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. 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 Centaurian 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 Centaurians 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. “Centaurian 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 males 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 Centaurians. I mean, what if I ever have to treat a social disease or give counseling to a Centaurian 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. 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 one that couldn’t be corrected by genetic engineering. She’d been devastated by the rejection. Then she’d decided to try her luck in the military. She’d even agreed to the mental neutering, dangerous in a woman of twenty. She flunked out of combat school with the lowest score in academy history. After that, she landed in the 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.
“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. 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 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…”
TheMorcaiBattalion:TheRecruit Page 2
