The General felt uneasy for the first time since he had stepped down into this trench from the bustling landing platform. With flight-crews and troops darting too and throw confusing trenches in the murky light was not unusual considering all the noise and the customary dash for cover. The platform had come under attack on numerous occasions.
The musty smell of peat and sludge over laden with the odour of rotting flesh and untreated sewage, the stale lingering whiff of energy bombardment and high explosive, Joel’s stomach heaved with a nauseous repugnance to such a stench. He grimly carried on knowing within an hour or two that the offensive filth would become just another part of the battlefield, still it stuck to the back of his throat like the gluey mud that stuck to his knee length boots. Once again he felt that something was not right, The General had toured the trenches of Mire before, these lines were defiantly unfamiliar, could their eagerness to leave the landing platform made them take a wrong turn he thought.
The United Planets troops had moved into this line less than four days ago an operation he himself over-looked with interest, the person he was about to met was in one of the forward strike squads that took claim of these trenches. He knew there was something wrong with this trench. It was not unusual for small bands of troops to get trench maze in newly dug labyrinth of ground, when it was necessary to keep your head and shoulders down in these ditches every trench looked and smelt the same.
“Markus?” General Thawbran said suddenly stopping. A quick look back the way they had came, then forward up the trench. “I think this is the wrong trench.”
Then he saw at once the uncertainty in the Captain’s face as he looked back. “Well General, I think you maybe right,” Markus replied. It wasn’t very often the General was wrong.
The trench was too quiet, it been deserted for the last kilometre, not a single soul had they passed in these labyrinths of brown high plastic coated metal walls. It was not uncommon to have solitary parts of a trench, but this one looked total abandon. Nothing, not even any maintenance `droids that usually scurry around these ditches constantly repairing the cladding to the walls and floors or rebuilding any destroyed by energy bombardment, this was totally unusual.
CRYDAW Call of the Blue Stone Page 25
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