Furnace (Hunter-Killer #1)

Chapter 35 - Mutually Assured Destruction

The stink of death hung over Brekka as night fell on the seventh day.

In the outer districts the streets had been turned into a graveyard of huge Scraegan corpses, burnt out Hunter-Killer carcasses and the gutted husks of skiffs. Traces of dead city militia could be seen amidst the carnage; blackened skeletons and shattered bodies abandoned in the heat of battle. Whole residential blocks had collapsed, their foundations rocked by the thunderous forces unleashed in the conflict, sending snaking columns of refugees towards the relative safety of the inner city.

Street by burning street the Scraegans ground their way into Brekka.

In the thick of the carnage, Ryke and his soldiers continued to fight with renewed fury. This was home and he would be damned if the Scraegans were going to take it from him. His Hunter-Killer made for a terrifying sight, burned, battered and lathered with blood as he dragged his squad into the thickest fighting.

The area where his metal jaw grafted to the rest of his face now ached from the near-constant recoil of the Hunter-Killer cannon and his face and arms were a criss-crossing map of cuts and burns. Every time a circuit shorted or a wire was torn loose by the battering of the Scraegan attacks more tiny injuries were added to his ailing frame.

The others felt the toll too – he knew it.

Kicking yet another Scraegan loose from his warblade and sending the beast crashing backwards clutching its ruined neck, he tried to step back and take stock. For nearly an hour HK-Rupture had been holding a crucial transit intersection barely a mile south of the Forge itself – a crossroads of sturdy residential buildings now repurposed as defensive fortifications.

To his amazement there was still a functioning level of organisation to the defence. Orders flew over the comms with frightening speed as Kelso and dozens of other support officers tried to direct traffic in the pandemonium. Most of the Hunter-Killer and Scout Cadre units being redeployed needed to pass through this section, which meant that while they allowed retreat in other sectors, here Brekka's commanders had dug their heels in deep.

He spat more fire across the hell-torn intersection at the Scraegan positions on the southern edge. Goliath shells obliterated huge chunks of masonry to expose Scraegan packs as they tried to excavate new tunnels beneath the streets. Screeching whines of strange machines Ryke had never heard before split the air, only to be silenced by the pounding of ordinance.

"Lockjaw, we have incoming, left flank!" Thaye bellowed in warning.

Ryke glanced up at his HUD to find a fresh batch of blinking red blobs encroaching through what remained of a civilian train yard. Militia units there harried them with rifle fire from gantries and dugouts, but they lacked the stopping power of the Hunter-Killers.

"Smokes, Havoc, Haunter – you're with me!" Ryke barked sharply. "Deadbolt, mind the shop front."

"Copy that," Preese replied calmly between snaps of cannon fire.

Leaving the rest of the squad to hold the line, Ryke set off at a run, the trio of pilots peeling out of their line to join him as he raced past. With shells screaming overhead from mounted guns, they wove through the battered human defences and arrived in the gutted oblong hangar of the train yard to meet a pack of Scraegans in the flank as they tried to smash through the militia lines.

His shield – this one a repurposed armour plate cannibalised from a damaged skiff – crunched against the shoulder of the first enemy, cannoning it sideways into another and sending both monsters crashing to the cracked and battered concrete of the station floor. A third pivoted with an already charged furnace cannon and fired, sending the Hunter-Killers diving for cover.