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was also a symbol, a reminder of how close they had come to outright victory in those earliest days of the war. The Norts would never willingly give up one inch of the bloodstained earth their city stood on. And there were many on the planning staff at Milli-com who saw the ravaged metropolis as a crucible, a place where Nort forces could be endlessly drawn in and destroyed in a particularly brutal microcosm example of the relentless war of attrition that was now being waged all across the galaxy.
    Nordstadt must be held at all costs and the invaders driven once and for all from its sacred soil, Nort propaganda had preached for the last twenty years.
    Take Nordstadt for good, the Souther strategists believed, and Hague's plan would finally be validated. The Norts had attached such mythic significance to the place that their resolve would break at last and victory on Nu Earth, and on many of the other battle planets in the galaxy beyond, would swiftly follow the city's final fall.
    And so the gruesome stalemate had continued for two decades, with every year bringing a new Nordstadt "Final Victory" offensive which would consign hundreds of thousands of more human lives to their fate in the slaughterhouse the city had become. Despite the propaganda boasts, none of the generals and planners could see an ultimate end to the carnage. No one could see the much-heralded final victory that would once and for all drive the enemy out of their hiding places and bolt-holes amongst the rubble of Nordstadt.
    All this, however, was about to change. The strategists on one side conceived a plan that would indeed finally end the battle for Nordstadt, in a level of callous mass butchery that had never before been contemplated.

FIVE
     
    "Clear!"
    Sergeant Hanna Coss lowered her binox-scanner, satisfied after several minutes of careful searching that there were no unexpected nasty surprises waiting out there for her and her squad. No human heat signatures or the telltale oxygen/carbon dioxide exchange traces from a chem-suit breathing apparatus that would signal the hidden presence of a Nort sniper or ambush patrol.
    At her command, the first two members of the squad stepped warily out of cover and began the dangerous journey across the open ground of the street in that familiar half-jogging, half-crouching gait that had come to be called the "Nordstadt Two-Step". They reached the comparative safety of a shattered doorway on the other side of the street, its stone surround scorched and pockmarked with the impact burns of multiple las-rounds. They gratefully crouched in the cover it offered, using their las-carbines to scan the surrounding terrain for signs of danger.
    It was only after a further thirty seconds, when one of them - Mckenna, who, at the age of twenty-three and with two years of combat experience under his belt, qualified as a grizzled old Nordstadt veteran - signalled the all-clear, that Hanna allowed herself to partially relax. She signalled for the next two members of her squad to cross: Verns, and the kid who had only joined the unit last week. She'd detailed Verns to nursemaid the kid until he'd learned at least some of the moves he would need to have a half-decent chance of surviving his Nordstadt tour of duty.
    Hanna was annoyed because she could never remember the kid's name, confusing him with the other rookie they got sent last month, the one who tripped that Nort plasma-mine over in the ruins of the Chancellery building. The blast had vaporised the rookie along with Handley and Lindermann and there hadn't been enough human remains to fill an ammo satchel.
    Hanna wouldn't have time to familiarise herself with the new kid's name because he and Verns were still only halfway across the street when the Nort mek struck.
    It was an Amok, a Nort battle droid, and it came rearing up out of a rubble pile on the other side of the street. It had been months since the Norts had last been reported using any meks in Nordstadt. Hanna