CHAPTER 8

“They’re running late, Fenix,” said Colonel Choi. He sipped his tea. “I expected them to invade weeks ago.”

Adam Fenix checked out the aerial recon pictures, trying to pin them flat on the wall while the permanent, infuriating wind snatched at the paper. Tyro was a collection of temporary huts clinging to the slopes of the mountains that separated Kashkur from its neighbors on three sides. At this time of year, the wind never gave up for a moment. If there was a crack in the building, it would find it. It had.

“So what’s the delay at our end, then?” Adam asked. “If this is from the Furlin border, the Indie cav and heavy artillery could be at the first crossing point tomorrow. These images are about four hours old, yes?”

“Politicians.”

“The Chairman was talking tough about defending Vasgar’s neutrality only an hour ago, on the radio.”

“Oh, that’s talk,” Choi said. “Not do. And I thought you were one of the great intellects of Tyrus, Captain.”

Adam took the comment as a joke, nothing more. “I can see we’re going to fling poor old Vasgar from the sled to divert the wolves, then.”

“Neutrality’s a bitch, isn’t it? No enemies, maybe, but no allies, either.”

“Hasn’t the interim government asked us for help?”

“Do we seriously want to be first to walk into a country that’s ripping itself up? No, the Indies can have that privilege. We’ll end up with a whole new theater to fight—that’s a long border to defend. If we just let the Indies walk in, it won’t make it any easier for them to reach Kashkur. Anvil Gate can just shut down the pass and pick off the Indie armor at leisure. All we have to do is stop the Indies moving through Shavad.”

“Very economical.”

“We’ll need everything we’ve got to hold this end of Kashkur.” Choi stared into his teacup. “Is this sediment something I should worry about?”

“It’s spices, sir. The locals put spice in everything.”

“As long as it’s not your ambitious lieutenant trying to poison me to create a vacancy.”

“Stroud wouldn’t bother with poison.” Adam kept a straight face, partly because it was true. “She’d just put a round between your eyes. Very forthright, our Helena.”

Choi paused for a moment and then bellowed with laughter. “Good-looking girl. Has she said who the father is yet?”

“No, sir, and I don’t think that’s any of our business.”

“Must be hard for a woman to leave a small child behind under those circumstances.”

“It’s hard for a man, too.” Adam went back to the map on the wall and tried to see the swirls of color and contour lines in three dimensions. “I’ll start moving the company down to Shavad now.”

“Change of plan. You’ll be shutting down the imulsion pipeline and making sure supplies stay rerouted north the moment Furlin crosses the border. Then, if need be, you reinforce the Kashkuri forces in Shavad.”

The big picture was suddenly clear. “We’re cutting off Vasgar?”

“Exactly. No fuel—so the Indies are going to have a tough time resupplying. If necessary, we’ll destroy that section of the pipeline and make it permanent. But in the meantime, just implement the contingency plan. Shut down Borlaine and Ecian Ridge, and open the emergency pipeline at Gatka.”

It was an interesting way to receive a change of orders. Adam saw the map in a whole new light. He’d already started working out the logistics of who and what he’d need to cut the supply—three teams of engineers, three infantry platoons to guard the pipeline hubs just in case the UIR managed to insert special forces—before the very obvious realization sank in. There were millions of neutral civilians who were going to be plunged into even worse chaos than an occupation.

“Just as well this isn’t later in the year,” he said. “I’d hate to see a Vasgar winter during a fuel embargo.”

“It’s not going to be too clever in the summer, either. But disgruntled civvies will give the Indies something extra to worry about.” Choi stood up. “Time you got going. I want your teams in place tonight. We haven’t warned the imulsion companies, just in case they talk, so they’re going to be very surprised to see you. They’re going to be losing a lot of revenue.”

Revenue? Of course. Life goes on. Companies need customers, bills need paying.

Adam sometimes wondered how he failed to factor commerce into warfare. He’d have to watch out for that blind spot.

“So we’re commandeering pipeline hubs now, sir.”

“You got it, Fenix. Can’t rely on civilians to cooperate even in a war. It’s gone on too long. No sense of crisis—unless they’re the ones in a combat zone.” Choi got up and looked out the window, then checked his watch. “Mustn’t keep the chopper puke waiting. He has a tendency to show his displeasure with bouncy landings. I’ll call in at twenty-five-hundred.”

Adam saw Choi off at the landing pad. The clock was ticking. He had less than a day to roll into three imulsion hubs, tell the operators that they were shutting down an entire country’s supply, and keep that supply shut off until further notice. Military objectives were clear-cut. He approached them knowing he was going to take fire and give as good as he got. But this was one of those operations that was fraught with delicate problems, because it involved civilians, allied civilians.

If they don’t cooperate, it’s going to get … unpleasant.

Choi’s aging Tern helicopter dwindled to a black spot against the backdrop of mountains. Adam knew he had an audience peering from the barracks windows and standing around in workshops and doorways. He had to turn around and look. He knew everyone was expecting an order to move down to Shavad to join the rest of the battalion on the front line.

“Captain?” Helena Stroud walked up to him. “Shall I get the staff and NCOs together for your briefing?”

Helena was an unnerving combination of a beautiful face, a wonderful actressy voice, and the eye-wateringly profane vocabulary of a drill sergeant. Adam had fully expected her little girl’s first word to be motherfucker rather than Mommy. As Choi had correctly judged, Helena was ferociously ambitious and as hard-charging as any of the men, and Adam didn’t expect her to be his lieutenant for long. Complicated bets were already being laid in the sergeants’ mess back at HQ as to when she would make captain, then major, then colonel, and how many medals she’d be awarded while doing it.

“It’s not what we thought,” Adam said. “We’re cutting off the imulsion pipeline to Vasgar.”

He expected her to react as he did; uneasy, and wishing he was doing some clearly defined fighting. But Helena was always up for any challenge.

“That’ll be a nice change of pace,” she said cheerfully. “We’ll need some clankies for that. Let me see if I can rouse them from their oily slumber. Briefing in the canteen tent, sir, fifteen minutes?”

“Very good,” he said. “I’m glad you’re relishing this, Stroud.”

“I’d rather be brassing them up, but a girl can’t always have it her own way.” She walked off briskly in the direction of the company office. “Maybe we’ll get some decent contact later.”

When Helena said fifteen minutes, she meant it to the second. Adam saw the flurry of activity between the huts as he gathered up his maps and made hurried calls. By the time he got to the canteen tent, she had all the NCOs and officers sitting on benches, the company’s detached squad of 2 REE clankies—men from the 2nd Battalion Royal Ephyran Engineers—with schematics pinned to an easel, and a chalkboard awaiting Adam’s attention.

It would have irritated some officers, but Adam was already used to Elain’s rigorously organized approach to life, so he simply felt reassured to have a fiercely competent female on his staff. One of the corporals tossed something small and brightly colored in Helena’s direction and she caught it one-handed. She held up a pair of pink knitted baby bootees.

“Oh, Collins, bless you! That’s a very sweet thought.” She flashed him that luminous smile. “Anya’s nearly three now, but I’ll put these away for her daughter.”

“Or your next one …” someone said.

Everyone laughed, including Corporal Collins. “My wife’s a very slow knitter, ma’am. Do what you can.”

Helena stepped aside to let Adam start the briefing. He clipped the central Kashkur map to the board and penciled circles around the imulsion facilities.

“We have some asset denial to carry out, ladies and gentlemen,” he said. “By twenty-five-hundred tonight, we need to have these imulsion pipeline hubs secured in preparation for shutting them down. Yes, this is in allied territory. No, the imulsion companies haven’t been warned, for opsec reasons. So expect this to be challenging.”

The assembled Gears looked at him in silence as if thinking through the likely course of events. It wasn’t what any of them usually did. Eventually someone spoke.

“But doesn’t it take days to shut down a pipeline, sir?”

“It takes days to shut down production safely,” Adam said. “All we’re doing is rerouting the flow. “We shut the imulsion spur pipelines supplying the two Vasgari refineries, and reroute the output into the west. That means closing Borlaine and Ecian Ridge, and opening the pumping station at Gatka to divert the stream. Either way, the Indies won’t have access to fuel if and when they roll across the orders, and they’ll have to ship it in, which is going to seriously crimp their logistics.”

“Technically simple, sir,” said one of the engineers. “But also a big and provocative step to take, because we’re depriving a whole country—a neutral country—of essential power.”

“The Indies might not think we’d go that far this early.”

“But the Vasgari power stations run on imulsion too. They’ll lose electrical power in days.”

“That’s the idea. Let’s get this done, Gears.”

Adam knew all too well what would cascade out of this. Once Vasgar used up its imulsion reserves, not only would the traffic stop and the factories grind to a halt, but the lights and refrigeration would go off too.

And the hospital power supplies. And the water-pumping stations. And everything the civilians rely on to live.

“Doesn’t Anvil Gate get its fuel from the Vasgar side?” Carmelo was one of the transport engineers. “Who’s resupplying them?”

“It’s all brought in by the same road anyway, so we can just as easily get tankers down to them from the nearest Kashkur depot.” Adam reminded himself that he needed to talk to the garrison commander, just a courtesy to let the man know what was going on in his backyard and that someone was taking care of the smaller detail for him. He’d be busy preparing for the Indie advance. “All they have to do is sit tight and lob some heavy ordnance down on any Indie foolish enough to try to beat history.”

Foreign invaders had always met the end of the line at the Anvil Gate garrison. Nobody had tried to fight through that pass from the south for more than a century. Adam tried to recall any army that had managed to fight its way past Anvegad, and he couldn’t think of one. They’d always been forced back to try another longer, more troublesome route.

The UIR would meet the same barrier to its ambitions—if it didn’t run out of fuel first.

“Okay, be ready to roll by sixteen hundred,” he said. “It’s two hours overland to Borlaine, and they won’t be expecting us.”

“Lieutenant Stroud can give them a big smile and grab them by the nuts, sir,” Carmelo said. “That usually works.”

Again, everyone laughed. They weren’t disappointed that they weren’t going into battle yet, and they had that unquestioning optimism that 26 RTI—the Unvanquished—always seemed to radiate.

It might have been the momentum of an undefeated tradition. It might have been that this particular company knew their captain’s reputation for meticulous planning. It might also have been the aggressive certainty that Helena Stroud could inspire out of thin air.

Adam Fenix took the logical view that it was a combination of all three, and decided not to look closely at the ratio.

“Well, that’ll teach me to keep my mouth shut.”

Pad Salton walked up and down the elevated gantry that ran from the main gun emplacement to the observation post, a metal bridge with a thirty-kilometer view across two countries. He was checking out the best sniper positions. With this terrain, he was spoiled for choice. Hoffman leaned on the rail, finding himself torn between his usual anxious impatience to fight and get it over with, and wondering what the hell had gone wrong.

“Bit pessimistic, Pad,” Hoffman said. “Assuming they’ll get close enough for you to slot one.”

“Your pessimism, my optimism, sir.”

“You know the range on those guns? Fifteen thousand meters. You’ll have to get the bus to even see the Indies.”

“Yeah.” Pad braced his elbow against the brickwork and sighted up his Longshot. “But some bugger always gets through. That’s why you’ve got me.”

Nobody had tried to take Anvegad since the days of horse cavalry. The Indies were either crazy, pulling a flanker, or just anxious to grab Vasgar now that its government had fallen apart. The place had plenty of heavy industry further south, and—Hoffman tried to recall his briefing notes—iron deposits that probably made it worth the Indies’ time even if they didn’t get to take Kashkur.

Hoffman watched the activity directly below the bridge. Sander, cautious to a fault, had decided to rush in extra supplies and munitions just in case the campaign dragged on. Gears were already muttering about being stuck here beyond the planned end of their deployment, and the gunners were moving 150 mm shells on hand trucks through the narrow alleys and passages to makeshift shell stores. It was just getting light, and the fort-city was speckled with street lamps and illuminated windows below him.

“Is he expecting a siege or something?” Pad asked.

“I’d rather he was the nervous type than the sort that thinks it’ll all be over by dinner.”

“You still talk like a sergeant, you know, sir.” Pad scoped through with his Longshot again, this time in the direction of the supply route to the north, a narrow road that squeezed through a steep gorge. It was a perfect killing zone for a sniper. “And I mean that in a good way. Oh, look, more trucks.”

Hoffman checked the road through his binoculars. Headlights bounced in a procession in the distance. “So how far do you think the Indies will get, Pad?”

Pad shrugged. “Have to work on the basis that they’ll roll up to the front door. When do you think they’ll find out we’ve cut off the imulsion?”

“It’ll be a while yet.” Hoffman looked at his watch. “The Indies are probably going to cross the border in the next hour. But you can’t keep something like that quiet for long with the number of people involved. If they don’t have agents this side of the border, I’ll be amazed.”

“And the refinery’s going to notice the flow’s stopped.”

“Pretty fast, yes.”

“Bit shitty not to warn them. They won’t be joining the COG in a hurry after this.”

Vasgar had made its choice, but its neutrality hadn’t kept it out of the war. Hoffman really had expected the COG to rush to its aid and pour in more Gears it couldn’t spare, but so far it hadn’t; Ephyra had learned its lesson about overstretch. That made him feel better.

Can’t go running into every damn skirmish and wiping these countries’ asses for them. Costs too many men.

“I’m going to check the teleprinter.” Hoffman didn’t like standing around doing nothing. “See you at breakfast.”

Anvegad was a city of early risers, but the place was a lot busier a lot earlier than usual. Hoffman passed Byrne’s girlfriend, Sheraya, in the delivery bay. It was a cobbled courtyard just wide enough for a modern truck to back into. She looked as if she was arguing with a driver, but it was hard to tell because the language always made Kashkuris sound as if they were about to punch your face in. It was just the combination of expressive hand gestures and harsh consonants. She was probably just telling him that his bread rolls were the finest in the land and asking how his mother was.

She caught Hoffman’s arm as he walked by. “Lieutenant, the driver says the bakery hasn’t received all its flour deliveries today. That means he’s only delivered half of the garrison’s order. He promises it’ll be back to normal tomorrow.”

“We can live with that, Miss Olencu,” Hoffman said. “But feel free to scare him some more.”

Sheraya didn’t crack a smile—so she probably was berating the guy—and went back to the high-volume, rapid-fire discussion. She earned her pay, that girl. Hoffman imagined himself struggling to learn the language well enough to argue and negotiate without starting a riot, and decided that interpreters were a budget item worth every buck.

When he got to the small admin office that doubled as the ops room, he found Sander sitting at the desk, gazing alternately at the phone and the radio transceiver while both remained stubbornly silent.

“No news, then, sir?” Hoffman glanced at the desk. Sander’s sketchbook lay open with a half-finished pencil drawing of the view from the north side of the city, looking down that deep trench of a gorge. The lines were light and feathery, ready to take a wash of paint. “Real news, I mean.”

“I’m waiting on a few messages. Confirmation that Indie troops have crossed the border, and that Captain Fenix has cut off the pipeline. As soon as I’ve dealt with the priority traffic, I think we should let the Gears call home to reassure the families. You know how comms goes to rat shit when a new game kicks off.”

Sander was definitely a planner. Hoffman checked the overnight telex messages, looking for something from Margaret. But there was nothing, and he had a sudden urge to write a letter, a proper letter, the kind every Gear left for his family just in case things ended badly. Hoffman had never written one for a wife before; parents and sweethearts, yes, but never anything serious like the last words to a wife. He knew he was going to sweat over it.

“We’re short on the bread delivery today, by the way,” he said, putting the task out of his mind for the moment. “Thought you ought to know. The bakery driver says he’ll make up the shortfall tomorrow.”

“That’s okay. We’re stocked up on everything now—call me a worrier, but I’ve had so many shortages with supplies and victualing in other garrisons that I grab as much as I can, when I can.” Sander reached across the desk and took his sketchpad in one hand, frowning at the drawing. Hoffman realized it was the captain’s safety valve rather than trivia that got in the way of his job. Sander didn’t drink. He painted. “I’ve run out of burnt umber. I’m going to have to make some myself now. Not sure if there’s any clay around here, though.”

“I suspect Miss Olencu can procure some for you, sir.”

Hoffman wandered outside again and stood on the ramparts, scanning the plain below with his field glasses. The constellation of lights that marked the imulsion refinery across the Vasgar border were gradually fading from prominence as the sun rose. About ten minutes later, Hoffman’s radio crackled. It was Sander.

“It’s a go, Victor. Just heard from Captain Fenix. He’s shutting down the pipeline.”

Hoffman found his stomach knotting. He was five hundred klicks from the advancing UIR forces, but it still made his adrenaline pump.

“They’ve invaded, then.”

“Token resistance at the border crossing, but the Indie armor is rolling in. I think the imulsion companies put up more of a fight when Fenix told them to stop supplying Vasgar. Much bleating about loss of revenue and who was going to compensate them.”

Ungrateful assholes. “I can’t see Vasgar being able to pay its fuel bills now anyway.”

“As of now, we’re on REDCON three. Alert-thirty. We’ve been authorized to open fire on Vasgari positions when we make enemy contact.”

Well, that made life easier; no messing around waiting for the Indies to open fire first.

They’d take a while to get to the northern border, though, if they were going to get this far at all. They had a whole country to work through. There was no telling what the shreds of Vasgar’s government, its army, or even its disgruntled citizens might do to throw a spanner in the works. Hoffman wasn’t counting on a magnificent Vasgari resistance, but there’d be fighting of some kind.

He slung his binoculars around his neck, snapped the bayonet on his Lancer, and went back down to the barracks. The ready-state siren went off, echoing around the walls.

Somehow that made it all more official. Anvil Gate was ready for war.

It was a small garrison, just a hundred Gears plus a few thousand civilians living beyond its walls in the city. That was all this place had space for; a few humans to keep the big guns company and eke out a living from them. And this was what they’d all drilled for from the time they’d arrived at Anvil Gate, but doubted they’d use this time, or on their next deployment here, or even the next. The absolute emptiness of the rocky plain below the fort just added to the sense of unreality. The never-ending war was still a whole country away.

Hoffman did his rounds, driving around the city to see how the locals were reacting. They didn’t seem overly anxious. Their history was one of sitting tight and waiting for the invader to exhaust himself on this stubborn rock. As Hoffman passed the small bar where Sander liked to eat and take coffee, the owner waved casually to him as he leaned against the door frame, waiting for breakfast customers.

“Maybe you get to fire the guns this time, Mr. Lieutenant,” he called.

Hoffman slowed a little. “I hope you remember your emergency drill. The Indies might bring some big guns too.”

The café owner laughed. Taking Anvegad was about the same as walking straight up to a man with a loaded rifle trained on you and trying to disarm him. The garrison could watch the enemy approaching before they even came within range of the battery.

There were no surprises.

Back in the NCOs’ mess at the base of the main gun emplacement, Pad and Byrne were listening to both radios—the broadcast service as well as the COG military net. Hoffman could see the frowns of concentration as both men switched their attention from one to the other, fingers tapping their headsets occasionally.

“So what else is happening?” Hoffman helped himself to coffee. He really couldn’t face Pad’s hot sauce this morning. “Or are we the headlines?”

“It’s all about Shavad,” Byrne said. “We’ve sent in tanks. That’ll keep the Indies busy.”

“Break out your knitting. We could be waiting some time.” Hoffman decided to ask. “I saw your woman this morning, Sam. Are you two serious?”

Byrne looked baffled for a moment. He had a broken nose that made him look a lot more aggressive than he was. It was the result of a dumb accident in a truck, but most people didn’t get as far as finding that out.

“Yeah, sir, I am,” he said. “She’s expecting.”

Hoffman couldn’t manage annoyance. There wasn’t a regulation about it, although Byrne should have told him in case it caused trouble with the locals.

“I suppose you want permission to marry while deployed, then,” he said.

“Now that you ask, sir, yes.”

Sander wouldn’t object. He was about to become a father himself. And there was nothing whatsoever to be achieved by telling Sam he had to wait.

“Go ahead,” Hoffman said. “Although what a smart girl like that sees in you, I have no idea.”

Pad mopped at his plate of eggs and lethal Islander sauce. “It’s his dazzling intellect, sir.”

“Has to be.”

It turned into an uneventful morning. Hoffman was beginning to think the border incursion was a feint to take the attention from Shavad, where the serious fighting was taking place, but at lunchtime the local radio station—the one that Sheraya had to translate for Captain Sander—reported that UIR forces, Furlin’s Third Infantry, had reached Oskeny. The city was fifty miles inside the border. There hadn’t been more than a roadblock erected by the local police chief, and it hadn’t worked.

Hoffman had everything to think about and nothing to actually do. He checked the fuel tanks deep under the fort that supplied the generators—full to the brim, enough for two weeks’ continuous running—and climbed to the gun floor of the main emplacement.

The artillery boys were on defense watches, sitting on their rickety metal seats and staring past the huge barrels of the twin guns while the radio chattered. Every damn position had a radio of some sort tuned to the Ephyra World Service. They looked like they were waiting for a movie to start.

“This is weird,” said the sergeant. “Can’t remember the last time I could actually see the target.”

“Well, with optics …”

“We don’t get to do much direct fire anyway, but this is like being a helicopter gunner—look down on it, point at it, blow the shit out of it. They’ve got no cover out there. Fish in a barrel.”

“Yeah, that’s why nobody’s tried to move through Anvegad for quite a few years.”

Hoffman walked the whole perimeter of the fort, some of it along the top of ancient walls, some of it in alleys that hadn’t seen daylight for the best part of a thousand years. The fort was a fascinating warren. It was also oddly relaxed. Every time he got to a vantage point to check out that spectacular view, there were still thousands of square miles of absolutely nothing.

Later in the day, just after lunch, the flour delivery truck arrived and groaned its way up the steep access road. There’d be extra bread in the morning after all. Anvegad went about its business, and not one shop closed for the day. Hoffman and Sander eventually met up in the observation post.

“The refinery’s shutting down,” Sander said. “Big argument between the acting president and the Chairman. They really weren’t expecting us to choke the supply.”

Hoffman snorted. “It’s the first thing any sane commander would do.”

“Everyone’s too comfortable with the war. They reach a stage where they think everything is a bluff to achieve something else.”

“Unless they’re the ones getting their asses shot off,” Hoffman muttered. “No hidden meaning there.”

Sander nodded. “No. Definitely not.”

It was about 1600 hours when a muffled whump shattered the quiet. Hoffman couldn’t work out which direction it had come from, but that wasn’t the sound that grabbed his attention most.

The whump was followed by a slow rumbling noise that gradually built into a roar. The rumbling was so loud that it almost drowned the next whump, and the next.

“What the hell is that?” Sander said.

There was nothing, absolutely nothing, in a two-hundred-degree arc in front of them. Then the comms net came to life.

“Sir?” It was Byrne. “Sir, possible contact north of the fort. In the gorge.”

Hoffman went pounding down the stairs to the next level, where he could look out to the fort’s back—the road into Kashkur. A pall of smoke rose from the gorge and spread out, or at least he thought it was smoke.

“Shit, sir. Look at that.”

Hoffman stared, trying to work out what he was seeing. Sander was right behind him. His first thought was that shutting down the imulsion supply had left flammable vapor in the pipeline, and somehow it had ignited. It was always possible. Pipes developed leaks, and when the pressure dropped and the thick fluid ran away from cracked metal and perished seals, accidents could follow.

It was a damn big explosion.

“Where’s the goddamn road?” he said.

It was like a kid’s puzzle. What’s the difference between these two pictures? Hoffman stared, and like all familiar things, the view looked wrong but it took him a few moments to pin down exactly what had changed.

He couldn’t see the road, or at least part of it. There was just jagged gray rock and dust, as if the mountains had taken a few steps to the east. The rest of it carried on to the north across more rugged hills, but the section he could normally see from this window had disappeared.

No road. The road’s not there.

“It’s a landslide,” Hoffman said, stunned. “What the hell did that?”

Sander sounded as if he’d gulped in air. “That’s thousands of tonnes of rubble. I counted three explosions.”

Sam Byrne’s voice came over the radio against a background of vehicle noises and shouts. “I’m going out to check, sir. I’m taking one of the ATVs. Stand by.”

“Salton, get your squad and give him some fire cover until we’re sure what we’re dealing with,” Hoffman said. “I’m coming straight down.”

Hoffman wasn’t the only one trying to get to the main gates of the city. The streets and alleys were packed with civilians trying to work out what had happened. He pushed his way through the crowd, yelling at them to get the hell out of his way.

“Sir! Over here!” It was Carlile, one of the combat engineers, driving a small ATV. “Get in.”

Hoffman scrambled into the cab. “That’s got to be the pipeline.”

“I don’t think so, sir.” Carlile drove at speed down the winding track into what looked like the tail end of a dust storm. “I heard explosions—detonations. Timed. Regular intervals. That’s the sort of shit I use, sir.”

The main road—the only road—through the pass was three hundred meters from the base of the ramp. As soon as Carlile steered right and joined the road, the scale of their problem became painfully obvious.

The pass was a narrow gorge between two big, rocky cliffs that were getting on for mountain-sized. That morning, it had been a deep-cut V shape.

Now it wasn’t. It was a wall of rock at least twenty-five meters high, and the road had vanished beneath it. Carlile stopped the ATV, put on his helmet, and jumped out with Hoffman. The avalanche debris was still clicking and moving as the rock settled.

Hoffman leveled his rifle and waited for shots. But it was a lot of trouble to go to for an ambush. Pad emerged from the side of the road and jogged over to them. The debris shifted as he passed, sending him sprinting to avoid further rock falls.

“The whole road’s blocked,” he said. “They brought the whole hillside down. From what we can see up top, it’s taken out a two-hundred-meter stretch, at least.”

“They?” Hoffman said. “You think it’s enemy action?”

“Bloody sure of it,” Carlile said. He went as if to climb up the artificial hill that had formed in less than a minute, but stopped as the rocks shifted again. “Look at the slope up there.”

Hoffman followed where the engineer pointed. He could see it now. The top of the cliff looked as if it had sheared off.

“Could be a fluke,” Carlile said, “but if I was going to do a spot of counter-mobility and pack explosives into a hillside to bring it down, that’s what it would probably look like afterward.”

It wasn’t imulsion vapor, then. It wasn’t bad luck or shitty timing. Hoffman began wondering how long it must have taken someone to pack those cliffs with enough explosive to change the map of Anvegad.

“Shit,” he said. “The bastards have cut us off from the rest of Kashkur.”