Hellsky (Hunter-Killer #3)

Chapter 34 - Long Distance Relationships

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."