The human woman made no sound or motion as Retov Varnak laid her ungently down on top of the steel autopsy table. Picking up one arm by the limp wrist and settling it into place, he tightened a leather strap around it. She didn't move as he did the same with her other wrist, then her ankle. Her head turned to one side, her eyes fixed blankly on the wall. It was only her breath that gave away that she was still alive.

He took hold of her face. His grip was not as hard nor cruel as Karfa's, but there was no compassion in it. Clinically he straightened her head and then looked down into her eyes. She looked back through a gaze that held no more life or intelligence than empty windows. Using his small light, he only produced the most sluggish shift of her pupils. Making a disappointed sound, Retov let her head drop back to the side. Swapping the light for a pair of small scissors, he quickly cut through the rough sack-dress and threw the pieces aside, leaving her naked.

As Retov turned away to the nearby tray of tools he'd set up, Karfa strode in, his anticipation and pleasure all but vibrating from him.

"Retov, where are we?"

"Nearly ready," Retov said. "I just need to finish the injection, then get the brain scan and cameras online."

"Good!" Karfa bent low over Ray and repeated his assistant's earlier action of straightening her head and looking in her eyes. A bit of disappointment entered his voice. "I fear what little she had left this morning has gone as well."

"Her vitals and her reflexes are showing catatonia," Retov said. "The brain scan might show more but I doubt it."

"I should have waited," Karfa said with disappointment. "Her spirit was much less than I thought it was."

"Apes," Retov said with a shrug. "Of course they're weaker than we are, in body as well as in spirit. With any luck, we'll get more with her talents soon, and you'll know better."

"Yes, with luck." Karfa cheered up at this prospect, and began to whistle as he turned away from her to look over his tools.

Retov moved over and set a filled syringe on the tray beside Karfa, before turning to a control panel to turn on the scans and recording equipment. Satisfying himself that he had everything he needed, Karfa picked up the syringe full of paralytic. It would keep her breathing and her heart beating, but the rest of her muscle control would be stolen from her. He wondered at this point if it even mattered; no one was home to feel anything. She may as well be dead.

"Well, little Mouse, shall we start?" he asked as he turned toward her.

Her eyes were no longer fixed and empty, and glittered in the harsh lights shining overhead. Retov had switched on the scan and the holographic display floating in the air above them blinked into being. The brain upon it was a flaming rainbow of reds, yellows, greens, and whites that was almost too bright to look at. Retov, already working to turn on the camera and other recording equipment, didn't notice the scan.

Karfa wobbled on his feet, the syringe in his hand sagging and nearly falling out of his grip, before he firmed it. For that brief instant his gaze had gone just as empty as hers had been a moment before, then it sharpened. He looked first at the Ape, her eyes once again empty and lifeless. The scan above her head showed a brain that was mostly devoid of activity. Only a few tiny star clusters of yellow, and a faint nebula of red in the brain stem, remained.

Karfa's eyes shifted to his assistant as he took a lumbering, clumsy step forward. The needle slid into Retov's neck and almost at once the assistant folded to the ground. The tray of tools clattered as he hit the base, rolling it away. Karfa's hand seemed to waver out over where the tray had been, before he simply dropped the now empty syringe on the ground.

He looked at the unconscious woman on the table for a long moment, then turned in an unsteady arc toward the tray, which had come to rest only a few feet away. A step, then two, then three, and his fingers began to quest over it. He knocked aside a nasty looking bone saw and some kind of serrated scoop, both of which went clattering to the floor. Then his hand lifted once again and closed on a large set of pointed forceps.

He clumsily shoved the tray out of his way, more tools clattering as he almost fell to his knees beside Retov. His fist clenched around the forceps, closing their jaws tightly together into one silver spear.

Retov stared up at him, body slack, breath ragged. His eyes were keenly alive and bright with horror in the moment before that silver spear sank deep into one, punching with force through the back of the socket and into Retov's brain.

Karfa struggled back to his feet, gripping first one hand, then the other on the edge of the table. After a moment of finding balance, he reached out and began to undo the straps holding the human woman to the table.


"We cannot keep doing this," Jondell said in a low and distracted voice, one that spoke more to himself than the others.

After arriving in those flooded tunnels Parry had lost count of the days. It was easy to do down below ground, which is where they most often found themselves. The Akmanti, as the Mandarin Order, were a conglomeration of Cats scattered across Kilrah, its colonies, and its fleets. Most often, one member did not know the true identity of any of the others. The closest thing to a single leader the Akmanti had ever approached was embodied in Ara Chaz. With her gone, it was now her brother, Zuhn; and he had to watch his tread very carefully.

Messages were sent and information gathered through the portions of Ara's shadow network inside Kilrathi Intelligence itself but much of this network had collapsed when Ara had died. It had kept as much of the Akmanti protected as was possible but at the cost of all but isolating every cell and making it far more difficult to pool data or even communicate. That Parry, Jondell, and Diane were human only added to the difficulty of hiding them on Kilrah or anywhere in the home system.

Since that first day, they had been moved half a dozen times. Elie Kaan, one of the only permanent faces they saw, had been trying to get them moved to an old mining colony on one of the moons, but making arrangements had been glacial and painstaking at best.

Parry supposed it was hard to arrange anything when you were believed to be dead to everyone, even most of the Akmanti.

Though Elie Kaan was in hiding as much as they were, and there was a regular rotation of other Cats either also in hiding or helping to keep them secure, the three humans understandably kept mostly to each other's company. They understood and appreciated that the resistance here had saved their lives, but their motivations for having done so still remained unclear.

Their current home for the moment was a set of old catacombs that dated back (according to Elie) two or three hundred years. They had a window of three or four days here before they would have to be moved again. If Elie had her way, it would be off-world.

If the humans had any say about it, the move would have been into the cockpits of some fighters, with the coordinates of the prison their friends were being held in plugged into their HUDS.

But where to then? Parry wondered as she watched Jondell. Only a few palm lights were scattered around the large area they used as a meeting place, the light they cast multiplying the shadows rather than banishing them. Her WC's face was thick with several days of beard, and his face seemed more drawn each day.

Even in fighters, even if they managed to get their people out of a well-secured POW camp, what then? Elie had been sharing what intel she was able to get about Earth and the Fleets but it was thin and horrifying. If her reports could be believed- and after the massacre of the First Fleet, Parry found it disturbingly easy to believe them- Confed forces had been steadily retreating from every front and theatre of war. They were working to evacuate colonies on the fringes before the Kilrathi arrived but more jump gates than just Junior had been scuttled.

Every gate destroyed bought Sol and her colonies more time as the Cats had to navigate long swathes of formerly Confed territory before even being able to sniff Sol, but it also spelled doom for those trapped here. Were they able to get off Kilrah and head back toward Earth they, too, would have to travel the hard way. They would arrive months after the Cats even in the most advanced of ships they could steal.

"We have little choice," Diane said to Jondell. "For the moment our options are limited. If Elie is able to get us to that mining camp we should be secure for some time."

"Secure to do what though?" Parry asked, hating how defeatist she sounded even to herself. Jon nodded his agreement.

"Exactly. While I appreciate the Akmanti for saving our lives I still don't understand what they were saved for. Every shred of news we're getting only gets more and more dire; in a few months the Cat Fleets will be at Sol. As far as the Kilrathi are concerned they've won this war. What does the resistance gain by rescuing us? They don't need us. The situation would be the same if they'd just left us to be executed, except that Kaan would still be 'alive' and able to work far more freely."

Diane had talked to the Cats far more often than Parry or Jon had. Partly because she was the senior officer of the three, with the most training and experience; partly because Merlin's death seemed to have incensed her, driving her to become more involved in what happened to them than Elie Kaan seemed to want.

If it was up to the Cat, we'd know nothing at all. We'd just be shuffled around. As long as we're fed and quiet, she'd be happy.

"Zuhn," Diane told him. "Zuhn's loyalists and the Akmanti are hoping to put him on the throne in his brother's place."

"And that involves us, how?" Parry asked.

"Surc openly assassinated Sarn with the support of many, because it could be spun that his father was surrendering," Diane replied. "Kilrathi do not do 'surrender'. It's one of the most dishonorable things a Cat can do."

"Right, but Sarn wasn't surrendering. Signing a peace treaty isn't surrender- "

"Doesn't matter. So long as Surc could spin it that his father was surrendering, his murdering Sarn became an honorable act. Zuhn doesn't have the option of murdering Surc, at least not himself. While he has quite the following as well, he has no way to spin the situation as Surc getting ready to surrender- they're winning. Surc needs to die but it needs to be done very carefully."

Parry felt a hot fire in her chest as she caught a glimmering of why they might have been rescued.

"They want one of us to do it," she said, unable to keep her voice from revealing her anger. "If Surc is killed by an Ape-…no. No, this is bullshit."

"Bullshit?" Diane asked, her voice level. She seemed more surprised that Parry was angry than anything else.

Parry wanted to tell her that it was bullshit because Ara had used her the exact same way. Ara had walked Parry through her 'assassination' in order to protect her family from dishonor and give humanity a false hero; Crazy Jane had 'walked' her through capturing the Prince; Zuhn and Elie had 'walked' them through their rescue and made it seem as if they had died, and all for what? So they could 'walk' them through Surc's assassination too?

Of course, she couldn't say those things. They may technically be POWs, the war may be ending with them on the losing side, they may never see home or another Confed face again- but the truth of what had happened with Ara Chaz was classified information. Jon didn't know it and, as far as Parry knew, neither did Diane. Though the chances were almost nil that if she spilled she'd ever actually face the music, the hope that they might still get out of this somehow was all she had left to cling to. If she told them, it was as good as admitting to herself that this was it. They were going to die here, humanity was going to be wiped out, and there was nothing she could do about any of it.

"Yes, bullshit," Parry said furiously. "If one of us kills Surc it just gives the rest of the Cats even more fuel to want to destroy us completely. They're already winning. If we gain the throne for Zuhn what benefit is it to humanity? Or us?"

"Well, you'll be happy to know then that we are not expected to assassinate Surc," Diane said. "And for those precise reasons. No, they saved us because if Zuhn gets the throne he plans to stop the war, and to get the rest of Kilrah on board with that he needs concessions."

"You mean he needs us to surrender," Jon said glumly. "Humanity."

"He needs bargaining chips, for both sides. Earth surrenders certain territories and considerations to Kilrah, in return they get us back and the Cats don't wipe us out to the last babe in cradle, as is Surc's plan."

"If the Cat fleets are already closing in on Sol they may surrender anyway," Jon said.

"With Surc on the throne it won't matter," Diane told him. "He'll be satisfied with nothing less than our genocide. With Zuhn on the throne- "

She broke off as they heard boots crunching in the dirt. All three of them straightened as Elie and four other Cats strode in.

"We need to move you again," Elie said without preamble. "I was just messaged that someone seems to be sniffing around the entrance to the old city, where we smuggled you into the tunnels. The olgamek may be coming up our back trail."

The olgamek, Parry had learned, were the Kilrathi equivalent of a police force. It was they that were most likely to find the four refugees so long as they stayed on Kilrah.

"Do we have sufficient arrangements to get to that mining colony?" Diane asked. Elie shook her head.

"I may have a promising lead but it will not solidify for another three days, at least. There are- "

She broke off and turned her head as another Cat could be heard running up the tunnel behind them. Every hand in the room seemed to instantly reach for sidearms that, in the humans' case, didn't exist.

The Cat appeared, puffing and out of breath, shaking his head. "Kaan, it's not olgamek."

"Who?" she demanded.

"It was Nedris Karfa Ikkled," the Cat replied, still trying to catch his air. "He- "

Parry had not imagined that a Cat could go pale before, but Elie's pink nose did indeed seem to go a notable shade of gray, and she hissed reflexively. Perhaps sensing what she would ask, the new Cat shook his head again.

"He- he's dead- "

"Good work to our sentry," Elie said tersely. "But if one Nedris has found- "

"N-no, you don't understand. The sentry didn't kill him," the Cat told her. "The Nedris was wandering around just outside the hatch to the tunnels, with a human in his arms. Sentry thought he was drunk, or injured. The moment the sentry approached him he did collapse. Dropped dead right where he was standing."

The Kilrathi and the humans both seemed to snatch on to different parts of this information.

"Dropped dead? Did the sentry move him?" Elie asked.

"Human? Carrying a human?" Diane asked, stepping forward as Jon and Parry exchanged looks. One of theirs?

The messenger ignored Diane. "Yes, he was moved inside. So was the human."

"What human?" Diane asked, visibly irritated as she stopped at Elie's side. "Are they alive?"

"I don't know 'what human'," the messenger said with a wrinkle to his snout. "You all look alike to me. It is alive, or was when the report was made. I can tell you no more than that."

"Have the human brought here," Diane told Elie, who gave her a sidelong look, and then nodded at the messenger.

"If it's still alive have it taken to Dr. Skibbik, you know where. Karfa's body as well." She looked back at Diane as the messenger took off again. "This could be a trap of some kind. Dr. Skibbik is one of ours, loyal to the core to Zuhn. She'll examine this human to make sure it is not hiding an explosive or a listening device somehow. Same with Karfa, and then she'll discreetly dispose of him. The human will be brought to us. We still have to move you. This is too much activity; we cannot risk it."

"What is a Nedris?" Parry asked. Elie gave another look of distaste.

"A…spy, of a sort. Your kind have them as well. They are ones who were lost in the Fold and brought back."

"The what?" she stared at Elie, then at Diane and Jondell, both of whom looked just as surprised.

"You mean the wormhole?" Diane asked Elie. "Your people have managed to bring back ships that were lost in a jump?"

"So have yours," Elie said coolly.

"Not possible, the Confed wouldn't keep such information secret-" Jon began, baffled. Elie fixed him with a look.

"Your Confed is not as clean-handed as you would imagine, Ape. Both my people and yours have brought ships back after being lost in the 'jump' as you call it. Most dead, but rarely one is brought back that can be salvaged. They seem to acquire certain…abilities. Or at least that's what reports from Intelligence say."

"What kind of abilities?" Parry asked, as confused as Jon was. Why would the Confed hide it if they had somehow had learned how to bring ships vanished in the jump back?

Elie rolled a shoulder. "The ability to see things from a distance, to move things without contact. I know what the reports say but I give no heed to such lunacy. This is mere fabrication, something that was made up to lend superstitious awe to the Nedris and more credence to their intel. No. The truth of the matter is they are just highly intelligent and very well-trained spies. Karfa Ikkled is the most talented of their number. Whether or not he's dead or how doesn't matter- it seems he was on our backtrail and we cannot know for certain which of the other Nedris he may have told, or even if he reported it to the Emperor."

"Surely if he was carrying one of ours-" Diane started, but Elie was already shaking her head.

"A ruse. A way to get us to bring him in rather than kill him on sight."

"But he's dead," Parry said. "If that was his plan it doesn't seem to have gone very well."

"Yes," Elie said thoughtfully. "But we still cannot risk it. I have arrangements to move you to another location complete within the hour. Be ready to go."