what he had to do. "Alright, everybody stay sharp, but nobody fires unless fire upon. Acknowledge?"
The four pilots sent their clipped responses in the affirmative. Nothing now stood in his way. He took several steadying breaths, then, like ripping off a band aid, he keyed in the sequence to crack open the Hunter-Killer's front armour. A hiss of hydraulics sounded, along with the blurt of a warning alarm due the presence of the nearby Scraegans. He ignored it, letting the light and the burnt air wash into the cockpit.
Then he was staring at the Beta, exposed and vulnerable, but knowing with every bone in his body that this was the right thing to do. The Scraegan took one heavy step forward, but he noted how it very deliberately kept its weapons pointed at the ground, arms hanging almost limp by its sides. Dark eyes narrowed; the boulder of a head tipped sideways, examining him.
A snort of satisfaction.
It straightened up and stepped back. Ryke let out a gasp of relief and rattled in the code to seal the armour again, his heart smashing against his ribcage. As the front plating closed to conceal his fragile human body once again, the Beta turned to the hulking warrior with the backpack and barked something in their guttural language.
"Everybody keep it together," Ryke advised as the big Scraegan slung the immense pack of its shoulders. The package was more than four meters long and at least half that across – an oblong oval swaddled in some kind of rough fabric that barely fit across the warrior's back. It looked bulky too, containing something big and solid.
The two Scraegans unwrapped the thing.
Ryke watched as they extracted an immense tan-coloured slab from the wrapping. One end was rounded, the other flat, and the Scraegans placed the latter against the ground, standing the immense thing up like some kind of obelisk. The side facing him was featureless, just blank stone, but he could just make out through the Hunter-Killers optics a faint series of lines slightly darker than the surrounding slab.
"And we didn't get them anything," Preese chuckled nervously.
"Thing looks like a bloody headstone," Kim put in, her voice tight with tension. "Ryke – Sergeant – are you sure we should be-,"
"Easy, Haunter," he said, keeping his voice calm and ignoring the breach in command protocol. "Just hold your position. If they wanted a fight I think we'd know by now."
"I ... yes, sir."
The comms fell silent again as the Beta shuffled over behind the immense slab, placing its hammer down on the ground with surprising gentleness. With that paw now free, it moved until it was almost obscured completely from view. Ryke could just see the movement of its arm, and heard a dull clunk echo across the badlands air. The Scraegan had inserted its immense paw into the back of the slab. He couldn't see the mechanism from this angle, but he saw the twist of its shoulder and the scrunch of its snout as it activated whatever control it had taken hold of.
The obelisk came to life.
Lines of bright, scorching orange suddenly appeared on the surface, and from the flanks of the main oval two more thinner slabs slid free, creating a line of three identical shapes in front of him. More lines of fire sizzled their way across the rock faces, forming strange interlocking patterns that he couldn't make any sense of.
It carried on. The burning lines on the face of the thing lit up, some areas brighter than others, others darker. In some areas the heat that created these shapes seemed lower, creating patterns of a dark, pulsating red that contrasted against the burning orange of other sections. He narrowed his eyes, focusing the Hunter-Killer's optics. Then he noticed a familiarity to some of the brighter lines, something about the way they converged and exploded across sections of the rock face.
He'd seen those patterns before, but where? He wracked his brains, trying to match those lattices of burning orange to anything in his memory. What did this mean? Then it suddenly clicked. The visual fell into place as though someone had dropped a rock on him. The realisation almost made him laugh but he managed to contain it, his eyes growing wide in amazement as the lines of fire etched their way across all three rock faces, creating an intricate, complex mural.
"By the watching Lords..." he breathed.
"What the hell is this thing, boss?"
"It's a map," Ryke replied. "Drown me, it's a map!"