The Devil's Bargain

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Jeff Somer's Avery Cates lives in a rough, weird reality. Cates started as a “gunner” - a gun for hire - who had climbed the greasy pole of the criminal underworld of New York to the top when society imploded. In his youth, things were easy: the Federated Systems ruled the world and kept its foot on the neck of the underclass. Then the Federated Systems had kind of a civil war that involved uploading human minds and radically depopulating the planet until nothing was left except some scattered populations fighting for the last remaining treasures of the dead civilization.

Cates improbably survived the whole thing, while even more improbably being involved in key moments of the downfall. Now, he is older, with aches and pains, and he is now back in charge, this time of a city-state that is about to be placed under siege.

He needs weapons and he knows where to get those weapons.

This is a very short story. It is, perhaps, slightly longer than a short story. Somers is writing his next novel in installment, which he is putting on the market when he completes an installment. This makes for some choppiness in plot development. For example, I think I've missed some of the earlier instalments and I need to go back and reconstruct the sequence.

Nonetheless, I think it's worthwhile. I enjoy the Cates' character and I would like to get an answer to the question of “what happened to the world?”