Daikon (ESS Space Marines Book 2)

by James David Victor

  Andy swore internally, but lifted her rifle and got off the first shot. The energy pulse launched between them and took out one guard. The other guard brought her weapon up and returned fire, sending the marines scrambling for cover. The woman fired at them with one hand, reaching up for something at her shoulder with the other.

  Something told Andy that she was about to sound an alarm.

  “Fast!” was all the sergeant said and Jade got off a successful shot just a second ahead of Anallin. Two energy beams slammed into the guard before she was able to complete her call of alarm.

  Andy blew out a breath and regrouped her marines.

  “That was too close. If one of the guards sound the alarm, we’ll have a firefight on our hands,” Andy said. “Shoot to kill. No hesitations.” It wasn’t the most necessary of orders, considering they would be quick no matter what, but it still seemed like a good idea to say it. It never hurt to be too prepared. “Hide the bodies as best you can.”

  Anallin and Jade moved forward with a nod, slinging back their rifles over their shoulders to kneel down and pull the communication devices free of the enemy guards’ uniforms. Jade managed to do it with a bit more finesse than Anallin’s simply tearing it off, but both had the same results: the devices were no longer attached to the bodies. Both marines put them in pockets on the chest piece of their gear, then propped the bodies up in a corner, as much out of sight as possible.

  “We’ll ditch those at a better spot,” Andy ordered, “just in case they have some fail-safe that’ll bite us in the ass. For the moment, though, keep moving.”

  Moving out, they paid special attention to semi-hidden corridors that branched into their corridor, lest they get caught by surprise again.

  As they moved, steadily and surely, Andy reflected on the fact that they were finding themselves in a lot of corridors lately. What she wouldn’t have given right then for a nice open field, or even crawling around in some mud as long as it was outside and in the open. All these curves and corners and turns and windowless hallways were getting obnoxious.

  It was one more turn and one more corridor, along with one more pair of disabled guards, before they arrived at the communications room that had been their destination.

  Now, they had a specific job to do and not much time to get it done so Andy led the squad into the communications hub. Still no windows, but at least they were out of the corridor.

  Chapter 6

  “Martin, can you get into it?”

  Jade had slung back her rifle and pulled off her gloves, taking a seat at the computer console after they had rendered the previous occupant...redundant. Dan and Anallin had moved that body out of the way so Martin could take the seat.

  “I think so, yes,” Jade said, biting her bottom lip as she looked at the screen and began to hit buttons. “This isn’t the most complex setup I’ve seen. I think my little brother’s gaming system is more difficult.” She wasn’t boasting, simply speaking conversationally. Computers and technology were her specialty, and she was tasked with breaking into the communications system and shutting it down.

  Of course, they all knew what plan B was: they simply destroyed it. However, their orders were to preserve it if possible so that when the compound was secured, they could delve into its data more deeply and try to trace it to other locations and players in the game.

  The communications room looked like what Andy might have assumed was some sort of guard station, had she not known otherwise. It had a window behind the console with open doors to either side. How the person originally at the controls hadn’t seen them coming, she would never know.

  Andy and Anallin took one door, while Roxanna and Dan covered the other. The room was small so there was little to no chance of surprise entrances, meaning they just had to cover the outer corridor. Although they’d had to subdue some guards on their way in, there hadn’t been very many of them. At least, there had been fewer than Andy would have expected there to be, which suggested to her that they expected little trouble here.

  With rooms full of chained slaves, the over-confidence was perhaps to be expected. They would think the corporations had them covered above and no one even knew about their trafficking hub down in the basement. Why bother with the expense and providing for of extra guards?

  Then even the ones they had would start getting complacent. Which, to Andy, was exactly what had happened. It made their jobs a lot easier, but she wasn’t going to let her marines get just as complacent because of it.

  The sound of Jade’s fingers hitting the keys filled the small room, along with her quiet stream of subconscious murmuring. Although it was so low that you couldn’t pick up on all of the words, it was audible enough to suggest she was basically narrating everything that she was doing to herself, along with the occasional argument with her hands or eyes or the system itself.

  “There is some encryption,” Jade suddenly explained loud enough for everyone to hear. “That’s what’s taking so long. I think it’s the basic log-in system for whoever uses this console whenever they need it to go active again, but since I don’t know the information that will unlock it their way—and I don’t see any other biometric locks—I have to find a backdoor.”

  “Can you?” Andy asked, looking over her shoulder at the younger woman.

  “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 for
ce 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 lower 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.

&nb
sp; 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.