Swords and Saddles Read Free Page B

partway down the sides, but only two doors were visible, the main entry and a side door. The tables and chairs inside had been pushed around, and the big flat display on the back wall sat dark and silent. Singh entered last, studying the room somberly.
    The woman had gone to the back and came out again with two other civilians, both men, one young and the other well past middle-age. “I’m Ariana Tisrok,” she said. “This is Juni Garios and Scorse Kalinga.”
    “Sergeant Singh,” he introduced himself. “Suppose you tell us what happened here?”
    Ariana slumped into a chair. “We don’t know much.”
    The younger man named Juni nodded. “We received the recall. Everybody was to report back to Amity on an emergency basis. But the truck we have here was out on a research run.” He hesitated, his eyes going to Ariana, then Scorse. “It had, um, four people with it.”
    “Including my husband,” Ariana said in a low voice. Taking a deep breath, she continued. “We tried calling our truck. Nothing. We tried getting a fix on its position, but the transponder was out. It should have been back before sundown that day but it never showed. We called Amity, to tell them we needed a ride and asking for more details. We never heard any reply. My – the people with the truck would have been able to walk back here within a day if it had broken down.”
    “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