The Morcai Battalion (14 page)

Komak took the bridge access ladder at a dead run, and seconds later he was secure in the spool-like bridge command console. His solemn blue eyes took in the situation at a glance as he studied the defense computer screen.

“Helm, how much speed can you give me?” he asked in Centaurian.

“None,” came the astonished reply. “Somehow, our engines are completely offline.”

Komak said a word in his own dialect, which caused the astrogator to raise an eyebrow. “Weaponry,” he snapped. “Set your timers, prepare to…”

“Impossible, sir,” the weaponry officer apologized. “We cannot self-destruct. The
emerillium
power units are fused. Useless.”

The young Centaurian sat there quietly, his huge eyes swinging around the bridge, watching the others of his race in a static, brief silence. Never in the history of the Holconcom had a Centaurian Holconcom commander been made prisoner of any other race. Now, that proud tradition was about to be broken, and on his watch. His jaw clenched with futile anger.

He knew, however. Quite suddenly, he knew how the ship had been sabotaged, and by whom. “Find the human captain Holtstern,” he told his chief security officer in rapid-fire Centaurian, “and the cloned Merrick. No quarter. You understand?” he added grimly.

“I understand,” the security chief nodded and trotted off toward the access ladder.

Komak’s hands clenched on the arms of the console. At least Stern would not live to boast of his treachery. He kept brooding on the fact that no Holconcom commander had ever been captured in battle. It was unthinkable. That must be prevented, at all cost. He only regretted that there was no way to destroy the ship in
time. That would have been the best solution to this monumental tragedy.

He stood up. There was one last duty, which only he could perform. He would allow no other soldier near the commander. This, he thought furiously, had not been part of the design at all. His sketchy knowledge of these days, this incident, did not include the death of the commander…

“Sir,” the astrogator asked quietly, “what do you wish of us?”

“Courage,” Komak replied. “And patience. If we cannot die as a unit, there is little logic in half measures. Let us show the Rojoks that Holconcom will not be subjugated by fear, as are other races. Let the Holconcom set an example of bravery that will be remembered as the valiant Morcai are remembered.”

“The commander would wish this, also,” the astrogator replied, with a green smile in his eyes.

“Yes,” Komak told the bridge crew as he turned away, with death and anguish in his dark eyes. “The commander would wish it.”

“They will demand surrender,” the astrogator reminded him.

“They will have to board us to obtain it. I will not yield the colors.” He turned again toward the access ladder. “Should you require me before they come, I will be in the makeshift exobiology sector of Dr. Madelineruszel.”

As he ran there, once down the access ladder, he wondered about the paradox he was about to create, and if he would vanish in a haze…

Madeline Ruszel was checking the rest of her shaken charges when Komak entered the sector. His eyes, dark with pain, fixed on the ambutube containing Dtimun’s powerful body.

“What’s going on?” she asked.

“We are surrounded and about to be subjected to capture,” Komak
told her. “However, your captain and the clone he managed to reprogram will not live to see it. They cost us the engines and our weaponry. My security chief is searching for them now.”

Cold chills ran down her spine. She knew the answer even as she asked the question. “What will they do? What will happen to Stern and Merrick?”

Komak met her gaze levelly, and there was no compassion, no concern,
nothing
in his elongated cat-eyes. “They will be killed,” he said simply.

She hesitated. “Please,” she said gently. “You don’t know Stern, the way he was before this happened. He was one of the finest commanders in our service…!”

“So was my commander, Madam,” he replied quietly. “I cannot allow him to be captured.” His hand went to the panel that would open the ambutube.

“Komak, what are you doing?”

“What I must. I have no more options. You have no idea what a medically weak Centaurian could suffer under Mangus Lo’s executioners, the treatment he would endure on
Ahkmau
.”

“There are always options!” she argued, moving to the ambutube.

He drew in a harsh breath. “You do not understand!”

It occurred to her that he hadn’t yet identified his commander with the still figure in the stasis unit. Nor could she. “You can’t hurt this crewman!” she raged. “Not when I’ve gone to such lengths to try to save him!”

“You have no idea of the pain it gives me to even contemplate it,” he ground out. He glanced into the ambutube and hesitated. His eyes flickered when he saw the changes she’d made to the commander’s appearance. “
Maliche!
What have you done to him?”

“What do you mean?” she asked deliberately, because even now
Rojoks might be aboard, watching the remote audiovisual units, searching for Dtimun. “I haven’t done anything to this crewman.” She emphasized the last word. She moved between Komak and the ambutube. “This poor, sick Holconcom crewman,” she continued deliberately, “has only had too much synthe-ale and is sleeping it off. You can’t kill a man for dereliction of duty, now, can you?” she persisted doggedly. “Your commander is already dead, but this soldier might live…!”

Komak hesitated, his eyes gone blue with surprise, as he registered what she’d just said. It was only for a second, but it was already too late….

Admiral Jeffrye Lawson stared blankly at the small pile of personal effects that his adjutant had dumped on the highly polished moga wood block his desk had been carefully carved from.

“What a hell of a legacy to leave behind,” he murmured to Ambassador Giles Mourjey, who was receiving a last-minute briefing on the state of the war effort before his long journey back to Terravega.

Mourjey studied the meager leavings. “Indeed. Two mems,” he noted, touching the small, silvery coins, “an ID disc, assignment disc, a ring watch, and…a piece of blue ribbon?”

Lawson frowned. “Part of a piece of blue ribbon. I wonder where the rest of it is?”

“Does it have some significance?”

Lawson smiled. “Stern carried it everywhere. The men used to rib him about being sentimental, because it had belonged to a woman he knew. He always kept the main piece, but he and his bridge crew used to pass part of it around like a medal, for valor under fire.”

“His service record was exemplary,” the ambassador said.

Lawson nodded, his silver hair glistening in the
soft glow of the ceiling. “He was one of the finest officers in the SCC fleet. And this had to happen…” He sighed wearily. “Sometimes this damned job gets to me. The casualty figures are more than numbers when you have to send condolence holos to families all over the galaxies.”

“Did Stern have a family?”

Lawson shook his head. “He was from one of the baby mills. One of the few without a known parent.” He touched the remnant of blue ribbon. “Madeline Ruszel and Strick Hahnson were the next best thing to his ‘family.’ Doctors, both of them—two of the best. I’ll bet they took it hard. God, if anything happens to Ruszel I’ll have the whole damned Paraguard on my neck. Her father is Lieutenant Colonel Clinton Ruszel. Remember him? Old Blood and Mud? He still commands a wing of the Paraguard Commandoes and, despite the regulations against any sort of emotional bonds, he’d fight a herd of
galots
for his daughter. I hope she and Hahnson survive the Holconcom. What am I saying?” he asked, wiping his steamy brow with his hand. “I hope the Holconcom ship survives. They’ve not been heard from since they rescued the crew of the
Bellatrix
.”

“What are the chances of getting a rescue force together to go after them?” Mourjey asked.

“One in a billion,” Lawson said flatly. He started pacing the room. “I’m just now massing troops for an all-out offensive in the Algomerian sector, and munitions and food stores are holding me up. We’re having to import them from the Vegan colonies, and the Rojoks are having a field day shooting the transport freighters out of space.”

“The Holconcom commander, Dtimun, is supposed to be something of a legend,” Mourjey said with a smile. “I understand the Council once awarded him its highest honor, the Legion of Valor. They say he threw it in Lokar’s face and walked out.”

“That’s so,” Lawson chuckled, remembering. “I was just a cadet at
the time, but I recall the ceremony. Dtimun has a temper that’s as legendary as his abilities as a strategist. He’ll get through the Rojok trap. I’d bet everything I own on him.”

“He’s older than you, isn’t he?”

Lawson nodded, smiling. “He’s in his eighties, although he could pass for much, much younger. His men would follow him out an airlock, and he has a sense of humor that sits oddly on that stoic reputation of his as a fighter. I’ve never known a commander like him. Pity we can’t shanghai the Holconcom into the Tri-Fleet. We’d be invincible. But old Tnurat Alamantimichar hates humans.”

Mourjey watched the light fading outside the Tri-D window with a long sigh at the swirl of candy colors on the horizon. There was such beauty out there, and humanoids eternally seemed to prefer blood to sunsets.

“You’re not listening,” Lawson chided. “I said, how soon can I get that armored cavalry division your government promised me?”

“I’ll check and let you know. Jeffrye, I should have stayed at home and become a writer of poetry,” he said as he clasped forearms with the older man. “I find no glory in war.”

“Nor do I, Giles,” Lawson agreed. His gaze fell involuntarily to the small length of blue velvet ribbon on his desk. “God, nor do I!”

Holt Stern and the clone, Merrick, stood sweating with apprehension in the tiny storage cubicle as the security squad passed right by them without stopping to check it. The armed guards were everywhere, and it had taken all the cunning he could manage to save the pair of them. But if those damned Rojok raiders didn’t board the
Morcai
pretty soon, it would be beyond his ingenuity to escape detection. He knew instinctively that he’d be shot on sight. He only wished he knew if Dtimun was still alive. It was important that the
cat-eyed terror was captured in one piece. He’d collapsed, but he knew Madeline would soon revive him. She was very skilled. It had to be on Dtimun’s orders that security was looking for Stern and Merrick. Or did it? What if Dtimun was dead? There’d be hell to pay. Komak didn’t like or trust him. Yes, it could be Komak who had a search party out looking for him. The younger Centaurian would make a tireless, relentless enemy, especially if Dtimun died.

He flexed his aching shoulders. Soon. Soon, it would be all over. The Rojoks would take the ship to
Ahkmau
, and it would all be over. And he and the clone would be…where? Rewarded? Confined? That thought had never occurred to him before. And again he could see Madeline Ruszel’s face in front of him.
Maddie!
He cried silently, involuntarily.
Forgive me!

He felt Merrick’s clone watching him, and he wiped the anguish from his face. This would never do. He would have to control these strange surges of emotion. His eyes closed as he hoped fervently for an end to the waiting.

In the makeshift exobiology sector, Madeline Ruszel’s fingers closed on a
Gresham
that was lying beside her on a computer console. She had to be quick and accurate. Komak was debating his next move, and she saw in his eyes that he had made it. His hand went to the controls on the ambutube. Another instant and the tube would open. Komak’s merciless hand would close on Dtimun’s neck. It would be too late. She didn’t want to hurt Komak, whom she liked, but it was stun him or lose the commander. Remembering the children who would be dead but for Dtimun’s intervention, she knew she couldn’t let Komak commit murder, not even to save the alien from Rojok hands.

“Komak,” she began, clasping her fingers around the weapon.

He glanced her way.

Before she could fire, there was a muffled commotion in the corridor. Suddenly five uniformed Rojoks burst into the sector with raised
chasats.
The first blue blast took Komak to his knees. The second felled him, stunned him unconscious. Misunderstanding the
Gresham
Madeline was holding as a threat to them, the Rojoks fired on her, as well. One blast was enough to carry her down, unconscious, beside Komak. Stepping over the two unconscious officers, the Rojoks moved toward the Centaurian in the ambutube, their slit eyes emotionless, their weapons still raised.

“We have him, we have him!” Mangus Lo laughed, raising his arms over his head as he leaned back in his silver throne. “I could wish for no brighter news to begin the day. He is being taken to
Ahkmau,
surely?”

“Yes, your Excellence,” the Rojok officer reported, but he was sweating.

“Good. I will send my personal emissary to bring him back here!”

There was a hesitation. “There is a…very small problem.”

“Small problem? What small problem?”

The officer swallowed. Hard. “He has, temporarily, only temporarily, managed to secrete himself somewhere aboard the ship.”

“And?” came the impatient reply.

“We are searching his ship, of course,” the younger Rojok said quickly. “It is only a matter of time until he is discovered.”

Mangus Lo’s dusky face became duskier. “How can the ship’s commander hide, even aboard his own vessel?”

The younger alien was becoming more and more agitated. “Through our monitoring, we learned that he had reached the
dylete
,” the alien confessed heavily. “There is a very, very slight possibility…”

“What? What!” the older Rojok demanded, furious.

“That the Holconcom commander died and his corpse was launched into space,” came the miserable reply. “We are not certain, of course, and we will continue to investigate. But it is a possibility.”

“Dead? Dead!” Mangus Lo sat down heavily again on his throne. He had waited for so much time, plotted, consorted even with the enemy to make sure that the Holconcom was commanded to the Peace Planet after the Rojok attack. It was all a means to an end, to capture Dtimun. And now a disease—no, not even a disease—had put an end to his life and robbed Mangus Lo of his most valuable prize. He breathed more roughly with each second. The eyes he finally turned to his officer were murderous.

“Then you will have ships search with every possible technology for his corpse, in the area of space where you think he was expelled from the ship!” Mangus Lo demanded.

“But it will take forever…!”

“No matter if it does,” Mangus Lo bit off. He leaned forward. “As for the rest of his miserable command, all of it is to be taken to
Ahkmau
. One by one the crew is to be interrogated, in the sonic ovens if necessary. Some one of them will eventually give you the truth of the commander’s final hours and the location of his body. I can have him cloned, even if he is dead!”

“Yes, your Excellence!”

“But first I must have the corpse.” His eyes narrowed. “Kill them all if you have to. But find what is left of the Holconcom commander!”

“It will be done!” the officer promised. He saluted and left the throne room. He was glad that he hadn’t mentioned the addition
of the humans to the Centaurian crew, or the fact that Dtimun might still be alive. It would be more comfortable for all Rojok military if Mangus Lo was convinced of Dtimun’s death. And it would save this officer’s life and career.

Holt Stern was still recovering his composure when the Rojok troop carrier left its orbit around Enmehkmehk, the home planet of Mangus Lo’s tyranny, and moved rapidly into orbit around the first of Enmehkmehk’s three moons.
Ahkmau
, the notorious death camp of the Rojok Empire, was located there. It was a site so secure that its borders had never been breached. The newest and most formidable of the Rojok military’s secret shield technology kept the camp of horrors safe from attack from any outworld raids.

The Rojok officer had just told Stern that he’d been cloned on Terramer to infiltrate the
Bellatrix
and, later, the
Morcai
. Stern was devastated at the news. The officer seemed to find his shock amusing. Stern had a purpose to serve, the officer continued. It was time he repaid the kindness of his Rojok comrades for his new life. Some life, Stern thought to himself, seeing his career vanish in front of his eyes as the realization that he was a clone hit home.

Komak’s security guards had been within a whisper of killing Stern and his cloned associate, Merrick, when the Rojok soldiers in the corridor swept through and rescued them. Stern was astonished that the enemy aliens didn’t even attempt to fire at him or Merrick. They knew who Stern was and treated him well. But Stern felt uneasy just the same, and he had an attack of nerves that was completely new to him.

Ignoring his silent companion, he watched out the starboard porthole as
Ahkmau
came slowly into view on the horizon. The whole hemisphere of the moon where the notorious death camp was
located was a sprawling red desert that contained no speck of life. What little atmosphere and water that might have existed here eons ago was long gone. The Rojoks had made the moon habitable by converting its desert into a highly sophisticated complex of encapsulated prisoner of war camps. Each pressurized command dome contained a self-supporting community of prisoners and guards. Stern lost count of the individual prisoner cell-domes. They dotted the endless swirling landscape like blisters on red flesh.

“Impressive, is it not?” a Rojok security officer asked Stern. “Each of those confinement domes has the capability to house at least twenty-five prisoners, and we have a thousand in this complex.”

“Not very many…” Stern began.

“They are temporary housing only, of course,” the officer continued, as if Stern had never spoken. “The prisoners are useful only while they contain information, which we require of them. Afterward, they are placed in the sonic ovens.” He waved a hand toward the complex. “We must, of course, import stores of hydrogen and oxygen to replicate water, but it is recycled from wastewater and, of course, the normal excretory functions of the prisoners for reuse. In emergencies we can resupply with transport ships.”

“Efficient,” Stern said stiffly.

“We are quite efficient,” the Rojok agreed. “The prisoners are fed a specialized chemical diet, which reduces the amount of solid sewage to be recycled. Most are disposed of and their biological attributes harvested, but the healthiest and strongest are conserved for our labor pool, to manufacture goods to further our war effort. The five large domes contain industries that produce the metal framework and the power supply for our
chasats
. They also manufacture engine parts for our ships, with minerals mined from the surrounding area by our robotic machinery.”

“How many workers?” Stern asked, curious.

“It varies,” he replied. “We dislike the idea of keeping workers for any great length of time, so we purge the population at intervals and replenish it from new prisoners. Some races are more adept at the fine work than others. The Centaurians,” he added smugly, “are quite strong and resilient. If we can tame them, they will be of great use to us in the construction sector, programming our constructdroids.”

“Centaurians do not make good slaves,” Stern said, wondering how he knew. “And these are Holconcom, not regulars.”

“We know of the Holconcom. Their reputation in battle is exaggerated, we are certain of it. And the Holconcom is inferior, made up of clones only,” the Rojok said with contempt. “I think we shall have no trouble with them.”

“How do you control the population?”

The Rojok shrugged. “It is a matter of chemistry. There are rewards for good work and punishments for failure to cooperate or laziness. We simply start removing body parts until rebellion is over, then we replicate the missing parts and reattach them.” He laughed. “It is a very painful process, which is demonstrated in front of all the prisoners. Cooperation is usually immediate.” He noted Stern’s involuntary shiver. “However, we treat the water which is provided through replicators in the domes. We use a special form of chemicals which induce euphoria and inhibit hostility. It works quite well.”

“What happens if someone escapes?” Stern asked with a flicker of hope.

“That has never happened,” the officer said indifferently. “No one has ever escaped from
Ahkmau
.”

Yet,
Stern wanted to say. No one has escaped
yet.
The smug look on the Rojok’s dusky-skinned face made his fists itch to hit out. Despite the indoctrination that had submerged the human part of
him, he felt a quivering ache in his mind to know freedom. To think as he pleased. To think freely. Even the idea of captivity was abhorrent to him. There must be some spark of the original Holt Stern left in him, in this copy of all that was the former captain of the SSC ship
Bellatrix.
Deep inside, he ached to be the genuine article. And knew he never could be. He thought of the torment to come, and his mind went rapidly to Madeline and Hahnson. As he pictured them being tortured, he felt sick to his soul. They would die screaming, and he’d put them there.

“You seem restless, comrade,” the Rojok remarked, eyeing him closely. “Something troubles you?”

“Yeah,” Stern said, making a show of wiggling his black boot. “My foot’s gone to sleep.”

The Rojok shuttle ships graved down toward the dome that held the hangars and smaller transports. The bubble rippled open like a transparent mouth to receive them as they left the command ship in orbit. Once inside, the ripple became a steady, visible barrier to flight. The Rojoks had obviously perfected their liquid shield technology since the early days of mechanical hangar doors. Only the far-flung Tarmerian dynasty had such technology. It didn’t take much reasoning to conclude that one of their scientists had been tortured into revealing its secrets. The sci-archaeo group that had been observing the colony on Terramer must have been brought here, along with the Jaakob Spheres, which contained the knowledge of a hundred worlds. Their scientific breakthroughs would be used with glee by the Rojok Empire to extend its borders. And it didn’t end there. Stern shuddered when he realized what his crew would know of Tri-Fleet battle groups and unit deployments, and what they would endure before inevitably telling the Rojoks every single secret they knew.

The ship’s terminal access bubbled open and a cylindrical corridor appeared that led into the main hangar, where smaller ground-based transports were waiting for the crew. Stern noted that the men weren’t being segregated.

“Why are you putting the Centaurians in with the humans?” he asked his companion.

The Rojok scoffed, “The combination will spare us the logistics of dispatching so many of the crew,” he said simply. “It is known to us that the Holconcom are always segregated from other units, even of their own race, because they are cloned to be both aggressive and physically superior to other humanoids. If they are touched by an enemy, they kill without hesitation. They will kill many of the humans, I think, before we get around to interrogating them.”

It was true. Stern felt even sicker. He searched the crowds of uniforms, but he couldn’t pick out either Madeline or Strick. He wouldn’t get to say goodbye. He felt a lancing pain. By now, they’d know that he’d sold them out. He’d delivered them into the terror of
Ahkmau
. They would die, by his hand…!

“You surely feel no remorse,” the Rojok said suspiciously, reading his expression. “You were cloned to be loyal only to Mangus Lo.”

“As I am,” he said, turning to follow the officer away from the transports. “I was looking for someone.”

“For the commander of the Holconcom?” The officer laughed. “You will not find him. We received word from a contact in the
palcenon
that the Holconcom commander died aboard ship and was consigned to space. Mangus Lo even now has search vessels looking for his body.”

So the commander was that important, that even his body was valuable to the Rojok dictator. Interesting. He wondered why. He had to steel himself not to ask questions or send any more worried looks
behind him. He felt an odd sadness at the loss of the Centaurian leader who had saved his ship and crew from what he would have deemed certain death at the hands of the Rojoks. No one knew that the situation had been created as a ploy to get the humans—and Stern—aboard Dtimun’s vessel so that it could be sabotaged and delivered up whole to the Rojoks. Dtimun hadn’t known that, though. He’d been saving a fellow space combatant. It was a noble act. It made Stern feel even worse, remembering. He drew in a quiet breath and walked out of the hangar.

Madeline Ruszel stepped through the airlock behind Strick Hahnson, her eyes searching the gray, military atmosphere of the hangar with restless apprehension. A former captain of the Amazon squads didn’t panic. But she knew more about
Ahkmau
than most of the other captives around her, because she’d once treated a victim of Rojok interrogation techniques. The victim had come from a battlefield, not the notorious Rojok death camp, but she’d lost sleep over his mutilation. They’d cut off his hands and feet while questioning him, one centimeter at a time while he screamed and gave up everything he knew. If he hadn’t been rescued by a SSC covert ops team, the Rojoks would have regrown the missing parts, reattached them and started the process all over again until they were certain he was empty of all useful intel. Not the most barbaric of the Tri-Fleet battle groups would even contemplate such a method of interrogation.

The formidable guard stations surrounded the blisters of the cells. They were three-level caricatures of modern architecture, gray-hulled and roughly finished, as though they’d been built carelessly and in a rush. They lined the entire outer perimeter of the complex and doubtless contained weapons to neutralize any prisoner who tried to escape.