Jackmaw stared out at the twin suns and watched a small dot as it emerged from a gap in the mountains. It was speeding towards Footfall faster than any animal in the valley.

  “Scope!” he called, and the Tallyman scrambled to grab him one. As he put it to his eye, he grinned so wide that his neck muscles strained. “About fucking time!”

  Riding the shimmering heat of the horizon was the contact from outside the valley. They sped above the sand on a floating craft that looked like a flying sailboat. Shi-Toh had called it a skimmer, once. It looked like it belonged in the wasteland, sporting a rusting hull was painted with a fading grey camouflage pattern.

  The warlord rallied his men, and they stood in full force. Over one hundred bloodthirsty psychos and junkies waited with their gifted weapons in hand. Only Jackmaw knew that their guns were subpar compared to the contact’s, but it didn’t matter. What was a minor difference in firepower when you were staring down a hundred barrels?

  The skimmer had a hum to it as it hovered, and Jackmaw’s heart raced when he began to hear it above the crazed chatter of his clan. “Everyone shut up! If I shoot, you all shoot. Understand?”

  There was a whooping and cheering from his clan, and with a glare, he silenced all of them. They all listened to the hum of the skimmer.

  When it slowed to approach, Jackmaw stepped forward. He had his hands spread wide, both to show he didn’t mean to pull his burner as well as frame his show of force. An offering of peace, and a promise of violence. The skimmer slowed to a halt and rested on the sands just outside of the town.

  “Greetings!” Jackmaw called.

  A single figure appeared atop the skimmer. It wore clothing made of synthetic rubber and plastics. Its body was completely covered in the clothing, even wrapping the head in a hood that had a glass breathing mask as the only window to view its inhabitant. It rested a hand on the pistol on its hip.

  “Where’s Shi-Toh?” a voice boomed over the skimmer’s speakers.

  “He’s back at the Emerald Expanse,” Jackmaw said. With a whistle, a cart was wheeled out of one of Footfall’s ruined buildings. It contained stacks of containers filled with shale. The warlord pointed to it. “He’s making sure there’s more of that shale shit for you.”

  “We only deal with Shi-Toh,” the speakers barked. The figure atop the skimmer began to turn and leave.

  The warlord’s face soured, and he pulled his burner from its holster. Every gun in the Gordo clan arsenal readied with him. A chorus of clicks echoed as they primed their guns and pointed them at the skimmer.

  “Now there’s no need to be so rude,” Jackmaw said. “We’ve got a lot here. Why not give us a little taste of what you’ve got to trade this time?”

  The figure on top of the skimmer turned back and panned the army of Gordo clan psychos. It pulled a strange pistol from its hip and pointed it at Jackmaw. Before anyone could react, a red laser bolt flashed from its barrel and crashed between the warlord’s feet. Jackmaw raised a fist to keep his men in line as he stared down at where the laser had landed. There was nothing but glass now.

  Jackmaw was pleased. His smile had returned to his face, and even behind the reflective glass mask of the contact, he knew they had reached an understanding. “Shi-Toh will be back soon.”

  “We’ll return in a day. If Shi-Toh isn’t here, we’ll be forced to rescind the deal.”

  The figure returned to the lower decks of the skimmer and powered it on. The craft lifted from the sand and then was off, racing back towards the twin suns. The Gordo clan watched it, pleased with the interaction. The Tallyman was at Jackmaw’s feet, pulling on his pantleg.

  “Lord! Look!”

  Out in the sand, where the skimmer had been, a crate was left behind for the clan. Jackmaw sent out a team, and they returned with the box. The warlord popped it open with a bowie knife and marveled at the weapon cradled inside a bed of straw. It looked heavy, and it sported a long belt of bullets. The top of the crate was spray painted black with the designation “M60”. Jackmaw picked it up, smelling the fresh gun oil and admiring the pristine shine that was lacking among the rest of the clan’s weapons.

  “Looks like our friends are quite charitable,” he smiled to himself. “Tallyman! Go keep an eye out for Shi-Toh and the others. I want an update as soon as you see them in your beady little eyes! And for the love of all that’s good and holy, somebody figure out what to do with the fucking lobotomites!”

  The twitching, shambling denizens of Kiva Noon were nothing without their master. A few of the slaves from the Black Thumb clan had tried to reprogram them to listen to Jackmaw or one of the lieutenants, but it was impossible. Even as mindless wretches, they refused to listen to anyone but a Black Thumb. A slave gathered them up, corralled them into one of the blown-out homes, and locked them inside.

  Jackmaw racked his new gun, listening to the heavy clicks and clunks as he familiarized himself with it. What he really wanted was a test run. He wanted to put a slave against a wall and see what kind of stopping power his new toy was packing. Little did he or the rest of the Gordo clan know, they would all get a chance to shoot a few rounds off that day. Indeed, war was coming, and they weren’t prepared for it.

  Shi-Toh walked through the desert with his hands tied to the cart. It would have taken two slaves to carry it, one on each handle. The feathered man was only able to do so because of the cocktail of drugs in his system.

  The Disciples had gotten together with their high priestess to concoct something special just for him. A mixture of many intoxicants foraged from the jungle swam through his veins and poisoned his brain.

  Zerker to make him strong enough to carry the cart. Downer to mellow him out enough to be docile. A few different chakras to make him more susceptible to commands and finally, a mouthful of purple stems to keep him awake.

  Krav was a bit jealous, and after he saw the mindless zombie they were able to create, he asked if he could be next. Greenblatt promised him after they got Lenny and Mac back, they could all get so high, their descendants would be feeling the withdrawal. He liked the sound of that.

  They turned Shi-Toh on the desert and made him march with the Gordo clan’s spoils of the Emerald Expanse. The high priestess gave her express permission to allow them to have that shale. It would be the last they ever got their greedy hands on. With her blessing of the operation, she told everyone of their fate and wished them all luck. Shi-Toh, in his current state, could barely remember his.

  “You are an evil man,” he remembered her saying. “The soul of this world, indeed the circle of life we belong to, would be better off without people like you in it. Is there anything you would like to say to try and find peace for your soul?”

  There was nothing. The backwards beliefs of wastelanders were beneath the feathered man. Outside this desert, far away from the glow of the twin suns, there was a place he truly believed in. Under the effects of the drugs, he couldn’t remember it, and that seemed punishment enough.

  “If I were a fool,” he sang to himself as he marched, “I would be a jester. If I were a sore, I would fester. If I were a king, I would lecture. If I were a liter, I’d be measured.”

  They weren’t quite the words he remembered singing as a boy, but they came to him so easy, he sang them anyways. His voice was a disconnected mishmash of syllables, but to his own ears, he may as well have been performing for the pleasure of his home’s wealthiest denizens.

  “Polis Mons! Polis Mons! You belong to the Planeteers!”

  It was a funny little song they sang in his land. They used to cry it out the way soldiers in a marching column might. A fading memory wormed its way into his mind, something he had long forgotten. Shi-Toh was just a child, standing in a large crowd of people with a woman who could be his mother, or maybe even older sister. It was hard to tell, but he knew the woman was long dead now.

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  The two of them stood holding hands near a stage. Confetti rained on a newly elected politician, and everyone sang along to the song like it was a celebratory anthem.

  “Polis Mons! Polis Mons! You belong to the Planeteers!”

  There was warmth back then. He forgot why he ever became a smuggler, why he ever wanted to leave the safety of his home. Was it desperation? Was it in search of adventure? He didn’t know. All he could think about now was home. A home that was so far away.

  How many people had he killed to get here? How many lives had he ruined? Those memories were easier to recall. He wasn’t sure if his time amongst the wastelanders had made him cruel, or if he was using it as an excuse to indulge in his sick fantasies. The things Shi-Toh had done would have stolen the smile from the woman who loved him back then.

  The memory of a slave girl pierced his mind as he walked. It was perhaps the first time he had really let the mask of a levelheaded consul slip. There was something about this slave that he didn’t like. They had captured her as they did all their slaves, first by killing all of their protectors, then by burning down her home. The choice was to wander the wasteland and succumb to the elements, or live life at the end of a chain. Back then, he despised the ones who gave up so easily.

  Jackmaw gave her to him. It was a test, of course. The warlord had suspected he was a homosexual by how much he cared about his appearance. That was something he would never get over, the unashamed filthiness of the wastelanders. Still, he took the girl with a gracious smile and led her back to his own tent.

  Back then, he didn’t know what to do with slaves. They didn’t even have servants where he was from. It felt improper to subjugate someone. He spent most of the evening ordering her to bring him more drugs and alcohol. Eventually his demands turned against service and towards entertainment. He wanted her to dance for him while he ate his dinner, and when she did so, it opened pandoras box for him.

  He could remember everything, and it brought a tear to his eye. First it was dancing, then it was undressing. She didn’t complain. The girl was a wastelander, she knew what happened to slaves with a mouth for complaints. That was all the permission Shi-Toh needed. He had his way with the girl, forcing her to perform acts that even the rest of the clan wouldn’t dare fantasize.

  Decades of being the imperious Shi-Toh, the calculated Shi-Toh, the proper Shi-Toh. It all melted away when he was with the slave girl. When he left his tent in the morning, he ordered a different slave to go in and clean up after him. Rumor had it, the girl was barely recognizable. The feathered man had sliced her to bits, forced her to cannibalize parts of herself, and raped her until she bled. By the time his tent was clean, the poor slave girl had succumbed to her wounds.

  They didn’t even bury her. Before breaking camp that morning, they fed her corpse to the mega vulture. He could remember the wails and agonized cries from the other slaves. Were they friends? Family? Lovers? It didn’t matter. They looked on in horror as their fellow slave had strips of mangled flesh torn away from her.

  Part of him died that day, he told himself back then. That was the downfall of Shi-Toh, the descent into becoming the feathered man of the Gordo clan. But in truth, that was his own rebirth, his new beginning. That was the moment he reached into himself and became the shadow he hid deep down within. What would the woman who once held his hand say? Could he live with himself if it was her that he had done that to? Maybe not back then, but now….

  “Polis Mons! Polis Mons! You belong to the Planeteers!”

  Indeed, time with the Gordo clan hadn’t changed him. He had always been a raider. Even when he wore a suit back in his homeland. Even when he held that woman’s hand. Shi-Toh didn’t leave home out of desperation or adventure. He did so because the winds of fate knew that his heart was a frozen stone, and it drew him to the wasteland to meet Jackmaw Yapyap. It was fate that gave him the slave girl, fate that allowed him to be the man he always wanted to be.

  And now it was fate that forced him ever onward. One foot after another, he sang his song and marched on. If he were sober, he might complain that his shoulders hurt from lugging the cart. He might wince at the pain in his feet. But he was high and giddy, thinking about the two women that wouldn’t leave his mind.

  “Polis Mons! Polis Mons! You belong to the Planeteers!”

  He reached the peak of a dune and could barely make out Footfall in his delirious gaze. An intoxicated smile formed on his face.

  “Jackmaw Yapyap!” he cried out on the wind. “Your loyal consul has returned!”

  In the town below, the Tallyman was leaping and squealing with joy. His task had been complete, and his lord would be pleased with him again.

  “Lord Jackmaw! My king of the world! Shi-Toh is there! He’s on the horizon!”

  Jackmaw Yapyap had been busy already. He had one of the slaves standing against a wall of one of the homes. A heavy jug had been placed on his head, and a crowd was forming around the spectacle. The slave’s neck strained to hold it up.

  “One second, Tallyman. I’m playing with my new toy.”

  The look in the slave’s eye was one of unmitigated terror. He sobbed as he stared down the barrel of the machine gun. “Please… Lord Jackmaw…”

  “Don’t cry! If you cry, I’ll laugh my ass off and it’ll fuck up my aim!”

  The machine gun was heavier than he was used to, but it worked about the same as the rest of their weapons. Jackmaw leveled the sights with his eye and flicked off the safety. One pull of the trigger spat five shots out and he quickly let go. The jar above the slave exploded, and the wall behind him had five massive holes blown into it.

  “Holy shit!” Jackmaw cheered. The rest of his sycophants stared in awe. His muscles spasmed with the fierce tingle of electricity sparked from the M60. It was a damned good gun. The slave who held the jar was lying on the ground in the fetal position. A weakling, Jackmaw thought. Then he had another thought. If it could punch holes that big in the wall, what could it do to a human being?

  He didn’t think long on it. Another trigger pull gave him his answer. Five more shots belted out quicker than anyone could count, and the slave was hit by each one. The bullets hit him harder than even a pipe would. One hit him in the head, popping it like a melon. Two more hit his back and split it open, exposing his burst organs. The last one caught him in the shoulder and blew his arm clean off.

  “Look at that! Once we get that scab head Shi-Toh back, everybody gets one of these bad boys!”

  The Gordo clan cheered and hungered for more. Jackmaw approached the corpse and scooped some of the ceaselessly flowing blood from it. He painted the M60 with a single slash to denote its first kill. With any luck, it would be stained completely in a month.

  When he looked to the horizon where the Tallyman was pointing, he expected his small detachment to be there. There should have been a generous helping of slaves and twenty shooters with the feathered man. But all he could see was Shi-Toh. That was it. This had to be the final straw. Jackmaw would secure the upgrades for his clan, then he would leave Shi-Toh on a cross in Footfall.

  “Kellog!” he called to one of his lieutenants. “Take a few guys up there to help him out.”

  “Polis Mons! Polis Mons! You belong to the Planeteers!”

  “Will you shut the hell up?” Kellog said as he untied Shi-Toh. “I asked you where Dansk is!”

  “Dansk? Dead. They’re all dead.”

  “And the slaves?”

  “Free,” Shi-Toh laughed to himself. “Free as birds in the sky.”

  One of Kellog’s raiders was in the back of the cart, rifling through the spoils that Shi-Toh had brought. It was more shale than any of them had ever seen before finding the Emerald Expanse. Surely their contact would be pleased.

  The raider jumped from the back of the cart and gave a thumbs up to Kellog. The lieutenant nodded. As a lieutenant, he had the right to execute Shi-Toh on the spot. It was something he knew Jackmaw would have done, but he knew his warlord. Jackmaw wanted to do it himself. To him, the feathered man’s failures were a personal insult.

  “Piper, Vance, carry him. Montenegro and Zed, pull the cart.” They all followed Kellog’s command, and soon they were all marching with Shi-Toh as he sang his song.

  Something was wrong though, beyond losing his mind. Shi-Toh had always had a strange walk to him, but this was different. He was having trouble, even with the help of Piper and Vance. Then Kellog thought he saw it. Something was weighing him down in his pants. It seemed like it was jutting out of his…

  “You must have had one hell of a night, cupcake. It looks like you shit yourself.”

  “Oh! Are you fucking serious!” Piper complained. She dropped her side of him and Vance followed suit.

  “Real classy!” Vance jeered. He kicked the object in Shi-Toh’s pants and expected it to squish and mess about. Instead, it actually hurt Vance. “Ouch! What the hell is that?”

  They all looked to Kellog, and the lieutenant shrugged. Shi-Toh had already made a fool of himself. Treating him like any other wastelander wasn’t off the table anymore. Kellog knelt and pulled off Shi-Toh’s pants. The raiders all gathered around and stared. There was some sort of metal object lodged there.

  “Who the hell would put this up his ass?” Kellog said. He poked the device with his gun.

  “What is it?” Piper asked.

  “I’m not even sure.”

  “Pull it out!” Vance said.

  “I give the orders around here! Montenegro, you pull it out.”

  The raider groaned and left the cart with Zed and knelt next to Kellog. He had never had any fondness for Shi-Toh, but this just felt wrong. He held his nose and grabbed at the device. “Oh fuck me, man. Can’t we just leave it in there?”

  Without warning, the device exploded. Zed watched as all of his comrades were vaporized by the blast. Kellog and Montenegro were blown to bits, sent flying in heaps of blood and gore. Piper had the left side of her body twisting in the air before it landed with a wet thud. Shi-Toh wasn’t even there anymore. He had been blown into tiny pieces and cast in every direction.

  “Holy shit! Holy shit!” Zed screamed. He dropped the cart and started to run back to Footfall when he heard something rustle in the cart. There was someone in there, someone they hadn’t seen when they searched it. Zed pulled his gun from its holster and pointed it at the cart.

  “C-come on out asshole! Nice and slow!”

  When the figure emerged, Zed was confused to see a boy. Probably seventeen or eighteen, unkempt hair and a paint job that made him look like he was Gordo clan. Zed even holstered his weapon thinking it was one of Dansk’s people.

  The boy carried a large metal tank on his back. There was a hose that ran from it to a gun Zed had never seen before. It was about the size of a pistol and had a tap handle on top of it like a garden hose might.

  “What’s the matter, scab head? Never seen an ass-bomb before?” Krav didn’t wait for an answer. He pulled back the tap and a gout of barely contained energy fired from it in a curling beam. The laser tore off Zed’s flesh and burned his bones to ash. When the boy turned the handle off, the raider was just a pair of legs and a cauterized stump. They swayed in the breeze for a moment, then they collapsed.