Warsong (Hunter-Killer #2)

Chapter 10 - Someone Has to Win

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.