She shook her head: “Stay by me at the door. I’ll get it, ten men with me take the house, twenty round the side door. You get down by that porch and take any charge starts out the door of the barracks.”
“Understood,” Merry said, and orders passed, quick and terse, by unit.
“No firing unless fired on,” Raen said, and took the nearest Warrior by the forelimb. “Warrior: you three stay here. Guard this-place until I call.”
“Warrior-function: come,” it lamented.
“I order, Meth-maren, hive-friend. Necessary.”
“Mess,” it sighed.
“I go first,” she said, to the distress of Merry and the others, but they said no word of objection. She stood up, gripped her rifle by its body, and started out into the road, dejected, limping. Her eyes, her head still downcast, flicked nervously from one to the other of the guardposts she knew were there, in the hedges.
“Stop!” someone shouted at her.
She did so, looked fecklessly in that direction, with no move of her rifle. “Accident,” she said. “Aircraft went down—” and pointed back. The azi came from their concealment, both of them, naive that they were. “I need help,” she said. “I need to call help.”
One of them determined. to walk with her. The other stayed. She limped on toward the house, toward the door, studying the lay of the place, the situation of windows; the barracks was at her back, the porch before.
And the azi with her went up the steps ahead of her, rang at the door, pressed- the housecom button. “Ser?”
Someone passed a window to the door.
“Ser, there’s a woman here—”
“Istra shuttle went down,” She cried past him. “Survivors. I need to call for help.”
The door unlocked, opened. A greying beta stood in it. She slipped inside, leaned against the wall, whipped the rifle up.
“Don’t touch the switch, ser. Don’t move.”
The beta froze, mouth open. The guard-azi did likewise, and in that instant a rush of men pelted across the yard. The guard whirled, found targets, fired in confusion, and the rush that hit the door threw him over, swept the beta against the wall, ringing him with weapons. Her azi kept going, and elsewhere in the house were shots and outcries. “No killing!” she shouted. “Secure the house! Go, I’ve got him.” She held her rifle on the man, and the azi swept after their comrades.
It was a matter of moments then, the frightened family herded together into their own living room, the azi servants, one injured, along with them.
Merry held the front porch. The first shot into the azi barracks had convinced the others. Her men regrouped, meditating that problem.
“Ser,” Raen said to the householder, “protect your azi. Call them out unarmed. No one will be hurt.”
He did so, standing on the porch with enough rifles about to assure he made no errors. In the house, the family waited, holding to one another, the wife and a young couple that was likely related in some way, with an infant. The baby cried, and they tried to hush it.
And fearfully the farm’s azi came out as they were told; she bade Merry and some of the men search the barracks and the azi themselves for weapons.
But most of all was water, food. She gave them permission as quickly as she could, and they drank their fill—brought her a cup, which she received gratefully, and a grimy fistful of dried fruit. She chewed at it and kept the rifle slung hiplevel, pocketed some, drank at the water. The householder was allowed to rejoin his family on the chairs in the livingroom. “Ser,” Raen said, “apologies. I told the truth: we’ve injured among us. I need food, water, transport, and your silence. You’re in the midst of a Kontrin matter—Kont’ Raen, seri, with profound apologies. We’ll not damage anything if we can help it.”
A cluster of beta faces stared back at her, grey with terror, whether for their attack or for what she told them, she was not sure.
“Take what you want,” the man said.
The baby started crying. Raen gave the child a glance and the woman gathered it to her; the injured azi touched it and tried to soothe it. Raen took a deep breath for patience and looked at the lot of them. “You’ve a truck here, some sort of transport?”