The Pursuit

by Diana Palmer

  * * *

  WHICH MADE IT doubly embarrassing that the first thing she did, at the very first kill of the day, was to throw up profusely all over her own shoes.

  The men rolled over laughing. Tears actually fell from their slit eyes, especially when she started swearing in Rojok at her own weakness.

  “It happens to all of us,” Rusmok said sympathetically as she got to her feet and mopped her mouth with a synthesized towelette from her pack.

  “I was sure it wouldn’t happen to me,” she groaned.

  “Your first hunt was expected to be somewhat traumatic,” he returned. “You will adjust.” He handed her another spear to go with her net. “Tollek killed the first. You are certain to kill the next.”

  She gave him a doubting look.

  “You will see.”

  * * *

  THEY WAITED WHILE the designated skinner went to work, deftly reducing the carcass to its component parts. A kombar, or teleporting device, was used to whisk the components back to the appropriate department in the capital city.

  Then they were off to the next sandsaber.

  Jasmine fell in behind the others, treading over the rocky terrain as the sun beat down on her blond head. She liked the feeling of comradeship that she got, being part of the team.

  Hunting wasn’t the ordeal she’d expected it to be. And despite her nausea, excitement was rapidly claiming her. Stalking game was invigorating. Once again, she was amused at the difference between the old Jasmine and the new.

  * * *

  FAR AWAY, NEAR the rim, the Holconcom was getting ready for an assault on a dissident camp, on Salash, an outer planet where Rojok colonists were under attack by pirates. Stores of Helium three were coveted by colonists and Cehn-Tahr alike. The pirates stole it and sold it on the black market, to renegades like themselves holding out on Tri-Galaxy Council planets throughout the galaxies.

  Although the Cehn-Tahr’s treaty with the Nagaashe on Akaashe provided them with plenty of Helium three for their reactors on Memcache, the colonists equally required the rare element for their own reactors. It was too far and perilous to try to transport it from Memcache all the way to the rim. So the Holconcom was ordered to deal with the pirates.

  “Here we go again,” Holt Stern, the flagship Morcai’s astrogator groaned as they made orbit. “You’d think these guys would give up eventually. Everybody hunts them, even Rojoks.”

  Mekashe smiled faintly. “Surely, you aren’t tiring of the hunt, Stern?” he teased.

  “Me, sir? Never!” the former captain of the SSC warship Bellatrix assured him. “It’s just the trip here. Tedious, to say the least, even at our speeds with the lightsteds thrown.”

  “True. I, too, tire of the travel,” Mekashe confided.

  “As do we all,” his exec, Btnu, added. “But the conflict is what we train for.”

  “Mustn’t let our expensive education go to waste, right, sir?” Stern chuckled.

  “Absolutely,” Mekashe agreed. “Btnu, organize the landing party.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  As Btnu left to get the unit together, and assign transport, Mekashe looked vacantly at the viewscreen. Rojoks did, indeed, love a hunt. So did Cehn-Tahr. He recalled that Jasmine had hated hunting, been afraid of cats, hated the military, had contempt for other races. It was a painful memory.

  He wondered what her life was like now, on Terravega, after the death of her father. He was forbidden to touch her mind, to inquire about her circumstances, even to ask anyone about her. The taboo was unbreakable.

  Just as well, he told himself over and over. There was no place in his life for her now. And she would never be able to accept him as he was. Nor could she deal with combat in any form. Just the thought of Jasmine in a battle of any sort was amusing. The elegant, sophisticated woman he’d known would flinch at getting her clothing soiled.

  “Ready to go, sir.” Btnu’s voice came over the comm.

  “On my way,” Mekashe replied tersely. “Stern, you have the conn. Please don’t break the ship in my absence,” he added, the first faint bit of humor coming from him since his assignment to command the Holconcom.

  Stern chuckled. “I won’t break her, sir. But I might bend her. Just a little.”

  Mekashe flashed him a green smile on his way off the bridge.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  JASMINE WAS SLOGGING her way through the nastiest swamp she’d ever seen in her life. It was the unit’s first combat training assignment, fighting insurgents on Lagana, in the Dibella system. She recalled vaguely that the Holconcom had fought an epic battle here with Rojoks during the reign of Mangus Lo.

  “Dupont, keep up!” the officer in charge called to her.

  “Yes, Dupont, keep up,” Rusmok chided as he passed her. “Or no Benaski Port R & R for you!”

  “We’ll see about that!” she retorted, and doubled her efforts to wade through the mel-leaches that already covered her boots and trousers. She groaned and, avoiding detection by the officer in charge, pulled out a small stunning device from her medical wrist unit and stunned the creatures. They dropped off at once. She grinned to herself as she replaced the device.

  “Five kuskons off your record, Dupont, for unlawful use of tech.” The instructor’s voice bit into her ear.

  “Yes, sir.” She sighed. “Sorry, sir.”

  “Reprobate,” Rusmok chided as she caught up to him. “You already have more kuskons than the rest of us combined.”

  “I hate mel-leaches,” she muttered. “And our unit leader must have eyes in the back of his head!”

  He leaned to her ear. “He’s a telepath,” he whispered with a laugh in his voice. “Nobody can keep anything from him.”

  “Just my luck.” She shook her head, noticing that the mel-leaches were once again crawling up her legs. “Can’t we collect these things and stew them?” she asked facetiously.

  “An admirable thought, Dupont. Proceed. We will expect you to cook it, as well, when we finish here,” the unit leader told her smugly.

  Rusmok made a face. “They induce unconsciousness,” he told her.

  “Not in small doses, Rusmok,” the leader replied. “In fact, they have a rather intoxicating effect. We will all learn from Dupont’s example. I love mel-leaches. In fact, I keep them as pets.”

  She sighed. “Figures,” she muttered under her breath.

  Fortunately for her, the leader pretended not to hear her.

  “Come! Move faster! A true Rojok soldier is always eager to do battle, to prove his courage and commitment to the service! Swamps are wonderful! Mel-leaches are delightful! How fortunate for us that we are tested by such a beautiful environment!”

  As he spoke, tangling vines reached out and tried to curl around Jasmine’s leg, and six mel-leaches reached her throat and tried to latch on to the soft flesh. With a sigh of resignation she brushed them off and removed the vines, which secreted a white toxic substance. It fell on one of the mel-leaches and it promptly dropped to the ground.

  An idea was born. She tore two of the vines in half and applied them to the other mel-leaches with a huge smile.

  “Now, that is proper curiosity turned to advantage,” the instructor said, halting the group. “Notice what Dupont has just done,” he told them. “She has discovered that the toxin in the attacking vines can be used to dislodge the mel-leaches. Use this new knowledge!”

  The other recruits followed suit, raising a cheer to Jasmine under their collective breaths. She burst out laughing, not caring if she got more black marks for it.

  “I owe you a synthale for that,” Rusmok told her. “A far better use for the foul creatures than a stew.”

  She chuckled. “I’ll hold you to that.”

  * * *

  THEY WERE HALFWAY through the mission when a surprise attack by a party of insurgents, led by an A
ltairian, exploded around them. Firing insurgents burst out of the swamp.

  Jasmine was shocked into immobility for a few seconds, before she regained her senses and rolled onto the swampy ground, pulling her chasat on the way down.

  She shot at the first pair of boots she saw, recognizable as non-Rojok issue. A shout of pain was followed by a hard thud. Another recruit finished the insurgent off. Jasmine got to her feet, continuing low to the ground, and started looking around automatically for wounded.

  Months of intensive training in the holo simulators, added to the constant reinforcement of her diagnostic and surgical skills, had hardened her to the gore of battle. Her only focus was on the patients, on relieving suffering and saving lives. She learned to overlook the horrible images, drawn from life in the simulators, that were imprinted on her subconscious as she progressed in her studies.

  She treated two minor wounds and quickly moved on. There was one other Cularian specialist in the unit, a male, but he’d gone forward to treat a more serious wound. Jasmine fell behind as she searched for other wounded. She found a dead soldier from her unit and performed the simple, mandated ritual for the passing of a fellow recruit. She hadn’t known the Rojok well, but unit became family as they trained together. She was sorry for his loss.

  It took a minute for her to realize that she hadn’t seen Rusmok since the attack began. He was probably up with the unit leader, who was calling out terse instructions as insurgents were captured. She peered through the thick vegetation, but she didn’t see her friend.

  “Tollek,” she called to another friend, “have you seen Rusmok?”

  He grimaced. “No, Dupont, I haven’t. I thought he was with our leader.”

  “So did I, but he isn’t.”

  Tollek sighed. “There were several casualties that we passed on the way here. We didn’t have time to look closely...”

  “I’ll run back and check,” she said, turning.

  She kept her chasat at her waist, her hand on it, as she searched through the insurgent bodies. There were five, all beyond saving. But no Rusmok. Perhaps he’d been somewhere near the leader, and she just hadn’t seen him, she rationalized. There was so much confusion that it would be easy to overlook someone.

  He was the first friend she’d made on Enmehkmehk. He’d been first chiding, and then encouraging. They spent a lot of time together on liberty, going from gaming station to bar. They found many things in common. There was no romantic aspect to it. Rusmok was suffering from unrequited love for a female who’d thrown him over when he announced his intention to go into the military. He still mourned her. While Jasmine had never gotten over Mekashe and was uncertain that she ever would. She blamed him for turning his back on her. But the memories were pervasive. It was unfortunate.

  Her heart dropped. Her thoughts scattered. She walked into a small clearing and there was Rusmok.

  Her heart fell to her feet. He was lying on his back, gasping for breath. As she grew closer, she saw that two chasat holes were burned into his chest.

  She ran to him and dropped to her knees at his side, fighting tears. “No! No, no, no!” she whispered as she pulled out her wrist scanner and started to diagnose his injuries. She reached over to put a diagnostic sensor in place.

  But his big six-fingered hand covered hers where it rested on his heaving chest.

  “Too late, Dupont,” he whispered with a wan smile. “I should have...ducked.”

  Tears were boiling down her cheeks. “It’s not the new weapons,” she said, fighting the horror she felt. She caught her breath. “Not the ones that do catastrophic damage. These are just chasat burns. Your lungs are punctured...but...not...irreversibly...!”

  While she was speaking, she was working. She initiated a repair on the first lung, sealed off the damage until she had time to finish reducing the wound. Her hands, steady and competent, went on to the second injury, the lesser of the two.

  “Too late,” he said in a drained tone.

  “It most certainly is not! Don’t you dare give up!” she raged. “Don’t you dare!”

  He was trying not to laugh. He failed. Even through the pain, her indomitable spirit amused him, even as her fear for him touched him. He gave up trying to speak and let her work.

  A few minutes later, he was breathing more easily. The pain was severe, and her pain medication was limited to what her wrist unit could carry. But he would live. She sat back on her heels, oblivious to the diminishing signs of conflict around them.

  “I don’t believe this,” she muttered.

  “What?” he asked in a strained tone.

  “You’d let yourself be shot to get out of buying me that synthale you owe me?” she returned.

  The unit leader, standing behind her, let out an involuntary laugh before he could stop himself. The other recruits slowly fell in around him, most of them grinning. She went back to work on Rusmok while the unit leader called in a medevac for Rusmok and the other wounded, and a prisoner transport for the insurgents they’d captured.

  Jasmine didn’t realize then what she’d done. Much later, it was related to her by someone outside the military that her blatant concern for an alien not even of her species had convinced her superiors that she was everything Chacon hoped she would be. Her coolness under fire, her competence even as a novice medic, earned her high marks from both her military and medical instructors.

  And Rusmok bought her that synthale. In fact, he bought her two.

  * * *

  RHEMUN’S LITTLE GIRL followed Mekashe around the villa, trying to match her small steps to his stride. He chuckled as he noticed her behind him.

  “We will make a soldier of you yet,” he told her.

  She grinned up at him. “Want to be a soldier,” she agreed.

  “Not yet,” Rhemun said firmly. “First you learn to eat your skemache, then you join the military.”

  She made a face at him, and then spoiled the mock anger by running into his arms to be picked up.

  Rhemun nuzzled his cheek against hers. “Torment,” he chided.

  “Where is Kipling?” she asked.

  “Gone to school with Komak.”

  “Want to go to school.”

  “Not yet.”

  She sighed. “I can eat my skemache now,” she said in such a resigned tone that both adults laughed.

  While she played in the grassy yard, Rhemun and Mekashe sipped ale in the cool of the steps. Both of them were off duty for two days, a holiday of sorts. It was rare for both of them to be at leisure at the same time. Especially for Mekashe, whose duty as commander of the Holconcom took him to far distant parts of the galaxy from time to time.

  “Edris will be sorry that she missed you,” Rhemun said. “She and Madeline went on a shopping trip to the moon bazaar.”

  “She never seems to age,” Mekashe said. He stared into his tall stone glass, lost in reverie.

  “You still dwell on the ambassador’s daughter,” Rhemun said quietly.

  Mekashe sighed and let out a hollow laugh. “It has been five years,” he said. “One would think that the passing of time would diminish the attraction. That has not been the case.”

  Rhemun studied his friend covertly. The other Cehn-Tahr had aged visibly. The hard-faced military man across from him no longer resembled his Kahn-Bo partner who was full of mischief and always kidding. Mekashe had become like Dtimun, who formerly led the Holconcom, battle-hardened and authoritative.

  But even with that coldness, the Cehn-Tahr and humans aboard the Morcai still revered their new commander. Not one of them had asked to transfer to other duty since his appointment. Rhemun recalled wryly that every human aboard ship had tried to transfer back to the Terravegan military soon after Rhemun’s appointment. He’d made enemies of everyone aboard with his long-standing prejudices against humans. He’d finally overcome those and won the respect of
his men. But Mekashe had never had to struggle with his command. The men welcomed him like a member of the family.

  “You still have Tellas serving as Cularian medicine specialist aboard the Morcai,” Rhemun commented.

  Mekashe shrugged. “It has been difficult to find a human female willing to serve with us,” he said simply. “We have petitioned the Terravegans, but to no avail.” He gave his friend a wry smile. “I think the medical authority on Trimerius holds us responsible for the revelation of their so-called three-strikes provision and the illegal black-ops medical experimentation that we reported to the three galaxies from Benaski Port.”

  “That was my responsibility,” Rhemun recalled. “I would do it again in a second. Edris was in danger of becoming a laboratory experiment after I sent her running from the Morcai.” He sighed. “I was horrible to the humans in the Holconcom. They forgave me, but it was a black mark that I could never erase. At least you had no prejudices to stand between you and the crew when you took command.”

  Mekashe smiled. “They were like family. They still are. I missed the Morcai when I was appointed captain of the Imperial Guard.”

  “You were next in line for that task, as I was next in line for command of the Holconcom when Dtimun was revealed publicly to be the emperor’s son.”

  “Clan is all,” his friend replied.

  “As it ever was, and ever shall be,” Rhemun agreed. “I do regret the loss of a warwoman aboard the Morcai,” he added. “It was a mark of distinction for us. One which the Rojoks have now appropriated.”

  “The Rojoks have a warwoman?” Mekashe asked, chuckling. “With their prejudices against females in the military? Not to mention,” he added, “their distaste for humans, from whom they must have taken the idea!”

  “I hear that it was Chacon’s idea,” came the amused reply. “He is still quite fond of Madeline Ruszel.”

  Mekashe shook his head. “Where did they ever find a Rojok female who was willing to undertake such a task? Is she a physician?”

  “Yes. A Cularian specialist. We can discover nothing more about her. Not even the emperor has been able to learn who she is. A very well-kept secret.”