Contributor: E.S. Wynn

John had been locked up on Mars for twenty years. Twenty years is a long time, long enough to go from being a stringy white-collar criminal dupe to a hardened, whipcord instrument of death quicker with a sharpened chunk of recycled plastic than any trooper was with a ray pistol. Wasn’t any good against the automated systems though, and Mars was all automation. Not a single human soldier in the place. It didn’t matter how much time John spent working out or polishing his moves. Mars was impossible to escape from.

Until some newbie technician blipped the power and shorted all the automatics.