by Diana Palmer
“Yes, sir!” Stern said sharply, and complied.
“Divert all unnecessary power to the weaponry units and defensive shields,” Dtimun added, his fingers going simultaneously to the intership switch.
“Security!”
“Yes, Commander,” came the reply.
“Send two of the Holconcom to the brig. Should the ship be taken, their orders are to kill Mangus Lo.”
“They are on the way, Commander.”
Dtimun broke the connection with a glance at Stern. “They may recapture this ship, by some miracle,” the alien said. “But, by Simalichar, Mangus Lo won’t live to see it!”
Stern nodded agreement, his eyes going to the starmaps as he tried to unravel the Centaurian’s flurry of orders. It was an old strategist’s trick, playing helpless to draw an enemy into firing range.
But the Morcai didn’t have that kind of firepower now. Could Dtimun be trying to buy more time for repairs? But speed wouldn’t help, either. They couldn’t outrun the Rojoks from a standing start, even with two-thirds engine capability.
“They’re coming on the screen,” Stern said quietly, his eyes following the colored spheres on his sensor net.
Dtimun’s eyes began to smile greenly as the six Rojok fighters moved into position, facing the Morcai.
“Sir, there’s a message coming in from the Rojok lead ship,” Jennings, the communications officer, said.
“Ignore it.”
“But, sir, they say we have one minute to…”
Dtimun gave the young human communications officer a single look, silencing him instantly.
Seconds wobbled by like centuries. The bridge was utterly quiet, except for the audible breathing of the crew. Stern kept his eyes locked on his sensors. If only they had enough power to blow those blasted Rojoks out of space! What the devil was Dtimun up to, anyway?
A movement of lights on the screen alerted him. “Commander, they’re throwing magnabeams on us!” he said quickly.
“How many?”
“Just the three lead ships.”
Dtimun nodded. “Stern, give me half power. Abemon, match the Rojok magnabeams and exert one-third again as much pull against them.”
Abemon looked puzzled, but he switched the power on. “Done, sir.”
“They’re hitting us with three more magnabeams,” Stern remarked. “We can’t pull away, now.”
“I’ve no intention of trying,” Dtimun replied, his elongated eyes still laughing in his golden-skinned face. He leaned back comfortably in his chair. “Weaponry, lock in on all magnabeams, wide scan.”
“Locked in, units primed, sir.”
“Fire!”
A spreading green light burst from the Morcai’s hull, pushing against some invisible force that the eye couldn’t see. Stern watched the viewscreen with tensed muscles. Perhaps it was wiser to lose the ship, and Mangus Lo, than be recaptured, he rationalized. His hands gripped the armrests of his chair. He’d expected the alien to put up a fight. This, he reasoned, was suicide. He bit his lip and tried to think of the afterlife as a place of joy…
18
Just as the Rojok ships stopped in space, their green magnabeams barely visible against the black of space, Stern suddenly realized what Dtimun was doing. Even as he watched, the green of the emerillium scatterbeams pressed closer and closer to the Rojok vessels.
“They’re fighting it, sir,” the weaponry officer said.
“Let them,” Dtimun replied confidently. “If they release their magnabeams now, they’re still finished. Maintain fire.”
“Now they’re trying to back away. They’re doing it!” Jennings said excitedly.
“I’m not deaf, Jennings,” Dtimun said with a laughing glance at the young officer. “Abemon, reverse polarity on our scatterbeams.”
“Yes, sir. Here goes!”
As Abemon threw the switch, the green light overtook the Rojok ships like a blinding blur of gaseous emeralds. Closer, closer and closer, and Stern held his breath as the Rojoks tried to back away. Suddenly the viewscreen on his console became a wild sparkle of emerald patterns growing brighter by the second. Then, with a gigantic, silent explosion that hit his eyes like a green sun going nova, the Rojok starfighters…disappeared. There was no sound, except for the faint metallic noises in the Morcai’s pressurized interior as pieces of the starfighters flew against the Morcai’s hull and scattered off into space.
The ship began to move. Slowly at first, rocking and turning, then picking up speed like a comet and rocketing forward, driving Stern back against his couch.
“Sir, the engines aren’t even engaged,” Abemon burst out. “I can’t hold her back!”
“Neither can I,” Stern added over his shoulder. His fingers coaxed the cyberbionic units, but they wouldn’t respond. It was as if they felt the dread of the crew and were frozen by it. “She won’t respond!”
“Brace for hyperlighting,” Dtimun barked into the intercom. “Close crash bulkheads, all personnel maintain crash positions! Kelekom units, stand by!”
Stern held on to his chair for all he was worth. On the sensor screen before him, the stars and distant galaxies became a bright, sparkling blur in the center of the screen. His ribs pushed against his lungs with a gravity force that seemed about to crush the life out of him. It was all he could do to breathe, and for an instant he thought he was going to suffocate.
Then, suddenly, he felt lighter than air. The process of living seemed to have slowed to zero. The beating of his heart took hours. His hands moved like they had steel weights attached to them. The breath he drew took forever to inflate his lungs. And, on the sensor screen, space was black except for a pinpoint of light.
Time crawled, with the ship moving in unbelievable velocity under him. Silence. Dead silence on the bridge. The only audible sound now was the high-pitched whine of the ship. A sound not like engines at all, but like infinity. Infinity that was a circle of life and death and life again. Awesome, inevitable, inescapable. It had all happened before. It would all happen again. He closed his eyes.
A harsh, grinding jerk sent him flying to the deck. His eyes opened. Around him, personnel were lying in tangled masses on the deck, just beginning to pick themselves up. Stern shook his head, absently wondering how long he’d been out.
Dtimun caught his arm and pulled him easily to his feet. “Check with all sectors,” he called to Komak, “and see what damage we’ve sustained.”
“At once,” Komak replied. “But it will be minor,” he added with a flash of green eyes.
Dtimun sent him a warning, dark glance and he turned and rushed to his chore.
Stern shook his head as if to clear it. “That, sir, was a close call,” he said, shaken.
“The Morcai was never built to withstand such forces,” Dtimun replied. “It is miraculous, as your race would say, that any of us survived.”
“I don’t know how fast we were going,” Stern said, “but I’d sure as hell like to know what caused it.”
“We couldn’t have outrun the Rojok fighters,” Dtimun told him. “Nor could we have won a battle with our firepower understrength. So I turned the Rojok magnabeams back on their own ships, reversing polarity at the same time. The combination of the explosion and the disrupted magnetic force threw us from one point in space to another—although we did not actually travel through the entire distance. Rather, we rode through a fold of space.”
“Our scientists said several hundred years ago that what we just did was impossible,” Stern remarked.
The alien’s eyes made a green laugh. “Did they not also say that colonization of solar systems beyond your own was impossible?”
Stern frowned. “That strategy you just used is one I’ve never read about in textdiscs.”
“It was never recorded,” Dtimun explained. “It was used only once, two centuries ago, by an old-style Centaurian warship.”
Stern’s eyes narrowed curiously. “What happened to that old-style Centaurian warship, if I might ask?”
&nb
sp; Dtimun actually grinned at him. “It blew up.”
Before Stern could react, the Holconcom commander returned to his command chair. “All right, Stern, plot our position while the kelekoms determine where we are.” Even as he spoke, he shot a garble of Centaurian into his ship intercom and received an instant reply. “I’ve had the kelekoms input their data into your terminal,” he added, turning to Stern. “Where are we?”
Stern sat down and studied the charts. The breath rushed out of him. “My God,” he breathed. “We’re less than two parsecs from Trimerius! That’s halfway across the galaxy from where we were!”
Dtimun’s eyes smiled. “Indeed it is. Take us to Trimerius, Stern. Since your Tri-Galaxy Council had the fortitude to declare war on the Rojok dynasty, perhaps they might even have the stomach to prosecute the prize we bring them in our brig.”
“They just might,” Stern agreed, understanding that the commander meant Mangus Lo.
But as he considered the landing, he also was faced with the apprehension of facing Lawson with his own story, that he was only a clone of the original Captain Holt Stern. He put it aside firmly. It had been a fascinating ride. It was worth the cost. At least, he’d saved Madeline…
“For the record,” he told Dtimun with a smile, “I’d rather have gone to glory in the Morcai than go back to Mangus Lo’s sandy playpen. But there’s just one comment I’d like to make about your strategy, sir.”
“Yes?”
“I think you’re crazier than an Altairian kibbit,” he said. “Sir,” he added respectfully.
“So Komak has told me, many times,” the Centaurian admitted. “Plot your course and leave over when ready.”
“Yes, sir!”
Trimerius was dark except for the diamond sparkle of the spaceport when the Morcai penetrated the continent-wide force dome that contained the Tri-Galaxy Fleet’s headquarters. The arrival of the Holconcom flagship went unnoticed except by the communication tower and the regular SP night patrol around the sprawling spaceport, where smaller vessels lifted and landed in profusion and much haste, as if an offensive was being mounted.
Mangus Lo, groggy and disguised in a borrowed SSC uniform, was taken from the ship by a full squad of Dtimun’s Holconcom under the concealing cover of semidarkness.
Stern watched him exit the ship down on deck three with bitter eyes. It all flashed back in his mind. His capture on the Peace Planet while he was scouting alone. The cloning. The conditioning. The infiltration of the Bellatrix’s crew. The destruction of the Bellatrix and the transfer to the Morcai. The capture by the Rojoks. The confinement. His own betrayal of his men, his flag, his military heritage, his citizenship. Living with what he was now was going to be hard enough, without having to live with what he’d done. His betrayal had killed not only many men, human and Centaurian alike, but it had led to Hahnson’s horrible torture and death.
His career was over the minute he stepped off this ship onto Trimerian soil. His stars of rank would be stripped away. If he managed to get off with thirty years in the rimscouts as punishment, he’d still be a clone when he came out. And the military opportunities available to clones, especially those convicted of crimes such as his, were nil.
His heart hanging around his knees, he managed a smile for Madeline Ruszel as she and Komak joined him near the elevator tube.
“Rocky ride, wasn’t it?” she asked with a wan smile. “We had our hands full down below. I expect you did, too.”
“Abundantly,” he agreed. “Did we lose anybody else?”
She shook her head. She drew in a slow breath and flexed her tired shoulders. “Home feels good, doesn’t it?”
“Do you really want me to answer that?” he asked with a trace of bitterness that he couldn’t conceal. “Never mind. Yes, Ladybones, it’s great to be back. For them, especially,” he added fervently, watching the medics move the ambutubes out the hatch near the elevator tubes and in a line to the base medical relief station.
Madeline touched his sleeve gently. “I’ll stand by you, for what it’s worth. That goes without saying, I hope.”
He smiled warmly down at her. “Thanks.” He drew in a long breath. “I wish Strick were here.”
She ground her teeth together. She mustn’t cry, she told herself. “Yes,” she said in a choked tone. “So do I.”
“So this is the Tri-Fleet home planet,” Komak said enthusiastically as he joined them. He looked through the transparent skin of the ship to the facilities beyond, domed and glowing in the distance. “I have only seen it in history discs…”
“History discs?” Madeline asked, aghast.
He frowned. “This is not the word? In data discs, then,” he said quickly, clearing his throat. “I seem to remember that there is a place of many intoxicants on the base where our men once had glorious disagreements with another set of Holconcom in years past. It is still here?”
“Of course!” Madeline said, laughing. “But I thought you people were forbidden to fight, Komak.”
“Only with physically inferior outworlders,” he corrected. He sighed. “Sadly that is now going to be the case, with our microcyborgs in place once more.” He brightened. “But among ourselves we may do what we like as long as the commander does not see us.” His eyes sparkled green as he looked at the humans. “When we have finished at the debriefing, perhaps we three might seek refreshments together?”
A spasm of dark pain washed over Stern’s swarthy face. Clones weren’t allowed in the base bar. And he, Hahnson and Madeline had always headed straight for it after missions away…
“Maliche, why are you still here?” Dtimun growled from behind them. “The crew was dismissed for debriefing five of your minutes ago. Come! Lawson is almost as impatient as I am, and we report directly to him.”
“To Lawson?” Madeline burst out as she followed the men into the elevator tube. “But we’ve never reported to the admiral!”
“Have you had a reply from Tnurat Alamantimichar?” Komak asked quickly.
“From the president of the dectat,” Dtimun corrected irritably. “You are surely aware that the emperor and I do not speak. An envoy is being sent to escort Lyceria back to Memcache. I offered her the freedom of the consulate here, but she prefers to wait in the privacy of her quarters aboard the Morcai.”
Madeline sighed as they walked toward the waiting military skimmers. “How soon do I go before the Military Tribunal?” she asked Dtimun.
“That was my question, too,” Stern added solemnly.
“That is something I intend to discuss with Lawson,” the commander said, without looking at them.
They exchanged puzzled glances. But nobody spoke until the skimmers had deposited them outside the towering liquid crystal walls of the Tri-Galaxy Fleet Headquarters building.
All four of them were transported by quick lift to Lawson’s airy office, where they stood at rigid attention while the admiral studied them.
Lawson, his white hair gleaming in the light of the glowing walls, stared at Stern blankly for a long time, just shaking his head. “I still can’t believe it,” he said gruffly. “I saw your body on the discs the rescue mission recorded. The injuries were such that you couldn’t have survived!”
Stern took a deep breath. Now was the time. He couldn’t put it off any longer. “Sir,” he began respectfully, “that body was…”
“A clone,” Dtimun said for him, his eyes narrowed as they met Stern’s, daring him to say another word. He hesitated. “You are aware that the Rojoks have refined the process of cloning to the point that memories and personality are transferred instantaneously into the reconstructed subject? They cloned Stern, but had the misfortune to shoot the wrong man. Their mistake. The body they left on Terramer was the cloned Stern.”
Lawson was confused. “But you were taken prisoner?”
“Yes,” Dtimun said easily. “Chacon arrived with his personal bodyguard and suspended the torture of Dr. Hahnson. In the subsequent confusion, we liberated ourselves and retook
the Morcai. In the process, we apprehended Mangus Lo. He is in the stockade as we speak.”
Lawson just stared at him, dumbfounded. That wasn’t the story he’d heard from one of the ambassadors.
Madeline and Stern looked as if they’d just been thrown headfirst into ice water. They shared an incredulous glance.
Lawson frowned. “I understood that Ahkmau was destroyed,” he began.
“Indeed it was,” Dtimun added confidently. “The Freespirit liberated the bulk of the inmates, we accommodated those of our crewmen who could be saved. We also lifted the survivors from Terramer, and the Jaakob Spheres.” He raised his chin. “Chacon made the rescue possible, although once the war vote was known to him, he pursued us diligently.”
“A gentleman, is Chacon,” Lawson pronounced. “A true gentleman. But a formidable enemy and the war has only just begun.”
“We have Mangus Lo,” Dtimun said. “Perhaps a truce may be constructed.”
Lawson shook his head. “Mangus Lo has a nephew,” he said irritably. “Han Cho. He assumed power the instant Mangus Lo’s capture made it back to Enmehkmehk. He announced his intentions over a broad laserband width. He says the Rojoks still need room to expand their starving billions and they aren’t going to agree to any peace treaty that doesn’t guarantee them ownership of the Binarius System.” He glanced at them. “It goes without saying that the Binarius System is the ancestral home of the Altairian Triumvirate, and she isn’t willing to donate it to the Rojoks.”
“They also claim the Tupari biosphere,” Dtimun added.
“Yes. Without it, the Tri-Fleet would be forced to barter with the Rojoks for emerillium deposits. We’ll never agree to that. So. It’s still war. And I remind you Chacon will fight no less fiercely for Han Cho than he did, in the beginning, for Mangus Lo.”
“Tnurat Alamantimichar led the war vote, we understand,” Dtimun queried.
“Yes, he did. He and his government are in mourning for the death of his only son,” Lawson replied, curiously aware that Dtimun avoided meeting his eyes. “But the knowledge that his daughter is safe has brought a little peace to him. He’s agreed to attach the Holconcom to my command,” he added, watching the alien commander closely.
