Lykos (ESS Space Marines Book 6)

by James David Victor

  They had to find the others, and try to repair the shuttle. She had little confidence that it could be fixed, but they had to try, even if just to get communications back.

  For the moment, though, she hurried into the shuttle. Now with the sunlight pouring in, she could see everyone and knelt beside Roxanna. Her arm was still wrapped in the strap, and it looked twisted into an angle it shouldn’t be. There was blooding drying on Roxanna’s face and her skin was swirling, but the movement was feeble. Her eyes were open and tracked Andy as she walked in.

  She stared hard at Andy, frowning a little, but didn’t say anything.

  “How’re you feeling, Sergeant?” Andy asked, kneeling beside the Selerid. As she lowered herself down, her own head felt a stab of pain. She needed to not go up and down so fast, it seemed.

  “I’m managing, Major,” Roxanna replied stoically. “My head hurts, though.”

  Dan laughed faintly behind them. “So does mine,” he said. “I’m having sympathy pains with you, Sergeant.”

  Instead of amusement, however, something else crossed the purple woman’s face—concern bordering on fear. Her eyes moved to Andy. “Does your head hurt?” When Andy nodded, she looked at Anallin and asked the same thing. Jade and Anath offered the information voluntarily. “Oh no…” Roxanna said, her body getting her people’s version of the adrenaline spike and feeding energy to the panicked opalescent swirling.

  “Sergeant,” Andy said urgently, trying to keep focused, despite the increasing pain in her head and the…feeling of anxiety rising in her. “Calm down. We need you to keep your head level. What’s wrong?”

  Roxanna replied with her native language, which was naturally spoken at such a speed that the translator in their earpieces couldn’t catch it fast enough.

  “Slow down,” Andy said.

  She heard a soft grunt behind her and looked back to see Jade holding her head, wincing as she tried to follow along.

  Taking a slow breath, then wincing, Roxanna spoke more slowly and not in her native language. She typically spoke in the common language of the ESS to not mess with the translators at all, but tended to revert when stressed and the translator had little hope of keeping up. “Something can happen to a Selerid when they have a head injury,” she explained, although the concern was still clear in her eyes. “It… It’s like someone flips a switch and turns out…” She took a breath again, her brows knitting as she tried to concentrate enough to explain. “Our empathy goes from input to output, so to speak. You all are going to be feeling what I’m feeling, and more so as time passes.”

  That was not good news…

  Andy looked back at Dan and Jade, and she could see it. Anath’s eyes were tight, but he didn’t look as bad off. Andy felt some of it…but not as much…

  “Arkana blood,” she said as realization dawned. “You’re going to affect Anath and I less than Anallin, Thomas, and Martin.” Now she realized that the anxiety she felt rising in her throat probably wasn’t hers, but she realized she had to think fast. “Alright, Martin, Thomas and Anallin, I think you need to move away from the shuttle until we sort this out. You two try to locate one of the other shuttles and establish what state they’re in.

  “Anath and I will remain here. We’ll take care of the sergeant and also try to repair what shuttle systems we can,” she went on.

  It wasn’t ideal, but it was the best idea she could come up with.

  “I want to stay,” Anallin replied. “With all due respect, Major, I would prefer to remain at the shuttle and guard it while they search and you work.”

  She eyed the Hanaran for a moment, eyes were clicking rapidly. Andy didn’t know if that was a sign of pain or just stress. It wasn’t like Anallin to speak up like this, so she had to consider it important.

  “Alright, Anallin will be stationed outside. Try to keep a little distance, at least. Meanwhile.” She looked at Dan and Jade again. “You two, take whatever you need—whatever you can find—from the shuttle. Return with any news you find, but don’t be longer than an hour. With luck, we’ll get the comms fixed and be able to contact you before then.”

  Still wincing, Dan started to nod, but then stopped. “Understood, sir,” he said, then glanced carefully at Jade. The pair of them gathered some gear, at least what they could find, and made their way out of the shuttle. Anallin grabbed a rifle and then went to stand outside.

  Anath rolled his shoulders, absently rubbing them as he nodded slowly to himself. “I’m going to survey the damage to the outside of the ship and see how bad it is and if anything out there is stopping the systems from working inside.” He offered a small, encouraging smile to Roxanna, then to his sister, before walking out.

  “I’m sure I can help do something,” the Selerid began. She started to get up and Andy gently pushed her back down.

  “Not with that head injury, Sergeant. I don’t know what else is going on in the purple head of yours, and I don’t want to find out. Stay put.”

  “Yes, Major.”

  “Now, what can I do?” Andy asked. “Is there anything that helps?” She pulled her knife from its place on her vest and carefully cut through the strap.

  “Aside from full medical intervention?” The Selerid smiled weakly, wincing as her arm came free and she lowered it to rest on her chest. After a moment, she went on, “Not that I know of. You could sedate me, which should negate the effects—turn it down if not off—but I’m not sure that’s a good idea with a head injury, and not good for long-term.”

  “I guess we’re just going to have to do the best we can,” Andy said, stifling a sigh.

  “As we always do, Major?” Roxanna asked.

  “As we always do.” Andy smiled slightly.

  19

  ANATH KNEW he wasn’t feeling the effects of Roxanna’s “empathic output” as much as the others had been, but it was still with some measure of relief that he walked out of the shuttle and moved himself out of her immediate range. This “output” possibility was a new concept for him so he didn’t know how far it would take to be truly out of range, but he knew that distance made a difference with Selerid empathy.

  “I do not see any sign of the enemy,” Anallin said as Anath walked out.

  The Arkana nodded, then walked slowly around the shuttle. Or limped around the shuttle, really. He wasn’t sure exactly what injuries he’d taken during the fight, the fleeing, and the crash, but he knew he was hurting. Nonetheless, he kept his sidearm in hand and his eyes and ears on alert.

  His quick visual survey showed that the shuttle had taken a beating. He was suddenly amazed that any of them had survived. What had happened was bad enough, but he was still amazed that it wasn’t worse.

  He was also pretty sure that this ship wasn’t getting into the air again, let alone space. It would take a minor miracle to fix any of the systems, but he was going to try.

  As he came around the back to return to the hatch, he actually looked at the ground and saw the long slide path of where the shuttle’s momentum has propelled it forward hundreds of meters until it finally stopped. It made him anxious to see it, realizing that there was a giant ‘come find us here’ sign hovering over that trail, but he knew there was nothing that they could do about it now.

  “It’s bad,” Anallin said laconically as Anath came back around.

  “Yeah, it’s pretty bad,” Anath agreed, moving to a panel and lowering himself painfully to the ground to pull it off—which was easy since it was partially unhinged anyways—and get to work. “Make sure no one kills me while I’m working, alright?”

  “Of course,” the Hanaran replied simply.

  The Arkana appreciated Anallin’s plainspoken ways and just nodded, diving into the guts of the shuttle in the hopes that something could be done.

  INSIDE THE SHUTTLE, Andy pried open one of the consoles that she knew had to do with the communications array. Engineering was far from her best area, but she knew enough to do something. She crawled underneath and squinted in the dim lig
ht, trying to figure out which wires were which.

  “Don’t fall asleep on me out there, Sergeant,” she said as she worked.

  “I’ll do my best, sir,” Roxanna mustered the strength to reply.

  Andy thought fast. She knew there was only so much talking she could focus enough to do, but she could listen. “Tell me about your home,” she said. “I’ve never been to Selerid.”

  Roxanna laughed softly. “I know what you’re doing.”

  “Good. It saves me the time and trouble of explaining. Now talk to me.”

  There was a long moment and the sound of a deep, shaky breath. “Selerid is beautiful. I know most people will say that about their home, but I still believe it. Much of it is underwater, and thus so are most of our cities. Someone who didn’t know could…” She paused, taking a breath. “They could fly over our seas and never know that the populace almost all lived beneath the waters.”

  Since a nod wouldn’t be seen, Andy worked to keep her talking. “Did you grow up in one of these underwater cities?”

  “I did,” she said. “A fairly typical childhood, by our standards. Lots of brothers and sisters, family around all the time. We are a social people.”

  “I guess that fits the empathic thing,” Andy commented. “Being around each other, being around loved ones who are happy to see you, and you feel it all?”

  “Yes,” Roxanna said, her voice weak but warm. “Not that we’re all happy all the time. Sometimes we have fights, but we tend to not be around each other then. No one wants to know exactly what someone else feels when that someone is mad at you.”

  That drew a quiet laugh from the major. “No, I suppose you wouldn’t.”

  The Selerid was quiet for so long that Andy almost prompted her again, but she continued before Andy had to do so. “Our military is small, because most of us can’t handle doing that kind of thing. You know? We are doctors and psychologists, trying to understand and fix people. We are scientists, trying to understand things we can’t get feelings from. Or engineers, to do the same but to fix them.”

  “Fixing and understanding seem to be themes.”

  “They are, yes. It’s core to our people, I suppose.”

  There was another long pause. “So what brought you to join not just the military, but the ESS Marines?” Andy asked. It was a topic they hadn’t really touched on much, since Roxanna usually seemed reluctant.

  She sighed, then groaned a little. “This arm is not good,” she said, her voice audibly tight. “I think I was always just a little different than the rest of the family. I was kind of restless, I guess. Everyone thought I’d go into science, like most of the family, but it sort of just… I don’t know. It bored me. I wanted action, and I had less issue with fighting. I even got into a couple fights in school.”

  “And here I thought you were the least impulsive one in this group,” Andy said with humor, cutting a wire overhead and wrapping it around another. It sparked and burned her finger, but it gave her hope that she was getting somewhere.

  “Perhaps I am, compared to the rest of you,” Roxanna said with a breathy laugh. “I am, however, rather…aggressive by Selerid standards. Not to the point of being a social outcast, but enough that I knew a life on my home world—as much as I loved the place and think it beautiful—was not for me.”

  Andy tied another pair of wires together, bypassing a burnt-out board. “How do your folks feel about that?”

  “They want me to be where I feel best. They don’t understand it themselves, but they know it works for me.”

  “And that’s here with us?”

  Roxanna laughed softly. “Well, I’d rather be not in a crashed shuttle on a hostile moon, but…yes. It’s here with you all.”

  20

  THE FURTHER FROM the shuttle they got, the less their heads hurt.

  Of course, it didn’t spare them from the pain of their own injuries, but at least they didn’t have to feel the ones from Roxanna as well.

  “I don’t even know where to start looking,” Jade commented with a sigh, trying to look everywhere at once. They both knew that it was next to impossible that the Arkana missed the shuttles coming back to the surface in such a spectacularly unpleasant fashion, so it was only a matter of time before they were found.

  “We’ll search systematically and hope we find someone,” Dan said pragmatically. “It’s all that we can do.” He glanced at her, and she glanced back. It was just for a moment, because they had a job to do, but his gaze was warm. Brown eyes peering out from a bruised, bloodied face. “We’ll manage okay. We always do.”

  She tried to return the smile, but knew it was feeble.

  The moment ended and they both turned forward, returning to their search pattern. Dan had a handheld scanner that had survived the crash, but the range was limited. Without the ship’s sensors or communications, it was next to impossible to get an idea of where the other shuttles might be.

  They kept their hour timeframe firmly in mind, but all the while hoped that Andy would get the shuttle’s communications fixed. The earpieces only worked when they were in range of proper communications arrays, such as those in the shuttles or the ship. The fact that they weren’t working meant that there were either no other shuttles in range, or those that were had their communications arrays damaged as well.

  Otherwise, it didn’t bode well for any of them.

  “This way,” Dan directed, bringing them on a new leg of the pattern they were tracing. “I think I’m picking something up on the very edge of this thing’s scanners, but I’m not sure. I think it was damaged in the crash after all, so I’m starting to doubt its reliability.”

  “You mean the one tool we have aside from our own eyes and ears may be damaged beyond trustworthiness?” Jade asked dryly.

  “Pretty much.”

  “Fantastic.”

  Jade had spent much of her early days in the ESS Marines filled with anxiety, second guessing her choices. War changed a person. Jade had to work to remember who that other Jade had been.

  “What does the scanner say?” she asked. “There’s as much chance it’s right as there is that it’s wrong. Is it suggesting friend or foe?”

  He didn’t answer right away, but he did stop to look more closely at it.

  “Well, no familiar signals are pinging from trackers or comm devices, but I don’t know if that’s the scanner screwing up,” he said uncertainly.

  Frustration rose up in Jade over the ‘maybe, maybe not’ answers, but she knew that she wasn’t really upset with him. He couldn’t help that things were damaged after a crash landing. They were both harrowed and injured.

  “We’ll play it safe and act as though they’re hostile,” Dan declared as the senior most in rank of the pair.

  Jade nodded her acknowledgement, and they shifted their search pattern to not encounter the persons on their scanner head-on. They would find out whether they were friend or foe while coming at them from a better direction.

  It was about three minutes more before they learned that the scanner was, indeed, not functioning properly.

  Dan and Jade ran into a search party, who was just as shocked to come upon them as they were to see the Arkana.

  All the two Marines could do was throw themselves back into the trees to find cover, but they knew the odds were against them. There were at least four members of that search party, and they had no idea how many might be nearby to be called in as backup.

  Many trees became casualties of their initial firefight. Both sides took cover behind what trees were available to them, then tried firing at the other. It was mostly a sequence of close calls when coming out to fire off a shot. But Jade was exceedingly aware of the deficit she and Dan were in, especially after all they’d been through.

  Those Arkana, even if they’d been in the compound fight, we’re clearly in better shape.

  Something snapped behind her, and she whirled around to see two Arkana lining up to fire on them from behind. “Dan!” she shouted, t
aking aim at the first one and dropping him with a clear headshot. The second was able to take aim and fire, but Dan had already been in motion, rolling to the ground. The energy bolt had been at a higher setting, or just closer, and it sheared through Dan’s tree.

  The top half toppled over, falling toward Dan, but he managed to roll out of the way and come back up on one knee beside her.

  “Back to back,” he said, out of breath.

  Although they didn’t quite line up with their backs against each other, they did set themselves facing opposite directions to cover both sides as best they could. Dan took on the ones originally in front of them both, with the greater numbers, while Jade made sure that no one else snuck up on them. But Jade didn’t know how much longer the two of them could hold out like this. They were soundly outnumbered. Either their ammunition, strength, or luck would run out at some point if something didn’t change.

  “Jade,” Dan said loudly over the noise and without looking at her. “In case we don’t make it out of this, I just wanted to tell you… I love you.”

  “What? Now?” she cried. “You choose now to say that for the first time?!”

  “Well, I might not get another chance, okay?” he snapped back. “Would you like me to take it back?” Another small concussive sound from his gun firing. The air was full of that sound, between the two of them, as well as the vague electrical sound of energy weapons returning fire.

  “Of course not,” she replied, doing another sweep of their area to see if anyone was coming up behind them. No one was, yet, but she wasn’t sure one of the original two flankers was fully dead. “This is just shitty timing. I love you too.”

  “Good,” Dan replied, and she could hear his smile—even in the middle of all this. “I didn’t want to die without saying it.”

  “We’re not going to die,” Jade declared firmly.

  She saw a pale body coming toward them from her field of fire, trying to be sneaky but she saw him anyways. She aimed and fired, dropping this one since he wasn’t purposely keeping himself in cover.