"Tell me where they are, or so help me God..."

Tracy's duster lay folded over the edge of the late Sheriff Frumt's chair. As for Tracy he'd rolled up the sleeve of his good arm to get down to business.

Blood stained Roy's teeth, but still he grinned in silence.

If there was one thing Tracy's borrowed hunk of an arm was good for, it was dirty interrogation. It packed a wallop behind it. Or so he thought. Roy remained impervious to the infliction of pain though.

As Tracy brought his makeshift cudgel raining down on Roy's face and torso, a quiet voice in the back of his head nagged at him. The more Roy evaded answering his questions, the more questions Tracy had.

How had it come to this? How had he, a U.S. Marshal, stooped so low?

Tracy scowled against his inner accuser. Rubrum forced his hand, all of them.

The local law enforcement showed that they were not only untrustworthy, they would kill him if they had a chance. Law on Mars didn't exist. Tracy acted alone, trying to enforce law and order in a reckless, untamed land. He just needed one man, and they couldn't even give him that.

One thing baffled him. They'd been alerted of his presence. New Oklahoma had been more than ready for the marshal, resolved not to hand Roy over.

There was no way anyone in New Oklahoma knew him from the next cyborg.

Unless—had Leroux ratted him out? Must've. His former friend had taken a huge fall from grace so he could rest on his laurels.

And now an innocent woman and child were tied up in it. By taking the mother and son hostage, Roy'd backed him into a corner.

The situation unraveled faster than a ball of yarn in a cat's paws, leaving Tracy wound up.

So the only answer was to counterattack, switch up the game, get Roy caught with his back up against the ropes.

His metal balled fist pummeled into the deceptive reverend, drawing many wheezing breaths, sharp cries, and gasps, but no admission.

By the time Tracy finished, Roy could not even hold his head up straight. Tracy dropped him in a cell and slammed the door with a satisfying click of the lock.

After wiping his hands clean, he slipped into his duster.

"I'll find her," he growled at Roy's semiconscious form on the cell floor. "We're not leaving until I do." He pressed his face against the bars. "And you better pray she's alive."

***

Tracy was a little surprised SmitHuri was still open for business after the mayhem.

Either the technoforge owner had no idea what happened, or he wasn't going to be the one to tell a marshal no after that marshal wiped out an entire posse.

SmitHuri charged an arm and a leg, for well, his smartarm. But as soon as Tracy reinstalled it and booted it back up, he recognized the work of a master technocraftsman.

"Recalibrated it. Hammered out the dings and dents. Replaced microchips and boards that were fried. And gave it a system update while I was at it. Not to toot my own horn, but it should be good as new, if not better."

Tracy swiped him the creds and threw in a tip.

"Thankya kindly."

This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.

After tipping his hat, Tracy exited the forge. Chasm waited for him, pawing the ground, as if sensing the turmoil raging inside of the lawman.

"Not now, boy. I know you've been cooped up here in town. You want to run free. Like we did to get here. I may need you yet, so I'll hold onto for the time being. But I'm afraid our journey is coming to an end."

***

Tracy couldn't draw Cora's whereabouts out of Roy. So he started at Cora's place of work, the Taj Diwan. Her concerned coworker Sandy pointed him to a prostitute named Dahlia.

Dahlia acted like she wouldn't squeal, but word of what Tracy did in the middle of town made its way around by then. The marshal reiterated the scene to her anyways, adopting his cocky persona, living up to his coldhearted larger than life reputation. Without the local law enforcement alive to take action against the marshal, and many of the town's toughest son-of-a-guns dead in the street, she realized there was nothing holding Tracy back. Of course he wouldn't have hurt her, but she didn't need to know that.

She pointed Tracy to a gossiping bot, who agreed to talk if Tracy would loan him some creds so he could get electro-high. After a few overjolts of power, the bot spilled the beans on who'd likely be holding Cora, and where they could be found, and continued to divulge much more information than the marshal needed. It was still spewing information as it collapsed, experiencing a system reboot from the electric overload.

The bot led him to the church.

The bot let him know that the church was one of the oldest buildings in the settlement. The significance being that they'd designed it with an underground storm shelter, because back when they'd first terraformed Mars wild storms prevailed more than they did at the present.

Turned out, Roy'd been granted a residency there in a parsonage and lived off of the charitable donations of his deceived congregation. He wondered how they'd feel if they knew that Roy was a murdering fugitive.

A loud outpouring of voices filled his ears as he neared the religious building. Now that he thought about it, he had heard the bell ringing, but had dismissed it to concentrate on the task at hand.

He crept up to an open window, crouching outside.

As he tried to figure out how in the world he was going to locate the entrance to the underground residency, he overheard a woman speaking to the congregants. He recognized the voice. He stole a glance. It was Cherry, Roy's brothel fling that had been hanging on his arm during their Faro game.

Currently she was working the townsfolk up into a frenzy.

The people gathered here after the massacre that happened in the street.

They were confused, in agony, and they needed someone to blame for all of the pain.

And there was only one man standing to direct their misguided rage at. Tracy himself.

An ache burned in his chest. He didn't want to kill any of those men. They'd ambushed him. Roy hadn't given him an option. What could he have done? Let Roy take him, a marshal into custody, and let Roy have his way with him?

Didn't mean he felt ecstatic about giving the town coffin maker a surplus of business. Tracy scowled. They made their bed with a murderous fugitive. These were the ramifications.

Tracy heard enough. They'd form a mob soon, try to bust Roy out of the jail, and hang Tracy. If he was lucky. You never knew with angry mobs.

Roy remained his leverage, and his only ticket off this dried up hunk of worthless planet. He needed to get back to his hotel, gather his belongings, commandeer a ship out of here, and drag Roy out at gunpoint. But his conscience would not stop screaming at him without confirming Cora and Ashton were safe.

After gathering his few belongings from his room he wrapped them up in his bedroll and moved outside, affixing them to Chasm's back.

An explosion shattered the silence on the otherwise quiet street, knocking Tracy to the ground. His ears rang. He inspected himself. Other than a new layer of dust covering him along with a few nicks and scratches, he was alright.

Down the street, a cloud of smoke billowed from the only building in New Oklahoma that held the fugitive behind bars. Roy doing. He knew it in his bones.

He and Chasm rushed to the smoking former sheriff's office. He scoured the wreckage, wasting precious many minutes, looking for a charred body, but found nothing. He thought he might have found footprints leading away, but just as he was about to follow them, movement on the edge of town caught Tracy's eye. He threw on his goggles to catch a better glimpse.

He recognized the outline of the fugitive's sharp frame. Roy was skipping town in a speeder. And the fugitive wasn't alone. He had two hostages with him. A mother and her son.