     "Trespasser!"

    Slugs of depleted uranium slammed into the wall beside Lieutenant Quintin 
Stone as he dove to the hard, metal floor.  His combat armor screeched as it 
scraped along the pitted iron surface.  Whipping his chaingun about, Stone sent 
a deadly wave of armor-piercing bullets in the direction of his enemy.  The 
twisted cybernetic monstrosity spun and jerked as the rounds tore through it, 
leaving a splash of crimson on the wall beyond.

    "Shit, Lieutenant!" cried a voice from behind him.  "You all right?"  There 
was a loud clatter as the nightmarish creature crashed to the floor.

    Swearing as he pushed himself to his feet, the Lieutenant turned around and 
fixed his subordinate with an angry glare.  "When I say 'secure the area', 
Private Banks," he shouted, "I mean SECURE THE AREA!"

    Banks swallowed nervously and stammered an explanation.  "I-I-I didn't know 
about the, uh, hidden-"  With a vicious and dismissive gesture, Stone cut the 
Private off.  Turning, he addressed the rest of his squadron.

    "Hunt and Wilson, recon fifteen meters ahead and report back.  Greene, 
Childs, and Atkins, search this area and see what kind of equipment you can 
locate.  Banks," he growled, "you watch the rear."  After watching the Private 
sullenly move towards their entrance point, Stone turned his attention to his 
mission computer.  A brief consultation with his objectives list and the 
orbiting ship far above the surface of the planet clarified his immediate goal. 
 As Hunt and Wilson returned, he addressed the squadron.  "All right, grunts.  
Whatever this thing is we're down here looking for, it's about fifty-five 
meters in that direction."  He gestured towards one of the dark passages from 
which Wilson had returned.  "What did you two find?"  Hunt and Wilson had 
little to report.  Two of the twisting, narrow corridors had dead-ended in 
small rooms of unidentifiable purpose.  The hall that Stone had indicated 
continued on for quite a distance in total darkness.  Sergeant Greene followed 
with his findings of the immediate area; several energy cells and several clips 
of chaingun ammunition from the fallen enemy.  The Lieutenant took the 
cartridges to replace his spent rounds and then distributed the cells among his 
troops.

    "Okay, worms, let's move out.  We need to get this thing and go home.  You 
know how grumpy I am when I don't get to sleep in my own bunk."  Quiet chuckles 
answered him.  "Atkins, take point."  Corporal Atkins hefted his supershotgun 
and moved first through the dark opening, the rest of the squadron following 
close behind.

    After a careful progression down the winding passageway, Atkins found 
himself facing a large metal door.  He listened for a moment at the door, 
checked the lock, then turned to Stone and shook his head.  The Lieutenant 
gestured everyone away from the door.  He tapped Greene, pointed at the door, 
and clenched his fist.  Nodding, Greene knelt down and shouldered his rocket 
launcher.  When the rest of the soldiers turned their heads from the door, 
Greene squeezed the trigger and let loose the rocket.  It screamed through the 
air and slammed into the door like an irresistible force.  With a deafening 
boom and a spray of metal shards, the door blew apart under the incredible 
assault.

    Stone leapt into the swirling cloud of smoke and dust, setting the 
multibarrels of his chaingun spinning.  A hoarse shout to his left brought the 
muzzle of his weapon around.  Jets of fire spat hot metal through the air into 
the surprised Strogg.  The rest of his troops filed in behind, guns blazing.  
As he emerged from the hazy cloud, he got his first look at the room.  It was 
vast, with a high ceiling and circular walls.  In the very center sat a 
strange, perplexing apparatus, surrounded by consoles, monitors, and computer 
screens.  It possessed huge rings that spun about in a hypnotic swirl of light. 
 Pulsing with an unearthly power, the air about it seemed to twist and warp as 
if the device sat at the bottom of a tumultuous wave pool.

    A stream of high energy plasma sizzled through the air beside his head.  As 
Stone threw himself behind a series of consoles, Atkins' double barrels roared. 
 The hovering mechanical-organic hybrid was knocked into a trio of monitors by 
the force of the attack.  Sparks filled the air as they shattered and the thing 
smashed into the floor.     As he rose from behind the electronic equipment, 
the Lieutenant saw a figure move in the shadows out of the corner of his eye.  
He turned his attention towards it and the creature bolted from the darkness 
towards the strange device in the center of the room.  Wilson's hyperblaster 
screamed while it tracked the unknown creature, white-hot bolts of energy 
splashing into the metal floor.  Alarmed, Stone yelled out, "Wilson, don't 
hit-"  He was never able to finish his sentence.  Time seemed to slow down; 
everything moved in slow-motion.  The stream of hyperblaster fire followed the 
creature's path directly at the alien apparatus.  As the first bolt of energy 
approached, it seemed to twist and writhe in the air.  Arcing around the 
spinning rings, the deadly plasma whipped about and flew among the marines, 
striking Private Banks in the left arm.  With a cry, he went down.

    A second hyperblaster bolt burned towards the device and seemed to shimmer 
and undulate in the air, like a distant object viewed over a hot surface.  In 
an instant, it crashed into one of the rapidly spinning rings.  A deafening 
thunderclap crashed over Stone with all the subtlety of a mile-high tidal wave. 
 Amongst screams of pain, he collapsed to the ground and everything went black.


                                    ******


    Brightness changed to shadows.  Back to brightness and then shadow again.  
Painfully, Stone opened his eyes.  Above him, back-lit against a harsh 
illuminated emptiness, stood a dark silhouette.  Nearly formless, it loomed 
over his body and Stone realized he was lying on his side upon a hard surface.  
He struggled to push himself up, intent on rending this creature apart with his 
bare hands if need be.  The figure took a step back and there was suddenly a 
weapon drawn in one hand.  Fast, Stone thought to himself, it's impossibly 
fast!  Taking another step back, the unidentified silhouette moved out from in 
front of the light source and illumination face fell across its front.  It was 
a man.  Dressed in a long coat the color of dust and a flat, wide-brimmed hat, 
this person was no one Stone had ever seen before and  wore a style of clothes 
the Lieutenant had never before encountered.  And then the man spoke.

    "Easy there, stranger.  Don't see no reason why you need to get yourself 
shot."  It was a soft voice, dry and scratchy, but full of the promise of 
death.  Stone turned his attention to the firearm in the man's hand.  A 
revolver? his mind pondered.  A single-action revolver?  The huge barrel of the 
weapon seemed to gape like an infinite precipice.  Stone blinked and looked up 
at the man's face.  Sharp angles and hard edges greeted him.  The gunman looked 
like he had been without a shave for almost a week, the lightly colored stubble 
covering his jaw.

    "Sorry," Stone rasped, surprised at how his voice came out as more of a 
croak than anything else recognizable.  Pushing himself up to a sitting 
position, he was overcome by a sudden wave of nausea and dizziness.  After a 
moment of stillness, it cleared and he asked the other man, "Where am I?"

    "Just outside Jerome's Pass," came the reply.  That gaping barrel remained 
fixed on Stone's head.

    Peering around, Stone took his real first look at the scenery around him.  
Sun bleached rock and sand greeted his squinting eyes.  The sky above was a 
pale bright blue and high above a white hot sun beat down mercilessly upon the 
surrounding countryside.  The two men were in a stone-lined pass that appeared 
to run between two small rocky peaks.  This was no Strogg bunker he had ever 
seen!  The Lieutenant tried to moisten his lips with his tongue, but his mouth 
felt dry and sandy, like this strange landscape in which he now found himself.

    "Jerome's Pass?" he asked, getting his mouth around the name.  "What the 
hell's that?"

    A brief expression of confusion and suspicion darted through the unnamed 
gunman's eyes.  He gestured towards one of the entrances to the pass with his 
revolver before returning the muzzle pointed in Stone's direction.  "Mining 
town," the stranger answered warily.  "Back the way you came."

    Surprised, Stone looked down on the ground.  A thin layer of sand on the 
rocky surface reflected a strange and startling turn of events.  Leading up to 
his position, from the direction of Jerome's Pass, was a wide, smooth furrow in 
the sand.  As if my body slid several meters across the ground, he thought to 
himself, and decided that was precisely what had happened.  Dozens of footsteps 
trampled the ground around the area, coming from the direction of the mining 
town.  Peering in the direction of their source, Stone saw only that the pass 
twisted around a corner and nothing else was visible.  Following the path of 
the imprints in the sand and dust lead his eyes to a ridge over which he could 
not see from his current crouched position.

    Careful of both his previous bout of dizziness and the hand cannon pointed 
so steadily at his cranium, Stone forced himself to his feet.  He found them to 
be rather unreliable, but managed to keep his legs beneath him.  The gunman, 
apparently deciding that Stone was not much of a threat in his current state, 
twirled his revolver and dropped it into a leather holster at his side.

    None of this made sense to Stone.  The bunker had been orbiting generally 
uninhabited planet with acid rain so harsh you couldn't spend twenty minutes 
exposed to the elements without losing your face to the corrosive atmosphere.  
There were certainly no mining towns on it, no sky like this, and no humans.  
That he was absolutely sure of.  He must be on some other planet; some 
backwater settlement where people still used single-action revolvers, of all 
things.  But how in the hell had he gotten there?  He didn't believe for an 
instant that the Strogg had brought him all the way to this backwards planet 
just to throw him in the sand then leave him there, alive and unhurt.

    "What's your name?" Stone asked, unnerved at just how completely wrong the 
whole situation was.  His newfound friend did not look like any colonist he had 
ever met.  He looked more like...

    "Friends call me Manko."

    "Well, Manko," Stone said, brushing his hands together to excavate the sand 
and dust that adhered to his palms, "I'm not real clear how I got here, but I 
had some friends with me and if I'm going to figure out where they are and what 
brought me here, I think I'll start in that direction."  He pointed towards the 
town of Jerome's Pass, in the direction his slide had started and the footsteps 
in the earth had originated.

    Manko nodded.  "I reckon so.  What's your name, stranger?"

    "Quintin Stone."

    Manko's eyes seem to flash with the barest flicker of surprise.  "Alright, 
Mister Stone.  Lead the way."

    The Lieutenant took a few steps on legs that felt like rubber before he 
regained a steady balance.  "So tell me, Mister Stone," Manko said, falling in 
beside him as he made his way down the pass, "what kinda outfit is you're 
wearing."

    Stone looked down at the worn and battered combat armor he wore.  This must 
really be a backwater planet if they not only didn't recognize the armor of the 
Coalition Marines, but didn't even know what combat armor was.  As he opened 
his mouth to make his reply, he heard Manko's sudden sharp intake of breath.

    "Mother of God, what in the hell is that?"

    Stone whipped his head up and his eyes widened.  Ahead of them, as the pass 
begin to widen, was a site he had never in his entire career encountered.  A 
black chasm, with jagged edges and a spread of twenty meters at least, spread 
across the exit of the pass.  But instead of opening into the rocky bones of 
the earth, this yawning opening stretched vertically into the sky, as if the 
very fabric of the universe had been violently shorn.  At the base of the 
chasm, where it met the stone-littered ground, a hallway with metallic walls 
was visible through the opening.  Stone immediately recognized it as the 
passageway that had led into the large room that housed the strange Strogg 
device his squadron had been sent to recover or destroy if necessary.  The 
chasm spread wider than the hallway, though, and a smooth cross-section of 
those walls was plainly visible, as if they had been sheared cleanly by an 
incredible force.  Outside of that hallway, filling the rest of the chasm, was 
an unyielding darkness; utter and complete blackness, unconcerned with the 
searing white sun that hung in the sky above this planet and beat down upon 
Stone's head.  With a chill, Lieutenant Stone realized that what he was looking 
at was some kind of tear in the fabric of space.  That Strogg machine had 
ripped apart the continuum of reality like a dull blade might shred cloth.  
This was no black-hole gateway, he realized; it was something new.  Something 
terrifying.  No wonder his team had been sent in with all the speed that 
Command had been able to muster.  Swearing loudly, Stone ran forward towards 
the rip.

    Stopping just before the black-edged chasm, his boots skidding slightly in 
the sand, Stone peered into the dimly lit corridor visible before him.  
Reaching down, he grabbed a handful of small stones from the sandy ground.  The 
first he tossed towards the hallway; it arced through the air, passed through 
the invisible and intangible surface of the tear, and landed on the hallway 
floor with a faint metallic ring.  The others he tossed into the inky darkness 
that existed outside of the view of the hallway.  Each pebble vanished without 
a sound or visible effect.  Just... gone.

    With a cold shiver that ran down his spine, the Lieutenant stepped into the 
corridor beyond.  He didn't know whether the tingling sensation that spread 
throughout his body was an actual effect or purely a psychological fabrication. 
 Whether real of imaginary, it left no lasting harm that he could detect.  He 
moved down the hallway, suddenly conscious of his empty hands.  No weapon, 
nothing to protect himself against one of those loathsome half-metal half-alien 
bastards that he'd encountered previously in the room ahead.  Faltering a step, 
he turned and looked back at the reality tear from this side.  Framed by a 
bright blue sky, Manko watched him, the man's scuffed and dust-colored boots 
planted firmly on the ground, his revolver in hand.  After a brief internal 
debate, Stone decided to continue on.  He didn't think the stranger would 
voluntarily give up his weapon, and Stone couldn't trust the man in a fight 
without having seen him in action.  Manko was fast, that the Lieutenant had 
seen for himself, but there was so much more to combat than speed.  Stone 
reoriented himself and continued cautiously down the short hallway.

    Nothing alive remained in the large room.  In the center, the strange alien 
device still hummed and throbbed.  It seemed to pulse; every couple of seconds 
it flashed... or anti-flashed.  Shadow emanated out of it, stretching out like 
some propagating evil shockwave of darkness.  Stone swallowed and turned his 
attention to the rest of the room.  "Damn," he swore under his breath, moving 
quickly to the body he just spotted.  Bodies, to be more accurate.

    Sergeant Greene's combat armor had been torn and shredded so deeply that 
the underlying flesh had been slashed to the bone.  The trooper's rocket 
launcher had been pulverized to a near unrecognizable condition.  The rockets 
themselves were missing.  The remainder of his squadron had met with similar 
fates.  Banks' arm had been horribly scorched, by the distorted hyperblaster 
shot no doubt, and his chest had been crushed inward.  Childs and Hunt had been 
slashed in manners similar to Greene, Hunt's chest had been obliterated by 
machinegun fire, and poor Wilson's head had been shattered by a length of metal 
pipe that remained lodged in the soldier's skull.  All of their equipment had 
been taken or demolished; not a single usable tool, weapon, or munitions 
remained.

    Kneeling over the bodies of his men, Stone committed their souls to the 
Void.  He still didn't know what he believed, but he felt they deserved 
something.  Standing, with a sigh, he gave one last lingering gaze around the 
room and then returned the way he came.

    "What the hell is that?" Manko asked, obviously unsure of where to point 
his revolver.

    Shaking his head, Stone replied, "Even if I told you, you wouldn't 
understand."  He peered down at the jumble of tracks in dirt at his feet.  
"What planet is this?"

    Manko stared at him as if he had grown a second, and possibly a third, 
head.  "Excuse me?"

    Stone moved his gaze from the sandy soil towards the strange man's face.  
"I said 'planet'.  What planet is this?"

    Manko licked his lips, still keeping that strange expression on his face.  
"Earth," he answered, almost nonchalantly.  "Where are you from?"

    Lieutenant Stone reeled as if he'd been kicked in the gut.  Earth?  This 
can't be Earth.  His mind whirled.  Earth, no no no, not possible.  This... oh, 
shit.  Now it dawned on him, the real need for an expedient solution to this 
Strogg situation.  They hadn't developed some kind of transportation system 
that punched vicious holes through the fabric of reality; they'd created a 
machine which was capable of twisting the very nature of space-time.  Going 
back and wiping us out before we'd even reached the stars?  Was that their damn 
plan?  Regaining his senses, he suddenly realized that he had been gibbering 
under his breath, mumbling incoherently.  He took control of himself and met 
Manko's level stare.

    "You going to tell me what this is now?" Manko asked.

    "Ahh," he started, "it's, uh..."  Manko simply looked at him expectedly.  
"It's a rip...."

    "A rip."

    Stone nodded.  "Though, ah, time."

    "A rip through time.  And that," Manko said, waving his revolver towards 
the hallway, "is the future."

    Lieutenant Stone nodded and watched as Manko thoughtfully digested this 
news.  "Normally," the stranger said, "I would think you a drinking man.  Or 
touched in the head.  But this...."  He shook his head.  "This is kinda hard to 
deny, Mister Stone."

    "Actually, it's Lieutenant Stone.  But you can just call me Stone."

    Nodding, Manko's gaze lingered on the chasm in time.  "So what happens now, 
Stone?"

    Stone raked his hand through his short, spiky hair.  "I need to catch the 
bastards who did this."  He waved at the tracks in the sand.  "They're out 
there, somewhere, and I don't even want to think about the trouble they can 
cause."

    "Some rough customers, are they?"

    "You have no idea, Manko.  These th... people, they're killers."

    Manko seemed to chew on this for a moment.  "Well, Stone, it seems to me 
you could use some help."  The hesitation before Stone's nod was barely 
perceptible.  "If these guys are as bad as you say, you'll need all the help 
you can get."  Dropping his revolver back into its holster, Manko began to make 
his way back up the pass.  "C'mon, stranger, let's get you a gun.  I have a 
feeling you'll need it."

    Without a doubt, Stone thought to himself and he followed Stone up the 
rocky incline.


                                    ******


    "Welcome to the Deep Shadows Ranch, Lieutenant Stone," Manko said, waving 
his arm at the series of wooden structures and wide fields that lay below the 
other end of the pass.  Cattle grazed languidly on the sparse bristles of grass 
that sprouted up from one of the fields.  In one paddock, horses whinnied and 
shifted against a wooden fence.  A mounted rider made his way up a broken path 
towards the two.  Manko made a sort of wave at the rider.  "This is Ramirez.  
He helps me out around the place."

    As the rider came closer, Stone saw a sudden glint of steel in the man's 
raising hand.  Surprise gave way to training and he threw himself into Manko, 
knocking him aside as a gunshot thundered across the landscape.  With a grunt, 
Manko crashed into the ground while Stone rolled several feet away.  Manko 
began to sit up and saw the approaching figure of Ramirez atop his horse.  He 
dropped his hand to his revolver.  His finger encountered an empty leather 
holster.

    Swearing, he spared a quick glance at the ground before looking up into the 
face of his friend Ramirez.  The looming barrel of a pistol quickly drew his 
attention.  "Ramirez," he said slowly, watching his friend draw back the 
revolver's hammer.  "Ramirez, you know me..."  A twisted grin spread across 
Ramirez's face, and in an instant, Manko knew he was going to die.

    A boom echoed through the air.  Ramirez went flying from his horse and 
landed motionless on the ground.  A single bleeding hole between his eyes made 
obvious his means of death.  Turning, Manko saw Stone rising from a shooter's 
kneeling position, the lost revolver in hand.

    "I'm sorry," Stone said, walking over and helping Manko to his feet.  "I 
know he was your friend, but he..."

    Manko shook his head and cut him off.  "No, you did the right thing."  He 
stepped over to Ramirez's body.  "He was gonna kill me, all right.  I just 
can't figure out why."

    Leaning down, began to examine the dead man's neck.  "I think I can 
explain."  He came up with what appeared to be a small piece of metal.  Two 
wicked barbs glinted in the bright noon sun.

    "What is it?"

    "Something new.  Apparently, they just started using them."  Standing up, 
he turned the device over in his hands.  "They shoot this thing into a person's 
neck and it turns them.  Against friends, family, anyone human."

    Manko frowned deeply, deep lines appearing in his sun-worn face.  "Human?"

    Stone nodded.  "Yeah.  They begin to kill everyone they meet, except for 
anyone else who has this thing on them."  He handed the gun over, then picked 
up Ramirez's fallen weapon.

    "Take the belt, too," Manko said, gesturing at the wide strip of leather 
around the body's waist.  "I think you'll need it.  And there's a knife in his 
boot."

    Bright brass cartridges in leather loops twinkled in the sunlight as Stone 
wrapped the belt around his hips and tied the leather strap at the end of the 
holster around his thigh.  He eased his new weapon into its holster, tilting it 
forward slightly for a quick draw.  The knife he slipped into his 
standard-issue combat boot.  He straightened up and saw that Manko's attention 
was raptly held by the ranch below.  Turning, Stone saw that the wooden 
structures from which Ramirez had come were all aflame.


                                    ******


    Rooting through the debris, Manko shook his head.  "It's all gone.  There's 
nothing left."  He tossed the twisted, scorched remains of a rifle into the 
smoking embers.  Sighing, he straightened up and looked over at Stone.  "I 
guess now it's personal."

    The Lieutenant nodded.  Without another word, the two men stepped out of 
the burning wreckage then made their way to the edge of the ranch.  They 
followed the scatter of Strogg footprints across the wasted and broken 
landscape, guns at their sides and revenge in their hearts.
