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.

"I understand you're familiar with Scraegan communication?"

"Well, up to a point."

"Yes, yes." Glennick pointed irately back towards the large data slate that had been supplied, the same one he'd used in his foray into the Scraegan lines. "I believe it's time we get... whatever this is, underway. Can you give them a greeting?"

"It's all programmed in," Ryke told him. "Anyone could do it."

"Yes, but this particular Scraegan seems to remember you. I think you know that's why you're here."

Ryke's shoulders slumped in a sigh, because he did know. "Yes, sir." He looked at Kelso; shrugged. His brother gave him a nod and a firm clap on the shoulder for encouragement.

Terrific.

With a fatalistic shake of the head, Ryke trudged around Glennick, dropped down on his haunches and fired up the data slate. Its three dimensional display burst into like, for the moment just showing a map display of the southern badlands. He hoped at some point they could try and match up their own maps with the display the Scraegans had brought, but at the moment he would just try hello.

The barked greeting leapt from the device's speakers. Some of the Scraegans shifted uncomfortably, but the Beta took a ponderous step forward, inclining its head to him. It still had the metal horn plate attached to its skull. Ryke wondered if these warrior caste members even could remove their armour. Questions for another day. He'd gotten the Beta's attention, and peacefully.

He stepped forward and gave the warrior a nod in reply. Then he spread his arms wide to indicate his companions.

"All of you," he murmured, glancing left and right. "Do what I did. Nod. Give him a greeting."

There was a moment's hesitation, but then the assembled officers copied his gesture, presenting what he hoped was a united (and more importantly, polite) front. The Scraegan watched them, black eyes inscrutable. Ryke cleared his throat, and pointed to the slab, hoping to move things along.

A moment passed, then the Scraegan grunted something. One of the warriors repeated the activation procedure, twisting a mechanism in the back of the obelisk until the lines of fire began to etch their way across the slab once more. Cameras recorded every molecule of movement, and the officers selected for the meeting edged forward in spite of their fear, eyes drawn to the movement.

Three distinct shades cut their way through the stone just as they had before. Ryke stared, struggling to figure out exactly what he was seeing. It looked like something was burning the stone from beneath the surface, creating the patterns for them to see, but after a few seconds he began to see three distinct groups forming.

Along the top there were blocky, jagged arrangements of crimson, zig-zagging their way across the rock face. Below them a much thicker tangle of orange filled the space, lines coiling back on themselves, splurging left and right in complex, interlocking entanglements. The last set crawled across the bottom third of the map, large, scorch-black blobs of varying sizes that dotted the slab and a straggled line.

Ryke could smell a strange, sharp scent, like over-torched incense. A faint crackling sound ebbed across the space between them and he stared hard at the lines. The central section of orange was what had first alerted him to what this thing had to be. The way the lines moved – they looked like Scraegan tunnel arrangements. He'd seen plenty maps and been inside enough of them to recognise the vague similarities. But what he didn't have was any frame of reference.

The map didn't have any terrain. Moving and living predominantly underground, perhaps the Scraegans didn't need to put so much emphasis on the surface of the planet. They didn't use landmarks above to get around, so he supposed it would stand to reason that these landmarks didn't feature in their maps either.

"Hey, wait, that arrangement, I recognise it!" blurted a young man from further back, wrenching Ryke from his musings. Heads whipped around to look, and Ryke spotted a soldier in the dark grey, casual fatigues of Brekka's Scout Cadre. Bald, and with a crisp, dark goatee, the man had captain's bars etched on the shoulder of his jacket.

"Well, don't just stand there," Kelso hissed, beckoning. "Get over here."

"Sir." The cout scuttled forward, eyes flickering between the Scraegans and the obelisk as he saluted. "Captain Prentice."

"You see something, captain?"

"The arrangement to the right, about... two thirds of the way up." Prentice's hand shot out pointing. "Where those lines converge – without the terrain it's a little hard to see it, but I think that's one of the western Scraegan warrens."

"How can you tell?"

"Last operation we were mapping it with seismics," he replied. "Picking targets for the gunners and the HKs. The tunnel arrangements look the same."

Ryke gave him a dubious look. "You're sure?"

"I..." Prentice bit his lip, looking closer. This only seemed to reinforce his assertion. "Yeah, yeah, I'm sure."

"You can tell that just from memory?"

The man gave him an affronted look. "I have a very good memory."

"I'll take the captain at his word," Major Glennick interjected.

Lieutenant Axinar shrugged her broad shoulders. "What exactly does that tell us?"

"Well, if he's right, it confirms it's a map," Kelso replied. "And those lines are orange. Does that mean the Scraegans hold them?"

Ryke nodded. "That's what I thought when I saw it. They're orange. Assuming that... down is south on this thing and up is north, you can see the red burns that must be our positions. That's why they're all blocky like that. We don't have any tunnels."

"So what are the black sections in the south?"

"I think I have an idea." Ryke drummed his fingers against his thigh uneasily. "But let's find out for sure. Give me a second." Steeling himself, he squared his shoulders and walked closer to the obelisk map. The Beta watched him, unconcerned. He pointed at the lattices of orange that festooned the central band of the stonework. Then he pointed at the Scraegan.

It made a huffing grunt and dipped its head in confirmation. He pointed at the top section next, straining on his tiptoes to indicate the more rigidly arranged bands of red. Then he pointed at himself.

Another nod.

"Pissing Rivers," he cursed under his breath. He closed his eyes for a moment; opened them. Glanced to Kelso. His brother's bright-eyed curiosity had dimmed now, his face a tight mask of unease. Inclined his head to the last section of the map.

Ryke took a deep breath, turned, and looked the Scraegan leader in the eye. Pointing down to the large black scorches along the lower third, he gathered his nerves, and in his best impersonation of the Scraegan tongue, barked out two syllables.

"All-Na?"

Silence. He was suddenly very away of a scratch in the back of his throat but fought the urge to cough, watching and waiting.

A third nod.

Ryke backed away from the map, wide-eyed.

It took him a moment to really grapple with the implications, and when they sank in he exhaled a slow whistle of amazement. Every single one of those dark, scorched blotches on the map indicated a nest of Crawlers. A sick feeling settled in his stomach when he realised just how many of those things must have infested the very ground beneath his feet.

More than that, he now knew beyond doubt that the Scraegans had been fighting both the humans and the Crawlers for a long time. A war on two fronts, against two enemies that could not have been more different. Reluctant admiration rippled through him. The Scraegans were more worthy adversaries than they'd ever realised.

At that moment the Scraegan Beta took another step forward, pointing at Ryke with one blunt claw. It coughed and growled out a phrase he couldn't follow, but he heard 'All-Na' snapped off at the end. Then the Scraegan brought its paws together and mimed what he was pretty sure was an explosion, blooming its thick paws open with surprising deftness.

"What's that?" Glennick asked quietly.

"This Scraegan," Ryke murmured from the side of his mouth, not looking away. "It pulled me out of the tunnels after the blew up that nest. It knows what we did." He gave an exaggerated nod to confirm what was being asked.

The Scraegan gave a snort of satisfaction. It thumped itself on the chest, rumbled, "All-Na," and then mimed the explosion again.

"Yeah, I get you, pal," Ryke said, more to himself than the Beta. "You and me both."

He repeated the series of gestures back to try and put this all beyond any doubt. The Scaegan gave another affirming snort, its massive head dipping once more in confirmation. Turning to the other warriors, it reeled off a rapid series of barking growls in their native tongue. The one at the controls replied with something equally impenetrable to Ryke's ears. Phrases shot back and forth, like a short, angry debate.

The warrior eventually did what was asked of it. Another clunk sounded and the lines on the obelisk began to change suddenly. The fires fell away for a few seconds, and when they returned they were much thicker, filling larger parts of the stone. Ryke noticed the black scorches did not come back, but the orange and red that picked out Scraegan and human lines was clearly in evidence.

Then he realised he was looking at their version of a zoomed-in map. Swallowing hard, he beckoned Kelso forward. His brother edged out of the line of officers and approached, his arms tightly folded. He looked the Scraegan up and down, offering another nod before turning his attention to the display once more.

In between the red and orange areas, a single, white hot X shape began to burn brightly, so much so that Ryke winced, shielding his eyes. Kelso put a hand on his shoulder, holding him steady. The white glow didn't last, and when Ryke looked again, a jet black cross had been scorched into the stone.

A shadow fell across them. He flinched but caught himself when he realised it was the Scraegan Beta rotating towards the obelisk map. Ryke held his breath.

The Scraegan reached over them and tapped a claw against the burnt X. Stepping back, it pointed at them, then patted itself on its barrel chest. It gave them an expectant-sounding grunt then fell silent, watching and waiting.

"Drown me," Kelso breathed after a moment, his eyebrows shooting up. "I think your friend here is just the messenger."

Ryke looked at him sharply. "And what do you think the message is?"

"That place, they've picked out, it's neutral ground."

"Yeah?"

"Good place for diplomatic talks, wouldn't you say?"

"Oh, Everflowing." Ryke dragged a weary hand down his face when he realised what that meant. "So you're saying...?"

Kelso winked, a gleeful twinkle in his eye.

"Yep," he chuckled. "I think we've just been invited to meet somebody a little higher up the food chain. Somebody who wants those Crawlers dead."