Hi everyone, hope you all had a good Christmas.

I took the week off for this story to get the holiday busy period done and finish publishing the annual Snoggletog story. So I found myself wondering where I had left things with Blue and when I opened this chapter to proof read it, I was so happy because I've been waiting for this bit. Hope you like, Marty.

Chapter 26

The night was perfect. There was a Half Moon but there was also a blanket of cloud covering the sky keeping the light low. Completely unseen by the guards on the nearby wall, a figure in dark clothing stepped carefully between random spots on the road and left a small orange orb in each place. He took his time for the air was still and if he should stumble or falter, his presence would surely be detected.

Eventually with his objective achieved, the figure turned and melted into the night.

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The next day was a relatively cold in the mountains and the people of Gran's survival village were spending most of their time working inside the tunnel system, or in the outer buildings. The only people still outside were those who were hurrying from one work station to the next, and the ones who were unfortunate enough to be on guard duty both on the wall and near the gate. None of the guards stood still at their posts but instead they paced back and forth, rubbing their hands and stamping their half frozen feet. There had not been any snow but the breeze was coming in from the northeast and it brought with it an unwelcome chill.

On the rough road leading off to the south, one of the wall guards thought he could see something moving. He lifted a pair of binoculars to his eyes and was surprised to see someone approaching. He did not know it, but it was the same lone figure who had been there the previous night, now making his way determinedly towards the encampment.

"HEY!" the guard called to the men on the ground below "Are we expecting any traders?"

"Not at this time of year, traders only come during the harvest season" Stanley answered.

"Well there's someone coming up the road."

Looking where the guard was pointing, Stanley finally noticed what he was talking about. The whole group watched with keen interest as the figure drew ever closer until he suddenly stopped about a hundred meters from the wall and just stood there with his arms crossed.

"What's he doing?" Stanley asked the wall guard.

"Err... nothing really."

"Is he armed?"

"Doesn't appear to be" the guard replied.

Stanley walked forward a little but stopped after only a few meters; something did not seem right and he could not quite put his finger on what it was. The figure wore heavy clothing to protect him from the cold and a black skull cap. The collar of his coat was turned up and with the light behind him, it was difficult to see any identifying features.

"WHO ARE YOU?" Stanley shouted above the wind.

As if the cold air wasn't bad enough, the figures silence only made everyone at the wall even more uneasy. When no answer was forthcoming to Stanley's question, he decided to try again before taking any action.

"WHAT DO YOU WANT?"

The figure uncrossed his arms and lifted his head, appearing to stare straight into Stanley's soul.

"I WANT THE TWO GIRLS, CALLA AND ABIGAIL; BRING THEM OUT AND THERE WILL BE NO TROUBLE."

"Is he kidding?" one of the men behind Stanley chuckled.

"It's the boy... the one who escaped... GET HIM!" Stanley ordered his men forward.

Blue could not believe his luck. He turned and ran back to the south with four armed men giving chase. When he had lead them far enough to be out of sight of the wall guards, Blue suddenly stopped and turned back to face his pursuers.

"WAIT!" he called out, holding up the palm of his hand to the men.

Even though they had no real reason to, Blue's authoritative demand made each man stop in his tracks. It took a few seconds before they realised they were following the orders of an escaped prisoner.

"This is your last chance!" Blue warned "Give me my friends or suffer the consequences."

"On the contrary" Stanley smirked "You are coming back with us."

"Alright then... FIREFLY; DISARM!"

Blue kept his eyes directly on the confused men standing before him. Unsure of what the young man was shouting about, they were not sure how to proceed. A strange bird gave a strange squawk high above them but it was not enough to divert their attention. Stanley half raised his rifle to show Blue that running again would not be a good idea, and ordered the other men to grab the boy. They had only taken a single step when the dragons struck.

Stanley jumped back from the shock as Firefly swooped down from the sky and grabbed the rifle barrel in his powerful talons. The other men abandoned the idea of moving on Blue and instead raised their own weapons with the intention of bringing the flying intruder down, but Azrail and Ginger Nut had other ideas. Putting their training to good use, they came in a few seconds behind Firefly and shot their fireballs straight into the fore stocks of the men's weapons. Both rifles discharged as the stocks disintegrated but Firefly had rolled into a dive, turning himself into a nearly imposable target. The wall guards gasped in astonishment at what they had witnessed; recapturing this boy should have been a simple task, but it had turned into quite the opposite.

Making the most of the distraction, Blue's allies had crept along the sides of the canyon and moved in along the sides of the wall. After slipping in the open gate, their intention was to climb the steps to the ramparts and capture the wall guards before the alarm could be raised; at least that was the plan. Reality turned out to be extremely different when Reed Branson found himself face to face with a man carrying a load of firewood, and a woman with a water container.

"Who the hell are you?" the woman demanded.

All this happened at the same time as the dragons attacked Stanley and his men, so when the rifles had discharged it soon became clear that something was afoot.

"HELP; WE'RE UNDER ATTACK!" the woman declared as she dropped her container and ran back towards the tunnel.

The man threw his armful of firewood at Captain Branson before retreating as well.

"Oh crap!" Branson declared as he removed the radio from his belt "Blue; we're about to have company."

The three men Blue had subdued with the dragons help, had begun to get their heads back in the game after the initial shock of being disarmed, and had realised they still outnumbered the young man three to one. But before they could do anything to press their advantage, Haley, Emerson and Doom ran out from the forest on the west side of the road to give Blue some back up.

"Don't get any ideas" Emerson warned as he brandished a baseball bat sized piece of wood in a menacing fashion.

All three members of the First Dragon Attack Wing circled overhead with Firefly happily chewing on the rifle he had stolen, so Doom and Haley called back their dragons so they could employ the same kind of intimidation techniques as Emerson did with his stick.

"You think you can force your way in with just a few..."

Stanley did not continue with his observation when he noticed more of Blue's allies moving in from the forest.

"Dragon Wing to Bull Ant" Blue spoke into his radio "Surprise strike had severely limited success; go to plan Delta."

A cold shiver ran up Stanley's spine when he suddenly realised his foes were far better organised that he had first anticipated. But based on the number of people he had seen so far, he knew his side could easily handle three or four times their number. Several members of the Strikers crew took the first three captives back to the forest edge with the intent of sitting them down and binding their hands.

Meanwhile, the four members of Captain Branson's infiltration force were facing their own problems. After the alarm had been raised concerning the presence of the intruders, the two wall guards hurried down the steps to meet the threat head on at the main gate. Reed signalled his people to back up behind the gates frame and as soon as the first rifle barrel appeared around the corner, he grabbed it with both hands and swung its surprised owner around into the waiting arms of his people. He then swung the commandeered weapon back, using the butt of the stock to fell the second wall guard with a considerable tap to the forehead.

This initial success for the infiltration team ended right there and then, when a large hoard of people began to pour out of the tunnel brandishing various weapons. A few had rifles or hand guns, but most made do with tools and sticks. Reed suddenly knew how Doctor Frankenstein's creature must have felt when the entire population of the local village had risen up against him.

"Oh crap!" he stated for a second time.

Quickly picking up the other wall guard's rifle, Branson abandoned his prisoners and herded his team back outside the gate.

"run run Run Run RUN RUN!" he yelled.

The infiltration team only had a short head start on the mob behind them, and they clearly needed urgent help. The assistance came quickly in the form of a single rifle shot. It had come from a nearby hill but the crack of the gunshot bounced around the area, making it impossible to identify the location of its source. The round struck one of the small orange orbs left the night before causing it to erupt in a ball of flame some three meters in diameter. The sight of the flash, and thunderous sound accompanying it, naturally caused the pursuing mob to falter in their determination to pursue Captain Branson and his team.

"Where the hell is that tank?" Reed demanded to know when he reached the others.

"The Bull Ant? It's coming" Blue replied.

"So is Christmas but which one will get here first?"

"Maybe we should go to the Bull Ant instead of waiting here" Haley suggested.

"Good Idea" Emerson agreed as the entire group headed south.

The mob from the compound was still advancing on the rescuers, but in a much more careful manor. From her hiding place on the hill, Marion Green watched the entire proceedings through the scope of her late father's snipers rifle. She picked out a second orange orb in the mobs path and squeezed the trigger. The second eruption had the desired effect of making everyone think twice about their actions.

Not far down the road, the rescuers finally came across their current goal. The rail carriage on caterpillar tracks that was the Bull Ant ground its way slowly and inevitably towards Gran's compound.

Its physical appearance had changed greatly recently, when the passengers and crews of the two ships from Sumatra had arrived and turned it into a reasonable facsimile of an Ancient Roman War Machine.

In only three days the crew of the One and All along with engineers from the Striker, had achieved something truly astounding. Gone was the solar blanket from the roof of the railway car, with all electrical power now coming from a shielded nuclear thermal generator the size of kitchen refrigerator, that had been repurposed from a planned observation satellite, as of yet unbuilt. Two hefty tree trunks hung from heavy chains, one on each side, running the entire length of the Bull Ant and protruding four meters out in front. Atop these logs a shield of smaller pine trunks curved around the nose and one third of the way down each side of the vehicle.

Offensive armament was light and consisted of only one sharp shooter in the form of Jose Garcia, and a flamethrower so small, it could barely be used to light a campfire. Jose had been given the task of trying to worry the defenders from the canyon, while the flamethrower was meant to scare the pants off them by making them think there was another dragon close by.

As the pitiful excuse for a war machine slowly closed the distance between itself and the compound wall, Blue and rescue team closed the distance between themselves and he Bull Ant at a more rapid pace.

"GET THE FLIGHT BOARD!" Blue cried out when he had reached his destination.

The rear door of the Bull Ant opened and two crew members lowered the pieces of Blue's new contraption to the ground.

"Are you sure about this" Reed Branson looked very sceptical "Your landings back on the island were pretty rough."

"Oh I'm sure the dragons will do much better this time... I hope" Blue admitted to some trepidation.

With Gran's defenders still making their way down the road, Blue knew he did not have much time to get ready, so he laid the board on the ground and got to work. What he had made consisted of a carbon fibre board cut from one of the underwater struts of the Star Runner's false keel. It was just over a meter long and had been modified with four steel rings loosely fitted, one in each corner. A piece of two meter pipe was slipped into the rings at the front, followed by another at the back. With everything in place at last, Blue called on his dragons.

"Good luck" Haley said as each of the four Terrible Terrors swooped down and took up their positions on the ends of the pipes.

"Luck would be nice, but I'd rather have a crash helmet" Blue admitted.

"Don't forget this" Emerson said, passing Blue a small satchel.

"Thanks... okay boys and girls... LIFT!" Blue ordered.

The sight of four small dragons carrying a young man on what could only be described as a aerial skeleton sled, was something the Bull Ant crew were still not quite used to. The whole system was still in its early stages of development and was very rough. The only control Blue had over the direction of travel was to lean his body in the direction he wanted to steer. For anything else he had to rely on the skill and intuition of the dragons.

They lifted off with the sled pointing to the south in an attempt to hide Blue's departure from the pursuing mob. About five hundred meters down the road, Blue leant back a little by lifting his shoulders, thereby signalling the dragons to start gaining a little altitude. Taking a wide arc to the left, Blue guided the dragons up over the top of the hill and back towards the compound that was once his home and prison, and where his lost friend and his sister still resided.

Blue already knew how intelligent and intuitive dragons were, thanks not only to the writings of Fishlegs Ingerman, but also from his recent experiences with them. Even so he would have been truly amazed if he had only known just how much the Terrible Terrors were aware about what was going on. This was not the first time these small dragons had needed to work together against a much larger enemy. They may not have known the reasons for why this conflict was occurring, but there was one thing they did know. Ever since the day they had first met the humans on the Island of Berk, Blue and his friends had proved themselves to be caring, generous, and fun loving people; so if they had a problem with these strangers from the cold mountain, then the dragons would have their backs to the bitter end. There was no doubt in their minds at all; playtime was over for now, this was war.

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Did anyone notice the paraphrase of a Han Solo quote?

I can't help it, I love putting stolen lines in ;)