She pursed her lips slightly. “And what if I’m not?”
“Then you need to lie, Andy,” he said plainly. “Even if you don’t give a damn to take care of yourself, you are their commander, and you need to take care of them. I have been willing to take your place for a while so you could get your act together, but you’ve had enough time. So get it together. Now.”
“You’re getting better at those human expressions,” she said with weak amusement.
Andy knew that he was right. She had known he was right since the moment she’d locked herself in her own room to pickle herself in grief.
“You can do this, little sister,” he said.
“I never really knew what it was like to have family that acted like family,” she said softly, scrubbing her hands over her face.
“Kind of nice, isn’t it?”
“I was about to say it’s a pain in the butt.” She lowered her hands and smiled a little at him. “I’m sorry that I’ve put you in this position.” Already, she could feel the liquor clearing her system. The stuff sold legally wasn’t the strongest out there anyway, which was why she’d had to drink so much of it. But its effects were already fading before the presence of her resolution.
He moved his hands to hers, squeezing them lightly. “We all have to have our moments and our time to recover, so I was glad to help you have that. But that time’s over now.”
“So you mentioned.”
Anath rose to his feet, then offered his hand to her. She looked up at him, knowing this was more of a symbolic moment. He could be dramatic like that. She took his hand and got to her feet anyway.
That was when he hugged her.
“I know it’s been hard,” he said as she hugged him back. “We’ve all been pretty lost since the Star Chaser was destroyed.”
2
“If you don’t stop throwing that thing against the wall, I’m going to shove it down your throat.”
Dan caught the ball as it rebounded back to him, turning his head to look at Jade with an arched brow. Her green eyes met his, and she smiled. It was somewhere between sweet, menacing, and embarrassed…which was a disconcerting combination, to say the least.
“But I’ll do it with love,” she added, holding out her hand.
He tossed the ball to her with a sigh.
“It feels like we’ve been here forever,” Lance Corporal Daniel Thomas said as he swung his feet around to put them on the floor and sit up properly on the ESS-issued, uncomfortable-as-hell couch he’d been laying on. “They might as well just call this a prison sentence if it goes on much longer.”
“I’m fairly sure torture is against the ESS Conventions of War,” Roxanna murmured, shuffling cards in her hand as she sat across the table from Anallin.
“I know, that’s what I’m say—”
“I mean the torture of listening to you whine,” the Selerid interrupted, her purple eyes briefly flickering to him.
His mouth was still wide open around whatever words he had been about to say before he clicked it shut with a scowl, folding his arms across his chest and slouching back into the sofa.
“Dan does raise a good point,” Anallin joined the conversation. “It has been an unreasonable amount of time for us to be sitting at this station waiting reassignment while the ESS is at war. An able-bodied unit should, in theory, have been reassigned almost immediately following the destruction of their vessel.”
It wasn’t that Hanarans were without emotions, but they processed and managed them differently than many other races, humans and Selerids in particular, so the seemingly casual way it had said “destruction of their vessel” sent a shiver down everyone else’s spines.
The worst part was, of course, that Anallin wasn’t actually wrong.
“It’s been almost three weeks,” Jade said quietly. She had a book in her hand—one of the old-fashioned kinds, with paper and a cover and everything—but she clearly wasn’t paying all that much attention to it. She had it lowered to her lap while she looked around at the rest of the group.
Roxanna looked away from her cards to meet Jade’s gaze, struck by how much older the girl looked.
She was still fairly young, by human standards, and certainly the youngest of the squad. When she had been assigned to their team, she had seemed like little more than a child. But the war… Well, it had aged them all. She went from a somewhat timid new recruit to a battle-scarred, cynical Marine.
There were some bright spots, though, Roxanna thought as she looked at Dan and Jade exchanging a silent look. As an empath, she could almost see an aura around the pair. It only grew, as their feelings for one another did. They worked hard to keep it professional, and generally succeeded, but it was hard to keep secrets from empaths and telepaths.
After a moment, Dan rejoined the conversation. “You don’t think they could somehow…blame us for what happened to the ship, do you?”
Roxanna shook her head. “No. We were deployed to the surface, doing our jobs. We had no responsibility for the battles taking place in the space above the planet. It’s probably just…” She sighed and thought. “I think it’s probably them giving us time to recover. Normally, they’d have us swarmed with counselors, but…”
“…the fleet is running low on everyone these days,” Jade finished for her sadly.
“Yeah,” Roxanna agreed, feeling that awkward grief fall over them, like it had done too often.
What do you do when you aren’t used to the fact that you were used for something terrible? They were all numbly accepting of the fact that the Earth Space Service and its allies had taken terrible losses in this war against the seemingly never-ending tide of Arkana, and yet it was still tragic and horrible and sad.
The conflict just made grief…awkward, which was sadly a weight that the Selerid bore more heavily than her non-empathic colleagues and friends.
She took a deep breath and tossed the cards down on the table, since it was clear that they weren’t playing anymore. “Look,” she began, knowing that while her commanding officer was…indisposed, she was the next in command. “I know that this sucks pretty bad. We want to get out there and help our brothers and sisters. No Marine likes being trapped. I’m sure they’ll get us a new assignment soon, and then we’ll get back out there again.”
The three others met her gaze as she turned her purple eyes to each of them in turn, then each one nodded once in agreement.
“Not bad as pep talks go,” Dan said with an echo of the sarcastic smirk he always used to wear. She wished she could see it more often again, but the scars of this conflict rested on all of them.
“In the meantime,” she continued, pushing her chair back from the table so she could get to her feet. “Don’t let yourselves get soft. Watch the drinking.” She looked at Dan, who returned a look of mock innocence. “Keep up with working out, the training, the sparring. Take care of yourselves, so we’re ready at a moment’s notice to ship out and do what Marines do. Got that, soldiers?”
“Yes, Sergeant,” all three said together.
“Oorah,” she said.
“Oorah,” they echoed.
Her pale purple lips smiled slightly, and she nodded once, turning on her heel and heading out the door before she lost herself in front of them.
3
The gymnasium on the Starbase was the best equipped of any gym that Roxanna had been in since she left Selerid. How long ago had that been now? It felt like six or seven lifetimes, at least.
Everything was weighing heavily on the empath. Her own fears, stresses, and negative emotions were hard enough to carry, but it also weakened her natural defenses against what everyone else felt. She had learned over the years that humans were particularly intense in their feelings, and the Marines were primarily made up of humans. It all felt like a huge boulder sitting on her chest while another sat on her back. The poor Selerid’s purple body was being crushed between the two.
That was what brought her here now.
She had
learned when she was young that she could bleed off those excess emotions through physical exertion. It had been part of the reason why she’d gone against the most typical path for her race and left for the ESS Marines instead of staying on her home world.
Wrapping the white tape around her fingers and fists, she pulled on the black gloves, and then sidled up to the heavy bag hanging from the gym ceiling.
Roxanna rolled her shoulders and squared off against her stationary opponent. She had been with the humans and the Marines so long that she almost heard herself called by her new name more often than she’d heard her native name. It was impossible for any other species to pronounce anything in the Selerid language, so she only heard that name when she contacted home.
It had been too long since she had done that. She made a note, as she made her first jab, to call her mother soon.
She had been working the bag for several minutes, the gym otherwise empty at that time, when she heard the swish of the opening doors behind her. She didn’t bother turning around to see who it was, because she could tell by their energy. It came along ahead of him, and it was familiar.
“Hello, Anath,” she said, still without turning around.
“It always creeps me out when you do that,” he said, coming around the bag and holding it for her while she hit.
“I know.”
She lifted her eyes to his and smirked a little, then the expression faded away as she felt the weight on his shoulders. He seemed to read her eyes just as much as she read him, because he nodded.
“Yeah, I just saw my sister.”
Roxanna nodded soberly. “How is she?”
He sighed heavily and shrugged. “She’s a mess, I think is probably the only way I can describe it. She’s still drinking alcohol like it’s water, and she doesn’t want to talk. I know I haven’t known her that long, really, but I just know this isn’t her. She’s been so strong since we came together, and through all this crap. It’s almost frightening to see her break like this.”
“The strongest walls always crack the worst,” Roxanna said, quoting a Selerid proverb.
“I guess so,” he said heavily. “Them just keeping us here like this isn’t helping her.”
Roxanna shook her head, and then hit again. “It’s not helping anyone. The entire platoon is stressed out.” Jab. Jab. Cross. “I don’t suppose you have any idea as to why they are keeping us here?” she asked. “You spent so much time talking to and working with R and D.”
He shrugged. “It’s not like they filled me in on anything. They asked questions about the Arkana ship we captured, and I answered those questions. I guess I offered some advice, but the flow of information was more a one-way street than anything.”
The Selerid snorted. “I suppose it would be too much to hope that the military would be forthcoming and let us know things we need to know.”
“There is no need-to-know for the grunts,” Anath replied bitterly. “It’s just go-where-pointed. Try not to die.” He shook his head a little. “The ESS is better than my father’s monarchy, however. I am grateful to be here rather than under his thumb.”
Sensing the shift in his feelings, Roxanna stopped hitting the bag and let her hands down to her side. She tilted her head, purple eyes peering at him closely. After a moment, he realized the intensity of her stare and met it with his own ice-blue eyes. Then those eyes narrowed.
“Stop that,” he said.
“Stop what?”
“Stop…empathing me.”
Roxanna snorted again. “Stop Arkana’ing me,” she retorted.
He grunted and swung back behind the bag. “You need to hit this thing some more.”
“It sounds like you’re the one who needs to hit it,” she countered, turning away from the bag and walking to the wall. There was a chair there and a bottle sitting on top of it with her water, which she picked up and took a long drink of. She stayed facing the wall, letting him have a moment of apparent privacy, before she heard his long-suffering sigh and listened to him walk up behind her.
Anath moved around her and sat down in the chair, staring up into her mostly neutral expression.
“So what do we do?” he asked. “She might be my sister, but you’ve known her longer.”
“Major Dolan’s biggest virtue is also her greatest flaw,” Roxanna replied with a sad smile. “She is incredibly stubborn. At times, this means amazing feats of mental strength, while at others, it means being incredibly hardheaded.”
He waited for her to say more, but she chose not to. He shook his head. “Was that an actual answer?”
She sat down next to the chair and leaned back against the wall, resting her head against the cool, regulation-gray metal composite. Staring up at the ceiling, she felt some of the weight lifted off her, but there was still a shroud around everything.
“It means we can help her when she lets us,” she replied.
“What if she drinks herself out of the service?” he responded, his tone very worried.
Roxanna sighed. “Then that’s what happens.”
4
This had to be the Arkana home world, but it didn’t look like it usually did.
Normally, Andy appeared either inside the capital city or just outside of it. The gleaming heights of blue and white were visible and within walking distance from wherever the dreams began.
This time she couldn’t see the city anywhere. Instead, she was in the middle of a field. She could see some trees lining the edge of the space, at some distance, but there were no cities in view and no buildings of any kind. There was a faint breeze, but she could neither hear nor see any other living creatures. No humans, or Arkana, or animals.
Everything was black and white and gray. There was no color anywhere.
As she tried to take a step forward, she almost fell on her face. That was when she realized that she was drunk even in her dream. Well, that was new. She stopped and held herself still for a moment, summoning what fortitude she could to keep herself steady as she began walking forward again.
After a few steps, she was feeling a little steadier. She knew she needed to keep moving, because that was always what she did in these dreams. She knew it was a dream, and she’d had so many of them by now. In fact, Andy was getting pretty freaking tired of them. What really was the point? The more she thought about it that way, the angrier she got.
“You have no idea where you’re going, do you?”
Suddenly, there was another being there with her. She immediately knew who it was, of course, because no one else had a self-aware power to invade her dreaming mind this way.
Andy still had no idea how he did this, how it was even possible, but there he was.
“What do you want?” she asked without turning to look at her father.
“That’s a pretty stupid question,” he said plainly. “We have had that discussion over and over and over again. Why even ask?”
“Why even be here?” she retorted. She felt like a petulant teenager, but she couldn’t summon the energy to change her attitude. It was just a dream anyway, right? What was the point?
There was a hand on her shoulder, spinning her around before she even had the chance to realize it was there. Andy opened her mouth to shout or curse, but she didn’t get the chance. A pale fist came flying at her, driving directly into the center of her face. There was the sound of a bone cracking, and as that fist drew back, the snow-white skin was splattered in bright red.
She staggered back, one hand reflexively going to hold her broken nose while the other came up in a defensive position. Her arm and wrist positioning were weak, however, and easily gotten around by a wide swing. That fist came in at the side of her head, making stars explode behind her eyes.
That was enough to send her off her feet, and she hit the ground hard. Her head bounced off the grass-covered dirt, and a pained noise slipped out between her clenched teeth.
She pulled her limbs in just in time to protect herself from the white boot swinging tow
ard her. The foot connected with such force that it sent her rolling, flopping over the grass to a rough stop several moments later. There was a sharp pain in the side of her abdomen when she took a breath, and she was sure a rib had just been broken.
Drawing her arms underneath her, she tried to get up on all-fours so she could push herself to her feet.
Before she could do that, however, the hard toe of the pale boot came for her again. It caught her in the stomach as she was pushing up to her hands and knees. All the air rushed out of her lungs in a pained wheeze, and suddenly she was on her back again.
The sky overhead was a snowy sort of gray. Before that boot cracked another rib, she inanely wondered if the sky over the real Arkana home world was really gray, or if that was just here in the dream—
Andy screamed as more ribs cracked, and she felt the burning sensation spread over her side. She feebly curled in on herself, just trying to not be hurt any more than she already was, but she knew that she couldn’t get up. She couldn’t fight him off this time. She wasn’t even sure she wanted to…
“You’re broken,” he said from above her. She didn’t bother looking up at him. He stopped hurting her for the moment, just long enough to spit on her. She felt it splatter against the side of her head as she curved her arms around herself. “Pathetic.”
He reached down, sliding one ridiculously strong hand between her arms and grabbing her throat. Somehow, he managed to dead-lift her straight up from the ground until her dark eyes were even with his pale ones. He stared angrily into her, and she wondered just what he was angry at.
That hand started squeezing, and a world that was already black and white started getting darker…
Andy woke with a start.
Sitting straight up suddenly in bed, she clutched her throat and gasped air so deeply and so quickly that she made herself sick. It took a concentrated effort to slow her breathing, which was when she realized that she wasn’t even in her bed. She had passed out while sitting on the floor…and she couldn’t remember how she had even ended up on the floor. It wasn’t too hard to guess that the empty bottles all around her probably had something to do with it, though.
World Breaker Boxed Set (ESS Space Marines Omnibus Book 3) Page 17
