The Morcai Battalion

by Diana Palmer

  “Lucky for us,” Madeline agreed. She sighed heavily. “Look, I managed to secure a cyberscalpel and a medisynthe. I have a bank of drugs and a miniaturized lab in my wrist array. The Rojoks won’t know about it—that’s classified tech. But Komak, I don’t have any graduate experience in Cularian surgery. The physiology, yes. Even some of the pharmacology. But I’m not experienced in this sort of surgery.”

  “You are his only hope,” Komak said simply.

  She grimaced. “The operation itself is what kills most Centaurians who can’t overcome the dylete naturally. The first heart is forced into stasis while the second is stimulated with a high current cardiogenerator. Two out of three times, the current itself is enough to cause fatal heart failure. Not that I believe in the use of cardiogenerators. I’d rather take my chance with old-fashioned open-heart surgery. I can do that blindfolded.”

  “I know. I’ve seen you perform it on the battlefield,” Stern interjected.

  “On humans,” she agreed. “But Centaurians differ drastically in such basics as temperature, blood pressure, pulse, even respiration, all of which have to be carefully balanced in surgery. We won’t even go into the matter of anesthesia, which is more dangerous even than the surgery.”

  “So, you can’t do it?” Stern asked carefully, and without looking at her.

  “I never said that!” she returned defensively. Her brow knitted. “The Roard-Nielson method. That might work,” she murmured, thinking aloud. “Vegan surgeons have used it successfully for years, and they share some striking similarities of Centaurian physiology. Yes. It just might work. But I’ll need a blood donor. Even my minilab can’t supply the amount I’ll need for surgery.”

  “Will I do?” Stern volunteered.

  “A Centaurian blood donor,” she specified.

  “My blood is of excellent quality,” Komak told her with a faint green-eyed smile. “It will cause our comrade to be indebted to me for the rest of his life, if I share it with him. I will never let him forget, in fact!”

  Madeline managed a smile of her own. “I hope you can outrun him.”

  “When do we begin?” the alien asked.

  “As soon as it’s completely dark,” she replied. Her eyes were worried. “But we may need diversions from time to time, to keep the guards from checking us too closely. Even weakened, the Holconcom would help us if they could. The humans…” She grimaced. “They’re probably all drugged anyway. I doubt they’d do anything to help the officer who spaced Muldoon.”

  “It would take something more potent than pleasure,” Stern agreed. “A cause. A holy grail. We’re damned short on miracles, Ladybones. But we can try.”

  Her green eyes wandered over his hard, swarthy face, the crisp, curling dark hair. So familiar. So unfamiliar. “You’re very like him, you know,” she told Stern’s doppelgänger.

  He grinned. “We had the same father,” he said, tongue-in-cheek.

  While they were talking, Komak had moved to the cell facing the complex’s entrance. He stood there, his cat-eyes wide and deep blue. He caught the attention of a Holconcom junior officer in a nearby cell and began to make odd hand movements. The other alien apparently understood them. He nodded, turned and spoke to his comrades in the cell. They spread out and began using hand signals to other cells.

  “At a guess,” Madeline told Stern, “he’s trying to warn the Holconcom about the synthesizers.”

  “Good idea. I know enough Elyrian sign language to warn our own shipmates. If it’s in time for any of them,” he added darkly. He went to join Komak, passing along the news in a language that humans would understand. Some of the occupants of the other cells were lounging on the floor apathetically. But a few gathered at the front of their cells and watched. Madeline noticed a lot of elbowing from the humans aimed at their Centaurian cell mates—because they hadn’t been segregated. Her heart fell. It didn’t auger well for their imprisonment if the two ships’ complements were going to fight each other. It would make any escape attempt impossible.

  “What the hell are you people doing?” Strick Hahnson growled suddenly. “I told you, we don’t need to escape!”

  Madeline glanced at Komak. The alien nodded his understanding. She activated her wrist scanner’s drug banks and, before Hahnson could move, she jetted the laserdot at his broad chest. Whirling, she repeated the action with Higgins, who was sitting beside the doctor. Two drugged officers melted into fleshy heaps on the padded floor and lay still, eyes closed, surreal smiles clinging to their faces even in oblivion.

  “This is a derivative of what the Rojoks are using in the synthesizers,” she growled, glaring from Hahnson and Higgins to the rest of the humans in the cell, who were lying complacently on the padded floor, smiling blankly. “Like one endless pleasant dream,” she muttered. “What a way to control the masses. Cheap and effective. I wonder how long it takes their version to wear off?”

  “Undoubtedly it does, at some point,” Komak agreed. “But I imagine the effects are cumulative, Madelineruszel. I communicated to my men that the synthesizer produced a drug that hampered free thought. However, it is unlikely that they have been desperate enough to sample the fluid banks. We can go long periods without water.”

  “We can’t,” Stern told him. “But I got through to one cell of our shipmates, and they’re passing the message on—to your Holconcom, as well, just in case, Komak. I gave our men a cause, too.”

  Komak actually frowned. “Camaashe?” he queried in his guttural language.

  “Never mind,” Stern said smugly. “Just do what you have to. I’ve got the men in my unit organized. They’ll help divert the sentries, too, if they have to.”

  “That isn’t likely,” Madeline said quietly, “after what the C.O. did to Muldoon.”

  “You might be surprised at the comradeship a common enemy will provoke,” Stern told her. “We’re all in this together, you know, Centaurian and human alike.”

  Madeline was studying him curiously. “You sound just like Holt Stern,” she said solemnly. “Are you sure you’re a clone?”

  He grinned. “Now that you mention it…”

  “I must trust you, Holtstern, clone or not,” Komak said with a flash of solemn blue eyes. “Trust is an awesome responsibility when so many lives are at stake.”

  “I won’t let you down intentionally, Komak,” Stern promised.

  “Then I can ask no more than that. We begin at first dark,” the alien replied.

  “I like the way you said, ‘we,’” Madeline told Komak with a smile. “I never like to operate without an assistant, particularly when he can double as a blood donor. You and the crewman share the same blood type and group, and I’ve already rigged a Galason Tube.”

  “If I share my blood with him, Madelineruszel, will I be transfused with his bad temper, as well as his blood cells?” Komak asked with a flash of smiling green eyes.

  “I’ll remember to ask him when he comes out of the dylete,” Madeline replied.

  “When you ask him,” Komak groaned, “remember to include a plea to spare my life and my career.”

  “Never mind the worrying,” Stern intervened. “With Maddie for a doctor, he’s got the best. He’ll make it.”

  “I hope we all will,” she replied quietly. “I hope we’ll all make it out of here.”

  Enmehkmehk’s other two moons, rising like fireballs in the distance, looked vaguely like smears of blood…

  Lyceria felt the touch of apprehension with a vague urge to conceal it, to ignore it. But she knew deep in her mind that trouble was coming this day. It was an instinct as old as her Clan, as familiar as the colors of her moods. Before the day was out, her life would change.

  She wondered at the absence of Chacon. Lithe, colorfully garbed Rojok women lounged in the spacious harem with her, divinely pampered and unconcerned with the world outside these flowering walls. Education was forbidden to them, as was any contact with worlds outside their own. None of them spoke Centaurian. They seemed to find the c
onfinement pleasing. Lyceria found it distasteful. Her educated mind rebelled at the idea of such seclusion from life.

  The Rojok commander had been conspicuous by his absence since bringing her here, although Lyceria, who spoke Rojok, heard from the other women that he was still in residence. She also heard, with puzzlement, that he paid no visits to the harem. The women were pampered, of course, but they had no duties to perform and were curious as to why. It seemed that the Rojok soldier maintained them out of protocol alone. They had belonged to his brother, who was killed in battle early in the conflict. He kept them out of family obligation only.

  Why was he ignoring her? It irritated her like the thousand nagging bites of a millekat. It angered her. Although, just perhaps, he was even now negotiating with the old emperor for her return to the Centaurian Empire. Perhaps…

  The sudden, unannounced entrance of a squad of Rojok soldiers cut into her thoughts. They came to surround her, like a living net. With drawn chasats, they forced her out of the luxurious confines of the harem into the corridor.

  The apprehension that she had felt now became understandable. Because, minutes later, she was standing in the imperial throne room of the Rojok palcenon itself, facing a dwarfed, slit-eyed little madman who ruled an empire gone equally mad.

  “I suspected as much,” Mangus Lo said, his gaze sliding contemptuously up and down the lithe figure of his captive. “Commander Chacon was too casual when he assured me that he knew nothing of your capture. It is unfortunate that he begins to lie to his emperor. Now I can no longer overlook his behavior. I must deal with it. He is far too dangerous to remain alive. But the people love him too much for a public trial and execution.” He stilled. “He will be of much more use to me as a dead hero. The people can still love him, not knowing what a traitor he truly was. I will build a monument to him, I think,” he added thoughtfully. “Yes.” He nodded, seeing blankly into a fantasy future. “I will build a monument.”

  “You cannot mean to kill Chacon?” The words slid from her mouth before she could prevent them, the thought chilling her.

  Mangus Lo’s eyebrows went up in sincere astonishment. “You, a Centaurian, are concerned for the life of an enemy soldier who has killed many of your people?”

  “The commander is much respected among all alien races,” she hedged proudly, “even by his enemies. He is…an honorable antagonist.”

  “Honor and integrity,” Mangus Lo spat, whirling to drag his useless leg along with him as he made his way back to his throne. Behind the throne, an elaborate red wall tapestry ran down the jeweled walls like blood.

  “Guard!” he called, slumping down in his throne.

  A uniformed Rojok appeared and saluted.

  “Take her to Ahkmau at once,” Mangus Lo said with a satisfied smile, noting Lyceria’s sudden loss of color with pleasure. “And give orders to my commandant there to make certain she is…interrogated…before she goes to the ovens.”

  She felt herself tremble at the sentence, but none of the terror she was feeling made its way into her solemn blue eyes or her proud carriage. She only stared at the emperor.

  “And send Mekkar to me,” Mangus Lo added. “I have an interesting assignment for my court executioner.”

  “Yes, your Excellence,” the guard saluted. He prodded Lyceria with a chasat toward the great arched exit way from the sprawling throne room.

  It seemed like years to Holt Stern before the two suns of Enmehkmehk finally set on the horizon. The combination of the red supergiant and the blue-white dwarf produced a stunningly beautiful nightfall. A dark band running through the supergiant like a ring seemed to link it to the tiny jewel-blue companion in swirls of fire as the suns touched the highly defined jagged mountains on the horizon. It was, Stern thought, a strange touch of beauty in a nightmarish setting.

  Ahkmau, located on one of three moons, rotated around the planet, but in such a manner that it had both day and night.

  As darkness finally fell, Madeline and Komak made their way inconspicuously to Dtimun’s side, while the other occupants of the cell, except for Hahnson and Higgins, who were still unconscious, took up apparently careless positions in the cramped confines—positions that deliberately hid the commander’s unconscious body from probing Rojok eyes.

  “Everybody on the alert,” Madeline told the others in Old High Martian. She linked Komak to the Holconcom commander with the Galason Tube. She activated her cyberscalpel and the miniature automated sterilization units combined within it. “I can’t make promises, but I’m going to give it my best shot.”

  She took the cyberscalpel in hand, and Stern saw her eyes close for an instant. Then she bent and began to pierce the sterile field over the alien’s bare, hair-roughened, golden-skinned chest…

  The silence in the cell at that instant was so ominous that Stern could hear the sound of his own strained breathing. Time dragged, passing in lazy drifts that were almost tangible.

  Watching Madeline and Komak fight to save the alien commander, Stern had to bite back a grin at the utter futility of it all. Even if they managed to save Dtimun, it was a waste of time. The Rojoks had briefed him well. Gain their confidence, they told him, tell them just enough to make them trust you. Then open your ears wide and listen.

  He’d listened, all right, and he had plenty to report. Their first action when he told them about Dtimun would be to take the alien to the interrogation sector. He frowned. Why did that thought bother him? Something Dtimun had said, back on Terramer, when Stern had made a remark about leaving the clones behind—“A life is a life, is it not?”—kept repeating in his mind. He recalled without wanting to that the Centaurians, of all races, elevated their clones to the same position as natural members of their race. There were laws against prejudice. So unlike Terravega, where a clone was only a living bank of spare organs for its original…

  Unwillingly his eyes swept the quiet, dimly lit cell, and fell on the unconscious Centaurian. Madeline might have been talking to him for all the indication she gave of performing life-saving surgery. Komak seemed to be sacked out at the tall alien’s side, idly listening to conversation. It looked so innocent: why should the guards suspect anything? The humans and Centaurians were supposed to be drinking the drugged water from the synthesizer, weren’t they? Why should there be any problems?

  Except that Stern had warned them not to drink the water, and that hadn’t been part of the Rojoks’ plan. He wasn’t supposed to tell them about the water. But he had. He’d told them things about this camp that the Rojok commander-in-chief, Chacon, didn’t even know.

  Above and beyond that, he’d organized the humans in the Morcai complement. From his memory, he’d dredged a tiny mystery and dangled the solution tantalizingly in front of the other humans—most of whom wanted that answer as much as they wanted to know why Komak had ordered one Centaurian in every domed cell to pretend to be unconscious. I’ll tell you about the blue velvet ribbon I carry, Stern had promised the humans in his crew. It was an old secret, much discussed among the crew. And it was cause enough to make them fight the drug, to refuse further nourishment from the synthesizers. Because every crewman who served on the Bellatrix knew about the blue velvet ribbon that Stern carried, and wondered why.

  Stern wondered himself, about his involvement with this crew. He was a clone. That stood out more than anything else he’d been told about himself. He…was…a…clone. A shudder of anguish washed over his mind. Clones, he remembered, were less than people to the human populations of all the Tri-Fleet member worlds. Less than animals. They were different, so they were either feared or hated because of that difference, minute though it was. He wanted to scream that he was human despite the difference of his entrance into life. Not some monstrous caricature of humanity, like a cyberdroid. He was human!

  He could feel the stares of the other humans in the cell. Hahnson and Higgins were just beginning to come out of their drug-induced euphoria, and with sanity came the realization that the original captain of the Bel
latrix was dead. It was in their eyes—all the grief and pain. The disgust. He was a thief, the looks said. He’d stolen Stern’s face and voice and body.

  Was it going to be like this from now on? the man behind Holt Stern’s face wondered bitterly. Will I ever be allowed to live in peace?

  His eyes went back to Dtimun. If the alien could be saved, he could get Madeline and Hahnson and the rest of the Bellatrix’s crew out of this hellhole. He could protect them from Mangus Lo’s sonic ovens. Knowing that, knowing his friends would die if the alien did, could he turn informer again and live with himself?

  The conditioning he’d been given was growing steadily weaker as Stern’s memories grew stronger. Memories hammered in his brain. Bits and pieces of another time, another life. Sounds and smells and faces. He sighed wearily, his gaze going outward, toward the other domed cells where hundreds of humans and Centaurians and Altairians and Vegans and even Rojoks with unpopular political views were waiting to die. Waiting in a drug-besotted stupor that was paradise itself for the sudden, inevitable drop into hell when the captives outlived their usefulness to the Rojok state.

  It was ironic, he thought, that he and Madeline had been Dtimun’s coldest enemies from the first confrontation. And now, here they were, risking everything to save him…

  A loud, steady tread of booted feet reached his ultrasensitive ears, bringing him back to the present. He looked up to see a Rojok prison patrol marching straight toward their cell!

  12

  “Guards coming!” Stern barked in a loud whisper at Madeline.

  She stopped at once. “Over here, Komak. Quick!” she breathed.

  She had Dtimun, Komak’s arm and her small array of tools under the thin, ragged thermoblanket in a flash. Hurriedly arranging the tattered tan blanket over an equally ragged part of the floor pallet, she stretched out beside Dtimun, tucking her hand against his broad chest under the cover to hide the faint bloodstains. The cyberscalpel was constructed of a miniaturized laser so efficient that bleeding was almost nonexistent in surgeries, as the instrument cauterized as it incised. But inevitably when working through bone under such primitive operating conditions, some slight bleeding could occur.