Consider Phlebas by Iain M. Banks Page A

foot as they clambered over fallen trees covered in moss and swept past creepers and suspended roots.
    ‘Fuck dispersing; this is too hard going.’ It was Lamm’s voice. Horza looked round and up, and saw the black suit heading vertically for the green mass of foliage above them.
    ‘Bastard,’ said a breathless voice.
    ‘Yeah. B-b-bastard,’ Lenipobra agreed.
    ‘Lamm,’ Kraiklyn said, ‘you son of a bitch, don’t break through up there. Spread out. Disperse, damn it!’
    Then a shock wave Horza could feel through his suit blasted over them all. Horza hit the ground immediately and lay there. Another boom came through the hissing helmet speaker as it fed in the noise from outside.
    ‘That was the CAT going over!’ He didn’t recognise the voice.
    ‘You sure?’ Somebody else.
    ‘I saw it through the trees! It was the CAT!’
    Horza got up and started running again.
    ‘Black bastard nearly took my fucking head off . . . ‘ Lamm said.
    There was light ahead of Horza, through the trunks and leaves. He heard some firing: the sharp crack of projectiles, the sucking whoop of lasers and the snap-whoosh-crash of plasma cannon. He ran to a small earth and shrub bank and threw himself down so that he could just see over the top. Sure enough, there was the Temple of Light, silhouetted against the dawn, all covered in vines and creepers and moss, with a few spires and towers sticking out above like angular tree trunks.
    ‘There she is!’ Kraiklyn shouted. Horza looked along the earth bank and saw a few of the Company, in the same prone position as he was. ‘Wubslin! Aviger!’ Kraiklyn shouted. ‘Cover us with the plasmas. Neisin, you keep the micro on each side of the grounds beyond, as well. Everybody else, follow me!’
    More or less as one, they were off, over the tangled bank of mossy ground and bushes and down the other side, through light scrub and long, cane-like grass, the stalks covered in clinging, dark green moss. The mixture of ground cover came up to about chest height and made the going difficult, but it would be reasonably easy to duck down out of a line of fire. Horza waded through as best as he could. Plasma bolts sang through the air above them, lighting the dim stretch of ground between them and the sloping temple wall.
    Distant fountains of earth and crashes he could feel through his feet told Horza that Neisin, sober the last two days, was laying down a convincing and, more importantly, accurate fire pattern with the Microhowitzer.
    ‘There’s a little gunfire from the upper left level,’ the cool, unhurried voice of Jandraligeli said. According to the plan, he was supposed to be hiding high in the forest canopy watching the temple. ‘I’m hitting it now.’
    ‘Shit!’ somebody yelled suddenly. One of the women. Horza could hear firing from ahead, though there were no flashes from the part of the temple he could see.
    ‘Ha ha.’ Jandraligeli’s smug voice came through the helmet speaker. ‘Got them!’ Horza saw a puff of smoke over to the left of the temple. He was about halfway there by now, maybe closer. He could see some of the others not far away, to his left and right, pushing and striding through the cane grass and bushes with their rifles held high to one shoulder. They were all gradually getting covered in the dark green moss, which Horza supposed might be useful as camouflage (providing, of course, that it didn’t turn out to be some horrible, previously undiscovered sentient killer-moss . . . He told himself to stop being silly).
    Loud crashes in the shrubbery around him, and smashed bits of cane and twigs fluttering past like nervous birds, sent him diving for the ground. The earth beneath him shuddered. He rolled over and saw flames lick the mossy stalks above; a flickering patch of fire lay directly behind him.
    ‘Horza?’ a voice said. Yalson’s.
    ‘OK,’ he said. He got up to a crouch and started running through the grass, past bushes and young trees.
    ‘We’re