Erren's tiny vessel cleared the mountain by barely five metres, and dived down into the valley. The pilots of the Empire's larger craft did their best to follow, but one of the three ricocheted off the mountain side, sending rock and snow cascading down the rocky slopes, and hurtled to it's fiery destruction on the valley floor. The other two could not manage the sharp dive achieved by Erren, and his sleek cloudcutter was nowhere in sight or on scanner by the time they had lowered their hovering vehicles into the valley.

     Erren could see them, however. Sitting in his cloudcutter, which was reposed on a rocky floor deep within a large but inconspicuous cave, Erren could just make out the two Empire skirmishers gliding slowly, and almost noiselessly, above the rock-strewn dried-up river bed. He powered up his vessel's engine, programmed in a course, and prepared to use the laser cannon mounted on the nose.

     With the push of a button, Erren's craft propelled itself with computer- controlled precision to the cave mouth and out into glaring sunlight. It flew past the two skirmishers, spitting forth a blaze of white light courtesy of Erren's trigger finger. One exploded instantaneously, as the intense heat of the laser beams sliced through it's hull and ignited it's fuel load. The other was disabled, and fell a metre into the hard dry mud with an alarming clunk. The cannoneer was clearly undaunted, as the turret mounted cannon of the Empire's craft followed Erren's wide arc across the sky, blasting out lances of light. One singed the starboard wing of the cloudcutter, but the damage was not serious enough to stop Erren from swooping in for the kill like an enraged harpy. The hull of the Empire's immobilised vessel was cut to shreds, as were it's three occupants, by the cannon of Erren, long-time thorn in the side of the Empire.

     "Alien bastards!" gasped Erren, between deep breaths.

     The sun was almost beyond the south-eastern horizon by the time the cloudcutter raced through the skies east of Torrund Mountain. All observers at the secret base, perched between two of the three peaks of the vast mount, could see that the craft was in some trouble. They had expected it an hour before, and the rebels communication blackout had prevented Erren from sending a distress signal, or even a warning of his delayed arrival. As the craft appeared as a blip on the huge scanner screen in the main building, a cacophony of cheers filled the air, and the noise was renewed with increased enthusiasm the moment the cloudcutter became visible to the eyes of the occupants of the base.

     The landing pad was cleared, but the cloudcutter did not head towards it. Instead, it made a descent towards the snow covered plateau to the west of the base. A recovery team was prepared before the small craft had even reached the perimeter of the collection of closely huddled metallic structures. The cloudcutter shot silently over the base, and for the first time it was realised that it was gliding, without power.

     No-one saw the vessel hit the snow, but some relief was found in the fact that no explosion was seen or heard. Within minutes, a load-carrier had reached the cloudcutter, as it lay buried in snow at the end of a thirty metre groove in the otherwise smooth white landscape.

     Darkness was encroaching on the base when the load-carrier hovered above the landing pad and lowered the heavily damaged cloudcutter to the ground. The load-carrier itself landed beside Erren's craft. Major Krinnen stood anxiously outside the opening door of the bulky vessel, which lowered to the ground to form a ramp. A sigh of relief escaped her when Erren stepped onto the ramp and strolled casually to the ground.

     "Sorry I'm late Major," he said nonchalantly. "Also, sorry about wrecking a cloudcutter."

     "You're more valuable to us than a cloudcutter," she replied, "but only just! What happened out there?"

     The two headed for the main building, ignoring the organised chaos that had been prompted by Erren's unconventional arrival.

     "Three imperial skirmishers," explained Erren. "I would never have made it, if I had not deliberately left Koll-gesson Skyport with a minimum of fuel. The intention had been to make the 'cutter lighter, to expedite my journey. As it turned out, it gave me the necessary manoeuvrability to finish off the skirmishers." They reached the main building, and Major Krinnen held the door open while Erren continued his explanation. "Unfortunately, the whole episode left me without enough fuel to make a vertical landing. So I glided as far as I could and used what little fuel I had left to make my crash as pleasant as possible."

     Once inside, the Major and Erren made straight for the officers' dining room. Erren had never been to this particular base before, and didn't expect it to be there long enough for a revisit. That is the way it is with rebels. A base can't exist for too long, for fear of it's discovery. This one was constructed for one purpose, and whether or not Erren's mission succeeded, it would be dismantled upon his departure. As they made their way through two dingy corridors, the Major gave Erren the usual praise that he had come to expect from her every time he pulled off some sensational victory. It was only when they had seated themselves on the tiny dining room's shabby metal seats, separated by an equally shabby table, that she began to settle.

     "When will you be leaving?" asked the Major, a nervous expression playing about her face.

     "As soon as you can furnish me with the map and bomb," he replied. "We're behind schedule already." He was not sensitive to the feelings of others, and it took him another couple of seconds to spot her worried look. "What's the matter?" he asked in as soothing a tone as he could manage.

     "This whole mission has been cursed from day one!" She was clearly agitated. "Two pilots died smuggling the bomb from the imperial arsenal on Ajax 9 to our base on Ajax 3; you were nearly killed getting here; and recent reports from our spies around the Western Gulf tell us that another whole battalion has been assigned to guard the Grand Computer building."

     Her stressed expression shook Erren's confidence a little, but he was ever the optimist.

     "Don't worry," he said. "I'll take that building out, and the Empire's Grand Computer with it. You'll see the blast from here. You'll feel the ground shake, and know that the Empire's armies in the Ajax system are finally cut off from their leaders. Once that happens, we'll take them easy!"

     Major Krinnen looked no more heartened, but was silent for a while. Evidently, it seemed to Erren, thoughts whizzed through her mind. She eventually spoke again.

     "We would be willing to live in peace with the Empire. Why do they need to repress us?"

     "They want control and power," answered Erren. "They can't handle living on equal terms with another life form. They need to hold us down."

     "They consider us to be no better than animals," she said, bitterly.

     "I think that's just the excuse they use to convince themselves that they have the right to treat us this way," said Erren.

     "I remember when they arrived," she mused. "Their huge warships dropped out of the skies above our cities, and decimated their populations with bombs and laser blasts, without even warning us, just to demonstrate their power. We had been sent warning from other colonies around the Galaxy, but what could we do? Where could we have gone? And now we're either slaves, or living in the wilderness like the animals they say we are!"

     "Don't wind yourself up, Krinnen." He seemed calm as always, in spite of his recent ordeal. "We always knew that the colonisation of other worlds carried the risk of attracting attention from hostile aliens. But our population was growing too rapidly for us to choose any other option."

     Again, she meditated quietly for a minute or so. Finally she said, "Have you ever wondered how it could have been, if we had been the powerful ones, with the advanced technology and military might? Would we have become drunk on the power, and repressed the other races we discovered? Would we have been the Empire?"

     Erren thought for a while. "I doubt it," he said at last. "We hold freedom very highly. Most of our colonies were run by democratically elected leaders before the Empire came. Such things don't even figure in the imperial mind! But, who can say for sure?"

     The door burst open as Erren finished this last sentence, and a Private charged into the officers' dining room carrying a message. Erren took it from him before the disgruntled Major, who was after all the senior officer on the base, had a chance. The message was a transcript of a coded radio signal, and was serious enough to warrant ending the communications blackout. It read simply:

IMPERIAL FORCES SEARCHING TORRUND MOUNTAIN REGION. BASE IN SERIOUS DANGER. PROCEED WITH FINAL STAGE OF MISSION IMMEDIATELY OR ABORT.

     Erren dropped the message on the table in front of Major Krinnen, who snatched it up and began to read.

     "Has the bomb arrived yet, Private?" asked Erren hastily.

     "The courier is in visual range now, Sir," the Private answered mechanically.

     "You prepare for take off," said the Major. "I'll get that map."

     All three rushed from the room, the Major spinning out a dizzying array of orders to the Private. Erren was in a fresh cloudcutter, standing on the launch pad surrounded by busy technicians, by the time the Major returned to him with the map. She climbed the portable steps to the cockpit, and handed him the small computer pad. He quickly examined the electronic, interactive sketch, scrolling around the image as though he was following his intended route.

     "This will get you through the building from the ground," the Major told him, "But getting there will be your problem."

     "I have that much fig..." he began to answer. Then, without warning, the scream of laser fire cut through the air from the south, and everybody looked through the night-time darkness to the flashes of white in the distance.

     "Battle stations," shouted Major Krinnen, and turning back to Erren she said, "You had better get inside."

     But it was too late. The canopy of the cloudcutter's cockpit was already closing, and the anti-gravity generators were powering up for a vertical take-off. The frustrated Major jumped from the portable steps, which were then wheeled off by the technicians as they abandoned their routine checks, and she backed away to a safe distance.

     With a pulsating hum, the cloudcutter rose from the launch pad, it's three legs retracting into compartments in it's underside. With a flurry of fire and hot air, the craft shrank into the darkness towards the lightening-like laser flashes. The Major cursed Erren's bravado, and made her way to the command centre.

     Erren was amongst the battle within a few seconds, and the two imperial skirmishers were scattered when his speeding cloudcutter emerged from the night with screaming beams of laser going before it. The distraction gave the cloudcutter they were assailing the chance to drop unnoticed to the ground, where it forced itself deep into the snow out of sight. The courier was safe; at least for the moment!

     Erren looped-the-loop and made another assault on the skirmishers, threading through their fusillade, to pierce the hull of one of the skirmishers several times. As it plummeted towards the snowy mountain side, seven new blips appeared on Erren's scanner; blips that read as skirmishers!

     Erren knew that he could not outfight eight of these vessels, so he led them towards the base. There, at least, he could rely on defensive fire- power. His small craft screamed through the air above the base, and spiralled downwards around the first peak of Torrund Mountain, becoming indiscernible from the mountain itself, as far as the enemy's scanners were concerned. The advancing vessel did not know what it was flying into, the base being adequately shielded from ordinary scans.

     Suddenly, a volley of plasma illuminated the sky, and the first skirmisher disintegrated in fiery brilliance. The Empire would have no doubt about the rebel's location now; the other seven skirmishers will already have sent the co-ordinates. They advanced on the base, missiles and laser cannons tearing craters into the terrain. The rebel's defenses fought back with all they had, destroying one skirmisher and sending another into a limping descent, but the onslaught continued.

     Erren's cloudcutter skimmed the surface of the snow on the mountain side beneath the imperial vessels, searching meticulously for the hidden cloudcutter. That courier carried the bomb, stolen from an imperial arsenal, without which Erren's mission was impossible. The battle shrank into the distance behind him, and in spite of the vague sounds of laser fire and explosion, a stillness surrounded his craft.

     That stillness was shattered by a ground-shaking boom, and Erren switched to his rear view screen to see the base ablaze. The fuel in the generators must have ignited; anyone still in the command centre would be dead, and anyone left alive on the base would be executed.

     Erren was disheartened for a few moments, until he realised that they had fought to keep his chances alive. At that moment, a small blip on his scanner indicated the presence of another cloudcutter. It whizzed past from his left side, and fell into a parallel course to him. It was the courier, and Erren opened a communications channel with him.

     "I am Captain Erren Bruinn," said Erren. "I must take receipt of the item you are carrying. The Torrund Mountain Base has been destroyed, and you are advised to abandon this area as soon as you have relinquished the item."

     "I am Guinn Torrinen," said the courier, "And I have been instructed to hand the item in person to Major Krinnen on Torrund Mountain Base."

     "If Major Krinnen isn't dead," said Erren, "she soon will be. The base is destroyed, but the mission can continue if you..."

     A new blip on his scanner, a big ugly blip, indicated the imminent arrival of an imperial skybase from the south. It's vast black hulk was not visible in the veil of night, so the first the two rebels would see of it was it's barrage of fatal light.

     Erren grimaced. "There is no time for argument or explanation," he screamed through the comm channel. "we cannot fight, and there is no value in running. I am pulling rank on you! Give me the item!"

     Then the metallic mass of the skybase drifted into range, and rods of blinding light connected it with the slopes around the two cloudcutters. Steam rose from the snow, making navigation by sight an impossible task. Both cloudcutters climbed into the air, parting as they did so, followed by the multiple laser fire of the sluggish skybase. There was no point in returning fire, as the damage done on a skybase by a cloudcutter's measly firepower could be repaired with a lick of paint, and Erren was at a loss. He flew in close to the skybase, out of the range of it's laser cannons' angles of rotation, searching for a vulnerability; but his attention soon turned towards the courier's cloudcutter, which had manoeuvred behind the behemoth.

     The skirmishers that had destroyed the base were returning to the skybase, preparing to dock on it's underside. Only three had survived the battle, and one separated from the others to chase Erren's cloudcutter over the top of the huge vessel. It was not swift enough to catch up with him, nor could it outmanoeuvre him, but it had only to flush him out from the protection of the skybase's hull. Erren dodged it's fire as best he could, while keeping an eye on the location of the courier with his all-important package.

     But the courier had decided on a suicidal tactic. As he aligned his cloudcutter with the skybase's vast rear engine, he ejected the bomb, letting it hurtle towards the snow. Erren immediately selected the bomb on his scanner, allowing the cloudcutter's automatic pilot free control of the craft. He sped away from the giant. The crew of the skirmisher were taken by surprise, but not as much as by the eruption caused by the courier's cloudcutter exploding within the skybase's engine.

     Fleeing from the carnage, Erren's craft snatched the bomb from it's descent. The light of the burning wreckage gleaming off the snow illuminated the landscape. Erren flew high, his course set for the Grand Computer Building. At maximum speed, it would be a matter of two hours before he reached it, but it would be two hours of reflection on the destruction he was leaving behind. Major Krinnen, whether she was killed in the destruction of the rebel base or the imperial skybase he would never know; the soldiers and technicians, at least fifty in all; and, of course, the courier, who probably saved Erren's mission. It was up to him now to make their deaths worthwhile.

     The Grand Computer Building was an ornately moulded metallic structure, vast and dark, with spires and arches. About it's walls, the tales of past victories of the Empire were presented in raised metal, stylised and dynamic. But the kitsch propaganda of it's external appearance cloaked highly functional bowels. Deep within the complex, a mighty computer controlled the flow of information throughout the imperial forces within the Ajax solar system, as well as receiving and sending instructions to other parts of the Empire. The eradication of this far-reaching technical fungus from the Ajax system would permit the overthrow of imperial power.

     The almost impassable forest surrounding the building harboured a potential source of just such an defeat. The concept behind the building's location was that nothing could approach from the air without being detected by scanners, and nothing could approach through the great expanse of dense forest without being poisoned or disembowelled or eaten (or all three) by the particularly aggressive flora and fauna of Ajax 3.

     But the Empire had not reckoned on the ingenuity of a repressed population. Erren's cloudcutter had followed a troop transport to the base so closely that a scanner could not tell the two vehicles apart. As soon as the tallest trees could shield him from detection, he lowered his vessel into the forest, where it rested on the dense foliage (cloudcutters are exceptionally light when low on fuel). Thereafter, he had only a twenty metre hike to the basement entrance, as shown on the map, and years of commando training and experience of guerilla warfare had prepared him for such a journey.

     A crimson dawn marked his arrival at the well concealed entrance to the basement of the Grand Computer Building. It was nothing more than a trapdoor, which lifted to reveal a chute into an overbearingly illuminated place. Erren simply dived down the chute, and found himself confronted by a voluminous subterranean storage chamber, full of metal crates and canisters. He made his way to the stairs on the other side of the room, and ascended to the ground floor.

     After many passages, rooms and near fatal encounters, Erren reached the generator room, a relatively small room with a huge tubular conduit running from floor to ceiling. Energy throbbed along the conduit, and the vibration could be felt through the walls and floor. Erren only needed to set the bomb's timer for an hour-long countdown, conceal the device beneath the control panel on the wall and leave as quickly as possible. When the bomb detonates, the entire building should be annihilated, and Erren will hopefully be a long way from it.

     And then, someone shouted at him. Although the sounds were definitely speech, they were not in Erren's language, but they were followed by a translation device's mechanical voice, "Drop everything and raise all six tentacles slowly in the air!"

     Erren spun around to see six human soldiers, clad in black armour, each holding a laser rifle pointed at Erren. His three eyes opened wide with astonishment for a moment, before he composed himself. His time was up; although his species were stronger than humans, he could never defeat six of them. He dropped his three pistols, and slowly raised all six tentacles, but the bomb was still held firmly in the three fingers of one of his hind limbs. Before the soldiers knew what was happening, he activated the detonator. The timer not having been set, the bomb exploded, tearing open the power conduit, and igniting the fuel core.

     Throughout the Ajax system, the command centres of the Human Empire had lost their flow of commands and information. On the burning world of Ajax 9, a misty, volcanic planet, the gigantic Dome 32 ceased weapons production. The enslaved molluscoid life-forms stole the weapons carried by their guards and liberated the rest of the domes on the planet. On Ajax 1, a tiny airless planet, the human occupants of Dome 3 were murdered by their slaves, and they sent the signal to the rest of the domestic slaves to follow their example. And most dramatically, on Ajax 3, the only world in the system with an atmosphere that could support life, and the main base of operations for mankind in the Ajax system, armies of rebels rapped their tentacles around the throats of numerous soldiers and officials, throttling the life from their pathetic human bodies. If Major Krinnen had lived, she would have been proud of Captain Erren Bruin, as she slithered through human corpses, commanding tentacled troops into battle.