“So...you’re my brother...and you want to fight with the ESS...” she said, still trying to understand it all.
“Yes,” he said. “I’m your brother. And I want to help you topple an empire.”
Nebula
ESS Space Marines, Book 4
1
Everything was hazy.
Andrea ‘Andy’ Dolan stood in the center of a far-reaching fog, unable to see anything beyond the grey mist. A sense of unease settled deep into her as she turned in a slow circle, searching for something, anything. But there was nothing, just fog. She was utterly alone.
Despite the way her skin tingled with nervousness, she remained calm.
Andy cautiously lifted her hand and moved it through the mist, slowly, testing what it felt like. It didn’t feel unusual. Her hand passed through air, feeling just a touch of cool dampness.
Silence. There was also silence.
Andy lowered her hand and turned her head one way and the other, trying to pick out any sound but there was nothing but deafening silence. She had always thought the term sounded impossible, until she had actually experienced true silence. It was like her body and brain tried to fill in the gaps, forming a sort of white noise, a hum. It was deafening in its way.
There was a sense of sterility to the haze. No sight or sound or smell. Nothing suggested that the mist itself was dangerous, since she had been breathing it for several minutes and was still alive.
She took a slow, deep breath and decided that the only way out of the fog was through it.
With one last look around, she took a cautious step forward. When nothing happened, she took another step forward. After a few cautious steps, the fog began to lighten up.
Andy continued forward at the same careful pace until finally, shapes began to emerge in the distance. She paused and studied the shapes, but there was no detail, or even a hint at what they were. The size suggested they were part of the landscape, or buildings.
She started moving forward again, and the shapes began to take on definition and color.
The last of the mist thinned and revealed a city that spanned a large valley, as well as buildings built up into the mountainside. There was a mix of buildings ranging from sterile, straight line buildings to ancient constructions with elaborate designs and bright colors.
Everything appeared to be made of stone, a mix of white, light gray, and deep azure blue.
Andy could see lines running along the side of the mountain, cutting straight or weaving around buildings and she knew that they were roadways. Everything was still and quiet. The uneasy feeling grew alongside a sense of...being haunted.
Among the discomfort, there was a thread of another emotion that was difficult to pick out. She stared at the city and worked at it, trying to pluck loose the errant thread.
Longing.
There was something about the city that drew her in. It felt like it was calling to her, even though she knew she had never seen it before.
Andy stared at the sprawling city and wondered where it was; she wondered if it was a real place somewhere in the universe, or just something in her imagination. She knew as the moments passed that this was a dream. She almost always knew when she was having dreams, and ones like this were getting more frequent.
She could sense that this city had something to do with her father’s people. Was this an Arkana city? No one had ever seen one, aside from the Arkana, or even knew where they were.
Was this real, or was it just her imagination creating what she thought it might be like?
Finding a white stone-paved road, she put her feet on it and realized that they were bare. She frowned at that, but couldn’t do much about it so she kept walking. Andy needed to know what the inside of the city looked like.
When she reached the first buildings and started to enter the city proper, a figure appeared on the road ahead of her. This one was not another building, all of which were now bright and clearly defined, but that of a person. It was a vague humanoid shape that gave her the sense of belonging to a man.
She had seen this figure in her dreams before.
‘He’ walked toward her and she stopped, but did not retreat. She stared at the featureless figure and waited for him.
As he drew nearer, she saw a shimmer—that was the only way she could describe it—showing in various areas of the shape. With each one, she almost caught a glance of a person within it. The faintest sign of facial features, but never enough to get an idea of what that face actually looked like.
“You’re here,” the figure said without a mouth.
“I am,” she replied plainly.
All was silent for several moments as pale, misty figures began to pass her on both sides. They also had the sense of being people, and yet there were no forms or faces to them as they went about their hazy business through the city.
“Why don’t you leave us alone?” she asked brazenly. It was her dream, after all, so it wasn’t like she had to practice diplomacy. Unless the Arkana could break into her dreams, but even then...
“You’re in our way.”
A shimmer and a flicker, a hint of a pair of crystal blue eyes and white skin.
“The ESS is in your way, or I am?”
A shimmer and a flicker, a hint of a pair of lips curved in an almost sinister smile. The figure, despite lacking all consistent features, managed to radiate arrogance. It was like an aura that lingered around the shape of the being and insidiously sunk into everything around him and her. She surprised a shudder.
“Both,” he replied.
Andy scoffed quietly. “I will stand in your way until they put me in a tube and shoot me into space.”
The figure seemed to tilt its head, quizzical and amused. “Why do you resist? You cannot stop us now that we are coming. We are the best of you, and you are now the least of you. There is nothing you can do that we cannot also do, and do better. It’s only a matter of time before you are overcome. You cannot stop us.”
“We’ll see about that,” she said.
Then, she slapped herself hard across the face.
2
“Damn,” Andy breathed, staring at the ceiling of her bunk. “I can’t believe that worked.”
She had never tried to wake herself up from a dream before, it had always just happened on its own. However, she’d heard once about pinching yourself or otherwise inflicting pain to snap your dreaming mind back awake. So, she had slapped herself and apparently that had been enough to do it.
Reaching up, she rubbed her shoulders where tension from the dream had followed her into the waking world. A few moments later, her computer’s alarm went off and she knew it was time to start the day anyway.
The Star Chaser was in transit, so the duties of Major Andrea Dolan, Commander of the 33rd ESS Marines, were minimal. Still, she kept to her schedule.
She got up, took a shower, got dressed, and then headed down to the brig.
Since she was there almost every morning, the guard on duty just nodded in a familiar greeting. “Going to breakfast?” she asked.
“Same as usual,” Andy replied.
The guard looked down at her console and pressed a few keys. “Valin will be here in a moment,” she announced a moment later, smiling politely at the Marine.
Andy returned the expression and then went to the first brig cell, looking through the combination metal bars/energy field door at the Arkana on the other side. He had a few objects in there with him now, compared to the sparseness of the other cells, but this one was being used more “long term” than usual.
Anath looked up from the book in his hands and smiled.
“Come to break me out for my morning meal?” he asked with no apparent rancor for his situation.
“I assume you’re interested,” she replied.
Andy’s half-brother—a fact that had been confirmed by the ship’s doctor—closed the book and set it aside. At least he had clothing to wear now beyond the generic “random guest” things the
y had for him at first. He looked...almost like a regular person, except for the ethereal air and pure snow-white skin and hair.
A tactical crewman by the name of Valin—Andy and Anath had been escorted by him before—came through the door to serve as guard for Anath while they went to the mess hall. It wasn’t that Andy wasn’t qualified to guard a prisoner, of course, but in her position, she was supposed to remain free for other things.
The guard at the console disengaged the field and slid open the physical door. Anath waited a moment before politely stepping through with his hands lightly laced behind his back, the same as he had every morning for the past two weeks since he had defected from the Arkana to join his half-sister in the war against them. The Star Chaser captain wasn’t willing to trust Anath completely, but was giving the Arkana some leeway.
Their walk from the brig to the mess hall was practically a stroll, keeping it nice and easy and making Valin’s job as placid as possible. They didn’t talk much until after entering the dining area and fetching trays of breakfast.
With food in hand, they found a table near the back of the room. A few crewmembers ignored Anath, but others gave him a polite nod or ‘good morning’ as they passed.
The ESS Star Chaser was the only ship in the fleet that flew with a member of the enemy and an officer who was half-breed to the enemy. However, it made the ship stronger and they knew it. Andy had proven her loyalty to the ESS and refused her father’s people, and Anath was a full-fledge traitor to his own people. He didn’t bring a lot of tactical information, but he did have insight into Arkana psychology and physiology that the ESS hadn’t had before.
“I had a dream last night,” Andy said once they were settled and had started eating. Half of her coffee was already gone. “I dreamed of a city, half built in a valley and half built up the side of a mountain.”
Anath looked at her curious, tilting his pale head. “What did it look like?”
She searched the foggy memories of her dream. “Like a mix of colorful old Earth buildings and modern buildings, all white and grey and blue. The blue was so bright, though. It made me think of jewelry, although it didn’t look like it was made of jewels.”
“It sounds like Ankareth,” Anath said thoughtfully. “A capital city of the Arkana people.”
“It’s a real place?” she asked. In truth, she wasn’t surprised, but it was unsettling. “I know I have never seen it, so how can I dream it?”
Her half-brother shrugged, finishing chewing before he replied, “Good guess?” He paused. “I mean, I imagine there’s some sort of genetic memory, shared consciousness. It’s always been believed among the Arkana, to a degree, and our father is a powerful man.”
She bit the inside of her lip. “Are any Arkana telepathic?”
“Not that I’ve ever known of,” he said with a shake of his head. “We engineered ourselves to resist abilities, not take them on. Humans aren’t telepathic.”
“Some are empathic, to a degree,” Andy pointed out.
“True,” he conceded. “But that’s still a far cry from true telepathy.”
She nodded in agreement.
Her Arkana DNA was nothing but trouble, she decided. True, it had come with some benefits, such as keeping her mind from being taken over by a telepathic race bent on chaos or being fried by bio-electrical bolts. Still, it had remained hidden for over twenty-five years until surprising her with its presence and now there was a chance of it having a “memory” that gave her images she hadn’t witnessed herself?
Or was there something more that her father was able to do and that was affecting her? He knew of her now. Apparently, her refusing to join her own people in their war against humanity and the ESS was legendary among the Arkana people. No one had ever done that before, but it was never a decision that she regretted.
The Star Chaser and its crew were her family, not some random species she just happened to share genetic heritage with, and who were now trying their best to kill her. That wasn’t really an endearing trait, frankly.
“The city looked like such a strange blend of styles,” she said thoughtfully.
“It is,” he chuckled. “As an Arkana, you are either a scientist or a soldier. Our leaders come through one of those two channels. There isn’t much choice in our culture, but the two choices are something of a dichotomy and it shows in our architecture. But I still think that it works.”
Andy looked at her breakfast plate. “I suppose the scientists made things to do all the menial tasks,” she commented.
He nodded, and they were quiet for several long moments while they focused on eating their food.
“Is the city beautiful?” she finally asked softly.
Anath smiled sadly. “It really is,” he said. “It’s a shame that the gifts my people, our people, have to create such wonders are now being turned to war.” He paused and sighed, looking at his food like he suddenly didn’t have an appetite anymore. “It’s a shame that you’ll never get to see it, and that I will never see it again.”
Andy looked at her food as well, poking at some scrambled eggs. “Well. I guess I’ll just have to show you some beautiful places on Earth.” She managed a smile as she looked back up at him. “And the other ESS Allied worlds we’re going to save from ‘our people’.”
3
After two weeks of working with Anath, the science department still wasn’t over its excitement.
The Star Chaser was not a science vessel, so the “science department” was a contingent of three science officers with labs connected to sickbay and its medical facilities. The lead scientist was an excitable, short man named Roger Stan. His assistants were a little more sedate, but they still clearly enjoyed learning about the new race. They were less enthusiastic about using the knowledge to aid the military efforts, but they understood the necessity.
“I’ve been granted limited access to your scientific database,” Anath said as they stood around a table in the science office, “so I could research species known to the ESS. So far, I haven’t found any record of the Morrann peoples, so we’ll have to work off what little I know.”
He tapped on the table and brought up schematics of the current energy signatures of ESS energy weapons.
“The frequency that your current energy weapons use is very similar to an ability of the people called the Morrann, which the Arkana have encountered,” he explained. “There are three other known species to have abilities using energy of this nature, so not only do we have to avoid the frequency the Morrann generate, but we have to make sure that we don’t make it similar to any of those other three too. Two of these species are in your database so we can use that, but the last one is not so we’ll have to work off my memory.”
“I hope you have a good memory,” Stan said thoughtfully. His tone was calm but he was rocking back and forth between his toes and his heels, the way he did when he went ‘full science nerd’ as they affectionately called it.
Meanwhile, Andy was just glad they were finally getting to this. She still didn’t understand why they hadn’t started with improving their energy weapons, but that hadn’t been her call. They were there now, and she was pleased. She also liked understanding what the problem with them had been in the first place.
She didn’t like having to rely on old-fashioned projectile weapons the way that they had been, though. Ammunition tended to run out faster, the options were more limited, and not every weapon had the same effective range and aim as their energy weapons. The Arkana weapons they had stolen were better, but could only be used by humans.
Even with Anath’s help, they hadn’t figured out how to change that, and she wasn’t sure they ever would.
“I guess we’re going to find out how good my memory is,” Anath said to the scientists with a wry smile. “I hope we can avoid using me as a live test subject, but I’ll submit to the most minor settings if it’s needed.”
“We’re not much for live test subjects around here,” Stan assured him.
“Even the Marines would rather not subject anyone to friendly fire,” Andy added with a half-smile for her half-brother.
“I appreciate both of you being willing to keep my pasty hide intact.” Anath’s steely blue eyes glinted with his sense of humor as he inclined his head to them. “I have also come up with some suggestions to adjust the aural frequencies for the stun grenades.”
He typed information into the computer set into the table and the view screen on the wall lit up with his suggestions. Stan and the other two scientists moved closer and peered at it closely. Proximity apparently increased the scientific comprehension. Andy just watched them with mild amusement.
When in school, she hadn’t been a bad student in science, but it definitely hadn’t been a passion of hers. She’d always been more physical, drawn to boxing and martial arts as a teenager. Going into the Marines had just seemed like a natural progression after school, and she had never regretted that choice.
Andy had to admit to herself, however, the scientists were intriguing. She stood back with her arms crossed over her chest, trying to not smile lest they all misinterpret her reasons for it.
“I have been wondering if there’s anything we can do with the Marine armor to improve it against Arkana weaponry,” she said, turning to her half-brother.
“I have been wondering that myself,” he said ruefully. “We haven’t managed to perfect any sort of personal energy armor, and since we use energy weapons, that’s the primary type of shielding that would work.”
“There is no material you know of, that we don’t, that can be integrated into our armor to increase our resistance?” she asked.
He shook his head slowly. “None that I know of. I’m sure even if there was, it wouldn’t be something accessible to you. Anything in your systems that we would be able to get our hands on would already be known to you.” Turning to look at her, he offered an apologetic smile. “We have managed to make our heavy assault vehicles somewhat resistant to energy weapons, but I was never involved in that area of things so I don’t know the process.”
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