don’t care if the tooth fairy sent you,” Stern countered hotly. “This is my operation and until I get authorization from SSC HQ, it’s going to be handled my way!”
“Mister,” the alien said irritably, “you are a pain in the…so you need authorization, do you?” he added. “I’ll show you my authorization. Holconcom!”
Even before the sharp command died on the air, Stern found himself surrounded by nine red-uniformed Centaurians in attack formation, slightly crouching, with eyes that chilled like a fever. A soft, low growl began to rise from the unit. It made the hair on the back of Stern’s neck stand up.
“This,” the Centaurian officer said shortly, “is my authorization. Interfere at your own risk.”
Stern palmed his Gresham and activated it. “Your choice,” he replied.
“Hold it! Hold it!” Strick Hahnson came puffing up, stepping out of nowhere to get between the two antagonists. “Stern, put up the Gresham,” he said breathlessly. “You’re outranked, and if you need verification for that, I can give it. I fought with this officer in the Elyrian uprising. Captain Holt Stern, this is Dtimun, commander-in-chief of the Holconcom.”
Stern hesitated, but only for an instant, before he deactivated the Gresham and put it away. The throbbing started again in his temples.
“I know you, Strick Hahnson,” Dtimun said in recognition, and extended his arm. The darkness in his eyes had paled into a warm shade of light brown.
Hahnson gripped forearms with the alien. “I know you, Dtimun. You carry your years well.”
“At the moment, they lie heavily upon me. Marcon is dead. Lyceria is almost certainly a captive of the Rojoks. And your captain,” he growled, eyeing Stern, “proposes the desertion of these survivors, most of whom are Jebob and Altairian nationals, allies of the Centaurian Empire. The Rojoks will most certainly come back to finish what they started here, and these wounded will be slaughtered. I will not have an interplanetary incident on my hands because of one officer’s warped sense of duty. I will transport them aboard the Morcai.” He turned to his men, who were still crouching, still faintly growling. “Holconcom, degrom c’hamas!”
The Holconcom stood erect at once, spread out among the ambulifts, and began to move them toward the Centaurian scout.
“Now, just hold it a minute!” Stern began.
Hahnson caught his arm and drew him quickly aside, with Madeline right beside him. She hadn’t said a word, too angry to open her mouth at the treatment she’d received from the alien.
“Holt, there’s been enough killing,” he said gently. “Dtimun was fond of Marcon, and his temper is legend. He’ll call the Holconcom down on you for little more than breathing. Let it go.”
Stern sighed with frustration. His eyes went past Dtimun to the clones in the ambulifts. Something stirred inside him, remembering the alien’s words. A life was a life—but, even an artificially created one? Was it entitled to the same rights as a naturally born being? For a moment, a soft compassion touched the eyes that lingered on the tortured bodies of the alien children. Then, with the returning pain in his head, it was gone.
“You read too damned many space legends, Strick,” he told Hahnson. “They’re just a bunch of cat-eyes to me. But all right. All right, dammit, I don’t have time to argue. I’ve got to get my people back home before the Rojoks come back and catch us on the ground. Medics! Let’s move out!”
Stern walked away.
Madeline looked up at Hahnson quietly. “He’s not himself,” she said. “I had to tell the Holconcom commander that he was planning to abandon these wounded. I couldn’t live with myself otherwise.”
He put a gentle hand on her shoulder and smiled. “It’s okay, kid,” he said, using the pet name that was against regulations.
She grinned up at him. “You’re a nice old man.”
He chuckled. “I’m only ten years older than you, hotshot,” he returned.
She started to reply, but the alien commander was suddenly looking at her. The impact of his eyes was a little frightening, even to an exobiologist who specialized in Cularian medicine, to which group Centaurians belonged. She’d studied Centaurians in textdiscs in medical school. But as she was learning, textdiscs were no match for personal encounters. She found him intimidating.
Odd, the sudden pull of her mind, as if it was being examined. She shook herself. She was definitely getting fanciful, and she had work to do. She turned and went back to the ambutubes, doing what she could to sedate the most wounded.
2
The labyrinth interior of the Rojok vessel was buzzing with activity. Lyceria of Clan Alamantimichar sat quietly in her temporary quarters watching crewmen dash past the magnetized transparent cell from which there was no escape.
Her slender hand touched a dark blue bruise on the golden silk of her arm. She could control the pain, but not her rage at such rough treatment. Thoughts of her brother made the rage near unbearable. They assumed that she did not know what had been done to him. The fools did not know that the Clan of Alamantimichar were telepaths. She had felt every second of Marcon’s agony. She had touched his mind at the moment of death.
She was aware of eyes staring at her, and looked up. The Rojok officer who had abducted her was grinning through the force shield. The slit eyes that peered out of that reddish-bronze face made her tremble. The shock of blond hair that fell on the Rojok’s broad brow was sweaty and slick. His hair was short, denoting a lesser rank. Only high-ranking officers were allowed to wear long hair.
“You are a rare prize, daughter of Tnurat,” he told her, studying her fragile beauty. “What a pity that I cannot show you to Chacon. It might mean another mesag mark of rank.”
Her chameleon eyes made dark, angry whispers, but her composure was perfect. She rose from the contoured couch, grace personified.
“Had Chacon not ordered my capture, and the death of my brother?” she asked softly.
The Rojok laughed heartily. “Chacon knows nothing of this mission. Some think our commander-in-chief wages warfare in far too chivalrous a manner. Some have promised me his mesag marks for the Jaakob Spheres—and you.”
“Think you that Chacon will not discover what you have done when the Holconcom come in pursuit?” she asked.
“The Holconcom?” He laughed again. “They are stories used to frighten children. But pursuers will find themselves pursued. Our forces even now are closing the distance between the planet Terramer and the Tri-Fleet battle lines. No ship can get through them now. Not even your phantom Holconcom.”
Her delicate face lifted proudly. “There is one who will come to avenge the death of my brother.”
“Let him try.”
“Where do you now take me? To your home planet of Enmehkmehk?”
His slit eyes narrowed. “If your arrogance persists, perhaps you will go to Ahkmau instead.”
He was gone, and she felt the chills wander over her slender body in its silky coverings. Ahkmau translated in Rojok as “place of tortures.” It was located on one of the three moons of Enmehkmehk, the planetary capital of the Rojok empire. It was the death camp of the Rojok tyrant Mangus Lo, and even a Centaurian could feel fear at the mention of its name. Had she been capable of shedding tears in front of these savages, she might have yielded to them. But Alamantimichar was a proud Clan, and to show weakness to an enemy was to dishonor it. She turned back to her couch. Dtimun would come. No matter the odds against him, he would come.
Back in the command chair on the SSC ship Bellatrix’s bridge, Holt Stern forgot the carnage and the Centaurians. He had a bigger problem. Terramer was located on the edge of the Algomerian Space Sector, which the