She held her firing for a moment as her eyes roved over the shield wall advancing on her and her soldiers. Her mind raced into the tactical as fiercely as it could, trying to piece out a weakness or…
“Aim for the feet!” she called.
“What, sir?” came one call. “Say again, Colonel.”
“The shields don’t reach all the way to the ground. Try to hit their feet!”
It was an order that balanced between the absurd and the obvious. The Arkana couldn’t have left their feet unprotected, could they?
Andy wasn’t one to give an order she wouldn’t do herself, however, and was among the first to take the shot. She learned that the Arkana hadn’t left their feet unprotected, but they had overestimated their boots. Some shots were able to penetrate, while others didn’t, but all it took was a few to take down a couple of the shield-bearers, and thus open gaping holes in the wall.
Holes that the ESS immediately took advantage of.
23
The sound of weapons fire outside nearly drew Jade back out to join her comrades, but she caught sight of something just beyond one of the bodies she had dropped.
It looked like...a computer of some sort.
Although all her training told her to go outside and fight, something else told her to look at this device. Her keen technical and analytical mind wanted to find out if she could use this to her advantage and fight with these skills as well, rather than just the gun and determination. When they had crashed on that miserable planet alongside that Arkana vessel, she’d had the chance to see how it worked…
Maybe that information could help her now.
Jade all but threw herself onto her knees in front of the small blinking light that she’d just barely caught sight of. She ran her gloved fingertips along the wall until she found what felt like a seam in the smooth metal. She took her knife and near-blindly guided the tip to the seam, wedging it in and carefully trying to pry the two apart.
After a few minutes of cautious effort, the thin metal panel popped off and thunked into her chest armor. She was nearly blinded by the sudden wash of technological lights as they blinked and flashed, and she couldn’t help but think that all technology looked the same in the end. Then again, Arkana technology had been developed from human origins.
She pulled one of her tools—a scanner—out of the cargo pocket of her pants, starting to scan the wires and chips and circuits. Although the ESS database in her scanner didn’t know what it was looking at, the image it built for her and the information that it did recognize was enough to give away a few secrets.
This was some sort of communication device. What were the odds?
If this was built for communication, then it was built to connect with things… The drones firing on her brothers and sisters-in-arms were technologically based as well, things that could be connected with.
She squeezed her eyes shut for a moment as she racked her memory for everything she had seen when she was inside that Arkana shuttle, and then later inside the captured Arkana ship that they had brought back to the service. She hadn’t spent as much time in the mechanical guts of that ship, but between the two of them, her experiences built a rudimentary foundation for hacking into this thing.
“Please work,” she whispered as she started poking and pulling at wires.
Anath wished that he could understand how something could be so familiar and so alien, all at the same time.
The city streets that were gleaming white and running with red were lanes that he had walked many times as he grew up, and then also moved through during his training. He knew exactly what street they were on now, and he knew all the buildings that lined it. It was a “business” district, but that didn’t mean much on this planet.
Most of the businesses were run by former soldiers who would rather be out there fighting but had finally aged out.
Now here he was, walking through those old warhorses’ businesses, firing on the young ones still in the soldier side of society. He had once been one of them, but now he was shooting them down. Killing many, but he’d already killed so many...even those he hadn’t pulled the trigger on. If they’d been captured, then they had killed themselves.
Even as he rolled out of cover and took a shot before moving back out of the line of sight of one of the drones, he wondered in the deepest parts of his mind why he was doing this… Why was he on this side of the line, rather than that one?
The answer remained so simple as to be painful: his father was wrong, and the universe did not need a wash of snow to bury it all out of its diversity. He had seen the power of that diversity inside the ESS, inside his own sister. He believed as she did, and deep down, he knew now that he always had.
This was the final sweep. The war would end here, one way or the other. If they were victorious, they could build a better future.
He just had to believe in that.
And keep firing.
The sound of the colonel shouting orders outside the building was enough to nearly make Jade drop everything she was doing and rush outside, but she forced herself to hold. She knew that what she was doing here would be more help, if it worked… So it had to work. She’d make it work.
She wasn’t sure she could have imagined that this was her destiny when she signed up for the Marines, but she’d make the most of it.
Jade’s toolkit was small, given it had to fit in the pocket of her pants, but it had just enough to get the job done. Sometimes, she just had to use her fingers. Her gloves protected her from most of the little shocks that came from wires she spliced through, although an occasional sting managed to find its way through the very tip of the fingers where the fabric was a little thinner.
Even when this happened, she ignored it and focused on the task.
Every so often, she would have to stop and scan things again to check on the power flow and the coding. The Arkana had Earth origins. but they had developed their own technological and linguistic paths. Still, she’d now seen enough of it to figure out...just barely enough.
Three blinking blue lights changed to green as she wired in yet one more spliced connection before swapping one circuit board for another, which set off another trio of lights from blue to green.
Was green good for the Arkana? She hoped so. She seemed to remember it being so in the vessels she’d been in.
The relentless sound of drone fire outside, which she could pretty easily distinguish from the weapons fire of the soldiers on the ground, told her that while she thought she was making progress, she wasn’t there yet. Blowing out a harsh, frustrated breath, she pulled the scanner out again and started running it while it was in one hand, while she used her other to shift over another circuit board. Staring at the bright little screen, she watched as the energy readouts changed with yet one more change in the color of the lights.
Where did they have time to wage war, when they were arranging all these light colors, she wondered.
She took another spliced wire and pressed it into the newly-moved circuit board. There was a faint fizzing sound, and for an instant, her heart fell into her stomach as she worried that she’d done the wrong one and ruined the whole thing. Her bright green eyes widened behind her visor as she stared at the circuit and wire she’d just manipulated, and she held her breath as she waited…
...and waited.
Just when she was about to give up hope, the lights flashed twice and then came on steadily.
The new streams of code she could read on her scanner showed that she had managed to connect the two, using her scanner device like a remote control.
A few commands and several seconds later, she heard the drone fire stop.
24
Things changed very suddenly.
The ESS Marines were still being fired at by the encroaching Arkana shield wall, although the wall had more than a few holes in it now, but there was a sudden layer of silence to the battle that hadn’t happened since the drones had appeared. Their buzzing and their rapid
-fire shots were quite abruptly gone.
After a half-second, Jade’s voice appeared in Andy’s ear.
“Colonel!” the younger Marine exclaimed. “Private Martin reporting. I’ve disabled the drones. I can’t swear that it will last, but it should buy us some time.”
“Good work, Private!” Andy replied with both surprise and relief. “Return to the line. We’re about to move.”
“Yes, sir!”
Her platoon leaders began reporting in that their Marines were recovered, at least most of them. Either the abducted had fought off their attackers like Jade had, or their comrades had gone after them and retrieved them amid the chaos. There were two, however, reported dead. Andy didn’t have the time to mourn, though.
They had to get moving. To stay here would mean more deaths and no steps closer to achieving their reason for being here.
It was easier to fight their way ahead through the already weakened wave of Arkana without the drones overhead, and Andy didn’t want her people to waste any time in doing just that—just in case the drones “woke up” again.
Once having overcome the enemy soldiers, the Marines continued forward toward their objectives. As they did, the streets grew a little more winding and complex. The map that Anath had provided was enough to keep each group on track, but the colonel noticed that they were increasingly spread out.
That wasn’t an ultimate issue, since different groups had different objectives. Hers—which consisted of her own squad and platoon as well as three others—was the march onward toward the palace, where others including the Army would meet them to converge on their final objective.
The ‘subduing’ of her father.
Although she knew what they were really doing here.
For several minutes, which paradoxically passed in the blink of an eye and the length of an eternity, there were no attacks. Although fully prepared and guns up, the Marines all proceeded forward along their streets and paths without any impediment.
Naturally, this made Colonel Dolan ever tenser.
She wondered where they were going to come from next. Tactically, she could see four options: either they’d come through the windows and doors again, or from above like the drones had, or from forward or behind.
So…basically, from anywhere. Underground seemed unlikely, but with these guys, she wouldn’t rule it out.
Andy and her squad reached an intersection of streets, and she called the group to a halt, hearing the echo of the command behind her in the squads trailing hers. With everyone at a stop, Andy nodded at Jade, who pulled out her scanner to check the map and their path. After a few moments, which was several moments too long, Jade nodded straight ahead. “Keep on straight,” she said.
“You heard the woman,” Andy said, gesturing for them to continue.
It was only a few moments before they all came to a halt again, this time when Dan’s head snapped to one side. “Do you hear that?”
Andy stopped them, and they listened for a moment. She expected to hear the buzzing of the drones again, but that wasn’t what she heard. After a split-second, she could make out...a hissing sound. As if air was escaping from something. They all started looking around until Roxanna pointed to a knee-high cylinder—made out of white metal, of course—that sat at the edge of a building, looking like it was meant to be there.
But suddenly, the colonel was pretty sure it wasn’t.
She was about to order a quick retreat, but the canister beat her to it. The hissing stopped, and then there was a very loud popping sound before gray smoke began pouring out of it at an alarming rate.
For a moment, Andy suffered the utterly inane thought of: Apparently, the Arkana can make something that’s not white or blue… Although they didn’t have time to scan it, she didn’t need scans to know what they were dealing with.
“NBC! Mask up!” she called, following her own order quickly before following up with, “Retreat!”
She had no idea just what kind of terrible surprise the Arkana had left for them. Andy couldn’t imagine that it was anything that would break apart their buildings, but it could well melt through one of her Marines if they got caught by it. The masks would likely only go so far.
The squads of now-masked Marines made a hasty retreat to where had been safe just moments ago, though not without checking both directions the whole way. Once they reached the intersection, they continued the way they had come—
—only to discover that another canister had been set off, and very close to the intersection itself.
Everything happened even more quickly then.
They began to move to one of the side streets.
A canister rolled into the intersection itself.
The squads had to split in what directions they could, and just hope that the side streets weren’t similarly set with traps.
Shortly after retreating into the left-side street, Andy looked and didn’t see any new plumes of gray smoke, but she also didn’t see all the members of her squad. She called them to a cautious halt when she was able to see that the smoke wasn’t flowing into their street, even though it was still visible in the middle of the intersection.
The wind wasn’t blowing toward them, so she took the time to make contact.
“We are in the right-hand street, Colonel,” Anallin reported after a moment. “The intersection appears still thick with the smoke and we can’t cross.”
‘We’ in this case was Anallin and Jade. Andy saw Dan and Roxanna with her.
Of course not. “Proceed forward with extreme caution. Watch for any more of those canisters. All of these streets intersect again, so we’ll reconnect there.”
“Understood, sir.”
25
The street continued roughly straight, and everyone was hyper-vigilant and on the lookout for any more of those canisters. For whatever reason, though, they didn’t see any more. That didn’t stop any of them from expecting one to come rolling toward them or flying out of a window at any moment, of course.
Roxanna assumed the role of checking the scanner, which they were all equipped with, but didn’t all need to be referencing. She had located where their street would intersect with the one the rest of their group walked along, and the information had been conveyed. For Andy’s half, they had what appeared to be a courtyard or city square to cross.
This knowledge had Andy even more unnerved, which was really a remarkable feat when you thought about it.
These narrow streets were not ideal, but they had been as adapted to as they could, whereas a wide-open courtyard was introducing a new element. Her tactical mind raced to accommodate every possibility, even though she knew there were dozens that she couldn’t conceive of until she saw them right in front of her.
The colonel stopped herself from going too far down that mental path. It wouldn’t help her or her people.
All too soon, the large, open square framed by tall, glistening buildings came into sight, and they were moving toward where the street emerged into it. Andy could see at least a dozen places where snipers could position themselves, although no one had taken any shots at them yet. There didn’t seem to be any ideal cover, but at least they could keep from crossing the middle.
Cold comfort, that.
Andy directed everyone by hand gestures to stay near the buildings as they made their way to the road they needed, moving as quickly and carefully as possible. Up ahead, another squad was moving into the same courtyard as they made their way onward toward the palace as well. Andy and the squad leader acknowledged each other before following similar Marine protocol to try to get through this wide-open space alive.
The wear and tear on Roxanna’s empathic senses and her ability to shield herself against the greatest excess of others’ emotions was being put to the test even more than she’d anticipated during this little...stroll through the Arkana capital city. There was nothing like seeing the sights of a new planet with one’s friends, right?
“Ahead,” Roxanna suddenly
announced as a small, moving bit of white against white caught her eye. It was closer to the second squad emerging in the area, and they announced their spotting of it over the comms at the same time as the Selerid.
“Report,” Andy ordered, since they couldn’t see it as clearly just yet between the blending of all the non-color and the light reflecting off it all.
After a moment, the report came in over the open channel. “It’s an Arkana woman, Colonel. She’s dressed as a civilian and is walking toward us with her hands up. She appears to be unarmed.”
“Do not allow her to approach,” Andy ordered quickly.
Over the comms and across the square, they heard the other squad leader call out ‘halt’ in a loud, commanding voice. They waited tensely to see if the moving white figure would stop, but she didn’t.
The squad leader repeated the command, even more forcefully, and held up a hand to try a gesture as well as a word. They had never before run into an Arkana who couldn’t understand their language, but they had also never been on the Arkana home world.
Visor-covered eyes and gunsights watched tensely to see if the Arkana woman would obey the command and stop her advance. Roxanna was almost choked with the feeling, but she focused on the woman and on her duty, their surroundings, lest this be a distraction. She could make out the woman better now, and she was clearly not dressed as a soldier.
Her hair was long and loose, hanging over an equally long and loose pale gown. The wind was low, so the fabric of the dress hung still and heavy.
The more noticeable thing, however, was that she didn’t stop walking.
“She’s not stopping, Colonel,” came the tense voice of the squad leader in closer proximity to the woman. “She hasn’t acknowledged anything I’ve said or done.”
World Breaker Boxed Set (ESS Space Marines Omnibus Book 3) Page 24