Diana Palmer’s second installment in her thrilling space epic is a vast panorama of far-flung civilizations, interplanetary conflict and galaxy-spanning passion…

THE MORCAI BATTALION: THE RECRUIT

A prophecy foretold:

Three years after the unprovoked attack on a peaceful colony, the war between the Rojok dynasty and the Tri-Galaxy Fleet rages on. Born of that war is the Morcai Battalion, a fleet comprised of Centaurians and humans—the first collaboration of its kind and a step toward an intergalactic alliance. But the fragile union is tested as their courageous commander in chief, Dtimun, is faced with the temptation of the forbidden—and human—Dr. Madeline Ruszel.

A combat surgeon, Ruszel is aware of the danger of inciting a Centaurian’s interest, even if he is the most intriguing of men. Besides putting their mission at risk, personal relations between their kinds are still outlawed. But a prophecy that touches on both their lives and the future of all alien nations hints that a greater unity may be theirs for the taking…if they, and their crew, survive in the battle for peace.

Praise for the novels of New York Times and USA TODAY bestselling author DIANA PALMER

“Fans of stark outer space military science fiction

will appreciate this sobering at-war thriller.”

—The Best Reviews on The Morcai Battalion

“A high-octane and gritty space adventure.”

—RT Book Reviews on The Morcai Battalion

“Palmer…is the queen of desperado quests

for justice and true love.”

—Publishers Weekly on Dangerous

Brought to you for the first time in paperback…

New York Times bestselling author Diana Palmer presents readers with her Mills & Boon HQN series, The Morcai Battalion. A thrilling, romantic space opera and adventure, The Morcai Battalion features passionate romance and intense action as unforgettable warriors fight for peace in the galaxy.

The Morcai Battalion:

The Recruit

Diana Palmer

www.millsandboon.co.uk

Dear Reader,

It is my great pleasure to have this novel, the second in my Morcai Battalion series, in mass market paperback. It was released previously, in 2009, under the Mills & Boon LUNA imprint, only as an ebook, so I am very grateful to have it in print. I have also added new content to this edition of the novel, as I did to the rerelease of the original The Morcai Battalion in June 2013.

It is fun to create a science fiction series, especially around characters with whom you have lived for over forty years. This is the second book of several in my Morcai Battalion series. It follows the adventures of Dr. (and Lieutenant Commander) Madeline Ruszel, the only female ever to serve as a member of the Cehn-Tahr/Human commando unit known as the Holconcom. She is a combat vet, and her alien C.O. doesn’t think women belong in combat. Watch for sparks to keep flying. Also watch for the next sequel, which continues Ruszel’s stormy relationship with her commander, in Invictus in 2015.

A lot of people helped give me ideas for this book. I am grateful to James Daniel Clayton, to whom it is dedicated. He served on a number of U.S. Navy nuclear submarines, and he was kind enough to let me pick his brain about the routine on a vehicle submerged for long periods of time away from port (sort of like being in space, you can’t just walk out of a nuclear sub and take a stroll when you feel like it). He is also Donovan and Selena Marie Kyle’s other grandfather, and part of a very nice family, which includes his wife, Jane; his son, Daniel; and his daughter, Christina (Blayne’s wife and Selena and Donovan’s mama!).

I owe Dr. Rob Wainberg, who is a biology professor at Piedmont College in Demorest, Georgia, a debt, too, because I forced him to revisit both graduate school and his days as a researcher to help me flesh out the Cehn-Tahr. He will find a surprise when he reads the book. Thanks, Rob! (And thanks to Dr. Carlos Camp, who was so understanding when his name was misspelled in the dedication to the first book in 2007!)

I hasten to add that any mistakes in this novel are strictly mine. As I age, the little gray cells become more rigid and less efficient with information. I do write primarily to entertain, not to educate. But I do spend a great deal of time reading studies in theoretical physics and hanging out on medical and science and NASA websites. Hope you like the book.

Visit me at www.themorcaibattalion.com and www.dianapalmer.com.

Susan Kyle

Habersham County, Georgia

2013

To James Daniel “Danny” Clayton, submariner

and retired veteran of the United States Navy, with many thanks

Contents

Cover

Back Cover Text

Praise

Title Page

Dear Reader

Dedication

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

CHAPTER TWELVE

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

GLOSSARY AND CHARACTERS

Copyright

CHAPTER ONE

BATTERED AND SORE, Dr. Madeline Ruszel stood at attention in front of the Holconcom commander, Dtimun. The tall alien perched on the edge of his liquiform desk with his arms crossed, glaring at her. His cat-eyes, which changed color to mirror his mood, were the dark brown of anger.

She knew she looked unpresentable. Her red Holconcom uniform was stained with synthale and her own blood. She was disheveled and bruised. Her long, wavy reddish-gold hair was in a tangle all the way to her waist, and also sweaty from her recent activities in the base officers’ lounge. Contacted by the base military police unit, after her apprehension, Dtimun had ordered Ruszel brought to the Morcai, the flagship of the integrated Cehn-Tahr and human commando unit known as the Holconcom.

He hadn’t said a word since she arrived, with bruises just coming out on the soft skin of her face, around one of her green eyes. She’d been standing at attention for several minutes, waiting for the explosion. Holconcom were forbidden to engage in brawls. That included not only the Cehn-Tahr complement, but the humans as well. The elite and feared military unit had, unknown to the human commanders of the Tri-Galaxy Fleet, genetically engineered superior strength, plus microcyborg enhancers that made brawling extremely dangerous. Besides that, Madeline was a combat surgeon. By constitutional galactic law, medical personnel were denied that sort of recreation.

Of course, they were also denied the use of sidearms. Madeline tried to conceal the one she was carrying tucked in her waistband, under her tunic, from the alien’s penetrating gaze.

Finally, he spoke. “You are out of uniform, madam,” he growled, indicating her uniform, unbuttoned at the throat.

She raised one hand and quickly fastened the button.

“And you are carrying a firearm,” he continued. “Firearms are forbidden to medical personnel. You are a doctor.”

Technically, she wasn’t only a doctor of medicine, but an internist in Cularian medicine, an anthropological group which included the Cehn-Tahr—or Centaurians, as they were incorrectly known by humans—and their worst enemies, Rojoks. In her past, Madeline had captained an Amazon commando squad and had routinely carried a service weapon. But she wasn’t going to push her luck by reminding him of that fact, given the state of his temper. His expression might be benign, but his elongated slit-pupiled cat-eyes were still brown. Grimacing, she tugged the Jebob disruptor from her belt, stepped forward and laid it gently on the desk beside him. She returned to attention.

“Would you care to explain the purple discoloration around your left eye?” he added.

“It’s called a black eye,” she informed him merrily. “That would be from Flannegan’s fist. Sir.”

He made a rough sound deep in his throat and folded his arms across his broad chest. “I assume that you do have some justification for throwing Flannegan through the expensive antique glass patio doors at the officers’ club?”

She brightened, although she still hadn’t quite met his eyes. “Yes, sir!”

“Which is...?” he prompted.

“Flannegan called you a cat-eyed benny-whammer. Sir,” she added formally.

He just stared at her, as if he had doubts about her sanity.

“How can I justify the dignity of your position aboard the Morcai,” he began solemnly, “as the only female, human or otherwise, ever to serve aboard her, when you spend hours in various bars across the base embarrassing both the Holconcom and me?”

She shook her head. “Sir, the honor of the unit was at stake,” she said earnestly. “You must see that we...” She cleared her throat. “I mean, I, had to defend your honor.”

“We.” His eyes grew darker.

“Me. I. Myself.” She gathered speed.

“And Stern,” he guessed, “and Hahnson and Komak.” The other two human officers, Captain Holt Stern and Dr. Strick Hahnson, were Madeline’s longtime comrades. Komak, a Cehn-Tahr, was Dtimun’s second in command.

She met his eyes, aghast. “Sir, I never said that...!”

He drew in a breath. “It is useless to try to deceive me.”

She straightened even more. “I’m really very sorry, sir,” she said. “I waded in to punish Flannegan, and his buddies in the First Fleet attacked me. I was outnumbered, so the others intervened to save me from them.”

“A pity,” he muttered darkly, “that they are not here to save you from me.”

“I was about to say that myself, sir,” she returned brightly. Her green eyes were twinkling, despite all her efforts to appear sincere.

The humor was contagious, apparently, because his cat-eyes flared into a green smile, if only briefly, before the angry brown returned.

“Brawling,” he scoffed. “Not only does it reflect poorly on your profession, but you have no business displaying a firearm to the entire base.”

“I had to relieve Flannegan of the firearm, sir—he’d taken it from a Jebob officer and he was using the grip to batter my head.”

His eyes narrowed. “I will remind you once more that medical personnel are not allowed sidearms. Lawson insists on it, and so do I.”

Her green eyes glittered at him defiantly. “With all due respect, sir, I’m not going into a combat situation unarmed, whether or not Admiral Lawson likes it.”

Dtimun stood up, shaking his head. “Your previous combat history as a captain with the Amazon Division is at war with your professional credentials as a healer. It will lead to grief.”

“I always hide the firearm, sir,” she assured him.

He turned, scowling, and gave her a long look that took in the nice fit of her red Holconcom uniform. There were no pockets. Neither was there room for a weapon. “Should I ask where you hide the firearm?” he questioned unexpectedly.

She gave him a horrified look. “Sir!” she exclaimed with mock embarrassment.

“At least reassure me that all of your Cehn-Tahr crewmates removed their microcyborgs before you engaged in this senseless slaughter,” he replied, trying to salvage something from the encounter. This was a deliberate deception, also. The microcyborgs were strength-enhancers, used by the Cehn-Tahr clones of the Holconcom. But their contribution to Dtimun and Komak’s physical superiority was minute. Dtimun and Komak were not clones. The humans had no idea of the real nature of the Cehn-Tahr.

“Komak collected them the minute Flannegan called you a cat-eyed...called you a name,” she amended quickly, “and I threw a bar stool at him,” she assured him with a muffled grin.

He let out a long sigh and waved a hand at her. “Get out of my office,” he muttered. “And stay out of the base officers’ club until I give you official permission to return there.”

“Yes, sir!”

“And, you are grounded until further notice.”

“Yes, sir!”

He glared at her as she started to leave. “Take that weapon and give it back to Flannegan. And if I catch you carrying a firearm into combat,” he began with the threat in his tone and his posture, “I will stand you up in the brig and let Komak use you as a practice target for his novapen. Am I understood?”

“Oh, yes, sir, you are,” she assured him, grabbing the weapon off his desk.

“Ruszel,” he called as the door powered apart at her movement.

Her hair flew around her face as she turned back to him, her eyes questioning.

“Does Flannegan have a similar souvenir of the encounter?” he asked unexpectedly.

She grinned. “Indeed he does, sir. Two of them!”

Once again, there was the faintest flash of green in his elongated eyes. “Carry on.”

“Yes, sir!”

She was chuckling as she went out of the room and down the deck toward her medical quarters.

* * *

DTIMUN WATCHED HER go with mixed emotions. She was so unlike women of his species, who were not allowed in the military, much less in combat. It had been a point of contention between himself and Ruszel since she and her Terravegan Strategic Space Command comrades, Captain Holt Stern and Dr. Strick Hahnson, had become part of the legendary Cehn-Tahr Holconcom unit now known as the Morcai Battalion. The humans frequently tested his patience to the limit. But they were fierce fighters, loyal and honorable, and they complemented the Cehn-Tahr soldiers in ways he hadn’t imagined.

In the almost three years since the Holconcom had escaped from the Rojok death camp, Ahkmau, the war between the Rojok dynasty and the Tri-Galaxy Fleet had intensified. The Cehn-Tahr of the Holconcom, except for Dtimun himself and Komak, were all clones. So were Captain Holt Stern and Dr. Strick Hahnson—through no fault of their own, since their originals had been killed by the Rojoks. Dtimun had carefully concealed this knowledge about Stern and Hahnson from the brass of the Tri-Fleet military, due to the inexplicable human contempt for clones.

His men and the humans, formerly of Stern’s ship, the SSC ship Bellatrix, had been a volatile mix in the first days of the unit. Holconcom were not used to touch without combat, and the Terravegan humans were a physical race. Therefore, brawling had been strictly forbidden for fear that a massacre might ensue, and not only because of the secret tech used by the Cehn-Tahr members of the Holconcom to boost their already formidable strength.

Not that it did any good to forbid brawling. Komak, Dtimun’s executive officer, had gotten around the no-brawling rule by having the clones remove their microcyborgs, the tiny, highly classified strength modifiers that all members of the Holconcom had embedded in their scalps. His comrades enjoyed the physical sparring with other races. Now the humans aboard the Morcai and their Cehn-Tahr comrades frequently trashed bars; but usually not on Trimerius, the headquarters planet of the Tri-Galaxy Fleet. Admiral Jeffrye Lawson was not going to take Ruszel’s participation in the sport lightly. He felt that a Terravegan lieutenant commander, as Madeline was ranked aboard the Morcai, should not brawl. Of course, he also felt that doctors should not help to create patients. But he had a soft spot for Ruszel, which was why she got away with so many infractions of regulations.

Besides Ruszel’s brawling, Dtimun had two more equally disturbing problems. The first had to do with the living machines aboard his ship, the Morcai. There were four kelekoms aboard the Morcai. The living, sentient machines bonded with their operators and were capable of incredible intelligence-gathering abilities. On Ahkmau, the ship had lost one of its operators and the unit had gone into hibernation after its companion had died.

None of the kelekoms had ever lost a companion since Dtimun’s accession to head of the Holconcom. Because the joining was so intimate a relationship, it was also emotional. The unit had gone into advanced hibernation mode. Two attempts had been made, over the past two years, to find it a new companion. The first had seemed encouraging. The kelekom had made an effort to give the Cehn-Tahr officer time to become familiar with it. It had forced itself to go on missions with him, had functioned almost normally during the weeks that followed. The officer was delighted to be part of the elite unit. The kelekom accepted him in the months that followed and allowed him to join with it. Mission after mission had followed. And just when Dtimun was sure the match would be permanent, the young Cehn-Tahr officer had walked into an ambush and died instantly.

The kelekom, now robbed of two linkeds Cehn-Tahr companions by death, had gone into depression and had finally shut down all over again. Months had passed with no interest from it as Dtimun presented it with new candidates, none of whom seemed to be acceptable. Now, it seemed possible that it would die. That, Dtimun could not allow to happen. He had to find a replacement operator, but none of his men aboard ship had inspired any interest in the declining bionic machine. So the ship had had to operate with only three units. He thought that perhaps Lawson might have a human computer technician to spare, one whose very strangeness might appeal to the depressed living machine. It was a long shot, but it might work.

His second problem had to do with a complement of ambassadors who were holding an emergency meeting on Ondar, a neutral planet in the nearby Cerelles system. They were discussing the unexpected death of Rojok tyrant Mangus Lo while he was in Tri-Galaxy Fleet custody, pending a retrial in his conviction on war crime charges, and the latest incursion by his nephew and successor, Chan Ho, who had seized another star system in the New Territory with the help of Chacon, his respected field marshal.

Apparently, Chacon had managed to explain his part in Mangus Lo’s arrest on Ahkmau. He had permitted the Morcai Battalion to escape from the horrors of Ahkmau, but no one outside the unit had been privy to that knowledge. Presumably, even if the explanation was sketchy, the Rojoks’ new emperor was afraid to test his own power as commander-in-chief by attempting to try the people’s favorite soldier, Chacon. There was interspace chatter, however, that Chan Ho favored his late uncle’s terror policies and had gone head-to-head with Chacon about their renewal. It was worrying.

The Tri-Galaxy Council was working on a diplomatic solution to the Rojoks’ latest appropriation in the New Territory, claimed by member planets of the Tri-Galaxy Council. The Rojoks had already seized Terramer and its system, now they were spreading out to another nearby system, which contained abundant natural resources. The ambassadors were on Ondar to vote on sanctions against the so-called neutral member-worlds of the Rojok dynasty, as well as a modified budget to fund the war against the Rojoks. It was a controversial meeting. The Rojoks might attempt a kidnapping.

Dtimun had word from a spy in his circle of acquaintances who said that a contingent of Rojoks was planning to establish a covert base within skimmer distance of the council chambers. He’d taken that information to Lawson, who advised patience. Dtimun had none. Despite the Holconcom’s alliance with the Tri-Fleet, it was autonomous. Dtimun could ignore Lawson’s dictates and do what he pleased.

Since the chambers were on neutral ground, in a neutral system, the Tri-Galaxy Fleet had been ordered to stand down while the diplomats debated.

Just to annoy Dtimun, the Cehn-Tahr emperor, old Tnurat Alamantimichar, had sided with Lawson on the issue and insisted that the Holconcom stay away from Ondar. He interfered frequently. It was ongoing payback for his Holconcom commander’s deliberate provocation of his chauvinistic policies by allowing a female—and a human female at that!—in the Holconcom. The old emperor had been outraged at the news. He and the Imperial Dectat had tried to have Ruszel arrested and executed. Dtimun and Lawson had spiked his guns with the Tri-Galaxy Council. Over the years the emperor had been making the Morcai’s commando raids more difficult. His word carried weight with the Council. Most of the member worlds were terrified of him. Dtimun was not. Nor was the old emperor going to keep him planetside if he had intel that the delegates on Ondar were in immediate danger. But for the time being, Dtimun sought more confirmed intel.

Meanwhile, he’d grounded Ruszel, forbidding her to leave her medical unit planetside as well as her office on his flagship until further notice. He would have put her in the brig, but grounding her, along with the threat of the brig, might be enough to keep her in line. For the time being, at least.

Privately, he admired her fighting spirit and valued her in combat situations. Even though she frequently pushed his temper past the breaking point, she pulled her weight aboard ship, and she was popular with the whole crew, including the Cehn-Tahr element. She was capable, intelligent and afraid of nothing. She was also beautiful. He found himself watching her and had to work at controlling his impulses. It was fortunate, he considered, that she had no emotional attachment to him. There were dread secrets in the past of his people, scientific experiments, genetic tampering, which had resulted in terrifying behaviors beyond their control. The Cehn-Tahr were so ashamed of them that they never permitted any knowledge of their social patterns or mating rituals to be known by outworlders. Had Ruszel displayed any physical interest in him, the results might be lethal. It was a good thing, he decided, that the human military mentally neutered its crewmen and officers for duty.

He was more wary than most of his race about interspecies relationships. In his youth, his defiance of the rules had ended tragically. It must not happen again. However, he had to admit that Ruszel was the most interesting, and desirable, female he had ever known. If regulations forbidding it had not carried the death penalty in both their societies, and the difference in their species not so great, his reaction to her might have been very different.

As it was, he put her out of his thoughts and went back to work.

* * *

MADELINE RUSZEL WAS animated as she explained her confrontation with Dtimun to Holt Stern and Dr. Strick Hahnson in her office at the base medical center.

“He was furious!” she chuckled, her green eyes gleaming. “But he let me off with a lecture. I didn’t even draw brig time for the gun. Of course, it was Flannegan’s gun,” she added.

“Not really.” Dr. Strick Hahnson grinned. “Flannegan knocked out a Jebob tech and stole it from him to bash you in the head.”

“You’re going to get yourself in serious trouble one of these days, Ladybones,” Stern said somberly. “The old man won’t overlook these infractions forever.”

“He’s been overlooking them for almost three years,” she reminded him.

“Yes, but the casualty lists are growing longer, and he’s more somber than I’ve ever known him,” Hahnson put in. He sighed. “He’s worried.”

“Aren’t we all?” Stern agreed. “I thought capturing Mangus Lo would end the Rojok threat. Was that naive, or what?”

Madeline could have answered that he was naive, in a sense. His entire life span amounted to only a little under three years. Like Hahnson beside him, he was a clone. The Rojoks had killed their originals; Stern on Terramer during the rescue of the colonists, and Hahnson on Ahkmau in a bout of torture that still could make Madeline sick to her stomach. Stern had fought off his conditioning and helped save his comrades. Hahnson had been cloned and returned to them by Dtimun as compensation, as he put it, for pulling them out of the Terravegan military and into the Holconcom. The human clones of her friends still had most of the memories of their originals. So the bond between the three officers was as strong as it had ever been.

That was nonregulation, of course. All members of the Terravegan military were mentally neutered before they ever put on a uniform if they were slated for space duty. The authorities had decided that most conflicts were based on sexual or violent emotional issues. They simply used chemical means to remove the ability to bond from members of the military. But once in a while, a candidate fell through the cracks. Madeline was one. So was her father, Clinton Ruszel, a colonel in the SSC Paraguard Wing. Although she’d been reared in a government nursery, Madeline was one of the few children who actually knew one of her birth parents. Her father had contacted her when she was very small. In fact, he and Dtimun had saved her from terrorists in the Great Galaxy War. Dtimun didn’t look it, but he was eighty-nine human years of age. He could have passed for a human in his thirties. He was only in the middle years of his life, at that. He could look forward to another eighty-nine years or more before he died.

“You drifted off again,” Hahnson mused, tapping her on the hand.

“Oh! Sorry.” She smiled self-consciously. “I was thinking about...” She started to say Ahkmau, but that would have brought back really awful memories for all three of them. “I was thinking about how I ended up being the first woman on a Holconcom ship.”

Stern whistled through his teeth. “Now, there’s a story of legend.”

“You aren’t kidding,” Hahnson laughed. “Old Tnurat Alamantimichar, the Cehn-Tahr emperor, had a screaming fit about that.”

She grinned. “We heard that he sent the officer who reported my assignment to the brig for a standard month.”

“Well, the C.O. does do everything he can think of to tick off the emperor,” Hahnson commented. “They’ve had an ongoing feud for decades. Nobody knows what started it, but it’s heated up in the past few years. Your assignment to the Holconcom tied the old emperor up in knots. He can order people killed on Memcache, the home planet of the Cehn-Tahr,” he added, giving the true name of the race that humans in first contact had mistakenly called Centaurians, thinking they came from the star-system nearest old Earth.

“He’s an emperor,” Madeline pointed out. “Couldn’t he just order the C.O. to give me back to Lawson?”

“That’s a whole other story,” Hahnson mused. “You see, old Tnurat was the first commander of the Holconcom. He gave it, and its commander, absolutely autonomy during the Great Galaxy War and thereafter. He can’t command it. Neither can the Cehn-Tahr Dectat, their parliament. Dtimun has absolute authority.”

“I begin to see the light,” Madeline said, grinning. “Poor old emperor.”

“He is, sort of,” Hahnson said thoughtfully. “He only has one child left, a daughter, the princess we rescued from Ahkmau. All his sons are dead, including the one you tried to treat on Terramer, the day we met the Holconcom for the first time.”

“I’d forgotten that his son died that day. Does he have a wife?” She frowned. “Do Cehn-Tahr have wives, or do they have harems?” she continued absently.

“You’re our resident Cularian medicine specialist,” Stern pointed out. “Shouldn’t you know the answer to that?”

She gave him a droll look. “Cehn-Tahr social behaviors, and mating rituals, are forbidden knowledge. We aren’t even allowed to research them.” She had an angelic expression on her face.

Hahnson raised a blond eyebrow. “There are black-market vids that purport to explain them.”

She shifted some virtual paperwork. “I’ve heard about those.”

“Have you also heard that they’re filmed in a studio in Benaski Port by people who’ve never even seen a Cehn-Tahr?” Hahnson persisted.

She gasped. “They’re what? Those pirates!” she raged. “I paid two hundred mems for...for...” She broke off. They were giving her odd looks. She cleared her throat and lowered her voice. “I mean, why would someone pay so much money for misinformation?” she corrected innocently.

Her comrades laughed.

“There’s a much easier way. Ask the C.O.,” Stern suggested.

Madeline actually flushed. “Are you nuts? They’d space him for even listening to such a question. They’d space me for asking it.”

“I was assigned to medical duty with the Cehn-Tahr during the Great Galaxy War,” Hahnson recalled. His eyes lowered. “There are things humans are never allowed to learn about them.”

Madeline was openly curious. “Such as?”

He looked up and smiled sadly. “Just things.”

“Didn’t you learn something you could tell me?” she persisted.

He hesitated, as if weighing his answer. “Well, Cehn-Tahr mark their mates in some ancient rite of passage.”

Madeline was taking notes. “Mark them. How?”

Hahnson shook his head. “Don’t know. But it does leave a scar.” He lifted his eyebrows again. “Does that help?”

“Not a lot,” she sighed. She leaned her chin on her elbow. “Rojoks are a lot more forthcoming. But their customs aren’t the same as Cehn-Tahr. I mean, what if I ever have to treat a social disease or give counseling to a Cehn-Tahr woman? I’d be useless.”

“They don’t have social diseases,” Hahnson said. “Because they don’t frequent brothels. They’re amazingly pristine in their intimate habits. They also don’t mate outside their own species, ever. It’s a capital crime.”

“I know,” Madeline said quietly. Her companions tried not to notice the hollow tone of her voice. Her covert glances at the Holconcom C.O. hadn’t gone unnoticed by her longtime friends.

“Dr. Ruszel?” A small, pretty blonde woman in a green SSC Terravegan medical uniform popped her head in the door. Bright blue eyes glanced from one officer to the other. They lingered on Holt Stern just a few seconds too long for polite interest. “We’ve got an Altairian diplomat with a nasty cellulitis. Do you want to treat it, or shall I?”

Madeline smiled. Lieutenant (J.G.) Edris Mallory was a sweet woman. She’d actually started out in Cularian medicine on a military scholarship. But just after graduation from medical school, she’d wanted to become a breeder. In fact, she’d come back to the medical unit from a breeder colony after tests had found her ineligible as a host parent. Any slight defect in genetics could disqualify a candidate and Mallory had recessive genes whose inheritable traits—light eyes and hair—were out of fashion the year she applied. She’d been devastated by the rejection. She’d gone back to the military and been assigned to combat training. She’d even agreed to the mental neutering, dangerous in a woman of twenty. But she flunked out of combat school with the lowest score in academy history. After that, she landed in the SSC medical corps. Madeline liked her. She was a hard worker and she never shirked a task, even the unpleasant ones. She was only twenty-two. Ruszel, approaching thirty, found her shy presence comforting, in some odd way. She and Hahnson had conspired to protect Mallory from a Three Strikes provision, a covert and shaming law that could land an offender in stasis, to be used for medical experimentation. Mallory had two strikes already, and they kept a secret that could make it three. She was a sweet, kind woman.

“Go ahead, Edris,” she said. “I’ll be around if you need me.”

She grinned. “Thanks, Dr. Ruszel,” she said. “Hello, Doctor,” she greeted Hahnson warmly. She flushed a little as she glanced at Stern and then quickly away. “Captain.” She darted back through the door.

“She knows I’m a clone, doesn’t she?” Stern asked a little irritably. She’d barely looked at him.

“Oh, it’s not that.” She leaned toward him. “She’s shy. But she thinks you’re hot.”

He frowned. “It’s cool in here.”

“She thinks you’re desirable,” she corrected.

He flushed. “That’s not allowed.”

“She wanted to be a breeder,” she reminded him with a wicked grin. “But her genetics disqualified her to produce a child for the state, so when they expelled her from there, she decided to try combat medicine. She already had her degree in Cularian medicine.”

Stern glared. “How nice for her.”

Madeline shook her head. She knew it was the memory of Mary, his only love, that prompted that response. The original Stern, too, had come out of the neutering basically unaffected. He’d loved a woman named Mary who sacrificed her own life to save the lives of children. He carried a piece of blue velvet ribbon that had been attached to the posthumous medal they’d given her. He and Hahnson and Madeline passed it around between them as an accolade for heroic deeds. It was one of their best-kept secrets.

Hahnson’s wrist unit alarmed at the same time Madeline’s did. They looked at each other and grimaced.

“New medical transports are coming in from the occupied territories,” Madeline explained to Stern. “I guess we’ve got work again, Dr. Hahnson.”

“I guess we have, Dr. Ruszel,” he agreed. “Good thing we’re in port for a few days. Medical is overwhelmed already.”

“Mallory, casualties coming in!” Madeline called to Edris. “Call in all off-duty personnel, if you please.”

“Right away, Dr. Ruszel,” she replied.

“She and I are the only two Cularian specialists on the base until the graduates from the Tri-Fleet Medical Academy arrive,” Madeline commented. “I suppose we’ll do double duty again. Not that we get many wounded Rojok prisoners to treat.”

Stern was somber. “Good thing. Three cadets who were in the last firefight tried to break into sick bay and hang a wounded Rojok when the last medical transports came in.”

“Sadly for them, the commander was here reading me the riot act for another bar brawl when it happened,” Madeline recalled with a faint chuckle. “You never saw cadets run so fast. Pity they bothered. He had all three of them before they made the front door. They were so shaken up that the military police didn’t even have to cuff them.” She shivered with mock fear. “The C.O.’s pretty scary when he loses his temper.”

“To everybody else except you,” Hahnson mused, tongue-in-cheek. “He could space you if he wanted to. But all he ever does is ground you.”

She leaned forward. “He’s not sure that I didn’t sew up a boot or a glass of synthale inside him when I operated on him at Ahkmau,” she said with malicious humor. “He wouldn’t dare space me until he’s positive that I didn’t.”

“He keeps you for a pet,” Hahnson said with a chuckle.

“Eat worms, Hahnson.” Madeline made a face at him before she followed Mallory into sick bay.

CHAPTER TWO

SICK BAY WAS FULL. Not only were there combat casualties brought in from all parts of the battlefront, but a new type of influenza was making itself felt among members of the Tri-Galaxy Fleet. There was no vaccination so far, and hardly any treatment that worked.

“I remember Dr. Wainberg, head of the Exobiology Department at the Tri-Fleet Military Academy, lecturing us on viruses,” Madeline said as she and Edris Mallory worked side by side on combat wounds encountered by two Dacerian scouts who’d been ambushed near Terramer.

Edris laughed. “So do I. He and our human anatomy chief, Dr. Camp, gave lab exams that were, to say the least, challenging.”

Madeline grinned. “Challenging to cadets who thought they could pass those courses by dissecting holospecimens instead of the real thing. The medical sector didn’t tolerate slackers. They meant us to be taught proper surgical techniques, and we were.” She frowned. “You know, it’s still fascinating to me that viruses aren’t actually alive. They’re like a construct, an artificial construct.”

“Who knows,” Mallory agreed, “maybe they were originally part of some long forgotten engineered bioweapons tech.”

“Viruses are already dead, Mallory,” Madeline repeated.

Mallory frowned. “But, ma’am, how can they be dead if they were never alive?”

Madeline rolled her eyes. “That controversy still rages. They are alive in one sense, not in another. And I’m not joining that debate,” she added on a laugh. She finished a restructuring job and motioned for one of the medtechs to take the unconscious patient in his ambutube out to the floor. She stripped off her glove films and smiled at the younger woman. “We can debate that over a nice cup of java after lunch.”

The younger woman hesitated. Her blue eyes grew large. “Java? You don’t mean, real coffee?”

Madeline leaned closer. “I have it shipped in illegally from the Altairian colony on Harcourt’s Planet,” she confided. “Then I grind the beans and brew it in my office.”

“Coffee.” Mallory’s mouth was watering. “I dream about it. What passes for coffee in the mess hall is an insult to a delicate palate.”

“I agree.”

She pursed her lips. “Ma’am, are you going to tell me something I won’t want to hear? Is that why I’m being treated to such a luxury?”

“You have a suspicious mind,” her colleague replied. “Hurry up. We don’t have a lot of time. There’s a medical transport coming in from Terramer in about a standard hour and we may have more work.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“I have to go over to Tri-Fleet HQ and report to the commander about this latest batch of casualties. You can flash me if there’s anything urgent before I get back.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

* * *

MADELINE LOCATED DTIMUN in his temporary office at Tri-Fleet HQ. It was smaller and more cramped than the one he maintained aboard the Morcai, but closer to fleet operations.

He frowned when she was admitted. “You have never reported to me directly on battle casualties. Is there a reason for this deviation from protocol?”

“Yes, sir,” she said, standing at parade rest. “It’s about Mallory.”

His eyebrows lifted.

“Lieutenant J.G. Edris Mallory?” she prompted. “My assistant?”

“Yes. What about her?”

“Sir, she needs to be familiarized with the routine aboard ship, in case I ever have to bring her with me on a mission.”

He stood up, cold and unapproachable. “I will not authorize the presence of a second human female aboard my flagship,” he said flatly.

“Only to observe,” she persisted. She let out an exasperated sigh. “What if I were captured by Rojoks on the battlefield?”

“I would send them my condolences,” he returned.

She glared at him. “You’d have nobody aboard who could save you from a health crisis,” she tossed back.

“It amazes me that you have never questioned the reason I carry no complement of Cehn-Tahr medics aboard the Morcai.”

She blinked. “They said you had a fine contempt for medics of your own species. I assumed that was the explanation.”

His eyes narrowed and became a steady, searching blue as they explored her face. “You know nothing about us except what we permit you to know.”

“You can pin a rose on that,” she returned bluntly. “I’ve had to resort to black market vids to find out anything at all about Cehn-Tahr society.”

His eyes flashed green with humor. “Those vids are made at Benaski Port...”

“...by pirates who never saw a live Cehn-Tahr, yes, I know. Hahnson informed me after it was too late to demand my money back!” she muttered.

The green grew broader in his eyes. He cocked his head. “It did not occur to you to ask me?”

She cleared her throat. “I wouldn’t dare!”

“I have found very little that you would not dare, Ruszel,” he retorted.

She shifted restlessly and averted her eyes. It would be embarrassing, even for a physician, to put any of her burning questions to him.

“I realize that,” he said softly.

She grimaced. “I wish you wouldn’t walk in and out of my mind, sir. It’s very disconcerting.”

“You are far too easy to read,” he pointed out. “Telepaths learn to block unwanted intrusions at a very early age.”

She lifted her eyes to his, searching them quietly. “You healed the little Altairian child with nothing more than your mind,” she recalled. “I’ve never spoken of it, but I think your mental abilities are greater than you allow us to see.”

“Much greater,” he said in her mind.

“You keep secrets very well, as a species,” she pointed out.

“Some are best kept,” he returned silently. “If your species knew the true nature of mine, few humans would feel secure enough to serve with us.”

That was a revelation. It disturbed her at some deep level. “We’ve seen you fight,” she said, assuming that was what he referred to.

His eyes became solemn. “You have seen a greatly restrained version of our fighting style,” he said surprisingly. “We modified it for the benefit of our human crewmen.” He looked at her closely. “Why do you think our emperor was able to conquer over one hundred and fifty worlds with little more than the Holconcom?”

That was a question she’d never asked. “I never thought about it, sir.”

“Some races who were victims of his first conquests still remember the Holconcom attacks. The fear alone kept them in line. It does, even today.” His face grew hard. “We are an aggressive, violent species. Mercy is unknown to us.”

“My little Altairian patient might disagree with you,” she said, smiling in memory.

“The child was not my enemy,” he pointed out.

She studied his hard face in silence. “Why don’t you want other races to know anything about your society?”

“It would serve no useful purpose,” he said curtly. “We never mate outside our own species.”

She felt cold inside. She wasn’t quick enough to divert her mind. He saw the sadness, and understood it all too well.

His eyes narrowed. “You are a fragile race,” he said.

She stared at him, uncomprehending. “I could remind you that I took down several Rojok soldiers when we were in Ahkmau.”

“I could remind you that only Chacon’s intervention saved your life during the escape.”

“Rub it in,” she muttered, flushing. “I was intent on saving a patient. I didn’t see the Rojoks rushing me.”

“Your impulsive nature could lead you to tragedy,” he said. “You must exhibit more control of yourself.”

“I do try, sir. But human nature is what it is. We can’t change what we are.”

He grew contemplative. “No,” he said, an odd bitterness in his tone. “We cannot.”

“About Mallory, sir...”

“You can use the comps to give her a virtual tour of the ship,” he said firmly. “I do not need any more distractions aboard. You and your temper provide quite enough already.”

“My temper?” she exclaimed. “Look who’s talking!”

“Remember to whom you are speaking!” he shot back.

“I didn’t break a Gresham in half with my bare hands when I lost my patience...!”

“Dismissed!”

She almost bit her tongue off keeping the reply back that she wanted to make. She saluted sharply, turned and marched out of the office. Behind her, she heard muffled curses in Cehn-Tahr, and marched faster.

* * *

LIEUTENANT (J.G.) EDRIS MALLORY’S expression was one of pure joy as she sipped the illegal caffeine in Madeline’s office. The use of stimulants, even natural ones, was prohibited by Tri-Fleet regulations. Not that anyone enforced the law, especially since Admiral Lawson himself sneaked in java from the Altairian colonies. Of course, he was an admiral and could get away with it. Madeline might not fare as well.

Edris closed her eyes and savored the taste and scent as she lifted her head. “Oh, bliss,” she sighed.

Madeline laughed. “It is pretty special, out here in the big black, isn’t it? We’re so far away from anything that can’t be grown in solution.” She sipped her own coffee. “I have to talk to you about something.”

Edris grimaced. “I’ve screwed up again, haven’t I?” she asked. “I’m just not suited to life in our present age, you know. I washed out of combat school with a memorable low grade, after I couldn’t get accredited as a breeder. Now here I am doing combat medicine, and I fumble more than I fix...”

“You’re doing well,” Madeline interrupted. “All you lack is confidence in your own abilities. Well, that,” she added hesitantly, “and the ability to talk back to people. To the Cehn-Tahr specifically.”

The slender young blonde moved restlessly in her chair. “They’re very intimidating, especially the Holconcom commander,” she replied. “He glares.”

“You have to learn to glare back,” Madeline told her. “They’re a misogynist culture. Their own women are denied access to the military, much less combat. The Cehn-Tahr think our military is mad to permit women to serve in it, mentally neutered or not.”

Edris finished the last precious drop of her coffee. “I’m just glad it’s you and not me serving aboard the Morcai.”

“That’s what I want to talk to you about,” Madeline told her. “Since Holmes and Watts shipped out, you and I are the only experienced Cularian specialists on base right now. There are twenty in graduate school, four of whom are due to be assigned to Trimerius when they graduate. But if something happens to me, you’re the only backup around.”

“Nothing will happen to you, ma’am,” Edris assured her with a smile. “You’re one of the bravest people I know.”

Madeline hesitated. “Anyone can die. The Holconcom can’t function without a medic who can operate on Cehn-Tahr soldiers in an emergency. The commander hates medics as a rule, and he won’t permit the Dectat to assign physicians to him. He’s reluctant to have me aboard, but Ahkmau convinced him that it was lunacy not to carry a Cularian specialist into battle.”

“He scares me to death,” Edris commented, wrapping her arms around her slender figure. “I don’t know what I’d do, if I ever had to substitute for you in the Holconcom.”

“That’s just the point. The commander agrees with me, that we need to start letting you come with us on certain missions aboard the Morcai so that you can get used to the routine aboard ship.” She deliberately didn’t meet Mallory’s eyes as she lied to her. It was in a good cause.

Edris lost two shades of color. “No,” she said at once. “Oh, no, I can’t do that. I can barely manage here, when you’re away with the unit. I could never...I mean, I can’t...”

“You can,” Madeline said, and in a tone that didn’t brook argument. “You got through medical school. You’ll adapt to the Morcai.”

Edris bit her lower lip. She looked hunted.

“They’re just men,” she said, exasperated. “Alien men, but males are pretty much the same anywhere.”

“Not the Cehn-Tahr,” Edris argued. “I’ve heard stories.”

Madeline raised both eyebrows.

Edris hesitated, but the gossip was too juicy not to share. “They say,” she said in a conspiratorial tone, “that a Cehn-Tahr soldier ate a young Jebob recruit during the Great Galaxy War...ma’am?”

Madeline was doubled over, laughing. That story had gone through the ranks over the years like a fever. Some people did actually believe it.

“Well, they said,” Edris said defensively.

“Edris,” Madeline replied, wiping away tears of near hysteria, “I can give you proof that no Cehn-Tahr has ever eaten another soldier.”

“You can?”

“The C.O. has never eaten me,” she reminded her colleague. “And nobody over the years has given him more cause.”

“You do wear on his nerves, I hear.”

Madeline laughed. “His nerves, his temper, his patience. He’s dressed me down, grounded me, brigged me on occasion,” she recalled. “But he’s never taken a bite out of me.”

That was true. The battles between the commander of the Holconcom and his chief medic had assumed the mantle of legend. Once, Madeline had followed Dtimun off the ship raging about his refusal to let her suture a bone-deep wound in his leg. He trailed blood out the airlock and just kept walking, even when she threw a cyberclamp after him in impotent rage.

“Isn’t it amazing that he never busted you in rank?” Edris mused.

“He did try,” Madeline assured her. “But my father is a colonel in the Paraguard Wing and best friends with Admiral Lawson. They ganged up on the commander and refused to let the demotion go through.” She grinned. “The C.O. was livid! And did he get even! He requisitioned my billet for storage and I had to sleep in the cargo hold for a solid week. He only relented when I borrowed a player from Hahnson and flooded the hold with ancient human drum and bagpipe music.”

“I heard about that,” Edris chuckled. “Didn’t he break a Gresham in half...?”

“With his bare hands, and lucky for him that the power pack was drained.” Madeline nodded enthusiastically. She pondered that. “You know, they really are incredibly powerful.”

Edris toyed with her java cup. “Do I have to go?”

Madeline nodded.

Edris sighed. “Okay, then.”

Madeline smiled. “Good girl,” she said affectionately, as she would have to a younger sister; if she had one. The government restricted information about the parents of children raised in government nurseries. It was one of many laws that she simply accepted, because she was educated to accept it, without question. But after serving with the Holconcom, her attitudes about her government were undergoing some serious alterations. Not that she could speak of them to Edris. Not now, anyway. She went back to work.

* * *

EDRIS MALLORY HAD never been aboard a Cehn-Tahr ship before. Everything about it fascinated her, from the way personnel ran to and from positions down the wide corridors to the temperature, which was several degrees cooler than SSC ships.

“Their core body temperature is three degrees higher than our own,” Madeline reminded her as they jogged toward the Cularian medical sector. “They cool the ship to make them more comfortable.”

Edris was looking at the alien script on the compartment hatches as they passed them. She shook her head. “I don’t know how anybody ever reads that.”

“It’s not so hard,” came the amused reply. “It’s a lot like old Asian languages on Terravega, mostly symbols. Pronouncing it, though, that’s hard.”

“They pronounce names differently according to kinship and relationship status, too, don’t they?”

“Yes.”

Edris frowned. “Why are they so secretive? I mean, we know a lot about their physical makeup, but nothing about their culture or even their behavioral patterns.”

“They don’t volunteer information,” Madeline said, still smarting about her black market vids that had been a scam. “I’ve spent years trying to dig it out of Komak. He won’t tell me anything.”

“You could ask the C.O.,” Edris suggested.

“Only with a good head start,” Madeline assured her. “You just don’t bring up those topics with him.”

“I suppose not. I wonder if...”

“Who authorized you to bring Mallory aboard?” came a terse, angry deep voice from behind them.

Madeline stopped with easy grace and turned. Edris was frozen in place, her blue eyes like saucers as she stared uneasily at Dtimun.

“If I go down sick, you have to have a Cularian specialist aboard,” she said simply.

“You are never unwell,” Dtimun pointed out.

“I could catch that Altairian flu and be laid low for a week,” she replied. “We have to have backup, and there isn’t anyone else.”

“Holmes,” he began.

“Holmes shipped out to the Algomerian sector last week,” Madeline told him. “Besides, he wasn’t comfortable aboard the Morcai.” She said it with a hint of reproach.

Dtimun’s eyes narrowed and his jaw firmed. “I have competent physicals on my own planet, given by my own physician,” he replied. “I do not require the services of a Terravegan Cularian specialist!”

Madeline pursed her lips and smiled. “Ever?”

He glared at her while Edris tried to melt into the deck.

“If I hadn’t been at Ahkmau,” she began, “you’d be dead now. Sir.”

“Will there ever be an end to the constant revisiting of that medical procedure?” he wondered.

“Well, not as long as I’m alive, sir,” she said with twinkling green eyes. “You are, after all, my greatest medical accomplishment.”

He didn’t speak. He was still glaring.

“Some surgeons couldn’t have managed what I did under laboratory conditions,” she continued, warming to her subject. “I did it with a couple of purloined tools and almost no pure water, with Rojok patrols right outside the prison cell.”

His lips were now making a thin line.

“You know, I don’t recall that you ever even thanked me for it,” she continued.

He bit off some comments in his own language.

“Sir!” she exclaimed.

He made a rough noise in his throat and turned his attention to Mallory. “Make sure that Ruszel acquaints you with shipboard protocol. No wandering is allowed, especially in the kelekom sector.”

Mallory saluted, rigid as a board. “Sir, I never wander. I’ve never seen a kelekom. I mean, I don’t want to see one. I mean, not that they aren’t interesting, I’m sure...!”

Dtimun turned back to Madeline, exasperated. “There is no one else?”

She glared at him. “Edris is perfectly competent.”

“To do what?” he demanded.

Edris made a hunted sound. She looked as if she wanted to hide under something.

“Sir, don’t you have some pressing military function to perform that requires your attention elsewhere?” Madeline asked pleasantly. “Lives must be at stake somewhere.”

“One day, warwoman,” he bit off.

She raised both eyebrows. “One day, what, sir?” she asked innocently.

He darted a killing glance at Mallory, another at Madeline and turned on his heel, muttering in his own tongue as he stalked off.

“Can you translate that?” Edris asked timidly.

“Oh, you don’t want me to do that,” Madeline assured her. “Let’s get you settled. It’s going to be a long few days.”

* * *

ON THAT SCORE, she was absolutely right. There was an emergency on one of the Coromat system planets near Terramer which required the skills of a Cularian medical specialist. Madeline elected to take Edris along, to let her get the feel of an away mission.

Sadly, no one had thought to tell the new recruit that the commander did high grav landings. He put down at six megs and Mallory threw up all over the deck. Dtimun was eloquent.

When he left the scout ship, Hahnson and Stern and Komak roared with laughter.

“Sorry,” Hahnson told Edris, “we aren’t laughing at you. It’s just that the C.O. does line himself up for these mishaps. I mean, who puts down at six megs?”

Stern raised his hand.

“Not in a Cehn-Tahr scout, you never did,” Madeline pointed out.

“I’m just so sorry,” Edris moaned, pressing a medicated wipe to her face. “I’m so embarrassed! I’ve never done anything like that.” She dotted an enzyme eraser onto the mess she’d made on the deck, cleaning it efficiently.

“I threw up the first time I did a high grav landing,” Madeline assured her.

“Not on Dtimun’s ship, you didn’t,” Hahnson reminded her.

“Oh, like you know,” Madeline muttered.

“Actually, I threw up, too, the first time I had to fly with Dtimun,” Hahnson confessed. “He’s just short of suicidal when he’s piloting a small ship. But that high grav landing really weirds out enemy combatants. They never expect it.”

“I suppose it would give us an edge in battle,” Edris commented weakly.

“I don’t suppose you’d know why the C.O. looks as if he’s been chewing on the hull plates?” Stern asked Madeline.

She gave him an angelic smile. “I’m certain it doesn’t have anything to do with me,” she assured him.

“What did you say to him?” Stern persisted.

“I only mentioned how lucky he was that I was with him at Ahkmau when he needed emergency surgery,” she replied. “And there was the matter of bringing Edris aboard.”

“But you said the commander wanted me to learn the routine aboard the Morcai,” Edris burst out.

“He did say that. Sort of,” Madeline hedged.

“What exactly did he say?” Hahnson piped in.

Madeline shrugged. “That I could give her a virtual tour of the premises.” She blinked. “Virtual, real, I mean, with the vid systems we have today, really, is there a difference?”

Edris put her face in her hands. “He’ll kill me.”

“Yes, but he can’t eat you,” Madeline assured her. “And we’ve already had that discussion. That Jebob soldier they said the Cehn-Tahr ate during the Great Galaxy War—he was actually eaten by a Rojok, wasn’t he?” she asked the men.

Edris covered her mouth with her hand and went pale.

“Rojoks don’t eat Jebob nationals,” Stern scoffed. “They’re far too stringy.” He yawned. “It was an old Altairian, and they’d just run out of rations...Mallory? You okay?” He winced. “Damn, and you just cleaned the deck already!”

Madeline hit him. He just laughed.

* * *

“I AM CERTAIN that I don’t want to serve aboard this vessel,” Mallory said when they’d treated the diplomatic patient and were safely back aboard the Morcai, heading back to Trimerius.

“You just had a bad introduction to Holconcom routines,” Madeline said soothingly. “First times are always difficult.”

“This first time will give me nightmares every night from now on,” Edris assured her. “How could you bring me aboard without telling the C.O.?” she moaned.

“Well, if I’d actually told him, he wouldn’t have let you come,” Madeline said reasonably, “and you have to learn someday.”

Komak came up beside them, running backward to keep pace. He was grinning. “Have you shown Lieutenant Mallory the kelekoms?” he asked.

“No, sir, and she’s not going to,” Edris interrupted firmly before Madeline could get her mouth open. “I’ve done enough damage for one mission. With my luck, I’d sneeze on one and give it some fatal disease.”

“They are quite used to humans now,” Komak chuckled. “It has been a long time since one of them was ill.”

“Has the C.O. had any luck finding a new partner for the inactive kelekom?” Madeline asked.

Komak shook his head. “Lawson will not provide him with any candidates.”

“Brave Lawson, to refuse the commander,” Edris murmured.

“He intimidates her,” Madeline explained to Komak.

“Who, Lawson?” he asked.

“No. The commander.”

“Oh.” Komak grinned. “He does not intimidate you, Madelineruszel,” he said.

“I’ve had all my shots.”

Komak frowned. “Excuse me?”

She chuckled. “Private joke.”

The intership speakers blared with Dtimun’s deep voice speaking in Cehn-Tahr.

Komak grimaced. “I am told to mind my own duties and refrain from delaying other crew members from attending to their own.”

“How did he know?” Edris asked, looking around warily.

“AVBDs,” Madeline said, bending the truth. She knew that Dtimun was a telepath, but she’d never told anyone. “They’re everywhere, except in the C.O.’s own office. You won’t see them,” she added. “They blend. See you, Komak.”

He smiled, turned and put on a burst of speed, leaving them behind.

* * *

“THAT OFFICER, KOMAK,” Edris commented as they jogged down the corridor of the Morcai on their way to the airlock, “he doesn’t seem a lot like the rest of the Cehn-Tahr.”

“I know. He’s spent so much time around humans that he’s taken on human characteristics,” Madeline laughed. “Odd, though, when we were in the death camp on Enmehkmehk’s moon, I was using Komak for blood transfusion for the C.O. When I synched and synthed compatibility factors, his blood seemed to have human elements.” She sighed. “And that’s impossible. We know the Cehn-Tahr never mate outside their own species.”

“Why?” Edris wondered.

Madeline blinked. “I suppose it’s their racial laws. It carries the death penalty.”

“Just like our military punishes any sexual fraternization with death,” Edris replied. “Isn’t it odd that both societies are so xenophobic?” she asked. “I’ve heard it said that all Terravegans were originally tea-colored with dark hair.”

“I’ve heard that, too,” Madeline said. “But I think you and I are proof that it’s just an old legend,” she added, smiling. “Your coloring and mine put paid to that theory.”

Edris fingered her blond hair and eyed Madeline’s reddish-gold hair and nodded. “Will the C.O. get over it? That I threw up all over the scout, I mean?”

Madeline stopped and looked at the other woman. “He’s amazingly tolerant sometimes,” she said. “He does have a temper, and he can be irritating and stubborn. But he’s the best commanding officer in the fleet. All of us would follow him out the airlock if he asked us to. Of course, he does have this deplorable, primitive attitude about medics being unarmed, and I do have to sneak weapons off the ship in my equipment bag...”

Edris’s eyes had widened and she was staring apprehensively over Madeline’s shoulder.

Madeline’s teeth clenched. “And he’s standing right behind me, isn’t he?”

Edris only nodded.

Madeline turned with a sigh. Dtimun was glaring down at her with both hands locked behind his back, looking stern and unapproachable.

“Shall we lengthen the period of your confinement to the base by two standard weeks?” he asked.

“Now, sir, why would we want to do that?” Madeline asked innocently.

He pursed his lips. “From now on, I intend to have your equipment bag searched every time we leave the ship.”

She groaned.

He nodded curtly, turned and jogged off down the corridor.

Edris, wisely, didn’t say a word. Dr. Ruszel’s face was almost as red as her hair with bad temper.

CHAPTER THREE

MADELINE WAS CATCHING up on reports on her virtual desk when a flash came in from Admiral Lawson.

She answered it at once. “Yes, sir?” she said respectfully.

He grimaced. “I hate to have to ask you to do this, Ruszel,” he replied, “but everybody else cut me off the minute I mentioned a personal dispatch I needed to send to Dtimun...” He waited. She didn’t protest. He grinned. “I knew you had the guts to do it.”

She sighed. “Everybody else is afraid of him, especially lately,” she confided. “He’s been in a sour mood. Not my fault,” she added at once. “I haven’t done a thing to upset him.”

Lawson reserved judgment on that, but he didn’t say so. “I’m flashing the dispatch to you. Top secret. Eyes only. I can’t trust anyone else to transport it.”

She blinked when it appeared, in solid form, in her cyberreconstitutor “in” tray. “Sir, you couldn’t flash it to the C.O.?”

He shrugged. “I could, if he’d answer his unit. He won’t.” His face tautened. “He won’t like the dispatch, but I have to give it to him. You’ll find him at the Cehn-Tahr embassy, by the way, getting ready for some big reception at the Altair center. He’s not happy that he has to go and represent his government. Their own ambassador refused to go and was recalled.”

She pursed her lips. “My, my, imagine that. It must be something big.”

“Something. Get going. He’ll be leaving shortly. If you have to chase him down to the Altair embassy, the Altairians will never let you through the door in uniform.”

“They’d have to,” she commented, “because I’m not changing my uniform for skirts even for diplomacy’s sake.”

He chuckled. “I don’t blame you. Not a lot of human females in the Holconcom,” he added with a grin. Her place as the only female in that crack unit made him proud.

“Yes, sir,” she agreed, smiling back.

He cut the connection. She looked at her screen with dismay. There were eight reports left to do. It was going to be a long night, she thought as she disabled the unit. But, hopefully, this wouldn’t take long.

* * *

SHE HAD TO GET a military skimmer to the embassy. The building was, like most things Cehn-Tahr, smooth and rounded and elegant, a fantasy of blue and gold lights, the colors of the Cehn-Tahr Imperial Royal Clan. She dismissed the robot transport and walked up the steps, declining the vator tube. She wondered how much trouble she was going to have getting inside the embassy. Humans weren’t exactly welcome here, even if a whole detachment of them served with the Holconcom.

A uniformed sentry waited at the door. With a hopeful smile, she started to present her arm, with its ID chip, but he saluted her at once and activated his comm unit.

“Dr. Madeline Ruszel of the Holconcom to see the commander,” he spoke into it.

Her surprise was visible. She hadn’t realized that she was known here. There was a long pause.

“Send her,” came the terse reply.

Madeline grimaced. “Oh, boy,” she said to herself. “He’s not in the mood for company.”

“It is the Altairian reception,” the sentry confided. “None of us like the Altair delegation...”

A rush of angry Cehn-Tahr poured forth from the comm unit.

“Yes, sir!” the sentry said into his unit, motioning Madeline through the door with a clenching of teeth and a look of apology.

Poor guy, she thought.

“You are not required to pass time with my subordinates,” came an angry, deep voice into her mind. “Why are you here?”

“You won’t like it,” she thought back.

“Lawson and his dispatch,” he muttered, adding a few choice words in his own tongue.

“Sir!” she protested, because she recognized some of them.

He stepped into the hallway. She almost didn’t recognize him. It wasn’t just the absence of facial hair that made him look different—he hadn’t regrown the beard and mustache he’d sported when the complement of the Morcai ended up in Ahkmau and Madeline had shaved him to disguise his face. It was his clothing that was different. He was wearing robes of blue and gold, the imperial colors, in some fabric as sleek as silk. The robes clung to the muscular lines of his body and draped over one shoulder to touch the floor at the tip of his highly polished black boots. He looked...different. Elegant. Regal. It was the first time she’d ever seen him out of a Holconcom uniform in the nearly three years she’d been part of the Morcai’s crew.

* * *

“HE SENT YOU,” Dtimun said with faint hauteur. “Why?”

“Because everybody else hid under a desk,” she muttered. She held out the dispatch.

A flash of green amusement touched his eyes. “You were afraid of me, too, at first.”

“That was years ago, sir,” she reminded him. Her own eyes twinkled. “As soon as I realized that the Cehn-Tahr didn’t eat humans, I stopped worrying.”

He chuckled. He read the dispatch. His lips made a thin line. “More predations on our forward supply transports. I cannot turn the Morcai into an escort ship. Lawson will have to find another way.”

“That was the job the Altairians were doing,” she reminded him. “Then the Terravegan ambassador, Aubrey Taylor, ticked them off and they withdrew their support vessels.”

“Taylor is what you humans call a bigot,” he replied.

“I could think of a few better names,” she murmured. Taylor had been vicious in his verbal attacks on the Cehn-Tahr, and the Amazon Division as well. He thought women in combat were a disgrace. She pursed her lips as she looked up at Dtimun. “You and Taylor should get along. He doesn’t think women have any place in combat, either. I hear he’s going to the Altairian reception, too—probably to tick off even more of their military. Pity you can’t think of some way to irritate him even more than you did when you withdrew his transport privileges on Cehn-Tahr vessels. Sir.”

He gave her an odd, intense scrutiny. “Sadly for you, I can think of a better way. You will accompany me to the reception.” He clapped his hands. Two younger men in uniform ran up and saluted. “Take Ruszel to the weavemaster and have him weave her robes to wear to the Altair reception. Tell him he has ten standard minutes.”

“Robes? Reception? I will not...!” she burst out.

“Does Lawson know that you brew contraband coffee in your med lab?” he interrupted smugly.

Her mouth stayed open. She closed it. “Admiral Lawson does it, too,” she began.

“He is an admiral.” He looked at his immaculate fingernails. “I understand the penalty is revocation of all base privileges for a period of four standard months.” He eyed her with evident amusement.

She glared at him. But she saluted, turned and followed the younger soldiers upstairs. She really hoped he was reading her mind on the way.

* * *

EXACTLY FIFTEEN STANDARD minutes later, she made her way down the winding staircase. Dtimun was looking at messages on his small virtual unit. He heard her steps—amazing, since the whole embassy was carpeted—and turned. His expression was too complex to classify, like the warping colors in his eyes.

She was enveloped in silken blue robes with gold trim. The robes covered her discreetly from her neck to her toes. The neck of the robes was draped in back just to the beginning of the creamy skin over her shoulder blades, displaying her nape. Her long reddish-gold hair had been pulled up and pinned in draping curls from a position high on her head by the weavemaster’s assistant, who had also applied the lightest touch of makeup. She looked elegant. Regal. Beautiful.

She felt awkward. She moved the rest of the way down the steps, watching carefully so that she didn’t trip over the unfamiliar skirts. “Next time could you just shoot me in the foot when you want to punish me, sir?” she asked.

He lifted an eyebrow. “You would grace a palace, madam,” he said quietly. He drew in a long sigh. “It is a great pity that there are so many differences between our species.”

She frowned. “Not that many,” she protested.

He laughed bitterly. “You have no idea. Come. We cannot be late.”

He moved in front of her and then stood aside at the door to let her exit first. There was a long, elegant diplomatic skimmer at the top of the steps, floating in midair, waiting for them. They entered quickly, standing by the rail, as the doors closed and the flyer zipped to the next row of buildings where the Altair embassy was located.

“I know where we could start a brawl,” she murmured to herself, provoking him.

His eyes cut around to meet hers. “I know where we could find a brig.”

She made a face. “I hate parties.”

“No more than I do, I assure you,” he returned stiffly.

They arrived at the Altair embassy and he stood aside to let her precede him. At the door, two blue-skinned officers were waiting to validate invitations.

“See, they have two guards at their doors. You only have one,” she said under her breath.

“One Cehn-Tahr suffices to keep out any number of intruders,” he replied. “Be quiet.”

“Yes, sir.”

He extended his invitation, indicated Madeline and was admitted to the flashy, neon-accented ballroom of the Altair embassy by vator tube.

“Fancy,” she mused, looking around.

“I have seen ragged carnivals with better taste.”

Her eyebrows arched. “You have?” she asked with pure mischief.

He glared at her.

“Commander Dtimun,” the Altairian ambassador said as he joined them. He was smiling, but cool. “I did not expect so high ranking an official at my poor reception.”

“Our ambassador was called away unexpectedly,” Dtimun said formally.

“And your companion...human? How...unorthodox. But she is lovely,” he added, giving Madeline a long look.

Madeline thought of planting her fist right in his teeth.

“Madam!” Dtimun said aloud.

She cleared her throat, flushed and smiled at the Altairian. “How kind of you to say so, sir,” she said.

He nodded and returned the smile.

“You do not recognize Dr. Ruszel?” Dtimun commented.

The ambassador did a comical double take. “Dr. Ruszel?” He peered closer and caught his breath. “No, I did not recognize you, Doctor. Forgive me.”

“I am out of uniform,” she sympathized with a cold glance at her commander.

“We are honored to have the Holconcom’s medical chief of staff among us,” he replied. “Please, enjoy our hospitality.”

“Thank you.”

Dtimun jerked his eyes toward the buffet table, a blatant hint that she was to leave him alone with the ambassador. She excused herself and set out to sample what she could stomach of the buffet. She sighed sadly when she realized that most of the dishes were what humans would describe as sushi. Not that she didn’t like it, when they docked at oceanic continents. But the Altairian idea of sushi came from sea lizards of a particularly poisonous species. She helped herself to a glass of synthale and nibbled on a dish of what she hoped was ground nuts.

The commander rejoined her shortly, clearly pleased.

“I’m glad you’re happy, sir,” she said. “I’m hoping to get drunk enough not to mind the taste of the canapés...”

“Do not dare embarrass me here,” he bit off.

She gave him a wry look. “Would I do that, sir?”

He lifted an eyebrow.

“Hey, look at the sweet little lady,” came a heavily accented, drunken voice from beside her. A fat little Terravegan in an expensive suit sidled up to her. “Aren’t you pretty?”

The voice belonged to the Terravegan ambassador, Aubrey Taylor. Highly positioned politicians weren’t bound by the neutering policy of the military. They could, and did, amuse themselves with women of all species. They, of all Terravegans, even chose where they wanted to marry.

Madeline gave him a cold look. Taylor glanced at the Cehn-Tahr beside her. “Some weird, unlawful combination, aren’t you?” he asked with disgust. “Does she know that trying to mate with you would kill her?” He sidled closer and put an arm around her. “But you’d do just fine with me...!”

She jerked back from him just as Dtimun made an odd rumbling noise, in the back of his throat. Madeline didn’t understand what it was, but she risked his temper by kicking him, covertly, in the leg. He made another sound, dismayed and angry. Madeline turned quickly and pretended to stumble. Her foot shot out efficiently, just covertly enough to trip the ambassador and knock him flat on his rear.

“Oh, my goodness, Ambassador Taylor, I’m so sorry!” she exclaimed loudly, and rushed to his side as he sat up on the floor, cursing. “Sir, I’m very sorry!” she exclaimed. “I turned too fast and tripped over my big feet! I’m not used to skirts.”

“You clumsy cow!” Taylor raged. “I ought to...!”

“You don’t recognize me, do you, sir?” she asked Taylor quickly as the commander stepped forward angrily and heads turned toward them at the ambassador’s loud exclamation. “I’m Dr. Madeline Ruszel, medical chief of staff of the Holconcom. The commander is my C.O.” She indicated Dtimun, who was glaring at the ambassador with eyes a color she couldn’t quite classify. His posture was oddly threatening.

“Commander?” Taylor blinked. He looked from one face to another and registered his surprise. He struggled to his feet. “What are the two of you doing here, dressed like that?” he demanded.

“Covert ops, sir,” she whispered to Taylor.

He swayed a little, then blinked. “Covert...? Oh. Oh!” He put his finger to his lips. “Shhhh.”

“That’s right, sir,” she agreed, forcing a smile. “Shhhh.”

He blinked. He was clearly over his limit. “I get it. Well, carry on, carry on!”

“Yes, sir.”

“I’m all right. Just tripped!” Taylor told his colleagues as he turned away from Madeline and stumbled toward the buffet table. “Will somebody get some more ice? These drinks are hot! Have to drink, this food is inedible!”

Muffled conversation began again. The Altair ambassador was even bluer with anger. Dtimun took the opportunity to leave the room, followed closely by Madeline.

They were outside, heading for the skimmer, when a curt laugh escaped him. “I should have you court-martialed,” he muttered. “The problem is deciding which charge to press—striking a superior officer or assaulting a diplomat.”

She grinned. “The diplomat deserved far more than that, sir,” she commented. “Sorry I kicked you, but I was afraid you meant to add to the ambassador’s condition.”

He didn’t answer her. He couldn’t admit that his temper had almost slipped its bonds when the drunk human had dared to put his hands on Ruszel. It was a behavior that was of some concern to him. It had not happened before with Ruszel. He was uncertain why it was happening now.

The skimmer lifted and moved off toward the Cehn-Tahr embassy.

Madeline was looking at him oddly. She was recalling what Taylor had said; that shocking comment that made no sense.

Dtimun read it in her thoughts, but he said nothing. The ambassador was quite correct. If he attempted to mate with Ruszel, with his genetically enhanced strength, he would kill her instantly. But he couldn’t speak of that to her. It was forbidden. Intimate contact was, of course, impossible. He looked down at her, at her radiant beauty, and had to force his eyes away. She was unlike females of any race he had ever encountered. He found her intriguing. But that still did not explain his violent reaction when Taylor touched her. It was disturbing. It was not a military response. It was a very personal one.

“Anyway, the sushi was nice,” she remarked, for something to say.

He pursed his lips. “Yes. We prefer our meat and fish raw as well.” He wasn’t adding that they could eat them whole, as any feline predator could.

She paused and looked up at him with open curiosity.

“Stop there,” he said in her mind. “Some questions are taboo, even among Clan. We are forbidden to speak of cultural habits to any outworlder. Even a Holconcom physician,” he added with a smile in his tone.

“We do know some things about your species,” she ventured.

“From your black market videos?” he asked with amused green eyes.

She gasped. “Sir!” she protested, flushing. “It has to be a breach of some sort of ethics for you to walk in and out of my mind!”

He chuckled. “Of course it is. But, then, madam, I have a reputation for bending the law.”

She had to admit that. It had saved their lives in many desperate situations, too.

“As for probing your mind, that is not intentional. I read only what lies on the surface.”

She gave him a demure look. “Good thing. I don’t fancy a court martial if you dig too deep,” she said with a gamine grin.

He repressed a laugh and changed the subject. “Ambassador Taylor’s behavior should be reported,” he said instead.

“Oh, please, sir, be my guest,” she invited. “If I report him, I’ll be mopping bathrooms, excuse me, heads, out on the Rim in the farthest outpost he can find for the rest of my military career.”

He laughed. “Surely not.”

“Afraid so. He, like all the politicians, has immense power in our society. It’s something we have to live with, in the military.”

“I might drop a word in Lawson’s ear,” Dtimun pondered. “He, too, has connections in high places.”

“That wouldn’t be a bad idea, sir.” She laughed. “But it is rather amazing, how much he seems to know about your race,” she commented.

He didn’t answer. It was just as well that it didn’t occur to her to wonder why Taylor had such intimate knowledge of a race he purported to hate, which was the Cehn-Tahr. Although it was the Rojok dynasty into which Taylor had been initiated, for some years now. Rojoks, both allies and enemies to the Cehn-Tahr in times past, knew a great deal about their culture, and would share that knowledge with even a human who was working for them. Madeline didn’t know, and he couldn’t tell her. He didn’t want to admit how correct Taylor’s remarks had been.

He was brooding. She could sense it; and not about the ambassador’s behavior. He wasn’t heading toward the skimmer. He seemed to have forgotten it was waiting for them.

“Sir, there’s something more,” she began hesitantly, wary of his hot temper. “It wasn’t just having to sub for your ambassador at the Altairian embassy.”

He turned and glared at her.

“Oh, right, it’s okay for you to wear ruts in my mind, but I can’t discuss what’s going through yours. Sir,” she added. She cocked her head and looked up at him quietly. “Something is really disturbing you. I’m not prying. But if there was any way I could help, I would,” she added very gently.

He hesitated. For once, his expression was almost vulnerable. His eyes narrowed, deep blue with solemn thought. “You are remarkably perceptive, Ruszel.” He drew in a long breath and when he spoke, it was only in her mind.

“We have, in my culture, a day of remembrance when we honor the dead. It takes place in the Hall of Memories on Memcache. But if we are too far away, we observe the ceremonies here, on Trimerius.” His tone in her mind was somber. “I place a glow stone, a virtual collection of music, verses, poetry, for each of my two brothers.”

“I’m very sorry for your loss, sir.”

“This happens in war. The youngest was close to me. It is...difficult.” He straightened. “I would be glad of the company.”

Her eyebrows arched. “You mean, I could go with you?” He nodded. “But, sir, isn’t it against the law?”

He smiled. “Yes.”

She caught his mood and smiled back.

“Come.” He led the way to the skimmer. A few minutes later, they landed at the Cehn-Tahr embassy. He led her down a long hall. All along the way, Cehn-Tahr soldiers bowed respectfully and saluted.

He glanced at her confusion. “They bow to me,” he said. “However—” and he sounded amused, in her mind “—they salute you.”

“Me?” she faltered.

“The Holconcom’s human warwoman,” he explained. “They find you fascinating. In fact, a group of our elite troops on Memcache refer to you almost in reverent tones. Considering their prejudice against humans, the behavior is remarkable.”

She was left speechless. He noticed that, and smiled.

But when the guards opened the door into a huge indoor conservatory, with trees and plants which were, presumably, native to Memcache, she found her voice. “It’s incredible,” she whispered as the doors closed behind them. The species of plants and trees were unfamiliar, but gloriously beautiful.

“A taste of home,” he remarked.

They approached a huge statue of a galot. This one was jet black with glowing green eyes. “Magnificent,” she thought, fascinated.

“Cashto, from whom we obtained some of our genetic material many ages ago.” He looked down at her. “You will not speak of this.”

“No, sir,” she promised. Later, she would recall these confidences with curiosity. He had said it was taboo to speak of culture with outworlders.

He turned back to the statue. He pulled three softly glowing pastel stones from a platform on one side of the statue, placed them on the other side and spoke words of remembrance in the Holy Tongue, which was spoken only by Cehn-Tahr elite—and which Ruszel would not understand. If he had been alone, he would have pulled up the images of his brothers. But that would be unwise. Ruszel had an excellent memory. He stepped back from the altar and stood quietly for several minutes. Ruszel, beside him, didn’t make a sound. While she’d lost comrades—in fact, her whole Amazon unit from the Bellatrix during the Rojok attack three years earlier—she’d never lost a family member. Well, except for Hahnson, on Ahkmau. She had his clone now, and he had Hahnson’s memories. It was infinitely sad to remember the original Hahnson’s death. She could only imagine how hard it was for the commander, to lose two brothers. The pain must be terrible.

“Quite,” he remarked. He was staring at Cashto’s statue, which towered over both of them under a spread of leafy trees. “Are you religious, Ruszel?”

She smiled faintly. “Well, I am, although not in any conventional sense,” she replied. “I’ve seen enough unexplained recoveries in my career not to discount miracles. There has to be something far more powerful than we are. Even science has its limits.”

He only nodded, as if her answer satisfied the question.

He led the way back out, lost in his own memories, his own pain. He had placed a stone as well for a woman he lost on Dacerius, decades ago. That was a memory he would not share with his companion.

She noticed that he placed three glowing stones at the altar, but she put the thought away. It wasn’t her business. However, she was very curious about the purpose of Dtimun’s visit to the embassy, when he hated Altairians.

He glanced down at her. “You wonder why we went to the reception.”

She nodded.

“The Altairians have a treaty with the Nagaashe, a race who live on a world near our borders. They have great stores of Helium 3, which we employ in reactors to provide heat and cooling for our cities. Our resources of this element are diminishing, but the Nagaashe will not trade with us. After many decades of diplomatic persistence, the Altair ambassador has agreed to present our case to the Nagaashe,” he added. “But considering the usual speed of their negotiations, I fear the treaty will not be created in my lifetime.”

“Who are the Nagaashe?” she wondered.

He smiled. “So many questions whirling in your mind, Ruszel. But answers must wait. Thank you for accompanying me.”

“It wasn’t as if I had a real choice, sir,” she pointed out, and he chuckled. She made a face. “And their idea of synthale is an abomination.”

“They do not consume alcoholic beverages in their culture,” he reminded her.

“No wonder!”

He laughed. He motioned for one of the young officers. “Show Dr. Ruszel to the room where she left her uniform, and then accompany her back to the medical center.”

“Sir,” she protested. “I can hardly be in danger during that short hop...”

He held up a hand. “I do not trust Taylor,” he said flatly. “You are one of my officers. I will not have you troubled by drunk politicians, regardless of their so-called power. Do as I say.”

She sighed, but she saluted. “Yes, sir.”

He nodded. His eyes roamed over her one last time, openly appreciative of her delicate beauty and the excellent fit of the robes she was wearing. But all at once, his expression became distant. He walked away without looking back.

* * *

MADELINE WONDERED FOR days about Taylor’s odd remark, that Dtimun would kill her if he tried to mate with her. She couldn’t find any reference to Cehn-Tahr customs or culture in any of her resources. In desperation, she key holed Hahnson, who knew more than anyone in her acquaintance about the aliens.

She told him what Taylor had said in his drunken state. “What did it mean?” she asked.

Hahnson only smiled blandly. “How would I know?”

She glowered at him. “You know a lot. You knew that Cehn-Tahr mark their mates.”

“A bit of gossip I picked up,” he said evasively. He lifted an eyebrow. “If I were you, I’d leave the subject strictly alone.”

She shrugged. “I guess I’ll have to. But it’s intriguing. We know so little about their culture, their behavioral traits. We know a lot about Rojoks, but they have reptilian DNA. Cehn-Tahr are supposed to be descended from felines.” She gave him a wry look. “I’m no geneticist but I’m not stupid, either. They have eyes that change color...nobody else in the galaxies does. And they may have feline traits, but the only way you get galot DNA is to be injected with it.”

He put a finger to his lips. “Don’t even joke about that.”

“Strick, we’ve been friends for a long time,” she persisted. “Can’t you tell me anything?”

He averted his face. “Some mysteries are best left unsolved,” he said flatly. “Now how about giving me your opinion on this new treatment for Altairian flu?”

Diverted, she turned to the virtual display. Since there was no way to satisfy her curiosity, she let the subject drop. For the time being. Privately, she wondered about the window her commanding officer had given her into his culture, something he’d never discussed with her in almost three years. It had been intriguing, and flattering, that he shared the remembrance ceremony with her. She really wondered why, when it was such a breach of custom. As she’d promised, however, she hadn’t said a word to Hahnson about that, even if she had picked his mind on Cehn-Tahr mating habits.

CHAPTER FOUR

THE WAR, LIKE all wars, had periods of monotony and boredom. It also had sudden spurts of urgency. This was one. The Rojoks had landed an advance force on a planet in the Dibella system and were preparing a staging area for a far larger command. Lagana was the largest continent on the planet; a rich source of clean water and foodstuffs, of which the Rojok supply lines were desperately in need.

Dtimun called in all off-duty personnel and set a course for the planet. The Dibella system was a link in a chain leading to the home planets of the Tri-Galaxy Council members. The advance, which was small at the moment, had to be stopped and the staging area destroyed. Lawson, for once, didn’t oppose the commando mission. Madeline had wanted to take Edris Mallory along on the mission, even if she’d had to conceal her on board. But once the Morcai put down on Lagana, the Dibella system’s fourth planet, she was glad she hadn’t. It was no milk run. There was a considerable Rojok presence in a staging area near one of the continent’s major cities—although on this jungle world, that meant a population of less than two hundred souls. The Rojoks obviously planned a takeover here, and had just landed troops with that intention, in two makeshift camps. The resources of the planet were extensive.

Dtimun called a briefing before the Holconcom left the ship. He pulled up a virtual map in the center of the room and indicated the Rojok staging area.

“We must destroy their communications equipment first. Jennings.”

“Yes, sir!” the human comm chief said, saluting.

“This will be your job. Coordinate with Komak’s forward unit.”

“Yes, sir!” Jennings grinned. On a human ship, he’d never have been allowed in combat. Communications personnel of Jennings’ command rank were not allowed on away missions in the Terravegan military. But here, duty descriptions were different. He loved these assaults; odd for a communications guy, Madeline thought amusedly.

Dtimun glanced at her and his eyes flashed green as he read the thoughts in her mind.

“You must take your bodyguard with you,” Komak told the C.O. abruptly.

Dtimun gave him an odd look.

Komak didn’t back down. “You must.”

Dtimun sighed. “Very well.” He indicated the four Holconcom who performed that function. “You will come down with me.”

The ranking officer in the small unit saluted.

Madeline found it unusual that Dtimun agreed to Komak’s suggestion. Often, the younger Cehn-Tahr had premonitions about difficult missions. Apparently, he had one about this one. Strange, because it was such a small Rojok command. But, Madeline thought, might as well err on the side of caution. She studied Dtimun covertly as he outlined the order of battle. She recalled him in sweeping robes at the Altair embassy. He had looked...very nice.

His eyes shot around and pinned her.

“Sorry, sir,” she thought at once, and forced her mind back to military thoughts. These irrational flashes were starting to get the better of her.

* * *

THEY HAD HOPED to land undetected, but the Rojoks had new state-of-the-art sensors and they worked. The minute the scout ships touched down, the Rojoks were waiting for them.

The onslaught was fierce. Two Rojok squads armed with kremoks, the new rapid-firing plasma rifles that fried internal organs, tore through the human infantry like fire through forests. Madeline saw two soldiers she’d served with since basic training go down, dead before they hit the ground. She checked them, anyway, but it was far too late for any medical technique to bring them back other than as clones, a living death in Terravegan society. She rose and moved quickly to the sound of plasma fire, forcing herself to be professional, not to let her emotions get the better of her. She had to tend to the living.

The medical research facility on Camcara was developing a counterweapon, a chemical screen that would be woven into the newest uniforms issued to the SSC. Madeline had adapted the technology for the Holconcom and Dtimun had authorized the addition and made it standard issue. But the uniforms were still in quality control tests.

Some of the commando squads were still using the older chasats, and one of those units had wedged itself between Dtimun and his bodyguard in the thick, muggy green jungle of vines and plants that covered this continent. Madeline cursed as she tried to move past a tangle that resembled a spiderweb. Then she remembered the illegal Gresham she’d tucked in the small away kit over one shoulder. She pulled it out and activated the power pack. With that, she cut through the vegetation in no time. She pressed ahead. The urgency grew as she heard the thum-thum sound of chasat fire close by.

“Ruszel!” She heard the ranking member of Dtimun’s four-man bodyguard unit in the tissue-thin monitor pasted just behind her ear.

“Yes!” she spoke into the matching monitor that rested like part of the skin at her lips.

“The commander has been hit!”

For an instant, the world went black. She was very still. “Critically?”

“Unknown. We saw him go down. Afterward, he did not move. We cannot get to him from our position. He has not answered our comms.”

“Where is he?” she asked tautly.

He gave coordinates. She didn’t speak to her comrades, who were mopping up the Rojok attack force. She motioned her medics toward three wounded Cehn-Tahr and then, with her heart racing at her throat, she sprinted toward the position where the commander was located. She didn’t dare think about his injury. With his greatly modified strength, if he was unconscious...!

Terror welled up in her. She didn’t see where she was going, she only ran, seeing the coordinates in the ether display that popped up from its concealment at the corner of each eye, produced by a film of circuitry which she wore over her corneas. She followed the blip, her illegal Gresham ready to fire. She wasn’t going to be captured. The C.O.’s life might depend on her, if he was still alive.

If he was still alive. She felt the words, like knives. He couldn’t be dead. He couldn’t be! She realized suddenly that if he died, the light would go out of the world. There was nothing that would make up for his loss.

Forbidden thoughts, she told herself, and she must clamp down on them at once. She was a doctor, and a patient was waiting. That was what she needed to be thinking about.

She rushed through a cover of native vegetation and saw the commander flat on his back with two Rojok soldiers standing over him, chasats drawn.

She yelled, commanding their attention before they could fire. As they turned, surprised, she took them down in a heartbeat with two quick blasts and never even paused to check, to make sure they were no longer a threat. She was a dead shot, especially under combat conditions, having been battle-tested as a child.

“Sir!” She slid onto her knees at his side, her wrist scanner already busy, searching out clues to his condition. “Sir?”

The members of his bodyguard suddenly came running from the direction of the worst fighting. Their uniforms were torn and one had a bloody arm.

“Why did you leave him?” she raged at them from a face as red as her hair. “Your job is to protect the commander, not to act as regular combat troops!”

In her mind a familiar, furious voice made itself heard. “Remember who you are, madam!” it demanded.

Her eyes turned to his. They were open, brown with pain and anger, but open and alive. She was shaking. She hadn’t even realized it.

“Remember who you are,” the angry voice sounded again in her mind. “Pull yourself together! You disgrace the uniform with this display of hysterics.”

She forced her mind to work, her body to relax. Her face reverted to its usual serene expression. “I beg your pardon,” she told his bodyguard in her usual, measured tones. “I spoke out of turn. We lost some of the Terravegans in the first wave, two of whom I had served with for years. It...affected me.”

“No apology is necessary, Ruszel,” the ranking bodyguard officer spoke for all of them. “We were pinned down in a gulley and could not get to the commander in time. Had you not been armed, the Rojoks would have killed him.”

“What...Rojoks?” Dtimun gritted as she opened his tunic and revealed a penetrating chest wound. “And what do you mean, had Ruszel not been armed?” he demanded, his angry voice gaining strength.

Madeline, busily working on his wound, tried to look invisible.

“Two Rojoks were in the act of killing you when Ruszel fired on them,” the officer said respectfully.

“You were armed?” he demanded of her.

She ground her teeth together as she pulled out another tool and began to repair the cellular damage. “So court-martial me.”

“I intend to!” he shot back. “How many times must I tell you that medics are not permitted weapons in combat? It draws fire from the enemy directly to you!”

“She saved your life, sir,” the eldest of his bodyguard interjected solemnly.

“Yes. And that’s twice...” Madeline began with defiant humor.

“Silence!” he growled. He tried to sit up while she was still working on him.

She pushed him back down. “Stay there!” she grumbled. “I can’t mend tissue on a moving target!”

The bodyguard stood rigidly, waiting for the explosion. To their amazement, the commander only made a sound in his throat and lay back down in the grass while Ruszel’s deft hands reduced the wound.

“After all the time and effort I put into saving your life at Ahkmau, I’m not letting some stray Rojoks take you out,” she muttered as she worked.

“We have already agreed that you most likely repaired me in such fashion that I will never function properly again,” he reminded her.

She made a face. “You could look for years in the Tri-Fleet and not find another Cularian medicine specialist who could operate on you under combat conditions.”

He didn’t answer. The rigid lines of his face began to relax. Madeline realized belatedly that he had been concealing the extent of the pain. It must have been horrific, she reasoned, considering the extent of the damage.

She finished the sutures and applied a sterile bandage. “You’re lucky that the Rojok hit your lung and not your heart,” she said absently.

“Your misfortune,” he replied, touching the invisible bandage with the tips of his fingers. “You have been warned repeatedly about flouting the regulations forbidding weapons to medics. This time you will pay the price.”

She got to her feet, trying not to notice the broad, muscular chest with its thick wedge of black hair confronting her as he followed suit.

“You’ll file charges,” she said nonchalantly, “the board will ask for my side of the story, I’ll call your bodyguard as witnesses and everybody will note that you would be dead if I hadn’t disobeyed orders. You’ll lose your case, I’ll get a commendation, and the Tri-Fleet will foot the bill for all the legal wrangling.” She gave him a smug look from twinkling green eyes.

“We would be required to tell the truth under oath,” the chief of Dtimun’s personal bodyguard interjected. “Sorry, sir.”

Dtimun closed his uniform shirt. “Get back down there and check the Rojok camp for intel,” he growled at the officer.

The other Cehn-Tahr saluted, grinned at Madeline and led his unit back to the dwindling sounds of combat from above.

Madeline knew she was in trouble. She didn’t even have to note the color of his eyes. It was bad enough that she’d carried a Gresham. It was worse that she’d forgotten herself so completely that she’d shown her fear for the danger he was in. She toyed with complex mathematical computations, hoping they might prevent him from seeing too much.

He didn’t say anything at first. He checked his virtual combat array to see how the mopping-up was proceeding, and he noted the position and strength of the remaining Rojok troops.

“Well, I couldn’t let them kill you,” she said defensively when he finally glared down at her. “I’m a doctor. I took an oath to save lives.”

His eyes narrowed. He seemed deep in thought. Something dark and painful made shadows under his eyelids.

Suddenly, she saw shapes. Humans. No, Cehn-Tahr. And Dacerians. Rojoks, too. There was sand; a village in the deep desert of Dacerius. There was a beautiful woman with jet-black hair that fell to her hips, and eyes like almonds. She wore the thinnest of black lace veils over her nose and mouth. She was smiling. Then she was yelling, held firmly by Cehn-Tahr soldiers in royal blue uniforms. A shadowy figure was raging at a younger version of Dtimun as he held the female by the arm. She whirled, moved toward him aggressively. The shadowy figure raised his hand and grabbed something from a nearby wall. A razor-sharp golden sword sliced downward. There was an anguished shout, a short scream, blood...!

She had to sit down. The images were horrifying, even to a physician who’d worked under combat conditions.

Dtimun was scowling. “Impossible,” he said harshly, visibly shocked. “You have no psi abilities. I checked your medical records!”

She was still trying to catch her breath. That beautiful, helpless woman. The barbarians! She shivered.

“Only six other minds in the three galaxies have ever penetrated mine, and they were of my own Clan!” he bit off.

The telling reference went right over her head.

“She was so beautiful,” she murmured, feeling sick.

He turned away from her. “We must go.”

She knew she should never have spoken aloud. Now she was going to catch hell for that, too. She got back to her feet, shaky and unsettled. She checked the medical banks in her wrist scanner for something to do.

“You will never repeat what you have seen,” he said, but his lips didn’t move.

She heard him in her mind. “Of course I won’t,” she replied, and her lips didn’t move, either. “I never repeat anything you tell me in confidence.”

They stared at each other for one long moment while the realization penetrated. Now it worked both ways. He was reading her mind; but she could read his as well. She wondered how Cehn-Tahr learned how to block probing minds. Before she could ask the question, even silently, the bodyguard came down the hill with a hostage.

Madeline left the commander with his bodyguard and rushed back to the rest of the command, to see what she could do for the wounded. Hahnson was directing his own medics among the humans of the unit. Madeline motioned to her medtechs and started toward another small section of the jungle battlefield. The sound of weapons firing seemed unusually loud.

Her contretemps with the commander had unsettled her, or she might have noticed the ambush. She’d gone ahead to search for more casualties when she heard the snap of a fallen limb just behind her. As she turned to see who was following her, there was a sharp pain in her head and then, darkness.

* * *

“WHERE IS RUSZEL?” Dtimun asked Hahnson as he and his bodyguard joined the rest of the unit.

“Maddie?” Hahnson looked dazed. “Sir, I haven’t seen her.”

“She came this way. She must be here.”

Hahnson called one of his assistants over. “Have you seen Dr. Ruszel?” he asked.

“Yes, sir,” the younger man acknowledged. “She went ahead to look for any casualties we might have missed. She’s only been gone for a few minutes...”

Dtimun was a blur of red, moving so fast that his own bodyguard was hard-pressed to close the distance between them. He looked for her in his mind. But he couldn’t find her. The lack of communication was...disturbing. His red-haired medic tended to overshoot her mandate in battle, often rushing into trouble. He recalled Chacon’s timely interference at Ahkmau during the escape of the Morcai Battalion from imprisonment, when Madeline had been treating a wounded comrade and didn’t see Rojoks creeping up on her with deadly intent. Her courage was legendary. But she sometimes had poor impulse control. He didn’t like this. It was very unusual that he couldn’t touch her mind when he liked. He did it more often than he cared to admit lately, and often without her knowledge.

He tossed a curt order to his men, insisting when they were reluctant to leave him. He had no basis for his concern, but he felt somewhere inside him that Ruszel was in trouble. She got on his nerves, she irritated him, she frequently made him furious. But if he lost her...

He put on another burst of speed as he looked for any sign of her. He found her boot prints in the soft dirt. They were joined by two larger pair. Rojoks! Her footprints vanished and those of one of the Rojoks deepened. She’d been carried out of here. But to where? If he couldn’t access her mind, he couldn’t find her!

He closed his eyes and searched for her thoughts. “Ruszel,” he called silently. “Ruszel, answer me. Where are you?”

There was a hesitation that he actually felt. “Sir?” Her thoughts were disoriented and layered in intense pain. But she was alive! He hated the intensity of relief that he felt. His overreaction to her danger was disturbing.

“Where are you?” he persisted.

Madeline’s head was splitting. She sat up and caught her breath. She was in a Rojok camp atop a mesa, overlooking the battlefield. The ranking officer of the Rojok squad was staring down at her with an expression that made her want to kick him.

“So you wake,” he said. “You are Ruszel,” he added surprisingly. “We have heard of you. The Holconcom has caused the deaths of many of our comrades. How fitting that we should now cause yours.” He gave an order. Two of his men jerked Madeline to her feet, worsening the headache.

The Rojok gave her a scrutiny that, if she had been herself, would have propelled her fist into his thin-lipped, slit-eyed face.

“You are comely, for a human female,” the Rojok purred. He reached out a six-fingered hand and ripped her tunic open. “Such white skin,” he laughed, gripping her soft flesh in his fingers.

She kicked him as hard as she could and was trying to land another blow when the Rojok’s hand connected with her cheek. She took the blow without flinching and used a Rojok word she’d heard from Komak. It made the officer furious.

“Here,” the small, muscular Rojok called to them as he poised on the edge of the cliff. “Bring her! We will show this bad-tempered, worthless female how we reward bad behavior among our own people!”

The taller aliens half dragged her to the precipice. Below, she could see the red uniforms of her colleagues. Her eyes weren’t focusing. She could barely think for the pain.

“Where are you?” Dtimun demanded again.

She blinked. “I’m on the edge of a cliff,” she thought to him. “Above one of our units. My head is killing me. These two-legged lizards must have hit me on the head. Which is nothing to what this little tyrant just tried to do...” She pictured it in her mind.

“Holconcom!” the small Rojok officer interrupted her, calling down to her comrades. “Can you hear me?”

Dtimun looked up. There was Ruszel, in the grasp of two tall Rojoks. A smaller one was posed there, his hands on his hips.

“We have your warwoman!” the Rojok officer yelled down. “Retreat, or we will throw her down to you!”

Dtimun felt the others group around him. Hahnson moved to his side. The husky blond medic was tense, still. His concern was almost physical.

“The Holconcom do not bargain. Return our crewman, or face the consequences,” Dtimun called back, in a tone like steel hitting rock.

The small Rojok only laughed. “I did not think you would bargain. But this one is much known among soldiers. Even our commander in chief has respect for her,” he spat. “She is nothing special. Just a female.” He caught Madeline’s arm and dragged her closer to the edge of the cliff. “But you will not replace her easily, Commander of the Cehn-Tahr,” he added. He laughed again. “What a shame, to kill her! You should obey me, and quickly, if you wish her to live. Which would break first when she landed, I wonder—her back or her skull? Perhaps we should remove her brain before we toss her down to you!”

“Dear God,” Hahnson whispered, his voice barely audible as he saw the certainty of what was going to happen next. “He’s crazy.”

Dtimun tensed. “Be still,” he shot at his comrade. He closed his eyes. “Madeline,” he called silently, using her name almost unconsciously. “Do you trust me?”

“With my life, sir,” came the quiet reply.

“You must close your eyes, hold your breath and throw yourself over the cliff.”

She didn’t question him, or argue. She knew it would be a leap to her death. No being in the galaxies could possibly save her without a force net, and she knew that her unit carried none of those. He wasn’t going to let the Rojoks have the satisfaction of causing her death. He expected her to die like a soldier, and bring honor to her command. And she would. Lack of courage had never been one of her faults.

“Now?” she asked.

“Yes.”

She didn’t even hesitate. “Malenchar!” she yelled, giving the battle cry of the Holconcom. At the same moment, throbbing head and all, she jerked out of the shocked Rojok’s grasp, took a breath and dived headfirst over the edge of the cliff. She closed her eyes. Free fall was exciting. Of course, there would be a sudden stop, she thought with gallows humor. Hopefully, she wouldn’t feel it.

About halfway down, she felt something warm and solid wrap itself around her. She opened her eyes, startled, and found the commander enveloping her. He made leaps against the face of the cliff that her mind told her were impossible. She’d seen great cats bound from high place to higher place, liquid with grace and strength, but she’d never seen a Cehn-Tahr do it.

With grace and elegance, holding her easily against him, he flew like the wind, finding a foothold, using it to leap to another foothold. Claws extended on one hand, and he used them to help keep his balance as he jumped. He made his way down the cliff in a matter of seconds, his strength unbelievable. Belatedly, Madeline wrapped her arms around his neck and held on for dear life. She was dead of course, but her mind had somehow lapsed into dreams before she hit bottom. None of this was real. No species in the universe could do what her mind told her that Dtimun was doing.

With a soft thud, he hit the ground at the bottom of the cliff, still holding Madeline close in his arms. The momentum cost him his footing. He rolled with her, protecting her with his body, so that the hard ground didn’t bruise her too badly. His grip was painful, like steel, and the genetically engineered claws that his hands produced in combat had come out involuntarily with the stress of the rescue. She flinched as they bit into her back like knives.

He felt the pain in her and forced his claws to retract. But there was a more intense reaction, which he could not control, prompted by her nearness and the flood of pheromones suddenly exuding from her soft body at the almost intimate contact.

As they rolled to a stop, he lifted enough to see her face. He looked down into her wide, shocked eyes and fought to catch his breath and control his hunger. A low, dangerous growl echoed deeply from his throat, involuntarily, as he stared at her without blinking.

Madeline was shell-shocked. She was still alive; the pain told her that. Her head hurt. There were deep punctures where his hands had gripped her, in her lungs, making breathing painful. She felt the sudden tension in his body and was amazed not only at its strength, but at the weight of it above her. The Cehn-Tahr were feline in origin, or so the legends went, but cats were lightweights. The commander was as solid as a wall, and he was heavy. She stared into his eyes with mingled fascination and scientific curiosity. The growl was puzzling. She’d only ever heard it in combat. No, that wasn’t true. She’d heard it at the Altair embassy, when Ambassador Taylor had touched her...

“You...caught me,” she stammered. “But that’s impossible! I fell from over a hundred feet!”

“One hundred and fifty,” he corrected, slowly calming. He scowled. “Your body is cool.”

“No, sir,” she said unsteadily. “Your normal body heat is three degrees higher than that of humans. I only feel cool to you.” She swallowed. His nearness was producing some odd sensations. “You must weigh three times as much as you appear to weigh...”

“Genetic engineering,” he replied tersely, something else he was forbidden to tell outworlders, that he’d already shared with her at his embassy. He was disturbed by her, and not thinking logically. “Density and mass, a result of enhanced tensile strength in the muscle tissue and bone.”

She was only barely aware of the words. He smelled of spices. He was very warm. She felt safe in the shelter of his strength. But the sensations were frightening to a woman who’d never felt them.

He searched her eyes quietly. “I damaged you in the process of saving your life,” he said curtly.

“Hahnson can heal the wounds,” she said simply, fighting to breathe. Claws had punctured her lung in one of the lower lobes. Still...”I would have been dead, had you not intervened. Thank you.”

He hadn’t blinked. “You obeyed me without question. Yet you thought I was commanding you to leap to your death.”

“Of course,” she said, puzzled. “I’ve never refused a command from you, sir. Well, not unless it involved carrying a firearm,” she added facetiously.

That was true. It touched him, at some deep level, that blind trust.

His eyes had darkened again and narrowed. His lean hands, propped beside her ears, tensed. The low growl came again.

“Sir?” she whispered, uneasy.

“We are predators,” he said in a rough tone. “There is a saying among us, that nothing in the known galaxies is as dangerous as a Cehn-Tahr male who is hunting.”

She wondered what that had to do with their present situation and what he meant by “hunting.” Did he mean the combat with the Rojoks? She started to ask. But even as she nursed the thought, the sound of footsteps, running, broke the tense silence.

Dtimun got to his feet in a quick, graceful motion and drew Madeline up with him, steadying her when she stumbled.

Hahnson came into view, huffing a little from the exertion. “We saw her fall!” he exclaimed. “Is she all right?”

Several human crewmen, and Dtimun’s Cehn-Tahr bodyguard, fetched up beside them. The humans were astonished.

“A tree broke my fall,” she lied with a laugh. She couldn’t admit that Dtimun had touched her. If anyone repeated the story, he could be spaced for breaking such a basic law among his own people as contact with a human female, even in the act of saving her life. “Well, several trees broke my fall,” she amended. “I’m fine, except for a hell of a backache,” she told Hahnson with a wan smile. She winced as she moved. The punctures were deep. “I got hit on the head, too. I need some patching up.”

Hahnson glanced at Dtimun, who was looking more dangerous by the second. “I can do that. We need to get you back aboard the scout ship.”

“That can wait,” she returned. “There’s a battle to win.”

“Indeed,” Dtimun said coldly. He whirled, shooting orders in his own language at his bodyguard. “The rest of you, wait here. And you will say nothing of what you see to anyone outside this unit. Is that clear?”

There was a chorus of affirmatives. Even as they died on the air, Dtimun and the four members of his bodyguard vanished like red smoke. The Terravegans had seen their C.O. move fast before, but never like this; not in almost three years.

Hahnson ran his wrist unit over Madeline while the other crewmen spread out, looking for survivors of the battle, along with a handful of medics.

Hahnson gritted his teeth. “These wounds are bad. One of them would have been fatal if I hadn’t been close by,” he added as he mended bone and muscle.

“He didn’t mean...to do it,” she panted, wincing as the pain bit into her. She’d hidden it from Dtimun, but she didn’t have to hide it from Strick. It hurt to breathe. “He saved me, Strick,” she said in a low tone. “He came up the cliff and caught me in midair, leaped from rock to rock to get me safely to the ground. I wouldn’t have believed it if I hadn’t seen it with my own eyes.”

“They have incredible strength and flexibility,” he said as he worked.

“You won’t mention this?” she worried and relaxed when he shook his head. “I wouldn’t want to land him in trouble with his own people. I’m not sure it’s safe to tell our own crewmates that he carried me down.”

“They wouldn’t tell.”

“They wouldn’t mean to tell,” she corrected. The pain eased as he mended the punctures. “The Cehn-Tahr keep so many secrets.”

“More than I can ever tell you,” he returned solemnly.

She studied him curiously. “He said an odd thing.”

“What?”

“That there was nothing in the galaxies more dangerous than a Cehn-Tahr male who was hunting.”

He let out a breath. His eyes met hers and concern was in them. “Oh, dear.”

“What do you mean, oh...?”

Suddenly, in the distance there were horrible screams. They were coming from the top of the mesa. Everyone looked up.

Bodies erupted from the bare rock and, falling heavily from the mesa, came to rest in the forest, breaking tree limbs as they careened down toward the canyon floor. Seconds later, Dtimun appeared with the small Rojok officer who’d taunted him with Madeline. The humans gathered close, fascinated. They’d never seen such speed.

Dtimun had the alien by the collar of his uniform. He shook him and threw him at Madeline’s feet while the nearby humans gathered closer.

“I...apologize,” the Rojok said in a thready voice.

“Again!” Dtimun prompted.

“I...am...sorry,” came the obliging reply.

The little alien had rips all over his uniform, and lacerations on every visible inch of skin. It occurred to Madeline that he was much like a mouse that had been caught by a cat.

“An appropriate analogy,” Dtimun thought to her.

She looked at him with surprise. “You were playing with him,” she thought back, shocked.

He cocked an eyebrow. He still spoke only in her mind. “It is not a game. He would have allowed us to watch him cut you to ribbons before he killed you. He is a sadist who enjoys torturing his victims. He has killed females who did not please him.”

She blinked. “There are still laws. Even a prisoner is entitled to trial...”

He closed his eyes. The Rojok arched. There was a loud, violent snap. He lay still. Dtimun’s eyes opened, stormy and cold, and looked, defiantly, right into Madeline’s.

No one spoke. Their commanding officer had killed an enemy combatant with the power of his mind alone. For the first time, Madeline realized what he could have done at Ahkmau if the dylete hadn’t caught him unaware. Perhaps it was also why Mangus Lo had been so desperate to capture him. Had the Rojok tyrant known the power of Dtimun’s mind?

“That is not a question I will permit you to ask,” came the terse reply, but only in her mind.

The humans had unconsciously moved closer together in the wake of their commander’s violent response to the Rojok. He glanced at them, slowly calming.

“There are things Holconcom never share with outworlders,” he told them quietly. “We have genetic enhancements which give us great advantage in combat, far beyond our natural strength. In addition to the enhancements, I can kill with my mind. Of this, you will never speak.” He had broken another taboo. But, then, they were his people, these humans. He was protective of them.

Higgins, the engineer, moved forward. He was pale, but not intimidated. “Sir, we are Holconcom, too,” he said with dignity. “It would never occur to any of us to betray any confidence you share with us.”

“Exactly,” Lieutenant Jennings, the communications officer, agreed somberly.

A chorus of affirmatives ran through the small unit.

Конец ознакомительного фрагмента.

Текст предоставлен ООО «ЛитРес».

Прочитайте эту книгу целиком, купив полную легальную версию на ЛитРес.

Безопасно оплатить книгу можно банковской картой Visa, MasterCard, Maestro, со счета мобильного телефона, с платежного терминала, в салоне МТС или Связной, через PayPal, WebMoney, Яндекс.Деньги, QIWI Кошелек, бонусными картами или другим удобным Вам способом.