Earth Space Service Boxed Set: Books 1 - 3 (ESS Space Marines Omnibus)

by James David Victor

“Oh yeah,” Jade replied. “It just takes time. But I’m not seeing any of the telltale signs that would suggest a trap or a fail-safe. Which, frankly, is pretty dumb on their part, but it does work in our favor.”

  Andy didn’t have much to say to that other than to agree, so she just let the girl get back to her work.

  She just hoped that it wouldn’t take too long. The longer they stood there, the more likely it was that trouble was going to find them. So far this mission had been going pretty well, and she was hoping to keep it that way.

  “Got it!” Jade declared, tapping one final button with triumph. She grinned up at Andy, and the sergeant had a moment where she couldn’t get past how young Jade looked. Andy herself was hardly old, but still, she felt worlds and eons apart at that moment.

  “Good job, Martin,” Andy said, giving her the praise she deserved. “Now, get things shut down and leave it for the rest of the tech-heads to sort out what’s what. We can regroup with the rest of the Marines and then get to doing what we really came down here to do.” Those two rooms filled with all those hopeless souls was not an image that had gone far from her mind.

  “I’m on it, Sergeant,” Jade declared, diving into the computer again while Andy turned her attention back to the corridor.

  They hadn’t seen anyone since entering the communications hub, and now she was beginning to wonder what the meaning of that actually was, if there was any meaning at all other than lax security they had already noticed. It still seemed strange that there hadn’t been any patrols, though.

  That thought brought with it a sense of foreboding, of being “due” for trouble. Andy shook that off fast so she could focus on the job.

  “It’s done, Sergeant. The system is shut down and now no one down here, aside from ESS Marines, can communicate with anyone else.”

  “Good work,” Andy said again. “Now, let’s get out of here and return to the meeting point.”

  Jade stood up and slipped her gloves back on, bringing her rifle back around. She moved toward Andy and Anallin, as Andy gestured for the group to exit into the hallway via the door they had been standing at. Roxanna and Dan would check the one way, then cover the back as they made their way out.

  The foreboding feeling ended up being prescient.

  It happened very fast. Later, Andy would only be able to guess that the shutting down of communications triggered a silent alarm and there was a quicker response than they could have anticipated. Guards came from both directions of the hall when Andy, Anallin, and Jade were already out of the room. She couldn’t see what happened to Roxanna and Dan in detail, but she knew they managed to blockade themselves in the room while the larger enemy force came from the front.

  All of the guards she hadn’t seen before were there now. She fired her pulse rifle and didn’t miss, but they had nowhere to go as the group from behind managed to push ahead, either past or over Roxanna and Dan. Andy couldn’t know at that point.

  All she knew was that they were overwhelmed when suddenly, darkness took her.

  CHAPTER 7

  NOTHING WAS REAL.

  As she stood in the core of Starbase Zenith, completely alone, she knew that she wasn’t actually there. This was just a dream or a hallucination of some sort. That knowledge did not, however, afford her a chance to figure out what to do about it or how to get out of it.

  The only way out was through. That was a phrase she had heard or read somewhere before, and that was what stood out now.

  When she had been in this room last time, there had been a Colirnoid there. Just one, but that one had been the “head of the snake.” The focal point to a web of Colirnoid working in telepathic conjunction to turn the people on the starbase into monsters so that the Colirnoid could feed off the chaos and violence.

  Her squad had almost killed each other. Only Andy had resisted...

  Yet she didn’t see the Colirnoid there now. It wasn’t standing in the middle of the room running its terrible abilities, nor was it lying on the ground, where it had fallen after she killed it, sending the others running.

  She started walking around the core itself. It was a long cylinder that rose several stories through the center of the station, surrounded by a fence and an energy field as two layers of protection against anyone who might fall or do something stupid. This entire section of Zenith’s engineering was created around this piece, the heart of the station.

  On the other side, she startled when she saw a...figure.

  She didn’t have a weapon, but she shifted immediately into a defensive posture with her hands up in front of her. It was then that she realized she wasn’t wearing any of her protective gear either. Well, that was just perfect...but then, this wasn’t real, right?

  The figure was just that, however. It was a figure without any apparent form aside from a vaguely humanoid shape, but there was no way for her to tell if it was facing her or facing away from her.

  There were no words, and no movement. Yet somehow, the longer she looked at the figure, the more she had the feeling of it...somehow being male. There was absolutely no evidence to support that, but she just had a feeling.

  “Hello?” she ventured to ask.

  The figure didn’t move, and there was no sound in return.

  Anxiety started rising in her chest, and she didn’t understand why. Well, she understood why, but there was an edge to it that made her chest hurt and she felt like she was on the verge of tears and that was what she didn’t understand. It wasn’t like her. What was it about this shadowy apparition that bothered her so much?

  “Who are you?” She felt better when she felt like she was actually doing something, and even if it wasn’t an effective something, talking helped.

  Father.

  The word just blossomed in her mind. She didn’t know where that had come from any better than the idea that it was a man, but the one likely came from the other. An amorphous male figure lingering in her subconscious, it was perhaps the obvious connection. Still, there was nothing to this.

  It was just a dream...right?

  Finally, Andy put her hands down and began to approach the figure. The lights flickered and she startled, lowering herself slightly and snapping her gaze around to try to spot an enemy, until she realized that it was in fact just the lights flickering. She straightened up and shook her head.

  “Who are you?” she repeated, sounding a little more direct. She resumed her track forward.

  As she got closer, she lifted her hand. She didn’t know why she did that, but she did, and she almost fled back when the shadowy figure mirrored the motion. Staring at where the “head” seemingly was, she almost thought she saw a face taking shape. Gritting her back teeth together, she forced herself to keep moving forward.

  Their hands drew closer, and they were almost touching...

  LIGHT FLOODED into Andy’s eyes and she gasped. The sound was so sharp that it hurt her throat and she went to lift her hand so she could shield her eyes from the light, but she realized she couldn’t seem to move one hand without the other.

  What was going on?

  Her hands were tied up. Her hands hadn’t been tied up. She could remember lifting her hand just a few moments ago, trying to touch that shadowy figure’s hand, so when did that change? How did she get tied up? She could feel the bonds tight against her skin, locking her hands together in front of her.

  It took just a few moments more for her to realize what was really going on, the dream or whatever it had been fleeing from her mind in the light of reality.

  She had been in the lower level of the compound at the Daikon Colony. They had been exiting the communications room, ready to regroup with the rest of the 33rd and then start freeing some people, when they had been swarmed out of nowhere. She remembered shooting her rifle, and then fighting hand to hand. It hadn’t been enough, however, and she had ended up being taken.

  Someone had knocked her out. She had been unconscious and moved...somewhere, presumably deeper in the compound’s lo
wer level, but where?

  Andy forced her eyes open and saw Anallin and Jade sitting beside her. They were also bound, but they were already conscious and were staring at her. Anallin’s eyes were clicking rapidly in agitation, and Jade’s eyes were so wide they were ready to stretch right off her face. She knit her brow, but tried to give them a weak smile to at least let them know that she was alive.

  That was a good first step, but what was the next step, the one that would lead to them getting out of there?

  CHAPTER 8

  ANDY GAVE herself a few minutes to finish waking up before she attempted too much of a tactical determination. Once she was awake, she pushed herself up into a better sitting position and looked around.

  The room wasn’t as big as the other slave room, but it was bigger than the communications room. It was the same style as the first in that it was simply one large open space with a high ceiling and one wall lined with cells. The other had shackles and collars attached to it. Andy and her people were set in one corner, next to the shackles. There didn’t seem to be a cell or a collar that didn’t have an occupant.

  They all had that same look of simply...having given up. It was a struggle to not feel paralyzing pity, but she knew that allowing herself to feel that wouldn’t help anyone.

  This room was guarded, however, unlike the other one. She could see two guards at each door and one in the room with them, staring at the Marines. This one didn’t have the air of a lackey; he seemed like someone in charge. She instantly knew that if she needed to go for anyone, that was the one it had to be. How, precisely, she was going to achieve that, she had no idea...but it was good to know.

  The guard watching them was Kriori, and it looked like at least three of the other guards were as well. That was a little more concerning. They didn’t have any defenses against that electricity other than avoiding it all together.

  “Are you two okay? Have they hurt you?” Andy asked in a low voice, turning her head so they could see her talking as little as possible.

  “I’m not sure I’d say we’re okay,” Jade replied in kind. “But they haven’t hurt us.”

  The word ‘yet’ seemed to hover between them all.

  When Andy looked up again, she saw that their Kriori guard was still looking at them. She suppressed a small chill at the intensity of that look, wondering what the alien was thinking when he stared at them that way. She didn’t want to think about it too much, though.

  Unlike the version of her that had been in her subconscious, this version wasn’t going to say anything to any of the guards. Aside from being ESS policy, it was generally just a better call; you didn’t want to give them anything.

  That plan worked for a few minutes.

  The one who had been staring at them finally rose to his feet, towering over them since they were on their knees. He stalked closer, still staring and not blinking. Andy thought she could see gathered electricity sparking between the antennas on his head. He came to stand in front of them. She said nothing, but didn’t turn away from his eyes.

  “Which one of you is the leader?” he asked in ESS Standard, the English-based language that was used throughout the ESS and all the civilian alliances. His tone was flat, but sounded like someone who was used to being obeyed. None of them answered and his gaze swung between the three of them. “I would say this one,” he continued, pointing at Anallin, “but who would put a Hanaran dog in charge?”

  The clicking from Anallin’s eyes increased with his agitation. The Kriori seemed to recognize the sign and smirked darkly.

  “However, the two of you are females,” he went on, looking between Jade and Andy. She could feel the younger Marine tense even more beside her, but Jade didn’t say anything. “However, if you do not tell me, I will work through each of you to find out. Starting with...” He swung a pointed finger between them until he landed on Jade. “Her.”

  Andy wasn’t really surprised. Being smaller and younger, Jade being seen as the “weak link” was not a surprise. However, it put Andy into the position of deciding whether she should let it play out and hope for the best or break her own edict about speaking out.

  The decision didn’t take long.

  “I am,” she said, keeping her face blank even though anger played behind it. She knew that the tracer in their uniforms would lead their fellow Marines to them, but they still had to hold on until that point.

  “I didn’t realize that humans let their females lead,” the Kriori said, turning to her. If she had to guess, she would’ve said he had suspected her answer before she gave it.

  The temptation was strong, but she didn’t rise to the bait. Maybe it wasn’t intended as bait and he really was surprised. Either way, she knew that it wouldn’t do any good to argue with him about inter-species sexism.

  “You’re not going to be very interesting, are you,” the Kriori said with a sigh. “What is your name?”

  “Sergeant Andrea Dolan. ESS Marines,” she replied flatly.

  He waited.

  She stayed silent.

  “Maybe I should talk to one of your compatriots here,” he went on. “Perhaps they will have more to tell me.”

  “I’m the sergeant. Talk to me,” she said.

  He waved a hand dismissively. When he did, she saw the spine-like protrusions along the inside of his palm. It was a reminder of what those protrusions were for and just what his ability was. She wasn’t in any rush to learn firsthand, and hoped she wouldn’t.

  “You aren’t very entertaining to talk to, nor particularly informative,” he said. “Your little team invaded our compound and shut down our communication system. While that isn’t overly troublesome, I assume there is more to your plan. And you will tell me what that is or you will find yourself on the next ship full of slaves heading for the Kriori Empire. One way or another, you will tell me what I want to know.

  “You can be assured of that, Sergeant Andrea Dolan.”

  CHAPTER 9

  0755 Hours

  ANDY TRIED to figure out how long it was that the three of them had been the not-so-honored guests of this Kriori. She guessed it couldn’t have been more than a half-hour, but she wasn’t able to be sure. All she had was a sense of time passing and her ability to estimate, which wasn’t very scientific but she was usually pretty good at figuring these things out.

  At the moment, her lead captor wasn’t trying to lure more conversation out of her and he wasn’t moving into full-on interrogation techniques. She wondered how long it would be before they reached that point.

  She watched him across the room while he dealt with a prisoner who actually tried to cause the guards trouble. The woman, of a race that Andy didn’t recognize, had started screaming incoherently. Admittedly, Andy didn’t know if it was on purpose or just a byproduct of it all, but it had been effective to draw them over.

  Of course, keeping herself still when they exercised their means of quieting her down wasn’t particularly easy. She didn’t silence after the first hit, but the second seemed to do it. It went against everything in Andy to stay put, but she knew that she was in no position to fight them right then.

  While the guards were distracted, she examined her restraints and tried to shift her wrists. The lock was unlike anything she had seen before and they didn’t budge with just the pressure she applied to it. There wasn’t actually any obvious locking mechanism, but it was also obviously not something like a tied rope.

  “Sergeant,” Anallin said in a low voice that she interpreted as urgency.

  She looked up in time to see the lead guard approaching and she stopped messing with her bonds. If he noticed what she had been doing, he didn’t let on. In fact, he didn’t come back to them at all. He paced close to them, but was talking with one of the other guards, a non-Kriori humanoid.

  At first, it surprised her that they were talking within her earshot, but maybe they were just used to slaves who had stopped caring, or maybe they themselves didn’t care because they assumed that she could
n’t do anything with whatever she heard.

  “I think the latest lack of discernment in the raids has given us a worthless crop,” the humanoid guard was saying. “I would toss them all out and find new ones, find better ones.”

  “How good does a slave have to be to be thrown onto a front line?” the lead guard, the one who had been talking to her before, replied snidely. “Think it through, you fool. We need them to serve only one purpose, and it doesn’t matter what state they are in when they serve that purpose, so long as they draw breath.”

  Andy forced herself to keep her head down, appearing defeated. She didn’t want them to know that she was listening, but she was intent on their words. The Kriori were, what, building an army? Did they not already have their military forces? Slaving was practically a way of life for the species, so they would be building an army for their race and not just themselves as slavers...but why?

  “We cannot withstand the storm without more forces,” the lead guard said, his voice practically a hiss of anger. “You know that. So why bring this to me?”

  The other was silent for a moment and sounded chastised when he replied, “I suppose I am just frustrated with the ones that we have here.” There was another pause. “Most of them are nothing more than lumps of flesh while others are—”

  As if to make his point for him, one of the slaves in shackles began to shout. The words were garbled, but they seemed to be somewhere along the lines of, “I will not fight in your damned army, Kriori filth!” He raged against his own chains, pulling at them as if he could pull them from the walls and get his hands on the guards.

  One of the guards began to approach him with his hand raised, but the man didn’t even need it. He just collapsed to a pile. The guard looked disappointed and kicked the body on the way past.

  “I don’t exactly find this much more tolerable than that man did,” Jade murmured.

  Andy glanced around quickly to try to spot their captors. They weren’t looking back in their direction yet, still engaged in their own conversation, so she turned to Jade. The younger woman was staring at the slave who had fallen.