Dusty came into view through the swirling dust and brushed straight past Chad. He was heading for Zeera! Chad swirled around and leveled his gun, only to see that Dusty had entwined his fingers with his palms up and was helping Zeera onto some sort of huge animal that had been sheltering in the dune they were leaning on. Zeera was too busy clamoring onto the leathery flabby thing, and Dusty was making sure she was secure, and so he had a moment to put his gun away and avoid embarrassment.

Dusty turned to him and smiled good-naturedly, offering to help him up onto this creature. Chad couldn’t even look him in the eye, and so rather than taking his help he sought out a rise in the sand. Shaking his head politely to decline Dusty’s offer he charged the small dune and vaulted off it, getting his arms and chest over the beast and then starting to slide back. Dusty could barely conceal a chuckle at what he viewed as a poor attempt at showing off. Chad was just about to fall off when Zeera grabbed the back of his shirt and hauled him up, helping to dust him up and chuckling. He couldn’t help but join in, the tension melting away as the chuckling couple helped Dusty up onto the beast’s back.

While Dusty maneuvered into a seat near the creature’s thick neck Chad took a moment to investigate their mode of conveyance. The hover beast had no real appendages to speak of, even its neck was thick and seemed to be more like an extension of its long body. The creature was at least fifteen feet long and three across, making it rather uncomfortable to sit on. Its flanks were covered in odd fleshy strips almost like fins that hung down and brushed along the ground. From what Chad could see of its mouth the thing had a large gaping maw covered by the same fleshy strips, which adorned its body. Its color was a sandy tan kind of brown, apparently to blend in with the sand. If this whale of the dessert had to blend into the sand to hide from something, Chad never wanted to meet that something.

"We’ll meet Lux in our next destination then?" Zeera asked as she watched the landscape float by.

"Yes." Dusty stated flatly, as if he knew where the line of questioning would lead and was already growing impatient with it.

"I’ll need the coordinates so I can transmit them to command." Zeera said softly, thinking she was heading for another battle with her team’s leader.

"Longitude 83 and five tenths, latitude 37 and a quarter. It’s about a mile off, in the center of a magnetic field which we’ve been in for the past half an hour." Dusty stated as if he was mentioning this crucial information as an after thought.

"What!?" Zeera demanded angrily. "That means communication with the corporate command is—"

Dusty cut her off as he fiddled with his boots. "Yes, it’s impossible. That’s why Ignacius and I arranged this site for the rendezvous. We don’t want any interference…"

"But without reinforcements could the three of us really take down Lux and whatever guards he has? And what do you mean arranged? What the hell are you up to?" Chad asked, completely confused by his friend’s attitude.

"The three of us together would be able to defeat Lux." Dusty said with a shrug as he moved from one boot to the other.

"Then we’ll need to plan for his guards and try to figure out whether we’re going to try to take him alive. You know what a prize that would be…" Zeera said, showing so much ambition that she seemed like just another human on the corporation’s roster.

"We would defeat them" Dusty emphasized. "but you two are going to stay out of it. There will be no coming back alive for one of us…"

"We’re with you Dusty, you can’t just kick us to the sidelines like this!" Zeera almost whined, though Dusty was beginning to worry her once more.

"You don’t get paid to settle your own personal grudges, Dusty!" Chad growled. He knew it was time to choose between his employer and his somewhat ambiguous friend, and if Zeera was on the former side than he would stand by her.

"This is no personal grudge. I’ve watched enough people die for this conflict. It’s going to end today. How many more times do I have to see the lives of everyone…" Dusty broke off and hunched over the hover beast a bit as Zeera and Chad both exchanged concerned looks.

"Dusty… If we didn’t come with you and something happened… We can’t just leave you." Zeera said. Her face showed only concern for someone who had once been her greatest detractor, and Dusty could see it when he looked back over his shoulder.

"I don’t know what you’re doing Dusty, but I want to stay with you to make sure our orders are carried out." Chad said, reaching a hand forward to his mentor.

"Forget about orders for a second, kid. I want to tell you both that I’m glad I found real friends before this. It was all worth it, even if I go down I’m sure we’ll meet up in the great roundup in the sky." Dusty caught Chad’s hand and his gaze at the same time. The resolve in his voice now covered all of the pain he had felt moments earlier, and the look in his eyes was enough for Chad to know what was going to happen. Zeera, sitting between the two, was on alert, as Dusty seemed to have just said his good-byes.

"We’re with you, Dusty." She was beginning to wonder where such words came from. Had Chad opened up something in her? She turned back to him and followed his gaze down to where Dusty still held Chad’s hand.

"Happy trails, you two." Dusty said before jerking to the side. He had been leaning over his right shoulder as he spoke to them. But in that quick motion he leaned far back and threw his right arm to his left, pushing his hand and Chad’s into Zeera’s shoulder and dangerously unsettling his hat, to say nothing of his fellow riders. Zeera and Chad were both thrown off balance, but Dusty had seen it coming and his boots were tightly against the hover-beast’s flank. Boots that, through his fiddling, had deployed glowing spurs.

The spurs dug in and the hover beast reared to the right, it’s front half going high into the air as it made a ghostly moan. Chad and Zeera, who’s momentum carried them left, toppled off its back and rolled in the sand. Their last view of Dusty was of him astride the rearing hover beast. He caught his hat with his left hand and settled it back on his head, tipping it to them politely and then guiding the creature off into the distance, leaving a clear trail of blown sand for them. Chad and Zeera looked to each other dumbfounded for a moment and then stood up, watching the dust trail recede into the distance, to a small gathering of buildings.

Zeera tried for a while to radio command and then gave up, kicking the sand hard as if that was the only action she could make that might actually effect something.

"You think we’ll ever see him again?" She asked Chad, who was checking his gun to make sure there was no sand in the barrel.

"I think so… If you get a move on." He teased her playfully. His resolve seemed to carry her feet, and before long the two were running towards the town off into the dessert. Running towards their lost friend, towards their greatest foe, and towards their destiny.

When they came upon the town what they found was the run down older section, populated by half-collapsed buildings and succulent cacti that seemed like trees. There was a hill up in the distance with what looked like tree stumps all over it, and there were figures moving atop it. Chad’s first impulse was to charge in and find out what was going on, but Zeera caught his arm and pulled him down behind a sand dune, shaking her head emphatically.

"Lux’s personal guard will be around. We need to get close, but slowly. If they notice us not only are we toast but Dusty will be distracted."

Chad nodded to her softly and they began to worm their way along the sand, trying to keep to the shadows of the setting sun. It wasn’t long before the reaches a little group of ruins with an ancient fence in front of them. The few relics of civilization littered the places: broken dishware, windows shattered by rocks eagerly thrown by children, and shredded curtains. Entire parts of the walls had simply caved in and this allowed Chad and Zeera their way in.

As they heard shots echoing in front of them they began to prepare for the worst, wondering how Lux and his rebels could have discerned their position. Chad and Zeera peered over the walls of the derelict house to see that the figures they’d spotted were none other than Dusty and Ignacius Lux. They were standing about forty feet apart on opposite sides of a hillock adorned with crosses and statues. They were dueling in a graveyard. Chad didn’t want to look. Between an aging gunslinger like Dusty and a well built and battle hardened man like Ignacius Chad didn’t expect much of a contest. But he could not turn his eyes away from the image that rebuffed his preconceptions.

Zeera meanwhile saw that they’d been noticed and began to fire on any of Lux’s men that got too close. They were a bit more numerous, but the particle blaster she had on her back and the two laser weapons she carried were enough to even things out. Shots rang out from every direction and even Chad was compelled to stop watching the fight occasionally to aid Zeera.

Chad turned back just in time to see both the men dive to their sides. Dusty found shelter behind a statue of an angel with spread wings that had (luckily for him) remained largely intact over the years. Not far off his opponent dodged behind an obelisk just moments before a bullet ricocheted off the side of it. Chad watched as his opponent tossed his revolver to his free hand and drew forth a platinum-plated shotgun. The shining pellets that burst forth from it peppered Dusty’s cover and even knocked one of the wings from the statue. It was falling in on Dusty when it suddenly lurched up and began to move rapidly towards Lux’s position.

A blast from Ignacius’ pistol served to shatter the angel wing, wounding Dusty’s arm in the process, but it did little good. Dusty was now behind Lux’s line of cover and the older man laid in with shots from his revolver, driving Lux out of hiding. Dusty was firing low, as if he didn’t intend to kill his enemy just yet. Lux noticed as he dodged around behind the base of a Celtic cross. Dusty was busily reloading and he hadn’t even gotten his gun cocked when a shotgun blast tore some of the brim away from his hat. He drew his side arm and emptied it at where he estimated the shots had come from, unwilling to look around the edge of his own barrier. He hit nothing, but he did hear a more satisfying sound- Lux was loading cartridges into his shotgun. Dusty swirled out from behind the tombstone and saw Lux crouched atop the Cross, which bore a few bullet holes in its base where Dusty had estimated Lux was.

Lux sped up his reloading, and Dusty did the same, with one marked difference. Dusty was putting ammunition into his gun while charging at Lux. He flew through the air but his drop kick fell short, or at least appeared to. When he hit the cross it began to crumble providing Lux had a far less pleasant trip down than Dusty had. The two adversaries began to gather themselves. Ignoring his shotgun Lux got to his knees and grabbed for his pistol, but he stopped when he saw Dusty standing in front of him with his own revolver only inches from his forehead. Lux froze in place and didn't dare to try to bring his weapon to bare. Behind a ruined stone wall to the left one of the rebels was about to turn his gun on Dusty when his body exploded with a dead on hit from Zeera’s weapon.

On to CH 23