Andy was counting on that.
She gestured again and they picked their targets. Neither of them were the sort of crack shot that Anallin was, but they held their own. Their first two shots took out the Arkana closest to their positions. Neither had the chance to make any noise before they hit the ground, and the Marines were already aiming their second shots.
They got those shots off, but the soldiers had seen their fellows go down and were more alert. One went down clean, but the other got off a shot of its own. The soldier hit the ground, but was not out of the fight yet. By now, the other two were pushing themselves against the tank, trying to use it for cover to return fire. The greenery that Andy and the others were using did just enough to keep them from being sure of just where they were firing.
Two shots blew past Andy’s side, burning away some of their covering foliage. She cursed softly and shifted over a little, but not so much to risk putting Roxanna or Jade accidentally into her field of fire.
Roxanna took another shot and put out the one on the ground before it could make any more noise.
Despite all of the sound that had been made so far, Andy didn’t see any reinforcements returning. The firefight taking place on the other side of the tank was still providing sufficient cover to keep their work beyond notice for the moment. So, there was that at least, and Andy meant to make the most of it.
She lined up her next shot toward the closest Arkana, trying to use part of the protruding armor of the tank to hide behind but it wasn’t nearly of a size to do any real concealing. What it did manage to do was make her shot a little more difficult, but Andy wasted no time in lining it up and pulling the trigger.
The bullet ricocheted off the tank and Andy cursed inwardly again. She adjusted her aim and again pulled the trigger, putting as little time between the two shots as humanly possible. This shot hit its mark and the Arkana soldier went down. The last one saw the other hit the dirt and started to run, heading around the back of the tank to alert the others to the trouble.
He didn’t make it.
14
Time was limited.
The three Marines had taken down the six remaining Arkana soldiers, but they all knew that this reprieve wasn’t going to last long. Eventually, the others would figure out something was wrong and would come back, or reinforcements that were held in reserve would decide to come check on things. At least it seemed that none of them had heard any of the noise.
Andy took a moment to scan everything before them, but she didn’t see anyone coming from either side.
She nodded and the three moved forward. They scanned everywhere around them as they advanced, just in case there were any surprise visitors, and they kept as low as they could while they hurried. The terrain they had to cross was more open, with no decorative foliage, and it made her anxious to be out in the open so much.
They reached the tank and stepped around the bodies, watching them warily to make sure that none were about to reach out and grab one of their ankles.
“Martin, you need to get in there and figure out how to disable it,” Andy said in a loud whisper, although the end of her words were drowned out when the tank fired again. “I’m guessing there’s a pilot in there. You’ll have to neutralize him and then figure out the controls.” Her ears were ringing slightly from being so close to the tank when it fired. She wondered how the Arkana kept from being deafened entirely.
“Yes, Major,” Jade said with a nervous nod.
“You can do this,” Andy reassured her. “Just move quickly. I don’t know how much time we’ll have before they come back here. We need that thing out of commission before it pulls the buildings down on our heads.”
Jade nodded again shakily. She stared at the ladder on the side of the tank before slinging her rifle back and pulling her sidearm, knowing that the inside of the tank was not likely to be spacious enough to fire a rifle.
Andy wondered just how it was that the tank driver hadn’t known there was something amiss right outside its door, quite literally, but it had to be just as loud inside that thing as it was outside. And undoubtedly, it was more focused on the enemy in front of it, rather than trying to keep an eye to either side. The soldiers surrounding it were supposed to be in charge of that.
Roxanna kept a watch out while Andy split her gaze between their surroundings and watching Jade go up the ladder. Anxiety that she refused to acknowledge gathered in the pit of her stomach, hoping that the young Marine could shoot the driver before the driver—or anyone else that might be in there—could get her.
It was yet one more calculated risk, but she knew it had to be taken.
Jade reached the top and put one hand on the handle of the hatch, keeping low, her other hand holding her sidearm at the ready. She glanced down at Andy and nodded once, as if gathering her courage and focus. Andy returned the nod, trying to convey both, and then Jade turned back to the door. She pulled it open and wasted no time dropping inside. Not just to get the drop on the driver, but to not give the ground troops on the other side enough of a chance to see her.
There was a long moment of silence before Andy heard the echo of a gunshot.
That was Jade’s weapon, she could be sure of that much since it was clearly a projectile rather than an energy discharge. There was a risk that the Arkana had overpowered Jade and taken her weapon, but she knew it was unlikely. Jade was young, but no less trained than any of the others.
After a painful, anxious moment, Jade used her communicator to contact Andy.
“Vehicle secure,” she replied in a low voice. Already, Andy could hear beeps and clicks and other technological sounds in the background. That was all Jade said before she closed the channel, because Andy knew that she had to focus. She had to figure out alien technology on a very short timetable.
“How much longer can they keep up that barrage?” Roxanna asked, just loud enough to be heard but pitched low enough to be no more than that. Her skin swirled at a hyper rate, demonstrating the agitation that she was too trained to let out otherwise.
“Hopefully, long enough,” Andy replied, knowing that her answer wasn’t really an answer, but it was the best one she had.
They waited in impatient silence after that. Andy could envision Jade inside the tank, hitting buttons and reading screens. The young woman had a habit of sticking out her tongue when she focused on technological matters, which received no end of teasing among the squad, but Andy could easily imagine that she was doing it just then. Had the situation not been so tense, Andy just might have smiled thinking about it, and about how well she’d gotten to know her people.
She could hear the focused fire on the other side starting to slow down, and she felt her muscles tense further. Andy wanted to know what had happened to make the change, but she knew she had to hold off on finding out. She didn’t want to call while they were busy laying down fire, and she wasn’t going to come out of their hiding space enough to get a visual.
As it always seemed to be, it was just when Andy was starting to think she needed to change her plan that everything fell into place.
Jade climbed down the ladder, having managed to exit the top hatch without either of them having heard her. She had her weapon holstered and moved to the ground both cautiously and quickly along the gleaming white vehicle.
“The tank is out of commission, Major,” she reported with a sharp nod. “I made sure that even if they put another driver in there, they won’t be able to get it going again. At least I think it is.”
Andy took a moment to look her over. Adrenaline had her emerald green eyes sparkling, and the major could see where blood from the driver had spattered back on her to be wiped off with her gloved hand. She looked anxious in the eyes, but the rest of her was solid and alert.
“Good work, Martin,” Andy said.
Jade smiled slightly. Andy looked to Roxanna, who nodded back at her. They were done and ready to go.
“We have to get back to the line before they realize that th
eir big gun has gone quiet,” Andy ordered, nodding for the three of them to start moving. “I don’t know about you, but I don’t want to be here when they figure that one out.”
15
The three Marines got back to their original positions without being spotted by the enemy. They shifted through the foliage and traced along the line of the building until they got back to where Dan and Anallin were holding things down.
Andy first noticed that the Hanaran was no longer in the tree.
“Report,” she called as she returned to the line of fire, adding her weapon to the still steady barrage.
“Fell out of the tree, Major,” Anallin replied without looking away from the enemy targets.
“Got shot out of the tree, more like it,” Dan supplied, standing on Anallin’s other side. “I did a quick field exam but didn’t see any serious injuries.”
“I’m fine,” the Hanaran declared. If Andy didn’t know better, she almost would have said that the tone was petulant...but petulance wasn’t usually in the Hanaran makeup. Unless Anallin really had been spending too much time around humans. “I can still hold the line, Sir.”
“I have no doubt that you can,” Andy replied sincerely.
They had to reach the end of enemy soldiers at some point, didn’t they? Without the tank to provide any sort of cover fire, they were out in the open while the Marines had the trees and buildings to try to keep themselves concealed. They had to run out of soldiers at some point.
Andy ordered that they ease up on their firing, to conserve energy and ammunition while they no longer needed to be a distraction.
It wasn’t much longer, however, until the Arkana picked up on the fact that the tank wasn’t firing anymore. Although it surprised Andy that it seemingly took them as long as it did. Their weapon fire slowed and even from where they were, Andy thought she could hear shouting from the enemy. The reduced weapons fire made it easier to hear. She couldn’t make out the words themselves, but they were clearly agitated.
“I think they found my handiwork, Sir,” Jade supplied with a small smile. It wasn’t an expression with any great amount of mirth, but still, her grace under fire was improving.
“I think they have, Martin,” Andy had to agree. “Hold fire, but keep your weapons ready.”
They stopped firing while they watched across the field, waiting to see what the Arkana would do. She could see two of them standing on top of the tank, looking highly agitated. She was about to order the Marines to open fire again and take out the last of them when the two on top jumped to the ground.
It was just a moment before the remaining group had come together and then turned their attention back on the Marines.
However, instead of opening up weapons fire again, the remaining Arkana straight out charged. Without having to keep it slow in order to remain alongside the tank, they just tore straight off and ran at the Marines.
“Fire,” Andy ordered.
They took out a few before the Arkana reached the line, but their long, lithe bodies were remarkably fast when they chose to be and they covered the ground quickly. Also, moving at that speed made them hard targets to hit. As they neared, Anallin was able to take down two more but that still left just over half a dozen for the Marines to deal with on a hand-to-hand basis, now that they were too close for the long-range weapons.
Jade managed to pull her sidearm again and use that, but Dan, Andy and Roxanna were caught in close-quarter combat. They were the front of the line, and Anallin shifted behind them. Andy couldn’t watch everything, but she knew the Hanaran would move around until it could get better shots and take them out quickly.
Andy and the others let the fight shift them back enough to use their surroundings to prevent any Arkana from getting around and flanking them.
Andy ducked and let a wild swing fly over her head, coming up with her fist leading the way into an Arkana soldier’s gut. The other woman grunted and coughed once, but it wasn’t as effective as it might have been once because the Arkana had started wearing a type of armor. It wasn’t enough to stop the Marines’ bullets, but it did help in other types of combat against ESS Marines.
Upright again, Andy slammed her head forward and broke the alien’s nose. She cried out in shock and instinctively held a hand to the spurt of blood that was now the center of her face. Andy grabbed the front of her uniform, and drove a knee up into the same spot she had hit just seconds before. Even with the armor, it was still tender and likely bruised, so a second shot—especially from something hard like a knee—was even more painful.
Coughing and sputtering, the Arkana tore herself out of Andy’s grip. She looked like she was about to throw herself bodily onto the major, but before she could see this plan through, she suddenly dropped.
Andy looked quickly to the side and saw Anallin, rifle aimed at the now crumpled body. She nodded her thanks before turning back to the fight.
She saw two coming at Roxanna from either side, and she dove in. She grabbed one by the back of its hair and yanked, sending it wildly off balance and stumbling backwards. She lifted a fist to hit it in the face, but the alien managed to twist away and get out of her grip. The silky white hair that had been in the ponytail slipped through her fingers, leaving nothing but a few strands in her otherwise empty hand.
Andy was forced to jump back a couple of steps as the enemy soldier lunged for her, apparently ready to all-out brawl. He had his hands up like an ancient Earth boxer and leaned back slightly in a defensive posture.
“Do you guys just materialize out of thin air?” she asked with no small amount of annoyance for the fact that they weren’t done with them yet. She had her hands up, ready to defend as well.
He shifted easily from defense to offense, lunging forward just enough to take a swing at her, which she deftly avoided by hitting his incoming hand with her own and sending it off course. This slipped her into his guard so she could take a hit of her own, but hers landed because she was closer than he’d been.
The Arkana tried to wrap his arms around her, grab her in a sort of bear hug and pin her arms to her sides, but she brought her knee up too fast and caught him right between the legs.
All the air rushed out of his lungs and he staggered back. A gunshot pierced the air not far from her, though it wasn’t destined for this soldier. He was half bent over, lurching to one side as he tried to right himself and come back for her. She had already grabbed her rifle and used the butt to drive into the back of his head.
He fell to the ground and didn’t move again.
“Major!” Roxanna called.
Andy spun around in time to see an Arkana soldier breach their line and take off down the street that had been behind them. Anallin got off a pair of shots, but the soldier was already around a corner and onto another street.
16
Instead of pursuing a solitary enemy soldier on the loose, Andy immediately opened a channel to the leader of Theta Squad. Theta had been given a more mobile assignment as a secondary line of defense, for situations just like these.
“Dolan to Theta Squad Leader,” she called, pressing the button on her earpiece. “There is a single runner who got through Alpha Squad position, heading east on the interior streets.”
“Acknowledged, Major. We’ll find him.”
The channel closed, and she knew that she would just have to trust that Theta Squad would do its job. And she did. For now, she had a lull in the fight at her position and her own squad to take care of.
Ahead of them, the sabotaged tank remained stuck in the dirt. Pale white bodies lie all around it. Those that had come upon them near the buildings were either laying on the ground or being dragged into a pile and bound as prisoners of war. Like all those caught before, except for one, Andy had little hope that they would survive to be questioned or held, but time would tell. It was not their job, morally or professionally, to execute people once they were defeated.
Anallin was sitting down on a large piece of debris, inspecting
wounds where the body armor hadn’t provided full protection. The armor itself looked to have taken one hell of a hit.
“Damn, kid,” Andy said. “Just how hard did you get shot out of that tree?”
“Kid?” Anallin replied, looking up with erratic eye-clicks.
“Never mind,” she said with a faint laugh, kneeling in front of the Hanaran and pulling out the small med-kit that she carried in the cargo pocket of her uniform pants. There wasn’t much to it, since there wasn’t a lot of room, but Andy had enough to get things started. “Now that your body is calmed down from the fury of battle, do you feel any more serious injuries?”
Anallin clicked. “No, Sir. All my limbs are functioning and I don’t feel any wounds losing blood at a significant rate.”
Andy nodded as she used a disinfecting sealant on the cuts that she could see, the Hanaran cooperatively holding out each arm in turn. “Need to keep all of us in our best shape, right?”
“Human colloquialisms still sometimes confound me,” Anallin admitted. “How could I be in any other shape so quickly?”
“I’ll re-phrase,” Andy said with amusement. Anallin seemed to lose grasp on human idioms and concepts when stressed or distracted. “We want to keep all soldiers in the best state of health possible.”
The Hanaran inclined its head. “Yes, Sir,” Anallin agreed, holding out the other arm.
From behind her, she heard, “Is there a line for medical care?”
Andy glanced over her shoulder to see Roxanna with her uniform sliced open, with a long, thin gash uncomfortably close to her neck.
“What happened?” the major asked.
“One of them had a knife and got in too close,” the Selerid answered, almost with embarrassment. “I know, Sir. I’m lucky that I didn’t get my throat cut.”
Earth Space Service Space Marines Boxed Set Page 19
