This was a weird-ass dream.

  Here I was, standing on a dock, surrounded by a bunch of fursuiters in khaki-beige-tan-whatever the fuck brown uniforms holding old ass rifles while my ears rang from explosions and what sounded like an entire gun range opening fire at once.

  “Lieutenant!” A very realistic fursuit runs up to me, a coyote or fox of some kind, eyes way too vibrant to be fake. “I don’t have a weapon!” She says to me in a Slavic accent, Russian, I guess.

  “The fuck am I supposed to do about that?” I say. Say…I can speak and think in this dream. This is pretty damn realistic. Maybe that painkiller prescription wasn’t lying when it said to take one every six hours only in ‘SEVERE PAIN’.

  The furry eventually slinks off, joining a crowd of wolves, a sheep, a few rats maybe, and whatever else retarded shit I’m dreaming up right now.

  Then, one of the loud ass noises around me starts getting louder, right above me. I crane my head to look up into the dark sky above and spot a darker silhouette rapidly approaching. Suddenly, two bright flashes appear on its wings, followed by a stream of bullets ripping into the ground and me.

  I barely feel the sensation as my legs are cut out from under me, followed by the collapse of my chest and organs from the hail of bullets.

  I immediately let out a yelp as my body spasms involuntarily.

  What in the everloving goddamn fuck WAS THAT?!

  What kind of dream has you get shot, feel the pain, and—I look around, seeing I’m still on a rickety wooden dock, surrounded by furries—still be dreaming?

  “Lieutenant!” I look to the voice and find the same fox-girl from earlier, her helmet at a weird angle now that I’m actually paying attention to her. “I don’t have a weapon!”

  “Then, uh, don’t go off and die?” I say. “Didn’t you already ask me that?”

  The fox’s face winces. “No, Comrade, I just got off the vessel over there, and—”

  I lose focus on her voice as I hear a noise from above. Craning up, I quickly spot the dark shape of a plane rapidly approaching once more, just like before.

  “Oh shit,” I mumble. I turn to get the fuck out of dodge, only to run right into the side of a lamp post right behind me. My nose makes a disgusting crunching noise as I fall right on my ass, pain flaring up and making blood spurt out of my nostrils.

  “Lieutenant!” I hear the voice of the furry girl right as the sound of bullets impacting flesh hits my ears, followed by bullets hitting me.

  Ok, this dream is really starting to piss me the fuck off.

  As soon as I find myself back on the dock, I start booking it past the crowds of animals and onto the shore, where a tank and a few trucks are parked.

  Wait.

  Russian accents, war-torn landscape, rubble, massive river,

  This is Stalingrad. Like, the fuckin’ meatgrinder of the Eastern Front. But what’s with the Groundhog Day shit?

  “GO, GO! FORWARD!”

  I look up and see a man—a regular human man—standing on a box between two trucks, a pair of furries on either side of him, handing out rifles and small packs of ammo to a crowd of anthropomorphic soldiers. He has a voice-cone-thingy held up to his mouth.

  “BY ORDER OF COMRADE STALIN, NOT ONE STEP BACK! DRIVE THEM FROM OUR STREETS! BURN THEM FROM OUR BUILDINGS! PUSH THEM OFF EVERY INCH OF GROUND!”

  I go to walk up to the guy and ask him some questions when I hear a gravelly voice behind me. “Go, get off the boats! Now!”

  Turning, I see a group of furred soldiers, dressed in a weird spotted camo, leap off one of the canvas-covered tug-boats, only for a shell or bomb to come crashing down and slam into the middle of it, sinking it quicker than shit.

  Another human man, an older guy dressed in brown and blue, doesn’t flinch when the explosion goes off. Instead, he waves his hand around and points past me, toward the city. “Go! Drive the Germans from our city!”

  Well, he sure as hell knows what the fuck is going on, may as well. “Comrade Tidman!”

  I find myself suddenly face-to-face with the commissar, his stubble almost tickling my nose with how close he is. “Take these two squads and advance!” He turns and yells at the twelve soldiers crowded on the pier. “MOVE! Get off the docks!”

  “Wait-” I try to ask him literally anything, but he’s already marched off, yelling at a crowd of plain-dressed furries.

  Shit.

  I whip myself around, trying to find another superior of some kind, only for another plane, a Stuka from the sound and shape of it, to come crashing down overhead, slamming into the wall of what used to be a factory, maybe.

  “Lieutenant! What are our orders!?” I turn around AGAIN and see the dozen camouflaged furries all huddled around me in a semi-circle, crouched to avoid shrapnel and the like.

  “Fucking, uh, follow me, I guess.” Helluva god damn dream.

  I start jogging off toward the mouth of the docks when a bombshell comes screaming down into a tug right next to me, sending a square piece of metal right into my neck and decapitating me.

  Holy fucking shit, that hurt SO god damn bad.

  I cough and grip my throat as pain shocks me along the rough line where the hot piece of metal severed my cranium from my body.

  Fuck…this is a really shitty dream.

  I move off the dock and avoid the strafing run from the first plane, keeping my head down to avoid any extra pieces of shrapnel. The boat from earlier docks, and the Commissar yells at the anthro’s to get off the dock.

  “Wait! Uh, Comrade Commissar! What are our orders?” I managed to ask this time. The grizzly-looking fucker doesn’t spare a glance and just moves around me. “To stop the Fascists and drive them out, Lieutenant! Now move!”

  “God damn it…Ok, uh, follow me!” I yell out to the twelve soldiers I’ve been ‘given’. We make it up the docks, this time before the bomb blows my head off, and onto the brick platform that’s—dear lord.

  This ‘Staging area’, if you can call it that, is littered with empty boxes, fresh and old corpses, and lines of stretchers, each filled with someone unconscious, screaming in agony, or already dead. Hell, I don’t think any of them are being treated.

  Forgetting everything else, I spring to the closest stretcher, a cat of some kind breathing raggedly and crutching her arm, lying in it. I kneel and reach for my shears…

  What the fuck am I wearing?

  My clothes are the same as the Commissar’s, only with yellow instead of blue. Can’t I even have my fucking kit in my own dream?

  “Lieutenant! Get up! We’re reclaiming our city!” I look up and see the Commissar, pistol in hand, yelling at me from over the sea of wounded.

  Fuck…it’s just a god damn dream, Alex…just a god damn dream…

  I stand up again and find my two squads eyeing me with wary glances. Unlike the majority of the soldiers around, these are armed with short-barreled SMGs and have better kits and actual fatigues instead of dull browns and khakis. At least my guys seem competent, unlike the nervous and shaken-up conscripts around.

  “Comrade, get up that hill!” God, that commissar sure has a pair of lungs on him. Right as I leave the wounded cat behind, a T-34 marked with a yellow stripe around the hull suddenly starts and advances away and up a hill pockmarked with craters, dead trees, and rubble.

  Seeing as how every conscript and their mother is doing the same, I might as well join in on the fun and not get shot while doing so. “Everyone, behind the tank, move it!”

  Leading my two squads, we sprint up right to the rear of the dull green AFV, and a good thing we did, too. Not a moment later, a rifle round pings off the side of the turret and whizzes right past my head. Peering over, just up the hill, I can spot a few dark grey and green figures behind logs and debris, easily firing and picking off conscripts as they charge forward aimlessly.

  My hands grasp my—god damn it, no rifle? Really? I look around my waist and find a leather holster with a bitch-ass looking revolver inside. The thing looks like it’s from 1890!

  In any case, I pull it out and find the handle is attached to the holster by a leather cord, which is nice, I suppose.

  I aim the pistol over the engine deck and put the tiny iron sights over the figure of a soldier and squeeze the trigger…for nothing to happen.

  Luckily, my two squads get the memo and start lighting up the enemy, sending a literal hail of bullets at the foe. Clearly, the German squad was not expecting a tank or an opponent that would fight back, and was torn apart like wet paper from our gunfire.

  As the last Kraut falls, I figure out that my pistol is single action, and requires me to pull back the hammer EVERYTIME I fire. Go figure.

  Another German squad farther off the side sees their friends get shredded and decides to pull back as fast as their legs can carry them. With the infantry pushed back, the T-34 pushes up farther, with us hugging its ass.

  “Charge! Break the German line!” Holy hell, that commissar is STILL yelling? How the hell is he everywhere and NOT dead yet?

  In any case, I choose NOT to charge my guys and me into the enemy, and remain behind the armored vehicle, lighting up another squad of Germans, this squad having a few SMGs of their own. Unfortunately, the tank has yet actually to open fire on the enemy, but at least we HAVE a tank, and they don’t.

  Finally cresting the hill, the tank stops before a massive defensive line of Germans, including rifles, a spotlight, and multiple squads of soldiers.

  Thankfully, the tank turret starts to turn and take aim at the line…only for a Stuka’s bomb to slam right in the engine deck and engulf it and us in a fireball.

  That, by far, has to be the worst pain I’ve ever felt in my 28 years of life. And now it’s just…gone.

  God, I wish I had some Oxycodone.

  I leave the docks, wait for the Commissar, avoid the bomb, follow the tank, push up the hill—

  I stand by my earlier statement; getting shot was nowhere near as painful as the fireball.

  Leave the dock, commissar, squad, don’t get fucking shot, follow the tank, reach the top of the hill.

  As the tank stops, I look to the right and spot a bombed-out storage shed made of brick, with a large enough crater to hold all of us. “Follow me!” I leave the back of the tank and dive into the crater as the rest of my platoon follows. As the last anthro hits the dirt, the same bomb hits the tank, creating a fireball, followed by a vision-rattling explosion.

  Ahhh…how I missed you, tinnitus.

  But, now, we’re all stuck in a bombed-out building with at least a few platoons of Germans on the other side of the rubble. “Ok, up and on the wall, don’t let them close!” I yell out, scrambling up and onto the bricks with my pistol ready.

  As I ready my gun, I spot a German anthro, of course, EVERYONE is a furry, advancing with their rifle in one hand and the other steadying themselves. I place my sight over their chest and pull the trigger.

  The revolver makes a surprisingly large bang, making my hand recoil about the same as a .44 magnum. The round catches the soldier in their upper chest, slamming them into the dirt and ceasing their functions.

  The rest of my…women, join me. Shit, there are a lot of female soldiers here. Fuck, Alex, focus.

  The rest of my soldiers join me, placing their SMG’s on the bricks and opening up on the surprised defenders, suddenly under attack by twelve sub-caliber machine guns from the right flank.

  A squad or two attempts to push back, but with us firing and the wave of conscripts finally catching up, the Germans break and retreat, most of them turning and running over the ruins of an industrial concrete wall.

  “Their line is breaking! They run like cowards!” A younger conscript, some kind of canine, yells with her empty hands raised in excitement, and of-fucking-course, tail wagging.

  But then, right as the adrenaline starts doing the feel-good shit, here comes Mister Commissar with a leather-bound book, along with a few other human men and, again, female anthros, some with yellow and some with blue uniforms.

  “Comrades! The time has come to push the Fascists out of Stalingrad!” He holds up the leather-bound book, which is actually a map case with an aerial photo of what must be the area we’re operating in. “Lieutenant Tidman, you will be leading the assault.”

  “What?” I blurt out rather unprofessionally. He ignores me and continues. “You will charge from the docks to the square.” He taps the bottom of the photo and drags his finger up along the ruins and streets toward a central area. “Once it’s clear, we can bring in support to help crush the German armor that is sure to be waiting.”

  “Hang on, armor? Do we have any anti-tank weapons?” I interrupt, standing from the rubble I was still leaning against. The commissar shoots me a glare. “You will make do. The Fascists are well dug in, but their persistence is no match for Soviet zeal and our overwhelming numbers!”

  “You’re just gonna send us to our deaths?” I hold my hands out. “That’s suicide! All you’ll be doing is killing—”

  Faster than I can realize, the commissar uses his free hand to draw his pistol and plant a slug right in my neck, sending me down onto the bricks, clutching my wound, knowing damn well there’s no way I’ll survive.

  “Lieutenant Isakovich, you will lead the charge…”

  That. Mother. Fucker.

  I draw my pistol and march down the dock to where the commissar waits and aim it at his back.

  The tug arrives with my squad, which he directs, only to turn and be met with a slug to the gut, followed by one to the shoulder.

  I only get to watch him squirm a little before another commissar lights me up with a semiauto pistol, one bullet striking my head and killing me quickly.

  That…was very therapeutic. Next time, I should probably just blow my own brains out, though, don’t wanna risk living and dying painfully, or worse, being arrested.

  Dock, squad, tank, hill, Germans’ retreat.

  I force myself to holster the pistol as the commissar arrives and goes over his plan again.

  “Do not be discouraged by a few losses. Kill these fascists, and show no mercy!”

  The commissar marches off with his cadre of goons and leaves me with a conscript armed with a bulky radio backpack and no weapon for the operator, of course.

  Time to kick the shit. “Ok, everyone, you heard the paper pusher. let’s go kill some Nazis.”

  Moving up from the bombed-out shed, I advance with my squad toward the main section of the destroyed wall, only for the sound of ripping paper to fill the air.

  That’s a goddamn MG42.

  Oh HELL no.

  As if on cue, the radio sparks to life, and a voice echoes through it. “Heavy machine gun, North of the breach: They have the main route covered.” I’ll fucking say, that thing’s called Hitler’s hacksaw for a reason.

  Then, in quiet horror, I can only watch as a fresh wave of conscripts run toward the breach, vault over the tangle of brick, barbed wire, and rubble, only to be gunned down by the MG42 and the collection of German defenders guarding it.

  The narrative has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

  “Avoid his kill zone.” Oh, yeah, thanks, mister radioman, I was thinking about running headfirst into the MG42. “Flank the location and clear with grenades.”

  Grenades?

  I turn toward my squads and have them stop just before we reach the smaller side breach, marked with a smaller hole in the wall. “Ok, hands up, who has grenades?”

  Everyone except the radio-conscript raises a hand, paw. Also, now that I look at them, every one of my soldiers has metal bodyarmor. Like, the heavy sapper plates they gave out to engineers.

  Thank you, lord.

  “Ok, everyone, on me.”

  I draw my revolver again and march-jog toward the secondary breach to the right of the main one, already spotting a small squad of Germans in the way when I hear a commissar call out from behind;

  “We have more shock troops available for deployment, comrade!”

  Oh?

  I plant my foot in the dirt and stop the advance. “Uh, you there?” I motion toward the radiowoman, a deer, who stammers and grabs the phone part of the radio. “Y-Y-Yes, comrade?”

  “Request…whoever for more shock troops.” I’m sure that is not at all the proper radio procedure for the Red Army, but I’m immortal or whatever, so, yeah.

  The doe speaks into her receiver quickly and quietly, but despite that, I guess they get our message, cause not twenty seconds later, another squad of six shock troops comes running over the hill, making a beeline toward us.

  They all snap to attention, with one of them, a female ram (how the hell?) saluting me. “Reporting for duty, Lieutenant!”

  “Yeah, good to see you, now-” “THIS HMG IS TEARING US APART!”

  I swallow my words and do a 90-degree turn toward the main breach where a human conscript is leaned agaisnt the rubble of the wall, taking cover. A commissar calmly walks up to him and grabs him by the collar and yanks him up. “GO! He cannot stop you all!”

  The poor guy is shoved over the wall along with the next wave, who are ripped to ribbons by a wall of 7.92mm Mauser.

  Holy…fuck. This doesn’t seem like a dream right now.

  Get…get a damn grip, Alex. You can’t die, and this isn’t real.

  “Alright, on me, into the flank!”

  The flank crosses over a road lined with a burnt-out tank, a StuG III if I remember right, and goes through some ruins to get a side angle on the MG position overlooking the walls. An initial squad of riflemen and women is caught off guard by our 18 SMG-armed shock troops and is cut down before they can get a shot off.

  Another broken wall is all that’s separating us from the flank of the MG, but it’s guarded by another squad on the other side behind a log, and they’re ready for us.

  “Ok, uh, ‘Nades, who has ‘em? Wait, shit, nevermind, you all do, uhh…You, you, you.” I point to three random anthros. “Toss some frags over the wall.”

  The three sling their guns and take grenades that, for lack of a better word, look like bean cans with pipes on one side, and hurl them up and over.

  “Was ist-GRANA-!” BANG

  We advance upon the flank, finding only the shrapnel-filled corpses of the enemy to stop us.

  And there it is. Along with two empty trucks, a mound of sandbags on top of a trenchline, with a single machinegun and operator.

  “Same three of you, toss your grenades.”

  The trio all huck their explosives up and down onto the gunner, who’s too busy to even notice the bombs until the position is turned into a small crater. The German trench line pauses and turns, some seeing us, and the others seeing the ruined MG42. All of them decide their best bet is to do what they’ve been doing:

  Run the other way.

  “The HMG is down-Advance!” I hear the oh-so-merciful commissar call out from the safety of our lines.

  Yet another fresh wave of young meat rushes forward, clambering over the German positions, some taking forgotten weapons as they go.

  Shit, that’s not a bad idea.

  But, right as I spot a shiny German MP40 SMG, I hear that FUCKING commissar yell at me again. “Comrade: Those fucking howitzers are going to annihilate our troops. Move up, locate, and destroy them quickly!”

  Great, first we had an entrenched MG, but now we gotta deal with heavy artillery. Peachy.

  Advancing behind the wave of conscripts, I find myself in a small open area with a wrecked T-34 shielding us from yet another damn line of Germans. And, by the sound of it, one of their squads has an MG42 with them.

  “Cover! Find Cover!” I yell out, sprinting behind the hull of the blackened tank with my eclectic mob of shock troops.

  It’s a funny sight. Nearly twenty soldiers all huddled up behind a single tank’s side, half of them popping up to take shots at the enemy while the rest, including the deer and me, just kept our heads down.

  Then, our luck runs out. A few of my shock troops step out to fire, only to get caught by the MG. 4 soldiers, in the blink of an eye, are dropped.

  But one of them manages to drop their SMG close enough for me to snag it without getting hit myself.

  It’s a…Pee Pee something, I can’t remember the full name. But it does have a drum magazine and certainly feels full of ammo.

  Regaining my composure, I take up a crouched position on the leftmost corner, setting the barrel of the PP on the headlight of the tank and aiming at the dwindling number of Germans.

  The gun roars in my hand, spewing lead out the front and brass up in the air. The two soldiers manning the MG42 are killed in a few seconds flat, and, upon seeing the death of their Ace card, the remaining two squads of…

  What in the…?

  The four Germans off to my left take their rifles and run, but the more I squint, the more something above them starts to…well, ‘appear’ would be the best word for it.

  “Osttruppen Squad, 71st Infanterie-Division.”

  “Osttruppen are cheap and numerous infantry of low quality, conscripted from Georgian, Azeri, Armenian, Dagestani, Russian, Ukrainian, Kazakh, Kyrgyz, and Uzbek soldiers. With little combat training, they rely on numbers and support to be effective.”

  …Huh. Well, I suppose being immortal and surrounded by furries aren’t the only things I have going for me.

  The Osttruppen book it away from the line, leaving the dead and wounded as the tide of red washes past us.

  “Help!” The radio operator fumbles with her radio as a call comes through. “This is Corporal Aleks; we are requesting support!

  “We are pinned down one kilometer North of the docks! We have civilians, the Germans are all around us-please, help!”

  Aw fuck, civilians? Fucking figures the Red Army doesn’t care enough to evacuate them.

  I move around my squads and grab the receiver from the deer, holding it to my head while my squad reloads and does whatever the hell. “This is…Lieutenant Tidman. We are close to your position. How many civilians do you have?”

  “Almost a hundred! We’re trapped in an apartment complex!”

  “Copy, ETA five minutes.” I hand the radio back to the operator and stand up.

  “Alright, you heard that. We’re gonna detour and play hero for that corporal. On me.”

  Turns out, I can actually see the building from our position, just between two other bombed-out structures, and of course, two small squads of Germans.

  Clearing them out is no issue, with some cover and a grenade.

  Then, we reach the clusterfuck.

  The apartment is surrounded by squads of Osttruppen and another type of soldier that I can’t make out, including a single MG42 somewhere in the mix. The complex is half torn apart, with the roof on one side missing and exposing an entire floor of conscripts doing their best to return fire, but they’re too suppressed to really do anything.

  But, thankfully, the Fascist bastards are too busy trying to shoot the conscripts to defend their flank.

  Using a line of sandbags that they probably placed, we form a 14-woman gun line.

  Opening up into them is about what you would expect. Actually, it’s kinda like that one scene from Saving Private Ryan, where the wall gets knocked down, and all the German and American soldiers are aiming at each other, until another squad of Americans guns down the Germans so fast they can’t react?

  It’s like that, kinda.

  Half of the squads are wiped out immediately, while the rest try to return fire, but are killed off anyway due to a lack of cover.

  The final group decides to literally tuck tail and run, which exposes them to me enough for another line of text to appear overhead.

  “Grenadiers, 71st Infanterie-Division.”

  “The Grenadier Squad is the core infantry unit of the German Army. They are rather small in numbers, but these troops are trained and experienced, capably led, and well equipped - they equal any soldier in the war. Arriving onto the battlefield, wielding Kar98k bolt-action rifles, they are most effective at long range, as well as the ability to be supplemented with the deadly MG42 LMG.”

  “Thank you, Commander! I thought we were done for.” I look over and see a ten-man-slash-woman squad of conscripts leave the apartment, followed by a steady stream of civilians in various states of shock and injury.

  “Take your wounded and bring them to the river, now.” The leader of the squad, a greyhound, nods and motions to the rest of the conscripts who follow her away from us.

  Now then, those guns.

  I look up to the sky and see what looks like a red star hovering midair just off to the right of the apartment.

  Using my big brain, I head along a small alleyway with my squad in tow and come face to face with a gun crew loading and manning one of the field guns we were told to destroy.

  The crew stops loading and looks at me.

  I look at them.

  “Shit.”

  The one closest reaches for a rifle, but my gun is already in my hands.

  Using my inner Stallone, I pull the trigger and sweep the gun over the battery, drawing a line from crewwoman to crewwoman, bullets embedding themselves in sandbags, crates, and pinging off the metal of the cannon.

  The rest of my squad finally reacts and gets some of the stragglers, knocking the gun out of commission.

  The second gun is only fifty or so meters onwards, which we also take by surprise, killing the crew and sending the few German soldiers scattering down the road towards the square.

  And they pass right by a tank—

  OH FUCK!

  “TANK!” I yell as loud as my vocal cords will allow me, pushing my soldiers aside. “GET OFF THE FUCKING ROAD!”

  “PANZER IV!” Some know-it-all belts out from God-knows-where.

  The boxy-looking AFV rolls right over a brim of rubble and lets loose a shell that flies fast and high, sailing into a building to our South. The coaxial MG and hull MG both open up and spray across what used to be a park.

  “Get out of its line of sight! Your shock troops cannot harm that tank!” I finish pulling the last of my soldiers off the road and into the second howitzer’s old location, watching yet another round fly from the barrel of the tank while the Commissar states the obvious. “I KNOW!”

  Ok, enemy tank, danger close, how do we kill it? Frag grenades won’t help much unless they open their hatches, and SMGs sure as shit won’t penetrate the armor.

  “Comrade, that Panzer is going to be an annoyance as we advance. The conscripts will keep it occupied-you need to find something to take it out with.” The radio buzzes.

  The doe nearly pisses herself as I turn toward the receiver, doing my best to keep calm given the shit we’re dealing with.

  “With WHAT? We have no AT weapons, and no armored support, and we sure as hell don’t have any air support, so what in the FUCK are we supposed to do against that?” I’m met with nothing but static from the radio, and the sound of tank treads reversing back down the cobble road.

  “A German anti-tank gun has been spotted in the ruins. Comrade, requisition it for our own use!”

  Well, that’s nice, except I don’t know how to use a German Anti-tank gun. Of course, I’m not gonna say that out loud, don’t want the commissar to plant another bullet in me.

  True to his word, the endless wave of furry soviet infantry keeps rushing onwards, trying to see how many Mosin bullets it takes to drill a hole into a tank that’s racking up kill after kill.

  Past the main road, where the panzer is a small factory with three pathways. Based on the sound of ripping paper, another MG42 position is down the rightmost path, while the other two lead to Osttruppen and Grenadiers.

  Flanking down the left path, only a squad’s worth of Osttruppen and Grenadiers stand in the way, using furniture as cover. Grenades, shock troops, and the help of some conscripts add another nine Invaders into the dirt, at the cost of another shock troop.

  But one of them dropped their MG42.

  “Hey, does someone know how to use this?” I ask, holding the bulky gun up by the breech. None of the shock troops speaks, but a conscript raises her hand. “Да, I used to be a machine gunner.”

  “Cool, you’re with us.” I toss the heavy gun over to the wolf-girl, who catches it easily enough, followed by a belt of ammo.

  Shit…that gun was pretty damn heavy. How strong are these guys?

  Anyway, we push up past the corpses and find the flank of the central pathway open, as well as the unaware German defenders.

  Bingo.

  The conscript sets the bipod of the Buzzsaw up on the shoulder of one of her comrades, aiming it at the distracted Germans. “Hey, wait, she doesn’t have ear pro—” BRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR—

  The concsript locks her finger down on the trigger and sprays 1200 rounds per minute worth of death into the sides of the foe.

  After a few seconds, the gun runs dry, leaving only the smoking barrel of the gun and one very deaf conscript left in the wake.

  Poor girl.

  All that leaves is the tripod MG and the AT gun for us to take.

  We round the corner, expecting to find more surprised Osttruppen, or maybe an empty field cannon.

  Instead, I’m met with the barrel of a shielded high velocity anti-tank gun aimed right at the corner I just rounded.

  There’s a boom.

  A flash.

  And nothing.

  You know,

  I expected that to hurt way more than it did. A 7.5cm shell flying at Mach: fuck seems worse than being decapitated, but I suppose being turned to mist is much more instant than being torn apart.

  But now I’m back at the docks.

  And there’s a bunch of machineguns between here and the square.

  Great…

  Dock, tank, hill, MG42, apartment-

  Something slams into the side of my head and makes the world black, splitting my head with pain before fading to nothing.

  God damn it!

  A ricochet? Really? Some stray bullet hits the side of a truck fender and goes into my damn ear?

  Fucking hell.

  Ok.

  Dock, tank, hill, MG42, apartment, howitzers, Panzer, factory.

  Approaching the corner this time, I inch up and peer around. Lo and behold, the gun is facing away this time.

  “Alright, grenades on that cannon!” The same shock trooper from my last lives, a fox, winds up her arm and hucks the grenade up and over the wall, which goes flying and behind the gun shield.

  A bang later, and the crew is now more.

  The tan colored gun sits empty, along with more floating text.

  “Pak 40 7.5cm Anti-tank Gun, 71st Infanterie-Division.”

  “One of the most effective weapons of its kind, a high rate of fire, accuracy, and excellent penetration make every vehicle on the battlefield vulnerable to the 7.5cm Pak 40.

  “The Pak 40 is considered one of the best mobile Anti-Tank guns fielded in its time. While it has a similar cost to the ZiS-3 76mm field gun, its Soviet counterpart, it has a shorter reload time, better penetration power, and better accuracy, posing a significant threat to even heavy tanks. With experience, a veteran gun crew can knock out and stun any tank with a well-placed shot.”

  Good enough for our purpose.

  “Advance and capture that gun!” Holy hell, where the fuck is that Commissar at? How is he EVERYWHERE!?

  My squads move up to the gun, which is conveniently located right behind the MG42 tripod, cutting down our conscripts.

  Caught between us and the conscripts, the Germans are sandwiched to death. The MG gets gunned down by our own ‘42, and the Germans are overrun by, get this, a literal bayonet charge! It’s not every day you see a Doberman get run through by a Husky.

  “Commander! Take that AT gun through the ruins and destroy that Panzer!”

  Without my direction, three of my shock troops sling their guns and grab the AT gun by the legs and start pulling the heavy piece of equipment through the rubble.

  Color me impressed.

  Conveniently, the ruins the gun is inside of has a large window front that, now get THIS, just so happens to be facing the ass of the Panzer and the backs of multiple German soldiers.

  The shock troops thankfully know enough to set the gun up facing the rear of the tank, and the Germans were so kind as to leave us a box of shells to use.

  God, I haven’t trained with a crew-served weapon system since that one course back in Kirtland. And that was a LMG.

  “Armor piercing, aim for that flat of their ass!” The first soldier opens the breech of the gun while the second slides in a black-tipped shell, closing it afterwards. The third starts twisting a crank, which makes the barrel move toward the tank.

  “You got it?” I ask. The third soldier looks up at me and nods, her rabbit ears flapping from under her helmet. “Yes, Comrade!”

  “FIRE!”

  The rabbit girl yanks a wire, and the gun BARKS. The smoke clears quickly, revealing a large dent in the right side of the turret, as well as a bunch of Germans with shit in their pants.

  “Chert voz'mi, it ricocheted!”

  The world goes quiet for a second, the Germans scrambling for cover while the conscripts and shock troops pick them off.

  Then, the turret of the Panzer starts to turn.

  “Shit. SHIT. LOAD! LOAD”

  The first two soldiers reload the gun, hurling the empty casing out and slamming the new one home as quickly as they can, while the bunny soldier does her best to turn the gun back from where it recoiled.

  Right as the Panzer turret starts to face us, the girl finally gets the gun back and rips the cord again.

  This one finds itself right in the ass of the tank, sending a shower of sparks back at us and a plume of fire into the sky. The tank rumbles, the barrel shakes, and finally, the hatch pops open, sending smoke and flame upwards.

  “We did it…We did it!” The rabbit girl stands up, and I shit you not, puts her hands together, and jumps up like a goddamn cartoon character.

  “We killed that Fascist piece of slag!” Wow. That…that sure is a hell of a thing for a girl like that to say so cheerfully.

  “Panzer IV is down,” Mister Radioman says through the pack on the doe. “Continue the attack on the rail station!”

  “All right, guys, get your shit in order and let’s go!”

  Keeping the Pak gun just in case, we move forward, albeit slower, toward the square.

  Leaving the ruins, I find a friendly MG to our right, an old, antiquated thing with a giant water jacket on the barrel and a shield on it. As well as the god damn Commissar.

  “You are soldiers of the Soviet Union! Not one. Step. Back!”

  Another fresh wave of conscripts advances past the machine gun, into the square where an old IFV and a half-tracked APC are waiting, cutting down soldiers, both men and women alike.

  Eventually, one of the conscripts stops, waves, and runs. “Retreat!” She ducks, avoiding a piece of rubble from a blast. “Pull back, PULL BACK!”

  Most of her comrades imitate her, stopping and running back toward the MG and the commissar. I start walking toward him, a bad feeling in my gut. “Hey!”

  “By orders of Comrade Stalin…All who retreat are traitors of the Motherland!” He yells, pulling his pistol out. I pick up speed, leaving my own soldiers behind. No, that fucking prick better not! “Turn back and fight, damn you!”

  Seeing as how the conscripts fear the German MGs more than him, he turns to the conscript manning the heavy MG. “Fir-” “NO!”

  The commissar turns just in time to find my knuckles flying into his nose.

  His head snaps back, and he falls onto his ass, pistol dropped into the dirt. I fall onto him, straddling him and grabbing him by the collar and bringing his bleary self up. “You piece of subhuman shit! What the fuck is wrong with you?!”

  His mouth opens, whether to respond or from the pain, it’s hard to say. Either way, I give him another hit, this time to the jaw, knocking his dumbass hat off and knocking him out cold.

  The pain in my hand starts to die right as the retreating conscripts make it back to the line, all of them taking cover from the hail of German bullets.

  “Commander.”

  I look up and find my squad, as well as two or three dozen conscripts, all staring wide-eyed at me as my superior officer.

  Well…I haven’t been shot yet.

  “…hah. Alright. Uh, radio?”

  The doe girl shuffles forward, radio receiver in hand. She doesn’t even speak, just nods at me while shivering. “Radio…whoever the fuck. Ask for more shock troops.”

  She does so, leaving me with multiple platoons worth of men and women all looking to me for leadership.

  Ok. You took a leadership course once. You got this, Alex.

  “Conscripts, you’ll hold the line here while the shock troops and I will knock out those MGs. Then, we can capture the objective.”

  I get off the bloodied commissar and shake my hand. “Shock troops, on me!”

  The left and right flanks of the objective are both locked down by MGs, not to mention the left also has an armored car or IFV. Whatever it is, it’s bulletproof and automatic. But we do have that AT gun.

  “Bring the Pak gun up with us through that ruin in the center; it’s undefended.”

  I would call out the blunders the Germans keep making, but I’d rather they keep making the mistakes. The center, while open, leaves us between the guns and at perfect grenade distance. Once more, the shock troops prove they should be MLB pitchers as they send their ordinance up and onto the guns and squads of the Nazis, opening up the right flank, while the Pak gun slinks through and sends a AP shell right through the side of the left armored car.

  The shell cuts clean through, killing whoever was inside, and sailing right into a building on the other end of the vehicle, leaving a perfect hole. Behind the right flank’s dead MG, the armored car turns its attention on, forcing me to dive on the MG42-wielding wolf girl and into a brick wall.

  She grunts, the bipod of the gun sticking into both of us.

  “Shit, sorry,” I say offhandedly. Our Pak gun turns on the second car and puts another round out, which hits the engine block and blows the front end open like a firecracker tube.

  “Both armored cars are down, but German tanks are entering the square!”

  God damn it. “Pull that Pak gun up to the first trench line! Shock troops, into the trenches!”

  I follow my own order and slide down into the ashy ditch, nearly stepping on a dead German shepherd.

  Then, I see the objective. A statue with children, human and furry, circling a normal crocodile. Just beyond it is a line of buildings, fortifications, and another Panzer IV, currently driving down the line. With the MG’s gone, the conscripts have decided to push forward at an acceptable pace instead of just rushing forward blindly.

  Our Pak gun fires, the shell slamming into the cheek of the Panzer and killing the gun, based on how it went limp immediately. The tank tries to reverse, but another 7.5cm shell into the turret causes an internal explosion and ends the crew’s careers shortly.

  With the tank burning, the final German line finally breaks. Every single soldier turns and runs, some abandoning their weapons, with others trying to grab their shit and run.

  “We did it! The Germans are starting to break! Za Rodinu!”

  Everyone, and I do mean everyone, starts cheering. Hands and rifles are in the air, flying around like New Year’s.

  Shit…

  With the immediate area clear of any resistance, a handful of conscripts make a quick trip around. The Commissar I decked earlier was nowhere to be found, so I’ve decided to just become the unofficial triage boss of the aftermath.

  As we pass the statue of the playing kids, a hand pops up, followed by another, as a human Osttruppen and an anthropomorphic Labrador Grenadier stand up.

  “Nicht schie?en! Wir ergeben uns!” The dog-girl stammers out while the Osttruppen stands ramrod still, trying to freeze himself in time. The squad with me raises their rifles, followed by the clicks of safeties being disengaged.

  “Wait, no! Don’t shoot! I’m not German!”

  I open my mouth to say something when one of the conscripts marches forward and grabs the Osttruppen by the arm cuff and yanks him over the statue wall, dragging him away from the Labrador.

  “Fascist Dog!”

  I flinch as the rifle right next to me fires, missing the Lab girl by a few inches. The rest of the conscripts fire on her. One bullet catches her in the upper right arm, causing her to yelp and grab the wound.

  Then the second hits her in the left scapula with enough force to cause her to drop her arm and recoil. The third catches her in the gut, slumping her against the masonry while the fourth flies where her head was, catching the marble and sending shards of rock everywhere.

  I’m frozen. My mind moves at a pace so fast I can’t keep up with it. But my body refuses to move.

  I have treated 3rd degree burns. I have pulled men screaming and begging for their mommy out of flaming wrecks. I have seen the life leave the eyes of a man I shot and killed while trying to save a pilot from being captured.

  And yet,

  Seeing my childhood pet, made sentient and humanized, get gunned down like…like a fucking dog…

  Oh fuck.

  I need to get out of here.