The Morcai Battalion (17 page)

Madeline followed his gaze and grimaced. She knew that the Rojoks would have looked for the microcyborgs and removed them before celling the Holconcom.

“They didn’t check him for…boosters?” she asked Komak, indicating Dtimun.

Hahnson gave her a patient look. “I know what the boosters are. I served with the Holconcom in the Great Galaxy War.”

She grimaced. “Sorry. Anyway, they didn’t check him?”

Komak smiled. “I informed them that another officer had already removed his units and mine. I was very convincing.”

She gave him a disbelieving look. She was about to say that only a telepath could have influenced a suspicious Rojok in that manner, but she didn’t say it. She turned away before a flash of green touched Komak’s eyes.

Higgins came back from the synthesizer with a small cellular cup of java from which he sipped. “Nice of them to integrate us like this,” he muttered.

“Even Rojoks like to be entertained,” Madeline remarked. “They’re expecting a floor show. And they’re about to get one,” she added.

In a nearby cell, a human officer and a member of the Holconcom were already slugging it out. Without his microcyborgs, the Holconcom was only a little stronger than the human, and it was a well-matched struggle. Others in that cell were grouped around the pair, watching, weighing, considering. Madeline turned away.

“It won’t be so amusing once the Rojoks realize that no massacre is going to ensue,” Hahnson muttered.

“We can’t fight the Rojoks and each other,” Madeline growled.
“Divide and conquer. They don’t care if we kill each other, only that we’ll try to. Damned Rojoks.”

“We’ll get out of here,” Hahnson promised. “Wait and see.”

“Strick, did you see where they put Stern?” she asked, mentioning their cloned comrade reluctantly. “You know that he sabotaged the ship. Just before we were captured, Komak ordered him shot, along with the cloned Merrick.”

“Komak had no choice,” he defended the somber alien. “You know that. If you’d been in command, you’d have done the same. Recriminations won’t change anything. We have to assume that Stern’s been eliminated. What matters now is that we have to watch each other’s backs and try to find a way out of here. Or in the words of Napoleon Bonaparte of ancient Earth, when facing adversity, Audacity, audacity, audacity!”

“Thank you for that stimulating lecture on comparative philosophy, Dr. Hahnson, honey, and how do you feel about bees?” she returned with a hint of her old sarcasm. “Let’s do what we can for old pain-in-the-pockets over here, and then we’ll discuss terms for letting the Rojoks surrender to us.”

He grinned. “I’m with you!”

Mangus Lo wheeled as his commander-in-chief, Chacon, entered the throne room. Mangus Lo was almost toppling over in his fury.

“Your men have let the Holconcom commander escape!” the little madman raged at Chacon. “I will have you publicly dismembered!”

The towering Rojok field marshal folded his arms calmly over his chest, the spray of
mesag
marks on his sleeves gleaming gold against his black uniform. “I have let whom escape?” he asked politely, as if he were speaking to a child.

“Dtimun! You have let the Holconcom commander escape! You
fool,” Mangus Lo whispered fiercely, leaning forward to hiss the words at his military commander, his puffy face seeming to bulge with his discontent. “With him as our prisoner, we could conquer the galaxy! He is worth an army, a division, a planet! His power…
cleemaah!
And you have let him escape!”

“I was not aware,” Chacon replied gently, “that the Holconcom commander was our prisoner.”

“Of course he is a prisoner! We have the
Morcai
and its complement and a shipload of humans and the Jaakob Spheres, as well! Do you not read your own intelligence reports?”

Chacon seemed to stiffen. His slit eyes were piercing and hot as they met Mangus Lo’s. “I was not informed of this capture. May I ask why?”

Mangus Lo looked momentarily disconcerted, as if he suddenly realized that he had given away too much. He paused, thought for a moment, then focused his attention on a bright globe of nightflies fluttering in stasis webs on his desk. “We have our reasons,” he said finally. “What of the Centaurian princess?” he added craftily.

But Chacon was a hunter, and he recognized traps. “Centaurian princess?” he asked with a scowl. “Your Excellence has deprived me of much information, it seems. Either I am in command of the military, or I am not. Shall I take my resignation to the people?”

“No, no, there is no need for that!” Mangus Lo exclaimed quickly, almost in panic. It was a well-known fact that Chacon was held in higher esteem than himself. He couldn’t risk a showdown, not just now. “You have not been deprived of any information. I was only ascertaining that it was…correct…before concerning you with it!”

“What of the Holconcom commander?” Chacon asked.

Mangus Lo dropped into the chair behind his desk. He toyed with the globe of nightflies, watching them burn like tiny blue fires in the soft pink shimmer of the stasis webs. “They have lost him, the fools!
He was aboard the
Morcai
when it was taken, I am certain of it. But when the complement was transported to
Ahkmau
, he disappeared.”

“You had the Holconcom sent to
Ahkmau?
” Chacon exploded. “But it is a camp for political prisoners, not military…!”

“It is a camp for my enemies, whoever they may be!” Mangus Lo shot back, his eyes wide and threatening. “Even you may be sent to
Ahkmau
, my commander! The terror must be maintained! Without it, we will lose everything!”

“With it, we will lose everything!” Chacon countered. “Honor, integrity…”

“Our people are starving,” Mangus Lo growled. “Will integrity and honor fill their empty stomachs? Will it undo the pollution that makes our fields dead and lifeless? Will it strengthen our economy enough that the poor will no longer have to choose between energy for their homes or food? Will it provide jobs for the unemployed? You idealists make me sick! My way is forcing a path for us into the New Territory. It is creating jobs in the military and the various death camps, and the munitions industries. It is giving us the opportunity to spread our mushrooming population onto new worlds. It is putting life back into a dead economy. Will your honor and integrity do that, Commander Chacon?”

Chacon stared at the small maniac with something like pity in his dark, quiet eyes under their shock of blond hair. “Honor and integrity will not do that,” he conceded. “But,” he added, “neither will they ask the sacrifice of a million lives a year in a camp already notorious for its depravity.”

“Depravity!” Mangus Lo’s face almost purpled. “It is not depravity to eliminate inferior races and enemies of the state! Will you argue that the humans are equal to us? Or the Altairians?
Cleemaah
, let it be known across the galaxy that what opposes us is horribly de
stroyed. I have said before, Commander, that the terror must be maintained! It is our banner of victory!”

“It is our symbol of disgrace,” Chacon argued, his eyes cold and raw with emotion.

“And have you hopes of liberating it, Commander?” Mangus Lo spat. “Forget them! If you so much as set foot on
Ahkmau
, I will have you imprisoned there! Do you understand?”

“I understand,” Chacon said icily. “By your leave…Excellence.” And he made of the one word an insult.

One day, Mangus Lo promised himself as he watched that stiff-backed soldier withdraw, he would eliminate the field marshal. He would have to. He could not tolerate a soldier whose popularity was double his own. Chacon was dangerous.

Holt Stern’s head jerked back when the Rojok officer’s merciless six-fingered hand connected with it.

“You lie!” the Rojok growled furiously. “You must know the Holconcom commander’s whereabouts!”

“How could I?” Stern returned, his blood churning fury in his veins. “The damned exec of the
Morcai
ordered the two of us shot before your men even boarded the ship! All I know is that Dtimun was critically ill and they said he would die. That’s it. Period!”

The Rojok glared at him, but Stern didn’t back down an inch. He compressed his lips stubbornly as he stared up at the alien with narrowed, dark eyes.

“You are of no further use to us,” the Rojok said finally, “unless you learn cooperation. We will allow your former comrades to convince you.”

“Better them than you, buster.” Stern grinned, and gave way to a strange impulse to pat the Rojok’s dusty cheek.

“Get him out of here!” the offended officer yelled to a subordinate.

Stern chuckled as he followed the guard out into the complex. It was as if all the conditioning, all the programming, was beginning to lose its potency. He wondered vaguely what the original, the
real
Holt Stern was like. Perhaps someday he’d find out.

Madeline had just gathered the last of her improvised necessary surgical tools, juryrigged unknowingly by the synthesizer, when Hahnson caught her attention.

“Remember when we were wondering about what happened to Stern’s body?” he asked.

“Yes,” she said slowly, giving him a puzzled look.

“Here it comes.”

“What!”

She joined the husky surgeon at the front of the dome, and watched, shocked, as Holt Stern was marched toward the cell in front of an armed Rojok sentry.

“What the hell is this?” she wondered softly. “An infiltration? Do they think we’re stupid enough to trust him?”

“He may not be here to infiltrate,” he said in Old High Martian. “He knows what the ‘old man’ looks like. He may be here to point the proverbial finger for his new buddies.”

“Oh, my God,” she whispered in a husky prayer. “Not now. Not when we’re so close!”

The cell opened wide enough to accommodate Stern, and he was pushed through it by the Rojok. The cell closed. The guard watched as Stern straightened. He looked around the cell slowly until his eyes lit on Dtimun’s unconscious form.

His eyebrows arched. “Well, well,” he chuckled. “What have we here? Isn’t this just like a family reunion?”

He glanced toward Madeline and Strick Hahnson, who were standing mutely like statues, their eyes glaring at him with pure hatred.

Madeline couldn’t decide between going for Stern or praying.

Higgins and Crandall and Jennings flanked the doctors, glaring at the newcomer. Komak and Btnu joined them, their eyes burning a solemn blue before they slowly darkened to brown anger.

“No welcome?” Stern exclaimed. “No hugs?”

“Let me find my scalpel and I’ll give you a really warm welcome,” Madeline began.

Stern’s jaw dropped. “What the hell is wrong with you people?” he burst out. “Don’t you recognize me?”

The silence was rudely broken by Higgins, his fair complexion gone red with fury as he moved toward Stern. “You ungodly traitor,” he breathed furiously as his fist drew back.

Stern’s hand shot out like lightning, inhumanly strong, almost breaking the bone as he grasped it. “I pulled you out of that burning freighter on Megus, boy…don’t make me regret it,” he said harshly, idly wondering at the memory and what reservoir of experience it had sprung from.

Higgins gaped at him, his brows drawing together as he stepped back. “Sir, you…couldn’t possibly remember that,” he faltered. “The medics had to remove a portion of your brain when the bulkhead collapsed on you afterward. They said…there was no way you’d ever remember what happened!”

“You’d be amazed at what I remember,” he said quietly, and his dark eyes went straight to Madeline.

She met that level gaze squarely, frowning, not sure what was happening here. “You sold us out,” she accused. “A Rojok officer told us you’d been cloned from our captain, Holt Stern.”

He shrugged. “Like I had a choice,” he muttered. His eyes
narrowed. “If you keep glaring at me like that, I’m taking back the blue ribbon.”

“There’s no way in hell you could remember that,” Madeline began.

He pulled a tiny remnant of it from his pocket and displayed it. “We split it on the last successful mission, as I recall?”

Madeline was still unconvinced and uneasy. Especially when Stern’s gaze went back to Dtimun.

He moved toward the alien and shook his head. “Why’s old Fred still flaked out like that?” he asked casually. “Is he drunk again? And on duty? My God, why doesn’t somebody report him before he causes an interplanetary incident on one of these binges? Komak, you’re slipping, to let one of your crewmen slip up like this!”

Madeline recovered quickly from the unexpected help from Stern. “We can’t sober him up,” she added.

“Alcohol affects my race differently than yours,” Komak volunteered. “It takes much longer for the effects to abate.”

“Tough,” Stern said. He glanced toward the Rojok, who was still watching. “We’re going to need every crewman sober when the Rojoks surrender.”

The Rojok guard made a sound like contemptuous laughter, sealed the cell and continued on his way.

Madeline took a deep breath. It had been close.

“Why did you not betray us?” Komak asked Stern in Old High Martian, his eyes still an angry brown but slowly mingling with flecks of blue curiosity.

“Pure cussedness,” Stern replied with a grin. “The Rojoks threw a few punches at me and demanded to know where the commander
was. Nobody does that to me. I clammed up, and here I am. Sorry your boys missed, back on the ship?”

Komak eyed the human in a silence more eloquent than words.

“You don’t trust me, do you?” Stern persisted, and the gleam of laughter left his eyes. “I can’t say that I blame you. If one of my command staff had done to me what I’ve done to you, I’d share the sentiment. You all know what I am now, don’t you?” he added slowly, looking around him at the somber humans.

“A Rojok operative,” Komak spoke for them, “programmed and probably genetically altered so that your strength and sensory capabilities would equal those of a Holconcom.”

“A genetically altered clone,” Stern corrected, and his lightning glance didn’t miss the looks of anger mingled with sadness on the faces of Strick Hahnson and Madeline Ruszel. “My…original…was killed on Terramer. They told me. They told me what I was. Strange, I seem to have most of the original’s memories. I don’t…feel…like a clone, however clones feel. But,” he added with a glimmer of bitterness, “ability doesn’t lie, and mine is far superior to any human’s. If it’s any consolation to those who knew the original, I had no choice about my actions. They were programmed into me at the instant of duplication. In all honesty, I don’t know how I managed to throw off the programming just now—or whether it may be the Rojoks’ way of giving me enough rope to hang us all.”

“Your honesty is to your credit,” Komak said warily. “For the safety of the ship’s complement, I should dispose of you now, Holtstern.”

“I don’t think you can,” Stern replied quietly, leaning back against the firm dome wall of the cell with his arms folded. “Oh, you’re welcome to try. But they replaced the calcium in my bones with a synthetic material stronger than
zenokite
—they won’t break. All my senses are magnified, as well. I can even hear the sentries talking
through the walls. I can sense radiation and body heat, and my sight is twice as good as yours, Komak. I make a formidable adversary, physically. And my improved mental capabilities would rival yours, as well, from an intellectual standpoint. I don’t possess psychokine-sis or telepathy, but I’m not sure if that’s part of the programming, or if I just haven’t learned to use them yet.”

Madeline Ruszel moved slightly between the two officers, her solemn face as smooth as a rain-wet leaf. “Fighting won’t solve anything. We’ve got to see about him,” she told them, gesturing toward Dtimun. “They want him, we’ve got him, and if they find out, he’s dead. We’re all dead.”

Stern glanced around the cell, his eyes narrowing on the ancient synthesizer. “Have any of you consumed anything out of that monstrosity?” he asked, nodding toward it.

“Sure,” Hahnson told him. “Why?”

“How much, how long ago and how many of you?” Stern asked quickly, his dark eyes concerned.

“Higgins and I had a cup of java about an hour ago,” Hahnson said easily, grinning as he pointed at the engineer of the now-destroyed
Bellatrix
. “I don’t guess anyone else has had the inclination yet. We’re kind of new to the joint, Holt, old boy.”

“Do you want to leave here, Strick?” Stern asked the husky physician.

“Leave?” Hahnson burst out. “In God’s name, what for? We’ve got free meals, a roof over our heads and we’re out of the war for the duration. We’re even going to be assigned to technical work, not hard labor. So who the hell wants to leave?”

Madeline looked at her colleague as if he’d taken off his nose and waved it at her. Komak only stared, his great cat-eyes the soft gray of curiosity at first, and then suddenly they darkened into deep blue certainty.

“A drug?” he said, turning to Stern.

“A very potent drug,” Stern said calmly, “which attacks the neurotransmitters and increases the norepinephrine production—magnifying the subject’s ability to perceive pleasure.” He glanced at Madeline. “Tell him.”

“We…use such a drug,” she faltered, her glance sweeping Hahnson’s dreamy expression, “in the treatment of incurable organic paranoid schizophrenia—the cases that are violent and don’t respond to genetic therapy. In ancient times, such aberrations were confined to prisons. Later, subjects were treated with mood-altering drugs, but those were only effective if taken daily. Now, we can induce a state of permanent serenity with a single dose. Apparently the Rojoks have modified the drugs to induce euphoria.”

“There’s another drug,” Stern told her, “that produces exactly the opposite reaction. One of many minor tortures they use to extract information, or as a medical research tool on alien races. They use sensory deprivation and subsonics, as well. The drug is the best, though. It’s cheap, in large supply and readily available. Just the thing for an inflated economy if you can’t afford the really expensive form of torture…”

“This is no time for cheap humor,” Madeline told him. “What do we do?”

“Don’t drink anything or eat anything out of that synthesizer for a start,” Stern told them.

“Just how long do you think we’ll last without water in this hellish heat?” Madeline asked irritably. She was already brushing at sweat on her flushed brow. “There’s no coolant in these ventilators. Deliberate, I suppose.”

“I don’t suppose anybody thought to bring along a few Milish Cones?” Stern mused.

Madeline turned and looked, hard, at Komak.

The alien’s eyes turned green. He produced two of the pocket water synthesizers out of a pocket in his uniform.

“Smart,” Madeline said with smiling praise.

“Good for you,” Stern added. “Share it covertly with the others. If the guards see it…well, you know.”

“We waste time,” Komak said after a minute, his great eyes going to the complex beyond the domed cell. Darkness was finally coming on the horizon beyond the jagged magenta peaks of the mountain chain that ringed the desert complex. The interior of the great pressure dome, which contained all the cells, began to give off a faint reddish glow. So did their own small cell.

“Will we have daylight equivalent in here, do you think?” Madeline asked the somber alien.

“I think not. No more than you see at the dome’s zenith.” Komak turned to Stern. “We propose to interfere surgically with the
dylete.
If you cannot assist, will you at least agree not to betray us to the Rojoks?”

“That depends on my conditioning,” Stern said truthfully, “not on my inclination. We both know that.”

“Then go sit in a corner and count your toes, old man,” Madeline said, giving him a wan smile. “Better yet, count the sentries.”

“No problem.” Stern’s gaze was drawn to the slender, hard-muscled Centaurian who was lying unconscious in his technician’s uniform, on the padded covering under the dome’s softly glowing reddish light. “Now that the drugs have been dispensed, and most of the prisoners have consumed them, they’re not expecting trouble. I doubt there will be more than one or two patrols all night.”

“The Holconcom,” Madeline asked Komak. “Will the drug work on them?”

Stern grimaced. “I don’t know how to tell you this. The Rojoks removed their microcyborgs.”

Komak’s eyes flashed a dangerous brown. “Barbarians!” he exclaimed. “The Holconcom wear them from infancy. It will be, for them, the equivalent of broken bones!” He looked at Madeline. “I still have mine, however.”

Her eyebrows arched. “Where?”

He gave her his best approximation of an indignant look.

“Never mind,” she said quickly. “I’ve also secreted quite a number in our comrade,” she added, meaning Dtimun. “If we can get out of here, I’m fairly certain that the
kelekoms
can replicate more.”

Komak looked uncomfortable. “Madelineruszel, outworlders are not permitted to know such things about the
kelekoms
.”

She held up both hands. “Forget I said a word. The
kelekoms
…?”

Komak closed his eyes, opened them again and smiled. “The Rojoks believe their very existence is a myth.”

“Lucky for us,” Madeline agreed. She sighed heavily. “Look, I managed to secure a cyberscalpel and a medisynthe. I have a bank of drugs and a miniaturized lab in my wrist array. The Rojoks won’t know about it—that’s classified tech. But Komak, I don’t have any graduate experience in Cularian surgery. The physiology, yes. Even some of the pharmacology. But I’m not experienced in this sort of surgery.”

“You are his only hope,” Komak said simply.

She grimaced. “The operation itself is what kills most Centaurians who can’t overcome the
dylete
naturally. The first heart is forced into stasis while the second is stimulated with a high current cardiogenerator. Two out of three times, the current itself is enough to cause fatal heart failure. Not that I believe in the use of cardiogenerators. I’d rather take my chance with old-fashioned open-heart surgery. I can do that blindfolded.”

“I know. I’ve seen you perform it on the battlefield,” Stern interjected.

“On humans,” she agreed. “But Centaurians differ drastically in such basics as temperature, blood pressure, pulse, even respiration, all of which have to be carefully balanced in surgery. We won’t even go into the matter of anesthesia, which is more dangerous even than the surgery.”

“So, you can’t do it?” Stern asked carefully, and without looking at her.

“I never said that!” she returned defensively. Her brow knitted. “The Roard-Nielson method. That might work,” she murmured, thinking aloud. “Vegan surgeons have used it successfully for years, and they share some striking similarities of Centaurian physiology. Yes. It just might work. But I’ll need a blood donor. Even my minilab can’t supply the amount I’ll need for surgery.”

“Will I do?” Stern volunteered.

“A Centaurian blood donor,” she specified.

“My blood is of excellent quality,” Komak told her with a faint green-eyed smile. “It will cause our comrade to be indebted to me for the rest of his life, if I share it with him. I will never let him forget, in fact!”

Madeline managed a smile of her own. “I hope you can outrun him.”

“When do we begin?” the alien asked.

“As soon as it’s completely dark,” she replied. Her eyes were worried. “But we may need diversions from time to time, to keep the guards from checking us too closely. Even weakened, the Holconcom would help us if they could. The humans…” She grimaced. “They’re probably all drugged anyway. I doubt they’d do anything to help the officer who spaced Muldoon.”

“It would take something more potent than pleasure,” Stern agreed. “A cause. A holy grail. We’re damned short on miracles, Ladybones. But we can try.”

Her green eyes wandered over his hard, swarthy face, the crisp, curling dark hair. So familiar. So unfamiliar. “You’re very like him, you know,” she told Stern’s doppelgänger.

He grinned. “We had the same father,” he said, tongue-in-cheek.

While they were talking, Komak had moved to the cell facing the complex’s entrance. He stood there, his cat-eyes wide and deep blue. He caught the attention of a Holconcom junior officer in a nearby cell and began to make odd hand movements. The other alien apparently understood them. He nodded, turned and spoke to his comrades in the cell. They spread out and began using hand signals to other cells.

“At a guess,” Madeline told Stern, “he’s trying to warn the Holconcom about the synthesizers.”

“Good idea. I know enough Elyrian sign language to warn our own shipmates. If it’s in time for any of them,” he added darkly. He went to join Komak, passing along the news in a language that humans would understand. Some of the occupants of the other cells were lounging on the floor apathetically. But a few gathered at the front of their cells and watched. Madeline noticed a lot of elbowing from the humans aimed at their Centaurian cell mates—because they hadn’t been segregated. Her heart fell. It didn’t auger well for their imprisonment if the two ships’ complements were going to fight each other. It would make any escape attempt impossible.

“What the hell are you people doing?” Strick Hahnson growled suddenly. “I told you, we don’t need to escape!”

Madeline glanced at Komak. The alien nodded his understanding. She activated her wrist scanner’s drug banks and, before Hahnson could move, she jetted the laserdot at his broad chest. Whirling, she repeated the action with Higgins, who was sitting beside the doctor. Two drugged officers melted into fleshy heaps on the padded floor
and lay still, eyes closed, surreal smiles clinging to their faces even in oblivion.