Explosions—not one or two, but an unbroken barrage of dull booms that hammered eardrums and chests.
Shells slammed into the scorched earth, throwing up waves of mud mixed with broken stones and severed limbs.
The air shuddered. Every explosion struck like an invisible sledgehammer, making teeth ache.
Roars, the dying howls of humans, the shrill whistles of xenos, officers' strained commands, the thunder of Tank engines, the piercing whine of weapons firing...
Every sound twisted together, boiled over, and spilled across this Slope, less than a hundred meters wide yet seemingly without end.
Sound lost all meaning. Only sheer volume remained, tearing at their nerves.
The screams were often brief, swallowed by louder explosions or cut off abruptly, leaving only a hollow echo lingering in the mind.
Sometimes they dragged on, like a dull knife sawing through flesh, rising in broken bursts from a shell crater or a body still twitching.
This was the Slope before Hill A-7. Hell's reflection on earth.
But the people of Colchis did not fear hell. They had crawled out of mountains of corpses and seas of blood. Their home had taught them only one truth: either wait to die in the putrid mud, or climb over the bodies of their enemies.
Fear remained, soaking into their marrow like icy water, but something harder held it down: an almost numb fury, a madness born of having no other choice.
Bang! Bang! Bang!
The gunfire was too dense to distinguish individual shots, like thousands upon thousands of scraps of cloth tearing beside their ears at once.
Red Laser beams, blue energy bolts, and tracer rounds wove a glowing web of death through the air.
Leki followed behind and to one side of the Chimera transport. The steel behemoth was his only moving cover.
The roof-mounted Heavy