The Morcai Battalion: The Rescue. Diana Palmer

never committed. She had no defense. Her soft blue eyes searched his angry ones and she saw secret dreams fall to dust there.

      “I don’t want your interest,” he gritted. “The scent of pheromones that exudes from you is an insult! It disgusts me!”

      She swallowed hard and pulled herself to a rigid stance. “I beg the commander’s pardon,” she said unsteadily. “It isn’t...intentional.”

      “See Hahnson,” he said curtly. “There must be some chemical means of disrupting the pheromones. I want no repeat of this.”

      She didn’t dare mention that she’d already been taking the maximum dose possible. There was nothing stronger, and she was already showing symptoms of allergic reaction to the substance Hahnson had prescribed. But she lied. “I’ll speak to him at once, sir.”

      He searched her blue eyes with contempt. “See that you do.”

      “I am very sorry,” she added, avoiding his gaze. “So very sorry. But you’re still young, sir. You and your mate can have other children...”

      “My personal life is not your concern!”

      She stood straighter. “It is not,” she agreed. “Sorry.”

      “And stop saying that you’re sorry!”

      She fished around for another word, couldn’t find it in her disturbed state and said nothing. She was all but shaking.

      He saw that. He knew, somewhere deep inside himself, that he was being unreasonable, but the floodgates had been opened. He had never spoken of his loss to any other Cehn-Tahr. The emperor knew, of course, but it was a secret that the two of them had kept. He was sharing his grief with Mallory, an outworlder, a human who looked like the killer. It was incomprehensible to him. Such subjects were taboo except between family members or close friends, and Mallory was neither. His own behavior sickened him.

      “Dismissed!” he snapped. “And you will never speak of this conversation!”

      “Of course not, sir,” she said, in a shaky voice. “Doctors make a vow never to discuss private revelations, you know.”

      He hadn’t known. He didn’t care. He saw again the ashes that had once been his child and felt again the rage and pain and...

      He turned on his heel and stalked off.

      * * *

      MALLORY DIDN’T GO to see Hahnson. She went to her quarters blindly and began methodically packing her few possessions. The military didn’t allow much. She had her uniforms and some personal bits of clothing that she wore off duty. She had a brush and a virtual Nagaashe that kept her company in her privacy.

      When she was packed, she sent a flash to Tri-Galaxy Fleet HQ and resigned her commission. That done, she booked a seat aboard a passenger ship that would cross the path of the Morcai only scant minutes later. She would have to run to the airlock to make connections, and there was no time to explain what she was doing. Protocol demanded that she tell Rhemun of her decision and give him time to send for a replacement Cularian specialist. But she couldn’t wait. She couldn’t bear to see the contempt and hatred in his eyes. Stop the pheromone production? There was only one way known to contemporary science to accomplish that. Yes, she could use a drug, in fact she was already using one, but it clearly didn’t work. She was aware that she wasn’t thinking clearly. Rhemun’s undisguised hatred confused her, panicked her. She had to get off the Morcai, get away from Rhemun, before she humiliated herself even more. The fact that he knew how she felt only made it worse.

      No, drugs wouldn’t suffice. The only way was to remove herself from his presence. And this was dangerous. By resigning her commission she was admitting to her third failure as a soldier. It would put her under the three strikes law and leave her vulnerable to Reboot. In fact, it was quite likely that Tri-Fleet HQ would send a team to arrest her and bring her back for a formal hearing. After which... She didn’t dare think about afterward. There were rumors that one victim of Reboot had been kept in a lab for almost four decades, taken apart cell by cell for experimentation.

      She ignored the possibility. Where she was going, they’d have a job trying to find her. She had a former colleague on Benaski Port who was the center of illegal activity there. She flashed him on scramble and asked permission to work in the Underway, as the underbelly of Benaski was known, as a medic. Permission was given at once, with an amused smile and a welcome. She had been kind to him at medical school, as many others had not, when he left because of his refusal to produce clones for medical experimentation. That practice had been ended by a Tri-Galaxy Council investigation. So now, the live human specimens collected legally under the guise of Reboot were even more precious.

      She ran down the corridor, into the airlock and onward to the skimmer she’d reserved, pleading a medical emergency on the passenger ship.

      The tech, a Cehn-Tahr with a kind face, smiled at her. “You will return shortly?”

      “Of course,” she lied, smiling back as she entered the skimmer. “But I’m sending the skimmer right back, temporarily. Don’t know how long this may take, and the patient is a high-ranking Jebob diplomat.”

      “Very well, Doctor. Have a safe trip.”

      “Thanks.”

      She closed the skimmer, punched the ignition switch and hovered through the first lock to the second. It opened. She flew out into open space, toward a bright dot that was moving on her astrogation screen.

      She’d thrown away her career, left her few friends, made a refugee of herself, all because her commanding officer found her very presence distasteful. It was shocking that she hadn’t realized, until he spoke to her, how involved with him she truly was. Their arguments and disagreements had been only a symptom of her growing feelings for him, which she could not contain or remove. And he was bonded. He had had a child... The grief and shame she felt overwhelmed her. Her only option was to leave.