The Morcai Battalion by Diana Palmer Read Free Book Online Page A

alien was speaking in his own tongue, but the machine simultaneously translated Centaurian into Terravegan Standard to Stern’s amazement. Perhaps the briefing room was constructed to allow conversation between alien races of different tongues.
    “If you please, Commander, I had just started to contact you,” the Centaurian officer said quickly. “My tramaks register a fleet of Rojok vessels closing in from several deshcam away in all directions, all sending out force nets to mesh the distance between them!”
    “Well, Mister?” Dtimun demanded, eyeing his comtech over the viewscreen.
    The Centaurian officer met those accusing eyes levelly. “We are cut off from Trimerius, Commander,” he said matter-of-factly. “The Rojok fleet is attempting to press us into their advance lines. Once that is accomplished…”
    Dtimun nodded. “Yes,” he said, cutting the officer off midsentence.
    The thought of capture by the Rojoks was oddly satisfying to Stern. He caught himself before a smile flared on his face, and wondered at the unfamiliar feelings that had begun to race through his mind; alien, traitorous feelings that frightened him. Strange, he thought, how those feelings had suddenly and completely replaced his earlier headaches. He hadn’t been the same since they lifted from the Peace Planet.
    “Tekar, can you beam a message through that net?” Dtimun asked his comtech on the bridge.
    Another alien face came into view on the screen. “No, Commander,” came the reply. “Our strongest megabeams cannot pierce the molecular density of the barrier.”
    Before Dtimun had time for another question, Madeline Ruszel came storming into the briefing room, her flowing auburn hair sweaty in spite of the cool atmosphere, her green eyes blazing. Stern ground his teeth together and waited for the explosion.
    “I’ve got people dying down there!” she raged at Dtimun without preamble, bracing her legs as if preparing for a hurricane. “I can’t resupply any morphadrenin because your damned synthesizer absorbed some bacteria from my fingers when I touched it, and it’s sick. Sick! What the hell kind of machines are you using on this bloody space-going whale? And that’s not all! My life monitors are malfunctioning from some kind of magnetic interference, and I…!”
    “Baatashe!” the alien thundered, staring down the furious exobiologist with angry brown eyes that silenced her immediately, to Stern’s amusement. “By Simalichar , hold your tongue before I have you spaced! If you have a request to make, make it in understandable tones and not in the language of a hashheem from a pleasure dome!”
    Her mouth opened slightly, and her green eyes dilated. But she regained her composure at once and stood her ground. “All right, sir,” she said, emphasizing the “sir.” “I need access to a working synthesizer because my morphadrenin is exhausted and my patients cannot withstand delicate invasive surgery without it. I also need a mute-screen to mask the magnetic interference that’s disrupting my life monitors. Because this,” she added, indicating the bionic panel in the creamy skin of her wrist under the sleeve of her green uniform, “can’t be five places at once to read vitals. Furthermore, my medics are going into their thirty-second straight standard hour without sleep or rest, and two of them have already collapsed on me. In short, sir, if this ship doesn’tmake Trimerius within one solar day on the outside, we’re going to lose every bloody alien casualty we’re transporting and maybe the humans in Hahnson’s medical complement as well!”
    “We cannot make Trimerius in one solar day,” Dtimun said in a deceptively gentle tone, “nor one solar month, nor one solar millennium. Because, Madam, we are gradually being surrounded by a fleet of Rojok vessels and we are cut off from Tri-Fleet Headquarters.”
    “Surrounded?” she echoed numbly.
    “Yes. Surrounded.” The Centaurian sighed angrily, as if