“Mennn. Humanasss. Human-hive.”

She gave a great breath of relief. Every face was turned toward it, faces suddenly touched with hope. She caressed the quivering palps. “Warrior, good, very good. Where are other Warriors?”

“Watching men.”

“Far?”

It quivered slowly. Not far, then. “We leave the wounded and five to help them,” she said. “We’ll come back for you injured when we’ve gotten transport. I say so. Understood?”

Heads inclined, all together.

“Come on,” she told Merry. “Choose those to stay and let’s move.”

Warrior moved ahead of their concealment, a black shape in the starlight. Likely Warrior was screaming orders; human ears could not pick it up. In a moment all three came back to the hedgerow, clicking with excitement.

“Guardss,” Warrior said, with two neat bows in the appropriate directions: majat vision in the cool of night could hardly miss a human.

“No majat?” Raen asked.

“Humanss. Human-hive.”

Fifty men were, in the last twos, grouping behind her. Lights showed ahead, floodlights about the fields, the farmyard. An azi barracks showed light from the windows; the farmhouse had the same, windows barred, proof against majat.

“Door’s nothing,” she said to Merry. “A burn will take it. Azi won’t fight if we can get the betas first.”

“Take the guards out,” Merry said. “Three men each, no mistakes. I’ll take one.”

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.”

“Yess,” 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 housecomp 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 hip-level, pocketed some, drank at the water. The householder was allowed to rejoin his family on the chairs in the living room. “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?”

Heads nodded.

She went off to the center of the house, hunting comp, located it, a sorry little machine pasted with grocery notices and unexplained call-numbers. She keyed in, called the house in Newhope, the number she had arranged for emergency.

“Jim?” she called. And again: “Jim!”

There was no response.

Her hand began to shake on the board. She clenched it and leaned her mouth against it, considering in her desperation how far she could trust Itavvy or Dain or anyone else in ITAK. “Jim,” she said, pleading, and swore.

There was still no response. JIM, she keyed through, to leave a written message, STAND BY. EMERGENCY.

She put the next one through to Isan Tel’s estate, where a few managerial azi kept the fiction of a working estate, unsupervised azi and a horde of guard. STAND BY. EMERGENCY. EMERGENCY.

And a third one to the Labour Registry. EMERGENCY, TEL CONTRACT. PLEASE STAND BY.

None used her name. She dared not. She rose and took two of the men with her, walked out past Merry’s unit to the road, and up it to the place where they had left the Warriors. They were there, fretting and anxious. “All safe,” she told them. To each she gave two pieces of the dried fruit, which they greatly relished. “I need one-unit to stay with me, two for a message,” she said.

“Yess,” they agreed, speaking together.

“Just tell Mother what’s happened. Tell her I’m coming to Newhope, but I’m slow. I need help, blue-hive azi, weapons. Fast.”

There was an exchange of tones. “Good,” one said. “Go now?”

“Go,” she said; and two darted off with eye-blurring speed, lost at once in the night and the hedges. The other remained, shadowed her with slow-motion steps as she and her guards returned to the house.

“Merry,” she said, when she had come to his group, where they huddled on the porch, tired men with rifles braced on knees toward the azi barracks. Merry gathered himself up, haggard, the light from the door showing darkly on his wounded cheek, his blond hair plastered with sweat and dust. “One of the two of us,” she said hoarsely, “has to get the truck back after those men. You’ve land sense. Can you do it? Are you able to? I need you back; I rely on you too much.”

Pride shone in the azi’s eyes. “I’ll get back,” he said; she had never imagined such a look of intensity from stolid Merry. It approached passion. Such expression, she saw suddenly, rested not alone in his face, but in those of others. She did not understand it. It had something to do with the tapes, she thought, and yet it was no less real, and disturbed her.