“…by pirates who never saw a live Cehn-Tahr, yes, I know. Hahnson informed me after it was too late to demand my money back!” she muttered.
The green grew broader in his eyes. He cocked his head. “It did not occur to you to ask me?”
She cleared her throat. “I wouldn’t dare!”
“I have found very little that you would not dare, Ruszel,” he retorted.
She shifted restlessly and averted her eyes. It would be embarrassing, even for a physician, to put any of her burning questions to him.
“I realize that,” he said softly.
She grimaced. “I wish you wouldn’t walk in and out of my mind, sir. It’s very disconcerting.”
“You are far too easy to read,” he pointed out. “Telepaths learn to block unwanted intrusions at a very early age.”
She lifted her eyes to his, searching them quietly. “You healed the little Altairian child with nothing more than your mind,” she recalled. “I’ve never spoken of it, but I think your mental abilities are greater than you allow us to see.”
“Much greater,” he said in her mind.
“You keep secrets very well, as a species,” she pointed out.
“Some are best kept,” he returned silently. “If your species knew the true nature of mine, few humans would feel secure enough to serve with us.”
That was a revelation. It disturbed her at some deep level. “We’ve seen you fight,” she said, assuming that was what he referred to.
His eyes became solemn. “You have seen a greatly restrained version of our fighting style,” he said surprisingly. “We modified it for the benefit of our human crewmen.” He looked at her closely. “Why do you think our emperor was able to conquer over one hundred and fifty worlds with little more than the Holconcom?”
That was a question she’d never asked. “I never thought about it, sir.”
“Some races who were victims of his first conquests still remember the Holconcom attacks. The fear alone kept them in line. It does, even today.” His face grew hard. “We are an aggressive, violent species. Mercy is unknown to us.”
“My little Altairian patient might disagree with you,” she said, smiling in memory.
“The child was not my enemy,” he pointed out.
She studied his hard face in silence. “Why don’t you want other races to know anything about your society?”
“It would serve no useful purpose,” he said curtly. “We never mate outside our own species.”
She felt cold inside. She wasn’t quick enough to divert her mind. He saw the sadness, and understood it all too well.
His eyes narrowed. “You are a fragile race,” he said.
She stared at him, uncomprehending. “I could remind you that I took down several Rojok soldiers when we were in Ahkmau.”
“I could remind you that only Chacon’s intervention saved your life during the escape.”
“Rub it in,” she muttered, flushing. “I was intent on saving a patient. I didn’t see the Rojoks rushing me.”
“Your impulsive nature could lead you to tragedy,” he said. “You must exhibit more control of yourself.”
“I do try, sir. But human nature is what it is. We can’t change what we are.”
He grew contemplative. “No,” he said, an odd bitterness in his tone. “We cannot.”
“About Mallory, sir…”
“You can use the comps to give her a virtual tour of the ship,” he said firmly. “I do not need any more distractions aboard. You and your temper provide quite enough already.”
“My temper?” she exclaimed. “Look who’s talking!”
“Remember to whom you are speaking!” he shot back.
“I didn’t break a Gresham in half with my bare hands when I lost my patience…!”
“Dismissed!”
She almost bit her tongue off keeping the reply back that she wanted to make. She saluted sharply, turned and marched out of the office. Behind her, she heard muffled curses in Cehn-Tahr, and marched faster.
Lieutenant (J.G.) Edris Mallory’s expression was one of pure joy as she sipped the illegal caffeine in Madeline’s office. The use of stimulants, even natural ones, was prohibited by Tri-Fleet regulations. Not that anyone enforced the law, especially since Admiral Lawson himself sneaked in java from the Altairian colonies. Of course, he was an admiral and could get away with it. Madeline might not fare as well.
Edris closed her eyes and savored the taste and scent as she lifted her head. “Oh, bliss,” she sighed.
Madeline laughed. “It is pretty special, out here in the big black, isn’t it? We’re so far away from anything that can’t be grown in solution.” She sipped her own coffee. “I have to talk to you about something.”
Edris grimaced. “I’ve screwed up again, haven’t I?” she asked. “I’m just not suited to life in our present age, you know. I washed out of combat school with a memorable low grade, then I couldn’t get accredited as a breeder. Now here I am doing combat medicine, and I fumble more than I fix…”
“You’re doing well,” Madeline interrupted. “All you lack is confidence in your own abilities. Well, that,” she added hesitantly, “and the ability to talk back to people. To the Cehn-Tahr specifically.”
The slender young blonde moved restlessly in her chair. “They’re very intimidating, especially the Holconcom commander,” she replied. “He glares.”
“You have to learn to glare back,” Madeline told her. “They’re a misogynist culture. Their own women are denied access to the military, much less combat. The Cehn-Tahr think our military is mad to permit women to serve in it, mentally neutered or not.”
Edris finished the last precious drop of her coffee. “I’m just glad it’s you and not me serving aboard the Morcai.”
“That’s what I want to talk to you about,” Madeline told her. “Since Holmes and Watts shipped out, you and I are the only experienced Cularian specialists on base right now. There are twenty in graduate school, four of whom are due to be assigned to Trimerius when they graduate. But if something happens to me, you’re the only backup around.”
“Nothing will happen to you, ma’am,” Edris assured her with a smile. “You’re one of the bravest people I know.”
Madeline hesitated. “Anyone can die. The Holconcom can’t function without a medic who can operate on Cehn-Tahr soldiers in an emergency. The commander hates medics as a rule, and he won’t permit the Dectat to assign physicians to him. He’s reluctant to have me aboard, but Ahkmau convinced him that it was lunacy not to carry a Cularian specialist into battle.”
“He scares me to death,” Edris commented, wrapping her arms around her slender figure. “I don’t know what I’d do, if I ever had to substitute for you in the Holconcom.”
“That’s just the point. The commander agrees with me, that we need to start letting you come with us on certain missions aboard the Morcai so that you can get used to the routine aboard ship.” She deliberately didn’t meet Mallory’s eyes as she lied to her. It was in a good cause.
Edris lost two shades of color. “No,” she said at once. “Oh, no, I can’t do that. I can barely manage here, when you’re away with the unit. I could never…I mean, I can’t…”
“You can,” Madeline said, and in a tone that didn’t brook argument. “You got through medical school. You’ll adapt to the Morcai.”
Edris bit her lower lip. She looked hunted.
“They’re just men,” she said, exasperated. “Alien men, but males are pretty much the same anywhere.”
“Not the Cehn-Tahr,” Edris argued. “I’ve heard stories.”
Madeline raised both eyebrows.
Edris hesitated, but the gossip was too juicy not to share. “They say,” she said in a conspiratorial tone, “that a Cehn-Tahr soldier ate a young Jebob recruit during the Great Galaxy War…ma’am?”
Madeline was doubled over, laughing. That story had gone through the ranks over the years like a fever. Some people did actually believe
it.
“Well, they said,” Edris said defensively.
“Edris,” Madeline replied, wiping away tears of near hysteria, “I can give you proof that no Cehn-Tahr has ever eaten another soldier.”
“You can?”
“The C.O. has never eaten me,” she reminded her colleague. “And nobody over the years has given him more cause.”
“You do wear on his nerves, I hear.”
Madeline laughed. “His nerves, his temper, his patience. He’s dressed me down, grounded me, brigged me on occasion,” she recalled. “But he’s never taken a bite out of me.”
That was true. The battles between the commander of the Holconcom and his chief Cularian medic had assumed the mantle of legend. Once, Madeline had followed Dtimun off the ship raging about his refusal to let her suture a bone-deep wound in his leg. He trailed blood out the airlock and just kept walking, even when she threw a cyberclamp after him in impotent rage.
“Isn’t it amazing that he never busted you in rank?” Edris mused.
“He did try,” Madeline assured her. “But my father is a colonel in the Paraguard Wing and best friends with Admiral Lawson. They ganged up on Dtimun and refused to let the demotion go through.” She grinned. “The C.O. was livid! And did he get even! He requisitioned my billet for storage and I had to sleep in the cargo hold for a solid week. He only relented when I borrowed a player from Hahnson and flooded the hold with ancient human drum and bagpipe music.”
“I heard about that,” Edris chuckled. “Didn’t he break a Gresham in half…?”
“With his bare hands, and lucky for him that the power pack was drained,” Madeline nodded enthusiastically. She pondered that. “You know, they really are incredibly powerful.”
Edris toyed with her java cup. “Do I have to go?”
Madeline nodded.
Edris sighed. “Okay, then.”
Madeline smiled. “Good..”
Edris Mallory had never been aboard a Cehn-Tahr ship before. Everything about it fascinated her, from the way personnel ran to and from positions down the wide corridors to the temperature, which was several degrees cooler than SSC ships.
“Their core body temperature is three degrees higher than our own,” Madeline reminded her as they jogged toward the Cularian medical sector. “They cool the ship to make them more comfortable.”
Edris was looking at the alien script on the compartment hatches as they passed them. She shook her head. “I don’t know how anybody ever reads that.”
“It’s not so hard,” came the amused reply. “It’s a lot like old Asian languages on Terravega, mostly symbols. Pronouncing it, though, that’s hard.”
“They pronounce names differently according to kinship and relationship status, too, don’t they?”
“Yes.”
Edris frowned. “Why are they so secretive? I mean, we know a lot about their physical makeup, but nothing about their culture or even their behavioral patterns.”
“They don’t volunteer information,” Madeline said, still smarting about her black market vids that had been a scam. “I’ve spent years trying to dig it out of Komak. He won’t tell me anything.”
“You could ask the C.O.,” Edris suggested.
“Only with a good head start,” Madeline assured her. “You just don’t bring up those topics with him.”
“I suppose not. I wonder if…”
“Who authorized you to bring Mallory aboard?” came a terse, angry deep voice from behind them.
Madeline stopped with easy grace and turned. Edris was frozen in place, her blue eyes like saucers as she stared uneasily at Dtimun.
“If I go down sick, you have to have a Cularian specialist aboard,” she said simply.
“You are never unwell,” Dtimun pointed out.
“I could catch that Altairian flu and be laid low for a week,” she replied. “We have to have backup, and there isn’t anyone else.”
“Holmes,” he began.
“Holmes shipped out to the Algomerian sector last week,” Madeline told him. “Besides, he wasn’t comfortable aboard the Morcai.” She said it with a hint of reproach.
Dtimun’s eyes narrowed and his jaw firmed. “I have competent physicals on my own planet, given by my own physician,” he replied. “I do not require the services of a Terravegan Cularian specialist!”
Madeline pursed her lips and smiled. “Ever?”
He glared at her while Edris tried to melt into the deck.
“If I hadn’t been at Ahkmau,” she began, “you’d be dead now. Sir.”
“Will there ever be an end to the constant revisiting of that medical procedure?” he wondered.
“Well, not as long as I’m alive, sir,” she said with twinkling green eyes. “You are, after all, my greatest medical accomplishment.”
He didn’t speak. He was still glaring.
“Some surgeons couldn’t have managed what I did under laboratory conditions,” she continued, warming to her subject. “I did it with a couple of purloined tools and almost no pure water, with Rojok patrols right outside the prison cell.”
His lips were now making a thin line.
“You know, I don’t recall that you ever even thanked me for it,” she continued.
He bit off some comments in his own language.
“Sir!” she exclaimed.
He made a rough noise in his throat and turned his attention to Mallory. “Make sure that Ruszel acquaints you with shipboard protocol. No wandering is allowed, especially in the kelekom sector.”
Mallory saluted, rigid as a board. “Sir, I never wander. I’ve never seen a kelekom. I mean, I don’t want to see one. I mean, not that they aren’t interesting, I’m sure…!”
Dtimun turned back to Madeline, exasperated. “There is no one else?”
She glared at him. “Edris is perfectly competent.”
“To do what?” he demanded.
Edris made a hunted sound. She looked as if she wanted to hide under something.
“Sir, don’t you have some pressing military function to perform that requires your attention elsewhere?” Madeline asked pleasantly. “Lives must be at stake somewhere.”
“One day, warwoman,” he bit off.
She raised both eyebrows. “One day, what, sir?” she asked innocently.
He darted a killing glance at Mallory, another at Madeline and turned on his heel, muttering in his own tongue as he stalked off.
“Can you translate that?” Edris asked timidly.
“Oh, you don’t want me to do that,” Madeline assured her. “Let’s get you settled. It’s going to be a long few days.”
On that score, she was absolutely right. There was an emergency on one of the Coromat system planets near Terramer which required the skills of a Cularian medical specialist. Madeline elected to take Edris along, to let her get the feel of an away mission.
Sadly, no one had thought to tell the new recruit that the commander did high grav landings. He put down at six megs and Mallory threw up all over the deck. Dtimun was eloquent.
When he left the scout ship, Hahnson and Stern and Komak roared with laughter.
“Sorry,” Hahnson told Edris, “we aren’t laughing at you. It’s just that the C.O. does line himself up for these mishaps. I mean, who puts down at six megs?”
Stern raised his hand.
“Not in a Cehn-Tahr scout, you never did,” Madeline pointed out.
“I’m just so sorry,” Edris moaned, pressing a medicated wipe to her face. “I’m so embarrassed! I’ve never done anything like that.” She dotted an enzyme eraser onto the mess she’d made on the deck, cleaning it efficiently.
“I threw up the first time I did a high grav landing,” Madeline assured her.
“Not on Dtimun’s ship, you didn’t,” Hahnson reminded her.
“Oh, like you know,” Madeline muttered.
“Actually, I threw up, too, the first time I had to fly with Dtimun,” Hahnson confessed. “He’s just short of suicidal when he�
��s piloting a small ship. But that high grav landing really weirds out enemy combatants. They never expect it.”
“I suppose it would give us an edge in battle,” Edris commented weakly.
“I don’t suppose you’d know why the C.O. looks as if he’s been chewing on the hull plates?” Stern asked Madeline.
She gave him an angelic smile. “I’m certain it doesn’t have anything to do with me,” she assured him.
“What did you say to him?” Stern persisted.
“I only mentioned how lucky he was that I was with him at Ahkmau when he needed emergency surgery,” she replied. “And there was the matter of bringing Edris aboard.”
“But you said the commander wanted me to learn the routine aboard the Morcai,” Edris burst out.
“He did say that. Sort of,” Madeline hedged.
“What exactly did he say?” Hahnson piped in.
Madeline shrugged. “That I could give her a virtual tour of the premises.” She blinked. “Virtual, real, I mean, with the vid systems we have today, really, is there a difference?”
Edris put her face in her hands. “He’ll kill me.”
“Yes, but he can’t eat you,” Madeline assured her. “And we’ve already had that discussion. That Jebob soldier they said the Cehn-Tahr ate during the Great Galaxy War—he was actually eaten by a Rojok, wasn’t he?” she asked the men.
Edris covered her mouth with her hand and went pale.
“Rojoks don’t eat Jebob nationals,” Stern scoffed. “They’re far too stringy.” He yawned. “It was an old Altairian, and they’d just run out of rations…Mallory? You okay?” He winced. “Damn, and you just cleaned the deck already!”
Madeline hit him. He just laughed.
“I am certain that I don’t want to serve aboard this vessel,” Mallory said when they’d treated the diplomatic patient and were safely back aboard the Morcai, heading back to Trimerius.
“You just had a bad introduction to Holconcom routines,” Madeline said soothingly. “First times are always difficult.”
“This first time will give me nightmares every night from now on.,” Edris assured her. “How could you bring me aboard without telling the C.O.?” she moaned.
TheMorcaiBattalion:TheRecruit Page 3