I wouldn’t have thought it was possible, but the gas was even thicker in the trenches than it had been in the subway tunnels, and it was an absolute soup compared to the thinned-out variety I’d been dealing with once we’d reached the surface. Whatever this shit was, it was heavier than the surrounding atmosphere, which meant the enemy sect was constantly pumping it out, probably from the bridge somewhere above us—the very bridge we were about to assault.
That was a problem for later. Now, there was just the trench.
We could hear the sounds of fighting somewhere behind us, and above, as well, the enemy using the gas attack to launch an assault on the factory walls as a diversion, keeping the sect inside from realizing that the true threat was about to come from below. It all seemed very distant, in the mists—the yellow-green fog and the high trench walls isolating us, making it seem as though we were on an entirely different planet from the world Jane and I had landed on this morning.
I stepped over rubble and debris and the detritus of war: broken guns and mortar craters and torn-apart armor plating. My feet swept through a carpet of loose shell casings like gravel, every step making telltale clinking noises that seemed to echo far into the mist. Every few minutes—not quite regular, but close—there was a heavy thumping sound, like a heartbeat, something more felt than heard. I wasn’t sure exactly what it was, only that it likely wasn’t anything good.
There were very few corpses, from either side. Bullet holes and bloodstains marred the concrete—bloodstains in several different colors, mostly red and teal—but very few actual dead. A part of me shivered away from the implications of that; I doubted, however intense the fighting got, that they were carting the fallen away for proper funeral rites. The more likely implication was that the constant war that raged across this world had given their sect at least a partial solution to the chronic food shortages common on a nonagricultural world like this one.
After all, it wasn’t exactly “cannibalism” if the enemy’s fallen dead were mostly comprised of a different species. Still, elsewhere in the galaxy, fucking eating another sentient being was frowned upon, to put it lightly.
“Three, forward. Manning a big gun,” Jane whispered through the bug in my ear. I almost jumped out of my skin at her voice—as I moved along the trenches, through the fog of death, it was easy to forget that I wasn’t entirely alone, a feeling that wasn’t exactly relieved by the fact that, even carrying Sho on her back, Jane was entirely fucking soundless, carpet of debris underfoot or no. A reminder that even after years of training, I still had a long way to go to catch up to her.
I raised Bitey up a little higher, slipping my finger inside the trigger guard. Inched closer to the booming reports echoing down the trench. That was what I had been hearing, what sounded like a heartbeat—the reports of the artillery, a big ground-based gun smashing away at the distant factory walls. We were close enough now that the sound was accompanied by a brief flash of light in the fog, like watching a thunderstorm from a distance and seeing lightning bloom inside the bruised veil of the storm clouds. I came to a curve in the trench; the gun should be just on the other side.
I waited for the next report, when the enemy would be at their busiest, reloading, rearming, preparing their beast of a weapon to fling another round at the thick walls somewhere high above us.
It came, the flash almost blinding, the sound deafening. I moved.
I took all three of the gunners down with quick bursts from Bitey, the shots lost in the fog of war and the general distant chaos in the gas cloud. Reached out with a mild application of my teke and broke the control mechanism for the gun, too. That wouldn’t do much good in the long run—and like Jane was constantly reminding me, we weren’t actually here to try and win this war; getting sucked into a sect conflict wouldn’t help us, or Sho, at all—but it made me feel better, just like smashing the gas pumps outside of the breach tunnel had.
In the silence left behind after the big gun was broken, I could hear another sound, a kind of rhythmic chanting, a repeated phrase, over and over again. Many voices, speaking in unison. Jane came around the corner; I frowned at her, tapping one ear with my free hand and then indicating the general direction of the noise. There were three paths out of the gun nest—the way we’d come, a path opposite that one, further along the trench line to the east, and a path leading north, deeper into enemy territory.
The northward path was where the sound came from; I hoped dearly that wasn’t the direction we needed to go. Several different experiences with Jane over the last few years had taught me a valuable lesson: chanting is bad. Anybody worked up enough to chant in unison is usually planning something horrible.
Jane listened as well for a moment, then raised Schaz again. “Schaz, Jane here,” she said softly. “Can you scan radio frequencies, patch into the communications of the sect that’s under siege?”
“I can, and already have,” Schaz replied, a little petulantly. “Want me to tell you what they’re talking about? They’re mostly reacting to chaos in the tunnels below their little fort, trying to get civilians out—”
“I want you to wait a few moments, then send a message to them,” Jane cut her off. “Do whatever you have to to convince them it’s legitimate; impersonate one of their scouts or something. You’re reading our position?”
“I am. You’re close to the bridge access.”
“Good. There should be some sort of structure nearby, a warehouse or a bunker or something. Can you make it out, through the gas?”
“I think I’ve got it—I can’t tell what it is, but I’m reading the location, southeast of you. A container of some kind, maybe a water tank. I can’t get heat signatures, though: too much concrete.”
“Don’t worry about it; we already know how many enemies are inside. Fucking all of them. That’s their staging ground for the assault down through the tunnels.” Oh. Oh, fuck. I hadn’t put that together. We were currently standing in between the massed might of the enemy sect and their path down into the factory stronghold. The chanting was their commanders, getting them worked up before they started their attack. Fucking hell, this was not a good place to be.
“Once we’re clear,” Jane was still talking to Schaz, “relay that position to the sect inside the city. Have them pound the fuck out of it with their big guns.” I grinned at that; probably a savage reaction, but I didn’t care. We weren’t supposed to choose sides—the Justified, I mean. It didn’t do any good, in the long run. If we’d come at the front lines from the other direction—if Sho had been born into the northern sect, as opposed to the southern one—we would have likely wound up on the other side of this conflict, fighting to break into the city, rather than killing off those assaulting it. It was just a matter of luck we’d wound up on the Wulf side of the fighting rather than the Tyll.
All the same, the Tyll sect had used poison gas to kill indiscriminately, and they were about to storm the subway tunnels to launch a cowardly attack on civilians, civilians including Sho’s mother, if she was still alive. We’d seen signs that they ate the dead, and that they were somehow fighting off the pulse, but only so they could better wage their war. Plus, they’d shot at us, or at least tried to. So fuck them; they could eat hot artillery shells. I’d sleep just fine that night, knowing we’d fucked up their plans to win their stupid little crusade.
“Tell me we don’t have to go through them,” I whispered to Jane. She shook her head, pointed down the eastern trench running along the front instead. I nodded, exhaling with relief, then reloaded Bitey, stepping over the bodies of the dead gunnery crew to take us down the correct route. I wanted as far from the massed assault battalion as we could get, as quickly as possible.
After just a few minutes, something shifted: it might have been my imagination, but I thought I could hear new sounds above us—not just the echo of distant gunfire, but a change in the low moan of the constant wind. Maybe even the creak of metal. We were underneath the bridge now, closing on our goal. Sure enough, another few steps forward into the trench, and the trestle supports loomed out of the fog, a wall of metal lattices rising up and up and up, seeming to climb forever up into the sickly toxic atmosphere like a cliff face of woven steel.
“Decision time,” Jane said as she came up behind me and saw the trestles as well. “We can keep moving forward—there’s an access ladder on one of the support pillars—or we can free climb the trestles themselves.”
“One of those things will be easier to do than the other. Especially with you carrying Sho.”
“True. But on the other hand, one of those things might have snipers in the city watching for enemy movement and an easy kill, snipers who won’t be able to tell us from Tyll. We’re going to be very exposed either way, but it’s significantly less likely those snipers are scanning the trestles themselves for movement.”
“Oh. Fuck.”
“Hadn’t thought of that, had you?”
“Congratulations, Jane, you’re very clever in figuring out awful ways for us to get shot. So we free climb, then?”
“I think that would be best. Unless you want to take a high-powered rifle round to the back of your intention shield; see if you can hold on to the ladder while that’s happening. You could make it into a game. A game called ‘Will Esa fall to her death or not?’ And also, ‘Can her shield recharge before the sniper reloads?’ I’d give that one about even odds.”
“You’re kind of awful sometimes, you know that?”
“So I’ve been told. Mostly by you. Come on: up and over. I’d like to get climbing—and get clear of where Schaz is going to direct that Wulf artillery barrage—as soon as possible.”