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of the moss. The hard red clay was hot, but at least it offered purchase for feet.
    "Such an inviting-looking drop zone," Stossen muttered. He looked back over the extensive field of moss-covered rocks. "No wonder the Heggies didn't bother to defend it. They must know that no one can stand on that junk."
    "I just wish we had known about it," Major Bal Kenneck, Stossen's intelligence officer, said as he walked up to the colonel.
    "Couldn't tell without putting people down," Stossen said. He shook his head and turned to Kenneck. "You have anything for me yet?"
    "Not much, sir. The only enemy activity has been pretty much limited to a few Boems. We're bringing in our heavy stuff already. But the Heggies are going to have plenty of time to get set to meet our mudders. Slow as that moss makes everything, it'll take a couple of hours to get our lines close enough to engage."
    "You seen Teu since we landed?"
    "Over there. He's coming," Kenneck said. Ingels and Dezo Parks were walking together.
    "Get on to CIC and see what the reports are from the other landing zone. And find out where General Dacik is. Then we'll see just how far behind schedule we're going to be here."
    Stossen shook his head and started walking to meet Ingels and Parks. His head still hurt, and there was a faint blurriness to his vision.
    —|—
    At first, the heat had been really intrusive only when the men scraped away the moss to get some purchase on the rock below. But as they moved west, crawling much of the time, toward the massive Schlinal depot, the heat grabbed at them, and it got more oppressive by the minute. There was only a very slight breeze, and that seemed to bring wave after wave of hotter air rather than any measure of relief. The more time the men spent flat on the ground, the hotter they got. One medic in Fox Company used a thermometer to determine that the ground temperature, just below the moss layer, was 39 degrees Celsius. And this is as cool as it gets was his thought. It was little more than an hour past dawn. The real heat of the day was still to come.
    Echo Company was in the middle of a three-company skirmish line advancing toward the Schlinal base. Bravo Company was to their left, Fox to the right. Two of the 13th's sixty-man recon platoons were on the flanks, ready to move up to envelop the enemy positions when they got close enough. By the time the line moved to within two kilometers of the Heggies, the men could see artillery explosions hitting the Schlinal positions. Occasionally they could see Wasps attacking ground targets, or fighting Boems in the air.
    At two kilometers, the men on the ground were still out of range of most ground fire. As they passed that distance, a few Schlinal automatic weapons, 12mm slug throwers, did open up on them.
    "Get what cover you can," Joe Baerclau told his platoon. Switching to another channel, he said, "Sauv, can your people get a line on that center chopper?"
    "Can't see the gun," Degtree replied, but I think we can give him some trouble. Hang on."
    A few seconds later, one Vrerch missile was fired by a man in fourth squad. Almost as if that were the signal, Vrerchs were fired by another half dozen men in the three companies, homing in on the enemy machine gun positions.
    All of the Schlinal guns seemed to stop firing before the first of the missiles exploded. A Vrerch could be seen in flight.
    "Move on up," Joe ordered on his platoon channel. "Get a few more meters before they start shooting again." He scrambled forward, arms and legs sliding out from under him as he tried to get to the next low spot in the terrain. All three companies fought to make some more distance forward, to the next good cover—rock or depression.
    Missiles exploded. Holes appeared in buildings. Stones tumbled. The 13th continued to advance—not rapidly, but steadily. Before the smoke of the Vrerch explosions settled, the Schlinal machine guns opened up again, more of them than before.
    "They must be bringing new