Lux stared up at Dusty defiantly but calmly and said clearly enough for anyone to hear. "Nothing you do will bring her back, Dusty… I’m working to avenge her, to prevent what created the two of us from ever happening again… And you’re only setting the stage for more tragedy! Kill me, I can at least dissipate into the universe knowing that I’ve been fighting the evil you pretend not to see." The look on his face as he knelt before the old cowboy was serene, wholly unlike a man about to meet death. But when one had stared death in the face so many times eventually began to accept it, to dare it to come on. So it was with Ignacius. Dusty was a different story. His hand was shaking, and not entirely from his wounds.

The gunshots began to drown out the sound of the two soft-spoken men at the center of it all as Chad continued to focus on the encounter while laying down a covering fire. It was Dusty who hung his head in defeat, not Lux. Chad noticed the blood dripping from his arm only a second before Lux noticed the same thing… and took advantage of it.

Ignacius’ free hand streaked upwards, grabbing the barrel of Dusty’s revolver and tossing it up into the air. As the weapon was traveling downwards to be caught over Lux’ shoulder, his free hand was bringing his own revolver up. Lux was on his feet at the same moment that the two great silver barrels came parallel with each other, pointing at Dusty’s chest. Zeera tugged on his shoulder as she sent a blast to knock one of the rebel guards off a roof, trying to gain his help in dislodging two of them from behind some cover. But when he didn’t budge or even look at her, she realized the most important fight for him wasn’t his own. She looked to the broken tombstones among the two men in the center of it all and saw that Dusty was looking at Chad.

Chad had caught the gaze only for a moment. Dusty’s look was somehow plaintive, almost as if he were asking Chad to forgive him for something. Dusty muttered something to Lux. Chad was somehow confident that Dusty’s last words would be anything but pleading for his life. Then the first shot sounded.

Lux was looking away, his teeth clenched as he pulled the trigger first on his own pistol and then on Dusty’s. As Dusty fell back his opponent walked forward, and by the time the second shot had rung out the only sounds in the ruined town were the shots fired by Ignacius and the ripping, gushing sound of the bullets connecting, and the blood spattering. Dusty never made a sound. Finally Lux held both the weapons together, and hit Dusty with both of the last bullets that were in the guns. Dusty’s body flew back through the air, skidding down the hill and sliding to rest against an old tombstone, the name it bore having long past into illegibility.

Lux turned his back coldly and began to walk down the hill to the opposite side. "Let’s go. We’ve been here too long." As if to underscore the man’s ominous words the ground seemed to shake as the sky in the west lightened. The rebels were leaving their cover, and one of them commented that it was almost fitting that they ride off just as the second sun was rising, a good omen for their cause. Chad paid little attention to Zeera when she mentioned under her breath that Trillos didn’t have a second sun.

Zeera was moving slowly to where Dusty lay as if she could possibly do something for him. Lux was forgotten except by one figure on the field.

"Damn you!" Chad screamed as he picked up Zeera’s discarded weapon and switched it to its particle blast function. The first round blew the monolith Lux had sheltered behind to dust. The second one surely would have killed the man had not the other rebels begun firing to cover the retreat. Streaks of light began to grace the sky as rebel landing pods began to ascend to their mother ships. Lux spread out his arms, palms up in front of him and turned back once to look at Chad, almost apologetically, before one of his last remaining men almost shoved him into his pod and he too was gone.

The fire was now lessened, and Zeera had come to his aid. She’d noted where the last two rebels were heading and moved to cut them off. Chad ran over to her side, still firing the particle blaster every chance he got. The rebels knew their only way out lay through their opponents, but for now they were more interested in surviving and disappeared back behind some ruins. Zeera grabbed Chad’s hand as he joined her.

"You’re an idiot! You could have been killed! Keep your head down!" She scolded him. He turned and let a round go at the building the rebels were sheltering in, though it only made a small hole in the wall that his enemies would likely use to shoot through. Zeera had by then given up the fight, letting Chad keep the two men pinned down while she scanned behind them. When she found what she was looking for she tugged on Chad, pointing to the escape shuttle not far off.

"We’ll fire off a good barrage and then make a run for it. We have to follow Lux and report to command!" She yelled over the shots that were ricocheting off their shelter. Chad nodded and readied his weapon, looking at Zeera one time for strength and then leaping up and beginning to fire alongside Zeera.

But the rocking they felt from the ground below them couldn’t have been caused by any weapon the four combatants possessed. There was a great roaring sound and then a burst of neon orange light that seemed to be spreading out towards them. Chad cried out in agony as the flash of light overloaded his optical nerves. Zeera, who had ducked the minute she heard the roar, pulled him down and laid over top of him. For a long time all he could hear was a terrific roar and the smell of burned flesh. He had to stop breathing because the air was so hot.

When it was safe to look up again his vision was blurry, but there was little left to see. Even the structure they’d hid behind was barely a pile of rocks and aside from a few of the bloodstained statues in the grave yard nothing else stood, but something was moving. One of the men they’d been facing, neither of whom had had any cover from the blast, was crawling on the ground making horrible dry sounds. Chad was glad his vision was too blurry to see the full extent of the man’s injuries. Zeera walked over and shook her head before mercifully putting a bullet through his. Chad staggered towards her and they clung to each other for a long moment before starting about the task of getting the escape pod right side up and launching it.

On to Chapter Whatever