When the Water Falls [Quest] Eye of the Storm

[Carmelita]

The savannah night air was instantly recognisable against her muzzle as she tumbled from the portal. On the one hand, Carmelita found this reassuring, harking back to the trip she’d taken to the Wild West and the sands of Arabia. On the other, that meant that her cloak had broken.

Sure enough, the stormtrooper who was resting his feet on his desk started in alarm, scrambling to grab his blaster to shoot at the faint blur that had tumbled from the portal. Carmelita wasted no time in running for cover as FENRIS mechs burst through behind her, sniffing the air with their chemical sensors and prepping their tasers. Her cloak quickly re-established its integrity, and she began sprinting away into the darkness, scrambling over the wire fence and away from the commotion behind her.

After half an hour of running, the sounds of pursuit died off. Carmelita dropped to her knees in relief, panting heavily. After several minutes spent simply lying there from exhaustion, she switched off the cloak and climbed a tree, settling into the branches in time to see the sun begin to rise on the horizon. Making sure she was invisible from below, she dozed off in the nook of the Eucalyptus, her first Omniverse nap beginning.

[Carmelita]

When she awoke, the heat had grown near overwhelming. The sun was directly overhead, the tree she was in providing plenty of shade, and so she removed her red overcoat and gloves and with trepidation dissolved them into omnilium with which to make some Interpol standard binoculars. She surveyed her surroundings.

In the distance, rusted steel caught her attention. The steel archway of portal encampment was directly behind her, and she could see what was probably the white adobe and tiled roofs of Carrefour off to her right. This conglomerate mass of rusted tanks and pipework looked like an oil refinery, and it seemed like it might have something useful. At the very worst, it would give her somewhere more secure than a tree to rest and prepare for her trek.

She set off, stalking lithely through the tall grass and squinting against the light. The ground was dry beneath her feet, but not cracked, and the long strands of green and brown were not difficult to part. A few animals, feral gazelle to her eyes, ran away as she passed them, scattering from her presence and scent.

She dropped herself down into a near-dry riverbed, the grass around her parting for a moment. There was barely a trickle of water, but it looked clean and unpolluted. Not one to pass up the opportunity, Carmelita bottled some and added a few drops of iodine mix from her pack to clean it as she continued on.

As she walked, Carmelita couldn’t help the slew of thoughts that kept crossing her mind. Some were memories, of good days and bad, others were questions on the how and why of her husband’s death. Being alone used to be a comfort to her, a solace from the crazy antics of her husband and his friends, but now it seemed almost suffocating. Was it her fault, somehow? Or was it simply that Sly had had a close brush with death one too many times? After the event, Bentley hadn’t been able to bring himself to terms with the event, insisting that this was another in a long line of tricks Sly had pulled to avoid trouble, but nothing Carmelita could think of would have troubled Sly. Murray, meanwhile, had been suffocating in his long weeping calls to anyone who had been even the slightest company of Sly’s, trying to stay positive and failing miserably. Carmelita had endured the long line of people who gave her commiserations at the empty coffin memorial service, but she had only really known most of them in passing and their words had seemed hollow and empty. Only the Guru, the wise old koala who spiritually connected himself to the Aborigine Dreamtime, had noticed her discomfort, and he had gifted her with the notice-me-not belt to help her avoid the unwanted attention. After that, she’d decided she’d try and keep her work going, but that had ended in… well, she was now walking through a savanna in a dimension of a whole other universe.

Her thoughts were interrupted as a big cat leapt from the undergrowth, making her backpedal frantically and unholster her Shock Pistol. Three quick shots landed between the lioness’s bright eyes, the cat giving a hiss at the sudden pain and shaking her head to clear her sight. Carmelita took the opportunity to break into a sprint, firing a point blank shot as she past its right flank to discourage the cat from continuing to chase her.

Despite being on the end of Carmelita’s attack, the cat simply yowled and came after her, stumbling slightly as one of its legs spasmed but not failing to keep up with her. She fired off a few shots, twisting her head to aim behind her, but her aim was slightly off and only one of the hit. A pinch of the fur on the cat’s paw smoked slightly, sparks of static visible for a moment before they grounded themselves.

The cat leapt at Carmelita, and she dived to one side, hissing as a claw scratched a line of pain through her yellow jacket and blue shirt from directly behind her. She twisted, charging a heavier duty shot. The cat’s movement was slower, more unsteady, and now she could dodge it back and forth for the few seconds she needed. A buzz from her Pistol let her know she was ready, and as the cat took a swipe she ducked beneath it and let fly with an electrical ball at near point blank range. With a crackle, the cat took a nosedive. It lay thrashing wildly in panic, its senses bllind to the world around it. Carmelita waited a few seconds, carefully staying out of reach of the sharp claws, before firing a small ball of electricity. She stood, calmly firing ball after ball, each shot weakening the lioness more. Ten seconds later, the cat’s eyes forced themselves open one last time, staring up at Carmelita before she gave it a vindictive smile. She fired one last shot. The lioness finally collapsed, spasms running along its body.

“Good night, puss. Next time don’t assume that just because I’ve got fluff I’m a toy to play with.”

Carmelita winced as the poor line came from her mouth. It wasn’t anywhere near the sort of banter she’d exchanged with Sly, and she seemed a little out of practice. She felt her back to find that the scratch was oozing blood, but in spite of that the little fight had been what she needed to snap her out of her mood. Fixing the jacket with omnilium and panting away the extra heat her vulpine body had accumulated, she headed on her way before the lioness woke up from her forcible nap.

[Carmelita]

Carmelita arrived at the refinery to the joyous sight of rank upon rank of rusted, busted earth-moving equipment and maintenance vehicles. She wasn’t a mechanic or electrician like Murray or Bentley, but she’d picked up a thing or two, and a lot of this was salvageable. Most interesting to her was the water tanker that had lost several wheels, since nothing quite said ‘I’m here to help’ than bringing a tanker of water to a town in a desert.

She began by summoning a wrench and car jack from her omnilium to prise off parts from a fuel tanker, fixing minor damage with application of a little more. Rolling the wheels over to the water tanker, which took a considerable amount of effort, she then decided to take a break. The light was already fading, and with the amount of work to do to get the tanker ready to drive through the desert, it was going to take the whole of the next morning. In the meantime, she’d take a look around the refinery proper.

It was as she was walking down one of the dirt tracks that lead between the rusting towers that she came across the main office for the site. She poked her head inside, a claw finding a lightswitch out of instinct. To her surprise, one of the fluorescent bulbs came to life, the room slowly illuminated.

The office had an old swivel chair and a broken coffee machine, but it was better than sleeping outside. She dozed off quickly, exhaustion ensuring a dreamless sleep.

---

The next morning, Carmelita found a generator and solar panels that she quickly applied to the roof of the tanker to power the electric engine. With a bit of applied omnilium, the rust fell off the tanker and Carmelita was ready to hit the road. She summoned up and fixed the keys and locks, hopping up the ladder and into the cab. As she sat in the driver's seat, a twinge in her back reminded her of the scratch she’d received from the lioness. A quick check in the mirror showed it wasn’t sceptic, but it had only just scabbed over. Gritting her teeth, she ignored the discomfort and started the tanker up. It gave a loud whir before settling down to a low purr.

From what she remembered from the information she’d found on the Endless Dunes, the best place to find water was the oasis in Carrefore, an Imperial town she’d spotted the day before. She made her way onto the overgrown dirt track that led from the refinery, the truck’s electric engine humming quietly.

Carrefore was visible in the distance when she noticed a dust cloud following her. A quick look with her binoculars showed that it was a collection of bikes, possibly travellers or bandits. She kept a close eye on them as she drove, and they swiftly gained on the slower water tanker. As they neared, she spotted one of them hoisting a machine gun onto his sidecar, gesturing for her to pull over.

She activated her cloak as she slowed to a halt, taking the key from the ignition as she hopped out the door. The bikers slowed to a halt the other side of the truck, and she snuck round the back as they came round the front.

There were four of them, one of them a grizzled leopard wielding a six-shooter whilst the others looked human, each carrying an assault rifle. Carmelita had plenty of time to circle round and find a small bluff a good twenty metres away.

“Hey Boss, there’s no one here.”

“What do you mean there’s no one there? Someone had to be driving.”

“Actually, Boss, there are some Imperial delivery trucks that-”

“Shut it Dictionary. Let’s have a look boys.”

She opened fire with her shock pistol as they clustered together, crackling balls of electricity flying straight through the air. The leopard took the first two in his back, and while his companions had plenty of time to run for their bikes, the electricity coursing through him made him stumble, an easy target for another four shots to knock him out cold. By that point, the three humans had opened fire on her location, and Carmelita ducked down out of sight. Bullets whined as they sped over the bluff, puffing as they smacked into the dirt ridge. After fifteen seconds, her cloak was ready for use again. The bullets petered out as she pressed a digit to her collar.

“Are they dead?”

“I don’t know. Thessy, go and check if there’s a corpse.”

“Why me?”

“Because me and Dictionary say so. You were the one who said there was no-one driving.”

“I’m not going! You go.”

While the three humans argued, Carmelita repositioned herself quickly, working her way around behind the bikes the men were using as cover. Again, catching them off guard meant that another of them was caught in the open, cut down by balls of electricity that shocked him into unconsciousness.

“Shit! Cyclo, let’s go!”

In a panic, the remaining two tried to drive away, one hopping in the sidecar and hunkering down while the other revved the engine and accelerated away. Carmelita stepped out of cover, aiming carefully and charging up a heavy-duty shot.

“Where do you two think you’re going,” she muttered, releasing the shot. It flew straight and true, crashing into the unprotected back of the driver. He screamed and began swerving wildly, unable to see, and the brief retreat ended with the bike and sidecar crashed into a ditch. Carmelita jogged over to where the two of them lay, battered and bruised from the crash, and knocked them out with liberal use of her shock pistol. She dragged the two away and bundled the four unconscious bandits together by the bluff.

She frowned slightly. She didn’t have anywhere to put these reprobates, so letting them go was probably her only option. She did confiscate their weapons, and happily looted their pockets of assorted credit-chips, coins and notes, deciding that perhaps some Cooper justice needed to be dealt out where Fox justice couldn’t be. With a jaunty salute to the leopard as he groggily stirred awake, Carmelita hopped back into the tanker.

“Don’t do highway robbery, Spots. That’s a lesson for the road.”

Grimacing at the quality of her rusty humour, Carmelita drove onward to Carrefore. The bandits were left in a shower of dust.

[Carmelita]

Carmelita filled up the tanker with little incident, even with a brief scare when two stormtroopers had asked for a permit. Thankfully, she got away with retro-actively purchasing one with some of the money she’d liberated from the bandits, and the two had walked away without a second glance. Apparently they had more important things to do than to fine some lowly truck driver. Carmelita fancied that those things might include like tracking down someone who’d snuck through the portal recently. A self-indulgent fantasy, perhaps, but it was possible.

Without further ado, Carmelita hit the road. There was a radio in the truck’s cab, and she fiddled with it, looking for a broadcast it might be capable of playing. After some interesting chatter involving two kids playing with radios they’d found in a scrap dump, she found a station that called itself ‘The Channel With No Name’. That wasn’t hard to extrapolate from, and so she found herself being cued in on the situation through the inferred knowledge she got from the broadcast.

“So now for the weather. Mara?”

The Texan drawl was replaced by an Arabian twang.

“Sandstorms have been spotted several times in the past few days, so the general warning is to batten down your windows and keep your belongings inside. Moisture farmers will want to begin partial shutdown procedures for caution's sake. Back to you David.”

“Thank you. Today we have the god-given pleasure of welcoming into the world two brand new baby boys, one of them a little Gideon Red and the other an Azaoxosis Erixonis. The station gives congratulations to their families.”
“No further clues on who broke in and stole from Mr Fans’ bakery last week, nor yesterday’s theft of food from Mrs Ervice’s granary. Roland was unable to comment due to being extremely busy with the more urgent problems, and the rest of the deputies refused to comment.”
“Shooty McShooterson’s Gun Shop has a special offer on ammunition today, reducing the price of standard revolver and pistol ammunition by twenty percent. I use a rifle myself, but that’s certainly a good deal.”
“And later on in the program, we’ll be talking about the water shortage. First, though, traffic. Mara?”

“The Carrefore approach has seen an increase in low-life activity, the Jeans and T-shirt gang the most organised bunch. The New Babylon road is commonly filled with relief efforts and refugees, which has led to a resurgence of skag activity and sand scorpion attacks. The Ashen Wastes route has been quieter lately, with the recent rebuff of the Fire-belcher mutants leaving the groups licking their wounds. Back to you David.”

“Thank you. Now, onto the water crisis that has gripped the Town With No Name. The town’s aquifer continues to be reduced to a muddy trickle, the pumps and wells running dry. Normally, we’d be relying on the moisture farmers to deliver tanks of water to keep the water towers filled, but there’ve been a lot of convoy raiding, especially from the Jeans and T-shirt gang. Water tankers have been stolen alongside food and supplies, and even armed vehicles have been subdued through dirty tricks and a few roadside bombs.”
“It should be no surprise that we’re expecting trouble from the malcontents again. Sheriff Roland has been prowling around to keep the peace, but that doesn’t make it easier on the deputies. Hopefully, this water crisis will be solved soon.”

Carmelita reached out and turned off the radio as the program came to an end. She felt the glow of self-justification, though the revelation that a few previous trucks had been waylaid despite an armed escort made her slightly nervous. She turned her eyes back to the road. The grass was giving way to sand and the hardened road she’d been travelling was now kicking up a huge column of dust behind the truck.

It was when the Town With No Name came into sight, palisade walls and all, that Carmelita was attacked. She had kept an eye on the mirrors, expecting any pursuers to sneak up behind her; what she hadn’t been expecting was for the road to travel along a ridge that hid two catapults to literally launch flatbed trucks into action from a standing start. Once again, the vehicles chasing her were smaller and more lightweight than the tanker she was driving. The truck on the left was full of humans, all of them shaved bald and several of them waving melee weapons or shotguns. The one on the right instead had three reptiles wielding flamethrowers. Carmelita shook off her surprise and slammed her paw down on the accelerator and hunkered down, preparing her shock pistol.

The truck on the left pulled ahead, and the other slammed into the tanker from the right. Thinking the miniguns the greater threat, Carmelita charged a heavy-duty shot and took careful aim, landing the shot on the driver through an open window despite the shotgun shells flying around her. The truck swerved as the driver lost sensation, ploughing into the soft sand of a nearby dune.

She turned back to the other truck just in time to see it slam into the side of the tanker. She turned the wheel, trying to avoid jack knifing. The wing mirror showed several of the passengers had boarded the tanker, and despite one falling screaming into the dust a few had hung on. The truck slammed into the side of the tanker again, and she grit her teeth tighter as she pulled her cab back into line. She prepared to barge back only to feel her cab lurch and pull ahead of the truck. All of a sudden, she was going much, much faster, and looking in the mirror, she could see why: the raiders that had boarded the truck had decoupled the water tank from the cab. Now it was slowing to a halt, the raiders were circling protectively around it, and she could see another cab driven by raiders approaching from the left. Gritting her teeth, she knew there wasn’t much hope if she went back now, and ploughed on along the road.

[Carmelita]

Carmelita pulled the cab over just before the gate, head sinking in frustration. She began slowly thumping her forehead against the steering wheel.

“Idiota.”

Thump.

“Idiota.”

Thump.

“Idiota.”

Thump

“Idio-”

“Er, miss?” A voice cut across her words, and she turned her head. A woman with green skin and tentacle hair was looking at her concernedly from the back of her horse. “You done beating yourself up?”

Carmelita nodded and pushed away her feelings.

“Pardon my outburst, Miss, just frustrated. I got ambushed-”

“-by the J and T gang, we saw from the wall. We thought you were a goner, actually. Turns out you held your own better than most. Name’s Kirsa, I’m one of Roland’s deputies.” The woman held out her hand through the open window. Carmelita couldn’t help notice that it had two thumbs, but she took it anyway.

“Carmelita Fox-Cooper. I was an Inspector for Interpol back home.”

“Hmm. You look too strong to be a summon, so I guess you’re a Prime. Come on, let’s get this cab of yours parked inside the palisade and we can talk more.”

---

The Town With No Name might be fairly poor, but it was still significantly large enough for the diversity of its inhabitants to show. As Carmelita followed the Deputy through the dusty streets, she took in the rusty steel shacks next to wooden bars and adobe cantinas. A hedge mage hedgehog sat on a patio, lighting her pipe with a flick of her fingers, staring with lidded eyes across the road at the man fixing scrapyard hoverbikes outside his auto shop. A bar advertising irradiated drinks sat cozily up against an imposing gunsmith’s and a set of stalls tried to hawk everything from nutrient paste to scorpion charms.

Deputy Kirsa walked through the streets with purpose, barely stopping to glare at a few shady looking humans lurking by a dark alleyway. After passing through a collection of plastic tents and several water towers, they eventually reached their destination. Kirsa opened the door to the Watering Hole, a few other deputies giving her a wave as she led Carmelita to a corner booth and gestured for her to sit down.

While Kirsa fetched drinks from the counter, Carmelita looked around. Clearly the local equivalent of the ‘cop bar’, the establishment was a fairly clean concrete room set in the ground with good lighting and an extremely holey dartboard. The bartender looked human, though she couldn’t make out too many details from this angle, and they seemed to be busy handling the patrons that had come in to get out of the afternoon heat.

Kirsa returned, two pints of beer in hand. She proffered one to Carmelita, who took it with a little wry smirk. Last time she’d tried a beer had been during the time travel venture where they’d ended up working with Tennessee Kid Cooper.

“So,” Kirsa said, leaning back against the worn leather of the bench. “What were you doing hauling water?”

“I was looking to get a friendly welcome. I wasn’t sure that I wanted to step on any toes when I started my work, so I felt a present might be nice for the area. Get Roland to give me a chance, you know.”

“Uh-huh.” Kirsa took a sip of her beer and looked over at the bar for a moment. “And your work would be…”

Carmelita took her old Interpol badge out from the pocket she always kept it in on the inside of her jacket and slid it across the table. Kirsa picked it up and examined it intently as Carmelita explained.

“I was an Inspector for Interpol at one point. Well, technically I was a member of the Nationale Police with experience in the Gendarmie Nationale who was seconded to UNPol and made an official European UNPol Interpol liaison, but it boiled down to me being an Inspector. Travelled a lot, hunted serial criminals and busted a lot of the big bad names of the time. Warlords, pirates, terrorists, drug lords, art thieves and forgers, corrupt politicians, environmental criminals… the list goes on. When I got married, I quit the force due to personal conflicts, but I ended up doing a lot of stuff from the sidelines, submitted a lot of ‘freelance’ reports and evidence. Now I’m a part of the Omniverse, closest I could find to UNPol or Interpol is an organisation with a distinct agenda, so I figure that I should probably set something up. Of course, I’ll need time to establish a name for myself, and I need to get the law enforcement onside, and the place I felt it best to start was here.”

Kirsa nodded and turned her head to the bar.

“You hear enough of that, Boss?”

Carmelita turned her head in surprise to find a gruff human studying her intently. The Sheriff’s badge on his jerkin and the unique pistol in his belt holster made it pretty clear that this was Roland Deschaine himself. The man felt around in a pocket and tossed a small silver star into Carmelita’s lap.

“I heard enough alright. Miss, if you can get the town a water tanker or the location of the J and T gang in the next four days, we’ll talk more about making that badge a permanent feature. You’ll not get any help from the rest of my people, mind. We’ve got plenty enough trouble to be dealing with here, and I can’t send them haring around in the sand trying to find those louts. Understand?”

Carmelita nodded, dumbfounded. Satisfied, Roland left the bar, the deputies tipping their hats or giving him nods as he passed.

She blinked and turned back to Kirsa, who had an unapologetic smirk on her face.

“Congratulations, you aced the initial interview. Now for the practical exam!”

[Carmelita]

Kirsa and Carmelita had had a more relaxed conversation after she’d been officially given the once over, talking about the rumours flying around the Dataverse about the Town With No Name. After a while, Kirsa had excused herself to get back to patrolling the palisades, leaving Carmelita to decide on her next steps.

She found herself wandering through the streets in the late afternoon light. Unlike when she’d been led by Kirsa, she ended up running into a few dead ends. One of these was where she found herself by the water pumps, the large triangular rigs quiet and the pipes to the water towers empty. Peering through the links in the fence, she could see several workers wandering the site doing half-hearted maintenance.

Carmelita turned away and was about to continue walking when she saw a nearby shop front advertising maps and mining equipment. Deciding she’d want a map to mark down the location of the Jeans and T-shirt gang when she found them, she made her way inside.

The first thing she noted was a large sign on the wall loudly proclaiming that humans were unwelcome in the shop. It was prominent enough that it took her a few seconds to tear her vision away from the discriminatory poster and back to the rest of the shop. A small droid was rolling through the shop, cleaning the products with a dustpan as it went. The yellow and black striped treads and the small bucket attached to its back indicated that this likely used to be a mining droid before it took up shop keeping. She coughed politely and the droid raised its head to the door.

“Oh. I’ll. Be. Right. There.”

The voice was monotonous and slow, punctuating each word with a following pause. The robot rumbled over to the counter, where it turned to face Carmelita.

“How. Can. I. Help. The. Furred. Female. Today.”

“I’m looking for a map of the area around here, with landmarks.”

“I’ll. Be. Right. Back.”

The robot trundled away and into the storeroom nearby. Carmelita sniffed slightly as her boot squelched as she shifted, sinking into something wet and dirty. She wiped it on the wood floor, hoping that whatever it was wouldn’t stain.

There were a lot of picks, several drills and a lot of shovels in view, and she took a moment to inspect them to keep her mind from boredom. Some of them looked new, others looked as though they’d been used recently and then returned. As she pondered whether the mining helmet in the corner would stand up to a fist, let alone a rockfall, another person entered the shop, stamping their feet.

She looked over to see a strange being, some sort of stumpy four legged creature with a metallic prosthetic sticking out from its back. It looked at her with four beady eyes, staring at her suspiciously.

“Is M.I.T.E around?” the being asked, after a lengthy silence.

“He’s fetching me a map.”

“Hmph.” The being pushed its way under the counter, yelling as it made its way out of site in the storage room. “M.I.T.E! I’m going to check the mail!”

The robot returned with the map, increasing the volume of its speakers as it did so. “Understood. Dino. I. Will. Join. You. Shortly.”

The droid turned and handed Carmelita the map. “Fifty. Creds.”

Carmelita paid as quickly as possible, pushing her way out the doors. She could feel the awkwardness pressing on her from behind.

---

As the light died, Carmelita set out from the Town. Armed with a map and some supplies she’d paid for using flawed crystals, she headed back to her ambush point on foot, hoping to find some clues as to where to begin. At the point where the tanker had been detached, she was frustrated to find that the raiders had been clever enough to cover their tracks, brush marks indicating the end of the trail. She stood for a moment, thinking, before remembering that the chase had started at least half a mile further along the road.

Luck was on her side. She found the catapult contraptions still in place, waiting for the raiders to pick up at a later date. Her eyes, aided with a small torch she made from omnilium, searched the ground, eventually finding the large tire tracks leading off to the right, forgotten by the raiders. Carmelita trudged out across the dunes, sand whispering beneath her boots. The wheel tracks were faded, the wind slowly erasing them, but they were enough to point her in the right direction. Pinpricks of light shone in the sky, staring down at her. The night air bit at her fur and the landscape seemed endless.

She crested another dune and slid down the other side, ignoring the itching of the sand grains in her clothes. Ascending the next dune, she kept on trekking, hoping for something to break the monotony. Her wish was not granted, and she kept on into the night.

[Carmelita]

It was nearing dawn when Carmelita finally found the camp. She had crested a sand dune, checking the location of a mesa on the map she was holding, when she spotted a black aerial a few miles away. As she got closer, the tracks she’d been following were joined by others, soon coalescing into a proper entrance between two ridges. She dismantled her flashlight into omnilium in a nook in the dunes before engaging her collars cloak and walking into the camp.

It appeared that the camp had been made around an old underground bunker, and the solid grey blast doors provided a contrast to the rest of the ramshackle shacks and tents that housed the raiders. A few humans stood guard around the borders of the camp, leaning against fence posts or sitting in salvaged deckchairs, while a few reptiles were warming themselves by a fire, cooking a large scorpion in its shell. Even more of the raiders were sleeping, some of them clearly having passed out from drinking.

Carmelita strode through the camp, coming up to the blast doors and examining them under the cover of her cloak. It looked not dissimilar to an old government facility, and fortunately had a side door that looked like it was the main way in and out. She tried the handle, only to growl to herself as it refused to turn.

Turning back to the camp, she looked at the habitation. Off to one side, she noticed what looked like it could have been a foreman’s office, dressed up in swathes of cloth and denim like some strange tent, and hoped that it would hold the keys. Upon approaching the impressive looking tent, and hearing low conversation from the front, she snuck around the back. She loosened a few pegs from the ground and snuck under the fabric that made the tent, wriggling through the gap.

Carmelita emerged and looked around, her eyes adjusting from the firelight to the flickering fluorescent bulb perched on the concrete wall. What she saw made her gasp. A girl, scarcely older than thirteen by her estimate, was being held bound to a chair, head slumped with the gag over her mouth. She didn’t seem to be a species Carmelita recognised, what with the three eyes and the small ridge down her furred back, but there was no mistaking the damp trails that had dried beneath the girl’s eyelids or the signs of struggle shown on the floor. Carmelita knew that this had made the job so much harder, but there was no way she was leaving her a prisoner.

Carmelita carefully made her way in front of the girl, deactivating the cloak and crouching down. She patted the girl on the knee gently, waiting for the three eyes to flicker into wakefulness. She made a gesture for silence as the girl’s eyes widened in shock, and carefully untied the gag from the girl’s mouth.

“Can you drive a truck?” Carmelita whispered.

“What?”

“Can you drive a truck?”

“I can try?”

“Good enough. Be silent.”

Carmelita found a pocket knife lying abandoned on the ground and carefully cut the girl free, gesturing for her to stay where she was for a moment. She made her way to the door, which was thankfully unlocked, and stalked into the office. The conversation was still going on through the other door of the room, but searching the room found a set of keys left in a desk drawer which looked like they’d fit the side door of the bunker.

She made her way back to the room the girl had been kept prisoner, and closed the door slowly behind her. The girl was rubbing life back into her wrists, gathering what seemed to be her jacket and a small bag from a closet to one side. Carmelita gave the girl an inquisitive thumbs up, which was swiftly returned.

Carmelita reactivated her stealth field and crept out through the gap she’d come through earlier. Upon checking that the coast was clear, she thumped the denim fabric lightly and the girl swiftly followed. The two made their way quietly through the camp, Carmelita scouting ahead then returning and guiding the girl through the slowly waking camp. Eventually, with a few scares thanks to a lizard relieving himself and a human carrying a crate of ammunition, the two made it to the shadow of the bunker door. Carmelita tried the keys one after the other, sighing in relief when one opened the door. The two slipped inside.

The bunker was little more than a vehicle bay, but a vehicle bay that held a veritable fleet of vehicles. In addition to the six tankers full of water and the cabs that had brought them there, there was a good dozen assorted vehicles from the two flatbeds that had ambushed Carmelita the day before to a rather bulky minivan.

Carmelita ushered the girl over to one of the tankers, specifically the one she’d renovated personally.

“Who are-”

“Shh!” Carmelita cut the girl off, opening the door to the cab. “Stay here.”

It was just then that the door they’d come in by opened, and a beefy looking lizard in jeans, a t-shirt and a cloak made out of denim strode through the bay. The girl ducked down out of sight, while Carmelita ducked into the shadows to reactivate her cloak. The lizard made his way into a side room, the light of a fluorescent bulb shining through. Carmelita crept close and listened intently.

“Hey, we got another tanker yesterday, we expect another shipment of weapons.” The lizards voice was grating, his throaty tones clear. There was a pause, as though there was a reply, and Carmelita picked up the soft scratchy tones of someone speaking through a communications device.

“Shut up. We’ve done what you said, and you’ve done what we asked. Now I’m asking for more.”

More murmurs.

“Well I can guess. I’m not a dumb brute, I know you had something to do with the aquifer drying up. It’s only a matter of time before Roland decides to take us out in person, and I want to be ready. If you can’t get us the weapons, this deals off.”

A few cursory words.

“Thought so. Pleasure doing business.”

The lizard gave a laugh and left the room, the door slamming behind him. Carmelita watched him leave the vehicle bay before sneaking into the room. Inside was a large transmitter of some kind, with a black plastic handset dangling by a cord with headphones nearby. She took up the headphones and listened, pressing the button to initiate a conversation.

From the headphones crackled a voice that Carmelita was shocked to realise she’d heard not half a day earlier.

“What is it you overgrown reptile?”

Carmelita blinked, realising the voice belonged to the same quadrupedal being she’d seen in the mining shop. She remembered the squelch of her boot in something wet, which no she thought about it was probably mud rather than something more horrible… which meant that somewhere in that building was a tunnel down to the aquifer.

“Hello? Ugh, the idiot must have dropped something on the transmission button. Forget this, I’ve got better things to do.”

Carmelita put the transmitter down and crept away. Now she had to get back to the Town, no question about it. Someone wanted the Town to collapse, and she needed to find out who. All of a sudden, she heard yells from in the parking bay.

She burst through the door to see a raider advancing on the girl she’d rescued, crowbar in hand, while another was running for the door. It took all of three seconds for her to charge a heavy duty energy ball and launch it at the attacker, and in the moment where the woman screamed as she lost her senses Carmelita grabbed the girl and threw her into the cab.

“Get that engine running!” she barked. “I’ll get the doors!”

She ran over to the blast doors, slamming her hand down on the large prominent green button nearby. Light’s flashed and spun as the doors opened with a smooth groan, breaking apart left and right. The girl revved the accelerator, and Carmelita leapt through the passenger door just as the truck burst through the new gap and into the camp.

The camp was in chaos, raiders grabbing guns and firing sporadically at the truck as it shot away, crushing a few tents and shattering a shack into matchwood. The sound of engines roared behind them, and Carmelita checked the mirror to see several vehicles already making their way out of the bay in pursuit.

“Okay, who in the nine verses ARE you?”

Carmelita blinked and looked across at the girl who was driving, bare foot to the gas pedal.

“Inspector Fox-Cooper, Interpol,” came the instinctual response. “You?”

“The name's Chip. If we die, I’m blaming you.”

[Carmelita]

The tanker had started with a decent lead, but the dust cloud kicked up in their wake was quickly relinquishing the pursuing vehicles. Carmelita took out her shock pistol and charged up a heavy-duty shot. She turned to Chip.

“I’m going to get a better view, try not to throw me off.”

“You’re what?!”

With that, Carmelita kicked open the passenger door and scrambled up the side of the cab to the roof, the sounds of Chip’s ranting lost in the howling wind. She moved cautiously from the roof of the cab to the swaying tanker, where the same bindings she’d used to tie the solar panels down made equally good ropes to hang on to.

As the sun peeked over the horizon and the glint of the sun came from behind her, Carmelita began firing. The closest target was a motorbike, and the lizard on board was caught by surprise. The bike swerved and bounced in the dust, and Carmelita winced as the driver was caught under the wheels of a following sports car.

The sports car’s occupants opened fire themselves, rounds bouncing off the metal shell of the water tank on either side of her. Carmelita took another carefully timed shot, but the sports car swerved and she hit one of the gunners instead. The woman sat down hard as she began waving her arms wildly in front of her face.

As she waited for the battery to recharge, the two trucks that had ambushed her the day before overtook the sports car and made a move on the tanker. The minigun truck was heavily damaged from the earlier crash, but one minigun was operational and Carmelita was forced to roll down the other side as it opened up on the top of the tanker.

She found herself face to face with the humans in the other truck, all waving their weapons with sick grins on their faces as they began leaping to grab onto the truck. Carmelita dodged the swing of a machete and shot a few low-power shots at the first of the boarders. His arm spasmed and he mistimed his grab, tumbling to the dirt speeding past below.

A shotgun was levelled at her face and Carmelita ducked in response, pellets ricocheting off the metal above her head. The owner pumped her gun to reload and tried to shoot again, but the tanker suddenly swerved to the right and crashed into the truck, sending it into a spin and then a roll, divesting itself of its passengers in a blazing fireball. Carmelita hung on for dear life as the truck then swerved in the opposite direction, the sounds of the minigun cut off by another explosion.

Gritting her teeth, Carmelita hauled herself up the rope dangling from the solar panels. Back at the top, she saw the sports car was overtaking the tanker, followed by the armoured minivan and another couple of bikes. The minigun truck was a burning wreck receding into the dust.

The sports car pulled alongside the cab and the shooters levelled their weapons at Chip, but Carmelita caught the driver off guard with a high-power shot and the vehicle swerved, crashing into a rock and grinding to a halt. The armoured minivan turned as well, lining itself up behind the tanker as the bikers began firing pistols up at Carmelita.

A bullet nicked her ear and she howled in pain, vindictively firing off a volley of three low-power shots at the biker who’d hit her. The driver jerked slightly, and slowed down to avoid crashing. She waited a second and fired another at the other biker, who dropped back as well. Her ear dripped blood onto the shiny surface of the solar panels, and she cursed.

There was a thump from the rear of the tanker as the minivan rammed the vehicle. Carmelita lost her footing for a moment, tumbling along the top of the tanker and grabbing a hub cap to steady herself. She found herself staring down at the minivan, which had latched onto the back of the tanker with a hook and was now extending a boarding ramp from the sunroof. A gecko poked his head out, spotting her and running at her with a baseball bat.

Carmelita crouched below the swing and grabbed the gecko’s bat arm, thumb pressed to the wrist. The gecko let out a scream and released the bat, and Carmelita kneed the raider in the nuts before chucking him at the brute of a human who was approaching with a spiked club. The two toppled backwards into the minivan, cursing and yelling.

Carmelita bent to remove the boarding ramp in time to narrowly miss a headshot from the two bikers, who’d recovered from the shakes. She cursed in spanish and fired a heavy-duty shot at the one she’d hit earlier, the reptile slamming on the brakes as he lost his sight. The other biker pressed in on the other side, firing the rest of his pistol’s clip at her and forcing her to retreat towards the front of the tanker.

This gave the minivan attackers time to recover. The gecko and brute returned, this time with a komodo backing them up with a chainsaw. The three of them advanced on Carmelita, the gecko’s sure footing letting him launch himself at her with a new bat.

Carmelita dodged the first swing and tried to shoulder barge the gecko off the roof, but the gecko’s feet meant he didn’t budge. The brute caught up, trying to get a cheap shot over the gecko’s shoulder and forcing Carmelita to back up even more.

The gecko made another step towards her, but slipped in the blood that had dripped from her shot ear and tumbled from the tanker, crashing into the biker who’d been sneaking up on the right. Carmelita and the two raiders left on the tanker watched them go, shocked, before they turned back to the fight.

Carmelita took the first shot, kicking out at the brute with her boot before firing all three low-power shots at the komodo. The brute stumbled but hung on to a hub cap while the komodo grimaced and started her chainsaw.

Carmelita easily dodged the slowed swing of the komodo, the chainsaw’s blade sparking as it struck the metal of the tanker. She tried to line up another shot but the brute bounced back, the spiked club leaving a gash in Carmelita’s left arm. In response, she dropped to the tanker’s roof and swept the brute’s legs to one side, and the man tumbled from the top with a final scream.

The komodo’s arm shook as she raised the chainsaw for another blow. Carmelita turned and fired another three shots. The shock to the reptile’s nervous system was too much, and her eyes rolled up in her head. Carmelita tried to grab her unconscious body, but was too slow and she watched as the raider fell to the desert sands speeding past.

She frowned as yet another life was snuffed out. Feeling sick, she took a moment to take stock, checking her wounds and looking for any more pursuers. Satisfied there were none, she made to return to the cab before one more figure arrived from the minivan’s boarding ramp. The same figure she’d seen earlier, presumably the leader of the raiders, stood in the wind, his denim and cloth cloak flapping wildly in the wind as he pulled out two machine guns.

Carmelita swore and ducked down behind a hub cap as the lizard opened fire, bullets flying wildly overhead. She pressed a digit to her collar, the cloak re-engaging as she waited for the bullets to stop flying.

“Come out you mangy fox!” the lizard bellowed, somehow making himself heard over the roar of the air rushing past. “Come out and face your death!”

Carmelita slipped down the side of the tanker and worked her way along the structural supports, clinging frantically. The lizard opened up again on her previous position, yelling insults.

She reached the back of the tanker, looking at the hook that had latched the minivan onto the rear of the tanker. Instead of trying to untangle the hook, she took a wrench from the valve opening and levered off the numberplate it had latched onto. The minivan dropped onto its front wheels before tearing the boarding ramp from the tanker as it ground to a halt.

“You’ll pay for that!” came a yell from above her.

Carmelita dived to one side as the lizard opened fire, huddling by the valves as lead poured through the air around her.

She pulled her shock pistol out of its holster again and charged up a high-power shot. Taking a pot shot, she clipped the lizard’s shoulder. The raider grunted and swore, firing his machine guns blindly and giving Carmelita a chance to make a break for it. She hauled herself along the side of the tanker, she reached the cab as the lizard’s vision cleared and hauled herself into the passenger seat. Chip looked at her, all three eyes wide as she stared at Carmelita’s arm and ear.

“What happened to-”

“No time, chica! We have an uninvited guest to shake off!”

Chip gulped and nodded, twisting the wheel from side to side frantically. Carmelita poked her head out of the passenger window, getting a glimpse of the lizard raider gripping a structural support strut in a death grip with one hand and a machine gun in the other. The lizard saw her too, and raised the machine gun just before the truck turned the other way, cutting off the line of sight between the two of them. Carmelita pulled her shock pistol out again and charged up a high-power shot.

As the truck turned to left, both she and the lizard opened fire. Bullets shattered the windscreen and wing mirror, but Carmelita was a better shot and landed the high-power ball of electricity. The lizard growled and fired blindly, but Carmelita pumped three more low-power shots steadily into the lizard’s chest and the raider tumbled from the side of the tanker.

With a sigh of relief, she returned to the passenger seat and laid her head back. She gave a small yelp as her wounded ear touched the headrest. Chip returned to driving smoothly, giving Carmelita a cheeky grin.

“Are chases common for truck drivers?” she needled.

“Only when it involves two pretty girls and a lot of water,” Carmelita replied.

“I have to say, the blood brings out your eyes. No wonder you were beating off guys with a stick.”

“A shock pistol and a boot to the head, actually.”

They settled into a comfortable silence as they drove back to the Town With No Name.

[Carmelita]

As the palisade came into view, Carmelita finished binding her wounds. They had another ten or fifteen minutes until they were going to reach the wall, and she put her shirt and jacket back on over her bandaged wounds.

She turned and looked at Chip in the morning light. The girl was lanky, less than a head shorter than Carmelita, but her face looked very young. Carmelita could see why she’d thought the girl not yet a teenager, even if Chip’s attitude and demeanour suggested she was quite a bit older. Her soft purple fur was covered with a kid’s shirt and tight shorts, adding to the illusion.

“How old are you?”

“Seventeen.”

There was a moment of silence before Carmelita pressed her next question.

“So what were you doing in the middle of the desert?”

“I got lost.”

Again, Chip did not seem eager to extrapolate on the subject. Carmelita sighed and rested her muzzle on her hand, looking out of the window at a cloud of sand on the horizon. Her free hand tapped her shock pistol in time with the clinking of a loose wire on the side of the tanker.

Chip coughed.

“So… you said you were an Inspector? EPD?”

“Oh madre de dios, no! I have way too many morals to work for those brutes. I’m a prime, I came from a world with an international policing association. Got to go round the world, chasing bad guys and taking them in.”

Chip smiled, two of her three eyes looking at Carmelita while the third watched the road. One of them flicked down to look at her shock pistol.

“So you use stun weapons and stuff? Like an ionic dispersion and anode-cathode relay?”

“Last time I read those words I was reading the manual… How did you-?”

“I’m real interested in mechanics, electronics, all that jazz. When we get back to town, I’m going to try and find an auto repair shop or something.”

“I’ll make sure to stop by.”

“Are you going to be a deputy, then?”

“I was thinking of trying to cobble together something similar to Interpol. Get the law enforcement agencies to work together against corruption, terrorism and so on. It’ll take a long time, but it’d be worth it, don’t you think?”

“If you’re fighting corruption, does that mean you’ll be giving the Empire the middle finger?”

“I was intending to be a pain in their behind, yes.”

The two grinned together as they slowed down for the gates. A horse trotted up, the sentry checking them over and waving them inside at the sight of Carmelita’s deputy badge.

As they maneuvered slowly through the streets, Carmelita spotted Roland making his way towards the cab. She opened the passenger door and shuffled into the middle of the cabin, giving him room to hop on up and talk. Chip glanced his way before returning all her concentration to navigating the crowded streets.

Roland looked at Carmelita.

“Did you find the J and T Gang?”

Carmelita pulled the map from her jacket pocket, pointing out the markings she’d made and the route they’d returned by.

“A lot of them are lying battered and bruised, if not dead by crash, along this route. They’re operating out of a vehicle bunker here, and there’s a good five more tankers hidden there. But you’ve got a bigger problem than that.”

She frowned at the shattered windscreen and passenger windows, wishing she could ensure no-one overheard what she was about to say next.

“You’ve got saboteurs plugging the aquifer and employing the gang to stop water shipments. I think I know where the tunnel is: gather some people you trust and get them to the mining shop next to the aquifer rigs.”

“If you’re correct, they’re trying to undermine my town. I’ll gather up some deputies and secure the area, go in and try and stop them from doing anything drastic once they realise the jig is up.”

“Understood.”

Roland hopped back out of the cab, striding purposefully away. Carmelita turned to see Chip with an impressed look on her face. She tilted her head questioningly and Chip smiled and shook her head, continuing to drive. With a shrug, Carmelita got ready to move.

[Carmelita]

Leaving the tanker to be drained into the water sanitisers by the workers, Carmelita split from Chip with a promise to meet again at a later date. She turned to the mining shop, and strode out with purpose.

The door opened with a loud creaking. Her eyes flicked down to where she’d been standing yesterday, noting the caked mud tracked across the floor. The mining droid was nowhere to be seen, so she stepped past the counter and began walking through the storeroom. She pressed a digit to her collar and faded from view.

Looking at the floor, she followed the tracks of mud through the storeroom. She passed sticks of dynamite, pickaxes, several defunct ore and tunnel scanners and a number of large ore buckets. Just before reaching the wheelbarrows, the trail turned right, coming up against a wooden wall. She tugged quietly on each of the store hooks, and on the second try the wall slid back to reveal a dimly lit ramp. She stalked down the tunnel, nothing but the smell of dirt and the sound of flickering lights to accompany her. The tunnel turned slowly, arcing round to the right slowly, and she followed. The cable of wires strung between the lights occasionally dipped down to get round the wooden shaft supports. Sand and grit gave way to clay, dried and cracked, and she came across a room off to the left. She poked her head around the corner.

Inside was another large communications device, identical to the one she’d seen in the raider encampment, perched up on a metallic workbench alongside a collection of files and a large, complicated looking data terminal. Carmelita strode over, looking around for any people, but finding no-one. She listened carefully, ears flicking left and right. All she could hear was the hum of electricity and the quiet beeping of the terminal. She looked at the files. Each was a file on some being in or outside the Town, graded from 1-5 in several categories, including ‘likelihood of sympathy’, ‘zeal’ and ‘exploitable weaknesses’. Each was accompanied with a paragraph of explanation, and some were quite extensive. Carmelita summoned a digital camera from omnilium, taking extensive pictures of each file. Following this, she checked the data terminal to find it locked, and since there was no conveniently located passcode she left it alone.

Carmelita left the room behind and continued stalking through the tunnel, readying her shock pistol just in case. The sound of gears from up ahead made her press to the wall, invisible as the mining droid trundled past, humming a quiet tune. She waited until the humming had faded and continued down the tunnel.

As she continued, the clay began to squelch quietly beneath her feet. There was clearly still moisture down here, and she wondered what could have stopped the rigs from pulling up water. A conversation could be heard from up ahead, and she slowed her pace, listening quietly. The first voice was of the quadruped, but the second was new to her ears. It sounded female, though there was a watery resonance to it that she hadn’t heard before.

“So any word from those idiot raiders, or do we have to recruit some more?”

“Their boss was worried about Roland, wanted a crate of weapons to defend in case the Sheriff came down on his head. He’s smarter than we thought, figured out we were responsible for the aquifer drying up.”

“Hmm… I think it might be time for Cubone’s cell to pay them a visit. Do you have a backup raider group in mind?”

“I was thinking we could extend our offer to the Queens of Sand. They’re mostly Scorpionoids and Thri-Kreen, and they have a bit of a grudge against Roland from the time he shot up their ‘Empress’. Raiding water shipments for a few explosives and vehicles would likely be a chance they’d leap at.”

“Good. We need to keep this up until the town snaps, then we can stir up support and get the humans kicked out of the Town for good.”

Carmelita peered round the corner, catching sight of the two conspirators. One of them was the four-eyed quadruped and prosthetic arm she’d seen earlier, but the other looked like some cross between a cactus and a scarecrow. She had two legs planted firmly in a low pool of water, a deliberate channel dug from each rig pump column in the extensive cavern to her feet. Carmelita could see one of the pumps slowly turning, the pump bring up a small flow of water to drain into the pool. She also saw another exit from the cavern on the other side, beyond the two conversing conspirators. She began sneaking through the cavern, sticking to the wall as she made her way round, when all of a sudden the sound of treads spinning and electric motor whirring could be heard. The mining droid called ahead, his speakers at maximum volume.

“Dino! Cacturne! We’ve! Been! Discovered! Roland! Is! On! His! Way!”

“Shit,” Cacturne swore, pulling her legs from the pool. “Looks like quietly using Water Absorb is no longer an option. Time to switch to the backup plan. M.I.T.E, set the charges. Dino, go grab the files, we can’t let them be discovered. I’ll go whip us up a Sandstorm.”

The three scattered, and Carmelita swore under her breath. As Dino and Cacturne left the cave, she took careful aim at M.I.T.E, breaking her cloak to begin firing balls of electricity. The droid beeped in alarm and ducked behind one of the rig columns, replying with a lit stick of dynamite. Carmelita gave a gasp and dived to one side, the spot she had been standing exploding and causing the roof to shudder.

“I. Knew. You. Were. Trouble. Fox.”

Carmelita knocked the next stick of dynamite into the pool of water, the fuse fizzling loudly.

“And I knew you were a bigot, droid.”

She dived forward, getting closer to the droid’s hiding spot and firing multiple shots as she did so. The robot sparked as the electricity damaged its systems, one of its tread servos even twitching violently enough to knock it out of cover. With a loud alarm, the droid grabbed a pickaxe from its side and took a swing at Carmelita. There was a brief moment where she ducked within reach, avoiding the pointy bit of the pickaxe to try and block the attack, but the robot’s strength sent her tumbling across the room, landing awkwardly against one of the pump columns.

“Mierda.”

“I. Was. Built. For. Crushing. Dirt!”

As the droid came at her on stuttering treads, Carmelita grabbed her shock pistol from where it had fallen and fired repeatedly, the droid taking each hit to the chest. It ground to a slow halt before keeling over, shut down.

She staggered to her feet, feeling the gash in her arm reopened by the force of her fall. As she began throwing all the dynamite in the pool of water, relieving M.I.T.E of any option to destroy the water rigs, a laser blast caught her in the leg and the smell of burnt hair hit her nose a moment before the pain did.

“You again, you pain in the ass.” Dino emerged from the tunnel, laser pistol held in his metal prosthetic and saddlebags filled with the files on either flank.

Carmelita stumbled behind a pump column as the laser bolts began flying. She could track the quadruped’s progress through the angle of his shots as he made his way over to M.I.T.E.

“And you’ve gone and gotten rid of my pal’s explosives, you bitch.”

“Bitches are dogs, tonto. I’m a vixen.”

With that, she dived from cover, the charged up energy ball flying swiftly into the quadruped’s face. Dino screamed.

“My eyes! How can you blind all four eyes at once?!”

The laser blasts went everywhere, and Carmelita took the opportunity to bodycheck the being into the pool of water. He spluttered as he lost his grip on the laser pistol, fishing around for it amongst the sodden sticks of dynamite as his vision cleared.

Carmelita stood, favouring her wounded leg, as she fired shot after shot at the quadruped, the being eventually collapsing from neural overload.

She breathed a sigh and leaned against the pump, her breathing settling slowly. Her rest was interrupted, however, by the arrival of Cacturne. The green being stared at her, and at the two bodies lying on the floor, before turning round and fleeing. With a groan, Carmelita gave chase.

The laser wound had been self-cauterised, but it still hurt every time she put her weight on it. Pushing through the stabs of pain, Carmelita sprinted after the third member of this cell of conspirators, hearing the thump of footsteps receding ahead of her. Unlike the other tunnel, this one was dead straight, leading steadily upwards. She glanced up to fire off a few bursts of her shock pistol, but Cacturne turned and gestured, bringing up a Spiky Shield that dissipated the shots.

The two continued up, until suddenly they were leveling out, the sound of wind roaring up ahead. Cacturne vanished into the light, and a moment later Carmelita found herself outside. Instead of the beautiful morning she’d been expecting, instead it was a howling nightmare of sand, her fur and jacket barely protecting her from the biting grains. Forced to retreat back to the tunnel, she stared out after the fugitive and waited for Roland’s forces to reach her as her wounded leg failed beneath her.

Her swearing was drowned out by the sand.

[Carmelita]

Carmelita sat pensive in the bar, dully sipping at a cocktail she’d ordered an hour ago. Kirsa had accompanied her to and from the small medbay, but had quickly grown tired of the fox’s dour mood and was enjoying a riotous game of blackjack with other deputies in a corner.

Her ears twitched as she heard someone walk in behind her and pull up a chair next to her. She was not surprised to hear Roland’s voice ordering himself a drink.

“Evening Sheriff,” she began, her voice strong in its resolve. “I understand I let one of the conspirators escape.”

“And why, pray tell, does it sound like you’re expecting to be punished for that?”

She looked up, mildly surprised. Roland sat ramrod straight on the bar stool next to her, casting a critical eye over her.

“It’s not… I’m not…”

Carmelita paused and started again.

“I used to be an Inspector for a police organisation called Interpol. There was a serial thief I never caught, and while I busted plenty of other criminal types promotion was always postponed. Coupled with the fact that I’m trying to gain your approval, I wanted to make as good an impression as possible.”

Roland nodded. He stared at Carmelita thoughtfully, tilting his hat back and drinking from his beer without looking away.

“Well, I can’t say you haven’t done that. You rooted out a Liberation Front cell, restarted our water supply and took down a small raider gang. For a first job, that’s pretty good.”

Carmelita nodded. She’d handed in an Interpol standard report she’d summoned from Omnilium immediately upon being found by the Sheriff’s forces, and it had detailed all the details she’d found and copies of the files she’d photographed.

“I’m looking to do more than that, though. I needed to make a good impression with you because I want to arrange a similar arrangement to that of Interpol back home: letting your best and brightest work with other forces of law and order.”

The Sheriff reached out, touching Carmelita’s deputy badge for a moment.

“Well I’m going to give you this to keep. While you’ll have to convince me on the whole ‘Interpol’ thing, you’re certainly a fine lawwoman. Keep it up, work with the rest of the deputies when they need it, and we’ll have plenty to talk about next time you bring this up. Now stand up, put a smile on and go save the rest of them from Kirsa. She’s a killer at blackjack.”

Carmelita let a smile spread across her muzzle and gave Roland a nod.

“Will do, Sheriff.”