Читать книгу The Morcai Battalion: The Rescue - Diana Palmer - Страница 10
ОглавлениеNOT SURPRISINGLY, THINGS got decidedly worse on the Morcai after Mallory’s involuntarily action on the cliffside. Rhemun gave her hostile glances every time he saw her.
He seemed to be the only Cehn-Tahr in the entire Holconcom who disliked her. Even old Btnu was kind, and he had enough reasons of his own not to like humans. Edris had heard that Btnu had been involved in a conflict with Alkaasar, the Cehn-Tahr who had rebelled against the empire and died as a result of it. An aggressive, and apparently mentally unstable, human advisor had provoked Alkaasar into a battle he couldn’t win. But Btnu liked the little blonde doctor.
So, sadly, did Mekashe, Rhemun’s friend. He came to see Edris often in her cubicle, just to talk. He was curious about humans and their social groups. He found endless questions about Terravega and the medical corps. He was always smiling, always in a bright mood. Edris warmed to him.
But he had a peculiar habit of trying to give her things. She didn’t understand why he was so intense about it. He offered her everything from virtual pets to virtual flowers. She always refused, because the very intensity of his gift-giving made her uneasy. He was good-looking and kind. It didn’t matter. Her emotions were centered on one very unpleasant member of his species, one who didn’t want her interest.
Rhemun noticed Mekashe’s visits to the sick bay.
“Why does he come here so often?” he asked Mallory coldly. “Mekashe is in perfect health.”
“He’s interested in Terravegan customs, sir,” she replied, standing at attention.
“Yes?”
She swallowed. His tone was openly hostile. “He’s curious about humans.”
His dark eyes narrowed. “Let me give you some advice, Lieutenant,” he said quietly. “Never accept anything from him.”
She stared at him uncomprehendingly and flushed. “I...well, he’s very kind,” she began hesitantly, “and I don’t want to hurt his feelings. But I can’t, I mean I don’t, accept gifts from him. Ever. Sir.”
He lifted his chin. The way he looked at her was unnerving. She couldn’t quite decide what that look really was. It was possessive. As if she belonged to him and Mekashe was trespassing. What an odd, and stupid, thought. She closed her mind on it at once. He hated her. She didn’t need words to push that point home.
“I cannot speak to him about it,” he said stiffly. “It is a breach of custom, a social taboo. But you must continue to refuse any gifts offered.”
“I already do. Sir.”
He nodded. “Very well. Dismissed, Lieutenant.”
“Yes, sir.” She saluted and almost ran from him.
He couldn’t tell her that the giving of gifts was a prelude to courtship, or that Mekashe, unlike his own Clan, had accepted all the genetic modifications that Dtimun had. If Mekashe attempted to mate with the little blonde human, he would kill her.
As much as he disliked Mallory, he was also fond of Mekashe. They had been friends since boyhood. He didn’t want the death of Mallory to lie heavily on Mekashe’s conscience for the rest of his long life. Of course, that was why he was concerned. He turned and walked back toward the bridge. It was on Mekashe’s account that he was concerned. Only that.
* * *
THE ENDLESS DRILLS continued aboard the Morcai. Rhemun timed the men on their response and rated them when they fell short of his idea of perfection.
“This is difficult for the men,” Btnu cautioned gently. “Dtimun did this, but only at first, when the unit was formed after Ahkmau.”
Akhmau was a sore spot. He had not shared that horror with the crew, so he didn’t have the comradeship with the humans that Dtimun had forged. He was an outsider. They let him know it in many ways, most of which involved referring to their time in the Rojok concentration camp. It irritated him when the humans did it, but he hadn’t expected his exec, Btnu, to join in.
His eyes narrowed over darkness. “We must have adequate response time. It might mean the difference between victory and defeat. When I captained the kehmatemer, these drills were conducted daily.”
Btnu cocked his head in a very human way and even smiled. “I know, sir,” he said gently. “But you were a bodyguard unit. Infantry. This is mechanized cavalry. They are different disciplines. As well, the kehmatemer was a very small group of men. We have hundreds aboard ship.”
Rhemun didn’t fly at him. He felt like it. “We might say that the difficulty is on both sides, but it remains that we must perform efficiently in combat.”
“On that point, I agree,” Btnu replied. “However, I will remind you, respectfully, that Dtimun led his troops more by affection and respect than by command alone.”
Rhemun’s jaw tautened. “I have no wish to befriend them.”
“I know your past. The humans do not. You judge them by a tragedy. They are not evil. They have courage and good hearts.”
“A human was responsible for my father’s death,” Rhemun said coldly. “A human killed my son.”
“Yes.” Btnu went closer and put a hand on Rhemun’s shoulder, as a fond father might. “But these humans did not.”
Rhemun felt cold. The memory of the past was covering him up, like ice. He never smiled. He never laughed. His heart was dead. And he was imprisoned here with the humans on a ship in space, because of his Clan status, because he was next in line to command the Holconcom. He wanted to go back to the emperor’s bodyguard, but there was no escape.
“I do not belong here,” he told Btnu, the words dragged out of him.
“You will belong here,” the older Cehn-Tahr said quietly. “But first you must make the effort to earn the humans’ trust.”
Rhemun didn’t reply with words. But he sighed, and nodded curtly.
Btnu smiled and went back to work.
* * *
THEY WERE ORDERED to Ondar, to pick up refugees from an ongoing conflict between a mixed culture community and a group of renegades who opposed Chacon’s entry into the Tri-Galaxy Council with all the member worlds of Enmehkmehk’s empire. The renegades struck unexpectedly, and efficiently, taking supplies, equipment, and sometimes even people when specializations were needed for some project.
Nobody could track them down, because they had no fixed base. The refugees were in a camp outside the largest city-state on the continent. This was where Madeline Ruszel had first encountered Tnurat. Edris had heard the story many times, so that she could almost picture it in her mind before Rhemun set the medical staff down in the camp and she saw the reddish landscape for herself.
“Prepare the refugees for transport,” he told Edris and her staff. “Hurry. The renegades strike quickly, and thanks to their depredations, they have equipment that equals our own.”
“Yes, sir,” she said, saluting him without quite meeting his eyes.
She led her medics into the camp, performing triage as she went along. There were only a couple of serious cases. One was a young Altairian boy who had suffered plasma burns when he ran unexpectedly between a Rojok and a colonist who were exchanging fire. The other was an elderly Altairian female with a concussion. Edris took care of the boy while Tellas, her assistant, treated the concussion.
Mekashe and several other soldiers who formed Rhemun’s personal bodyguard unit had come down with them.
Ensign Lawrence Jones, the young blond weapons specialist, had accompanied them because of his prowess with a sensor cannon.
He paused beside Edris. “Ma’am there’s a signal I can’t read,” he said.
She glanced at his monitor unit and grimaced. “That’s a casualty,” she pointed out. “See the life signs? It’s Cularian, too.” She looked past him. “Who’s missing?”
“Not sure, sir. I don’t see Mekashe, though,” he added worriedly. Like Edris, he was fond of the commander’s friend.
She finished healing the boy’s wounds, smiled at him and reassured him in Altair that he would heal and be whole again.
“You speak Altair?” Jones asked, grinning. “It’s really hard to learn, Ma’am.”
She smiled at him. “Really hard,” she agreed. “I’m so slow that it takes me forever, but I’ve picked up quite a few languages in the past few years, even some that are an archaic form.”
“I’m slow, too, Ma’am. Don’t feel bad.”
She nodded. “It’s okay, Jones. You’re doing great.”
“Thanks.” He glanced over to where the commander was just entering one of the scout ships. “He’s going back to the ship to relay our progress to the military command,” he told her. “We’re having some comm issues on the ground. It’s intermittent but it’s causing him to be short-tempered. More short-tempered,” he added under his breath. He shook his head. “I wish he didn’t hate us so much.”
She sighed. “You and me both, Jones.” She got to her feet. “I’ll have one of the air techs fly me over to the source of that signal. Darn, it’s gone again. No matter, I saved the coordinates. If it’s Mekashe, I’ll send up a flare. You be watching, okay?”
“That’s an affirmative, Ma’am. Please be careful.”
She grinned. “You do the same.”
* * *
A FEW MINUTES LATER, Edris wished she hadn’t ordered the scout to leave her in the clearing. She’d been certain from the readings that a medical emergency loomed nearby—most likely one of their Cehn-Tahr crew who’d gotten separated from the rest of the landing party. It might be Mekashe who was missing. The sensor reading indicated a wounded person, a wounded Cularian person, in this vicinity. The sensors had suddenly fallen prey to an electromagnetic interference of unknown origin, however, so it was impossible to use a robot probe to find the victim. She’d started to follow the sensor trail when her unit began malfunctioning. It was almost, she puzzled, as if the signal had been wiped out by some sort of jamming device. It was quite possible that the renegade Rojok unit could still be camped near the refugees. They would certainly have jamming devices.
She checked her wrist sensor again. It was almost useless. At least the drug banks would work if she found an incapacitated soldier here. She only wished she’d taken more time and refilled the med banks first. As usual, she’d jumped in too quickly, without enough preparation. It was a fault she’d tried to correct over the years. Her head injury from years ago was still causing problems, even now.
Well, it would mean some walking, to use her eyes and ears to search for a patient. But if it was Mekashe lying there injured, it would be worth the effort.
A sudden, sharp sound made her turn her head. She heard a voice speaking an ancient dialect of Rojok, which only a few outworlders, including Edris, could even understand.
“Holconcom!” it rasped. “Shoot!”
She felt a sudden burning pain in her lower rib cage. “Stop! Medic, not soldier...!” she called back, in the same dialect, just before she hit the ground.
There was a scramble of feet and suddenly she was surrounded by Rojok soldiers of some elite group, all wearing black uniforms. The leader, who could be recognized by his long blond hair, stood over her with narrowed eyes. At that, he couldn’t be the ranking officer, his hair only came to his shoulders, too short for even a company commander.
“Edris Mallory,” she said, quickly using a light dose of her precious few meds to alleviate the pain. There was no time to diagnose the damage. “Dr. Mallory.”
“Holconcom,” the officer returned.
“Medic...not Holconcom soldier,” she corrected. “I was searching for a wounded person. Our sensors...” She couldn’t mention that they didn’t work; this party of Rojoks was certainly one of the rebellious splinter groups that didn’t honor Chacon’s cease-fire with the Tri-Galaxy Fleet. “Our sensors weren’t specific,” she added.
“Our leader was wounded in a firefight with one of the refugees in a camp near here,” the Rojok said. “You speak our dialect. This is unprecedented.”
“I have an affinity for languages,” she replied. “May I see your leader? I am a specialist in Cularian medicine.”
He looked even more surprised. He glanced at the others, who were uneasy and coaxed him to let her try.
He sighed and signaled his men to holster their weapons. “Yes. We will take you to him.”
It was hard to get up, even harder to walk. There was some internal damage, but not immediately life-threatening. Perhaps a slightly damaged lower lung. It was difficult to breathe normally, so it was probably the lung. The lower lobe was expendable, if necessary. Thank goodness the shot hadn’t been better aimed. She’d already used a mild sedative, just enough to get her through the worst of the pain. She got to her feet.
She followed them to a speeder, got inside, and was whisked to their base camp. It was small. There were only about ten of them. They looked shocked when their comrades came into camp with a small blonde human female wearing the uniform of their enemy, the Holconcom, but they recovered quickly when the ranking officer explained why they’d brought her to camp.
He took her to a molded plexifab hut, inside which was a tall Rojok officer, middle-aged, lying unconscious on a pallet.
Edris went to him at once and prayed that her scanner would work long enough to diagnose, and that the electromagnetic field wouldn’t interfere with the operation of her drug banks.
She grimaced, because the scanner wasn’t working properly. “There’s interference with my sensors here...” she began worriedly.
The ranking officer snapped something to a soldier, who saluted and left. Only a couple of minutes later, the sensors were working again. A jamming device. That made sense.
“Thanks,” Edris said with a glance at him. “I’m afraid we’ve lost the ability to do examinations without our tech these days. Medicine, like weaponry, is dependent on it.”
He nodded. He didn’t speak. He stood, grim-faced, while she diagnosed the condition of their leader.
She sighed and smiled. “It’s not as bad as it looks,” she promised him. She went to work. It was a penetrating wound which had done damage to several internal organs and nicked his colon. She set about using her tools to do the necessary repairs.
Halfway through, he came around and groaned.
“Sorry,” she said in the dialect, and used the last of her drugs to inject a powerful painkiller. “Better?” she asked.
He looked up at her, blinked and managed a rough laugh. “Better. A Holconcom? And you haven’t killed me?”
“No, sir,” she said, with a painful smile. Her own injury was uncomfortable. “We take an oath to treat any patient, regardless of political affiliation. Besides that, I know Chacon,” she added softly.
He was impressed. “How?”
“My best friend is married to the son of the Cehn-Tahr emperor,” she said easily. “His sister is the mate of Chacon. I attended the bonding ceremony on Memcache.”
“We revere Chacon,” he said heavily. “It grieves me that he joined the Empire with that of the Cehn-Tahr.” He did not add that Chacon was a relative of his. It had saddened him to oppose the field marshal on this issue.
“It was to prevent the war from spreading,” she said simply, “and claiming even more lives on both sides of the conflict. He sits in council now with the Tri-Galaxy and has a powerful voice in making policy. He will see to it that planets in the New Territory are shared equally between all worlds, including Enmehkmehk, your own homeworld.”
He touched his stomach. “I feel the mending,” he said, surprised.
She smiled. “We have powerful medicines, and even more powerful instruments.” She closed her wrist scanner. Its drug banks were empty now.
The commander of the small unit got to his feet with a little effort, stood erect, towering over Edris, and managed a smile. “Thank you.”
She smiled back. “Saving lives is an obligation, not a kindness,” she said, quoting Dtimun, the emperor’s son who had led the Holconcom for many years.
They moved outside, and suddenly the entire camp was on alert. A red blur materialized beside Edris with his big hand around the throat of the Rojok commander. Rhemun!
“No!” She jumped between them, pushing at Rhemun’s broad chest. She grimaced at the pain. Rhemun, shocked, let go of the Rojok. Edris moved between the two aliens, to shield the Rojok with her own small body. “No, he’s a friend! I just saved his life. Don’t you dare kill him!”
Rhemun gaped at her. She’d just spoken to him unthinkingly in the dialect the Rojoks used, the ancient tongue, which he spoke but no human ever had.
The Rojok commander laughed. “So everything written of the Cehn-Tahr Holconcom is true, I see,” he mused. “Such speed is almost impossible to believe, unseen.”
Rhemun nodded solemnly. “This is almost never seen outside a battlefield. Why is my medic here?”
The commander’s lieutenant moved forward. “We brought her to treat our officer,” he said. “She speaks the ancient tongue,” he added with faint reverence.
“So I see.” Rhemun lifted both eyebrows. “Impressive,” he added, almost reluctantly.
“Odd that your commander would allow her to wander around hostile, contested territory alone,” the older commander remarked, obviously not recognizing that Rhemun was the commander. Holconcon leaders never wore rank insignia.
“He had no knowledge of her deployment,” Rhemun replied. “I came in search of her.” He didn’t add that Mallory’s absence from the camp had first annoyed him, and then concerned him, as she’d gone in the direction of a suspected Rojok camp. Instead of deploying someone to check on her, he’d come himself. He didn’t dare examine that thought too closely.
“I wasn’t supposed to come alone,” Edris told the Rojok with a grimace. “I suppose I’ll be stood against a wall and shot for insubordination.”
The Rojok commander laughed.
“I thank you for my life,” the Rojok told her gently, and smiled. “We will tell tales of you around campfires.”
“You honor me, when I am unworthy,” she said, in the same ancient tongue.
He only smiled. He sighed as he looked at Rhemun. “Perhaps the old ones are right, and Chacon’s government will be one to support.” He shrugged. “My men and I will surrender ourselves and hope for clemency.”
“I can tell you from my own experience that Chacon is the most fair-minded of military leaders,” Rhemun told him. “He does not punish idealism.”
The Rojok smiled secretly. He did not share his affiliation with the new head of the Rojok government. The Rojok bowed formally. So did Rhemun.
“May I know your name?” he asked the little blonde human.
She managed a faint smile for him. “Dr. Edris Mallory.”
He made a stab at pronouncing it, which widened the smile.
“That’s close enough,” she said, encouraging him.
“My name is Soltok,” he replied. “I will remember you.”
“I will remember you.” It was a formal leave-taking.
The men saluted her and Rhemun. The salutes were returned. The human and the Cehn-Tahr left the camp, walking.
When they were far enough down the dirt trail to be out of earshot, Rhemun glared at her. “I gave strict orders that no one was to do foot searches down here,” he said curtly.
“Sorry, sir,” she said, and managed a salute. “There was a wounded person. I recognized the physiology as Cularian. I didn’t realize it was a Rojok. Nobody had seen Mekashe and I thought it might be him. The sensors weren’t working properly...” She stopped walking, grimaced and caught her breath. There was a lot of pain. She felt unsteady on her feet.
Her remark about Mekashe had caught him on the raw. He didn’t like her affection for his friend. He would have said something about it but her gasp caught his attention. “I smell blood,” he exclaimed, turning to her. “And cauterized flesh.”
She drew in a breath and went to sit on a large boulder beside the trail. “I was shot with a chasat.”
“What?”
She held up a hand, because he was looking back in the direction of the Rojok camp with fiery intent. “They saw the uniform and fired first. Having seen you appear in their camp the way you did, I wouldn’t have blamed them for shooting first. Holconcom have a fierce reputation among soldiers, and I don’t wear a medical insignia that’s visible at a distance. Something I’m going to recommend change for,” she added.
“How bad is it?”
She swallowed. “I made running repairs. I think I may have some minor internal damage. I have nothing left in my medical banks. I used it all on the Rojok officer.”
He drew in a rough breath. “I can carry you to the ship,” he said.
She held up a hand. “No!”
He scowled, waiting for an explanation.
“I know that the commander doesn’t find anything attractive about me, however, I am bleeding,” she pointed out. “Even if I make a breach in protocol by mentioning it, if you come in contact with my blood, it could...” She bit her tongue. She was going to catch hell anyway, but she couldn’t bring herself to say the words.
He lifted his chin. He was angry that she’d dared to say anything to him about intimate Cehn-Tahr behaviors. They were not discussed even between males, unless they shared Clan affiliation. Even then, it required at least family status.
Here she was, an outworlder, a human, presuming to lecture him on the dangers of touching her. And not for the first time. She’d made the same remark when he started to carry her across the chasm on an earlier mission. The trouble was, she was right. That made it worse.
He rubbed the crystal on his comm ring and Hahnson appeared.
“Mallory is wounded. I cannot touch her. This is our position. Make haste.” He cut the communication and glared at Mallory.
“Sir, it’s not my fault,” she said, trying to stand at attention. “I was made aware of certain things during my time on Memcache when Dr. Ruszel delivered her son. I learned by things I overheard. I did not pry or ask questions.”
He looked down his nose at her. She was in obvious pain and he felt guilty that he didn’t just swing her up in his arms and run with her back to the refugee camp. However, she was correct. The scent of her pheromones was already disturbing. If he touched her, if he came in contact with her blood, it would almost certainly provoke a mating behavior. It was more dangerous than coming into contact with just her skin. It made him angry that she knew.
“We do not discuss such things, even among ourselves,” he snapped.
“Yes, sir. I know that, sir. I’m very...sorry, sir.” Her voice was getting weaker.
He rubbed the crystal again. “Hahnson, where the hell are you?” he demanded, sounding so much like Dtimun in a temper that Edris just stared at him.
“Five clicks away. Four. Three,” Hahnson was counting.
Two seconds later, he landed in one of the small scout ships, piloted by Ensign Jones. “Hold it there,” he told Jones. “We’ll be right in.”
He ran to Edris, examined her and grimaced. “You have a knack for accidents,” he pointed out as he extricated his tools from his wrist unit. “You couldn’t treat this yourself?”
“Used up all my meds treating a renegade Rojok.”
“And they shot you?” Hahnson added coldly. “Some gratitude!”
“His men shot me when they saw the uniform, Doc,” she replied, wincing. “We need bigger medical devices on our uniforms...”
“I’ll put in a suggestion. Hold still.”
He had to go close to work on her. Rhemun turned away. It was incomprehensible that he suddenly wanted to throttle Hahnson. A growl rose in his throat. He suppressed it by activating his comm ring and trying to get a message through to the crew at the refugee camp.
“All fixed.” Hahnson chuckled. He hadn’t noticed Rhemun’s strange behavior or he might have remarked on it.
Edris got to her feet and drew in a long sweet breath. “Thanks,” she said warmly.
“Back to the camp,” Rhemun said icily, and gestured them toward the ship.
Mekashe was waiting at one of the preformed huts. He grinned when Mallory came into view. “You went looking for me,” he exclaimed with a laugh. “You thought I was wounded and you were concerned?”
“She was wounded looking for you,” Rhemun snapped. “A loss of time and efficiency.” He glared at Mallory. “Your department would benefit from the same drills I require of command line soldiers. I’ll initiate them when we’re back aboard.” He turned to Mekashe. “We have no time for pleasant conversation.”
“Yes, sir,” Mekashe said, saluting. But he had green eyes when he glanced at Edris.
She only nodded. She didn’t want to see any more of the commander’s temper. She was uneasy enough already. He didn’t want Mekashe around her. She’d have to find a kinder way to deter his friendliness.
