A strange mood settled itself among the strike force's troops as they hunkered down for the night in the newly liberated ruin of Ozzmar. On the one hand the soldiers were buoyant. They'd driven out the Scraegans and secured a vital staging area to press the war further south. On the other, the fight to reclaim Ozzmar had come at a high price.

The hastily constructed flanking action that Ryke had coordinated with Brackenshaw had succeeded in dislodging the Scraegan defenders at last. They struck with the precision and brutality of a well-swung axe, ripping a hole in the enemy line through which Miquelon was able to direct the main thrust of the strike force. With the Scraegan defenders split, their resistance quickly crumbled, many of the packs withdrawing before they could be encircled and destroyed.

There was no massacre – the Scraegans were too intelligent to be caught fighting to the death for a relatively paltry prize. They retreated, bloodied and bruised, but with a significant portion of their force living to fight another day.

And they were not the only ones bloodied and bruised.

Ryke felt a surge of anger when he saw the streets where the main battle for Ozzmar had taken place. The armoured brigades and infantry columns had taken a mauling in those narrow confines, leaving burnt out husks of vehicles and easily more that a hundred soldiers dead. On top of that, Miquelon's own HK-Strident had lost three pilots; HK-Praxis under Charpente had lost two. From Ryke's squad, while they had suffered no deaths, both Raptor mechs had been badly damaged in the fighting and Scantlin had suffered a fractured collarbone. Neither he, nor his Hunter-Killer, would be fit to fight for some time.

That meant more replacements. More pilots into the meat grinder. Ryke felt his jaw tighten, a gentle ache throbbing along the seam of the metal plate as he strode along the line of now-empty Hunter-Killers. All of them were scorched and dented, some more than others. His own machine had taken a pounding in the assault, it's armour washed by sooty darkness from furnace shots and battered by heavy blows.

He strode along the line and made his way through the ruined town square that now hosted the attack force's vehicles. The Hunter-Killers formed silent ranks on the northern edge, with Brackenshaw's surviving skiffs sat on raised supports to the east and the armoured vehicles filling the rest. Guard posts had already been stationed at Ozzmar's outskirts – tanks hunkering down amongst the ruins, accompanied by militia spotters with seismic readers and long range scopes.

With that security in place, the rest of the task force settled in to rest and await the arrival of the repair and resupply column that trailed in the wake of Llewellyn's army. Ryke found his pilots sitting well apart from the other Hunter-Killers, lounging on lumps of masonry, sucking on hydro-cubes in the dwindling heat.

Brigg and Marylee sat with a trio of Scout Cadre troops playing with a deck of octagonal cards; Thaye dozed on a long spur of broken wall with her jacket bunched behind her head as a pillow. Brody, Koral and Kim sat nearby conversing in low tones. Preese lay with his back against a wall segment, reading something on his data slate.

Scantlin was still with the medics.

"What's the damage, boss?" Preese asked without looking up as Ryke trudged over to join them. He moved to stand beside his second officer, running his eyes over the troop.

"Kim's mech needs a full combat strip and rearm."

"What about Scantlin?"

"Two weeks minimum until he can even try to pilot a Hunter-Killer again," he muttered. Battlefield medicine had taken great leaps as the Scraegan war ground on, but the technology could only shortcut so much.

Preese shook his head; glanced up from his data slate. "Means we'll be getting another newbie, eh?"

Ryke popped a hydro-cube from his jacket pocket and placed it on his tongue, feeling icy sensation of water slowly releasing into his mouth. He rolled it from side to side thoughtfully.

"So long as we get someone from Brekka," he muttered. "I can work with that."

"You think the lieutenant's got the straying power for this?"

"No, I don't." Ryke sighed. "He kept it together enough for us to pull this one out of the bag because he didn't have to change his plan. We changed it for him."

"Can't wait to see what it looks like when plans fall apart," Preese grunted sarcastically.

"Won't that be an interesting day?" He thumped a gentle fist down on the other pilot's shoulder. "Make sure they get some rest. I need to debrief with Miquelon but I want everybody to do have a full damage check of their rig ready to go when the engineers get here, alright?"

"We'll get it done." Preese shot him a mischievous look. "Try not to pick any fights without us."

"No promises."

Steeling himself, Ryke left his pilots to their small slice of calm. He had a feeling that moments like this would soon be on short supply.

*

That night the support columns arrived. With Ozzmar secured, a train of vehicles streamed into the ruins under the setting suns of the badlands, carrying extra medical staff, engineers and porters.

Makeshift tents sprung up all around the town square and the he smelled sizzling meat and earthy vegetables as the porters plied their trade. In a matter of minutes long triage centres lined large portions of the square, where wounded soldiers stabilised by the combat medics could receive proper treatment. The searing scent of welding torches and burning fuel washed across the vehicle bays as the engineers set to work.

Ryke made his way through the bustle, heading back towards the Hunter-Killer bay where repairs would soon be underway. A row of bulky crawlers from the Engineering Cadre were parked in the centre of the square now, their loading doors open on the flanks as they disgorged crate after crate of fresh armour plates, ammunition and spare parts. His eyes wandered over the serried mass of vehicles, the deluge of voices reverberating through the square as orders were yelled above the growl of engines. Ryke found it all oddly nostalgic, like being back in the massive hangar at Stamm Basin.

As he passed by the nearest crawler, however, he spotted something that made his heart leap. He stopped abruptly, twisting on his heel and stepping over to the side of the vehicle. He leaned close, examining the insignia emblazoned just above its immense balloon wheel. His eyes lit up as he saw the burnished silver shield motif encircled by upward facing bullets, with the number fifteen etched below it.

The Engineering Cadre's 15th Armourers platoon out of Brekka – Ivy's unit. They were in Ozzmar right now. Ryke looked up sharply, glancing left and right for any sign of her. Then he realised the most likely place she would be and set off at a jog towards the dormant Hunter-Killers.

Sure enough, when he reached the northern edge of the square he saw her familiar figure standing in front of his mech, head cocked sideways as she examined the damage, fingers tapping into her data slate as though they had a mind of their own. He slowed to a walk, finding his smile.

"Evening, Corporal," he called breezily.

She whipped around at his voice, her face lighting up as he approached. Ivy took a step forward and slung her free arm around his shoulders, pulling him into a hug.

"Riverlords, it's good to see you," she told him, giving him a tight squeeze for good measure before letting go. "Heard you had quite a scuffle getting in here."

"Any one you walk away from, right?" Ryke replied. "Did you get the damage reports?"

"I did indeed." She nodded down the line where other engineers were making their own assessments of the ranks of battle mechs. "We'll have you all turned around in time."

"Time for what?"

Ivy shrugged. "Don't ask me. Lord Miquelon just told us forty-eight hours. I'm sure you've got a lovely long briefing to look forward to in the next day or so while we're putting his task force back together for him."

"Terrific." He moved to stand beside her, looking up at the Hunter-Killer. "Hope I didn't give you too much extra work."

"Pff, I've seen a lot worse than this. You'll be back out there in no time. I saw the report for Scantlin's mech though – he'll probably need a whole new rig. How's he doing?"

"He'll be okay, but I'd feel a hell of a lot better if he was out there with us."

"You think you'll be pushing further south?"

He nodded grimly. "If they want to keep the momentum up, the last thing we can do is sit here giving the Scraegans time to regroup. That's probably why Miquelon's got such a fire under your feet for the repairs."

"Retaking every town..." Ivy shook her head. "If every settlement is like Ozzmar this is going to be a bloodbath."

"You worrying about me?"

"Always." She leaned sideways, touching her head to his shoulder for a moment. "Sometimes I wish I could pilot one of these things and head out with you. Then I remember how much it terrifies me."

Ryke bit his lip, searching for the words. "You know... I don't want to feed you lies, Ivy. Hunter-Killers don't come with a safety guarantee."

"I know. And I don't want any grand promises from you. Just do what you do best. It's kept you alive so far."

"I can at least promise that."

Words slipped away from them both for a moment, the clatter and clang of repair work filling the air instead. He could feel her unease; wished there was some way he could help her feel just a little bit better. She had to send him out into the fray, day after day, not knowing if he would come back, and there was nothing he could do to change it.

Ivy eased her head up and moved to face him again. "Ryke, I don't know that all of... this-," she made a sweeping gesture to the preparations going on around them, "is really a good idea."

He smiled wryly. "I don't trust the northers any more than you do, but we're stuck with it. Hopefully they'll learn as they go."

"I don't mean the northers and I'm not talking about battle plans." Ivy shook her head. "I mean all of this. Sending this army south, fighting the Scraegans like this. It's a bad idea."

Ryke hesitated, his smile fading and brow furrowing in confusion. "I... what do you mean?"

"I mean that we shouldn't be doing this." Her voice dropped low and she glanced around, as though afraid of being overheard. "I know how it sounds, but this isn't right."

"Isn't right?! We're at war," he hissed back, his voice just above a whisper as he leaned close to her. "We barely survived Brekka, Ives. We can't wait for that to happen again."

"I get it, I get it, I do," Ivy said quickly. "It's just, this war has always been about defending ourselves. Now Llewellyn and the rest of them want to kill every last Scraegan? Ryke, that's genocide, not war. They were here first. They're living creatures. Do really have the right to just wipe them out?"

Just wipe them out.

The words struck him like a physical thing and he felt a clenching in his stomach. The thought had crossed his mind too, but he'd been trying not to think about the implications. It was hard enough keeping his resentment of the northern officers at bay while trying to lead his squad through the most vicious battles that Rychter had seen in living memory. Attempting to add ethics to that melting pot made his mind scream.

"What choice do we have?" He inclined his head to the blackened ruin of a wall that marked one corner of the makeshift repair yard. "Look around. Look what they did to Ozzmar. They levelled this place – just one of many."

"I'm not trying to defend them-,"

"This was Thaye's home," Ryke interrupted sharply, a sense of frustration stinging him. "They destroyed it and turned her into a killer. Who knows what she might have done if that hadn't happened."

Ivy pressed her lips tightly together and nodded.

He wasn't finished. "She's not the only one. Kim is from Alldeep – she lost her brother when the Scraegans attacked. I only ended up in Brekka because they destroyed Rukker's Quarry. They killed my parents."

She spoke softly. "I know that, Ryke."

"Then what are you trying to say to me right now? Nobody on this planet asked for a war with the Scraegans, but they've killed thousands of innocent people. What are we supposed to do? We can't just sit and wait forever. The Scraegans made us into this and now they're reaping what they've sown."

"You of all people should know there's more to the Scraegans than that," Ivy replied. "You communicated with one. You stopped the battle at Brekka and saved a lot of lives – ours and theirs. Now you're telling me you're happy to just see their entire species go extinct? You're better than that, Ryke. We all should be."

The pain throbbed in his metal jaw as he clenched it and exhaled a long breath through his nose, digging one hand through his mess of dark hair. His mind flashed back to that confrontation with the Scraegan prisoner, the member of the enormous priest caste they had captured. That operation ended up being the unwitting catalyst for the Scraegan assault on Brekka. Only Ryke's efforts at rudimentary communication with the religious leader had stopped the human and Scraegan forces from massacring each other.

He knew they were intelligent – they'd proved that much – but that didn't seem to change things a whole lot. That intelligence seemed solely geared to further prosecute the conflict they'd started. The humans still couldn't communicate with their foes in any meaningful way, and the Scraegans had made no attempts of their own. Whatever moral qualms Ivy and others might have had, the cold reality was that they remained in a state of all out war.

"This isn't something anyone wants," he said eventually. "But what are we supposed to do?"

Ivy threw up her hands in exasperation. "I don't know. I just know this doesn't feel right. There has to be another way."

"What if there isn't?" Ryke looked her in the eye and shrugged, feeling a helpless weight on his shoulders. "We've been fighting them for decades, Ivy. It has to end somehow. Someone has to win."