Czytaj książkę: «The Morcai Battalion: The Recruit»

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.”