“You OKAY??”

“Get in there, they fuckin’ killed her or something!”

The noise came from a side passageway to one of the cargo areas. Running footsteps shook the flimsy floor. Two Runge and an Estrai burst in- Angs, Tres, and old Benz- Benz, who had once refused to tell Magarce his name, because he felt she was too much trouble and preferred her not to know him at all. She’d wondered why Angs insisted Benz join the boarding party, but forgot her curiosity when she learned she was to play a central role of getting the pilot to redirect his course.

“Oh, shit, oh, shit, oh, shit…”

“Angs, grab those!”

“They’re in the… erf… way!”

“Shove them off the fucking chair, get in there!” cried Tres.

“I can’t, the guy’s really strapped in!”

Angs and Tres wrestled with the controls, the Runge pirate captain on one side taking one lever, and his vixen girlfriend and evil genius taking the other. Between them, they stabilized the airbody and aimed it roughly for the landing area their crew had readied.

Between them, Magarce slouched over the corpse of the pilot, eyes rolled back in her head, the side of her face covered with his blood. It wasn’t clear whether she’d fallen against his ruined jawline, or whether she had nuzzled at him in transports of carnal ecstacy, in spite of the knife thrust upwards into his skull. She sagged against him, fevered, spent, limp, and unconscious, a bit of drool running out the side of her dainty, half-open mouth.

Benz regarded her with some distress. “You should have questioned her more carefully. Why did she do it?”

“If we get this thing down and we’re all still alive we can ask her, okay?” said Angs. “Think you can work the pedals?”

“I’ll try.”

“You’ll have to. Get on it. I think our part’s going to be most of it. Tres, more! Push it back!”

“It’s trying to rip out of my hands!” protested Tres.

“Okay, that’s enough. This guy must have been fuckin’ strong!”

“Didn’t help him against our Mags.” observed Benz.

The feline in question stirred, and yawned. Angs had shifted to a position more behind his lever, and his elbow poked her, producing a cranky little mew.

“Oh, good, you’re going to join us?” said Angs.

“Lot of help she’s been.” observed Tres.

Magarce tried to twist around and see behind her, but she was too spent to do it, and she nestled against the corpse’s chest. “Did we land yet?”

Angs let go the lever with one hand, and elbowed Magarce roughly. “What the fuck did you think was going to happen?”

“Ow! It’s supposed to glide down, right?”

“With a pilot!” snapped Tres. “Mind explaining why you killed the pilot? No, let me rephrase that. Why did you kill the pilot NOW?”

“Oh, that. You were right!”

“I was…” said Tres, and she looked at Magarce’s position, looked at where she was straddling the corpse. “Oh no. Oh no no. You didn’t.”

“It totally did! Oooh. I gotta do that again!”

“The fuck…” said Angs. “Tres, what did you tell her? What happened here?”

Tres sighed heavily, which didn’t stop her wresting the control lever to adjust the glide path. Perhaps it was the fact that she and Angs were lovers and partners in crime, but they were doing amazingly well at flying the plane despite taking a role normally handled by two arms on one person. Her tail drooped, and she didn’t reply at first.

“I’m waiting. What.”

“All right.” said Tres. “It’s like this. I was fuckin’ our kitty the other day…”

“You’re spoiling her- I saw you kissing her, too.”

“Hey, she’s cute and crazy, what can I say? She makes no sense at all. I never saw anything quite that free. Where’d we get her again?”

“Not the point! Explain what happened here. Why did she kill the pilot? I think I can guess why she’s on his dick, but I don’t get the other part.”

“All right, all right. I told her about hangman’s tip.”

“What?”

“You know. We’ve seen it often enough… when a guy gets hanged, sometimes he’ll orgasm. That or shit himself- smells like this one came so hard he couldn’t even shit.”

Angs looked at Magarce, puddled over the Nerre pilot’s body, with a mixture of distaste and fascination. “You’re telling me…”

“Yeah. Looks like sweet little kitten stabbed him in the brain to see how hard he’d throb. Hey, retarded fluffball? Fill me in, how hard did he come?”

“Ooooh.” purred Magarce. “Amazing.”

“Since you’re so fond of him, who was he?”

“Who cares?” crooned Magarce. “I hate those fuckers. Mmmmmm.”

Angs and Tres blinked at each other, and Tres shrugged.

“That’s our Mags. I guess we deal with it, huh?”

“I guess so.” said Angs. “Hey, keep an eye out, looks like we’re almost at the clearing.”

“Where are the guys?” said Tres. “I don’t see them. Why don’t I see them?”

“We told them to seek cover, remember?”

“Yeah, but you know our guys. I don’t trust them to stay in cover. You telling me they’re being good and doing what you told them?”

“Amazing, isn’t it?” said Angs.

“Terrific.” said Tres.

The airbody settled, sedately wobbled to left and right. Angs and Tres wrestled with the control levers, their synchrony fraying as the required activity increased- landing phase was most eventful, and to line such a large craft up on a landing strip for a gentle touchdown required a great deal of elegant preparation, or a great deal of diligent wrestling.

If the wind was gusty, elegance took a back seat or wasn’t included at all. There were no gusts or microbursts of air, which was all that saved Angs and Tres, but there was also no runway and seemingly no reception committee. In practice, this simply meant that the entire clearing counted as the runway, and it was just as well, because the airbody slewed about in slow motion as Angs and Tres finally lost control of it. They’d had a sense that it was trying to dive into the ground, and had pulled back the levers, not in perfect synchrony, and stalled it- or very nearly stalled it- and the craft floundered in sedated incoherence, three feet over the ground, and keeled over to the side so that the wing surface struck first.

Angs didn’t react, but Tres panicked and yanked back on her control lever, which was opposite the wing strike. This did two things. One, it created tremendous drag on that side, and caused the elevon to push down with enormous force, twisting the airbody and pulling the injured wing back up off the ground. Two, it caused the elevon to push down with enormous force… while the airbody was already stalling, and in ground effect.

The whole airbody reeled backwards, as if horrified by the approaching treeline, and sagged onto its tail area- the vast, broad delta of fragile fabric backed by a filigree of delicate struts and wires- and slumped forward onto its landing gear, coming to a halt in a cacophony of creaks and crunches as its vast momentum stressed its internal structure beyond toleration, tossing the four passengers around violently- and merely shaking the only one strapped properly down, something that could not worry him any longer.

They looked around, and Tres shook her head. “Look at that. He still looks like, three seconds after kitty’s first blowjob. It’s creepy, and this is me saying it. Let’s get going.”

Magarce awkwardly clambered off the dead pilot’s lap, complaining in a dazed, dreamy way. “I like it. I can have him be dead, and still get what I wanted, what’s not to like about it?”

“He should have been landing this, that’s what. I hope we didn’t damage the cargo, that’s the whole point, or didn’t you remember?”

The little feline sulked, and a drip of all that was left alive of Ansi Camassi dribbled down the inside of her leg.

The clearing still looked empty. Tres peered around the edge of where the gangplank opened, though it was a very awkward posture. “Seriously, where the fuck are they?”

“Time to start yelling.” said Angs, and he started down the gangplank as Tres snapped, “No!”

She hesitated, torn between her caution and a desire to grab Angs and pull him back.

Angs reached the grass, bellowed, “Where the…” and a shot rang out, distorting his ‘FUCK’ into a hideous sound, for it had hit him in the throat.

There was an immediate blur of motion. Benz was on top of Magarce, pressing her to the deck, and Tres was down the gangplank in a flash of russet and white, grabbing Angs and supporting him. Shots rang out again. For a moment it looked like she would be able to get him back up the gangplank, but they were slowed because Tres wouldn’t take a position to the side of Angs- she dragged him along as he coughed and staggered, and kept her body entirely behind his. One more shot rang out, his body jerked, and he was no longer able even to stagger. His weight was too much. Tres dragged him a few more steps, and then bolted up the gangplank again, into cover.

Magarce, under Benz, looked on in horror. She could see both Tres, and Angs lying on the gangplank. He kicked feebly, and tried to rise, and another shot hit his arm. He made a horrible snarl, and pounded his fist against the gangplank, making a muted dull clanging sound. And then, he raised his hand, and his finger made a circle against his thumb, and then it flicked out as if in disgust. And again, more emphatically…

Tres fired once and shot him through the eye, and he slumped against the gangplank, dead.

She moved over to Benz and Magarce, who were safe for the moment, out of the line of fire. Magarce looked up at her in horror and a bit of awe, and mewed “What do we do?”

“First, I thank you.” said Tres. Tears ran from her eyes, but her jaw was set.

“What for?”

“Saving me a bullet. I didn’t have to shoot the pilot. I didn’t realize that would matter, now it does.”

“What else?”

“We wait for them to approach, and we find out if they have more people than we have bullets. Benz?”

“Ready.”

They waited, silently, staring out over Angs’ body, scanning the area, waiting. There was an arc of grass visible in the fading evening light. The shots had come from somewhere beyond it, Nerre hiding in the foliage, predatory, lurking over the bodies of the ground team that had been waiting with the landing craft.

“Wait a minute.” said Tres softly.

“What?” replied Magarce, whose nerves weren’t holding up very well.

“That thing they say. They shot Angs. I didn’t hear anybody say it. Do they… can they sort of mumble it? Did they say it before taking out the ground team?”

“I don’t know. I don’t like that stuff. I know the one you mean, though. We say ‘vrironste’. Don’t remind me…”

“Yeah, but if they stop- do they have to say it again? Do you have to say it to any new fight?”

“I don’t know!” protested Magarce. “I hate this place! They want to kill me because I won’t put up with all that stuff, why are you asking me?”

Tres fell silent again, looking thoughtful, the fur below her eyes streaked and stained with tears.

A minute passed. Tres spoke again.

“Is there another opening to this ship, Benz?”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean a hole. Another gangplank, a door, the cargo bay…”

“I think this is it.” said Benz. “The cargo bay’s not going to open, we smashed the landing gear and we’re lying on the door. I didn’t see any doors or hatches up in the cockpit. What’s on your mind?”

Tres sighed, looking unexpectedly old. “You remember last week? When we were fooling around on the ship? Some of the guys on the ground team, me, Mags, playing tag in the corridors? Those guys are dead now, but think.”

Benz did think. “I know you and Mags kicked our asses. You kept turning up in unexpected places…”

“And our little kitten turned stealthy, and snuck up on anybody she liked, silently. I was lucky she was on my side. Remember?”

Magarce licked her paw, still stained with pilot’s blood, distractedly. “Sure. You guys can be so clumsy…”

“So, my point. We’re on a planet of them now. We’re waiting for them to make a frontal assault. I’m thinking we’re being idiots. What holes are there in this ship? We’re looking out of the only one they’re NOT going to come through.”

She looked around, nervously, and Benz joined her in that nervousness. He said, “I don’t see ‘em. I’m pretty sure I can hit any I do see.”

Tres laughed. “Yeah. Possibly. So let’s try and watch all the exits.”

“Can we move around? Shouldn’t we hear them, if they’re getting in here and moving around?”

“Remember last week? Think about that assumption for a second.”

Benz did, and it apparently pissed him off. “So if they’re like her…”

“They could be anywhere. Assuming they get in at all. What about the landing gear?”

“What about it?”

“That’s a hole. This is not a ship that can take vacuum. I don’t think it’s even pressurized, is it? Hey Mags, do these things come pressurized?”

“I don’t know.” said Magarce, peering hectically from under Benz’s body. Her ears were well back, her dainty tail irregularly bristled out.

“I think they don’t.” said Tres. “I think they’ve had plenty of time to go around, sneak up, climb up into the wheelwells. The reason we don’t hear them is, they’re cats like our Mags, but with guns, and they’re creeping up on us and laying their plans…”

“Stop it.” said Magarce.

“You’re still covered with blood, don’t even start with being scared, okay?” snapped Tres. “You’re the scariest fucking thing on this ship, if you ask me. Help me figure this out. We haven’t fired many shots, we might have a counter-strategy if only I can think one step ahead of them…”

“You can do it.” said Benz.

“Thank you. Now, it’s like this. Let’s say they’re in here. They could fire around a corner, but that puts them into another standoff. I don’t think they’ll go for that. Remember kitty with the tag, how she kept getting in position for some kind of pounce?”

“Cute as hell. Yeah, I follow you…”

“Let’s say they’re doing that. Can’t pounce down a corridor. Not gonna come up the gangplank. What are these walls made of?”

“Some kind of metal.” Benz rapped one, and it sounded very flimsy, but metallic. Magarce began to make a faint, high, keening noise, which Benz and Tres tried to ignore.

“Do you think one of the kitties could burst through one of these walls to gain surprise?”

“What’re you thinking?” said Benz.

“We can work out where they are and shoot first. But if we guess wrong, we’re wasting bullets.”

Benz considered this. “But if they’re really silent, that might be our only chance to take initiative. I think you’re right, but I don’t think they’ll come through the walls. One of our guys, maybe, but they’d have a hard time. Not the walls.”

All other possibilities exhausted, Tres and Benz slowly and warily looked up.

“Ceiling ti…”

All along the corridor, the ceiling burst into fragments of lightweight material, smashing out of their frames as feline bodies dropped upon the hijackers.

“Capture, ‘aons!” cried one well down the hall.

“We remember!” replied another, but it wasn’t being made easy for them. Magarce was a hysterical ball of teeth and claws, already covered with Nerre blood and quickly adding more. Tres got off a shot before being overwhelmed. Benz got off two, both times drilling a Nerre through the forehead, and then one was behind him and slammed a gun butt into his head and he dropped.

Finally, the fighting was over, with three Nerre barely holding diminutive Magarce, one holding Tres at gunpoint, one more covering Benz as he got unsteadily to his feet. They took Tres’s and Benz’s guns, and they gave their terms.

“We will take this Nerre, ‘aons, for her crimes are beyond toleration or forgiveness. We would like to know who your master is. Do you represent some government or relevant authority to which we may return you?”

Benz looked inquiringly at Tres, who didn’t reply.

“Please, identify yourselves. We must determine the correct procedure within protocol. You may not have to die with your companion…”

“You BROKE protocol.” accused Tres.

The Nerre- surely Hse-Nerre- who held her at gunpoint, blinked. “Explain, ‘aons!”

“Okay,” said Tres, in a fussy whining voice completely unlike her usual tone. “Here’s the deal, you TOTALLY cheated with your protocol there. Because I understand you were fighting our guys and you then started fighting us but you have to realise that we’re a different crowd, okay? That vrir-whatever, that you say, you had to say it again for us. Aren’t you ashamed? You blew it! You’re tainted!”

The Hse-Nerre were unprepared for this attack. Prey to their own expectations and conditioning, they were being accused of the most unforgivable crimes, and suddenly had to think about whether they’d violated their own rules by not re-saying ‘Vrironste’. They were capable and deadly, but they were blindsided by this accusation, and they lost a moment looking at each other with expressions of piteous distress.

Tres and Benz did not need a moment- or even need to look at each other.

Tres’s large, fluffy tail twitched out to the side, in a weird, unnatural posture, that had to be a big strain- and in that moment of distraction upon distraction, they struck, unhesitatingly. Benz’s fingers went into one Hse-Nerre’s eyes. Tres’s leg kicked up and caught another in the balls. The remaining ones would have interceded, but one yelled, for Magarce had sunk her teeth into his forearm with no warning at all, and was bearing down, face contorted and ears back. And then, Benz had grabbed both guns…

Shots rang out in quick succession, and Hse-Nerre dropped. First was the one nearest Tres, and it took that to loosen his grip on her gun, for even after a shot to the nuts he’d clung to the weapon determinedly. Next, one holding Magarce. Then Tres shot the one Benz had blinded with a poke, and his temporary darkness became permanent. Then, Benz shot the fourth, and shouted, “Let go!”

The object of his displeasure was Magarce, because while she wasn’t lacking in fighting spirit, tactics were not her strong suit. She was still biting the one surviving Hse-Nerre’s forearm, and he’d spotted what was happening though he was not free to intercede. He’d watched his companions go down in a flurry of shots, and he’d backed against the wall, holding his arms up, and taking cover behind the very same criminal he’d come to capture- and there he stood, his body and head sheltered behind a crazed Magarce who was trying to rip the meat off his arm-bones.

“Let! Go!”

And he had a gun. And he placed the gun to Magarce’s head, and said, with only a mild grimace of agony, “I will… trade this… for my life.”

Tres hesitated for just a moment. Not a long moment.

“Go ahead. Shoot her.”

“What?” said the Hse-Nerre.

“It’s doing us a favor, honestly. Do it.”

“But then if I…”

He’d peeked around Magarce’s head just a little bit more, and it was enough. Tres’s gun banged, and the bullet grazed Magarce’s ear and took half the guy’s head off. He thrashed as he fell, and fired into the ceiling.

“…what the hell was that about?” said Benz.

“It worked, didn’t it?”

Magarce had let go of the guy’s arm when he fell- she’d been so locked into dealing damage that it seemed like she might not have noticed the exchange. She scrambled away from him, tried to get up, and she staggered and fell over, too overwhelmed by adrenaline to coordinate her motions. Tres didn’t help her, but Benz moved in her direction- before he could reach her, she was up and looking at them, a fearful sight with blood at her mouth to match the blood on her paws.

“Did you… say…” she began, but Tres cut her off.

“Worked, didn’t it?”

This didn’t seem to convince the little Nerre, who looked more and more distressed by the second.

“But… if he… and then I guess you shot him, and if he was…”

“Life is tough all over.” snapped Tres. “Let’s get out of here…”

Magarce went with Benz, clinging on to his arm as they followed Tres. It looked like Magarce was putting together fragments of overheard conversation in her head, phrases like ‘it’s doing us a favor’ that had been merely noises in the heat of battle, but now brought unwelcome meanings, meanings that were hard to excuse as ‘worked, didn’t it’. Her eyes were big and haunted as the three pirates snuck out of the wrecked airbody, keeping an eye out for additional Hse-Nerre and not seeing any. It looked like they’d got the whole team.

They found the landing craft- and their companions. Three Runge corpses lay outside the gangplank of the landing craft. They’d been lined up, in some attempt to be orderly. One had several gunshot wounds to the torso. The other’s throats had been cut, blood drenching them. Magarce thought of the razor claw implants the Hse-Nerre had. They could learn to handle guns, but they would first turn to the weapons of their culture, and they had taken two of the pirates by surprise, even as they watched and waited for Angs and Tres and Benz and Magarce to arrive.

Tres seemed to have become reckless- she went straight into the landing craft without trying to test if other Hse-Nerre were hiding inside. Possibly she calculated there weren’t any, or possibly the mood that had taken her when she told them to shoot Magarce was still on her. Nothing happened, except that she came back out in less than ten seconds and said, “Help me carry stuff.”

“We’re not taking it back to the ship?” said Benz.

“Come see. Then help me carry stuff.”

When they got into the landing craft and saw its control room, they understood. The Hse-Nerre had neatly shot up the computer and the controls. It looked like three bullets, maximum, had done it. The placement was very artistic, if you liked seeing your hopes of escape neatly shattered. One bullet took out, not the main display screen, but the cluster of buttons and switches over the actual navigating computer. One had shattered the grip area of the control stick, with electronic trim controls and the thumb-wheel throttle common to these landing craft. And one, along the center line of the craft and toward the front of the control console, in a blank area that hadn’t looked important at all- took out the craft’s gyros, crippling its artifical stability mechanisms on top of everything else.

These Hse-Nerre were no fools. They were dead now, but the landing craft was very thoroughly grounded.

“See if they got the provisions. I would almost believe they did. Go see.” said Tres.

Benz went into the back of the landing craft, glancing at a blood spatter on the wall as he passed it. Though it was inside the ship, it looked more like the result of a throat-slashing, and not gunshots. It suggested that Hse-Nerre had chased one of the pirates into the ship before killing him. They’d had to work for their slaughter, apparently. Benz was pleased he’d killed them, but acknowledged their skills and ferocity.

Up front, Magarce spoke to Tres.

“I heard what you said. I… need to know, how could you say that?”

“What’s the problem?” said Tres, coolly. “You know how these things go.”

“The problem,” said Magarce unsteadily, “is I don’t want you to say go ahead and shoot her.”

“It worked, okay? It worked. Wash your face. Benz! Get her a towel. Wet it down.”

“But… he did have a gun, I saw it! And I think that means he must have been pointing it at me…”

“While you tried to eat his arm, yeah. Your point? Damn it! It’s like you don’t realise that I just lost a lover and friend, not fifteen minutes ago!”

“I think I just lost two.” said Magarce in a little, childlike voice.

Benz arrived with a wet towel. He took one look at Magarce, and his face fell. “Oh, crap. We still have to get out of this…” He dabbed at her mouth with the towel, and then simply handed it over and hugged her. “C’mon. I know what Tres is thinking. Hang in there for us until we reach cover. Don’t break down now!”

“Look at me.” said Tres. Then, commandingly- “Look at me!”

Magarce looked, blinking away tears- to see that Tres’s eyes glistened as well. The pain showed, but the vixen’s words were unyielding.

“You will keep it together enough to help us. You will carry provisions, same as us, and we’re going deep into the woods until we find a place to hide. These are mountains, there must be some cave or something. Not only will you carry stuff, you will help us by trying to walk single file and covering your tracks and following us, even if we have to take to the rocks, which I fervently hope we can do.”

Magarce stared, entranced, into the Estrai gaze.

“We will get out of this and then you can break down.”

“And you, right? Once we’re safe?” said Benz, placatingly.

“You do not ask me that right now, Benz.”

“Got it.” he replied, and with that, the three pirates headed back, past the bloodstain, to dig out emergency supplies.

By the time they were prepared, darkness was falling, and it had grown colder. Magarce shivered as she looked back at the clearing. Bodies, of two species, once distinguished by the more fevered Nerre metabolism- now, alike in coldness. Tres had not moved Angs’ body. His head was a ruin. One hand still showed fingers parted, frozen in the moment when he’d made that hand signal, again and again, the one that said ‘I’m done for. I hurt. Kill me. Do it now.”

Magarce wondered if there was another hand-signal, one that started with fingers apart and closing into a circle against the thumb. One that said, “This is too horrible. Heal it, make it better, build something even if that’s not easy.”

But who, in her world, would use it?

The woods quickly concealed them. Tres, bearing a huge, heavy pack, led the three survivors through the mountains. It was odd, but she didn’t seem to be heading for civilization- rather, she was finding more and more impassable terrain, rocky outcrops and crevasses.

“Why are we going this way?” asked Magarce.

“You’ll see.” panted Tres.

“You want to walk on rocks, right? Not leave tracks?”

Tres paused, and looked at her. “Not bad. Did you just work that out?”

“Yeah. Will it work?”

“Depends. If they have friendly Resten, at the actual site, they can track us through almost anything unless we find a big river. Do your cops have friendly Resten on staff?”

“We aren’t friendly to anybody.” said Magarce forlornly. “Well… not the way you’re talking about. Other species don’t stay here because they can’t be trusted to observe protocol. Mostly. My Benj…”

“Hold it. Hold it!” snapped Tres. Magarce had welled up with tears unexpectedly, mentioning Benjen, who now stood in a seemingly unbroken line of death and destruction starting the day she fled her home and continuing through Angs- and the little Nerre stumbled under the weight of her pack, eyes blurred from weeping.

“You get a grip, it shouldn’t be much farther! Don’t flake out on me now! Look, here’s what we’re gonna do. You keep fuckin’ walking while I look for a cave up here. Do you know why we need a cave? I’ll tell you why we need a cave- your cops don’t have to find tame Resten to sniff us out if they can do an aerial scan for heat sources. They can buy that shit from the Runge anytime they want, and they might have it. Before we crash for the night we’re going to be in a cave. It might even be warm, or at least warmer than it is out here. Right, Benz?”

“Yeah.” said Benz worriedly. “Yeah. Uh, can I help her, you think?”

“Take her arm. Lead her, I’ll scout ahead. Don’t try to carry her, you’d have to lose the third pack. I know it’s not very big but it contains some food and medical supplies…”

“Right.” said Benz. “Come on, kitten, you have to keep moving…”

He wasn’t really in a position to hug Magarce, but he tried, awkwardly, anyway. She responded with a brief, shrill wail of anguish, but kept moving, allowing Benz to guide her while she couldn’t see.

“Tres, our kitten’s a little kid in some ways, did you know that?”

Tres called back. “Cleaned off the blood, on her mouth, from that guy’s arm? Huh?”

“Yeah- pretty much.”

“How about her hand?” called Tres. “From where she stabbed the guy in the brain? You know, to feel him spurt in death throes?” She sounded exasperated.

“You tryin’ to tell me something?” called Benz. “That sounds like us. On a bad day.”

“Just making sure you don’t forget it…” called Tres, and she was out of sight, searching through the crevasses.

Benz struggled on, supporting and guiding Magarce, who was sniffling and trying to get back to mountaineering-mode. He said, not unkindly, “You know, kitty- maybe you need to decide who to be.”

“What.” managed Magarce.

“It’s just- nice kitties cry over people dying. Sheltered ones, you know? Ones with a life. But they don’t stab guys in the brain, or try to eat cops. Just saying…”

“Sorry…” said Magarce, affronted, and pulled away from him, to stagger up the rock face by herself.

Benz stared at her in disbelief for a moment, but only a moment, because Tres had popped back into view.

“Up here! Drag kitty if you have to, it’s not that far!”

Benz glanced again at the diminutive, stubborn feline as she once more soldiered on, cheek-fur damp with tears, petite jaw set.

“She’s on her own power, I think.”

“Good!”