Furnace (Hunter-Killer #1)

Chapter 21 - Battlemaster

The images from the Hunter-Killer mounted cameras were chaotic, no matter how good the resolution was. Some part of him wasn't ready to look at this so soon, memories of the carnage beneath the Scraegan mountain still raw.

But that wasn't a part he was going to listen to.

Forcing his misgivings to the back of his mind, Ryke focused on the images, trying to abstract himself from the mayhem that played out on the screens. The flash and blast of furnace cannons and armour piercing rounds strobed across the bank of displays in the modified briefing room, punctuated by the clipped radio messages that flashed between pilots through the fighting. Nine screens were arranged in a square, with eight smaller ones surrounding a larger central monitor that could be focused at will by the attending technician.

Around him a host of senior officers involved in the engagement were gathered, along with Colonel Hackley, several black-clad Scout Cadre specialists, General Theikvaal and half a dozen of his senior aides. They'd given the Hunter-Killers a day of rest after the operation, but now it was time to reap the rewards they'd spilled so much blood over.

Ryke had no idea what success – if any – the interrogators at the Forge had achieved with their captive. He couldn't begin to think how you went about extracting information from something like a Scraegan. Still, that wasn't his job. The other side of the coin came from the wealth of video footage that for the first time shed some light on the Scraegan world beneath his feet.

He tried to pay closer attention to it as the battle played out in more detail than he could ever have remembered. His eyes roved, trying not to concentrate on the Scraegans themselves but on their surroundings, on the honeycomb of tunnels that infested their mountain stronghold. In the course of the battle he'd seen no evidence of machinery and found himself wondering if the Scraegans even needed machines. They moved through the earth somehow, but it looked like the passages in this place had been there for years. Did they live there? Somewhere in the depths of the mountain was their some Scraegan equivalent to living quarters? He had no idea.

Then again, he reasoned, the Hunter-Killers hadn't exactly been exploring. They'd cut their way into the heart of the mountain like an axe, wasting as little time as possible in the unfamiliar environment.

"It's like a bloody ant-hive," the commanding officer of HK-Thresher grunted, shaking his head. "We could have spent days down there."

"No real defences though," Ryke said as the playback continued. "They didn't have barricades – no defensive emplacements, nothing."

"Probably because they've never needed them," Hackley mused. "This is the first attack on a Scraegan target. That worked in our advantage. They never saw it coming. The layout of the place is very simple from the modelling. You were able to run straight and true, down to the central chamber."

He shifted uncomfortably in his seat. "I don't think we'll be able to do that again."

"We'll cross that bridge when we get to it."

Then the leading camera from one of the pilots in HK-Warlock took centre stage as the attack reached the huge chamber where they'd encountered their eventual captive. Ryke took a deep breath as the thing loomed large on the display, almost as frightening now as it had been when they first met. It turned; unleashed its thunderous bellow. The displays on every camera flickered with static for an instant, the audio growling into an unintelligible mess under the beast's vocalisation.

"Freeze it," Hackley snapped.

The technician complied instantly with a flick of her finger, time-locking the moment where things had spiralled totally out of control.