"Lockjaw-Valley," Ryke growled through the comm as he stepped back, moving slowly and methodically in a firing line with the surviving mechs of his command. "We are running interference. Bug out and get to the Scouts' defensive cover."

"Sir?!"

"Drown me, you need it written down? Go! That's an order!"

Keeping one eye on the HUD as he moved, he nodded grimly to himself as the signatures of Valley's mangled Hunter-Killer squadron moved away, pounding out across the plain. After the Alpha's attack they were down to six mechs, and only Mayder Ricardo's sacrifice had ensured it didn't get any worse.

Anger pulsed through him at the flash of memory; of the whip crashing down and smashing the scout mech into the blasted sand. Ricardo's body would never make it back to Brekka. He'd be another face on the ever-growing war memorials.

HK-Rupture were not going to let anyone else die on this blasted plate of hell. Behind their line of fire trucks, troop carriers and the last dregs of the Scout Cadre flights scrambled frantically to get clear before the Scraegan hammer fell in earnest.

Ryke and his troops fought a slow, dogged retreat as more Scraegans piled into the breach, smashing through the armoured walls of the human positions like paper. There wasn't much choice – he didn't want to risk stopping their barrage of suppressing fire to withdraw any faster. Enraged Scraegans could move a lot faster than a lot of people realised.

"Lockjaw – SC-10?" he barked.

"I hear you," Brackenshaw replied. "You got to get out of there Vannigan. Reinforcements are two minutes out."

"Doing my best, ma'am." Ryke gritted his teeth; snapped off a shot at a Scraegan advancing through the wreckage of the human perimeter of the liaison post. The beast ducked with a growl as armour-piercing shells cracked across its shoulder, leaving bloody gouges behind. "But if we turn around and run we're going to get shot in the back."

"We've got secondary firing lines beyond the perimeter approach," she replied. "Just get out onto open ground and we can cover you from there."

An explosion thundered through the plateau as a furnace blast gored through a pillar a handful of meters from Ryke's mech. He lurched back sharply away from the resulting avalanche of shattered rock.

"Easier said than done," Fenix muttered.

"Sarge, I've got another signal, coming in hot from the west edge of the plateau," Kim blurted. "Pissing Rivers, they're cutting right under the base. Looks like another Scraegan pack."

Ryke looked sharply up at the HUD and swore under his breath as she pinged him the display from her Raptor's powerful sensors. A small red clump was looping around from the far side, trying to get behind them.

"They're trying to cut us off." He picked out another target through the smoke, spraying an arc of fire in the direction of the dark shape. A shell thumped out from Erin's Goliath mech, smashing a crater in another Scraegan and sending it spinning away with a howl of pain.

"We go straight backwards we're gonna run right into them, boss," Preese cautioned. "What's the play?"

"SC-10, you seeing this?"

"Everflowing – yeah, I see them."

"Any ideas?"

"Sarge!" Scantlin piped up. "I think we got another route out through the crags on the east edge. Might be the scenic route but it'll keep us from getting surrounded."

"Confirm that, Lockjaw," Brackenshaw interjected. "There's a route out at 094° from your current position. It's a tight fit though. You get caught up in there-"

"Better than getting surrounded out here, ma'am," Ryke grunted, his mind already spinning into gear. "Okay, Haze, this was your idea so you're on point."

"No pressure," Scantlin chuckled bleakly.

"Haunter, up front with Haze. Everybody else reel it back and follow their lead – one by one like we're dancing a jig," he continued. "Riptide, you're on rearguard with me."

"Yes, sir."

"Once you're out onto open ground wheel south," Brackenshaw chimed in. "I'm scrambling two flights and a mechanized gunnery team to meet you. We'll dump a mine drop to stop anything chasing you any further out."

"Meet you there, ma'am. Lockjaw out."

One by one mechs detached themselves from the defensive line, looping behind Ryke and thumping off to join the narrow queue led by Scantlin's smoke-blackened Riot mech. A narrow crevice barely big enough for two Hunter-Killers to stand side by side was apparently their way out, slicing down through a tangle of crags on the plateau's eastern slop. On the HUD he could see a winding path that would eventually spit them out onto the flat badlands plains, well away from the incoming Scraegan reinforcements.

They just had to get there.

A furnace cannon shot glanced across the side of his mech and Ryke let out a hiss of pain, feedback jolting his left side and heat alarms blasting through the cockpit. His shield arm blinked with an amber damage warning with several melted servos.

"You good, Lockjaw?" Fenix yelped.

"Just a scorch," Ryke snapped back, letting go a juddering volley of shots in the direction the blast had come from. More heavy shells from Brigg and Erin blasted clouds of dust into the air, turning the whole battlefield into a murky, beige fog.

He zig-zagged his way backwards to join the others, locking into formation with Fenix's mech at a staggered angle. With her close on his shoulder, they backed into the narrow defile, and he just hoped that the whole thing wouldn't come crashing down around them under Scraegan fire.

"Everflowing," Brigg muttered nervously, sensing the same danger. "Gotta watch our shooting in here, Sarge. We hit the wrong piece of rock and the Scraegans will be the least of our problems."

"Solid copy on that," Ryke replied, wincing as Fenix drilled a well-aimed burst just passed his mech's left shoulder, battering a Scraegan warrior that had pushed forward further than its fellows. "Everybody watch your aim. If anybody else is swimming the River today, I don't want it to be because we got buried."

The other pilots crackled off their acknowledgements, comfortably of the same mind. As a Hunter-Killer, the last thing you wanted was to die in some kind of accident. He tensed as more Scraegans came into view, spreading through the human half of the plateau, furnace-cannons lashing shots into any building left standing – scouring the human presence from their land.

A furnace-cannon bolt roared overhead, taking a chunk out of an overhanging crag. Rocks clanged off the thick armour of his mech.

"Let 'em have it," he barked to Fenix, and both of them redoubled their efforts, plugging the narrow gap with armour-piercing shells. Several Scraegans ducked back, letting out victorious howls. They had no need to chase them into such a confined killing ground.

It didn't take long for them to traverse the narrow gully, with the Scraegans apparently uninterested in pursuit, having driven out the bulk of the human force already. Ryke felt weight lift off his lungs as HK-Rupture spilled out onto the badlands plains, spreading into a broad skirmish line. He allowed himself a deep, steadying breath – at least this disaster was almost over.

Then his HUD blinked red.

"Incoming! Straight ahead, bearing 012°!" Kim yelled.

Ryke didn't wait for an explanation. He just turned with everyone else, and saw the tell tale swells of earth that signified only one thing.

A Scraegan pack coming to the surface.

"Combat pairings," he barked. "Haunter, link up with Two-Step and Headstone."

"Copy."

"Weapons hot, here they come."

A line of dusty eruptions blew up maybe thirty yards from HK-Rupture, with a dozen huge, armoured bodies corkscrewing out of their makeshift tunnels, shedding muck and dirt, bellows of challenge thundering through the air. He tensed, bracing for another bloody confrontation.

But the figure that emerged in front of him made him hesitate.

Had anything – had anyone else burst out of the ground, he would have started shooting without hesitation, but he saw that serrated horn, the squat cube of a torso and the heavy war hammer, and his fingers jerked away from the firing trigger.

The Beta.

"HOLD YOUR FIRE!"

The order was out before he could stop it, some piece of his mind grasping at a flimsy, desperate hope that it didn't have to end this way.

He stared at the Scraegan for a moment, indecision clawing at him like knives. It snorted; let out a guttural, coughing bark and tossed its head. A step forward shuddered the ground and the other Scraegans edged along behind it.

But their furnace cannons didn't fire. The gullets of several of them snarled with heat, but the sensors on his HUD showed the weapons were simply idling. What were they waiting for?

In a split second decision, he let the main gun of his Hunter-Killer drop and snapped up the mech's other hand with an open palm. He waited for a second, ready to spring in case this insane gamble didn't pay off.

"Lockjaw, what-,"

"Hold your positions!" Ryke snarled over Fenix's baffled voice. "Hold, Everflowing, that's an order!"

He honestly didn't know if they would obey. HK-Rupture were a well drilled unit, but his command went against everything they'd been trained to do for years, never mind the full-blown battle they'd just been embroiled in.

Seconds ticked by.

Nobody started shooting.

He could feel the tension in his pilots, every Hunter-Killer mech coiled and ready to explode into action at a moment's notice. His HUD sensors snapped up thirteen Scraegan targets straggled out in front of them, the stocky Beta at their head.

It snorted again, standing there with its heavy frame heaving with deep breaths. The thunder of guns and Scraegan battle-roars boiled the air. Red indicators splurged across his sensors back the way they'd come as their foes spilled through the abandoned human camp. In a straight fight, he had faith in his squad to go toe-to-toe with a single Scraegan pack, but the delay would let the reinforcements catch them.

Then they'd be as good as dead.

"What are we doing here, Ryke?" Preese asked nervously.

"Maybe salvaging something from these bloody rapids," Ryke muttered. Gulping in a breath, he keyed the HUD to open up the front plating of his mech. "Everybody be ready just in case this ends up being the stupidest thing I've ever done."

"Oh, bloody Watching Lords, boss..."

The armour split in half with Preese's groan echoing in his ears. The heat of Rychter flooded in over him, coarse wind bringing with it the stink of scorched flesh, burnt metal and the acrid tang of blood. He settled the nausea that rolled his stomach and let the Beta see him through the storm

He wasn't about to drop to his knees, but he knew one gesture he could mirror. Bowing his head, he clenched a fist and thumped it to his chest.

"Pissing Rivers," Fenix whispered in disbelief. "Better you than me, sir."

"Yeah, tell me about it," Ryke murmured, raising his head to look a the Beta. He wasn't dead yet, which was a good start.

The Scraegan leader's snub-nosed face contorted with something that looked like frustration, one lip curling back to reveal a thick, blunt incisor. One of the other warriors snuffled something in the Scraegan language and the Beta barked a sharp retort. Then a deep, earth-shaking bellow echoed up out of the crags, too loud and impossibly deep to be any normal Scraegan.

The Alpha.

Ryke licked dry lips, his fingers poised over the controls that would slam his armour shut in the event his all went to hell. Out of the corner of his eye on a secondary HUD he saw the fast-moving blue indicators of Brackenshaw's relief force closing in.

Unless he said something, they would come in firing.

"Alright," he said quietly into the comm. "Everyone keep your cannons cold and start moving."

"Boss?"

"You heard me Preese. Back it up." He kept his eyes fixed on the Beta as he spoke. "Start moving, slow and steady, back towards inbound friendlies. Copy?"

"I... yeah, copy that, boss. You coming along?"

"I'll be right behind you."

The Scraegan warrior looked to the crags, then back to him, unease etched on those brutish, animal features. Its dark eyes flickered with suspicion as the other Hunter-Killers started moving, the heavy clump of their metal feet filling his ears. Some Scraegans further back eased their cannons up, tracking the motion, but none of them fired. At least not yet.

When the Beta looked at him again, Ryke pointed at the great column of smoke now rising over the ruin of the Liaison post, and thumped himself on the chest again.

Our fault.

Our responsibility.

Only the Watching Lords could now how much of this, if any, got through to the Beta, really, but it's shoulders seemed to ease back, some of the viciousness fading from its stance. It let out a short huff of air through its nostrils, then tossed its head in the direction of the retreating human forces.

"Okay, Ryke," Brigg said firmly over the comm, dispensing with both rank and callsign. "I think it's time to go."

Ryke waited for a few more seconds, then nodded to the Beta, a churn of confusing emotions thundering through his veins. Then he closed the armour of his Hunter-Killer.

He held the beast's stare until the plates of metal closed once more, his combat HUD springing blithely into life again, painting Scraegan targets with screeching red indicators. He sighed, and started to back away. His speed increased little by little as he started to pull level with the retreating HK-Rupture.

"Vannigan, we are forty-five seconds out," Brackenshaw's brusque voice suddenly burst into the comm. "I've got a Scraegan pack on our sensors less than a hundred yards from your position!"

"Stand down, lieutenant," he replied. "No hostile engagement. They let us walk away."

The comm fizzled with a stunned silence for a moment.

"Say that again, Sergeant?"

"They let us walk away, ma'am," Ryke repeated wearily. "I think everybody's had enough killing for one day. Let's go home."