"Brackenshaw to all units, comm check?"

"Rihkotso, loud and clear."

"Hynan, I read you."

"Locke, solid copy."

"Marder, I copy."

"De Leur, reading you."

And that was it. Six souls into the fire. The single person skiffs whipped out across the badlands, slamming through the dust-ridden air, while beyond the horizon the guns of the north boomed.

Somewhere just beyond that rise of crags and rocky hills, the battle for Crescentscar raged, and it took every ounce of self-control that Kaydie Brackenshaw possessed not to turn and race towards the noise. She wanted to be there, not screaming out into the unknown with a payload of mountain-cracking explosives attached to her.

She'd gone over the maps a dozen times, and the theory was all sound enough. No amount of theory in the universe, however, would make her feel any better about her prospects. They would be hurtling through definitively enemy territory for hours, even at top speed, and she had no idea how sophisticated their enemies' tracking equipment might be.

After that, they would be slaloming through active combat zones. As predicted, it hadn't taken long for the Scraegans to get organised and start hitting back, their warbands gathering for sudden, vicious assaults on the wings of the encroaching army. Reports from long range scouts showed clashes erupting all along the front.

Employing the tactics they had used against their human adversaries for two centuries, the Scraegan packs stayed away from a pitched battle, instead sending their hunters in lightning raids, emerging to butcher groups of Crawlers before disappearing back into the depths.

They weren't stopping the enemy, but they were slowing them down.

Brackenshaw wished them all the luck in the world, as she veered hard to the left, plunging her skiff down into a narrow gully, out of sight and mind. The other skiffs locked onto her trajectory, moving in a long, straggled line, their ground penetrating radar thumping out into the world for any sign of the enemy.

So far, so good.

She settled into her seat, and braced herself for a long, long flight. Even at the speeds the single-person skiffs could reach, it would take the better part of a day for them to get within tight of the labyrinth.

The gunfire receded into the distance. Flashes were visible on the horizon for a while, until they too faded away, leaving Brackenshaw in an eerie sense of unreality. Open tracts of the badlands opened out before them, unspoiled by shell fire, tunnels and treads.

They raced south. Radar showed distant Crawler masses still slithering out into the world, their tunnel networks expanding exponentially. Everflowing, how she wished she could have blanketed this place with deepstrike mines; blown the whole system to smithereens in atomic fire. But that it was not to be. Instead, she and her companions carried modified, high yield charges from the Blackwater technicians, designed for surgical precision rather than all out destruction.

Four hours into their journey, the first warning call came.

"Long range seismics going crazy, ma'am," Rihkotso warned. "Got readings on a large group of Scraegan packs. From the look of this there's an enemy force right on top of them."

Brackenshaw nodded as the data was shunted to her HUD. "Alright, we'll take a wide pass, people. This one's not our problem. Let the Riverlords sort it out."

Muted acknowledgements came back over the comm, and she angled her skiff onto a new heading, sweeping away from the combat zone. It didn't take long before they could hear the distant thunder of battle, however, with Scraegan war howls echoing across the badlands, punctuated by the muffled thump of furnace cannon blasts.

She had no idea how the Scraegans were faring. Part of her didn't want to know.

They carried on, bypassing the engagement and weaving south. She caught sight of small groups of the enemy, the hulking aliens leading small groups of Crawlers out from their great ship. From a distance Brackenshaw could see some of them dragging long, dark sleds of some kind over Rychter's surface.

Again, she had no choice but to suppress her instincts. They logged the sightings and carried on. Deeper into the south, she could actually see the apex of the massive space vessel, just visible on the horizon as they skirted dangerously close to its perimeter.

"What do you suppose those things are here for?" Hynan muttered as they dipped into a narrow, sheltered valley, the ship falling from view again. "I mean, the what in the Everflowing bloody River is so special about Rychter?"

"Couldn't tell you," Brackenshaw replied. "But I think it's safe to say, we're not going to like it."

"Maybe it's some kind of weapons test," Rihkotso interjected. "Some sort of experiment with the Crawlers? It's like... like they left them here to just see what would happen."

"Then we killed the queen and knocked the experiment off course." The possibility didn't make Brackenshaw particularly sanguine about the situation. "If it is an experiment, let's give them more results than they bargained for."

"Yes, ma'am."

The suns of Rychter were beginning to creep downwards when she finally caught her first glimpse of the labyrinth, still more than an hour away, but just visible as a dark smear on the horizon. Her limbs ached and her eyes were sore from staring at her HUD for so long.

Only now did she realise how exhausted she was.

"Alright, everyone," she called through the comm. "We've got one rest stop to take, then we're heading right up those mountains."

"You really think we can find a route up there?" Hynan asked dubiously. "I looked at those maps. A whole lot of prayer-work that those old charts are up to scratch."

"Nobody said we wouldn't be improvising," Locke put in with an uneasy chuckle.

"Oh, that makes me feel all better."

"Objection noted, Sergeant," Brackenshaw told him, "but I think we've come a little too far to bail because we don't like the intel."

"Copy that," he muttered.

Smirking to herself, she glanced at her HUD. So far, so good. Hynan's worries were certainly not unfounded, but right now she was willing to just take this one step at a time. Rolling her shoulders to loosen them, she exhaled through her filter mask. Her eyes flickered down to the display.

Something was wrong.

"What the...?" Brackenshaw blinked and looked again. A split-second of disbelief froze her solid, until she could process what she was looking at. The HUD was suddenly alive with activity, all around them, completely out of nowhere. Scraegan seismic readings and the radar readings of the fast moving Crawler tunnel systems.

"Lieutenant!" Panic surged into Rihkotso's voice. "Seismics are going crazy! GPR too!"

"How in the Riverlords..."

"THEY'RE RIGHT ON TOP OF US!"

De Leur was dead before anyone could react.

One minute he was soaring along at the rear of the column. The next, a Crawler exploded from the earth and simply swallowed him up. A half-scream cut over the comm before its colossal bulk pulverised him into the ground, the creature's rotating under-maw ripping him to pieces.

"Break, break, break!" Brackenshaw screamed, heaving on the controls to cut the momentum of her skiff, realising that she was heading right at one of the impossible readings.

Another Crawler ripped from the ground in front of her.

Its limbs and torso came slamming down, right where she would have been if she hadn't slowed down. In the nick of time, Brackenshaw managed to haul the skiff to a stop, barely a three meters from where the thing landed.

It reared up again, a huge, shrieking mass of limbs, its under-maw of serrated teeth whirring and clashing. Brackenshaw frantically tried to reverse course, wrenching at the controls and firing the skiff's emergency thrusters, just as the monstrous arthropod struck again.

She felt the world darken in slow motion, the Crawler's huge shadow falling across her. Was this it? Was this finally when her luck ran out? She'd survived a lot of things over the past decade that could easily have ended differently. Maybe this time would be different.

The skiff's engines screamed, propelling her backwards, but the Crawler jumped to match the speed, rising over her, then falling... falling... falling.

A big shape suddenly filled her vision.

Brackenshaw hardly had time to register what she was looking at before the Scraegan surged upwards, a long length of metal clutched in both its paws. The point of the weapon slammed straight into the vulnerable underside of the creature, filling the air with a crunching squelch, and spraying thick grey blood in all directions.

Brackenshaw swore as the innards of the creature splattered across the viewshield of her skiff, the impact sending her into a half-spin. By the time she wrestled control back and re-centred herself, she saw the Crawler on its side, legs kicking and tail thrashing wildly.

Her saviour had a long length of what looked like salvaged metal embedded in the monster's underside, twisting and ripping savagely. Then she saw the warrior's head; the distinctive hornet helmet, and her eye widened with shock.

Grunn.

Ryke's beautiful bloody friend. She knew the Scraegans had left days before her sortie began, but of everyone – everything – she'd expected to run into out here, he was near the bottom of the list. Only then did her world expand beyond the dying Crawler, and she realised there were Scraegan warriors everywhere.

They came churning from the ground, furnace cannons lashing at point blank range to boil carapaces.

"Get clear!" she roared into the comm.

"Contact, contact!" Rikhotso screamed back. "Everflowing-,"

A flash scorched the edge of Brackenshaw's vision. She turned in time to see Rihkotso's skiff disintegrate, along with its pilot. Her eyes went wide with horror as the woman's smoking corpse smashed into the dirt, coming apart on impact.

Behind her loomed the shape of one of the alien leaders.

Sand sloughed off its armour as it rose fully out of the shallow trough in the earth, limbs battering a rhythm of command as it moved, the long arch of its head section swivelling. She saw the bulbous oval of a weapon clutched in its forelimbs, the air around it shimmering with residual heat.

It pulsed again, and one of the Scraegan warriors went down, a smoking tunnel in its torso. Brackenshaw's mind raced as she kicked her skiff into gear, twisting past a lunging Crawler, hunkering down and passing just beneath a clash of huge bodies.

"Kaydie!" Hynan hollered. "What are you doing?!"

"Get everyone else clear, Sergeant. That's an order!" she barked back, then close the comm as she concentrated.

The carnage around her continued, blood and limbs flying in all directions. She saw two furnace cannon shots explode harmlessly against the alien's carapace, its armour rippling to disperse the force. It shot back; another Scraegan collapsed with its right leg severed at the knee.

Grunn threw back his head and let out a deafening roar of challenge as he stepped over the corpse of a twitching Crawler, the arthropod impaled and pinned to the ground by his long spear. The Scraegan's cannon whined as it charged, even as he shrugged his warhammer free from the sheathe across his back.

The alien turned to face the latest challenge, legs stamping and weapon swinging to bear. A shot from Grunn's cannon detonated against the front of the creature's torso, but it shrugged off the blow, taking aim as the Scraegan warrior charged.

Before it could fire, Brackenshaw swept across in front of it, and let off a broadside of flares from the skiff's rear launchers into its face.

A clicking, hissing sound spat from the raised appendage, and the creature reared back, two of its forelimbs scrabbling at its armoured head. Its weapon flashed; a section of the ground a few feet behind her sizzled and melted. She felt the heat and the sting in the air that made her eyes water, even through the armoured goggles.

Her distraction did enough. Grunn came thundering forward, his heavy warhammer now clutched in both paws. He brought the weapon around in a murderous arc, and smashed it down into the junction where the alien's head section met its thorax.

She saw the armour flex, trying to cushion the blow, but the Scraegan had found a weak point. A sound like shattering glass echoed across the plain, and the alien lurched drunkenly, a big dent in the joint of its neck.

Even then, the creature had more than enough power to fight, twisting savagely to its left and swiping at Grunn with two of its legs. The Scraegan took the blow hard and went sprawling, then rolled, avoiding the trample of the monster's other limbs. A second warrior leapt into the fray, aiming its spear right into the breach Grunn had created.

The point slammed home, and lodged there, the Scraegan leaping back out of reach as the alien thrashed and screamed. Green ichor splurged out onto the sand as it rotated, lashing out in all directions. Its tail hit one Scraegan and she heard a crack of breaking bone, the warrior collapsing with a guttural howl.

Grunn thundered forward again, leaping and catching the protruding spar of metal. The full bodyweight of the bulky Scraegan made the metal bow, and for a moment she thought it might actually snap.

The alien carapace gave way first.

A ripping, nails-on-a-board screech shook the air, so loud that it stung her ears beneath her helmet, and she saw the alien armour peel open, It split gradually at first, before finally tearing apart. Gore sprayed into the air; organs and entrails she couldn't begin to recognise splattering across the desert ground.

Their foe pitched forward, legs skittering and sliding as its lifeblood gushed from the fatal wound. Its body lurched for a moment, trying to writhe away, before the Scraegans were on it with a vengeance. Weapons rose and fell savagely, and in seconds the warriors tore the dying alien apart.

Keening cries went up from the surviving Crawlers, and the hulking creatures quickly scurried away, disappearing back beneath the sands. Brackenshaw slewed to a stop, only now registering just how fast her heart was hammering beneath her chest.

The Scraegans moved back from their kill, snorting and snarling to one and other as the alien's shattered body came into view. The warriors had taken no chances. It had been smashed to mulch and literally ripped limb from limb.

"Lieutenant?" Hynan's shaking voice came over the comm. "You okay?"

"I'm good," she replied, hearing the tremble in her own words but unable to suppress it. She took a shuddering breath. "Everybody else in one piece?"

"Yes, ma'am."

"What in the Everflowing happened?" Locke interjected. "They all just... came out of nowhere."

"They must have been waiting here – both of them," Hynan said. "Some kind of stand off and we walked right into the middle of it."

"Bloody Rivers," Brackenshaw muttered. She swallowed hard when Grunn came crunching towards her, bloodied and bruised, but unbowed. His hulking frame heaved with exertion as he stopped in front of her, his eyes flicking towards the other surviving scouts before he grunted at her.

"Guess he wants to know what we're doing here," Locke chuckled nervously.

"I guess so." Brackenshaw nodded. "Well, the way things are going, we could use all the help we can get."

Tugging her breather mask down, she looked up at Grunn, raised her voice, and started to explain.