Koro Melemann walked down the street in the bright Techterra sunshine, a bag of groceries in his arms. He hummed a happy tune with a smile imprinted on his otter-like features. He nodded graciously to people he passed, and they smiled in return.

  He turned down an alley. The bright sunlight dimmed between the tall buildings. The alley was broad and clean.

  He turned a corner in the alley, an area tucked away from prying eyes. He carefully set his groceries on the ground against the wall. He surveyed the empty alley with his hands on his hips.

  "Well?" he said. "You've been following me all day. Did you want to talk?"

  Dass Gunstar stepped from the shadows in the corner.

  "Koro. So you did survive."

  Koro turned his head at an angle.

  "Do I know you? My apologies, but you don't look familiar to me."

  Dass began slowly circling the Lutrin.

  "Oh, you know me," he said. "You knew a couple friends of mine as well. Cid Tallav and Ikke Kelbier. Do you recall them?"

  Koro put on an expression of pleasant quizzicality, and clasped his hands behind his back, turning his body to continue facing Dass.

  "I'm sorry, I don't. Should I?"

  "Oh? You don't remember the two NavInt agents you murdered fifteen years ago?"

  "Goodness, no. I'm simply a humble journalist. I wouldn't be involved in anything so violent."

  Dass kept circling, circling.

  "I ran across some of your handiwork lately. You always did love your little listening wires."

  Koro kept his hands clasped behind his back, a confused smile on his face, radiating honesty.

  "I'm sorry, but I really don't know who you are," Koro said. "Maybe just a little hint?"

  Dass grinned, not in a nice way. His face bulged, distorted, began to melt. The flesh of his limbs flowed, stretching, thinning. He grew taller, his shape reforming.

  Within moments, instead of a stodgy Duroclade, a tall, buxom Terran woman with shimmering golden hair stood in the alley. She was proportioned as though she'd been designed by a young man with more imagination than experience.

  "Ringing any bells now?" she asked in a sultry voice.

  Koro's pleasant demeanor had frozen on his face.

  "Ah," he said. "Vorta Kast. You did always know how to hold a grudge."

  "You killed my friends and blew my cover," she growled, her eyes locked on his. "Did you think I wouldn't?"

  "I underestimated you last time," Koro said. "I should have killed you first."

  "Yeah, you should've."

  "Maybe only you. I could have turned Ikke. With enough money, maybe Cid, too."

  "You shut up!" Vorta roared. "They were good men!"

  A pseudopod lashed out, slapping against the little Lutrin. Vorta's flesh began to creep across his body. Koro's left hand came out from behind his back and he stuffed something into his mouth. He worked his jaw a few times, settling something in place. He began tearing at Vorta's flesh with his claws, trying to pull it off him, but the relentless, blobby mass kept advancing.

  "They were scum, Vorta," Koro said as the flesh crept relentlessly toward his face. "Scum for the Imperium. Like me. Like you."

  "They were not like you," she snarled. "And now that I've found you, I can put their souls to rest."

  Koro shook his head. He reached under his coat.

  "So you want to kill me, not arrest me." His smile turned genuine. "That makes things easier."

  Koro's little arm popped back out, holding a flareblade. The tungsten shaft stuck out ten inches from his fist, its leading edge an angry red glow, humming and spitting sparks. "I figured you'd be back someday. That's why I stayed prepared."

  He swiped the burning blade across Vorta's flesh. A loud hiss filled the alley along with a huge cloud of green, reeking steam. Vorta screamed as her pseudopod was severed. The scream ended in a burble as she shifted back into Dass' Duroclade form.

  Koro's glowing blade shone through the mist. Everything else was obscured. The red glow darted forward, sinking into Dass' body. Red fire boiled deep within him. His body swelled as his fluid turned into steam. He thrashed, but Koro swayed and jumped with Dass' movements, keeping the pressure on, keeping the knife buried.

  "When you have fifteen years to prepare, you have time to think things through." Koro hissed as he put all his weight behind the blade. "You have time to ask yourself the important questions. Questions like 'how do you kill a slime-man?'"

  Dass growled and yanked himself away, his form beginning to collapse. A farting gush of steam escaped his body as he ripped himself free from the flareblade. He fell against the wall. His body throbbed, the Mucilagean equivalent of gasping for air. His Duroclade form drooped, sagged, struggled to hold together. Runnels and drips of flesh poured off his surface, splashing onto the pavement below.

  Koro smiled his friendly, trustworthy smile and advanced, still holding the spitting blade in his charming paw.

  "I sincerely appreciate you coming to me," he said in his friendly voice. He stood over Dass and raised the blade. "It always bothers me so to leave work unfinished."

  A smaller pseudopod shot from Dass' body, splatting directly across Koro's face, sealing his nose and mouth. Dass quivered, straining to hold the pseudopod in place.

  Koro shrugged and shook his head. Dass could feel him smiling. With deliberate slowness, Koro lifted the blade and ran it longways down the stretchy pseudopod, all the way from his face to Dass' body. The pseudopod hissed and fell away, revealing Koro's smile.

  "Mouth rebreather," he said, pointing at the shiny device in the back of his mouth, fitted over his molars. "This lets me breathe even if my mouth is sealed off. It's only good for a couple of minutes, but that's plenty of time for what I need to do."

  He stabbed the blade down into Dass again, then drew it along his body, opening a huge gash. Hissing green steam gushed into his face. The gash began sealing up immediately, but Koro fished something small out of his pocket and tossed it into the gash before it closed completely.

  "A little snack for you," Koro said.

  Dass whimpered and pulsated.

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  "Same old Vorta, same old tactics," Koro said. "You depend so much on the shock of sealing off your victim's air supply that you don't know what to do when that doesn't work. I told you, didn't I? It's been fifteen years since the last time we fought. I've studied Mucilageans since then. I've learned so much. But you haven't learned anything, have you?"

  The Lutrin pushed Dass' head onto the ground and brought the sparking blade near to his face.

  "Not one blessed thing." He brought the blade close enough that Dass' flesh began to bubble. "Any final words?"

  Dass gasped and pulsed. He struggled to form words.

  "S... S..."

  Koro paused.

  "Yes?" he asked.

  "Starstrider, power up!"

  Koro's brow knitted. A shank of Dass' flesh-- now formed into one of the angular, blade-like accouterments of XOS-1-- pierced Koro just below his short ribs.

  Koro cried out in pain. Dass' flesh rushed forward, filling the Lutrin's mouth, but he didn't stop pushing. He invaded further, further, forcing himself into Koro's lungs. With a mighty heave he flipped Koro onto his back and piled all his mass on top of the Lutrin.

  "A rebreather in your mouth doesn't do you any good if there's no room in your lungs," Dass gasped.

  Koro's eyes went wide. His chest hitched as he tried fruitlessly to draw air in. He thrashed and flailed, slashing at Dass with his fiery blade. Dass tried to hold Koro's knife arm down, but greenish, stinking steam still filled the air as Koro's blade carved off slices of his flesh. Dass pushed the blade of his flesh further in, straining to reach Koro's heart. Koro's left hand grabbed the blade and held it tightly.

  Dass kept his mass on Koro's face and continued shoving himself into Koro's windpipe with every bit of strength he had left.

  Koro's struggles slowed, weakened. His feet stopped kicking. His grip on Dass' spike loosened. His eyes glazed, and the flareblade rolled out of his grasp, clanking onto the pavement.

  The Lutrin lay on the ground, still.

  Dass withdrew himself from Koro's respiratory system, and removed his bladed flesh from Koro's side. He reformed himself into Dass, slowly, painfully, much thinner now and struggling. He weaved on his feet, dripping, his wounds still steaming.

  With a great effort, he picked up the flareblade. He was so drained that he couldn't even manage a snarky quip.

  The flareblade buzzed back to life. Dass stood over the Lutrin. He was going to make sure, this time.

  He brought the blade to the Lutrin's throat. With a quick, precise movement, he closed that chapter of his life.

  Admiral Stonefist's office was full of the quiet bustle of afternoon work. Sol was working diligently at his desk. Kinnit was working on tidying up the slips and files on Grimthorn's desk. She was focused on physical paperwork, since she didn't have access to the systems. She was technically still on suspension.

  Grimthorn himself was plowing through a backlog of messages. He'd discovered that he could simply delete about four fifths of the messages that came in, more or less at random, and nobody ever noticed. The remaining messages still consumed a significant part of his day.

  The ceiling flashed blue.

  "End of day," Grimthorn said without looking up from his console. "You two can take off."

  Sol immediately stopped typing mid-sentence, put down his slips, and walked stiffly out of the office. Kinnit's worried eyes followed him out the door.

  "Is he okay?" she asked.

  Grimthorn stared at the closed door.

  "Probably. I hope so."

  "I wonder if I should go talk to him?" she asked.

  "Under other circumstances, I would say yes. Right now, I don't think your advice would be taken in the spirit it was offered."

  Kinnit colored heavily, remembering how she and Grimthorn had been caught smooching.

  "You're probably right," she said. "I hope he can figure things out."

  "I do, too."

  Kinnit sat back at her desk and stretched out.

  "Speaking of figuring things out," she said, "you never did tell me how you tracked me back to Techterra."

  Grimthorn's face soured.

  "It wasn't difficult. First, I went through everyone I thought you'd contact. Lieutenant Voth was the second person I contacted. At that point it was only a quick search. Even commercial ships keep manifests. Not many commercial ships carry navy shuttles as cargo."

  "Ah. Oh yeah. Um. Who was the first?"

  "Admiral Balia. He's nearly as bad of a troublemaker as you are."

  "Oh. That makes sense." Her brow knitted. "I really am sorry. I should have talked to you about it all."

  Grimthorn held up a hand.

  "You've apologized enough for that."

  "I know, but I still feel bad."

  "There's nothing I can do about that, so apologizing won't make you feel any better." Grimthorn paused as her face fell. He tried to bring the mood up a little.

  "It wasn't all bad," he hastened to assure her. "I was able to spend some time in your old cave on Takkar. I got to know some of your people, a little."

  "What do you mean? It couldn't have taken you very long to realize I wasn't there."

  "Oh, well, I was there for about a week. I accidentally was trapped there by the Great Storm."

  Kinnit nodded thoughtfully.

  "That's right, it's about that time of year. I forgot," she said. Then her brow furrowed. "Wait, did you say a week? The Great Storm lasts longer than that."

  "Ah. Yeah. I... kind of flew out of it."

  Kinnit gripped the edge of her desk.

  "Wait, you flew in the Great Storm?!"

  "Just a little way!" Grimthorn said, holding up his hands. "The eye of the storm came close to the cave, so I was able to get out through that."

  "How close?"

  Grimthorn paused for a long minute, trying to work out how to say "ten kilometers" without getting her "ten kilometers" worth of upset. Her expression darkened the longer he waited.

  "Ten kilometers," he said finally.

  "What?!" she screeched. "You fuss at me about putting myself in danger and you flew a shuttle through the Great Storm for ten klicks?!"

  "I needed... I had to..." Several possible responses occurred to him-- all of them perfectly reasonable, from his point of view-- but he realized that any of them would only make things worse.

  "Ah... you're right. I'm sorry," he said.

  Kinnit sat with her arms crossed and fumed.

  "I can't believe you flew through the Great Storm," she muttered.

  "Ah, but I did get to hear a lot of the singing," he said, anxious to change the subject. "Your people have many beautiful songs." He grew wistful for a moment. "None of them sing as prettily as you, but it was wonderful to listen to.

  Kinnit blushed, her mouth open, suddenly caught between being angered and smitten.

  "I... well, I don't sing as well as some. Dame Haffa sings much better than me."

  "I heard her," Grimthorn said, " and I disagree. I think you are much more talented." Kinnit's face flamed red. "She did sing well enough to make me miss your voice."

  "I-- you--" Kinnit tumbled to a stop, fully flustered. "You're a flatterer, Grimthorn Stonefist!"

  Grimthorn smiled.

  "Is it flattery if it's true?" Rather than continue to make her stew in compliments, Grimthorn changed tack again. "In any case, they had some new songs. Some were about a character you might recognize, Kinnit Longlegs."

  "What? You mean, songs about me? "

  He pulled out his scanner.

  "I wrote them down. I hope that's okay."

  "Show me, show me!"

  He pulled his notes up and projected them. Kinnit rushed over and spun through the notes, reading the lyrics. She giggled with delight as she read through them.

  "Oh, Grimthorn! I'm in a song!" She leaned against him and laid her head on his shoulder.

  "I recorded at least four different songs," he said, spinning further through the notes. "There was some overlap, but I tried to separate them out as best I could."

  "Oh! Oh, I wish I could hear them! Grimthorn! Sing them for me!"

  "Uh... what?"

  "You heard them sung, didn't you? Sing them for me please!"

  "I don't really sing, it's... uh..." Kinnit was looking up at him with her luminous eyes pleading, wearing an expression that would send him conquering half the galaxy if she wanted him to.

  Conquering half the galaxy would be easier than singing.

  "I... really... can't..." Her lower lip pooched out the tiniest amount, and a rim of tears collected in her eyes. "I..." Grimthorn sighed. "I'll try," he said finally.

  "Yay!" Kinnit ran over and snatched up her chair from behind her desk. She set it next to Grimthorn, sat down, and waited.

  Grimthorn cleared his throat and ran his notes through the translator, to get the lyrics back into Kobold. He spent some extra time reading through them, on the one hand to try and understand the pronunciation properly, and on the other hand hoping that if he took long enough, Kinnit would get bored and want to do something else. He glanced over at her.

  She sat, with her chin in her hands and elbows on her knees, staring at him adoringly.

  He cleared his throat uncomfortably. He lifted his chin as he'd seen the Kobolds do, and tried a few notes. His voice cracked and he stumbled to a stop. She kept her expression of eager anticipation trained on him like a blaster cannon.

  He started again. He fumbled through the first song, no doubt butchering the pronunciation of many words, and committing acts of unspeakable desecration against perfectly innocent notes, but he made it through.

  Kobold songs ran long, telling, as they did, epic legends. Grimthorn finally squeaked through the last few notes and looked to Kinnit, hoping that, as awful as it was, it had convinced her not to want to listen to any more.

  Her adoring eyes had not diminished at all. Now they fairly sparkled.

  "Oh, Grimthorn, you sing so wonderfully. I can't wait to hear how you sing the rest of them!"

  Grimthorn grinned uncomfortably. With great reluctance, he began the next song, filling his office with the halting, imperfect music of the Kobolds while Kinnit listened in rapt silence.