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.

Her fingers flickered over the display keypad, shifting the image forward to their target zone. The geography morphed, the wider badlands giving way to a rockier region that, if their intelligence was correct, was home to the furthest flank of the Scraegan line. The bulwark of fortified warrens that Llewellyn and Harcourt had marked out as their targets spread for miles from east to west, and the job of securing this remote fortification had fallen to Brackenshaw.

They weren't expecting heavy resistance this far from the main combat zones, but if the last couple of weeks had taught her anything, it was to prepare for the worst at every opportunity.

Their target warren was a shovel of rock that peeked out from a rolling range of sun-scorched dunes, easy to miss unless you knew what to look for. The approach didn't make for a pleasant route, having to wind through the natural valleys before emerging into a small area of open ground that formed the approach to the warren's surface entrance. Rocky slabs sealed it, almost invisible without the high-powered military optics of the human soldiers.

"ETA?" she asked, not looking up.

"Thirty-four minutes."

"Alright, prepare deployment orders." Brackenshaw straightened up as Hynan pulled out his data slate in readiness. "HK-Rupture and HK-Praxis will follow the main route, staying out of sight in the dunes. I want a full spread of our skiffs and Gaul's light vehicles to approach from here, and here." She tapped the display, indicating two opposing positions. "We'll take the left flank; Boxley will run the right." All going to plan, she could create a fast-moving pincer to mask the incoming advance of Ryke's Hunter-Killers.

"We'll bring the tanks and big guns up to these dunes here," she continued, pointing to a series of rolling dunes that looked down on the warren from the north west. "We need the heavy ordinance to loop away from us and come around into a bombardment position without being seen."

"Alone?" Hynan glanced up at her uneasily. "If the Scraegans catch them they'll be sitting ducks."

"A chance we're going to have to take," Brackenshaw told him. "It's all in the timing. We need every element striking at full strength, all at once. I can't spare any Hunter-Killers to chaperone. Gaul's people know the risks."

"Ma'am." Hynan keyed the notes to his slate, ready to be disseminated to the task force's commanders with the press of a button. He kept any further questions to himself, looking to her expectantly.

"We bring the flanking forces in from east and west," she said. "Hit and run to draw the Scraegans out to fight, and see if we've got any surprises hiding out in these dunes. Once the enemy force is exposed, Gaul's tanks will launch a covering bombardment to break the main door and keep the Scraegans pinned. Then Vannigan and the Hunter-Killers hit them hard, right up the gut. Armoured infantry brigades will follow them in after the initial breach has been made. Once we're in we let the HKs do the dirty work clearing out that place, the rest of us run interference on any reinforcements."

Everything sounded so simple when she reeled it off like that. It was a good plan, she was sure of it, but the Scraegans had a habit of ruining the best-laid schemes. She pressed a button and the display flashed back to live, showing the task force's advance into the depths. Thirty-four minutes.

"Pass the word," she told Hynan. "I'll be topside."

"Yes, ma'am." He saluted sharply.

She left him to send out the full orders to the different elements of her battle-group, turning from the display table and mounting the stairs to top deck of the skiff. She rammed her blast helmet down into place, fastening the buckle tight beneath her chin as she emerged into the whipping air of Rychter's badlands.

There was a scorching scent in the air, like hot glass, and tiny blizzards of grit whipped at her body armour. The suns of Rychter seared over the horizon, lighting up the rising dunes. Dark slashes of shade marked out the dips and gulleys they would soon be traversing.

Ten scout troops were already in position at the firing rails on all sides, keeping a wary eye on the surrounding sands. Brackenshaw moved between them, thumping shoulder pads and clacking helmets with her troops as they prepared for yet another battle. Some of these men and women had been under her command for years. She'd kept them alive through the worst kind of hell, and they would follow her into the Everflowing and beyond if she asked it of them now.

Corporal Locke manned the prow cupola, finger resting gently on the trigger of her rifle as she looked out over the approach.

"How's it looking, Corporal?" Brackenshaw asked, leaning into the armoured nest.

"Wouldn't recommend it for a barbecue, ma'am," the other scout replied wryly without looking round. "But otherwise, all quiet."

"We're thirty-minutes out. Eyes sharp up here."

"Yes, ma'am." Locke shifted in her seat, easing the scope of her rifle into position. "We looking out for anything besides Scraegans?"

"I wish I knew."

"I saw that tooth. What in pissing Rivers tries to eat a Scraegan?"

Brackenshaw smiled grimly. "Let's just hope we don't have to find out."

She thought back to the briefing where she'd shown that evidence to her commanders, not even sure what she was telling them to do, and even less sure how they would react. While Llewellyn and Harcourt had at least been appropriately surprised, there had been nothing in her report to dissuade them from their current course of action.

Brackenshaw couldn't exactly blame them for that. After all, what was a few more dead Scraegans in the middle of nowhere, when they were in the middle of an all out war? Even Major De Lunta hadn't seemed overly concerned. Brekka's ranking Hunter-Killer officer was as eager as the rest of them to strike back, to land a killing blow to the Scraegan forces after the massacres that had taken place.

Only Vandaleen Hackley resisted. The wily scout colonel had taken one look at the images captured by Brackenshaw's troops and immediately called for a full investigation before the attack went ahead. They needed more info. Something else was out there – that was one thing no-one could deny.

She couldn't, however, overcome the inertia of the enormous human force already bulldozing its way south. In many cases it was too late to stop now even if they wanted to. Scraegan defenders were already massing to confront the avalanche of steel about to come crashing down upon them. In the end, scout patrols in the flanking sectors had been doubled; the tooth itself was shipped off to the Forge back in Brekka for analysis.

But the war would carry on regardless.

"What do you think it was?" Locke asked, and Brackenshaw could hear the tingle of worry the soldier's voice. She pressed her lips together tightly as she considered her response. Locke was hardly the only one rattled by the implications that there was something else roaming the sands.

"I think that right now it's not our problem," she told her, clapping a firm hand down on the woman's shoulder guard. "We have a job to do now. Whatever else is out there, today we are dealing the Scraegans. One problem at a time, okay, corporal?"

Locke exhaled a steadying breath; nodded. "Yes, ma'am." A moment later she felt the skiff turn, engines flaring and churning up dust.

"Sarge?" Hynan's voice crackled in her earpiece.

"Go ahead."

"All combat orders assigned," he confirmed. "All task force elements now deploying as ordered. Estimate we will reach attack range in twenty-four minutes."

"Copy that." Stepping back from the prow cupola, Brackenshaw strode along the deck of the skiff and opened her comm to the wide-band. "SC-21 to all units. You all have your orders. I understand you've got a lot of questions – so do I – but today we are fighting Scraegans, and that is all you need to know. Today we're going to help break the back of these bastards, from here to Brekka. Today we're going to send a gift to the souls that we lost."

She shunted her fears and worries to the back of her mind and fixed her goggles in place. Slinging her rifle off her shoulder, she checked the sight before clamping it into one of the forward firing locks.

"On our lead," Brackenshaw ordered. "Let's crack some heads."