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Many a year I’ve watched the patrons of my bar wander in and out. Some become long-time regulars. Others? They meet untimely ends.
This is my place, The Rattler Inn, in the dying border town of Brimstone.
Once, it was a thriving little port town. Two big churches, a market square bustling with trade, three schools, rows of buildings, and a long stretch of warehouses where raw materials came in, got packed, and shipped out again.
Yep. Those were the good ol’ days. Gone now, like so much else.

To the east, the mines have all dried up now in both Needles Point and Vein Valley, both towns built on sandy rock and prone to cave-ins.
To the west, that’s where the repackaged goods went, the tri-city sprawl of Red Ridge, Clutch City, and Crimson Canyon. I don’t know who named ’em, but I doubt they expected those places to become Mars' main metro zones.
South of here, is all open land. A scatter of name less pit stops, dirt highways, and whole stretches of unexplored rock.
What do you expect? The planet’s only been settled for a hundred years.
Welcome to Mars.

Now, one might think a hundred years is a long time. Feels like it took that long just to get the basics up and running. And even now, it ain’t pretty.
Picture the American Old West, just without the open plains, the buffalo, or any real signs of life. What we got out here is dirt. A whole hell of a lot of dirt.
Livestock don’t do too well in dirt, neither. Ain’t much for ‘em to eat, and it gets darn cold at night.
You remember I mentioned raw materials?
Mostly ore.
They’re from asteroids that smashed into the red rock long before any of us got here. There’re still some mines running, but cargo routes don’t bother coming through Brimstone anymore.

We’ve got moisture farms now, big metal poles and bowl-like catchers scattered across the land, sucking what little water there is from the thin air.
Solar farms too. Those power most of the settlements. In the cities, they say flat roofs catch enough sun to run entire blocks. Wouldn’t know myself. Never been to a city. Don’t trust ’em. Too big, too violent, too busy.
Now, you wanna know the most valuable thing Mars has? The people.
Not braggin’, but it took a hell of a lot of ingenuity to even make a population here.
Earthlings still try to adapt, even with their fancy domes, hexagon-shaped plexiglass monsters with high-oxygen interiors just so they don’t keel over. They’re soft. Not built for this rock.
Sure… I look like an Earthling. Most of us do. But out here, outside the domes, we ain’t Earthlings anymore. We’re something else.

The old ones, like me? They call us Vats, short for something, I’m told, but mostly it just means test-tube babies. Genetically engineered non-humans, cooked up in fluid-filled vats built to survive the worst Mars throws at us: sub-zero nights, heat spikes, low oxygen. You get used to it.
Of course, tweaking the genome came with quirks. We are all sentient, but we certainly are not human. Different species, different abilities, different then them. But we all live in the artificially enhanced paper thin atmosphere. Most of the DNA we used came on Earth supply ships, the ones that docked on Mars’ upper moons.
MOST.
Just don't ask what Euclid cooks up.

So yeah, that’s the past. Or at least, my past. Not that I ever cared much for it. But maybe you need to understand where we are.
Where I am.
Where you’re standing.
On my planet.
In my town.
In my bar.
Looking me in the eye, waiting for me to tell you the story of one Ricochet.

Suppose I can start at the beginning' at the start of it all.
Mind you it ain't the start of Mars, nor the end, nor the middle. It just so happens to be some point o' time there within.
The boy came outta no where, dusty and alone. Angry and broken, enraged and battered and even worse shredded innocence.
His emotions were all held in those harsh blue eyes set in his soft youthful face. Scars n' all.
The boy wasn't that big, nor small, but all youth. Ifn' he had been a full teenager I'd be surprised.
He looked like a battered pre-teen to me.
One that shouldn't be wandering around the streets of Brimstone alone.
Yetn' he was. Casually at that.
Now, here’s the one thing you need to know about Ricochet:
Wherever that boy went, trouble followed.
Wasn’t his fault, mind you, just seemed like trouble found him.
At first glance, he looked like an easy mark. Dust-covered, rail-thin, half-starved, and barely old enough to shave, the kind of kid you’d expect to run errands, not start fights.
Until he fought.
That’s when I got properly introduced.

He flung a grown man straight through the front door of my bar.
Busted the hinges clean off. Wood splinters flew, and the place went dead quiet. The music stuttered out, cups stopped clinking, and half a dozen regulars froze mid-drink with that “what the hell just happened” look on their faces.
The man, a drunken freight hauler with arms like tree trunks, groaned where he landed, knocked cold.
And then, in walks the boy.

Not running. Not hiding. Just… walks in.
Boots dusty, shirt torn, one eye bruised dark. But calm, too calm. Like he wasn’t the one who just threw a 200-pound man through a wooden door.
I leaned against the bar, arms crossed, watching him.
He scanned the room, gave a little nod, and walked up like he’d been here a hundred times before.
Didn’t even ask for a drink. Just sat on the stool, swung his legs and said:
“You got food?”
That’s how Ricochet introduced himself to Brimstone.

Now, I could’ve kicked him out. Could’ve called the Marshal or told him to drag that boy to the orphan ward up in Rustpoint. But something in me said no. There was a weight in those eyes, like he’d seen more death than a child ought to, and I’ve learned not to ignore that kind of look.
So, I gave him a meal.
Just beans and bread, but he ate like it was the first food he’d had in a week.
Didn’t speak much after that. Just sat, chewing quiet, eyes flicking toward the busted door like he was waiting for the next hit to come.
And I remember thinking:
“That boy’s a fuse. Short. Lit. And pointed straight at something flammable.”

There wasn’t any way I could let him go after that. I gave him a room, I gave him a drink, what I had that wasn’t punched strong from the illegal still I ran in the basement.
He warily accepted.
And he worked off his lodgings.
I got a new dishwasher and bus boy. He… he got a home he desperately needed.
I was an idiot.
He was a bigger one.
We made a great team.
Still do.
When he comes home to visit.