Finally, the readings stabilized on his wrist monitor. “About time,” he muttered under his breath as he saw the alien relax.
Dtimun blinked, took a long breath and stood erect. He let go of Madeline’s long hair and moved back a step, his actions a bit jerkier than normal as he registered how far his lack of control had taken him. He glanced at Hahnson with calming eyes. “Thank you.”
“We live to serve,” Hahnson replied.
Dtimun stared at Madeline evenly, unblinking. He scowled as her stunned expression penetrated his sluggish mind.
“Sir,” Hahnson said after an uncomfortable silence. “You came to speak to Ruszel about her grants…?”
Dtimun frowned. “Grants.” He nodded.
Madeline was keenly aware of her sweaty, and probably smelly, person, her disheveled hair, her unkempt appearance in the tatty sweatshirt and sweatpants worn by military personnel in the gym. She realized with a start that absence hadn’t helped the problem. If anything, it had worsened. She looked at her commanding officer with anguish, wishing for the impossible.
“Sir. The grants…?” Hahnson repeated.
“Yes.” Dtimun cleared his throat. He looked down at her. “Ruszel, you have grants.”
She felt as strange as her commanding officer looked. “Yes, sir.”
“Good.” Dtimun stared blankly at Hahnson, blinked, turned on his heel and walked out of the building, obviously distracted.
Madeline didn’t dare laugh, but she wanted to. She stared at Hahnson when the door slid shut behind their mutual commander.
“We came to tell you that there’s going to be an attempt by Ambassador Taylor to grab your research grants. But don’t worry—the C.O. is going to stop him. Oh, and Mallory is going to replace you on the ship for a few more weeks,” he said in a kindly tone.
She let out a long breath. “This day is going from bad to worse. I guess I expected it, about Mallory…what did you do to him?” she added, still aghast at what had happened.
“I hit him with two hundred milliliters of drazelvium,” he told her.
“Two hundred milliliters?” she exclaimed. “You could bring down a pair of Yomuth with a dose that large!”
“Yes, well, you notice that I mainlined it directly into an artery. That dosage level was when the monitor registered that he had enough to stop him,” he replied defensively.
“To stop him from doing what?”
“Well, for starters, from killing Flannegan,” he said. “His next move after that would have seen you dead, too. Don’t go anywhere alone with him, not even if he orders you to. And if you can’t avoid it, remember the dosage I told you, and be sure to mainline it.”
Tranquillizers. Violent social behavior. Obvious and violent jealousy on the part of her commander that would never go unnoticed in company. It was too much. She gave Hahnson her best party smile. “Mary had a little lamb,” she began to recite.
“One more word and I’m having you psych-probed,” he replied.
She let out a breath and shook her head. “This is the strangest conversation I’ve ever had.”
“You’ll have others. I can guarantee it. I’m, uh, sorry about your Holconcom assignment being revoked,” he added gently. “There’s been some gossip about why.”
“There wasn’t much choice about that.”
She really had expected it. She looked up at her friend and frowned.
“The ambassador is going to try to take my grants away?” she asked suddenly. “Is he holding a grudge because I knocked him on his butt at the Altair reception?”
“You did what?” he exclaimed, laughing.
“He made a nasty remark to me and put his arm around me, and the C.O. growled…” She stopped. That had been the beginning. Dtimun had been ready to attack the ambassador because he had insulted her. “So Taylor’s getting even.”
Hahnson just smiled. “He won’t succeed. No worries. And you’ll be back with us in no time.”
Would she? She wondered. In just over two and a half years, Madeline had come to call the Holconcom home. She loved the Morcai and its crew. She loved the camaraderie of her fellow soldiers. She was accustomed to the pace aboard ship, the Cehn-Tahr fare in the canteen, the odd sounds and smells, the sometimes outrageous playfulness of Komak when the crew went together to the officers’ club. There was also the daily sight of Dtimun, which gave meaning to life. All those things would be gone forever.
“Don’t borrow trouble,” Hahnson advised. “I’ll shepherd Mallory. Maybe,” he added hesitantly, “things will work out.”
She nodded, but she was recalling Dtimun’s violent anger at Flannegan when he touched her and the abrupt, violent move he made toward her. Obviously, absence hadn’t helped his situation. If anything, it had made him hungrier. No, things were not going to work out. She was sure of it.
During the next week, she worked out in the gym, alone, reworked medical filing systems, went through the motions of seeing patients and writing up reports. But her heart felt like lead in her chest. The joy of that incredible day on Memcache seemed as distant now as the three moons of Enmehkmehk when the crew was transported to the horror of Akhmau. And about as hopeless.
Her misery was made complete by a visit from Ambassador Aubrey Taylor, the Terravegan ambassador to the Tri-Galaxy Council. He’d replaced the former one; a kind and sympathetic man who frequently played vid games with Madeline’s father, Paraguard Colonel Clinton Ruszel. Taylor looked as if he’d never played a game in his life. He was cold, unyielding and as friendly as a Nagaashe serpent in a fever.
“If you’re attached to the Holconcom, Lieutenant, why are you here on the base?” he asked curtly.
A good question. She wished she had a decent answer. “I had a bad case of Altairian flu, sir,” she replied courteously.
“Flu. You’re a doctor and you couldn’t inoculate yourself against it?” he asked.
Her face colored. She didn’t dare argue.
He glanced at her. “They say your commander values you.”
“I’ve heard that myself,” she said, trying to sound amused.
He didn’t laugh. He paced around her medical ward, inspecting things. “You have two classified military research grants coming up for renewal, I believe.”
Her heart felt cold. “Yes, sir.”
He glanced at her. “And how do you conduct research as a battlefield medic?” he asked.
“I do the research in my downtime, sir,” she replied.
He scoffed. “Downtime. This is your first downtime of any length in over two years, I believe?”
She felt her teeth clench. She didn’t reply. She hadn’t wanted to be away from the Holconcom even for the small space of time required to do intensive research. That was a failing she couldn’t deny. Adventuring in space was far more suited to her taste than bending over beakers and test tubes—or the modern equivalent.
“There’s a young Jebob woman in the Terravegan unit who has excellent grades in graduate school and has asked for your grants. She’s already won prizes in molecular biology. I favor transferring the grants to her.”
Madeline was winded, as if he’d punched her in the stomach. So Strick had been right. It had never occurred to her that she could lose her grants. There had been no deadline on her research into a new strain of bacterial parasite that infected Cularian bronchial passages—linked to Rojok DNA—and was almost always fatal.
Taylor waited for her reaction and seemed irritated when she didn’t reply. “No comment?”
“Sir,” she said politely, “the grants aren’t mine by right. I won them through hard work and debate.”
“You’re welcome to debate my Jebob candidate,” he said easily. “You’ll lose, of course.”
She could have kicked him. The obnoxious little worm!
He picked up an antique beaker and studied it through the light. “It also seems unacceptable to me that a human female, a Terravegan national, has been transferred to an all-male battle group acros
s racial lines. My predecessor approved the transfer, but I’ve had second thoughts. I think it looks bad. One woman, among all those men.”
“Sir, the military are mentally neutered…” she began.
“Oh, don’t hand me that bull,” he muttered. “The process can be reversed, and many times, it doesn’t even work. We’ve got a pregnant supply sergeant right now who’s being dishonorably discharged and sent to a breeder colony. Once the child is removed, she’ll be spaced for her actions.” He stared at her. “Some of your colleagues say you’d die for your commanding officer.”
“We all would, sir,” she replied smartly, although the reference to the misbehaving supply sergeant’s fate made her feel even sicker. She didn’t let it show. Not that she herself would ever experience that particular fate.
Taylor gave Madeline an irritated glance. He moved around her, his hands on his hips, and the way he looked at her made her uneasy.
“Your pal Flannegan is talking about an incident in the gym a few days ago. It seems your commander threatened to attack him when he found you sparring with him. Does the Holconcom C.O. have an interest in you that isn’t professional, Ruszel? Pity, considering that he’d kill you if he acted on it. His military authority at the Centaurian Dectat would be very interested to know about that, wouldn’t they, Ruszel? I mean, you’re a human. It’s against his law for him to even touch you.”
His comments made tragic sense. He couldn’t get at her directly, so he was going after Dtimun, to get at her that way. He was going to dig until he discovered that her commanding officer had an involuntary attraction to her. It would mean the end of Dtimun’s career, perhaps his life, if Taylor persisted.
She had to think fast. This was dangerous territory. She had to protect Dtimun, whatever the cost. “Sir, Flannegan called my C.O. a ‘cat-eyed benny-whammer’ in the officers’ club not too long ago,” she said, improvising. “I got in trouble for slugging him, and I had to tell the C.O. what prompted me to get into a brawl. That was why he threatened Flannegan.”
Taylor looked disappointed. He paced some more. He brightened. “I notice that the Holconcom commander has replaced you with your assistant, Mallory,” he said. “In fact, you haven’t been on missions with the Morcai for some weeks now.” He smiled coldly. “Are you incompetent, or is your commander leaving you behind for some other reason? Some…unmilitary reason?”
She bit her lip, hard. She would have to act. Dtimun couldn’t be sacrificed because she couldn’t control her own feelings. Her behavior had prompted his. He couldn’t help it, either. This was going to hurt. But it had to be done. There was only one way she could think of to save the situation.
“Sir,” she said in a hopefully conspiratorial tone, “I’m not happy in medicine. Not the way I thought I would be.” She averted her eyes, as if shamed by what she was admitting. “I was better suited as an Amazon captain. I asked to be relieved from duty with the Holconcom, to have time to review my options.” She glanced at him covertly. “There’s not much hope of a transfer. Admiral Lawson says it gives our services a boost to have an SSC medic, a human female at that, posted with a crack Cehn-Tahr commando unit.”
Taylor pursed his lips and looked elated. “I can manage that transfer, with or without Lawson. That what you want, Ruszel, to serve with humans again?” He emphasized the word “humans.”
She wanted to slug him, but she couldn’t afford to. She needed the transfer. It might spare Dtimun his career and his life. He stood to lose both if he had to be around her for any length of time.
“Yes, sir,” she lied. “I want to serve with a human division again.”
He smiled. It was a chilling smile. “I’ll get the paperwork through. Since you’re going into a forward division, you won’t need those grants or your research. I’ll give them to my Jebob candidate. Have a good day, Ruszel.”
He left. She waited until he was out of earshot, behind the closed door, before she let loose with a barrage of Cehn-Tahr curses, learned from Komak, which would have incensed the commander.
“An apt description of Ambassador Taylor, indeed,” came an amused, deep voice into her mind. “This is a sacrifice of some proportion, Ruszel,” the voice continued quietly. “Why are you making it?”
“You’re invading, sir,” she said, recalling the grizzled old face and snow-white hair that went with the voice even while she marveled at the reach of his mind through the distance between them. “It isn’t ethical.”
“Many things are not. Taylor wants your research because it threatens the Rojoks.”
“I suspected that.”
“Yet you are playing into his hands. Why?”
She closed her mind with mathematical formulae. The old voice chuckled.
“I see more than you realize,” he said gently. “Your commander will not understand your decision. It will enrage him.”
“Better enraged than dead, sir,” she said, and then could have bitten her tongue for the slip.
“I would never let them harm him,” he replied. “Or you.”
She recalled what Dtimun had told her, about the old one’s attempts to have her spaced when she was added to the Holconcom.
“I did not know you then, warwoman. I deeply regret my actions,” he said quietly. “I lived in bitterness, with my grief and my guilt. Dtimun and I have been at odds for many decades. He goes out of his way to enrage me.”
“You and the emperor, sir,” she said with a smile in her voice.
He chuckled. “As you say. I am in good company, am I not?” He became serious. “You may think your assignment will profit you both, but Taylor has an agenda. He will seek to harm you.”
“He’ll have to go through Admiral Mashita, sir,” she said, “and she knows me a great deal better than the ambassador does.”
He sighed. “Very well. But be wary of any dangerous assignments. Things are progressing at a pace I had not anticipated,” he added. “I must double my efforts to effect research progress, and also change in my own government.”
“Sir?”
“Never mind, Ruszel.” He hesitated. “Your feelings for the Holconcom commander—you do not understand the obstacles.”
“I do, sir,” she said stiffly. “Better than you realize.”
There was another hesitation. He saw her last conversation with Dtimun, in his office, in her mind. It saddened him. “I have committed many crimes in my long life, warwoman. Now I begin to pay for them. I will not interfere further. But there is a danger in being near your commanding officer, a grave one.”
“He would never hurt me,” she began defensively.
“He would never intend to hurt you,” he corrected. He paused. “I must go. Keep well. I must now attempt to find solutions for problems I, myself, created.”
And he was gone. Well, at least she had a way out, for Dtimun and for herself. It would mean giving up everything she loved. But at least Dtimun wouldn’t have to give up his career, or his life, if she left. It was her fault that he’d had to sideline her, because of her helpless attraction to him, which had caused him to react in that violent way with Flannegan. Now she had to provide a solution, however she could.
Ambassador Taylor was a sick little man. He was already notorious for his racist views about the Cehn-Tahr empire and aliens in general. He was also an advocate of family rights groups who felt that the government’s policy of neutering was a detriment to the human genome. The groups were trying to do away with the mental neutering of the military and even the breeder colonies. They had some radical idea that humans should choose their own mates and breed when they chose. It was a revolutionary attitude that was gaining strength.
But Taylor himself had no real agenda that could be discovered. He attached himself to whatever cause brought him the most prestige. He was a radical with power, one of the most fearsome of opponents. Madeline couldn’t fight him, and she knew that Dtimun wouldn’t, that he couldn’t afford to. Pretty soon, she was going to be out with a combat unit and her
stint with the Holconcom would be a warm memory to take out on cold nights during deployment. She wondered at her own docility. The human medic who’d dared Dtimun’s hot temper on Terramer had let the Terravegan ambassador walk all over her. It was out of character; but, then, she’d had a hard few weeks. She had no more heart left for a fight. She only wanted peace, even if it came at the cost of a transfer. Dtimun, she decided sadly, would probably be relieved to have the problem solved for him.
Two days later, her orders came through. She was to report within the week to Admiral Mashita in the forward lines of the Amazon Division for reassignment.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Two weeks later, Madeline was in charge of a company of girls in the forward division, charged with search and rescue of a downed Jebob ship on one of the planets in the Meg-Warren sector, which was several parsecs distance from the front. It wasn’t a choice assignment. The planet on which the ship went down was Akaashe, as the Cehn-Tahr called it, the home planet of the fearsome Nagaashe, the giant serpents who had once been the terror of the three galaxies. Their numbers were reduced now, and no one believed that any were left even on their home world. Madeline, who had seen both adult and child of the species, and knew of the Cehn-Tahr hopes for a treaty with them, knew better.
“No one’s seen a Nagaashe in decades,” Madeline’s EXO, Darmila, mused. “They’re probably extinct. This is just a milk run, ma’am, something to get you back into the rhythm of the job.”
“I’ve seen a Nagaashe in the past six standard months,” Madeline said solemnly. “And you have no idea of the size or ferocity of the adult of the species.”
“Where did you see one?” she asked, excited.
Madeline almost bit her tongue. On Memcache, but she couldn’t admit that. It had been a dangerous slip. She struggled for a reply that wouldn’t get her in more trouble. “That’s classified, sorry,” she said, and smiled.
Darmila bought it. “Oh. Sorry.” She frowned. “Then, what if they’re not extinct after all? You know, a shipload of children went down on Akaashe during the Great Galaxy War,” she added. “They were survivors of an attack by the Rojok/Jebob Alliance, pitifully crippled. They were never heard from again.” She shuddered. “Nobody high up ever commented, but gossip was that the giant serpents killed them all, every one.”
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