There were more than two hundred squirrels on the roof of the campground
convenience store, the orange lights of the parking lot illuminating the
mass of red and silver fur. The raised rim around the outer edge, along 
with its unique nature, made it an ideal meeting place for the remnants 
of Group A. 'That tree over there' would have been hard to pass on reliably,
despite the special facility of squirrel for conveying just that information;
even with a map and a hologram finding a specific tree in a forest would be 
a difficult task. 

Besides, aside from the tops of the nearby trees that leaned over the roof, 
there was no vantage for the bunnies to watch them from.

It hadn't been hard to find the other squirrels. Loren and his rapidly 
growing band of squirrels had been able to spread out and comb the forest
in only three or four days. They'd stayed split up, on Loren's orders not
gathering in groups larger than three until this meeting. And apparently,
it had paid off, since here they were with no bunnies in sight.

Loren was the last to arrive, by design. As he leaped to the roof from an
overhanging branch, the squirrels gathered around, chittering questions.

"What happ--" "Where are--" "How can we--"...

Loren shushed them and waved his paws until they calmed down.

"First of all," he said softly, "does anyone here have their radio." There
was a rustle through the crowd, but no one answered.

"Good," he said, "We can't be sure that that was how they tracked us, but it
seems a likely guess. We cannot take that risk."

"So what are we going to do?" someone asked from the back. Loren turned
towards her, and she shrank back into the crowd. He sighed.

"What indeed," Loren replied. "We are likely the last surviving group of this
entire operation, unless group C is still holding out somehow. We are trapped
in this forest, at least two days travel from UCirc, with no means of 
communicating our situation -- at least, none we dare use.

"We do, however have most of the equipment we brought with us. I'm sure all
of you have your bounce packs," there was a general murmur of agreement. Of
all the things a panicked squirrel might throw away to run faster, that was
perhaps the last. "I need to know how many lasers, how much explosives, and
how many batteries we still have. So everyone bring those up here so we can
count them."

Loren looked at the collected equipment and sighed. They had plenty of 
batteries, but that hadn't been his worry since in an emergency the bounce
packs and lasers could work (for a while) on standard human batteries 
(triple A). They had barely enough explosives -- there had been a safety
factor in the number of demo charges they carried with them, but with some
of the squirrels not making it there, and some of them dropping the bombs
to run faster, they had just enough to seriously damage a warren, probably
shut it down.

Where they were hurting was weapons. The lasers had been the first things
dropped when they started running, and they had only fifty three for two
hundred squirrels. And most of the grenades had been thrown at the bunnies
when they tried to chase them into the forest.

"We're going to need some new weapons," he said.

"Why? If we split up we can make it back without ever seeing a bunny,"
someone replied. Loren's leaped over several squirrels' heads and tackled him
to the ground.

"We are *NOT* giving up and running home with our tails between our legs!" he
hissed, "We did not wait all these years, come all this way, and suffer these
losses to run away now!"

"But they'll slaughter us!" someone else added.

"No, they will not!"

There was a rather long pause. "Why not?" someone asked, at last.

"Because this time," Loren said, "We'll be careful. This time surprise will
be on *our* side. And we will *not* engage their forces." He looked around
at the squirrels surrounding him.

"Only a few of you are trained soldiers, I know," he said, "but the rest of
you remember life in the wild, do you not? Do you remember running from
humans with guns? Hiding from cats? Dodging cars?" A few nodded, seeing the
point.

"But we joined so we wouldn't have to do that anymore," someone objected.
"If we're still going to be sneaking around, we might as well never have
joined!"

"Ahhh," Loren said, getting up off the squirrel he had pinned. "But then it
was hiding just to live another day. Hide from everything, with no way to
fight back. But this time --" he flicked his tail and grinned, "This time
we'll pay them back. We'll teach those bastards what happens if you push the
wrong squirrels around for too long." A few of the squirrels nodded, a few 
scratched the ground absentmindedly, lost in thought.

"But what do we do for weapons?"

Loren shurgged. "What can we do. We'll make them."