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afford to have lost. Not if I wanted to remain in command. Yet I felt the need to lighten my touch with him. He needed to obey me, not be broken by me.
    "Idris, what was, is now gone," I said. "We will have to adjust and adapt if we are to survive."
    "I know that," he snapped, gathering instruments. He pointed to a table next to him. "Lie down there."
    I did as he bid. "If she is any example of how these Terrans are, then they are not so unlike us," I continued. "She went into a battle that was not her own, facing a foe whose strength she did not know, to save a being who was a stranger to her."
    "You hope to make allies of these Terrans, then?" Idris asked.
    In truth, I wasn't sure. They were technologically backward, behind us by centuries. They had only just discovered how to fold space so that they could voyage between the stars. How much help would they be? If even Cymtarra had fallen to the Skree, how would Terra stand?
    My thoughts had been to repair the ship and flee, perhaps try to gather some few other survivors of my race from other worlds. Enough to save our species might still exist, if I could gather them all together. Or failing that, to die trying to take our vengeance upon our enemies.
    I looked over at the fragile Terran form, still and silent inside her stasis tube. Her face was much like ours. Her fingers, her hands... The same. Across all of space I had never seen another race that looked so similar to us. Perhaps there was another way.
    "I do not know," I replied as honestly as I could.
    "Humph," he said. He jabbed a port into my arm, connecting a tube to it. "This will gather nanites from your bloodstream. You will be weaker and heal slower for some time afterward. You must be cautious."
    "I understand."
    "This may not even work," he muttered. "Even if it does, it will be painful for her."
    "Can you think of another way to save her?" I asked.
    He shook his head.
    "Then do it."
    I would watch over her, as she healed...or died.

Chapter Nine
Kim
    I woke to a pain unlike anything I'd ever felt before. My back arched with the agony. It felt like I'd been dipped in lava, or acid, except that it even hurt inside me. It was like every nerve had been set on fire all at once.
    Someone was screaming, and I realized as if from a distance that it had to be me. My throat felt raw with it.
    Around me people were bustling, speaking in some language I couldn't understand. Something was jabbed into my arm, but the pain barely registered against the searing I already felt.
    Was I dying? My mind retreated from the pain but found nowhere to hide. Even my thoughts hurt, like knives stabbing through my brain.
    Then I felt a cool touch on my hand. Gently, it pressed in against the nerve center between my left thumb and forefinger, massaging there. The pain ebbed away a bit in that spot.
    Those hands moved up my arm, finding more tender spots in my forearm, then higher on my arm. Wherever they touched, the sensation of agony eased a little. Changed from unbearable to something just on the edge of tolerance.
    "Easy now," a soothing voice said in Universal. "This will fade. You must fight through the pain."
    His fingers touched my temples, bringing their cooling relief to my mind and the smallest bit of clarity back to my thoughts. I knew that voice. It was Bran.
    "I can't," I whimpered, hating the tone of my voice even as I said the words.
    "You can," he replied. "You are a fighter. Prove it."
    "She is too weak," another voice said. "She will not survive."
    I wanted to growl at that second person. Call me weak? I wasn't the strongest person I knew, not be a long shot. But I was not some simpering weakling. I'd never given in, not to anything. I wasn't about to start now.
    "That's better," Bran said. "You will survive this."
    I rode the pain for as long as I could stand it, as the fire slowly faded from my veins and dropped to something that was only agonizing. My face was wet with tears I didn’t even remember crying. My hands