“Let me see if I am to be understanding you correctly,” the small furry creature repeated. “You want me to talk to the leaders of the rebel Zruthy forces, to convince them not to give up and be destroyed at the hands of the Deathspawn?”

Rostov nodded. Beside him, the tall Zruthy admiral stood resolute, unmoving.

Tolnaire let out a low, ragged whistle. “You are to be saying that you want me to help out the very people who enslaved and tortured my race for thousands of years?”

“If you do not do this,” Sakaki warned, “we will all be destroyed anyway. Yourself included.”

The Chor-Atha paced around his bed for a few moments. “Even if I were to want to do this,” he said, “what makes you think that anyone would listen to me?”

Admiral Sentori rumbled. “You are to be Chor-Atha,” it said simply. “The rebels are to be worshipping your kind. A word from you is to mean much.”

“And why can you not find others of my kind to do this job? There are millions of us on the homeworld. Surely one of them would be a better choice!”

The Zruthy shook its massive bulk from side to side. “No,” it said. “The other Chor-Atha do not understand. They are to be scared, to not listen to any Zruthy any more, whether they are to be loyalist or rebels. You are to be different. You are to have traveled much and seen this war from both sides. They would listen to you.”

“I very much doubt that,” Tolnaire said. “I am not a leader. There must be better options than myself.”

“No!” Sentori thundered. “There is only to be this option! You are to come with me back to the Zruthy homeworld and convince the rest of your kind to stand up and fight with us, or there is to be no deal!”

Tolnaire let out a deep, intermittent sigh. “I didn’t ask for this, you know,” he said bitterly. “I didn’t ask to be stolen from my mother at birth, to be implanted with a pain-giving slave device, or for the rest of my race to live in perpetual torment! Now you are to demand this of me… it is not fair! To make me make this choice!”

Everyone was silent. The distant throb of the artificial gravity’s rotation motors was the only thing that could be heard for a long time.

“Damn all of you,” the Chor-Atha said quietly. “I will almost certainly be going to hell for this, but I will help you.”

“Thank you,” Admiral Sakaki said, and he bowed slightly. “You may just have saved all of us.”