The air in the forward trench basin smelled of scorched high-pressure fluid, spark-charged ozone. The sickly sweet rot of burst alien entrails. Behind Arthur, Gideon Thorne lay curled on his side in the black mire. He shivered wildly, his manicured hands clutching at the muck as if trying to burrow beneath the mud. The corporate director’s breathing came in ragged, wheezing gasps. His lips shook with incoherent prayers to banks and insurance cartels that couldn’t hear him.
Along the battered sandbag line, the surviving Vanguard troopers were frozen. Two heavy machine-gunners lay half-buried beneath the rubble of the collapsed overhead frame, their weapons jammed with silt. Lieutenant Briggs was shouting into a dead field radio, trying desperately to establish contact with rear artillery batteries that had already cut their lines to prevent back-surge interference.
Arthur Vance didn’t look back at the ruined soldiers or the sobbing executive. In trauma triage, outer chaos was merely surrounding noise. If an attending surgeon allowed the screams of the waiting room to dictate the angle of his razor knife, the patient on the table died every single time.
Arthur reached up with a steady, gloved hand and flipped down the triple-lens Zeiss sight magnifying glass mounted to the side of his tactical headband.
