The Morcai Battalion (22 page)

“I think so,” Stern replied. “He was going through the place with scanners looking for somebody and he was in a red temper. He had two of the guards sent to the ovens the minute he got here. And he killed the two Rojoks who tortured Hahnson personally. One was the camp commandant.”

“Rojok death camps are notorious for their use of mind-altering drugs,” the commander began.

“Yes, we found out the hard way,” Stern told him. “We were given
synthesizers preprogrammed to add pleasure drugs to anything we drank or ate from them. Nobody’s been near that synthesizer for water since we found out. I’m not going to risk it now, either, although my damned throat’s parched. We’ve been using these,” he added, showing the alien a tiny hydrotox pills. “Madeline had a few of them left in her drug banks, but we’re running out. Komak had two Milish Cones. God, the other poor devils in this place haven’t even had that!”

Dtimun digested that in silence. He seemed preoccupied, and not just a little weak from his brush with the hereafter, Stern thought.

“Was Chacon searching the camp for me?” Dtimun asked.

“It is probable,” Komak replied, his eyes a troubled blue-gray. “The Rojoks had standing orders that you were to be taken to Mangus Lo the instant you were located.”

Madeline wondered absently how Komak had come by that information, when nothing had been mentioned in her hearing about it.

A green smile colored the Holconcom commander’s eyes. “I can think of nothing that would give me greater pleasure.”

“You must not kill him,” Komak warned. “The Council would space you for it. Whatever the provocation, as the head of a government he has the right to trial and the Tri-Galaxy Council has the right to exact payment for his crimes.”

“That conclave of gaggling old women?” the commander burst out, his eyes brown with anger. “They will not even agree to make proper war on the Rojok. Only a few governments have sent troops to the intersystem force.”

“It’s not because Admiral Lawson hasn’t tried,” Stern reminded him with a grin.

“Lawson is one man. And by now, certainly he has old Tnurat to contend with, as well. The Centaurian emperor has no patience with
weakness and bureaucracy—even less than Lawson. And his temper is meaner,” the Centaurian added.

“Even if Lawson could get a war vote,” Stern added, “it wouldn’t do us much good, would it? Most of the member planets can’t even get along in peacetime. We’ve been segregated into planetary units ever since the war started, and there’s no coordination among the few fleets that were sent to fight for us. Only a unanimous war vote would change that, and too many pacifist governments won’t sign such a treaty.”

“Indeed,” Dtimun said. “If a war vote came today, it would be many of your months before Lawson could organize the divisions and supply them for deep space. To mount an offensive in space is a great deal more difficult logistically than to deploy troops on solid ground.”

“What’s going on outside?” Madeline interrupted from the front of the dome. She’d been only half listening to the discussion behind her. There was a growing force of Rojok guards moving toward the entrance to the huge complex.

“They mass for action, unless I miss my guess,” Dtimun said calculatingly. “And I am not sufficiently recovered to fight,” he said. “Nor are my Holconcom,” he added with a pointed look toward Madeline.

She knew that he meant the Holconcom had their microcyborgs removed. A number of them were implanted under the commander’s scalp.

As she thought it, he scowled and his hand went to his thick black hair. He gave her an odd look.

She actually flushed. He couldn’t have read her mind, of course. It was only coincidence.

But his next statement belied any coincidence. “They must be transferred without explanation,” he said abruptly, looking straight at her. “There are enough for most of the Holconcom, though they will necessarily fight at lesser strength through dilution.”

“I can do the transfer,” she replied. “If you can get us out of here.”

He nodded. The others stared at them uncomprehending, all except Komak, who smiled. The microcyborgs were powerful. They would lend the commander stellar physical abilities as long as his body harbored them, but only two were designated to each of his unit. They were the size of pinheads, but their incredible abilities were known to only a few souls in the galaxy. Madeline was one. Komak understood without being told that she had shared that knowledge with no one.

“The Holconcom are as vulnerable as the humans,” the commander continued. “And all are weak and depleted physically since they have been avoiding the synthesizers.”

“We’ve got to do something quick,” Stern interrupted, watching the Rojoks. “I sense trouble.”

“I agree,” Komak added, studying the enemy aliens. “I sense one faction building to confront another.”

Dtimun’s eyes searched the Rojoks as one company of them began to loosely form the ancient phalanx. In the distance, the planet’s twin suns were looming closer to the horizon, bringing again the red haze of sunset to the horizon.

“One of the groups is going to be Chacon’s, I imagine,” Stern said.

Even as he spoke, the Rojok field marshal moved into view at the head of the phalanx. He shot an order to the men there and suddenly turned, commanding even across the space of the complex in his height and the arrogant self-confidence of his stride. He began to walk between the rows of domes. His slit eyes carefully searched each one as he passed it, two of his personal bodyguard flanking him as the others stood at attention.

“We’ll hide you,” Madeline said quickly.

“You will not,” Dtimun replied somberly. “If Chacon wishes to find me, by
Simalichar
, I will let him!”

“But, Commander, you can’t let him arrest you…!” she protested.

“In all probability,” he reasoned with her, in solemn tones, “you have rearranged my inner organs in such disorder that I will likely die anyway. What have I to lose?”

She gaped at him, her mind clouding as she read the laughing green of his eyes and tried to understand how he could succumb to humor at a time like this.

“If Chacon finds the commander,” Stern explained with exaggerated patience, “he’ll have to open the cell to take him out, won’t he? And if he does, we’ll jump him. With Chacon as a hostage, they’ll give us the place!”

“Well, gee whiz, what a simply super idea!” Madeline said in mock astonishment. She glowered. “You think Chacon’s going to march into the cell alone, without armed guards?”

“We could ask him if he’d oblige us,” he said reasonably.

She threw up her hands.

“Bataashe!”
Dtimun shot at them suddenly, his body tensing as the Rojok warlord moved toward them, searching each domed cell that he passed.

But he stopped suddenly at the entrance of Dtimun’s cell and stood there, tall and imposing, as proud as any emperor, just staring at the Holconcom commander. His reddish-skinned face was expressionless, his long, blond hair falling, wet from sweat, onto his forehead and into his slit eyes. Stern felt the power in their narrow gaze as if it had the power to burn.

“I find you in a strange place, Dtimun of Centauria,” Chacon said. “Legend has it that no Holconcom has ever been taken prisoner in battle.”

“Until now, that was true,” Dtimun replied.

Chacon nodded. His gaze swept over the other prisoners in
Dtimun’s cell. His thin lips turned up into a kind of smile. “Which is worse, I wonder, the confinement here or the constant company of the humans?” he asked the Centaurian. “I seem to remember that you nursed a violent distaste for them.”

“How could he,” Madeline interrupted, “when he’s never eaten one of us?”

“Yet,” Dtimun said with a narrow glare in her direction.

Chacon chuckled. “This one would be too spicy for your palate, I think.” He stared at Madeline. “Dr. Ruszel, I presume?”

He knew her? “Why…why, yes, sir,” she faltered, her eyes wide with surprise.

“The human in the multisonic cell,” Chacon explained, all the humor suddenly gone out of him. “He said to tell you that he didn’t deserve the blue velvet ribbon this time.” The Rojok frowned. “It makes no sense at all, this message he asked me to give you.”

Madeline swallowed hard and stood as tall as she could. “It makes all the sense in the three galaxies, sir,” she said with a glance at Stern, who nodded solemnly. “Thank you,” she added huskily. “And thank you for…putting an end to the torture.”

Chacon stared back at her, his eyes kindling with anger. “No soldier deserves such a death,” he said curtly. “Even war demands some rough thread of honor, if only to remind us that it is all that separates us from savagery.” His eyes swept to Dtimun. “I must take you to Mangus Lo. As I once allowed you to take me to the
Pyrecrete
on Thesalfohn. You remember?”

Dtimun’s eyes went gray with thoughtfulness, and suddenly burst with colors, the predominant flash of which was green. His gaze went to Stern and Komak. He read accurately the coiled alertness in them, felt the tension of muscles waiting to spring.

“I will go with you,” he told Chacon at once. Then he added, quickly, “Watch these two beside me. They will attack if they can.”

Komak and Stern stiffened, their eyes incredulous as they met the Holconcom commander’s. Something flashed in his, a passage of information that registered also in Komak’s eyes.

Komak straightened. “We will not interfere. My word as a Holconcom.”

Stern’s mouth flew open. “What the hell…?”

“You can’t just let him take you away!” Madeline burst out. “Not after all the time and effort and sacrifice of lives…!”

“Do not interfere,” Komak shot at her.

“I’m not interfering!” she muttered, her lips set. “But I’m not going to stand here and watch my greatest medical achievement walk off to the sonic ovens…!”

“Bring her, too,” Chacon said curtly as his guards graved the cell doorway open. “We have no time for verbal combat.”

“Maddie, no!” Stern cried, diving for the guard.

Komak caught him with one long, efficient arm and held him, struggling and cursing, until the cell closed once more. Stern fought the younger alien for all he was worth, but he couldn’t match Komak’s steely strength. First Strick, now Maddie. It was beyond bearing!

“Damn you, let…me…go!” Stern roared, and with an inhuman burst of strength, he actually broke the Holconcom’s hold and stood facing him with dilated eyes, his body crouched to attack.

“No outworlder,” Komak said blankly, “has ever escaped me!”

“There’s always a first time,” Stern replied harshly. “They’ll do to her what they did to Hahnson, damn you! I ought to kill you, Komak!”

“You are welcome to make the attempt,” Komak replied. “But it would be less a waste of time to let the force of life sweep you along instead of trying so hard to swim against the current.”

“I am not in the mood for any damned Centaurian philosophy!” Stern raged.

“Stern, let it go,” Madeline called to him, standing tall and proud between two Rojok bodyguards, her auburn hair gleaming like red honey in the light of the two moons as they hung low on the flat horizon. “I’m not afraid of these two-legged lizards,” she said in a coldly, steady tone. “Just get the others out of here, Holt.” And it was the first time since their escape from the Peace Planet that she’d used his first name. “Just do that, and it will have been worth it all. Okay?”

His fists clenched impotently. His eyes were dark, full of death and anguish. “You got it, Ladybones,” he said very quietly.

Chacon, who had been watching the byplay as intently as Dtimun, nodded. “Loyalty. I have noticed it often in this particular humanoid sect. Even torture does nothing to weaken it.”

“On the contrary,” Dtimun replied, “I think it strengthens it. Lead on, Rojok. I will show you how a Holconcom faces the ovens.”

Madeline straightened. “And I’ll show you the human equivalent,” she added, not to be outdone as she marched away beside Dtimun, surrounded by guards. “Give ’em hell, boys!” she yelled to the SSC officers and men in the cells.

Cheers went up from the prisoners as the small group disappeared from sight. And it wasn’t just the humans cheering.

“Why?” Stern asked Komak, the fury still in him as the other humans moved to his side in the cramped cell.

“Trust me,” Komak said, not oblivious to the confrontation in the making as the other Holconcom surged around him. The female medic was beloved by the human element. They would not understand why Komak had stopped Stern from preventing her removal from the cell.

“You ask a hell of a lot,” Stern said flatly, and saw Higgins nod beside him.

“I know,” Komak told him with a soft green smile in his eyes. “I have a—how is it said?—feeling of affection for the fire-haired female. I do not think that I could stand by and watch her go to her death. Knowing that, will you now trust me, even though I cannot provide evidence to support my actions?”

Stern scowled. His eyes measured the Holconcom officer and he knew, suddenly, that one word from him would decide between the
forged comradeship of the prison and a life or death struggle in this small cell. One word could have the humans and the Holconcom in a minor bloodbath. And some residue of the Rojok programming wondered what the outcome would be…

Madeline and Dtimun were taken quickly out of the cell complex into the Rojok flagship, its bulging saucer design comparable to the
Morcai
, except that this ship was at least twenty degrees hotter. Apparently the Rojoks were much like their exothermic reptile ancestors in their inability to produce heat internally.

Chacon led them into a compartment near the engine room, and, dismissing his select bodyguard, magnalocked himself in the small area with them. A touch of his graceful six-fingered hand cut off communications completely, a move Dtimun’s sharp eyes didn’t miss.

“
Maliche
, you tempt me!” Dtimun said shortly, his tall body tensing, the muscles rippling in his arms, his legs. “What manner of trickery is this? And what purpose does it serve?”

“Call it repayment of a debt, Centaurian,” the Rojok officer said quietly. “You saved my life on Thesalfohn.” He straightened. “I have Lyceria.”

Dtimun seemed to explode. Without the appearance of movement, he had the Rojok by the throat and black death dilated in his eyes.

“Look into my mind, Dtimun,” Chacon said steadily, no trace of fear in his slit eyes. “See the truth for yourself.”

Madeline watched the byplay with fascination. These two didn’t act like enemies.

“Where is she?” The Centaurian’s grip tightened visibly.

“Two cubicles away, her mind in darkness that may become permanent if you do not listen to me!” Chacon growled, his fingers
grasping Dtimun’s wrist firmly, forcing the hand away from his throat. “Mangus Lo had her brought here from my harem and subjected to sensory deprivation…”

“Your harem?” Even as he spoke, his hand grasped the Rojok’s throat a second time.

Chacon slapped it away and actually hit the Centaurian, sharply, across his broad chest. “
Islamesche
, will you listen to me, you hardheaded first cousin to a
shazemech?
” he thundered at Dtimun, his slit eyes like beams of black radiation. “Her sanity depends on you! I had her taken to my harem because it was the one place I thought Mangus Lo might not look for her, not because I used her as a warrior uses a
pazheen!
Now will you hear me?”

Dtimun seemed to relax, but only slightly. “
Mashcon shelach
,” he said quietly.

“She was placed in a sensory deprivation booth,” Chacon continued, his eyes burning at the memory. “Her mind, in rebellion, has withdrawn into a shell. If it is not brought back into the light, and soon, she will remain so for her lifetime. You and Dr. Ruszel, between you, must find a manner of returning her to reality. You are her only hope, and there is little time. My presence here is against explicit orders. Mangus Lo will know it very soon and send his bodyguard to intercept me.”

Madeline was puzzled at the reason a Rojok commander would risk his life for a Centaurian captive, but she didn’t have time to ponder it. “Is she aware of her surroundings at all?” Madeline asked professionally. “Does she respond to verbal stimuli?”

“She has not spoken since I brought her from the chamber,” Chacon said quietly. “She only stares into space with eyes that see nothing. Nor does she move.”

“With an injection,” Madeline told him, “there’s a possibility that
I can stimulate the neurons in her brain to activity. But it would take neuroprobing by a psychtech to reach her mind and coax it back. I haven’t the credentials or the training for that.”

“That is why I have brought Dtimun,” Chacon said mysteriously.

The two aliens exchanged a look that Madeline couldn’t decipher.

“I would know what your reason is for taking such a risk as this,” Dtimun told the Rojok. “And you must realize how great a risk it is. Inevitably there will be a confrontation, especially if you have defied Mangus Lo to come here. He will have his spies watching.”

“The confrontation forms as we speak,” Chacon replied. “As to my reason, I have never been known to tear wings from starflies, Centaurian,” he added. “This camp makes me want to retch. Until I came here myself, against the emperor’s orders, I had no idea of its depravity. We were told that it was a camp for political prisoners and that the gossip by outworlders was only propaganda.”

Madeline frowned. “Sir, you’ve never been here?” she asked Chacon.

“It was forbidden by military protocol,” he said. “I see why, now. War is one thing—I can see rare glimpses of nobility even in its horror. But this place is an affront to sanity. It should be reduced to atoms and a Tri-D projector left in its place to flaunt forever the fruits of appeasement. You know of what I speak,” he added.

“Yes,” Dtimun agreed. “The Tri-Galaxy Council has a history of appeasement and pacifism.”

“One of your senators knows of this place,” Chacon said, surprising his companions. “And he has said nothing to his colleagues about it. Money has changed hands. You understand?”

“Who?” Dtimun asked, making a laser of the word.

Chacon shook his head. “I know nothing of his appearance or position, only that he is a senator and has links to our empire. A doctor has helped him. Not this one,” he said, with a faintly pleasant glance at
Madeline. “A psychologist. But we have no time for discussions of genocide. I am a soldier, not a diplomat. Mangus Lo’s insanity is no less than that of your Tri-Galaxy Council, which permits him to commit genocide with mild protests and no military action to speak of.”

Dtimun only nodded. “The bureaucrats of the Council decided long ago to deny the New Territory to nonmember worlds, a decision which surely forced your people to war, since your politics and those of the Council will never mix. However, at the moment my concern goes no further than the daughter of Tnurat Alamantimichar—and my
Morcai
Battalion.”

Madeline smothered a grin at that last sentence. The Holconcom commander who first, and reluctantly, brought humans aboard his ship in what seemed lifetimes ago, would never have made such a statement.

“I will have the princess brought here,” Chacon said, moving to the bulkhead, which concealed a private discalator. He stepped inside. “I will return shortly. You will not be disturbed.”

Madeline and the
Morcai
’s commander were left alone to study each other quietly, warily, with eyes free to discover, to explore, out of sight of other eyes.

“You have no fear of the Rojok commander,” Dtimun said.

She nodded. “When he first got here,” she said, “an aide to the Rojok commandant of this place was…slicing off Hahnson’s fingers. He’d already used multisonics on him and the screams…” She drew a breath. “Anyway, it was just one more unbearable torture, and his hands…you know, they mean everything to a surgeon…and the Rojok was just slicing them away! Chacon didn’t bother with accusations or explanations. He whipped out his
chasat
and cut down the camp commandant who ordered the torture, along with the guard who’d been doing the torture.” A tiny, bitter smile touched her full mouth. “He cared. He cared that a soldier was being tortured, and
he didn’t stop to see what race the victim belonged to or whether or not he was an ally. Compassion is such a rare virtue, Commander,” she added. “My father—he’s a mean-tempered colonel in the Paraguard—says that it’s the death of an army and shouldn’t be tolerated. But a few of us escape the indoctrination.”

“Your father is Colonel Clinton Ruszel, is he not?” Dtimun asked her, and a green smile touched his eyes at the astonishment in her face.

“Why…yes!” she stammered.

“You were only four years old when your father and I rescued you and two hundred other Tri-Fleet children from terrorists on Mal-gomar. I doubt you remember the incident, but I remember you vividly, Madam. I picked you out of a cremeceton bush, and the instant you were free of the thorns, you sank your teeth into my forearm.” He pulled back his sleeve and showed her the tiny scar buried in the dark hairs of his golden-skinned flesh. “I promised Clinton that day that I would repay the injury when you were older.”

“What did he say?” she asked curiously.

“That you would likely die of blood poisoning from biting me,” he told her, with a green smile in his eyes. “Now,” he said, the smile fading to blue concern, “tell me about Stern. All of it.”

And she did, every bit of it, ending with the cloned human’s attempt to unite the prisoners, save Hahnson, and to help her save Dtimun. “He’ll be persecuted, you know,” she said defeatedly. “They’ll never trust him. They’ll say he’s just a clone and give him over to the rimscouts, and they might as well lob his head off as assign him there. Clones are people, too. They should have rights, just as we do. But in my society,” she added curtly, “it isn’t like that. Clones are property. Stern’s clone…is all I have left, now. Stern and Hahnson are both dead…” She turned away, ashamed of the emotion that was betraying itself in her face, her voice.

“And the emperor’s young son, along with them,” Dtimun said quietly. “War demands many sacrifices, Madam, none of them pleasant.”

Before she could reply, the bulkhead opened and Chacon stepped through it, the lithe form of the Centaurian princess clasped close in his strong arms, cradled like some exquisite treasure against his broad chest.

And like a puzzle suddenly putting itself together, Madeline knew why the Rojok field marshal had risked so much to come here. It hadn’t been to free the prisoners. It had been to find and rescue Lyceria.

Why
, she thought incredulously,
he loves her!

“Obviously, Madam,” Dtimun said aloud, but absently, as if he’d forgotten himself in the emotion of the moment.

But Madeline flushed to her toes as the truth sank in. The Holconcom commander had read her mind. Those two words had linked her to a secret that probably no other officer knew, not in the civilized worlds. It was a tremendous responsibility, that knowledge. But as she watched him stare at the princess, she wondered if he even knew that he’d given himself away.

Chacon laid the princess gently on a velvety couch against one bulkhead and stood back. Madeline moved to the young woman’s side, using the wrist scanner as a neurosensor to ascertain the damage. Even as she worked, she marveled at the princess’s feline beauty. She was like a graceful work of art chiseled from golden stone.

“Well?” Dtimun asked impatiently, glancing at Madeline.

“Sorry,” she murmured as she injected the motionless body with a neurostimulant and stood erect. “She’s very beautiful,” she explained with a self-conscious smile.

Dtimun looked at her and she felt odd tinglings in her body, as if it had been stroked.
As are you
, she imagined she heard in her mind. She must be imagining things!

She cleared her throat. “If you probe her mind, very gently,” she told Dtimun, “and coax her consciousness back with the barest suggestion of reality, there’s a chance. Her mind is damaged, but not beyond repair. The thing is to make her want to live. But you have to be patient.”

He nodded, slowly, his eyes probing hers until she lowered her gaze. He sat down beside Lyceria on the low couch. He smiled. “A hunter learns patience in infancy, Madam,” he told the female physician. “In all things,” he added deliberately, with a taunting green smile in his eyes.

She blushed, again astonished that he could provoke such a response.

Dtimun closed his eyes and Chacon scowled as he stood riveted to the spot, waiting, waiting…

“Commander Chacon!” came a sudden shout from the other side of the bulkhead. “Commander, the emperor’s flagship is throwing its antigravs in orbit, in preparation for a landing. Our agents think he and his personal bodyguard have come with Mekkar to take you!”

“Later,” Chacon murmured, his eyes fixed on Lyceria. “Later, Lieumek. I have no time for war now.”

Madeline studied the Rojok in silence. And wondered if there was so much difference in their races after all.

Stern watched Komak in a silence that grew unbearable before he finally relaxed his threatening stance with a harsh sigh.

“I have to trust you,” he said finally, and with a grin. “It’s a little too late for anything else, now.”