Pace spoke over the platoon loop. The corporal sounded ragged. “We have to go on,” he said.

Pirius knew the theory. The “creeping barrage” ahead of them was a sweeping curtain, continually progressing at about walking pace. The infantry were to follow, coming in right behind it, to mop up whatever was left before the Xeelee weaponry had a chance to recover. So they had to move on, or the protection of the barrage would soon leave them behind. But everything was wrong.

“Corporal,” Pirius said. “We’d be advancing into fire. It would be suicide.”

“Do your duty, Service Corps. On my mark in three.”

Pirius and Cohl exchanged a glance. They had no choice.

Again that ear-splitting whistle sounded.

Pirius roared, “Shit, shit!” He blipped his inertial field and pulled himself out of the dip.

Again he flew, his armored chest a few centimeters above the ground, his bulky pack an awkward mass behind him. Around him he glimpsed ten, maybe fifteen others, floating like ghosts above the churned-up dirt. Some of them aimed and fired their weapons as they swam.

But cherry-red light flared immediately, threading more bodies which burst and writhed, before they subsided in dreamlike microgravity slowness back to the ground. One of them was Pace, he saw; the corporal, recognizable by his bright command armband, took a hit even before he got out of the trench.

Pirius hit the dirt again. He was breathing hard, his pack bumping at his back, his faceplate pressed to the dirt. Starbreaker light continued to flare over his head, and detonations in the ground sent dirt flying up all around him. He could feel no pain, and was amazed he still hadn’t been hit.

He risked looking up. The barrage still crept forward, smashing its way across the asteroid away from him. Silhouetted before its unearthly light he saw figures moving, troopers trying to work their way from one bit of cover to the next, maybe even trying to advance. But there was no semblance of coordination, and few of them were even firing their weapons. Xeelee starbreakers picked them off with impunity.

He was exposed here; he was on a shallow ridge that actually raised him up above the mean surface. He would last only seconds in this spot.

He saw a line in the ground, a faint shadow a couple of meters ahead. If that was a trench he might live a little longer. If not—if not, he had no choice anyhow.

Again he didn’t allow himself time to think. Three, two, one. He blipped his inertial field, and with a single thrust he threw his body through a shallow arc at the shadow in the dirt. He slammed down at three gravities, hard enough to knock the wind out of his lungs. It was a trench: worn, its lip broken by the scrabbling of gloved hands, but a trench nonetheless. Starbreaker light flared over him, frustrated, a cherry-red lid over this bit of shelter.