What were Kris and her tiny convoy driving into?
''Lock and load,'' Kris ordered as they came in sight of the station. That made a few troopers' day. Tom left his rifle in the scabbard hanging from the door.
''Can't use it and drive.''
It had been a successful farm, if three large barns said, anything about its pre-volcanic wealth. A big house held pride of place facing a central yard. Other houses and outbuildings turned the station into a small village. There was no one in view.
Kris ordered the other trucks to halt and go on over watch, then explained that meant them watching, rifles ready, while she had Tom drive slowly in. Maybe she spotted motion behind a window. Maybe the barrel of a gun protruding out a door. With a fatalistic grimace, Kris ordered Tom to stop at the gate, dismounted, and started to walk the rest of the way in.
Activating her mike, Kris announced, ''I am Ensign Longknife of the Society Navy,'' when she was a hundred meters from the nearest outbuilding. Her voice boomed from her truck's loudspeaker. ''My rigs have food. You went off net several months ago. Do you require aid?''
A barn door opened; three men slipped out before closing it, then started walking toward Kris. At the big house, several women appeared on the porch, two with babies in arms. They also made for the center of the commons. Kris did, too.
They met in the middle. A tall, bald man held out a hand to Kris. ''I'm Jason McDowell. My father started this station.'' He waved at the thin, graying woman leading the other women. ''This is my wife, Latishia.''
Kris shook his hand, then the woman's when she joined the group. ''I have food packages for you. I was hoping to leave about a month's supply. How many people do you have here?'' The man shook his head. ''A hundred or so, but a month's worth of food is too much. They'll just come back and take it,'' he said bitterly.
''We could hide some, Jason,'' his wife whispered. ''They'd make us tell. Someone would give it out. They'd make us.''
The wife looked away but nodded agreement.
''I guess we can come out here once a week,'' Kris offered, not really wanting the workload. Others now came from the barns, houses, and outbuildings; the number kept growing. Kris had expected to see guns. There weren't any.
''Before I can leave the food, I'll need every person's Identacard to verify the delivery.''
''Don't have any. They took ‘em.'' Jason dropped the words like lumps of hot iron.
''Does that mean you can't help us?'' Latishia asked, her hands knotting her apron. The two silent women beside her clutched their children.
''We didn't drive all this way to tell hungry folks we can't feed them because of a paperwork snafu,'' Kris said. And Lieutenant Pearson can finish her policies in hell.
She chinned her mike. ''Tommy, bring' em in.''
Still, losing Identacards was no minor matter. For the last month, these people could have had their bank accounts emptied, their personalities misused on the interplanetary web. Anything could have happened to them while they were off net and unable to say a word in their defense. This did not sound like the work of local hooligans. ''With no IDs, I'll need photographs of everyone,'' Kris said, then ordered Tom to break out a camera.
''Brother, if they've got a commlink, I could check our bank account,'' one of the men with Jason said.
''You do that, Jerry.''
''Tom, see that this man gets a link to the net.'' Tom took the flood of orders with a grin and a ''You got it, ma'am.''
''Can you get everyone out here?'' Kris asked.
''My mother is bedridden,'' Jason said. ''I guess we could bring her down here, but…''
''I'll go see her. I'm just trying to keep the damn auditors from flaying me too badly when this is over.''
''I understand. We're in business…'' Jason stopped, glanced around, ended up staring at the muddy yard. ''We were.''
''We will be again,'' his wife said, offering a hand that he flinched away from. As a commissioned officer, Kris ought to leave this well enough alone. Still, Judith would never have let Kris get away in therapy with dodging what these two were running from, and Kris owed Judith her life. In the mud room of the house, Kris shucked her poncho before taking the stairs slowly to the third floor. The house was made of wood, finely polished by work and use.
In a bedroom hung with the needlework of years, a woman lay alone on an oversize bed. She moaned in pain. With three quick steps, Kris knelt by the bed, lifted the covers from the old woman. Her weathered skin showed the blue and yellow discoloration of a several-weeks-old beating.
''I've got a corpsman in the convoy. Can I have her take a look at your mother?''
''We've done what we could for Mother,'' the man said, eyes flinching from the woman.
''Do you have painkillers? They took ours,'' his wife said.
''Tom, send up the corpsman. Have her home on my commlink.''
''Yes, ma'am.''
Kris turned from where she knelt, looked up at the couple. ''Are you going to tell me what happened here? Everybody told me when I got orders to Olympia, watch your back. Everybody carries a gun. Our Colonel doesn't want us on the streets at night. Too many guns. Well, I haven't seen a gun in this compound.'' Kris pointed at a gun rack hanging on the wall beside a window—empty. ''Where are your guns?''
''Gone,'' the man said. ''They're just gone. Leave it at that, Navy.''
''My husband went to the fields,'' the woman began softly.
The man turned on his wife, his eyes begging her for silence. She met his eyes with her own, level, unflinching. When she didn't turn away, he fled to the farthest corner of the room. ''A farm isn't something that you take care of when you feel like it, not if you're like Jason and his family. His pa carved this station out of a grant. It was swamp when they came here fifty years ago. They drained it. The pumps have to be checked. Now especially. And the pumps are close to the swamps.''
''There were five of us,'' Jason said to the floor. ''All armed. We knew that''—he failed to find a word—''those men were out there. We figured we'd see them coming.'' Jason looked up at Kris. ''We're good shots. Pa had us practice every week, and there are things we locals call a buffalo in the swamp that can trample a crop into the mud. We're good at hunting them.
''They came out of a ditch. Must have been breathing through hollow reeds or something. They had the drop on us before we even knew they were there. If we'd gone for our guns, they'd have slaughtered us.'' The man looked up at his wife. His voice choked. ''Honey, I wish to hell we'd fought.''
Now the woman went to her husband's side, gave him a shoulder as he sobbed. Kris had rarely seen men cry. On the bed, the old woman struggled to find a comfortable place, moaned. Kris stood, her hand going to the butt of her pistol. There were things she'd joined the Navy to take care of. At the moment, the local bad guys were two up on her. She didn't like the score.
As her man wept, the wife continued the story, her voice a low monotone that screamed, Wrong, by its very softness. ''The trucks stopped four hundred yards out. About a dozen got out. Any of them that weren't one of ours, we had them in our sights. Then someone shouted. ‘Woman, I got a pistol at your husband's head. You have your men and womenfolk drop their guns, and everyone's gonna come out of this alive. People start shooting, and he dies first.' ''
''I told you to shoot.'' The man's voice was begging for understanding, forgiveness. ''I shouted at you, screamed for you to shoot.''