“Yes,” he said flatly. “Mating.”
She flushed. “Oh.”
He turned and moved around his desk to face her. “You must go back to your lab.”
She met his eyes evenly and tried not to reveal that her heart was breaking inside her body. “Thank you for telling me the truth, sir,” she said. “You know that I won’t repeat anything you told me.”
He smiled gently. “I know. You have never spoken of the fact that I can read your mind in almost three years.”
“It would be nice if I knew how to block that.” She gave him an odd look. “I’ve had some…strange…dreams lately.”
His expression was bland. “Have you?”
“Now, listen here…!”
He held up a hand. “I am not to blame. Perhaps you should refrain from drinking contraband coffee behind Lawson’s back,” he added.
She glared at him. “Coffee is the only pleasure I have in life. I refuse to give it up. He can throw me in the brig for a month. It won’t stop me.”
He chuckled at her determination. “Not much does,” he commented. “I have enjoyed these years with you,” he added, and the smile faded. “Perhaps Caneese can find a way to curtail the worst of the predatory behavior. At least you could return to the Holconcom.”
Something that no scientist in four hundred years had managed, she recalled.
“Yes, but Caneese has a gift for biochemistry,” he replied. “She likes you.”
She smiles. “I like her, too.” She frowned. “Sir, I’m not prying, but it seemed to me that she was closer to you than an acquaintance.”
“She is,” he said quietly, but he volunteered nothing more.
“Does she have a mate?”
“Yes. But she and her mate have been apart longer than you have lived,” he said. “Her eldest son was killed in the Great Galaxy War,” he said with quiet sadness. “She blamed her mate for that.”
“I’m so sorry,” she said gently. “She’s such a nice person.”
He searched her eyes. “It occurs to me that I have shared more of my private life with you than with anyone in recent memory.”
She smiled. “It’s because I’m a clam.”
His eyebrows arched in query.
“A small crustacean with a shell that it closes under threat,” she lectured. “A metaphor for the ability to keep secrets.”
“I see.”
She shrugged and her eyes twinkled. “Besides that, you trust me.”
He smiled. “Perhaps I do.” His eyes narrowed. “But you should not trust me. And this is the last time we must ever be alone.” His hand moved to the sphere and deliberately deactivated it, at the same time he opened the door.
“Yes, sir.” She gave him one last look and moved to the door. The weight of the sadness was growing.
“Life is not fair,” she commented.
“No,” he agreed. “It is not.”
She wanted to wish him well, to say goodbye, to say anything. But she couldn’t manage the words. She went out and closed the door behind her without looking back.
She walked away, oblivious to Komak’s concerned gaze. He started toward the commander’s office, but hesitated when he heard the crashing of ceramics and the muted, building growls coming from inside. What he had to say could wait a few hours, he decided, turning away. Or a few days.
Madeline walked off the Morcai, and caught a skimmer to the Medical Center. She walked blindly into her own office. She’d been able to keep her chin up in the commander’s office, but the full weight of what he’d revealed to her was crushing.
“Oh, good, you’re back,” Edris Mallory said with a kind smile. The smile faded. “Dr. Ruszel…?” she added, worried.
“No calls for a few minutes, Edris,” Madeline said huskily and with a wan, forced smile.
“Yes, ma’am.” Mallory saluted and went back out.
She was nice, Madeline thought as she powered the door shut, and locked it. She pushed a button on her desk and activated her own white screen, to thwart any probing vids. Then she sat down behind her desk, laid her cheek down on her forearm and dissolved into tears for one of the few times in her entire life.
She wished she had someone to talk to about it. She didn’t have a close friend. Well, Stern and Hahnson were close friends, but how could she talk to them about a situation that was potentially a death sentence if they let something slip?
She slid back the sleeve over her wrist scanner and injected herself with a nonlethal form of Altairian flu. The symptoms, gratefully, presented immediately. She allowed herself to slump to the floor, buzzing Mallory on the way down. Unethical, she told herself. Necessary, her mind replied.
Edris came in and gasped when she saw her commanding officer on the floor. “Ma’am! What happened?” Lieutenant J.G. asked worriedly.
“Don’t know. Some sort…of quick-acting virus, probably,” she whispered. “We had that Altairian in here yesterday with flu…” She let her voice trail off suggestively. She was sicker than she ever remembered being. Lovely, lovely sickness that would save her from the ordeal of being around Dtimun for three weeks.
“I’ll call Dr. Hahnson at once,” Edris said, and scampered.
“Altairian flu,” Hahnson pronounced with a strange glance. “Funny how quickly you caught it.”
“Isn’t it?” she asked, so weak she could barely speak. “I felt fine earlier.”
“I know. We’re supposed to lift in two hours,” he added quietly.
“Obviously, I won’t be lifting with you, except in an ambutube,” she said in a weak attempt at humor. “You’ll have to take Edris.”
“No!” he groaned.
“Mallory may be young, but she’s good.”
“She flunked out of combat school with the lowest grade in Academy history,” he exclaimed.
Madeline gave him a droll look. “She isn’t going to be asked to shoot people. Just to treat them. Cehn-Tahr people. Or if we get the opportunity, Rojok people. She won’t get in your way. And it isn’t as if it’s the first time she’s gone with you.”
He grimaced. “The old man won’t like having a substitute.”
She closed her eyes. “Well, we don’t have a choice—it’s Mallory or nobody. Cularian specialists are thin on the ground. Our substitutes are on a training mission themselves. There is no one else.”
“I suppose so.”
She pushed the comm switch next to the examination table. “Mallory, in here on the double,” she said in what she hoped was a commanding tone.
Mallory came in seconds later, flushed and worried. “Yes, ma’am?”
“You have to go with the Holconcom,” she said.
Mallory flushed even more and started to argue.
“There’s nobody else,” Madeline interrupted her. “Get your uniform. Hahnson will keep an eye on you.”
Mallory grimaced. “The Holconcom commander…” Mallory murmured, worrying her lip. “He scares me to death.”
He’d once scared Madeline, too. “Scare him back,” Madeline said weakly. “Go. It’s an order. I’ll handle any emergencies here, but with the Holconcom out of port, it isn’t likely that I’ll have patients except the recovering ones here. An orderly can handle those while I get well.”
Mallory sighed. “Yes, ma’am,” she said miserably.
“You can go to the ship with me,” Hahnson told her with a kind smile. “It will be all right. Honest.”
She brightened just a little. “Yes, sir. I’ll try not to disappoint you, ma’am,” she added, to Madeline.
She saluted and went back out.
“Were we ever that young?” Madeline asked her companion.
“Never,” he said. He closed his wrist unit. “Something you might like to tell me?” he added, producing a white-out sphere. He activated it.
She stared at him, wanting to talk, afraid to.
He pursed his lips. “Come on. Tell Dr. Strick all about it. Your endorphins are screwed up like crazy. I won’
t even mention your blood pressure and your pulse, and it doesn’t have a damned thing to do with the Altairian flu you just inoculated yourself with. Stern saw you coming out of the C.O.’s office. He said you looked as if you’d been skewered by a Rojok harpoon.”
She let out a heavy breath. She really was sick. “I’ve been…out of line. Severely. I was staring at the C.O. in assembly and thinking things I shouldn’t.” She grimaced. “I couldn’t help it,” she said huskily, her face contorting. “I’ve never felt like this…”
“He read your mind.”
She stared at him.
“I served with him for two years during the Great Galaxy War,” he said. “I know he’s a telepath. I’ve never divulged it to anyone else. I never will.”
“Yes,” she said. “He read my mind. Called me into his office.” She closed her eyes on the pain. “He told me everything.” She opened her eyes and looked at her friend. “Including something about you.”
He looked down at his hands. “I’m only a clone of the original Hahnson, but I have all his memories,” he said. “That one is…poignant.” He met her searching eyes. “I know how you feel, believe me.”
“At least you lived through it,” she said.
“I did. She didn’t.” He averted his gaze. “She killed herself. She couldn’t live with the knowledge that we could never be together.”
“Oh, Strick,” she groaned. Now the commander’s comment about keeping cells from Hahnson’s consort made sense. Poor Strick.
“You see, once those behaviors begin, they don’t end. The Cehn-Tahr pay a high price for their enhancements. The galot DNA made them into animals, in some respects. You’ve never seen them fight without restraint. I have.” He shook his head. “No race that endured such predations would ever instigate a battle with them.”
“I didn’t realize how strong they really were, or that their senses and life spans were so enhanced,” she replied. “I’ve been living in a dream. It was a beautiful dream.”
“The reality is something less.”
“Yes.”
“I’m sorry.”
She fought tears. “Oh, so am I.”
“You can’t be alone with him again. Ever,” he told her gently. “He can’t control it.”
She nodded. “I may never be able to come back aboard ship. If only there was some way to stop it!”
“That’s beyond my abilities as a researcher.” He pursed his lips. “You could do some experiments. You have research grants.”
“Oh, sure, I know the admiral would be totally understanding if he knew I was using government grants to find a solution to my pheromone production or invest me with super strength.”
He chuckled.
She did, too. “When I mess up, I do a good job of it. I did suggest a short-term memory wipe.”
“Wouldn’t help,” he said. “He can’t be memory-wiped, and it’s his emotions that are causing the problem.”
“Not emotions, exactly,” she said with faint bitterness. “It’s more an animal response to stimulus on his part.”
“There isn’t much difference.”
“We can agree to disagree,” she said. She swallowed a bout of nausea. “I feel awful.”
“Next time, call me. I can give you something incapacitating that’s much nicer than what you injected.”
“I was desperate and didn’t have much time,” she said defensively. She drew in a long breath. “Take care of Mallory. Try not to let her get eaten alive.”
“I’ll do my best.”
She looked at the white-noise generator. “Can that block a telepath?”
“Most of the time, depending on the distance involved. Not formidable telepaths, however. Old Tnurat, the Cehn-Tahr emperor, can do it across parsecs of space. I heard about it during the Great Galaxy War. They said he could heal the dying just with the power of his mind. He has incredible gifts.”
“The Royal Clan,” she said absently, her mind still on blocking Dtimun’s mental probing, not really on what Hahnson was saying. “They’re very different from other members of their species.”
“Some even more powerful genetic engineering there, unless I miss my guess, but I wouldn’t want to say it without a noise screen running.”
She remembered what Dtimun had told her, in confidence. Maybe it explained why modern Cehn-Tahr were so rigid about no interference with natural rhythms. They didn’t allow any sort of genetic modification now.
But she didn’t say any of that. She just nodded. “How about getting me a white-noise generator so I don’t get spaced for mooning over my C.O.” she asked heavily. “And don’t put it on the books,” she added.
He whistled softly. “Dangerous.”
“It will be more dangerous if I can’t get a handle on what I’m feeling. If he couldn’t read minds, I could probably manage.”
“I’ll keep your secrets. Meanwhile, don’t give yourself any more injections.”
She smiled at him. “I’m so glad we got you back after Ahkmau.”
He smiled, too. “At least I get to serve with the one bunch in the galaxy who respect clones.”
“The best bunch of fighters in the three galaxies,” she replied.
“We are. Get well.”
“I will. Come back alive. And take care of Mallory.”
He grinned. “I’ll do both. See you, Maddie.”
He handed her the white-noise sphere. “I lost it somewhere,” he mused. “Damned if I know where. I’ll have to requisition another.”
“Thanks,” she said huskily.
He patted her shoulder. “No need for that.”
She needed time, she thought, to find a way to get her unwanted feelings under control. She had to hope she could do it, or she might never be allowed back aboard the Morcai. Now that was a horrifying thought, indeed. She gave herself an injection to make her sleep. Being a doctor had its advantages, she thought as she drifted away.
CHAPTER TWELVE
Madeline spent her R&R in the base gym, trying to make up for all the missed practice in combat techniques. If she did have to leave the Holconcom and join an SSC unit, she’d never cut it without some remedial combat practice. Dtimun wouldn’t permit her to carry a weapon and he insisted that she remain behind the lines in any forward mission. Combat wasn’t really required of her aboard the Morcai. In a forward division of troops, it would be. The Amazon Division would be the only place she could go, if it came down to it. Maybe that wouldn’t happen. Maybe the absence would relieve Dtimun’s symptoms. She hoped so.
Flannegan, of the First Fleet, helped her with the workouts. For all his bluster and insults in bar brawls, he was a formidable fighter on the mats. He’d been in combat even more than Madeline, and he knew moves that she didn’t, handy for close-in fighting, which Rojoks loved. He was a master trainer in hand-to-hand for the First Fleet, to which he belonged. He wasn’t bad-looking, either, she had to admit, with that shiny pale blond hair down to his waist in a ponytail and his light brown eyes that twinkled when he teased her.
“Not like that, you rimscout reject,” he chided when she led with a right and walked into his elbow. “Hit and duck. Like this, see?”
She laughed. She’d been doing a lot of that just recently, in his company. She realized with a start that it had been a very long time since she’d felt like laughing. Her helpless, unrequited passion for her C.O. had beaten her down. But here, with her former brawling adversary, she was coming back into the light.
She followed his instructions and punched him with the cushioned glove, then ducked to the side and hit him in the diaphragm.
“Oofff!” he exclaimed, laughing, because she hadn’t pulled that punch.
She grinned at him. “Of course, if you were a Rojok, I’d have made that hit a couple of inches lower.”
He ruffled her hair with some familiarity. “Reprobate,” he teased.
A long, low, building growl fell deep and threatening on the silence, reminiscent of the decaliphe, the de
ath cry of the Holconcom. They both whirled, to find Dtimun, with a worried Hahnson at his side. The Cehn-Tahr was glaring at them with dark brown eyes and he didn’t speak. The growl hadn’t abated. His posture, although barely altered, was threatening. Chilling. Madeline knew what was happening at once. She hadn’t known Dtimun was anywhere on the base. Beside Dtimun, Hahnson tensed.
Flannegan felt the chill. “Sir,” he said, standing at rigid attention. Madeline, close beside him, followed suit.
The growl grew louder. All at once, every ABVD in the building exploded in a blinding flash of light and sound.
“Dismissed, Flannegan!” Hahnson called. At his side, unseen by his commanding officer, he was gesturing the spacer toward the exit, urgently.
“Yes, sir!” Flannegan grabbed his gear. He didn’t even take time to send a smile in Madeline’s direction.
Madeline wanted to thank him for the lesson, but she kept her mouth shut. Dtimun had blown out all the surveillance equipment with just his mind. Incredible!
Flannegan was barely out the door when the black-eyed Holconcom commander appeared at Ruszel’s side in a blur of red.
Dtimun had started to growl again, a low, threatening sound that accompanied another lightning-quick movement that brought him up close to her. His eyes were black, jet-black, and she caught her breath. Dtimun’s lean hand whipped out and caught her long hair, using it to pull her against him. He jerked it, tilted her face up to his black eyes. She caught her breath, exhilarated and frightened at the same time.
“Sir, you don’t want to do this,” Hahnson said quickly.
“Leave us alone,” Dtimun said in a deep, rough tone.
“I wouldn’t dare,” he murmured to himself. Hahnson lifted a laserdot syringe from his wrist unit and abruptly shot a tranquillizer into the main artery at Dtimun’s neck with almost casual efficiency. It had no effect, so he duplicated the action, reading his monitor intently.
“Hahnson!” Dtimun glared down at him with cold anger, touching the place where the laserdot had hammered the drug in.
“Sorry, sir,” Hahnson repeated absently, and hit him with the drug again, but it wasn’t working. He grimaced and kept pumping. “Sorry sir. Sorry, sir. Sorry again, sir.”
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