Nebula (ESS Space Marines Book 4)

by James David Victor

  “I hope so,” the major replied honestly.

  The time seemed to pass incredibly slowly.

  The injured, exhausted members of Delta Squad remained on the floor, recovering from their battle as best they could while Alpha Squad—in better states of health—kept a watch for any hostiles that might come their way. So far, everything was quiet except for the labored breathing of the ESS and the discontented mumblings of the Arkana.

  Andy felt the urge to pace but managed to hold that off. She knew it wouldn’t instill much confidence to the see the commander of the 33rd losing her mind with worry.

  And she was worried.

  The idea was almost as surprising to her as she imagined it would be to anyone else, but there it was. In the weeks that she’d had the chance to get to know her half-brother, she had come to like him. There were even similarities in things like their humor and ways they looked at the universe around them. She had come to trust him, and appreciate his presence. It was almost like...having a family.

  She knew her Marines, her squad, were her family. But Anath was different; they shared heritage.

  If she lost him now, sacrificing himself for her ship and the rest of her family, she didn’t really know how to process that. The loss of her mother hadn’t affected her as deeply as the possible loss of her brother did, since she and Anath had actually...bonded, while her mother had never seemed to want anything to do with her.

  Anath actually wanted to be her brother. He’d forsaken his species for a half-sister who had forsaken only half of hers.

  What if he didn’t come back out?

  Chapter 18

  “Lieutenant,” Andy finally said, turning to the chief engineer when she couldn’t take it anymore. “How long should it take to complete this?”

  “It’s hard to say, Major,” Norrell replied, leaning his head back against the wall. “It depends on the state of the systems in there. They might be sluggish. If his resistance isn’t quite as good as he thought, it could take time because of that. On a normal day, it would have been done by now, though not by much. Given the state of things, I’m not surprised it’s taking longer and we’re not in worry time yet.”

  That was easy for him to say, she thought but didn’t give voice to.

  Neither did she add, ‘Or he could be dead.’

  Andy shifted away from him and back to her place near Roxanna. The Selerid glanced sidelong at her for a long moment.

  “I’m sure he’ll be okay,” the empath said softly.

  Of course Andy didn’t ask how she knew, since that was obvious. She just managed a faint smile and nodded, though she didn’t say anything.

  It was another small eternity before the main bay doors opened. Andy spun around and moved toward them, getting there just in time to see her half-brother stagger through, clutching the door edges where he’d pulled them open before falling through. Andy just barely had time to drop her weapon on its sling and catch him. He was taller than her, but slender and she was able to keep him from hitting the floor.

  “Anath,” she exclaimed, being pulled down to the floor by his weight and momentum, but keeping either of them from hitting the floor hard.

  “The bay,” he gasped softly, “is cleared.”

  Norrell was on his feet in a moment, a long moment since he still wasn’t in his best shape, but his place was clear and it was time to get to work. The single-minded motivation of an engineer with a damaged ship came into play and he and his remaining staff hurried inside.

  “I’m okay,” Anath said, but his voice was hoarse and she could see angry red splotches at random intervals on his skin. “I’m sure I look bad, but just a few minutes...to rest...and I’ll be okay. I promise.”

  She looked down at him doubtfully, but his pale lips managed a faint smile.

  “With engineering secured, we should get you and the injured down to sickbay,” she began to say...

  That was when Jade called out, “Enemy incoming!”

  Anath all but threw himself out of Andy’s grasp, freeing her to get to her feet and take her weapon back up. The Delta Squad Marines who were able to also rose and took up their weapons, which added three to the rest of them. Anath had pushed himself back against the wall, breathing hard as he glared down the corridor at the encroaching Arkana. He grabbed one of the weapons on the ground and lifted it. Andy felt a brief surge of pride at that.

  The Arkana fired first. Neither side even attempted any sort of talk. They were both far past that.

  Energy bolts shot down the corridor, singing bulkheads and just narrowly missing the Marines on the first volley. They all returned fire, listening to bullets ricochet as they too missed their original marks.

  “They can’t get past us into engineering,” Andy declared, although she didn’t really need to. She knew that everyone knew that. A second round of fire was exchanged. One Arkana fell with a wound to the head, but one of Delta Squad went down with a brush of energy fire to the shoulder. Andy could smell the faintly singed flesh, but knew he would probably survive.

  Andy prepared herself for a third shot, but when the Arkana let loose, the targets they aimed at brought the ESS up short.

  Within moments, the prisoners—who hadn’t been moving but were only partially guarded by the positioning of the ESS—had all been shot and were slumped over. Caught off guard, the Marines hesitated for just a moment, and that was when the Arkana charged them. Why they chose a physical assault rather than a few clear shots in the moment of distraction, Andy would never know. But they did.

  Before the front line had a chance to fire again, the Arkana were on them.

  Andy was driven back against the wall. The soldier in front of her punched at her face, and she moved her head just in time for the blow to be a glancing one rather than a direct hit. She still could feel the blood running down her cheek from where the punch had crack the skin.

  When the second punch came, she managed to slide to the side further and his fist connected with the wall. She heard a crunch from the bones in his knuckles. Twisting, she grabbed his wrist with her right hand, holding it in place against the wall as she drove her own fist up into his elbow joint.

  The soldier screamed in pain, right in her face. Her ears rang from the sound but she was able to take advantage of his pain and push him back. A boot to the stomach followed a moment later, sending him stumbling back where he fell into the pile of comrades he’d just killed.

  Before she had a chance to turn, she felt a fist in her back. It was close to a kidney shot, though off just enough to not cripple her. She still grunted with pain and stumbled forward. She kept her momentum going to give her a little bit of space as she spun around to fight this new attacker.

  Pain still radiated through her back and kept her from standing fully upright, but she got her fists up to block a wide hit and then a second that quickly followed.

  The punches came in a flurry and Andy managed to block each one, not letting any of them reach her, but she was so busy defending herself that she didn’t have a chance to retaliate. She held her ground, blocked, dodged, and ducked, all the while trying to find an opening to burst through and turn the tide. He was faster than most of the Arkana she had faced so far, when it came to hand-to-hand combat and he was definitely pushing her to the limit.

  Her frustration grew until she heard the report of a projectile-firing rifle. It wasn’t an Arkana weapon, and when the punches suddenly stopped, she knew who the target had been. She pulled her arms apart just enough to see the soldier stiffen and then fall. Andy had to dance back fast to avoid being landed on.

  She took in a deep breath and looked around, seeing her brother—still sitting on the floor—with his rifle up, aimed where she had been fighting the Arkana soldier. He lowered it and nodded at her.

  Andy nodded back, then surged back into the fight.

  Chapter 19

  They fought off the rest of the Arkana, taking two of them alive. They piled them up at the end of the line ag
ainst the wall.

  Anallin had a bad burn to the shoulder, which Roxanna was treating with a numbing gel to ease the pain and provide a barrier from debris until they could get to sickbay. Andy walked over to check on them, ignoring her own sore back and jaw. Anallin assured her everything was fine and to not worry. Andy patted the Hanaran on the other shoulder and went to check on the rest of her Marines.

  Dan had a graze to the side that mostly damaged his uniform, and Jade and Roxanna were fine.

  One of the Delta Marines was dead, but the others were fine. Krall looked even worse for the wear now, but he was still conscious and coherent. She let him remain where he was while she finally went to check on her brother.

  “I’ll survive,” he said before she even had the chance to ask.

  “Thanks for saving my backside,” she said, lowering herself to an aching seat beside him. The lack of full life support that had them all feeling weak and more exhausted than they would have otherwise, but even in optimal conditions, there had been enough battles to make them weary.

  He smiled a little. “I’m sure that you would have managed,” he said. “I just sped it up.”

  Andy laughed softly. She wasn’t entirely sure of that herself, but she wasn’t going to argue with him. “We can’t stay sitting here forever,” she said. “Some will have to guard engineering while they work, but we should work on getting the others to sickbay. We have a lot of injuries here.”

  “Leave as many as you can here,” he said.

  She would have said that was obvious, but there was something in the way that he said it that caught her attention. She frowned slightly. “That was already the plan, but what makes you say that?”

  Anath leaned his head back against the wall and blew out a hard breath. “I know the Arkana,” he said. “The fact that more came to engineering tells me that they know the state of things. They know that they can’t kill themselves in this nebula, and that the chances of being found by the ESS is as likely as their own people.”

  “So what does that mean?”

  “They are going to try to destroy the ship,” he said flatly, staring into the darkness of the ceiling.

  Oh, was that all... Andy’s head made a dull thud as she dropped it back against the wall beside his. “If they can’t kill themselves, they’ll try to take the whole ship out? Pretty much all or nothing.”

  He snorted a laugh. “That’s our way.”

  “So, defending engineering is suddenly even more important,” she thought out loud. “It’s the only place that has the power and resources to destroy the Star Chaser from the inside.”

  “I figured as much,” he agreed. “And they will too. Every Arkana loose on this ship will be coming here, and the internal sensors aren’t functioning so we have no idea how many more there are.”

  “That’s...just great,” she drawled, closing her eyes for a minute and wishing that she had gone into history or art or something. Anything other than enrolling in the ESS Marines when she was sixteen. She could be back on Earth, painting seascapes or reading old texts about the ancient days of Earth cultures.

  Wishing got you precisely nowhere, though. Besides, all that sounded quite boring.

  “Alright. Well. That’s what we have to do then,” she said. “That means we can’t spare anyone to help people to sickbay, so everyone will just have to hunker down here.” She hated to say that. She hated that that was a decision she had to make, but it was. So she did. Getting the wounded to sickbay would mean nothing if the entire ship was blown up.

  She pushed herself back onto her feet. “How are you doing?”

  Another weak smile. “Better than I was when I first got out of there,” he said. “We Arkana full-bloods look frail, but we’re surprisingly hearty. Genetic engineering at its finest, yeah?”

  Andy laughed softly. “I guess so. Are you able to fight or are you staying here?”

  He took a long moment to answer and then stood up slowly. He stretched and then nodded. “I’ll fight,” he declared. “I’m not going to help anyone by sitting there on the floor, myself included. Besides, who’s gonna protect your backside if your big brother isn’t around?” He smirked.

  Part of her felt like she should be offended, but another part enjoyed the familiarity. So, she smiled back and shook her head, then turned to the rest.

  “Alright, Marines!” she called. “I have it on authority that since their primary objective failed, the Arkana are going to be coming for engineering. Everyone still up and moving is going to come here. Since we lack sensors, we don’t know how many that is or where they’re at now. Their goal has moved from capturing the ship to destroying it outright, and they aren’t stupid. They know that this is the place to do it. Every Marine who can fight is going to man the interior of the engineering bay.

  “There are other points of access into the bay, as we know. I’m not sure how our enemy will has learned this, but I’m not going to trust in the hope that they haven’t.”

  “Hope is a bad plan, right?” Jade asked lightly.

  “Yes, hope is a bad plan,” Andy agreed wryly. “So, we’re going to watch every point of entry until we know the coast is clear. Either that means we’re rescued or the engineers get the sensors working to tell us who is where. So, everyone who is able, move into engineering. We need to move everyone who is injured inside as well. I’m not leaving anyone outside. Be careful but be quick.”

  She heard the echoing chorus of “yes, Major” and then stepped back to let people work.

  Those uninjured outnumbered those injured, and so the latter were moved to positions of safety in short order. Andy knew that it wasn’t the best idea to move people who were injured, since you may do more harm than good, but leaving them to the mercies of the Arkana in a deserted corridor wasn’t a good option either.

  Andy looked at those who remained able to fight: herself, three from Alpha Squad, Anath, and two from Delta. She stationed Anallin with the injured. The Hanaran was probably well enough to fight, but the shoulder was bad. Besides, it would help to have someone with the injured just in case they were targeted by the Arkana.

  That left seven people to guard three access points.

  “Roxanna, Yalwa, Anath, guard the main entrance. Thomas and Hennessy, watch the tunnel access hatch. Martin, with me. Eyes open and ears sharp. And try not to get in the engineers’ way.”

  Chapter 20

  The engineers were furiously at work, seemingly everywhere and nowhere at the same time. They completely ignored the Marines with an impressive single-minded focus on the task at hand, pretending the non-engineers in the room were little more than air and dust particles. It was all the better since the Marines wanted to guard them, but did not want to be in the way. Each group knew precisely what their jobs were, and they went about them.

  The tension grew all around them, and as Andy watched her specified hatch, she could hear them at work. They were a noisy group, or maybe it was just in an emergency. They shouted across the room at one another, announcing what they saw as well as what they needed or wanted to see. The results of diagnostics. Curses as colorful as any Marine if something didn’t work right, and that times two if it started sparking.

  “Do you think they can repair the ship before it dies and takes us with it?” Jade asked quietly, not turning her head to look at the major as she asked it.

  “I certainly hope so,” Andy replied honestly. “The ESS trains its engineers pretty well and we’ve got some talented folks down here who know what they’re doing. They’re fighting to keep themselves alive just as much as we are. I know they’ll do their best and if that’s not good enough, there was nothing else that could be done.”

  Jade didn’t reply for several moments. “No offense, Major Dolan, but I’m not sure that does anything to make me feel any better.”

  Looking at the younger Marine, Andy smiled slightly with a soft laugh. “No offense taken, and I wasn’t trying to make you feel better. I was being honest with you
. Platitudes and kind lies are all well and good, and maybe they work well when you’re in a relationship, but that’s not what we have here. We are ESS Marines on an ESS vessel, stranded and breaking down in the middle of a nebula, unsure of who is waiting just outside. The truth is what we need, and that’s what I’m telling you.”

  The blonde blew out a breath and then nodded. “Yes, sir,” she said. “You’re right.”

  “Of course I’m right,” Andy said wryly. “They didn’t put me in command for nothing.” If she hadn’t had insight into the enemy, she was sure she wouldn’t yet be a major and in command of the 33rd ESS Marine Detachment, though. Maybe she didn’t give herself enough credit. She would probably never know sure. What she did know was that she was a Major and in this position, she was responsible for a lot of lives.

  Inwardly, of course, Andy also wanted someone to tell her something, anything, that would make her feel better. Rationally, she knew and believed everything that she had just told her squad-mate, but she was human too.

  She wanted good news.

  And listening to the curses from the engineers, she was beginning to think she wouldn’t be getting any.

  Andy forced herself to stop thinking that way. Cynicism would get her nowhere, and it would bring everyone else with her. She wasn’t an engineer, so there was nothing that she could do about all that. What she could do was be part of the defense and watch the access hatch to make sure the Arkana didn’t get through.

  “Do you think they’ll find the other ways in?” Jade piped up again.

  “I hope not.”

  “I thought we all agreed that hope is a bad plan.”

  Andy half-smiled. “I didn’t say it was a plan,” she pointed out. “It’s just my feeling, and hope is a justifiable feeling. I’ve heard it said that if we don’t have hope, we don’t have anything.”