Earth Space Service Space Marines Boxed Set

by James David Victor

  The footsteps returned, and he was behind her in an instant. She felt a sudden yank on the short ponytail at the back of her neck, and the pull dragged her backward. It was a Herculean effort to stay on her feet, but she managed. In a moment, she was back against him as he tried to hook his arm around her neck. She clasped her hands together to put a little more power into her arm as she twisted slightly and drove her elbow into his gut.

  Coughing, the arm released before it was completely around her neck and she staggered forward, falling to her hands and knees.

  She couldn't get back on her feet in time, and he fell on top of her. Half of the air in her lungs rushed out as he crashed on top of her, flattening her to the floor. She felt her teeth drive into her lip and tasted blood as she tried to rise up. His weight wasn't fully on her, she could tell, but enough of it was to make her weak form struggle against him.

  Concentrating on what she could tell from how she felt, she knew when he brought his head down as if he was going to say something to her. She threw her head back in one swift moment and delivered a glancing blow against him. Some of the weight moved and she threw her weight to one side, rolling onto her back.

  The man was still half on her when she did this, but she had a little more space and a little more leverage. She spat the blood out in the direction of his face and then brought one leg up, wedging her knee partially under his side. She pressed harder and harder, driving it into his ribs with what strength she had. She didn't believe she did any damage, but it was enough to push him the rest of the way off her.

  She wiggled sideways, trying to get away from him and find just enough room to get back on her feet.

  He had the advantage, though. Snaking out one hand fast, he grabbed her by the wrists and yanked her back toward him. As he did, he drove his fist forward and she felt it collide with her nose. There was a dull cracking sound and a resounding pain through her skull. Blood ran down her face and joined the blood already in her mouth.

  Reeling from the pain and disorientation, she managed to spit the blood again and actually hit him in the face.

  The man punched her again, and she felt the skin over her cheekbone split open. She moaned. This time, the pain was just too much. Stars started to explode before her eyes as she sagged back. Her normally stalwart stamina was far from returned after all she had been through, and she just couldn't hold up anymore.

  He let go of her hands and she thought he would just leave her there, but suddenly, he punched her again. She managed to get her hands up and over her face and head, trying to curl up and protect the really important parts just before his boot found her.

  Pain lanced through both shins and her arms, but she kept tight and waited for him to stop while the pain engulfed her.

  19

  0930 Hours

  It had been over an hour since the captain had come to tell him that his sister had been abducted, and there hadn't been any news. He took comfort in the idea that meant she hadn't been found dead...but it wasn't comforting for the fact that she still must not have been found at all. It was a big station, he knew, but he would have hoped for something a little quicker.

  Over the past hour, Anath had alternated between staring at the ceiling and pacing the small floor space of his room.

  Just when his frustration was reaching its peak and his brain would not stop racing over the whole thing, he had what the humans described as a "light bulb" moment. He knew just enough history to know what that was, but also realized just how antiquated it was. Still, he had a flash of inspiration and felt immediately stupid.

  Why hadn't he thought of this before?

  Anath immediately went to access the communications console in his room. "Anath to Captain Wallace," he said.

  The captain replied, "Yes, Anath. I'm sorry to say I don't really have any news for you."

  "I figured that, sir, but I think I might have an idea." He swallowed hard to try to calm his racing heart. "I think I might have an idea to help find my sister."

  "Come to the bridge," Wallace replied after a long pause, undoubtedly from surprise.

  Anath smiled a little with relief and raced out of his room. He didn't even stop to reflect on the fact that his feet were bare. It didn't matter. Nothing but his sister mattered at this point, and he sprinted from his room to the lift and up to the top deck and then to the bridge. He passed by numerous crewmen who all looked at him strangely, but he didn't stop to explain.

  He nearly fell face-first onto the bridge as the door opened and he tried to come to a reasonable stop. He stopped, at least, although 'reasonable' was perhaps a stretch.

  "Welcome to the bridge, Mister Anath," Wallace greeted him dryly. "Let's hear this idea of yours."

  "Yes, sir," Anath said, but he was out of breath so held up a hand until he caught it enough to speak properly. "I can't believe I didn't think of it before. I know the sensors on the Star Chaser are not sensitive enough to seek out specific DNA structures. However, they can be configured to look for specific elements, right? I know it usually applies to minerals, but it's the same idea."

  "That's correct," Wallace agreed cautiously.

  "Arkana DNA very closely resembles human DNA of course, since that is where we all came from. However, there are a couple elements that have been engineered into our physical makeup over the centuries. It's been part of our...quest for perfection, I guess you could say." Now he was out of breath from talking so fast and had to stop again, panting a few times before taking a deep breath to continue. "These elements are unique enough for us to isolate. There is at least one, that I know of, that no race in the ESS Alliance contains."

  The expression on the captain's face showed he was following along now. "Being half-Arkana, would Major Dolan have enough of this element in her body for our sensors to pick up on?"

  "I don’t know, Captain," Anath said honestly, "but I think she will. Maybe just barely, but enough."

  "Tell me what you need," Wallace said easily.

  Anath smiled, again relieved. "We're going to need to take a sample of my blood and then isolate the element. I don't remember the structure well enough to input it into the sensors, so we'll have to take it from my system and then program your sensor suite."

  Wallace looked at Shailain, and they both shook their heads. "We don't have that sort of equipment on board, so we'll have to work with medical." He pressed a button on the armrest of his chair. "Wallace to sickbay. We need a doctor or nurse and some medical equipment sent to the bridge immediately. We need to be able to draw blood and analyze its elements." He paused and looked around for a moment. "Is that something you can do on the bridge?"

  Doctor Martin replied, "It is, although it's not the smallest item we have here. However, I assume that it's beyond urgent. We'll be up in just a moment." The channel chirped closed.

  "Thank you," Anath said sincerely, stepping back to wait for the doctor to show up.

  The nervous energy was quickly too much for him, and he began to pace. Everyone seemed to tolerate it for a while before Captain Wallace finally snapped, "Sit down before you hurt something, son."

  Anath sat on the floor right where he'd been when the captain spoke.

  A few moments later, the door opened and Doctor Martin came onto the bridge with a nurse in tow. They had an open cart between them with a large piece of equipment. Anath bounced up like the floor was electrified and hurried over, holding out his arm.

  The Selerid lifted his brows. "I assume this means we're analyzing your blood," he said dryly, not waiting to pull a small syringe off the tray. Anath didn't even bother to answer, just kept standing there with his arm out. Martin put the needle into the pale skin and pressed a button, filling the tube with red blood just a moment later.

  He pulled the needle out and put the blood in a small glass tray, which he inserted in the machine.

  "Will you recognize what you're looking for?" Martin asked without looking away from the machine's small screen.

  "I will,
" the Arkana said, standing close beside him so he could see the screen as well.

  Martin was quiet for a moment and then asked, "Is this to help find the major?"

  "Yes."

  "Good."

  A few moments later, the machine whirred one more time, then beeped. A list of elements scrolled down the screen, and Anath read each line quickly. Finally, he said, "That one!" He pointed to it. "Now we need to program the ship's sensors to look for this element. If my sister's half-blood has enough of this, we'll be able to find her."

  He moved across the bridge to the sensor officer. "May I?" he asked. The officer stood and stepped away, they exchanged a nod, and Anath sat down. Martin came over and read off the results, which he programmed into the sensor suite. Then he immediately started a full sweep of the entire station.

  "Now we wait?" Doctor Martin asked, although it was really more of a statement.

  Anath blew out a hard breath. "Now we wait."

  20

  0940 Hours

  Before they started on the room by room search of the storage areas, they were notified that security had collected all the surveillance video from the areas of interest. Alpha squad headed down to the security office to view the footage before they did anything else, since it could help narrow things down and target their search more effectively.

  There wasn't a recorder pointed directly at the interrogation room door, but there was one on each side of it in that corridor, so that's where they started.

  "There's the cart," Dan said suddenly.

  Roxanna had been watching a second monitor that showed the other half of the corridor, but now she paused her footage and moved over to his. She watched as the man walked down the hallway moving away from the interrogation room. She could see his build and the uniform, although not a lot else.

  "Look how he's keeping the recorders from capturing his face," Dan said, not even blinking as he stared at the screen. "He knows where the recorders are and the angles. He knows too much." He was grinding his teeth again.

  "From the build and the hair color, it seems to confirm what the captain found out about March," Roxanna pointed out. "So we know which direction he went. Do we have footage from inside the lifts?"

  "Not inside the maintenance lifts," the security officer replied.

  The Selerid thought he could at least have the good manners to sound apologetic, but she wasn't going to say anything about it. They didn't have time for a manners lesson right then, but she might come back to give him one.

  "Let's work on the assumption that he wouldn't want to go to a far one, so he took the one nearest to the interrogation room from that direction," she said. "So, let's view the hallways around that lift on the three decks in question and see which one he exited from."

  Jade had taken over the console controls from the security officer, citing she could do it better and Roxanna supported that, so she was the one who pulled up the new footage. She split the screens within the screen so they could watch all six spots at the same time—the hall in each direction on either side of the lift for the relevant decks. She put it to the same time as the timestamp on the video of the suspect walking away from the interrogation room, and they all stood there and watched.

  Roxanna's eyes flickered from square to square, viewing each one for several seconds before moving on and always aware of the dim peripheral images. She knew between the four of them, they wouldn't miss anything, but she couldn't help herself.

  "There," Anallin said, pointing at the screen with a blue finger as the image of the man pushing the cart rolled past.

  "Pause," Roxanna ordered. "Now pull up the images from the recorders farther down the hall and set them for the same timestamp as this image. Do we have an idea of the time between recorders?"

  "An average, yes," Jade said, "though he's going to be moving slower than average."

  "He's pushing a cart with a full body's worth of weight in it," Dan elaborated. "Even if he's in a hurry, he's still going to be a slower than someone who isn't so weighed down."

  Roxanna nodded, but her purple eyes remained on the screen. She could feel the tingling in her skin increasing with her agitation. This time, the screen was divided into four moving images instead of six.

  "There are more down this corridor, but I won't pull them up unless he passes all four of these," Jade explained.

  Purple, blue, green, and brown eyes were all once again riveted to the screen. They watched and waited. The sound was turned off on this viewing, so the only sound in the room was their tense breathing and an occasional teeth-grinding from Dan or clicking of Anallin's eyes that showed it was feeling agitated as well.

  They watched as the man and the cart passed the first view and then the second. He did not pass the third, so they all stared at it. Jade kept looking up at the view then down at the bottom of the screen. After a few moments, she shook her head slowly. "He should've passed this camera by now," she said, then sped up the image. They watched it at high speed for what was an hour of real time and still nothing.

  "He vanished somewhere between view two and view three," Roxanna declared. "Pull up that station schematic again so we can see how many of these storage rooms are located between the two."

  Jade typed out the commands on the console keys, and Roxanna watched as the moving images paused and then turned into a minimized window on the screen. A moment later, the black and blue image of the ship's plans showed up, looking just like the one they had all been looking at before.

  "The second recorder is here," Jade said, almost thinking out loud as she highlighted one area on deck thirteen. "And the third is here ..." She highlighted another. "Between the two of them, we have one...two...three…four...five storage rooms."

  Roxanna nodded slowly. "Well, that's better than having to go around the entire outer perimeter of the station," she said with her best "look on the bright side, it could be worse" sort of tone. It didn't seem to sink into any of the other three members, although they were already looking less somber and more like people ready to act.

  She peered closely at the screen, taking in the full schematic as it laid before her and thinking of the best approach to everything. For a moment, she let herself wonder why the man had chosen this storage room—whichever one it was in that five-room group now highlighted between the two recorder checkpoints.

  After a moment of her mind wandering, she shook her head. It doesn’t matter why he chose it, just that he had and it looked like their major was in one of those rooms. She had to hope the guesswork was correct and that they would find Major Dolan inside one—unharmed and ready to be rescued.

  "Let's get our butts down to deck thirteen and start searching those five rooms. The faster we search, the faster we find her. Oorah!"

  "Oorah!"

  21

  0950 Hours

  Andy was still hazy, but this time it was from pain rather than drugs. If nothing else, it was at least a change of pace.

  Her face and head hurt the worst. Every time she inhaled, she could feel every rising bruise and bleeding cut. She felt at least relatively sure he hadn't damaged her skull, and she had kept consciousness throughout. A concussion seemed unlikely, but she knew she couldn't rule it out entirely.

  There was also plenty of pain in her arms and legs, but her abdomen and back seemed okay. She thought she had managed to protect those regions enough to spare herself internal damage.

  After the beating he'd given her, he dragged her back to where she'd been before and re-tied her ankles. Then he stormed out of the room. Even in her state, she was rather shocked he would leave her alone after her escape attempt, but he probably figured she wouldn't be doing much moving around as she was.

  Little did he know.

  She waited a few minutes after he left to feel certain he was gone and to take stock of herself. There also might have been a moment or two given to wallowing and whining from the pain, but she didn't let herself have that luxury for too long. Once she got out of he
re and was in sickbay on the Star Chaser—since she sure as hell wasn't staying on this base—she could wallow and whine all she wanted.

  The straight-out escape attempt hadn't worked very well, so she had to try something else. She had to hinder her captor in some way.

  Wrapping her fingers around the knot at her ankles, she realized he wasn't very good at the knot-tying thing. It took a little longer than before, but she was still able to loosen it up enough to pull it apart. Instead of focusing on how to run though, she started looking for other ways to use it and what else was around her.

  Of course, the act of looking around hurt a great deal as the skin around one eye was swelling and painful. She forced herself through it as much as possible.

  There wasn't much around. Everything seemed to be industrial crates and large supplies. She hobbled forward to the crate he had been sitting on to see if she could get the lid off. As luck would have it, it was unlocked. She slid the lid back and looked inside. It was dark and hard to know what she was seeing, and she was hesitant to reach inside.

  Her eyes finally picked out an engineer's spot welder, which was pretty similar to an energy weapon. They both fired energy beams, which ran very hot. The spot welder was much less intense than a weapon, but at close range... She stuffed the handheld device into her pocket, which was a little too shallow for the thing and the welder still stuck out, but it at least freed her hands to keep looking. There were other little welders, but she only had the two hands and even then not really. They were still bound together, so she really only had one hand.

  Everything else was more sealed boxes and large pieces of metal.

  She struggled to slide the lid back into place but managed it before sliding back to where she'd been sitting before, folding her unbounded ankles under her again and twisting to her welder side toward the wall. All of that exertion while in this much pain made it feel like her heart was about to beat its way out of her chest, and she panted for breath.