A hired gun delivers frontier justice on a colony world in this exciting novel from "an imaginative writer with a director's eye" (Aaron Allston, New York Times–bestselling author of Mercy Kill: Star Wars Legends).

The man called Twelve is a hired gun, taking his laser pistol from planet to planet, renting his services out to the highest bidder.

He finds himself on Glycon-Prime, a new colony at the edge of space. On the hunt for work, Twelve blows into a small frontier town—only to find a massacre.

The survivors? A trio of young children, devastated by the murder of their families. They are hellbent on hiring the gunslinger to get revenge on the leader of the vicious mutants responsible—the man known only as The Serpent's Head . . .