It took a few minutes for William to get his items restored in his pack. It wasn’t exactly a multi-pouched ruck that let him divide out his belongings so he could easily find what he needed. But it was better than carrying it all by hand.

As soon as he was ready the older pose member sighed and hopped down from his saddle. He walked over and started digging through William’s bag pulled out a round for his revolver. He pushed it down into one of the leather loops that ran along the belt part. He dug through the bag and pulled out the rest of William’s ammo and took his arm before slapping the rounds into his hand.

“What they teaching you?” He asked as he walked away chuckling with William's bag in hand. He tossed it onto the back of his mount and secured it to the saddlebags.

William was still frozen for a second and blushed as they looked at him until he started putting the rest of the rounds on his belt. When he ran out of space he realized there were similar loops on a leather sleeve that fit over the stock of his rifle, so he moved the rifle ammunition there and filled his holster with revolver rounds. It wasn’t like it was obvious! It looked like decoration and he was used to magazines with ammo pouches!

They laughed at him as he finished and started riding away slowly immediately after. William carried his rifle at the read but a few glances from the others and he decided to sling it over his shoulder to be less threatening. He had to admit, if a stranger was armed and looked like they could fire at a single moment, he’d have done more than just give them a dirty look. They’d probably end up looking down the barrel of his own weapon.

They walked in silence for a while. The pace was kind of a fast walk but William had no problem keeping up. He looked at the mounts they were riding and tried to [Identify].

Southern Painted Bakarna Charger- Level 12

Details: A domesticated variant of the pack hunting Bakarnas. Like their wild cousin’s the Bakarna Charger survives on a carnivorous diet.

Age: Unknown

Durability: Unknown

Damage output: Unknown

Estimated value: Unknown

Stats: Unknown

Again, it wasn’t that great of information. He could already tell the strange animal was a carnivore just by its teeth. He at least knew what to call them now.

As he studied the meat-eating horse substitute, it looked over at him and flicked a long slender tongue out at him before it gave a hoarse, open-mouthed hiss. William hadn’t been expecting that and stepped away from it. An action the others took note of immediately.

“They don’t got Bakarnas where you're from?” One of the men asked but didn’t seem to expect an answer. He laughed and kept talking after Williams embarrassment broke the ice, “Sheriff Teddy you met, I'm Deputy Victor… that's Deputy Jakob… and Skunk.”

He pointed to each of the others in turn. The first two gave a wave while the last stared at Deputy Victor and pushed his fist through his other hand. Back home that would have meant ‘shove it up your ass’ and William could bet that it meant the same there.

“Nice to ah… meet you. Skunk?” He wasn’t sure who to ask about the moniker.

“Got drunk and wandered off 'fore I got sprayed by a skunk, now they call me skunk. Names Deputy Bartholomew, ya can call me Bart,” Skunk informed him.

“No, we call you Skunk because that happened... Then three more times in the same month!” Jakob laughed at his fellow deputy, “Don’t be ill. You can’t blame us for that one… you walked right into it!”

Bart pulled a wad of something that looked like chewing tobacco out of his mouth and threw it over at Jakob. His Bakarna hissed at something being thrown at him but despite how dangerous the animal looked, none of them seemed concerned. William could only hope their trust wasn’t misplaced, the large muscular animals looked like they could run him down without a problem and tear him to pieces. He really wished he had his M81 with him. Then again he basically had a short barrel cannon on his hip.

“You ever been to Silverstead before?” Sheriff Teddy asked, looking back at him, “You look familiar in a sorta way but can’t say I can place ya.”

“Ah… No, can't say I have,” William debated about playing along and decided it may be best to play dumb in case the locals weren’t space faring.

“You’ll like it. Best little podunk in Bovath!” Victor proclaimed proudly.

“Use ta be a bit more than a podunk though,” Skunk said, digging more of what looked like tobacco out of his pouch. He stopped to tuck some into his lip before continuing, “Bout twenty years back-”

“Oh shut it Skunk,” Jakob said, “You’re what… fucking twenty. How can you be talking about twenty years back? You were still in your momma!”

“You’re the same age as me!” Skunk protested.

“So? I’m not trying to act all informed and shit, let the old men tell it,” Jakob ended the argument, which was followed by a moment of silence.

“Till about twenty years ago now, the mines were still open. Once the silver dried up, nearly three outta four left,” Deputy Victor said plainly. He looked to be around 40, so he must have been around during that time and appeared to be roughly the same age as the Sheriff.

“Ah, why’d people stay?” William asked. It wasn’t uncommon for mining colonies to be abandoned when the valuable ore dried up to the point it wasn’t profitable running it. Those places usually sat abandoned on the surface of planets to eventually be filled with refugees if it was habitable. The ones in asteroids and small moons tended to become bases of operations for pirates and smugglers. William had spent his fair share of time clearing those out.

“It’s home,” Sheriff Teddy said from the front. William just shrugged.

"So, did you really get drunk and wander into the high desert?” Jakob asked.

“Ahhh… Maybe? I’m not sure how I ended up there,” William tried a dusting of truth before starting a little inquiry of his own. As tactfully as he could, “Thought maybe coalition spooks dropped me there.”

“Coalition spooks?” Skunk looked at him and spit a black glob, “That some sort of necromancy cult?”

“That’s the last thing the folks round here need, damned undead!” Victor exclaimed. William wasn’t sure what he expected. He didn’t know if the locals were privy to what was going on and had already started doubting the spook's conspiracy but it was obvious they had no idea about the Coalition or the slang term for its intelligence officers. The cult description could be partially accurate.

“I remember the last time we had them come by,” Sheriff Teddy reminisced. He turned in his saddle and looked at the two junior members of his posse, “It was before your time, few years before the mines shut down... but I know Victor remembers it well.”

“Damn right I do. Zombies and skeletons shuffling down the valley, few bigger ones… ah… what were they called again. The ones that were a-”

“Abominations,” the sheriff supplied.

“Yup. Fuckin’ abominations… nasty ones. It was like a pile of corpses glued themselves together walking around, as big as giants. Except their legs were different bodies melded together, their faces made from the mouths of a dozen lost souls, and the stench was…”

Victor kept on talking, describing abominations in great detail. William was dumbfounded by the sudden ghost story but Jakob and Skunk were listening to every word. The latter even looked sick at the vivid description that William was sure Victor was giving just for that effect. The man grew more pleased the worse Skunk looked.

William just listened as the story of abominations was joined with tales of armored skeletons, zombies, fast-moving ghouls, specters, and a necromancer throwing around death magic.

“So who finally killed the bastard? You catch him and give him a rope necktie?” Jakob asked when the story was concluding.

“You daft? Margie put a bullet in his head from two hundred yards!” Victor exclaimed.

“That old hag killed him?” Skunk asked.

“Don’t let her hear you call her that,” the sheriff warned, and as far as William could tell, he wasn’t joking. Considering her willingness to have him either hung or shot a few hours prior… he would heed the advice that wasn’t directed at him.

“Wouldn’t want Miss Kate hearing you talking about her grandma, would ya,” Jakob winked at Skunk.

“Wouldn’t be talking about little Kate either… You try and break her heart, the entire Landry clan will be coming for ya. That’s one murder I might be willing to let slide,” Victor said which earned him a glance from the sheriff. He just shrugged, “There’d be three of us against twenty of them, and even that little boy knows how to shoot. We wouldn’t get past the fence. Plus you'd be asking me to go against my own in-laws.”

Victor looked down at William and explained, “The Landry family is one of the largest families in town. They’ve got a bit of land just downriver from Silverstead... Deathbane Ranch, used to be Landry Acres but you just heard why they renamed it. Best stay clear of ‘em unless you have business and if you do, make sure you don’t cross ‘em. Even if they don’t kill ya, you’ll probably have to pull yourself back to town on broken legs. I'm a deputy and I married a Landry, I still step carefully out there.”

“Ah.. thanks for the heads up,” William said honestly while his mind whirled. He was caught up by the name of the ranch. Did he just imply that the mini zombie apocalypse he described actually happened?

“That being said, it’s best to stay clear of Miss Kate as well. You’ll see her in town a lot more often than the rest. She’s a pretty thing about your age, as sweet as can be but…”

“Yeah… Not going to flirt with a pretty girl if it means I’m going to end up tasting my own spleen,” William understood. Kate was off-limits, not that he had any intention of trying his luck during the spook experiment.

“Smart boy… You two idjits take note!” Victor said to his two younger colleagues.

The group kept on going nonstop. They walked in silence for a while as William took every moment to use [Identify] on anything he could. He even used it on plants and kicked himself when he noticed that the details part mentioned if it was edible. The nanite assisted identify skill had given him vague information but as far as he could tell it hadn’t lied to him yet.

Everything looked similar to life on earth but a few differences. A frog was still a frog for example. Sure it had more to its name and was actually a ‘black toed striped frog’ but it wasn’t a ‘black toed striped xanafroth’ or some shit. He knew it was possible that it was simply translated for his benefit.

Using the skill wasn’t that useful but it did pass the time. William didn’t understand how it worked. Some things, like the frog, gave a full name while his hat was simply named ‘hat’ and described as ‘It’s a felt hat’. At the same time, Skunk's boots were described as ‘Aged Snakeskin Boots’ with a description saying it came from the processed skins of snakes, which William could only nod in approval at the idea of the little monsters dying in mass to have Skunks feet shoved in them.

He eventually decided that when it came to his hat, there wasn’t much to say about it. The description was valid and the object itself wasn’t special. His other items were mostly the same. He did level up when he inspected his bag, which was just a ‘linen sack’ with an extra bit of unknown information regarding it’s size… like that actually mattered, he could see how big it was. The level didn’t get him any new information though and only increased his range to fifteen feet… just shy of five meters.

“So gotta question for ya, William?” Sheriff Teddy asked.

“Ah, yeah?” William was taken away from his pondering on the [Identify] skill.

“You called yourself Sergeant but that’s not your name…” he let his words go. Giving William an opening to fill in the details.

“Oh… That’s my military rank. Sergeant William… Tempest,” He nearly said Remington but none of them seemed to think the pause at his new last name was strange.

“You like some sort of commander or something?” Jakob asked.

“No… I was just in charge of a fire team… ah, three other people,” he realized it was more information than he should give out but they were friendly and he’d switched them over in his head from potential hostiles to potential allies.

“Gotcha, so you were kind of like the Sheriff then… Fight many wars?” Skunk asked.

“Skunk, it’s not polite to ask a soldier that,” Sheriff Teddy rebuked him.

"It’s alright, a few I guess. Most of the time we just hunted down rebels, smugglers, pirates, crime bosses, that sort of thing,” William admitted.

“Oh, so like bounty hunters!” Skunk yelled out in faux understanding. He trotted up next to William and, while he stared at the Barkarna, Skunk leaned down and whispered, “Tried taking one of them once. Even managed to track the lowlife down but when I got him back… Sheriff up there said it was my duty because I wear the badge. Didn’t see a single dollar of the reward.”

“I warned you before you set out… good on you for tracking him down though. Victor bought you a bottle for it,” the Sheriff heard everything the man said.

“I even bought you an hour with big titty Betsy for that one!” Jakob laughed.

Skunk sat up in his saddle and adjusted his hat with a smirk before admitting, “Guess I did get a little reward.”

"Little? They don’t call her that because she’s little!” Jakob barked with laughter. A laugh that William could at least smile at. It was a mix of banter similar to what his squadmates did all the time. There was a growing familiarity with the four law enforcement officers, and the thought he was actually insane as he kept thinking he was stuck in a fucked up western movie.