Russ rolled a metal pointer finger over and over in his palm. Quynn's cyborg finger. It was the only thing left of him. Pete had not been able to slow the speeder down in time. They'd collided with the avalanche of boulders. Boom. Poof. Gone.

He had sifted through the rocks and wreckage with wild abandon until his fingertips were scraped and bloodied. But to no avail. There's no way Quynn or Pete survived that. Russ had been lucky to even find the index.

In a way though it was better than the long forever fall that Milton and Edom suffered. Theirs had been a near endless plummet into Noctis Labyrinthus. The canyon swallowed them without so much as a whisper. If Russ thought about it, they blew up too, just much, much later. As much as Russ did not want to think about it, he could not help being reminded. The bloody canyon chasm crawled ever present alongside him and Crag as they dragged their feet back home.

The sun set long before he and Crag made it back to Tharsis. Their speeder had not blown up, but the boulders had squashed the front half of the hovercraft. So they trudged the long walk of shame back.

Starlight punctured holes in the night sky. The countless heavenly bodies reminded Russ of the equally countless times when he and Quynn—as mischievous young boys- had explored the craters and canyons around Tharsis. Shirking their farming responsibilities, they would sneak out and be gone from midday until the twin moons ran their course across the sky. Expeditions full of hunting lean jackrabbits with railgun pellet rifles, capturing lizards by hand, or illegally operating and joyriding in an old rusty abandoned speeder they found and fixed. The ever-present stars were the only ones to witness he and Quynn's adventures. And now besides Russ, only the stars would remember Quynn.

Dark shapes squatting in the night brought Russ to attention. It took a moment to recognize the modular buildings. He and Crag had dropped one boot in front of the other all the way back into town. His mind snapped to the present with a mental whiplash. He did not even remember the long walk back. Judging by the position of the twin moons, it was late evening, almost the early morning of the next day.

The town he'd known his whole life looked different in the moonlight. Unrecognizable. Empty. A chill wind crept over Russ, crawling across the back of his neck, down his spine. The strange shadows illuminated the deep maroon hue of the ground, dark as dried blood. For the first time in his life he caught a whiff of the true stench of Rubrum, what offworlders complained of. She reeked worse than an abandoned wet mutt. She stank of death and despair.

Russ snarled.

Numbness deadened his mind, but the chill lingered in his bones.

In a daze, he did not respond as Crag bid him good night. Disorientation kept his thoughts spinning, never able to grasp the here and now, only the dead and gone.

Somehow he managed to get out of his clothes and into bed.

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He sunk into his mattress, drifting through delirium as the night hours sifted away. Staring at the ceiling, his mind replayed the deafening explosion over and over, and the ecstatic look on Tracy's face as he escaped the doom while Russ' friends died in a blaze of inferno.

Early in the morning, Russ attempted to get some shuteye, but the mask of terror, the last look on Quynn's face was etched on the inside of Russ' eyelids.

Anger did not burn in him. But a frigid frost spread all throughout his body, stemming from his heart.

When the first morning light beamed through his window across the bags under his eyes, it did not warm Russ in the slightest. All it did was affirm his resolve. It was a new day full of old hatred. An emotion as ancient as Cain and Abel.

With calm determined precision, Russ pulled on his jeans, slipped on his boots, buttoned his shirt, strapped on his belt, holstered his guns, and donned his hat.

His badge rested in his palm.

He opened the pin to slip it through his shirt, but he missed and pricked his chest.

Rage erupted, filling him. He screamed and flung the star. Thanks to it's sharp points, it embedded itself in the wall.

He thrashed, pummeling his fists into anything that crossed his path. But none of it brought Quynn back.

Eventually he ended up in a sobbing heap on the floor.

He caught his reflection in the mirror.

The mirror showed a circle of blood pooling underneath his shirt, just above his heart where the pin had pricked him.

Russ dried his wet cheeks with his pillow, wiping all expression of sorrow from his face forever, then got to his feet. The revolvers at his hips hung heavy with duty, but not the oath he'd been charged with. Instead of the old oath, a new duty fueled him. It was a duty born of loss, a need to right wrongs, for scores to be settled. Russ tugged the star out of the wall and headed towards the Sheriff's office.