What if he got himself killed? Or worse, got Jade killed?
“Dan?”
Jade’s voice snapped him out of it and he looked at her for a moment, then shook his head slightly to clear it and looked around. Everything was exactly the same as it had been just a moment before, but he knew that he had to make a decision and he had to make it fast. Maybe it would be wrong, or maybe not, but indecision was a worse mistake.
“Say the word,” she repeated, her voice continued to cut straight through to him.
He swallowed hard and glanced over his shoulder again. “Word,” he said, his humor so often used as a defense against life shaky but intact.
They shared a look, nodded, steeled themselves, and then started their backward retreat in a hail of cover fire. This time, it was less about trying to hit the enemy and more about trying to obscure themselves. As they fired, they backed up until Dan felt like they were deeper into shadows to help conceal them and then they turned and ran through the trees.
“We seem to be running away a lot on this mission,” Jade said, her voice tight and barely loud enough to be heard over the sound of their footsteps.
“Sometimes that’s the only option you have,” Dan replied, orienting himself from where they had been to where they needed to go. Eventually, he’d need to use the scanner and the map in its drive to get back to the shuttle, but for now, it was just a matter of evading the enemy long enough to get to that point.
Unfortunately for them, that wasn’t going to happen.
While they did their best to be aware of their surroundings and any other enemies who might be around, sometimes, luck was just against you.
Jade spotted them before Dan did, but before she could bring them both to a stop, the enemy search party had already spotted them and were opening fire. Dan and Jade had to throw themselves to the side, hitting the ground hard. Dan felt every wound he had already taken as his body shook with the impact, and he knew his adrenaline wasn’t going to keep him going much longer.
“Behind!” Dan called, spotting a single Arkana coming up behind them.
He took aim and fired, one bullet lodging in the oncoming enemy, but it only slowed rather than dropped them. Dan pulled the trigger again and came up empty. There wasn’t time to reload, or think too much, and he surged to his feet and drove his shoulder into the enemy’s wounded midsection.
They both went to the ground, and Dan smacked him around with his gun until he stopped moving.
Staggering back to his feet, Dan turned. He had every intention of diving back to cover to reload and start firing again, but an energy bolt cut through the trees and drove into his abdomen. It was slightly to one side, but it was still a hit. His armor took a lot of it, but that didn’t stop him from feeling the heat as his skin began to burn.
Releasing a strangled sound from between his teeth, he fell to one knee.
“Dan!” Jade called, but she was too pinned down to go to him.
Pain made the world go in circles for a moment, but he tried to keep it together. He knew that he needed to reload if he wanted to keep fighting, but managing the process to do so was proving nearly impossible.
He couldn’t let it be impossible, though. He couldn’t let her down. He couldn’t let the others down…
The Arkana were closing in, he could see that even with his blurred vision, but then they suddenly seemed to…vanish. No, not vanish. They dropped. They were getting shot, but it wasn’t him or Jade doing it.
Dan whirled around to see what the hell was going on.
22
Resistance was not the same as immunity.
Anath was lamenting that particular distinction as he felt the dull throbbing at the base of his skull. They had given Roxanna a painkiller from a medkit they’d found in the wreckage and it had helped, but she must have been in a great deal of pain. Even with the medicine and his Arkana resistance to her empathy, he was still hurting enough to be distracted.
Wedged under the cockpit console, he was also distracted by the fact there was a dead body right next to him. He wasn’t really a squeamish person, but it was still disconcerting.
“What is this thing?” he asked out loud, pulling on a small disc with wires coming out of it that didn’t seem to be attached to anything important. “I don’t think this does anything.” He tore it out and tossed it outside.
“Why are you talking to yourself?” he heard his sister call to him.
“So I don’t lose my mind,” he replied. He wasn’t sure if he actually meant for her to hear that or not, but there it was.
After a moment, she went on. “Tell me that wasn’t anything important you just threw out here.”
If he could have moved his shoulders in the cramped space, he would have. In fact, he would really like to be able to move his shoulders and it was becoming harder and harder to deal with the fact that he couldn’t. Small spaces had never bothered him before, but the tight space, the darkness, the pain in his head… He felt something like panic rising and he didn’t know how to control it.
He called back, “It wasn’t anything important.”
“Do you mean that or are you just telling me what I said to tell me?”
“I think I mean it, but I might just be appeasing you,” he said. “I don’t know what the hell half this stuff does. I just want power back!”
Realizing that he’d practically screamed that last part, he paused and closed his eyes, breathing slowly around the lump in his throat.
He heard Andy’s voice a little closer. “It’s okay, Anath. We’re going to be okay.”
As she spoke, he realized that his chest was tight. It was hard to breathe. “I’m just…really uneasy. Jittery, I guess. I don’t know. Nervous.”
A third, weaker voice joined the conversation. “I’m sorry.” Roxanna sounded worse than she had just five minutes ago. “It’s me. I’m… I guess I’m getting kind of panicked. My head is hurting a lot, which I realize affects you, and the more it does, the more nervous I get, which affects you too.”
“Don’t apologize,” Andy said. Her tone was firm, but her brother could hear the weakness in it. “It’s not your fault. We’ll be fine. We’ll all be fine.”
“Right,” Anath said to himself very quietly. “We’re all going to be okay, and we’ll be more okay if I can get my head together and fix this.”
With that, he focused again. He knew about engineering and could fix ships, and he’d studied what he could about ESS vessels, but he was far from being a qualified engineer. He knew he was destroying as much as fixing, but he could only do what he could do. He cut wires and spliced them together, bypassed circuit boards and conduits.
After an indeterminable amount of time, there was a buzzing sound and he realized that emergency power—beyond what was needed for their tiny lights—came on. “I’ve got it!”
Just as he said the words, there was a thud out in the cabin.
“Anath,” Roxanna called.
With fear lancing through him that he knew was now his own, he ripped himself out from under the console. Part of his uniform tore and he nearly tripped over the foot of the dead pilot as he stumbled toward sunlight.
Andy was leaning back against one of the ragged interior walls, her head back as she breathed deeply.
“What’s wrong?” he asked urgently, gripping her shoulders.
“I just got a little lightheaded,” she said, opening her dark eyes to look at him. They were a little unfocused, but her black pupils were equal sizes between brown irises so he thought she didn’t have a concussion. He looked at Roxanna.
“I don’t think that’s me,” she said.
Anath’s mind raced, which of course just made his head hurt more. Or was that Roxanna’s head hurting more? He couldn’t tell.
She reached down like she was about to put her hands on her hips, but instead touched her leg. When her hand came back up, there was blood. “I think Dad got a better hit than I thought,” she said with a weak, humorless s
mile.
“What did he do to you?” Anath asked. Rage rose up, replacing the panic.
“Kicked me while I was on the ground a couple of times,” she said. “Alright. I’m feeling better. I’m okay.”
Anath ground his back teeth together. “No, you’re not, but there’s only so much we can do.” He held onto her shoulders still. “I’ve got some of the backup power restored and I think we have a little while before it overloads and the shuttle explodes.” She arched a brow at him and he smiled slightly. “You were working on communications?”
She nodded slightly. “Yes. One of the primary wire junctions had a piece of metal rammed through it and I was trying to reroute the functions to another junction.”
“Alright, I’ll start working on that,” he said. “Why don’t you sit do—”
Before he could finish, Roxanna started speaking in rapid Selerid. She went on without taking a breath for longer than someone in her situation should have been able to, and as she did, her head swayed back and forth, eyes rolling from white to purple.
He worried that she was having some kind of seizure or stroke. He had no idea what that would look like in one of her people, but it had to look something like this. Or if it didn’t, anything that looked like this had to be bad. The other option was some sort of non-corporeal being possessing her body…but he dearly hoped not.
“Not…all…outward,” she gasped when she finally slowed. “I can still…sense some things…” Her body trembled and when she opened her purple eyes again, stark fear was there amid the swirling skin tones. “They are coming!”
23
“Who?” Anath asked urgently, but Andy thought the answer to that was obvious. If it had been their fellow Marines, Roxanna would not have panicked.
“The Arkana,” Roxanna said with a shudder.
The world still tried to swim, but Andy ignored it as she pushed off the wall and went to the small pile of rubble around the shuttle’s weapon locker. The lock was self-powered so that if the shuttle lost power—like it had—the weapons inside would not become accidentally accessible to enemies.
She hoped it hadn’t been damaged itself in the crash, but this one tiny piece of lucky coincidence was on their side. She keyed in her command code, and the weapon locker opened. She pulled out two non-prototype rifles.
“Andy,” Anath said, crossing the distance between them to stand close to her. “You can’t be serious. You’re not fighting in your condition.”
“Of course I am!” she snapped. “If we are to be overwhelmed and die, then I’ll do it on my feet and not trapped in this shuttle like it’s a can. I can still walk, and I can still fire my rifle and I can still take down arrogant Arkana pissants.”
He opened his mouth like he was going to retort, but she lifted her brows and he didn’t say whatever it was that came to mind.
“Give me a gun,” Roxanna said.
Andy turned toward her sergeant, getting ready to tell her the same thing that Anath had just tried to tell Andy. She stopped herself in time. She wasn’t going to condemn anyone to dying in here without a fighting chance, but part of Andy’s justification was that she could still walk and move, which Roxanna could barely do…
Although the panic was still there, the Selerid gave her a dry look and held out her hand. “I can still shoot.”
Only hesitating a moment more, she turned to the locker and took out another rifle, handing it to Roxanna. “Don’t shoot us by accident, okay?” Andy smiled a little, but it was an equally sound request.
“I won’t, Major.”
Andy took a deep breath and nodded once, then turned back to Anath. He was holding the gun, ready but at ease while they waited for the enemy. “I don’t want this to be where all of us die.” It wasn’t an apology, but there was an apologetic tone to it.
She stepped over debris to return to his side, then kissed his cheek—a sweet gesture at odds with their armor, their guns, and their situation. Then she ordered her own brain to hold it together long enough to survive this. “I don’t want this to be where all of us die either,” she said simply. “Come on.”
Andy and Anath walked outside and looked around. There was no sign of Arkana yet, but Andy trusted Roxanna’s senses, even if she did have a head injury and was giving them all a literal headache. If she said they were coming, they were coming.
“The Arkana on their way,” Andy informed Anallin, who was standing near the shuttle scanning the terrain around them. “Stay close to the shuttle,” Andy ordered, “with our backs to it so they are less able to come around and get us from behind, but don’t get in the way of the door and block Roxanna’s shots.”
“Understood.”
“Understood.” Anallin echoed the laconic acknowledgement, and then turned its attention to the incoming.
They were silent for a few moments before Andy broke the silence. “Anath?”
“Yes?”
“What is our father’s name?”
He seemed taken aback, although she didn’t look at him. “What?”
Andy thought she heard movement from the trees beyond and knew instinctively that the enemy was coming. “I never found out our father’s name, and if I’m going to hate someone this much, I should know his name.”
“Anaris,” he said. “His name is Anaris.”
Anaris… It didn’t sound like the name of a madman to her, but there it was. She would remember that, and if they did all die here… Well, at least she knew the name of the man whose fault it was.
They adjusted their positions to use the shuttle for protection and to obscure them from the oncoming force as best they could, but Andy knew they were practically sitting ducks out here. The shuttle would stand out from the greenery like a sore thumb, and they would be right there with it.
She felt so weak…feeble, even. Just holding the rifle up and keeping it ready seemed like a task for a superhero, which she certainly was not. She couldn’t remember having felt like this any time in the past. She worried she was close to failing, but she couldn’t fail. She knew that. For Anath, and Roxanna, the rest of Alpha Squad and all of the 33rd, she couldn’t fail. For herself, she couldn’t.
They came through the trees like white shadows, just shapes at first until they became defined but at a distance.
“Fire at will as soon as they get into range,” she said, hoping they could take out as many as possible and whittle down their potential numbers.
Would she know when they were in range? Or would her body betray her? Would they remain fuzzy the whole time? No… They were taking shape more. Neither Anath nor Anallin had fired yet, so she could trust that they would be able to determine the right time. She could follow suit with them.
When Anath took aim and fired a shot, so did she, and she heard the echo of Anallin’s rifle as well. A white shadow collapsed, so she knew she hit someone, but the rest of them dispersed behind big trees or whatever else might have been out there to hide behind. She could still see them, though, and there was some detail. She picked out the top of a shadow and fired a shot.
They were coming closer, though, moving from cover to cover as they tried to avoid the rifle shots and get close enough to overwhelm them. Their own shots impacted the shuttle around the three Marines, but none were a direct hit. Andy wondered how that was possible, but she wasn’t going to look that gift horse in the mouth.
Shots came out from the shuttle as the white forms drew nearer and then the world began to swim and suddenly, there were Arkana everywhere in front of her.
Andy threw herself back just in time to avoid a rifle swing for her head. The weapon collided with the shuttle’s damaged hull, making a loud noise that seared through her. She propelled herself forward, lunging for the soldier in a clumsy embrace that brought them both to the ground.
They rolled to one side and then the other, each one trying to get one-up over the other. An energy bolt slammed into the dirt beside them, which shocked her as much as anything, since she didn’t t
hink they would fire with such a risk of hitting their own comrade.
The Arkana got on top and punched her in the face. She spat blood back into his face, putting her hands up to hold him back from getting a grip around her neck.
But that didn’t stop the world from dimming. Shadows started closing in, and she felt powerless to stop them.
24
“Andy!”
Anath looked over just in time to see the Arkana soldier on top of his sister, and her looking like she was on the verge of passing out…or worse. He’d never completely understood the human phrase “seeing red” until that moment, but he understood it then. He had felt the fear when she was taken, but he hadn’t seen anything then.
Actually seeing her in mortal danger triggered something deep inside. He fired a round into the soldier in front of him with his sidearm and then rushed for the one on top of Andy. He got within range and shot him in the head, kicking him to get him off of her.
“Andy!” he shouted, wanting to kneel down and check on her but realizing that he couldn’t afford to do that because there were too many still around them. So he stood over her and kept shooting.
The pain in her head was growing unbearable. The wealth of input from her empathic abilities combined with the pain of her own injury was on the verge of disabling her entirely…but she couldn’t let that happen. She might have been too weak to get up properly, but she could still fire from where she was.
Her actual window was limited, but she was going to make the most of it. Every time she had a shot, she took it. Now that they were at close range, she was having much better luck with her shots actually putting them to the ground.
Fury.
Fury flooded her, and she suddenly had the urge to tear off the arms of everyone around her.
“Andy!” she heard Anath calling his sister’s name, and his anger and her panic warred inside her head.
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