The freezing autumn rain swept horizontally across the mudflats of Sector Four. That turned the lonely expanse of no-man’s-land into a churning sea of gray sludge, crushed slate, and toxic chemical runoff.
Arthur Vance crested the southern rim of the Iron Trench system at 05:45 hours, leading his squad and the forty-two liberated commoner beasts in a disciplined, silent column. The march from the ruins of Facility Fourteen had taken forty-five grueling minutes through underground drainage under-road drains and swampy ravines, guided only by the soft golden glow of Pip’s crest and the rock-steady tracking sense of Grimm’s black nostrils.
Below them, Iron Trench Outpost was engulfed in a storm of bone-shaking fire, shattered timber, and poisonous chemical vapors.
Along the crest of the northern ridge three miles away, the hidden siege batteries of Baron Korgan Rask kept a nonstop, mechanized rhythm of slaughter. Every twelve seconds, a battery of four heavy two-hundred-and-tiny siege howitzers fired in rolling salvos, their massive muzzle flashes tearing through the low-hanging rainclouds with blinding sheets of hellish orange flame.
THOOM! THOOM! THOOM! THOOM!
The incoming shells screamed through the cold sky like falling freight trains. That left greasy streaks of chartreuse vapor in their wake before plunging into the defensive outer edge of Dugout Seven.
