The Morcai Battalion: The Recruit

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.