The Morcai Battalion: Invictus

“Not again,” he groaned.

Caneese laughed out loud. “What is this, about Akhmau?”

“I operated on him under battlefield conditions when he went prematurely into the dylete,” she recalled smugly, reminding Caneese of an earlier conversation. She frowned. “Well, in one stage of it, anyway. Can you still call it the time of half-life when it’s only one of many?” she added thoughtfully.

“Call it what you like,” Dtimun said gruffly. “I am going to bed.”

“You sleep well, sir,” Madeline said. “If I hear anything threatening outside, I’ll attack it for you.”

He muttered something under his breath, turned on his heel, and stalked back across the balcony.

Caneese was grinning, overcome with mirth. “I have never seen him in such a state,” she chuckled.

“I get on his nerves,” Madeline said, grinning back. “It keeps him on his toes. He does tend to brood.”

“Yes. Even as a child, he was like that.”

“You’ve known him that long?” Madeline asked.

Caneese’s eyes softened. “I have.” She studied the younger woman quietly. “You are uneasy about the bonding. You have never known the touch of a hunting male.”

Madeline’s heart jumped. She averted her eyes. Uneasy was an understatement.

“You must not dwell on it,” Caneese said. “But you must use your strongest sedative. You are frightened of him in the darkness already. This will augment it.”

Madeline flushed. “His eyes glow...”

“We have feline eyes,” Caneese reminded her.

She frowned. “He said something curious. He said that you keep more secrets than we know, and that you aren’t what you seem.”

“There have been incidents, in the past,” Caneese said carefully. “When humans...”

“Stop there,” came a commanding voice into her mind. “Say no more to her.”

Caneese grimaced. “Well, it is nothing that concerns you,” she amended. She smiled. “You should try to rest. Tomorrow will be stressful.”

Madeline hesitated. “What is it like?” she asked, the words almost torn out of her.

Caneese only smiled. “You will understand soon.”

Madeline sighed and turned away. “I suppose so. Good night.”

“Sleep well.” Caneese bit her lower lip as she watched the fragile human female walk away. Madeline was concerned, but Caneese did not dare satisfy the other woman’s curiosity. She hoped that Madeline could summon enough nerve not to run, as she had tried to, just before her own first mating. It was not a memory she liked to revisit, despite the pleasure of the ones that followed.

* * *

KOMAK HAD USED a curious mixture, which contained bone marrow cells and Cehn-Tahr DNA, as well as an accelerant whose properties he would not disclose, to facilitate Madeline’s transformation into a human with the strength of the aliens with whom she had served for almost three years. After he finished with the initial procedure, he injected another mixture into the artery at Madeline’s neck with a laserdot. “You must not be nervous,” he said gently. “I assure you, I know what I am doing.”

She managed a smile for him. “For a time-traveling magician, you’re not bad, Komak.”

He chuckled. “So I am told.”

She studied his face. “You know, you do use human facial expressions more than any Cehn-Tahr I’ve ever known.”

“You are remembering the traces of human DNA in my blood, when you typed and cross-matched it to transfuse the commander at Ahkmau.”

“Yes.”

He removed the laserdot placer. “We all keep secrets. That one must remain my own.”

“The commander and I think you’re related to someone who lived in this time period.”

“You are both astute. I am.”

“Can you tell us who?”

He smiled and shook his head. “That is one subject we must not visit.”

“Do you have human DNA, or was it just a glitch in my equipment, as I thought at the time?”

He put down the laserdot and looked her in the eye. “Answer your own question. Do I resemble a human?”

She sighed. “No, Komak,” she had to admit, smiling. “You look like the rest of your species.”

He was amused. She did not know the true tech he employed, although he had let her think she did, and he had no intention of telling her. To do so might reveal too soon the secret Dtimun kept from her. He smiled back. “We are all one color, one race. Unlike you humans, who come in all colors and races.”

“There’s a legend that my people were once all tea-colored,” she recalled.

He pursed his lips. He didn’t speak.

She frowned. “You know something. Tell me.”

“Your race was once tea-colored, as you say, from millennia of racial mixing. Humans rose to become a great space-faring civilization. Then a comet collided with your planet of origin and reduced your species to a gene pool of less than ten thousand,” he said simply. “The reduction mutated you, so that the old genetic material was reborn and you split, once more, into separate races and coloring. Your leaders discovered relics of this civilization, but they hid it quite carefully.”

“Hid it? Why?” she asked, exasperated.

“Would you reveal to an optimistic, ambitious population with growing tech ability that another civilization had risen to such heights, only to be destroyed in a natural catastrophe?”

She thought about that. “I don’t know.”

“It would diminish your accomplishments, dull your ambition,” he suggested. “It would limit the achievements.”

“I suppose it might. How did you come to be a time traveler?” she asked. “And who discovered its potential?”

He grinned. “It was me. Building on tech developed by one of my...antecedents,” he said carefully, “I perfected the ability to jump through dimensions, into different time lines.”

“But how?”

“I cannot say. But the Nagaashe are the key,” he added. He sobered. “You made the discovery possible, by convincing them to trade with us. You do not yet realize the scope of that accomplishment. It will lead to untold discoveries.”

“I just crashed on their planet,” she said softly.

He shook his head with awe. “I read about this period of history. But the records were quite scant, and frankly the first-person accounts of it were grossly understated. All of you were too modest about your actions. And nowhere was it recorded that Chacon himself assisted in your rescue. Or your...old fellow,” he added. “There were whispers, of course, but they were dismissed as myths.”

She smiled. “I make odd friendships.”

He chuckled. “Indeed you do. I am most proud to be included in them,” he said gently. “You and the commander are more than I ever realized from my research. The two of you have been a constant delight.” He drew in a long breath as he looked at her. “Serving with you is my greatest honor and privilege.” His eyes saddened. “I will miss you both.”

“Miss us?”

He nodded. “I must leave. Today.”

“Today? Surely not before the bonding ceremony!”

“Yes.” His face tautened. “I must not interfere in any way with this timeline.” His eyes were soft with affection. “It is precious. More precious than I can tell you.” His face tautened. “There is another matter,” he said quickly. “You must not return to the Amazon Division, for any reason. Do you understand? It is important.”

Her heart jumped. “Komak, this is only for a mission,” she said. “I can’t tell you what it is, except to say that many lives may depend on its success. But afterward, whatever happens, I will go back to duty.” She averted her eyes. “I’ve already spoken to Strick Hahnson about doing a short-term memory wipe on me. I won’t remember anything...”

“Memories are precious, Madelineruszel,” he said quietly. “Your feelings for the commander are quite intense. Do you really want to forget them?”

Her sad eyes met his. “He’s an aristocrat. I’m just a grunt of a soldier, and I’m human. He must...bond with a woman of his own species, to produce an heir who can inherit his estates.” She lowered her gaze to the table. “He feels nothing for me. I just get on his nerves. And right now, he’s locked into a behavioral cycle that could cost him his life or his career, all because of my intense feelings. I have to do whatever I can to save him. Whatever the cost. I can’t go back to the Holconcom,” she added quickly, conspiratorially. “Don’t you see? Even with a memory wipe, I might feel the same for him, all over again, and trigger the same behavior. I won’t put him at risk a second time.”

Komak’s face was grim. “You care so much?”

“I care so much,” she said huskily.

“But, if there is a child, as I feel certain there will be...” he began hesitantly.

“The child can be regressed. It’s a gentle process. He’ll be absorbed back into the tissues of my body.” She didn’t look at him. “Nobody must know. It would hurt his career, if it became known that he’d fathered a child onto a human female. It would...disgrace him.”

“Surely he did not say that to you!”

She didn’t speak. He hadn’t. Not in so many words. But she knew he must have thought about their differences in status. Her jaw tautened. “I’ll do whatever I need to do, for this mission to succeed. Then he’ll go back to his command, I’ll go back to mine. We’ll be quits.”

Komak looked devastated. This was not the history he had read. Surely the timeline was not so corrupted already?

“We don’t always get what we want in life,” she said thoughtfully. “I would have liked to keep the memory.” She drew herself up to her full height. “But I’ll do what’s best.”

He stood up, too. He moved close to her, his eyes wide and quiet and tender. “I will never forget these years with you,” he said softly. “It has been an honor, to know you as a comrade.”

She smiled sadly. “It has been for me, too, Komak.” She shifted. “I feel...odd.”

“Odd, how?” he asked, but he was smiling.

She reached impulsively for a metal sphere on the desk and closed her fingers around it. No human could have made a mark on it. She crushed it in her hand. She gasped.

He chuckled. “So. We need not ask if the experiment was a success.”

She looked at the misshapen lump on her palm and laughed with delight. “No. We need not ask!”

CHAPTER TWO

MADELINE WAS A combat surgeon. She certainly knew about the reproductive process, in animals and humans, even in Rojoks. But trying to get any information about Cehn-Tahr matings was like pulling stones out of a vacuum.

She thought Caneese was the obvious person to ask. Although Caneese was very polite, she was almost mute on the subject.

“You will cope,” she told Madeline gently. “The thing to remember is that you must...yield, and let nature take its course,” she said finally, after searching for just the correct word.

“Yield.”

“Exactly! I am so glad that we had this talk. You will feel better about the encounter, now, yes?” And she walked away, smiling.

Madeline ground her teeth into her lower lip. “Smoke and mirrors,” she said to herself, nodding.

* * *

IN THE END, there was only one person she felt comfortable talking about it with and that was her partner for the event.

She found him standing on a stone patio, his hands behind him, watching the sun set over the distant mountains.

He heard her footsteps and turned. In the robes he wore at Mahkmannah, he was like a stranger. She wore robes, too, of course, but was less comfortable in them.

“You have concerns,” he mused as she approached.

“Yes. Nobody will talk to me about it,” she said irritably. “They talk around it.”

He gave her a long look. “You must remember that women in my culture are not as self-possessed and independent as you are. We have traditions that have existed for millennia.”

“I’m not denigrating your culture,” she said. “I just want to know what’s going to happen.”

He raised an eyebrow and gave her a look of mock astonishment.

She actually blushed. “I wish you wouldn’t do that,” she gritted.

He laughed softly. “It is irresistible. The brawling, insubordinate medical chief of staff who sends her underlings running for cover, reduced to blushes and confusion about a process so basic that it is familiar even to children.”

She glared at him. “I might remind you that I’ve spent the past twenty-nine years of my life as a neuter, basically without gender,” she said curtly. “I’ve never felt...well...the sort of things women feel with men. With males. I mean...” She couldn’t find the words.

He turned and moved closer, so that he could look down at her face. His hand came up and touched her red-gold hair lightly. “Madeline, you are making much work of a natural process.”

She sighed. “Sir, can’t you just tell me, soldier to soldier, what I’m expected to do? Caneese is the only Cehn-Tahr woman I could have asked, and she said that it was only necessary to yield and endure it.” She shook her head. “Is that what the women of your culture do? Simply...yield?”

He cocked his head. “You have seen few young Cehn-Tahr women, but you spent some time with Princess Lyceria. You have also been exposed to Dacerian women. Do you notice a similarity in comportment?”

“Yes,” she replied. “They’re very docile, gentle females. Intelligent, but not assertive.”

“Exactly.”

“Then they...simply submit.”

“Yes.”

She frowned. It troubled her. “Wouldn’t such a docile sort of female tend to exaggerate the violence of an encounter if she didn’t, well, participate in it so much as endure it?”

One eyebrow went up.

She grimaced. “I’m sorry. I’m finding it difficult to explain what I mean. It’s complicated to discuss something so intimate with you.”

“Indeed. You and I have engaged in many verbal battles over the years, but our encounters have been nonphysical. This one will be.”

She searched his eyes, looking for any sign of what he was thinking. “What do you expect of me, sir?” she asked in a soft, uncertain tone. “What is it like?”

The question, added to the sudden burst of pheromones exuding from her body when he stared at her, kindled a helpless reaction. His face tautened. Like a snake striking, his hand shot out and suddenly grasped her long hair at her nape and jerked, pulling her face up to his. The eyes stabbing into hers were jet-black. “It is like this,” he said in a voice which sounded so alien that at first it was barely recognizable. It was similar to the sound a cat might make when it was angry, except with words instead of hisses. His head bent, so that his eyes filled the world, and the pressure of his hand forced her body close to his in an arc, thrilling and frightening at the same time.

Her heart jumped up into her throat. He seemed, for the first time in their long relationship as commanding officer and subordinate, so alien that she almost didn’t recognize him.

“You begin to understand,” he whispered, in that same odd tone, and for a split second, in a flash of presence like the blinking of a light, he seemed to be taller, far more massive than he looked. She must be hallucinating, she thought.

Her hands flattened against his robes, feeling the strength and warmth of his chest under them.

“I am not what I seem,” he said.

She was a little intimidated, but she didn’t let it show. She nodded. “I know. My instruments and my senses don’t coincide.” His eyes changed color yet again, to a burnished gold, almost glowing. She didn’t know what it meant.

His hand lessened its pressure on her hair and became oddly caressing. “Weakness is prey. It invites brutality. Do you understand that?”

Her lips parted. “The more a female yields control, the more a male exercises it.”

He nodded. His gaze dropped to her throat, softly vulnerable at the angle. “We are a passionate species,” he whispered, bending his head. His mouth opened and slid over her throat. She felt the faint edge of his teeth. Even they felt different than they looked, different than her instrument readings described them. The slow rasp of them against the vulnerable skin of her throat should have been frightening. It was only exciting. Her heart began to race.

His nostrils splayed as stronger pheromones rushed up into them. “Delicious,” he rasped. And suddenly his tongue slid over the soft flesh, abrasive and stimulating.

Her nails stabbed into his chest and she gasped audibly.

He laughed.

She was alive as she’d never been alive, on edge, shivering with sensation and curiosity. He lifted his head and looked into her eyes. His own narrowed. His chin lifted arrogantly. He looked at her as if she already belonged to him. She recalled that expression from earlier, non-physical encounters and realized that he had been possessive of her for a long time.

“We are a warrior culture,” he said in a deep, velvety tone. “We conquer. For generations, our women have been taught that submission to the violence is the only way to survive it.”

Her breath was coming in little spurts. “Is that why they’re so afraid of it?”

“Yes. They dread the onset of the mating ritual, because they fear the aggression of the male. They have been taught that it is not feminine to meet passion with passion.”

She was seeing things she’d been blind to. His calm demeanor was a front. He could control his actions, except when he was exposed to Madeline’s involuntary pheromones. What she was seeing now was the true male, the true creature, without the veneer of civilized conduct.

“That is essentially correct,” he said curtly. His hand contracted again on her hair and brought her face very close to his, so that she could almost taste his clean breath in her mouth. “I have forced a change in the protocols. The mating will take place in total darkness.”

Her senses were heightened, but the odd statement kindled her curiosity. “Doesn’t it usually?”

“No,” he said flatly. “It is an innovation.” He couldn’t bring himself to tell her why.

He stared down at her with mingled concern and hunger. Her taut features betrayed her fear, even as she tried to hide it from him in her mind. “You are already afraid of my eyes in the absence of light. Added to that, you will experience the violence that goes with the feline response to desire.” His voice rasped. “I cannot control it.”

“I know that. Your eyes startle me at night. But I’m not afraid of you. Not really.”

“You know that I will not hurt you deliberately.”

“Of course,” she said simply.

His hand contracted harshly. “But remember this,” he said in a harsh, alien voice. “If you bend your neck to my teeth, I will make you pay for it!”

Her neck. If she bent her neck to his teeth. She suddenly remembered something from her biology courses. The great male cats of the human planets mated from behind. Did the Cehn-Tahr, as well?

His face lowered and his cheek rubbed hard against hers. At the same time, he lifted her and pushed her against the stone wall, pressing her there with the weight of his powerful body. She became aware of gigantic size and strength, despite her reengineered body. The familiar commander was suddenly someone else, something else.

“You are mine,” he whispered roughly at her ear, and pressed harder against her.

His mouth opened on her throat, warm and feverish and exciting. She caught her breath and shivered at the sudden rush of sensation.

He growled. The sound she made, involuntarily, sent him over the edge.

She shivered as a wave of pleasure washed over her, dulling her senses, robbing her of resistance. It was almost familiar. It came again, violent this time, so piercing and sweet that she moaned as she felt him move against her. Her nails dug into his long back hungrily as she waited for whatever came next...

“What are you doing?” Caneese demanded belligerently as she approached them. “You are not allowed to touch her before the bonding ceremony!”

He was so far gone that he growled at Caneese.

She cuffed him hard enough that the sound echoed. She growled, too. Madeline, almost mindless with her own responses, barely registered that Dtimun obeyed the older woman at once. He let go of Madeline and moved back, grasping at control and dignity.

“It is all right,” Caneese told him gently. She touched his cheek lightly. “It is all right.”

Madeline was getting her breath back. She was flushed. “I’m sorry,” she told Caneese. “It was my fault. I only wanted to know what was going to happen.”

Caneese smiled at her. “There is no need to apologize. I understand.”

“The bonding ceremony is tomorrow, anyway,” Madeline began.

“Yes, but the mating must be witnessed, that is the law,” the older woman said gently.

Madeline had heard that odd phrasing before, but never thought about it until now. Witnessed?

Dtimun had recovered. His head bowed slightly, in deference to Caneese’s position. “We were discussing certain...aspects...of the ceremony,” he said with a straight face. “Madeline was curious.”

Caneese’s eyes were wide and shocked. “And you were telling her?”

He moved forward, took Caneese’s face in his hands and, smiling, touched his forehead to hers. “I was not,” he lied. “She wanted reassurance. Our customs are disturbing to her. I was attempting to explain them when things got out of hand.”

“A little out of hand,” Madeline said blithely. The look she gave Dtimun, unseen by Caneese, was wicked enough to make his eyes flash green.

Caneese melted. She touched Dtimun’s cheek with her hand. “I had to interfere. But you must not tell her anything further. I do not want you to make her more frightened.”

“Not to worry,” Madeline quipped. “I’ve had all my shots, and I’m experienced in six martial arts.”

Dtimun burst out laughing. Caneese stared worriedly from one of them to the other.

“We will not embarrass you,” Dtimun assured her. He hesitated. Madeline’s reaction to him was extremely stimulating. “We will not deliberately embarrass you,” he corrected. “It might be...wise—” he considered his choice of words “—to double the mute screen in the mating chamber, however.”

Caneese now looked horrified.

Dtimun held up a hand. “She has been known to throw things at me when she lost her temper,” he said quickly, looking for an explanation that would not disturb Caneese.

“Wouldn’t it be easier just to remove the ceramics from the room, sir?” Madeline asked him cheekily.

“Sir?” Caneese echoed. “Madeline, you must refrain from addressing him so.”

“Sorry,” Madeline replied with a smile. “Habit.”

“You must consider that this is the lesser of two evils,” Dtimun agreed. “She has, at least, refrained from saluting me.”

“Oh, I rarely do that,” she said. “In fact, we have this new guy, the kelekom tech, Jefferson Colby, that the commander stole...excuse me, borrowed,” she added when Dtimun glared at her, “from Admiral Lawson. Colby saluted the CO so often that he was getting a crick in his neck. So we told him that we never salute the CO because it affects his ego. Right, sir?” she asked Dtimun with a grin.

He glared at her. “When we are at Benaski Port, if you refer to me as ‘sir’ in front of possible spies, even your pregnancy will not be enough to ward off suspicion that we are enemy agents.”

“Point taken. Sorry, sir. I mean...” She hesitated. “Well, what the hell am I supposed to call you, then?” she asked.

“Madam!” he gritted.

“Madeline!” Caneese echoed.

Madeline threw up her hands. “I give up. I’m never going to be able to pull this off. I mean, look at...?”

She stopped, fascinated, as Rognan came dashing toward her as fast as his injured leg would allow.

“You must deal with this,” Caneese told Dtimun helplessly. “He has been told that he will not be permitted at the ceremony. He is very upset.”

“But why can’t he be?” Madeline asked.

“Because he considers you his mate,” Dtimun said with a flash of green eyes. “We would never make it past him into the mating chamber.”