“Then run, Marines!”
Every ounce of her body hurt at that moment, and her brain felt like someone had lit it on fire. She realized as Alpha Squad booked it through the trees that things felt a little…less real than they had just an hour before. Was it because of seeing her father here, or did she have a concussion.
She had no idea. She just ran.
“I ordered the others back to their shuttles to be ready to leave in a hurry,” Roxanna shouted over the sound of their heavy footsteps and the angry cries of Arkana soldiers pursuing them.
“Good idea,” Andy called back, realizing at that moment that speaking hurt.
The six of them dodged trees as they beelined back to their shuttle. Andy expected energy bolts to start flying past their heads at any moment, hopefully not into their backs, but they seemed to still be out of range for the moment.
Up ahead, the clearing came into view and they saw the shuttle. The back hatch was open and the pilot stood in the opening, gun in hand and ready to defend the ship but keeping it ready for them.
Andy was going to put that pilot in for a commendation when this was done.
“Get ready to lift off,” she shouted. “We have company!”
Without a word, the pilot rushed back to the front of the craft. Alpha Squad practically threw themselves inside and the hatched hissed as it began to close. They weren’t even in their seats when the shuttle began to shudder and lift. Within a moment, there were faint thuds of enemy weapons fire hitting the ship as it took off.
“Buckle yourselves in fast,” Andy ordered. “I don’t need any of us to survive all this just to have a concussion because we weren’t strapped in properly.”
Everyone hurried to their seats and strapped in. As the strap crossed Andy’s torso, it sent a new lance of pain through her from where her father had kicked her in the ribs. She didn’t think any were broken, but she knew several were bruised. Maybe fractured. But at least not snapped… She hoped.
Andy gripped the edge of her seat as the ship rose, leaving the little thuds behind.
They rose quickly through the atmosphere.
“Are we in contact with the other shuttles?” she asked.
“Yes, Major,” the pilot—a human lieutenant by the name of Anne Wilkes—replied over the noise of atmospheric flight. “All shuttles have lifted off and are heading off planet. We have not been able to raise the Star Chaser, however.”
“That’s not good,” Andy murmured. Then more loudly, she asked, “At all?”
The pilot worked the controls for a few moments before replying. “We get the ‘please hold’ response, basically. They are too busy to respond to the hail, but the ship must still be intact, or the computer wouldn’t be able to send that response.”
That was something, at least.
All she could do was sit back and wait, hoping that once they breached back into space that they would be able to communicate with the command, and return to it. The fighters had been able to cover their flight to the colony, and hopefully there would be one or two available to cover their homecoming.
When the shaking got really bad, she knew they were ascending those last few kilometers of atmosphere and she turned her head to look through the viewscreen that showed everything ahead of them.
What she saw was…not comforting.
“I think I know why the Star Chaser wasn’t responding to our hails, Major,” the pilot said grimly.
In the space above Lykos Colony, there were two large ESS vessels rolling and banking as their weapons shot out across space. There were three large Arkana vessels, and a small swarm of their fighters. The ESS fighters were still in the melee, dodging and swirling and dancing around the bigger ships as they fired their weapons.
There was a large hole in the Star Chaser, but emergency forcefields appeared to be holding. There were a few immobile hulks of burnt fighter craft drifting and spinning slowly.
Not a single vessel in that space wasn’t looking far worse for wear, and dancing as fast as it could to avoid the final death blow. Arkana and ESS alike looked like they had been through hell, and they were still duking it out.
Andy felt her stomach drop. Was there any way that they could get back to their ship, or even the Galaxy, amid all this? She couldn’t see how, but the only other option was to return to the moon’s surface where a very large population of enemy soldiers wanted nothing more than to light them up.
Would the Star Chaser survive this engagement? It was clearly even worse than they had anticipated…
“Oh, hell,” Lieutenant Wilkes said, quickly snapping Andy out of her brief reverie over the fate of both themselves and their mother ship. She blinked and was about to ask what it was that made her say that, but then she saw it.
Some of the small Arkana fighter craft were coming right for them.
16
“We can’t fight them without help,” Wilkes declared, her voice tight. “There’s too many for our limited defensive weapons.”
“Return to the surface,” Andy said, giving the order even though it tasted bad just to say it. “Keep us away from that compound. Coordinate with the other shuttles.”
The pilot nodded sharply. “Yes, Major.”
Andy felt the ship as it turned, the dampeners having to fight against the sudden spin as they prepared their headlong rush back to the safety of the atmosphere and colony below. ‘Safety’ being a relative term, of course, given there was a vindictive madman, who just happened to be her father, and his army bent on killing them all. But they were prepared for a ground fight, and the shuttle could stand up against their guns.
Fighters in space were another matter. They were designed to break other ships, and it was unwise to take that risk.
Really, just the lesser of two evils.
“Other shuttles acknowledge,” Wilkes reported. “We are returning to the moon and about to re-enter the atmo—”
Her words were cut off as the fighters opened fired on their retreating craft. The shuttle pitched forward, slamming the Marines against their restraints and drawing several pained grunts, including Andy’s.
She didn’t think they had flown so far from the atmosphere coming up, but it seemed to be taking forever to get back. Even though she couldn’t see them, she knew that more than one ship was firing on them. The shuttle pitched every time, jerking them around and sending her stomach into her throat.
No, she had never been destined for the aerospace corps either.
Another hit came that damaged systems, and a console behind Roxanna turned into smoke and sparks. The Selerid released a strangled scream, leaning as far forward as she could, but there was a small fire already started, and Andy watched her unhook her restraints and move away from her seat.
An instant later, the shuttle’s anti-fire system kicked in and put it out, but the damage had been done.
“Brace yourselves,” Wilkes shouted over the noise. “Incoming!”
The word wasn’t even finished reaching their ears before another big hit came and sent them spinning. Every organ in Andy’s body felt like it was being sent to the wrong place. One or two of them thudded into her bruised ribs and she gritted her teeth against the pain of it all. Her head swam, or maybe spiraled, and she felt darkness closing in around the edges of her vision.
“I am…attempting…to level our descent,” Wilkes shouted, but the words were clearly hard for her to get out as she desperately tried to keep her hands on the controls while the ship itself was out of control.
It felt like they outright smacked into the atmosphere, and her sergeant went flying across the small cabin. Andy tried to reach out and grab her, help her hold on, but Roxanna’s uniform was just out of reach. The Selerid was trying to do the same thing, but every time she reached for something, the ship lurched, and she lost her footing.
Time came in fragments then, as if she was blacking out for a few moments at a time, but it seemed like every time she opened her eyes, she saw things differen
t than they had been when she closed them.
The cabin was filled with voices during that intermittent consciousness, and she realized that the pilot was trying to communicate with the other pilots. Andy couldn’t understand what was being said, however. Was that because of the noise, or because of her? She was sure they were speaking the same language as they had always done…
“We’re coming in too fast!” she thought she heard Wilkes say, her voice tinged with frustration and panic, rising above everything else.
Andy fought to look up, through the viewscreen as it showed clouds hurtling in their direction and the ground growing rapidly. Something—she had no idea what—hit the front of the shuttle, shorting out the screen and plunging them into darkness with no visual of the outside.
Her mind flickered. She couldn’t decide if this was a better or worse death than being shot by the Arkana…
The world was nothing but movement, darkness, and nausea.
Roxanna felt the pain radiating from her head outward, down to everything else. She was trying to get back to her seat, at least hold on to the restraints even if she could sit in it for the damage and debris anymore, but the shuttle wouldn’t remain stable long enough for her to do so. One moment she was reaching for the seat or the hand of a comrade, and the next she was rolling across the floor.
Finally hitting a corner, she was able to get her hand around a strap used for cargo. It burned against her skin as she was yanked by the craft’s movements, but she remained in place this time.
She held on as tightly as she could, praying to the three gods of protection of her people that she would make it through this. That they all would.
Roxanna was holding on. Anallin’s eyes were making so much noise that Andy could hear it above the chaos around them. Dan and Jade were holding hands, while their other hands held on to their shoulder restraints.
Andy found her brother’s pale eyes and held him. He smiled tightly.
The shuttle shook harder, and then, darkness took them all.
17
The world returned slowly, in bits and pieces.
Everything seemed gray as she forced her eyes open and lifted her head. There was something wet running down her cheek, and she wondered why she was crying. And why she couldn’t feel that she was crying, but she had to be, because there were tears, right?
She couldn’t remember where she was at first. Andy pried her eyes open and looked around, which brought it all back in shattering clarity. Everything from the first landing to the crash landing came back, and she remembered that she was in the ESS shuttle with the rest of Alpha Squad.
Judging by the silence and stillness around her, she knew that they were on the ground again.
“Sound out,” she called, although it sounded more like a croak to her ears.
“We’re here,” Dan replied, sounding about as well off as Andy did.
“Martin too?” Andy replied, noticing his use of the plural.
There was a soft grunt, and the sound of something shifting. It was hard to see exactly what was happening on the other side of the shuttle. “Yes, I’m here, Major.”
Andy looked at her restraints, which seemed…twisted somehow, but the world was still fuzzy. It was clearing, but slowly. She found the fasteners and undid them, hearing the metal click and fall away. The release from the pressure of the restraints was a relief, and she let out a long breath. Then with a groan, she pushed herself to her feet.
The inside cabin was disheveled and dark, power completely off inside and only a few emergency lights providing any illumination at all.
“Major,” she heard Anallin say.
Within a moment, she saw a white shadow move toward her, and then realized it was her brother. He stood next to her, one hand resting on her arm like he was waiting to see if she needed any help.
Smiling faintly at him, she did a roll call in her head. Two voices not here.
“Roxanna? Wilkes?”
There was no reply.
“Roxanna. Wilkes.”
Still nothing.
Worry started to grow. “Someone check for Roxanna. I’ll check on Wilkes.” She had been seated closer to the pilot, while the others were closer to where the sergeant had ended up. She hoped that they were both okay and just hadn’t waken up yet, but what were the chances of that after what just happened.
Andy nodded at Anath and then moved past him, using what she could to make sure she kept her balance as she moved over the debris to get to the cockpit. There was a dim bit of light from a few emergency lights blinking, but it was scarcely enough to see by. They would have to get the hatch open, and soon. Their light and air depended on that.
“Wilkes?” she asked again, reaching the pilot.
Peering around, she saw just enough to know that the woman wasn’t moving. Andy reached out to take a pulse. She found none, and her hand came away with too much blood to be healthy for the other woman. Looking closer, she realized that something had broken away from the interior and punctured her throat.
Andy sighed. “You got us to the ground,” she said quietly. “Thank you.”
“Sergeant Roxanna is alive,” Jade called from the other end of the shuttle. “She is still unconscious, though. I think she hit her head.”
“Thank you, Martin,” Andy said wearily. It wasn’t good news, but it wasn’t as bad as it could be. “Anath.”
There was the sound of shuffling feet, one thud combined with a curse, and then her brother was in the cockpit. “We need that door open. We have to find the manual release,” she said. “And my head isn’t too clear.”
“Right,” he said. “I’m not sure mine is either, to be honest, but maybe between the two of us, we can make a whole person.”
“That’s interesting math,” Andy replied. “Or is it biology?”
Anath breathed in a way that might have been laughter. “I’m not sure it matters,” he said. She heard him moving away to look for the release for the hatch, while she tried to pull anything out of the ship controls. The shuttle had just had an emergency shutdown but maybe it could be rebooted, so she had to try.
She sat in the empty co-pilot’s seat, which was generally redundant and thus rarely manned for these expeditions. There was something creepy about sitting there, knowing the pilot was dead beside her, but she knew that it would be impractical, and waste time they needed, to try to move the other woman.
That would have to come later.
In the small circles of light stationed around the console, she moved her hands over the controls. She had basic training in the operation of the shuttle, since it was considered good backup for when the Marines were transported to places. She had seen the wisdom of it then, and was grateful for it now.
Not that it got her very far.
She tried every option and startup sequence she knew, but the computer was not responding. She couldn’t rouse any power from it.
“I’ve got it,” Anath said from the other end of the shuttle.
Andy wedged herself out of the chair and then the cockpit to reach the small back cabin, just as the hatch popped open. At first, she just saw the sliver of light running along the bottom and sides, and then Anath pushed against it until it rose. The system that self-opened wasn’t working, obviously, but there were some mechanics in place to help him open it himself and then secure it open.
As sunlight poured into the shuttle, it made everyone wince, but it also showed in stark reality the mess their shuttle was in.
Andy made her way outside, bringing up her gun just in case there were any unpleasant surprises, but there was no one. Out of the possible dampening of the shuttle’s interior, she tried using her earpiece to contact the other squads. Of course, there was no reply. No chirp. No sign that it was working at all.
She sighed heavily. They were on their own, for the moment.
18
“Major,” Jade called out to her. “Roxanna is waking up.”
Andy had still been standing o
utside, taking in the fresh air to clear her head as much as possible and form a plan. She knew they couldn’t stay down here safely for very long, although their overall safety relied on the victory of the ESS over the Arkana up in space, and that wasn’t a guarantee at all.
They had to find the others, and try to repair the shuttle. She had little confidence that it could be fixed, but they had to try, even if just to get communications back.
For the moment, though, she hurried into the shuttle. Now with the sunlight pouring in, she could see everyone and knelt beside Roxanna. Her arm was still wrapped in the strap, and it looked twisted into an angle it shouldn’t be. There was blooding drying on Roxanna’s face and her skin was swirling, but the movement was feeble. Her eyes were open and tracked Andy as she walked in.
She stared hard at Andy, frowning a little, but didn’t say anything.
“How’re you feeling, Sergeant?” Andy asked, kneeling beside the Selerid. As she lowered herself down, her own head felt a stab of pain. She needed to not go up and down so fast, it seemed.
“I’m managing, Major,” Roxanna replied stoically. “My head hurts, though.”
Dan laughed faintly behind them. “So does mine,” he said. “I’m having sympathy pains with you, Sergeant.”
Instead of amusement, however, something else crossed the purple woman’s face—concern bordering on fear. Her eyes moved to Andy. “Does your head hurt?” When Andy nodded, she looked at Anallin and asked the same thing. Jade and Anath offered the information voluntarily. “Oh no…” Roxanna said, her body getting her people’s version of the adrenaline spike and feeding energy to the panicked opalescent swirling.
“Sergeant,” Andy said urgently, trying to keep focused, despite the increasing pain in her head and the…feeling of anxiety rising in her. “Calm down. We need you to keep your head level. What’s wrong?”
Roxanna replied with her native language, which was naturally spoken at such a speed that the translator in their earpieces couldn’t catch it fast enough.
Lykos Page 6
