The Morcai Battalion. Diana Palmer

some bacteria from my fingers when I touched it, and it’s sick. Sick! What the hell kind of machines are you using on this bloody space-going whale? And that’s not all! My life monitors are malfunctioning from some kind of magnetic interference, and I…!”

      “Baatashe!” the alien thundered, staring down the furious exobiologist with angry brown eyes that silenced her immediately, to Stern’s amusement. “By Simalichar, hold your tongue before I have you spaced! If you have a request to make, make it in understandable tones and not in the language of a hashheem from a pleasure dome!”

      Her mouth opened slightly, and her green eyes dilated. But she regained her composure at once and stood her ground. “All right, sir,” she said, emphasizing the “sir.” “I need access to a working synthesizer because my morphadrenin is exhausted and my patients cannot withstand delicate invasive surgery without it. I also need a mute-screen to mask the magnetic interference that’s disrupting my life monitors. Because this,” she added, indicating the bionic panel in the creamy skin of her wrist under the sleeve of her green uniform, “can’t be five places at once to read vitals. Furthermore, my medics are going into their thirty-second straight standard hour without sleep or rest, and two of them have already collapsed on me. In short, sir, if this ship doesn’t make Trimerius within one solar day on the outside, we’re going to lose every bloody alien casualty we’re transporting and maybe the humans in Hahnson’s medical complement as well!”

      “We cannot make Trimerius in one solar day,” Dtimun said in a deceptively gentle tone, “nor one solar month, nor one solar millennium. Because, Madam, we are gradually being surrounded by a fleet of Rojok vessels and we are cut off from Tri-Fleet Headquarters.”

      “Surrounded?” she echoed numbly.

      “Yes. Surrounded.” The Centaurian sighed angrily, as if the prospect of impotence was beyond acceptance or even belief. “No one ship, even this one, could penetrate the force net of the Rojok fleet and survive. They now seem intent on capture rather than destruction or they would already have fired on us. And that,” he said in a chillingly soft voice, “I will not permit, even if it means destroying the Morcai myself.”

      Stern glanced at the Centaurian, puzzled. “Why so much flurry over one lone ship?” he asked pointedly. “They have the Jaakob Spheres and the Centaurian princess. What’s left?”

      The alien ignored the question. He turned back to the comm unit and addressed his navigator. “Degas, how many ships are they throwing against us?” he asked the comtech.

      “I read two hundred, Commander, traveling at half sublight speed.”

      “Maliche, they are confident!” Dtimun growled.

      “The casualties can’t take another battle,” Madeline said tightly. “And I didn’t save them just to have you blow them up, sir. It isn’t their bloody war. There must be one aid station we can reach before—”

      “What we have reached at the moment, Madam,” the Centaurian interrupted abruptly, “is the limit of my patience.” His eyes were enough to silence her. He turned slowly to the comm unit again. “Degas, can we make Benaski Port?” he asked, naming a notorious way station on the outskirts of the civilized galaxy.

      “If we reduce our weaponry capability and divert all power to the engines,” the Centaurian navigator replied. “It is the only neutral port within reach.”

      “Then throw your lightsteds and make for it at maximum light.”

      “Yes, Commander.”

      Dtimun turned back to Madeline, his eyes calmer but still tinged with brown anger. “I will have Komak supply another synthesizer, which you will not touch. They respond readily to speech, even Terravegan speech, because of the translators we employ in all comm units aboard. I gather that your knowledge of bionic tech is as limited as your knowledge of proper female behavior.”

      “Proper…?” Madeline just gaped at him.

      “Our science has been long capable of producing self-sustaining, self-perpetuating machines. Living machines, if you will,” he continued unabashed. “They are extremely sensitive to alien bacteria, a fact which Komak was sent to impart to you. Apparently he was too late.”

      Her green eyes narrowed. She was struggling with an urge to knock him on his superior rear end.

      His eyebrows arched, and his eyes became threatening at once.

      Madeline blinked. It was coincidence, surely, that anger. “What a pity,” she said with mock softness, “that your science couldn’t also provide a means of inoculating the machines against alien bacteria.”

      Dtimun let that insult fall unnoticed. “Until your people were taken aboard, no humans had ever set foot aboard the Morcai. Such preventions were unnecessary. We have had to make modifications to our language banks to accommodate you. There was no time to attend the machines.”

      “What about more medtechs?” she persisted.

      “I suggest that you make arrangements with Hanhson to acquire some of his.” He held up his hand when she started to protest. “I am aware that your specialty is Cularian medicine, and his is Terravegan, but surely some medical expertise is preferable to none at all. That problem rests with you. Benaski Port is still three days away at our present speed. You must accommodate the delay.”

      “Perhaps some of the wounded will last that long,” she said tightly. “By your leave, sir,” she added with a salute.

      “One thing more, Madam.”

      She turned, the question only in her resentful eyes.

      “The next time you step onto my bridge,” he said quietly, “tread lightly. Your disregard for military routine could easily grant you a place in history textdiscs as the first human female ever spaced aboard a Centaurian warship. Am I understood?”

      Her teeth ground together. But all she said was, “Yes, sir.”

      The alien watched her leave the bridge with a ramrod stiffness in his posture. Then he turned to Stern. “See to your men, Mister. Word has already reached me of unrest among them, even in the small time since you came aboard. No incidents of violence can be tolerated.”

      “For that,” Stern told him, “you will need a miracle. Sir.”

      He saluted and followed Madeline’s trail off the bridge. For that one, brief instant, he felt almost like his old self.

      

      Mangus Lo, the Rojok dictator, sat at his many-hued stone desk in the palcenon and drank in the news his chief advisor had just provided.

      “Is it true?” he asked with a malicious smile. “The Holconcom vessel has fallen into the trap? Cleemaah! We have him!”

      “But, Excellence, the trap is not yet sprung,” the tall, slender Rojok advisor protested gently.

      “A mere detail. Chacon knows nothing of what has been done?” he asked quickly, searching the younger man’s eyes.

      “No, Excellence,” he replied. “I instructed the soldiers in secret, as you ordered.”

      The dwarfed, middle-aged Rojok nodded in something like relief. “He is my ablest commander,” he said, “yet his distaste for my methods is a hindrance. The terror must be maintained!” He slammed the polished stone desk with both fists and his eyes gleamed almost transparently. “Compassion is the death of the cause! Why does he oppose me? Does he not know that I could have him killed with a word?”

      “If your Excellence will permit me,” the advisor said, “he has become something of a legend among our people. To have him killed would be to welcome revolt.”

      “Silence!” Mangus Lo eyed the advisor with a piercing, deadly fury. “You, too, are expendable! You are all expendable!”

      “Excellence, I did not mean…!” he began quickly.

      The