Stern took a deep breath. Now was the time. He couldn’t put it off any longer. “Sir,” he began respectfully. “that body was…”
“A clone,” Dtimun said for him, his eyes narrowed as they met Stern’s, daring him to say another word. He hesitated. “You are aware that the Rojoks have refined the process of cloning to the point that memories and personality are transferred instantaneously into the reconstructed subject? They cloned Stern, but had the misfortune to shoot the wrong man. Their mistake. The body they left on Terramer was the cloned Stern.”
Lawson was confused. “But you were taken prisoner?”
“Yes,” Dtimun said easily. “Chacon arrived with his personal bodyguard and suspended the torture of Dr. Hahnson. In the subsequent confusion, we liberated ourselves and retook the Morcai. In the process, we apprehended Mangus Lo. He is in the stockade as we speak.”
Lawson just stared at him, dumbfounded. That wasn’t the story he’d heard from one of the ambassadors.
Madeline and Stern looked as if they’d just been thrown headfirst into ice water. They shared an incredulous glance.
Lawson frowned. “I understood that Ahkmau was destroyed,” he began.
“Indeed it was,” Dtimun added confidently. “The Freespirit liberated the bulk of the inmates, we accommodated those of our crewmen who could be saved. We also lifted the survivors from Terramer, and the Jaakob Spheres.” He raised his chin. “Chacon made the rescue possible, although once the war vote was known to him, he pursued us diligently.”
“A gentleman, is Chacon,” Lawson pronounced. “A true gentleman. But a formidable enemy and the war has only just begun.”
“We have Mangus Lo,” Dtimun said. “Perhaps a truce may be constructed.”
Lawson shook his head. “Mangus Lo has a nephew,” he said irritably. “Han Cho. He assumed power the instant Mangus Lo’s capture made it back to Enmehkmehk. He announced his intentions over a broad laserband width. He says the Rojoks still need room to expand their starving billions and they aren’t going to agree to any peace treaty that doesn’t guarantee them ownership of the Binarius System.” He glanced at them. “It goes without saying that the Binarius System is the ancestral home of the Altairian Triumvirate, and she isn’t willing to donate it to the Rojoks.”
“They also claim the Tupari biosphere,” Dtimun added.
“Yes. Without it, the Tri-Fleet would be forced to barter with the Rojoks for emerillium deposits. We’ll never agree to that. So. It’s still war. And I remind you Chacon will fight no less fiercely for Han Cho than he did, in the beginning, for Mangus Lo.”
“Tnurat Alamantimichar led the war vote, we understand,” Dtimun queried.
“Yes, he did. He and his government are in mourning for the death of his only son,” Lawson replied, curiously aware that Dtimun avoided meeting his eyes. “But the knowledge that his daughter is safe has brought a little peace to him. He’s agreed to attach the Holconcom to my command,” he added, watching the alien commander closely.
Dtimun raised both eyebrows. “Attach? I interpret the act to mean that you may request our assistance,” he said with pure arrogance.
Lawson glared at him. “I knew it was going to be a fight to the death. Listen here, young man…!”
“It is you who are the young man, Jeffrye, being some five years my junior,” Dtimun said with a flash of green eyes.
“Yes, I heard from your medics that you went into the dylete and the whole unit protected you while Ruszel operated, before they killed Hahnson. Hell of a shame about Hahnson. But at least we still have Ruszel and Stern. Now about a new ship,” he began.
“That will not be necessary,” Dtimun said easily. “I intend to add Stern and Ruszel, as well as the rest of the surviving Bellatrix crew, to the Holconcom.”
Madeline stiffened. She was in line for the position of medical chief of staff. It was just beginning to occur to her that her career was in the process of being blown to hell by this Centaurian headhunter.
“Now just a damned minute here,” she flashed, her auburn hair glowing in the light.
“Bataashe!” Dtimun snapped at her, his eyes fighting both hers and Stern’s. “Remember to whom you speak, Madam!”
She looked as if she’d tried to swallow a Gresham whole, even as she stiffened into a military posture. Her green eyes made threats that Dtimun simply ignored. Komak’s eyes were glittering green, as if he was enjoying the whole episode.
“Yes, just a damned minute here,” Lawson appropriated Madeline’s opening. “You can’t transfer my personnel across military lines, even if you are Tri-Fleet allies!”
“Oh, but I can,” Dtimun replied. “The combination of humans and Centaurians in my Morcai Battalion will make a statement about the adaptability of command. If the other governments see that our races can successfully merge on a warship, it will inspire others to work harder at getting along together.”
“But the emperor,” Lawson protested.
Dtimun’s eyes flashed green. “It will make him furious,” he said smugly. “Especially when he hears of the addition of a human female to my crew. In the history of the Holconcom, there has never been a female aboard a Centaurian warship.”
“He’ll have you killed!” Lawson protested. “Court-martialed! Banished!”
“He cannot. I command the Holconcom. He has no authority over it, or me.”
“I hope you know what you’re doing.” Lawson sighed as he turned to Dtimun, a grimace tugging at his mouth. He shook his head. “All right. I’ll approve the transfers. But if the emperor comes in here looking for blood, I’m sending him right over to collect yours!”
Stern and Madeline stood like statues as what the alien was saying finally got through to them.
“We’re…being attached to the Holconcom,” Stern said. “Both of us?”
“Of course,” Dtimun said, scowling impatiently. “And immediately. In case the two of you have forgotten, we are still at war against an empire with Chacon at the head of its armies. We destroyed Ahkmau, but some facsimile will certainly replace it. We also captured Mangus Lo, but not the bureaucracy that supported his empire. The war will be long, and each part of the Tri-Galaxy must fight to win it.” He turned to Lawson. “I need those orders cut now, Jeffrye, giving me possession of the Bellatrix’s surviving crew.”
“I’ll whip them out,” Lawson agreed, moving back to his desk. He paused, pulling out a tiny cube of personal effects. “Stern, these are yours, I believe. Would you like to have them?”
Stern reached out and took the cube. In it was, among other effects, a piece of blue velvet ribbon. As he took it out and held it in his hand, he remembered a promise he’d made to his crew and vowed to fulfill it as soon as possible—at the same time he informed them that they’d been shanghaied by this alien tyrant here, and appropriated into the Holconcom. He doubted there would be any fuss, however.
Then it dawned on him that Dtimun was sparing his career by the move. He would still have his old status. But he would command even more respect, as a member of the galaxy’s most notorious and feared military authority. Incredulously, he gaped at the alien, whose eyes smiled at him.
“Blame yourself, Mister,” Dtimun told him. “The idea of a Morcai Battalion had never crossed my mind.”
Stern tried to speak, with Lawson’s voice on the interbase communications band deep and slow in the office around them. But he couldn’t manage the words. His eyes met Madeline’s as if in apology, but she was still glaring at Dtimun with venom in her whole look.
Dtimun glanced at her and smiled. “There will be compensations, Madam.”
“Sir?” she asked curtly.
But Lawson was off the band, smiling. “Their transfers are in Operations now and being lasered to your ship. What have you got planned, can I just ask that before you rush off and disrupt my whole battle plan?” he added, glaring at Dtimun.
“Your battle plan will self-destruct at the beginning of every encounter,” Dtimun replied c
almly.
“Don’t change the subject. There’s something else, too,” he added worriedly. “We’ve had a complaint already from the Terravegan senators. There was a spacing before your ship was captured, an SSC noncom named Declan Muldoon…”
Dtimun’s eyes twinkled. “Komak?” he said.
Komak went to the sliding door, peered out it and motioned.
“Declan Muldoon, reporting as ordered, sir!” the Irishman saluted with a grin, while Stern and Madeline gasped. “The commander here had me disguised as a Centaurian and put in a stasis tube. When we were captured, I hid the kelekoms and stashed myself in a, well we could call it a crawlspace, where the Rojoks’ scans couldn’t detect me.”
Dtimun shrugged. “An example was required to keep the humans in line,” he told Lawson. “I had one of my men and one of Stern’s stage a confrontation, so that I could deal with the problem before it cost lives. My officer was given a drug, which allowed him to feign death, after which he was sent back on duty in another sector. Muldoon was ‘spaced’ but in a transparent survival suit that was not apparent to the spectators. Jeffrye, no one yet has been advised of Muldoon’s survival, or my officer’s. I have transferred them both to the engineering depot on Altair to keep the secret—at least until the two units are more comfortably united.”
Lawson just shook his head, laughing.
Declan was sent to debriefing, winking at Madeline and Stern as he exited the office. “We dead men will do our best to keep the Tri-Fleet ships flying, sir,” he added cheekily to Dtimun on the way out. “Even if we have to do it on Altair!”
“Humans,” Dtimun said. “They are a fascinating race,” he added.
“Which brings me back to my former question, about your plans,” Lawson began again. “I know you don’t have the first idea of how to belong to a fleet and coordinate battle strategies, and I don’t have any real authority over the Holconcom, but since you’re stealing two of my best officers and some talented SSC techs, I do feel that I have some rights!”
Dtimun’s eyes gave a green laugh. “I will consider the request,” he told the irritated old soldier.
“While you’re considering it, you might give me some suggestions on how to break this to Clinton Ruszel,” he added heavily. “He’s already been in here once, assuring me that nobody could capture you unless it was part of your strategy…” He stopped. “How the hell were you captured, anyway? And what’s this I hear about a spy infiltrating your crew?”
“Goodbye, Jeffrye,” Dtimun said quickly, motioning his officers out the door. It closed on Jeffrye Lawson’s last question.
“Outside, double stride,” Dtimun called to them, leading the way, “before he can ask any more embarrassing questions.”
They were outside, under the semidark cover of night, where two moons drifted lazily above the planet, one red and one glowing white. Moga trees made sinister shadows over the hypoturf as the officers made their way toward the base recreation hall.
“I was in line to be base medical chief of staff! I’ll never forgive you,” Madeline growled furiously. “Not if I live to be two hundred!”
“Madam, we have just survived one battle, must we fight another now?” Dtimun asked in mock weariness as he held them up just outside the officer’s club.
“Sorry, Maddie,” Stern said. “I’ll forgive you, sir, on the spot. I’m more grateful than I can tell you. But, why?”
Dtimun pondered that question silently, as the din from inside the club reached outside with the lure of music and gamevids and laughter. “Why,” he asked finally, “do you carry a piece of blue velvet ribbon?”
“I promised never to tell,” he began.
“You promised to tell the men,” Madeline argued.
“I promised to tell them about it,” he corrected with a grin. “It’s blue, made of velvet, 5.2 centimeters long and six years old.”
“The woman who wore it in her hair was a physician,” Dtimun said quietly. “who threw herself in front of a chasat to save two children. A medal was awarded to her posthumously, and received by you as her commanding officer,” Dtimun replied, folding his arms across his broad chest. “You buried the medal with her. Now you and Ruszel—and Hahnson, when he was alive—pass the ribbon back and forth among you as an accolade.”
“How did you know that?” Stern asked huskily.
Dtimun only smiled mysteriously. “I have attached you and your crew to the Holconcom as a measure of respect for your courage. You would have been discarded by your insane society because you were a clone. I wanted the entire complement, which seems to me the most capable of your entire military. Lawson will believe that your clone died on Terramer. And so will everyone else in the Tri-Fleet.”
“That still doesn’t explain why I got transferred to the Morcai Battalion, too,” Madeline grumbled. “You didn’t even ask!”
He raised an eyebrow. “I didn’t have to,” he said meaningfully and with a look that made her cheeks flush.
“My career in the SSC is gone forever,” she muttered. “I was in line for medical chief of staff, I had plans, I had—”
“Madam, will you cease and desist for just one moment?” Dtimun interrupted as he glanced toward the door of the officer’s club, where Komak had just entered and was now nodding in a conspiratorial manner. He looked down at her. “I have something for you. In recompense.”
“Something, for me?” she stammered, surprised.
“For both of you,” he replied solemnly. He glanced at Komak and motioned to him. And then, he moved aside as a second figure stepped out onto the hypoturf. First in shadow, then into the light of the two moons. The husky figure was suddenly outlined in light. It was smiling.
“Oh, my God!” Madeline whispered brokenly.
“This is…a hell of a way—” Stern broke off, choking on emotion.
They moved, all three at once, together. Arms opening, then closing. Heads touching. Bodies closing together. Tears rolling down cheeks that were forbidden to know tears. Voices husky with emotion that all the tortures of Ahkmau hadn’t been able to drag out of them, suddenly loosened unashamedly, while the two Centaurians stood quietly, watching.
“Strick! Oh, Strick!” Madeline sobbed against the physician’s broad shoulder.
“You son of a…!” Stern growled affectionately.
Dr. Strick Hahnson’s clone chuckled as his big arms clasped his two friends to his side. “God, it’s good to see you two reprobates again!” he said. “Komak brought me back from a couple of cells while the rest of you were liberating the camp. The C.O. hid me out with Muldoon in the hold on the way back. He said he was going to need a surprise to keep Maddie from landing in the brig. I guess I see what he meant, now.” He smiled at her. “And I thought I was going to end up alone with the Holconcom and the rest of our crew. It just wouldn’t have been the same, without you two!”
Madeline turned a red-eyed, tear-streaked face up to Dtimun’s, and everything she felt was there, naked, in her mind for him to read. She was the only one of the three who knew about his psychic abilities, a secret she would gladly carry to her grave after this joyful reunion.
He read that, all of it, in her eyes. And he smiled. “Come,” he said to the three humans. “We have just enough time for an intoxicating beverage before we lift.”
Komak came to join them. “Am I not the best keeper of secrets in the three galaxies?” he bragged. “And I said nothing!”
“You’re a prince,” Stern told him.
Komak looked warily at Dtimun, whose raised eyebrows and hard glare made him shake himself mentally.
“It’s a human expression,” Madeline told Komak. “You’ll get used to them.”
“You know, I think I will,” Komak agreed.
“Now, about Muldoon,” Madeline began.
Dtimun held up his hand. “I refuse to divulge any more command secrets in an unsecured location,” he said. “I must try to find a new kelekom operator before we lift.”
“T
hat will take skill,” Komak remarked. “They are rare, minds that can endure the joining.”
The three humans burst ahead of them into the officer’s club, to be greeted with waves and cheers and, then, catcalls. Nobody knew that Stern and Hahnson were clones. Madeline was certain that nobody would ever know, except Dtimun, Komak and Stern and herself. It would be the best-kept secret of the war. And, she had to admit, getting Strick back in any form was worth the sacrifice of her career advancement. She wouldn’t admit that serving aboard Dtimun’s ship was going to be invigorating, dangerous and exciting. But he probably knew, just the same.
“Ruszel, you fractured my wrist last time. Now it’s my turn!” an SSC pilot from another unit was yelling.
“Oh, yeah?” she replied. “Come here, you second-cousin to a space fungus, and I’ll fracture the other one for you!”
Dtimun glanced past Komak at the humans and smiled softly. “It will be a challenge, combining these crews.”
Komak chuckled. “She is everything I expected her to be,” he began.
Dtimun held up a hand and his eyes darkened. “Careful!”
“Very well. But she may sustain a fracture. I should assist her,” Komak remarked.
Dtimun’s eyes narrowed. “You have twice the strength of the humans,” he pointed out.
Komak took a small device, lifted it through his jet-black hair and handed it to the Holconcom commander. “There. All my microcyborgs are in your keeping. Madelineruszel, I will save you!” he yelled as he darted through the open sliding door into the officer’s club.
Dtimun stared down at the glowing microcyborgs in his golden palm, looked around him, sighed and walked into the building. The humans weren’t the only problem he was going to face in the months ahead, he considered, watching Komak bound above and into a group of spacers from a rival SSC ship.
But then, he assured himself, the Morcai Battalion was going to be the pride of the fleet one day. He glanced at the communidisc in his hand and scowled. This was something he didn’t want to have to share with his officers just yet. After their ordeal, they did deserve a night of fun. This new problem could wait, at least until the next day.
[Luna] The Morcai Battalion Page 27