I pointed to the sky. "Your ships hit the Kristang base where I was being kept as a prisoner, I escaped because the explosion damaged the building, and I was able to get out through a broken wall." Tapping my bloody uniform top, I added "I killed a Kristang by bashing its skull into a bloody pulp with its rifle," I pantomimed the action, in case my words didn't translate well, "then I shot three more lizards with that rifle. Three other humans escaped with me. We killed only four lizards, because that's all we could find," that came out with way more bravado than I intended. "Did that answer your question?"

It was a contest whose eyes were open wider, the Ruhar soldier, or Lieutenant Rogers. Rogers stayed silent. "You killed Kristang?" The Ruhar asked.

"The Kristang executed humans, and were going to execute us," I indicated my three former prison companions, "because we refused orders to kill Ruhar civilians. The lizards abused and tortured our females, the women," I added, to emphasize that women were people, which is not the way the lizards thought of them.

The Ruhar soldier had an animated conversation with whoever was talking into his earpiece, then with two other soldiers. It was an argument of some kind, likely the Ruhar here on the ground arguing with some dumb-ass Ruhar fobbit who was sitting safely in orbit. I could sympathize. Finally, the Ruhar soldier who had been talking to me gestured at me. "You, and the others who were being held by the Kristang, will come with me." He must have called the Dodo, for it was rapidly approaching and descending.

"Whoa, whoa, wait." I held out my hand, palm forward, in what I hoped was another universal body language thing. "I'm not going anywhere, until I know what will happen to my people here." Rogers and I exchanged a glance. As the ranking officer, they were my responsibility, even though I'd barely met them. As a hodge-podge unit, it wasn't as if they had served with Rogers for long either.

Irritation briefly flashed across the soldier's face, that was surely a universal body language, then he nodded. One soldier to another, he could understand my concern. "They will be escorted to an assembly point to the west, where we are distributing human food. What happens after that depends on discussions between my leaders and yours."

And whether the Kristang come back, I thought, but didn't say it aloud.

Riding in a Ruhar Dodo wasn't much different from riding in a Kristang dropship, except this time I was a prisoner of war. Now that I think about it, maybe we were all POWs of the Kristang before, and just didn't know it yet. The Ruhar had taken our weapons, but I'd insisted that Desai and Adams each bring two MREs each with them, to recover their strength. They had both attempted to protest, that they didn't want special treatment, until I made it an order that they eat. Chang and I were getting hungry, but we'd had at least a skimpy breakfast that morning. A few minutes after the Dodo roared back into the sky, a Ruhar crewman walked back to my seat, and handed me a Ruhar zPhone. I put the earpiece in. "Hello?"