The Morcai Battalion: The Recruit

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.