“You would be correct about that, but the Arkana aren’t like other alien races,” she said. “We aren’t.”
Andy’s brows knit slightly. “What do you mean?”
Shakti paced slowly in front of the captain’s chair for a moment, then shrugged again and waved her hand. She smiled that infuriating smile again. “I suppose you have the right to know what you’re moving into,” she declared, then waved again, this time at the others. “And you as well, since soon everyone will know.
“During the twenty-second century on Earth, humans were finding more and more contacts with alien species,” she went on, sounding like a professor as she sat in the captain’s chair again. “Some were concerned about this. Everything seemed friendly enough—peaceful—but who knew if it would last? They were scared, and they wanted to be prepared.
“They turned to genetic engineering. They wanted a good defense. The end result was a genetically engineered being. They could not change those who were already grown, however; the DNA manipulation had to be conducted at the earliest levels of conception. There were countless failures, but eventually they did. They created a new species. The beings were, basically, human, but they were resistant to all manners of alien abilities. This new race was able to develop a resistance to all the abilities they had encountered.
“As things happen, though, this new race of beings was never revealed to the general public nor turned loose. They ended up taking to space themselves, out to some far reaches, but they never lost their original goals and they modified themselves for every new species they came across. They increased and improved themselves and their resistance.”
Shakti smiled and held out her hands. “Meet the Arkana. Us. We are the future of the human race. We are ultimately still human, deep down, but better. Superior in every way.”
Andy was genuinely shocked for several long moments. It answered a lot of questions, though.
The Arkana woman leaned forward and the gleam in her eye sent a shiver down Andy’s spine. All of the air seemed to be sucked out of the room.
“We’re going home, Andrea Dolan,” Shakti whispered just loud enough for the sergeant to hear her. “We are finally returning to Earth, and making humanity the dominant species it was always meant to be. We are going to achieve the goals set for us by our creators.”
Things exploded in Andy’s mind then.
“You’re why the Colirnoid were moving out of their territory for the first time in ages, and why the Kriori are building an army,” she said before she could stop herself. They were events that seemed disconnected before, but now they made sense. Now it all made sense, and the implications were staggering.
“Yes,” Shakti said with a hint of pride. “They’re running scared, and they should be. They cannot defeat us. Every time they try, we just make ourselves better.”
No other race would be safe, Andy realized. The Arkana wouldn’t care about the ESS, except for the humans within it. And would they even care about the humans? The people of the ESS worked with and aligned with all manner of fellow species.
The Arkana weren’t built to tolerate that.
That had to be stopped.
“I know your father, Andy,” Shakti went on smugly. “Not the smartest of men, I’ll admit, but a good soldier. You’ll meet him soon.”
“I guess I will,” Andy said softly.
“Dolan,” Captain Wallace said, almost pained, like he thought she was turning on them and about to go with the Arkana. And why shouldn’t she? This woman was offering her the father that she had never known, and the only parent—the only blood family—that was still alive.
She turned her head as far as it would go, looking at the captain and turning her face from Shakti. A tiny smile curved her lips and she winked a little, then she turned back to Shakti.
The Arkana approached Andy, smiling with victory and welcome. “I’m so glad that you decided to join us,” she said. “Everyone does once they know of their true origins.”
Andy stared at her for a long moment.
The ship’s communication system chirped.
“Knock, knock,” Atad said.
Andy smiled.
The doors on either side of the bridge slid open.
Chapter 13
The Arkana with guns all turned toward the doors, but energy blasts from their own weapons and bullets from the guns were streaming across the bridge faster than they could react. Shakti looked to one side but turned fast to glare at Andy, realizing that it had been an act.
“Thanks, but no thanks,” Andy said simply and surged forward, jamming a fist hard into Shakti’s solar plexus and folding her in half with a harsh, loud cough. Andy gripped her hands together and clubbed the woman on the back of the head, sending her to the ground. “This is my home, and you’re not going to take it from me!” she shouted, letting her anger come out.
Shakti was not yet unconscious and rolled over just as Andy dove for her. The Arkana lashed out with her own foot, glancing Andy’s hip. The marine hopped back and Shakti got to her feet, but the time it took to get her there let Andy drive in again. She sent a hard right hook into the pale woman’s jaw, snapping her head to the side before a left hook snapped her head the other way.
“You are a fool!” Shakti spat blood on the deck plates as she came back with a hit of her own, splitting Andy’s cheek open. “You will go down with all the rest of them and will know what a mistake you have made! We are your family! Blood to blood.”
“No!” Andy snapped a punch into the woman’s chest, then an uppercut broke the Arkana’s nose. “These people are my family.” Hit. “This is my home.” Hit. “And I’m not going to let any xenophobic snowflakes take it away!” She grabbed the woman by the lapels of her vest and yanked her forward, slamming her forehead into Shakti’s and letting her stagger back dazed.
Before Andy could level any more hits, a blast of energy fire flew across the bridge and hit Shakti in the side. She gasped and fell into a heap.
Andy gasped, feeling her adrenaline cut short. She turned her head to see Jade standing there with an Arkana rifle, smiling shakily. “Glad you’re still with us, Sergeant,” she said.
While the others handled the bodies and the prisoners, Andy hurried over to where Captain Wallace, Major Carson, and the others were waiting anxiously to be freed. She knelt beside the captain and examined the bindings, figuring out in a few moments how to open them. One by one, she freed everyone and then stood back as they got to their feet.
“Thanks, Dolan,” Carson said with a small smile. He looked almost embarrassed for having been overtaken while one of his squad leaders had to come rescue him, but Andy wasn’t about to make that point.
“For a moment, I thought we were going to lose you,” Wallace admitted.
She shook her head. “Never, sir,” she said with confidence. “You reminded me that this was my home, Captain. I’m hardly going to give that up for some idiots who think they’re going to conquer the universe, you know?” She managed a small smile, looking at her squad as they worked around the bridge. “I got my hands full already.”
She heard the men laugh a little as she looked back to them.
Moving to join the others, they began to contact other departments and marine squads to learn that the bridge was the last place to be retaken. Every other boarding party had been subdued, and the ship was back in the hands of the ESS.
“I’m not going to sickbay!” Andy declared, sitting on the couch in the rec-room while she used a small cloth to blot the blood away from her cheek. “I’m tired of that place. If the doctor wants to see me that bad, he can come here.”
“I think he has his hands full, Sergeant,” Roxanna said. There was an edge of fond chastising in her voice, but she didn’t push the point anymore. Instead, she fetched a small first aid kit kept in the room and took over treatment of the wound. “You did good,” she added as she worked. “I wouldn’t have blamed you if you were tempted.”
Andy laughed so
ftly, holding her head still while her corporal worked. Had she been tempted at any point? In her heart of hearts? She couldn’t be sure that she hadn’t, but at least it had never been a conscious thought. Just like she had known that the Arkana were telling the truth about her heritage, she also knew that something wasn’t right. They weren’t “okay.”
She smiled a little. “Blood and family are two different things,” she said.
“You got that right, Sergeant,” Dan said, coming to sit beside her.
Jade sat on the other side. “Oorah,” she chanted with a smile. She seemed to be saying it even more than usual, like a talisman against her fears. Andy wasn’t going to stop her.
Anallin stood behind Roxanna, as if watching to make sure that she did a good job. “You humans have a phrase,” the Hanaran began. “We are with you till the wheels come off?”
“You got it,” Andy said, her smile growing slightly.
There was a lot of comfort in their presence, and Andy was glad to have them. But there was no escaping the sinking feeling in her gut.
There was a war coming, and she knew she was right smack in the middle of it.
THANK YOU
Thank you so much for reading Star Chaser, the third book in the ESS Space Marines series. I am so excited you took the chance to read it and I really hope you liked it. If you could leave a review for me, that would be awesome because it helps me tell others about my books.
If you want to be the first to hear about new releases and special offers, be sure to sign up our Science Fiction Newsletter. We have several fun things planned that will only be available to newsletter subscribers and can’t wait to share those with you too. To start with, you will get a free short story from the Niakrim War series. It tells the story of Cyrus Jones, one of the main characters in the series, and how he came to be part cyborg. All the information is on the next page.
I have also included a preview of Discovery which is the first book in the Niakrim War series. After you read the preview, you can download the book on Amazon.
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Preview: Discovery
Space is so boring!
This was certainly not what Violet had expected space travel to be like. She had dreamed of this since the first time she looked up at the stars in the sky, but none of those dreams had included endless days of nothingness. The only excitement she had experienced during the first days of the journey was when an occasional piece of space debris penetrated the warp field forcing the pilot to take evasive action. Even those potentially deadly encounters were brushed aside, as if they were no more bothersome than a fly buzzing around the room, by the Krim Sprinter's legendary pilot, Cyrus Jones, who was as much machine as man.
The captain had assured her that the Krim Sprinter was the fastest ship in the fleet, which made it the fastest ship in the known universe, when he reluctantly brought her on board the week before. The problem with space travel was the incomprehensible distances between planets. Even at three hundred times the speed of light, the travel time to Proxima was listed as seven days. The captain had assured her that they would be there in five. When she asked what they would do on the Proxima outpost for two days while they waited for the rest of the crew to arrive, Captain Mitch Cooper had just smiled and walked away.
After four days of watching countless specks of light stream past in a blur, Violet wished her childhood dream had involved something less monotonous...like being an accountant. She was wondering if it was possible to actually die of boredom when the ship violently lurched, throwing her from her chair. She froze in the air momentarily as the warp drive was forcibly shut down, dropping the ship back into real time, before being slammed into the navigation console. Everything went black.
When she came to, the ship’s bridge was in total chaos. Warning sirens were going off. Red lights were flashing. Captain Cooper was rushing from station to station, assessing damage and muttering to himself. She had a pretty good idea of what he was saying.
"What the hell just happened, Cyrus?"
"We were hit by a photon torpedo, Captain," he answered calmly as he stared at the seemingly empty space in front of the ship.
"That's impossible!"
"Yet here we are."
Captain Cooper looked ready to explode. Instead, he took a calming breath as he ran both hands through his grey hair. "Did you drop us out of warp before we tore the ship apart?"
"Of course," Cyrus replied without taking his eyes off the still empty space in front of the ship. "Belzaire's not gonna be happy, though. There's no telling how much of the warp system we tore up shutting it down that quickly."
Violet had pulled herself to her feet and was using the navigation console to steady herself. "So what just happened?"
"Somehow, we were hit by a photon torpedo while traveling at warp three," the captain muttered.
"How is that possible?"
"It's not."
The captain raised his hand to head off further questions. "We'll talk later. Can you find your way to engineering?"
"I think so."
"Get down there and help Belzaire. There's bound to be damage of some sort."
She was leaving the bridge when Cyrus quietly said, "There's something out there, Captain."
"Where?"
"Right in front of us."
"What is it?"
"I don't know," Cyrus answered. "I can't see it."
"If you can't see anything, how the hell do know something's there?"
Cyrus just shrugged.
The captain pointed at Violet. "Get to engineering. Tell Belzaire to get that warp drive back online."
"I'll do what I can."
The last thing Violet heard as she headed to engineering with a renewed sense of urgency was Captain Cooper telling Cyrus to put everything they had into the shields. All their lives might depend on it.
As Violet rushed into the warp room, she was confronted with a scene straight out of her nightmares. Glowing green warp fluid squirted everywhere. Steam leaks sprouted like geysers. Blinking red and yellow beacons were the only discernible source of light. When a huge man with deep red skin and jet black hair rounded the corner screaming curses, she thought, just for a moment, that she had been transported to Hell and was facing the devil himself.
"What are you doing here?" the large, angry man growled through gritted teeth.
"I...I...I'm here to help," she managed. "Captain said to help you get the warp system back online."
"Oh," he said with a sudden smile. "Glad to have you. I'm Belzaire. Come with me. We've got a lot of work to do."
Belzaire turned and walked straight into the chaos, not even bothering to avoid the steam blasts or leaking warp fluid. Violet followed tentatively, doing her best to avoid both. When she caught up to him, he was in the process of sliding a very heavy looking cabinet to the side, revealing a trapdoor in the floor.
"What's in there?"
"Warp fluid," he replied nonchalantly.
Before Violet could ask why the warp fluid was stored behind a hidden trapdoor, Belzaire pulled the door open to reveal a deep chamber with hundreds of clear cylinders full of glowing green fluid. There was easily ten times the legal limit of warp fluid in there.
Belzaire answered her unasked question with a mischievous smile and started pulling out cylinders. "We lost almost two hundred liters before I got the system shut down," he said. "I'll fix the leaks while you refill the system."
"Two hundred liters is more than a ship this size needs for the entire system," Violet sputtered, finally coming to terms with what she was seeing. "Not to mention twice the legal limit of reserves allow
ed on a ship like this."
"I've made some modifications," was all he said while he continued to pull out more cylinders of the precious liquid.
When he had retrieved twenty-five cylinders, Belzaire stood up and looked at Violet, who was staring at him with wide eyes, trying to comprehend what was going on. "Now, look," he said firmly. "If the captain sent you down here to help, something is seriously wrong. We need to get this ship back up and running. You deserve an explanation, but now is not the time."
Sensing the gravity of the situation, if not the cause, Violet nodded slowly. "What do you need me to do?"
Belzaire smiled reassuringly and pointed across the warp room to the half-empty tank of warp fluid. "We need to refill the reservoir. Can you do that while I fix the leaks?"
"I think so."
"Good. Just put a cylinder on the fill pad and hit the green button."
Those were the only instructions he gave before turning away and heading to a pipe leaking warp fluid on the far wall. Violet looked around the room briefly, wondering what she had gotten herself into, then started transporting the cylinders to the reservoir.
It took far longer than she had anticipated because she was constantly stepping over debris and around puddles of warp fluid, which she learned the hard way were very slippery. By the time the last cylinder had been sucked into the tank, Belzaire had finished repairing the leaks and was gathering the empty cylinders and putting them back in the hidden compartment. When she attempted to ask about them, Belzaire simply said, "Later," and closed the trap door and slid the cabinet back into place.
With the compartment of warp fluid again hidden, Belzaire turned to Violet and smiled warmly. "Thank you for your help," he said. "You should head back to the bridge. If something goes wrong, that's the best place to be."
Star Chaser (ESS Space Marines Book 3) Page 5
