The Morcai Battalion: Invictus. Diana Palmer

Memcache, the home planet of the Cehn-Tahr, had become her home since her rescue from a crash on the planet Akaashe with her military unit. Her former Holconcom commander, Dtimun, had defied his government and her own to save her life. She was recuperating from her injuries, but also facing a new and dangerous challenge once she healed. It was hard to sleep with the most momentous decision of her life hanging over her. She was going to agree to a procedure that would change the very structure of her body, and to a mission that might mean her death.

      She heard the wind stir outside. She wondered if her former commander had as much trouble sleeping as she was having. This place, this stone fortress, was his home. She was still amazed to find herself here, instead of back on the Tri-Galaxy Fleet’s planet, Trimerius, where wounded military with life-threatening injuries such as hers had been were customarily hospitalized.

      She hoped Dtimun wasn’t in too much trouble with his government for pulling the Holconcom out of the Tri-Galaxy Fleet in order to rescue her. She, and all the humans aboard the Cehn-Tahr ship Morcai, were now under threat of court-martial and spacing. The Terravegan ambassador, Aubrey Taylor, had mandated the return of all human military back into Terravegan units, thus forcing the Holconcom’s human component to return to its own base. The humans, all fond of Madeline, had refused to comply with the order, which also forbade any attempt to rescue her from Akaashe. So now they, and she, were fugitives from justice. She wished, not for the first time, that ambassadors had less power. They were the equivalent of world leaders in the totalitarian society to which Terravegans belonged.

      She drew in a slow breath, delighted to notice that it was not as painful as before. Her injuries would have been fatal, but she’d made a friend during an earlier mission. She saved the life of an elderly Cehn-Tahr soldier. It was he who had come with the Holconcom to Akaashe to get her. It was his powerful mind that had healed her. She owed him a lot.

      She shifted in the bed, restless. She wasn’t used to inactivity. She’d been in the military since she was very young. At the age of eight, she’d been divisional champion marksman in the sniper company where she’d first served. Her career as a soldier had been satisfying. So had her career as a doctor, a field that paired diagnostic and surgical functions and specialties in one individual. She was an internist, dealing with Cularian racial types such as Cehn-Tahr and Rojok. She was also medical chief of staff for the Holconcom ship Morcai. Or she had been, until Ambassador Taylor had transferred her to a commando unit in the all-female Amazon Division and put her in harm’s way.

      It had been a move she hadn’t fought. Her helpless attraction to her commanding officer had resulted in a behavior he couldn’t control, one which had almost cost him his career. The Cehn-Tahr had mating behaviors which were violent and quite noticeable. When a human was involved, the consequences would have been deadly. The Interspecies Act forbade any mingling of genetic material between Cehn-Tahr and non-Cularian races, such as humans. Dtimun had often hinted that the Cehn-Tahr—genetically modified to be vastly physically superior to any other race—had many feline behaviors.

      Which raised a question in her mind. Did the Cehn-Tahr sleep at night, like humans, or did they subsist on catnaps? She knew they could eat small mammals whole, owing to the striated muscle in their esophagus. But they also had a detached hyoid bone. That meant that they should be able to purr, like the small cats that occupied space on Terravega. That was an interesting idea. She’d heard the commander growl. She’d heard what passed for laughter among the Cehn-Tahr. She’d never heard one of them make a purring sound. Well, just because they had the anatomical structure to make it possible didn’t mean they did it, anyway. The commander had intimated that there were still secrets about the Cehn-Tahr that they’d never shared, even with their human crewmates. She wondered what they were.

      She got up, a little stiffly, and walked to the window. With a soft sigh, she opened the shutter-like wings and let in the night breeze. It carried warm breezes with the scent of the same flowers that occupied pots in her bedroom. No cut flowers here, she’d noticed, and smiled as she decided that Caneese had been responsible for that. Dear Caneese, who took such good care of her. It was comforting to have a woman’s touch. Especially for Madeline, who had been raised in a government nursery on Terravega.

      She was so unlike Cehn-Tahr females. Madeline was independent and spirited, a capable soldier, a competent doctor. Cehn-Tahr women were forbidden to join the military at all, much less operate as combat soldiers. It had been a point of contention between Madeline and Dtimun. Their battles had become the stuff of legends. And now she was living in his home, about to be bonded with him in preparation for the creation of a hybrid child. The pregnancy would act as a disguise to gain them entrance to the most notorious den of thieves in the three civilized galaxies. And they would do this, risking execution from their respective governments, to save the life of an enemy military commander. All because a traveler from the future, Komak, had told them that civilization would perish if the Rojok Field Marshal Chacon was removed from his position by the murderous Rojok head of state. It was a frightening concept, that the future could depend on a human female and an alien male and a child that Madeline was still not certain was even a possibility.

      She wondered how Komak planned to do the genetic manipulation that would make her strong enough that Dtimun could mate with her without killing her. Probably by injection, she decided, using a biological catalyst to facilitate the combination of human and alien DNA. It was an intriguing scientific theory put to practical use, if he could pull it off. But why not? The Rojoks had developed similar tech, and her Terravegan former captain, Holt Stern, was proof of it. She’d seen him take on Komak and fight him to a draw.

      Not that she planned on trying to deck the CO. She had considered it the day before, listening to him scoff at emotion. But, then, he had good reasons for his opinion. How terrible, to lose the one woman he’d ever cared about so violently.

      She recalled their discussion about the way Cehn-Tahr marked their mates, about the aggression of mating. She would have to mate with the alien commander, if they were to assure the future timeline. A disturbing prospect, but Komak, who was from the future, had insisted that the mission was vital. Pregnancy would be part of their disguise. In all of history, no Cehn-Tahr had ever mated with a human female. It had been considered impossible, due to the uncanny physical strength of the aliens.

      It was unsettling to a woman who had spent her entire life as a neuter. She had no idea what to expect, except for what she knew from a medical standpoint. Probably, she decided, it was better not to think too much about it until she had to.

      “Why are you out here alone at this hour?”

      She jumped at Dtimun’s voice. She hadn’t heard him approach.

      “I couldn’t sleep, sir,” she stammered.

      He was wearing robes, not his familiar uniform. He appeared somber and out of sorts. He moved to her side, looking out over the dark silhouettes of the trees and distant mountains. “Nor could I.”

      She leaned on the balcony that ran around the porch. “I’m sorry I was rude, earlier.”

      “I was rude first.”

      She laughed to herself, picturing an altercation earlier between her female physician colleague and a Cehn-Tahr officer during which Dr. Edris Mallory had ended up with a pot of soup poured over her head.

      “What?”

      “I was remembering poor Edris Mallory, covered in soup.”

      He laughed, too. “I must confess that I can understand what motivated Rhemun to retaliate after she threw a soup ladle at him. The only thing that saved you in the past from the same fate was the lack of soup at an appropriate time.”

      “I know I get on your nerves,” she said without looking at him. “I don’t mean to.”

      The soft, high trill of some night bird filled the silence between them.

      “I used to come here late at night when I was a child,” he remarked. “There was a myth about a small winged creature with human features that fed on entots fruit. It grows here, in the garden. I escaped my parents and prowled, hunting. I never found the creatures.”

      “Every