Warsong (Hunter-Killer #2)

Chapter 32 - Stranger Worlds

This was all very strange.

Ryke folded his arms, his whole body tight with discomfort as he tried to get to grips with the scene before him.

The Scraegan party, after much deliberation among the senior officers, had been ushered through a small gap in the bristling human line, and escorted through to a hastily cleared meeting area. The broad, flat clearing a few hundred yards behind the front line had been pressed into service as a training field. Now it had been repurposed for something altogether more unnerving.

Twenty Hunter-Killers – including the other members of HK-Rupture – stood sentinel around the gathering, motionless but ready to spring into combat at the slightest provocation. Ryke's hair prickled on the back of his, knowing just how much firepower was currently trained on them now.

In the middle of the converted training field, the Scraegans loomed around the vertical structure of their map, forming a loose semi-circle. Facing them were Ryke and several other middling to upper level officers, but Llewellyn had forbidden the top echelon of command from being present at the meeting.

It sounded cowardly, but Ryke supposed that if the Scraegan Beta chose to kill him, or any of the unprotected humans in the party, there was no way even the Hunter-Killers could do anything to stop it. If the commanders came down here, there was a chance, however, unlikely it felt, that the Scraegans could assassinate them all, giving their own lives in trade.

Happy thoughts, Ryke, happy thoughts, he reminded himself, shunting those grim plots out of his head. Right now, he needed to hold on to a little bit of hope, and assume the Scraegans really were here to talk peace. Amongst the lower echelon of command he recognised Lieutenant Axinar, the cold-faced woman who commanded HK-Bandit and a couple of Colonel Marrow's infantry captains. But standing right beside him was the most surprising addition of all.

Kelso Vannigan stood there, apparently undaunted by the Scraegans. His sharp eyes barely seemed to register that the beasts were there, fixated instead on the glowing lines of the map and the changing colours. He edged forward, as though pulled by gravity towards the slaps. The mind of an intelligence officer; Ryke couldn't have dragged him from this meeting.

"Like what you see?" he asked quietly.

"It's amazing." Kelso looked at him, gesturing to the three slab arrangement with the flick of a hand. "We knew the Scraegans had some kind of technological know-how – they build those furnace cannons. But we've never seen it applied to anything that wasn' designed to kill people."

"How do you think it works?"

"Drowned if I know. I doubt they're about to let me crack it open and find out." Kelso gave a wry smile, his attention shifting back to the obelisk again.

Ryke marvelled at his brother's transformation over the span of a short year of warfare. Once, piloting a Hunter-Killer had been his dream, but after failing the testing twice he ended up reassigned. At the time, 'combat support unit' had sounded like a nothing job, something to give a pat on the back to people who didn't make the cut.

How wrong that impression had been.

"Sergeant Vannigan?" an elfin-featured officer in the red livery of Rubicon said, stepping over to him, unable to avoid casting an uneasy glance at the Scraegans. The man cleared his throat and straightened up. "Major Glennick, 43rd Rubicon Armoured."

"Major." Ryke saluted, sizing the soldier up. Glennick was tall and spindly, with devious, dark blue eyes, and he had the highest ranking bars of anyone in this little gathering. Ryke supposed that put him in charge.