"No problem. I have a radio in Federico."
"Federico?"
"My car. I've been in contact with Fort Apache all day."
"Well hell, lady, why didn't you say? Can I call in now?"
"Certainly."
"First, I have to settle up. Pedro?"
The bartender cringed, and failed to look Stack in the face.
"How Much Do I Owe You, Pedro?" Stack asked deliberately, staring at the man.
Pedro was sweating, looking at the floor. There was blood over the bar. Stack's, and the Gaschugger's.
"N-n-nothing, Senor…. eet ees all on thee house."
"Thank You Kindly."
Pedro slunk back, passing a damp cloth over the spilled blood.
"We'll Come Back Soon."
"Good night Senor, Senorita."
Stack left the bar, paused as his pains hit him, and limped towards the doors. Chantal reached out and stopped him.
"You must be tired, Trooper."
He looked puzzled. Then, it hit him. "Yeah, I…I wasn't thinking. Sorry. Thanks."
Chantal walked carefully to the door, unfolding her IR shades. She slipped them on, and the darkness outside went away.
"The one with the claw…"
"Shell."
"Is that his name? Like the oil company? He is crouched down by the row of cykes. The girl…"
"Miss Unleaded."
"Very amusing. She is up on the roof of the abandoned feed store with some sort of rifle. Nothing too high-tech. The others are there too, somewhere."
"Five to two. Those are lousy odds."
"You are right," she said, taking the pumpgun from him, "they hardly have a chance. I shall try not to cause further loss of life."
Stack's jaw dropped.
From her position just by the doors, Chantal had a clear shot at Shell. He was uncomfortable crouched behind the cykes, and kept shifting his weight. The claw must be a recent implant. He wasn't used to carrying it yet. She wondered if he got an unscratchable phantom itch where his fingers used to be. That was supposed to be the insoluble problem with bio-implants.
"Throw something heavy through the doors, please."
"Whatever you say, Ms Julie-rat." Stack picked up a barstool and slung it at the doors. Miss Unleaded's rifle cracked, hitting the stool in mid-air, and Shell stood up, a six-gun in his good hand. When the doors had swung back, Chantal fired low.
The gastank of the first cyke exploded in a brilliant blossom of flame. The whole row went down like dominoes, each tank exploding in turn. Shell was splashed with the burning liquid and ran off, screaming, waving his robobit like a firebrand.
"No wheels, Miss Unleaded," Stack shouted, "how'd you like that?"
A shot ploughed into the hardwood floor of the saloon by the doors.
The small 'chugger Stack had butt-thumped earlier came hurtling through the doors, screaming and firing wildly.
Stack drew his side-arm and plugged him under the right eye. He staggered backwards, his face on fire, already dead as the flames caught his gas-soaked hair and clothes.
"Darn," he said, "I guess I just lost me some life."
Outside, on the porch, the Gaschugger exploded.
"People who drink gasoline shouldn't smoke cigars," Stack said.
No one spoke for a minute. There were shouts outside, and people running away.
"It's clear," Chantal said.
Pedro rushed out from behind the bar with a bucket of sand and doused the burning corpse on his wooden porch, kicking the fire out and the 'chugger into the street. The cykes were still burning, and he had to call for someone called Pauncho to help him put that blaze out before it spread to the saloon.
Stack and Chantal left the saloon. Pedro swore at them in Spanish. Chantal was amused by the range of his imagery.
Federico was parked just across the street. When she had arrived in town, the Silver Byte was the only place lit up and she had gone there for directions to the church.
"Is this your car?" Stack asked.
She nodded. Stack whistled again.
Chantal tapped in the entry code, and Federico's driver's side door raised with a slight hiss.
"Federico."
"Yes," it said, switching to English for Stack's sake.
"Contact Fort Apache."
The automatic signal was sent out. There was a pause. Across the street, Pedro and Pauncho had the fire under control but were still swearing.
"Fort Apache does not respond."
"That's not possible," said Stack.
"Repeat: Fort Apache does not respond."
Chantal's hand went to her throat. She fiddled with the chain of her crucifix.
"Attempt to override. Try the personal channels for Brevet Major General Marshall Younger, Colonel Vladek Rintoon, and so on down the chain of command."
Federico worked in silence, a few lights on the dash going on and off.
"No response registered."
"Is Fort Apache down?" Stack asked.
"Fort Apache reads normal. It does not respond."
Chantal knew that this was what she had been sent to America to deal with. She had a moment of doubt. She tried to overcome it.
"We can't do anything until morning," she told Stack. "Let's get some sleep. Get in the car, and I'll drive you to the motel. You are staying at the motel?"
Stack was thinking five minutes behind. He shook his head.
"Yeah…uh…"
"Good. I'll take a room. We can be at the church tomorrow."
She got behind the wheel, and opened the passenger door. Bewildered, Stack got in. By the time they reached the motel, he was asleep—unconscious?—in his seat, head hanging against the safety belt.
She left him there and, unable to find a nightman, broke into a room.
III
Lauderdale was inspecting his androids. The whole troop stood to attention under the cellophane shrouds in the store-room. Seven-feet-tall, andiropomorphic and faceless under their helmets, they looked a little like the robot in the movie The Day the Earth Stood Still, but slimmer and battleship grey. The only customised touch was the US Cav yellow stripe down their legs.
The Robo-Troopers were Captain Lauderdale's special field of expertise. The Cav didn't use them that often any more, following the wave of anti-android feeling that had swept the nation after the Governor of Los Angeles send them into the Watts NoGo to break up a peaceful demonstration against the USA's links with Greater Rhodesia. Some programmer's minor error had led to an override of the androids' prime directive and a massacre of 1594 people. Most Agencies had quietly scrapped their android programs after that, or diversified into different branches of robotics. Hammond Maninski Inc., out of the fortress city of Pittsburgh, was rumoured to be experimenting with the Donovan Treatment, putting human brains in android bodies—as in the British police teevee show, Dixon of Dock Green—and putting them in the field. Lauderdale knew that was a bad move. The human brain should be well removed from the field of combat, watching the action on all the monitors, playing God, not stuck inside a tin can waiting for the first lucky home-made frag to burst its eggshell.
He ran a systems check on the master control console. The androids hadn't moved since the last inspection. Really, Lauderdale ought to detail someone to dust them down more often. They hadn't been used in action for eighteen months, and had only been trotted out for parades and display inspections after much nudging. Lauderdale resented the downplaying of his discipline. He felt like a spare man at Apache, assigned to odd jobs like looking after official visitors rather man performing the duties he had signed up for.
Colonel Rintoon had ordered everyone to double-check their own areas of the fort. He believed there was a murderer loose somewhere, and that he had gained access to and exit from Younger's kitchen by some as-yet unknown means. Everyone was supposed to be searching for clues. Lauderdale agreed with Captain Finney's diagnosis. Younger had been killed by his own kitchen equipment. The physical presence of a killer hadn't been necessary. Finney had explained that a murderer could tamper with the kitchen by tapping into the central system of the fort, but Rintoon insisted on believing the evidence of the power outages and the thats and maintaining that Apache was inviolate. Rintoon was near the edge. Problems were popping up beyond the parameters of his programming.