“On my way.”
“Jennings!”
“Yes, sir. Scout confirmed. She’s on a descent course.”
“SPs, line up on my flank,” Stern told the ship police as they rushed into view. “Greshams out, on heavy tranquillizer force. Fire only at my order.” He turned to the medics. “The rest of you, into the scouts and back to the ship. Move!”
The tension was electric as the taciturn men took their positions. The medics, with their charges in the ambulifts, scattered into the nearby scouts. Hurriedly they secured the hatches and began to gun the lightweight crafts up into the radiation-marked skies.
The pain in his temples subsiding now, Stern drew his Gresham and gripped the jeweled emerillium power pack tightly in his hand as the alien scout came into view overhead.
She was sleek and her burnt-copper hull drew the mingled sun and radiation onto a blemishless surface only to scatter the light in strange patterns against the ground.
With unnerving precision, her pilot set her down in the middle of the remaining prefab medical domes and ambulifts. Noiseless until now, a soft hum radiated outward from the bubble dome and suddenly died.
Madeline swept through the ship police to stand beside Stern. She was breathless, and her long hair whipped unkempt around the high collar of her uniform. “Strick’s on…his way,” she panted.
Stern nodded. The tension was too much for words. The responsibility was more. Centaurians were known for certain barbaric tendencies when members of their race were threatened. But this ship, he already knew, was too advanced to be part of the Centaurian regular army. It was more suited to commando missions, and if his growing suspicious proved true—
A knifelike slit appeared in the smooth hull of the scout. Suddenly nine red-uniformed Centaurians poured out of it, single-file, to converge into a tight, ultramilitary formation around it.
“Those uniforms,” Madeline whispered. “My God, Stern, they’re…!”
“Holconcom!” He felt chills run the length of his body at the sound of the word on his own lips. “Drop the Greshams!” he barked at his SPs. “They’re allies!”
The Holconcom. The peacekeeping right arm of the Centaurian Dectat. A force that no military unit in the galaxy could match or best, if legends held any truth.
“Convince me,” Madeline said quietly. “Just because the Centaurian government gave them absolute authority over all the services in wartime, and Lawson requested their help with investigative missions against Rojok positions, doesn’t make them allies.”
“Stow it,” he snapped. His eyes were on a tenth alien just leaving the ship—a Centaurian in a red uniform. But this one had a single gold emblem on the high collar.
This one was taller than his comrades, and he alone wore a mustache and a beard, short, black and violently contrasting with his pale golden skin. He carried himself with the arrogance of authority, and even at the distance Stern could feel the raw power of his eyes.
The alien glanced around him carelessly, then gestured to his men. They stood at rigid attention while he strode forward, straight toward Stern. As he approached, the brown anger in his huge, elongated cat-eyes became evident and threatening under black eyebrows. He stopped just in front of the humans.
Stern presented the Holconcom officer with a rigid, military salute. The alien returned it, but without respect, then stood quietly, watching him.
“I don’t speak Centaurian!” Stern said, raising his voice as if the alien were deaf rather than accustomed to a different combination of syllables. “You’ll have to…!”
“I seek two survivors,” the alien replied in crisply perfect, unaccented Terravegan Standard English. “A Centaurian youth and a female of our species.”
Stern’s muscles went taut under his uniform.
“The boy didn’t make it,” he replied slowly. “We found no Centaurian female.”
The huge eyes began to darken even more. “Take me to the boy.”
Stern was prepared for anger when they gathered around the ambulift—or he thought he was. But when the Centaurian got a close look at that frail body, with its evidence of torture, he seemed to implode.
“Maliche mazur!” he roared, and Stern could have sworn that the ground rumbled under his feet. In that one, harsh cry was a kind of grief he didn’t remember ever experiencing. A grief that came without tears, but was greater than if it had.
The alien whirled on Stern, a predator looking for prey. “The other observers. Are they alive?”
“Technically,” Stern replied quietly.
“You will have them in your Admiral Lawson’s office ten minutes after you touch down at the Tri-Galaxy Fleet HQ on Trimerius,” he told the captain. “With them, you will present yourself, your chief medic and your ship historian.”
Stern started to speak, but the alien silenced him with a cold narrowing of his dark eyes. “But for now, I will know which of your medical personnel dared to lay hands on this boy!”
Madeline Ruszel’s face flushed. She’d expected to catch hell for her interference, but she’d done as her code of ethics demanded. Squaring her shoulders, she stepped forward, staring up at the Centaurian officer. “I did,” she said curtly. “The alternative was to do nothing to ease his suffering. I gave him a drug that made his passage easier. Nothing more. If you consider that an atrocity, sir, you are welcome to present charges against me.”
“My pleasure,” the alien replied icily. “Consider it done. By Simalichar, what manner of creatures are you humans, that you dress your women as men and send them into combat to die?”
“Barbarians,” Madeline said sweetly. “Sir,” she added in a drawl guaranteed to provoke him.
The alien stared at her for a long moment, during which she mentally reviewed what she knew about Centaurians to make sure they didn’t eat humans.
The officer turned away. “Komak!” he called sharply.
A younger, red-uniformed Centaurian ran to his commanding officer and saluted. “Yes, Commander?”
“Take Marcon’s body to the ship and have it urned.” His tone was deceptively gentle. His eyes were unnerving to Madeline. “Inform Tnurat Alamantimichar and the Council of his death, and of Lyceria’s capture.”
“It will be done as you say.”
The tall alien moved out into the throng of ambulifts. His gaze missed nothing as they wandered restlessly around the ruins. “These casualties will be lifted, of course?” he asked deliberately.
Madeline saluted, hating herself for what she was about to say. But her sense of outrage was stronger than her sense of loyalty. “Sir, Captain Stern ordered us to leave them here….”
“Yes, I did,” Stern growled, glaring at her. His head throbbed suddenly. He touched his hand to it. “We don’t have the space to lift them,” he added tightly. “The damned Rojoks swiped the Jaakob Spheres, in addition to the carnage they did here. I have to get the surviving sci-archaeo scientists and their data banks back to HQ. These clones—” he emphasized the word as if it were dirty “—will have to wait.”
The alien glared down at him. “A life is a life,” he said coldly. “You will not leave these wounded behind. I will transport them myself.”
“Transport them, hell!” Stern’s dark eyes narrowed. “I’m in command here. This is a Terravegan Strategic Space Command rescue operation, and you don’t touch those pilgrims without authorization from the Tri-Galaxy Council!”
“By