Tracy eyed each man in turn. None met his gaze. They let their gun barrels do the staring. The backstabbing cowards.

None met his gaze, except for Roy. A sharp-toothed grin spread across the fugitive's face.

"See boy, I run this town. You think you're the Law. But in town, I'm the Law. Don't push it. I'll give you a clash you won't believe."

More gunners popped up over the top of nearby buildings. This wasn't a simple switching of sides, from Tracy's to Roy's.

This was premeditated. An ambush. He'd been set up. And he'd swallowed the hook, letting it scrape its way down and catch in his throat.

Tracy chuckled, calculated the odds in his head, but no matter how many he could outgun, there would still be enough turncoats and outlaws left to make him as hollow as his acoustic guitar. He lowered his revolvers with slow precision.

Roy whispered, "As you've likely guessed by now, I've got Miss Coraline and her little runt hostage. If you want them to live, I suggest you comply. Drop them fancy revolvers on the ground."

Tracy grimaced. Letting Judge and Jury fall to the ground would fill every crevice with grime. It would take hours to clean. Multiple times. And they might never work the same again. He would have had one trick up his sleeve, but he left it back with SmitHuri.

"I said drop 'em, Edgar—," Roy sneered. "Er, I mean, Tracy. Ain't going to repeat myself."

So the gig was up. Roy not only had Cora and the boy, but he knew he'd been fooled during Faro. Which meant he'd had time to prepare all this.

Tracy let his JC Maxwell's drop to the ground in a plume of red dust. "Piss and pestilence, Royce. You're a real cactus in my crotch, you know that?" He spat in Roy's direction.

Roy just laughed. "Detain him boys. Haven't decided what to do with him yet."

To those nearest him, Tracy smelled like electric humidity, the thick tension that boiled the air before a coming storm. They hesitated to obey Roy, but only for a moment.

The sun blazed high in the Martian sky, glinting off of his U.S. Marshal's badge.

Outnumbered? Yep.

Backstabbed? But of course.

Was he, an extension the Law, about to bend down and lick Corruption's boot? Never.

After all he'd been through, Tracy wasn't going to be taken down by these putrid pieces of gutter feces. Hina and his unborn child waited for him to return to be the husband and father they needed.

Trace the Ace wasn't without any preparation.

The wailing harmonica tune from yesteryear cut the silence again, an omen for the present, a dirge from the future.

Two men approached the lawman, one with guns drawn, the other with cuffs ready to subdue Tracy.

The first man snapped a handcuff into place around Tracy's flesh arm. But as he adjusted the cuff to fit the oversized borrowed prosthetic, Tracy let out a sharp whistle like the piercing screech of a bald eagle.

Thunderous galloping answered as the metal Mustang stormed into the fray. With roaring exhaust pipes rumbling, Chasm reared up, pawing the sky, causing the perfect heart-stopping distraction.

Tracy twisted, clasped the man's wrist and squeezed hard. He felt bone break and heard it snap, then disintegrate under the crushing clamp of the beefy borrowed arm. The man doubled over, howling in pain.

Tracy spun on his heel and grabbed the man, using him as a human shield, while his metal hand stole the man's revolver.

Roy's friends didn't even hesitate. They showered their compadre in friendly fire, reducing him to meatloaf. Most shots grazed Tracy's duster, but some dug close enough to sting.

Tracy fired on the second man, the one closest to him. They shot to kill him, a man of the law, and they outnumber him. Tracy shot to survive.

Pew. Pew. Pew. Pew.

The Ace fired as he seized the opportunity to draw back, finding cover between two modular buildings and dropped the deadweight meat shield. By the time he found cover, his four shots nestled into new homes. They might as well have been nails in coffins. Three of Roy's cronies slunk to the dust. A fourth doubled over, in the throes of death.

For his part, Chasm charged the group of men nearest him like a boulder tumbling towards clay bowling pins. He bucked and donkey-kicked men, shattering bone under his alloyed hooves. Shots ricocheted off of his chrome hide, burrowing into unintended victims.

Deafening blasts rang in Tracy's ears. Shots chipped away at the edge of the wall Tracy had his back against. Debris filled the air, threatening to choke Tracy. He blinked away the sawdust blinding him.

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He could not stay put.

The dying forth man finally collapsed, his flailing arm dropping a revolver just within Tracy's reach. The lawman snatched it up and retreated further back between the two buildings to the end, and ran along the backside of the buildings, firing into the gaps like spaces between a picket fence.

Tracy sprinted far enough to end up behind Roy and his crew. If they stayed put. Doubtful. He came up to the corner of a covered deck, the shadow of the roof giving him visual cover.

He peaked out just enough with a single eye.

Roy's men aimed guns in every direction but his current position, some still slinging shots where Tracy had been, most trying in vain to down the steeder. Roy himself was nowhere to be seen, but his cackle cut through the gunshots.

Judge and Jury lay in the dirt. The guns he snagged felt strange, foreign. Inadequate tools. No intimacy existed between him and them. One bulky arm weighed too much, and a pair of handcuffs dangled from the other, throwing his balance off, and possibly his aim. They may as well have cut Tracy's hands off and left him with bloody stumps. But he had to make due.

He checked the cylinders. Basically empty. He refilled them with rounds from the belt strapped across his chest. His lips tightened. Hina's face filled his mind. He envisioned her, clear as day, hands resting on her rounding stomach, hoping against all odds that this time it would come to full term.

He sniffed, drawing in a long breath, still loathing the stench of Mars. The stink was like an odorous symptom of the turn of events, like trying to quench his thirst with spoiled milk.

Tracy's fists tightened around the strange gun grips.

This would not be his end. He was Law. Roy would face justice.

Tracy nodded to himself and turned the corner. His onyx duster trailed behind him like a reaper's cloak. He raised the barrels in front of his piercing eyes so that to his enemies there seemed four barrels, not two.

Faces turned his direction, masks of confusion, mouths agape. Electromagnetic flares exploding from the revolvers were the last things they saw. Pain erupting, tearing through their vitals was the final sensation they felt before the end.

Tracy cracked the revolvers and reloaded. Shell casings pitter-pattered on the wood deck like metal raindrops, while his enemies fell from rooftops or collapsed where they stood, drowning in red pools.

Chaos was cut short.

Only Law and Order remained.

Silence followed. Then a sharp wind carried the smoke from Tracy's gun barrels up and away like whiffed out vigil candles.

Tracy's boots were the only ones still standing.

Roy was nowhere to be found, but somewhere close. "Well played, Marshal," he yelled. "Doubt we'll meet again."

A speeder thrummed to life and shot off down the road.

Without hesitation Tracy raked the speeder with coilgun fire. Smoke vomited from the fender and the speeder swerved, out of Roy's control, crashing into a nearby building.

Roy hacked on the smoke as Tracy approached, his watered eyes blinded.

Tracy let a bit of his anger seep through into his actions. The marshal grabbed the fugitive by the scruff of his neck and dragged him out of the speeder, then slammed his face up against the side of the building.

Roy huffed, the wind knocked out of him, but Tracy didn't care. He only had to bring Roy in alive, not uninjured, or even whole.

Tracy took a moment for himself. He'd caught Roy. Seized him, against all odds. Warmth filled his chest. He siphoned a satisfying breath of Martian air. It almost smelled fresh.

The hint of a fouled whiff reminded him something was still amiss. A single mother and her son were held hostage, somewhere. Technically all Tracy had to do now was secure Roy on a ship back to Earth and his mission would be complete for all intents and purposes. But he could never live with himself knowing that something ill had befallen Coraline and Ashton.

Tracy intended to find out exactly where they were, by almost any means. Even if that meant getting his hands dirty.

No sooner was Roy bound with Tracy's own pair of handcuffs when a notification pinged on Tracy's borg arm. It was SmitHuri. His smartarm was ready, and payment of a steep sum was expected.

Tracy eyed the stiff ragdolls littering the dusty street, suddenly seeing cred symbols. A bitter taste crept over his tongue. But what choice did he have? Mars had marooned him, stole his money, left him for dead, and now betrayed him. They drew a line in the dust first. What could he do, but return the favor?

Moving from man to man, he swiped just enough creds to call it even with SmitHuri.

The last corpse he came to was none other than Noke'la's own, Sheriff Frumt. The man lay face down in the dirt, blood pooling from a wound where his neck should be, if he were skinny enough to have a neck.

He grabbed the sheriff's jail keys, unlocked the handcuffs from his own arm, and jingled them in front of Roy's bruised face.

"Looks like I'm the Law in Noke'la now."

Chasm surprised Tracy, nuzzling his neck. He patted the steeder, then draped Roy over the back.

Tracy mounted the Mustang and left a buffet for the winged buzzards in his wake.