The dust grated in my throat like sandpaper, rubbing it raw. Trying not to cough, I crouched against a rock, my hands pressed into the dusty ground. At least there was shade here.

He had been hunting me for a full day and a half, and I wasn’t sure I could elude him much longer. Even if I could elude him, I might be dead anyway soon enough.

Tilting my head, I listened to the silence of the desert around me. Good. I didn’t hear his footsteps crunching on the gritty sand. Maybe I had thrown him off my trail.

That was unlikely, though. He was a trained tracker and killer, whereas I was neither. Instead, I was unarmed and worn down.

The shade behind the rock provided sweet relief from the sun that had been pounding down on my head all day. Heat like that was just unnatural. It was insane. How did people live on this horrible desert of a planet?

Why did I have to set foot here in the first place?

It had started with a stupid mistake on my part, really. I shouldn’t have put myself in a situation where he could find me in the first place.

My spaceship, the
Dragontooth
, had needed supplies badly, but the port town where I could get them didn’t allow weapons within its borders. I should have just moved on to the next town rather than risk going about unarmed with
him
after me, but I didn’t. I had left everything behind, even my weapons, when I had parked the
Dragontooth
outside of town to go get supplies.

I should have known it was too dangerous to go about unarmed in a place like this with a killer after me.

For weeks, I had been getting threats from him. He had been an assassin under the Assassin Master Trilloque, whom I had killed a year ago after discovering a plot Trilloque had hatched to build giant weapons all over the galaxy and kill worlds of people along the way.

And the man hunting me today, Randew Larsen, had been one of Trilloque’s favorites. Larsen had been on some faraway planet when I had killed Trilloque, stabbing Trilloque while he tried to squeeze the life out of my beloved, Useia Mongarusa. Yes, I had killed Trilloque. I didn’t deny it to myself or anyone else. And Larsen hated me for it.

He was going to have his revenge by killing me, Alan Michael Wolf.

What made it worse was that Larsen was a trained assassin, just as Trilloque had been. That meant he had all of an assassin’s special little nasty skills.

I caught my breath and stood up, squinting over the rock at the bright desert around me. There was no Larsen in sight, just a blank expanse of sand and jutting rock, broken occasionally by the odd desert scrub plant. He could be hiding behind any of those rocks out there, ready to creep closer.

I ran my tongue across my teeth, finding both tongue and teeth far too dry. Dehydration.

This was an awful place to die of thirst and an even worse place to get murdered. I didn’t want either to happen to me.

I checked the landscape again. Though there was still no Larsen in sight, the heat and the thirst were really starting to get to me. I could feel sand in my teeth, too. How did that even get there? Did I inhale sand, too? I didn’t even know what sand in the lungs would do to me.

Not that it would matter, because dehydration would do me in first. Or maybe heat stroke.

Feeling a wave of weakness and nausea pour over me, I hung on to the rock to keep from keeling over like a felled tree.

Several weeks ago, I had received the first threat from Randew Larsen. An anonymous communiqué had made its way to the comm. system of the
Dragontooth
.

It contained five simple but unsettling words:
I am coming for you.

Three days later, there was another message:
I am getting closer.

I had taken off, piloting the
Dragontooth
to a different port, mildly shaken up, but the messages kept coming.

Vengeance for Trilloque.

The assassins will rise again.

I’m going to kill you, Alan Michael Wolf.

My sister and traveling companion, thirteen-year-old Katelyn, was determined to find out the identity of the person behind the mysterious threats. In the year we had been traveling together, she had become something of a wunderkind with technology. Using some methods I could not even begin to describe, she found out who was sending the messages, and I heard the name Randew Larsen for the first time.

Knowing who he was made me less unnerved, but it was still hard to relax with the knowledge that there was a crazed former assassin somewhere out there who wanted nothing more than to kill me. In the
Dragontooth
, we flew from port to port in an attempt to throw him off our trail.

Then, when there had been no messages for almost two weeks, I breathed a sigh of relief. The galaxy was a big place. We had lost him.

That was when I had decided to go for the supplies, certain we had left Larsen several planets away.

He had cornered me in the supply market as I was staring at a vat of oranges, fingering the money in my pocket. I loved oranges, and always bought them whenever I could find them, which was rare in the spacefaring life Katelyn and I led.

Suddenly Larsen was there, looking like a slightly more haggard version of the image of him that Katelyn had found and shown me. He slowly made his way towards me through the crowd of people in the market, his eyes fixed on me. Those eyes never seemed to blink. His hands were in his pockets, where I could see the unmistakable glitter of a weapon. A knife, perhaps? Or a gun?

There was nothing for me to do but run—so I ran.

Like a predator closing in on its prey, he had followed me relentlessly, a smile on his face and coldness in his eyes. He wouldn’t give up, chasing me out of the town and into the surrounding desert.

That was where I had been for the past three days. I had been running from him because there really wasn’t anything else to do. If he caught up to me, it would be a short fight: he had a weapon and I didn’t.

Trembling from weakness and dehydration, I knew I needed to stop soon. I couldn’t keep moving like this, from rock to rock, not stopping to sleep for three days.

I had to change things somehow. I had to turn his little cat-and-mouse game on its head.

Maybe if I had a weapon I would be ok. Then if we fought, I would have a decent chance of winning. I was pretty handy with a knife, after all.

No. That was ridiculous. Even if I had a knife, I wouldn’t be able to stand up long enough to get a single good strike in. I’d need a projectile weapon like a gun to end the fight fast. Randew himself was probably well supplied for this chase. If he spotted me in my current state, I was a dead man.

Dropping to the ground, I let the meager shade of the rock cover me. After running long in the sun, this shade felt like heaven. Perhaps I could hide. Perhaps I could lose him that way. Maybe he would walk right past me.

Drawing my feet up under my chin, I relished the touch of the cool ground that hadn’t had the sun on it to bake it to painful temperatures.

As I shut my eyes, another sound reached my ears.

A raspy sound, over and over.

Rattle, rattle.

Rattle.

A chill washed over my body that had nothing to do with the outside temperature.

A rattlesnake. Perhaps I would be a dead man sooner than I thought.

Chapter 2

I saw the tan and copper ribbon of the snake’s body only seconds before I felt its fangs sink into the flesh of my calf.

Stars swam in front of my eyes, little points of light everywhere. The pain from the snakebite shot up my leg. I gasped.

That hurt!

I groped around on the ground until my fingers closed on a rock. I smashed the rock down hard onto the snake’s head, which was still firmly attached to my leg. As pain spread across my leg like fire, I beat the snake’s head to a pulp.

Pulling the snake’s corpse off me, I tossed it to the side.

It fluttered off into the distance like a grisly ribbon to land at the feet of a man standing several yards away.

It was Randew.

He stood there, the sunlight gleaming painfully off his knife. The light made me squint.

He had found me at last, and now he was going to kill me.

A wave of exhaustion washed over me, carrying away any desire to move.

“Just do it,” I rasped, the sound of my own voice shocking me. It sounded more like two sheets of sandpaper rubbing together than human speech. I coughed.

Raising his knife, Randew began his approach. What was it about these assassins and knives? They always seemed to favor them more than any other weapon.

The sight of the knife sent a jolt of fear adrenaline through me. As exhausted and racked with pain as I was, I suddenly remembered I still had a sliver of a will to live. I really didn’t want to die by Randew’s knife. I wanted to stand up and fight.

If I was going to die, I was not going to make it any easier for him to be my killer.

Groping around on the ground again, my hand closed upon a rock slightly larger than my fist.

Rolling to the side, I somehow got my feet under me and staggered upright, the venom making its slow way through my veins.

Why wasn’t I dead yet? Shouldn’t the snakebite have done something? Maybe that snake hadn’t been carrying a full tank of venom.

Or perhaps the dehydration had something to do with it. Perhaps that was slowing the absorption of the venom down. I could only guess—I was no scientist.

“You’re in bad shape,” said Randew, keeping an eye on me while he lifted something to his lips. A canteen. When was the last time I had consumed water? Of course, my adversary was perfectly hydrated and in possession of a clear head.

How frustrating.

I staggered backwards along the rock, feeling around my hip for a knife that wasn’t there. Of course it wasn’t. That was how I had gotten myself into this mess—by choosing the wrong place to be unarmed.

Then I remembered I had a rock in my other hand.

Randew, only a few feet away now, pulled a second knife from his belt, a smile on his lips.

The colors in my vision started to blur. My hearing was going, too. There was some sort of ringing in my ears, like a buzz…

Or a rattle.

With a shriek, Randew Larsen leaped back.

Two rattlesnakes were attached to his foot, their fangs sunk into his ankle. He stabbed at them, still yelling, and then tried to pry them off.

A small smile crept over my cracked lips. Assassins probably did not get much training in dealing with rattlesnakes.

There must have been a nest of rattlesnakes somewhere near here. Now, while he was distracted, I had my chance.

My rock weapon ready, I launched myself at him.

If I was about to die, perhaps I could rid the universe of this murderer on my way out.

My body slammed into his, knocking us both to the ground as I tasted blood into my mouth. More rattles—that meant there were more snakes nearby.

It was too late to care about that.

I smashed the rock into his head as I felt one of his knives enter my body just below the hip. Wetness spattered my arms and face. Was it blood? Probably. It certainly wasn’t water.

Raising the rock, I struck again and again. This was my only chance. Kill or be killed. I would rid the world of this murderer before I died.

Chapter 3

Somehow, I was still alive.

How did I know?

There was a massively annoying sound in my ear that wouldn’t stop.

It was a mechanical sound, like some machine was operating just outside my ear.

Loudly.