The twin suns of Titan Ridge burned low and copper-red, staining the methane plains in bruised light. 

Wind dragged static across the rusted skeletons of terraforming rigs long abandoned. Somewhere in that dying light, a lone rider moved.

They called him Rook Vance.

His boots crunched on frozen hydrocarbon crystals as he stepped into the ghost-town settlement of Caldera-9. The place was nothing but corrugated domes and broken solar spines now. Old mining banners fluttered like torn prayer flags. A tumbleweed of shredded polymer drifted across the main drag.
Rook wore a long dust-coat stitched from scavenged hull fabric. A plasma revolver hung low on his thigh, heavy, old-world iron redesigned for vacuum bursts and close-range obliteration. The grip was carved bone-white from some alien beast pulled out of Saturn’s shadow.
He pushed open the swinging door of the saloon dome.

Inside, gravity was low and the air was thin. Neon flickered over a cracked bar. Three men sat waiting.
The Black Coyote Syndicate.
They’d taken Caldera-9 months ago. Turned it into a slave pit for methane miners and organ harvesters. Rumor said they were stripping colonists and shipping parts off-world, lungs for high-grav planets, kidneys for radiation workers. Brutal business. Efficient.
The one in the middle grinned when he saw Rook.
“Didn’t think you’d come alone,” he said, fingers hovering over a magnetized rail pistol.
Rook removed his helmet slowly. His face was lined like fractured stone, one cybernetic eye glowing faint blue.

“Wasn’t planning on staying long.”
The bartender drone whirred nervously in the corner.
The first shot came fast.
Coyote Left twitched.
Rook was faster.
His plasma revolver roared, a concussive thunderclap in the dome. The blast tore through the man’s chest in a molten bloom of blue-white light. He lifted off the floor in slow low-grav ballet, body smoking before slamming into the ceiling.

The second syndicate gunman fired wildly. Rail slugs ripped through tables, punching glowing holes in the walls. One round clipped Rook’s shoulder, burning through coat and flesh.
He didn’t flinch.
He stepped forward and fired again.
The blast sheared the man’s arm off at the elbow. The rail pistol clattered across the floor in slow spin. A second shot ended him.
Now only the leader remained.
Coyote Prime smiled thinly. “You think killing me fixes anything? The shipments already left orbit.”
Rook holstered his revolver and walked to the bar.

He grabbed a bottle of Titan whiskey, distilled antifreeze mixed with grain alcohol, and poured two glasses.
He slid one across the counter.
“Drink,” Rook said.
Coyote Prime hesitated… then laughed and drank.
Rook drank too.
A long silence.
Outside, the twin suns dipped lower.
“You were a marshal once,” Coyote Prime said quietly. “Before the colonies fell apart.”
Rook nodded once.
“You know this frontier doesn’t belong to law anymore.”
Rook set his glass down.
“It belongs to whoever’s still breathing.”
Coyote Prime lunged.
Too slow.

Rook’s hidden wrist-blade snapped out, vibrating monomolecular edge humming like a tuning fork from hell. He drove it upward under the man’s chin.
Blood drifted in slow crimson spheres as gravity failed around the dying body.
Rook held him there.
“Tell your bosses,” he whispered, voice like dry metal, “the ridge is closed.”

He stepped outside as the settlement’s oxygen generators began to overload. He’d rigged them before entering.

The town detonated behind him in a blooming dome of fire and ice. Shockwaves rippled across the methane plains, igniting drifting gas in silent, beautiful catastrophe.
Rook didn’t look back.

He mounted his ion-cycle and ignited the engine. The machine howled, a lone mechanical stallion under alien stars.
As he rode into the violet horizon, comms crackled in his ear.
Another colony.
Another syndicate.
Another sunset waiting for blood.
On Titan Ridge, justice didn’t wear a badge.
It wore a plasma revolver.