Free The Morcai Battalion by Diana Palmer Page A

size!” He threw another punch, putting everything he had into it. The Holconcom absorbed it as easily as he had the first. But his eyes began to dilate. As he turned toward the human, Madeline saw the elongated cat-eyes slowly turn brown.
    “Stern, do something while there’s still time,” Madeline said quickly.
    But the Bellatrix ’s captain only sat watching the byplay with oddly blank, dark eyes.
    Suddenly a low, soft growl began to grow in the silence that followed the human engineer’s next deliberate blow. The sound built on itself, like a low roar that quickly took on the ferocity of a jungle cat’s warning cry. It exploded abruptly in a high-pitched inhuman scream that froze Stern’s heart in his chest with a terror that bordered on panic. The blank look left his eyes as his jaw dropped. He’d never heard such a nightmarish sound in his life, even in combat.
    “My God!” Hahnson whispered. “The decaliphe! ”
    Before the soft words died on the air, the Holconcom regular was on his feet. He began to crouch, his eyes darker by the second, his hands slowly assuming the shape of a cat’s open paw. They flexed. Beneath the tips of the fingers, steel claws began to extend in gleaming sharp points. It was a form of bionic engineering that none of the humans had yet seen.
    Madeline pushed Stern, but he didn’t react. He was frozen in place by the low growl that built again in the Centaurian’s throat.
    Madeline grabbed for Stern’s Gresham and fired it at point-blank range, into the back of the Holconcom, with the setting on maximum burn. It should have killed the alien. It should have dropped him tohis knees at least. It did neither. She fired again, cursing under her breath, with the same result.
    “What in the seven netherworlds…!” Madeline exclaimed huskily.
    The Holconcom group had risen in unison. They were standing, watching the other Holconcom who crouched in front of Muldoon.
    Hahnson got to his feet. “Twenty Greshams wouldn’t stop him now!” he told Madeline. “He gave the decaliphe —the death cry. Only Dtimun can bring him down! Hold the other men back, no matter what the Holconcom do, if you can. I’ll get the C.O.”
    He was out the door at a dead run. Madeline moved forward with the Gresham leveled, ignoring Stern, who still sat as if in a trance.
    “Hold it!” Madeline barked at two human noncoms who were in the process of rising from their seats. “Move and I’ll drop both of you,” she added, her green eyes backing up the threat. They sat down.
    But Lieutenant Higgins, the Bellatrix ’s exec, rose from his chair despite the threat of Madeline’s Gresham. Across from her, the Holconcom regular was moving with a catlike stalking gait toward Muldoon, who had by now realized his peril and had begun to back away, his face mirroring his fear.
    “He’ll kill Muldoon, if we don’t do something,” Higgins pleaded huskily. “He’s my friend. If we could just get Muldoon out of here…! You don’t know what they’ll do if the alien actually attacks Muldoon.” He nodded toward the Holconcom. “You haven’t seen them fight. I have.” He swallowed, hard. “There won’t be enough of Muldoon left to bury, and then they’ll go for the other humans in a solid mass. They can’t help it, Doctor, it’s the way they fight…!”
    Another sharp, catlike cry from the Holconcom interrupted him.
    The hairs on the back of Madeline’s neck stood up, but she held her ground. She had, after all, been an officer in the Amazon regiment, long before she became a doctor. “Move toward him again,”Madeline told Higgins, “and he’ll have company. It’s Hahnson’s show. He knows what he’s doing.”
    The rest of the Holconcom were still standing, and when the humans began to stand, as well, the Centaurians’ eyes began to grow darker and the pupils dilate.
    Hurry, Strick, she thought silently. She wasn’t certain what the outcome would be, but she was inclined to believe Higgins.