She pointed through the door into the outer office. "You don't have the authority to hold Will Stuckey."
Quantrill feigned confusion, although no doubt he knew the situation well, thanks to psychic messages from his toady Marat.
The Captain leaned forward helpfully. "Sir, one of the Colonial Rangers went berserk and became a menace to public safety. We took him into custody."
"A menace to public safety!" Debbi shouted. "He didn't do anything!"
Captain Marat retorted, "He was discharging a weapon indiscriminately within town limits. He is a danger to himself and others."
Debbi surged at the Captain. "You rotten son of a bitch!"
"Dallas!" Ross yelled.
The violence in his voice brought her to a halt.
Ross was standing now, but he was staring down at the top of the desk. "Stuckey will be treated like anybody else. If he's guilty, so be it. If not, then he'll walk."
"But Ross . . ." she began.
"That's it!" Ross slammed his fist on the desk. "The law applies to everybody. Even Rangers. Let it go and do your job."
Debbi stared wordlessly at Ross. Her lips quivered with rage and fear.
Quantrill said, "Captain Ross's words are reasonable, Ranger Dallas. No one is above the law."
Debbi turned to the other living human in the room. "Mr. Atkinson, has the Legion been granted official law enforcement powers in Temptation?"
Atkinson looked flustered and she instantly regretted pulling the Milquetoast bureaucrat into the conversation.
He stammered, "Well, I . . . uh . . . they are . . ."
Quantrill said evenly, "If we must get technical, the Syker Legion is a reconstituted unit of the defeated United Nations Expeditionary Force, the only such unit currently on the surface of Banshee. As such, it inherits all duties and missions lately exercised by United Nations forces on Banshee. EXFOR had the long-standing right to exercise supreme authority in any area of military operation or in case of civil emergency. Temptation clearly fit into both categories when we arrived last month. Civic functions had virtually ceased and you were in imminent danger of destruction from an invading Reaper army. Even so, when I entered Temptation, I refused to assume governmental authority, although I clearly was within my rights to do so. But since this town had an existing, albeit incapacitated, government, it was my desire to restore it to normal operation rather than distress it further by instituting a military regime. To that end, I made the resources of the Legion available to the civic authorities to whatever level they have desired to restore order in Temptation.
"We have assisted in destroying those flying creatures that had infested your town. We assisted in reburying the mindless undead that had risen from your cemeteries. We have assisted in erecting field wind-generators to restore some electrical power. We have assisted in cleaning criminal elements off the street and prosecuting profiteers. We have secured badly needed supplies and, moreover, the Legion's presence has reassured caravaneers that Temptation is once again a safe place to trade. The Legion, so far as I can see, has been nothing but a boon for this town."
The General slowly turned his head to regard Atkinson. "I believe Mr. Atkinson, and the rest of the Town Council, approves of the Legion's record of service here. Yes, Mr. Atkinson?"
"Oh . . . yes. Of course. Things are much better. I enjoy the electricity. And those bat things were horrible. And, of course, all those horrible zombies wandering around . . ." Atkinson turned pale and froze, unsure how to undo the insult. His tongue darted out nervously between his lips. "I . . . didn't mean you, of course, General. I meant . . . the undesirable zombies. The horrible ones. You and your men are a credit to your . . . your . . . lifestyle."
"Thank you, Mr. Atkinson." Quantrill extended a decaying hand at Debbi. "I'm a soldier; I understand loyalty to a comrade. But like your captain said, the law has to apply to everyone. Even the lawmen. Otherwise, the social order could break down again."
Debbi had been uncomfortably quiet for too long. She said, "Understand this, General. If you harm one hair on Ranger Stuckey's head while he's in your custody, I'll show you just how far the social order can break down."
"Ranger Stuckey will be treated as all prisoners. Surely you aren't requesting special treatment for one of your own?"
Debbi shot a glance at Ross who had resumed his seat and was staring down, unengaged by the conversation. Then she shoved between Quantrill and Captain Marat, leaving this hive of insane dead bureaucracy. She instantly regretted it as patches of viscous mold adhered to her. As she stood in the squad room, the door to Ross's office closed behind her.
She keyed the touch pad to the lock-up door and pulled it open. Ringo sat huddled in a cell, his head between his knees.
"Hey, Ringo," Debbi called out.
The young man's head shot up, his wild brown hair flying. The look of wild expectation on his boyish face tore at her heart. He rose and grabbed the bars with white-knuckled fingers.
"Dallas! Are you here to get me out?"
"No, Ringo, not yet."
His jaw fell slack and his eyes began to water as he stepped away from the bars. The ragged edge of hysteria had been replaced by despair.
Debbi added, "But don't give up. Okay? I'm working on it. The Rangers aren't going to leave you in here. You're not alone."
He rubbed his eyes on his sleeve and nodded. "Yeah. Sure. I know. You guys won't forget me."
"You're damn right. You're one of us." She reached through the bars. The young man took her hand and she drew him closer. He was trembling.
She asked, "What happened to you back there?"
He shook his head. A tear ran down his cheek. "I don't know, Dallas. I was on rounds down by the south wall. I thought . . . I thought I heard something. So I went in to check it out." There was a steady gasping of air as Ringo tried to relate the rest. His skin had gone clammy and pale. "It was dark, but I heard . . . I heard. Oh God, I heard something." The young Ranger grabbed his head in frustration and fear, his hands wringing his hair viciously in the process. "I can't remember, Dallas. Honest to God. I remember running. There was something behind me, all around. It was after me! They were after me!"
"Who was it? What was it? Help me, Ringo. I need some answers."
Placing his head against the cool bars, the youngest Ranger shivered. "I don't know! I just can't take it anymore, Debbi. I just went crazy or something. But I wouldn't have hurt anybody. You know that. I wouldn't hurt anybody."
"I know."
A part of her also knew that this young man had been through hell. Ringo had been alone with Lyle Cassian when the elderly Ranger was killed so gruesomely by batrats, and he hadn't been able to do anything to prevent it. Perhaps the young man was merely experiencing a delayed reaction to that horror. After all, Debbi still had nightmares about Cass's boneless, gelatinous body lying on the floor of the radio shack. They had all lost a good friend that day.
Ringo clutched her arm. "Are they gonna send me to the Bone Camp?"
"Not if I can help it, Ringo. You just sit tight. And if they mistreat you in any way, I want to know it so I can put my foot up their undead asses. Got it?"
"Got it." He smiled shakily.
"Okay. I've got to go talk to the guys. Is there anything I can bring you?"
"No."
She patted his cheek. "Try to get some sleep. Stay tough."
"Okay. Thanks, Dallas."
She didn't lock the door to the lock-up as she went out. She heard General Quantrill's loud voice coming from Ross's office. The two zombie troopers were preparing to nail several boards over the broken window.
She stopped, pulled her gun, and smashed the window on the other side of the front door.
"You missed one," she said to them and left.
Quantrill pointed at Ross. "I'm tired of these petty interruptions. You're here to control the Rangers. Control them!"
Ross stared blindly at him.
Quantrill lashed out and kicked a chair a
cross the room. "The Legion is marching on Ghost Rock City tomorrow and I intend to keep the resources of Temptation safely to my rear. That is your job. I left some of your rational mind inside that skull so you could function much as you had in your previous life, so your people wouldn't suspect you were mine. Make no mistake, I will obliterate your Colonial Rangers before I allow them to endanger my plans! And it will be because you failed to protect them by getting your people to follow my orders!" Quantrill lifted a plate of abandoned food and tossed it down with a loud clatter. "And eat something! Or I'll make you eat every rotting plate of food in this room! I won't have you starving yourself to death!"
Quantrill spun and left the office with his adjutant and Captain Marat close behind. He slammed the door shut.
Quantrill said to the Captain, "I want that Ranger you arrested charged, convicted, and moved tonight. And make sure you arrange the proper paperwork. It must be completely legal."
Marat smiled with corrupted, rotten teeth. "Yes sir. But might I suggest, we could manipulate this situation into an opportunity to destroy the Rangers outright."
Quantrill glared at his junior officer. "We can't afford a civil war in the streets of Temptation. You know what their black guns can do."
"But there are barely fifteen Colonial Rangers. Even if you include their pathetic militia, they barely have two hundred under arms. The Legion is over a thousand strong."
"Yes, but the whole structure depends on the fifteen of us who are psychically alive. If the Rangers kill my officers, such as yourself, the Legion is decapitated."
"We are sykers, General. We could take them easily. We must crush them while we have the chance. Then we can exploit the resources of Temptation as we see fit to conquer Banshee."
"I'm moving to engage the Reapers. They are our enemy. I won't risk the loss of a single Legionnaire here in Temptation fighting Rangers who should be our allies."
"Sir, if I may speak frankly, I believe that the loyalty you feel toward this Captain Ross is clouding your judgment. He isn't one of us. He's nothing but a tool to be used and disposed of! Our strategy should be . . ."
"Are you lecturing me, Captain?" Quantrill shouted with frightening fury. "Without my clouded judgment you would still be feeding Banshee's soilborne parasites at this very moment. And remember, I have the power to send you back into that black nothingness! I have reasons for everything I do here! Reasons that you need not understand or appreciate in order to obey without question! My opinion of Captain Ross is no concern of yours. The matter is closed! Do you understand me?"
Marat snapped to attention and saluted. "Yes sir!"
Quantrill left the Ranger headquarters and stalked down the center of the moon-bleached street. He was consumed by an overwhelming rage, a vicious desire to plunge his fingers into his Captain's dewy eyes. However, Quantrill privately took Marat's words to heart. The General had a peculiar sympathy for Dave Ross due to Ross's vague, perhaps even unintentional kindness, during the final year of Quantrill's life when he was a pariah among colonists on Banshee.
In addition, Captain Marat was understandably impatient after his time in the grave, ready for conflict. Quantrill felt the same; he was eager to come to grips with the Reapers at Ghost Rock City. He longed for battle and the sound of the well-deserved screams of his enemies. However, he was a commander and he had responsibilities for the safety of his men. Quantrill could not afford to waste any member of his new Legion. Dead sykers were not an endlessly renewable resource on Banshee and he would need every one of them to resurrect his reputation as a leader of men that had been unfairly tarnished in the Red River campaign nearly twenty years ago.
Even so, Quantrill felt confidant that the odds were clearly in his Legion's favor. Even though the Rangers possessed the mysterious black guns, syker-stoppers, the lawmen were hesitant to start a war because of the Legion's sheer numbers. That hesitation would give Quantrill the time he needed to shore up his power. Once the Legion's successful campaign for the control of Banshee was underway, the situation would quickly progress beyond the Colonial Rangers' ability to interfere.
The reborn, undead Quantrill would demonstrate his own strategic genius and balanced leadership to everyone on the planet as he brought Banshee under his fist. In the process, he would destroy all those who had a role in his downfall. And that included all the spineless colonists who demanded he be a monster for their sins, and then hated him for it.
Quantrill noticed a group of townsfolk slipping back into the shadows and hiding as he passed. Their fear washed over him in delicious psychic waves.
"After all I did for them, they still hate me," he thought and shook his head in anger.
They were right to be afraid. All of Banshee was.
Chapter 3
At the same time across town, Debbi stalked down the street. She had searched the area around the south wall for a clue as to what Ringo saw, or thought he saw, but she had come up empty. There was nothing there that hadn't always been there. Empty barrels and rotting garbage. There were still a few batrats in the area. Maybe they had swarmed some poor soul and Ringo witness it. Maybe that sparked a terrible memory of Cass's death and set him off. But hell, those nasty buggers had been around for a while. Why would Ringo react to them so violently now? If they had swarmed someone, where was the body?
There were too many questions without answers.
Dejectedly, Debbi noticed the sun was just rising. It chased away the shadows but could do little else. It couldn't cleanse the rotting smell and it couldn't lift her spirits. Too many friends lost, one right after another with no way to save any of them.
And most of all, she had lost Ross.
Everything she had come to rely on over the past few months had been ripped away. She almost wished Ross had been killed in action with the Reapers or the Legion. Even that would be better than the shell of a man he now was.
Debbi screwed her face tight against the onslaught of emotions that assailed her: fear, despair, anger. She was being buffeted from a hundred different directions.
All she knew for sure was that she was on her own. She told herself she was merely biding her time, waiting for the moment to strike. Eventually it would come. It was something that couldn't be rushed. Too much was at stake. The Rangers were too few in number even though they had the black guns. The black needles, composed of a ghost rock-tannis compound, had proven effective in blocking the psychic powers, whether in human sykers or anouks who had a natural psychic magic. The material in the needles somehow disrupted psychic powers and locked the victim in a mental rigor. This allowed the shooter time for a kill shot with normal ammunition, or in the case of the undead Legionnaires, allowed them to be destroyed like a "normal" zombie with a brain shot. Without the black needles, the Legionnaires were enormously resistant even to damage to their brains. The black guns were simple tubes that attached to the barrels of regular firearms. All the Rangers and militia in Temptation had them. But even the black guns might not enough to stop the Legion.
Ngoma's lanky form stepped up onto the sidewalk at the next intersection and beelined for Debbi. She steeled herself for another crisis. She almost sighed with relief when there wasn't.
Ngoma fell into step beside her. "Hickok wants to see you at the LAX."
Debbi's brow wrinkled. "Did she say what about?"
"Couldn't tell you. She hardly talks at all nowadays."
Debbi cast a look around the quiet town. On any normal day, Temptation would have been bustling with caravaneers and tradesmen. It was the height of the season, but there were less than half of the usual caravans present. Legitimate caravans largely avoided Temptation now. Most of the merchants present were opportunistic vultures who were willing, even eager, to brave the horrors of the City of the Dead to sell desperately needed goods at steeply elevated prices.
"Everything in town quiet?" she asked, not looking at Ngoma.
The young black man half smiled. "Quiet as a tomb."
Debbi inwa
rdly groaned. Some of the Rangers had taken to making dead jokes to help ease the tension. Personally, they wore on her, but it seemed to make the others relax. If the jokes helped even in the slightest, she would tolerate them.
"Who knew being occupied by the undead would be so hilarious?" she quipped.
Ngoma's dark eyes glinted with mirth. Then he grew serious. "Do you need backup at the LAX?"
"We're spread too thin right now as it is. I'll be fine. I'll cut through the Depot. Marat's things tend to stick inside the walls so there shouldn't be too many of them out there."
Ngoma nodded. "Check in every few minutes or so though. Just to be sure."
"I will. See ya."
"Yeah."
Ngoma broke off and headed for his sleeping quarters. It had been a long night. Debbi was bushed too, but she veered toward the Depot regardless. She was curious as to why Hickok wanted to see her. She thought the pilot would have been long gone by now. Hickok hated sykers with a passion. Dead ones couldn't possibly make matters any better.
As much as Debbi was loathed to admit it, she had become sympathetic of Hickok. The woman was cocky and snide, but she had gone above and beyond. She had faced her fear in New Hope when she helped Debbi rescue the group of refugees from a Skinny, very much against the pilot's self-protective nature. Debbi admired that.
Of course, that didn't completely erase some of the bad blood that had passed between them. For now, they were tolerant acquaintances. But if Hickok ever reverted to her mercenary ways, Debbi would be more than happy to put her back in her place. Hickok knew that and thereby the line was drawn and respected.
The walk to the LAX took Debbi through the area around the Depot, what used to be the more rancid part of town. It was the caravan zone and had been frequented by beggars and hustlers. The Depot had once been lined with businesses, many shady and most lucrative. Almost any item or service could be had, given enough time and money. The frenzied shouting of vendors had once filled the air.
Now the area was somber. There were hardly any people moving about. The few sellers sat quietly in their booths, afraid to draw attention to themselves. Dark corners and shadowy nooks were empty of vagrants and hucksters.
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