"Gorram ape-faced qing wa cao de liu mang!"

Running cautiously through the many levels of the space station currently in orbit above Dyton Colony, Wren Ishido muttered multiple expletives under her breath, ranging back and forth between Chinese and English in varying degrees of quiet fury and desperation. She should have known better than to come here; the place was Alliance, after all. But she was fast running out of places to hide herself, and with him on her trail, she couldn't afford to backtrack.

Why in the sphincter of hell did they have to send him after her? She rolled her eyes at the stupidly whiny thought. She knew why he was the one hunting her, determined to bring her in. He knew her, probably better than anyone, and he was proving that masterfully. Each stopover point for her had been shorter and shorter in duration over the year she'd been on the run, because every time she stopped, he got that little bit closer. He was utilizing everything he had learned to find her and bring her back, and she knew why. Knowing the Alliance hun dan in command, if she wasn't brought back, her hunter would be considered implicit in her 'crimes'. They had been ... close ... before her escape, and that closeness was enough to condemn him in her place.

Which weren't that many, really, she reflected, ducking left into an old access shoot to slide down the next couple of levels in relative safety. But they were the worst sort of crimes in the eyes of the Alliance. Thinking for herself, after she'd been trained not to; going looking for the truth, when they expected her to believe their lies; and worst of all, coming to the conclusion that she'd been fighting on the wrong side all her life. Rebellion in the ranks was not to be permitted, and she knew her former commanders all too well. She'd even witnessed a couple of the executions for 'crimes' similar to her own.

Dropping lightly onto the level she wanted, she paused, listening intently at the vent for any sign of movement in the almost deserted hangar where she'd left her dilapidated and, admittedly, stolen ship. No footsteps, no signs of life ... but that meant virtually nothing. He could already be there, lying in wait to bind her and drag her back to face judgement. She had no choice but to risk it.

Carefully she opened the vent and slipped out, not bothering to pause and replace it. Either she got away clean, or she was captured - either way, one open vent was not her problem. Hugging the wall, keeping as much to the shadows as she could, golden brown eyes scanning the hangar intently for anything that might give warning of danger. Nothing came to light, but again, she wasn't foolish enough to think that there was nothing there. But just maybe Buddha was on her side today ...

She broke from the shadows, accelerating across the hangar and into the shadow of her tiny stolen fighter, gloved fingers scrabbling at the door mechanism. There was a click behind her, and she froze. She knew that particular sound all too well.

"Wren Ishido, you are bound by law under the Union of Allied Planets. Put your hands in the air and turn around slowly."

It was him. Of course he had known she would make for her ship as soon as she caught sight of him. For all she knew, that glimpse in the bar seven levels above could have been staged with the holo-technology he'd always said he hated so much. Her hands lifted slowly, rising to either side of her head as she stared at the hull of her stolen ship, her mind racing. He wasn't infallible, there were ways he could be defeated. All she had to do was take him by surprise ... and he began to speak again.

"Good move, cutting your hair," he complimented her hasty decision to hack off long dark chocolate locks in a desperate attempt to disguise herself. "Makes you harder to find when all I've got to show 'round is your Academy ident image. Get moving, Wren, I ain't hanging around all day."

He was distracting himself, the idiot. She almost could have laughed, were it not for what she now had to do. With a yell, she spun, one hand knocking his autopistol away from her as the other drew the short-stacked carbine from the holster on her thigh and fired. There was a loud report, he grunted, and then was flying back from her under the force of the shot to land heavily against the metallic floor several paces away.

Wren spun back to the door, holstering her weapon again as she scrambled into her stolen ship, pulling that door shut securely. It was too much to hope for - and she knew she wasn't hoping all that hard, anyway - that he had been wounded even lightly by the shot. He knew her far too well not to wear body armour when she was armed. Even now, he was pulling himself to his feet as she revved up the ancient engine, preparing to depart.

"Don't make me do this, Wren."

His voice was as clear as could be within the confines of the little ship, and she jumped, looking up to find him talking into one of the older communicators favoured by the Rim planet administrations. Gorram it, he had to have been on her ship to plant the other one.

"Do what? You going to shoot me?" She made herself laugh, feigning a confidence she didn't feel. He was too calm.

Slowly he raised his autopistol and she swore loudly in shock. That fei fei de pi yan was aiming for her fuel tanks. If he hit them, it wouldn't much matter where she was going. There wouldn't be enough of her to scrape off the walls and box up for her family.

"Last time, Wren. Lay down your arms and surrender."

She stared at him, utterly shocked that he would even consider doing this to her, after everything they had been through. And as she stared, she realised that it was not so easy for him as it seemed. His hand was shaking, something she had never seen before, and there was an odd note of pleading in his voice, echoed in his eyes as he met her gaze from across the hangar. And somehow, that made it easier to accept that this was her fate.

"I'll take dead and free over living and brainwashed anyday," she told him, laying her hands on the arms of her pilot's chair, inwardly preparing for the death that was coming as her eyes fell closed.

She heard the bullet leave the pistol, seemed to hear its trajectory in slow motion as it ripped through the air, the dull, deadly clunk as it punctured those volatile tanks below her. And the 'verse exploded.

Fire and debris threw her upwards, shaking her brain in her skull as she yelled out in shock and fear. The flames licked up all around her, burning and strangely soothing all at once. A flash of her eyes opening and closing showed the same flames reaching for him as he was thrown backwards by the blast, and part of her regretted that he had to die because of her.

But the fire was not hot enough, the light too bright, and suddenly there was no disintegrating seat beneath her, and no pain or fear to fuel her. She floated, held in hands of air and light too bright to keep her eyes open, warm and cool breezes rippling over her skin as something carried her away from danger and death.

She landed with a thump, grunting with the impact, and slowly her eyes flickered open. Above her was a clear blue sky, decked with fluffy white clouds. A stiff breeze ruffled her clothing, blowing the longer strands of her hair over her face as she blinked in confusion and vague alarm. A questing hand told her that the surface beneath her was grainy and warm ... sand that clung to her fingers as she pushed herself into a sitting position.

"Guai guai long de dong?"

Wherever she was, it was unlike anywhere she had ever seen. Mountains and forests that seemed straight out of the storybooks rose around the horizon, sparkling blue waters of a crystal clear lake lapped at the shoreline nearby. The wind cooled her skin as she lifted a hand to shade her eyes from the glare of the warm sunlight flickering off the water before her.

Where in the gorram hells was she? And how had she got here? She should be dead, burned to a crisp in exploding fire, and instead she was ... here. Wherever here was. A vague consideration that she was dead, and this was the afterlife she had never believed in was quickly pushed aside as a groan reached her ears.

She turned, rising onto her feet, and felt a chill run through her. He was here, too, unconscious but beginning to come around. So much for the afterlife theory. Then her instincts caught up with her, reasoning pointing out that no matter where they were he would continue to hunt her, and look for a way to take her back. There was nowhere in the 'verse the Alliance's hand could not reach if it stretched far enough.

Without a backward glance at the man who had once been everything to her, she spun away, feet thumping easily across the sand as she headed towards the shelter of the swaying trees nearby. Her plan - to discover where she was, and where the best place would be to find a ship that could take her away from here; to steal that ship and leave him behind her, hopefully for good.

A pity that the best laid plans so seldom come together.