The Morcai Battalion (19 page)

“You tell him, buddy,” one of the bruised humans seconded as he moved to stand beside the Centaurian and glare hellishly at the two Rojoks.

The Centaurians and the humans straightened proudly into a tight, military line. They turned in one body and marched off toward the mysterious interrogation sector, their backs as straight as geometric lines, humans and Centaurians together. If Stern had any doubts about the brawl being staged, they were now erased.

A wild, booming cheer broke out in the cell complex for the departing prisoners in a queer combination of Terravegan Standard and Centaurian. The uproar grew and spread, from one cell to the other, so that the Plexiglas walls couldn’t contain the sound. It burst out like a crude song into chants of “Freedom! Freedom!” that twined into a deep, strong chorus in many voices. It didn’t begin to die down until the five prisoners were completely out of sight. Seconds later, the complex was deathly quiet.

Suddenly every eye in the complex seemed to be on the cell that held Dtimun, and Stern could taste the tension. Those soldiers knew what was going on. But even the humans were now involved in the life and death struggle of the alien commander. The Rojoks’ vicious tactics had only served to create a bond of fellowship.

Stern turned to Madeline. “How’s it going?”

“Another couple of turns and a stitch…Finished!” She hunched her shoulders with a weary groan. Mending torn blood vessels was something best done under proper conditions, and with greater tech
than she possessed. But it wasn’t a bad job, she told herself as she tidied up the sutures and prepared to stimulate the second heart.

“I’m ready for the hard part,” she told him. “Stern, it’s going to take all three of us to handle this.”

He slid across the floor to her side. “Okay. What do I do?”

“Assist.” She handed him the small, heavy cardioprobe. “Komak, are you still with us?”

“Yes, Madelineruszel,” he said.

“Okay. Get your hand as close to that pressure point as you can without actually touching it. Good.” She leaned forward. “I’m going to force the old heart into cardiac arrest. When that happens, he’ll jump. I’m going to count on you to put him out as soon as you see the first sign of reflex action. If you don’t act in time,” she added, very somberly, “you can make up a suitable eulogy for Stern and me, because the shock will produce a fight-reflex in the commander’s brain and Stern and I will be dead very fast. When we make it to that point, Stern, if we survive it, I’ll need you to apply the cardioprobe to the second heart on the count of odd numbers while I massage the heart muscle manually. Got that?”

He nodded. “How about sterilization, since you aren’t using the laserscalpel?”

“I’ve already laid down a field with the retractors,” she replied. “Let me emphasize this—no matter what happens, come Rojok patrols, quasabeams, or fusion tissue bombs, don’t lose your concentration for an instant. Once we start, it’s a total commitment. One second of hesitation and the commander is so much raw meat.”

“So are the rest of us,” Stern added.

She nodded. “All right. Let’s go.” She leaned forward toward the blood-rimmed opening in Dtimun’s muscular chest, and looked at Komak. “Ready?”

“I…am ready,” the boy said weakly, and Stern hoped he was stronger than he sounded. Madeline had tapped his veins already for quite a large amount of blood, transfused as she worked.

Madeline’s slender, capable hands disappeared into the cavity, straddling the smallest of the alien’s two slick-tissued hearts, one very tiny, the other twice as large as the first. She began to massage the tissue. “Stern, ready?”

“Yes.”

“Go on even numbers with the stimulator. Okay. One,
two
…” She applied pressure, made a turn and a hard jerk, and Dtimun sat straight up with open, black eyes. Black, in a Centaurian’s eyes, were the color of certain death. A faint, deep, menacing growl grew in his throat.

“Komak!” Madeline cried.

There was no answer, and the commander’s eyes turned, riveted to Madeline’s face. The growl grew more deadly.

“Komak!” she called again.

But there was no answer. Komak was unconscious.

“Stern!” she called to him. “Get around behind the commander! Find the pressure point between the second and third cervical vertebrae and pinch it, hard! Hurry!”

He moved faster than he could ever remember moving before. Catching the alien’s thrashing head, he dug his fingers in at the neck and held on for all he was worth. Even as he applied the pressure, he was aware that no normal human would have been strong enough to temporarily paralyze the nerve. For seconds that seemed like hours he was afraid it wasn’t going to work at all. Around them, Madeline’s instruments were doing a shimmy on the pallet as the commander fought Stern’s hold. Concentrating all his strength, Stern pressed harder. In a human, compressing the carotid artery would produce the same result, but Centaurian physiology was very differ
ent. Stern groaned. If any guards were within sight of the cell now, and they looked this way…!

His heart froze as the sound of running footsteps echoed in the complex. Oh, God, he thought, even as he felt Dtimun’s body relax, it’s too late, it’s all over, they’ll see!

But there came with the footsteps the familiar sound of growls and curses and human voices yelling. And then came the sound of quasabeams from
chasats
, humming like angry bees in the semidarkness. Afterward was silence. Silence unbroken except for the shuffle of marching feet and hoarsely yelled threats. Again, that chant of “Freedom! Freedom!” And then, again, silence. How many lives this time, Stern wondered? How many more lives would be lost to pay for this one life in Madeline’s hands?

“Will you listen to me!” Madeline snapped at him. “Pay attention, Holt! We’ve only got seconds to force the changeover before the lack of circulation does irreparable damage to his brain! Its structure is so radically different from our own…God, I hope the sutures I made will hold! We can’t lose him now!”

Stern rolled away from Dtimun and back to his original position, cardioprobe in hand. He didn’t have time to be relieved, only to act. He thrust the instrument, cold and heavy, down onto the motionless second heart while Madeline counted off the pulses.

“All right, go again, use the stimulator on the even numbers, ready? One,
two
, three,
four
, five,
six
, seven,
eight
,” she droned, massaging on the odd numbers. “That’s good, that’s very good, Stern, nine,
ten
…”

His mind felt numb as her voice continued the count, and he worked only by reflex, mechanically, efficiently. A life is a life, he thought. A life is a life is a life, and even if he lives, how the hell are we going to get hundreds of our people out of here?

“It’s working!” Madeline said suddenly, sitting up straight, her face flushed but beaming, at peace for the first time since the ordeal had begun. “It’s beating on its own! That’s enough, Stern, you can stop now. We did it.”

He leaned back and slumped, letting the words register. Around him, he heard the enthusiastic murmur of their cell mates as they, too, heard the news.

“I’ll induce regression on the tissues of the old heart,” she droned, “and then it’s just a matter of knitting back the bones and nerves and blood vessels and muscles.”

“Three hundred years ago,” Stern reminded her, “he’d be in a body bag, if I remember old Earth terminology.”

She smiled. “Yes, he would.” She went to work. “When I’ve finished, I’ll bring Komak back around.” She began closing, her eyes intent on her task. The cyberscalpel was very small to perform such a profound task, but it worked quickly and efficiently. The process was so seamless that Stern unconsciously marveled at the beauty of it. “I wonder what happened out there when we were at the critical point?” she wondered apprehensively.

“I’ll see if I can find out.” He eased up to the front of the dome, noting an absence of guards, and caught the attention of one of the humans in a nearby cell. Using the Elyrian sign language, he asked quickly for the outcome of the diversion.

The human’s solemn face was a study in impotent rage as he flashed his hands in answer to Stern’s question. “Simulated riot to divert Rojok guards,” the human “told” the
Bellatrix
’s skipper. “Guards quasabeamed prisoners inside cell with
chasats
. Five dead, four badly wounded and carried off to interrogation. We did our best.” It wasn’t possible to send curses with the hand signals, but Stern could read them in the crewman’s face. Damn the Rojoks!

Solemnly he sent out a signal of his own about the commander of the
Morcai
. The impact on the prisoners as his contact relayed it to his mates in the cell was staggering. Broad smiles broke out like rashes among the humans—the
humans
—in the cell! The Centaurians’ huge eyes made green laughter so vividly that it was visible in the semidarkness from several meters’ distance.

Stern could hardly believe the sight of humans and Holconcom talking to each other jubilantly, much less the sight of gold-skinned hands clasping white ones as the message was relayed from cell to cell by humans and Holconcom alike. Something seemed to uncurl inside Stern, like a spring wound too tight suddenly letting go. All the aching indecision and confusion passed from him in one long, rustling sigh. His eyes closed as he leaned wearily against the cool Plexiglas, giving in to a feeling of luxurious calm, a paradox if ever there was one.

“I’m home, Maddie,” he said quietly. “I’ve broken their hold. I’m home, at last.”

“What are you muttering about over there?” Madeline asked. “Did you find out what happened?”

“Five dead, four wounded. This has been an expensive operation,” he told her with a tired smile. “But I think it was worth it. They’re shaking hands.”

“They?” she asked, puzzled.

“The humans and the Centaurians.”

She paused as she worked on Komak to gape at him.

“They’re shaking hands,” she said slowly. “Why?”

“They’ve made peace,” he explained. “Apparently being imprisoned together has done something all the commander’s threats couldn’t.”

She lowered her wrist scanner to Komak’s chest. Odd, one of those readings would indicate human DNA. That, of course, was
absurd. Her scanner, under so much pressure, was probably prone to glitches. “Confinement does strange things to people,” she agreed.

“How long before he comes out of it?” Stern asked, nodding at Dtimun.

“Minutes. Hours. Days.” She helped him shove the used bloody sponges into the disposal unit before they could be spotted by any passing guards. She activated the hyperclean function on her instruments and stuck them in her boot. You never knew…

“Will he live?” Stern persisted worriedly.

“That’s out of my experience,” she said quietly. “That he lived through the procedure is a miracle in itself. That particular surgical technique was theoretical, none of the Terravegan surgeons ever having performed it on a living Cularian subject. It was a gamble.”

“Every breath we take is that,” he replied. He studied her flushed face, her flyaway auburn hair curling in the sweltering humidity. “If he lives,” he added, glancing at Dtimun, “we’ve got something for the men to hold on to. Saving the C.O. It’s like a catchy tune that caught on in the sensorama.”

“Love the underdog, and all that?” she mused. “We humans still love a loser, Stern.” She pursed her lips. “Are you really going to tell them about the blue velvet ribbon? You wouldn’t, would you?”

Both his dark eyebrows went up and he grinned. “Keep the C.O. alive and I may be able to find a way around the whole truth.”

Madeline, stretching wearily, managed to bring Komak around. “It would be like giving away the color of Lawson’s Skivvies,” she said to herself. “Or spraying morph gas into the Tri-Galaxy Council chambers.”

“That was a lie. I only threatened to do it. I had to stop Lawson from transferring you back to Terravega,” Stern chuckled.

Suddenly her eyes came up and met his and there was shock in her expression. “Stern?” she whispered.

“Yes,” he replied. “I think it’s really me. Or what’s left of me. Trust me, Maddie,” he added with solemn dark eyes.

A long time seemed to pass before she finally nodded, a swift, curt jerk of her head before she programmed her wrist scanner for a drug to spear consciousness back into Komak’s stirring, but still limp, body.

Lyceria let the Rojok guards lead her from the sand skimmer onto the gray hypoturf. In the dirty tan uniform they had given her, she looked little different from the other prisoners in the compound, except for her huge, unblinking eyes—eyes that rigidly held a solemn, calm royal-blue color while inside her the terror was screaming.

“Well, where do we put this one?” one of the guards growled in harsh Rojok. “They are being sent to us more rapidly than the sonic ovens can dispose of them! We must either build more efficient ovens or find other, better ways of mass execution.”

The other nodded. “It is so. The cells grow more cramped. The latest additions are being held for mind sensings, are they not, since the Holconcom commander has not been found among them.”