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  “Here, sir!”

  “Arrange for more strenuous physical training for these men. Except for you, Chief Everard,” he said to the gang’s leader. “You’re confined to your quarters for a hundred twenty hours. Come see me afterward. Lieutenant Pappas, come with me.”

  My fault for letting this kind of thing happen at all, he chastised himself. Discipline’s too lax. I think too much like a doctor and not enough like a base commander. Better do something about it.

  Even as he made a mental list, he was acutely aware of the young woman as she followed him across the plaza.

  “Could you have taken him?” he asked her.

  “I’m more fit than I look, sir.”

  He glanced over his shoulder at her. “It’s not easy for a diplomat to simply say yes or no, is it?”

  “No, sir.”

  “It is or it isn’t easy?”

  “I was being diplomatic, sir.” She tried not to smile, and failed.

  Her smile made his day. “How’s that report on the Asi coming along, Zoe?”

  She also returned to being professional. “I’ve been trying to organize everything I know about their culture as it might pertain to the current situation. I’ve got it all boiled down in my head, but I’m having trouble getting data storage for the report.”

  “Then you can report verbally when I call a staff meeting. In the meantime, let’s get some one-on-one experience.”

  Zoe quelled the urge to ask, “You have staff meetings?” Because this sort of thing was to be encouraged rather than met with sarcasm. After a moment she realized that this unkind thought was a product of the connection between her empathy and the general’s telepathy that met and mingled whenever they were together.

  “You’re not very happy with yourself at the moment,” she said.

  He didn’t answer or even bother to look her way, but his emotions blanked as he tightened his mental shields. A fair enough response, she thought. She trailed along in silence as they made their way through growing darkness into the Asi tunnels.

  The silence was shattered by a human scream as they entered the main corridor of the aliens’ quarters, and Doc broke into a run. Zoe followed, but it was impossible to keep up with the big man’s speed and she was soon left behind.

  Doc didn’t try to push the crowd of aliens aside but leapt over them to get to the bleeding man on the ground. As he landed, he was thinking loudly, Arco, get me a medical team and some security to the Asi main chamber. And make sure the Kril don’t know anything.

  Since Arco was no telepath he couldn’t respond, but Doc was certain of the corporal’s ability to receive and to carry out orders.

  As he knelt, he gave only a cursory glance at the pair of Asi fighting over the human’s severed arm.

  Arterial blood poured in spurts onto the already soaked floor. Doc pulled off his shirt and turned it into a tourniquet, but the smell of blood made him dizzy and he had to fight to concentrate.

  “What the hell happened?” he asked as he applied pressure.

  A pale face turned to him, but the victim’s screams just became whimpers. He heard the Asi leader clicking and snarling away, but the sounds made no sense to him.

  “The human wandered onto forbidden ground,” Zoe translated, her voice shaking slightly. She took a deep breath and went on steadily. “He was defeated when he was challenged. His lost meat is acceptable apology for his ignorant behavior.”

  “Lost meat—” Doc shook his head. He understood this part of the alien culture too well, and didn’t like the similarities he could see in himself.

  He had the bleeding under control enough to look up at Zoe. The fear in her eyes affected him too strongly—empathy to telepathy mixed with his own shaky control. They both had to stay calm, to deal with the situation.

  “What really happened?” He asked the translator’s opinion.

  “I think a lost newbie wandered down the wrong corridor and was jumped by the challenger’s faction.”

  Doc recognized the big, rebellious Asi standing in the crowd. “He wants an incident? With us or his boss?” Doc asked.

  “Probably both.”

  Doc stood with the man cradled in his arms. Some aliens moved a few menacing steps toward him. “Well, he’s not getting one with us right now.”

  Doc stepped forward and the Asi leader put himself between the humans and his kind. The leader gestured for them to be let through the crowd.

  We’re coming out, Arco, Doc thought to his subordinate. Everybody wait for me at the tunnel mouth.

  Focused on getting the man to the medical section, it wasn’t until he laid his patient down in the infirmary that he noticed Zoe Pappas hadn’t returned with him.

  8

  “Can you grow it back?” The young man’s voice was raspy from screaming, but the rough tone didn’t disguise his hope and fear.

  “Your arm can be regrown, Ensign Morgan,” Doc answered. “But I don’t have the equipment to do it here.”

  Most of the hope in the youngster’s eyes faded. “But—it can be fixed?”

  Doc nodded, and patted his patient on the shoulder. He didn’t try to explain to Morgan that there was a time limit on how long it would be before the severed nerves could be regenerated. Maybe they’d be out of here before that window closed. He’d have to explain the prognosis to the amputee eventually, but right now he was going to let Morgan rest and recuperate.

  “Sleep,” he said, and made it a telepathic order.

  Once he was sure Morgan was out, Raven went to his office, where Arco was waiting. “Morgan’s going to be fine,” he told him.

  “There’s an angry crowd outside,” Arco reported. “They want to know what happened.”

  “The incident was pretty much as our alien liaison officer—Lieutenant Pappas—guessed,” he clarified at Arco’s puzzled look.

  He went out to the plaza, where dozens of human prisoners were gathered. The tension in the air was so heavy it nearly knocked him over. A woman with her back to him was stirring up feelings as Doc arrived.

  “We’re at war with them!” Ensign Langly shouted. “They’ve proven they won’t honor a truce. We can’t let the Asi get away with attacking one of our own.”

  Doc liked Barb Langly, but she was a bit hot-blooded. “You’re a good weapons officer, Barb,” he said, coming up behind her. “But you make a lousy strategist.”

  She whirled to face him, putting herself at the head of the group that moved closer to him. She looked hopefully at him, her expression a little too close to hysterical. “The Asi are the enemy. Tell us how to wipe them out and we’ll do it for you, Doc. Give us some strategy and let us loose.”

  Doc waited for the shouts of approval to subside. “I appreciate your enthusiasm,” he told them. “But no one here breaks Raven’s Rules.”

  “What about what the Asi did?” Barb demanded. “They wounded one of your people.”

  “And they did it on purpose.” Doc held up a hand for silence before the angry buzz could get started. “Morgan wandered into their territory and got himself attacked by an Asi faction that’s trying to start a war with us.”

  “Fine with me!” somebody yelled.

  “We are at war with them.” Barb Langly turned back to the crowd and raised a fist into the air. “If they want a fight, let’s fight!”

  “With what?” a woman asked. “They’re born armored.”

  “We outnumber them,” one of the navy people said.

  Doc noticed that his marines were keeping out of the argument. In fact, they were lined up in a loose circle outside of the crowd, containing the hotheads, ready to stop them if need be.

  He crossed his arms. He showed no concern at the continuing hostility. “I know you people are bored, so I’ll let these rumblings of mutiny continue for a couple more minutes before I start knocking heads.”

  “An eye for an eye!” Langly shouted.

  “How about an arm for an arm?” came a calm voice from the distant shadows.
>
  Doc didn’t know where Pappas had gotten her voice training, but he admired the way her words were pitched to carry. He smiled, and gestured for her to be let through. She received a marine escort through the gasping crowd. He’d gotten a whiff of blood a few seconds before she spoke, so he wasn’t surprised by what she carried, only about how she had gotten her hands on it.

  “May I explain, sir?” she asked when she reached him.

  He put his hands behind his back to keep himself from shaking her and demanding what she meant by putting herself at risk. “I wouldn’t miss this for the world. Gunny Kathiu, kindly relieve the lieutenant of her burden.”

  The marine sergeant took the grisly piece of Asi carcass and held it up so everyone could see. Zoe wiped her bloody hands on her uniform as she faced the crowd, but a yellow stain remained on her palms.

  “Go on,” Doc urged.

  “The Asi truly do live by the precept of equal justice for offenses—‘an eye for an eye’ has a completely literal meaning for them. Attacking and possibly killing any Asi for what happened to our man would begin a cycle of reprisals that the Hajim, through the Kril, would make us all pay for. At best, interspecies conflict would result in harsher treatment for all prisoners. At worst, we could be signing the death warrants for every being in this camp.” She gestured toward the severed limb. “The Asi offer this as equal payment for the human arm that was taken. Their leader wishes to keep the status quo among our populations in place.” She looked at Doc. “If you agree, sir.”

  Doc wondered how this silver-tongued woman had worked out this agreement. He also wondered if the Asi missing his claw had volunteered to make this peace offering.

  “Fine with me.” He addressed his people. “This incident is now settled between humans and the Asi. No one lets our Kril keepers know that it even happened.” He gave a stern look to the people before him. Many of them came to attention; even more slipped away. “That’s fine with all of us,” he told the stubborn ones that were left. “Isn’t it?”

  “Yes, sir!” the marines barked out. Everyone else followed their lead.

  “Dismissed,” Doc said. “Except you,” he said to Zoe.

  Barb lingered for a moment, but gave Zoe a dirty look and left when Doc didn’t acknowledge her.

  After everyone had gone, Doc turned to Lieutenant Pappas. “What am I supposed to do with a severed Asi arm?”

  “Do we have any butter sauce?” she deadpanned.

  9

  “Okay, Pappas, your turn. Where would you go?” Siler asked.

  Zoe sat among a group in a corridor entrance just off the plaza. It was a good gathering place, as the air recirc system simulated a breeze here much of the time. They could at least pretend they were getting fresh air. The pretending was even more elaborate at the moment; they were playing a game of Perfect Shore Leave. It was a way of passing the time and remembering the worlds they’d left behind.

  “That’s easy,” she answered as she leaned back against the cool, damp wall. She glanced at Maria on her right. “I’d visit Santorini.”

  Maria shook a finger at her. “No fair. You’re a Terran native. You can’t go home in this game.”

  Zoe rubbed her chin. “Okay, let me think.”

  She very rarely got home to Terra, and that was her first choice of anywhere in the Empire to visit—she’d had enough of exotic worlds. But the players’ goal here was to provide stimulus to escape the boredom and ugliness, not to remind each other of their homesickness.

  “Got it,” she finally said and looked at the eager faces turned her way. “When I was going to university, a history professor told me about a dark star world that’s off-limits to all but a few archaeologists. There are ruins on this uninhabited planet of a dead civilization.”

  “Boring,” Everard said.

  She’d discovered that Everard wasn’t really so bad, he was just the sort who needed the occasional ass-kicking to put him in his place. He’d apologized to her quite nicely after he got out of stir and received a firm reprimand from the general. Everard still carried a few bruises from that encounter, but didn’t seem to resent them at all. Men were funny that way.

  “Not boring,” Zoe countered. “You see, this civilization looks like a human one, though it was already dead while we were still living in trees.”

  “Humans didn’t get out of the Sol System before the Bottleneck,” Maria said.

  “That we know of,” Zoe added. “But this was definitely a humanoid species. Their artwork shows some anatomical differences, but they essentially look like us. Or we look like them—maybe some of them emigrated to Terra. After all, the suprahuman races that evolved along with us do have slightly different DNA than Homo sapiens sapiens.”

  Everard rolled his eyes. “Boring,” he repeated. “Who’d want to see ruins on a shore leave? Even if this artwork was all porno.”

  “Well, I’d like to go there,” she answered.

  “Is there alcohol? Can you have sex there?” Mischa asked.

  “We can have sex here,” Maria pointed out. “And get drunk.”

  The still Siler and Mischa had built didn’t officially exist, but everyone knew about it. The group had been passing around a bottle of truly wretched vodka as they shared their fantasies.

  “But sex and liquor is no fun here,” Katie Alzar complained. “I’m a country girl from Doga Four, and most of the planet is just farm after farm. It’s a great place for growing wheat, but no place to party. I joined up to get a taste of decadence somewhere, so my perfect shore leave would be Sensar. I know it’s got three suns and is mostly desert, but the luxury spas on the Salt Sea are supposed to be the best in the Empire.”

  Zoe wasn’t going to spoil the young woman’s fantasy with the truth that the spas were overpriced, or worry her with the news that her homeworld was now in Hajim territory.

  Aliens valued naturally arable land as much as the humans did, and there wasn’t a natural abundance of habitable worlds. Most conflict between spacing species was over territory and trade routes, and there was conflict over territory even within the Empire. The Imperial Military Service existed as much to police humans as it did to protect the Empire from outsiders.

  “I’d like to visit a world with three suns,” Everard spoke up. “Especially after living in the dark all this time. But where I’d really like to visit is the underwater cities of Sebasta.”

  “That story about dolphin hookers isn’t true, you know,” Katie said.

  “Don’t spoil a boy’s dreams.” Everard nudged the man sitting beside him. “Siler?”

  Siler shared a grin with Mischa. “We’ve talked about this. When we get out of here we plan to head for the space stations around Baoka Two.”

  “They’re the most impressive examples of structural engineering in the Empire,” Mischa said. “They hang in space like a string of delicate beads …”

  “…huge delicate beads,” Siler added.

  “Geeks are so predictable,” Maria said.

  “Where would you go?” Zoe asked her friend.

  “There’s so many places I’d like. Maybe I’d visit Solsangre.”

  “The hell you will!” Barb Langly jumped to her feet. She was unsteady and bellicose from too much vodka. “You stay away!”

  “Oh, for crying out loud, Barb!” Maria moved across the circle to stand in front of Langly. “You have got to stop acting like this.”

  “You leave him alone!” Barb shouted. She glared around. “All of you leave him alone.”

  Zoe was the only one who seemed surprised by Barb’s behavior.

  “Stop it right now.” Maria put a hand on Barb’s shoulder. The other woman failed to shake her off. “You’ve been down here too long, Barb; that’s all that’s wrong with you.”

  “There’s nothing wrong with me.”

  “You’ve started taking your connection with Doc seriously. You can’t do that. No one who goes with him can. He’s not a one-woman man. You have to accept that when you go in
to it.”

  “You want him for yourself.”

  “Hell, no.” Maria grinned. “I just want him every now and then. We can’t afford to be selfish.”

  Zoe cringed and desperately wished the conversation away. What was it that drew female attention to that magnificent specimen of a man? Hers included, damn it!

  “Hell, no, is right.” Everard also rose to his feet, stepped to the center of the group, and turned in a slow circle. “Doc’s not the only man down here, ladies.” He cast a hopeful look at Zoe, but it was Katie who jumped up and put her arms around him.

  As they began to kiss and fondle each other, Zoe turned away. She’d had enough playing games for one day. As she left, Barb was still yelling and Maria was still being reasonable. Siler and Mischa were locked in an embrace. Zoe didn’t want to hear or see any of it. She didn’t want to participate no matter how much she craved someone’s touch.

  She took the vodka with her to her cave.

  What the hell was so special about General Raven, anyway? What made her keep thinking about him, even as she fell into lonely sleep?

  10

  “Happy to see you could join me at last, Lieutenant.”

  Zoe refused to look at him.

  She hadn’t been in the general’s office for several days, and was embarrassed to arrive in the room at the back of the infirmary late. It didn’t help that her head still swam with vodka-fueled erotic dreams. After Arco had woken her to tell her what time to report, she’d gone back to sleep, and didn’t know how long it had been before she dragged herself out of her cave.

  “You look terrible,” Doc added.

  She looked glumly at the floor. “Sorry, sir.”

  “There’s no need to be sorry. I’m a doctor, so it’s good for business when people look terrible—at least when they come into the infirmary.”

  She couldn’t help but laugh, which made her wince. She eyed the big man behind the desk. “You did that on purpose.” He responded with a shrug. “I’m sorry for being late, General,” she clarified.