The Morcai Battalion (18 page)

“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 confinement 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
Bellatrix
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!

“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.

As she motioned, Stern threw himself down at her side and feigned sleep. Let the guard think they were huddled together for warmth, she thought. Perhaps they wouldn’t consider it too odd to
find two Centaurians and two humans in such physical proximity. Jaws would fall anywhere in the SSC at such a sight.

Stern could almost feel the eyes of the Rojok guards on the occupants of the domed cell as they paused outside it to study the occupants. So could Madeline. She closed her eyes tightly and prayed that none of the other prisoners would betray them; especially Stern. She still didn’t quite trust him. At her side, she felt Komak’s powerful body tensing, as well.

Stern felt the sweat beading on his swarthy forehead. If Madeline had been in a crucial stage when interrupted, the Holconcom commander could be dying even now while the arrogant guards pointed to the human/alien group on the floor and laughed. Apparently they did find the arrangement unusual and amusing. He felt a surge of rage as he considered what was going to happen to all of them, if they didn’t find a way to escape. Damn the Rojoks, he thought furiously, and damn
Ahkmau!

Madeline was counting her own heartbeats and monitoring Dtimun’s with her hand buried in the thick black hair over the golden skin of his bare chest. She was mentally neutered for military service, so of course she felt nothing sensual from the contact. Except that her own heart skipped and she felt an odd warmth in the pit of her stomach. Fear, she told herself. It was only fear. It was impossible for her to be attracted to any male, especially this arrogant, strutting Centaurian son of a…

There was an odd smothered laugh from Komak; almost as if he read her thoughts. That was ridiculous and only highlighted the extent of her silent hysteria, because it was a known fact that Centaurians weren’t telepathic.

Just as she was considering drastic action, the guards spoke to each other again, laughed again and slowly started away from the cell to
patrol further. She spoke just enough Rojok to understand one phrase—something about the drugs working unusually well, so that the Centaurians didn’t find the repulsive humans bad company.

She counted the seconds until they were out of sight and earshot. “Barbarians,” she muttered in Old High Martian, which was the only language they dared use among themselves now. “That was just too damned close. I’d only finished sealing what passes for his damaged left ventricle in the new heart! Stern, better check and make sure they’re really gone,” she added.

He got carefully to his feet, leaving the other three in their positions on the pallet. The other prisoners in their cell, including Hahnson and Higgins, were awake now and aware of something odd in the positioning of their cell mates. They darted quick, apprehensive glances toward the makeshift surgical suite nearby, then at Stern. It seemed to surprise them that he hadn’t alerted the guards.

It surprised him, too, because that’s what his conditioning dictated that he should have done. But for some vague, barely discernible reason, he simply couldn’t. He felt a sensation of belonging among these people. It was new, and precious and fragile. He wasn’t about to risk it for those bloodthirsty mental defectives who ran this place.

He took up his position near the synthesizer, looking out into the compound again, his eyes growing slowly accustomed to the reddish glow of the cell block in the darkness. Above the main dome, in the night sky where the clearly outlined jagged mountain peaks met the sky itself, a dark red band from the long-set two suns swept across the stars. In its beauty, it was as alien as the Centaurians in the cell with Stern, and his human comrades.

Something made his skin tingle, and he turned his head to meet the glowing eyes of a Holconcom officer in a nearby cell. He
shivered involuntarily. The alien’s eyes were like a cat’s in the dark, glowing a surreal green. Most humans reacted similarly to their first sight of it.

He realized after a minute that the alien was watching him, reading his face, in what precious light there was in the dome. Two other Holconcom joined him, also watching.

“We’re under observation,” Stern murmured.

“By the Holconcom?” Komak asked in a strangely weak tone.

“Yes.”

“They will help, if they can,” the alien sighed. “But most of the other cells are too far away to know what we are attempting.”

Stern pursed his lips. He began signaling to the humans, a quick and staccato sentence that said only, “We’re trying to save the C.O.” The humans understood. They gave the message to the Centaurians. They nodded and turned, gesturing to other cells, mindful of the guards.

“Back on ancient Earth,” Stern murmured, “they’d call that the jungle telegraph.”

“Excuse me?” Komak asked.

“They’re passing it along.”

Komak’s chest rose and fell slowly. “They would do anything for the commander. As I would. But your human comrades…”

“They’ll do anything to find out about the…secret I promised them,” Stern said.

“Without their microcyborgs, they’re not much more powerful than the humans,” Madeline murmured while she worked. “It will give them points in common while we need them.”

“A likely summation,” Komak agreed.

Stern turned toward him, frowning. “Komak, do you think…” He stopped and grabbed his head. Amazingly, he saw a rolling montage of pictures running through his mind, alien and strange. Frighten
ing beasts who fought like
galots
, the Centaurian jungle cats, tearing and ripping their prey; a woman, a beautiful Centaurian woman, weeping. Warriors slashing at their arms with sharp implements. Then, as the pictures merged, there were others; the Commander, but years younger, on a desert planet, riding a huge furry
yomuth;
a young alien woman in silks lying dead, blood around her. Then there was an old Centaurian yelling, the Holconcom filing into the
Morcai
at a Centaurian spaceport. There were flashes of Madeline, not as she was now, but older and more beautiful, wearing elegant robes, and her belly faintly distended…

“No!”

The sudden command from Komak, the brown threat in his eyes, brought Stern back to the present. He blinked, drawing in a long breath. “What the hell…!” he burst out.

Komak stared at him, narrowed his eyes, pinned him with them. Seconds later, Stern couldn’t remember anything he’d seen. He blinked. “Boy, do I need a brain scan,” he said aloud.

“Shut up and get me another small sterile towel out of that damned synthesizer,” Madeline muttered, working. “This cyberscalpel isn’t fully charged. God, I hope it doesn’t fail!”

“Bite your tongue,” Stern said.

He got the towel and gave it to her, his eyes alert to any new threats. He watched Madeline, noted that she was sweating wetly. He could hear her ragged breathing. She, like the rest of them, was stressed almost to breaking point. She was a good battlefield surgeon, but she’d been mostly administrative in recent years. The strain was telling on her.

Hahnson was snoring. He’d almost come to earlier, now he’d relapsed. Pity, Stern thought, the surgeon could have been a lot of help to her.

“Can I do anything to help?” Stern asked.

“If you’re offering, get back to the ship and fetch my emergency kit…”

“Anything I can do in here,” Stern corrected.

“Sure. Grab one of those sponges and get this sweat out of my eyes, will you?” she asked, breathing raggedly.

He picked up a worn, orange-red sponge and soaked off the beads of perspiration on her forehead. “How’s it coming?”

“Barbaric conditions,” she muttered. “No oxygen ampules, anesthetic or even another bank of
morphadrenin
. No nanobytes, endomorphins, no cell regenerators…” She stopped, shaking her head. “If it weren’t for the scattering of microcyborgs I concealed under his scalp before we were captured, I’d already have killed him. How he’s enduring this without adequate anesthetic is fascinating. It’s almost as if he can control pain itself, even unconscious.” She leaned back to flex her shoulders. “I must have had my brain baked when I agreed to this half-gassed piece of idiocy.”

“Don’t give up now, Ladybones,” he replied. “Think what fun we can have throwing this up to him when he recovers. It might even spare us a court-martial when we escape.” He grinned, and when his dark eyes sparkled like that, he was just like the old Stern.

Her eyes went back to Dtimun’s chest, barely visible in the automatic light from the retractors she was using to keep his rib cage open. Incredible, she thought, that even with all its advances, heart surgery still demanded this ancient butchery of opening the ribs to access the heart. It was more controlled in sick bay with robotic operators, of course, and pain screens overlaid with the other tech that controlled breathing and blood pressure. “We both know that I never quit,” she murmured to Stern. “Okay. I’ve sealed the damaged artery
in the new heart, along with the damaged nerve receptors that were impeding changeover. But I’ll have to do the changeover manually. That means I have to transfer the load from the failing heart to the new one, but the second heart is unusually weak, and the old one is damaged beyond my present ability to repair.” She tossed her sweaty hair out of her eyes. “Once that’s done, if the regenerated heart can be strengthened, I have to regress the old heart back into tissue.” She shook her head. “This is a job for a specialist, Stern. I’m doing my best, but the transfer may kill him if I can’t stimulate the action of the new heart in time. This is what kills most of them, you know,” she told him with somber eyes. “They don’t allow medical intervention in their own culture.” She hesitated. “Now there’s a cheerful thought. If I save him, I’ll be court-martialed. Maybe the Rojoks will save my career by killing me here.”

“Stop that,” Stern said firmly. “You’re just tired. Don’t think past this minute. Go to work. Repair the commander so that he can get us the hell out of here!”

Her eyebrows arched. She grinned. “Nice motivation,” she nodded. “I’ll recommend you for promotion.”

That really was a joke, considering that clones had no status in the Tri-Fleet. But he didn’t say it aloud. He laid down the sponge and went back to his vigil at the outside of the dome.

The guards came into view on patrol again, and Stern stiffened. His eyes drifted to the cell nearest him, where several of the Holconcom seemed to be waiting…

As the guards came close, a quarrel suddenly broke out in that nearby cell, loud and threatening even through the Plexiglas.

The two guards spared the conflict only a glance, unimpressed. They continued straight for the cell where Madeline was trying to save the alien commander.

“Watch it!” Stern hissed to Madeline. “They’re coming straight for us!”

“I can’t,” she bit off, her face contorting as her hands flew with the instruments inside the open chest. “If I don’t finish this suture, he’s dead!”

Stern’s heart froze like water thrown on dry ice. The guards were moving quickly toward the cell, and there was no hope that they wouldn’t see what was happening this time. No hope at all. Desperate, Stern looked for a way, any way, to divert them. If only he had a
Gresham;
even a novapen! God, they couldn’t do this, they couldn’t!

Suddenly a loud, nerve-scraping wail broke the silence in the compound. The guards whirled, wild-eyed, and broke into a run toward the nearby cell where three Holconcom were starting their attack on the humans in the cell with them. It looked, on the surface anyway, as if a massacre was taking place. Those wails, like the sound an angry cat made, were nightmarish. The humans in Stern’s cell tensed and looked hunted as they heard it, as they saw the slow, graceful, deadly motion of the Centaurians nearby.

Stern didn’t know if prayers got answered or not, but he was grateful for the intervention, whatever the cause of it. “We’ve only got a few seconds before they come back,” he called to Madeline. “Make them count!”

“Stand back and watch me,” she said tersely.

The Rojoks had opened the cell now and they were taking two Holconcom and three bruised humans out of it.

“You will cause less trouble in our interrogation sector, I think,” one of the burly Rojok guards sneered at the prisoners, “and be of more use to our cause. The first fifty of your complement to be interrogated have been sent to the ovens already. You should have made better use of the synthesizers. The ovens would not have been so ap
pealing that you became eager to test them, had you consumed more water.”

“We cherish freedom above all,” one of the Holconcom prisoners spat at the guard. “Freedom, Rojok. It is more potent than all your neurotranquilizers, more precious than all your pleasure drugs!”