For a long moment Holloway held the glare, the muscles of his throat and cheeks working, but his reddish color slowly beginning to fade. Finally, with a long and thoroughly exasperated sigh, he turned back to Melinda. "I'd have you court-martialed, Doctor," he said, tossing the stylus in disgust onto the desk, "except that that's what you technically are anyway. All right—let's hear it."

"Yes, sir," Melinda said, turning on her plate and setting it on the desk where Holloway could see it. "To begin with, Prr't-zevisti seems to represent a stage of Zhirrzh existence that has no real analogue in the human life cycle. At the point of physical death, their spirits—or personalities, or whatever—are drawn back to and anchored at the site of an organ that had been earlier removed and preserved. These fsss organs are taken from beneath the brain when the Zhirrzh are children—that's where that scar at the back of the skull comes from. The organs are then stored in huge pyramid-shaped structures maintained by the various Zhirrzh families."

"Ghost retirement homes," Takara murmured, hitching his chair closer to the desk for a better look at the plate.

"Something like that," Melinda agreed. "Except that they're called Elders, not ghosts. Anyway, it seems that if you then take a slice from one of these fsss organs, the Elder attached to it can move back and forth between the main organ and the cutting. Supposedly instantaneously, even if the two pieces are light-years apart."

"I'll be damned," Takara said quietly. "There it is, Cass. That's their instantaneous communication method."

"Maybe," Holloway said, frowning suspiciously at Melinda. "And he just told you all this?"

"Most of it," Melinda said. "Some parts I had to work out on my own because of the language barrier."

"So it's really just speculation."

"There's very little speculation to it, Colonel," Melinda said tartly. "The bottom line is that Prr't-zevisti thinks this war is a terrible mistake, and he wants very much to get it stopped. That's why he opened a dialogue with me in the first place, and why he's been so candid about himself and his people."

"What does he mean, a mistake?" Takara put in. "Did they think we were someone else?"

Melinda shook her head. "It was the communication package the Jutland transmitted to them. Apparently, radio waves play havoc with the Zhirrzh sense of balance and also cause tremendous pain to Elders via their fsss organs or cuttings. So much so that radio transmitters were used once—just once—in a Zhirrzh war. They're still called Elderdeath weapons."

For a minute both men were silent. "No," Holloway said at last. "It's all very interesting, but it doesn't hold together. You might be able to explain that first battle with the Jutland by saying they thought the contact package was an attack, but that doesn't explain their subsequent invasion of the Commonwealth."

"Prr't-zevisti doesn't understand that either," Melinda said. "Though he does concede the Zhirrzh have always moved swiftly to crush races they thought had attacked them without provocation."

"They certainly seem experienced at it," Holloway said sourly. "So what does Prr't-zevisti suggest we do? Set him free to go proclaim peace to his people?"

"More or less," Melinda said. "Though I'm not sure I would have put it quite so cynically."

"Being cynical runs in my family," Holloway countered.

"Being cynical is also part of our job, Doctor," Takara added. "I agree with Colonel Holloway that this Elderdeath thing is intriguing. But with comm lasers next to useless out here in the wilds, this could just as easily be some kind of Zhirrzh sympathy ploy to get us to limit our use of short-range radios."

"Not to mention the whole Elder concept being a little hard to swallow in the first place," Holloway agreed. "I hope you realize we can't simply give in on this."

"I wouldn't want you to," Melinda said. "The Cavanagh genes lean to conceit, not naïveté. What I would suggest is that you have all this ready to upload the next time one of those Peacekeeper surveillance ships comes into the system. If there's even a chance Prr't-zevisti is telling the truth, the Commonwealth needs to know about it."

Holloway and Takara exchanged glances. "That's a reasonable idea," Holloway said. "Unfortunately, the only laser we've got that's able to punch a signal that far out is currently in service as a perimeter defense weapon."

"Can't it be reaimed upward?" Melinda asked.

"Reaiming isn't the problem," Takara said. "The problem is that the frequencies used for communication are nothing like those used in combat. It would have to be retuned, and that would take time."

"More time than any surveillance ship would likely want to hang around the system," Holloway said. "Though there might be some kind of modular tuner we could cobble together. Check with the techs, Fuji, and see what they can do."

"Right," Takara said, making a note on his plate.

"In the meantime, what do we do about Prr't-zevisti?" Melinda asked.

"Colonel!" one of the Peacekeepers called across the cavern. "Report from Spotter Three: the enemy's on the move. Six or seven Zhirrzh on foot, moving north from Point Zero."

For a heartbeat Melinda looked at Holloway, an odd sense of unnamed dread pricking at her. Why did north from the village seem significant?

Then, abruptly, it clicked: the underground tectonic-monitoring station, where she and Holloway had speculated one of the CIRCE components might be hidden. "Colonel—"

"Must have found the tectonic station," Holloway cut her off, his eyes flashing a warning as he got to his feet. Melinda nodded: clearly, he hadn't shared their private suspicions about the station with the rest of his troops.

For obvious reasons. Whenever the Zhirrzh finally got around to launching their attack, the last thing Holloway would want potential captives knowing was that there might be more to the tectonic station than met the eye. "What do you want me to do?" she asked.

"Go back to the infirmary and get prepped," Holloway told her. "There's a good chance you'll be getting some new patients soon."

The door to the underground structure was well hidden, built into the surface of one of the many hills that dotted the area. They'd located it, and Klnn-dawan-a had succeeded in opening it, when the alert came.

"Report from Commander Thrr-mezaz," the Elder said urgently. "The Imperative has spotted Human-Conqueror warcraft coming this way."

"Arrival time?" Warrior First Tbv-ohnor asked.

The Elder vanished, returned a pair of beats later. "Two or three hunbeats," he said.

Klnn-dawan-a felt her tail speed up. "That's not much time," she said, trying to keep her voice calm.

"No, it's not," Tbv-ohnor agreed, looking around them.

Klnn-dawan-a looked around, too. It was not, to her mind, a particularly auspicious location for a battle. The heavy tree canopy overhead would hide them from sight, but it would do little to shield them against enemy weapons. The only Zhirrzh weapons powerful enough to stop the warcraft were in the ground defense stations protecting the village, the nearest of which was a good three thoustrides away. At ground level the trees and other hills in the area also offered some protection against long-range weapons, but they similarly limited the range of the Zhirrzh warriors' own laser rifles. Worse, they would provide cover for advancing Human-Conqueror ground warriors should the enemy choose to attack that way.

Which left the underground structure.

She peered inside. Behind the door was a short entrance chamber, perhaps two strides wide by three strides long, unlit except for the dim sunlight filtering down through the trees. At the end of the entrance chamber was a stairway, disappearing downward into darkness. If they went down there...