Year 248 P.L. Rychter Calendar
Coordinates: 52.3°S; 77.2°W
Site Designation: Badlands, Western Reach

"Well ain't this the pissing scenic route?"

Ryke allowed himself a smirk as the voice of Brigg 'Avalanche' Alwick rumbled over the comms, thick with as much boredom as the veteran pilot could muster.

"Gotta get our cardio in somewhere, don't we?" he replied, keeping one eye on the display flickering in front of his face. "And everybody watch your spacing will you? We're not tour guides out here."

His Hunter-Killer responded to every impulse of his body, his legs moving and driving the battle mech onward through Rychter's southern barrens. A four meter tall, fifteen-ton war machine, from a distance the Hunter-Killer had a vaguely humanoid shape, designed to seamlessly replicate the user's motions through its neural interface.

Its spherical 'head' was embedded in an armoured caldera of a neck, and a slab of heavy armour was fixed to the right shoulder. That arm housed a retractable blade of fat black metal, and the other had a rotating cannon slung under the Hunter-Killer's fist. Hot smoke hissed from the cooling stacks that jutted up from the back section. Ryke's mech had been through a lot, patched with fresh plates of armour, while still bearing scars and scorch marks of battles long past.

Ensconced within that thick armour, Ryke stood in the pilot's cradle, wired into the machine through the thin membrane of his link skin. His arms and feet vanished into the machine's controls, prickling with the neural feedback connection that made him feel every inch of the metal monster's hide.

On the HUD the blinking indicators of his squadron shifted their positions slightly, providing clear firing lines as they loped across the desert. On the flanks the two Raptor scouts sprinted, bracketing a wedge of six front line Riot mechs. Behind them, the final two members of the squadron trudged, piloting the heavily armed Goliaths. In front of him a HUD blazed information, showing the positions of his squad, and a feed from the Hunter-Killer's camera-studded head section.

Rychter's southern badlands opened out before him – baked by the twin suns overhead. He thanked the Riverlords for the Hunter-Killer's coolant system that kept the worst of the heat at bay. It was a barren vista before them, broken up by clumped up crags and canyons, stretching away into the distance toward the black horizon of Rychter's western volcano ranges.

"Ain't enough cardio in the world to make a brute like that move faster," jibed Mayder 'Rabbit' Ricardo, piloting one of the nimble Raptor mechs. Lighter than the Riot-Pattern models, they sacrificed armour to house a bigger reactor and powerful leg sections that could propel them to fearsome speeds.

By contrast, Brigg's Goliath-Pattern was a cumbersome beast that tossed manoeuvrability into the River to accommodate the heaviest ordinance Hunter-Killer mechs could carry. A massive cannon jutted over one thick shoulder plate, and a set of thick supports bulged around the Goliath's waist section, to be unfolded to provide a stable firing platform.

"Laugh it up, Rabbit," Brigg shot back. "Maybe next time we'll strap the mine launchers to that pretty dancer of yours and see how fast you can move?"

"Wouldn't wanna deprive you of the manual labour."

"Don't listen to these jokers, Avalanche," the second Goliath pilot sneered in her southern badlands drawl. "When they're done runnin' away from the Crawlers, they'll come call us to get the job done properly."

"Copy that, Two-Step," Brigg chuckled. "Crawlers need a heavy touch, eh?"

"Ain't that the pissin' truth."

Ryke smiled thinly. He was happy to see the new pilot was finding her voice. Erin 'Two-Step' MacIntyre was one of two rookies that had been transferred into the now vaunted HK-Rupture following their last operation. The last months of the Scraegan war had taken its toll, not just on Ryke's unit. There were a lot of new faces in the Brekkan Hunter-Killer Corps these days.

"Alright everybody," Ryke chided lightly. "Let's tighten the chatter. We're approaching our target zone. Haunter, you got eyes on our friends?"

"Got them on seismics at bearing 275," Kim 'Haunter' Lassange replied from the second Raptor mech – immediately all business. "Right where they're supposed to be, Sarge."

"That's what I like to hear."

"Almost like they've done it before," drawled Preese, his second in command, thumping along a few places down in another Riot mech. "How heavy are we playing this, boss?"

"Just like last time," Ryke confirmed. "One last op before rotating back to Brekka for some R&R, people, so let's make it a clean one. Stay sharp, mark your combat pairings and watch each other's backs. Drinks on me when we're home."

"Holding you to that, boss," Brigg warned.

The chatter died down and their pace increased, thundering through the wastes towards their target zone: a small Crawler nest beneath a cluster of badlands crags. He could see the ugly gnarl of rocks clambering out of the blasted ground, and on his HUD the pulsing indicators of the allied force came into view – a cluster of red indicators showing on the Hunter-Killer's seismic sensors.

A Scraegan war band.

Working alongside them had taken a lot of getting used to. Bad blood still seethed beneath his skin; he'd lost his parents to the beasts that inhabited Rychter's southern reaches. Lost friends. Nearly lost his life a dozen times over.

But the world was a strange place, and over the past months he and his squad had pulled off three identical missions alongside their former enemies. How long this could really last, he didn't know, but right now everyone had a common enemy to direct their ire towards.

"Alright, everybody," he barked into the comm. "You know your jobs. We're gonna knock fast and hard, stir this place up like hell, and let the Scraegans clean up. Rabbit, Haunter, you're up first. I want a light show that the Riverlords could see."

"Solid copy, Sarge," Kim answered. "Rabbit, form up on me."

"Copy."

"Haze, Riptide, left flank with me. Deadbolt - you, Medea and Headstone take the right."

"Copy, boss," Preese replied and the well-drilled Hunter-Killers began to spread out into their combat formation.

"Avalanche, Two-Step?"

"You rang?"

"Let those crawling bastards know they're about to have some company."

"Yes, sir."

The relish in Brigg's voice was palpable. The two hulking Goliaths stomped out into position on either side, heavy mine launchers unfolding from their armoured backs like scorpion tails. A moment later the unmistakable thunk-thunk-thunk of the launchers echoed out across the badlands air.

Dark shapes arced high overhead, toothed spheres spinning at a thousand revolutions per minute. They landed amongst the crags, and those teeth ripped into the ground, digging deep and letting the mines burrow deep into the planet. Red markers blinked at precise entry points above the Crawler tunnel network on Ryke's HUD as the mines landed.

"Brace for detonation," Two-Step announced, her laconic tone making it sound like she'd just set off a firework.

The mines were anything but. An instant later huge geysers of smashed earth blew out of the ground as the explosives detonated, sending a tremor of shock waves reverberating in all directions. A huge wall of smoke and pulverised rock belched skywards, obscuring the crags from the naked eye.

Ryke's Hunter-Killer optics cut through it all with ease, and his eyes lit up on a fresh tunnel mouth – their entryway into the Crawler hive, blasted into existence.

"GO, GO, GO!" he bellowed, launching his Hunter-Killer into a sprint. Everything about these strikes hinged on speed and timing, on giving their foes no time to react to their impending doom.

Darkness swallowed them up as they plunged into the tunnels, Kim and Ricardo leading the way in their Raptors. Headlights blazed a trail through the gloom and the rest of the squad barrelled in behind them, their pounding metal feet creating a deafening cacophony within the confines of the passage.

Following the map provided by the Brekkan Blackwaters, they threaded their way deeper, ignoring dozens of subsidiary passages, knowing exactly where they needed to go. Crawler nests all followed the same lay out – a mind-bending tangle of tunnels, all swirling like a whirlpool around a central chamber.

Out in front, Kim led them straight and true, straight into the maw of the beast.

As she entered the chamber, specially adapted shoulder launchers on her mech blossomed into life, letting loose a blinding spray of flares that soared across the chamber like shooting stars. Without the Hunter-Killer optic shields Ryke new he would have been blinded by the display. For the underground denizens of this place, the effect was even worse.

Ricardo followed up a second later, his own launchers blistering into life to add to the phosphorus hail. Ryke thundered in after them, his eyes picking out targets as the whole chamber lit up like a sun.

A rough hemispherical cavern, this Crawler nest was a relatively small specimen compared to some he'd seen, maybe a hundred yards across, but its floor was thick with thrashing armoured bodies. Agonized hissing filled the air and the hulking things crashed into and over each other in a chaotic spray of limbs.

Closest to them, one of the Crawlers reared up in the light.

Larger than a Hunter-Killer, the central disc of the creature body spanned six meters across, forming a rough oval studded with chitinous plates of bony, armoured carapace. Its multi-segmented limbs splurged from the flanks of the body, and a whip like tail thrashed behind its thorax.

The head that jutted from the front of the carapace had a roughly triangular shape, sloping down in the shape of an upturned shovel and ending in a gaping double jaw. The Crawlers didn't really have something you could call eyes, being almost entirely subterranean – instead, a clump of sensory glands on its skull filtered light and dark. As the thing's body rose, it revealed a whirling cyclone of teeth of teeth in its underside, viscous liquid spraying in all directions.

"Send them to the River," Ryke spat, and the Hunter-Killers opened up.

Armour piercing rounds from six rotating cannons battered it, virtually point blank range and filled with heavybore rounds designed to punch through the thick hides of the arthropods. Carapace buckled and grey blood spattered. The first Crawler fell in a shattered mess, and they opened up into a wide firing arc.

From behind them the deep boom of the Goliath cannons thundered through the cavern, their shells shattering limbs and breaking carapaces, bludgeoning the reeling creatures backwards as they tried to adjust to the blazing lights. More flares went up from the Raptors as they added their guns to the fight.

"Press forward," Ryke shouted. "Flank out and push them into the centre. Haunter, Scraegan ETA?"

"Crashing the party in two minutes."

"Then let's move!"

The Hunter-Killers ploughed forward, driving the writhing mass of Crawlers back towards the middle of the cavern under a storm of gunfire. Some of the larger, older creatures adjusted to the shock faster than others, and several of them came clattering towards them, hissing screams of challenge.

"Close quarters," Ryke snapped. With a flex of his wrist he shook the warblade free as the first Crawlers reached them. Limbs flailed and they leapt at the metal-clad intruders.

He met the first one head on, directing its headlong charge aside with a twist of this body. The impact of the thing's forty-ton bulk rang his Hunter-Killer like a bell as it struck the shoulder shield, but he knocked it off balance into the waiting clutches of his comrades.

Scantlin 'Haze' El Vahari piloted one – a pilot who'd been fighting alongside Ryke almost as long as HK-Rupture had existed. His movements were polished as he removed one of the Crawler's forelimbs with a surgical swipe of his blade. The creature shrieked out in pain and mindless rage, twisting to follow him and lashing its tail at the other Hunter-Killer.

Normally, Ryke would have worried about a new pilot being thrown into close combat with a Crawler, but Fenix 'Riptide' De Lunta, was no ordinary rookie.

War ran in her blood.

She ducked the snap of the tail and in the same motion brought her warblade swiping in an overhead strike. In that one blow she hacked the tail into a short, bloody stump, with grey, sludgy ichor spilling onto the cavern floor. As the Crawler toppled, she battered a spray of cannon fire into its exposed belly, shattering its hideous under-maw and punching armour-piercing rounds into its vital organs.

"Keep moving!" Ryke roared, ramming his warblade straight through the bulbous head of another Crawler that was still reeling from the flares. More shells from the Goliaths burrowed into the packed bodies, unable to miss such a mass. The Riot and Raptor mechs slowly hacked and blasted their way to form a crescent shape to the left and right, driving their foes into the centre of the nest.

And when the Crawler bodies were piled together in a single, seething mess, the Scraegans arrived.

On the left and right the walls of the chamber blew inwards and huge shapes emerged from tunnels of their own. At least twenty of them – huge warrior caste soldiers with coal black fur and charcoal armour – all with their furnace cannons raised and charging.

Each weapon lit up, churning with destructive energies in a cauldron a meter wide. Already charged, the Scraegans didn't waste any time. A guttural bark rose above the sound of battle, and they fired.

From all sides, roiling bolts of hell slammed into the Crawlers. He still didn't know exactly how the cannons worked, but what they did was send out explosive, white hot blasts that melted through arthropod exoskeletons with ease. With the enemy so close together, every round seared through two or three bodies at a time.

Ryke was glad the Hunter-Killer's systems didn't include olfactory sensors.

"Back up!" he yelled over the comm, wrenching himself loose from another dead Crawler and stumbling backwards. "Suppressing fire only, keep 'em in place."

The arc of heavy mechs backstepped, spitting fire at any Crawlers trying to escape up the ramp towards them. Preese and his group hacked one to pieces as it tried to charge free; flares from Kim and Ricardo fired straight into the faces of others, forcing them back into the conflagration.

Behind those stragglers, it was a massacre. Three huge volleys of furnace cannon rounds turned the hoard of monsters into a smoking heap of charred exoskeletons. When most of the Crawlers were dead or dying, the Scraegan hunters trundled forward, wielding barbed spears the size of lamp posts. They skewered any surviving Crawlers; smashed their skulls with heavy blows and blasted away at the final vestiges of the next until nothing was left alive.

It was over with shocking quickness.

The largest Scraegan – this one carrying something akin to a long-handled axe – raised the weapon briefly in Ryke's direction and let out a gruff roar of acknowledgement. Then the war band just melted away, receding back into the tunnels like avenging gods of the deep whose work was now finished.

Ryke surveyed the smouldering wreckage of a job well done. Relief made his shoulders sag and he allowed himself a grin. Picture perfect. A month of death and destruction – the dirty work, finishing what they'd started in the hell-torn bowels of the Scraegar Labyrinth – but now it would be someone else's job. HK-Rupture had earned some rest.

"Time for some calm shores everyone," he said. "Let's go home."