The transit hall between the heavy-duty quarter and the outer edge was three miles of sunken dark rock roadway, cut deep into the bedrock to shelter supply convoys from stray aether-lightning.
Arthur jogged alongside Instructor Valerie Koslov. Then, the noise of the lower city faded behind them, replaced by the deep, bone-shaking thunder of the front line. The air here was raw and metal, stinging the throat with the greasy stench of heavy diesel exhaust, crushed stone. The clear, vinegar-sharp tang of packed formic acid.
Ahead. There, the sunken road ended at the outer edge stone retaining walls, the comms trenches were already clogged with retreating militia stretcher-teams. Commoner conscripts in torn canvas smocks were carrying their wounded rearward, their boots slipping in the greasy gray slurry that coated the wooden walkway planks.
“Make hole!” Valerie barked, her voice cutting through the groans of the injured. She didn’t slow down, her long military stride eating up the distance, her clockwork left arm swinging with rhythmic care. “Stretcher bearers to the left wall! Walking wounded keep moving toward Outpost 9! Don’t bunch up in the choke point!”
A young militia runner, barely eighteen years old, was leaning against the sandbag stone retaining wall. It grabbed a bloody rag to his left forearm where a spray of acid had dissolved both sleeve and skin down to the fat under the skin. He was hyperventilating, his eyes wide and glassy with shock.
