Chapter 28 - Count it in Bodies

"Colonel!"

The panicked cry from one of the surviving members of HK-Ferocci galvanised Ryke into action. For a moment he could only stare as the Crawlers tore Harcourt to pieces, leaving nothing but a mangled pile of smashed metal and bloody remains that had once been the commander of Rubicon's Hunter-Killers. True, he had neither liked nor respected the man, but he wouldn't have wished such a brutal fate on anyone.

With Harcourt dead, the Crawlers looked to new victims. Shrill comm chatter blazed through his earpiece as more and more of the creatures gathered, pressing in from all sides on the beleaguered Hunter-Killer force. Five members of HK-Ferocci were still fighting – two Goliaths two Riots and a Raptor mech dancing between them – but it wouldn't be long before they were overwhelmed.

"Sound off!" Ryke barked. "Anybody still packing flares?"

"Haunter here; got one more full load, sarge!" Kim shouted between bursts of cannon fire.

"Then get it ready." With his own weapon thundering on full automatic, Ryke stomped forwards, trying to cut a small avenue of space into the encroaching mass of Crawlers. "HK-Rupture, all pilots, on my lead."

"Sir?" Shock charged Qadira's voice. "Carpenter's down. If we leave-,"

"I know that," he snarled. "Now fall in! That's an order."

"Sergeant ...?" Carpenter's whisper of a voice cut into his ears. "I can't... I can't move."

Ryke gritted his teeth unbridled fury boiling in his guts for what he was about to do. He squeezed his eyes shut, forcing the rookie pilot's face out of his mind and focusing only on the cold hard numbers; on the facts.

"I know, Marlowe," he said firmly, using every ounce of self control to keep the wobble out of his mouth. "Everybody form up. We have a job to do." Silence fizzed on the comm for a moment before Preese spoke.

"You heard the man!" his second in command roared. "Form up!"

For a heart-stopping moment the readings on the HUD stayed static, as though in freeze frame. Then, to Ryke's immense relief the indicators of HK-Rupture began to coalesce into a wedge behind him. The relief was quickly followed by determination. They were going to finish what they'd started, no matter what.

"Avalanche," he thundered. "You're on freight duty. Get a hold of that mine cart!" He flicked his channel to the wideband. "Lockjaw – Torch. Colonel Harcourt is KIA but I still have a combat effective force. We're gonna make a dive for the target. Want to join the party?"

"We're on our way, sergeant!" Bandit's commander snarled without hesitation. "Keep their present safe."

"Copy that, sir," he said, before addressing the rest of HK-Rupture again. "Defensive formation. Nothing touches that bomb! Haunter, light this damn place up."

"Copy that."

The flares from Kim's spare launcher exploded in the gloom. White-hot light blazed across the line of hissing arthropods and they reeled away, some crashing into each other, others toppling back down slopes in the cavern floor.

It bought enough space for Ryke and his companions to knife their way through to the survivors of Harcourt's bodyguard.

"Lockjaw – HK-Ferocci," he yelled as he piled forward, taking the leg from one Crawler with a vicious hack of his warblade. "Form up with us. We've got a delivery to make!"

"Cascade – Lockjaw," a woman's voice responded, tight and shaking with effort. "Lead the way. Let's send these bastards to the River and let them drown there!" She let out a grunt of effort that coincided with her bulky Goliath mech shunting a flailing Crawler to one side and blasting a cannon shot into its vulnerable underbelly. "Let's go!"

With their numbers bolstered, the full force of Hunter-Killers drove their way into the Crawler nest, like a blunt knife being forced through flesh. As the light from the flares dissipated the resistance stiffened, but by then the other squads at the other side of the cavern had driven their way diagonally towards the target area, aiming to rendezvous with Ryke's group.

Every inch of movement came at a cost, however. Two of Charpente's pilots were down, one from HK-Bandit and three from the northern soldiers of HK-Gladiai. Ryke had already left one of his people behind, as good as dead, and with every crunching impact that his mech endured more damage indicators blared. Servos and armour plates screamed in protest as he wrestled his way through the crush, blasting, slicing, punching and stabbing with the strength of desperation.

Brigg hauled the carriage along with them, the veteran pilot taking any chance he could to take a shot with his shoulder cannon, all the while guiding the precious cargo over the rocky terrain, weaving around the ever-growing melee that surrounded him. By the time they reached the nominal centre of the chamber Thaye's mech was caked from head to toe in thick grey ichor; Ricardo's cannon had been snapped clean off; Koral had lost half the gyro stabilisers on her mech's right side, forcing her to move almost drunkenly through the mayhem.

But they pressed on.

They burst clear into the flat clearing where huge eggs loomed grotesquely in the dark, most of them empty shells but some still intact, waiting to disgorge more of Rychter's subterranean horrors. He heard a screech over the comm and saw a blurt of red cutting through the midsection of Kim's Raptor mech.

"Haunter, status!" he barked.

"Tail cut my torso armour, boss," she gasped back. "I think... I think I'm okay."

"Hang in there," he hissed.

"Covering," Qadira called. "Haunter, pull in on my flank. Follow me through."

"Copy."

"Avalanche?" Ryke turned his attention to their cargo.

"On my way, boss," his friend rumbled, and a moment later the Goliath came thundering free from the battling mechs, hauling the atomic mine in his wake. He wrenched the cradle along to their target location, pausing only to shoot an interloping Crawler squarely in the face with his heavy cannon. The thing's head came apart in a blizzard of grey flesh and it flopped limply to the ground. Ryke launched himself forward to intercept a second that tried to slink around from behind, catching the thing in the side with his shield, wedging it up against a ragged boulder and blasting more than twenty shots into its belly.

The tail whipped around as the Crawler died, smashing into his side with bone jarring force. Something blew out in the cockpit and he coughed through a sudden cloud of stinging, acrid smoke. A critical warning blinked on his reactor, its containment damaged badly by the impact. Heat swelled inside the Hunter-Killer and Ryke shook the rivers of sweat from his face. The creature was dead, and his companion was home free. That was all that mattered right now.

With all hell breaking loose around him, Brigg swung the cradle into position and without preamble, triggered its activation.

The base of the cradle opened up and sank down, its wheels detaching and clattering away to either side. Bands of light swelled along the bulbous mass of the huge mine, toothed motors whirring viciously into life along its flanks and underside. The chassis descended until the cutting teeth struck the ground.

On contact the cradle split open, and in a matter of seconds huge sprays of pulverised rock went spewing skyward.

"Weapon is armed!" Brigg roared.

"Nice work," Ryke replied as the mine disappeared into the ground. He twisted, catching a thrashing tail on his shield. The metal buckled under the force, but he tried not to think about it, instead glancing at the HUD.

"Torch – Lockjaw," Bandit's lieutenant barked. "Reverse your course – we're twenty yards away. Get to us and we can cut our way out of here."

"Copy that, Torch," he replied. "We're-,"

A crash and a scream cut him off. One of the HUD indicators blared red. A mech from HK-Rupture.

"Mallet's down!" Ricardo howled, the rookie pilot's voice shrill and close to panic.

"Everflowing," Ryke cursed as he swung himself around to see one of the Crawlers draped awkwardly atop the sparking form of Brody's Goliath. It looked like the thing had blind-sided him, smashing into the heavy mech from the side. Its under-maw was ripping at his shoulder where the bent and broken structure of his cannon hung limply from the mech's frame. "Mallet! Talk to me!"

"Critical damage," Brody gasped. "My reactor – the ammo feeder got ruptured and... oh Riverlords..."

"Hang on!"

"Covering," Brigg yelled already halfway to their stricken comrade.

"No! STOP!" Brody screamed. "Reactor's going critical – I can't-"

Before he could finish his warning, the Goliath mech exploded.

Even through the cameras of the Hunter-Killer Ryke had to jerk his head away, closing his eyes against the sudden nova of light. The powerful reactor that was the beating heart of Brody's Hunter-Killer detonated, blowing the mech to pieces in the blink of an eye. The Crawler that had downed him was ripped to pieces by the blast, along with two others that had been closing in for the kill.

Burning slabs of metal flew in all directions. Ryke dropped flat as the shrapnel screamed overhead. Much of it went scything into the wall of Crawler bodies behind him that were pressing towards the other group of Hunter-Killers, but he saw Thaye catch one molten hunk of metal on her shield. Closest to their comrade, Brigg reacted with fearsome speed, twisting and dropping down to place his Goliath's massive shoulder bulwark between him and the blast. Flame washed his mech, metal raining down on him, but the slab of armour took the brunt of the impact.

But Brody was gone.

There was little left. Just a smoking crater and shards of scorched metal and bone in a rough circle where he'd been lying when the reactor blew. Body parts of dead and wounded Crawlers were everywhere, and the brightness of the explosion had sent their adversaries reeling.

Which left a brief a window of opportunity. Ryke shunted the death, the anger and the grief to the back of his mind and steeled himself. If they didn't get out of here, none of it would mean anything.

"On my lead!" he hollered, his voice cracking ever so slightly as the emotions threatened to burst out of him. "We need to clear the blast zone!"

There was a numb acceptance from the pilots. No-one spoke. What could they say? Instead, like machines, they piled in behind him as he led the way, plunging afresh into the writhing, disoriented mass of Crawlers and bludgeoning his way through to link up with their comrades on the other side.

They found the brassy mechs of HK-Bandit waiting from them in a straggled line, backed up by the red and blue of HK-Gladiai and HK-Praxis. Cannons spat withering salvos into the crush of bodies as the mechs further forward extracted themselves from close combat. Dead Crawlers littered the ground, along with several smashed Hunter-Killer corpses. A glance at the HUD made Ryke's stomach turn. Fully a third of the pilots that had come down here with them had been killed. It was a cost that made him feel physically sick.

It meant everyone else needed to get out alive.

"Recommend we bail out, fast, sir!" Ryke shouted over the comm.

"No arguments here, Lockjaw," Torch replied. "HK-Praxis, on your lead. We are bugging out. Fall back to point of ingress. Squad by squad. Gladiai you're next, then Ferocci. Lockjaw, form your people up behind us and we'll lead you out."

"Copy that."

No-one needed to be told twice. As though the River itself was flooding towards them, the surviving Hunter-Killers sprinted for the tunnels they had entered through barely half an hour ago. Charpente's troops led the way out, piling single file into the passages and disappearing into the dark. The two squadrons from Rubicon – what was left of them anyway – thundered in after them. Half of HK-Bandit had vanished into the safety of the shadows before the warning came.

"Ryke," Thaye said grimly. "I don't think they're gonna let us walk out of here. We have incoming!"

He twisted around, turning the lights of his Hunter-Killer on the undulating mass of Crawlers. A cold, punch of fear ripped through his chest when he saw the seething rapidly across the cavern floor towards the fleeing human force. They were coming a lot faster than any Hunter-Killer could run.

"Torch – Lockjaw," the lieutenant snapped. "Fancy a rearguard action, soldier?"

"We're on it, sir," Ryke replied. He didn't so much as blink as he swivelled his Hunter-Killer to face their enemies, flexing his metal jaw and shaking his neck from side to side to loosen up. "Everybody pull in, defensive cordon around the tunnel mouth. Empty your mags – give them a damn good taste."

"Everflowing take the bastards," Thaye hissed, a black rage sizzling in her voice as she took up her position alongside him, cannon screaming as it disgorged its munitions.

Warnings screeched across cockpits. Koral's cannon blew out, already damaged from the fighting and she was forced to slink away. With his ammo emptied, Preese was close behind. One by one the others slunk away into the dark, their defensive ring contracting meter by meter, their fire withering with each passing second.

At the back of the queue, Ryke began edging back into the passage, with Brigg behind him and Thaye a couple of meters further back. While the tunnel entrance provided a bottleneck, it was also so narrow that the Hunter-Killers had a hard time shooting past each other. They backed their way nearly fifty meters through the tunnel, Crawlers scrabbling in after them. Before long they were mounting the roofs and walls, pressing closer with each passing second.

Ryke knew they couldn't keep this up any longer.

"Aim high," he yelled. "Bring the tunnel down and block them!"

"Ryke if that tunnel collapses on us we're dead!" Brigg warned.

"If we let those things overrun us we'll have a lot of company," he snarled back. "Now do it, Everflowing that's an order!"

After a second's hesitation the mechs of the rearguard raised their weapons, away from the cracked, smoking corpses of the crawlers now clogging up the passage and instead blasting at the roof of the narrow tunnel. Armour-piercing rounds ripped the rock and packed earth to pieces and it didn't take long before he saw the ceiling buckle under the strain. A shot from Brigg's shoulder cannon sent cracks spidering through the structure and Ryke knew it was time to go.

"Fall back!" he screamed through the comm. "Everybody out. Deadbolt, on your lead!"

"Copy that," Preese rasped and with his second in command leading the way, the Hunter-Killers turned and sprinted away from the darkness. A roar of crashing rock echoed after them as the main tunnel caved in, burying the Crawlers as they ripped and barged their way through the bodies of their fellows.

Ryke could almost feel the weight behind him, the vibrations of the cavein reverberating up through the Hunter-Killer's shock absorbers and sending warning alarms blaring across the HUD. Just as Brigg had feared, the desperate move had caused a much wider implosion of the tunnel's structure.

"PUSH IT TO THE EDGE PEOPLE!" Ryke bellowed.

Amber and red light blared across status indicators. He vented half his coolant just to keep his damaged reactor from blowing him to pieces, buying a few more precious seconds to sprint from the collapse. They twisted left then right, chunks of masonry falling around them like heavy rain. One clanged off his shoulder armour, nearly sending him crashing into the wall.

Relief surged through him when the makeshift deployment ramp came into view at last. Ahead of him the other mechs raced up it into the abandoned Scraegan warren. Ahead of him Brigg's Goliath smashed its feet into the surface, and the metal bowed dangerously under the weight.

Ryke scrambled up after him.

And then the ramp gave way.

He fell.

Ryke's teeth rattled painfully inside his skull when he hit the ground, his mech's shock absorbers fighting to protect him from the collapse of the ramp. More warnings screeched across the HUD and something sparked inside the pilot cradle. Above him he saw the legs of Brigg's Goliath flailing in empty space before several huge metal gauntlets closed around the mech's rear armour and heaved him to safety.

"Drown me," he swore.

"Boss!" Preese's voice cut into his comm, shrill with panic. A Riot mech appeared in the dust-filled aperture in the ceiling but Ryke wasn't listening. With desperate energy he wrestled his mech upright and looked back the way he'd come.

He immediately wished he hadn't.

The Hunter-Killer's optics picked out the collapse of the tunnel still following them, rock and rubble smashing to the ground. The floor of the Scraegan warren above was about to come down, its structure undermined by the Crawler tunnel cutting beneath it.

"Get out!" Ryke yelled. "Fall back to the Mammoth and get clear of the blast. That's an order!"

"But-"

"Pissing Rivers, go!"

"I ... copy that. On our way. Stay alive, boss."

"Count on it. Lockjaw out."

Not wasting another second, Ryke took the only option left to him and set off, dragging his battered mech as fast as his limbs would carry him down the passage. The light of the entrance faded behind him, before vanishing completely as the tunnel collapsed around it. Hundreds of tons of smashed earth snapped at his heels, but he pushed himself on, sheer bloody-minded determination keeping him moving. He wasn't going to die down here, not if he still had the slightest breath in his body.

"R-... me. Rep ... kjaw, come in?"

Ryke blinked in surprise. The radio message was barely readable, but he recognised the voice.

"Kelso? Kelso, that you? Do you read me?"

"Ryke! Thank ... lords. Are you... told me you were still... detonation."

"Drown me – Kelso I can barely read you!"

"Ryke – Ryke?!" the signal crackled, clearing slightly. Bursts of static diminished. "Ryke can you hear me?"

"I gotcha, Kelso," Ryke replied still blundering onward with the thunder of the collapse ringing in the auditory filters of the Hunter-Killer. "Whoever specced that ramp is getting a fist rammed right down their throat if I get out of this."

"Where are you?"

"Drowned if I know. I just had to keep moving down the passage."

"Ryke, you've got to haul ass and find a way out of there. With the Crawlers on the move we can' t wait. We need to detonate the mine now before they get clear."

Ryke exhaled a sharp breath and nodded. "Then do it."

"What?!"

"Kelso!" he roared suddenly, all the anger and the pain for the pilots he'd left behind blazing out of him in a violent rush of emotion. "Too many people died today for you to let me being here stop you from doing what you have to do. Don't worry about me. I'll keep moving and maybe I'll get clear. Just blow those bastards to the River, and do it now!"

An instant of silence ached out over his comm link, static saying more than his brother ever could in that short span of time. Then Kelso responded, a hoarse, half-choked sound.

"Copy that, Sergeant Vannigan," he said. "Good luck."

Five seconds later Ryke felt the tremor of the blast.