Year 248 P.L. Rychter Calendar
Coordinates: 52.3°S; 77.2°W
Site Designation: Badlands, Western Reach
"Well ain't this the pissing scenic route?"
Ryke allowed himself a smirk as the voice of Brigg 'Avalanche' Alwick rumbled over the comms, thick with as much boredom as the veteran pilot could muster.
"Gotta get our cardio in somewhere, don't we?" he replied, keeping one eye on the display flickering in front of his face. "And everybody watch your spacing will you? We're not tour guides out here."
His Hunter-Killer responded to every impulse of his body, his legs moving and driving the battle mech onward through Rychter's southern barrens. A four meter tall, fifteen-ton war machine, from a distance the Hunter-Killer had a vaguely humanoid shape, designed to seamlessly replicate the user's motions through its neural interface.
Its spherical 'head' was embedded in an armoured caldera of a neck, and a slab of heavy armour was fixed to the right shoulder. That arm housed a retractable blade of fat black metal, and the other had a rotating cannon slung under the Hunter-Killer's fist. Hot smoke hissed from the cooling stacks that jutted up from the back section. Ryke's mech had been through a lot, patched with fresh plates of armour, while still bearing scars and scorch marks of battles long past.
Ensconced within that thick armour, Ryke stood in the pilot's cradle, wired into the machine through the thin membrane of his link skin. His arms and feet vanished into the machine's controls, prickling with the neural feedback connection that made him feel every inch of the metal monster's hide.
On the HUD the blinking indicators of his squadron shifted their positions slightly, providing clear firing lines as they loped across the desert. On the flanks the two Raptor scouts sprinted, bracketing a wedge of six front line Riot mechs. Behind them, the final two members of the squadron trudged, piloting the heavily armed Goliaths. In front of him a HUD blazed information, showing the positions of his squad, and a feed from the Hunter-Killer's camera-studded head section.
Rychter's southern badlands opened out before him – baked by the twin suns overhead. He thanked the Riverlords for the Hunter-Killer's coolant system that kept the worst of the heat at bay. It was a barren vista before them, broken up by clumped up crags and canyons, stretching away into the distance toward the black horizon of Rychter's western volcano ranges.
"Ain't enough cardio in the world to make a brute like that move faster," jibed Mayder 'Rabbit' Ricardo, piloting one of the nimble Raptor mechs. Lighter than the Riot-Pattern models, they sacrificed armour to house a bigger reactor and powerful leg sections that could propel them to fearsome speeds.
By contrast, Brigg's Goliath-Pattern was a cumbersome beast that tossed manoeuvrability into the River to accommodate the heaviest ordinance Hunter-Killer mechs could carry. A massive cannon jutted over one thick shoulder plate, and a set of thick supports bulged around the Goliath's waist section, to be unfolded to provide a stable firing platform.
"Laugh it up, Rabbit," Brigg shot back. "Maybe next time we'll strap the mine launchers to that pretty dancer of yours and see how fast you can move?"
"Wouldn't wanna deprive you of the manual labour."
"Don't listen to these jokers, Avalanche," the second Goliath pilot sneered in her southern badlands drawl. "When they're done runnin' away from the Crawlers, they'll come call us to get the job done properly."
"Copy that, Two-Step," Brigg chuckled. "Crawlers need a heavy touch, eh?"
"Ain't that the pissin' truth."
YOU ARE READING
Hellsky (Hunter-Killer #3)
Science FictionAfter decades of all out war between human and Scraegan, the planet Rychter has finally settled into an uneasy peace. Both sides can rebuild, lick their wounds, and for the first time try to coexist. But the war isn't over for everyone. Without the...
