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red-orange fury, coupled with a thunderclap of sound. Jake ducked behind the rocky outcropping, as a wave of superheated debris shot past his meager hideout. He gave a silent prayer of thanks, blessing the ordinance guy on the Tennyson, Nick Richardson, who had issued him a MAG50 instead of the much less potent RP30. The concussion from the blast dropped him the rest of the way to the ground, leaving him face down, gasping in pain, the force of his fall multiplied by the stronger Casserine gravity. He rolled slightly to the side, pitching the launcher away from him as he grabbed for the particle beam rifle near him.
    He crawled with it across the clearing towards where he saw Adrian go down. After twenty feet, the sparkling powdery debris from the explosion began to settle. Jake could see Adrian lying on her side, facing away from him, another forty feet away. He saw her move weakly, as if trying to turn her body closer to the rock wall in front of her. Jake glanced back towards the storage areas. He smiled grimly, thinking about how surprised these pirates would be when they lacked a ship to escape with their plunder.
    It took him another five minutes to reach Adrian. Jake knew the consequences of trying to hurry in Casserine’s gravity. He would be of no use to Adrian if he could not move when he reached her. Jake cursed her under his breath all the remaining way, remembering how she had smiled as he ordered her to take their field communication unit, and head towards the hollowed out cave they had readied for just this kind of emergency.
    Jake put a hand on her unmoving shoulder. Adrian tensed at his touch. She let him ease her body over facing him as she lay on her back. Her hands were clenched over her left side, Where Jake could see two of the blind shots from the pirate ship had burned a furrow under her rib cage, and an equally nasty looking one across her right calf. Adrian smiled up crookedly at him.
    “Hummmm…me sorry Ke-mo sah-be,” she said weakly, imitating the disc recording of the old radio tapes Jake had ordered in. Adrian tried to lower her voice to match the Lone Ranger’s Indian sidekick, Tonto.
    “If you weren’t already wounded, Tonto, I’d shoot you myself. What part of ‘get the field communicator to the cave refuge’ didn’t you understand? Has English all of a sudden become your second language? Remember our job descriptions? You know, the ones which state I handle military operations and you communicate with base.”
    “Make Ke-mo sah-be feel better…if.Tonto bleed to death…on cold…ground?”
    Jake sighed. “Tonto not bleed to death, because luckily, bad shots cauterized the wounds as they burned pieces out of Tonto’s disobeying hide.”
    Jake put his rifle down and braced himself against the rock wall. He reached down with his right arm. “Come on Tonto, you will have to ride Trigger to safety, where the Ranger can patch up his un-trusty sidekick’s wounds.”
    “Trigger. was. Roy Rodger’s horse,” Adrian corrected haltingly as she pulled herself up.
    “Whatever, I knew I should never have let you listen to those tapes.” Jake helped her up onto his back. He leaned carefully against the rock wall again, and picked up his particle beam rifle, slinging it around his neck. Straightening slowly, he eased himself away from the rocks. “We’re going. to have. to cut back on Tonto’s eating habits. if Tonto makes a habit out of disobeying .the Lone Ranger’ s orders. It feels…like the…Lone Ranger has Trigger…on his back instead of Tonto.”
    Adrian giggled in spite of her wounds, as Jake trudged slowly in the direction of the cave, staying close to the steep side of the mountainous terrain, where they had built their refuge. Jake almost lost his footing. He stopped immediately, waiting to regain his equilibrium.
    “You did at least…get the…communicator into the cave, didn’t you, Tonto?” Jake asked, as he steadied himself with his right hand against the rock