The rain fell through the sulfur haze of Rift Zone 09 in a steady, gray drizzle. He smelled of crushed dark rock, wet charcoal, and battery acid. High above the sunken trench line, the sky was a bruised sheet of slate. But inside Bunker 12, the only light came from a hanging heavy dark metal work lamp that swung gently on its braided cord every time a distant siege mortar shook the outer edge.
Commander Varner was strapped to an upright steel I-beam with three-gauge binding wire. His baked-clay flak cuirass lay in shattered fragments by the drain grate, stripped of power cells and transponders. Blood, dark and thickened with bitter-salt grit, tracked down his left temple from a split scalp where Grimm had driven him into the stone retaining wall fifty minutes earlier.
Across the zinc-topped razor-sharp cart, Arthur Vance stood with sleeves rolled to his forearms. His knuckles were bruised, the skin across his right wrist stained with carbon soot from his ARC-7 Mag-Carbine. But his pulse was steady. Between his thumb and forefinger, he held a nine-and-a-half-inch heavy dark metal-hardened carbon-iron stiletto. The blade had no decorative fuller. It was a heavy-duty cutting instrument, matte gray and balanced for deep body work.
