The steady drip of acid rain through gaps in the tarpaulin filled the trench.
The trench at night, after the guns had fallen silent, was filled not with quiet but with damp cold and a terrible stench. The stillness after a battle brought no relief. It was a prolonged torture, waiting for the next assault that could come crashing in at any moment.
With my lasgun across my knees, I slipped a hand into the inner pocket of my fatigues. My fingers found two damp power cell packs and an emergency ration pack whose waterproof plastic wrapping had been slightly torn.
Rustle.
When I tore open the wrapper, two pale chunks of compressed protein biscuit appeared.
Acid rain and acrid sulfur fumes must have seeped through the tear in the waterproof plastic, because the biscuits' surfaces had already swollen and gone soggy. When I pressed one with a finger, it crumbled like hardened clay, releasing a grotesque mixture of sulfur and rotten bean smells.
A mechanical hunger was wringing my stomach. Human taste, likes, and dislikes were not factors worth considering. I only needed the minimum calories necessary to pull a lasgun trigger until tomorrow morning.
I opened the feeding valve at the bottom of my gas mask and shoved a piece of swollen biscuit into my mouth.
"..."
What filled my mouth was not the savory taste of grain. It was the dry grit of chewing sand, along with the dull, fishy taste of artificial protein that numbed the tip of my tongue. No saliva came. My throat kept clogging up. I raised my canteen to my mouth, but only a few drops of lukewarm water mixed with disinfectant, smelling of iron, dripped out.
When I forced the lump down, my stomach convulsed with a scream. Without batting an eye, I shoved the remaining half of the biscuit into my mouth.
"Is it edible...?"
Lazar, who had been resting his head against the trench wall, barely opened his bloodshot eyes and asked quietly.
His gaze was fixed not on the protein lump I was chewing, but on the power cell packs in my pocket.
"It's passable. It provides calories."
"Give me... just one piece too. My mouth's dry as if it's burning..."
Lazar stretched a trembling hand toward me, his blackened right arm shaking. Black sewage smeared each of his knuckles, where the blood had yet to clot.
I took the remaining half-biscuit from my pocket and tossed it indifferently into his palm. It was not compassion for a comrade. I had first calculated that if Lazar collapsed from malnutrition or dehydration, the firing arc I would have to cover on the next watch would increase by more than thirty degrees.
Lazar shoved the biscuit into his mouth, but could not even chew it properly and kept coughing. Soggy biscuit crumbs ran down beneath his chin with dark red saliva.
"Cough! Cough! Damn... I actually miss those standard ration packs labeled meat-flavored..."
"Third Platoon took all of those when they raided the supply depot last week. All that's left now is this artificial synthetic paste."
Sergeant Yakov came around the corner of the trench. In one hand, he held a notebook smeared with grease and bloodstains.
"Second Squad's remaining rations. Four packs of compressed biscuits, two tubes of protein paste. Half a canteen of water. Commissar Vorkov's orders. There will be no additional rations until the supply transport arrives at 0600 tomorrow."
Yakov gave Lazar's wound and the black spit he had coughed up an indifferent glance, then squatted beside me and removed the power cell from his laspistol.
"Sergeant, is there no more supporting fire?"
When I asked, Yakov clicked his tongue quietly in derision.
"Supporting artillery? The artillery bastards are out of power cells and shells too. Even if lightning struck No Man's Land, they couldn't fire a gun. The only things left on this front are spare parts like us and those things crawling out from wherever they came from."
The Sergeant looked down at the trench floor with exhausted eyes.
Black oil slicks that the acid rain could not wash away drifted slowly over the sewage. Between them, iridescent bubbles silently rose to the surface without end.
Hiss... bubble.
When Sergeant Yakov leaned against the trench wall and closed his eyes, a suffocating silence descended over the entire platoon sector once more.
The acid rain showed no sign of stopping. Raindrops falling beyond the bent tarpaulin struck the Guardmen's helmets and the cooled flak armour of the corpses left on the ground with steady honesty.
I slowly ran a hand along the barrel of the lasgun across my knees. Only the lukewarm heat still lingering around the cell port proved that I was still standing on a living battlefield.
"Ivan..."
Lazar called to me quietly from beside me.
His eyelids quivered faintly with fever, and ichor seeped from the wound on his blackened right arm, carrying a horrible sulfur stench.
"What is it?"
"I hear... something strange by my ear."
"It's the acid rain hitting the trench lip. Stop talking nonsense and keep yourself together. You'll relieve the Sergeant in three hours."
I answered dryly as I checked the two power cells in my pocket once again.
Hallucinations caused by sulfur gas? Or an infection from the contaminated sewage? Mechanical calculations busily ran through my mind, trying to analyze the situation through objective causes. If Lazar's temperature kept climbing and he collapsed into dehydration shock, the burden of the morning reorganization would fall to me. This was Castigar. The reasons soldiers went mad here were always contamination, exhaustion, and fear.
"No... it's not the rain..."
Lazar muttered, kneading the mud on the trench floor with his fingers.
"...The gate... the gate..."
His tone and rhythm were eerily similar to the enemy who had died that afternoon, moving his mangled lips.
"Stop it."
I snapped at him in a low but cold voice.
"If the Commissar hears that kind of talk, there'll be a hole in your head too. It's a night without supporting fire. Just stay quiet and breathe."
Lazar's mouth snapped shut.
He nodded mechanically a few times, then clutched his wounded arm and buried himself against the trench wall again, closing his eyes. No more muttering came from him.
Only black oil slicks that the acid rain could not wash away drifted quietly over the trench floor. I stared blankly at the black fog beyond the tarpaulin.
One.
Two.
Three.
The shelling had stopped, but the rhythm echoed of its own accord between my breaths.
I could hear Lazar's rough breathing as he lay beside me. A steady, dull rasp spread through the damp night air.
One.
Two.
Three.
Without realizing it, I was tapping the body of my lasgun with my fingers in time with Lazar's breathing.
When a sudden realization struck me, I stopped tapping the weapon.
...Why am I counting?
No shells were falling anymore. No Man's Land was quiet, and there was nothing in the trench but the sound of rain. Yet the springwork in my head had not stopped, mechanically dividing time into three-second intervals.
I swallowed hard. The fishy artificial sulfur taste of the swollen protein biscuit lingered again on the tip of my tongue.
One.
Two.
Three.
The countdown in my mind began running again, regardless of my will.
The trench's spare part was finally collapsing quietly from within.
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