The Morcai Battalion: The Recruit

Madeline’s teeth clenched. “And he’s standing right behind me, isn’t he?”

Edris only nodded.

Madeline turned with a sigh. Dtimun was glaring down at her with both hands locked behind his back, looking stern and unapproachable.

“Shall we lengthen the period of your confinement to the base by two standard weeks?” he asked.

“Now, sir, why would we want to do that?” Madeline asked innocently.

He pursed his lips. “From now on, I intend to have your equipment bag searched every time we leave the ship.”

She groaned.

He nodded curtly, turned and jogged off down the corridor.

Edris, wisely, didn’t say a word. Dr. Ruszel’s face was almost as red as her hair with bad temper.

CHAPTER THREE (#ulink_79852100-25f7-5ad0-8992-359d6365fd2d)

MADELINE WAS CATCHING up on reports on her virtual desk when a flash came in from Admiral Lawson.

She answered it at once. “Yes, sir?” she said respectfully.

He grimaced. “I hate to have to ask you to do this, Ruszel,” he replied, “but everybody else cut me off the minute I mentioned a personal dispatch I needed to send to Dtimun...” He waited. She didn’t protest. He grinned. “I knew you had the guts to do it.”

She sighed. “Everybody else is afraid of him, especially lately,” she confided. “He’s been in a sour mood. Not my fault,” she added at once. “I haven’t done a thing to upset him.”

Lawson reserved judgment on that, but he didn’t say so. “I’m flashing the dispatch to you. Top secret. Eyes only. I can’t trust anyone else to transport it.”

She blinked when it appeared, in solid form, in her cyberreconstitutor “in” tray. “Sir, you couldn’t flash it to the C.O.?”

He shrugged. “I could, if he’d answer his unit. He won’t.” His face tautened. “He won’t like the dispatch, but I have to give it to him. You’ll find him at the Cehn-Tahr embassy, by the way, getting ready for some big reception at the Altair center. He’s not happy that he has to go and represent his government. Their own ambassador refused to go and was recalled.”

She pursed her lips. “My, my, imagine that. It must be something big.”

“Something. Get going. He’ll be leaving shortly. If you have to chase him down to the Altair embassy, the Altairians will never let you through the door in uniform.”

“They’d have to,” she commented, “because I’m not changing my uniform for skirts even for diplomacy’s sake.”

He chuckled. “I don’t blame you. Not a lot of human females in the Holconcom,” he added with a grin. Her place as the only female in that crack unit made him proud.

“Yes, sir,” she agreed, smiling back.

He cut the connection. She looked at her screen with dismay. There were eight reports left to do. It was going to be a long night, she thought as she disabled the unit. But, hopefully, this wouldn’t take long.

* * *

SHE HAD TO GET a military skimmer to the embassy. The building was, like most things Cehn-Tahr, smooth and rounded and elegant, a fantasy of blue and gold lights, the colors of the Cehn-Tahr Imperial Royal Clan. She dismissed the robot transport and walked up the steps, declining the vator tube. She wondered how much trouble she was going to have getting inside the embassy. Humans weren’t exactly welcome here, even if a whole detachment of them served with the Holconcom.

A uniformed sentry waited at the door. With a hopeful smile, she started to present her arm, with its ID chip, but he saluted her at once and activated his comm unit.

“Dr. Madeline Ruszel of the Holconcom to see the commander,” he spoke into it.

Her surprise was visible. She hadn’t realized that she was known here. There was a long pause.

“Send her,” came the terse reply.

Madeline grimaced. “Oh, boy,” she said to herself. “He’s not in the mood for company.”

“It is the Altairian reception,” the sentry confided. “None of us like the Altair delegation...”

A rush of angry Cehn-Tahr poured forth from the comm unit.

“Yes, sir!” the sentry said into his unit, motioning Madeline through the door with a clenching of teeth and a look of apology.

Poor guy, she thought.

“You are not required to pass time with my subordinates,” came an angry, deep voice into her mind. “Why are you here?”

“You won’t like it,” she thought back.

“Lawson and his dispatch,” he muttered, adding a few choice words in his own tongue.

“Sir!” she protested, because she recognized some of them.

He stepped into the hallway. She almost didn’t recognize him. It wasn’t just the absence of facial hair that made him look different—he hadn’t regrown the beard and mustache he’d sported when the complement of the Morcai ended up in Ahkmau and Madeline had shaved him to disguise his face. It was his clothing that was different. He was wearing robes of blue and gold, the imperial colors, in some fabric as sleek as silk. The robes clung to the muscular lines of his body and draped over one shoulder to touch the floor at the tip of his highly polished black boots. He looked...different. Elegant. Regal. It was the first time she’d ever seen him out of a Holconcom uniform in the nearly three years she’d been part of the Morcai’s crew.

* * *

“HE SENT YOU,” Dtimun said with faint hauteur. “Why?”

“Because everybody else hid under a desk,” she muttered. She held out the dispatch.

A flash of green amusement touched his eyes. “You were afraid of me, too, at first.”

“That was years ago, sir,” she reminded him. Her own eyes twinkled. “As soon as I realized that the Cehn-Tahr didn’t eat humans, I stopped worrying.”

He chuckled. He read the dispatch. His lips made a thin line. “More predations on our forward supply transports. I cannot turn the Morcai into an escort ship. Lawson will have to find another way.”

“That was the job the Altairians were doing,” she reminded him. “Then the Terravegan ambassador, Aubrey Taylor, ticked them off and they withdrew their support vessels.”

“Taylor is what you humans call a bigot,” he replied.

“I could think of a few better names,” she murmured. Taylor had been vicious in his verbal attacks on the Cehn-Tahr, and the Amazon Division as well. He thought women in combat were a disgrace. She pursed her lips as she looked up at Dtimun. “You and Taylor should get along. He doesn’t think women have any place in combat, either. I hear he’s going to the Altairian reception, too—probably to tick off even more of their military. Pity you can’t think of some way to irritate him even more than you did when you withdrew his transport privileges on Cehn-Tahr vessels. Sir.”

He gave her an odd, intense scrutiny. “Sadly for you, I can think of a better way. You will accompany me to the reception.” He clapped his hands. Two younger men in uniform ran up and saluted. “Take Ruszel to the weavemaster and have him weave her robes to wear to the Altair reception. Tell him he has ten standard minutes.”

“Robes? Reception? I will not...!” she burst out.