The Morcai Battalion

by Diana Palmer

  All eyes turned toward the doorway. Dtimun was standing just inside it, with Komak at his side. The alien’s eyes, as black as those of his Holconcom, looked and held on those of the Centaurian who had Muldoon in his grasp.

  The soldier’s eyes suddenly calmed. The black death was gone from them, to be replaced by a color that Madeline’s whirling mind couldn’t classify. His face abruptly contorted, and he screamed—something unheard of in the ranks of the Holconcom.

  The scream died. He stood there, facing his commanding officer with a fear so complete it seemed to radiate from him and touch every Centaurian in the mess hall.

  “You were warned,” Dtimun said, very quietly, “of the consequences of conflict. You have seen the power of the Holconcom. Now see the power of their commander.”

  He moved forward so quickly that he was a blur in the eyes of the humans. He had the Centaurian by the neck in a heartbeat. A split second later, his hand flexed and the alien flew completely across the mess hall, over the heads of the Centaurians and the humans, with lightning speed. The offending Centaurian hit the Plexiglas wall and bounced off onto the floor, to lie still with his huge eyes open, with his mouth open, as well. He arched, once, and then lay unmoving, like Muldoon.

  Madeline swallowed hard. She was a doctor. Before that, she’d been an elite warrior. But in all her battles, she’d never seen anything like the commander in action. She’d never have believed that any humanoid could move that fast until she’d seen it. Beside her, she felt Hahnson’s arm tense like a coiled spring.

  Dtimun’s black eyes calmed into a somber blue. He straightened regally, with barely noticeable effort, and turned to the others. His expression was so fierce that Higgins actually backed up. “There will be no further incidents,” he said quietly. “Or the perpetrators will answer to me. Am I understood?”

  The entire complement of the mess hall stood at rigid attention, including the Holconcom.

  “Who integrated the mess?” the alien added abruptly, and turned to Komak.

  “Not I,” Komak replied.

  “I did,” Stern said, finding his voice at last.

  Dtimun moved toward him without seeming to move at all. He was a head taller than Stern. He stared down at the human with barely concealed rage. “Once, I would have killed you for such an infraction. Your rank in the Tri-Fleet prevents me from such discipline. However,” he added with cold eyes, “it will not spare your subordinate.” He whirled and shot an order in Centaurian. Two Holconcom went to the downed human, Muldoon, and dragged him to his feet. He was conscious, wide-eyed and visibly terrified.

  “Captain Stern!” Muldoon called piteously. “Help me!”

  Stern’s mind was a nexus of conflicting emotions. He stared at Muldoon blankly as he realized what he’d done, and what the consequences could have been. He couldn’t believe he’d put his men at risk like this!

  “What will you do with him?” Stern asked the Holconcom commander.

  Dtimun didn’t reply. He turned back to his officers. “Prepare him.” He glanced at Stern. “All officers will go immediately to the green section airlock,” he added. “Video monitors will be activated for the crew, so that they may watch, as well.”

  He made a gesture with one lean hand, which prompted the Holconcom with Muldoon to act immediately, almost carrying a protesting Muldoon out of the canteen. The man’s sobs could be heard like echoes of fear.

  Madeline gasped aloud. “You can’t mean to space him!” she exclaimed. “There are protocols…!”

  Dtimun didn’t answer her. He looked straight at Stern. “Ask your captain the penalty for inciting intermilitary conflict in time of war.” He turned and followed his officers and Muldoon, expecting obedience.

  The humans gave Stern shocked, angry looks as they filed by, too shaken by what they’d seen to risk the commander’s temper.

  “Stern, for God’s sake, do something!” Madeline raged.

  “It’s too late,” Hahnson said for him, his face set in hard lines. “No power in the galaxy will stop Dtimun when he thinks he’s right. Damn it, Stern! You’ve cost us one of our best engineers!”

  He filed out behind the other humans. Madeline hesitated, but only for an instant. She was shocked at Stern’s unnatural behavior, at his instigation of the conflict. She turned her eyes forward and followed Hahnson.

  Stern watched them go with wide, blank eyes. He was puzzled and vaguely frightened by his actions, but he couldn’t seem to stop doing insane things. Perhaps his concussion had prompted it. Regardless of the reason, Muldoon was about to be spaced, and Stern couldn’t do a thing to stop it. Not a single damned thing.

  5

  By the time Stern got to the airlock station, Muldoon was standing inside the closing doors. Dtimun’s third officer, a tall Centaurian named Btnu, was at the wall with his hand on a switch.

  Madeline started to protest, but Hahnson kicked her boot. Hard. She swallowed her rage and glared at Stern instead.

  Dtimun turned and looked straight at the human crewmen as he gave the order to Btnu. Inside the airlock, Muldoon was pounding at the transparent screen, yelling, his face red and swollen. He looked frantic.

  Idly, Stern thought how out of character it was for Muldoon, who was one of the bravest engineers he’d ever served with, to behave in such a manner. He’d seen the Irishman beaten bloody and still struggling to his feet to give back the punches. He wasn’t the sort of soldier to beg and plead.

  While he was thinking it, Btnu threw the switch and Muldoon was suddenly floating in space.

  There was a muttered curse from beside him as the Irishman tumbled over and over and slowly became a speck in the deep black of star-sprinkled space.

  “This is what you can expect if there are ever additional incidents of this sort,” Dtimun said in a deadly, soft tone as he turned to face the humans. “We are at war. Aboard this ship, we fight Rojoks, not fellow crewmen—even reluctant ones! Remember what you have just seen. Never forget it!” He glared at them. “Dismissed!”

  The humans grouped together like defiant, belligerent insurgents and left the deck. The Holconcom showed no emotion whatsoever. They saluted their commander and followed out behind the humans.

  Madeline’s fists were clenched at her sides. She said nothing, but her eyes spoke for her. She’d almost run out of vicious names to call him, mentally, when he suddenly turned on his heel and glared at her.

  Dtimun abruptly walked to her side and stopped with his hands linked behind his back. His posture was threatening enough, without the dark anger of his elongated eyes. “I have no qualms about spacing women,” he pointed out, in deep tones without a trace of an accent. “Interfere again and I will prove it. You have duties, Doctor, none of which pertain to command of this vessel. Attend to them!”

  She swallowed, her teeth clenched so hard that she thought they might break, and snapped the hateful alien a salute before she turned with perfect posture and marched off the deck.

  Hahnson grimaced as he saw Stern’s expression, but he said nothing. He saluted and joined Madeline outside.

  Dtimun’s expression never wavered when he looked at Stern. “The Holconcom fight as a unit,” he said. “If I had not intervened, you and your entire crew would be dead. Explain your behavior.”

  Stern frowned. His hand went to his head. There was a terrible pain, a shattering pain. He could hardly bear it.

  The alien’s eyes turned blue. He cocked his head. “This pain,” he said, “is it from the concussion?”

  It didn’t occur to Stern to wonder how the alien knew he was in pain. He could barely think. “Pain,” he gritted. “So…much…pain…!”

  He dropped to the deck, unconscious.

  When he came to, he was in the makeshift human sick bay and Hahnson was bending over him, a concerned expression on his broad face as he checked Stern’s head with a small device that read through tissue and blood and bone.

  “Will I live?” Stern husked.

  “You may
not want to, considering how much trouble you’re in,” Hahnson told him quietly.

  “The commander was out of line, too,” Madeline muttered, standing just to the side of Hahnson. “I’m saving up infractions. When we port at HQ, I’m bringing him up on charges.”

  Hahnson gave her a tongue-in-cheek glance. “Pay your burial fees first.”

  “I’m not afraid of him,” she said curtly. But she didn’t push the issue. “How is he?” she asked Hahnson.

  “No major damage that I can see,” Hahnson said absently, checking his scanners. “But there are some minor deviations in the endorphin levels, and there’s some foreign substance that I can’t even identify.”

  “I have some memory loss,” Stern admitted at last. He winced. “And headaches that aren’t even describable.”

  “Maybe the deviations are responsible,” Madeline interjected.

  “That doesn’t explain them,” Hahnson replied. He handed Madeline a copy of his readings. “You’re better at exobiology than I am. Run those through your diagnostic computer, will you? Perhaps you can find something that my scanners can’t read.”

  “My degrees are all in Cularian medicine,” she pointed out. “That’s Rojok and Altairian and Centaurian genetics.”

  “There are some similarities to Rojok cell structure,” Hahnson said surprisingly.

  Stern sat up too quickly, grabbed his head and groaned.

  “Just lie back down, if you please,” Hahnson said, easing him onto the medical scanner array. “I’m not accusing you of being a Rojok spy. I said there were similarities, that’s all. You might have picked up some cellular residue left behind by the Rojoks when they attacked the colony. This equipment is sensitive enough to detect week-old skin cells.”

  “Oh,” Stern murmured.

  Madeline peered into the computer built into the examination array and frowned. She exchanged a glance with Hahnson that Stern didn’t see.

  Hahnson read it very well. He patted Stern on the shoulder. “You just lie there and rest for a few minutes. I’m going to walk Madeline through the sensor workup. Okay?”

  “Okay.” He opened his eyes and looked up at his comrades of many years with a worried frown. “What’s wrong with me?” he asked abruptly. “I let that cat-eyed terror blow up the Bellatrix without a protest. I let him space Muldoon. On Terramer, I was willing to sacrifice the Jebobs and Altairians. What the hell am I turning into?” he asked in anguish. “Why can’t I remember anything before we left the Peace Planet? Why didn’t I rush that cat-eyed terror when he spaced Muldoon?” He groaned, holding his head. “The pain…is terrible. I can’t…function…like this!”

  “We’ll find the answers, Holt,” Madeline said quietly. “I promise.”

  He drew in an unsteady breath. “Muldoon’s gone. It’s my fault.”

  “It’s his,” Hahnson corrected shortly. “He could have gotten us all killed. If you’d ever seen the Holconcom fight, you wouldn’t be apologizing.” He shivered faintly. “It’s not a sight you ever forget.”

  “Enough philosophy,” Madeline told Hahnson. “Let’s go.”

  They stopped just at the door to Madeline’s makeshift sick bay. She looked around at the antiseptically clean corridor and at the walls. “Think they have AVBDs out here?” she wondered softly, using the abbreviation for audio-visual biodetectors.

  “I’m not sure we’d know if we were being watched. Their biotech is centuries ahead of ours. They have living, breathing machines called kelekoms, that work as a connected bank of high-level supercomputers. There are only four aboard the Morcai, and the operators are joined to them for life. The kelekoms actually feel. They’re biological entities, from a world of beings who lead noncorporeal lives bound to technology.”

  She grimaced, only half listening. The corridor was too cool to be comfortable. Like Stern and Hahnson, she was a Terravegan national. The human colony was subtropical, with lavish pink and black sand beaches and incredibly lush flora. She missed it from time to time, although most of her life had been spent in the military, from the age of three when she entered a cadet training center. She was one of the few military officers who knew one of her biological parents. Her father was Colonel Clinton Ruszel, a Paraguard officer in the Tri-Fleet. He’d kept tabs on her all the long years, and there was a sort of affection between them, despite the mandatory mental neutering of the military that made it difficult to maintain any sort of emotional ties. Ideally she shouldn’t have been able to feel any sort of familial affection. Certainly it was designed to prevent sexual attraction between the coed military, and it worked. Very few tried to have the required mental neutering reversed. Fraternization was the only offense left on the books that carried the death penalty.

  “You’re worried,” Hahnson noted.

  She nodded, looking at the scanner in her hand. “These are more than just discarded Rojok cells. There’s a genetic structure here that I’ve never seen, except in clones.”

  “You don’t think Holt is a clone, surely?” he laughed.

  She didn’t smile. “He was missing for a long time, Strick,” she reminded him. “We know that the Rojoks are experimenting with instant cloning.”

  “Like they’re going to have it on a remote planet in the middle of nowhere,” he scoffed. “They were after the Jaakob Spheres, they weren’t cloning people.”

  “If they were,” she persisted, “think how devastating it could be to our war effort. Suppose you could clone a military officer or a high official, program him to do what you wanted and then replace his original. If you’d downloaded his memories, his education, as well, the clone would be virtually undetectable. We’ve been working on such tech for the past five standard years, and we’re on the verge of a breakthrough. What if the Rojoks already have it? They experiment with all sorts of biotech at Ahkmau, their notorious prison camp on Enmehkmehk’s moon. They could develop this before we can, since they are not restricted by ethics as we are.”

  “Stern had a concussion,” Strick said gently. “That explains the headache and the behavioral anomalies.”

  “Does it?” she replied. “Then why didn’t he save Muldoon?”

  “He’d have been spaced alongside him.”

  “That wouldn’t have stopped the Stern we both know,” she pointed out. “Remember when Lawson had Danny Bean arrested for a murder that Stern could prove he didn’t commit? We actually broke Danny out of maximum security in the brig. Stern knew it would mean a reprimand on his permanent record. He did it anyway.”

  Hahnson nodded slowly. “Well, concussion has been responsible for some very odd behavior,” he said, clinging to his theory.

  She moved a step closer, wary of passersby who might overhear her. “I think his brain has been altered,” she persisted. “Remember that brain scan I ran on him just after we came on board this ship? I found an abnormality in the neurotransmitters. His norepinephrine levels have been chemically altered, and there are anomalies in the neurons, as well. The bone scan detected an altered cell structure we can’t duplicate. Not only that,” she added wearily, “the biorhythm scan was indecisive. His pattern was run less than a month ago—standard procedure—and charted. I compared the new one with it. The change is too radical to be explained away by concussion. Someone’s been experimenting on Stern. I think.”

  Hahnson blew wind through his lips. “God, what a mouthful! All that evidence, Maddie, and you only think his brain’s been tampered with?”

  “I can’t deny that the concussion could be responsible for some of the readings. Theoretically it could have affected the outcome of a brain profile, I suppose.” She sighed. “And you’re right about those stray Rojok cells. They could have contaminated his cell structure if he was exposed to residual traces of them.”

  “Theoretically black holes could be harnessed for time-drive systems if they’d stop gobbling up our scientific expeditions,” he countered. “Well, what do you want to do about it?”

  “Watch him closely until we get
to Benaski Port. What else can we do?”

  He cocked his head. “We could talk this over with Dtimun, you know.”

  Both auburn eyebrows went up. “With that strutting, black-browed, inhuman son of a…” she began, her voice gaining power with each word.

  “Maddie!” Hahnson cautioned hastily, his eyes intent over her left shoulder.

  Slowly she turned to meet a gaze as black and dangerous as a hungry galot’s. The raw power in those dilated cat eyes could have backed down a group of mutineers. Madeline’s eyelids flickered as if the impact of his glare had actually been physical.

  “Finish the description, Madam,” the Morcai’s towering commander said, his gentle tone far more threatening than pure rage.

  Madeline swallowed. Hard. “C…Centaurian, sir,” she said, hating the tremor in her voice, hating the fear, hating him, and her eyes told him so. She was a combat veteran, a leader of elite troops, but this creature was more than her match.

  “Tread softly, warwoman,” he told her with a cold bite in his words. “As I have said, I have no compunction about spacing a human female.” He made the adjective sound like a disease, but his eyes dared her to challenge him. “What was it, Madam, that the two of you were considering to discuss with me?”

  Hahnson cleared his throat. “Commander, it was the matter of our patients,” he hedged, thinking fast. “Time is getting precious. Is there some chance that we can make it to Benaski Port before the Rojok ships close in on us?”

  The Centaurian’s eyes became a cold, solemn blue. “A chance,” he agreed finally.

  Hahnson’s eyes narrowed as he studied the alien. “When we served together, you were legendary for pulling rabbits out of hats, theoretically speaking. Why is it so difficult for you to find a way around our pursuers?”

  The alien’s eyes burned brown as he glared down at Hahnson. “Do not try friendship too far with me, Hahnson,” he said coldly. “My capacity for it, as you well know, is limited. Both of you, back to your posts. I expect your patients to survive until we reach port.”