Lead-gray cumulonimbus clouds churned rapidly across the sky. Toxic volcanic ash merged with the storm clouds and drifted into the distance on the gale. The scorching black sulfide rain was intensely corrosive. Though it never lasted long, as the earthquakes grew more frequent and powerful, the sulfide acid rain also came more and more often. At first, it had only been a drizzle lasting about a minute. Now, it had become a twenty-minute sulfide downpour. The Hellfire Knights reacted quickly, covering the heavy guns with tarps to keep water out of the barrels, then ordering the Armored Personnel Carrier crews to seal up and withdraw to safe areas on standby.
But for ordinary people without any protection, the sulfide black rain was lethally dangerous.
As Enuratu arranged the burial of the tribal warriors killed in the previous battle, she ordered all non-combatants in the tribe to begin working. Girls and elderly women brought rainwater purification devices, filtering out clean water that still smelled of chemicals, then washing the acid-burned wounds of civilians who had come seeking shelter. Supplies of painkillers originally intended for the life-support and medical systems of the Hellfire Knights' Power Armor were diluted by the accompanying medical staff and injected as anesthetic into civilians injured by mudslides, acid rain, and other causes.
The rebel camp was filled with anguished cries. As Paititi's rightful ruler, Enuratu walked through the camp, and for a moment, she felt as if she had arrived somewhere unfamiliar rather than the stronghold where she had lived for so long after her husband's mysterious death, hiding from the Quetzalcoatl Cult. She even saw idle mechanics using biomechanical prosthetic limbs to assist in battlefield surgery—or serve as surgical lamps, depending on what sort of biomechanical prosthetics they had chosen. Most low-ranking Martian Technicians had prosthetics