ed his throat. "Empress
Lindner, what's Lieutenant DarElwyn's departure time?" Subvocally he
added, "Monitor till I tell you otherwise."

"Yes, Ranger," came the answer only he could hear. "He is preparing
for launch now."

"Ask him to delay for two hours, please," Medart said aloud. "And make
sure he's bringing a shelter for the team; they'd be pretty cramped in
the facilities available here." He paused. "Oh, and program my chrono
to display local time as the primary."

"Yes, sir. Is there anything else?"

"That's it; Medart out." Turning his attention back to the Inquisitor,
Medart settled back in his chair. "All right, Colonel. I'm ready."

* * * * *

Bradford's questioning, Medart thought when it was over, was the most
thorough and probing debrief he'd ever been through. It hadn't been
pleasant reliving those memories of murder, family loss, torture and
maiming--his, even though he hadn't been the one the originals happened
to--and he was relieved when Bradford called a halt, saying he'd gotten
all the useful information Medart had. His smile this time was more
genuine. "You're a good subject, Ranger. You've given me all I need
to have that judge arrested, as well as identify and arrest the rogue
Inquisitor and the rest of those Brothers."

"If they haven't gone into hiding." Medart checked his chrono and
rose. "My bodyguard team should be down in ten minutes or so, if you'd
care to meet some non-humans."

Bradford hesitated, then nodded. "I don't really care to, but if
Colonel Cortin's right, I'd better start getting used to them."

Medart smiled. "If you join the Empire, yes. I'd planned on giving
you a bit more preparation, but Colonel Cortin suggested my bodyguard
be the biggest people we have, and those are Traiti. The Empire
includes standard humans, human variants like the Sandemans and the
Narvonese Dragon-Kindred, and non-humans, like the Traiti and
Irschchans. One of my fellow Rangers is Irschchan, and I wouldn't be
at all surprised if she became Empress some day. Plus there are
occasional genetically-engineered variants who're so far from the human
norm they'd be classified non-human if that weren't their root stock."

"I understand."

Medart was thinking hard as they went outside to wait. He would have
liked to get a reaction uninfluenced by prior information to his
bodyguards' appearance, but from Bradford's response to the mere
mention of n