The attack came at twenty-two hundred hours under a moonless, soot-choked sky that cried greasy black rain across the Sunken Fissure.
Prior to the breach, Arthur Vance had been conducting evening rounds through the backup holding pens, inspecting the thirty-nine hounds and draft-oxen that had completed the bitter-salt nebulization treatment. Every animal was showing robust cold and exact recovery. Tiny blood vessel refill times were under two seconds, the vesicular breath sounds were clean. The beasts were resting peacefully on dry pine shavings.
Beside him, Grimm had been walking the outer edge with steady, rhythmic strides. Meanwhile, Pip roosted quietly beneath Arthur’s collar. Titus had been following two paces behind, his newly formed spade claws clicking rhythmically against the wooden walkway planks, pausing sometimes to inspect an empty grain sack or sniff a puddle of rainwater.
Then, the frontline low roof wall in Trench Sector Three gave way.
It didn’t begin with the familiar roar of heavy artillery, but with the sudden, total collapse of the forward stone retaining wall. A thirty-meter section of heavy dirt and railroad iron dissolved into a boiling, acidic sinkhole. From the bubbling mud erupted a horde of underground horrors. Acid-Stalker Scorpions and Underground Trench-Crawlers, driven from the deep sump drainage caverns by the chemical overflow from Rask’s cut bypass line.
