The earth didn’t merely shake. It snapped.
Along Section 3 of the forward comms trench, the solid dark rock bedrock split open with a sound like tearing sheet steel. A yawning black fissure, four feet wide and exhaling dense sulfur vapor, zipped across the cross. It tore through the heavy oak stone retaining walls. It snapped twelve-inch support timbers like dry matchsticks and dropped fifty yards of wooden walkway planks into churning fiery mud.
Through the howling curtain of freezing black ash, the darkness below the rift began to writhe.
They came in a chittering tide. Hard-shelled Trench Burrowers—segmented, beetle-like monstrosities the size of wild boars, their multi-jointed jaws dripping with acid-burning stomach enzymes—scrambled up the newly formed dark rock ledges. Behind them scrambled Basalt Scorpions, their segmented back shells black as coal, their heavy serrated pincers snapping in rhythm as their whip-like tails arched forward, venom needles dripping cloudy amber neurotoxins.
“Defensive positions!” Captain Richter’s voice thundered through the storm. “Fire team one, man the cross! Don’t let them gain the low roof wall!”
Near the parked corporate transports, chaos erupted.
“Secure the outer edge!” Gideon Thorne barked, his voice losing its boardroom composure for the first time as the freezing ash blizzard whipped his charcoal coat around his knees. “Alpha team, deploy the hounds! Form a crushing weight ring around carrier one!”
