Arkana (ESS Space Marines Book 4)

by James David Victor

  Control those, and the planet was theirs. It would put them in a better position to fight off the ESS as well, and they couldn’t have that.

  “They’re heading towards city center,” Roxanna said, although it was with a frown. “I am almost sure of it.”

  “Scans are being distorted, but what I can see would concur,” Anallin agreed, looking up from the handheld scanner. Those things seemed to be distorted more often than not, and Andy wondered why they even carried them.

  Between the two streets, there were no obvious signs of which way they had gone, so she once again had to make the best guess she could. She looked down one and then the other one more time before gesturing for them to follow the one that was the most direct route to the city’s center.

  With their new direction chosen, they began moving ahead again. Weapons up and eyes open, they returned to their pattern of watching all sides of the street and checking every building and door and window they passed.

  It didn’t take an empath to feel the tension radiating between them, each wondering if they were on the right path and, if they were, where the Arkana would be. Were they walking into an ambush? Would they be right in the open and make this easy? Would the Arkana find a good sniper location and pick them off one by one?

  Andy had all of these questions going through her mind simultaneously, and she knew she wasn’t the only one. No one said it, but everyone was thinking of it.

  As they made their way slowly down that street, they didn’t find any of the Arkana soldiers that were on the loose. Even the number of unlocked windows and doors were few and far between.

  She was just beginning to wonder if she had chosen the wrong street when she saw something odd up ahead. She called a halt as she gave it a thorough visual examination, although she couldn’t make out much of it because of the distance. From what she could see, however, it looked like some sort of hastily formed barricade across the street.

  “Thoughts?” she asked.

  “The citizens trying to stop any invaders from getting through?” Jade suggested.

  “The Arkana trying to block our pursuit?” Dan said.

  Either seemed likely, but the only way to find out was to get closer. She gave the signal for them to move forward again, although this time at an even slower pace. She looked at the barricade, then to either side, then at the barricade again. She could see the crates and what seemed like...random industrial debris? It was hard to figure out what it all was, but it was clearly not a thought-out design.

  She still didn’t see anything suggesting there were living beings around now, so she nodded towards it. “Let’s start pulling this apart and try to get a better look at the other side of the street.”

  Dan and Anallin were the first two forward, and they began to pull the makeshift barricade apart.

  Suddenly, Roxanna called out urgently, “Stop!”

  Chapter 18

  The abrupt warning gave Dan and Anallin just enough time to throw themselves to the sides of the barricade. It was just in time, because within a heartbeat of their movements, a large energy blast broke through the barricade and sent pieces of it everywhere.

  Had the two Marines still been in position, they may well have been killed.

  Andy stifled a long string of curses that wanted to escape, because there simply wasn’t time to let them out. They pressed themselves to either side of the street, but had little cover now that most of the barricade had been destroyed. At least they knew where the Arkana were, now.

  Bringing up her rifle, she took aim and returned fire. It became a basic firefight then, although each group had just enough cover, distance, and obstructions to keep from scoring any good hits.

  At one point, Jade cried out and Andy spared a glance. The young Marine’s arm had taken a glancing hit from an energy bolt. Her uniform sleeve was melted away, and the skin underneath was bright red. Andy couldn’t tell if it had melted to muscle or was just really angry skin. Jade was visibly gritting her teeth, the arm held against her side protectively, but she did not drop her weapon and she kept firing.

  Andy leaned forward slightly, trying to get a better look at the enemy without putting herself too far in the line of fire.

  She spotted one and aimed her rifle. He spotted her at the same time. There was a long heartbeat between them before she pulled the trigger, and felt the recoil of her rifle. She flowed with that motion to pull herself back behind what little cover she had, narrowly avoiding the energy bolt that lanced the air.

  Roxanna fired a shot from the other side of the street, and Andy heard a cry and a soft thud. At least someone had hit one of them.

  Suddenly, there was silence.

  “Hold fire,” Andy said in a low voice. None of them moved, however, or relaxed in the least. Instead, they waited for several long, terrible moments before Andy leaned forward to look again. “They’re running,” she hissed, then gestured for them to pursue.

  They ran after the Arkana. The enemy would occasionally turn and try to fire, but they could not take time to fire accurately without risking being caught.

  “Don’t let them get any further ahead,” the major hissed as her boots slammed into the pavement, one foot after the other. Her body was under the influence of an adrenaline rush and she knew that her body would pay the price, when all was said and done.

  With their long legs and slender builds, the Arkana were all good runners, but somehow, Alpha Squad managed to gain a little ground on them. Perhaps it was because those being pursued couldn’t stop looking back and taking haphazard shots. That was just poor strategy, and self-control, Andy reasoned somewhere in her mind.

  As she tried to look beyond those they were chasing, she could see that another intersection was coming up. This one didn’t form the perfect four-way stop that the previous one had and was more like a Y, with the street splitting off into two angled streets. She knew, somehow, that they were going to split up.

  She counted, in between the jarring of her brain from the headlong sprint. Five Arkana. Five Marines. How were they going to divide themselves?

  Andy leaned forward slightly, trying to push herself to get any extra speed that she could. She hoped that maybe they could reach the Arkana before they even entered the junction and stop the choice from even being made. But the Arkana were fast. Too fast. Although she tried, and knew that the others were trying hard right alongside her, she could soon tell that they would not stop them before they had the opportunity to split up.

  Maybe they wouldn’t split and it would continue as a straight pursuit, but she couldn’t imagine that happening. Not really. It was just wishful thinking.

  The Arkana reached the split of the Y and, just as she figured they would, they split up, with three going right and two going left. Andy didn’t see any sort of gesture, so she guessed there was just a random divide. As far as she knew, the Arkana did not possess any sort of telepathy—just a resistance to it when others tried to use it on them.

  Andy, however, knew for sure that she wasn’t telepathic. “Thomas with me,” she ordered tightly, her voice reverberating with the pounding of her feet. She gestured down the left fork, after the group of two. “The rest, after them.”

  No one acknowledged the order, because they really didn’t need to. Dan was the closest to her because she was a good runner and in the lead, and he otherwise had the longest legs in the group. Anallin trailed, being shorter and stouter, but they all kept up.

  They reached the split themselves, just moments behind the others, and each went the way Andy had ordered them to.

  The Arkana looked behind themselves again and saw that Andy and Dan were still in tight pursuit. They looked like they cursed, although she couldn’t hear them, and started swinging their heads around. Looking for an escape or way to slow the Marines down, no doubt.

  One of the two turned again and tried to shoot. The shot just barely missed Dan’s head, and Andy tried to return fire. Miraculously, her shot landed and the soldier
hit the ground. The other one looked like it wanted to help, but then kept running. So much for loyalty, Andy thought as she pushed herself to keep on. The one on the ground wasn’t moving, so they didn’t stop to restrain him.

  The remaining alien turned and found an open door. It was one of the only ones Andy had seen that was left open. Lucky for the Arkana, but less so for Andy and Dan. “Make sure there’s no back way out of here,” she ordered as she rushed into the building after the enemy soldier.

  Chapter 19

  As she ran into the building and was making her way across the front room in hot pursuit, she heard an abrupt crashing from just outside the door. Although she knew it gave the other soldier more time—maybe too much—she had to stop and take at least one look back, which was just enough to see that...something had crashed in front of the door and blocked it.

  That meant that unless there was another entrance that Dan would find, she was alone in the building with an enemy soldier...which meant that she had just done something kind of stupid.

  She did not have time to fix it now, however. She would either have to trust in her squad-mates to dig her out, or dig herself out once she’d caught the Arkana. She didn’t waste any more time staring at the blocked door and instead rushed into the building after the escaping soldier.

  There wasn’t much by way of furniture in this building, for which Andy was grateful. None of the lights were on, but there were several windows that let in the sun and provided enough light to see by. She hurried through the first room and then came to an abrupt halt at the doorway, bringing up her rifle and swinging around the door in the way she had been trained to.

  The Arkana was not in sight, but she could hear the thudding footsteps ahead of her.

  What she was looking at was a flight of stairs. The light filtering into the staircase was far more sparse, but she could make things out just enough once her eyes adjusted. She moved up the staircase, ears straining for any sign that the soldier was coming back for her, but at least there were no hiding places along the stairway that he could come out of.

  Her heart was thumping in her ears in the sudden quiet of the building. Although it had been very loud outside, with the ambient noise of machines and industry and what it took to maintain the city, all of that was blocked out by this building, likely by design. Now it was quiet, so quiet that it was almost loud in its own right.

  Keeping her back to the wall, she slid her way up the stairs until she reached the top and she looked around warily as her head rose by increments to see what was beyond. All she saw was a long, semi-dark hallway and no sign of the so-pale-they-were-almost-glowing Arkana.

  She crested the top of the stairs then and stayed close to the wall. Holding position for a moment, she tried to count what doorways she could see. They were all open, or didn’t have doors in the first place. She wasn’t sure if that was good for her or not, but she had to keep moving forward, either way.

  Each room would need to be checked before she could move on, but she was sure she’d heard the footsteps coming up here so he had to be in one of them.

  Moving along the wall, she reached the first door and peeked in fast. There were no obvious signs of the Arkana, so she swung around and inside. Her gun was up, ready to fire at anything hostile, but the room was empty, other than her plus a pair of couches on one wall and a table with many chairs. There wasn’t anything by way of decor and if she’d had more time, she would have speculated on what sort of business transpired in this room.

  However, now was not the time for speculation.

  Andy repeated the process in the next room and then the one after that. The furniture and decor didn’t seem to change a whole lot, at least in that it all remained sparse. Some rooms didn’t have couches and instead had shelves and cabinets, but that was about all the difference she took time to notice. She wasn’t trying to be an interior decorator, she just needed to check the rooms for any sign of the Arkana she was attempting to apprehend.

  She went through a total of five rooms like that, bringing herself from one end of the hallway to the other.

  At the very end, she could see a door that did close—and was closed—straight before her. She wondered if that led to another stairway, since none of the rooms that she had been in seemed to have any evidence of getting to another level. All of the buildings they passed on the street seemed, as best she could determine, to be at least three stories. But even if they weren’t, there was quite possibly roof access.

  She was coming out of the last room on the hallway, with no sign of anyone but herself, when she heard footsteps above her.

  So...another floor. She doubted there would be much noise coming through the roof since the rest of the building had been so effective at blocking out sound.

  Andy hurried to the end of the hall, which was now only a few steps away. She pressed the panel next to the door and jumped out of the line of sight of the opening door as it slid back. Since there was no immediate weapons fire, she cautiously moved around and into what was indeed another stairwell.

  She blew out a quiet breath and moved onto the steps. This one was also dark and she gave herself just a moment for her eyes to adjust. Her lungs wanted to breathe faster with the growing tension inside her body, but she forced it back. She couldn’t afford to be tense any more than she could afford to be anxious, so she ignored them both. Andy knew that she would have to deal with it all later, but that was for later.

  Now, she pushed herself to start on her way up the stairs.

  Once more keeping her back near the wall, she went up step by step. She lifted her head slightly, to give herself a quicker look at what was on the landing above her as she ascended. As her eyes took it in, the rest of her ready to duck down fast if she had to, she once more saw nothing. There was no one on the landing, and it was just another hallway with another set of rooms.

  No doors, so all open and waiting for her to have to clear each one.

  She reached the top of the landing, almost aggravated that the Arkana soldier hadn’t been there waiting for her at the top. The lack of anyone trying to kill her was getting tedious and tiring. Andy was trained for action, and she was ready for it.

  This hallway apparently only had three rooms, and she saw why when she entered the first one.

  Each room on this floor was almost twice the size of the rooms below, but they were just as sparse so it didn’t take any longer to clear each one. Just like she had below, she cleared the first one. Frustrated at finding another empty room, she hurried to the next room.

  With her back to the wall and gun raised, Andy blew out a deep breath and spun into the next room…right into the barrel of an Arkana energy pulse rifle.

  Andy and the Arkana froze, weapons pointed at each other with a promise of mutual destruction. Neither fired. Instead, she stared down her rifle barrel at him and watched as his shockingly blue eyes widened slightly and he spoke.

  “It’s you.”

  Chapter 20

  “Do I know you?” Andy drawled, since they both knew that she didn’t.

  The Arkana smirked. Neither of them lowered their weapons even a fraction, but they weren’t shooting either. Andy considered just firing and seeing this over with, but something held her back. Arkana soldiers normally looked put-together, even in the middle of a fight, but she couldn’t help but notice that this one looked disheveled. His white hair was loose and plastered to either side of his face, and there were shadows under his pale eyes.

  He tilted his head a little. “You don’t, but I do know you. Now that I look upon you, get a good look, I recognize your features.”

  Andy narrowed her eyes slightly. She wanted to ask what he was talking about, but she refused to take the bait. She was not going to give him that power over her even though she really did want to know how he recognized her. She just wasn’t going to let him know that.

  She didn’t say anything, and they stood there in silence for several long moments.

  “Y
ou inherited his way with silence, that’s for sure,” the Arkana finally said.

  Everything inside her seemed to freeze all at once. She stopped breathing and thought maybe even her heart stopped. The way he said it, and obviously the use of the word “inherit,” made it obvious who he spoke of.

  He knows my father.

  Her skeptical side didn’t rule out the idea that he was lying, but to what end? If he knew enough to know that was a trigger point, then he did know her and recognize her. So, if that was the case, then how did he recognize her? Was she on some sort of “Arkana’s Most Wanted” flyer among his race? She wouldn’t put it past them, but still, that didn’t ring true.

  It didn’t feel true.

  But there was no denying that a well-placed lie about that half of her heritage could provide a lot of “emotional capital” in the hands of the enemy, if she were to let on that it got to her. That was the struggle, and she fought it hard within herself. She had to keep her “game face” on and not let it show that it did, in fact, get to her.

  Why? That was the other question. She had already rejected the entire species, and thus rejected her father as well.

  “You’re still not going to say anything?” he said with clear disbelief.

  “You seem to be doing enough talking for the both of us,” she said flatly.

  Just shoot him and be done with it. There was an angry little voice in the back of her mind encouraging a swift end, but he wasn’t shooting at her and he wasn’t attacking her. It was a standoff for the moment, though if he made the slightest move—with something other than his mouth—she would end him, no matter what information he might possess.

  “Don’t you want to know more about your father?” he asked, trying to dangle the topic in front of her like a child trying to attract the attention of a pet. “That’s how I recognized you. I can see your father in your features. I know him, or of him, at least. We haven’t had much actual conversation, a common soldier like me and...someone like him.”