The Morcai Battalion: The Recruit

by Diana Palmer

  Even as he spoke, the great ship wavered, wobbled and suddenly accelerated in a burst of speed that left the humans gasping.

  Edris Mallory was sick all over the deck. But this time Dtimun didn’t say a word.

  * * *

  THE OLD ONE and the kehmatemer came aboard the Morcai in tight formation. Several of the human members of the crew, including Edris Mallory, were present when they entered the airlock.

  Dtimun and Komak met them, with Holt Stern. The old one gave the humans a curious appraisal from amused green eyes.

  “It has been many decades since I saw so many humans,” the old one remarked.

  Rhemun, captain of the kehmatemer, glared at Edris Mallory. “Is this the one who took Ruszel’s place?” he asked haughtily.

  Edris, the mild-mannered, gave him back the glare, her blue eyes sparking. “I am Dr. Edris Mallory,” she said coldly.

  “Another warwoman?” the old one mused.

  “A Cularian combat surgeon,” Dtimun corrected. “Like Ruszel.”

  “There is no other female like Ruszel,” Rhemun said shortly. “She is a warwoman. We have no need of physicians.” He made of the word an insult.

  Mallory drew herself up to her full height, which was far shy of the captain’s. “If you ever have need of one, sir,” she said in a biting tone, “pray that it isn’t me.”

  “Mallory,” Dtimun said shortly. “Captain Rhemun is a visitor. We do not insult visitors.”

  She saluted Dtimun. “Sorry, sir, he looked like a Rojok to me, sir.” She turned and beat a path out of the sector before she could be reprimanded.

  Stern and Hahnson were struggling not to laugh. They saluted and followed her.

  “At ease, Captain,” the old one told the ruffled captain of his guard. “We are fighting one war already. Settle your men.”

  “Yes, sir!” He saluted. So did his squad. He dismissed them.

  Dtimun and Komak and the old one dashed up the ladders to the bridge.

  The Cehn-Tahr in bridge crew bowed to the old one reverently before they went back to their positions.

  “It is a great honor to have you here, sir,” Komak told the old one with something like awe.

  The elderly alien gave him a penetrating opaque blue stare. His eyes suddenly went green. Dtimun, watching, was blocked out by both their minds at once. His surprise was visible.

  “One day, we will explain it to you,” the old one said. He sobered. “But for now, Ruszel is our priority. Leave orbit at once.”

  Dtimun nodded and gave the command. For the first time, he felt a flutter of hope.

  * * *

  THE NAGAASHE PLANET was a contrast in colors and climate. The island continent on which the Morcai put down was lush and green. Under other circumstances, Dtimun might have taken the opportunity to enjoy it. Now, his only thought was to find Ruszel in time.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  DTIMUN WAS OUT the airlock of the Morcai ahead of the old one and the kehmatemer as soon as the ship’s massive engines whispered to a stop. His mind searched for Madeline’s and could not find it. Anguish washed over him.

  The Nagaashe approached the Cehn-Tahr warily. The humans in the Holconcom started backing up at just the sight of the giant serpents. Weapons Specialist Jones raised the barrel of his nanomissile launcher. Dtimun caught the barrel and threw it up without even looking at him.

  “Put yourself on report, Jones,” he said.

  “Yes, sir,” Jones groaned. “Sorry, sir.”

  The old one came outside with two robed figures, both of whom had joined the ship from a skimmer as they passed Dacerius. Everyone stood back to let the robed figures approach the giant serpents. They bowed and hissed. The robed figures hissed back.

  So began the long and arduous process of negotiation for Ruszel’s release. But Dtimun was losing his mind as he stood beside the Cehn-Tahr contingent, tormented by the slowness of the process.

  The eldest of the Nagaashe, who had spoken with Madeline, approached him. “You fear for her, so you are impatient,” he thought to Dtimun. “Go to her, with your medics. It will be proper. We will continue the negotiations in your absence.”

  “Thank you,” Dtimun thought back.

  “She is just inside the cave there. She is quite unique,” the serpent replied. He turned and undulated back to the others.

  Dtimun motioned to Hahnson and they darted toward the cave. Madeline was just coming around, swamped with pain and barely lucid. When she saw the commander, her eyes burst with helpless delight. He rushed to her and made an odd sound when Hahnson bent over her.

  Hahnson sent the medic to check the two survivors of Madeline’s company. “I wasn’t going to touch her,” he assured Dtimun, tongue-in-cheek, as he pressed a sensor from his wrist unit against Madeline’s abdomen. “Death was very unpleasant and I have no wish to repeat it.”

  Dtimun didn’t look at him. He was watching Madeline, whose own eyes were open and staring at him.

  “You came...after us,” she whispered, astonished.

  “Yes.” He fought to keep emotion from escaping his control. His big hand slid to her cheek. She caught it and cradled it against her face. Dtimun leaned toward her with a low growl. “Hahnson,” he said huskily, his eyes troubled as they met the physician’s. He could barely contain the hunger at all.

  Hahnson hit him with a laserdot of dravelzium in his neck artery.

  Dtimun looked at Madeline, whose soft hand he still held. “Again,” he whispered.

  “Too much...” Hahnson began to protest.

  “I would rather die than harm her,” he told the husky physician, and his elongated eyes echoed the words.

  Hahnson added another large dose, checked the monitor and nodded.

  “What happened here?” Dtimun asked after a minute, slowly calming from the effects of the sedative he’d been given.

  Madeline caught a breath. It hurt, but not as much. “We were sent here on a rescue mission.” She nodded toward the outside of the smooth rock cavern. “They,” she said, meaning the Nagaashe, “were told that an invasion force was coming. We...didn’t know. Message said...a Tri-Fleet ship, a Jebob ship, went down here. We were sent in...to rescue them.” She managed a laugh. “No crashed ship. Just furious Nagaashe.”

  “They didn’t kill you,” Hahnson said as he examined his instruments, shaking his head. “Amazing. They have a reputation for aggression.”

  She drew in another painful breath, aware of Dtimun’s stillness. “They’re telepaths,” she said. “Knew...I saved one of them...on Memcache.”

  Hahnson’s eyebrows rose. He stared at her expectantly.

  Dtimun laughed lightheartedly for the first time since the ordeal began. “She called a flock of Meg-Ravens to deter a galot who was pursuing a Nagaashe child.”

  Hahnson let out a laugh. “You can communicate with Meg-Ravens?” he exclaimed. “You should be teaching bird speech at the medical academy! Better yet, at the military academy!”

  “I’d love to know how you...got around Ambassador Taylor to come and get us,” Madeline said to Dtimun.

  He studied her smudged, weary face, her tangle of red-gold hair, her cracked and missing copper-hued armor plate. “I broke a few laws.”

  She managed a weak laugh. “Typical.” She drew in a quick breath. “Thanks.”

  “You are still Holconcom,” Dtimun said curtly. “I put you on reserve status to protect you from your military.”

  “Oh,” she faltered. “I didn’t realize...”

  “We do not desert our own,” he added softly.

  She blinked. Hahnson had given her something for pain and she was suddenly drowsy. “How bad?” she asked him. “I can’t diagnose—my wrist unit is in need of repair.” She laughed and thought to Dtimun, “So is
that white noise ball.”

  He only smiled. She was alive, at least. The need still ached in him, but his reactions to her were...more than that. He dismissed the thought. Surely it was just his relief at her survival.

  Hahnson looked at his readouts. He wasn’t smiling anymore. He looked at Dtimun, who seemed to pale as he read the medic’s mind. “Nothing major,” he told Madeline. He gave her a dose of sedative. “Rest now.” Her head leaned back against the wall. Her eyes closed.

  Hahnson tugged Dtimun to one side. He was solemn. “I can’t fix her,” he said stiffly.

  “The ship has more resources...”

  “You don’t understand.” He looked anguished. “She has catastrophic damage to her internal organs. I don’t know how she’s managed to stay alive this long. Nothing in my medical background prepares me to mend this sort of thing,” he added miserably. “Her liver, and her kidneys are failing, she’s bleeding internally...” His voice broke.

  Dtimun stared at him uncomprehending. The drug made his thought processes slower. Then, all at once, he realized what Hahnson was saying. Madeline was going to die. Hahnson couldn’t repair the damage. She was going to die...!

  “She is not!” came a firm, authoritative voice from behind him.

  The old one, trying to restrain the kehmatemer, strode into the cave and paused next to Madeline. “I will deal with the warwoman,” he said. He grimaced. “Hahnson, your skills are needed outside. Three of the human Holconcom attempted to stop my men from entering the cave. There are a few assorted fractures,” he added with a grimace.

  “Yes, sir,” Hahnson said. He hesitated. “Can you...?” He couldn’t put it into words.

  The old one knew more about Hahnson than he realized. He put a comforting hand on Hahnson’s shoulder. “Yes, I can heal her,” he said gently. “She will not die. Go to work.”

  Hahnson grinned from ear to ear. “Yes, sir!”

  He left, plowing through a squad of kehmatemer who were just barely kept at bay by an impatient gesture from their leader. Outside, Edris Mallory had approached one of the injured Cehn-Tahr and was stopped abruptly by Captain Rhemun.

  “Attend to the humans,” he said bitingly. “We take care of our own.”

  “As you well know, Captain, we don’t carry medics of your race,” Edris shot back, her blond hair wisping around her soft oval face. “I’m a Cularian medical specialist, just like Dr. Ruszel. And if you don’t let me treat these patients,” she added bitingly, “I will refer you to the commander of the Holconcom!”

  Rhemun’s dark eyebrows levered up under his helmet. He glowered at her, but he did step aside. “Very well,” he said with cold courtesy.

  Hahnson appeared beside her, moving toward the human casualties among the Holconcom. “Way to go, Mallory,” he said under his breath, with tacit approval. “That’s how we do things in medical service.”

  She was still flushed with anger from the encounter, but she tossed him a grin as she bent over the first casualty and, following protocol to the letter, formally asked permission to treat him.

  * * *

  THE OLD ONE sat down beside Madeline and took her face in his hands. Dtimun couldn’t repress a low warning growl, despite the tranquillizer. The older alien looked at the younger one. “You might as well subside,” he told him with an amused smile. “I have no fear of you, and I am too old to be a rival.”

  Dtimun cleared his throat and straightened. “Reflex.”

  “Understandable,” the old one said. He turned his attention back to Ruszel. “Ruszel,” he called softly. “You must awaken now.”

  She opened her soft green eyes and looked at him with awe. “Sir,” she said, grimacing, because the pain had returned full force. “You came...with them?”

  “You are valued by all of us who are Cehn-Tahr,” he said solemnly. “Not just by the Holconcom. Ruszel, you have shattered organs. Hahnson cannot mend you. I can. But it will require an intimate contact between our minds. You will not be able to hide anything from me.”

  Madeline thought at once of that one, almost fantasy-perfect day on Memcache and she knew she couldn’t allow the contact; not even to save her life. She could condemn her commanding officer to death if this high-ranking member of the Dectat had access to her thoughts and knew how close the two of them had been that day. Not to mention, if he was able to read her memory of the encounter with Dtimun on Lagana, which was far more intimate.

  “I cannot allow it, sir,” she said in a rough whisper. “You must...let me go.”

  Incredibly, the old one’s eyes misted. He made a rough sound in his throat as he lifted his gaze to Dtimun, standing tortured a few steps away.

  “Let him mend you,” Dtimun said sternly. “It will not matter.”

  “It will,” she whispered. Her eyes, her tormented eyes, met his and went liquid with feelings she couldn’t hide, even now. “I am expendable.”

  “No!” Dtimun raged, the word dragged out of him in anguish.

  “Comcaashe,” the old one told him, gently, involuntarily using the familiar tense of the word. “I know a great deal more than either of you realize. And your commander is right, Ruszel, it does not matter. You must permit me to mend you. Otherwise,” he added with a faint smile, “the kehmatemer will murder both your commander and me for letting you expire.”

  “Not true,” she whispered, but she was beginning to realize that her old fellow was not the enemy.

  “Hahnson even now is mending three humans who tried to stop my men from entering the cave where you were,” came the droll reply. “There were many fractures, and you can see the outcome.” He gestured where his men were standing frozen, worried, just inside the cave.

  “Nice,” she managed, “to have friends. Oh!” The pain convulsed her. She could feel her organs starting to shut down.

  “You must remain conscious. You must concentrate as I tell you to.” The old fellow took her face in his hands again and looked straight into her eyes. “You must instruct your body to mend itself. I will show you how.”

  It was the most intriguing few minutes of her medical career. She felt the power of the Cehn-Tahr’s mind with wonder. This wasn’t any ability boosted by microcyborgs. This was pure, raw, power, beyond explanation. She could actually feel the cells of her body reforming in response to his mental commands. It was centuries beyond anything she’d been taught, far beyond the highest medtech interventions known to common science. She felt the old fellow’s mind and could not hide her thoughts from him. Nor could he hide his, from her.

  She saw great battles. She saw him as a young man, proud and tall and muscular, leading armies. Leading the Holconcom!

  “Be still, Ruszel, you are not supposed to see that,” he thought to her.

  “You were very impressive,” she replied silently.

  He laughed in her mind. “Yes. She who bonded with me also thought this.”

  Madeline could see her—a proud, tall, elegant young woman with black hair to her waist and pale blue eyes that suddenly sparked with green laughter as the proud warrior presented her with a single shaft of canolithe nestled in an elegant pot. Strange, how familiar that woman looked...

  The old fellow’s sadness erased the image. “I was arrogant and made bad choices in my life. I lost her, and many of my children. We have been apart for longer than you have lived, but my heart is still owned by her.”

  “I am sorry for you,” she thought back. “I...understand.”

  “Yes,” he replied silently. “You understand all too well, do you not? You could have refused the reassignment, Ruszel. Even Taylor would have been forced to pursue his command through channels.”

  She conceded the point.

  “You could not control your feelings, nor could Dtimun contain his own. So you found a more reckless way to protect Dtimun from contact with you
.”

  She wondered at the pronunciation, because it sounded far different than the way she’d always heard her commander’s name used.

  The old one ignored the stray thought. “You think that he will die if you live.”

  “Sir, you must not save me, at the expense of his life,” she began miserably.

  “That will not happen,” he replied firmly. “I will not permit either of you to die.”

  She drew in a long breath. It didn’t hurt.

  “You see?” he told her. “Your own mind can control your physical integrity.”

  “This is centuries advanced from anything I know,” she confessed.

  “It exists alongside telepathy. You know already that your commander has the gift.”

  She wasn’t going to speculate why he had it. Perhaps the rumors that only the Royal Clan was so gifted was a myth, like so many others.

  “Why couldn’t he do what you just did?” she wondered.

  “Because his attachment to you is too deep,” he said simply.

  She shook her head. “He feels nothing for me, really, sir,” she said gently. “It’s a behavior he can’t control. It’s just a physical response to stimulus, that’s all.”

  He pursed his lips. “You have no idea what methods he used to come to your rescue. It will open your eyes, I think.” He thought it with a smile as he got to his feet. “You still have injuries, but Hahnson can deal with those. I must rest. At my age, even such mental exertion has consequences.”

  “Thank you, sir,” she said with gratitude evident in her face.

  He studied her silently. “Saving life is an obligation, not a kindness,” he said quietly.

  She recalled those words spoken almost identically by her C.O. aboard the Morcai almost three years ago, when he saved a young alien clone from death.

  Dtimun moved forward, almost as if he wanted to interrupt her revealing thoughts. “We must get her aboard ship, where there are more resources for Hahnson to use,” he said.

  “My thoughts exactly,” Hahnson said, rejoining them. “Don’t worry, sir, they didn’t kill anybody,” he added, with a rueful glance at the kehmatemer. “What a formidable bunch! I’d hate to see even the Cehn-Tahr members of our unit try them.”