CM

Court Gentry is known as The Gray Man—a legend in the covert realm, moving silently from job to job, accomplishing the impossible, and then fading away. And he always hits his target. But there are forces more lethal than Gentry in the world. And in their eyes, Gentry has just outlived his usefulness. Now, he is going to prove that for him, there's no gray area between killing for a living-and killing to stay alive.

Two years after an attack brought down the electrical grid across the United States, the recovery effort is well underway. A new network of armored trains carry supplies and industrial equipment crucial to rebuilding the country. But along the rails, one area of America is still mired in darkness, violence, and danger. Some call it the Badlands. Others the Wild West. The government simply refers to it as the New Frontier.

For 15 years the truce has held. Swordsmen of the Tryst of Casr have kept the peace and extended the rule of law over half the World, but now sorcerers have started killing swordsmen again, and swordsmen traitors are aiding them. Shonsu-who was Wallie Smith before he became a swordsman of the seventh rank and liege lord of the Tryst-must once more gird on the seventh sword of Chioxin, and this time he rides out to fight the war that he hoped would never come.

More than two centuries after World War III poisoned the planet, the final bastion of humanity lives on massive airships circling the globe in search of a habitable area to call home. Aging and outdated, most of the ships plummeted back to Earth long ago. The only thing keeping the two surviving lifeboats in the sky are Hell Divers - men and women who risk their lives by skydiving to the surface to scavenge for parts the ships desperately need.