22. The lure.

“Hey, Zeet, I’m picking up some sort of distress signal.” Lazzaro’s voice broke Toes’ reverie and he turned from surveying the starry blackness outside and ground out the Jamaican Gold he’d been smoking in an ashtray, “It seems to originate somewhere around Mars, but I’m having trouble getting a more accurate fix on it than …

20. The evil that men do.

Dreeb watched the uneven, crater-strewn surface of Phobos roll slowly past the observation window of his cruiser and congratulated himself on how close he was to finally catching up with the man who, he was convinced, had robbed him of the last fifteen years of his life. “Six,” he barked, “when will we be above …

19. Save Thyself

Pentaethymethalyne-metalliod, commonly called “liquid hell” because of it’s extremely hot and explosive reaction with oxygen, non-reactive with nearly all chemicals and compounds, the stuff hates oxygen. One single molecule of oxygen will spell disaster every time. Therefore, after a short life as a weapon of mass destruction Pentaethymethalyne-metalliod was banned from Earth. It was quickly …

18. Dangerous games.

Now they were safely in Earth orbit, Carli knew she only had a few days to prepare, but since the success or failure of the operation depended largely on keeping Lazzaro off balance and distracted, she had to spend at least some time each day working on him. Whether that meant finding an excuse to …

16. Jailbreak.

Colan Dreeb lay on the new, non-regulation, divan bed in his cell, idly scrolling through the huge collection of murder-porn on his virtual reader unit. He could hear the sound of his fellow prisoners being marched out into the force-shielded exercise area, from where they would have a 360° panoramic view of the endless, desolate …