The Scraegans were coming.

Ivy could feel the vibrations now without the need for any seismic sensors. The massive structure around them passed the tremors with ease. It had been quiet for a while as the Scraegan attackers licked their wounds, punctuated by occasional blurts of noise as they finished off one of their dying brethren.

Or a surviving human. Even deep within the rock they'd heard the faint, truncated screams. She fiddled with her a cutter in the dark, the only weapon she'd been able to scrounge up. She knew that if she got close enough to a Scraegan she was probably already dead, but still, if the tool could hack through solid rock, it ought to deal with armour and flesh easily enough.

She wasn't going to die without a fight.

Around her the others paced, conversed in hushed tones, and tried to doze as the Scraegan digging grew inexorably closer, hunting for any vestige of human presence in this place.

What in the River happened out there?

The question wouldn't leave. She'd never seen Scraegans kill each other, not en masse like that. She guessed the Scraegans had factions and disagreements like anybody else. If you were smart enough to build a civilisation, you were smart enough to argue about how it should be run. Clearly these newcomers took a dim view of the truce with Rychter's humans.

Ivy couldn't help but wonder what that would mean for the planet – for the war that by now showed no signs of stopping. Both sides had people who still wanted to fight – would always want to fight – and that was no recipe to peace.

A couple of years ago she would have considered herself to be one of them, but finding this place buried beneath the Scraegar Labyrinth had changed all that. She now needed to confront the uncomfortable truth that there was a lot more out there than this little planet, a mystery that she had just been starting to get her teeth into.

The facility trembled again. A fist-sized piece of broken rock fell and shattered against the black stone-metal a meter away from her.

"Drown me!" she snarled, scrambling upright and stepping back against the wall, glowering upward.

"You okay?" Kelso asked quietly, stopping his pacing for long enough to look at her.

"They're getting closer," she shot back, hefting the cutter and checking its charge pack yet again. Eighty-two percent. Enough to do some damage if she had to.

"I mean ... they can't get in here, can they?" one of the other technicians asked in a trembling voice, staring uneasily at the ceiling. "They wouldn't fit through the doorways we excavated."

"There's a lot more here to unearth," Captain Kenyatta said grimly. "We have no idea how far this complex really goes, or where the front door is." She gestured to their surroundings. "They'd have to stoop a bit, but you could fit a Scraegan in here."

"C'mon, cap." Ivy managed a nervous laugh. "You could sugar-coat it a little."

Kenyatta shrugged, folding her arms.

"We just need to wait," Kelso said, raising his voice just a little so that the small band of survivors could all hear him. "The rescue party is on its way."

"A rescue party with Scraegans?" one of the guards snorted. "Really want to bet on that, sir?"

"I'm open to other ideas, specialist."

"How long?" Ivy asked. "How long will it take them to get here?"

"Assuming they set out from Brekka as soon as they got the distress call, they could be arriving any time now. We just need to stay alive."

"What if ... what if the war's back on, for real? What if the Scraegans won't let them through?"

"That's why he's got help."

Another vibration made her wince and she gestured to their surroundings. "Let's just hope his 'help' doesn't feel the same way as our friends outside."

"He'll be here. Trust me."

Everflowing, he sounded so sure. And why shouldn't he be? Ryke was his brother. Ivy wished she felt as confident. She knew more than anyone how skilled a pilot Ryke Vannigan was, but you couldn't fight a ticking clock.

Kelso resumed his pacing; Kenyatta turned her attention to a ration pack, nibbling at a dull nutrient block the colour of concrete.

Then she heard a deep, low boom from beyond the facility walls. Her fingers tightened around the grip of the cutter and she opened her mouth, but then the shockwave struck.

This one felt like an earthquake, and the ground shuddered violently. Men and women cried out in surprise, equipment was tossed across the ground, and Ivy tripped into an awkward tumbling roll until she came to her knees, every muscle in her body coiled with fear.

"What in pissing Rivers was that?!" she blurted.

"That was a bloody explosion!" Kenyatta exclaimed, scrambling to her feet. "With in the Everflowing are they doing out there?"

Kelso's face was grim as he pumped the loader of his grenade launcher. "Must've gotten tired of trying to dig out a way in."

Another blast shook the subterranean world, making the blue lights on the floor flicker. Ivy let out a yelp, trying to stand up as The others frantically scrabbled to secure what equipment they had left. She made it to her feet in time for a third explosion to almost flatten her again. Staggering, she spread her feet for balance and gripped the cutter tight, watching for cracks in the dark material of the outpost.

To her relief it remained intact. Too tough for them or the Scraegans to break.

The structure itself might have been too solid to be broken by the Scraegan weapons, but the rocky growth that had infested it over the long march of time was another matter entirely. Ivy's eyes widened at the sound of a sickening crack, and she looked up. A jolt of horror shot through her.

"LOOK OUT!" she screamed, hurling herself forward into a wild dive as a chunk of broken rock the size of a car came falling out of the gloom.

Not everyone got out of the way.

An engineer and one of Kelso's guards were pulverised into the ground as the rock landed, its structure smashing apart on impact to reveal a pair of broken bodies. Ivy stared, breathing heavily and crawling until she felt her back hit the impregnable wall of the facility. Kenyatta and a couple of others darted over to their stricken comrades, but she already knew it was far too late.

"We can't stay here, Vannigan," Kenyatta hissed, standing up from the dead bodies and rounding on him.

He flashed her a dark look. "I know."

"Then what are we going to do?"

Another blast shook more chunks of rock loose, revealing vast spars of dark material above them. From somewhere beyond the destruction she heard a full-throated Scraegan roar, far too close for comfort. They were coming. No more tunnels or careful excavation. They were blasting their way to this chamber to kill everything they could find.

Looking over, she could see Kelso's mind racing, an internal battle raging inside him. Did he keep faith in his brother, or take matters into his own hands?

Ivy wasn't about to wait around and die while he tried to decide. She darted past him, running into the control room and looking out through the viewing windows to the great comms spire of the facility. It pulsed on the underground horizon.

All the way to the surface.

It was insane, she knew that, but right now it seemed better than being buried or torn to pieces.

"The spire!" she shouted, scurrying back through as another explosion sent more rocks tumbling in a deadly rain. She pointed. "We can get out that way!"

"What?" Kenyatta spun to face her. "How?"

"We climb!"

"Climb?! Shanklin have you lost your mind?"

"Yeah, maybe a little." Ivy marched forward and grabbed Kelso by the arm. "If we don't go now we're going to be dead long before Ryke can rescue our sorry hides." For a moment he didn't speak. He just looked at her. 

"Kelso, by the bloody Everflowing River, get a grip!"

Her voice was viciously sharp as she gave vent to her frustration, and she might as well have slapped him. He jerked out of her grip and nodded, taking a shuddering breath.

"She's right," he shouted. "Everyone out."

"They can dig through there!" Kenyatta shouted, pointing towards the spire. "That's just a flat bloody plain. If they catch us out there-,"

"It's better than getting cornered in here." Kelso trudged past her, clapping Kenyatta on the shoulder with a clenched fist. "C'mon, Captain."

Kenyatta looked like she wanted to keep arguing but another blast, this one much closer, brought a curtain of shattered rubble crashing down into the main room, almost burying two of the surviving engineers.

"Captain!" Ivy urged her. "We've got to go!"

"Watching bloody Lords," Kenyatta cursed, twisting on her heel to follow them.

Ivy bolted out in front, with Kelso limping along as best he could behind her, down one of the symmetrical ramps that coiled down and out from the control centre in the shape of bull horns. More seismic detonations boomed in the shining half-light of the spire, the shocks almost knocking her head over heels forward as she sprinted along.

The inquisitive part of her ached. She wanted to see just what the Scraegans would unearth with their brute force excavation of the facility. At the same time she was beyond furious. While the walls of this alien place might have physically withstood the blasts, they had no idea what damage the shocks might do to the internal mechanisms and control systems of the complex. Those maniacs could wreck this whole place any bury its secrets forever.

She skidded to a halt as she reached the machine-smooth surface of the cavern floor, twisting back to see Kelso struggling along, Kenyatta taking one of his arms over her shoulder. The rest of their little band pelted forward, carrying any weapons and supplies they'd been able to snatch up before running for their lives.

Ivy didn't need to give any orders. She just set off, locking her eyes on the spire and praying to every Watching Riverlord that she could get there before the Scraegans figured out where they were. In reality it wasn't a massive distance, maybe five hundred yards, but right now it felt like the longest race she'd ever had to run.

The cavern roof loomed down over them, a pitiless blackness looking down on a thin line of tiny human bodies snaking across the open space. She pushed the reality of what was happening out of her mind, and just focused on getting to the door. In truth, she had no idea if they could climb the spire. Maybe thing thing would irradiate them all if they set foot inside its chamber, but anything was better than just waiting for a Scraegan to smash her into a pulp.

She could see the entrance now. If they could seal the door behind them they would at least buy themselves some time. Her legs burned, the cutter heavy in her arms, but she clung on and forced one foot in front of the other; again, again, again.

Then she caught something out of the corner of her eye and she slowed, licking dry lips as she looked at it fully.

Ivy wished she hadn't.

A rough circle of wall on the cavern's eastern edge collapsed inward, sending a low wave of shattered earth spilling into the chamber. Her eyes widened with horror as a bulky Scraegan wrestled its way through the hole. Its fur shone in fiery orange and red, brutish, home made armour plating strapped across its body. This one didn't have a furnace-cannon – small mercies – but the gigantic, long-handled mace in is paws would be more than enough.

Its big head swung left and right as it rumbled forward, and then it spotted them. She felt the black eyes lock onto her, and she froze.

For a brief instant they just stared at each other. Then the Scraegan threw back its head with a roar and launched into a thunderous charge across the plateau towards them. The sight of it coming at her shook Ivy out of her stupor.

"EVERYBODY RUN!" she screeched, her voice rising like a knife through the cavern air.

The others didn't need her to tell them. A mad dash ensued as they hurled themselves towards the spire, the Scraegan thundering forward at an angle to try and cut them off. They were close – close enough she thought they just might make it.

Then two more tunnels burst open ahead of them, and six more Scraegans emerged, stomping into place to bar their path.

Ivy's heart sank out of her body and down through the floor. 

She wished she could have followed it as she stumbled to a halt, staring at the line of flame-furred monsters. An array of fearsome weapons glinted in the light, along with a handful of furnace-cannons, more than enough to wipe out their little group in the blink of an eye.

She felt the others coming to a stop behind her.

"Everflowing," Kenyatta gasped. "Now what?"

"Something very stupid," Kelso grunted, shaking her off and raising his grenade launcher. "We're not all getting out of this. Anybody with a gun, you're with me. Spread out and we'll see if we can distract them long enough for the rest of you to make a run for it for the door."

"Kelso, that's suicide," Ivy said, still looking at the Scraegans.

"We don't have a lot of options."

More tunnels broke open to her left. The first Scraegan had slowed to an easy lope now that its quarry was cornered, and behind it another pack came clumping into the cobalt glare. Triumphant howls stung her ears as they spread out, smashing their weapons of armour

She was going to die here. By the bloody River, she was actually going to die.

Then another roar ripped out across the cavern, cutting through the din of the advancing Scraegans. This one came from her right, opposite their foes. Ivy gulped down a scream and turned to face it, revving up the cutter's battery, fully expecting to see more flame-furred Scraegans bearing down to surround them.

She saw a fresh passage torn open on the far wall. She also saw another Scraegan come stomping through it, the furnace-cannon lashed to its arm sizzling with coils of superheated smoke. The warrior tossed its head and letting out a long undulating bellow, and raised heavy warhammer high.

This one didn't look like it belonged to the new faction, though. Its armour was dull, its fur the colour of granite and its thick helmet plate sported a nasty-looking serrated horn.

But what really surprised her was the Hunter-Killer that stepped out of the tunnel behind it.