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After seventy-four minutes, by Ace's watch - which was mounted in his compass-box - the bombardment suddenly fell silent. The rounds never moved up the line fully, they strafed too and fro across a short area, as far as he could tell from inside the tiny room.

The squirrels picked up talking twenty minutes into the bombardment, the collie started crying when the creaking roof was struck by a shell and the room almost fell in, and the skunks chittered away in their own corner. Ace spent much of the hiding sat in front of the door. He didn't say much to anyone.

"Can we please leave now?" Asked the fearful dog. Ace said nothing.

"Yeah, lets go. I've had enough of this" Said one of the squirrel volunteers as he stood up, grabbing his unloaded rifle.

Ace tilted his head around to glance at the volunteer, shooting a cold, hating stare.

The squirrel tried to shake it off, but the unmoving fox gave no ground and the squirrel stopped in his steps seven feet away from Ace.

"Put your weapon down. Or I'll kill you myself" Ace said as he stood to full hight, cracking his back and his neck as he did, and flexing his fists.

"We've been in here for an hour!" Shouted the other squirrel. "Let us the frack out!"

Ace drew his loaded pistol and pointed it at the first squirrel.

"I'll let you out when its safe. Now you either stay here, quietly. And wait... If you open that door, for all I can tell napalm will come bubbling through and melt off our feet, intoxicate the air and suffocate us all. Now perhaps you want to stay calm, or else I won't" Said Ace, menacingly in his deepened voice, commanding obedience from the squirrels. The second squirrel twitched.

"You thing gunslinging will keep me calm!?" He bellowed, "What kind of fracked logic is tha-"

Ace shut up the squirrel by discharging a round from his pistol at the door behind him, which ricocheted off and bounced into a wall, chipping the concrete. His arm spun back forwards as a blur, the pistol facing the louder squirrel.

Silence.

"Listen to him!" Shouted Alaska at length. "He's got a weapon, damn it he'll kill us!"

"I'd rather die to the bombardment" Answered the now over-brave second squirrel, staring at ace. Ace was silent, his arms extended with the barrel of his amour-piercing pistol pointed firmly at the squirrel.

"Listen to me, you tree-dwelling prick" Said one of the skunks. "I don't want to be here, neither does he, or her!" Pointing to the other skunk and the collie. "I can tell you don't want to be in this fracking hole, and neither does that fracking sniper. Its far too hot in here, its stuffy and it smells like a pigs dick!" He continued.

Ace grinned as the squirrel turned to face this new opponent. He holstered his pistol. Quietly.

"Listen" Said Ace, interrupting the skunk. "All we need to do is wait. Then when its safe, you can piss off, and leave everyone else alone. I have places to go you're not cleared to follow. So lets agree when this is over we can hate each other then"

This was the last thing anyone said in the bunker. After another hour of waiting Ace finally stood up, spraying the door with foam from a miniature fire extinguisher from under one of the bunks. It was standard equipment to be found in a fox-hole like this.

With the steel door cooled the squirrels, unsurprisingly, were the first to dissapear out the hole. The skunks gathered themselves and followed next, and then Ace.

Outside was a mess.

The concrete trench system was still largely intact. There was slight indents here and there where the jelly of the napalm had corroded into the surface, and black scars of charring from fires but their concrete-lined-strength was still there. The air stank of everything foul.

It smelt of over-burnt meat, seared flesh and torched clothes. Melted materials were oozing from a fox-hole that had been filled with equipment, and shattered shells lay everywhere. The ground outside the trenches was scorched deep browns and blacks, and now resembled more of no-furs-land. Ace glanced across the wasteland between the front lines. Behind the horizon he could just make out white glows. Faint and incredibly distant.

The over-heated barrels of their batteries, he thought.

If he acted quickly he could get the approximate co-ordinates to Ellie. If she was alive. He looked down the trench lines to the hole they had taken residence in. Down the line there was still smoke rising. Something had burned. Ace could only see it being unfortunate conscripts, un-drilled and untrained in actions like these. They would have sheltered anywhere they could find it - underneath some crates before a fox-hole or sealed bunker if it was nearer, he thought.

That might have just saved them, in a normal bombardment. The heated shrapnel would only have scarred them rather than maimed them if they were well hidden, a near-direct hit would end them, but it would bury them if they were in a fox-hole.

But from incindary.. There was no salvation outside.

Flames and napalm. It destroyed everything.

Something was sick behind him. Ace spun quickly to see what it was.

"Alaska?" He asked. She was puking her guts out. "Do you want help?"

She waved her hand negatively through her vomiting. Ace shrugged. He walked on through the barren trench as he heard a thick crunch beneath his tred. He looked down, to see a charcoaled black arm, burnt almost to the bone reaching out to him. He staggered back from it, disgusted by what it seemed to be doing, bumping into Alaska as he did. She spilled her stomach onto his tail.

"Oh frack off! I survive a hellstorm to be vommed on!?" He outraged as Alaska staggered backwards from him, her skin paled beneath her scruffy coat and her eyes dull from the sickening environment she was in.

"I-I'm so-sorry!" She managed. Ace flicked his tail, trying to spill the sick from it.

"Whatever" He replied. Wanting to clean it, but not touch it. He may have been a seasoned soldier. But this just wasn't right.. "Where are you supposed to be" Demanded Ace. He was looking back at the charred fur now.

He had... She had.. Ace couldn't tell. It had been reaching for the door. Maybe whilst it was still melting beneath the napalm.

"117th Mechanised" She blurted, chasing after his tail to wipe of her sick.

"Which platoon?"

"15th. I think. Third Squadron.." She replied. "But I don't know my way back to the platoon command"

Ace was surprised by her a second time. The first time was in the bunker, when she was the one to ask him how they could survive. Now was a terrified, squeamish civilian, conscripted into service, actually knowing which regiment and which platoon she was in.

Ace pointed down the charred trench to the right.

"Follow that" He said. "You walk for like, two minutes and its down there. Can't miss it. Giant bunker" He said. She nodded.

Ace set off in the opposite direction, towards his platoons area.

"Where are you going?" She asked.

"Back to my platoon, the 117th mechanised 1st Platoon" He said over his shoulder.

"Isn't that platoon command?" She asked.

"Yes"

"Why are you going there?"

He never replied to her.

The next time he saw her, she was a gutless stain in a crater.

She was with the right squad that time, though.

Ace pushed on through the hot air of the burning trenches, avoiding the burnt husks of furs where he could see them. There were dozens of them. One bunker, the 13th platoon, almost every fur was burnt across the ramparts or in front of the bunker, which was left open and was still blazing. Ace walked past it - there would be no one left alive in there. Not after at least an hour of burning in a one-room bunker.

The 13th platoon - a platoon of conscripts - as it was later assumed had mistaken the artillery guns for anti-tank guns coming from further up the trenches, and taken weapons to the ramparts to repel an attack, and assumed the explosions behind them for a curtain barrage of incidery rounds - when a rather unfortunate 34Kg Phosphorus round landed two feet left of the entrance to their platoon bunker, setting instantly alight everyone still on the ramparts. This sent a wave of heat and a ball of flame down the trenches, scorching any fur not already dead, and igniting the closest fabric items to the platoon's door, leaving the rest trapped inside where they were all found, stuck in a corner still brandishing the half-dozen tiny fire extinguishers.

The skunk-fox reached his platoon's area, walking past a few more charred bodies. The bombardment had come from nowhere, after military intelligence had declared the enemy was out of artillery shells, their supplies blockaded by the siege. He was glad to see that his squads door was bolted shut, and generally unscathed. He banged on the door, a heavy 'DOOMF DOOMF' echoing from inside as he did.

"Who's there?" Demanded Barron's voice from inside.

"Ace" Came his shouted reply. Bolts clinked from behind the door.

"Ace! You're alive!" Shouted Barron as he went to hug the fox. Ace didn't move, stopping Barron moments before the pair touched. "Well, come in.." He said, hesitantly.

Ace stepped in past the tiny goat, seeing his squad eating from their ration tins.

"Wow, marksman, you're alive. You really are untouchable, aren't you?" Mocked Lill, Ellie smiling to see him.

Ace did nothing in reply. He simply sat in his place.

"Eat up, Ace. Thats an order if it has to be" Said Ellie. Ace looked up at the cross-breed. She pointed to her watch, hers mounted in an identical compass-pack as his, prompted up against a wall. "Its three-hundred. One hour until the attack" She replied.

Ace reached over to his bunk, and dragged his rucksack from it, taking out a random tin and, twisting its built-in self-opening screw, peeled back its tin lid. He looked at the less-than-appetising grayish paste inside it, and used the self-opening screw - in reverse now - as a spoon to eat it.

"They must know we're coming" He stated in between mouthfuls of gray ration-matter.

"I know" Replied Ellie. "We were talking about it earlier"

"Yeah" Said Stephan. "Is there anyone left to attack?"

"looked like 13th were dead. The strike was isolated, ended just short of here, stretched up to at least the 14th, probably up to the 16th. Looks like they only hit the 117th Mech. They know our layout. Again" Replied Ace. The room was quiet for a short while.

"Well... we're not the only ones going" Said Ellie after a while. "These casualties are only light. They're sending the 118th, and the 435th as well, along with the 12th and 15th armored, and seven infantry regiments are being pushed across in reserve"

Everyone was quiet. Everything was quiet. Ace sat and wondered. He was wondering mostly about what to say. But everything seemed inappropriate, or wrong somehow. The silence overwhelmed every attempt at talking. It was like a blanket that took over all the sound, no matter how much will Ace seemed to put into talking, or even making some random noise, it simply refused to happen. Even the assembly point was quiet, as Ace and his squadron led the conscripts of the 117th Mechanised Airborne backwards from the front line and towards their transport aircraft, the infantry company they walked past were silenced.

The burnt-out husks of furs were crudely pushed to one side to make way for the mobilizing furs.

War, thought Ace, is unglorified. He checked his rifle one last time before he got in the over-crowded air-landing craft, half filled with conscripts.

He suddenly felt his stomach sink..