Tracy Irving crawled out of the crater. Smoke billowed on the wind, smothering him. Dust covered his crashed ship. He trailed his eyes over himself, from his booted feet up to his calloused hand.

Scratched? Sure.

Bruised? You bet.

Blood stained? Undoubtedly.

He tugged his head to the side until his neck cracked, then looked back. The wreckage was beyond bad. More like unsalvageable. Tracy gnashed his teeth.

The sun bore down on him from a quarter high in the Martian sky, glinting off his U.S. Marshal's badge.

He spun slowly, squinting until he found it. His hat stared back at him, half covered in sand. He snatched it before it could up-n-leave with the rush of wind. Smoke from the wreckage continued assaulting him.

His actual assailants were nowhere to be found. Scavengers. Blasted him out of the sky. Whether they set fire to the ship after looting it, or the crash started the fire, and they considered it a lost cause and left him for dead in an open grave, he'd likely never know. His head still reeled as he tried to shake the dizziness from blacking out.

He spit, moved upwind, and drew a cigar and matchbox from his duster. If he was going to shrivel his tongue, might as well enjoy the taste. He struck several matches against the rough diamond patterned plate of his prosthetic palm. Otherworldly wind blew out the flame a couple of times. The charred matches did nothing for the stench, the natural odors wafting from the pits of the planet. They'd warned him about it. They weren't exaggerating. Even with the planet semi-terraformed, whiffs of rotten eggs, hints of sweet onion and garlic tang, along with a chalky after-smell all rolled together into one heck of a nose tickle. The smell stung his nostrils, making his nose wrinkle.

When the tobacco finally lit, he drew long and slow on the cigar, and took Mars in, in all her glory. She looked way better than she smelled. That was certain. Of course he was partial to rugged landscapes, being an Arizona boy, born and raised.

Jagged fragments of volcanic rock peered from under the dull red soil, half-covered, hinting at more below. Way off in the distance, rectangle specks glared back at him against the backdrop of a blood orange mountain. Civilization. A quarry embedded in the mountain—dormant volcano really—and a settlement at the base. And between the crater and him, a lot of frigid Martian desert.

Three weeks. The Attorney General gave Tracy just three weeks to scour the US colonies on Mars—and if need be, the whole planet—to capture the fugitive. And the allotted time wasn't arbitrary. If he missed the cutoff window, He'd be stuck on Mars for another two years before the red planet's cycle around the sun synced up with Earth again. The worm jump only worked one way after all.

The burning of oil and metal told him everything in the lander was already scrap, including the speeder—if the scavengers hadn't sped off with it. He had a long, bone-chilling walk ahead of him, in which he'd have to weave around craters like a skin mite scuttling across a pockmarked face.

The wind sighed, like Mars was agitated. She'd kick up a dust storm in no time. But there was nowhere to hunker down. The endless crater field sprawled out for kilometers in every direction.

Picking up a handful of Martian soil, he watched it sift between his fingers. What wonders were buried beneath the surface of Mars, that blanket of dust? What history had the sand suffocated under the weight of time? As the last of the dust trailed off his hand he formed a fist and scowled. That same dust crept into the crows feet that framed Tracy's eyes as he squinted against the glare of the sun. He tugged the brim of his diamond shaped cowboy hat further down, almost resting it atop his eyebrows.

He patted himself down. Still had his trusty gauss revolvers. But not much else. His lever-action rail gun was either melted or stolen.

Tracy removed the U.S. Marshal badge from his duster, pinned it to his shirt, and tugged his long coat tighter around his body to fend off the cold.

On Earth the badge was a mark of honor. A star of authority. On Mars, might as well be a target. The planet was not entirely without Law, or a semblance of it. Only thing to do was get into town, see what reaction his star garnered, and sniff out that psycho killer's trail.