by Diana Palmer
“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 portable white-out sphere. He activated it. Added to the fixed one on her desk, it guaranteed psychic privacy.
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. “Somehow what I feel triggered a mating behavior in him,” she explained. “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 sadly. “As he said himself, its more an animal response to stimulus on his part, one that he can’t control.” Despite the tenderness he’d shown her, his primary response to her was feral, physical, a need that drove him almost to madness. She knew that he had loved a woman in his past, that he still loved her. It was hard to accept that, but she had to rid herself of illusions about the future.
“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 portable white-noise generator for my quarters, 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 death 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 small gym cubicle exploded in a blinding flash of light and sound.
Hahnson, standing beside Dtimun, was working frantically with his wrist scanner. Not two seconds later, Dtimun was in front of Madeline, facing Flannegan, having moved so fast that the human didn’t even see him coming.
Flannegan, flustered, backed up a step and gaped at the tall alien. A low, threatening growl came up from Dtimun’s throat and his eyes began to turn black. The genetically engineered claws began to slip out from under his clean, manicured fingernails.
Hahnson moved to Dtimun’s side. “Divert him!” he shot at Madeline in Old High Martian.
Not knowing what else to do, she reached out cautiously and caught at the sleeve of Dtimun’s uniform.
His head turned toward her. He was scowling. His posture, like his expression, was dangerous. But the feel of her fingers on his arm apparently calmed him.
“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.
Hahnson went with Flannegan, closing the door, locking it and then moving as rapidly as he could back to Dtimun.
“He touched you,” Dtimun told Madeline in a voice that sounded odd, like the sound a cat would make in anger. For a second he seemed bigger, broader, altogether different in appearance. But she blinked and he was the same commander he had always been. She must be seeing things.
“Sir, we were...sparring,” she faltered, because he’d moved close to her. His lean hand shot out and caught the ponytail at the back of her head. He gripped it to force her close to his hard, powerful body.
He spoke to her in the Holy Tongue, words that even Hahnson, with his greater command of Cehn-Tahr, couldn’t translate. He was only half listening anyway. He was drawing fluid into a laserdot.
“He will never touch you again,” he growled as his gaze fell to Madeline’s body. She was wearing a sleeveless T-shirt. Her soft, creamy skin was visible. His eyes fell to the flesh just below her collarbone. He wanted to mark her. He wanted to make a visible statement, one that no other male could mistake, that she was forbidden to any male except himself. His head started to bend toward her.
“Sir!” Hahnson groaned when he realized what his commanding officer was about to do. He rushed forward, reached up, unfastened the collar of Dtimun’s uniform shirt and started pumping dravelzium into the artery at Dtimun’s throat. He was barely going to have enough. He hadn’t resupplied his wrist scanner’s drug banks, damn the luck!
“Hahnson!” Dtimun growled, disoriented.
“It’s okay, sir. It’s okay. Just a little more...sorry, sir,” he murmured, still pumping. “Sorry again, sir.”
Dtimun’s hand in Madeline’s hair lost its tautness and began, ever so slowly, to relax. He drew in harsh breaths, as if he’d been running. She felt him release the long hair at her nape. It felt as if it had almost been detached. She grimaced.
“Thank goodness,” Hahnson said at last, nodding as he read his monitor. “I think that will do it.”
Dtimun lifted his head, as if he was feeling cool air on his face. “Another cc, if you please, Doctor,” he said heavily.
Hahnson hesitated. “Are you sure, sir?”
Dtimun nodded.
Hahnson shot one more dose home into the artery and moved back.
Dtimun let out the breath he’d been holding. He looked down at Madeline with strange, golden eyes. She was spellbound. It was a forbidden look into Cehn-Tahr mating behaviors. One which, if she read it right, had almost cost Flannegan his life.
“An excellent point,” Dtimun said in a strained tone. He pulled up Btnu’s image on his communicator ring and spoke again, but this time in a dialect of Cehn-Tahr that Madeline and Hahnson could both understand. Btnu nodded and saluted, and the image faded.
“You’re sending your bodyguard after Flannegan?” Madeline exclaimed. “But, sir...!”
He held up a hand. “They aren’t going to harm him,” he assured her. “They’re going to prevent me from killing him, in case the dravelzium wears off before I can get back to the Morcai.” He glanced at Hahnson and gave an order mentally.
“Yes, sir,” Hahnson replied. “I’ll, uh, make a few adjustments to the wiring so that it will look as if the AVBDs malfunctioned due to a faulty connector.”
Dtimun nodded. He managed a faint smile.
Hahnson pulled out two laserdots and handed them to Madeline. “Just in case,” he added, and went to perform his task. He closed the door behind him.
Madeline’s misery was visible. She knew that she would never be able to return to the Holconcom. If what had just happened was any indication, leaving her behind had only whetted Dtimun’s appetite, not diminished it.
He nodded. His face was hard, grim. “The behavior escalates, as I told you once.”
She ground her teeth together. “It’s my fault. I’m so sorry!”
“How is it your fault?” he asked quietly. “I know your mind as well as I know my own. The...feelings you have for me are not assumed or pretended. You are as incapable of controlling them as I am of controlling my n
eed.”
“Will it stop if I stay here?” she asked.
“We find ourselves in uncharted space, so to speak,” he replied. “The only real cure is mating, which is impossible. I have no experience of this situation. There is no literature which addresses it.”
“I have even less experience than you do,” she began.
“Yes, your knowledge of male behavior is oddly lacking, for a physician,” he mused. “Flannegan wants you. How can you not be aware of it?”
“He...what?” she stammered.
He shook his head. “Another example of the inefficiency of your so-called neutering drugs.” His face hardened. He lifted his chin, and his whole expression was arrogant, possessive. “You will not spar with him again.”
It was a command. There was a time when she would have resisted it, argued with him, defied him, dared him to dictate her private life. But the sensation his possessive attitude provoked was...strange. She felt heat rush through her body, because of the way he was looking at her. As she had noted once before in their turbulent relationship, he looked at her as if she belonged to him.
“Yes,” he said softly. “You like it.”
The color grew redder. “Sir,” she protested. “That is a very unmilitary attitude to take...”
His breathing was heavier. His eyes began to darken. He grimaced. “Madeline, that dravelzium Hahnson gave you,” he said in a strained tone. “This would be a good time to use it.”
She grimaced. “These are very heavy, dangerous doses, sir,” she protested as she lifted the laserdot.
“What I would do to you,” he said in a tone that almost purred, “would be even more dangerous.”
And in that instant, in her mind, she felt a rush of pleasure so intense that she gasped and almost lost her balance.
He caught her arms to steady her. She felt muscles straining in her arms at the painful grip. “Hurry,” he whispered.
She reached up quickly, shivery at the contact, and shot home the laserdot in his strong neck while he watched her with hunger consuming him.
He was bending toward her when the dravelzium took effect. He drew in a sharp breath and suddenly let her go and stepped back. “I injured you,” he bit off.
