Warsong (Hunter-Killer #2)

Chapter 31 - With Friends Like These

The skiffs skated dangerously close to the earth as they raced hard and fast through the badlands, surrounded by a raging sandstorm. Dirt and grit howled and scratched at their outer plates of armour, violent gusts of wind snapping at their slim forms, trying to smash them onto the rocky outcrops that littered Rychter's landscape.

Inside the lead skiff, Brackenshaw couldn't help but brace herself against one of the interior handholds, feeling her heart lurch every time a larger piece of debris whipped up by the storm cracked off the outer hull. Around her the other Scout Cadre troopers were similarly ill-at-ease. In the rear section her pilot – a taciturn private named Rankil – wrestled with the controls, his weather-beaten features crumpling with fierce concentration.

Nobody wanted to fly through this, but orders were orders.

Kelso Vannigan and the rest of his spooks had been working flat out since the discovery of the Crawlers to figure out some means of tracking the things beneath Rychter's sands. Seismics seemed useless – something which Brackenshaw still couldn't quite get her head around – but that hadn't deterred the intelligence specialists. Problem solving was how they earned their stripes.

The solution actually ended up being technological regression, as far as she could see, but it was the only one that seemed viable right now. Rather than the hyper-sensitive seismics that most of Rychter's armed forces carried, they had begun retrofitting as many Scout skiffs as they could with a rudimentary, ground penetrating radar system.

The theory was sound enough. Although it wouldn't work as a precise live tracker, a consistent pounding of vulnerable areas with high-frequency radio waves ought to show them any newly formed tunnels beneath the sands. Their likely targets would be any passages suddenly springing into being. Someone had found just such an anomaly on the eastern edge of the human line – tunnels spidering their way towards the town of Alldeep – which sent Brackenshaw and a fresh flight of Scout Cadre fighters through the teeth of this storm to meet the Crawlers in time.

She turned her attention to the skiff's main display, the table now sporting a bulbous, ad-hoc collection of wires splurging from one side to wire it up to the radar system that ran the length of the hull. The whole thing was mangled together with the seismics in a way that made the display cluttered and awkward to read, but on such short notice the overworked technicians hadn't had time to make things pretty. As long as it worked, that would have to be enough.

"ETA to target?" Brackenshaw asked, ignoring another bang of rock on metal as something struck the hull.

"We are twelve minutes out," Locke replied, hunched over the main display, gripping the table with both hands to keep herself steady. "Should be clear of the storm in eight."

"Brackenshaw to all units, prepare to break cover," she advised over the comm link. "We'll be clearing the storm in eight minutes. As soon as we're through I want all gunnery positions spun up and firing rails manned. Mine launchers prepare to deploy on my go. Acknowledge."

Patchy responses filtered through from the seven other skiffs that had been dispatched as part of her brigade, their communications fighting through the rage of the sandstorm. Brackenshaw nodded to herself, curling and uncurling her fingers. This would be a test of the new theory, and part of her hoped it was all a wild goose chase.

The eight minutes flashed by as the skiffs cut their way through the grinding winds. Brackenshaw suddenly felt lighter. The noise fell away from beyond the armour and the troops around her physically relaxed, standing straighter, bumping fists and clapping shoulder guards as they allowed themselves a small celebration.

"SC-21 – AC-84," Brackenshaw snapped into the wide-band as soon as they were free of the storm's disruption. "We are on approach to the combat zone. Confirm status?" All around her the scouts burst into motion, snatching rifles from cradles and clattering up the firing steps. She waited for a moment. Just as she opened her mouth to repeat herself, the comm crackled.