Three Against the Stars (17 page)

Makki grinned. “But satisfaction brought back the cat,” he answered in his native tongue.

Flix pointed a clawed finger at Makki, who snapped his jaws at it. Flix jerked his hand away just in time to avoid losing it.

“I’ll handle this,” Chanori said.

Flix bowed and stepped aside.

Chanori walked over to Makki and smiled down at him. “I want you to listen to me, Makki,” he said in the Rhajni language. “Your father died fighting the Khandra. But he was a fool. Do not walk in his shadow. Tell us what you know, and I’ll grant you your life.”

“The Khandra imprisoned this mewling in a labor camp,” Makki growled, struggling to break free of his bonds. “The Khandra
murdered
this one’s father and mother!”

“Your life is in my hands,” Chanori said. “Do not force me to cut it short.”

“This one would welcome the opportunity to cut
you
down to size!” Makki said.

Chanori’s eyes narrowed into slits. He looked as if he were about to respond, but the hint of a shadow crossed his face.

Makki suddenly realized that the Rhajni lord wasn’t as certain of victory as he let on. Chanori was afraid that Colonel Dakota might already have been warned, and that she was luring him into the open by pretending to play into his paws. Chanori was hiding his doubts and fears behind a mask of arrogance.

Makki laughed at him. “The humans are fond of saying that a cat has nine lives. This one suggests you begin at once and test that theory, before you bore everyone here to tears.”

Chanori sighed and shook his great head. He took a black kerchief from a pocket and wiped his paws. “You may begin, Vash,” he told his son.

Vash’s eyes lit with joy as he punched a button on the control box. Lights flickered. Smoke billowed. The hum of electrical motors and the smell of burning fur filled the room.

Makki screamed.

Chapter Seventeen

The Versatility of the Diascan Unit

T
he bright Rhajni sun rose slowly over the Baroda Mountains . . . over the Khandra fortress . . . and over the 50-mile stretch of Jaipur Pass. Hundreds of Khandra warriors stationed themselves at tazer and zapgun emplacements hidden in the Giruda Foothills on either side of the pass.

But all O’Hara could see when he stuck his bandaged head through the bars of the cell’s narrow window were the sky and mountains. Looking up, he also saw the old-fashioned aerial and the metal dome concealing the laser cannon rising high above the roof of the fortress.

“Oh, bloody hell!” he cursed.

Then he noticed the plastic casing of the aerial clamped and bolted to the outside wall, next to the window. He knocked on the aerial’s casing and heard a hollow sound. It was made of the same type of plumbing conduit still used on Earth.

He turned from the window and sat on the cot next to Cortez.

Akira sat across from them. She wrapped bandages into a ball and set them on the cot next to Makki’s medikit. She was tired and worried about their friend.

“How is your head, O’Hara?” asked Cortez.

O’Hara knocked on his forehead. “Like a rock!” he said. “Akira did a good job of patchin’ me up—for a girl.” He smiled at her. “How’s
your
head, dearie?”

“Not as thick as yours,” Akira said.

Cortez stood and went over to Akira. He put a gentle hand on her shoulder.

“We are all worried about Makki,” he said.

The cell door slid open.

They turned toward it as a pair of Khandra panthermen shoved Makki through the door. He stumbled into the cell, looking haggard and distressed.

The door slid shut without a sound.

“Makki!” Akira ran to him, hugged him and led him over to her cot. “Sit down,” she said.

Makki masked his pain with a weary smile and waved to his other friends. O’Hara and Cortez knelt on the floor in front of him.

“You all right,
amigo?
” Cortez asked.

“As right as rain,” Makki replied.

Akira knew he was putting up a brave front, but said nothing to the others. She didn’t want to embarrass Makki. His bravery, his sense of honor, and what Cortez and O’Hara thought of him meant everything in the world to him.

“What did they do to ya, lad?” O’Hara asked in a surprisingly gentle voice.

Makki shook his head. “Doctors . . .
examined
this one.”

“You mean they tortured you?” Akira asked.

Makki nodded. “But not injured. No wounds to patch.”

Looking at him, Akira thought:
But there are certain types of wounds that can’t be seen.

“The bloody fiends!” O’Hara roared. “I’ll tear their heads off!”

“Chanori tried to learn what this mewling and sergeants know about this place,” Makki explained. “He wanted to know if the regiment has been warned.”

“You did not tell them anything, did you?” Cortez asked.

“This one knows even less than you!” Makki said. “This mewling worked in labor camp but escaped and hid in ruins of city until Marines come to Rhajnara. If not for Marines, this one would not be alive—and would not be locked in cell with friends!”

Akira realized they were all close to the edge of their nerves, contemplating their fate. She was glad for the silence that intervened.

“This one has learned that Ambassador Hassan was murdered when the Khandra assassinated Chancellor Ginjua,” Makki said, brushing away the silence with his words.

“Dios mio!”
Cortez said.

“Them Drakonians may be a nasty lot, but the Khandra can teach ‘em a thing or two,” O’Hara said, rubbing a hand over his face.

“O’Hara—you know nothing about Drakonians,” Cortez told him.

The big Irishman scowled. “And I suppose you know more than me?”

Cortez returned O’Hara’s scowl with one of his own. “I was on leave when the Drakonians attacked Mars,” the Spaniard said. “I will never forget what they did to my beloved Burroughsville.” He turned to Makki, his eyes glistening with the tears of painful memories. “I saw the Drakonians murder my mother and father. I watched them die right in front of me.”

Makki gently squeezed Cortez’s shoulder. “This one never knew of this.”

“I’m sorry, too, mate,” O’Hara said. “You’ve never mentioned this before.”

“In the face of a grim future we’re all learning a thing or two about each other’s pasts,” Akira said. “But as for the here and now—we 
have
to escape and warn the colonel!”

Cortez pointed at the window. “How? Through that?”

“This one tried to cut through bars of window with laser scalpel, but did not have enough time to complete job,” Makki said.

“And even if we took out those bars, none of us could squeeze through that little window,” said O’Hara. “We’ll just have to be thinking of something else.”

“Then start thinking, Seamus,” Akira said. “I don’t mind dying—I just don’t want to go down without a fight.”

Makki scooted across the cot until his back was against the wall. He began to rummage through his medikit while his friends argued amongst themselves.

444

Camp Corregidor was busy that morning. Convoys of jeeps and tanks, supply trucks and medical vans, troop carriers and other vehicles rolled through the main gates. The Rhajni sun was on the rise, and the morning promised to be warm, bright and clear.

Colonel Dakota and Major Helm strolled toward a waiting jeep, where a driver sat behind a windshield made of blast-proof glassteel.

“Are the Comanche squadrons ready, Major?” Dakota asked, popping one of her stomach pills and swallowing it dry. She was anxious and trying not to show it.

“We’re good to go, Colonel,” Helm replied. “The AEVs will be in orbit by 0900. One shuttle will remain on base with the fire team assigned to arrest and escort our missing personnel to the
Iwo Jima—
if and when they decide to show up.”

“Have you heard anything from Corporal Flix?”

“No, Ma’am,” Helm told her. “No one knows where he is. But one thing’s for sure—he is
not
with our AWOL sergeants.”

Dakota stared at the major, not wanting to express her thoughts and fears. But she was afraid . . . afraid that Makki and her three best sergeants had gotten into something that was way over their heads . . . afraid that they might never return to camp.

“I’ll contact you as soon as we reach Jaipur Pass,” she said. “Good luck, Major.”

The African officer snapped to attention. “
Semper fi,
Colonel!”

Dakota and Helm exchanged salutes and shook hands. The colonel hopped inside the waiting jeep, and it took off like a bullet, racing across the campgrounds and the tarmac.

Major Helm watched the jeep for a moment, before tending to his duties.

444

Not even the electric-blue tracers flashing from the wing-gun of the black starship could warm the cold, vast reaches of space on the fringe of the Tetaara System.

The Terran merchant ship
Venture
, known for the valuable cargo she often carried, had set course for the Hamilton Wormhole when the black starship soared across a quadrant of neutral space and swooped down on the freighter like a cosmic bird of prey. Without warning, the warship attacked the
Venture
, her weapons burning the hull and cutting into the freighter like a can opener. As if she were some alien space dragon, the black starship spat luciferous destruction from the jaws of her dinosaurian prow, and then moved in for the kill.

Then the wormhole suddenly expanded and pulsed with orange light—and the starship
Courageous
flew from its gaping maw. Almost immediately the black starship swung around, and fired a volley of atomizer torpedoes and white energy beams from the solar cannons mounted on her wings. In a matter of seconds the
Courageous
took evasive action and retaliated. Her lasers and photon guns flared and lit up the darkness of space.

444

Cortez paced the floor and kept stepping on his friends’ feet. O’Hara stared at his chronoband, shaking his head. Akira practiced Tai Chi. Makki carefully replaced each of his medical instruments inside his medikit, but held the Diascan in his paws and stared at it as if waiting for the answer to their situation to suddenly appear on its tiny screen.

When Akira finished her routine, she sat down on the floor to stretch her legs. “We don’t have much time left, boys. We have to find a way to contact the colonel.”

“And just how do we do that, Doctor Zarkov?” O’Hara asked. “We don’t have a Questron transmitter or a short wave radio. Good God, woman—we ain’t even allowed to carry around our own personal communication units!”

“Be silent, O’Hara!” Cortez said. “Let someone with brains do the talking.”

O’Hara fumed and glared at Cortez. In spite of her concerns, Akira couldn’t help but laugh. The big Irishman was about to tear them all apart with his usual verbal vitriol when Makki grinned and showed the Diascan Unit to his friends

“Can use this to send message,” he said, grinning from the end of one set of whiskers to the other. “Idea may work.”

Cortez stopped pacing. Akira stopped laughing and jumped to her feet. O’Hara stopped fuming, shambled over to Makki and grabbed the Diascan from him.

“This thing’s a bloody antique!” he griped.

“But still works very much well,” Makki told him.

“It’s not a radio, Makki,” Akira said. “We can’t contact anyone with it.”

Makki rolled his eyes.
Humans can be so stupid,
he thought. “Diascan can talk direct and exchange information with main computers aboard
Iwo Jima.
”

He took the Diascan away from O’Hara, opened the back of the unit, uncoiled a thin wire, and showed his friends a link-up jack.

Akira stared at Makki, her expression about as blank as a computer screen in sleep mode.

Cortez scratched his head. “
Por favor . . .
so how are we going to send a message without the proper transmitting device?”

Makki was about to explain when O’Hara roared with laughter and slapped his thigh.

“That bugger Chanori should’ve killed us when he had the chance, instead of talkin’ our bloody ears off,” he said. “Makki—gimme your laser scalpel.”

Makki winked and handed O’Hara the laser. He knew what the big Irishman had in mind.

“What’s going on in that shamrock you call a brain, Seamus?” Akira asked.

“The Khandra transmitter!” O’Hara said gleefully. “The bloomin’ antenna is right outside our window. I’m gonna burn a hole in the plastic casing—”

“And use Diascan to patch into Khandra communication system,” Makki said.

“Makki, you’re a bloody genius!” O’Hara said.

Makki’s ears jerked upright and his chest swelled with pride.

“But I still think you’re a Lavarian beggar,” O’Hara quickly added.

“And you are one big roaring fat cow!” Makki told him, scowling as best he could.

O’Hara scowled right back, then barked with laughter and slapped Makki on the back. Makki staggered from the blow and almost toppled over.

“You know, of course, that the Khandra will intercept any message we send,” Cortez said. “Vash and Chanori will be able to read it.”

“Not if I use my own personal code,” O’Hara said. “Ain’t that right, Makki?”

“This one has no idea what sergeant is talking about,” the corpsman replied.

While O’Hara set to work with Makki, Akira reached into her blouse pocket and took out a cigar. She patted her other pockets, looking for her solar-charged lighter. Then her face went white. She removed her hand from one pocket and looked at the flashchip Preston had given her.

“What’s wrong?” Cortez asked her.

“I forgot all about Cooper!”

444

Preston lay on the floor of the closet inside the sergeant’s quarters, where Akira and O’Hara had locked him. He was gagged with a bandanna, and his arms and legs were expertly tied at wrists and ankles with a pair of belts. Sweat rolled down his face and stained his clothes as he battered the door with his feet.

When I get out of here I’m going to strangle that O’Hara!
Preston told himself.
Then I’m going to hogtie Makki and Cortez. And
then
I’m going to marry Akira and keep her barefoot and pregnant and locked in the kitchen where she belongs!

His feet pounded on the door until the bones in his legs were on the verge of breaking—and then the lock finally broke and the door flew open.

He lifted his eyes in gratitude to Heaven.

Finally!

All he had to do now was stand up.

444