If that wasn’t enough to put a brain into conflict, what was?
Andy blew out a breath and tried to get her mind back under control. Those thoughts may have been inescapable, but they were also useless. Nothing about any of her thoughts would help her to fight the battle that was before her. The conflict inside her head would do nothing for the conflict she was about to throw her body into.
She closed her eyes for the briefest of moments and pushed the thoughts aside. They would come back again, but not now.
Now, she had to focus.
It was just a few minutes later that the Star Chaser called her.
“The Arkana ships are in range. We have intruder alerts. The tactical team is handling it. Shuttles are on their way to the planet. Be ready.”
Chapter 12
If the waiting had been bad before, it grew increasingly intolerable once they knew that not only were the big Arkana ships coming but the shuttles were heading directly for them. Of course, which point of entry they would choose was still an open question, and if it would be one or multiple locations.
The Star Chaser didn’t have time to give them too many details, since they had their own problems to deal with.
Seconds ticked down to the rhythm of heartbeats. Even with the faint sounds of a city behind them, like the automated systems that were not disengaged or the few people that remained and could be just barely heard in the distance, Andy could hear the steady breathing of her squad. And, of course, the eye clicking. That was a cadence which bordered on the comforting for her now.
They were all well-trained. She made sure of that. They had also been through more than their share of tough spots during their time together. Everyone’s adrenaline would be rushing—Roxanna’s skin swirling and Anallin’s eyes clicking—but they were calm, and ready. They were not shaken.
Every pair of eyes roamed from one side of their field of vision to the other, but saw nothing. All ears were straining at every sound, but they heard nothing. Andy knew that her earpiece could ignite with sound at any moment, but still nothing...
They waited.
Just when she began to doubt that the shuttles were heading for the surface, her earpiece chirped and she heard the voice of Captain Valentine.
“We have a visual,” he said, pitching his voice low. She could hear the tension. “They are on approach to our location. They do not look like they are here for tea and a chat.”
Andy would’ve laughed, but the situation really wasn’t that funny.
“Confirmed,” she replied. “Stick to the plan. Engage as necessary. Squads will remain in position unless ordered otherwise, but call if you need help.”
“Yes, Major.”
The channel chirped again as it closed.
They still had no signs of Arkana landing in their area, which made the impulse to move from it and join Valentine a very strong one. But she knew better than that. Unless it was for reasons of emergency, they could not leave their own post unmanned. It was just as likely that the Arkana would be showing up in front of them at any moment, and they had to be there to greet them when they did.
It didn’t take too much longer.
They heard them before they saw them. There was a low rumbling sound, like something rolling over dirt and grass and rocks. Roxanna was the first to pick up on it, and that was before the sound could be heard. She sensed them, using her empathic Selerid senses. She could tell when there were new minds in her area, generally well before they could be either heard or seen.
“They’re coming,” she said quietly.
Everyone straightened up just a little more, and held their weapons ready.
Then, they heard the sound. The rumbling started quietly at first and grew louder as the...whatever it was moved towards them. In just a few minutes more, they saw it. It looked like some sort of vehicle on rolling treads. It was boxy and looked metallic, but with an odd pale sheen to it from a metal that no one in the ESS had ever seen before. It reminded Andy of the tanks from old Earth that she had read about, although it didn’t quite look the same. There was more than just a...feeling of similarity.
There were Arkana troops, armored and well-armed, walking to all sides of it. Just like their enemy counterparts, they had their guns up and were ready to engage.
Definitely not there for tea.
Alpha Squad held firm to their positions, but any orders of waiting until fired upon were unnecessary. The “tank,” for lack of a better term, opened fire almost as soon as they saw it. The shot was an energy pulse, broad but imprecise. It flew over the heads of the Marines on the ground and hit the building behind one side of them. Andy and Jade moved fast out of the way of falling debris, but they didn’t take their eyes off the enemy for more than a moment.
“Thomas,” Andy ordered.
Dan swapped his projectile rifle back on its sling and brought forward the second gun he carried. This one was a large Arkana rifle that had been taken from a casualty on their ship. Only humans could fire the Arkana weapons. This one was of a size for Dan to carry, at least as a second weapon.
The tank fired again, this time forcing Dan to move, but still without hitting a Marine directly. He shifted his position, but quickly took aim again with the Arkana rifle.
He sighted down its length at the glossy white vehicle and pulled the trigger. The bright light of its energy fire flew from it and hit the ground just to the left of the tank, at the feet of some of the soldiers. They returned fire, but the other Marines provided cover. Anallin took the key sniper shots from its position in the tree, but it seemed that every Arkana who went down was replaced by one from behind the vehicle.
Dan’s second shot was delayed as he was forced to again change position, between the ground troops’ fire and the tank’s third shot.
He hit one of the rolling treads, breaking the seams between them. It stopped working abruptly as the treads lost cohesion, and for a moment, it almost began to turn—like it would move in a circle. Whoever was driving it brought it to a halt fast, letting it sit in place but still facing the same direction as it had been.
Its gun still faced the Marines and city.
Dan didn’t waste any time before firing another shot, which hit the tank’s side. It didn’t damage the material of its body, but part of the shot hit the other side’s treaded wheel and that lost its cohesion as well. The tank was now effectively dead in place.
Its guns, however, remained entirely live.
It punched another hole in the building while the ground troops fired at them. Dan shot at the tank, but the rest of the body was not as vulnerable as the wheels had been. His further shots couldn’t do anything to pierce its armor.
“We need to get that gun out of commission,” Andy said between shots. “We need to get inside that thing.”
Chapter 13
It was like trying to split one’s brain in half, while making sure that both parts still functioned properly. Andy continued to engage the enemy, since they certainly weren’t going to stop and let her think, but she had to look over the scene before her and try to make a plan for getting to that tank and disabling it.
Weapons were not penetrating the armor of the tank itself. All they had done was ground it...which was good, just not good enough.
If this tank was anything like ancient Earth ones, there would be some sort of hatch on the top. Looking at the design of the thing, it seemed likely that that was where the opening was. On the ground, she could see soldiers to either side. There were a couple to the front and reinforcements coming from behind it. She couldn’t see the numbers of those behind, but she knew that there had already been several who had needed to come forward and replace those taken out by Alpha Squad’s shots.
Her squad was only five, and she wasn’t going to bring any of the other squads in for this. She didn’t want the whole group to attack the tank, and part of it couldn’t take on either side on their own. Not with things as they were.
“Anallin, Thomas,” A
ndy called over the sound of gunfire and energy discharges. She had to wait as the tank fired another shot that sent debris at their backs, but it was small enough to not damage them. “Focus fire on that thing’s left side. See if we can draw them to that side to return fire. Keep it coming hot. I want them to think more than just you guys are shooting at them. Thomas, continue with the Arkana rifle.”
Two voices acknowledged her order. She would have crossed her fingers had they not been busy holding onto the rifle. After a moment, she told Roxanna and Jade to cease fire, so it really looked like they were focusing on the one side.
She ground her back teeth together, refusing to give in to anxiety. This wasn’t the best plan ever, but she knew that it was the best one she could manage under the circumstances, in the grand total of thirty seconds she had to make it. Her dark eyes roved back and forth to either side of the tank and for too long, she didn’t see any of the Arkana moving to cover the side being blasted to hell.
Andy was just about to change her orders and scramble for a new plan when she saw soldiers from the right side of the tank back away, going around behind the large gleaming vehicle to emerge on the left side and add their fire to the rest. Thomas and Anallin kept it up, but she could see from the corner of her eye that Thomas was being forced to move to avoid enemy fire.
As he moved, his weapons fire became more erratic. She worried that the enemy would think they had moved again, but he picked it right back up to full speed as soon as he was in position again. He moved fast, efficiently, and she allowed herself that briefest moment of pride to, once again, see her squad performing at their finest.
Now was not the time for such things, however, and she had to move on.
She turned her full attention to the right side of the tank.
The Arkana weren’t stupid, so they hadn’t abandoned that side completely, but the number of soldiers guarding the downed vessel were fewer than before. What Andy had previously estimated as over fifteen to twenty, she now saw was closer to six. At least from what she could see.
Andy gestured for Roxanna and Jade to follow her, and the three began to slowly slide toward the right. They kept their eyes sharp and their guns up, using some of the decorative greenery that wasn’t shot down to obscure the view of them as they moved.
The six—now she was sure—Arkana soldiers weren’t watching the direction they were coming from, too busy trying to determine if they were missing all the action on the other side.
The three Marines moved as quickly and silently as they could. Andy waited until they were about halfway between where they had been and the tank before gesturing that she and Roxanna were to open fire. She knew that this had to be fast and precise, or those soldiers would get the warning out to their compatriots. Of course, the wealth of noise and light coming from the exchange would cover many things.
Andy was counting on that.
She gestured again and they picked their targets. Neither of them were the sort of crack shot that Anallin was, but they held their own. Their first two shots took out the Arkana closest to their positions. Neither had the chance to make any noise before they hit the ground, and the Marines were already aiming their second shots.
They got those shots off, but the soldiers had seen their fellows go down and were more alert. One went down clean, but the other got off a shot of its own. The soldier hit the ground, but was not out of the fight yet. By now, the other two were pushing themselves against the tank, trying to use it for cover to return fire. The greenery that Andy and the others were using did just enough to keep them from being sure of just where they were firing.
Two shots blew past Andy’s side, burning away some of their covering foliage. She cursed softly and shifted over a little, but not so much to risk putting Roxanna or Jade accidentally into her field of fire.
Roxanna took another shot and put out the one on the ground before it could make any more noise.
Despite all of the sound that had been made so far, Andy didn’t see any reinforcements returning. The firefight taking place on the other side of the tank was still providing sufficient cover to keep their work beyond notice for the moment. So, there was that at least, and Andy meant to make the most of it.
She lined up her next shot toward the closest Arkana, trying to use part of the protruding armor of the tank to hide behind but it wasn’t nearly of a size to do any real concealing. What it did manage to do was make her shot a little more difficult, but Andy wasted no time in lining it up and pulling the trigger.
The bullet ricocheted off the tank and Andy cursed inwardly again. She adjusted her aim and again pulled the trigger, putting as little time between the two shots as humanly possible. This shot hit its mark and the Arkana soldier went down. The last one saw the other hit the dirt and started to run, heading around the back of the tank to alert the others to the trouble.
He didn’t make it.
Chapter 14
Time was limited.
The three Marines had taken down the six remaining Arkana soldiers, but they all knew that this reprieve wasn’t going to last long. Eventually, the others would figure out something was wrong and would come back, or reinforcements that were held in reserve would decide to come check on things. At least it seemed that none of them had heard any of the noise.
Andy took a moment to scan everything before them, but she didn’t see anyone coming from either side.
She nodded and the three moved forward. They scanned everywhere around them as they advanced, just in case there were any surprise visitors, and they kept as low as they could while they hurried. The terrain they had to cross was more open, with no decorative foliage, and it made her anxious to be out in the open so much.
They reached the tank and stepped around the bodies, watching them warily to make sure that none were about to reach out and grab one of their ankles.
“Martin, you need to get in there and figure out how to disable it,” Andy said in a loud whisper, although the end of her words were drowned out when the tank fired again. “I’m guessing there’s a pilot in there. You’ll have to neutralize him and then figure out the controls.” Her ears were ringing slightly from being so close to the tank when it fired. She wondered how the Arkana kept from being deafened entirely.
“Yes, Major,” Jade said with a nervous nod.
“You can do this,” Andy reassured her. “Just move quickly. I don’t know how much time we’ll have before they come back here. We need that thing out of commission before it pulls the buildings down on our heads.”
Jade nodded again shakily. She stared at the ladder on the side of the tank before slinging her rifle back and pulling her sidearm, knowing that the inside of the tank was not likely to be spacious enough to fire a rifle.
Andy wondered just how it was that the tank driver hadn’t known there was something amiss right outside its door, quite literally, but it had to be just as loud inside that thing as it was outside. And undoubtedly, it was more focused on the enemy in front of it, rather than trying to keep an eye to either side. The soldiers surrounding it were supposed to be in charge of that.
Roxanna kept a watch out while Andy split her gaze between their surroundings and watching Jade go up the ladder. Anxiety that she refused to acknowledge gathered in the pit of her stomach, hoping that the young Marine could shoot the driver before the driver—or anyone else that might be in there—could get her.
It was yet one more calculated risk, but she knew it had to be taken.
Jade reached the top and put one hand on the handle of the hatch, keeping low, her other hand holding her sidearm at the ready. She glanced down at Andy and nodded once, as if gathering her courage and focus. Andy returned the nod, trying to convey both, and then Jade turned back to the door. She pulled it open and wasted no time dropping inside. Not just to get the drop on the driver, but to not give the ground troops on the other side enough of a chance to see her.
There was a long moment of silence before Andy heard the ec
ho of a gunshot.
That was Jade’s weapon, she could be sure of that much since it was clearly a projectile rather than an energy discharge. There was a risk that the Arkana had overpowered Jade and taken her weapon, but she knew it was unlikely. Jade was young, but no less trained than any of the others.
After a painful, anxious moment, Jade used her communicator to contact Andy.
“Vehicle secure,” she replied in a low voice. Already, Andy could hear beeps and clicks and other technological sounds in the background. That was all Jade said before she closed the channel, because Andy knew that she had to focus. She had to figure out alien technology on a very short timetable.
“How much longer can they keep up that barrage?” Roxanna asked, just loud enough to be heard but pitched low enough to be no more than that. Her skin swirled at a hyper rate, demonstrating the agitation that she was too trained to let out otherwise.
“Hopefully, long enough,” Andy replied, knowing that her answer wasn’t really an answer, but it was the best one she had.
They waited in impatient silence after that. Andy could envision Jade inside the tank, hitting buttons and reading screens. The young woman had a habit of sticking out her tongue when she focused on technological matters, which received no end of teasing among the squad, but Andy could easily imagine that she was doing it just then. Had the situation not been so tense, Andy just might have smiled thinking about it, and about how well she’d gotten to know her people.
She could hear the focused fire on the other side starting to slow down, and she felt her muscles tense further. Andy wanted to know what had happened to make the change, but she knew she had to hold off on finding out. She didn’t want to call while they were busy laying down fire, and she wasn’t going to come out of their hiding space enough to get a visual.
As it always seemed to be, it was just when Andy was starting to think she needed to change her plan that everything fell into place.
Arkana (ESS Space Marines Book 4) Page 5