The Morcai Battalion

by Diana Palmer

  “Here!” Komak said from the rear of the throne room, his green eyes laughing as he held up a glowing amber globe with the hope of the free galaxies inside. In the center was a cluster of tiny globes, each containing DNA from a racial type, with documentation written in a dead language. He smiled. “Evidently the Rojok scientists could not decipher them,” he added. “They are recorded in Old High Martian.”

  “Where are the scientists?” Dtimun demanded of Mangus Lo.

  The old emperor glared at him. “They refused to translate them. They were expendable.”

  “As was the Centaurian prince?” Dtimun added in a voice so soft and dangerous that Stern felt uncomfortable.

  Mangus Lo looked at him blankly. “He would not tell me where you were,” he said, as if it should have been perfectly clear why the boy was tortured. “I have had this plan in mind for some time, to attack Terramer and kidnap the Centaurian elite, so that you would be forced to come and rescue them.” The Rojok smiled coldly. “What are a few thousand lives, if I have you at my side? The greatest of the alien commanders—without you, the Tri-Galaxy Fleet could not menace us…!”

  Dtimun glared at him. “You are completely mad,” he pronounced.

  The old Rojok blinked. “You will decipher the Spheres for me,” he said quickly. “Then you may take Chacon’s place at my side. I will give you a planet to rule, servants, women! Chacon must die,” he added, his mind obviously far removed from the reality of his capture. “He disobeyed me and came here. My guards say that he actually saved the Centaurian princess. I sent her here to die, because your men would not give you to my guards…” He frowned and stared at Dtimun. “How did you escape?”

  “You will have a brief time to ponder that before your execution,” Dtimun told him, still furious.

  The emperor smiled. “You will never get out of here alive, with or without me.”

  Dtimun smiled back. “We will all get out of here alive,” he countered. “You will face justice.”

  “I am a sovereign ruler. You cannot try me in a court.”

  Dtimun didn’t grace the remark with a reply.

  Stern straightened. “I hear marching feet,” he said. “Reinforcements?”

  “I have many troops in other ships,” Mangus Lo said pleasantly. “You are mine now, Dtimun.”

  “Do you think so?” Dtimun’s eyes flashed green, just as the door burst open behind him.

  Madeline Ruszel could have kissed every medic aboard the Freespirit as she watched them gently go to work on the survivors of Ahkmau who could be saved. So quietly, so efficiently, they consoled the broken-spirited, the half-dead, the mentally torn. Medics of all races were represented in that crew, and possessed of a dedication rare for the time. Most of them were retired from high-pressure work. They were too old for conventional medicine, so they formed this fraternity of healers, bought a space-going vessel, and became the most famous rescue ship in the three galaxies. Madeline admired them with all her heart.

  “How many of them can we save, do you think?” she asked the head surgeon, Lindsey Bagnacdor of Terravega.

  The dark-skinned, dark-eyed surgeon shrugged. “There are several hundred who are starved already beyond salvation, despite our sophistication. Another two hundred have minds so completely destroyed that we will never be able to identify them. In forty years of medical practice, I have never seen the likes of this place. Never!”

  Madeline nodded. “A nightmare,” she agreed. Her eyes went to the spaceport where the Morcai was filled with her crew and waiting to be boarded. Most of the camp’s inmates had been teleported aboard the Freespirit while the battle still raged between Chacon and Mangus Lo’s warring forces, and the survivors of the Holconcom. It was impossible to tell who was winning, but the diversion gave the Freespirit time to land and evacuate the camp. In the meantime, the rest of the Morcai complement found its way aboard, including a grinning Lieutenant Jennings, the communications officer, who had mined the rest of the base’s communications network after disabling the primary unit.

  Dtimun and Stern and Komak were still missing, however. Jenkins and Higgins were adamant about waiting. Dtimun had commanded them to lift if he wasn’t back when the Freespirit was ready to depart. It was a direct order, and they meant to obey it.

  “We can’t risk waiting, Dr. Ruszel,” Higgins said apologetically. “By now, Mangus Lo’s ship will have realized that primary base communications are out, and he’ll have ordered reinforcements here from his ship. If we don’t get out now, we could all be recaptured.”

  “I know, Higgins, but…” she argued sadly.

  “We have to get out while we can,” he said.

  He was only doing what he was told. In all honesty, she couldn’t even blame him. But she still procrastinated, even now, hoping to buy just a little more time for Stern and Komak and the commander…

  “Dr. Ruszel, we have to go now!” Higgins insisted.

  At his side, Jennings listened to the microchip receiver in his ear and grimaced. “It’s Abemon,” he called to Higgins. “The kelekoms are registering an entire fleet of Rojok fighters on the way here!”

  Which raised the question of how the kelekoms had been hidden from the Rojoks all this time, but she didn’t have time to ask, and she could no longer argue her position.

  “Okay. I’m on my way,” she called. She extended her hand to Bagnacdor. “Thank you for responding so promptly. You must leave now.”

  “I’m only glad we could be of assistance,” he said, smiling. “Our size is our greatest asset in rescue missions like this. Of course, that bulk makes us sluggish, and we can’t run very fast. But very few warring cultures try to shoot at us. We have a good reputation.”

  “The best. If ever I can be of service…”

  “When you get too old to be a combat medic, come and see me,” he offered. “You’d be an asset. Bon chance.”

  “And you.”

  She moved slowly back toward the Morcai even as the Freespirit signaled to her medics that they had five minutes to teleport the remainder of the survivors aboard. Damn, Higgins, she thought as her eyes scanned the crowded spaceport where battles were still raging, they wouldn’t leave you!

  “Aren’t we even going to blow up the place before we leave?” she asked the young first officer as she paused reluctantly at the hatch to the elevator tube of the mammoth ship. Its coppery hull gleamed like Vegan honey in the first rays of the sunrise.

  “Already taken care of, Doc,” he said, smiling. “The demolition teams have been busy while you and the rescue medics evacuated the survivors. Everything goes up in atoms when we lift.”

  She glanced behind her and winced. “Higgins, couldn’t we…?”

  “Doc, I don’t want to leave them, either,” he told her gently. “But the C.O. said to lift, and I’ve got to. You haven’t heard yet, but we received a lasergram from HQ. The Centaurian dectat just forced a war vote through the Council and announced its own. We’re now officially at war with the Rojok empire, and that includes the entire Centaurian fleet, as well as Tri-Galaxy Fleet forces. That means Chacon will soon be ordered by the Rojok Military Command to stop us from escaping. Maybe he hasn’t heard about the war vote of the Tri-Galaxy Council yet, but he will, any minute. I’m sorry. We have to go. Now!”

  “Karamesh,” she murmured with a weary, sad smile. The thought of the cloned Stern sitting out the war in a prison camp like this was wounding, not to mention the treatment that Dtimun and Komak would receive. It had been a hard day. First, preparing Hahnson’s scarred body for urning. Now, giving up what was left of Holt Stern, abandoning him to fate. It had been a very hard day. She turned slowly and made her way to the elevator tube, her heart sagging around her ankles.

  “Maddie!” a familiar voice called from nearby. “Wait for us!”

  That voice! She whirled, her eyes alight with joy as she saw the three missing officers running toward her. There was someone being carried like a sack of chovamecks over Dtimun’s broad sh
oulder.

  “Talk about timing!” she exclaimed. “Where were you?”

  “In Mangus Lo’s flagship,” Stern grinned, sweating and gritty faced.

  “The sandskimmer would not start, so we had to make our way here on foot,” Komak explained with a flash of green eyes.

  Madeline glanced at the unconscious form over the Centaurian’s shoulder. Her eyes widened as she recognized the dumpy little form in Royal robes. “Mangus Lo?” she exclaimed, disbelieving. “You’ve got Mangus Lo?”

  Dtimun nodded. “Stern and I reluctantly decided to leave him alive to face justice at the hands of the Council.”

  “An unfortunate set of circumstances force me to contest that decision,” came a commanding voice from behind them.

  Chacon and six of his men, armed with chasats, stood suddenly between the small group and the Morcai’s elevator tube.

  “The war vote from the Council just came over our communications network,” Madeline told Dtimun sadly.

  “A pity it did not come one day later,” Chacon said. “Put Mangus Lo down.”

  Madeline stepped forward, right in front of the Rojok field marshal’s chasat. “Before you go any farther, Commander,” she told the tall Rojok, “look around you, please. Over there.”

  Where she pointed, the Freespirit medics were loading over a hundred children onto the teleportation mat. Some had limbs missing. Others were so thin, their bones stuck through the flesh. All races were represented in that sad, young group. And the sight of it was enough to turn even a combat medic’s stomach.

  “Multiply that by several million,” she persisted, her eyes steady on the Rojok’s face, “and see if your conscience can bear it. Even our own worst races don’t target children.”

  The Rojok’s expression was rigid, expressionless. For one long minute, he hesitated. Wavered. Relaxed. He drew in a short breath. “In exactly five solar minutes,” he told Dtimun, “I will hear of the war vote for the first time.” He glanced at Madeline with an odd twinkle in his slit eyes. “If I were you, I would run…very fast.”

  She grinned at him, turned and rushed toward the ship, where the last of her patients was being brought up into the belly of the giant copper-hulled ship.

  “I will remember what you have risked for the sake of these wretched survivors,” Dtimun told the Rojok field marshal. “As will they.”

  “Would you have done less, Dtimun of Centauria?” Chacon asked with a knowing smile. “T’cleemech.”

  “T’cleemech, Chacon.”

  Dtimun turned and carried the unconscious Rojok emperor into the elevator tube. Chacon’s men watched with unreadable expressions. It went without saying that they, his personal bodyguards, would have followed him straight into hell if he’d asked them to. They wouldn’t betray him to whatever authority replaced the tyrant Mangus Lo in the Rojok government.

  Stern paused as he and Komak followed Dtimun. “Commander, if I were you, I’d get my ship the hell out of here,” he told Chacon. “In less than two standard minutes, there’s going to be a lot of noise and dust where Ahkmau once stood.”

  “An improvement, I would think,” Chacon replied, eyeing the mounds of dead inmates that still lay in the red dust.

  He turned, commanding and regal, as he led his men quickly toward the Rojok flagship that Mangus Lo had just, unwillingly, vacated.

  The Freespirit lifted as the vator tubes locked shut on the Morcai.

  Within seconds, the Morcai was airborne. Below it, a chain reaction of explosions sounded on the red desert, sending earth-shattering tremors to the distant chain of mountains beyond.

  “Nice of the Rojok field marshal to let us go,” Stern commented when they were on the bridge.

  “Do not be deceived,” Dtimun said from his command chair. “Chacon is first and foremost a soldier. He will honor the plight of the survivors and not, I think, attack the Freespirit. We, however, are fair game now. I do not expect the Rojok commander to hold anything back.”

  “If we can outrun them,” Stern said, “we’ve got a fighting chance.”

  “That depends on the results of Abemon’s survey on the ship’s condition. They cannot equal our normal speed, but they have firepower that we lack,” Dtimun said quietly. “Abemon, how are we?” he called to the Centaurian engineer.

  Abemon looked up from his panel. “It’s a miracle that we even made orbit, sir,” he replied. “Some of the circuitry is fried. Weaponry’s still out.” He shook his head wearily. It had been a long day for the engineering and communication officers. “Sir, we lost five engineers and ten techs taking the ship back. I’m that many understrength—and it’s a big ship.”

  “By Simalichar, why did you not say so earlier?” Dtimun demanded. His fist hit the intership comm switch on his console. “Personnel!”

  “Sir!” came the instant reply.

  “Run a check through your database and find me the name of every crewman, human or Centaurian, who has advanced training in ship engineering, regardless of his current assignment aboard ship.”

  “Yes, sir. It will only take a moment.”

  “How long do you estimate the repairs will take?” he asked Abemon.

  “Impossible to say, sir,” Abemon replied apologetically. “These replacement parts we removed from the Rojok ships are inferior at best. We have to adjust them to make them fit, and that takes precious time. I can give you half power now, but that’s pushing it.”

  “I’ll want two-thirds in fifteen minutes, engineer, and don’t tell me it’s impossible,” he added when Abemon opened his mouth to protest. “For me, the word does not exist. Weaponry section, report your progress,” he called to the Centaurian officer on his right.

  The weaponry officer turned from his console. “We’re separating the main unit now, Commander. By the time engineering completes its repairs, we can give you one-third firepower,” he said proudly.

  Dtimun cursed quietly in Centaurian, mumbling something about five soldiers with novapens being able to climb onto the hull and do better than that.

  Stern felt the sensors pulse under his fingers at the helmsman’s console he was occupying, replacing the Holconcom helmsman who had died on Enmehkmehk, and he scowled as his eyes briefly touched the starmaps. “Rojoks!” he muttered.

  Before he could comment further, one of the ship’s four kelekom operators walked onto the bridge, his kelekom transported by clinging to the front of his uniform and glowing a soft green color.

  “Commander,” the operator said with a salute, “we have detected a wing of Rojok fighters coming after us.”

  Dtimun’s eyes colored a solemn blue as he studied the kelekom. He closed his eyes for an instant. When they opened, they were a darker shade. He nodded, and as if he and the kelekom had communicated somehow.

  “There is another matter,” the operator added sadly. “We have lost Koras, and with him the youngest of our kelekoms. It is dormant. I think it may not survive.”

  Dtimun only nodded. “His courage will be noted. Do what you can for the unit.”

  “Yes, sir.” The operator left the bridge.

  “As I expected, the truce dissolved only seconds ago, and Chacon’s ships are in full pursuit.” He glanced at Stern curiously. “How can you read starmaps so well when part of our power is drained and you have no direct link to the charts?”

  Stern shrugged. “I learned to fly by instinct. I rarely look at a sensor screen or a starmap. I follow paths I can see in my mind. I suppose I sensed the ships—” He broke off, embarrassed.

  Dtimun smiled. “It is how we ourselves navigate, Stern,” he replied, “with the help of the kelekoms. Cut your speed to sublight and come about to 234 Brichtlar Scale. Let’s try evasion first.”

  “Aye, sir,” he said, feeling the surge of power under his hands as he made the adjustments on the console. It was a dream of a ship, he thought, the excitement making his dark eyes shimmer as he felt the mammoth ship respond to his fingers. Pilots spent their lives and careers praying
for one fling at the controls of such a precision piece of equipment. It would, most likely, be the last time he ever sat at the controls of a ship, he thought bitterly. Clones weren’t admitted to the pilot rolls. The thought took some of the pleasure out of his maneuvers, but he managed to ignore it. Like Komak said, better to flow with the current than to fight against it and go under.

  He made the correction quickly, neatly, and the great ship reduced speed. But the engines were sluggish, and the process took much longer than would have been normal.

  His eyes went to the sensors. He grinned. “They flew right over us,” he laughed.

  Dtimun’s eyes gave a soft green smile. “Abemon, I’ve bought you a few more seconds. I expect results.”

  The young Centaurian nodded. “You’ll get them, sir.”

  Komak came up the access ladder and joined his commander by the main console. “The casualties are managing well, although Madelineruszel is using some very strange words in connection with the Rojok prison guards.”

  “No doubt. And Lyceria?” Dtimun asked, standing up.

  Komak lifted his shoulders in a facsimile of a shrug. “She remains in her compartment. I think she mourns for her brother, Marcon.”

  “And more, perhaps,” the Morcai’s commander said quietly, moving to the side of his spool chair.

  “Commander!” Stern called. “I’m picking up six Rojok starfighters on my sensors, coming at us sublight on intercept!”

  Dtimun whirled. “Abemon?”

  “No chance, sir,” the engineering officer said in a grim tone. “We’ve got to have another five minutes, minimum.”

  “Weaponry!” Dtimun called. “Status?”

  “We’ve got your one-third firepower, sir,” the officer replied. “It won’t cut through the Rojok force shields, but it might be enough to hold them off until we can do better.”

  Dtimun sat down in the command chair, deep in thought. “Stern,” he said quickly, “cut power to zero.”

  “Sir?”

  “I don’t repeat orders on this bridge, Mister!”