The Morcai Battalion Read online

  “Stow it,” he snapped. His eyes were on a tenth alien just leaving the ship—a Centaurian in a red uniform. But this one had a single gold emblem on the high collar.

  This one was taller than his comrades, and he alone wore a mustache and a beard, short, black and violently contrasting with his pale golden skin. He carried himself with the arrogance of authority, and even at the distance Stern could feel the raw power of his eyes.

  The alien glanced around him carelessly, then gestured to his men. They stood at rigid attention while he strode forward, straight toward Stern. As he approached, the brown anger in his huge, elongated cat-eyes became evident and threatening under black eyebrows. He stopped just in front of the humans.

  Stern presented the Holconcom officer with a rigid, military salute. The alien returned it, but without respect, then stood quietly, watching him.

  “I don’t speak Centaurian!” Stern said, raising his voice as if the alien were deaf rather than accustomed to a different combination of syllables. “You’ll have to…!”

  “I seek two survivors,” the alien replied in crisply perfect, unaccented Terravegan Standard English. “A Centaurian youth and a female of our species.”

  Stern’s muscles went taut under his uniform.

  “The boy didn’t make it,” he replied slowly. “We found no Centaurian female.”

  The huge eyes began to darken even more. “Take me to the boy.”

  Stern was prepared for anger when they gathered around the ambulift—or he thought he was. But when the Centaurian got a close look at that frail body, with its evidence of torture, he seemed to implode.

  “Maliche mazur!” he roared, and Stern could have sworn that the ground rumbled under his feet. In that one, harsh cry was a kind of grief he didn’t remember ever experiencing. A grief that came without tears, but was greater than if it had.

  The alien whirled on Stern, a predator looking for prey. “The other observers. Are they alive?”

  “Technically,” Stern replied quietly.

  “You will have them in your Admiral Lawson’s office ten minutes after you touch down at the Tri-Galaxy Fleet HQ on Trimerius,” he told the captain. “With them, you will present yourself, your chief medic and your ship historian.”

  Stern started to speak, but the alien silenced him with a cold narrowing of his dark eyes. “But for now, I will know which of your medical personnel dared to lay hands on this boy!”

  Madeline Ruszel’s face flushed. She’d expected to catch hell for her interference, but she’d done as her code of ethics demanded. Squaring her shoulders, she stepped forward, staring up at the Centaurian officer. “I did,” she said curtly. “The alternative was to do nothing to ease his suffering. I gave him a drug that made his passage easier. Nothing more. If you consider that an atrocity, sir, you are welcome to present charges against me.”

  “My pleasure,” the alien replied icily. “Consider it done. By Simalichar, what manner of creatures are you humans, that you dress your women as men and send them into combat to die?”

  “Barbarians,” Madeline said sweetly. “Sir,” she added in a drawl guaranteed to provoke him.

  The alien stared at her for a long moment, during which she mentally reviewed what she knew about Centaurians to make sure they didn’t eat humans.

  The officer turned away. “Komak!” he called sharply.

  A younger, red-uniformed Centaurian ran to his commanding officer and saluted. “Yes, Commander?”

  “Take Marcon’s body to the ship and have it urned.” His tone was deceptively gentle. His eyes were unnerving to Madeline. “Inform Tnurat Alamantimichar and the Council of his death, and of Lyceria’s capture.”

  “It will be done as you say.”

  The tall alien moved out into the throng of ambulifts. His gaze missed nothing as they wandered restlessly around the ruins. “These casualties will be lifted, of course?” he asked deliberately.

  Madeline saluted, hating herself for what she was about to say. But her sense of outrage was stronger than her sense of loyalty. “Sir, Captain Stern ordered us to leave them here….”

  “Yes, I did,” Stern growled, glaring at her. His head throbbed suddenly. He touched his hand to it. “We don’t have the space to lift them,” he added tightly. “The damned Rojoks swiped the Jaakob Spheres, in addition to the carnage they did here. I have to get the surviving sci-archaeo scientists and their data banks back to HQ. These clones—” he emphasized the word as if it were dirty “—will have to wait.”

  The alien glared down at him. “A life is a life,” he said coldly. “You will not leave these wounded behind. I will transport them myself.”

  “Transport them, hell!” Stern’s dark eyes narrowed. “I’m in command here. This is a Terravegan Strategic Space Command rescue operation, and you don’t touch those pilgrims without authorization from the Tri-Galaxy Council!”

  “By Simalichar!” The alien’s eyes dilated and darkened even more. “You have no authority here save what I allow you! The Holconcom are here by Council request.”

  “I don’t care if the tooth fairy sent you,” Stern countered hotly. “This is my operation and until I get authorization from SSC HQ, it’s going to be handled my way!”

  “Mister,” the alien said irritably, “you are a pain in the…so you need authorization, do you?” he added. “I’ll show you my authorization. Holconcom!”

  Even before the sharp command died on the air, Stern found himself surrounded by nine red-uniformed Centaurians in attack formation, slightly crouching, with eyes that chilled like a fever. A soft, low growl began to rise from the unit. It made the hair on the back of Stern’s neck stand up.

  “This,” the Centaurian officer said shortly, “is my authorization. Interfere at your own risk.”

  Stern palmed his Gresham and activated it. “Your choice,” he replied.

  “Hold it! Hold it!” Strick Hahnson came puffing up, stepping out of nowhere to get between the two antagonists. “Stern, put up the Gresham,” he said breathlessly. “You’re outranked, and if you need verification for that, I can give it. I fought with this officer in the Elyrian uprising. Captain Holt Stern, this is Dtimun, commander-in-chief of the Holconcom.”

  Stern hesitated, but only for an instant, before he deactivated the Gresham and put it away. The throbbing started again in his temples.

  “I know you, Strick Hahnson,” Dtimun said in recognition, and extended his arm. The darkness in his eyes had paled into a warm shade of light brown.

  Hahnson gripped forearms with the alien. “I know you, Dtimun. You carry your years well.”

  “At the moment, they lie heavily upon me. Marcon is dead. Lyceria is almost certainly a captive of the Rojoks. And your captain,” he growled, eyeing Stern, “proposes the desertion of these survivors, most of whom are Jebob and Altairian nationals, allies of the Centaurian Empire. The Rojoks will most certainly come back to finish what they started here, and these wounded will be slaughtered. I will not have an interplanetary incident on my hands because of one officer’s warped sense of duty. I will transport them aboard the Morcai.” He turned to his men, who were still crouching, still faintly growling. “Holconcom, degrom c’hamas!”

  The Holconcom stood erect at once, spread out among the ambulifts, and began to move them toward the Centaurian scout.

  “Now, just hold it a minute!” Stern began.

  Hahnson caught his arm and drew him quickly aside, with Madeline right beside him. She hadn’t said a word, too angry to open her mouth at the treatment she’d received from the alien.

  “Holt, there’s been enough killing,” he said gently. “Dtimun was fond of Marcon, and his temper is legend. He’ll call the Holconcom down on you for little more than breathing. Let it go.”

  Stern sighed with frustration. His eyes went past Dtimun to the clones in the ambulifts. Something stirred inside him, remembering the alien’s words. A life was a life—but, even an artificially created one? Was it entitled to the same
rights as a naturally born being? For a moment, a soft compassion touched the eyes that lingered on the tortured bodies of the alien children. Then, with the returning pain in his head, it was gone.

  “You read too damned many space legends, Strick,” he told Hahnson. “They’re just a bunch of cat-eyes to me. But all right. All right, dammit, I don’t have time to argue. I’ve got to get my people back home before the Rojoks come back and catch us on the ground. Medics! Let’s move out!”

  Stern walked away.

  Madeline looked up at Hahnson quietly. “He’s not himself,” she said. “I had to tell the Holconcom commander that he was planning to abandon these wounded. I couldn’t live with myself otherwise.”

  He put a gentle hand on her shoulder and smiled. “It’s okay, kid,” he said, using the pet name that was against regulations.

  She grinned up at him. “You’re a nice old man.”

  He chuckled. “I’m only ten years older than you, hotshot,” he returned.

  She started to reply, but the alien commander was suddenly looking at her. The impact of his eyes was a little frightening, even to an exobiologist who specialized in Cularian medicine, to which group Centaurians belonged. She’d studied Centaurians in textdiscs in medical school. But as she was learning, textdiscs were no match for personal encounters. She found him intimidating.

  Odd, the sudden pull of her mind, as if it was being examined. She shook herself. She was definitely getting fanciful, and she had work to do. She turned and went back to the ambutubes, doing what she could to sedate the most wounded.

  2

  The labyrinth interior of the Rojok vessel was buzzing with activity. Lyceria of Clan Alamantimichar sat quietly in her temporary quarters watching crewmen dash past the magnetized transparent cell from which there was no escape.

  Her slender hand touched a dark blue bruise on the golden silk of her arm. She could control the pain, but not her rage at such rough treatment. Thoughts of her brother made the rage near unbearable. They assumed that she did not know what had been done to him. The fools did not know that the Clan of Alamantimichar were telepaths. She had felt every second of Marcon’s agony. She had touched his mind at the moment of death.

  She was aware of eyes staring at her, and looked up. The Rojok officer who had abducted her was grinning through the force shield. The slit eyes that peered out of that reddish-bronze face made her tremble. The shock of blond hair that fell on the Rojok’s broad brow was sweaty and slick. His hair was short, denoting a lesser rank. Only high-ranking officers were allowed to wear long hair.

  “You are a rare prize, daughter of Tnurat,” he told her, studying her fragile beauty. “What a pity that I cannot show you to Chacon. It might mean another mesag mark of rank.”

  Her chameleon eyes made dark, angry whispers, but her composure was perfect. She rose from the contoured couch, grace personified.

  “Had Chacon not ordered my capture, and the death of my brother?” she asked softly.

  The Rojok laughed heartily. “Chacon knows nothing of this mission. Some think our commander-in-chief wages warfare in far too chivalrous a manner. Some have promised me his mesag marks for the Jaakob Spheres—and you.”

  “Think you that Chacon will not discover what you have done when the Holconcom come in pursuit?” she asked.

  “The Holconcom?” He laughed again. “They are stories used to frighten children. But pursuers will find themselves pursued. Our forces even now are closing the distance between the planet Terramer and the Tri-Fleet battle lines. No ship can get through them now. Not even your phantom Holconcom.”

  Her delicate face lifted proudly. “There is one who will come to avenge the death of my brother.”

  “Let him try.”

  “Where do you now take me? To your home planet of Enmehkmehk?”

  His slit eyes narrowed. “If your arrogance persists, perhaps you will go to Ahkmau instead.”

  He was gone, and she felt the chills wander over her slender body in its silky coverings. Ahkmau translated in Rojok as “place of tortures.” It was located on one of the three moons of Enmehkmehk, the planetary capital of the Rojok empire. It was the death camp of the Rojok tyrant Mangus Lo, and even a Centaurian could feel fear at the mention of its name. Had she been capable of shedding tears in front of these savages, she might have yielded to them. But Alamantimichar was a proud Clan, and to show weakness to an enemy was to dishonor it. She turned back to her couch. Dtimun would come. No matter the odds against him, he would come.

  Back in the command chair on the SSC ship Bellatrix’s bridge, Holt Stern forgot the carnage and the Centaurians. He had a bigger problem. Terramer was located on the edge of the Algomerian Space Sector, which the Rojoks had already claimed as captured territory. If Chacon’s hunter squads were still in the area, it was going to take every ounce of his command ability to get the ship home.

  “Higgins,” he asked his sandy-haired first officer, “how’s our fuel holding out?”

  “We’ll make it back, sir,” Higgins said with a grin, “but we won’t have enough left over to fill a java cup.”

  “Like I thought. Helm, is the Centaurian ship pacing us?”

  The astrogator shook his head. “They were running a parallel course when we left orbit, sir, but they’ve disappeared. I assume they’ve lighted out of sensor range. Our tracker beams can’t touch them.”

  “Sir,” Jennings, the comtech, broke in, “I’ve got the short-range commbanks working now, and I’m getting an alien signal. Close, and on scramble.”

  “Ignore it,” Stern said. “Rojoks use an emergency code like that to get a fix on enemy ships.”

  “It doesn’t read like a Rojok signal, sir. There’s…”

  “I said, ignore it.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  He got up and flexed his shoulders while he checked the starmaps over the astrogation console in the cramped nose of the sleek starship. The headache was better now, although there seemed to be blank pieces of his life even behind the pain—pieces he didn’t have time to mourn. His brow furrowed. There were no patterns to indicate an intruder, but Chacon’s ships sometimes appeared like ghosts. He felt uneasy, and he’d learned to trust instinct more than machinery.

  “Higgins, slow us down to quarter-light and take the ship on bearing 6.25, mark one.”

  “Yes, sir.” Higgins gave the order to the astrogator. “Expecting trouble, Captain?”

  “I’m always expecting trouble, Higgins. Steady as she goes.”

  “Sir,” the comtech said, “that alien signal’s back. It’s in English this time, in the clear.”

  Stern sighed angrily. “Oh, hell, what’s it say?”

  “It’s a distress call from the Vegan Paraguard ship, Lyrae. They’re under attack from a Rojok squad and their weaponry is out.”

  “Location?”

  “They didn’t give it, sir. Shall I request…?”

  “No!” He slammed down into the command chair. “Under no circumstances are you to reply to that message! Astrogator, prime the auxiliary power units. We may have to make a run for it.”

  “Sir?”

  “Mister, if you were surrounded by a squadron of Rojok ships, and you had time for a single distress call, would you be stupid enough to omit your coordinates?”

  “Not me, sir,” the astrogator said, shaking his head. “Not unless I was trying to home in on a commbeam by sending it.”

  “Exactly. Prime those units. Jennings,” he shot at the comtech, “do your sensors register any other ships in the immediate area?”

  “No, sir. Just a meteor—an ‘iron’ judging by the density. Strange. I don’t remember any on the advance scans…”

  “Meteor?” He snapped a code into the console at his elbow and glanced over the up-to-date Tri-Fleet starcharts. No meteors or other celestial bodies were charted on the screen. That didn’t mean a rogue asteroid or meteor couldn’t be out there. Even so, he had a feel for navigation in space that many of his fellows in th
e Academy had envied. He knew that it was a trap.

  “Throw a modifier on your scanners,” he told Jennings, “and tie in the master computer for analysis. I think we’ve located our ‘friend in distress.’”

  “Yes, sir.” Jennings’s slender hands flew over the controls. He smiled. “Well, I’ll be a—there they are, sir. Two of them, Rojok configuration. Heading toward us at two sublights, using a meteor holoscreen to mask their signals.”

  Stern grinned, feeling confident now. “Hold your course, astrogator. Weaponry, tie in your emerillium boosters and give me the best widescan spray pattern you can manage. Fire on my signal. Higgins, bring us down to half-sublight and hold.”

  “Aye, sir.”

  Stern leaned back in his chair, keeping his eyes glued to the short-range scanner screen on his console. As he watched the approach of the “meteor” he had to grudgingly admire the strategy of the Rojok captain piloting that lead ship.

  The Rojok vessels drew closer by the second. Tension grew on the bridge. The crew was accustomed to these confrontations, but the effect of battle was still the same. Fear, quiet terror, dry throats were all a part of space conflicts. Retreat was impossible once combat was engaged. Where was there to go, except into cold space? Uncertainty rippled through the crew. No commander, no matter how capable, could guarantee the outcome of a battle.

  The Rojoks, depending on their “meteor skin” disguise to camouflage them, were beginning to make their run. To an untrained eye, the only disturbance among the bright stars would have been a wayward little meteor feeling its way to oblivion. But Stern knew, and was ready.

  “Weaponry, stand by,” he called.

  “Ready, sir.”

  “Watch your screen. Give him five seconds into the run, then lock on to him.”

  “Counting, sir. One…two…three…four…”

  Before he could voice the final number, a violent shock wave hit the Bellatrix and threw it careening off course. Stern’s back slammed into the arm of his chair and he fell with a racking thud to the deck as the generators that maintained the pressurized interior hit a blip. He was on his feet before the full effect of the bruising ride hit his suddenly throbbing temples.