The lull following the destruction of the forward scout lasted less than ninety seconds.
Across Trench Sector Three, the smell of burnt sulfur and boiled away hard shell hung thick in the freezing drizzle. Along the muddy low roof walls, fifty commoner infantrymen clutched their rifles with trembling, blistered hands, their breath coming in ragged white plumes. From the command stronghold three hundred yards behind the line, Instructor Valerie Koslov was bellowing orders through the field telephone, her voice crackling over the wire as she tried to map point backup mortar batteries.
“Sector Three, report!” the wire squawked. “We have heavy ground-shaking tracking data spiking across the sub-trench stratum! Fall back to the backup stone retaining walls before you’re cut off!”
“No time to fall back, Teacher,” Arthur Vance spoke calmly into the field transmitter hanging from a stone retaining wall post. “The bottleneck is already compromised. If we retreat down the comms trench, the swarm will overrun our rear triage bay in two minutes. We hold the avenue here.”
Before Koslov could reply, the ground beneath Trench Sector Three began to heave.
It wasn’t a subtle tremor. The dark rock bedrock shuddered with a dark, low-hum grinding that set the ammunition cases rattling against the timber wooden walkway planks. The muddy water in the flooded shell craters began to boil, frothing with thick, eerie-glowing emerald foam. Intense fiery heat surged upward from the underground deep pit.
