Warsong (Hunter-Killer #2)

Chapter 16 - Warlines

Kaydie Brackenshaw looked over the report from HK-Rupture's sortie with increasing concern. She'd been a scout for a long time; information on the enemy was her job. But she'd never seen anything like this before.

Her gut twisted unpleasantly at the unanswered questions that tumbled through her mind. Vannigan's report had been as thorough as she could have asked for, but she still had no idea what any of it added up to. The images of mangled Scraegan bodies flicked by as she brushed the data slate with one finger.

She zoomed in on one of the wounds; brought up a high resolution image of the tooth alongside it. Logic dictated that the owner of that tooth had killed the Scraegans in the valley, but she knew of nothing on the planet that fitted the bill. The Scraegans were apex predators – they did not have natural enemies.

Could this be a weapon gone horribly wrong? The report from HK-Rupture and her own scouts had posited that as a theory, but what kind of weapon had teeth? Could it be a biological experiment gone wrong? She'd seen nothing in her long career to suggest that the Scraegans had any such scientific nous, but even after all this time humans still knew very little about their foes beyond their battle tactics. It wasn't impossible.

Slinging her feet off the side of the bunk, she stood up, feeling the tremors in the deck beneath her boots as they raced southwards. One strange encounter would not be enough to halt the march of the human war machine. She marched past her soldiers, exchanging nods and muted greetings as she went, anti-armour rifle bumping against her back.

Corporal Hynan looked up from the map display as she approached and his eyes flickered to the data slate in her hand.

"Still chewing on that?" he enquired.

"The perks of command," she muttered, shaking her head. Brackenshaw sighed heavily and placed the data slate down into one of the holders fitted in the map table. There was nothing to be done about it now.

The south-west flank of the attack zone sprawled out in three dimensions on the display, with a spray of blue indicators marking out the positions of her battle group. Her battle group. It still felt a little odd, having this level of power, one she'd never needed or wanted. She'd done what she had to do when their column was ambushed, taking a horrific situation by the scruff of the neck and surviving, because that was what she knew how to do.

Brackenshaw had assumed a new commander would be parachuted in to take over. She should be so lucky. Instead she now had to take the reins of a company that had nearly torn itself apart over internal strife. She liked Vannigan, and had vast respect for his skills as a Hunter-Killer pilot, but the kid was volatile; dangerous if not handled properly. Lieutenant Gaul seemed to spend most of his time in a state of denial that he really was the commander of the armoured columns now. She felt like he could shatter if she pushed the wrong way.

"Anything I should be worried about, Corporal?" she asked, leaning down to examine the display more closely.

"Nothing on seismics," Hynan replied. "Though, I'm not willing to take that as a guarantee of anything right now. Boxley's got Callaghan and Whouna with him doing wide sweeps to keep everybody honest."

Brackenshaw nodded, though she shared his unease. The ambush had left the scouts with a sense of wounded pride. It was her job to make sure something like that could never happen again. On the display the task force moved in a widely scattered formation in line with her orders.

At a glance it looked vulnerable, but she knew the most important thing about fighting the Scraegans out in these open tracts was having room to manoeuvre. Vannigan and the Hunter-Killers needed the space to shift their heavy combat power from flank to flank quickly, Gaul's tanks needed the firing lines. She'd taken pains to leave no vulnerable clumps of soldiers that could be targeted by a quick Scraegan volley.