37%.
It was the power cell Lazar had left behind. I slotted it into the underside of my lasgun. The dull feel of cold plastic came through my glove.
Pang.
35%.
I fired one shot into the fog. The number went down. That was all. Other than one bar disappearing from the indicator on top of the power cell, nothing had changed.
I sorted through Second Squad's current manpower in my head again.
Combat-capable personnel at present:
Me.
Sergeant Yakov.
Two.
The roster was short. It did not matter whether Talia and Brix were buried somewhere in the mud of the adjacent sector, or still breathing as they carried ammunition crates.
Being outside my field of view meant they could not cover this sector's firing arcs. It was proper to exclude unquantifiable factors from the calculation.
My finger rested without the slightest movement on the fixed trigger, while my barrel faced straight ahead at No Man's Land, where ash-gray fog and acid rain poured down. The faint tremor Lazar's fingertips had left behind had long since seeped away into the sewage beneath my boots.
For a while, Sergeant Yakov silently stared down at the sewage. Rolling the crushed Lho-stick butt between his fingers, he muttered quietly.
"He didn't even leave any cigarettes behind."
I did not answer. I merely raised the barrel slightly and swept it across the outlines beyond the fog.
"Useless bastard."
There was neither anger nor grief in the sergeant's voice. I did not try to distinguish whether those words were an insult or his own version of a final farewell. Death was not a special event in this trench anyway.
Lazar was dead.
Talia and Brix had not returned.
But there could be no empty space in the right-side defensive line of Sector 3.
In war, a person dying was not the problem. The problem was whether, after that person died, there was a replacement part left to stick a gun barrel into that position. My boots filled the place where Lazar had lain, and I took over the firing arc Lazar had watched. As long as those who remained filled the space left by those who were gone, that was enough.
For the replacement part named Ivan, that conformity was all there was to survival.
Ssssh—
Acid rain gradually eroded the dirt walls of the trench and washed it into the pit of sewage. The lull did not last long. What shattered the heavy silence was not the enemy to our front.
Rumble!
The trench wall toward Sector 4 on the left collapsed with a dull tremor. Bent support beams and heaps of wet mud poured down like a waterfall, while choking dust mixed with the acidic fog.
"Cough! Cough! Damn it... damn it...!"
A bloodless cry burst from beneath the pile of dirt. Crawling out across the sewage-covered trench floor was Talia, drenched in blood. The shoulder guard on the right side of her flak armour had already been blown away, and the knife she always carried had broken, leaving only the hilt.
Brix crawled in after her. His once-heavy frame was so covered in mud and black blood that it was hard even to make out his shape. Brix dragged one leg of a crushed heavy bolter tripod in his right hand, but the ammunition box was nowhere to be seen.
"Sector 4... collapsed..."
Brix exhaled raggedly with his face buried in the sewage.
"The enemy climbed over the trench lip... they're crawling out... from beneath the bodies...!"
Gripping the wall with mangled fingers, Talia barely forced herself upright and looked up at Ivan and Yakov. Her eyes shook wildly with fear and exhaustion. But as she looked past me and saw the vacant spot where Lazar had lain, her lips stopped in a spasm.
"Where's Lazar?"
Talia asked.
Without looking straight at her, I answered indifferently as I thrust my lasgun barrel back beyond my firing arc.
"Under your feet."
Talia's gaze fell upon Lazar's flak armour, half-submerged beneath Ivan's boots in the sewage, with only traces of it remaining. For a moment, the air in the trench seemed to stop.
"The right firing arc is open."
I glanced once at the power indicator on Lazar's cell.
35%.
"Get your ammunition. The right firing arc is open."
Talia did not answer.
No, it was more accurate to say that she did not even have the leeway to answer. She threw away the broken knife hilt and dropped heavily onto the muddy ground of the sector Lazar had occupied only moments ago.
Her fingers convulsed madly as her trembling hand rummaged through her vest pocket and pulled out a tattered power cell.
"Brix."
Sergeant Yakov growled low.
"Get up. A heavy weapons gunner should be holding a gun. How long are you going to lie face-down in that mud pit?"
Rather than answer, Brix coughed up dark-red blood. The blood spilling from his chest quickly dyed the trench sewage black.
"Sergeant... we're out of ammunition. The supply depot got buried when Sector 4 collapsed with it..."
"Don't make excuses."
Yakov drew the old laspistol at his waist and gave Brix's shoulder a light kick with his boot.
"If you don't want to die, go pick up an ammo pack or a lasgun from where those corpses are lying. It isn't the trench wall the enemy is pushing down through. It's these heads."
Brix forced his mangled face up as he raised his torso. What lay in his eyes was not fear, but mechanical resignation. Like a crawling animal, he moved across the trench floor on all fours and began rummaging through the pockets of the enemy corpses that had been lying there.
Pang.
I pulled the trigger.
33%.
An enemy silhouette glowing faintly in the fog toppled over and plunged into the mud.
There was no time for sentiment.
The trench line Talia and Brix had escaped from had already collapsed.
The two had survived.
And they had returned.
That was enough.
Talia: alive.
Brix: alive.
Lazar: dead.
Me: alive.
Sergeant Yakov: alive.
Two wrecked bodies had been shoved into the place left vacant by one of the five-man squad.
The roster was filled again.
Like forcing two broken parts into place, Second Squad began moving again.
"Ivan."
At my side, Talia called my name in a low, hoarse voice.
"What is it?"
"You... what's wrong with your eyes?"
Without stopping the finger resting on my trigger, I stared into the fog ahead and answered dryly.
"I'm watching the firing arc."
Talia neither avoided my gaze nor said anything more.
She pushed the sole remaining power cell in her possession into her lasgun.
Click.
The sound of cold metal locking together cut clearly through the acid rain.
On the right, Talia's lasgun spat fire.
On the left, Sergeant Yakov's pistol boomed dully.
The lasgun in my hands began vibrating again at a steady rhythm.
The trench closed once more.
Talia filled Lazar's place, and Brix picked up an enemy lasgun in place of the destroyed heavy weapon.
No one looked for Lazar.
Neither did I.
There were once again three gun barrels on the right-side defensive line of Sector 3.
That was enough.
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