Swords and Saddles (3 page)

“Our truck might’ve made it to Amity,” Scorse said stubbornly. “My wife –“ He stopped talking for a moment. “They might have made it to Amity,” he repeated, the simple statement sounding like a prayer.

“What reason did Amity give for the recall?” Singh asked.

The researchers exchanged glances. “Something about crowds of Izkop. Large numbers of them,” Juni finally offered. “’Tribal situation uncertain.’ That was the last thing I heard.”

“What were you supposed to do if the Izkop turned hostile?”

“Hostile?”

“Yes,” Singh said patiently. “If the Izkop attacked, what were you supposed to do?”

“The Izkop attacked?” Ariana asked.

Johansen didn’t quite suppress an inarticulate grunt of disbelief at the question. Rather than answer Ariana directly, Singh pointed upward. “The regional base at Mandalay, about ten light years from here, got an emergency pulse from the human base on this planet through the quantum entanglement comms. Those can’t provide details, but it was the most urgent emergency pulse that could be sent, the one that calls for military assistance as quickly as possible. We’re from the on-call battalion at Mandalay. They loaded us on the
Saratoga
and we jumped here. Once inside the star system we started picking up messages your people had begun sending over a week before, talking about danger from the Izkop and requesting emergency protection.”

The three civilians looked at each other in amazement, then Juni faced Singh again. “We never heard those messages. Not long after the recalls, the satellite relays went down, and without those we haven’t been able to pick up anything.”

“You don’t have an emergency transmitter/receiver?” Archer asked.

“Yes, but –“ Juni gave the other civilians an embarrassed look. “It was stored in one of the sheds. Everything in that shed got ransacked and smashed the night after we heard the recall, before we knew the relays were down.”

“So the Izkop know you’re here?” Johansen asked.

“We don’t know that the Izkop were responsible for that.”

“Who else could have done it?” Ariana asked. “The Izkop knew we were here then. In the days since we’ve tried to make it look like we left, because…there wasn’t much else we could do.”

“And because you insisted on it,” Juni grumbled.

“If we’d been alone,” Scorse said, “we’d have set out for Amity on foot, but not with ten
children
to worry about.”

“Ten children?” Singh asked. “Are they all yours?”

“None of them are ours. It was a field trip,” Ariana explained. “Normally we wouldn’t have children here. They were staying for a few nights.”

“No other adults or transport with them?”

“The two adults escorting the children were also out with our truck. An all-terrain bus brought the children in and was supposed to pick them up three days later. It’s not that long a drive from Amity.”

Adowa, who had been leaning against one wall peering suspiciously out a window, now looked at Ariana. “It’s a long walk. How many kids were still in Amity?”

“None. A few teens. All of the preteens are here.”

“The Izkop hit the valley while all the kids were here?”

“I suppose - Hit?” Ariana stared at Adowa, then at Singh. “The Izkop attacked Amity?”

All of the other soldiers looked at Sergeant Singh, who exhaled heavily before replying. “Yes.”

“Did they kill anyone?”

Burgos made a choking sound.

Singh nodded twice. “There’s nothing left living at Amity except Izkop. Lots of Izkop. They blew up the buildings there, they self-destructed the equipment, and they seem to have burnt out everything in orbit.”

None of the civilians spoke for a long moment. Ariana recovered first. “They’re…all…dead?”

“Yes, ma’am. As far as we know, the only humans left alive on this planet are in this building.”

“I…I don’t…” Juni made a baffled gesture. “If the Izkop are that dangerous, why did your commander only send eight of you here? And on foot?”

The sergeant spoke carefully. “I said every human still alive is here. We’re all that’s left of our unit. The Izkop were waiting for us. They turned your systems on us and took down the big ship that brought us, as well as about half the dropships carrying us to the surface. Half the battalion died that way. The Izkop swarmed the other dropships and anyone who got out onto the surface. Nobody had time to form up before they got overrun, so our individual firepower advantage wasn’t enough.”

The civs fell silent again. Juni just sat as if unable to absorb the news. Ariana kept blinking back tears. Scorse put his face in his hands, shuddering with what seemed like anger rather than grief, then shot to his feet, his eyes blazing. “You got away!” Scorse accused. “How the hell did
you
get away? You just ran, didn’t you? You left everyone else to die and –“

He stopped talking as the barrel of Burgos’ rifle came to rest a millimeter from his nose. “Shut up,” she breathed.

“Private Burgos.” Singh’s voice was calm and authoritative. “Stand down.”

She held the weapon in the man’s face a moment longer, then stepped back, lowering it. “If you say that again, I’ll kill you,” she told Scorse in a cold voice. “We fought.”

“
Stand down
,” Singh repeated. “Sir, I would strongly advise you not to question the courage of my soldiers. We left most of our platoon dead and barely shot our own way out of there. There was nothing else we could have done but die on the spot. Now, if we’re lucky, we’ll be able to hold out here until another ship gets in. When the
Saratoga
doesn’t send a routine status pulse back to Mandalay they should send another ship to check on things. If we’re lucky, someone could be here in a week.”

“And if we’re not lucky?” Juni asked.

“Then we’re all dead,” Adowa said. Singh glared at her but she just bared her teeth in a fierce, humorless smile. “They ought to know, Sarge.”

Ariana shook her head, her expression torn between grief and denial. “How could it have happened? If the Izkop pressed us, we were to withdraw. Pull back from contact until the misunderstanding or whatever was resolved. They knew we weren’t here to stay, to colonize or conquer.”

“Maybe some of the Izkop didn’t get the word on that,” Nassar commented from his watch post near another window.

Singh gave him a flat look which shut up Nassar, then turned back to the civilians. “How many Izkop have you seen around here?”

“The first day after the recall, we observed a few,” Juni offered in the voice of a man coming out a daze. “Out in the hills, while we were looking to see if the truck was coming in. Before that, there’d been a lot of Izkop movement. The satellites tracked many Izkop moving toward Amity.”

“Didn’t that worry anybody?”

“There were varying interpretations about the meaning of the Izkop movements. I…don’t know what they did at Amity,” Juni mumbled.

Singh leveled a finger at Goldera. “It’s almost sunset. Get out there and do a scout while we’ve still got some light. Nassar, watch his back. I want to know what you see around this place, especially whether there’s signs that the Izkop are watching it.”

“Okay, Sarge.” Goldera slipped out the door, followed a moment later by Nassar.

Singh sat down, gesturing this time to Johansen and Adowa. “Keep an eye on the outside. Burgos, you and Stein check out this compound. Carefully and quietly. I want to know how it looks from a defensive standpoint.
No firing at anything.
Archer, run a full diagnostic on that comm unit. That’s our only lifeline for calling the relief ship when it gets here. Nothing better happen to it. Now, I understand you civilians have been in for an awful shock, but I’d like a better idea of what happened. Are you sure you don’t have any idea why the Izkop went spindizzy?”

“No,” Juni said, hunched over as he sat staring at his hands. “What you describe is uncharacteristic. The Izkop have ceremonies which to outside observers can replicate aggression, but they haven’t shown any radical deviations from standard behavioral modes.”

“Ceremonies. They haven’t been acting aggressive?”

“No. Not that I’ve heard or observed. The Izkop are well integrated into their environment and have no need to manifest authentic belligerent group behaviors.”

Ariana shook her head. “I believe the Izkop are an actively aggressive culture, but they haven’t acted aggressively toward us. There’s been some pushing of our limits, but nothing serious.”

Singh raised one eyebrow. “Pushing your limits?”

“In terms of our equipment, asking more about it. At first they wouldn’t ask at all, then gradually they got more interested and wanted to know more. Over time we’d show them a little more, to build bonds of trust and ensure they knew these were simply technological devices.”

“They haven’t pushed,” Juni objected. “They just ask. They’re manifesting natural curiosity about new factors in their environment.”

“What about when you said no?” Singh asked. “How did the Izkop react to that?”

Ariana spread her hands helplessly. “I doubt anyone ever simply said no. We’re researchers. We’ve been trained in nonviolent conflict resolution. When the Izkop press us on something we divert them or find a way to address their concerns or whatever is necessary to keep the situation from escalating.”

“And you had no indications that wasn’t working?” Singh questioned. “Let me tell you what we heard on the way in. The civilians in Amity were sending out messages, both general emergency signals and specific calls for help. They showed video of large numbers of Izkop carrying spears surrounding that valley where your main settlement was located.”

“Amity isn’t a settlement,” Juni corrected. “It’s a research installation.”

“Fine. According to these messages, lots of Izkop were threatening the humans there. The same few messages kept auto-repeating. Now we know that must have been because the humans who sent them were already dead. Then the messages cut off after the first transmissions from our ship reached the planet. We figured the Izkop must have trashed the transmitters somehow to keep the humans here from replying to us, but actually the Izkop apparently just killed the signals once they knew we were being lured in.”

“You’re assuming a rather high level of sophistication in their planning of an act of violence,” Juni said. “How could the Izkop have learned how to take those actions and plan such an entrapment?”

Ariana turned an angry look on him. “Their legends are full of accounts of battles and ambushes.”

“Literary and historical-cultural inheritances can’t realistically be employed to put into practice major changes in group inter-relational dynamics.”

“The Izkop knew what they were doing,” Johansen said. “Not only did they lay a near-perfect ambush for us, but someone showed them how to handle a lot of the equipment there, and they figured out how to modify functions to use non-weapons as weapons.”

“Everything we have is user friendly,” Ariana said in a low voice. “It’s not that hard for anyone to grasp. All you need to do is navigate through simple touch menus to change settings. But at this outpost we never showed the Izkop much. Just the simplest things.”

“And in Amity?” Singh asked.

“They…might have been forced to show more. A great deal more. If the Izkop threatened them. What you’re describing seeing sounds like a dominance display.”

Singh sat back, glancing at Johansen. “What’s your opinion?”

“We’re still missing a reason.”

“Yeah.”

His eyes glowing with rage, Scorse shouted at them. “They wanted our equipment and they were willing to kill for it! I know soldiers like you don’t come from the best and brightest, but how hard is that to figure out?”

Singh kept his own voice dispassionate. “If the Izkop wanted your equipment, sir, why did they blow it all to hell?”

Scorse got up without replying and stormed into another part of the building.

Ariana spoke in a choked voice. “You’re certain everyone else is dead?” Singh nodded, somber again. “Juni, could you look after the children alone for a few minutes?” She excused herself and also went off by herself, while Juni scowled and headed to a back room where the children must be.

“Lost her husband,” Adowa said in the silence after the civilians left. “Too bad we had to tell her.”

“We didn’t have a chance to save him,” Johansen said, knowing he sounded defensive.

“No. I’m just saying. Hard to hear, you know?”

“Yeah.” Scorse had lost his spouse as well, but cruel as it might be Johansen couldn’t muster up the same sympathy. Johansen looked around again as Juni led out from the back room a small column of children.

“See,” the young man told the children, “these soldiers are here now.”

The soldiers nodded to the kids, who nodded solemnly back, their eyes big. “Are you taking us back to Amity?” one who looked about ten years old asked.

“No,” Singh said. “We’ll be leaving on a ship with…everyone on the planet.”

“Why are you here?”

“Why are we leaving?”

“Why can’t we call home?”

“Where’s my mom and dad?”

Singh hesitated, uncharacteristically uncertain, so Johansen forced a smile, standing up to convey genial authority. “Hey, guys, we’re just soldiers here to do our jobs. You got your people here like Juni. They’ll tell you anything they can, but right now a lot of it is secret. You understand?” The children nodded reluctantly, while Juni kept his eyes averted from them. “So you guys stay in the back. That’s part of the secret. You have to keep hidden back there until the ship gets here. Okay?”

The children still looked doubtful. “But we’ve been in there for a loooong time,” one complained. “
Days
. And we hardly ever get to come out.”

Archer smiled, too, as she winked conspiratorially at them. “We need your help guys. This is a special game, like my buddy there says. Stay secret, stay hidden, stay cool.” The extra maternal boost must have been enough, because the kids smiled back and nodded.