Chasm navigated the gorge. Erosion weathered the rock walls for thousands of years. Maybe more. The gradient colors between the basaltic layers faded from rusty vermilions up top, with rich ambers seated in the middle, and shades of pale sulphur at the bottom.

They passed through wide valleys and narrow dried up ravines. On more than one occasion Tracy was duped into climbing the gentle slope of a cuesta, only to reach the top ridge and find the violently steep drop on the other side. For as much progress as Chasm made, the marshal had to double him back twice as often. Hardly ideal.

At one point a rumbling vibration rattled up Chasm's legs, causing Tracy to clench his bottom in a startled reflex.

A former cliffside gave way and collapsed. Loud crashing reverberated in his skull. Massive boulders stampeded down, tumbling over each other in a race to the ground floor. The lawman kicked the stallion into gear, pressing the morph button, shifting him into a hover chopper to flee the natural disaster. He wasted a precious amount of the KEC bar, but hey, they were alive.

Once well in the clear, he slowed Chasm and shifted him back into a Mustang to check on the boy. He found Ashton giggling with anxious glee. This kid was either made of tougher stuff, or deathly ignorant. Here he was, afraid the kid would be scarred for life. But the kid thought the falling rocks were all fun and games. The absurdity of it made Tracy chuckle. Until he realized that's exactly why kids needed parents. They had no awareness of danger until after the damage was done. It was a parent's job to instruct a child how to navigate the dangers of life. Except this terrain, this scenario itself, was all new to Tracy too. In the wake of the towering natural superstructures, he was less than a child, a pebble of a man. And the child Ashton had no parents any longer.

They made more progress, then had to stop. The kid had to go potty. And not number one. Tracy stammered as he tried to coach himself how to handle the situation. These were the things you didn't realize would happen when you became a guardian of a kid in the span of a life-altering moment.

Tracy led the kid into the shadow of a large boulder, stacked some medium sized rocks to form a toilet of sorts, and instructed the kid to do his business. The kid stared at him with a blank face.

"What, kid? Don't you know how to go by yourself?"

The kid nodded.

"So go."

"I can't."

"But you said you have to go. You do, right?

Ashton nodded, dancing in place.

"Then have at it."

The kid's face shriveled in a desperate look. "There's nothing to use. After..."

Tracy facepalmed. With the strength of his smartarm, he tore a large corner off of the bottom of his duster, handing it to the boy.

"Don't look."

Tracy blushed. "Oh. Duh." He cleared his throat and stepped around the corner of the boulder, figuring now was as good a time as ever to handle his own business.

After a time the kid bounded around the corner with pep in his step.

"All good?"

"Mmhmm."

"Here. Found this in the horsey. Forgot I had it."

He squeezed a dollop of hand sanitizer on the kid's hand.

"Good. Let's get going. Lost some time there."

As soon as they were situated on Chasm and started off on their way, the kid spoke up.

"I'm hungry."

The marshal grunted. "Just a little bit further."

"Where are we going?"

Tracy pointed ahead.

"Why?"

"Uhhh..." he rolled the words over in his mind, trying to steer clear of sensitive topics, and yet still tell the truth in a way Ashton understood. "Remember the bad yellow man in the cave?"

The kid's face blanked, void of emotion, eyes big as the twin moons, lost in memory. "Yes," he whispered.

"The yellow bad man has done a lot of bad things to a lot of people. I'm going to catch him and bring him back to Terra."

"Where's that?"

"Earth."

"I used to be on Earth.

"Me too, kid."

"Are you a policeman?"

"Sorta. Yeah."

"You get to catch bad guys?"

"Yep. Most of the time."

The kid scowled, in thought. "How come the bad man hurt mommy?"

Tracy's breath caught in his throat. He tried his hardest to ward off the lump lodged there. "He's a yeller bellied coward, that's why. I'm going to catch him though."

"And bring him to jail?"

Tracy grinned, latching onto a flash of optimism. "Uh huh."

"Where will you bring me?"

The question hit the marshal harder than if he'd been caught under the wake of the landslide they narrowly escaped. He lay bare before the innocent child, unable to lie, but without answers. He removed his hat and scratched his head, then ran his hands over his thick mustache.

"We'll cross that bridge when we get to it, Okay?"

Ashton nodded. Then he scowled, peering ahead. "What bridge?"

Tracy winced. "Never mind, kid. No more questions. I might lose the bad man. And we can't let him get away, right?"

"No."

Tracy tussled the kid's hair. "That's my boy." Then he cleared his throat. The saying rolled off his tongue so easily. But the kid took idioms at face value. He didn't mean to imply a future with the kid. He gulped, but Ashton didn't seem to react, one way or another. After a time, the lawman realized he was holding his breath. He let it out in a long sigh.

The kid's hard questions were put to rest a short while later however. The canyon floor was nothing if not teeming with a visual feast of various natural shapes and sights few human eyes ever beheld. Like the blackened stain on the ground that Tracy took for a dark shadow, but soon understood it to be the bottomless pit of a gargantuan sinkhole. Given that the cliffs here were fragile at best, and ready to break away at any moment, he didn't like how close he'd brought them to the edge while lost in thoughts, blinded by tunnel vision. With great caution, he backed Chasm away from the edge. The steeder's hooves caught on some loose rocks, sending the stones over the side. Tracy never heard them hit the bottom.

They pressed on. The kid remembered he was hungry. Tracy only had one option, that he didn't like. His only source of nourishment left was the IV backpack strapped under his duster. This was almost worse than potty training because it involved a needle. Kids hated needles, Terran and Rubrum alike. It was an unwritten rule of the universe.

A memory flashed in his head, and he smirked. He had an idea that just might work. First he prepped the IV, removing it from his shoulder and sterilizing the end with the cobalt blue flame of his smartarm finger. Then, ripping off a strip from the other corner of his duster so it matched, he made a quick tourniquet on the boy's arm.

"Ow that hurts. Why are you making a knot?"

"You want a drink, buddy boy?"

He nodded, wiggling his eyebrows.

"Then stop asking questions," he snapped, but made a face so Ashton knew he was being playful.

He readied the needle, then said, "Watch my hand."

With the flick of his wrist he sent his metal smarthand falling into the sand, then waited. Timing was everything. Then, just as the kid was going to get bored, he made the hand scuttle away like a metal crab.

The kid's mouth hung aghast.

He thrust the needle in while the kid's brain swam in amazement.

"Ouch," he said. But the hand crab-walking was too interesting to see what caused the pain.

Tracy held the tube in place, watching the pack deplete, making sure it pumped vital fluids into the young boy.

After a time, the kid's skin and face looked refreshed. As Tracy removed and sterilized the needle again, a thrumming noise offered a low hum. Rising from his feet to his knees, he listened. This sound wasn't natural, but mechanical. Man-made. The thrusters of a speeder. And coming not from up ahead, but from behind.

"Up boy. On the steeder."

Instead of getting on himself, he led Chasm behind a group of boulders, making sure Ashton himself was tucked away in a small cleft, safe and out of sight.

"Are we hiding?"

Tracy held a finger to his lips, encouraging the boy to whisper. "Yes. We're playing hide-n-be-quiet. Do not move from this spot until I come find you again."

The boy gave him a tiny thumbs up and a smile that melted Tracy's heart, which the marshal returned.

Then he told Chasm to stay, in a place that someone following would find the steeder, but only if they were tracking him, looking for the chrome stallion in the cluster of massive rocks.

With the Model X4 railgun rifle slung over his back, Tracy climbed the backside of a boulder, away from the approaching speeder, and fell into position. Tapping out a few options on his smartarm, he activated a setting that made him almost invisible to heat signature detection. The kid wore the goggles, so he'd be at a disadvantage, but that wouldn't hinder him too much.

From his vantage point he couldn't see the speeder or who was in it. Only if they came into the cluster of boulders looking for him. Seeing as they were out in the wastes, he figured it was a straggler of Roy's crazed cult, or someone from Noke'la with a personal vendetta against the marshal. Only the Maker knew the lawman had put down enough Rubrums in the city to have made any number of new enemies.

The speeder came and went.

He let out a sigh of relief. They weren't after him. Who knew why they were out here. He was tired of confrontations that started with his trigger fingers and ended at the end of his barrels.

But then the speeder thrusters shifted, turned back.

The noise moved towards their position again. If they were tracking his steeder, they'd have just lost the hoofprint tracks, and would have to double back and find them again, leading them right into the cluster of boulders. Speeders could carry anywhere from one to eight people. Tracy double checked his Model X4, noting that he had plenty of bullets for the worst-case scenario, as long as he was on target every time.

With Ashton down there in the mix counting on him, there was no way Tracy could miss.

A pair of heavy boots crunched gravel underfoot as they drew near the body of boulders. Tracy primed the railgun, his gaze running down the length of the gun, ready to shoot first and ask questions later, aiming at the space between two close boulders where the tracker would have to pass between if they spotted his steeder.

He drew a full breath, exhaling a measured sigh, relaxing. This was the secret to being a crackshot. Calm, smooth trigger pulls backed with confidence.

The figure shuffled between the rocks, coming into sight. From the size and gait in his steps, Tracy knew it was a man. A wide brimmed hat covered his head, obscuring his identity. When he saw Chasm, he made sounds of relief and his tone of voice shifted in attempts to not scare the steeder off. His gauss guns were tucked away in his holsters. Still, he was getting mighty close to Ashton's position.

Tracy exhaled and pulled the trigger.

A warning shot grazed the man's jacket, leaving a scorch mark on the outside of his covered arm, but not harming him in the slightest. The man froze, putting his hands up.

"Don't shoot, Trace."

Tracy stood up, exposing his position, keeping the railgun trained on the man, though he recognized the voice.

His own voice cut through the tension, resonating off of the clustered boulders. "What you doing way out here, Sheriff Leroux? If you're not careful you might soil them clean boots of yours."

"I come to talk, Trace."

The marshal didn't move, nor did he lower the gun.

"Irving. Come on man. I've been tracking you for almost two days now."

Tracy could hear something of the man he knew back on Terra in that voice, back when they worked holster to holster, not the voice of the scumbag he'd been reunited with in Tharsis. Still didn't trust him one hundred percent though.

"Drop your guns and put your hands up against that wall."

"Irving. Why would I go to all this trouble to—"

Tracy exploded. "Do it Blaine. Or so help me God I'll paint these boulders with your brain matter."

Leroux rolled his eyes, but obeyed.

"Okay. Don't even flinch your glutes."

Leroux let out a weak chuckle.

Tracy came down, eyed Ashton, who he could tell was getting antsy, gave him the thumbs up, then slung the railgun strap over his shoulder and patted down Leroux with one hand, the other never leaving Judge.

Leroux spoke as he did that. "Got something to tell you Trace. Something bad."

Tracy guffawed. "Don't lie Blaine. You and I know you didn't come all the way out here just to talk to me. What kind of game are you playing?"

Leroux turned, eyes full of sorrow, cutting Tracy to the quick. Leroux was about to speak when Ashton popped up, taking his place besides the marshal.

"My, my. Who's this little feller?"

Shyness silenced the kid, but only for a moment. "Ashton."

"Hi Ashton. I'm Sheriff Leroux. What you doing all the way out here with the marshal?"

Tracy stepped in, speaking in hushed tones. "Roy's woman put little Ashton's mom in the ground. Roy left him alone to die. I'm all the kid has now."

Even as he spoke, renewed anger boiled in his veins, for Roy, whose fault it was, and for his woman Cherry, who did the deed.

Leroux winced, offering the kid a pained smile. The wince didn't leave his face as he faced Tracy again.

"Listen. I got a comm all the way from Earth..."

Leroux's neck constricted, unable to get more words out.

Even before the sheriff relayed the message, the marshal knew what it was about. He could see it in Leoux's eyes.

"It was from your wife...trying to get a message to you."

Tracy's face maintained composure, but inside his blood turned to ice.