The Morcai Battalion (21 page)

In his mind, he was seeing a husky blond soldier at Tri-Fleet HQ, years before Mangus Lo rose to power, years before there was
Ahkmau
.

“They call this unit the Strategic Space Command,” Strick Hahnson had told the new Lieutenant J.G., Holt Stern, as the two of them boarded the Royal Legion of Terravega ship
Bellatrix
. “Brand-spanking-new outfit, this. The elite of the space services. They said they needed a few good spacers, and I’m just about the best there is, so I knew they’d want me,” Hahnson had added with a grin. “Name’s Strick Hahnson, Doctor of Interstellar Medicine, homo sapiens division.”

Stern had grinned, too, at the other’s dry sense of humor, and locked forearms with him. “Holt Stern. I figured they could use some good pilots to go along with the troops, and they don’t come any better than me. I fly by the seat of my pants.”

“So do I, occasionally,” Hahnson had laughed, “depending on how many drinks I’ve had when I start throwing challenges at rival crewmen.”

It had been a beginning. From rescue hops to scientific observation jumps, he and Hahnson and a budding medical legend named Dr. Madeline Ruszel, the only Cularian specialist in the fleet, had protected each other against Rojoks, terrorists, wildlife and other rival crewmen for almost ten years. In all that time, he’d never once had cause to regret his friendship with either one of them. Despite the SSC’s rigid policy of mentally neutering coed personnel in the military, the three had formed into something like a family. It was a close-knit, caring family, any one of whom would gladly have died for the other two.

Stern owed his life to Hahnson a dozen times over. Now he was standing helplessly in a cell on a red dustball of a moon, watching his friend die by inches. And there wasn’t a damned thing he could do about it. On top of that, he had to live with the knowledge that it was his fault. His fault.

Something wet misted his eyes, made a path down one lean, darkly tanned cheek. He tasted salt in the corner of his parched mouth.

Beside him, he heard a broken sob in a woman’s voice. Beyond the cell, he could see Strick Hahnson’s face contort into something so hideous that it was barely human. And still the screams came, piercing through the agonized silence of the cell complex as every crewman of the
Morcai
and the
Bellatrix
watched, and every ear listened.

“Now will you tell me?” the Rojok officer demanded of the imprisoned soldiers. “Will you say where is the
Morcai
’s commander? Each of you who remains silent is guilty of this officer’s torture! Unless you speak, each of you must bear the guilt of his painful death!”

Holt Stern’s tall frame shuddered with rage. “Don’t you buy it!” he yelled in Terravegan Standard, loud enough that his voice penetrated the cell dome, its speaker enhanced so that the occupants could tell the Rojoks what they wanted to know the minute their spirits broke. It was backfiring on the Rojok commandant, as Stern used the opportunity to keep the men quiet. “Hahnson wouldn’t sacrifice even one life to save his own, and you know it! If you talk, the Rojoks win!”

The humans, who all knew Hahnson, gazed toward Stern for a minute and then began to speak to each other in huddles.

“It is as he says,” Komak said suddenly, his loud voice, in Centaurian, echoing behind Stern. “Hahnson gave the war cry of the Holconcom—
Malenchar!
Our honor demands that we not betray his sacrifice!” He turned to the Rojok commandant, standing confused at the dome. “You will find no traitors in the ranks of the
Morcai
Battalion, Rojok! We live or die together. We will not, ever, surrender!” It was an echo of Stern’s own speech, almost verbatim.

The Holconcom made odd sounds in their throats as they turned, angrily, to face the Rojok commandant of the camp. Weak from self-
enforced hunger, from lack of water to escape the Rojoks’ drug, torn and ragged and weary, still they fought back in the only way left to them.

“Free-dom,” they began to chant in Terravegan, deliberately drowning out Hahnson’s agonized screams. “Free-dom! Free-dom!
Free-dom!
”

The humans quickly joined in the chant, gathering with the Centaurians at the part of their cells that faced the platform where Hahnson was shivering with pain.
“Free-dom!”
they chanted in unison. They stood at attention, defiant and proud, daring the Rojoks to come and get them.

Stern felt a pride that overwhelmed him. “By God, that’s doing it!” he whispered hoarsely, his eyes never leaving Hahnson. “They’re drowning him out. Now maybe the Rojoks will get tired of hearing us and put an end to it. Oh, God, maybe they’ll let him die now. Maybe they’ll let him die!”

Madeline was less hopeful. Tears ran helplessly down her face, but her green eyes blazed up like living flames. “The inhuman sons of bitches,” she bit off coldly. “If we ever get out of here, that commandant is mine. I’ll filet him like a Tiranian goldfish!”

“I’ll lend you a knife,” Stern gritted.

Higgins came up beside Stern and hesitatingly laid a hand on his shoulder, very gently. “We all liked Dr. Hahnson, sir,” he said unsteadily.

Stern drew a deep breath and managed a wan smile for his sandy-haired exec. “Thanks, son.”

“Sir?”

“Yes, Higgins?”

The young first officer of the
Bellatrix
drew himself up proudly. “I don’t give a damn whether you’re a clone or not,” he said abruptly. “I’ll follow you straight to hell if you want to go there, sir,” he added with a pale grin.

Stern couldn’t manage an answer. There was one hell of a lump
in his throat. He nodded his gratitude, turning his tortured gaze back to the cell suspended above the panorama of domes.

“You will not talk!” the Rojok commander growled, as the chant continued. His thin lips twisted into a demoniacal smile. “So you choose to condemn your comrade to death. Very well. Then watch what your refusal has caused. See what you have condemned this poor human to!”

Every eye snapped to Hahnson’s cell. The chanting stopped as the Rojok commandant gave a signal to his underling. At the sign, the Rojok began, slowly, deliberately, to hack away at Hahnson’s sensitive hands with a
chasat
. A half an inch at a time, he sliced away flesh and tendon and nerve and bone as the husky doctor screamed and screamed and screamed, writhing in agony, kept conscious by the damned alien machine as the
chasat
whined.

“Damn you!” Stern yelled hoarsely, tears of impotent, unbearable rage streaming down his face. “Damn you to hell and back again! I’ll kill you!”

“His hands,” Madeline ground out. “Dear God, not his hands!” She beat her fists against the dome, as Stern had done earlier. “You cowards!” she raged at the Rojoks. “You cowards!”

Inside the cell, Hahnson was still conscious, his screams hoarse now, as the damned nanobots repaired damaged cells so the disruptors could begin again to rip him apart.

Madeline hit the cell wall one last time, her eyes drowned in tears. With a husky sob, she began to pray aloud, the last resort of the doomed. They were light-years away from the Tri-Fleet. No SSC commander would be reckless enough for a suicide mission like the rescue of the
Bellatrix
’s crew. The Holconcom were indispensable to the defense of their homeworld, but no one knew where the crew of the
Morcai
was. She wondered if the old Centaurian emperor
would even believe it, if someone told him his crack, elite troops had been captured and tortured.

Her eyes drained tears of absolute anguish. As Hahnson’s voice rose to a nerve-shattering peak of agony, there was a sudden murmur of Rojok voices, followed by quick, frantic activity.

Frowning, Madeline strained to see what was going on. Several Rojoks were moving toward the platform where Hahnson was being held. Even as she turned to ask Stern who it might be, a voice as commanding as Dtimun’s rose above the murmurs. It had the ring of steel hitting rock.

“Cleemaah!”

The clear, piercing authority in that harsh Rojok command spread a silence like that of decaying tombs over the complex. The humans and Centaurians, diverted, stopped raging about Hahnson. The Rojok commandant, recognizing the other Rojok, turned white and ran,
ran
, to the platform where the newcomer was standing beside Hahnson’s cell. The guard who had been conducting the torture suddenly stood at rigid attention with the blood-spattered
chasat
still clenched in his hand. The camp commandant and his two other guards hastily followed suit.

Stunned at the Rojoks’ unexpected timidity, Stern and Madeline watched a tall, powerfully built Rojok soldier, with many slashes of
mesag
marks on the sleeves of his black uniform, signal to his bodyguard. He was abruptly flanked by six of the burliest, most military-looking Rojok soldiers Madeline had ever seen. The raw power of the newcomer was evident even in his posture, as though he com
manded by his presence alone. His long, straight blond hair gleamed like pure honey in the glaring reddish light of the other two moons, burning like the slit eyes that seemed to glitter even at a distance as they took in the evidence of the prison commandant’s handiwork.

“Most honorable visitor,” the flustered, flushed Rojok commandant began in a nervous, respectful tone.

Before he could finish the sentence, and without a single word, the towering newcomer pulled a
chasat
from his belt and cut the officer in half with it. Mercilessly, with a savage contempt, his highly polished black knee-high boot lobbed the dead man out of his way. Before the guard who had been torturing Hahnson could react, the same muscular officer had whirled and, in a single graceful motion, separated the murderous guard from his head.

A guttural flow of Rojok followed the snap executions. The tall Rojok gestured toward the cell imperiously. It was opened and Hahnson’s handless, bleeding body was lifted,
gently
lifted, and carried out of it by two members of the newcomer’s bodyguard.

“By the ten plagues,” the tall Rojok cursed at the two remaining compound guards on the platform who were staring at him with dawning horror, “I will have your heads for this! Lieumek, have these barbarians thrown into their own sonic ovens! Both of them, now!”

Not one of the guards made a single protest. Nor did the bodyguards. The tall Rojok waited until the order was carried out, standing like a statue as his slit eyes scanned the cells, the dehydrated bodies, the undernourished prisoners crammed together without so much as a blanket.

Another flow of orders followed the first flurry, and Madeline caught something about bringing in fresh water and food and blankets, and gathering medical personnel from among the prisoners to treat the survivors—the rest was urgent, but too fast for her
to translate, even with her meager store of Rojok verbs. She could hardly believe her ears.

“What the hell is going on?” Stern asked for all of them, shocked at the staggering pace of unlikely events. “Who is that Rojok?”

“Excuse me,” Komak apologized quietly. “I thought you would have recognized him from battle vids. He is Chacon. He commands the Rojok fleet.”

Chacon! Stern and Madeline exchanged puzzled glances as they watched Rojok medics scattering among the cells to seek out prisoners with any medical experience to help treat the sick and injured. They saw the individual cells being given rations of water and food—quite obviously from the field marshal’s own stores. Madeline began to believe the legend of the Rojok commander whose code of ethics had earned him the respect of the worst of his enemies. He had been known to halt a successful attack long enough to let medics evacuate the dead and wounded of the vanquished. He had never fired on a medical transport.

“Why is he here, though, Komak?” Madeline asked the tall alien beside her. “We’re the enemy, and this camp is Mangus Lo’s pride and joy. Surely he isn’t acting under orders?”

“Hardly,” Komak returned curtly. “Although, it is possible that the Rojok emperor sent him here to identify the commander,” he added uncomfortably. “He alone of all the Rojoks will know the Holconcom commander on sight.”

“Well, that’s lovely,” Madeline said shortly. She ran a hand through her sweaty, dirty auburn hair. “After all we’ve gone through to try to save him. And then to lose Strick…” She swallowed, hard, and turned away, ashamed of letting her tears be obvious. She cleared her throat as she stared through the dome at the flurry of activity. Bodies dressed in red Holconcom uniforms and green Strategic Space
Command uniforms were pulled from the sonic ovens while the prisoners watched. “What a waste of lives!” she bit off.

“Madelineruszel, look!” The Centaurian she called “Abe” burst out suddenly from the commander’s side.

She whirled, her eyes widening at the sight. Dtimun was stirring. There was eye movement. His breathing, though a little quick, was regular and steady. “What’s that old saying, Stern, that good can come of the worst evil? Praise the fleet, look!”

Dtimun’s head began to move slowly, back and forth on the pallet. She dropped down beside him and before she considered the wisdom of the move, her hand went down to check the big artery at his throat.

But even as her fingertips touched his golden skin, his big, golden-skinned hand whipped out like a quasabeam and snared her wrist. Pain lines cut into her complexion and she groaned.

“Maddie!” Stern called out, moving quickly toward her.

“Stay back!” she whispered huskily, drowning in pain. “Don’t move. Whatever happens, don’t interfere!”

“Komak, can’t you do something?” Stern growled.

“I am sorry, no,” the younger Centaurian replied sadly, his tall body tense and restless. “I do not think he will kill her—but even though he alone of the Holconcom is not a clone, he is as unused to touch without combat as the rest of us. If we rush him, he will certainly snap her neck. We can only wait.”

Dtimun’s eyes dilated until blackness filled them. His lean face tautened.
“Quy nom holconcom!”
he growled huskily at the human in his grasp.

Komak paled.
“Maliche!”
he swore softly. “Madelineruszel, repeat what I tell you, with the exact inflection,” he called to her.
“Bacum…tocache. Bacum…tocache!”

Madeline struggled to breathe. The words were like ancient native
dialects, with high tones and low tones and glottal stops. The pain was slowing her thought processes. She pulled against his hold with both hands as she tried to repeat the rising and falling tones.

“What are you telling her?” Stern asked urgently. “What’s happening?”

“See his eyes, Holtstern!” Komak ground out, watching as the commander began to rise from the padded floor into a sitting position, his hand loosening its grip on her wrist—only to curl suddenly around her throat. “He thinks she is an enemy soldier. He will kill her!” Ignoring Stern’s sudden pallor, he repeated the words again to Madeline, who had garbled them. “Say the words! Quickly!”

Her mouth opened, but the commander’s grip on the softness of her throat was too secure. The words formed only on her lips as they began to go numb from the lack of oxygen. She must try. She must try, to live.
“T…tocache!”
Madeline husked through her tortured vocal chords as the commander’s hand tightened.

“No, Madelineruszel!” Komak said in something like horror, if a Centaurian Holconcom could feel horror.
“Bacum tocache!”
he emphasized the first word.

But, unbelievably, the word softened her captor. The alien’s eyes lost their murderous black color all at once and became suddenly a quiet, curious, soft shade of brown as they searched Madeline’s flushed face.

“I remember, little one,” he said strangely. “You bite.”

Her eyes widened incredulously. Surely, she thought, she was delirious from lack of oxygen and hearing things.

Dtimun released her abruptly and stretched his taut muscles, drawing up a long leg so that he could lean his forehead against his knee. Weak, but alert, his huge, elongated eyes swept the compound and the realization was suddenly there in eyes colored dark brown in anger.

“Ahkmau!”
he snapped, his furious gaze going directly to Komak, who winced. “In the history of the Holconcom, no one of us has ever been taken prisoner in battle! Why did you not blow up the ship?” he demanded hotly. “And, failing that, why did you not kill me, knowing what could happen if I fell victim to the Rojok madman?”

Komak seemed to pale under his golden complexion. “The
Morcai
’s
emerillium
drive units were fused,” he said simply. “We could not ignite them. And I did try to take your life…”

Madeline glared at him. Dtimun only stared relentlessly at Komak, his eyes hard and unblinking as he waited for the answer.

“It is,” Komak said, moving uncomfortably, “very difficult to explain. First, I tried to…dispose of you aboard the
Morcai
. Madelineruszel delayed me until the Rojoks dropped us both with
chasats
. You were barely alive when we were brought here. I thought, forgive me Madelineruszel, that surgical intervention under these conditions would hasten your demise. So I urged Madelineruszel to interfere with the
dylete
.” He looked embarrassed. “You did not die after all. She saved you, under impossible conditions and with the barest minimum of surgical tools.” He smiled apologetically. “
Karamesh
,” he added. “Fate. As I already believed, it was not your destiny to meet your end here.”

“My God,” Madeline breathed, shaking her head. “I never suspected why you were so keen for me to operate,” she said, addressing Komak, who only smiled again. Her gaze went to Dtimun. “Well, that ought to brighten an otherwise dreary day for you, sir. You can bring me up on charges before the military tribunal on two counts of dereliction of duty, including breaking a Centaurian cultural taboo and defying the Malcopian Articles of War. My court-martial should be quite colorful,” she added pleasantly.

“You’ll enjoy mine, too,” Stern assured him, folding his arms across
his chest. He grinned. “Not to mention the spacing that’s sure to follow the court-martial. I’m a clone of the original SSC Captain Holt Stern, genetically altered by the Rojoks as an infiltrator. I was responsible for sabotaging the ship so that it could be captured. I’m the reason we’re all here together in this Rojok hell.”

The cat-eyes studied Stern for a moment, and the human felt strange, probing sensations in his mind. Dtimun’s gaze shifted to Madeline, then to Komak, and his expression went bland as if he now understood everything.

Dtimun carelessly raised an eyebrow as he turned to Lieutenant Higgins, who was watching the byplay uneasily. “Higgins, have you nothing to confess?” he asked with a flash of green eyes. “This seems to be the time.”

“Well, sir,” Higgins complied with a shy grin, “before I actually confessed to anything, I’d have to have some assurance that it wouldn’t be used against me when we get out of this place. After we process all the Rojok prisoners we take, that is.”

The arrogant statement brought another flash of green to Dtimun’s eyes. “Humans,” he said. “How does Lawson bear it?” He looked around the cell at Crandall and “Abe” and Jennings and the others. They were thin and weary and subdued, and there were new lines in the female medic’s face. “Where is Hahnson?” he asked abruptly. “Is he in another cell?”

“He…they used multisonics on him,” Madeline said softly, her eyes glued to the floor of the cell as she fought for composure. “After the Rojok commandant of this place tortured him to make the men tell where you were, they…the Rojok…he was slicing away Strick’s hands. His mind was already…and they…Chacon stopped it, but it was too late, you see. It was…” Despite her best efforts to stem them, tears made silver tracks down her flushed
cheeks. “Nobody said a word,” she defended the men, raising her face proudly to the commander’s eyes. “Not a word, human or Holconcom! And Komak told the Rojoks that the
Morcai
Battalion stood by its own, human or Centaurian. A lot of the men died for you, Commander. To keep the Rojoks from finding you. And we did that. All of us, we did that.”

“
Maliche
, why?” the alien asked in astonishment.

“Because it isn’t our way in the SSC to let any member of our unit be used as blackmail to force information. It’s a thing called honor.” She shrugged. “Besides, Komak said that if anyone could get us out of here, it would be you. We had to give you the chance to live, so other lives were sacrificed. Can you get the men out?”

“Madam,” he said with a heavy sigh, “I will get them out if I have to chew through the hyperglas. But what is meant by the
Morcai
Battalion? I was not aware that I commanded such a group,” he added wryly.

“You do now,” Stern told him. “About four hundred of them are human, too. How’s that for good fortune?” he added with a grin and a touch of the original officer’s impertinence.

A stream of guttural Centaurian passed the commander’s lips, and Stern had the feeling he was fortunate to lack a translation.

“You mentioned that Chacon was here,” Dtimun said as he rose to his feet a little unsteadily. “Is he still?”