"A bitter consequence, indeed," Thrr-mezaz agreed. "On the other side, the Zhirrzh are a long way yet from such destruction."

Lahettilas spoke again, his tone turning dark and grim. "Perhaps you are closer than you realize. Your Warrior Command urgently needs to hear about the weapon called CIRCE. If the Human-Conquerors are able to reconstruct it—"

Behind the Mrachanis an Elder abruptly appeared, only his transparent face protruding through the wall. "End this conversation immediately, Commander," he hissed.

In the two fullarcs since they'd landed there, the Mrachanis had gotten faster at trying to locate the source of these brief Elder communications. But they weren't yet quite fast enough, and the Elder had vanished before they were able to turn around. Lahettilas spoke—"These faint Zhirrzh voices disturb me, Commander of the Zhirrzh. Where do they come from?"

"I'll speak to Warrior Command about your request," Thrr-mezaz told him, ignoring the question. "We must go now. The warriors will look after you."

Lahettilas did the inhale/exhale thing again and bowed his face briefly toward the floor as he spoke. "Very well. I suppose it is all we can do. Certainly all which those of us who are minor players in this span of history can hope to accomplish."

"Farewell, then," Thrr-mezaz said, turning away from the aliens, a sudden flush of annoyance flowing across his tongue. A minor player. Was that all these aliens considered him to be, a minor player?

How dare they make such a presumption? He was Thrr-mezaz; Kee'rr, commander of a Zhirrzh beachhead in enemy territory. Not in any way a minor player.

And he would prove it to them. He would get to Warrior Command, all right—maybe even to the Overclan Prime himself. He would get this straightened out so fast, it would make their fur twist.

"Arrogant little overgrown nornins, aren't they?" Klnn-vavgi muttered at Thrr-mezaz's side as they headed across the landing field toward the headquarters building.

"Extremely," Thrr-mezaz growled back. "I don't know how Mrachanis look at it, Second, but I don't consider any Zhirrzh in a war zone to be a minor player."

"We'll just have to make sure we prove that to them." Klnn-vavgi glanced back over his shoulder, flicking his tongue thoughtfully. "It happened again," he said, lowering his voice. "Did you notice? Third time in the past two fullarcs, by my count."

"You mean the Elder who was handling the pathway back to Warrior Command suddenly cutting off the conversation?"

"Exactly," Klnn-vavgi said. "All the more interesting, given the chance they're taking."

"Indeed," Thrr-mezaz murmured. Supreme Ship Commander Dkll-kumvit had made it clear as fine glasswork that the existence of Zhirrzh Elders was to be kept a closely guarded secret from the Mrachanis. Yet the supreme commanders at Warrior Command, listening at the other end of the Elder pathway, had now risked exposing that secret. Not once, but three times.

Which could only mean they considered it even more urgent that those particular three conversations be interrupted. Which implied that Lahettilas knew something that Thrr-mezaz and the rest of the Zhirrzh warriors weren't supposed to hear. "I take it you also noticed the common element each time?" he asked Klnn-vavgi.

His second in command flicked his tongue in grim agreement. "That weapon Lahettilas keeps wanting to talk to Warrior Command about. The thing he calls CIRCE. I wonder what it is."

"I'll bet Warrior Command knows," Thrr-mezaz said, glancing around. He didn't see any Elders hovering around listening, but with Elders that didn't necessarily mean anything. Insubstantial and virtually transparent, they were ideally suited for eavesdropping.

"Something unsuitable for us minor players, no doubt," Klnn-vavgi said. "I don't know about you, Thrr-mezaz, but I'm getting the taste of politics dripping all over this thing."

"Maybe," Thrr-mezaz said. "I wonder... no."

"What?"

"Just a thought," Thrr-mezaz said, looking around again. "Whatever the Mrachanis or Warrior Command know about this, I'll bet our Human-Conqueror prisoner could tell us the whole story."

"Interesting thought," Klnn-vavgi agreed. "Maybe we ought to go have a little talk with him."

For a handful of beats Thrr-mezaz was tempted to agree. As a Zhirrzh commander in the war zone, it seemed only right that he should know everything Warrior Command did about enemy weapons his warriors might be facing.

But the Human-Conqueror prisoner, Srgent-janovetz, was under continual monitoring by the beachhead's Elders. If they asked him about CIRCE, Warrior Command would know about it within ten beats. Cvv-panav, the Speaker for Dhaa'rr in the Overclan Seating, had already tried once to have Thrr-mezaz ousted as commander of the Dorcas ground warriors. Pressing to learn something Warrior Command obviously wanted kept secret would be all the excuse he would need to finish the job.

Thrr-mezaz looked sideways at Klnn-vavgi, a sudden doubt oozing beneath his tongue. Could that in fact be the outcome his second in command was trying for here? To goad Thrr-mezaz into doing something that would get him removed from command? Klnn-vavgi was also Dhaa'rr, after all; perhaps his oft-stated contempt for clan politics was a lie designed to lull Thrr-mezaz into complacency.

His tongue flicked in self-disgust. An absurd thought, and he was ashamed with himself for having even entertained it. Lahettilas and all that talk about distrust must have gotten deeper under his tongue than he'd realized. "Let's try something else first," he told Klnn-vavgi, changing direction toward the eastern edge of the landing field. "Come on."

The warriors and techs had long since finished their examination of the storehouse building where the two Mrachanis had come under Human-Conqueror attack a fullarc ago. Outside the eastern wall where the doors had once stood, the ground was covered with wooden splinters, and Thrr-mezaz found himself wincing as he and Klnn-vavgi crunched their way through them. There, crushed beneath those doors when the explosion blew them off their hinges, two Zhirrzh warriors had been abruptly and prematurely raised to Eldership.

And were still suffering the consequences of that raising. Yanked instantly back across the three-hundred-plus light-cyclics separating Dorcas and their preserved fsss organs on Oaccanv, both of the new Elders were twisted in the temporary insanity of anchoring shock.

As were the warriors who had been raised to Eldership during their initial invasion of Dorcas. Now, seventeen fullarcs later, that group was still showing no signs of coming out of the madness.

There were, Thrr-mezaz knew, whispered rumors of searcher and healer theories that had supposedly proved that a Zhirrzh who was too far from his fsss organ at the time of his raising would be forever locked into anchoring shock. The clan and family leaders uniformly denied that such theories had ever even been formally proposed, let alone tested or proved. But that didn't stop the rumors. Thrr-mezaz could only hope that, if such an outer limit existed, Dorcas was still inside it.

Three more jagged holes had been ripped in the north wall by the Human-Conqueror explosives after the blast that had destroyed the doors, showering more splinters and wood fragments outside the building. "What are we doing here?" Klnn-vavgi asked as Thrr-mezaz led the way to the middle of the room.

"I have a special arrangement with one of our communicators," Thrr-mezaz told him. "He's supposed to look in here a couple times per tentharc to see if I want him."

"Really," Klnn-vavgi said, eyeing his commander. "A special arrangement, you say."

"Yes," Thrr-mezaz said, starting to have second thoughts about this idea. The secure pathway which the Dhaa'rr Elder Prr't-casst-a had set up two fullarcs ago between Thrr-mezaz and his brother Thrr-gilag had been for one purpose only: to discuss the suspected capture of Prr't-casst-a's husband, Prr't-zevisti, by the Human-Conquerors. Trying to use the pathway for any other purpose might well meet with resistance from the Elders involved in carrying the messages back and forth, particularly if the discussion turned to Dhaa'rr political moves. Perhaps he should just forget about this and hope that the Mrachanis were overstating their case on this CIRCE threat.