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Grav couldn’t move. He regained consciousness spread-eagled on a flat surface, arms and legs tethered to posts.

But I’m alive. He felt shamefully relieved. There was honor in dying in defense of the empire, but he discovered he valued his life more than honor.

The female had intended to kill him, but she hadn’t. She’d discharged her weapon, firing into the ground next to his head, causing his ears to ring painfully. Why had she spared his life? Had the situation been reversed, a Progg wouldn’t have hesitated to eliminate her. One did not let the enemy live.

Do it once. Do it right. Leave no survivors.

Instead, she’d brought him here. Wherever here was. Drifting in and out of consciousness from pain, he had only a hazy recollection of being dragged on some sort of sled across the rocky, frozen ground. He lifted his head and spotted the sled leaning against the wall.

He’d peeked inside enough dwellings to recognize this wasn’t a common habitat. A lamp smelling of oil cast a shadowy glow, enabling him to see rough walls of speckled gray stone, the domed ceiling the same, the floor covered by hard-packed dirt. No windows. No doors, only a wide opening. Cave, probably. It was an obvious place to hide. Vaporizers penetrated walls of wood, glass, plaster, even a layer of brick, but not solid stone many ruqa thick.

The Progg had conducted a thorough geological scan of the planet. Aided by human informants, eventually the teams would have gotten to the caves and underground hiding places to root out the stragglers—but before that could happen, the excrement hit the turbines, and the GM aborted the campaign.

Were others living here? He noted two other beds besides the one he lay on, which appeared to be a double-decker; his wrists and ankles were tied to the posts holding up a top bunk. Had someone helped her bring him here? He weighed no less than twenty yemps , not an easy pull on a sled. He didn’t recall seeing anyone else—just her, but he’d been out of it a good part of the time.

He yanked on the restraints, but the ties held fast. The effort hurt his already cramping chest. The cave’s warmth and his own body heat had relaxed his muscles, enabling his body to begin to expel the foreign object.

“You’re awake. Still alive. Pity.” The woman entered with a kit of some sort, and he got his first good look at her. Humans were hirsute, although not as much as some furry four-legged Earthlings roaming the planet. This one had a full head of dark-brown hair falling to mid-back, a fringe covering her forehead, and a slender arch of hair over her dark eyes. She lacked the luminescence or the scales of other alien races, leaving her skin smooth. He’d noted that human coloring ran the gamut from very pale to very dark; she was in the middle.

Standing over him in the woods, her weapon trained on him, she had seemed much larger. Having shed her bulky outerwear, she appeared less imposing, considerably smaller than him. He could overpower her—if not restrained and injured. And if she wasn’t still armed. The weapon was holstered on her hip.

She settled on a chair by his bed and surveyed him with loathing. Unflinching, he met the scrutiny but wondered with some trepidation what she would do next, what the kit contained.

Hatred he understood. Vanquished peoples retained long memories of their suffering, hence the necessity to kill everyone—eliminate survivors who might regroup and foment a rebellion.

The Progg didn’t hate any of the beings they vanquished—they viewed them merely as obstacles to the expansion of the galactic empire.

“Do you understand what I’m saying?”

Every word, but he kept his expression blank.

More could be learned by remaining silent, like finding what she had done with his weapon. It was coded specifically to him, so she couldn’t use it, but he needed it back. Without it, he was defenseless. There was no telling when he’d get off this planet—if ever.

Before every campaign, communication broadcasts of the targeted planets were studied to learn the planet’s vulnerabilities, capabilities, and languages in the event faux diplomacy were required. Rank and file didn’t need to understand or speak to the native population, but as an aide to Admiral Drek, the Earth campaign commander, Grav might. His translator chip had been updated with common Earth languages.

“You’re a tough bastard. You should have died. I wish you had. I should have killed you.”

Why didn’t you? he wanted to ask.

“I’m an idiot. I couldn’t do it,” she said.

She lacked ruthlessness, then. Good to know. Such a weakness could be exploited.

“I guess being a nurse is too engrained in me. I’ll have to work on that.”

He understood nurse to be a type of health care provider. On this planet, medical care had been administered by well-intentioned but fallible people. It astounded him that humans hadn’t switched to medical artificial intelligence like everyone else. Of course, if they had, they would have cured their diseases, and that would have changed everything.

She expelled a sigh of self-disgust. “I have no idea what I’m going to do. I can’t kill you.”

Good news, although he’d suspected as much, or she wouldn’t have gone through the effort of dragging him here. She would have shot him again, which begged the question, why hesitate to finish the job?

Unless she wasn’t the one who tried to kill him?

“But I can’t let you go, either.”

Not-so-good news, although it didn’t come as a surprise.

“It’s kind of like grabbing a tiger by the tail. Once you got it, you don’t dare let it go.”

She opened the kit. He didn’t recognize any of the stuff inside. “I once had a patient who killed his ex-wife and two-year-old daughter. He was running from the police when he crashed his car. They brought him to the hospital. We treated him, of course.

“Doctors and nurses don’t separate people into good and bad, deserving and undeserving—we provide medical care to all. Some deserve to die, but we still try to save them because that’s our job.”

She got up and pulled the light, along with the table it rested on, close to the bed. Next, she snapped on a bright-purple glove, calling his attention to her five-fingered hand.

He had yet to encounter an intelligent, dominant race without at least one opposable thumb. All animals had the ability to fight, but you couldn’t rule your world unless you could manufacture and grasp weapons to overpower a stronger opponent.

At some point, you developed weapons enabling you to progress beyond risky hand-to-hand combat. That’s when you could begin to dominate the galaxy.

She donned the other glove and then wiggled her fingers. “These are more for me than you. I don’t care if you get infected—hopefully you’ll die anyway. But the idea of touching you with my bare hands creeps me out.” Her mouth drooped at the corner.

Her disgust stung in a way her animosity didn’t. An important aide to a decorated admiral, he was considered quite a catch on his planet, experiencing no lack of females who attempted to curry his favor, eager to bear offspring with him.

From the kit, she extracted a sharp double-bladed instrument and cut through the front of his tunic exposing his blood-smeared torso. He could see the lump formed by the foreign object.

She frowned. “Odd. It looks like the bullet lodged just under your skin.”

It would have been odd if it had happened that way. However, the projectile had gone deep. His body had been working it to the surface.

She set the metal tool on the lamp table then brought up a jug and soaked a white pad with a clear liquid from the pitcher. Water? It smelled like it. He licked his dry lips, realizing how thirsty he was. But rather than offer him a drink, she swiped roughly around the chest wound.

“I can see the bullet,” she murmured. “I’ll bet I could extract it with forceps.” She palpitated the area around the entry wound with her gloved fingers—and the bullet popped out.

Her jaw dropped. Her expression of surprise was almost comical. She picked up the slug and eyeballed it. “Looks like it came from a .38.” Her assessment confirmed his hunch she hadn’t been the one who’d shot him. She plunked the slug onto the table.

The injured site bled, but not copiously, his body having worked to seal the wound from the inside. She dabbed at the seeping injury with a dry white pad. “I suppose I should disinfect this as best I can. That’s what a medical professional would do. Not that I’ll ever practice my profession again.”

She grabbed a bottle marked antiseptic and sought his gaze. A tiny smile played at the corner of her lips. “This may cause a little discomfort.” She uncapped the bottle and splashed the wound with the pungent-smelling contents.

“ Pikur zok vinik okum !” A string of curses erupted from his mouth. He would have vaulted from the bed if he hadn’t been tied down.

“Oh, did that hurt?”

“Fuck, yeah, it hurt!” he burst out in her language.