THE LAW OF LEAD

THE YEAR IS 23XX.

EARTH HAS FINALLY SUCCUMB TO THE RAVAGES OF HUMANITY:

WAR.

WASTE.

OVERINDULGENCE.

OVERPOPULATION.

APATHY

AND

DETACHMENT FROM THE REAL.

REJECTION OF NATURE’S IMPERATIVES.

REGULATION AND A RETURN TO FORM WERE NOT ENOUGH.

ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE AND BIOMECHANICS WERE NOT ENOUGH.

THE FORTUNATE LEFT FOR THE STARS CENTURIES AGO.

VISITS TO THE ANCESTRAL WORLD ARE BUT TO PICK CLEAN ITS CORPSE:

PRECIOUS MINERALS, PRE-DEATH TECHNOLGOY, BIOLOGICAL LIFE.

THOSE WHO REMAIN KNOW ONLY SUFFERING.

THE PLANET HAS REJECTED THEM.

WARLORDS RULE OVER EMPIRES OF DIRT.

NOW, EARTH KNOWS BUT ONE LAW

THE LAW OF LEAD

A SIMPLE THING:

NO LAW.

ONLY LEAD.

CHAPTER 1:

DELIVER US FROM EVIL

An aging, angry sun punished the corrugated metal roofs of an unnamed, ramshackle town deep in the heart of the Dead World’s Northwestern autonomous zone. The blinding light of those spiteful rays heated beyond comfort anything—or anyone—foolish enough to linger too long without a heavy layer of something, anything, between them and the afternoon star.

This was reflected most notably in the drab, utilitarian clothing of the few villagers not hunkered down in their hovels. Those who risked being scorched a deep red hustled between the manufactured shade of covered awnings, extended rooftops, and tall structures just to go about their daily duties of moisture farming or scrap collecting. They wore tatters, mostly, but made the best of what little they had by covering as much skin as possible. At the very least, they tried to cover their heads or shield their eyes in some form or fashion. Having to take a day off to recover from the tortures of the unforgiving sun almost assuredly meant going hungry. Better safe than sorry.

But it was an honest life, if not a wholly subsistence one—one in which fortune was always forever out of reach and tragedy could strike in an instant. It came at you fast, too, often before you could even see it coming, and before it reared its ugly three venomous heads or buried a chain-axe. Bad luck was fatal here on the Dead World. And if not fatal, then it was often a fate worse than death. There was no shortage of suffering here, even in the best of times.

It was like an earthquake that refused to split open the land. The villagers felt it before they heard it and knew immediately the peril it brought the moment the sound reached them—engines, dozens of them, roaring out across the rocky plain. Before they ever saw the source, every man, woman, and child rushed for the false security of their homes. Those who had no home to hide in risked the heat and dove into ditches, hid behind tall rocks, or simply ran as far as their legs could carry them.

Which wasn’t very far.

Several of the rusted devils peeled away from the storm of others with an ear-splitting rev of their engines. Most skirted around the town completely, arcing wide to give their prey the illusion of hope… before they ran them down and then ran them over. The drivers and passengers aboard such beasts celebrated by hooting, hollering, and whipping up dust clouds in the circles they spun around their victims.

“RUN! RUUUUN!” A spiky-haired hooligan in goggles slapped the side of his vehicle with a short metal chain. “FASTER! C’MON, FASTER!”

The marauder’s taunts fell on deaf ears, for the young man he chased was in a screaming panic and racing for a nearby boulder to hide behind. Unfortunately, fate’s cruel hand saw fit to make the villager one with the rock instead—a splattered mural of blood and bone strewn across the surface. The vehicle chasing him had braked hard, angled to the side, and drifted into the poor fellow at such a speed that the gory crunch of his body between metal and stone could be heard even over the wild cackle of his murderer.

“STEEEE-RIKE!”

Another rolling monstrosity didn’t even bother with the pretense of a chase. It barreled through one of the ramshackle homes outright, throwing its scrap-metal walls to the wind while simultaneously crushing the cowering family beneath and killing them instantly. A mercy unintended, most assuredly.

One of the cars drove up alongside an escaping woman. Its maniacal passenger leaped from the vehicle, tackled her to the ground, pinned her down, and began tearing the clothes from her body.

Grim tidings for all.

The village square—if you could truly call the intersection between a few rusted dwellings a square—became the site of wanton violence and malevolent revelry. Men and women were torn from their homes, beaten and butchered, or worse. The lucky ones were bound in chains and secured to one of several surrounding monstrosities. The unlucky were violated first… then enslaved.

“Back off, she’s mine,” a bulky, half-naked raider shouted while backhanding one of his smaller compatriots. The two played tug-of-war with a slender, black-haired woman who wailed like a banshee. “I said get lost!”

“Agh! F-Fuck you! I saw her first! Like hell!”

The scrawny goon flailed out a kick that the larger one paid no mind to. Another high-flying fist was returned in kind. Then came the whistle of a gleaming boot knife slicing through the air and the whooshing whiff of a rusted club…

Stuck in the middle of the scuffle, the dark-haired woman was yanked to and fro like a ragdoll. She was almost made a victim to both blade and club, but had enough wherewithal to shy away from them through tears that went entirely unnoticed.

“Stop, please! Let me go! Father, help!”

The man to whom she called—an elder with a weather-beaten face and stark white hair—writhed in vain as an armored hooligan sat on his back and rested the sharpened edge of a makeshift axe atop his skull.

“Chell,” he cried out, before being threatened into silence by the press of his subduer’s boot atop the weapon threatening his very life. A trickle of blood began to crawl down the old man’s scalp and along his face, but the barbarity on display compelled him to continue pleading for mercy. “Leave her be! Take what you want, just leave her be!”

“What do ya think we’re doin’, old man?”

Whack!

The pommel of that menacing axe rendered the old man unconscious instantly.

“She is what we want,” the armored brute howled through a toothy grin. “A hot piece of meat to make running through this shithole worth all the trouble! Rest of these bitches are a buncha old hags! Dump only got one worthwhile whore or what?”

He then rose from atop the dazed old man and sauntered over toward the bickering goons, twirling his axe. Upon approaching the larger of the two, the armored man brought his blade down through the muscle-bound raider’s forearm and severed it clean from his body. The stunned oaf managed only to stumble back a few feet, clutching at his gushing wound, before collapsing onto his knees in a fit of agonizing shrieks.

As a consequence, Chell was sent careening into the smaller goon and knocked roughly to the ground atop him. It would almost have been comical if the situation had been anything other than what it was…

“Hrrk! Ah-ah, hah! Th-thanks, Jax! Hah! I owe ya on—”

Before the small fry could finish heaping on praise, the armored man known as Jax pressed his heel into the bladed hand of the other raider and twisted hard.

“AGHHH!” the toppled goon yelped. He cruelly shoved the captured woman off him with his free hand to clutch at Jax’s heel in an attempt to pry his pinned hand free. To no avail. “You bastard! Get offa me!”

“Quit your whining, dog. Gimme the girl and I’ll think about it,” Jax countered, driving his foot into the man’s hand even more menacingly. “Think fast! While you still have one good hand to keep you company tonight.” The sound of crunching beneath all that pressure made it clear—if there had ever been any doubt—that there was no bluff to call. “Tick-fucking-tock, pissant!”

“YAAAH, FINE—FINEFINEFINE! SHE’S YOURS! FUCK OFF ME! GET OFF, DAMN YOU!”

Chell, in a state of shock and still recovering from her tumble, could do nothing but stare in awe as the fight for possession of her was finally resolved—and to a third party whose brutality boded worse for her than the others.

When it rains, it pours.

“Good boy,” Jax snorted. He removed his heel only long enough for the other man to snatch his hand out from under it. “Now, take a fuckin’ nap.” Then he kicked the scrawny goon hard across the face, knocking him out cold. “Tired of all your whining.”

Chell was caught by the collar of her tattered shirt and lifted off the ground in a terrifying display of Jax’s strength. His physique, though by no means as broad or barrel-chested as the man whose arm still clutched the girl’s in a mortis vice, boasted impressive thews. But to lift her like she weighed nothing?

It all made sense when the girl realized he was sporting hard tech.

Jax’s entire right arm was synthetic. It looked real and felt real, but it had tiny metal seams where it had been grafted onto his frame plate by plate. That probably explained how he had been able to cut through that big lunk’s tree-trunk arm with a rusty blade as smooth as butter. It wasn’t entirely uncommon for raiders and their ilk to have such tech at their disposal. In fact, even most small-time bands boasted one or two mooks with some junkyard biomechanics—the good stuff being saved for the boss, of course.

But Jax’s tech looked… new, Chell thought in between bouts of silent struggle and panic. At the very least, it didn’t look rusted, gangrenous, or like someone had tried to drunkenly solder an engine block to some drugged-out lunatic’s forehead. Did that mean he was the boss of this crew?

It was an answer she wasn’t going to get anytime soon.

“Let’s take a peek under the hood, yeah?” With the girl trapped in his vice, Jax let the jagged edge of his blade snag the top of Chell’s shirt so he could slice it open in one fluid motion and free her naked breasts from their confines. “Nice,” he whistled in a catcall. “Pretty thing, aren’t ya?”

Chell squirmed and kicked against the violation, but found it hard to fight or whine for long against the tightening grip of her captor. The most she could manage was a flurry of fruitless blows against both the biomechanical arm at her throat and the undoubtedly real (and warm) hand now groping at her chest.

And then the world turned black.

Chell succumbed to the choke.