Imtep—Fifth planet from its star. Close to Earth-like (.95 on Ming-Hoffman Scale). Dominated by a single massive continent sprawled across equatorial regions. Eastern areas of the landmass are very rugged, but the central and western regions feature extensive prairies or steppes around a large, shallow inland sea. Native sentient species the Izkop (“People”) are humanoid, organized into tribes or clans, the majority living on the plains in agrarian/
herder communities. Technology is very limited, primarily craft-metallurgy which allows the construction of durable implements. The Izkop are evaluated as “competitive but non-belligerent,” research reports identifying their dominant culture as well-integrated with their environment. A research facility with a staff of eighty has been established on Imtep. Imtep is classified Type Three for human visitation, with pre-clearance required and only small parties allowed to avoid disrupting relations with the native population.
They had to pry Goldera out of the last set of armor when the power pack drained to exhaustion. After forcing open enough of the suit to get Goldera free, they left the armor lying there as they resumed walking, the empty carcass sprawled in the short, tough grass like a body denied the benefit of burial. There wasn’t any simple way to conceal it, and they lacked the time and the strength to do anything else. The blast rifle, useless without power, lay abandoned alongside the armor.
No one had spoken for at least an hour, everyone concentrating on walking, putting one foot before the other despite the fatigue filling their bodies and minds. Corporal Johansen squinted up at the too-bright sun, trying to remember what had happened over that long day since reveille had sounded at zero-three-hundred to awaken everyone for the rescue operation. But he couldn’t focus on any single, clear memory, his mind filled with disjointed images of the deathtrap that had been a place called Amity.
Johansen brought his gaze down to stare at the back of Sergeant Singh. The sergeant’s last command had been “follow me,” given as they looked down at a valley where nothing now moved or lived except swarms of Izkop warriors. Since then, Singh had been leading them over the hills around Amity, down through patches of woods and shrubbery, and now across this open area. Fear had lent them speed at first, but now nothing kept them moving except the sergeant’s steady pace in front.
With a major effort, Johansen called out just loudly enough for Sergeant Singh to hear. “Sarge.”
The sergeant didn’t stop, instead turning his upper body and head to look back at the corporal as he kept moving, his face locked into the same expressionless mask as someone under inspection. “Yeah?”
“Gotta rest. They’re on their last legs.”
“Understood. Not out here.” Singh raised one arm to point ahead, toward a tree line. “There. Under cover.”
Tall, dark Private Adowa looked toward the trees, her eyes framed by runnels of sweat on her dust-streaked face. “How far is that?”
One corner of Singh’s mouth turned upward slowly. “Check the map,” his voice grated out sardonically.
The map had been digital, of course, linked to satellite arrays which the Izkop had already shredded. Normally, the soldiers would have called up the map, gotten their precise location, and a precise distance to the trees ahead. But the navigation units had been built into the powered armor, and that was gone along with the sats. All any of the soldiers could do now was look around, inexperienced with judging distances by eye and unaccustomed to marching this far without power assist from their armor.
How far had they come since the dropship set down hard on one side of the valley that had held the human presence on this world? As the platoon had spilled out of the broken dropship, they had been presented with a balcony view of the disaster unfolding in the valley itself. Debris from what had been the buildings of the human civilian community still falling back to the surface, craters marking the graves of damaged dropships that had plowed in too hard for any survivors, scattered groups of soldiers firing frantically at the masses of Izkop swarming over the entire valley floor. More Izkop popped up, among and all around the platoon, their heavy spears flashing in the light of the morning sun, surging into the dropship to wipe out the crew, dragging down soldiers and tearing apart the robotic mules carrying the backup power packs. Sergeant Singh had rallied them, tried to get as many soldiers as he could up the side of the valley, while everyone shot as fast as they could and members of the platoon got swamped one by one.
Where had all of the aliens come from? Somebody had been screaming “out of the ground” on the comm circuit before their signal cut off.
Johansen focused on that puzzle to distract himself from the fatigue that threatened to overwhelm him. Out of the ground. He hadn’t had much time to look around during the fight. None of them had. But he recalled visions of slabs of turf lying neatly cut and overturned. “The ground,” he muttered. “The bastards were all lying under the sod.”
Private Stein turned partway to frown at Johansen, then his expression cleared with understanding. “That’s where they came from? Because nobody said anything going in. Landing fields are clear, they said.”
Adowa shook her head. “They also said we should be careful not to cause any violent reaction by the Izkop. Just a rescue and security op in a ‘possibly non-permissive environment.’ Possibly non-permissive, hell. Orbital sensors can’t see aliens lying under a layer of dirt and grass, ready to kill us as we hit dirt.”
“What did the damned civilians do to make the Izkop want to wipe out everyone and us in the bargain?” Private Nassar wondered. “The Izkop didn’t care how many of them we killed.”
Only Private Burgos answered, her eyes haunted. “We didn’t kill enough,” she whispered.
They fell silent again after that, just trying to keep moving in the wake of the sergeant, who plowed onward as if he himself were a suit of armor with an inexhaustible power supply. Johansen looked backwards at times, fearing to see the shapes of Izkop coming after them, and irrationally hoping that other soldiers would appear to join them. But he saw nothing, though as the march went on under the blazing sun Johansen sometimes imagined others marched with them, seeing the shapes of soldiers he had once known wavering insubstantially until he blinked and shook his head to clear it. The tree line gradually grew closer, resolving into a thin forest which would offer at least a little cover from the Izkop and a little shade from the sun.
Singh kept them going after they reached the first trees, onward about a hundred meters, before he stumbled to a halt. “Rest. Half an hour.”
The others didn’t so much sit down as drop, collapsing in place with expressions of mingled pain and relief. Johansen let himself fall as well, luxuriating in not having to keep moving, but after a few minutes forced himself to struggle up until he sat with his back against a tree. Second in command. You’re second in command now. The lieutenant was dead, the other sergeants were dead, and so were the other corporals. For that matter, so was the colonel and everybody else ranking higher than the sergeant. Hell, I’m second in command of the entire relief force now. All eight of us that are left.
Eight out of a little more than two hundred in the battalion.
Johansen looked at the six privates who had made it out of the valley with him and Singh. Goldera, short, lean and wiry, lay on his back, staring blankly upward. Adowa, her dark face and hair blending a bit into the shadows beneath the trees, had a jaw slack with fatigue, but her eyes kept roaming the woods, on watch for danger. Archer, one of the worst shots in the unit despite her name, was a bit smaller than Goldera but had clung stubbornly to the platoon’s portable long-range comm unit despite its weight and now lay hugging it to her chest with both arms. Nassar sat limply against a tree, but like Adowa his eyes were still alert and searching the woods around them, the buzz-saw light machine gun resting on his lap. Stein, big and solid, lay as if dead, only the movement of his chest revealing that he still lived. Burgos, her eyes open but glazed, seemed to still be looking at the deadly chaos around Amity and unaware of their current surroundings.
Sergeant Singh had lowered himself to sit, breathing deeply, his eyes hooded in thought as if they were just on some especially difficult training mission and the sergeant had to figure out how to beat a tough scenario.
As if sensing Johansen’s gaze, Singh nodded to him. “Now that we’ve reached cover we’ll rest ten minutes each hour after we get going again.”
News which normally would have been greeted with muttered complaints from the tired privates brought nothing this time, a measure of their utter exhaustion, but Adowa stopped scanning the woods long enough to look at Singh. “Where are we going?”
Singh jerked his head in the direction they had been traveling since leaving the valley. “Before my armor gave out I spotted a place on the map. A small outpost of some kind along a river. At least one permanent building. We’re sure to hit the river if we keep going this way. Then we find that outpost.”
“Water,” Stein mumbled. “River’s got water.”
“Yeah. And maybe there’s food at that outpost,” Johansen said. They hadn’t carried much, just the usual emergency packs. The other rations had been destroyed with the dropships.
“We hope,” Singh replied. “And maybe some shelter. Depends what the Izkop did to it.” He didn’t have to elaborate. Amity had been intact when the dropships launched, but just before the Izkop erupted out of the soil they had blown apart all of the buildings, taking soldiers and dropships with them.
Nassar breathed out slowly. “Someplace safe, maybe.”
Adowa shook her head. “Safe? How many Izkop got to be looking for us, Sarge? There were thousands back there, and they know we got clear.”
“We haven’t seen them following us yet,” Johansen said.
“We didn’t see them in the valley, either, until we did. How much trouble would they have tracking us with eight suits of armor laying dead, pointing this way? Any fool could follow us.”
“Maybe,” Archer murmured, “they couldn’t keep up. Sarge moved us a long ways pretty quick.”
This time Nassar shook his head. “You heard the briefings. ‘On open ground, the Izkop are very fast and can maintain their speed over long distances,’” he quoted. “They may not be big like Stein, but they’re strong enough. Why did we get this far?”
Everyone looked at Sergeant Singh, who shrugged. “No idea. Shooting our way out of the valley wasn’t a low-profile op, and they nailed everyone else who was trying to get out in other directions.”
“So,” Adowa insisted, “why didn’t they run us down?”
“They didn’t want to lose any more of their own?” Goldera asked.
Nassar snorted. “You saw them swarm everyone down in the valley. No concern with casualties at all. If we hadn’t burned out the suits so fast, firing the energy weapons without a break and jumping up one side of those hills and down the other as fast as we could, we’d be back there with everyone else, getting our guts hauled out and danced on. It’s a miracle we made it this far.”
Burgos roused enough to glare at Nassar. “I’m not dying before I kill a lot more of them.”
The sergeant eyed her soberly. “Ramada’s dead. We need to stay alive.”
“Yeah.” Burgos barely whispered as she closed her eyes again, shuddering slightly, her left hand clasped tightly so the ring on it stood out clearly.
After a moment of silence, Nassar spoke. “They were waiting for us. How long did they just lay there, under the turf, waiting for us to come down?”
“Days,” Adowa said. “Crazy bastards. How do you plan for fighting against something that’d lay that kind of ambush? I got to tell you, I’m worried we left someone. Somebody still alive.”
“Us being dead wouldn’t keep them alive,” Johansen said.
Archer sat up wearily, brushing hair from her face with one hand and nodding toward the portable comm unit. “I’ve heard no signals from anyone else living since we got clear. For a while I kept picking up automatic distress signals from armor back at Amity, reporting occupants killed in action. No wounded needing pickup, just KIAs. But the KIA signals went off, I guess when the Izkop got around to smashing them. I can understand the Izkop pulling the bodies out of the armor, but why go to so much trouble to smash all the equipment on the armor, too, even while the fight was still going on?”
“I guess we can’t ask the civs we were supposed to be rescuing,” Adowa said. “Wonder how long they’ve all been dead and if they put up any fight?”
The sergeant shrugged again. “Probably a while and probably not. The civs here were just researchers. Their reports on file didn’t pay much attention to Izkop fighting methods.”
Johansen laughed bitterly. “The civ reports barely mentioned that the Izkop had spears. What did the civs call the Izkop? Competitive?”
“And non-belligerent. I keep getting the feeling they’re out there,” Goldera added. “Watching us. Sure wish I still had the scout sensors in my armor.”
“There’s a lot of stuff in the armor we’ll miss, but good soldiers can fight without it,” Singh said. He focused on Archer again. “Are you sure the comm unit didn’t take any damage?”
Archer smiled slightly and stroked the outside of the comm unit. “Aimee’s fine. Ready to talk when we find someone to talk to. The solar collectors on her shell can keep her charged indefinitely and recharge batteries for any other gear we’ve got left.”
“Too bad it couldn’t recharge the armor,” Goldera grumbled. “They took out the big ship. How the hell did they know how to take out the ship? Primitives, hell.”
“They used the research facility’s own protective system,” Johansen said. “The Sara wasn’t ready.”
“Nobody was,” Nassar observed. “The Izkop burned out everything taking down the Sara and our dropships and frying a lot of the satellite arrays and blowing up everything in that valley. Why’d the Izkop kill all the civs, anyway?” he asked again.
“Who cares why?” Burgos had both hands on her rifle. The lightweight slug throwers, emergency weapons usually stowed literally up on the back of the armor, had become their primary means of defense now. “Murdering scum. Their reasons don’t matter.”
“Yes, they do,” Singh corrected. “Understanding the enemy is critical. If we don’t understand them, we don’t know what they might do next.” The sergeant had always worn an old-fashioned watch, not depending on suit systems to keep him aware of the time as most others did. Now he consulted it. “On your feet, everybody. We’ve got a ways to go.”
They staggered onward, the sergeant always in the lead, Johansen always at the rear to make sure everyone stayed with them. There were plenty of times when he wondered if he would collapse as the too-long day on this planet kept the sun crawling slowly through the sky, beating brutally down on them even through the scattered screen of shade provided by the trees. But if he fell out somebody else might drop and be lost, too. So he kept going.
The river proved just as impossible to miss as the sergeant had predicted, meandering across their path, perhaps fifty meters wide but apparently shallow all the way across. As everyone drank their fill through filter straws, Singh studied the terrain. “The map showed some ridges on either side of the place we’re looking for.”
Johansen looked up and down the stream. “The bluffs beside the river course are just mounds along here. It looks like they’re higher upstream.”
“Yeah.” Sergeant Singh gazed up at the sun. “I figure we’ve maybe two hours of sunlight left.”
“The night vision gear was all built into the armor.”
“Yeah,” Singh repeated. “We don’t want to be stumbling around in the dark. Let’s get moving, people. We need a place to fort up by nightfall.”
As they moved back into the tree line, Goldera paused to look around.
“You see anything?” Johansen asked him.
“Nah. Haven’t seen anything but what passes for birds and squirrels here.” Goldera hesitated, scanning the horizon. “Still feels like they’re out there, though.”
“Keep an eye out,” Johansen said, then moved alongside Singh long enough to pass on what Goldera had said. Singh only grunted in reply, and Johansen fell back again as the tiny column reached the trees and then turned to move upstream.
They found it when the sun was only a short ways above the horizon. The bluffs on either side of the river’s lowland had risen enough to form a rift between them. The woods dwindled near the edge of the rift, leaving an area almost open along the sides before the land fell away abruptly into bottomland with the river snaking along roughly through the center. Singh and the others wormed forward on their bellies toward one edge of the rift until Singh could raise his field glasses to examine the small cluster of buildings constructed to human standards, while they all lay as concealed as possible by the sparse vegetation.
After a moment, the sergeant cursed softly and lowered the glasses. “Power focus. Great stuff until the power dies. Anybody got charged batteries?”
Without rising, Archer held out one hand toward Burgos, who took what she held and passed it to Stein, who handed the batteries to Johansen who gave them to Singh. After the sergeant replaced the batteries in his field glasses, he passed the worn out batteries from them back along the chain until Archer got them and slid them into charging slots on her comm unit.
Focusing again, Singh stayed motionless for a long time, then finally passed the glasses to Johansen. “What do you think?”
Johansen focused, trying not to expose himself too much to any watchers. “It looks intact.” The compound was dominated by a low-slung one-story structure that apparently combined living quarters and offices. From here that main building looked substantial, with thick walls of compressed dirt and a heavy roof of reinforced metal with built-in solar cells. The rest of the buildings, including a small livestock shed, were of much simpler construction, just stamped metal set on concrete pads.
“See any sign of Izkop?”
“No. No sign now, and no sign they’ve been there. Maybe once the civs left the Izkop didn’t bother with it.” One of the doors to the main building swung idly in the wind. “It looks abandoned . . . or someone wants it to look abandoned.”
Something moved among the buildings and Johansen stiffened as he watched, the others falling into tense silence. As the thing moved fully into sight, Johansen almost laughed with relief. “A cow. There’s still a cow alive down there.”
“A cow.” Singh made it a statement, gesturing for the return of the field glasses, then studied the animal. “A cow,” he confirmed, lowering the glasses. “Not one of the local herd beasts. A milk cow, Earth-livestock.”
“Milk?” Adowa did laugh very softly, her face lowered into the dirt to muffle the sound. “Too bad I’m lactose intolerant.”
Singh didn’t smile in return. “A milk cow. Abandoned here. It wouldn’t have been milked for some time. But it seems content.”
“You know cows, Sarge?” Goldera asked.
“My family’s neighbors had some.” Singh looked at Johansen. “After only a few days, an unmilked cow would be very uncomfortable.”
“Somebody’s been milking it?”
“Yes. Would an Izkop do that? Could an Izkop do that without the cow panicking? Stein, didn’t your family have a ranch?”
“Yeah, Sarge.” Stein’s large face creased slowly in thought. “No. If what the briefers told us is right, cows wouldn’t like the Izkop, and cows can be damned skittish even with people.”
“Could there still be people down there?” Archer asked.
“Either there are, or it’s another Izkop trap,” Johansen said. “You’ve still got nothing on the comm unit?”
“No. If any civs survived, they’re staying si-lent.”
Singh looked back at them all. “We go down there, or we go on.”
“Go on? Where?” Nassar wondered.
“Nothing any better than this, and nothing we can reach with less than another full day’s walk, if we could find it.”
Johansen sighed and checked his weapon. “I’m getting tired of walking, and it’ll be dark soon. We might as well see what’s here.”
Burgos licked her lips, her eyes fever bright. “If there’s Izkop, maybe it’s just a small force. We can wipe them out.”
Singh pointed one finger at her. “Or there’s ten thousand of them within sound of a shot. Nobody fires without my orders.”
“Yeah, Sarge,” Burgos muttered, her expression sullen.
“You go spindizzy on me and I’ll shoot you myself, got it?” Singh kept his eyes on her, hard and demanding.
Burgos flushed. “I said yes, sergeant.”
Fortunately, the compound was on this side of the river so they didn’t have to splash through the water and mud. Tired as they were, the soldiers still moved carefully toward the buildings, only two moving at a time while the others covered them. Once inside the bluffs the flatland around the river was covered with short, round bushes with sparse leaves that caused Stein to mutter “tumbleweeds,” but the area inside the human-built compound had only short grass growing.
Johansen came up against the main building, his rifle at ready, his back to the wall right next to the open doorway where the door still swung lazily in occasional gusts of wind. Adowa crouched on the other side of the door, raising her weapon questioningly. Johansen shook his head, then looked back to where Singh and the others were lying in the grass, their weapons aimed at the windows and doors of the building. He pulled out his combat knife, took a deep breath to fight down a wave of fear, then spun around the corner and inside, once again planting his back against the wall with the knife at the ready before him.
A figure moved, jerking to one side with a gasp of fright. Johansen swung the knife’s point that way even as his mind shouted human. “Who are you?” Johansen demanded.
Instead of replying to his question, the figure rose, resolving into a woman who stared at him in disbelief. “Are you a soldier?”
“Yes, ma’am. Any Izkop here?”
“No.” She looked anguished for a moment, then swallowed and steadied. “We haven’t seen any here since the recall. We’ve been unable to contact Amity since then.” Her expression changed. “We heard what sounded like explosions in the distance this morning. In the direction of Amity.”
Johansen just nodded. “We? You’re not alone here?”
“No. There’s two other adults and ten children. The others are in the back rooms.”
Finally relaxing, Johansen leaned out the door to wave an all-clear and beckon to the others.
The other soldiers came on carefully, still dodging forward until each darted inside the doorway. As he waited for them and watched for trouble, Johansen saw that the building’s interior consisted of a big main room which stretched all the way across its width and perhaps a third of the way back, where an inside wall showed hallways and doors leading to what must be living quarters and offices. A series of big windows ran along the front and 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, 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 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 that 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 of 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 had 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 went off, 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 a small column of children out from the back room.
“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.
Juni hesitated, then herded the kids into the back again, leaving the soldiers looking at each other.
“Thanks, Johansen. Thanks, Archer,” Singh said.
“Nyet problema, Sarge.” Archer gave the inner door a puzzled look. “Why’d he bring them out here? Like he was trying to dump them on us.”
“He hasn’t got kids of his own,” Adowa said. “You can tell. And he’s really shook up by this. He didn’t say it like the old son of a bitch did, but he’s another one of those guys who think because they spent ten years in college they understand everything.”
Johansen nodded. “Only he’s realizing that he can’t understand this. The real world is always a shock, but this is a lot worse than those guys usually deal with, and all he can do is take care of the kids.”
“Well, I’d love to help,” Archer said, “but I got other things to do right now, and he doesn’t.”
“You can bet he realizes that, too, and isn’t too thrilled to know it.”
A few minutes later Burgos and Stein came back, Burgos shaking her head. “Just empty sheds out there. There’s hay in a small barn for the cow. Nothing we can use. That shed where they had their emergency gear was completely trashed. Nothing usable in it. Why the hell didn’t they have that stuff in here with them?”
Singh waved around. “Living quarters. You should know some of that survival gear isn’t allowed to be stowed in living areas. Flares and stuff, because of the hazard. How’s the back of this place look?”
“Solid wall. Maybe bad storms always come from that way. The sides of the building back from here have a couple of doors we need to seal off, but the only windows in those areas are slits high up. If we guard the front and sides of this room we’ll be okay, though the Izkop could dig through at other places in time.” She sat down, holding her rifle across her chest, her expression gloomy.
“The civs have been milking that cow,” Stein offered. “Feeding it hay, too.”
“The Izkop would have spotted that if there’s any around,” Singh said, then looked over as Goldera and Nassar returned. “What’d you see?”
Goldera swung his arm in a wide arc through the east, north, and west. “They’re out there, Sarge. I knew it. Lots of them. I could see groups of Izkop scattered all around in those directions. None of them seemed to be focused on here, but they were out there all over the place. Not real easy to see, either. I could only spot them when they moved. But it looked clear to the south.”
“Clear?” Singh questioned.
“Yeah, Sarge. Not an Izkop in sight that way. There’s decent cover and the terrain’s easy. We could move fast.”
Singh leaned back, frowning, then glanced at Johansen.
Johansen didn’t hesitate. “Too easy.” Like the landing zone had looked.
“That’s what I was thinking,” Singh said. “That good cover to the south could be hiding Izkop who aren’t moving. Still, they might be expecting us to be keeping to the rougher territory, and there was another research outpost northwest of here they might think we were aiming for.”
This time Johansen gestured toward the back of the house. “Those kids couldn’t move fast. If it was just us, maybe. But not with them.”
“Yeah, that pretty much settles it, doesn’t it?” Singh looked out of the closest window. “Even if it’s clear to the south, we can’t go without leaving the civs here to the Izkop.”
“It’s a chance,” Goldera insisted. “Maybe our only chance to live.”
Adowa gave him a hard look. “We’ve seen those kids. You should take a look, too. How you going to live knowing you left them to the Izkop?”
“That’s the thing,” Singh agreed. “We came here to protect the civs. It looks like these are the only civs left, so I figure we have to stay here and protect them.”
“But staying here won’t make any difference,” Goldera protested. “I wasn’t talking about leaving anybody, just us all making a run for it. I won’t leave any kids.”
“They couldn’t keep up.” Singh looked around. “So we hold here as long as we can, soldiers. Let’s get things set up for a siege. None of us were high enough in the food chain to know how close other ships are, or what time the Sara was supposed to send in her status pulse each day. Another ship might already be on the way, might get here in time to lift us all out, if we hold out long enough. Make sure those back doors are sealed and that there are no other ways in.”
When Ariana returned, her eyes reddened but her expression determined, they tallied up the food resources at the outpost. “With you here as well as the children,” she said, “we probably have about six days worth of food left. We’ve already been cut off for a while and we’re not set up for this population.”
“What about the cow?” Stein asked. “She’s pretty well-fed. Lot of meat on her. I can do the butchering.”
Ariana gave him a wan look. “The cow is . . . was . . . an experiment, to see how the Izkop would react to her. We were hoping . . . her milk has helped stretch our supplies.”
“I understand, ma’am,” Stein assured her. “A milk-cow isn’t like a beef animal. People get attached to them. But it looks like we’ll need that meat.”
“We wait six days,” Singh decided. “On the seventh day, if no relief ship has shown up, we kill the cow.” The sergeant stood up, stretching, much harder to see as darkness fell rapidly with the disappearance of the sun. “We’re all exhausted, too tired to keep talking tonight, but the Izkop are out there. We stand watches, two hours each, until sunrise. You handle the schedule, Johansen. Make sure the sentries know not to show themselves and not to show any lights, and to wake the rest of us if they hear anything even if it doesn’t sound dangerous.”
“Yes, sergeant.”
Johansen saw and heard nothing unusual during his portion of the watch that night. None of the others reported detecting activity, either. But at dawn Johansen was awakened by a string of curses recited in a monotonous tone by Singh. “What happened?”
“Take a look,” Singh offered, beckoning out the window he was kneeling beside with Burgos, who had the last watch. “Everybody else, get up now!”
Raising himself cautiously, Johansen felt a pit open inside him as he looked at what the dawn’s light had revealed. The area around the compound and for about five hundred meters beyond was empty, but outside that what seemed to be a solid mass of Izkop stood in apparently endless ranks, spears in their hands, gazing silently at the human building. Like the Izkop they had fought in the valley, these wore no armor, just odd pants which came only partway down the upper legs and partway up the abdomen.
“I didn’t hear anything,” Burgos said, her hands twisting on her rifle as she stared at the Izkop.
“Nobody heard anything,” Singh replied. “Or saw anything. These guys are very good at concealment, but we’re also too used to depending on the sensors in the armor to hear and see trouble.”
Ariana gazed out with a hopeless expression, Juni seemed puzzled as well as frightened, while Scorse glared hatred.
The other soldiers took positions at the windows, weapons ready. Most of them simply muttered despairing curses, but after Stein had gazed out for a while he looked troubled. “Sarge?” he questioned. “There’s a lot of them. I don’t think we got enough ammo.”
Adowa started laughing, then Johansen joined in, then Archer, Goldera, and Nassar. Even Singh laughed, and finally Stein added his hoots to the mix. Only Burgos sat silent, as well as all of the civilians, who were now watching the soldiers in amazement.
“Why are you laughing?” Juni finally asked.
That just made them laugh again, loud and long, even Burgos gasping a few bitter snorts, Johansen himself feeling the darkness inside, the certainty of doom which only dark, irrational humor could keep at bay. He noticed that Singh had stopped laughing, though, and was gazing thoughtfully out the window. “What’s up?”
“They’re listening,” Singh commented as the last chuckles died away. “You could tell they were listening to us laugh, and watching us. Do the Izkop understand human laughter?” he asked Ariana.
“Yes,” she said, hurrying to look out the window beside the sergeant. “They have a capacity for mirth that seems similar to our own, though I don’t understand any of their jokes. I can’t tell from here how they’re reacting to your laughter. Their facial muscles don’t show emotions in the same ways ours do, so it wouldn’t be easy even if we were closer.” Ariana sat back, her eyes now on the soldiers. “That display. It’s meant to impress. To frighten enemies. But you all laughed.”
“Is that going to make them mad?” Adowa asked sarcastically.
“There’s an Izkop phrase that I think translates as ‘greeting death with smiles.’ They use it in their legends, to describe heroes.” Ariana took another cautious look outside. “See those Izkop gathered together, the ones with the tattoos and decorations? Those are leaders. They’re talking, and I’m sure it’s about you laughing when they expected you to be overawed.”
“Let’s give them something else to talk about,” Nassar suggested, hefting the buzz-saw. “Hey!” he called. “Whenever you’re ready! Come and get it!”
“Quiet,” Singh ordered. “Ma’am, do you know them well enough to see if they’ll talk to you? Maybe arrange a truce or something?”
Ariana hesitated. “I don’t know if they’ll—what did they do at Amity? To . . . everyone else? Did they just kill them or . . . ?”
Singh pressed his lips together before answering. “The dead we saw were lying face up, cut open from chest to groin, their guts spread out around them. We saw the Izkop doing the same thing to dead soldiers on other parts of the field while we were shooting our way out.”
Ariana looked ill, her body shaking. “Why . . . ? Sergeant, I . . . I . . .”
“That’s okay. If you can’t stand dealing with them now—”
She held up one hand, palm out, her voice steadying even though she seemed to be fighting off nausea. “I have to. For everyone’s sake. If they’ll listen. But I don’t know why they—I’ll call to them from here.” Ariana visibly braced herself, then stood up, looking out the window, and called out some words in another language, her voice straining over glottal stops and other sounds.
The Izkop leaders ignored her, continuing their conference, then abruptly gesturing and calling out commands. With eerie synchronization the entire force of Izkop began stepping back, slowly retreating with their faces to the humans. They kept going until at least a kilometer distant, then the formations broke and the Izkop seemed to melt into the landscape.
“What the hell happened?” Goldera asked. “Not that I’m complaining, but why didn’t they kill us just then?”
Singh rubbed his chin, then looked at Ariana. “Because we laughed at them?”
“Yes, but they stayed in threat posture,” she responded. “And they ignored my attempts to talk to them. I’m not . . . oh . . . ‘the peace of the warrior before death.’ That’s what it means.”
“So they’ll hit us later?”
“Yes.” Ariana sagged, her face in her hands. “It’s a mark of respect, not a reprieve. There’s no set period for the peace that I could determine.”
The sergeant nodded calmly. “At least it’s obvious they know we’re here. Two on watch at all times,” he ordered the soldiers, “the rest get to work fortifying and blockading all the windows and doors as best we can. Don’t worry any more about keeping the barricading concealed from the outside. If the Izkop haven’t hit us by the time we’re done with that, those off-watch will rest so we’ll be ready to keep two sentries on at a time all night.”
“What about us?” Ariana asked.
“Look after those kids and keep them quiet, ma’am. It’d be a big help if you all also took care of meals for everyone.”
The peace before death had lasted all day. Now, long after sunset, Johansen sat near one window, searching the outside for any signs of Izkop. On the other side of the room, Stein stood sentry at another window. No lights showed inside or out, and the stars and three small moons of this world provided very little illumination.
Johansen had learned that you found out a lot when sitting silently on sentry duty at night. No human noises around, just you and the quiet broken only by the night sounds of whatever place you were in. Listening and watching, you could hear and feel the rhythm of the creatures and the land. And once you knew that rhythm, you could tell when something was disturbing it.
Of course, without the colors and noises and activity of the day to act as distractions, ghosts came at night, too. Johansen tried to ignore the phantoms brought to life by his memories, but still the ghosts sometimes appeared in the stillness of the night.
Ariana came out of the back, hesitated, then came to sit on the floor near Johansen, her back to the wall, hugging herself.
Johansen watched her for a moment before speaking. “You okay?”
She took a deep, shuddering breath. “You mean for someone expecting to die very soon?”
“Yeah.” Their voices were barely murmurs, just loud enough for the other to hear.
“No. I’m not okay.” Ariana clenched her eyes shut in anger. “Why? I know what’s happened, but I don’t know why. It’s my job to try to understand the way others think. Is it too much to ask that I be allowed to understand why my husband died and why I’m going to die and why those children have to die?”
Johansen ran one hand down his weapon, concentrating on the curves and edges of it under his palm. “People always die sooner or later. Why do any of us have to die?”
“I’m not talking about philosophy.”
“Neither am I.” Johansen gave her a rueful smile. “I’ve seen a lot of people die. Most of the time, I couldn’t tell you why they died. Especially I couldn’t tell you why they died and not me.”
She returned a curious look. “Most of the time? Meaning sometimes you could tell why they died?”
“Sure. Sometimes they died because I shot them.”
After a long moment, Ariana spoke slowly. “That was a joke?”
“Yeah,” Johansen said. “Soldier humor. Some of it’s pretty dark, but you either joke about it or let it give you nightmares. Sometimes both.”
“Greeting death with a smile?”
“Yeah. It’s nuts, but it keeps us going.”
She studied him, shaking her head. “You see, I never understood that greeting death with a smile phrase. What did it mean? None of the other humans here I talked to could understand it, either. They blew it off as some kind of symbolism. I thought it must be an Izkop way of thinking, embracing death under certain circumstances. But you showed it. You and the others, and none of you want to die. Now, I think maybe I understand a little. It’s not about welcoming death, it’s more about laughing at death to push fear aside.”
“Yeah, I guess that’s right. No soldiers here, huh?”
“No. We’re all researchers.” Ariana looked down. “What Scorse said, about soldiers
being . . .”
“Low-class creatures with limited intellect?” Johansen asked, grinning at her reaction. “That’s something Sergeant Singh calls us sometimes. But only when he’s unhappy with us. One of the things you learn as a soldier, though, is that everybody’s got some experience, some way of thinking that might be useful. Most people, anyway. I’ve met a few who couldn’t walk and chew gum at the same time, but only a few. You need all kinds. I’ve been around enough to know that everything can’t be solved with firepower. Right now, I guess that’s all we’ve got, but I wouldn’t mind some other options. At least there’s something we can do. I don’t know what it’s like for you and the other civilians.”
“We’re not used to any of this,” Ariana said. “The danger. Taking care of the children. Scorse isn’t helping at all with that, and even though Juni’s okay with children, I can tell he resents acting as a baby-sitter.”
“Well, yeah, big shot research guy, huh? I mean, he seems okay, but that’s the sort of job he figures he’s supposed to pay other people to do. You said none of the kids here are yours?”
Ariana shuddered again. “No.”
“That’s one good thing, then.”
“Yes.” She stared at Johansen. “Having children at Amity was a demonstration that we were here in peace. We kept the numbers limited so it didn’t appear we were settling here. It was all supposed to show that this was peaceful and not aggressive.”
Johansen made a noncommittal gesture. “I guess the Izkop didn’t see it that way.”
“Or it somehow didn’t matter to them even if they did see what we intended.” Ariana clenched her fists and her jaw, the muscles standing out clearly even in the darkness. “We all thought that we understood them well enough to know if anything was wrong, and I still have no idea why they massacred everyone at Amity. Or what the mutilation after death means. One thing I do know is that the Izkop consider children to be purer of spirit than adults. It may not be a coincidence that the Izkop moved against Amity when the children left to come here for a few days, but why that would matter if they intend killing us here as well is one more thing I don’t understand.”
After a long silence, Johansen cleared his throat softly. “I dated a woman for quite a while once. Moved in with each other and all that. I thought everything was fine, that we understood each other, and then one day she left. Said she’d been telling me what was bothering her, and when I didn’t respond it just made her more upset.”
Ariana met his eyes. “But you hadn’t noticed anything?”
“Nope.” Johansen looked out at the darkness, not wanting to see the fear and sorrow in her. Instead his mind conjured up a vision of Maria standing at the door to their place, her face twisted with anger, yelling at him. How could you not know? I kept telling you! A door slammed and Johansen started with pulse pounding and weapon coming up before he realized that sound had only echoed in his memory. “We think we can understand aliens when we can’t even communicate with other humans half the time.”
“I suppose that’s true.” Ariana bit her lip. “It’s our job to understand, though, just as it’s your job to fight. How could the Izkop have killed so many soldiers? Your sergeant explained, but none of us really understood.”
He didn’t want to recall that, but the question deserved an answer. “Um, well, when you fight, you need someone watching your sides and your back, right? Usually, that someone can be a good distance off, but against a whole mob you need them right there, otherwise while you’re shooting forward some others can get behind you and grab your arms and stuff.” Johansen shrugged, hoping the hammering of his heart at the memories of the massacre wasn’t too obvious to her. “Like Sergeant Singh said, the battalion was scattered all over the valley.”
“But why were you scattered? Didn’t your leaders, your commanders, know that you needed to watch each other’s backs?”
“Well . . . there was talk the captain, our company commander that is, was unhappy with the plan, but the colonel, he was in charge of the whole operation, was set on dropping in a wide formation,” Johansen explained. “Because it was a rescue op. We could see Izkop on the hills around the valley, in lots and lots of small groups. The colonel wanted us to cover lots of territory so we’d be wherever the civilians were in the valley. If we just dropped in a tight group then some or even all the civs might be outside the group and then the Izkop could rush in and massacre them.” It seemed funny now, in a sick way. “We didn’t know the Izkop had already massacred the civs at Amity, and hidden themselves all over the valley. So we got massacred, too.
“We knew they were in the hills but didn’t see them waiting in the valley itself. Maybe your people showed them how IR gear and stuff like that works. They figured out how to hide from it, and our leaders didn’t figure they’d do that. Just a bunch of spear-chucking primitives, right? There they are, no need to look around any more, no need to deploy special battlefield recce, especially when those civs need us now! So we dropped right in as if the whole landing zone was empty. Only it wasn’t. Someone wants to kill you that bad, usually there’s a real strong reason. I guess I’d like to know what the reason is, too.”
“They destroyed everything in Amity, you told us,” she said. “That has to be a clue. Have I mentioned Prometheus?”
“Prometheus? The Titan who stole fire from the gods?”
“You know about that Prometheus?” She smiled, then looked embarrassed. “I’m sorry. I—”
“No offense taken, ma’am.”
“My students call me Professor Tisrok. My friends call me Ariana. No one calls me ma’am.”
He couldn’t help grinning at her. “So what am I?”
“Call me Ariana. The Izkop legends have a figure I call Prometheus. But the status of the Izkop Prometheus is confusing to me. Is he a god? Or a demon? He seems to be both. The Izkop value knowledge, but also fear having their souls corrupted by accepting things stolen from the gods.”
“You think maybe the Izkop decided humans were working with Prometheus?” Johansen asked.
“Maybe,” she said cautiously. “But our policies should have prevented the Izkop from ever thinking that. We never gave them anything. What happened that translated into massacre? What did the Izkop think happened? If only . . .”
“Yeah?”
Ariana clenched her jaw again. “My professional opinions aren’t popular. There’s a lot of politics in academia. I believe that mythologies, religious beliefs, tell you a lot about how sentient creatures think. That’s not fashionable right now. The orthodox, prevailing view in my field is that myths and religions are just window-dressing, not really fundamental to world-views and not regarded by cultures as serious explanations for how the universe works.”
Johansen gave her a baffled look. “Where did anyone get that idea?”
“If everyone you work with and socialize with thinks like that, then it’s very easy to believe that it’s true of everyone else.” Ariana sighed. “Like Juni, most of my colleagues back at Amity even argued that the Izkop aren’t truly warlike, that the spears and the battle practices and everything else are just vestigial and symbolic. They look at a primitive society and see the noble savage.”
“Noble savage?” Johansen shook his head, his eyes searching the darkness outside. “How does someone be noble and savage? And how does that correlate with being primitive?”
She laughed briefly, the sound filled with pain. “Those are exactly the sort of questions that I ask. Some very technological human societies have been very savage. Noble primitives seem to be something people want to believe in, like . . . like . . .”
“Hookers with hearts of gold?”
“Yes! Those are probably as rare in real life as noble savages.”
“So,” Johansen asked, “what do noble savages do?”
Ariana sighed, shaking her head. “I’ve been told by experts senior to me that the Izkop with their primitive technology are so closely connected to their world that they understand their place in the universe much better than we do.”
“How exactly does that work?” Johansen asked after a long moment.
She caught the hint of mockery in his voice. “That’s a question that Juni would answer with many words made up of many syllables. I don’t believe the logic behind them. That’s why I was posted out here, where I wouldn’t bother others any more with my skepticism. Now perhaps I’ve been proven right, and those experts are now dead in Amity, and it hurts so bad. If only I’d been wrong.” Her voice broke on the last words.
“You being wrong wouldn’t have meant they were right.”
She gave him a tormented look. “Perhaps there’s something more I could have done. Something that could have saved everyone.”
He watched the night outside for a moment being replying, glad that her presence had driven off the ghosts. “Nobody can save everybody. It’s not your fault.” He’d been told that, years ago. He hadn’t believed it. Not really. He wondered if she would.
Ariana inhaled deeply, then fell silent, so they just sat there for a long time until she dozed off and Adowa came to relieve him on the watch. Adowa raised a questioning eyebrow at Johansen as she pointed at Ariana, but he just shook his head and gestured for quiet.
Copyright © 2010 by John G. Hemry
