Stranded (ESS Space Marines Book 7)

by James David Victor

  She cursed under her breath, losing her composure for a moment as pain stabbed through her head and neck.

  Two crash landings was enough for her. Maybe she needed to change careers.

  “Do we know where the Arkana landed?” Anath asked, slurring his words slightly as he pushed himself up from his seat. It creaked with the movement.

  “No,” Andy replied, still staring at the remains of the back of the shuttle. “If we can get any power to the sensors, we might be able to look around.”

  “On it, sir,” Jade said, sounding just as weary. As the squad’s technical expert, she was the most qualified to help the pilot get anything on this bucket working again. “I’ll also try to get the communications going, or at least an emergency beacon. Try to reach the Star Chaser. We couldn’t have gone that far off course.”

  Andy was going to argue the reality of that statement, but chose not to because it didn’t actually help. “Good idea, Martin,” she said instead. “Let me know how it goes.”

  “Oh, you’ll hear me cursing if it doesn’t go well,” the youngest Marine of the group said.

  Stepping closer to the openings between the outer parts of the shuttle and them, Andy realized that the light outside was dim. It was evening, or nighttime with a very bright moon.

  “Thomas,” she said. “Can you stand?”

  “Yes, Major.”

  “Take first shift as guard here at the back, moving between inside and out to keep an eye on things. Obviously, this planet has a breathable atmosphere.” She gestured at the openings where all the air was going in and out without them dying. “So we have that going for us, but we don’t know where the enemy is. Watch out for them, and anything else that might give us problems while we figure this out.”

  She heard some movement behind her and then metal on metal as she guessed he found a weapon. When that same metal clanked, she turned to see him put a broken weapon away and find another. This one apparently passed muster and he limped toward her, nodding as he stood close to the back of the shuttle.

  “Anath,” she said. “Let’s check out supplies. We don’t know how long we’re going to be here.”

  4

  It had been roughly an hour, as best Dan could tell, and it was truly night now.

  Dan worked as a Marine for the space service, so the dark wasn’t something that bothered him. He was surrounded by it every day, just on the outside of those bulkheads and hull plates. He hadn’t been afraid of the dark as a kid, either. He’d always had this great plan of telling jokes to the monster in the closet until it laughed too hard to do monster things.

  Thankfully, he’d never had to put that to the test.

  Something about the dark on this planet made him uneasy, though. He couldn’t put his finger on what it was. He was standing outside and everything was calm. It would have been easy to mistake this for a forest on Earth, although the trees were taller than any he was used to being around. The canopy was high and thick in some areas. Where there were openings, the trees reaching above it seemed to vanish into the night sky.

  Maybe his uneasiness was just because he couldn’t be 100% sure that his rifle was working properly after the crash. He’d been able to see that everything looked intact, but maybe there was damage in the mechanisms that he couldn’t see, and if the Arkana did show up, or something else did, he couldn’t be sure that his weapon was useful until he attempted to use it.

  Yeah, that was probably it.

  He moved a few paces away from the shuttle. They had gotten a little power working inside, and he could see a dim light from within it as he turned back.

  Before he took the first step back toward the shuttle, he heard something behind him.

  He spun quickly, bringing his rifle up. His eyes widened instinctively, trying to see as much as he could, although it wasn’t much in this dim light. Breathing slowly and somewhat shallowly to lessen the noise, he stared at the shadowy trees for any sign of what might have caused the noise.

  There wasn’t anything that he could see, but even while staring, the sound happened again.

  The uneasiness in his gut grew, but he stuffed it down. It had no place in this moment, because he needed to focus. He took in the whole semi-circle before him, from one side of the shuttle to the other.

  What he wouldn’t have given for functioning night vision goggles.

  Another noise. Just ahead.

  Staring forward, he brought the gun up again. He thought he saw, or maybe just sensed, some kind of movement…but nothing was coming into sight. Carefully, he walked backward as he kept his gun trained ahead of him. He reached the shuttle ‘entrance’ and called in, “Sergeant?”

  Roxanna was nearest to the entrance, since she was due to take next watch.

  “Yeah, Thomas?” she asked, stepping outside.

  “I think I heard something,” he reported in a low voice, still looking forward. “I think I may have seen something move, but I can’t be sure. It’s dark out there.”

  The Selerid stepped up next to him and looked in the same direction he was. Her skin swirled slightly in the low light and she narrowed her eyes in concentration. There were no other sounds or movements from the forest. She opened her eyes normally again.

  “There is…something out there,” she said. “I can sense it.” She frowned.

  “Is it the Arkana?” Dan asked.

  Roxanna shook her head slowly. “No, it’s not them. I would recognize them. They feel like humans, mostly. This is something else. It’s animal…I think.”

  Dan studied her for a moment. Her concentration was obvious, and he hated to interrupt that, but he didn’t like the uncertainty and open questions in her statement. “You think, Sergeant?” he asked hesitantly.

  “There is more sentience to it than animals I’m accustomed to, but the primal feel of it is too strong to be more like a human or Selerid,” she explained after a moment. “It makes it a little harder to decipher than the average animal, however. I don’t sense any intent to come after us, as best I can understand it. I think it’s…curious more than anything.”

  Dan couldn’t tell if that made him feel better or worse. “Do you want me to report this back to the major?”

  Roxanna shook her head. “I’ll do it,” she said. “You stay on watch. Keep close to the shuttle, though. Just in case.”

  “Understood, sir,” Dan said with a nod.

  The sergeant stood looking out into the dark for a little while longer, then turned and headed back inside. Dan didn’t watch her go in, keeping his own eyes trained on the darkness in his best effort to look everywhere at once.

  He knew that his turn at watch wouldn’t last for much longer, but he wasn’t sure just how much sleep he’d be getting tonight.

  5

  Soldiers always sleep when the moment calls for it. It’s a survival reflex—eat when there’s food, and sleep when there’s peace.

  That doesn’t always mean sleeping well, of course, but they all slept.

  As soon as orange sunlight began peeking through the cracks in the ship, everyone who had been asleep woke up. Anath was standing just inside the “door,” having been the one to take the final watch. Jade was slumped over the co-pilot’s console, having spent most of her time working with the pilot to repair what they could.

  Roxanna took a deep, centering breath and worked to shut out everyone’s tension and fatigue. She had been an empath all her life, like her people, so it was rare that she wasn’t able to shield herself from the majority of it. It just took a little concentration at times, and people’s emotions were running particularly high right then. Not on the outside of course, they were all too well trained for that, but she could feel it.

  The major came up beside her as she was rolling and stretching her shoulders.

  “How’re we doing, Sergeant?” she asked.

  “We’re doing fine, sir,” Roxanna replied. “It’s not ideal, but we’ll make it work until we can call the Star Chaser. Any luck on th
at front?”

  Andy shook her head. “Jade was able to get the communication system working enough to get a call out, but there’s no reply. She says either the signal strength isn’t good enough, there’s interference on this planet, or the Star Chaser isn’t close enough. We’re trying to figure out exactly where we are, but it looks like we’re on a planet that hasn’t been explored. If we’re right, it’s tagged with its basic locator name and that’s it.”

  Roxanna huffed. “Lovely, sir. That’s lovely.”

  “Isn’t it, though.” Andy smirked wryly. “We’ll keep trying, but for now we have some emergency supplies. If we rely on them alone, however, we won’t last too long. We need to see if there is anything else on this planet to sustain us. I want you and Anallin, hopefully with functional scanners, to go hunting and gathering.”

  “Sounds like fun, sir,” Roxanna said, just as wryly. “We’ll leave at once.”

  “And, Roxanna,” Andy said, suddenly somber. “Keep your senses open. We don’t know where the Arkana landed.”

  The Selerid nodded once, then went to get Anallin. Not that she had to go far, of course, since the shuttle was not that large.

  Laconic as always, Anallin listened to her and then nodded once. It reached into one of the cargo pockets of its uniform and found the scanner it always carried. Although the Hanaran was not their technical expert, it had managed to come up with some ways to enhance the scanner over the past few weeks.

  “Please tell me it’s working,” Roxanna said, fully expecting that it wouldn’t be.

  Anallin’s eyes clicked with a level of agitation that matched her own, probably also thinking it was broken in the crash. Roxanna couldn’t sense the Hanaran’s emotions the same way she did the others, although she was learning to read Anallin more and more. She waited as it opened the scanner and tested it . There was a pair of beeps, then Anallin nodded and the eye-clicks slowed.

  “It’s working.”

  Well, that was a small favor then. “Good. Let’s go.”

  They had been on the hunt for nearly an hour, and they had a shoulder bag stuffed with plants that Anallin promised were edible and two canteens with water that was “pretty much” free of potentially harmful bacteria. Roxanna wasn’t feeling a huge amount of confidence in the food they’d found, after Anallin’s explanations, but she did trust that the Hanaran would be cautious enough to not get them killed.

  “Let’s check over there and then head back to the shuttle,” Roxanna said, gesturing to a clearing just beyond the nearest line of trees. The canopy was thick over that area, covering most of it in shadows.

  Anallin just nodded in acknowledgement, and the pair moved cautiously into the clearing. Roxanna didn’t sense anyone in the area, but she wasn’t going to let her guard down. She stepped through the trees first, moving her rifle aim around the clearing to determine that it was safe. Then Anallin came through, slinging back its rifle so it could use the scanner.

  The Hanaran moved methodically, starting around the perimeter and checking over every plant. When it would find something, Anallin would stop and pluck some and stuff it into the bag.

  Perhaps halfway through the investigation of the clearing, something changed.

  Clouds must have moved over the sun, because everything suddenly became darker in the already dim area. Roxanna tensed instantly as it felt like a shadow moved over her empathic senses as well. It only took a moment to realize it was the same “something” that they had felt the night before, but it was different.

  There was no curiosity this time. The emotions too were…darker.

  “Anallin,” she ordered tensely. “Guns up.”

  The Hanaran knew better than to second guess any order Roxanna gave, so it immediately dropped the scanner and brought the rifle back into its hands.

  And just in time.

  “Above!” Roxanna shouted, but neither of them were fast enough. Just as soon as they got their rifles pointed toward the canopy, a large dark figure dropped from the trees and fell straight on them.

  All she would remember later on of that first moment was hands and arms. They seemed to be everywhere in an instant. Roxanna was on the ground with a huge mass on top of her. Jaws were snapping everywhere, howling and growling sounds seemed to pierce her inner ears.

  She heard Anallin’s gun go off and the creature on top of her jerked with the impact, but didn’t move away from her. Its bulk pressed on her and kept her from moving her weapon arm enough to bring it to bear. Predatory hostility poured off of it, making her senses swim and her skin swirl.

  Using her arms to hold the snapping jaws away from her, she tried to assess just what the creature’s form was like so she could use it against it, but in this position and in the dark, it was hard to see.

  A stream of Selerid curses spilled from her mouths, too fast for any translator to pick up. The rolling stream of angry-sounding syllables flew upward and the beast seemed surprised by the sound. It paused in its attempts to get at her face, for just a moment, but it was enough for Anallin to run into it and knock it off her.

  Claws that had been in her shoulders tore free as it went sideways, slicing through her armor with frightening ease and drawing blood. As soon as the weight was off her, Roxanna was on her feet. She realized that her leg was hurt too, but she ignored it. She brought up her gun and she and Anallin fired.

  Two or three rounds hit the beast before it turned and ran.

  “We shot that thing at least four times and it’s still alive,” Roxanna said, feeling a sliver of fear rise up. “And that’s shots from you.” Anallin was the sharpshooter in their group.

  “That’s…a concern,” the Hanaran said.

  “Master of understatement.”

  6

  Thick forests were not always the best at landmarks, and they had no information on this planet to have any knowledge about it. The pair did the best they could to trace their steps back to the shuttle between their memories and what the scanner had recorded. Roxanna was limping, but she kept up.

  It still felt like a part of her brain was cloudy, though, as she tried to filter out everything that had been shoved in there after the encounter with the creature.

  Which probably would have explained why she didn’t know they were about to be on top of a single Arkana soldier until they practically were.

  The Marines came to an abrupt halt.

  The Arkana came to an abrupt halt.

  Then, there were three weapons all up and aimed.

  A long, tense moment.

  The Arkana fired. Then turned and ran.

  Roxanna took a shot, aiming to disable, but the bullet lodged in a tree.

  The Marines didn’t have to say anything. They both knew the danger. They were too close to their own shuttle and didn’t need that soldier getting back to his own. They pursued.

  It didn’t take long to recognize that the Arkana was running with a limp, much like Roxanna was. Anallin, however, was running fine. Although the somewhat short, compact body of a Hanaran wasn’t built for speed, Marine training had improved natural abilities and the little blue Marine caught up quickly with the slender, lithe Arkana.

  Anallin tackled him from behind and they both went down in a heap, the Arkana’s gun flying out of his grip as he rolled over and held up his hands.

  The Hanaran stood, eyes clicking rapidly as it leveled its weapon at the prone form of the enemy soldier.

  “It looks like we have a prisoner,” Roxanna drawled.

  7

  “I think the thing was all hands and teeth,” Roxanna muttered as she sat on a large rock just outside the shuttle while Anath used one of their small first aid kits to clean and seal the wounds on her shoulders.

  “I am certain there was more to it than that,” Anallin supplied, taking guard duty alongside Dan.

  “So literal,” Roxanna muttered. She winced slightly at one point, but didn’t say anything. “I don’t know how to describe it otherwise, though. These clouds th
at keep moving in front of the sun made the clearing particularly dark. I couldn’t see it.”

  Andy nodded slowly, then looked over at Anallin. “What did you see?”

  Its watery blue eyes swung toward her. “Not much more than the sergeant,” the Hanaran replied. “Everything was dark. It moved very quickly. I believe it had been in the trees and jumped onto us. It was large, and noisy.”

  “Very,” Roxanna confirmed.

  “We encountered them too.”

  The dull voice wasn’t one she recognized, and Andy turned when she realized that it had come from their prisoner. She stared at him, bound and sitting on a log near the shuttle entrance, and he stared back.

  “You’re still alive,” she commented with a note of surprise.

  To date in the course of this war, there had only been one Arkana prisoner taken by the ESS that did not commit suicide by a means they still hadn’t been able to prevent. That one had been Anath, and that was because of Andy. He had defected for his sister.

  What was this one’s deal?

  “Yes,” the Arkana replied. “There is still a chance of rescue by my people, after all. An Arkana ship could be the one to find us.”

  Andy was aware of that, but she didn’t like it. “You’ve seen one of these creatures?”

  His blue eyes settled on Andy, their gazes meeting and holding. Surprisingly, she saw no malice there. She wasn’t sure what it was, but it wasn’t the usual hate-filled glare that the enemy usually gave her and her brother.

  “Yes,” he said. “It attacked us at our crash site last night and killed one of us. They are as fast and brutal as your people would suggest.”

  Andy narrowed her eyes at him. “And why tell us this?”

  “It occurs to me that we could help each other here,” he said. He sounded…sad. “A cease-fire, as it were, for our time on the planet. We could form something to our mutual benefit.”