He smiled, turned and put on a burst of speed, leaving them behind.
* * *
“THAT OFFICER, KOMAK,” Edris commented as they jogged down the corridor of the Morcai on their way to the airlock, “he doesn’t seem a lot like the rest of the Cehn-Tahr.”
“I know. He’s spent so much time around humans that he’s taken on human characteristics,” Madeline laughed. “Odd, though, when we were in the death camp on Enmehkmehk’s moon, I was using Komak for blood transfusion for the C.O. When I synched and synthed compatibility factors, his blood seemed to have human elements.” She sighed. “And that’s impossible. We know the Cehn-Tahr never mate outside their own species.”
“Why?” Edris wondered.
Madeline blinked. “I suppose it’s their racial laws. It carries the death penalty.”
“Just like our military punishes any sexual fraternization with death,” Edris replied. “Isn’t it odd that both societies are so xenophobic?” she asked. “I’ve heard it said that all Terravegans were originally tea-colored with dark hair.”
“I’ve heard that, too,” Madeline said. “But I think you and I are proof that it’s just an old legend,” she added, smiling. “Your coloring and mine put paid to that theory.”
Edris fingered her blond hair and eyed Madeline’s reddish-gold hair and nodded. “Will the C.O. get over it? That I threw up all over the scout, I mean?”
Madeline stopped and looked at the other woman. “He’s amazingly tolerant sometimes,” she said. “He does have a temper, and he can be irritating and stubborn. But he’s the best commanding officer in the fleet. All of us would follow him out the airlock if he asked us to. Of course, he does have this deplorable, primitive attitude about medics being unarmed, and I do have to sneak weapons off the ship in my equipment bag...”
Edris’s eyes had widened and she was staring apprehensively over Madeline’s shoulder.
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.
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