He eyed her as they stepped in the lift, the door shutting behind them. “Skip what part? Forming a plan?”
“Well, basically.”
There was a long moment of silence. He looked at her. She looked at him.
“You honestly wanted to go capture a full functioning enemy ship without a plan?” he asked in disbelief. “Are you still seeing the ship’s counselor? I think you’re losing your mind. Maybe a fever? Are you having hallucinations? A bout of Denebrian Flu?” He started touching her cheeks and forehead, like checking how warm she was.
“No,” she snapped, swatting his hands away from her face. “I’m perfectly healthy, and yes, I’m still speaking to the counselor. I wasn’t really going to go after a ship without a plan. I just hoped to get the captain’s approval ahead of that, just to make things easier.”
Anath made a noncommittal noise in his throat. “I’m still worried about your brain,” he muttered.
She snorted. “I’m worried about my brain too. I want it to remain in my skull, which I have less confidence about with every passing day and every new, dark report from across ESS space.”
“So you want to throw yourself on the sword?” he retorted.
“I have no intention of dying,” she snapped, spinning to face him. “I am going to make this plan work, and you’re going to help me. So stop doubting me! I don’t mind rational questions, but you’re not asking those. You just say you think I’m nuts. How about trying to have a little more faith in your sister?”
He looked at her for a long moment, his expression flat. “I’ll try,” he said. “I trust you more than any other sibling I have, but remember the father I grew up with. Family has a way of turning on you in the ruling Arkana bloodline.”
Andy softened a little and sighed. “I know,” she said. After all, the father she had never known for all of her life had turned out to be the universe’s biggest tyrant who was ready to kill her because she wouldn’t do what he told her to do. “But I’m not turning on you, or myself. I’m not planning a suicide mission. Yes, it might go wrong, but every mission runs that chance. We’ve already nearly been killed at least ten or twenty times, but if this works, it’s game over for them. Isn’t that worth a risk?”
“Yeah, it is,” Anath agreed.
“So are you with me?” she asked fervently, her dark gaze holding his pale one.
“Yes. I’m with you.”
22
“No. Absolutely not,” Andy said firmly, slashing her hand through the air as if to underline her own seriousness.
“It has to be kept as an option, Major,” Roxanna said, her voice both tight and patient but the swirling of her skin showing her own agitation over the idea that she had thrown into the middle of their ‘round table’ discussion.
The major stared at the sergeant, and the sergeant stared back. The silence stretched out long enough for Dan and Anath to begin to fidget.
Andy finally sighed. “It’s suicide, Roxanna,” she said quietly.
“There’s a risk of it killing me, yes,” the Selerid agreed, “but it’s not for sure, and what are we afraid of? That we might die? If we were afraid of that, we shouldn’t have joined the Marines, right?”
“This is different and you know it.”
The Marines of Alpha Squad had gathered around the table to discuss possible ways to carry out the major’s crazy plan. Andy wanted to put the whole of the ship at risk as little as possible, but she wasn’t any happier about her sergeant’s idea.
Alpha Squad had learned in recent history that certain injuries and conditions could turn the Selerid’s empathic abilities from “input” to “output.” At the time they’d learned this, Roxanna’s head injury had incapacitated them all. Now she was suggesting attempting to medically induce a similar condition so she could be a “psychic bomb” and knock out the Arkana on the ship.
While the Arkana were engineered to be highly resistant to the natural abilities of alien races, they were not immune, and Anath and Andy had learned that this particular issue was hard to resist, perhaps because it wasn’t a normal part of her ability.
“We can’t be sure it would work,” Andy pointed out. “I’m not keen to risk your life on that kind of unpredictability.”
“I’m just saying it needs to be an option,” Roxanna persisted.
Andy just made an annoyed but otherwise noncommittal sound in her throat.
“What else could render the Arkana unconscious in a hurry?” she asked, mostly directing the question at her full-blood brother.
“A lot of substances aren’t going to be effective,” he began, staring at the center of table in thought, “since so many resemble alien abilities that we have been engineered to be resistant to. So chemical weapons, even if we could get them into their ship’s life support systems, aren’t really good.”
“Arkana physiology is still pretty similar to humans, right?” Jade asked. Anath nodded. “What if we could get the ship into a high gee spin?”
Anath nodded slowly. “Gravimetric forces react on us the same way they do on humans and other biological forms,” he said, “but what about the inertia mitigation system? That would kick in and work on keeping precisely what we want from happening.”
Although the youngest of them, Jade was their technology expert and they could all see the figurative wheels spinning in her head. “Well, you have experience with Arkana ship technology and I got to see some of it in the ship on that planet… I think between us, we might be able to find a way to knock that system offline.”
“It’s possible…” he agreed carefully. “But not easy.”
“When is anything easy?” she asked wryly.
No one could argue with the truth, after all.
Andy thought it through. “We’d have to, what, ram the ship to knock it into a spin?” It seemed way too simple, but sometimes, the simple answer was the right one. “How do we stop it? And what do we ram it with? We can’t send the Star Chaser into it.”
“Marine shuttlecraft on autopilot,” Anallin suggested. “Get it started. If the Star Chaser can put up a good show, as you would say, that should distract the Arkana enough to send a shuttle out at top speed to ram into it. Too fast to destroy it completely.”
“Try to make sure we don’t damage it beyond usability,” Andy pointed out. “We’ll have to do some repairs on it, and figure out how to stop it.”
“Drones,” Jade supplied. “We have a couple AAADs on board.”
Andy had usually not worried about items on the ship that she didn’t use, so she didn’t recognize the name. “We have what?”
Jade smiled a little. “AAADs. Autonomous attitude adjuster drones,” she explained.
“I could’ve used some of those for my sister growing up,” Dan muttered, and everyone laughed a little.
“We send a couple over, they latch on, and then can stop the spin after it’s gone on for long enough,” Jade said.
Andy nodded, feeling the threads start coming together in her head. “We find an Arkana ship and the Star Chaser engages in the first part of the fight. While distracting them with the weapons fire, we send over these drone things and disable the mitigation system. Fling the shuttle at it and hope it all works out…”
They all exchanged silent looks at that point, each one of them knowing that it wasn’t the best plan they’d ever had but equally as sure that it wasn’t the worst either. Or at least, it wasn’t the most vague. Which, really, was kind of impressive.
However, it was the best plan they had. They had been working through the problem for a while now and the only other solid idea was the one that Andy refused to take, which involved her sergeant. While a psychic bomb was appealing, she wasn’t going to let Roxanna throw herself away on a slim chance.
No, this was their best plan, and so that made it their best shot.
“So, all we have to do now is go out in the big wide universe and find an Arkana ship that we can sneak up on and tackle,” Dan said with a wry ha
lf-smile. “Where are we going to find this ship?”
“Oh, it’s never too hard to find an Arkana ship these days,” Andy said dryly.
23
Andy stood on the bridge, just to the left of the captain’s chair, while on the right was the chair of the first officer. Frankly, she didn’t feel like either of them were giving her a very approving look, but she ignored them.
The ship had a new first officer, as their previous had been transferred off and given her own command. The ESS was doing its best to expand its fleet with capable officers, but without being willing to just throw anyone into any role, it wasn’t the fastest of processes. A lot of officers were still being fast-tracked however, and the Star Chaser had lost a few. Those roles—primarily bridge crew—were replaced by still mostly competent but greener replacements.
“This still isn’t my favorite plan, Major,” Wallace said in a low voice.
“I know, sir,” Andy replied stoically. What mattered was that he had agreed to it, because he knew the state of the things—he knew the stakes—just as well as she did. They had rushed headlong past the point of playing things safe.
Risks had to be taken, but Andy wasn’t going to tell others to do what she wouldn’t, so she would be at the vanguard of this.
There had been multiple Arkana sightings not far from the dwarf planet of Bekonna. It was a terraformed world turned into a farming center for this region, as well as for many of the ships that came through on the trade routes that flew near it. Given that the Arkana had already taken over or tried to take over other agricultural hubs, it seemed clear they were ready to make a move on Bekonna.
Defenses were already in place or being put in place, but knowing that the Arkana were staking the place out made it a good hunting ground for the Star Chaser’s purpose.
Of course, part of the trick was finding one alone, and not one of the very big carriers that were sometimes seen in their space. Fortunately, those behemoths were few and far between. Of course, Andy thought darkly, knowing my luck…
The minutes seemed to crawl by, if she was generous in her verb choice. What was slower than a crawl? Aside from dead stop, she wasn’t sure what that was but that’s what time felt like it was passing at. It was only the intensive training of the ESS Marines that kept her from going insane, outwardly at least.
Finally, the word came.
“I’m picking up an Arkana signature just at the edge of our sensor range, Captain,” the sensor officer announced. “They are on a course for Bekonna—” She paused. “Correct that, they are altering course and heading toward us. They are accelerating. Time to intercept, five minutes.”
“Here we go, folks,” Captain Wallace declared, sitting up a little straighter in his seat. “Open a ship-wide channel.”
“Open, sir.”
“Five minutes to contact with Arkana vessel. Battle stations.”
Andy felt her pulse leap up and try to race away as she stepped to the side and activated the comms from her earpiece. “Dolan to Anath and Martin, are you two ready with the inertia mitigation system blocker?”
It was Anath who replied. “As ready as we can be, Major. This is an untested program and we’re about to test it under fire. Not exactly optimal circumstances.”
His sister tried not to roll her eyes like a teenager. “I don’t believe I asked for an opinion on the methods, Anath. I just asked if it was ready.”
“Yes, it’s ready,” he repeated, sounding a bit more petulant but she let it go.
“Prepare to deploy on my order. Dolan out.” She switched the channel to the hangar bay. “Anallin and Thomas, report. Is the shuttle and its autopilot course ready to be launched ?”
“Yes, sir,” Anallin replied. Its eyes were clicking rapidly with its agitation, so much so that she could hear it over the comm. “On your word, Major. Once the fight has started, we’ll need a few moments of lead time to properly target the enemy ship.”
“Understood, Anallin,” she said with a nod that it couldn’t see. “I’ll give you as much time as I can.”
“Understood, sir.”
The channel closed.
Andy turned back to the captain and the view screen ahead of them, watching and waiting for them to make contact with the ship she hoped to commandeer.
Doubts suddenly began to flood her mind. Was this the stupidest plan she’d ever come up with? It might well be, but even in her doubt, she knew she didn’t have any other ideas. So many things could go wrong in this next ten minutes, but it was the only thing she knew of to try.
She just had to hope for the best.
“I’m receiving data from the hangar bay,” Wallace announced, looking at the screen in the armrest of his chair. “Where on the Arkana ship they intend to hit for the most effect, so we need to keep the focus of the enemy away from that area and buy the shuttle as much time as possible.”
“Understood, Captain,” the weapons officer announced. “Receiving the information now and calculating best approach.”
“Three minutes,” the sensor officer said.
“Anath and Anallin are both ready when the word comes down, sir,” Andy informed the captain as she took her position beside his chair again. “Anallin has asked for what lead time we can give him for programming the autopilot.”
Wallace nodded once. “We’ll do the best we can,” he said, “but I don’t know just how accommodating the Arkana are going to be.”
Andy smiled without humor. “I’ve never known the Arkana to be particularly accommodating, but we’ve sometimes managed to just take what we needed and convince them the hard way.”
His smile matched her own. “That we have, Major. That we have.”
“One minute.”
24
“I think we have their attention!” Captain Wallace shouted over the sound of the ship shuddering and the warning chimes going off from various consoles around the bridge.
“I think you’re right, sir!” Andy shouted back, gripping the back of the captain’s chair to keep from falling down. “Are we ready to launch the program?”
Wallace looked down at his armrest-console, tapping it a couple times as he looked through the various reports coming in from all departments. “I think so, yes. Their defenses are weakened slightly, although so are ours. Move fast, Major. I don’t want to get their ship at the expense of our own.”
Andy gritted her teeth as the ship shook again. She didn’t want that either. “Dolan to Anath!” she called over her Marine comms. “Can you launch the program?”
“Hold that thought, Major,” Anath’s tense-sounding voice returned.
“I’m not going to be able to hold anything for long if we don’t get a move on,” she replied, just as tense.
The line remained open and she heard someone cursing loudly in the background. She was pretty sure that was Jade, although she’d never heard the young Marine swear so fluently. Perhaps Dan was having an influence on her.
“Got it!” Jade suddenly shouted. “We have found a connection to their computer, but the window is short. Launching the program now!”
“Cross your finger, dear sister,” Anath chimed back in. His breaking formality in the middle of others made it pretty clear how stressed he was about this, and Andy could hardly blame him. She felt like she was about to claw her own skin from her body.
She used every trick she had ever been taught to keep from showing just how high her anxiety was rising with every moment that passed while she waited for the word. She needed to know that the program was successfully implanted in the Arkana ship before she could launch the shuttle.
If this didn’t work, the entire plan was futile and she had risked the ship—and the lives of everyone on it, including her own—for nothing.
“We’re in!” Jade and Anath shouted simultaneously. “We’ve got it!”
Andy didn’t even bother responding. She just switched the channel to Anallin. “Launch!”
“Setting autopilot now,” Anallin r
eplied immediately.
The major clenched her fists until she worried that her short nails would somehow manage to draw blood from her palms.
On the view screen, they watched as the Marine shuttle vaulted from the Star Chaser.
Andy had launched on those shuttles many times and even under the most urgent of circumstances, safety protocols had always been adhered to. There were speed regulations to observe, but all of that was out the window now. The shuttle looked like a bullet fired from a gun, speeding recklessly on toward the Arkana ship.
The enemy caught on to their presence after a moment, but their shots didn’t land.
Somehow, the distance between the two ships hadn’t seemed far at all when they were getting shot at, but now that she stared at the shuttle as it raced over, it seemed like there were galaxies between them.
The shuttle finally slammed into the end of the Arkana ship. It smashed itself to pieces in the process, but the enemy ship began the spin they needed. A cheer went out from the rest of the bridge crew as they watched physics at work.
Jade’s voice jumped into her ear. “Major, the drones are ready to launch at any time.”
“Can they hook onto the ship in the middle of that spin?” Andy asked uncertainly, cursing herself for not double-checking that part of the plan.
“Yes, sir,” Jade replied. “Not easily, but they can, and they will.”
“Then let them loose, Private,” Andy said quickly.
“Launching drones!”
Turning back to the view screen, Andy watched for the sight of the drones like she had watched for the shuttle, but they were not as easily spotted as the shuttle had been. She wasn’t even sure they had launched until Jade called in that they had made contact with the out of control Arkana vessel.
They had a certain amount of time to wait to be sure. It had been worked out between Anath and the ship’s doctor.
“Initiating slow down now,” Jade said.
Everyone on the bridge watched the ship as it suddenly slowed and eventually stopped.
Earth Space Service Space Marines Boxed Set Page 62