Chapter 1

1: Ranger at the Gate

Liberty lay flat on his belly, unmoving, with all of his concentration centered on the distant target nestled comfortably in the crosshairs of his scope. From his vantage point across the compound, lying prone on the dark metal top of an empty building, he could see everything going on below. There were five people lounging around outside of the pub where Jane’s rivals had taken up occupancy, but Libs was after only one of them.

Libs shifted minutely so the crosshairs rested over his target’s head, partially obscured by a patchy cowboy hat. From this distance, an ordinary sniper would be aiming for the man’s chest to be certain of a kill shot. Not Liberty. He didn’t move, he didn’t breathe, and not even his heart pulsed to throw off his aim even a miniscule amount.

Most snipers didn’t have this advantage and had to regularly keep up such mundane tasks as breathing, having to regulate it in order to get a clean shot. Liberty wasn’t most snipers.

He squeezed the trigger, like a caress. He stroked it back by millimeters, and as it clicked into place, the bullet cartridge rocketed down the barrel. In his scope, he watched his target’s head snap back, a spray of scarlet painting the area red with the evidence of his success. The people around him shot to their feet, drawing weapons and searching the area in a frenzy of disbelief. Libs drew in a breath in order to snort sardonically at their antics. Clearly, he was too far away, if they’d only stop a moment to think, and perhaps to get under cover in case he wanted to further diminish their ranks.

Luckily for them, his order had been to take out their leader and no one else. Jane wanted them to come crawling back to her so she could hold their desertion above their heads for the rest of their lives.

Eventually, watching the deserter’s panic grew less amusing, and Libs pulled away from the scope of the high-powered sniper rifle and started carefully taking it apart. His equipment was his livelihood, and he needed to take good care of it.

Truthfully, he didn’t really need his rifle to do the job, but this rifle was one of the few attachments he had over the long years of his unnatural life. If he really wanted, he could have gone straight up to the man and broken his neck, quicker than the eye could track. It would have taken moments, and no one would have been able to stop him.

In spite of this, for every single time he was called in to take out a target for Jane, he spent hours scouting out the place, his target, and all the possible locations he could lie in wait. Sometimes he would wait ages on a rooftop, searching for the perfect shot.

It was finesse. His reputation as the best sniper in this end of the quadrant was well acknowledged. There was an art to it, lining up his shot and placing a bullet in the exact spot that he was aiming. Not many people knew his actual name, not here and not anywhere. Mostly, they called him “Jane’s gunman.” It was as close to the truth as anything on Leonis Alpha 305, and only fools pushed their luck in this area of space.

Having packed up his equipment, Liberty left the cold rooftop and disappeared into the shadowy corners that abandonment threw up all over the derelict space station. This place housed the refuse of society: the abandoned, the outcast, the exiled. No one asked how Libs had ended up here, on the outermost edge of the Legacy starfield. In a way, they already knew.

He got back to the Core, the central hub of activity on Leonis Alpha, which was where the headquarters for Jane’s crew had set up operations. She had taken over a building complex, and surrounding that complex was the market and the places where those less fortunate made their homes. It was one of the only areas in the whole station that was lit with the dull glow of old lanterns, relics from a time past. At some point, there had been enough power to keep the overhead lights operational, but that time was long gone.

The amount of light mattered little, though. Those that lived here were used to living in darkness. No matter where they were, there were always obscured faces hidden behind hoods and scarves, or with the shadows of a hat brim tugged down low. They wrapped themselves in cloaks and long coats, then strapped on gun belts and holsters over all of that. Liberty was no different.

He strode towards the warm yellow glow of a small pub near the edge of the Core, although most referred to it as a saloon. In fact, nowadays, people simply called it “the Saloon,” as if it was the only one in existence. Libs had insisted that if it were to be called that, at the very least it had to have the double swinging doors, just like the old West saloons back when there were real cowboys and gunslingers.