by Diana Palmer
“Another matter I haven’t had time to discuss with you,” Madeline told the alien commander. “What about cloning Muldoon? We have the tech…”
“No,” he said flatly.
She was shocked. “But, sir, the copy would have the same capabilities…”
“No,” he repeated. His eyes dared her to continue the argument. “My personnel will attend to his urning. And to the recloning of my officer.”
“Are we still being followed?” Hahnson asked abruptly.
“More closely by the parsec,” Dtimun replied.
“Do you have any ETA on Benaski?” Madeline added cheekily as the alien walked away. But no answer trailed back.
“You’re tempting fate,” Hahnson told her. “He isn’t himself. Something’s wrong.”
“What is he made of?” she asked suddenly. “You saw what he did to his own man in the mess hall, Strick. It was beyond even the means of a combat-trained Holconcom. And why are the Rojoks throwing so many warships against one lone vessel, even a Holconcom ship? What’s aboard that Chacon wants so badly?”
“I honestly don’t know,” he replied. “But if we can’t get Stern back to himself, we may very well find ourselves in another bloodbath before we reach a neutral port.”
“I could have cloned Muldoon,” she muttered.
“And he could have been an outcast, especially in our own society,” Hahnson replied curtly. “Would you really wish that on him? Yes, he had great knowledge of space engineering, but it would be insane to bring him back into a life worse than hell.”
“I suppose you’re right,” she said heavily. “I’ll miss him, though. Well, I’m going to go synthesize some more morphadrenin for my patients. Poor devils,” she said, thinking about the horror the refugees had endured. “Only clones, but they bleed and think and feel and cry just like us. And they can’t even vote, Strick, or marry or hold public office. They can’t serve in the military. They have no legal rights at all. They’re walking spare parts in our culture. I must have been insane to propose that for Muldoon.”
“Stop,” Hahnson said as they turned back down the corridor. “Don’t tell me, tell the Council. I feel the same way. Now, get to it, old girl, before the man on the bridge decides to take a bite out of you.”
“Let him. I’d give him hives,” she muttered.
“He has changed over the years,” Hahnson said as they jogged toward their respective makeshift sick bays. “The Dtimun I used to know would have stood you up in the brig with novapens leveled at your nose until you apologized. Strange.”
“Double-check my readings on Stern, will you?” she added.
“Will do. Maybe,” he added, tongue-in-cheek, “the ship’s scanners caught a cold and it blurred their vision.”
“A remark like that,” she called over her shoulder, “could get you inoculated for diseases they haven’t even discovered yet!”
On a screen halfway through the ship, a pair of elongated dark blue eyes was watching a plasma screen. On it, a redheaded woman in uniform was walking back to her makeshift sick bay. He touched the screen and the image faded. Seconds later, he was in the corridor.
Madeline had gone over the cell structure twice, with the same disquieting results.
She leaned forward, with her hands spread on the microanalyzer stand, frowning.
“It doesn’t make sense,” she murmured to herself.
“Perhaps it does.”
She jumped at the deep voice behind her and whirled, her green eyes wide. Dtimun stood there, unsmiling, his eyes a deep violet-blue as he looked at her. “You do have AVBDs in the corridors,” she said quietly, grinding her teeth inwardly as she recalled some of the things she’d said about Stern.
He nodded. “Although we rarely use them,” he told her. “The kelekoms can ‘see’ for us, even there.”
“Kelekoms…”
“Our living machines. What you call computers.”
She averted her eyes to her patients. Her mind, occupied for so many minutes on her lack of basic medical stores, began to work rapidly. Hahnson’s admiration for the alien had caught her attention. She’d been grossly unfair in her judgment, but Muldoon’s spacing had blinded her to the situation they were in. Dtimun had saved them when the Bellatrix had been threatened. He could easily have let the Rojoks slaughter them and escaped on the Morcai unscathed. But he hadn’t.
She was just beginning to see things that emotion had blinded her to, earlier. Dtimun’s quick action had stopped a massacre. Even she had to admit that Muldoon had precipitated the near disastrous conflict in the mess hall. But when she considered the spacing that had made her so angry, she saw more than she had at first. Something didn’t quite make sense about the public execution of the Centaurian officer, and of the Bellatrix’s chief engineer…
She turned to Dtimun and studied his strong, golden-skinned face. The fact that he’d refused to let her clone Muldoon, especially given the Centaurian respect for the procedure, had gnawed at her brain since their earlier conversation. Was there some other reason that he’d denied permission to clone the Bellatrix’s beloved eldest engineer? Some…stranger reason?
“You killed Muldoon.” It was more a question than a statement, now that her sharp mind was working properly again. She’d also had time to note some anomalies in the fight in the canteen and the spacing she’d witnessed.
Not one iota of expression escaped Dtimun’s control. “An example was necessary to avert a massacre.”
She searched his eyes. “I don’t remember ever reading that a Holconcom officer screamed, even when he faced death at the hands of his C.O. Not only that, Muldoon also screamed,” she said suddenly, as the event ran again through her mind.
One dark eyebrow lifted.
“I’ve served with him for six years aboard the Bellatrix. We’ve been in combat together. Muldoon has never screamed in his life,” she explained.
“Perhaps he had never faced certain death in a controlled environment,” Dtimun suggested.
“He was acting,” she persisted.
The other eyebrow joined the raised one.
“Besides,” she added, the argument solving itself, “his face never changed color or showed any reaction to the vacuum of space. Odd, isn’t it?” she added musingly. “Not something even a first-year med student would miss, if she was watching carefully. I must have been really distracted not to notice that.”
His eyes faded from a royal-blue to an amused, soft green, only a few shades lighter than her own. But he said nothing.
“You’re not going to tell me anything, are you, sir?” she asked.
“I will tell you not to offer these strange observations to your crewmates.”
She searched his eyes. “Very well.” She felt odd. As if she and the alien were sharing secrets. More than secrets. He’d infuriated her, made her angry, insulted her, threatened her with the discipline of the military. None of that had fazed her. Now he made her uneasy, but not in any way she’d ever felt before.
“You told Hahnson that you found something in the scans of Stern’s brain,” he changed the subject.
She grimaced. She didn’t want to confess it to an outsider. Hahnson would never make public his knowledge of Stern’s condition without real need. This alien was different. She was apprehensive about what he might do if she told him the whole truth. “I’ve served with Stern and Hahnson for ten years,” she pointed out, “ever since I gave up combat command and obtained my medical degree.”
“And you feel loyalty to your captain. Is that not against regulations?”
The question was unexpected. Her eyes were troubled. “It is. I was an SSC Amazon Commando from the time I was nine, until my eighteenth year. When I left, I held the rank of captain,” she told him. “I never understood, either, why I left, or what led me to medicine. Even SSC HQ questioned the choice. It was inexplicable, even to me.”
“Sometimes,” he said in an oddly soft tone, “our destinies shape us, rather than the rev
erse.”
“Perhaps.” She turned back to the sensors. “Do you understand the basics of viral transmutation?”
He nodded. “We do not perform medical research, since even the most basic tampering with DNA in nonclones carries the death penalty in my culture. But we are privy to the experiments of your government with genetic alteration. Viruses are nonliving organisms which achieve the extreme of evolutionary specialization for parasitism.”
“Very good, Commander,” she said, impressed. “Well, Rojok scientists have found a method in which it is possible to engineer a virus and introduce it into a human body to activate certain behaviors, which would be abnormal under ordinary conditions.”
He folded his arms over his broad chest. “You speak of biogenetic engineering.”
She nodded. “It only takes a second to introduce the virus. It doesn’t even require injection. It can be placed in the nostril.” She hesitated. “Stern was missing for several hours. When he came back, his behavior was, to put it mildly, odd.”
“Hahnson said the same thing.”
“Yes. We’re both concerned. In fact,” she added, facing him, “Stern himself is concerned. He doesn’t understand why he didn’t interfere when you allegedly spaced Muldoon.”
He cocked an eyebrow. “I suggest you omit the adverb if you repeat this conversation.”
“Allegedly means it isn’t proven.” She smiled.
He didn’t react. “I want you and Hahnson to watch Stern closely,” he told her. “I have a—” he sought the right word “—feeling that there may be more to this than an erratic personality change.”
“You think the Rojoks may have gotten to him?”
He nodded. “Anything is possible. Stern would be a valuable tool in the hands of Rojok spies.”
There was a loud moan, coming from the back of the mess hall where Madeline had several critical cases in ambutubes. She moved quickly to peer inside the torpedo-shaped Plexiglas case. Inside was a blue-skinned Altairian boy, a clone, crying out in pain. His culture was notorious for its stoicism. The pain, she thought as she opened the case, must have been monstrous. She’d been giving him opiates since he’d been brought aboard. The pain hadn’t diminished very much.
She reached in with her wrist bank of precious opiates and started to laserdot one into his primary thoracic vein once more.
The commander’s arm came out and blocked the move.
“He’s in pain,” she began to protest.
Before she got the last word out, Dtimun bent over the boy. He touched him gently on the forehead and closed his eyes. Only a second later, the child looked up at him with royal-blue eyes and smiled.
“Degrak mogkrom,” the child said.
Dtimun actually smiled. “Toshwa,” he replied in the same tongue.
The little boy’s eyes closed. He went to sleep.
Dtimun stood erect, visibly affected by the action. He caught himself and stood erect.
“Sir, are you ill?” she asked.
“I am not,” he denied.
“What did you do?” she persisted. “I’ve given him every opiate I possess, but nothing has completely contained the pain.”
He looked down at her with curious, pale blue eyes. “I convinced his mind to forget the pain,” he said simply. “It is a technique we employ with our own military. You may have noticed that we carry no medical complement.”
“But what if someone is critically injured?”
He didn’t reply at once. “We have methods of treatment that are somewhat advanced,” he said at last.
She wanted to press the issue, but Komak appeared in the doorway, his eyes a twinkling green. “Strickhahnson wishes to borrow a fledelwongmatzel,” he said with a nicely imitated human grin.
Madeline’s eyes bulged. It was a very naughty word.
“Nos hac malcache!” Dtimun shot at him.
The irrepressible alien didn’t react to the harsh tone. “It is Terravegan,” he explained to his superior officer. “It means…”
“Never you mind what it means!” Madeline said shortly. “If you’ll excuse me, sir, Hahnson needs his mouth washed out with soap.” She saluted and marched out the door.
“It is a curse of some magnitude,” Komak elaborated. “The human physician also threw a large object at a tech who questioned his orders.”
Dtimun chuckled, a trait he’d picked up from humans over the years. “He has improved with age. When we knew each other many years ago, he threw the techs themselves.”
“These humans, they are fascinating, are they not?”
“They are volatile and unpredictable,” Dtimun replied. “Stern must be carefully observed, at all times. There is something…”
Komak nodded. “I, too, feel it,” he said, the humor going into eclipse. His elongated eyes narrowed and grew dark blue. “There is a Rojok pulse here.”
Dtimun moved a step closer. “You must never speak of such intuitions in front of the others,” he said firmly. “Much less reveal that you feel them.”
Komak sighed. “We keep so many secrets,” he said.
“To reveal them would be catastrophic,” Dtimun replied. “Especially for you.”
“I live and die at your command,” he said with a smart fist to heart salute. He grinned.
“One day,” Dtimun threatened, “I will make soup with your bones.”
“You will become the first cannibal of your Clan, and my ghost will avenge me,” he shot back.
Dtimun’s eyes burned dark brown.
Komak held up both hands, palms out. “I know, we never speak of Clans. Forgive me. I shall return to duty immediately. I would make very bad soup.”
The boy saluted again and ran for his life.
Dtimun moved back to the ambutube that contained the young Altairian. The boy’s eyes opened. Dtimun placed his hand over the boy’s heart and stared into his eyes with a deep blue gaze. After a minute he nodded. The child smiled faintly and once again went to sleep.
On his way back to the bridge, the C.O. stopped in the kelekom sector. One of the operators, the current supervisor, gave him a worried look.
“The kelekoms have been following the Rojok pursuit,” the operator told him. “The Rojoks have modified their sensors to detect our faint heat signature. They have turned and are approaching.”
Dtimun drew in a long breath. “Who commands the pursuing fleet? Is it Chacon?”
The operator shook his head sadly. “It is one of their most fanatical captains,” he replied. “The kelekoms infer that our capture would mean Ahkmau almost immediately.”
“Keep me informed,” Dtimun replied quietly, and left them. As he started down the long corridor, he felt a sudden, stark pain in the center of his breastbone, between his two hearts. He stopped, caught his breath and managed to regain his composure before approaching crewmen saw any weakness in his posture. So it was beginning now, a year too soon. And at the worst possible time. He must speak to Komak quickly, in order that the chain of command would be intact if the worst happened…
Admiral Jeffrey Lawson was downing a quick cup of java while he waited for the first report from Terramer. His lined face showed the effects of only an hour’s sleep. He was impatient for news; for confirmation that it had been Holt Stern’s crew that the Holconcom had rescued.
He got up and paced the dim confines of his office. His mind still balked at the idea that Chacon had led the merciless attack. The wily Rojok commander-in-chief’s code of honor in battle was legendary. An attack on a defenseless colony of clones was hardly in keeping with that reputation. Mangus Lo would be capable of such an atrocity, but would Chacon submit to an order that conflicted with his code of ethics? Lawson shook his head. Perhaps the patrol he’d sent to Terramer could provide some answers.
“Sir!”
The sound of his adjutant’s voice froze him in thought.
“Yes, lad?” He activated the automatic door and strode quickly into the outer office. “Any word?”
&nb
sp; “Yes, sir.” The automatic comtech translated the message as it began to come in on the intersystem scanner. “The scouts report fatal magnabeam radiation blanketing the planet now. All the casualties seem to have been removed. The patrol’s just beginning to search the area. Sir, they have found one thing in the wreckage of the sci-archaeo ship—carefully hidden inside a bulkhead.”
“Well, what it is, boy?” Lawson demanded when the younger man hesitated and grimaced.
“A body, sir,” he said reluctantly.
“Only one?” Lawson’s brows drew together. “Can they give us an ID?”
The adjutant sighed and lifted his eyes to Lawson’s. “Yes, sir. The officer in charge knew the victim personally. Positive ID. The body, sir…it was Captain Holt Stern.”
6
Hahnson’s scowl was the darkest Madeline Ruszel had ever seen on his face. He was alone in his office, beyond the closed and soundproofed hyperglas door behind which Holt Stern lay in an ambutube.
“You’ve been corrupting Centaurians,” she told Hahnson.
He shrugged. “Only Komak. We could call it improving his education in Terravegan slang,” he replied. He folded his arms across his chest, his expression worried. “Look at this, Maddie.”
She moved to his side and looked at the diagnostic screen. In seconds she was scowling, as well.
“That’s what I was afraid of,” she said quietly. “I ran the same scans and came to the same conclusion. Stern,” she added, meeting his eyes, “is definitely not himself.”
He nodded.
“You aren’t trying to pacify me, are you?” she queried, used to arguments from her colleague. “I haven’t gone space-happy.”
“I know that,” he said. “I matched his bioscans from a month ago to these new ones and got the same result you did. The change is too radical to be natural. Someone has altered Stern’s mental patterns.”
“Yes,” she agreed, lowering her voice. “Does he know, do you think?”
He nodded. “Let’s say, he suspects. It’s an amazing alteration, too,” he agreed reluctantly. “There are no definite signs of tampering except for the rogue cells and the bioscan patterns. If we’d been less detailed physicians, we’d never even have suspected. He seems perfectly normal most of the time.”