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lasers were deadly. Moorhen was an easy target.
    Norbi looked up and saw Moorhen running towards the Chanden. "No!" Norbi called out.
    But Moorhen could not stop. He yelled a clan war cry as he descended upon them.
    Then from the dark behind Moorhen sprang the sechule straight at the two remaining men, knocking them over with the force of its landing. Moorhen nearly fell over as he stopped himself. The few remaining Chanden turned their attention to the beast. It tore into one of the men, killing him.
    Ignoring the creature, Moorhen made his way over to his brother, fearing him dead. "Norbi!" he turned him over. Nearby someone shot at the sechule .
    Moorhen grabbed Norbi, who was in considerable pain and hauled him to his feet. "Can you walk?"
    "I … don't know," muttered Norbi.
    Moorhen half carried, half dragged Norbi away from the camp. The sechule had the Chanden on the run and some of them were in pieces. The beast only gave a brief glance at the two Garrans as they made their way to the nearby rock spire. There was better prey to be had.
    As Moorhen set Norbi down, his brother tried to speak. "Moorhen, they took the crystals!" There was an air of delirium to his words.
    Norbi bled from several nasty knife wounds. There were bruises all over him, including his face and lips.
    "Are you hurt badly?" asked Moorhen. It was a stupid question, but he feared there might be greater damage than he could see, such as internal bleeding.
    "My arm," moaned Norbi.
    Moorhen helped him up. "We have to move."
    Norbi grit his teeth as Moorhen lead him away. Moorhen tried to be quiet but abandoned the effort. With the commotion of sechule and the Chanden, it scarcely mattered now.
    In the end, Moorhen carried his little brother all the way back to the tsirvak. Moorhen felt dizzy from the experience. The moment of anger had passed and the truth of the danger they'd been in hit him. They moved without speaking. Moorhen now had no heart to upbraid Norbi for his reckless actions. No words were needed. The treatment of the Chanden had been lesson enough.
     

CHAPTER SIX
    Ruben and the others had wrapped the bodies of Dale and Tomlin and put them in body bags. These they had taken a distance from town, into the hills, and buried. The Agency would come back to claim them later.
    Once that was done, Ruben and his team travelled for half the night, carrying the priest Jaynanth's body on one of the yithhe . Ruben took them over rocky trails to hide their tracks in case someone tried to follow.
    The north moon rose and gave them a little light. Still they rode their yithhe well away from the village. They found shelter in a ravine and made camp.
    They dropped Jaynanth's body carelessly on the ground. His vacant eyes stared up at Asta. The eyes almost looked alive still. She bent a little closer and thought she heard a whisper; it made her jump. She moved away from the corpse.
    “You didn’t have to kill him,” Asta accused Ruben, who was standing nearby.
    “You hate the Garrans as much as I do!” insisted Ruben. “What were we supposed to do?"
    "Arrest him and give him a trial," she said, upset.
    "You saw what he did to Dale and Tomlin! He’s a killer. And I’ll be damned if he got away with it!”
    "He wouldn't have gotten away with it," said Asta. That's what courts were for. This breach of justice bothered her.
    Ruben studied her. "Is this going to be a problem for you?" asked Ruben. He knew that her father was Koethe. He'd almost refused to take her into the Stealth Unit because of that. "You're not going to get me in trouble are you?"
    She could, she knew it. Technically, her father, Koethe was the head of the Enforcers. Though as base Commander, though he oversaw little of the actual operations. But she and her father weren't exactly on speaking terms. But she could report him to someone else. She studied him silently.
    "Look," he said. "Things happen out here. If you can't handle it--then maybe you're in the wrong line of work."
    "I