It was plain what had happened, as plain as if she'd witnessed it herself. Parry's eyes slowly shifted from Merlin's dead body to Shadow and Reaper's faces. The Cats had thrown the grenade and Merlin had jumped on it to protect the others. He'd done so without hesitation or thought, and by the time any of them could really process what was about to happen it had been done and over.

Sound had momentarily vacated the universe but now it returned. Her neck still burned slightly where Ray had torn off her dog tags. Given everything else that had happened it seemed an odd thing to focus on, but her mind refused to shift away from it: her neck burned, because Ray had torn off her dog tags.

Without dog tags it would take them longer to realize who she was. Not forever. Not even a few hours, but a bit longer. A few breaths and heartbeats and minutes longer to more fully appreciate their situation.

Anger filled her. Anger at Ray for insuring she had those few minutes, those few eternal minutes to suffer even more, instead of letting it end quick like it had with Merlin. Then she became angry at herself that she was angry with Ray. Then she realized numbness was easier and stopped feeling much of anything. It was comforting…for now, anyway.

The Cats shoved both her and Ray forward, toward the others. Rafe looked demonic with the gashes and dried blood covering the side of his face. He was puffing like a bull, on his knees and bent awkwardly forward by one Kilrathi while another held a sidearm to his head.

Shadow had been pulled back with the others, and like them driven down to her knees. Her eyes were still focused on Merlin and there was an intensity behind them that their artificiality couldn't account for. It was as if she believed she could revive him from the dead by sheer force of her will alone.

Jondell had gone silent. Parry didn't look at him as she was roughly hauled over with the rest of them and forced down to her knees. Ray made a gritted sound of pain as they pushed her down as well. The knee of her prosthetic made an ominous creaking sound and seemed to deform.

One of the Cats, a burly fellow with a dusty, ragged, dark mane, squinted at them and then spoke in broken, accented English.

"Who is of most highest ranking?"

No one spoke. His eyes simmered and glowered.

"Who is of most highest ranking?" he demanded again. "Who is in charge? Who leads you?"

Silence.

He uttered a Kilrathi oath, impatience more than anger in it, and gestured at one of his men. This one came forward to the far end of the line, where Briggs was kneeling. As Parry watched his path with her eyes she realized something- the Prince was nowhere in sight.

Did he betray us? Or did he get away? Is he hiding?

The Cat who approached Briggs reached out toward her neck. She spat at him and he recoiled slightly before lifting a clawed hand to strike her. The burly Cat- no doubt this unit's commander- barked at him, and reluctantly he lowered his hand again. Visibly irritated, the Cat gripped the front of her uniform and then tugged out her dog tags, snapping them off her neck. He then went to Haleh, but found nothing. Then to Jon. One by one, he yanked off the dog tags of everyone wearing a set.

Parry and Ray were the last two. The Cat yanked off Ray's dog tags. The motion nearly hauled her off balance and Parry instinctively started in an attempt to catch her. The next thing she was tasting blood and found she was lying face down in the dirt. Her cheek and jaw was on fire from the blow the Cat had given her.

He hauled her back upright, a sneer of disdain more than aggression on his face. She glared at him, forcing herself not to draw back as he began searching for her own dog tags. Finding nothing, he turned away and began to rifle through the tags while the Cat in charge paced the line of prisoners, squinting at each intently in turn.

Halfway down the line he reached Diane. She was not looking at him, her gaze still fixed intently on Merlin. He was just about to step past and to the next prisoner, Tinkerbell, when the one with the dog tags hurried over to him.

"This one," he said, gesturing at Diane. He looked as felinely self-satisfied as a housecat who had gotten into the cream. "And see who she is."

He displayed her dog tags to his officer, who regarded them and then grinned. He straightened up and all but purred.

"You are Colonel Rochester," he said smoothly. "You are known, Shadow."

For the first time, Diane's eyes shifted up from Merlin's body and her gaze fixed on the Cat. There was a look in those eyes that chilled Parry even at a sideways glance. It wasn't a look of fear or resignation. It was a cold look, an almost emotionless look. It was a look that promised things far more horrible than mere pain or death.

In the wake of that look, the Cat's own smugness faltered a little. Just a bit, and he schooled it almost immediately, but it had.

Diane said nothing, just looked at him. Sniffing a little, the Cat looked toward Merlin. His smugness was back, thick on his face.

"Dare I hope?" he asked. The fellow who'd taken the dog tags went over and after a moment's hunting, pulled another set from the mess that had once been the most skilled pilot in the Confed fleets. Jon revolted again slightly, and the Cat closest to him gripped his shoulder tightly to stop him. Parry could see its claws sinking in past cloth.

The officer took the tags and after a quick glance at them, thrust them into the air and bellowed something in Kilrah. The rest of them roared and cheered, and Parry's gut roiled with sudden angry nausea.

Ray suddenly was whispering to her, her voice all but lost in the loud ruckus. Parry strained to hear it without leaning closer to her; she didn't want to redraw their attention.

"You're strong, Parry. I know you are. Trust that, and trust the Prince."

Her eyes flicked toward Ray but the Cats were quieting now and she didn't dare reply. Ray's faith in her only increased the nausea. She wasn't strong, couldn't Ray see that? She wasn't really a hero. The real hero was lying dead just a few feet away while these bastard Cats celebrated. Soon, they would all be dead too. She just prayed they killed her before they killed Rafe or Ray. She didn't want to see that happen to them. She didn't want to see that and know it was her fault.

Her fight with Chiv suddenly came back to her mind, with a clarity that made her stomach roil and her back ache furiously. She could almost smell his breath, feel his claws raking against her shoulders, hear the gurgle as her fingers clenched deep into his neck.

She didn't think killing Chiv made her a hero. She had done so out of sheer desperation, an instinct of survival. Was it heroism to save your own life? She didn't think it was, but killing Chiv- she'd done that on her own. She hadn't been guided through it by Ara, hadn't been escorted past it by some well-plotted scheme to make her appear as some well-trained assassin. She hadn't been rescued at the last minute by someone else. She'd done that. Killing Chiv; she'd done that.

At the same time she wanted to tear the memory away from her, she clung to it. It was her victory, damn it. Hers. Parry. She did it, and if she had to, she'd do it again.

As she refocused she realized the Cats now seemed to be paying the most attention to Diane and Jondell. It appeared they had put together the surnames and realized that Jon was of relation to Merlin. Though she couldn't see them, there was a hum of engines and disturbed dust in the air. Transports were landing somewhere behind where they knelt.

Their hands were bound behind them now, and they were being forced to their feet, weapons trained on their faces. Ray had a harder time of it, her prosthetic either out of joint or outright damaged. As she wobbled and staggered on a knee that would not support her, one of the Cats impatiently cuffed her.

Parry surged forward before she even knew she was going to move, a furious curse on her lips. The Cat holding her hauled her back with a snarl. His hand wound around her neck to hold her, and she could feel the prick of claws against her skin.

"Another move and I will lay your gullet open," he hissed low in her ear.

"She has a prosthetic leg," she said, her voice nearly as much a hiss as his had been. "The knee isn't working, can't you bastards see that? She's not doing it on purpose!"

"She will be missing more limbs if you do not behave," he replied, and gave her a single sharp shake. As the Cat wrestling with Ray lifted a hand to cuff her again, however, the one with Parry growled at him.

"Carry her, you damn oaf. Can't you see her leg is broken?"

The other spat out a curse but lifted Ray and flung her over his shoulder instead. Parry had no doubt in that instance that if they had not been instructed to bring them in alive, he would have just shot her and been done with the hassle.

They were taken aboard one of three separate transports. Parry, Ray, Rafe, Blade, Haleh, and Tink were together. The others were brought aboard the second transport. Just before she was pushed aboard, Parry could see that Jon and Diane had been separated from everyone else and were the only two brought aboard the third one. As they disappeared from view, Parry wondered if she'd ever see either of the two again.

They have Merlin Killdare's son and second in command. If there's any negotiation for any of us there will be none for them. They will be publically executed. We might all be, but they certainly will be. If they knew who I was, I'd be right there with them.

Her own identity hung like a weight over her head. Only Ray's quick thinking and Merlin's death had saved her. The Cats had been too distracted with their glee over his death and in capturing Diane to give much more than a cursory glance thus far at the rest of them. Dog tags or no, it would only take a single Cat who'd seen the vid of her taking Zuhn hostage looking at her longer than a moment or two, to put everything together.

Zuhn. Where was Zuhn, anyway? She'd not seen hide nor hair of him since they'd been forced to abandon the campsite. She had no idea if he was dead, alive, captured or free. All she knew was that he was not here now.

Was he the reason they were all now prisoners? Had he betrayed them?

Ray had said to trust him. Parry trusted Ray, but couldn't help the nagging feeling he'd betrayed them. She didn't know what had happened that had put Ray and the Prince together near the brig just before the attack, and without knowing she was riding on Ray's word alone. That should have been enough…

No, it is enough. It's enough. Ray trusts him and I trust Ray. That's it. That's all she wrote.

They arrived aboard a cruiser not too long after take-off, and were almost immediately separated. Parry struggled with herself not to fight against her captors as she watched first Rafe, then Ray taken away from her, the latter slung once again like a sack of meat over a Cat's shoulder. Ray managed to lift her head enough to meet her eyes as she was carried past, and Parry could have sworn she almost felt the other woman hug her.

It'll be ok, Parry. You're strong. I know you are. Don't give up.

It was like reliving a nightmare. Parry was taken to be examined by clinical, uncaring doctors; the only difference this time was that none were human.

She was asked her name and rank, and could taste bile in the back of her throat. If she refused to answer, they'd look at her more closely and someone was bound to recognize her. If she gave a false one, only a few moments' research would show she was lying and they'd look at her more closely- and with the same result.

The numbness she'd managed to immerse herself in back on the planet had vanished now, and she could feel the fear taking hold of her again. No matter what she did or did not say, this all ended the same way. Her only real choice was to face it as a coward…or with courage.

As she had done on that long ago day on the Muhs OhDann, Parry lifted her chin slightly and replied, "Mazurek, Parry, 2nd Lieutenant Confed SFT."

The medic who'd asked at first did not react much. He simply started to input the name into a datapad he was holding. After a moment or two, however, the activity around her began to halt as the Cats started to process what she'd said. The medic slowly looked back up at her, lips tense.

"Repeat that," he demanded.

"Mazurek, Parry, 2nd Lieutenant Confed SFT," she said again, meeting his eyes as if daring him to speak, or act, or attack.

His lips tensed a fraction more, baring the ends of his teeth. They glimmered against the fur of his chin like infinitesimal chips of diamond. One of his assistants hurried over and whispered in his ear, and the medic nodded. The guards who had been standing nearby to keep the prisoner secure suddenly grabbed her with a roughness that, while not unexpected, jarred her. As they bound up her arms the medic leaned close and all but snarled in her face.

"By evening your skin will be pinned to the Captain's wall, murderer."

The abrupt courage she'd found to reveal who she was suddenly bloomed into a reckless bravado. "Ara Chaz herself couldn't kill me, Cat. I'll eat your Captain for breakfast."

The Guards hauled her off the bench where she had been sitting and they slammed her with brute force to the floor. The impact was enough to knock her breath out but she took a lot of the blow on her chin. Her teeth snapped together and her entire skull and spine seemed to ring with bright light and blinding pain. Reluctantly the light died away and the world came back into focus. Drawing a breath was like trying to inhale through a tiny straw, and the fact that at least one of the Cats had most of his weight on her back was not helping the process.

"You are fortunate, ka'astika," the Guard leaning on her said, bitterness so thick in his voice she could almost imagine it running like drool from his chin. "His Greatness was able to escape you Apes, and we retrieved him unharmed before we found you and your kin running like the richalva you are. He will be able to witness your skinning personally. He will relish every moment of it, devour every microsecond of pain like the sweetest candy, after what you did to Her Grace. He will make sure it is slow, excruciating."

He let out a rough, dry, mirthless chuckle. "Or perhaps you are not fortunate after all."

So, Zuhn was alive it seemed. He had taken off and been found by his own people, and now was returning safely home. Dark hate boiled for a moment behind her eyes at the thought, seeming to fill up the spaces in her still ringing skull as they hauled her back upright and marched her out of the room.

Trust the Prince, Ray had said. As much as Parry desperately wanted to, how could she? The man had abandoned them the moment things got hairy and rushed to the safety of his own people. He knew they'd welcome him back with open arms, bring him back home-

Where his brother who is now Emperor knows he's a traitor and will heap a fate worse than death upon him.

Perhaps Zuhn thought he could avoid that? Perhaps he had enough of his own loyals to threaten Surc's power?

Or perhaps he just did it out of cowardice, and he'll just 'disappear' again. His own people, those who aren't aware he's a traitor, will hardly keep him under guard. He'll slip away, vanish somewhere off in the galaxy, and be perfectly safe while the rest of us are tortured and murdered and our species wiped out for his brother's amusement.

Parry didn't know what to think. She didn't know what to believe. Ray had said to trust him and Parry clung to that like she had clung to Ray's 'ghost' back on the Muhs OhDann- but her head ached and her thoughts whirled and she couldn't help the thoughts that kept ringing through her skull.

The thought that he'd done it to save his own neck. He'd seen an opportunity to get out of this with his hide intact and he took it. He abandoned them and now Merlin was dead, they were all prisoners, and she, Jondell, and Diane were going to die in the most horribly painful and humiliating way the Cats could come up with- and he'd left them to it. He'd saved himself and left them to it.

And the thought that she was terrified if the time and similar opportunity came for her…she'd do the exact same reprehensible thing.