by Diana Palmer
“Madelineruszel, look!” The Centaurian she called “Abe” burst out suddenly from the commander’s side.
She whirled, her eyes widening at the sight. Dtimun was stirring. There was eye movement. His breathing, though a little quick, was regular and steady. “What’s that old saying, Stern, that good can come of the worst evil? Praise the fleet, look!”
Dtimun’s head began to move slowly, back and forth on the pallet. She dropped down beside him and before she considered the wisdom of the move, her hand went down to check the big artery at his throat.
But even as her fingertips touched his golden skin, his big, golden-skinned hand whipped out like a quasabeam and snared her wrist. Pain lines cut into her complexion and she groaned.
“Maddie!” Stern called out, moving quickly toward her.
“Stay back!” she whispered huskily, drowning in pain. “Don’t move. Whatever happens, don’t interfere!”
“Komak, can’t you do something?” Stern growled.
“I am sorry, no,” the younger Centaurian replied sadly, his tall body tense and restless. “I do not think he will kill her—but even though he alone of the Holconcom is not a clone, he is as unused to touch without combat as the rest of us. If we rush him, he will certainly snap her neck. We can only wait.”
Dtimun’s eyes dilated until blackness filled them. His lean face tautened. “Quy nom holconcom!” he growled huskily at the human in his grasp.
Komak paled. “Maliche!” he swore softly. “Madelineruszel, repeat what I tell you, with the exact inflection,” he called to her. “Bacum…tocache. Bacum…tocache!”
Madeline struggled to breathe. The words were like ancient native dialects, with high tones and low tones and glottal stops. The pain was slowing her thought processes. She pulled against his hold with both hands as she tried to repeat the rising and falling tones.
“What are you telling her?” Stern asked urgently. “What’s happening?”
“See his eyes, Holtstern!” Komak ground out, watching as the commander began to rise from the padded floor into a sitting position, his hand loosening its grip on her wrist—only to curl suddenly around her throat. “He thinks she is an enemy soldier. He will kill her!” Ignoring Stern’s sudden pallor, he repeated the words again to Madeline, who had garbled them. “Say the words! Quickly!”
Her mouth opened, but the commander’s grip on the softness of her throat was too secure. The words formed only on her lips as they began to go numb from the lack of oxygen. She must try. She must try, to live. “T…tocache!” Madeline husked through her tortured vocal chords as the commander’s hand tightened.
“No, Madelineruszel!” Komak said in something like horror, if a Centaurian Holconcom could feel horror. “Bacum tocache!” he emphasized the first word.
But, unbelievably, the word softened her captor. The alien’s eyes lost their murderous black color all at once and became suddenly a quiet, curious, soft shade of brown as they searched Madeline’s flushed face.
“I remember, little one,” he said strangely. “You bite.”
Her eyes widened incredulously. Surely, she thought, she was delirious from lack of oxygen and hearing things.
Dtimun released her abruptly and stretched his taut muscles, drawing up a long leg so that he could lean his forehead against his knee. Weak, but alert, his huge, elongated eyes swept the compound and the realization was suddenly there in eyes colored dark brown in anger.
“Ahkmau!” he snapped, his furious gaze going directly to Komak, who winced. “In the history of the Holconcom, no one of us has ever been taken prisoner in battle! Why did you not blow up the ship?” he demanded hotly. “And, failing that, why did you not kill me, knowing what could happen if I fell victim to the Rojok madman?”
Komak seemed to pale under his golden complexion. “The Morcai’s emerillium drive units were fused,” he said simply. “We could not ignite them. And I did try to take your life…”
Madeline glared at him. Dtimun only stared relentlessly at Komak, his eyes hard and unblinking as he waited for the answer.
“It is,” Komak said, moving uncomfortably, “very difficult to explain. First, I tried to…dispose of you aboard the Morcai. Madelineruszel delayed me until the Rojoks dropped us both with chasats. You were barely alive when we were brought here. I thought, forgive me Madelineruszel, that surgical intervention under these conditions would hasten your demise. So I urged Madelineruszel to interfere with the dylete.” He looked embarrassed. “You did not die after all. She saved you, under impossible conditions and with the barest minimum of surgical tools.” He smiled apologetically. “Karamesh,” he added. “Fate. As I already believed, it was not your destiny to meet your end here.”
“My God,” Madeline breathed, shaking her head. “I never suspected why you were so keen for me to operate,” she said, addressing Komak, who only smiled again. Her gaze went to Dtimun. “Well, that ought to brighten an otherwise dreary day for you, sir. You can bring me up on charges before the military tribunal on two counts of dereliction of duty, including breaking a Centaurian cultural taboo and defying the Malcopian Articles of War. My court-martial should be quite colorful,” she added pleasantly.
“You’ll enjoy mine, too,” Stern assured him, folding his arms across his chest. He grinned. “Not to mention the spacing that’s sure to follow the court-martial. I’m a clone of the original SSC Captain Holt Stern, genetically altered by the Rojoks as an infiltrator. I was responsible for sabotaging the ship so that it could be captured. I’m the reason we’re all here together in this Rojok hell.”
The cat-eyes studied Stern for a moment, and the human felt strange, probing sensations in his mind. Dtimun’s gaze shifted to Madeline, then to Komak, and his expression went bland as if he now understood everything.
Dtimun carelessly raised an eyebrow as he turned to Lieutenant Higgins, who was watching the byplay uneasily. “Higgins, have you nothing to confess?” he asked with a flash of green eyes. “This seems to be the time.”
“Well, sir,” Higgins complied with a shy grin, “before I actually confessed to anything, I’d have to have some assurance that it wouldn’t be used against me when we get out of this place. After we process all the Rojok prisoners we take, that is.”
The arrogant statement brought another flash of green to Dtimun’s eyes. “Humans,” he said. “How does Lawson bear it?” He looked around the cell at Crandall and “Abe” and Jennings and the others. They were thin and weary and subdued, and there were new lines in the female medic’s face. “Where is Hahnson?” he asked abruptly. “Is he in another cell?”
“He…they used multisonics on him,” Madeline said softly, her eyes glued to the floor of the cell as she fought for composure. “After the Rojok commandant of this place tortured him to make the men tell where you were, they…the Rojok…he was slicing away Strick’s hands. His mind was already…and they…Chacon stopped it, but it was too late, you see. It was…” Despite her best efforts to stem them, tears made silver tracks down her flushed cheeks. “Nobody said a word,” she defended the men, raising her face proudly to the commander’s eyes. “Not a word, human or Holconcom! And Komak told the Rojoks that the Morcai Battalion stood by its own, human or Centaurian. A lot of the men died for you, Commander. To keep the Rojoks from finding you. And we did that. All of us, we did that.”
“Maliche, why?” the alien asked in astonishment.
“Because it isn’t our way in the SSC to let any member of our unit be used as blackmail to force information. It’s a thing called honor.” She shrugged. “Besides, Komak said that if anyone could get us out of here, it would be you. We had to give you the chance to live, so other lives were sacrificed. Can you get the men out?”
“Madam,” he said with a heavy sigh, “I will get them out if I have to chew through the hyperglas. But what is meant by the Morcai Battalion? I was not aware that I commanded such a group,” he added wryly.
“You do now,” Stern told him. “About fou
r hundred of them are human, too. How’s that for good fortune?” he added with a grin and a touch of the original officer’s impertinence.
A stream of guttural Centaurian passed the commander’s lips, and Stern had the feeling he was fortunate to lack a translation.
“You mentioned that Chacon was here,” Dtimun said as he rose to his feet a little unsteadily. “Is he still?”
“I think so,” Stern replied. “He was going through the place with scanners looking for somebody and he was in a red temper. He had two of the guards sent to the ovens the minute he got here. And he killed the two Rojoks who tortured Hahnson personally. One was the camp commandant.”
“Rojok death camps are notorious for their use of mind-altering drugs,” the commander began.
“Yes, we found out the hard way,” Stern told him. “We were given synthesizers preprogrammed to add pleasure drugs to anything we drank or ate from them. Nobody’s been near that synthesizer for water since we found out. I’m not going to risk it now, either, although my damned throat’s parched. We’ve been using these,” he added, showing the alien a tiny hydrotox pills. “Madeline had a few of them left in her drug banks, but we’re running out. Komak had two Milish Cones. God, the other poor devils in this place haven’t even had that!”
Dtimun digested that in silence. He seemed preoccupied, and not just a little weak from his brush with the hereafter, Stern thought.
“Was Chacon searching the camp for me?” Dtimun asked.
“It is probable,” Komak replied, his eyes a troubled blue-gray. “The Rojoks had standing orders that you were to be taken to Mangus Lo the instant you were located.”
Madeline wondered absently how Komak had come by that information, when nothing had been mentioned in her hearing about it.
A green smile colored the Holconcom commander’s eyes. “I can think of nothing that would give me greater pleasure.”
“You must not kill him,” Komak warned. “The Council would space you for it. Whatever the provocation, as the head of a government he has the right to trial and the Tri-Galaxy Council has the right to exact payment for his crimes.”
“That conclave of gaggling old women?” the commander burst out, his eyes brown with anger. “They will not even agree to make proper war on the Rojok. Only a few governments have sent troops to the intersystem force.”
“It’s not because Admiral Lawson hasn’t tried,” Stern reminded him with a grin.
“Lawson is one man. And by now, certainly he has old Tnurat to contend with, as well. The Centaurian emperor has no patience with weakness and bureaucracy—even less than Lawson. And his temper is meaner,” the Centaurian added.
“Even if Lawson could get a war vote,” Stern added, “it wouldn’t do us much good, would it? Most of the member planets can’t even get along in peacetime. We’ve been segregated into planetary units ever since the war started, and there’s no coordination among the few fleets that were sent to fight for us. Only a unanimous war vote would change that, and too many pacifist governments won’t sign such a treaty.”
“Indeed,” Dtimun said. “If a war vote came today, it would be many of your months before Lawson could organize the divisions and supply them for deep space. To mount an offensive in space is a great deal more difficult logistically than to deploy troops on solid ground.”
“What’s going on outside?” Madeline interrupted from the front of the dome. She’d been only half listening to the discussion behind her. There was a growing force of Rojok guards moving toward the entrance to the huge complex.
“They mass for action, unless I miss my guess,” Dtimun said calculatingly. “And I am not sufficiently recovered to fight,” he said. “Nor are my Holconcom,” he added with a pointed look toward Madeline.
She knew that he meant the Holconcom had their microcyborgs removed. A number of them were implanted under the commander’s scalp.
As she thought it, he scowled and his hand went to his thick black hair. He gave her an odd look.
She actually flushed. He couldn’t have read her mind, of course. It was only coincidence.
But his next statement belied any coincidence. “They must be transferred without explanation,” he said abruptly, looking straight at her. “There are enough for most of the Holconcom, though they will necessarily fight at lesser strength through dilution.”
“I can do the transfer,” she replied. “If you can get us out of here.”
He nodded. The others stared at them uncomprehending, all except Komak, who smiled. The microcyborgs were powerful. They would lend the commander stellar physical abilities as long as his body harbored them, but only two were designated to each of his unit. They were the size of pinheads, but their incredible abilities were known to only a few souls in the galaxy. Madeline was one. Komak understood without being told that she had shared that knowledge with no one.
“The Holconcom are as vulnerable as the humans,” the commander continued. “And all are weak and depleted physically since they have been avoiding the synthesizers.”
“We’ve got to do something quick,” Stern interrupted, watching the Rojoks. “I sense trouble.”
“I agree,” Komak added, studying the enemy aliens. “I sense one faction building to confront another.”
Dtimun’s eyes searched the Rojoks as one company of them began to loosely form the ancient phalanx. In the distance, the planet’s twin suns were looming closer to the horizon, bringing again the red haze of sunset to the horizon.
“One of the groups is going to be Chacon’s, I imagine,” Stern said.
Even as he spoke, the Rojok field marshal moved into view at the head of the phalanx. He shot an order to the men there and suddenly turned, commanding even across the space of the complex in his height and the arrogant self-confidence of his stride. He began to walk between the rows of domes. His slit eyes carefully searched each one as he passed it, two of his personal bodyguard flanking him as the others stood at attention.
“We’ll hide you,” Madeline said quickly.
“You will not,” Dtimun replied somberly. “If Chacon wishes to find me, by Simalichar, I will let him!”
“But, Commander, you can’t let him arrest you…!” she protested.
“In all probability,” he reasoned with her, in solemn tones, “you have rearranged my inner organs in such disorder that I will likely die anyway. What have I to lose?”
She gaped at him, her mind clouding as she read the laughing green of his eyes and tried to understand how he could succumb to humor at a time like this.
“If Chacon finds the commander,” Stern explained with exaggerated patience, “he’ll have to open the cell to take him out, won’t he? And if he does, we’ll jump him. With Chacon as a hostage, they’ll give us the place!”
“Well, gee whiz, what a simply super idea!” Madeline said in mock astonishment. She glowered. “You think Chacon’s going to march into the cell alone, without armed guards?”
“We could ask him if he’d oblige us,” he said reasonably.
She threw up her hands.
“Bataashe!” Dtimun shot at them suddenly, his body tensing as the Rojok warlord moved toward them, searching each domed cell that he passed.
But he stopped suddenly at the entrance of Dtimun’s cell and stood there, tall and imposing, as proud as any emperor, just staring at the Holconcom commander. His reddish-skinned face was expressionless, his long, blond hair falling, wet from sweat, onto his forehead and into his slit eyes. Stern felt the power in their narrow gaze as if it had the power to burn.
“I find you in a strange place, Dtimun of Centauria,” Chacon said. “Legend has it that no Holconcom has ever been taken prisoner in battle.”
“Until now, that was true,” Dtimun replied.
Chacon nodded. His gaze swept over the other prisoners in Dtimun’s cell. His thin lips turned up into a kind of smile. “Which is worse, I wonder, the confinement here or the constant company of the humans?” he asked the Centauri
an. “I seem to remember that you nursed a violent distaste for them.”
“How could he,” Madeline interrupted, “when he’s never eaten one of us?”
“Yet,” Dtimun said with a narrow glare in her direction.
Chacon chuckled. “This one would be too spicy for your palate, I think.” He stared at Madeline. “Dr. Ruszel, I presume?”
He knew her? “Why…why, yes, sir,” she faltered, her eyes wide with surprise.
“The human in the multisonic cell,” Chacon explained, all the humor suddenly gone out of him. “He said to tell you that he didn’t deserve the blue velvet ribbon this time.” The Rojok frowned. “It makes no sense at all, this message he asked me to give you.”
Madeline swallowed hard and stood as tall as she could. “It makes all the sense in the three galaxies, sir,” she said with a glance at Stern, who nodded solemnly. “Thank you,” she added huskily. “And thank you for…putting an end to the torture.”
Chacon stared back at her, his eyes kindling with anger. “No soldier deserves such a death,” he said curtly. “Even war demands some rough thread of honor, if only to remind us that it is all that separates us from savagery.” His eyes swept to Dtimun. “I must take you to Mangus Lo. As I once allowed you to take me to the Pyrecrete on Thesalfohn. You remember?”
Dtimun’s eyes went gray with thoughtfulness, and suddenly burst with colors, the predominant flash of which was green. His gaze went to Stern and Komak. He read accurately the coiled alertness in them, felt the tension of muscles waiting to spring.
“I will go with you,” he told Chacon at once. Then he added, quickly, “Watch these two beside me. They will attack if they can.”
Komak and Stern stiffened, their eyes incredulous as they met the Holconcom commander’s. Something flashed in his, a passage of information that registered also in Komak’s eyes.
