The Morcai Battalion. Diana Palmer

Mangus Lo said. He gazed out the oval window at the small, white moon over his towering winter palace on Enmehkmehk. Ahkmau was there, his notorious place of tortures. In his mind, he could see the smoke rising from the sonic ovens. He did so enjoy watching the annihilation of his enemies. He smiled. “I will have Dtimun. And, with him, I will have the power to bring the Tri-Galaxy Federation and the Centaurian Empire itself to their knees!”

      “I…do not understand,” the advisor ventured.

      He whirled on the younger Rojok. “You are a diplomat! You are not expected to understand, only to obey!” he screamed. “One word more and I will have you sent to the ovens!”

      The advisor paled. He stood rigidly, unmoving, unspeaking.

      Mangus Lo smiled at his companion’s terror. He turned back to the window, his eyes glowing with a strange, mad fire. “It is ironic,” he mused, “that only I know Dtimun’s worth. When I have him, I have the universe in my hands. The universe!”

      

      Holt Stern called his officers together in a briefing room near the improvised medical stations and delivered Dtimun’s ultimatum. The reaction was predictably unfavorable.

      “Like being captive on a slaver,” a weaponry officer grumbled.

      “Aye, and it’s not even our fault,” Declan Muldoon, the aging engineer, agreed with a harsh glance at Stern.

      “If there’s any fault,” Stern said loudly, “it’s the Rojoks’. Whether we like it or not, we’re stuck here for the next three solar days and we’ll make the best of it. I want our boys kept in line. Do it with words if possible, brig them if you have to. I don’t want any trouble on our side.”

      There were irritated looks all around. Stern could feel their eyes measuring him, and the unfamiliar hostility infuriated him.

      “You shudna let that cat-eyed terror yank us off the Bellatrix and blow her up,” Muldoon said reproachfully. “We could have got her to port.”

      Stern glared at the Irishman, then at each man in turn. “The past is dead, gentlemen. I’m in command here, and you’ll follow orders or I’ll brig the lot of you. Is that clear?”

      Muldoon lowered his mutinous eyes, but his face only grew redder.

      “I’ve had reports of grumbling and even threats being overheard,” he told them. “If you’ve got a problem, you tell me, and I’ll handle it. Who’s first?”

      Higgins stood up. “Sir, before I became your exec, I was trained to be an astrogator, and they’ve assigned me to the weapons deck. I’m not complaining, maybe there’s no room for another astrogator in their navigation sector, but I’m getting a lot of static and hard looks from the Centaurian execs. I don’t know their technology, and no one will explain it to me.”

      “I’ll see what I can do.” Stern looked around. “Anyone else?”

      “Yes, sir.” Jennings, the comtech, rose. “The communications exec’s got me polishing the consoles wearing space gear. He says I’m a walking bacteria bank and he won’t let me touch his precious equipment unless I’m properly attired. I started toward the kelekom unit but he stopped me outside the door. He said something about me giving his kelekoms germs. Sir, what the hell kind of cyberbionics do they use to run this crazy ship?”

      A brief skirl of laughter passed through the crew and they relaxed a little. Stern remained rigid. “They use living machines,” he said, “highly vulnerable to our bacteria. Do what they tell you.”

      Madeline Ruszel stood up. “Dr. Hahnson and I are currently practicing medicine,” she said, “in a glorified storage room and what seems to be a mess hall,” she added with a wince. “The Centaurians are still trying to use the mess hall and storage facilities with our sterile fields in operation and surgery being performed.”

      “I’ll take care of the problem,” Stern assured her.

      Muldoon stared at the dark-eyed captain. “Sure, and what’ll you do about them cat-eyes struttin’ around like they was kings and making one big joke out of us? One of those SOBs threw a damplegraft at me and made noises like a mugwort when I fell trying to catch it. I canna press two hundred pounds of metal! I almost threw a punch at the…”

      “Keep your hands off the Centaurians,” Stern told him. “That goes for the rest of you, as well. If you mix it up with the aliens, it’ll be your necks and I don’t have the authority to countermand the commander’s orders. All I could do is wave at you when he kicked you out the airlock. It’s his ship.”

      “Thanks to you,” an anonymous voice muttered.

      Stern ignored it. “If that’s all?” He waited, but only a sullen, resentful silence met his ears. “All right. Dismissed.”

      Madeline was the last of the Bellatrix department heads to leave the compartment. She turned at the door. “You made a mistake, Stern,” she said.

      “What kind of mistake?”

      “Telling the men you wouldn’t back them up. It does nothing for morale, and theirs is just about shot. They’re being bullied by the Centaurians. You’ve as much as said you won’t stop it.”

      “Why lie?” he asked blankly.

      Her eyes narrowed. “What’s the matter with you? I’ve never known you to back away from a fight, even when you were outmatched!”

      “Maybe I’m tired,” he said coldly, resenting the words.

      “Maybe you’d better pull yourself together before you get the bloody lot of us killed,” she snapped back. She turned and left without another word.

      Stern glowered after her. She irritated him. They all did. The humans were suddenly as distasteful to him as the aliens.

      He shook his head as if to clear it. Other thoughts were shaping themselves in his mind. It would be soon, now. He had duties to perform, a mission to accomplish. Let the humans whine while they could. A slow, alien smile touched his lips.

      4

      The massive Tri-Galaxy Council chambers had the feel of an eons-old tomb. Tri-Fleet Admiral Jeffrye Lawson, a Terravegan native, sat numb and rigid in his solitary chair, unmoving in the maelstrom of motion around him.

      The gray-haired old warhorse eyed the diplomats with quiet contempt. The stoic neutrality of the majority here in the costly war was responsible for casualty lists that left him sleepless and haggard. Idealists, the lot, he thought bitterly. Establishing “Peace Planets” like the colony on Terramer while the Rojoks were building better ships and bigger armies and sending hunter squads to terrorize the New Territory by killing colonists. The neutral solar systems didn’t even have the guts to send representatives of their various governments to Terramer, at that; they’d sent clones. In this universe, clones had no social status whatsoever, despite the best efforts of activists. They were property, at the mercy of governments that had no mercy.

      Above the heads of the member delegates, Lokar, the Jebob chairman of the Council, stood quietly at his raised podium. In his thin, blue-skinned hands he held the small communidisc that had heralded an emergency session in the middle of Trimerius’s night.

      Around Lawson, diplomats in various state of national dress were hurrying into their seats around the circular chamber. In seconds, all eyes were on Lokar’s long face.

      “As you were told,” Lokar began in a gently accented voice, translated by the prompter into an uncountable number of languages and dialects that fed directly into each member’s implanted receiver, “the communication I hold is from the Imperial Dectat of Centauria—the seat of the one hundred twenty planet empire of Tnurat Alamantimichar.”

      Lawson grimaced and moved restlessly in his chair, waiting for the patient old Jebob to continue in the sudden death hush of the assembly. Just the mention of Tnurat’s name was enough to cause panic.