FSE

Furry search engine

formerly SoFurry search engine

Ace sat silently as the air-lander's engines roared into life, lifting the troop-laden craft vertically from the floor. Despite the amazing roar of the huge engines lifting the craft upwards, and Ace's proximity to the still opened landing ramp, it was still all too silent.

Somehow he thought he would never get back alive.

But then again. He always did feel like that.

He strapped himself to the metal bench along the wall of the lander. He looked down the row he was sat on the end of. All veterans from the 1st platoon. The commanding squad of Captain Ellie and her elite guard, joined now by the Vox-Casters, mapper and a medic. There was another squad sat further down from the same platoon. The opposite side was covered in conscripts, and the central hand-rail of the lander also had conscripts down it, too. At the far side of the ship were a few crates. The Vox equipment, thought Ace. And probably some ammunition. Ace checked his rifle. Again. It was all in working order.

No dirt in the cock, or in the discharge breach, the barrel was clean and the scope was well aligned. No scratches on its lens. The trigger was responding, as was the loading breech.

His pistol was the same. The cock came back as it should. The clip slipped freely in and out when needed to, and stayed in place otherwise. The gun was clean, responcive. The barrel pristine.

His equipment where it should be. His combat knife by his left side, his sniper ammunition in pelts on his right, pistol at his back. Grenades at the front, handy-knife in its scabbard tucked into his left boot, spare knife tucked under his left shoulder Kevlar plates.

Rations in his rucksack along with his rifles bi pod, more ammunition, a tiny shovel, binoculars and both his spare scopes, the army handbook, his letter writing stuff, his ration heat-pack, some water, some stolen alcohol, some cigars even..

His compass pack with the tiny built in hand-faced clock was tied to his belt and in his left hip pocket, a flashlight in the zip-sealed right knee pocket. In his compass pack was his tiny local map - waterproofed with his designated building of combat circled in red.

His last Will and Testimony in a pocket on the inside of his Kevlar vest, a spare handed in to Captain Ellie.

Ellie stood up at the far-end of the lander.

"Furs! Our objective as the 117th is to piss off these traitor-furs by assaulting, taking and holding key positions of re-supply and reinforcement routes behind the front line of assault, so that our ground troops may pre-occupy the enemy effectively, and our armoured devisions break through their line, and punch through past our pockets of resistance and, with the aid of the 118th and 435th Mechanised, following behind the 12th and 15th armoured may set up an effective forward-line, until we are releaved by the infantry and may continue with the assault. Once down we will be resupplied by the air components of our unit" Shouted the dog-captain, over the sound of the engines and the consuming silence of the furs.

"Once we land, my squad will take the ammunition and Vox supplies out the craft. There will be a large, rounded building on our left and a blockade in front of the lander. We need to storm the round building, and clear it of enemy units. The rest of the 1st, 10th and 12th platoons will be aiding us in this, and the next wave will include the 15th up to the 23rd squads. Almost all of the 117th will be assaulting this seven-story building, be prepared for close-range intense firefights those who go inside, those who stay to repel counter attacks... Pray our snipers are faster than theres" She added as she sat down.

"Forty seconds until Landing Zone" Carried a dirtied, muffled voice over the speaker. Ace looked through the still opened boarding ramp. They were flying in low. Hugging the ground.

There were buildings spilled into the road, opened up like giant, over-filled boxes by air strikes and artillery. It was still relatively dark outside. They had flown past the front line, who would have been too occupied with the advancing infantry, and too ill-supplied through siege to shoot down the fast, low-leveled skimmers with any weapons efficiently.

"I wonder how many made it through.." Said Ace absently.

"Enough" Answered Stephan from the seat next to him. Ace turned around grinning.

"Enough for the fight to be interesting" He said. His grizzled-veteran attitude had returned, and was eager to refill the space it had left to the desperate silence before.

"Dibs on the first tank" Said Lill smiling.

"Five finger discount, I'm afraid" Ace replied, holding his rifle aloft in one hand. "First tank is all mine"

"Seconds!" Shouted Baaron, tapping at the tube-charges against his shoulder.

"Then I get the gods-damned third!" Shouted Lill.

"If you're fast enough" Answered Ace.

"Ten seconds!"

"This is it.." Said a voice from across the lander. ".. Actual combat"

"Pull yourself together!" Shouted the conscripts sergeant. "Its time for fighting not crying!"

Ace sighed as the lander screamed, slowing down to land roughly on the road as all the buckles holding the soldiers in opened up automatically, and retracted onto the benches. Following combat doctrine, Ace let way for the conscripts on the central hand-rack to get out first, followed by the two lines of soldiers on the benches on either side. He spun around letting the rest of the furs pass him as he held up his rifle, eying down the enemy at the barricade infront of the lander. He chased half-seen shadows through the bitter darkness with the cross-hairs of his rifles scope but never fired. One precious shot would be one worthy kill, not a bullet wasted.

"Go Ace, go!" Shouted Ellie, dragging a crate behind her. Barron ran out with another, and Ellie with the third. Ace shook his shoulder, being sure his rucksack was on it as Stephan ran out sending bursts of shots into the barricade as Ace sprinted past him, the roar of the lander lifting upwards behind him. he ran into the first room of the round building. Already several squads of conscripts had run up, Ellie still ordering the remaining few sergeants about as Barron followed up behind him, Lill and Stephan propping up the boxes in a corner.

A window exploded as tracer rounds marked enemy fire spat through, pinging wildly off the walls as Ace hit the floor with a thud, turning to see Lill and Barron doing the same, Stephan hiding behind a pillar and Ellie out in the corridor.

Now the battle had begun.

Ace stayed low to the ground, his rifle clutched below his bulk. He threw off his rucksack, keeping his siluet below the frame of the window and pushed his bag against a wall away from him.

"Suppressing fire.." Noted Barron.

"Yeah no shit" Shouted Lill as she loaded her weapon.

"I'll cover when you say the magic word" Called out Stephan as he kicked the bi pod from underneath his hefty-looking heavy machine gun, lifting its near unmanageable weight onto a table, pointing it towards the barricade, where flashes and tracers laced the upper floors.

More richotes came from the window frame.

"I need targets" Said Ace, pressing himself against the inside of the window, and sliding up the outside of the frame, still keeping himself hidden.

"I see at least two heavy weapons. LMG's" Said Stephan. He held his fire, knowing their positions were still invisible to the enemy through the dark.

They were firing blind at the elite of the 117th.

"Where?" Shouted Ace as more bullets panged from the walls. Their aim was sliding into room. Slowly.

"Two on the far left" Shouted Barron as he peeked up over the edge of the window's frame. "Another at the mid-point. No other contacts" He said. Tracers were now flying down from upper floors in the building.

Ace slipped a hollow capped round into his rifle through the loading breach, and pulled back the cock, the weapon clicking into its fire-ready position.

"On three" Said Stephan, seeing Barron ready with his rifle.

"One.." Counted Ellie from around the corner of the far-side window frame, with her massive shoulder-mounted anti-tank rocket launcher.

"Two.." She continued. Ace's grip on his pistol tightened. He peeked around for a flash of a second, seeing the tell-tale flashes of LMG's firing.

"Three!"

Stephan's machine gun was the first to open up. It tore white-hot rounds through the air, down the middle of the window's 12' frame, a safe distance from Ace and Ellie. Ace heard the crack-crack-crack as the rounds flew by him as he span around and knelt at the battered window and held the rifles scope at his eye's level.

He heard Barron's rifle snapping its single rounds off, and saw them tearing clouds of dust and debre from the barricades of up-turned cars, sandbags and dragons-teeth tank traps. He put the cross-hairs of his rifle across the face of a hamster trying to re-load one of the machine guns.

He clenched his fist around the handle, and felt the rifle kick back into his chest as it spat the round across the road, six lanes wide, and saw through the scope a spray of gray brain-matter and a crimson cloud of thick blood as the hollow round stopped some place in the hamsters skull, the force lashing out and removing the upper part of his head. He saw the gunner of the weapon jump in horror, and scream as the body, still leaking fluid, slid gracelessly to the ground behind the barricade.

Ace grinned.

He slid around to re-load the rifle as a white light filled the room as fire jetted from the back of Ellies weapon, and sent a rocket screaming across the road. Ace looked around to see the back half of a car, exploded and burning, sent wheeling furiously through the air by the explosion. A ripple of heat lashed back at Ace's face as he reloaded his weapon by touch and experience.

Sliding the scope across another fur, he fired another hollow round into a shoulder, punching a fist-sized hole into the furs upper torso, destroying his arm and, screaming in horror and pain, the fur got up and began running pointlessly away.

Stephan's weapon fell silent, as did Barron's. Ace turned to see why, to find Ellie crouched behind cover, her weapon shouldered.

"First squad. We're moving to the second floor so we can have a vantage point. Grab your gear and move"

Ace grabbed his equipment and headed up the stairs towards the distant crackles of weapons fire beyond. He was running behind Ellie, her tail wafting into his face. The irregular fur patterns caused by the scaring across her tail irritated his nose. She pointed into a room which had bullet holes dotted across the door, and a dead allied fur sprawled in the entrance to the room directly opposite, the deep red spray of his blood on the floor in a small puddle. It hadn't taken long for him to die. A second of the 117th was dead in the doorway just in front of the first. There was no blood around his body.

"Lill, Ace. In there" She said.

"Yes sir!" Shouted the pair, near instantly in reply.

The room was dark and dingy. The first few golden-orange rays of the rising sun were shining down the road the room overlooked. Three dead traitor furs were in the room. All rodents. Two mice and a rat. The mice were one male, one female. The male had been the one to fire at the door, his still glowing gun slumped in front of him as he lay on his face still groaning distantly in pain, his weapon just out of reach. It was apparent he no longer had the energy to reach it.

The female was dead, one of her arms brutally and gorily severed just above the elbow - cut by a high velocity round. There were holes of similar size and thickness to Ace's foot in her chest where other rounds had punched through her. One had chewed its way in through one breast, turned it into a fine paste and blown it all out across the wall behind her, along with chunks of her backbone and fine, runny spinal fluids, the lumpy pink matter of her lungs and a thick, red gore.

The rat was also a guy. He had suffered at the hands of indecent sub-machine gun fire. Bullets randomly marked the wall behind him where probably the better half of a magazine had been fired into the room from the hip as the group of the 117th entered.

Ace crouched down at the mouse, firmly standing on the rifle. Just in case.

The mouse looked up at him, lifting slightly from the ground with one arm. Ace saw that the mouse was cradling his spilled intestine through a glancing hit on his right side. Probably from the same weapon that had killed the other mouse.

"Kii-" Spat the white rodent. As he struggled to speak, blood spat from his mouth in a fine misty cloud, and he shuddered in pain. Ace, almost face-to-face with the mouse was covered in it. His fine, white muzzle now running pink with spit and blood.

He struck the mouse with the butt of his rifle.

The mouse screamed in pain, and Ace planted his boot in the rodents face.

"What was that for?" Asked Lill as she set up her weapon in a windowless window.

"He spat at me" He replied as the mouse, filled with searing pain slipped into unconsciousness.

"So he's alive? Will he be okay?" She asked.

Ace looked at the mouse as his opened side leaked his vital fluids into the cold, hard floor of the room through the thick, frail looking pink tubing of his intestine.

"He's waiting to die" He replied.

Ace looked out the window into the dark streets below and saw tracer fire glowing as it was spat across the street. Closing his eyes he imagined what the mouses last moments were to himself.

From what he had saw, he could imagine, for whatever reason, the fur's of the 117th had passed this room unchecked, only to return to it, probably after hearing sounds from within. The first fur had been gunned down in the hallway, shot by the male mouse through the door as the other furs of the 117th took cover behind the walls. Opening the door from cover, the mouse would have been narrowly missed by the SMG fire as the gunman sped in, spinning through the room at head height. The female was prone, and rose up as the gunman entered, the bullets whizzing past her as she rose, gunning down the second allied fur. A lucky shot to the head probably. Not before the rat was racked by the SMG and taken down, too.

The third fur to enter would have had the heavy weapon. Guessing at the immense damage it had caused, Ace placed it as a high-velocity rifle. Probably the Trispeen Armour-Piercing rifle used by the conscript special weapon teams. It had been fired on the mouse, who's side would have exploded in a cloud of mess, and he would have fallen face-first almost immediately. An easy assumed kill. An easy mistake to make. Then the conscript had trained his weapon on the female - the first hit would have been her arm. The next dozen or so shots would have been a petrified reaction by the conscript watching an arm explode, as one hit blew through the mouses heart, killing her in seconds.

A rather sticky end, thought Ace.

A clacker came from the far side of the room. Ace spun immediately to the mouse, who's blood soaked paws were now fumbling the barrel of his rifle. Ace fluidly pointed his rifle at the mouse, but a grim click sounded from it. It wasn't loaded.

By this time the mouse had the weapon in his grip. Ace threw the longshot rifle at him, the five foot weapon striking him, butt-first in the jaw, knocking him over. Ace crouched and drew the knife from its scabbard on his boot in a single, swift motion.

The mouse struggled through the pain to hold up his weapon. With a 'shwoosh-thick!' Ace's knife cut into the furs right shoulder, pinning his firing arm back with a wave of hot pain as the blades razor-steel edge stabbed into him, the mouse releasing the trigger of the rifle.

"Holy crap!" Shouted Lill from across the room. "I thought he was frackin' dead!"

"So did I" Replied Ace grimly. The mouse shuddered in pain.

"You killed her.." The fading rodent mumbled through his blood-soaked mouth. "I loved her and you killed her.."

He was looking to the mess of a female mouse across the room.

"Frack you" Replied Ace, kicking him hard across the jaw. Again. He felt a thick crunch beneath his boot as the mouses jaw broke.

"Hooh... Hoow would.. Yooh like it" forced the mouse through his destroyed jaw, chattering like a deranged fool through his blooded mouth and shattered body.

Ace went for his pistol in a single, near poetic movement as he gripped the weapon.

He felt the hot air as the rifle spat out white-hot rounds past him, and Ace felt his arm move all too slowly as the mouse continued to blast away. Ace's hand stalled into position, time slowing down, his arm moving as if through a thick treacle. Each inch felt like a mile.

He finally had the gun facing the mouse, as the rodents gun clackered with inactivity, the mechanism now starved of rounds. Ace clenched his fist as hard as he could, feeling the trigger barely moving beneath the pressure of his finger, almost hearing the bolt igniting the propellant in the bullet.

He felt his muscles tense against its harsh recoil, and suddenly everything was back in real time.

The kickback of the pistol shook him so hard he felt his ears wobble as he placed five hot rounds through the mouse, who finally shook and gave out. Twitching lifelessly to the floor in a thick heap, his resistance to death finally broken by Ace's third attempt.

Ace spun around to check the damage the mouse inflicted. There were bullet marks and blood around where Lill was stood. Ace rushed over to her.

She lay on the floor with a bullet lodged in the veteran symbol on her left shoulder. Another had glanced her right arm, and a third had impacted on her right breast against the Kevlar.

If she had been a conscript, there would have been nothing to stop that round. She lay on the floor, grunting and groaning as she held back screams from the pain with tears in her eyes.

"Ace!" She shouted. "What the frack!?"

"He's gone. Are you wounded?"

"Frack you! My fracking tit! Oh my god!" She screamed.

"It hit the Kevlar vest" Said Ace, trying to calm her as he went to grab her upper torso, only to notice her wounded shoulder. Then by the arms, noticing her bleeding arm.

"You're only bleeding from the arm" He ended, taking her by the stomach with one hand, holding her head down with the other.

"Check me" She said, still grunting in pain.

"What?"

"Check me! Check I'm not bleeding. If I am stop it. Use my med-pac. Its in my rucksack" She finished, pointing to her bag in the corner beneath her weapon. Ace looked down at her.

"Are you sure?"

"Fracking yes! I'm fracking sure I want you to fracking check if I'm fracking bleeding! Now GO!" She screamed at him as he scrambled to her bag. He took her med-kit from the pocket in the bag they were supposed to be in, and crawled back across to her.

He sighed as he grabbed her by the waist and propped her up against a wall. She was cradling her arm now.

"First things first" He said as he opened the tiny green box. He unwrapped then held up a tiny tablet before her. "Open wide".

Lill opened her large, canine mouth and Ace propped the tiny morphine tablet on her tongue. She swallowed hard. Thinking back to his training Ace took out a strong-scented anti-bacterial agent and dabbed some of the almost clear, bluish liquid onto a piece of cotton, and dabbed it into the glancing hit on her arm. It was more burnt than anything, Ace noticed, as he cleaned it with the fluid.

The touch of it against her broken flesh made Lill complain.

"Quit whining" Said the skunk-fox as he bandaged the wound on her arm. "Its not that bad. You'll be fine in a few days"

"Get on with it" She retaliated.

Ace hesitated.

"Oh the horror" Said Lill when she saw what he was doing. "So you'll see my brutalised tits. You're man enough, come on!"

Ace shook his head. He reached to her sides and unclipped the straps that held the front Kevlar fiber and thin steel plate against the back.

Outside bullets whizzed and several cracked off walls in the dark room. He herd return fire coming from rooms down the halls, and Ellie barking orders into each room she came across.

"Sorry Lill" Said Ace, relieved at the sudden burst of action as he spun around, and crawling along the floor took to his rifle.

"What if it gets infected!?" She shouted at him, as more bullets panged off the walls.

Ace loaded his rifle and paid her no heed as he peered out over the window. The crossed roads were lit by a fire in the barricade, and the flashes of muzzle fire were sending glowing streaks of bullets from windows in adjacent buildings now.

Streaks of smoke filled the air as screeching, high-pitched missiles flew overhead and traveled further into the city. He noted several heavy weapon teams, all some form of machine gun. The fire was intense, and Ace worried to show too much of himself, even to the random fire coming from across the road.

Suddenly a rocket came from the barricade and jetted upwards, slamming into the side of the building two floors above Ace with a fierce deafening explosion. The building shook violently, as if trying to escape the fight, loosening ceiling tiles that impacted around Lill who had re-buckled her armour and now sat at her weapon.

"I need targets!" She shouted over the racket of snaps and claps of weapons fire.

Ace looked down his scope at the barricade and saw the rocketeer moving his weapon as bullets from the 117th panged off the steel gate he had propped his thick, tubular anti-tank rocket against. He was a big cat, a Lion, reckoned Ace, judging by the thick head of deep brown hair. It could have been a scruffy, randomly golden-brown cat from the glimpse Ace got, but his tracking-target was the loader.

A rather attractive-looking skunkette, with a filled chest-plate that looked like a tattered, looted piece from the Volunteer core. It sported a similar emblem to the 89th Infantry platoon that had served here a few months ago, before being whipped out to a fur in a fierce urban assault. The pair dissapeared into the building directly opposite the one the bulk of the 117th were inside.

He quickly spotted a tight-packed group of furs letting blaze with their various weapons, sheltering inside a make-shift bunker made from salvaged plates of steel inside the back of a fire-scarred APC that was missing part of its left track system. Ace grinned. He pulled the laminated map from his pocket for the grid-reference.

"Area Two-Four-Bravo is the whole fucking street!?" He shouted in frustration over the battle.

"It is? What the frack is that about?" Replied Lill, with tears still fighting in her eyes to escape from the pain.

"Well down the road. APC, Helios class, full of evil baddies" He said as he trained his rifle on a machine-gunner too stupid to seek decent cover. "Do you see it?"

"Indeed I do" She replied as her weapon screamed, unleashing an anti-personnel rocket which hurtled towards the APC. It lit up the whole side of the building as it left, and Ace saw its reflection through his scope against the opposite building's windows. The dominating explosion ripped out through the APC, shooting fireballs out any available escape route and sounding a loud series of pings and ricochets as the shrapnel rocket tore shreds out of any unfortunates inside the vehicle.

"Report" She demanded as she reloaded her weapon from behind its armoured shield, watching the havoc she wrought through a thin visor.

"Holy prophets of Verus" Said a stunned Ace as he looked back at the APC.

"Was one of His Own in the rocket?" Asked Lill will a menacing laugh as she furthered his reference to the fur's God of war, murder, strife and fire.

"Looks it" He replied with usual militery unfeeling, "I guessed at five in the vehicle visible, all dead. Two more climbing out the hatches afar, one of them is missing her legs, and the rifles in front of the explosion are all casualties. Still kicking though" He described to her as he eyed the carnage breifly.

One of the escaping furs, who bore the stripes of a platoon sub-commander was only slightly harmed by the blast, a few lumps of twisted steel had partially shredded his left leg. He was still combat effective.

Ace adjusted his shot for the wind and ballistics, aiming just above and five centimeters to the right of the sergeants head as he fired. His rifle thumped back at him and silently and invisibly sent the round across the road and it carried on through sub-commander's face, hitting the end of his muzzle and exiting at the top of his spine.

He fell limp and lifelessly back into the vehicle he was trying to escape from. He reloaded his rifle, the hot, spent casing of the previous round fell out to the floor with a hollow clank as Ace fed the weapon more ammunition.

"Any more targets?" Asked Lill as she looked through the eyeslit in her weapons shield for more.

"The whole building" He replied as he dispatched another fur trying to reload a machine gun. "Its crawling with them. Probably use incidary"

"Got none" She replied. "All anti-personnel, and two anti-tank spear rounds, five high-explosive left, but most of 'em are in the ammo crates"

"That it?" he replied reloading, the pair concentrating on their duties rather than each other.

"Yea"

Ace looked at her stunned. She was the anti-tank member of the Platoon-Captains personal staff, why hadn't she brought any anti-tank rockets? She was holding the rocket-launcher at the building as she pulled its trigger, another rocket screaming across the massive road and impacting on the side of the adjacent building.

Shattering glass echoed across the road as it rained down towards the pavement below and a fireball rolled upwards along the building and concrete fragments flew outwards in all directions. Lill was struggling with her weapon, her wounds hampering her combat efficiency.

Ellie slammed the door open, the harsh slap of the wood against the cold concrete of the seemingly unfinished building the 117th was in sounding out above the fight.

"Lill you fracking flea-ridden moron! By the tears of Iiral, what the hell are you doing!?" She screamed in as she clutched her helmet against her head. Bullets were now impacting the walls of the room violently and almost constantly.

"My job, sir" She replied, looking up.

"Is your job to get yourself killed, missy?" Demanded Ellie. "Fracking move your weapon and cease fire! Use a damned rifle, and don't let them use your own weapons trails as target co-ordinates. They'll shoot at a missile launching bitch like you! Like they are doing now!!" She shouted as a bullet panged off the rocket-launchers shield and Lill ducked under the window's edge. Lill tried to heave the heavy weapon off the window from the cover, but screamed in pain, dropping the launcher to the floor as she fell down.

Ellie looked angry.

Very angry.

"She's wounded, sir" Said Ace as he fired his weapon again. He pulled his rifle off the ledge and sat up against the concrete wall under the window.

Ellie didn't look pleased.

"Ace, you'd better end that enemy RPG's crew pretty damn fast and make sure no one fires it. The last shot killed four furs, set two on fire and another one is still missing his arm. I'm damned sure they'll aim at the competition this time" She said as she checked her rifle.

"Already on it, theres a busty skunkette loading it in salvaged volunteer armour, and the 89th infantry badge. Loaders a Lion. I'd say about 20-ish, six-fiveish. Urban camo, some salvaged 'script armour, didn't see the badge" He answered proudly.

Ellie grinned at him. "You really are the best, aren't you?"

"Best of the best" He replied. Ellie ran back into the corridor as he spoke and Ace looked at Lill.

"Thanks Ace" She replied. She took the rifle from the dead rat in the corner.

"Nice shooting" He replied as he looked out over the window and saw the smashed wreck in the wall in the other building reloading his rifle for the umpteenth time.

"Thanks" She replied. "I'd say about yours, but I can't see what you see"

"Thats why I'm the Ace" He replied smirking as he brought his rifle to bare. He saw the skunkette through a window and chased her with his cross hairs. It was no good hitting the loader, he'd need to hit the gunner. And any one else who picked up the weapon.

Through the scratches and the dirt inside the scope he followed the jet-black female for almost seventy seconds as they vanished behind walls and re-appeared in windows a dozen times before they decided on a firing spot. The skunkette, it turned out, was only pointing out targets, the lion, as it indeed turned out to be, was firing the weapon and and another female, a squirrel, was loading it. Ace was disappointed to discover the squirrel had smaller breasts than the skunk, but such was life, he supposed.

He decided, as the Lion set up the RPG, that he had to get the best psychological effect from the shot as possible to pros pone the next shot from the weapon long enough that he could reload to shoot the next firer of the weapon. The chesty female was spying over the building Ace was in with binoculars as Ace watched her, getting the tingle of a more true form of sniping in his spine. He felt like he was watching his helpless prey as bullets sprang off the wall around him.

He took a few moments to eye her over, examining her, seeing if she was a worthwhile kill. She bore no marking of her own, no squad insignia, besides the 89th, and no rank marks. Perhaps she was a soldier of fortune, a civilian with a gun? She certainly didn't have the body of a soldier. She was slightly large, but looked as if the months of siege and the lack of food the inhabitants of the city had were thinning out her flabby body. Her breasts were far too big for a soldier, she was wearing the generic armour for the volunteer core, which could suit anyone up to a C-cup, which was generally everyone, until anything more was needed. But she was pouring out of it. Ace reckoned she'd be fat-boobed more than big-boobed anyway.

He suddenly noticed she was looking at him through her binoculars. She had followed the smoke trails from Lill's rockets to the room they were both in. Lill was firing blind out the window by now, hiding from the mirad of bullets reflecting off the room and the windows, and everything else around them. Ace just stayed low, looking at the top floor of the building opposite where the RPG team were taking their sweet time about picking a firing angle.

Perhaps they were just slow, cumbersome fools with an RPG to fire.

Perhaps they knew alot more about what they were doing. Perhaps.. Perhaps they knew something Ace didn't.

The top floor was only one up from where Ace was, and the width of the six-lane road that made the distance between the two buildings made the angle fairly straight-forward. He waved to the skunkette looking at him from behind his cover, who then lowered the large, gray binoculars slightly confused.

Ace shot them.

They shattered in her hands, cutting them open with fragments of glass and shattered plastics, and the bullet continued through her hip and into the wall behind her. She dropped down to where Ace couldn't see.

He sharply reloaded with an armour-piercing round, only because he found it easier to reload and fire than anything else. The RPG team was startled by the skillful shot made by Ace, and the gunner pointed his weapon roughly where the skunk had been looking.

His aim was off. Way off.

Ace reckoned he would hit two or three rooms to his left, further towards the center of the bulding. Ace fired at him, hitting the arm he had bracing the weapon as the squirrel loaded it. He fell backwards with the weight of the gun and out of Ace's view. The squirrel looked down and shouted something, but to Ace it was cold and silent, and in the cross-hair of his scope.

He went for a kill now. He loaded a hollow-cap into the rifle and took especially careful aim. Bullets continued to rain down around him, but the aim was terribly off, and many rifles had been turned at other targets, or simply stopped firing.

Ace was about to fire when he felt a rumble. It felt like a supersonic fighter, but he could hear nothing. He looked down the street, then up it. Then he looked behind the barricade.

Still nothing.

He looked back into the scope of his gun, and re-aligned his shot at the squirrel. He fired, blowing a chunk of crimson fluids out her right shoulder, ending her usefullness to any military as she joined her comrades on the floor.

He felt the deep rumble again. He looked up from his rifle and down the street again and back up it. Then down the road the baricade was on.

Nothing.

Lill looked at him.

"You feel that too?" She asked, clutching the depleted rifle.

"Yeah" He replied, looking at her.

"Can you see anything?"

"No"

"Nothing in the air?"

"No. Not even theirs"

"The roads?"

"Deserted. Accept the barricade, which is on fire"

He sat back against the wall and rested his rifle on the floor and looked at Lill, who did the same.

"RPG?" She asked him, staring at her wounded arm.

"Gone, for the moment" He replied. The firefight had almost totally cooled down now. There were odd bursts of weapons fire every ten seconds or so, but nothing more. Ace checked his pelts of ammunition.

Suddenly there was an earthshaking explosion and chunks of debre flew down the corridor past the door, followed by screams. Ace clutched his rifle and took to the window, but everything was still quiet, the roads empty and the RPG hadn't fired. There was no smoke trail.

He looked back to Lill who was reaching for her weapon, and detaching the tri-pod and its armoured shield so she could handle it.

"You don't think its a-"

"Tank" Interrupted Lill. "Its my job. Trust me. I just know"