The Morcai Battalion: The Recruit

Madeline, busily working on his wound, tried to look invisible.

“Two Rojoks were in the act of killing you when Ruszel fired on them,” the officer said respectfully.

“You were armed?” he demanded of her.

She ground her teeth together as she pulled out another tool and began to repair the cellular damage. “So court-martial me.”

“I intend to!” he shot back. “How many times must I tell you that medics are not permitted weapons in combat? It draws fire from the enemy directly to you!”

“She saved your life, sir,” the eldest of his bodyguard interjected solemnly.

“Yes. And that’s twice...” Madeline began with defiant humor.

“Silence!” he growled. He tried to sit up while she was still working on him.

She pushed him back down. “Stay there!” she grumbled. “I can’t mend tissue on a moving target!”

The bodyguard stood rigidly, waiting for the explosion. To their amazement, the commander only made a sound in his throat and lay back down in the grass while Ruszel’s deft hands reduced the wound.

“After all the time and effort I put into saving your life at Ahkmau, I’m not letting some stray Rojoks take you out,” she muttered as she worked.

“We have already agreed that you most likely repaired me in such fashion that I will never function properly again,” he reminded her.

She made a face. “You could look for years in the Tri-Fleet and not find another Cularian medicine specialist who could operate on you under combat conditions.”

He didn’t answer. The rigid lines of his face began to relax. Madeline realized belatedly that he had been concealing the extent of the pain. It must have been horrific, she reasoned, considering the extent of the damage.

She finished the sutures and applied a sterile bandage. “You’re lucky that the Rojok hit your lung and not your heart,” she said absently.

“Your misfortune,” he replied, touching the invisible bandage with the tips of his fingers. “You have been warned repeatedly about flouting the regulations forbidding weapons to medics. This time you will pay the price.”

She got to her feet, trying not to notice the broad, muscular chest with its thick wedge of black hair confronting her as he followed suit.

“You’ll file charges,” she said nonchalantly, “the board will ask for my side of the story, I’ll call your bodyguard as witnesses and everybody will note that you would be dead if I hadn’t disobeyed orders. You’ll lose your case, I’ll get a commendation, and the Tri-Fleet will foot the bill for all the legal wrangling.” She gave him a smug look from twinkling green eyes.

“We would be required to tell the truth under oath,” the chief of Dtimun’s personal bodyguard interjected. “Sorry, sir.”

Dtimun closed his uniform shirt. “Get back down there and check the Rojok camp for intel,” he growled at the officer.

The other Cehn-Tahr saluted, grinned at Madeline and led his unit back to the dwindling sounds of combat from above.

Madeline knew she was in trouble. She didn’t even have to note the color of his eyes. It was bad enough that she’d carried a Gresham. It was worse that she’d forgotten herself so completely that she’d shown her fear for the danger he was in. She toyed with complex mathematical computations, hoping they might prevent him from seeing too much.

He didn’t say anything at first. He checked his virtual combat array to see how the mopping-up was proceeding, and he noted the position and strength of the remaining Rojok troops.

“Well, I couldn’t let them kill you,” she said defensively when he finally glared down at her. “I’m a doctor. I took an oath to save lives.”

His eyes narrowed. He seemed deep in thought. Something dark and painful made shadows under his eyelids.

Suddenly, she saw shapes. Humans. No, Cehn-Tahr. And Dacerians. Rojoks, too. There was sand; a village in the deep desert of Dacerius. There was a beautiful woman with jet-black hair that fell to her hips, and eyes like almonds. She wore the thinnest of black lace veils over her nose and mouth. She was smiling. Then she was yelling, held firmly by Cehn-Tahr soldiers in royal blue uniforms. A shadowy figure was raging at a younger version of Dtimun as he held the female by the arm. She whirled, moved toward him aggressively. The shadowy figure raised his hand and grabbed something from a nearby wall. A razor-sharp golden sword sliced downward. There was an anguished shout, a short scream, blood...!

She had to sit down. The images were horrifying, even to a physician who’d worked under combat conditions.

Dtimun was scowling. “Impossible,” he said harshly, visibly shocked. “You have no psi abilities. I checked your medical records!”

She was still trying to catch her breath. That beautiful, helpless woman. The barbarians! She shivered.

“Only six other minds in the three galaxies have ever penetrated mine, and they were of my own Clan!” he bit off.

The telling reference went right over her head.

“She was so beautiful,” she murmured, feeling sick.

He turned away from her. “We must go.”

She knew she should never have spoken aloud. Now she was going to catch hell for that, too. She got back to her feet, shaky and unsettled. She checked the medical banks in her wrist scanner for something to do.

“You will never repeat what you have seen,” he said, but his lips didn’t move.

She heard him in her mind. “Of course I won’t,” she replied, and her lips didn’t move, either. “I never repeat anything you tell me in confidence.”

They stared at each other for one long moment while the realization penetrated. Now it worked both ways. He was reading her mind; but she could read his as well. She wondered how Cehn-Tahr learned how to block probing minds. Before she could ask the question, even silently, the bodyguard came down the hill with a hostage.

Madeline left the commander with his bodyguard and rushed back to the rest of the command, to see what she could do for the wounded. Hahnson was directing his own medics among the humans of the unit. Madeline motioned to her medtechs and started toward another small section of the jungle battlefield. The sound of weapons firing seemed unusually loud.

Her contretemps with the commander had unsettled her, or she might have noticed the ambush. She’d gone ahead to search for more casualties when she heard the snap of a fallen limb just behind her. As she turned to see who was following her, there was a sharp pain in her head and then, darkness.

* * *

“WHERE IS RUSZEL?” Dtimun asked Hahnson as he and his bodyguard joined the rest of the unit.

“Maddie?” Hahnson looked dazed. “Sir, I haven’t seen her.”

“She came this way. She must be here.”

Hahnson called one of his assistants over. “Have you seen Dr. Ruszel?” he asked.

“Yes, sir,” the younger man acknowledged. “She went ahead to look for any casualties we might have missed. She’s only been gone for a few minutes...”

Dtimun was a blur of red, moving so fast that his own bodyguard was hard-pressed to close the distance between them. He looked for her in his mind. But he couldn’t find her. The lack of communication was...disturbing. His red-haired medic tended to overshoot her mandate in battle, often rushing into trouble. He recalled Chacon’s timely interference at Ahkmau during the escape of the Morcai Battalion from imprisonment, when Madeline had been treating a wounded comrade and didn’t see Rojoks creeping up on her with deadly intent. Her courage was legendary. But she sometimes had poor impulse control. He didn’t like this. It was very unusual that he couldn’t touch her mind when he liked. He did it more often than he cared to admit lately, and often without her knowledge.

He tossed a curt order to his men, insisting when they were reluctant to leave him. He had no basis for his concern, but he felt somewhere inside him that Ruszel was in trouble. She got on his nerves, she irritated him, she frequently made him furious. But if he lost her...

He put on another burst of speed as he looked for any sign of her. He found her boot prints in the soft dirt. They were joined by two larger pair. Rojoks! Her footprints vanished and those of one of the Rojoks deepened. She’d been carried out of here. But to where? If he couldn’t access her mind, he couldn’t find her!

He closed his eyes and searched for her thoughts. “Ruszel,” he called silently. “Ruszel, answer me. Where are you?”

There was a hesitation that he actually felt. “Sir?” Her thoughts were disoriented and layered in intense pain. But she was alive! He hated the intensity of relief that he felt. His overreaction to her danger was disturbing.

“Where are you?” he persisted.

Madeline’s head was splitting. She sat up and caught her breath. She was in a Rojok camp atop a mesa, overlooking the battlefield. The ranking officer of the Rojok squad was staring down at her with an expression that made her want to kick him.

“So you wake,” he said. “You are Ruszel,” he added surprisingly. “We have heard of you. The Holconcom has caused the deaths of many of our comrades. How fitting that we should now cause yours.” He gave an order. Two of his men jerked Madeline to her feet, worsening the headache.

The Rojok gave her a scrutiny that, if she had been herself, would have propelled her fist into his thin-lipped, slit-eyed face.

“You are comely, for a human female,” the Rojok purred. He reached out a six-fingered hand and ripped her tunic open. “Such white skin,” he laughed, gripping her soft flesh in his fingers.

She kicked him as hard as she could and was trying to land another blow when the Rojok’s hand connected with her cheek. She took the blow without flinching and used a Rojok word she’d heard from Komak. It made the officer furious.

“Here,” the small, muscular Rojok called to them as he poised on the edge of the cliff. “Bring her! We will show this bad-tempered, worthless female how we reward bad behavior among our own people!”

The taller aliens half dragged her to the precipice. Below, she could see the red uniforms of her colleagues. Her eyes weren’t focusing. She could barely think for the pain.

“Where are you?” Dtimun demanded again.

She blinked. “I’m on the edge of a cliff,” she thought to him. “Above one of our units. My head is killing me. These two-legged lizards must have hit me on the head. Which is nothing to what this little tyrant just tried to do...” She pictured it in her mind.

“Holconcom!” the small Rojok officer interrupted her, calling down to her comrades. “Can you hear me?”

Dtimun looked up. There was Ruszel, in the grasp of two tall Rojoks. A smaller one was posed there, his hands on his hips.

“We have your warwoman!” the Rojok officer yelled down. “Retreat, or we will throw her down to you!”

Dtimun felt the others group around him. Hahnson moved to his side. The husky blond medic was tense, still. His concern was almost physical.

“The Holconcom do not bargain. Return our crewman, or face the consequences,” Dtimun called back, in a tone like steel hitting rock.

The small Rojok only laughed. “I did not think you would bargain. But this one is much known among soldiers. Even our commander in chief has respect for her,” he spat. “She is nothing special. Just a female.” He caught Madeline’s arm and dragged her closer to the edge of the cliff. “But you will not replace her easily, Commander of the Cehn-Tahr,” he added. He laughed again. “What a shame, to kill her! You should obey me, and quickly, if you wish her to live. Which would break first when she landed, I wonder—her back or her skull? Perhaps we should remove her brain before we toss her down to you!”

“Dear God,” Hahnson whispered, his voice barely audible as he saw the certainty of what was going to happen next. “He’s crazy.”

Dtimun tensed. “Be still,” he shot at his comrade. He closed his eyes. “Madeline,” he called silently, using her name almost unconsciously. “Do you trust me?”

“With my life, sir,” came the quiet reply.

“You must close your eyes, hold your breath and throw yourself over the cliff.”

She didn’t question him, or argue. She knew it would be a leap to her death. No being in the galaxies could possibly save her without a force net, and she knew that her unit carried none of those. He wasn’t going to let the Rojoks have the satisfaction of causing her death. He expected her to die like a soldier, and bring honor to her command. And she would. Lack of courage had never been one of her faults.

“Now?” she asked.

“Yes.”

She didn’t even hesitate. “Malenchar!” she yelled, giving the battle cry of the Holconcom. At the same moment, throbbing head and all, she jerked out of the shocked Rojok’s grasp, took a breath and dived headfirst over the edge of the cliff. She closed her eyes. Free fall was exciting. Of course, there would be a sudden stop, she thought with gallows humor. Hopefully, she wouldn’t feel it.

About halfway down, she felt something warm and solid wrap itself around her. She opened her eyes, startled, and found the commander enveloping her. He made leaps against the face of the cliff that her mind told her were impossible. She’d seen great cats bound from high place to higher place, liquid with grace and strength, but she’d never seen a Cehn-Tahr do it.

With grace and elegance, holding her easily against him, he flew like the wind, finding a foothold, using it to leap to another foothold. Claws extended on one hand, and he used them to help keep his balance as he jumped. He made his way down the cliff in a matter of seconds, his strength unbelievable. Belatedly, Madeline wrapped her arms around his neck and held on for dear life. She was dead of course, but her mind had somehow lapsed into dreams before she hit bottom. None of this was real. No species in the universe could do what her mind told her that Dtimun was doing.

With a soft thud, he hit the ground at the bottom of the cliff, still holding Madeline close in his arms. The momentum cost him his footing. He rolled with her, protecting her with his body, so that the hard ground didn’t bruise her too badly. His grip was painful, like steel, and the genetically engineered claws that his hands produced in combat had come out involuntarily with the stress of the rescue. She flinched as they bit into her back like knives.

He felt the pain in her and forced his claws to retract. But there was a more intense reaction, which he could not control, prompted by her nearness and the flood of pheromones suddenly exuding from her soft body at the almost intimate contact.

As they rolled to a stop, he lifted enough to see her face. He looked down into her wide, shocked eyes and fought to catch his breath and control his hunger. A low, dangerous growl echoed deeply from his throat, involuntarily, as he stared at her without blinking.

Madeline was shell-shocked. She was still alive; the pain told her that. Her head hurt. There were deep punctures where his hands had gripped her, in her lungs, making breathing painful. She felt the sudden tension in his body and was amazed not only at its strength, but at the weight of it above her. The Cehn-Tahr were feline in origin, or so the legends went, but cats were lightweights. The commander was as solid as a wall, and he was heavy. She stared into his eyes with mingled fascination and scientific curiosity. The growl was puzzling. She’d only ever heard it in combat. No, that wasn’t true. She’d heard it at the Altair embassy, when Ambassador Taylor had touched her...

“You...caught me,” she stammered. “But that’s impossible! I fell from over a hundred feet!”

“One hundred and fifty,” he corrected, slowly calming. He scowled. “Your body is cool.”

“No, sir,” she said unsteadily. “Your normal body heat is three degrees higher than that of humans. I only feel cool to you.” She swallowed. His nearness was producing some odd sensations. “You must weigh three times as much as you appear to weigh...”

“Genetic engineering,” he replied tersely, something else he was forbidden to tell outworlders, that he’d already shared with her at his embassy. He was disturbed by her, and not thinking logically. “Density and mass, a result of enhanced tensile strength in the muscle tissue and bone.”

She was only barely aware of the words. He smelled of spices. He was very warm. She felt safe in the shelter of his strength. But the sensations were frightening to a woman who’d never felt them.

He searched her eyes quietly. “I damaged you in the process of saving your life,” he said curtly.

“Hahnson can heal the wounds,” she said simply, fighting to breathe. Claws had punctured her lung in one of the lower lobes. Still...”I would have been dead, had you not intervened. Thank you.”

He hadn’t blinked. “You obeyed me without question. Yet you thought I was commanding you to leap to your death.”

“Of course,” she said, puzzled. “I’ve never refused a command from you, sir. Well, not unless it involved carrying a firearm,” she added facetiously.

That was true. It touched him, at some deep level, that blind trust.

His eyes had darkened again and narrowed. His lean hands, propped beside her ears, tensed. The low growl came again.

“Sir?” she whispered, uneasy.

“We are predators,” he said in a rough tone. “There is a saying among us, that nothing in the known galaxies is as dangerous as a Cehn-Tahr male who is hunting.”

She wondered what that had to do with their present situation and what he meant by “hunting.” Did he mean the combat with the Rojoks? She started to ask. But even as she nursed the thought, the sound of footsteps, running, broke the tense silence.

Dtimun got to his feet in a quick, graceful motion and drew Madeline up with him, steadying her when she stumbled.

Hahnson came into view, huffing a little from the exertion. “We saw her fall!” he exclaimed. “Is she all right?”

Several human crewmen, and Dtimun’s Cehn-Tahr bodyguard, fetched up beside them. The humans were astonished.

“A tree broke my fall,” she lied with a laugh. She couldn’t admit that Dtimun had touched her. If anyone repeated the story, he could be spaced for breaking such a basic law among his own people as contact with a human female, even in the act of saving her life. “Well, several trees broke my fall,” she amended. “I’m fine, except for a hell of a backache,” she told Hahnson with a wan smile. She winced as she moved. The punctures were deep. “I got hit on the head, too. I need some patching up.”

Hahnson glanced at Dtimun, who was looking more dangerous by the second. “I can do that. We need to get you back aboard the scout ship.”

“That can wait,” she returned. “There’s a battle to win.”

“Indeed,” Dtimun said coldly. He whirled, shooting orders in his own language at his bodyguard. “The rest of you, wait here. And you will say nothing of what you see to anyone outside this unit. Is that clear?”

There was a chorus of affirmatives. Even as they died on the air, Dtimun and the four members of his bodyguard vanished like red smoke. The Terravegans had seen their C.O. move fast before, but never like this; not in almost three years.

Hahnson ran his wrist unit over Madeline while the other crewmen spread out, looking for survivors of the battle, along with a handful of medics.

Hahnson gritted his teeth. “These wounds are bad. One of them would have been fatal if I hadn’t been close by,” he added as he mended bone and muscle.

“He didn’t mean...to do it,” she panted, wincing as the pain bit into her. She’d hidden it from Dtimun, but she didn’t have to hide it from Strick. It hurt to breathe. “He saved me, Strick,” she said in a low tone. “He came up the cliff and caught me in midair, leaped from rock to rock to get me safely to the ground. I wouldn’t have believed it if I hadn’t seen it with my own eyes.”

“They have incredible strength and flexibility,” he said as he worked.

“You won’t mention this?” she worried and relaxed when he shook his head. “I wouldn’t want to land him in trouble with his own people. I’m not sure it’s safe to tell our own crewmates that he carried me down.”

“They wouldn’t tell.”

“They wouldn’t mean to tell,” she corrected. The pain eased as he mended the punctures. “The Cehn-Tahr keep so many secrets.”

“More than I can ever tell you,” he returned solemnly.

She studied him curiously. “He said an odd thing.”

“What?”

“That there was nothing in the galaxies more dangerous than a Cehn-Tahr male who was hunting.”

He let out a breath. His eyes met hers and concern was in them. “Oh, dear.”

“What do you mean, oh...?”

Suddenly, in the distance there were horrible screams. They were coming from the top of the mesa. Everyone looked up.

Bodies erupted from the bare rock and, falling heavily from the mesa, came to rest in the forest, breaking tree limbs as they careened down toward the canyon floor. Seconds later, Dtimun appeared with the small Rojok officer who’d taunted him with Madeline. The humans gathered close, fascinated. They’d never seen such speed.

Dtimun had the alien by the collar of his uniform. He shook him and threw him at Madeline’s feet while the nearby humans gathered closer.

“I...apologize,” the Rojok said in a thready voice.

“Again!” Dtimun prompted.

“I...am...sorry,” came the obliging reply.

The little alien had rips all over his uniform, and lacerations on every visible inch of skin. It occurred to Madeline that he was much like a mouse that had been caught by a cat.

“An appropriate analogy,” Dtimun thought to her.

She looked at him with surprise. “You were playing with him,” she thought back, shocked.

He cocked an eyebrow. He still spoke only in her mind. “It is not a game. He would have allowed us to watch him cut you to ribbons before he killed you. He is a sadist who enjoys torturing his victims. He has killed females who did not please him.”

She blinked. “There are still laws. Even a prisoner is entitled to trial...”

He closed his eyes. The Rojok arched. There was a loud, violent snap. He lay still. Dtimun’s eyes opened, stormy and cold, and looked, defiantly, right into Madeline’s.

No one spoke. Their commanding officer had killed an enemy combatant with the power of his mind alone. For the first time, Madeline realized what he could have done at Ahkmau if the dylete hadn’t caught him unaware. Perhaps it was also why Mangus Lo had been so desperate to capture him. Had the Rojok tyrant known the power of Dtimun’s mind?

“That is not a question I will permit you to ask,” came the terse reply, but only in her mind.

The humans had unconsciously moved closer together in the wake of their commander’s violent response to the Rojok. He glanced at them, slowly calming.

“There are things Holconcom never share with outworlders,” he told them quietly. “We have genetic enhancements which give us great advantage in combat, far beyond our natural strength. In addition to the enhancements, I can kill with my mind. Of this, you will never speak.” He had broken another taboo. But, then, they were his people, these humans. He was protective of them.

Higgins, the engineer, moved forward. He was pale, but not intimidated. “Sir, we are Holconcom, too,” he said with dignity. “It would never occur to any of us to betray any confidence you share with us.”

“Exactly,” Lieutenant Jennings, the communications officer, agreed somberly.

A chorus of affirmatives ran through the small unit.

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