By the morning of Day Eighty-Eight, the burning wreckage of the four vanguard cruisers had cooled into jagged black iron reefs.
Thick oily grease floated on the ocean swell, coating the black basalt walls of the canyon throat.
Across the five-mile gap, Moros’s remaining sixteen dreadnoughts held their distance, wary of the lethal reflection field.
They maintained a steady, long-range mortar barrage, hurling explosive star-iron shells at high angles over the canyon cliffs.
The shells screamed down through the mist, detonating against the upper water surface in deafening concussive bursts.
Inside the sheltered throat of the Abyssal Fire Trench, five hundred thousand allied troops held their positions along the basalt ledges.
Barges and transport hulls were moored in three tight tiers along the canyon walls, protected from direct broadsides by the sheer rock faces.
Soldiers sang quiet continental marching songs around charcoal braziers, passing bowls of warm broth to keep the cold ocean spray from freezing their marrow.
