Firefighters are sifting through the wreckage of a burned out dilapidated building, one of them sees something, stoops down to pick it up. It is a small recording device. It is cracked and barely working. A bullet has grazed its edge. As he starts the playback a deep rasping voice crackles over the speaker.

“Well hello, folks. I don’t know if anyone will hear this, as I’m not planning on living any longer from this moment than it took to give birth to me. But man likes to leave more than a bloodstain when he dies. I’m only thirty six, but that’s a long time on this blasted piece of shit rock: in some horrid whorehouse in some dusty district of some cunting country of some minor moon of barely inhabitable planet. I was born here, and it never treated me all that well, and I ain’t planning of giving it the credit for my life or my death.

“I’ve never been a man to regret his choices. I killed, I stole, and I fucked my way through this desert. Pretty good with my guns too; beautiful obsidian crystal shotty on my bed right now . . . No, not you, woman, go back to sleep. I said beautiful, so you know I’m not talking about you. Got double holster full of mana artillery repeating pistols, too. Never take them off. Like I said, I don’t regret much, but I regret getting myself killed. I ain’t dead just yet, and won’t be without taking a few motherfuckers with me, but I’ll be dead. Man can’t fight an army. I just hope I see the bullets coming.

“I don’t reckon anyone will cry when I’m gone. Maybe the ugly hookers in this fucking joint, ‘cause I’m rich as fuck, for at least another few hours, before these gangster punters take their money back and burn this place to the ground . . . Yeah, you heard me, bitch! Get the fuck outta here, then. Or stay and make another Double Dollar before you go. Sorry, her name’s Bubbles and she’s just a country bimbo with big tits and a small brain. Anyway, I might as well tell you the story of how I got myself killed. Though I warn you, we might be interrupted by my death rattle.

“I was in on this scam with this other dude I know. He’s got less scruples than the devil, but he’s got information and knows every sordid dime that a two bit bandit can get away with in this technological dust belt. Leastways, he usually does. We were sitting in some seven seater saloon with our feet up, smoking some brown leaf and drinking beers. Should’ve put a bullet through his brain, might of saved me. He tells me that he’s got a gem of a job for me, and I’m all ears. He had never steered me wrong, not then. Fact is, two of his jobs had financed benders all along this moon’s equator; some of the best times of my life, you see: jump in your ship, head to the next port of call, bribe an official or two to keep you off the books, hit the bars and drug dens and brothels until you kick up enough shit to get you kicked the fuck out or wanted by some army or another. You make a lot of short lived friends that way and long lasting enemies, but it’s the only way I ever wanted to live.

“So my old buddy, my unintentional killer. Ah, fuck it, might as well tell you his name, got me killed after all. Gereim Corway’s his name, but people of a certain circle call him Blue Blood.

“So old Blue Blood say a train’s coming into town and it’s meant to be loaded with credit chips for the dowry of some rich gentry-type woman. She was getting married to some government man, or the mayor’s son, or some shit, I didn’t really care because the amount Blue Blood told me was well beyond the total of all my robberies, murders, and acts of minor terrorism combined. Even better, I didn’t have to do it alone. Six man team, with a plan, all they needed was another gunman who could follow direction. Seems now that God or the Devil laid a trap for me. Kill a couple curb crawling security and disable their drones, never work again. It’d be a tempting proposition for any man.

“It was all meant to go down a week from that day. I met the crew, Newt, Willy, Ollie, Kay Kay, Diggins, Kaur and me. They were all business and I didn’t say shit to them neither. It’s the rules of the road: shut your fucking trap, get paid, get laid. They had guns that would make any slinger jealous, but they shared, so I felt good.

“Now, I know that Newt is a dipshit’s name, but Newt was nobody’s fool. He had some guy on the other end, where the train was departing you see. The train was coming from some big city, richer than these little podunk dustbowls that I like to hid away in. People there fly from apartment to work. They got filters to keep the dust out of their lungs. They live for a hundred years. Fuck them, as far as I’m concerned. They aren’t about to share. Newt had a plan, and a damn good plan it was. The train was supposed to stop only once on its journey, and we were to hit it about an hour after.

“Not just anyone can rob a sound-speed train these day. You need equipment, expensive equipment, but they had it, because, I guess, with great risk comes, comes greater reward, comes greater financing. We had fast cars, we had the grappling machines, we had the shelters to keep us from blowing off and dying as a sandy chunk of flesh in the barren waste. Some weird creatures live out in those reaches, and not a man alive really wants to see their eyes, especially not when they’re coming for you. We had the cutters to get through the wall and the seals to keep the hole from sucking the contents of the train into the wind. The plan was a solid one. The only lady, I say lady, Kay Kay, would be a passenger, and would disable the drones before we leeched the train, and she did so to a tee.

“We dropped off the car going eight hundred miles per hour, cut our way through the hull and the rest was easier than shooting beer cans. Newt and I happened to drop into the right car and we took out the six guards before they knew what the hell was happening to them. The other passengers just sat there, timid, lively as some fucking mutton burger you eat at four in the morning, fucking sheep. We had to cut one of the guy’s hands off to get his briefcase but we got it, ran back to our shelters on the outside of the train. Hell, we even sealed up the holes so the passengers wouldn’t get sucked out. That was Newt’s idea too. Too charitable if you ask me.

“Here’s the part where you suspect me of some sort of wrong doing, as if I were some righteous prick who might even feel guilty. Well, I ain’t done shit wrong. Newt paid quickly, in full, and I went on my way just as I pleased. No, death isn’t quite like that, least not for me. It blindsides some like stepping in front of some rocket powered hovercraft, but not me; I’ve always had a weary eye turned in His direction.

“First I hear of my own death is when I hear about how the others start dying. Blue Blood was first. Too stationary I guess, not like us nomads, he had his bar and he stayed put so as people who wanted to talk to him could find him. Then they found Ollie, then Willie, then Newt. Eventually they found everybody, everyone except me.

“You can’t spend your life like I have without stepping on some toes, but I never thought that I would have pissed off people as powerful as these. I found out from a source of mine that we’d taken the money from some big city mafia boss, with ties to the government, the army and the underworld. I was flattered by the bounty on my head . . . Shit, it was almost as much as what I stole. Then I learned that this boss’s son had been one of the people we killed. That’s when I knew I was fucked. Powerful men don’t just get even, and my bounty was double if I was brought in alive. That ain’t happening. I won’t be tortured to death or left a cripple.

“I been running for two months, and killed eleven people dumb enough to come at me solo or in pairs. Never had much of a code, but if I did I’d say it was fuck bounty hunters. Pleases me to be such a straight arrow before I go.

“So here I am holed up in this shitty little town with six bars, two brothels and zero dignity. I haven’t left this room in four days because I know damn well I’m being watched. Not even going to open the window for some fresh air. They may want me alive, but my bounty is a king’s ransom even with me dead. They’ll just have to settle.

“Man has to accept his fate. There is no escape, not for you, not for me. All we can do it try to shape our own death, to make it the death we want, within the conditions we’re given. My conditions are simple. Live it up until I die, kill at least three of these motherfuckers before they kill me, and see it coming. No real man wants to die in his sleep.”

Just then, as if on queue, the sound of gunshots, elated shouts, more gunshots. The recording goes dead.