Arkana (ESS Space Marines Book 4)

by James David Victor

  “It might be, Sir,” she answered honestly. “That’s why we have to get you on board this transport to make sure you can see your daughter again.”

  He smiled and patted her arm. “Yes, Ma’am. You get on now. Get the rest of those people out of there so they can live to see their families too.”

  Andy returned the smile with a small one of her own. “That’s the plan, Sir.”

  Chapter 9

  By the time the ESS Nebula arrived and deposited the 15th ESS Marine Detachment on the planet, the majority of the north side of the city was in the temporary dwellings, on a transport vehicle, or standing in line about to get on one. There were still a few groups that needed to be moved out, but they had hustled over those hours and had most of them seen to.

  Andy split off from evacuation duty to meet Captain Valentine. She resisted the urge to make any quips about the name and after a few minutes in his presence, she knew that had been a good call.

  He wasn’t much taller than she was, with a shock of ink black hair but pale hazel eyes that stood out from the mid-tone tan of his face. She outranked him, but the look in his eyes suggested he was tempted to ignore that; and she knew almost immediately that this man could be a bit of trouble.

  “Major Dolan,” he said. She waited a moment to see if there would be any commentary, but he was professional enough to keep his words out of it.

  “Captain Valentine,” she returned with a single nod. “Have your squads speak with Sergeant Roxanna about aiding in the evacuation while you and I talk strategy for the defense of the city.”

  “The evacuation isn’t done yet, Sir?” he asked. The words were polite, but she picked up on that edge.

  “If it was, do you think I would be ordering your squads to assist, Captain?” she returned sharply. “It nears completion and will be done even more quickly with your people, so get to it.” She didn’t say anything, just kept a level dark-eyed gaze on him with only the rare blink. He held her gaze for a few moments before realizing that he wasn’t going to get anywhere with that.

  With a curt nod, he stepped away to speak to one of his Marines before he came back to her.

  “We’re not going to have a problem, are we, Captain Valentine?” Andy was going to tackle the problem before it had a chance to blow up, potentially at the worst possible time.

  His first expression said he wanted to contradict her, but thought better of it because she had so clearly seen through him. He was the leader of a Marine detachment and was privy to certain information that the corps on the whole would not be. She had encountered this reaction in others who weren’t on the Star Chaser and recognized it instantly.

  They knew that she was half-Arkana; she was part of the enemy. They doubted her. But they didn’t know her.

  “No, Major,” he finally replied flatly.

  She just stared into his gaze for a few moments before giving a curt nod of her own and gesturing him to the side, so they would be out of the way of any potential evacuation actions taking place around them. She didn’t have a great deal of faith that Valentine wouldn’t give her some kind of grief, but she was going to take his word for it for the moment. They had a job to do, after all, and they were Marines.

  “The Star Runner is still on schedule, but that means it will still be another three hours until the 21st arrives to help us. That gives us three detachments with six squads each,” Andy said, stating the obvious first. “That is clearly not enough to surround the entire city perimeter, but we shouldn’t have to.”

  She brought out the tablet that Theodora had given her and brought up the map of the city. “Since we know they can’t use their teleportation equipment from ship to surface, that means they will be coming down via ships.”

  Valentine interrupted, although his tone was improved. “What if they try shooting their ship’s weapons at the surface?”

  Andy shook her head. “They won’t. They won’t care for any of the population, of course, but they will care about the production buildings, as well as any supplies and the centers for the communications and satellites. They want this planet functioning. No, they are going to come down here and they are going to try to take it over.”

  “You sound pretty sure of yourself,” he said quickly, then lifted his pale eyes and added, “Sir.”

  “I am,” she said. “The Arkana have so far proven to follow logical paths. They have a goal and they are doing what is best to achieve it. What I’ve said aligns with that logic.” She leveled him with a look before continuing. “They are going to want to bring down as many soldiers as possible, and that means the areas where they can land ships is limited.” She pointed out two primary locations. There were some where a single ship could land, but only two spots where multiple vessels could touch down. There was nowhere in the city itself that wouldn’t damage either building or ship.

  Andy was gambling they wouldn’t want to risk damaging the buildings, just in case it was something important to them.

  “Once on the ground, they have to get into the city,” she went on. “They will try to get to the center where they can take over all the key points which will allow them to control the entire planet. Once they have their hands on communications, power, weather...once they have everything, they will have the planet and will be able to control the populace. So, we have to keep them from getting that far.”

  Valentine pointed at the map on the tablet. “These buildings,” he said, looking up at the city before them for a moment before going on, “form walls and canyons.”

  Andy nodded. “Something that we’ll be counting on. It will help limit their points of entry.” Those she outlined with her finger hovering over the top of the screen. “We can set our squads just outside and then partially into the city,” she said. “Trying to defend it entirely from outside the buildings won’t give enough cover, but we can use the buildings and roads to our advantage.”

  She looked over the map one more time, her brain spinning.

  “I think the southeast corner and the side due west will be their main focus,” she said. “It is both of these areas that have the clearest, straightest paths to the most important buildings. We’ll assign one detachment to each one, and then split the final one amongst the other potential entry points on the northeast side. I expect that’ll see more trouble if they try to come through them all at once, which is a possibility depending on how many soldiers their ships can put on the ground.”

  Valentine rubbed the back of his neck, nodding slowly. “We’re making a lot of assumptions, Major.”

  Andy was aware of that. “It’s the best we can do right now, Captain.”

  Chapter 10

  Of course, they weren’t going to leave everything up to chance and assumptions. In the time they had before the arrival of their final reinforcements and the enemy, they would set up what secondary defenses they could.

  They had to play a delicate balance between setting defenses and not destroying the city they were trying to protect. Some damage was inevitable, and they were all aware of that, but they were going to try their best to minimize it when possible. Until this moment, and indeed not for another few hours, this planet had not experienced the ravages of war.

  Andy hoped they would be able to leave it as close to that as possible.

  “Try putting it closer to the wall,” Andy suggested, pointing to where they were running a line along the bottom of a building and across the street. Unlike in a forest environment, concealing things was a little more difficult in a city but they were doing their best. Anallin kneeled at one end while Jade checked the other.

  Given that the Arkana were known to be resistant to a lot of high tech weapons, they were going a little old-fashioned. The “live” element to it, which Jade—as the group’s tech specialist—was in charge of setting up, would set off a line of short spikes. A delaying tactic at best, but it was something. This road was one of the few that wouldn’t have a Marine squad sitting right on it, after all, but it also di
dn’t lead anywhere “important.”

  “I’ve heard this planet grows guonga fruit,” Dan commented as he took another length of physical line and ran it along a stretch that Roxanna pointed out. “I wonder if that’s why the Arkana really want it. I mean, who can resist that guonga candy?”

  “I can,” Anallin commented.

  Dan turned his head to look at the Hanara with a dry expression. “Really? I mean, come on, you can’t eat or drink any of the good stuff. No guonga fruit, no chocolate, no coffee, no alcohol... What do you Hanarans do for fun?”

  This was the sort of question that would make anyone listening in think that they hadn’t, in fact, been in the same squad together for as long as they had. The other three in the squad knew, however, that it was not the first time this discussion had been had. The intermittent clicks from Anallin’s eyes showed its acknowledgements of this fact, too.

  “Do you really require me to tell you again?” Anallin asked, standing up and looking at Dan.

  “We don’t have that much else to talk about?” Dan offered.

  Everyone else chuckled, except Anallin of course. Not for lack of amusement, in theory, but simply because Hanarans did not express emotion in the same way as other species.

  “I’m not telling you again,” Anallin finally said, which made everyone chuckle again as they continued their efforts. They finished one section and moved to another, setting up a trap involving the dispersion of a gas that would possibly render the Arkana unconscious, at least for a short period of time.

  Figuring out what worked and what didn’t against the Arkana was an ongoing process of trial and error. They knew that the original genetic engineering of the Arkana had been based on humans, so that was a starting place, but they had apparently spent a lot of time genetically engineering themselves over the last couple centuries.

  ESS engineers continued to work on improving their own energy weapons using captured energy weapons from the enemy, but in the meantime, old-fashioned projectiles were still the name of the game. Other things had been brought out of the weapons closet, so to speak, and tinkered with and experimented with.

  One of the more effective was stun gas, as they called it. Unless the ESS people were wearing gear, it couldn’t be used on ships, though, because what affected the Arkana affected them as well. Now seemed like a good time to bring that weapon out.

  “When do you think we’re going to get leave again?” Dan asked as they worked on the next section after Andy had checked in with her other squads, as well as Valentine. If there was one in her own group that was going to work to fill the silence, it was Dan. When she had met his mother—who still, despite even more recent attempts to convince her, refused to believe that Dan and Andy weren’t dating—Andy had understood where his “gift of gab” had come from.

  “I don’t know, Thomas,” Andy said, shaking her head. “I am hoping soon, though. It has been pretty nonstop since they declared war and even before that. One day off on that starbase didn’t seem like enough.”

  “Probably because that base didn’t have anything worth doing on it. One lousy bar that played bad music, had no dancing, and only served synthetic liquor,” Dan muttered. “What kind of a day off is that?”

  Jade chimed in, kneeling on the ground with her scanner. She didn’t even look up when she spoke. “I have to agree with him on that one, Major,” she said. “I wouldn’t have minded it being just one day if we’d actually had somewhere with things to do. Time off in one’s bunk is all well and good, but when you want distraction, you want something...distracting.”

  Of course, this brought a laugh from Dan that hinted at vaguely inappropriate thoughts, but Andy silenced him with a look.

  “I would love to have leave time long enough to go home,” Roxanna said, almost wistfully. “It’s been a long time since I set foot on Seler. I miss the oceans.” She moved along the building wall, scanning. “Earth has some lovely water, but it’s still nothing like the deep glittering black of the waters on Seler. To visit the city of Unaria.” She glanced back at them with a light in her purple eyes. “It’s entirely underwater, you know.”

  “Really?” Jade asked with almost cheerful curiosity. “Like Atlantis?”

  Roxanna blinked back at the younger human. “Like what?”

  Andy chuckled and shook her head. “Atlantis,” she said. “It’s a mythical city on Earth said to have sunk beneath the waters.”

  The Selerid nodded with understanding. “Like that, but not mythical nor sunk. It was built underwater, and it is one of the most beautiful places in the galaxy.”

  It never ceased to amaze Andy how people could be. They were on a planet, setting up defenses against an enemy that would be upon them in hours. There would be combat, and injuries and maybe fatalities. They could die. No one knew what would happen, and it would be their first wartime combat on a planet. Defending a city that none of them had seen before this moment...

  And yet, they were not morose. They spoke to one another, working hard, like they always did. Treating one another like a unit, like a family, like they always did.

  When the fight came, they would fight hard.

  Like they always did.

  Chapter 11

  “Major, the Star Runner has arrived and is establishing orbit.”

  That was good news. Andy acknowledged and said, “And the Arkana?”

  “Both ships are still directly en route for Baccem. They will arrive in approximately forty minutes.”

  That wasn’t good news.

  Andy closed the comm channel from the ship and turned to the rest of her squad. They were loosely arrayed around where they would be stationed once the Arkana reached the planet, but hadn’t taken up formal positions yet. Although they had been fairly loose earlier, now the tension was starting to settle in and silences were lasting longer.

  While she waited, she checked over her gear for the fifth time.

  “Sir, I’m pretty sure that nothing has changed in the past five minutes,” Dan commented from where he was leaning against a wall. There was tension in the tightness around his brown eyes.

  “You can’t be sure of that,” Andy replied, managing a half-smile in return.

  “Whatever you say, Major.” Dan shook his head with a small smile of his own.

  It took another twenty minutes for the ESS 21st Marine Detachment to get on the ground, and Andy didn’t want to waste any time. She used the communications system to send them where she needed them to go. Knowing that they would have the least amount of time to get ready, she put them where they needed the least intense coverage.

  The 21st was led by Major Canar, a Ronnor who had been one of her instructors during her years in training. Now he was serving in the field again, having re-upped when the threat first became clear but before war was declared. He was technically the senior between them, but she had been on the field first and set up their tactics. He ceded to her and she was grateful that his wisdom overrode his ego.

  “We are in position, Major Dolan,” Canar called in just a few minutes after their shuttles had touched down. “The Star Runner is reporting an ETA of fifteen minutes until the Arkana are in range to launch their shuttles and potentially board our ships.”

  “Acknowledged, Major,” Andy replied, trying not to grind her back teeth at the thought of the enemy being so close.

  She gestured to her squad and they all moved into more entrenched positions around their section of the city’s outer limits. Anallin was the company’s best shot and took up the highest location, with both cover and a clean shot of all directions the Arkana could come from. This happened to be a tree growing at the edge of the building. There was a swath of “nature” leading straight up to the edge of the buildings, undoubtedly by design rather than natural occurrence. Either way, it worked in their favor.

  Now, no one spoke.

  Andy quietly checked in with Valentine again, and then with each of her squads. Everyone reported they were at full readiness, a
nd now...they waited.

  It was the moments of waiting, when there were no more tasks to be completed, that were the worst. These were the times when there was nothing to do but think. Her body had to remain still, so her mind made up for the difference.

  Every moment of combat was difficult. It forged a deeper conflict within her each time she came face to face, toe to toe, with Arkana soldiers. It wasn’t that she was conflicted by a desire to go with them. That ship had sailed far off into the stars and was not coming back. Why would she want to be part of a group like this just because she happened to be related to them; that wasn’t her fault.

  However, she knew that she was related to them. She knew that the genetically manipulated blood that flowed through their veins also flowed through hers. It was a conflict to know that she was related to people like this; who would wage a war based, basically, on xenophobia. She had been raised on ESS values, and grew up around these allied species. She considered Roxanna and Anallin as much her family as Dan and Jade.

  There was also the question of her father.

  She knew what he was, but not who. Even at war, she couldn’t help but wonder who he was among the people. Had she already met him and not known it? Had she possibly already fought, and maybe even killed, him? How would she know? It wasn’t like he would be wearing a nametag or something.

  And then, even further back in her mind, was the question she couldn’t escape.

  Why me?

  Until this past year, there hadn’t been anything special about Andy. She was a bright woman who did well in school and training, moving on to be a competent Marine and a solid leader, but it was nothing that put a spotlight on her. She was perfectly happy with that too, because the spotlight was not anything she sought.

  To the ESS, she was the half-Arkana woman helping them fight a war.

  To the Arkana, she was a half-breed traitor.