The Morcai Battalion Read Online Free PDF Page A

it.
    Dtimun, sitting in his spoollike command chair, listened only halfheartedly. His mind was a galaxy away, on Enmehkmehk, home planet of the Rojok Dynasty. It was there that Chacon would surely take his captive—to Ahkmau , the infamous death camp on one of its moons where political prisoners were kept. The thought of Lyceria in such a place was torture, even to a career soldier’s trained mind.
    “ETA Trimerius?” he asked the helmsman.
    “Two mekkam, Commander,” was the reply.
    Komak joined the older Centaurian, and the laughing green light left his eyes. They grew blue with concern. “Your eyes speak for you,” he told Dtimun, careful lest the others hear him. “I regret Lyceria’s capture. I know that the commander’s heart was soft for her.”
    “My heart is soft for no one.” Dtimun’s darkened eyes belied the words. His gaze went to the main viewscreen. “ Maliche , I could make more speed in a crippled scout! Are your gravs malfunctioning, helmsman?”
    The pilot glanced at him. “I have not fired them, Commander,” he said, and his eyes went to Komak.
    “I assumed,” Komak told the commander, “that you would wish a lesser speed to keep the Earth ship under surveillance. Should it encounter a Rojok patrol, its defense systems would render it incapable of a counterattack. Human ship designers make no allowance for stabilizing BEK gyros and reflectors such as ours.”
    Dtimun glared at the younger Centaurian. “I will not play parentto an inferior shipload of aliens. I have no more love for humans than does the Rojok tyrant Mangus Lo, or his field marshal, Chacon.”
    “Were it our race that Mangus Lo persecuted in his death camps,” Komak said quietly, “instead of the humans, I think your sympathies might find more interest in them.”
    “By Simalichar , you try my patience!” Dtimun stood up. His chameleon eyes faded from a concerned blue to a questioning gray. “What merit can there be in a race whose entire history is preoccupied with pride in cruelty and contempt for life?”
    Komak’s eyes went green with mischief. “I had not known that the commander’s library included textdiscs on human history.”
    Dtimun ignored him.
    Komak studied the older alien with respectful eyes. In a society where Clan was life itself, the commander wore no Clan insignia and claimed no allegiances. He was as mysterious as he was feared and respected by his men. In his years of commanding the Holconcom, no challenge to his authority had ever been given. Not even by the emperor, whom Dtimun treated with utter disdain. His ongoing feud with old Tnurat Alamantimichar, head of the Dectat, was legendary in the space services. No one knew what had started it. No one dared ask. But Komak knew things about him that the other crewmen didn’t. Dtimun was aware that Komak’s odd outbursts of insight had a basis in fact. It had been disconcerting when he realized that Komak knew more about him than he’d anticipated. As he thought about it, Dtimun glared at Komak.
    “Commander,” the comtech called out, “the Earth ship has disengaged her lightsteds and is slowing to a crawl. I show two Rojok destroyers trailing her.”
    Dtimun turned his angry eyes from Komak to the viewscreen at his semicircle console. The Rojoks were already firing when heengaged the video. The Earth ship hung as if dead in space, offering no resistance as salvo after salvo connected with her hull and sent her reeling to and fro. Then, with the suddenness of a cosmic storm, she turned slowly and began to pick up speed as she began a run that would take her on a collision course with the lead Rojok vessel.
    “Is that black-eyed captain of theirs a madman?” Dtimun growled. “What use can this strategy serve? Komak, check the energy scanner.”
    Komak’s hands flew over the scanner switches on the command console. “His weaponry is useless,” he reported. “His fuel output reads less than one-quarter capacity and his repulsers are