Blake and Avon ran.
Alarms blared rhythmically throughout the complex, echoing around the landscape of twisting steel towers and labyrinthine walkways. The two men emerged into the open air through a heavy vaulted doorway onto a balcony overlooking the communications base. Vapour from cooling vents obscured much of the industrial terrain, lending the base an eerie quality as Blake and Avon clattered down a grilled stairway to reach ground level.
They had almost reached the bottom when a trooper emerged like a black ghost through the miasma, his gun up and ready to fire. Blake launched himself down the remaining steps, smashing onto the trooper. Both men went down, the trooper’s rifle skittering away as Blake landed the butt of his gun into the man’s face once, twice, shattering the eye lenses of the trooper’s helmet.
A second guard sprinted into view, aiming straight at Blake’s exposed back.
‘Blake, down!’ shouted Avon.
Blake felt the heat across his back as Avon’s blaster shrieked, the trooper slamming roughly against a concrete wall. Blake was up and running before Avon reached the bottom of the stairs.
‘Thank you,’ Blake called as the pair ran down a straight walkway between two buildings.
‘Don’t thank me yet! Which way?’
‘Left here.’ The two men ducked nimbly into a side passage as a retinue of helmeted guards marched into view at the end of the walkway, their boots splashing through oily slicks of water. They spotted the two rebels and broke into a sprint.
Avon followed Blake down one passage, then another, always dodging the squads of pursuing Federation troopers. But logic dictates that luck, sooner or later, must run out. They reached a junction where six walkways carved into the landscape of twisting steel intersected. From all around, a symphony of thudding boots, barked orders and klaxons told them they were out of options.
Dark smudges appeared in the distance of every thoroughfare, soon focusing into black phalanxes of troopers marching closer. Hot sparks haloed just above Blake’s head as the first shot slammed into the wall. He raised his gun with a determined gleam in his eyes, a look mirrored back in Avon’s angular face. ‘Make them count,’ said Blake grimly.
Both men fired into the lines of approaching troopers, selecting their targets carefully. The air crackled and fizzed with the heat of the energy discharge from their weapons, which screamed fatal blasts of power into the Federation ranks. As bodies began to fall, the troopers took cover, returning the aggressors’ fire, but never finding their mark.
‘How much more of this, Blake?’ Avon shouted over his shoulder as shots gouged shards of scorched metal from the floor.
‘Until Cally—’
‘That’s not what I mean,’ Avon countered, dropping another trooper. ‘How many more communication bases? Depots? Insignificant supply routes?’
A flash of black came into Blake’s line of sight and he fired, a trooper falling with a cry of pain. ‘This is what we do, Avon. This is the fight.’
‘It may be your fight,’ said Avon, shifting position and firing, ‘but how long it will be everyone else’s remains to be seen.’
‘What’s your point, Avon?’
‘How long until this rebellion starts to mean something? How long can you keep striking at the edge of the Federation? Sooner or later, you will have to aim for the heart.’
Blake didn’t reply, mouth set into a determined line as he fired again and again.
Avon paused, glancing back questioningly. ‘Blake?’
‘I’ll know the moment. For now, I just need you to trust me.’
‘Right now, I’d settle for trusting we’re going to get out of here.’
‘Oh, I think something should be happening right about…now.’
An explosion erupted across a walkway, the retinue of guards caught in a blast of fire and debris. Other discharges erupted in sequence, some rumbling in distant corners of the base, others close, ripping savagely into the attacking troopers. One body lay, blood spurting in a sticky river where an arm should have been, another ran screaming as fire engulfed his entire body.
Avon averted his face away from the wall of heat that squalled towards him, trying to ignore the screams of the dying men. ‘That was close,’ he said. ‘Too close.’
Blake smiled as two figures emerged sprinting through the flames of the walkway directly ahead of him. One was a giant of a man, his tall, broad frame like a running wall of muscle. The other was a woman, lithe and graceful, her curls of brown hair bouncing as she ran. Avon levelled his blaster towards them then pulled back sharply as he recognised the pair.
Blake greeted them. ‘Cally, Gan. Right on time.’
Olag Gan towered above his three comrades, smiling benignly. ‘Always happy to help, Blake.’
‘Mission accomplished?’ asked Cally.
‘For what it matters,’ Avon said coldly.
Cally’s eyes narrowed and she looked questioningly from Avon to Blake.
Blake placed a hand on Cally’s shoulder. ‘Ignore him. Yes, mission accomplished.’
‘So can we please get out of here?’ said Avon impatiently.
‘I’m with Avon,’ said Gan.
‘You have no idea how much that pleases me.’
Gan ignored him. ‘Those guards won’t be down for long.’
‘Yes,’ agreed Blake. ‘Time to leave.’ He raised the teleport bracelet on his wrist and thumbed a button. ‘Liberator?’
‘Thank goodness,’ Jenna’s voice crackled from the speaker. ‘Vila thought you’d got lost.’
‘I did not,’ joined in another crackling voice. ‘I just…worry. I’m a worrier, okay?’
Avon rolled his eyes wearily.
‘We’re fine,’ said Blake. ‘And ready for teleport. Bring us up.’
‘Teleporting now.’
The four rebels remained still as the air around them began to vibrate with energy and with a gentle burst of static they were each outlined in a halo of thin white light. Seconds later, the whine of static altered pitch and the freedom fighters vanished, the white light discharging to nothing.
Dirty red flames licked at where Blake and his three followers had stood seconds before, black smoke obscuring the dead bodies of fallen Federation troops.