Dawn in Rift Zone 09 arrived without sunlight.
A sickly sulfur yellow seeped through the heavy overcast, lighting up a landscape smothered under inches of fresh fiery soot. Wind howled through the jagged dark rock cuts of the forward outer edge. He drove flakes of foam-stone horizontally across the rusted concertina wire. In the outer listening trenches, frost coated the iron firing steps in a crust of yellow-gray rime.
Arthur Vance adjusted the canvas strap of his ARC-7 Mag-Carbine. The break-action marksman’s weapon rested snugly against the small of his back, its rotary metal tube loaded with high-pressure potion-made delivery ampoules. Beside him, Captain Tanya Richter knelt behind a sandbag low roof wall. She swept her sight periscope across the dead expanse of No-Man’s-Land.
Her massive tiny armor-piercing rifle was slung across her broad shoulders. It was wrapped in strips of greasy burlap to keep the sliding bolt from freezing.
“Clear sight is down to twenty paces,” Richter said, her voice rough against the whistle of the gale. She lowered the periscope and spat dark tobacco juice into the frozen mud. “The sulfur vents in Basalt Trench Nine have been blowing continuously since midnight. That means the ground heat is dropping, and the underground crawlers will be looking for heat.”
