Invictus

by Diana Palmer

  She started to speak when there was a soft chime from his communicator ring. He activated it, and Sfilla appeared, full sized, in the tent.

  “I have found him,” she announced. “We are in the process of liberating him.”

  “Admirable speed,” he commented. “Hazheen’s tracker will lead us to you.”

  “Take care, there may be small pockets of Rojoks which we have not found,” she cautioned, and her image vanished.

  Dtimun turned to Madeline. “You should remain here.”

  She got to her feet and stared at him stubbornly.

  He shook his head. “Very well. But this is not my wish.”

  She smiled and moved closer. “I would not be interesting if I were complacent.”

  He laughed and impulsively hugged her close. “I must agree.”

  His easy affection made her feel warm inside. She didn’t dare think ahead, to a time when she’d never see him, or even remember these precious few weeks they’d had together.

  “Do we walk or ride?” she asked.

  “Walk. A Yomuth would be far too noisy, especially at night, when sound magnifies. In case there are Rojok patrols, we must use caution.” He paused at the door of the tent, went back inside and returned with two novapens. He handed one to her.

  She was surprised. “You’re arming me?” she asked, stunned. “After all those threats you made?”

  “You are not on active duty at the moment and your life might depend on having a weapon,” he returned. He glared at her. “This is not, however, an avowal of your own position on medics being armed in the field.”

  She saluted him.

  He shook his head and went out the door.

  * * *

  THE TRACKER LED them through the starry darkness up old desert trails, down thorny paths, on a journey that seemed to take forever.

  “It is only just ahead,” he whispered finally, and moved into a clearing.

  He dropped like a rock. Five Rojok soldiers appeared out of seemingly thin air, surrounding Madeline and Dtimun. One of them had a tiny pulse-syringe which he jabbed against Dtimun’s neck. The effect was instant. Madeline watched with horror as her commanding officer became first dazed and then docile.

  “And now,” the Rojok squad leader said with a cold smile, “you are our prisoners. In one coup, we have captured two of the Tri-Galaxy Fleet’s finest officers. And in less than two hours, you will both be dead.”

  CHAPTER TEN

  MADELINE FELT THE bonds tighten every time she tried to free her hands. It was no use. She rebelled at the thought that she would die with her child still breathing in her belly, that Dtimun would die with her. This was not how she had envisioned her death. She only wanted a weapon. Damn the Rojoks!

  She looked beside her at Dtimun and grimaced. He was drugged. He could have freed them with a thought if he hadn’t been. Which led her to worry about who had known of his mental abilities and told these assassins to drug him. Chacon knew that Dtimun was a telepath, but he would never have betrayed that knowledge. However, there had been a woman in the village who had been quite curious about the Cehn-Tahr male in her camp. There were Dacerian telepaths. Perhaps that woman had been one.

  But her suspicions wouldn’t matter anymore, not if they died here. She thought of the child she would never see, of a future she had hoped so hungrily for, even when she knew it would be denied. Her green eyes swept lovingly over her mate, her commander, her friend. She had sacrificed so much to keep him alive. It wasn’t fair that it should end like this!

  “Sir,” she whispered. “Sir!”

  He opened his eyes and blinked. He stared at her, his sluggish mind trying to wrap itself around the grim reality of their situation. It hit him immediately. The Rojoks were going to kill them. He could hear them discussing it nearby. He could not manage enough psychic ability to overcome them, in this condition. Madeline would die, along with the child in her womb. The sickness he felt in his very soul was so shocking that his face paled. The thought of losing her now was unbearable.

  “Sir, you can escape,” Madeline told him urgently in the few seconds they were left alone while the Rojoks debated the best means of dealing with their bodies following the executions.

  He glared down at her. “No.”

  “Listen to me,” she said, almost in anguish, “you’re one of the finest strategists we have. I’m just a grunt, a common soldier, easily replaced, but you have the experience and the means to help end the war, defeat the Rojok alliance. I know you can get out of here. Even drugged, you’re strong enough to break those bonds. Not one of the Rojoks could outrun you!”

  He didn’t speak.

  “It would free you, of the bonding ties,” she continued feverishly. “Afterward, you can bond with a Cehn-Tahr woman, an aristocrat, and have children to inherit your lands and titles...!”

  “I will not leave you.”

  “Please!” She saw the Rojoks making preparations. “There’s no time. Please. Please go!” Her voice broke on the last word. Her courage had held up, until now, until death was a taste in her mouth. Tears dimmed him in her vision. “Don’t risk everything, don’t let a scraggly band of Rojoks kill you because of your sense of honor! I’m expendable! Any soldier is!”

  His eyes were a soft, quiet golden hue. They searched hers. His face seemed to clench as he looked down at her. “Madeline,” he said quietly, “I will not live without you.”

  The impact of those words was visible. Tears slid, hot and salty, down her flushed cheeks. Her lower lip trembled.

  He drew in a rough breath and struggled to regain the control of his emotions that the drug had cost him. “You are Holconcom. You must stop weeping,” he muttered. “It is undignified, especially in front of Rojoks.”

  A helpless laugh escaped her tight throat. “Yes, sir. Sorry.” She swallowed. Her throat was dry. “I wish we could have saved Chacon. I suppose it was hopeless from the beginning,” she said.

  His eyes went that odd opaque blue that indicated mental linking. “Something has gone right, at least,” he thought to her. “Sfilla and her people have liberated Chacon. He is safe.”

  “Thank goodness,” she said, straightening. “The timeline will be secure, then.”

  He studied her. “I wonder.” He frowned. “Do you not think it odd that Komak did not mention our deaths? Surely he saw this.”

  She met his look with curiosity. “You’re right, he didn’t say anything.” She glanced at the approaching Rojoks. She sighed. “Well, I suppose he didn’t want to upset us by mentioning that we were going to die saving Chacon.” She searched his eyes hungrily. “It has been the greatest honor, and pleasure, of my life, to have served with you, sir,” she said formally, straightening.

  “And mine, to have served with you.”

  She bit her lower lip. “I’d give half my retirement for a gresham.”

  He was suddenly still. His indrawn breath was audible.

  She looked up at him, frowning. “What is it?”

  His eyes met hers. They were...green!

  “Okay, now, what’s going on?” she asked.

  There was a whisper of wind, a skirl of red sand. The Rojoks, moving toward them with intent, suddenly stopped, dead.

  All around, flashes of white solidified into Nagaashe. Dozens of Nagaashe. The ones Madeline remembered from Akaashe would have been dwarfed by these. They were as tall as a two-story building, coiled, and they were all spreading their hoods and hissing at the Rojoks.

  “Your people have a saying, from centuries past,” Dtimun commented blandly. “Something about a group called the cavalry coming over the hill...?”

  She burst out laughing. “Yes!” Although she was certain that it didn’t refer to white snakes the height of a building.

  The Rojoks were runn
ing and screaming. In minutes, the heavily armed camp was deserted. A few of the serpents had pursued the fleeing enemy. The tallest, and oldest, of the others undulated over to where Dtimun and Madeline were secured to their posts by chains. He closed his blue eyes for a second and the chains fell away as if by magic. Had Dtimun not been drugged, Madeline mused, he could have done the same.

  “We are greatly in your debt,” Dtimun thought to him. “But I do not understand how or why you are here.”

  The white serpent laughed. “Old man in Dectat contacted us. Treaty we signed with him has clause for mutual aid.”

  “Thank you,” Madeline said aloud. Her hand went protectively to her belly. “I thought we were dead.”

  The serpent lowered his head and looked into her green eyes. “Child will be greatest link between your world and ours and the Cehn-Tahr,” he said surprisingly. “Because of child, new worlds will be open to exploration for both your peoples.”

  Madeline was very still. “You don’t understand,” she began quietly, and thought about the regression of the child and her own upcoming mind wipe.

  “You will see,” the serpent murmured.

  “We’re very grateful to you for saving us,” she said again. Perhaps her thoughts hadn’t been understandable to him.

  The serpent nodded. “You saved our great-grandchild on Memcache,” he thought to her. “Family is everything to us. You are now family. You are part of our tribe. You belong to us. So does your mate, and so will your child.”

  She was sure that no human had ever been so honored. It was a special mark of distinction, since she already owed her life to this tribe of serpents following the crash on their home planet when she had been so near death. Not to mention for getting her damaged ship to the ground in one piece. She smiled, delighted. “It is a great honor. Thank you!”

  “You must bring your child to Akaashe to see us one day.”

  Before she could tell him again that there wouldn’t be a child, he undulated back to Dtimun. The serpent had said that the Dectat had contacted the Nagaashe. They knew Dtimun had been kidnapped, but perhaps they didn’t know about the child. She had to hope so. It would be unbearable to have been spared from death at the hands of the Rojoks only to have Dtimun killed by his own people for his relationship with Madeline—even though it had saved Princess Lyceria from likely the same fate as Chacon.

  * * *

  THERE WAS A strange remoteness on the part of Dtimun once they were reunited with Sfilla and on their way back to Hazheen Kamon’s camp. Perhaps his lack of control had unsettled him. She supposed his comment had been a last act of kindness, something to make death easier for her. She didn’t really believe that he didn’t want to live without her.

  Chacon was waiting when they arrived. He laughed wholeheartedly at the sight of them, dusty and begrimed, their garments streaked and torn.

  “You look like refugees,” he commented.

  Madeline gave him a similar appraisal, noting the bruises and abrasions on his dusky skin, the dusty long blond hair and torn shirt and trousers. “Begging your pardon, sir, but you don’t look a whole lot better than we do.”

  “I must agree.” He locked forearms with Dtimun and gave them both an affectionate smile. “You have risked much to save me. I am forever in your debt.”

  “I still have to save you one more time for us to be even, sir,” Madeline replied with a grin.

  “We can consider that you are, Ruszel. You are forgetting that you saved me when you removed the sniper on Benaski Port.”

  “We know that Lieumek betrayed you,” Dtimun said, solemn now. “I am sorry.”

  Chacon’s eyes twinkled. “Actually he was working on orders from me.”

  “What?” Madeline burst out.

  “We knew there was a traitor, but not whom. Lieumek has a female paramour who is Dacerian, who also has ties to Chan Ho’s assassins. He permitted her to think that she could manipulate him. The plot was revealed slowly, but entirely. I allowed myself to be brought here, where we already had operatives in place. Unfortunately it was she who gleaned information about your mental abilities and told the other Rojoks who apprehended you. She has been...dealt with, however,” he added grimly.

  Madeline knew that Chacon was aware of the power of Dtimun’s mind—it had saved Lyceria at Ahkmau.

  He glanced at Dtimun. “I have never revealed what I know. The Dacerian woman, however, was a telepath and I fear she might have told others. I am sorry for this.”

  “It is not your fault. Neither is it a problem any longer. Many changes are coming in the future. Good ones.”

  Changes. Madeline wondered what they were, and why the revelation of his psychic abilities wasn’t a concern to him.

  Chacon motioned to Sfilla, who came forward grinning with her arm in a sling. He smiled, too. “Your finest assassin here was instrumental in rooting out the ringleaders and, shall we say, removing the threat.” He shook his head. “I am gratified that you never sent her to eliminate me,” he told Dtimun, tongue in cheek.

  “If you think she’s formidable, you should meet her son,” Madeline interjected.

  Dtimun glared at her.

  “The captain of the kehmatemer is known to us,” Chacon chuckled. “We are hopeful that he will never replace Dtimun as leader of the Holconcom.”

  “That’s hardly likely,” Madeline replied. She thought of the future then, of her eminent return to the Amazon Division and the end of this happy episode in her life—which she would never remember. Dtimun would return to lead the Holconcom. It would be over. All over. She hadn’t realized that it would happen so soon.

  Dtimun and Chacon were staring at each other very solemnly. Madeline didn’t notice. She was miserable. She straightened and saluted Chacon. “I’m glad you’re safe, sir, but I hope you won’t mention my part in your rescue,” she added with twinkling eyes. “I’m afraid Admiral Mashita might take the news of it badly. You are the enemy, after all, and court-martials are so messy...”

  He laughed out loud “You have my word that I will never tell Admiral Mashita.”

  “I’ll go with Sfilla to pack up, sir,” she told Dtimun formally, and saluted him, too. She left before he could say what he was thinking.

  Chacon became solemn with her exit. “The child...you are going to permit her to remove it, along with her memory of it?”

  Dtimun was very quiet. “There are processes at work that I dare not reveal. Even to you.”

  Chacon lifted a ridged eyebrow. His eyes twinkled. “Plots within plots. Would Ruszel’s old fellow be involved in them?”

  Dtimun’s eyes made a flash of green. “He sent the Nagaashe to rescue us,” he replied. “He could never admit it, of course, without revealing that he had knowledge of an illegal bonding, an illegal pregnancy, and the salvation of our most dangerous enemy commander-in-chief. The Dectat would probably space him for it.”

  “Unlikely.”

  Dtimun shrugged.

  “You had better make certain that Sfilla follows Ruszel’s every footstep,” Chacon advised. “She is formidable, also, and she will have plans for her future that you may not be aware of.”

  “That is what concerns me.” He smiled. “The war will end one day.”

  “I have hopes of this.” He hesitated. “Lyceria...”

  Dtimun looked at him knowingly. “I sent her back to Memcache before Madeline and I came here with Sfilla. She is safe.” He smiled. “Lyceria is like the rest of her family where her affections are concerned—unchangeable.”

  Chacon grimaced. “She is very young.”

  “So is Madeline, but it makes no difference.”

  Chacon smiled. “There will be a scandal in high circles.”

  “Madeline and I are likely to create a higher one, and soon. You might want to monitor the nexus in
the near future.”

  “A Cehn-Tahr and human child,” he said, shaking his head. “It will confound the three galaxies. Many things will change because of it.”

  Dtimun nodded. “You have no idea how true that is.” His eyes flashed a green smile at Chacon. “Please try to avoid future kidnapping attempts. Madeline is unmanageable even under normal circumstances.”

  “And far more unmanageable under unusual ones,” the other alien agreed. “But she is unique.”

  Dtimun’s eyes made a soft brown shade. “Yes. Unique.”

  * * *

  THEY TRAVELED ON a commercial ship to the edge of Dacerian space, but the Morcai intercepted the vessel and took Madeline and Dtimun on board.

  Madeline’s condition, easily visible, had a sudden and shocking impact on both Holt Stern and Edris Mallory, whom Hahnson had not told about Madeline’s condition.

  “It’s all right. I’m only a little bit pregnant,” Madeline said at once, tongue in cheek.

  Edris looked from her colleague to the towering, unapproachable alien commander with absolute shock.

  Which was nothing compared to the look that claimed Captain Rhemun’s face when he joined them.

  Dtimun’s eyes narrowed, darkened and he growled ferociously.

  Rhemun flushed, snapped to attention and avoided looking at Madeline at all, while the humans struggled not to laugh.

  Madeline glanced at her companion, confounded. She hoped that response would leave with the child. She frowned. What if it didn’t? Even if she returned to Admiral Mashita, would the commander be left in this condition, vulnerable to his military authority and the Dectat? Would he still be protective of her, wherever she went, when the child was removed? After all, his memory couldn’t be wiped, Hahnson had once said.

  He glanced down at her. His eyes narrowed. She looked worn and tired and desolate. He calmed at once.