Hi Thorn, thanks for the lovely review. It inpsired me to knock this chapter out early. It's good to see people are out there!

I watch silently as the engineering team crouch around the detonator. The pad is compressed and I hear the roar of the earth even through the soundproof earphones I've been issued. Dirt fountains up into the sky and arcs gracelessly to earth, great brown clods of it, mixed with shards of rock. A new foxhole has just been built.

I watch the scurrying of the engineers with a jaun eye. It's been six hours since we reached the LZ again, without incident. Four of the other companies out had had contacts with Johnny too, and six skinnies, including a commander of some sort, where herded off to the interrogation tent, kept isolated from the rest of the camp.

Whatever the skinnies told Command, it sure set the cat amongst the Chocobos. They shrank back our perimeter, halving the 'box' we're defending, and set the engineering battalion to blasting new foxholes and strengthening the dug-outs at the double. They've run out miles of wire and laid mines. The engineers have even emplaced our 155mm cannons and chain guns, and there are mutterings that the Colonel is having the regiment's SAM 08G company taken out of hibernation.

The engineers are all pale and drawn and the officers move about thin-lipped. The grunts are restless. Wild rumours about what lieutenant so-and-so let slip and what Captain whats-her-name reckons are flying all over camp. Fights keep flaring then dying down as soldiers run out of steam and go back to waiting. The pressure is worst for the sergeants. We've got to keep order amongst the grunts while being kept in the dark ourselves, trusted by neither grunts nor officers. Typically therefore, I am huddled with Blue and Caster, in a little hole out of the way somewhere, and we are each drawing comfort from the presence of the others.

[Term: Box, slang word for regimental camp or LZ.]

No one knows what it is the Colonel is so worried about, but the fact we've gone from sweeping search-and-destroy patrols to all out defence means even the dimmest grunt knows that Johnny must be all through these mountains. The brighter grunts have gone into an overdrive of speculation; about us and the Fourth and Tenth to the north being used as bait, to temp Johnny out of his networks of tunnels to where General Bell can drop his paratroopers and bombs on them to his heart's content. Others reckon that the skinnies wouldn't have the strength to break our camp, but that they've hired a SEED company. Other favourites include either the Free Republic of Winhill or the Eco-Confederation of Timber secretly deploying regulars in these mountains disguised as skinnies, or that Esthar has given the skinnies the Bomb, and the Colonel has stopped patrols to avoid stirring him up.

The first artillery shell screams in just as darkness falls, almost unheard under the roar of digging equipment and the crump of the excavation blasts. The detonation as it strikes a petrol dump shakes the camp and lights up the whole 'box'. Screams are lost behind the roar of the flame as it eats skywards. We can hear the odd whining noise of more shells incoming. Like Blue and Caster, I'm thrown violently to the earth floor of the trench as one explodes a mere thirty yards away. Unlike on the web shows there is no fancy spurt of flame, just earth fountaining up with a rumbling roar as though the earth itself is wounded. I reel upright in total shock, in a world once again gone mad. My shoulder hurts like blazes and I'm seeing in triple vision after my head slammed off the wooden floor of the trench.

Blue is hauling me towards her, mouthing the words of a cure spell. It's healing warm seeps through me numbing my shoulder and clearing my head like a torrent of icy water. Blue slaps me hard. Now it is my cheek that is numbed.

"How many fingers am I holding up?" she yells over the cacophony of noise.

"Four," I say, looking round her blearily at the night sky.

Under the crystal desert sky with its frozen perfection hell has ringed the horizon. Flames leap from hills to the north, where the Fourth is stationed. Eastwards, the buffs of hill 861 and her sisters flicker with flashes as PLF artillery spits down on the LZ. The hills seem to bristle with guns; the flashes are bunched together, on what I guess are the unsearched plateaus. Our regular patrols and sensors stretched only three klicks out from the LZ's edges, the maximum range of the skinnies' new homemade Katsunya rockets. It seems that isn't the only new weapon they've been building. The 'sweep and clear' missions the companies performed this morning have stirred up a hornet's nest.

The skinnies are hammering us from seven klicks away I think numbly. Big guns, with a range twice that of our own light 155mm pieces. The Fourth is being targeted from the south. I back-track the graceful arc of one star of death and find myself staring at mountains whose peaks are so distant I need to scroll up to maximum visual magnification to spot the tell-tale flashes. A swift request for the co-ordinates cross -referenced against the helmet chip's virtual map confirms my suspicions. The Fourth is being shelled by pieces which can reach them from twelve miles away. Safely across the border with the Free Republic.

[Author's note: the events depicted in this story are not in any way meant to be anti-Islamic. I admit freely that I drew on my experiences of living in the Middle East and this part of the UK, which is about forty percent British Asian. There are scenic parallels with Afghanistan, but these guerrillas are NOT the Taliban! The PLF is based mostly on the FLN, the Algerian liberation movement in the 1950s and 60s. It also draws on modern day secular Palestinian militants. Yes, they are religious, but they are rather people fighting for independence who happen to be religious, rather then people fighting because of their religion. This is not a story about jihad, which in any case couldn't apply as this war is an aggressive one for independence, rather then a war in defence of their religion.]

Imran Ahmed Hassman-al-Saloud, leader of Tujin's Panthan, Amin of the Chzack Mountains Tzenmen and a Lieutenant-General in le Front de la Liberation Populaire, stood on the plateau overlooking the camp of 'les Blancs'. He idly checked the time again on the antique stopwatch he'd worn since the day he'd become Amin on his father's death. He supposed it was time. The Nakzers of the three 2000 strong pandins had each made radio contact confirming they where in position. Malabur, the bandy-legged Menik from the plains, had sent a runner signalling his Padishar commandos had insinuated themselves within striking distance of the enemy camp.

Les Blancs would have a nasty shock when Malabur and his Padishars run amoke through their camp he thought and he smiled, thinly. Unlike the majority of soldiers in PLF Panthans and in a 1200-strong contingent of fighters from the allied movement l'Organisation des Clans Unies, the suicide-commandos didn't care how many casualties they took. Dying was rather the point.

He checked his watch again. The guerrillas' 'hurricane bombardment' had entered its thirty-fifth minute. The gunships and ornithopters of the enemy had been buzzing round the Winhillian batteries' positions for the last fifteen minutes duelling with the guerrillas' machine-gun nests and Katsunya rockets. Soon the high altitude bombers with their high explosive laser-guided bombs would be arriving, guided by the infrared emitting markers scattered from the ornithopters. It was then les Blancs would discover just how deep the bunkers the guns where firing from where. Les Blancs where not the only ones who could use a computer, and military ballistics where surprisingly simple when you had a three-dimensional virtual map of the entire area. Still, being caught in the open in an air raid wasn't smart.

He raised the radio mike to his lips.

"Galka Nidos?"

"Sir?"

"The troops are in position, Galka. Cease bombardment. Pending further orders you may begin free-fire. In the next few minutes you should begin receiving requests from the field commanders for fire support. You will comply with the best of your ability."

"Yes Sir. Vie La Malisa!"

"Vie la Malisa."

Snapping off the contact the Amin allowed his anxious body guards to hustle him back into the relative safety of the bunker. Behind him he heard the continual roar of the thirty-six pieces below begin to break up, as the battery commanders responded to their Galka's free-fire order. Somewhere down there three pandins would be rising to their feet, their fighters casting off the camo-cloaks, that simple space blanket coated with earth that concealed them, and surging towards the shattered trenches of the stunned enemy. Malabur and his commandos would already be fighting in the midst of the LZ.

The Amin's stump ached, and he shut his remaining eye. Hyne willing, this would work. It had sounded madness a year ago, when the Vessel had first broached the plan of taking on les Blancs in open battle, and Imran still did not like it. It ran against centauries of Tzenman battle traditions. To place yourself openly in the way of the Galbadian fist!

But of course the youthful warlords that had risen in the PLF on the back of the war had been eager for it. A way to cut the war's length, by perhaps ten years! Ruthless risk-taking had brought them to power. What was one more gamble? The Amin shook his head. Youthful impatience could still undo all that he and the older chiefs in the leadership had plotted for, fought for, in the last six years. But the Vessel had sounded so sure…Hard to say no to the mortal incarnation of your chief god! And the older he got, the tighter Imran clutched the Scriptures to his heart. They were the one thing that retained any meaning for him in this jumbled, senseless world. And if the gods did not know what to do, who did?

"Chakka-, I mean General! Nakzer Uzman says his men are encountering stiff resistance from the enemy strong points to their east. Les Blancs have deployed a dozen SAM 0G8s there. He is requesting reinforcements and vehicle support."

Imran shook his head, irritated that the wanderings of old age have crept up on him unnoticed, as much as by the youthfulness of the aide standing by the radio set. Enough of that! He had his part of the battle to direct and, Hyne willing, win.

"He is receiving artillery support?"

"Yes sir, 'F' and 'L' troops."

"Tell Nakzer Uzman his request for more men is denied. Tell him to expect the arrival of the vehicles shortly. Release Galka Nashir's jeeps. Twelve with launchers. Make the rest draw point carriers. Priority to healing magic that can revitalise his assault."

Imran settled on the edge of his chair and scowled at the map. He had a battle to fight.