Earth Space Service Space Marines Boxed Set

by James David Victor

  Moving to the other console, Jade nodded and looked at the screens. She found the interrogation room and then followed the schematic down three decks to the storage rooms. "That would be deck thirteen," she said. "If he went this way from the interrogation room, then section seven-b would be closest. Eight-c if he went the other way. That's supposing he took an engineering lift rather than one of the main elevators."

  He put his hand on the back of her seat and leaned down to look at the screen. "That's a good bet," he agreed. "Less likely to run into someone who'll ask questions. Unless this guy got an engineer's uniform, his having that cart would be suspicious."

  "It would," she agreed. "But if he acted like he was supposed to be there, no one would have challenged him either way. You know how they say fake it until you make it? That seems to work on the people around you as well."

  "I didn't pay much attention to psychology," he admitted with a wry smile. "Although I would have had to if I'd stayed in school on the criminal justice track. Being able to create a mental profile of a suspect can be useful."

  "I'm not sure much of a profile can be built here," Jade said sadly. "Everyone is anti-Arkana right now, and that could have put our boss in the crosshairs of...almost anyone."

  16

  0900 Hours

  "Captain, you should really get some sleep."

  Wallace lifted his head and turned it just enough to look at his first officer, whose green eyes were looking at him with undisguised concern. For the past few minutes, he had been leaning his head against his hands to let his brain catch up with everything. Fatigue was weighing heavily on him since he hadn't slept all night, and the emotional cost was high.

  "When Major Dolan is home, Commander," he said tiredly. "We won't abandon her."

  "Sir, no one is abandoning her," Shailain pressed. "But you can't help her if you push yourself to exhaustion and end up in sickbay."

  That had a certain logic to it, but he wasn't ready to throw in the towel just yet.

  He straightened his back and shook his head. "Not just yet," he said. "Soon, I imagine, but not yet. For now, let's get back to working on this." He pulled up a few things on his screen while he verbally went over what they knew so far. "Whoever took her had to know she had been arrested in the first place."

  "We've already confirmed with base security that they had not been made aware of the arrest until after it happened," Shailain supplied. "Neither did base command. That means only intel officers were aware, be they ones who are stationed here or perhaps on a ship docked here."

  "That's a good point, Commander," he said. "Pull up a manifest of ships docked here since last night. Highlight any that departed in the meantime, just in case."

  She nodded and turned to her console.

  "Sergeant Roxanna reported that they found three different DNA signatures in the interrogation room," Wallace went on. "One of them belonged to a file that once existed in the database but has been removed. Private Martin was at least able to confirm it was also in databases outside Eclipse.”

  "Including one that was classified."

  "Precisely. That further suggests an intel officer. So for now, let's keep our scope to that and hope we hit on something likely."

  There were several moments of silence before Shailain said, "All right. I have the list of ships and I am happy to report that none have departed, unless there was an unregistered ship hanging around which is unlikely."

  That wasn't entirely impossible, although it was improbable. "Contact base operations and ask them to review outer sensor files to see if there were any ships coming or going from the station in the past twenty-four hours that somehow got under the radar because someone wasn't watching a feed when they were supposed to be." He paused. "And if that's the case, then please kindly kick that person's ass."

  Shailain's green brow-ridges rose as she looked over at him, but she didn't chastise him for it like she might have on another day. Instead, she was tapping commands into her console and then she nodded. "Message sent to operations. If they don't reply in fifteen minutes, I'll call them again."

  Neither of them had time to be patient.

  Wallace reviewed the list of ships, then turned to his console and began pulling up rosters of intel officers stationed on the base as well as some of the ships docked. His captain's code was required to access them, but he didn't hesitate to look. Only three of the ships posted had any intel on board, and most of them were one or two-man departments. The base itself had a fully staffed office, which meant about eight people.

  "Let's start with people who'd have the power to erase their own file," Wallace said, thinking out loud. "They may have had someone else who could do it for them, but let's start there."

  "From the account of Fitzwallace, as little as it was, it sounded like a human male. So we should start with them."

  Wallace nodded and added a filter to his search. He pulled up only the files of human male intel officers. Of the twelve total from all the rosters, seven were human males. That was a good start. He started pulling them up, one by one, and reading the highlights of their personal histories for anything that stood out.

  By the time he was done, he had narrowed it down to the three most likely suspects.

  "These three," he explained to Shailain, "have all lost loved ones in the war." He sighed at the senselessness of it all. "Commander Gregory March lost his brother. Captain Edward Myers lost his wife. Commander Zachariah Kline lost his parents."

  "All of them pretty close losses," Shailain said sadly. "Any one of them could go a long way to make someone pretty angry."

  "Yes," he agreed. "And all with rank and position to erase a file."

  Shailain frowned. "But you were just able to access their files, sir," she pointed out.

  Wallace nodded slowly. "Yes, but files are often divided." He went into every file and tried to access the medical information, which would show up with the DNA records. The regular personnel file didn't contain that information.

  He was able to access Kline's medical file, as well as the record for Myers. He was beginning to think maybe this was a dead end when he went to open the medical file for Commander Gregory March ...

  ... and nothing.

  "Commander, I think we may have found our man," he said, trying to temper his enthusiasm even as his exhaustion spent more time trying to encourage it.

  She got up and came over to stand behind him so she could view his console. He returned to the main personnel file, which showed a picture of him. Wallace thought he looked rather unremarkable, all things considered, with blue eyes and dark blonde hair. At first glance, he didn't look like the sort of man to orchestrate a kidnapping and delete records to avoid being caught, but you never could tell about a person, could you?

  "Sir, can you access the medical file again?" Shailain asked.

  He nodded and went to do so, receiving the same result.

  "Now can you access any timestamps?" she asked. "I'm hoping the code of a captain finds more than Jade's could. I have an idea." She smiled faintly as he opened the tracking record for it.

  "What's your idea?" he asked as the information scrolled up.

  "When was the record removed, sir?"

  He nodded with understanding. That wouldn't necessarily be bullet-proof, but it would go a long way depending on the answer.

  Once the information filled in, he scrolled down for the timestamps of changes made and there it was.

  The DNA file of Commander Gregory March had been removed two hours after Andrea Dolan had been arrested.

  17

  0915 Hours

  Fortunately, her captor wasn't there when she woke up from the dream. She felt a residual strangeness from it that followed her into consciousness. Even though she knew it was just a dream, it still left her with an unpleasant, lingering feeling.

  Andy didn't hear anyone coming, so she turned to her ropes while she had the time.

  She wiggled her wrists and found some slack, bu
t not enough to pull her wrist out without doing some kind of damage to herself. Since she wasn't quite at that point, she reached down to her ankles. Her hands had been tied in front of her—further evidence that her abductor was an amateur—and worked at the knot in that binding.

  Finding the knot, she was able to wiggle her fingers around it and began to tug at it. It wasn't easy with her wrists pressed against each other, but she grit her teeth in concentration as she managed to pull the knot apart little by little. She just kept at it until the thing came open and she was able to pull the ends out so she was no longer bound.

  Of course, she heard him coming right then.

  Choking on a curse, she leaned back against the wall and bent her knees to bring her ankles underneath her—at least as much as she was able to—so the lack of the knot was hidden from his view. She pretended to be asleep as she listened to him approach, then a slight creak from the crate told her he'd sat down again.

  She opened her eyes slowly and lowered her head, looking at him. Wherever he had gone or whatever he had done, he looked calm again. That was either good news for her or bad news; she didn't know yet.

  "How are you feeling?" he asked.

  Her brows rose slightly. Ah, he was already going to try to win her to his side. Of course, he hadn't put in nearly enough effort to make it work against her. The playbook to break a mind was torment followed by random acts of kindness. The torment had not been considerable, especially for a Marine, so this little act of consideration didn't penetrate.

  She stared at him for a moment longer. "I'm fine. Thank you," she replied flatly.

  He held up a bottle. "Thirsty?"

  Andy was thirsty. She hadn't had anything to drink in nearly twelve hours, and her drugged moments of unconsciousness didn't seem to equal "sleep" to her body. No water, no food, no sleep, and drugs. Her body was on the verge of total rebellion, but she had to ignore it.

  Of course, she had no reason to think this water he offered wasn't drugged. As much as she might want a drink, she smiled faintly. "No. Thank you."

  Her refusal seemed to surprise him. Could he really be an intel officer? Had he failed every course? Or was this some sort of mental breakdown and she was looking at a man no longer in charge of his full faculties? She didn't have enough evidence to judge, but it was all very strange.

  "Oh, all right," he said, taking a drink from the bottle and then setting it down.

  That seemed to suggest it wasn't drugged and she hated herself for saying no, but she knew it had been the smart choice. It still wasn't proof. She would just have to hold out.

  Andy was sure her squad was coming to get her. They would tear apart the station if they had to. All she had to do was hold out until they found her. Of course, with Mr. Unpredictable here, that might be easier said than done.

  "If we aren't going to do niceties, then down to business," he said. "Why would you turn against your own people?"

  Given who he was, it would suggest he meant against humanity. He thought she was a traitor. She had turned against her own people, just not the human ones. So what was he really asking?

  "I turned against the Arkana because I don't believe what they believe," she answered the question she wanted him to ask, hoping to take some of the power from this conversation back. "They believe they are superior, even to their creators. They are xenophobes who believe that humanity, and thus the Arkana, should not mix with any other race in any other way. I believe that the unity and diversity of the ESS is what makes it strong; it's what makes it great. The Arkana would see that burned from our stars, and I won't have it."

  When she stopped talking, he just stared at her.

  She stared right back.

  "That's...not what I meant," he finally said. "I meant why would you turn against humanity and the ESS and give information about your ship's mission to the Arkana?"

  "I wouldn't." The reply was quick and firm. "I didn't."

  For a moment she thought maybe he believed her, but then that other look came back into his eyes and he shook his head forcefully. "You're the only one who could have," he said. "Your brother was too regulated on your ship and being watched too closely from the outside, so there's no way he could have done it. You, on the other hand, are senior staff on an ESS vessel and have an in with the Marine Corps. You could have done it. No one else on that ship had a motive."

  She tilted her head slightly. "I won't deny that I could have, but could does not automatically mean I did. I could paint my face green and tell everyone I'm a stalk of broccoli, but that doesn't mean I would."

  And then he did something that surprised her even more—he laughed. It was a single, short almost bark-like sound, but it was a laugh before he caught himself and schooled his face back to its calm. "Your flippancy will not distract from the important issue at hand."

  "That's not what I was doing," she said. "I was simply providing an example."

  It was back to the staring game for a while.

  "You're a smart woman," he finally said. "For a Marine."

  "I'm not saying thank you," she replied, her eye twitching a little. It was the nicest thing she could form to come out of her mouth in response to that. There was no option not to reply, so she had to at least minimize the damage of whatever she did say.

  "But the logic still holds," he went on. "Someone must have given information to the enemy about the Star Chaser's mission, otherwise they would not have known to go after it in such force when they did. They knew the ambassador was on board and wanted to stop your ship from getting to the rendezvous."

  "The logic does not hold," she retorted. "The Arkana have attacked ships in numbers of two, three, and even four without there being some important mission. It's just a matter of how many of their ships they have in the area when their sensors pick up on an ESS vessel. It seems suspicious that they attacked us like they did when we were on that mission, but the nature of the attack was not an anomaly. It was a common part of their tactics that just happened to coincide with our sensitive mission.”

  His dark brows knit. "I don't believe in coincidence."

  She smirked. "That's your problem."

  The man somehow managed to look even more disconcerted by her and stood up suddenly, stalking off.

  Watching him go to the end of the room, where there seemed to be a door, she knew this was her moment. She might not get another. So, she slid her legs out from under her as soon as he was through the door and pulled off the rope.

  18

  0920 Hours

  Once the rope was unwound from around her, she tossed it aside. She realized the rope itself had been wrapped somewhat tightly as she felt full blood flow return to her feet and make them tingle a little. Or maybe that was just how she had been sitting and for how long, plus the drugs still in her system.

  Andy had no idea how much time she had, so she knew she had to move quickly. She braced her still-bound hands against the floor and pushed herself up. Once she was upright, she weaved unsteadily and had to lean her shoulder against the wall until the world stopped swimming laps around her.

  Pushing down the nausea, she looked both ways down the long rectangular room.

  She knew there was a door at that end because she had seen her captor go in and out of it, but that also meant she was most likely to run into him if she used it. This looked like a storage room. and she knew that most had two doors. It would be her luck, on this day, to find a storage space that didn't, but she had to try. Hopefully there would be a second door and that second door would lead her to a space that found her less likely to be found by him before she could get back to her people.

  She pushed herself away from the wall and started hobbling down the room, moving toward the end opposite to where he'd exited.

  Nearly stumbling more than once, she cursed the feebleness of her body in that moment. She was a Marine and a commander of them, besides. Her body was an important part of doing her duty, and now it felt like it was betraying her. She kne
w it wasn't her body's fault or her fault in any way...but she was still frustrated.

  And, just her luck ...

  She heard the door open behind her. Andy didn't want to risk a glance over her shoulder because it would waste time and might very well make her fall over. If she did, she wasn't sure how well she would be able to get back up again. All she could do was try to move quicker, which she did. She got several steps forward before his voice echoed through the small room.

  "Get back here!" he shouted.

  She almost wanted to shout back and ask what the hell he was thinking. Did he really believe that would work? That she would just turn around and head back? She hadn't forgotten about the gun he had when he'd first come for her, but she hadn't seen it since then and even if he had it, she would rather die trying to escape than live by surrender.

  Behind her, she heard his heavy boots pounding against the metal floor as she stumbled and weaved along.

  Her eyes desperately roamed the walls ahead of her, but the light was even dimmer in this part of the room and she could barely make out anything. She thought she could make out a dark indentation, a line, running down one of the walls that suggested there might be a door set into it and she could only hope there was.

  Andy reached the wall before he reached her. She felt everywhere with her bound hands, looking for a button but not finding anything.

  She heard his footsteps nearly upon her as well as his labored breathing almost down her neck, and she thrust herself against the wall, using it to roll to one side just as his fist came flying at where her head had just been. His fist ended up in the metal. There was a cracking noise, from hand or wall she wasn't sure, and he cursed loudly.

  As he staggered back, shaking out his pained hand, she used his distraction to start running in the other direction. She knew there was a door there if she could just get to it! But her gait was still imbalanced, and she wasn't very fast. It was all she could do to run and not fall flat on her face.