Earth Space Service Space Marines Boxed Set

by James David Victor

  After a while, she heard the door open and turned her head enough to watch him walk in. She cursed inwardly when she saw him pressing buttons on something he placed over the door seam. She couldn't tell for sure, but she thought it was a lock.

  If he had locked the door to a biometric signature or a code...well, she wasn't going to get out of here that way.

  "You're awake again, I see," he said as he approached. She slid the welder into her hands and pressed her hands against her legs, hiding it—mostly—from his sight. "I hope you're not thinking of doing anything else stupid. I'd hate to have to hurt you again."

  Somehow, she doubted he'd "hate" it, although he was made up of contradictions so far.

  Andy didn't respond to him, although she let herself glare through her one and a half available eyes. He seemed taken back by her look, but he kept moving forward until he was about to sit down.

  He looked away for a moment and she took advantage. She lunged forward and brought up the welder, shooting the low level laser into his shin. He screamed and fell to the ground, and she shot him in the head. She knew part of his ear burned off, but she didn't know if it penetrated enough to keep him down.

  Welder in hand, she staggered to her feet. She stumbled even worse this time because of the pain in her legs but she limped toward the back again, trying to find the door. She found a panel this time and pressed it, but nothing happened. "Damn it!" she hissed.

  Turning around, she saw him lunging to his feet. The shot to his leg apparently wasn't as damaging as she'd hoped, and she wanted to scream. She tried to judge if she could get around him, but realized she couldn't in her current state. Maybe if she was healthy and whole she could. But not like she was.

  Running and escaping the room seemed unlikely, so she started to weigh the other alternative: hiding.

  The crates and metal sheets leaning against the walls could make for nooks to hide in, and she had to hope it would be enough. She hobbled toward one wall, moving around the materials to find a place to put herself. The noise of doing so was covered by his cursing and shouting in pain along with his stumbling steps.

  She still had the welder and made sure to keep a tight grip on it. It could be necessary.

  Finding a space behind a crate with a thick stack of metal paneling leaning against the wall beside it, she got on her hands and knees and inched her way inside. Everything hurt with every scrunched-up movement, but she grit her teeth and pushed her way through it. When all of her body was inside the cubby, she tried to settle down and position herself to be quiet and still and able to use the welder if she needed to.

  That was when she heard him start to throw things around.

  22

  0950 Hours

  Starbase Eclipse was even bigger than Anath had thought. The scan was taking a lot longer than he had anticipated to go section by section trying to pick out this one specific element combined with a bunch of others that could hinder the effectiveness of the sensors.

  Anath didn't want to move away from the screen, so he couldn't pace. Instead he tapped his foot against the ground and his fingers against the edge of the console. Every now and then he caught a crewmember look at him with a little bit of annoyance, but everyone was considerate enough to not actually say anything.

  He almost jumped out of his skin when he felt a hand on his shoulder.

  "Captain," he said with a breathless laugh, wondering how he hadn't heard or seen the man come up beside him.

  "I didn't mean to startle you," Wallace said with a small smile. "I don't suppose you have anything yet."

  The Arkana man shook his head. "I started with the three decks Alpha Squad is focusing on, but the structure is surprisingly complex. It's taking a while for the sensors to properly scan all of it while looking for what—to a ship and starbase—are miniscule amounts of the element." He sighed with frustration.

  Wallace patted him on the shoulder again. "We're already well ahead of where we were, thanks to you. We'll find her."

  Taking a deep breath and blowing it out, Anath nodded. "Yes, we will," he said. He knew he had done his best and it wasn't up to him anymore, but he couldn't avoid being frustrated with the computer anyway.

  He was trying his hardest to not imagine the worst, but it was hard. He knew now that it had been over two hours since she had been taken, and no one had heard anything from the captor or been able to find her yet. If she was lost, he would never forgive the ESS. Not that he had any intention of going home, he would never again side with the Arkana, but he wouldn't help the ESS any more either if they let his sister get killed.

  His thoughts were drawn away by a beeping from his console. Blinking, he realized what it meant and gasped. He sat up straight and stared.

  The screen showed him the element had been found in one of the scan regions. The sensors were now narrowing in on that section, dividing it into a new grid and going part by part until it narrowed it down another level. It did and then subdivided that section as well, scanning each one. The progress wasn't really that slow, but anything slower than instantaneous made his breath haggard and his heart almost stop cold while he waited for it to show a result.

  Finally, it narrowed down to one square of three sub-sections.

  "I have it!" he cried out, realizing the captain had silently managed to escape from where he'd been and return to his seat. Wallace jumped up and hurried over to the sensor console that Anath had claimed.

  "Deck thirteen, sections eight-e, f, and g," he announced.

  "Get Sergeant Roxanna," Wallace commanded urgently. When he got the affirmative, he told Anath to relay the information to them. And he did.

  "We're on it, sir," she announced, and the channel chirped closed.

  Anath sagged against the console, breathing heavily. Wallace patted him on the back. "You did good work, son."

  1000 Hours

  Alpha squad had just finished a full sweep of section eight-d on deck thirteen. The rooms were long and filled with a great variety of things that made doing a proper check of everything and everywhere very time consuming. They used the handheld scanner, but in the first room, there had been supplies that affected their readings. They did all visual confirmations.

  Roxanna halted them in the corridor when they got the call from the captain. The group's tension level spiked, and she fought against the onslaught while she kept herself calm enough to hear what the ship had to tell them.

  "We've been on the right track," she told them as the channel closed. "They've narrowed it down to one of the next three rooms."

  Optimism washed in on the heels of their tension, and she smiled faintly. With a single nod, the group was on the move again. Roxanna used the code the engineers had given her to unlock the door of the next room. They entered in a room clearing formation, ready for anything, everything, or nothing.

  It was another dimly lit room filled with all sorts of building materials. Those very materials were what made the search so complicated, with gaps and crannies of varying sizes and shapes and locations. Nothing really made sense, but there were many places a person or two could be.

  Eight-e proved to be nothing of use, and they left quickly. They were eager to search all the rooms, but tried to keep themselves level-headed and unhurried; they didn't want to risk missing something.

  Each of them took a quadrant and looked behind crates, as well as inside them. They searched under every space created by materials against the wall. In one corner, Roxanna poked through a stack of industrial tarps. She also learned that the station's environmental cleansing system was lacking in the storage areas by the amount of dust on top of everything.

  It was said that humans lost skin cells and hair at a surprising rate, and dust was formed from these. It made for a rather grotesque image to think that she was breathing in pieces of a human being. Thankfully, Selerid did not have any such biological process.

  She realized how the stress was affecting her, and she forced herself to pull back from the ra
ther random tangent she had just gone on.

  "All clear," she announced. "On to the next room."

  They went through the same procedure for room f.

  Unlock.

  Enter.

  Search.

  But this room proved to be exactly the same as the last. There was no sign of Major Dolan, her abductor, or anyone else.

  If Anath's scans were correct, that meant she was in this final room. Eight-g.

  Roxanna looked at the rest of them. "Be ready," she ordered, then keyed in the unlock code and watched as the door slid open.

  23

  1005 Hours

  Andy could hear him getting closer.

  All she could do was wait and hope that she could get another shot off, a more effective one, before he could get his hands on her. She could feel the last of her resistance, the last of her energy and stoicism, flowing out of her. Her body hurt, and she knew she was battling massive dehydration from the lack of water, not to mention blood loss. At least she hadn't started hallucinating ...

  She hoped.

  Suddenly, it was too much. She felt all the emotions she had been fighting off starting to take over her mind. She wanted to close her eyes and hide her head, but she knew she couldn't let herself do that. If he got within range, she had to be ready. Maybe she would be able to shoot him right in the face and reach his brain, then she wouldn't have to worry anymore.

  She wouldn't have to be scared.

  But she was scared. It wasn't a feeling she usually allowed herself the luxury of having, but she felt it then. He had already shown he had no issue with using violence. That had been shown from the first moment, but the way he had kicked her while she was down...that was more than what this all seemed. There was something personal about it, though she could guess it wasn't personal against her but against what part of her was.

  Her heritage wasn't something she'd had a say in, though. He wanted to kill her for something she had no hand in doing. If she was going to be punished, she would have at least liked to have committed the crime for it.

  Andy felt two tears slide down her cheek, and she bit her lip against any others.

  A piece of thin metal sheeting was tossed to the ground and it made a strange, loud wobbly sound that seemed to echo off the inside of her skull. Her breath was shallow in her chest as she tried not to breathe too loudly. Her heart hammered so hard she felt sure it must be loud enough to be heard, and she had no control over that, but logic said that wasn't possible. It only felt that way.

  "Where are you?!" he screamed, an edge of hysteria coloring his voice. She heard another wobbly metal sound, and then a stream of curses. The word "cut" fell into that stream somewhere, and she guessed he had cut himself on the sharp edge of one of the sheets. She hoped maybe he would bleed out and leave her alone, but logic ruled that one out too. Not unless he had cut off his whole hand ...

  It was too much to hope for.

  She heard his foot stomp against the sheeting, now punishing an inanimate object for something that was his fault. Andy was both aggravated and comforted and frightened by the idea that this guy was so far around the bend. It was one of those things that could help as much as hurt in situations like this.

  A thought struck her then that almost made her laugh.

  She had been in so many battles by now against the Arkana. There had been battles with ships, with tanks, with guns, with hands, and with words...and yet, she could not remember ever feeling afraid. She had been focused, ready, and she did her duty. She knew what each step needed to be, and she followed the path. As a sergeant, she followed orders. Now she gave them. In each battle, she still knew what to do and was not afraid.

  Now she was afraid. It felt like she was more at risk now than in any battle. And the one chasing her was human.

  Understanding the concept of irony had never been her strong suit, but it felt like this situation had to be a pretty good contender for it. Whichever way she looked, her life was going to be ended by one of her own race. She couldn't be Arkana, and now maybe she couldn't even be human.

  Her throat tightened with the emotion she was holding back, and she cringed uncontrollably when she heard the slide and clatter of what she guessed was a crate top being grabbed, removed, and flung to the ground. If she had to guess, she'd say he was within one or two crates of reaching her hiding place. It wouldn't take long for him to throw down the sheets of metal over her head and push the crates out of the way.

  She just had to hope she had the time and angle to shoot at him as soon as the path was cleared, before he had a chance to disarm her. Her strength was strongly in doubt, and she felt a tremor running through her hands.

  Andy didn't want to die. She was a soldier prepared to die, but that didn't mean she wanted to. And if she did die, she didn't want it to be like this.

  Suddenly, everything stopped.

  She swallowed hard and held her breath, trying to listen and see what she could hear that would tell her what was going on. There was no way for her to see out of her crawlspace, and the silence was suddenly making her more anxious than the noise had. She desperately wanted to poke her head out to look at what was going on, but she stopped herself from doing that. She knew it was likely her head would be bashed in before she had a chance to defend herself.

  Then she heard footsteps and it took a moment, but she realized it was more than one person. And the steps were heavy, like they were wearing boots.

  "Get the hell out of here!" her crazy abductor screamed.

  "ESS MARINES! GET DOWN ON THE GROUND NOW!"

  Andy's heart skipped a beat or two. She recognized Roxanna's voice in an instant, even in that infrequently used tone and volume. Normally when there was commanding or shouting to be done, Andy was the one to take care of it. Now the sound made her heart beat erratically with relief because she knew they had come for her.

  The cavalry had arrived.

  "Get out!" the man screamed again. She heard wild, uneven steps and then the high-pitched whine of an energy weapon being fired. It was immediately followed by something large and heavy hitting the floor hard. She could easily envision a body falling to the floor.

  "Major Dolan!" She recognized Roxanna calling for her, and she laboriously pushed herself out from her hiding place. An opened crate showed he had almost been upon her, and she felt a chill settle at the base of her spine and in the pit of her stomach.

  Roxanna rushed to her side, slinging back her weapon as she knelt beside her commanding officer. The Selerid's people skin was swirling at a high rate suggesting panic. "Major, we found you," she said. It was stating the obvious, but Andy didn't care.

  Then the major did something very un-Marine like.

  She hugged Roxanna, just barely choking back the tears that wanted to explode from her, and she was relieved when the sergeant did not reproach her but hugged her back.

  As she did, she was close enough to hear the call coming over the purple woman's communications earpiece. Andy could instantly recognize her brother's voice. "Sergeant! Do you have her?! Please respond. Do you have her?"

  "We have her, Anath. We have her."

  24

  It had taken the doctors two hours to get the major close to back to working order. Her injuries had to be fixed, and there were quite a few of them. They also had to push fluids into her system and give her shots with nutrients to help her body continue the process of healing. Sleep would do her wonders, but for now, she wanted to rest but stay awake.

  She said she'd had enough of being unconscious.

  They had tried to keep her isolated, but she insisted they let Anath visit. The brother and sister didn't talk much. He just sat beside her bed and held her hand, her dark one partially covered in a grey bandage standing out starkly against the snowy complexion of his Arkana skin.

  By the afternoon, she was able to sit up a little and eat and drink in a normal way.

  Captain Wallace walked in. He smiled a little and came to stand next to Anath a
t her bedside. He looked exhausted too. "I almost had to get Commander Shailain to body-block Doctor Martin to let me in here," he said with fatigued humor. "And your squad is lingering out in the hallway and coming close to scaring passing crewmen."

  "Order them to get some sleep," Andy said with a faint laugh. "I'd do it, but I don't think anyone could body-block the doctor enough to get me out of here for a few days."

  "We are all very happy to have you back on board, Major," Wallace said, and she could hear and feel the genuine emotion in his voice when he said it. That brought warmth to her, a sort of affection that had been missing in her dream with her alleged real father. "Your abductor survived surgery and is now in the brig on Starbase Eclipse."

  She nodded a little, although moving her head too much still made her dizzy. "Will he be getting a psychiatric evaluation?"

  Wallace tilted his head, amusement and surprise showing through the weathered features of his face. "Yes, he will," he said. "How did you know?"

  "We did talk a little," she said wryly. "I think he meant to interrogate me, but he couldn't even get that right. It was like he had me but then didn't know what to do with me. I'm really not sure he ever had a plan. He just knew I was half-Arkana, and I was here. It was pretty obvious he was a little nuts."

  "Well, your assessment is accurate," the captain said sadly. "Do you remember the battle near the colony of Villanova?"

  Her brows knit a little and she blinked, but then nodded—just a little and very slowly. "Yes, I do. We responded to the distress call, but couldn't get there in time. They had taken the colony."

  Wallace nodded. "Well, the man holding you is named Gregory March. His brother, Garrett March, was a civilian on Villanova Colony. He died in the attack. Gregory came to hate the Star Chaser as much as the Arkana because he blamed us for not getting there in time and thus not saving his brother. Apparently, their parents were dead and they were the only family they each had left. Now, Gregory is alone … and bitter."