When Harrison Kent is ten years old, the riots start on Mars. They’re the results of the tyrannical actions of the 200-year-old governor of Mars, Osbert Clayton. Cutting off oxygen to different parts of the settlement to stop the riots, Clayton almost kills Kent without even knowing the boy exists.

Decades later, Kent is a mercenary thief living on a distant alien world, in a household where he is part of a three-way, committed bisexual relationship. A sleazy businessman named Chatterton hires Kent to steal the prototypes of a new model of pistol from the Deluxe Arms Corporation, Chatterton’s rivals.

At the same time back on Earth, a man named Kirchner hires Rex Chisum, an assassin to liquidate Kent and “deliver him a message first.”

Kent steals the briefcase full of guns. His payoff from Chatterton goes badly, when a woman named Theoria Woolworth shows up and demands the weapons. Chatterton panics, kills her, and a sniper kills Chatterton. Kent discovers Woolworth was an agent of Human Worlds Security (probably that’s where the sniper was from) and flees with the merchandise.

Read THE STARS THEMSELVES UNDER THE GUN, now on Book Country.