The First Gunslinger on Mars [3]

"I think you have something of mine," he said, dropping the spare suitpack and then reaching toward the toolbag that he held in his left.  He saw one of the raiders tap a control on an armplate, evidently to broadcast on the common band, because the sound of gruff laughter suddenly filled his ears.

He saw a second raider reached into a nearby toolbox and pulled out a strange-looking tool - probably of the sort that was used to pierce the hulls of immobilized rovers.  He grabbed his own tool a second later, but he was faster, due to hours of practice, hours that had seemed like little more than a foolish hobby at the time.

The tool he grabbed had been brought to Mars by his grandfather, in the early years of settlement.  His grandfather had been the inheritor of a family heirloom, and had used a fair bit of his five kilogram personal mass allowance to bring it along with him, after assuring the ship's operators of its nonfunctional state by filling the barrel of the gun with cement.

Year's later, the grandfather handed the heirloom revolver down, father to son, as had been done five times before.  That son carefully cleaned out the barrel, and then hand-crafted six rounds for the gun, along with a custom-made laser insert for target practice, before handing the gun on again.  The insert allowed the last owner to practice shooting - and drawing - in a hobby that he grew ever better at over the years.  Hundreds of hours of practice over the years, without ever firing a real shot - just pulling the trigger to have a flash of laser that either hit the target or missed, though he rarely missed.

And although he had never fired an actual bullet with it, he had gotten in the habit of taking it with him, fully loaded, whenever he traveled cross-country.  Just in case, he thought.

And when that case finally came, he had the gun out of the toolbag and leveled at the raider while the man had only partially raised the piercing tool.  Years of practice meant a fluidity of action that he could hardly even be sure of, after the fact.  One shot & one target was quickly followed by a second shot & a second target and then a third shot.  Three shots, three men down, with the fourth having been quick enough to get behind the vehicle for cover in the moment that proved to be the other men's last.

Only after lowering his gun did he realized that his leg was hurt.  The bolt from the piercing tool had grazed his leg, slicing open his suit along with the leg, and rapid loss of air was doing as much to make him weak as the pain.  He collapsed to the ground, fumbling for a repair kit, only marginally aware of the nearest rover driving quickly away.  A minute later, he had roughly sealed the suit, but it was quite a bit longer before he struggled back up to his feet.  He checked both rovers, finding his own to be as dead as the three men down on the ground, and finding the other one with a broken driveline, so that he wouldn't be able to drive it anywhere, and although its life support was operational, he didn't want to stick around to see who might be showing up to reclaim it.  So, once more, he started off on foot, with too many kilometers and too little air for the trip ahead.