Nebula (ESS Space Marines Book 4) Read online

  He typed information into the computer set into the table and the view screen on the wall lit up with his suggestions. Stan and the other two scientists moved closer and peered at it closely. Proximity apparently increased the scientific comprehension. Andy just watched them with mild amusement.

  When in school, she hadn’t been a bad student in science, but it definitely hadn’t been a passion of hers. She’d always been more physical, drawn to boxing and martial arts as a teenager. Going into the Marines had just seemed like a natural progression after school, and she had never regretted that choice.

  Andy had to admit to herself, however, the scientists were intriguing. She stood back with her arms crossed over her chest, trying to not smile lest they all misinterpret her reasons for it.

  “I have been wondering if there’s anything we can do with the Marine armor to improve it against Arkana weaponry,” she said, turning to her half-brother.

  “I have been wondering that myself,” he said ruefully. “We haven’t managed to perfect any sort of personal energy armor, and since we use energy weapons, that’s the primary type of shielding that would work.”

  “There is no material you know of, that we don’t, that can be integrated into our armor to increase our resistance?” she asked.

  He shook his head slowly. “None that I know of. I’m sure even if there was, it wouldn’t be something accessible to you. Anything in your systems that we would be able to get our hands on would already be known to you.” Turning to look at her, he offered an apologetic smile. “We have managed to make our heavy assault vehicles somewhat resistant to energy weapons, but I was never involved in that area of things so I don’t know the process.”

  Like her, he had been a soldier. A good one, apparently, though never on the leadership track that she had taken. If that bothered him, he never let it show.

  “It’s something to think on,” she said. “Maybe an idea that we can turn them loose on.”

  Anath chuckled. “You don’t think that they have enough to work with? I think their heads might explode if we give them too much more to play with.” He paused, tilting his head. “Your doctors have been pretty intrigued too. I feel like someone’s favorite toy.”

  Andy smirked slightly. “Well, that’s not really too far from the truth, I guess, but it will go a long way to helping us...as you put it...topple an empire.” She glanced at him sidelong, her own dark eyes roving over his pale face. Andy questioned why he really wanted to leave his own people, but so far, everything he said was genuine. And while she didn’t think anyone on the ship or in the ESS would trust him completely any time soon, what he provided was very helpful.

  Before either of them could say anything more, Stan wandered back over to them.

  “If you wouldn’t mind, Anath, let’s go into the lab so we can start trying to figure out those energy signatures,” he said, bobbing his head a couple of times. Sometimes, he reminded Andy of an enthusiastic turtle. “Assuming you don’t need him for anything?” This was directed at her.

  “Not at all, Lieutenant,” Andy said with a polite smile. “I will let you guys go about it. I have some work to attend to.” She nodded at her half-sibling and then to the scientists before turning and making her way out of the office.

  She nodded at Valin on the way out, not envying the conversations he was going to end up overhearing.

  Chapter 4

  After leaving the scientists and her brother to keep at their work, Andy headed to the briefing room. She knew they were on their way to their next task and now was the time when everyone else was going to be let in on the secret.

  Andy walked into the room, nodded to the other senior staff members who were there, and took her seat. Now that she’d attended a few of these briefings, her place in them didn’t feel as awkward as it had right after her rather large leap of a field promotion from sergeant to major. She settled in as the silent Marine shadow in the room.

  Captain Wallace came in a few moments later, followed by his first officer. He waved at everyone with one hand while the other held his coffee. He couldn’t seem to deliver one of these without it.

  “Good morning, everyone,” he said, taking his seat. “I’m sure you’re curious about where we are headed, so I won’t keep you in suspense. We are going to Starbase Forty-Six, which is on the border of ESS space and the Kaijian Coalition. As I’m sure you are all aware, or should be aware, they have repeatedly turned down invitations to join the Earth Space Service Alliance. However, they have become aware that they are just as vulnerable to Arkana attack as anyone else, laying in one of the apparent paths to Earth.”

  “Have they chosen to join the ESS?” Doctor Martin asked.

  Wallace shook his head. “Not exactly,” he said. “However, they have contacted us to discuss a treaty and the possibility of helping each other for the extent of this war. Peace thereafter, but not as part of our union.”

  Andy nodded thoughtfully. It wasn’t as ideal as having a full ally, but it was better than nothing. So far, one of the problems in this war wasn’t the enemy but the non-Allied species fighting on their own fronts while the ESS fought on theirs. Without coordination, they had tripped over each other more often than she would care to count. The Kaijian had never been precisely hostile to the ESS, but they hadn’t been especially friendly either. This could be a good step. But first they needed to win the war.

  “So what’s on Forty-Six?” the tactical chief asked.

  “The ambassador from the Kaijian Coalition,” Wallace said. “His people will bring him to the base and they want an ESS ship to escort him to the meeting with ESS Command and the members of the Allied Species Council. Our ships are better equipped in a fight and they have made the tactical decision to risk our ship instead of their.”

  Andy thought through what she could remember about the Kaijian. Not a warrior species, so she could understand not wanting to fly one of their own vessels through ESS space. What could they bring to the plate? Their ships wouldn’t be ideal fighters, but one more species at least cooperating with the ESS would help them all. She knew they were also strong in the medical fields, including xenobiology, and that could go a long way too.

  “Where is the meeting with ESS Command?” the tactical officer asked. “Or more to the point, how long will the ambassador be on board? If the Arkana get word of this, they’ll be coming for us. They won’t want us allying with anyone else. Our divisions help them.”

  “Well said,” Wallace replied with a nod. “It looks like we’ll be graced with the good ambassador’s company for two days. He will be coming with a small security detail, but is mostly relying on our ship’s security, which would be you and Major Dolan.”

  Andy noted that the captain didn’t actually tell them where the meeting was, just answered the question about how long it would take.

  “We’ll be ready, Captain,” she said simply.

  The captain smiled a little. “I have no doubt, Major.”

  Andy stood behind the podium, leaning against it while she waited on the last of the Marines of the thirty-third to enter and find a seat. There were thirty total, in six squads of five, which included herself. In their faces she saw the spectrum of species, gender, and colors, and she knew that this little sampling of the ESS and its allies alone was everything that the Arkana hated.

  “Good morning,” she said once they were all sitting. She recalled her first time doing this as rather awkward, though she was assured that it didn’t show to anyone but the two Selerid in the group. “We are presently on our way to Starbase Forty-Six to pick up an ambassador from the Kaijian. They will be meeting with the ESS and Allied Species Council for a possible treaty during this war.”

  There was a brief wave of murmurs as everyone made a comment or two to the person sitting next to them, but it died down fairly quickly. They all knew their jobs. They were in this room to be told, not to tell.

  “The ambassador will be coming on board with a small security detachme
nt of his own, but otherwise, we will be responsible for him and the ship during transit. We will be liaising with tactical, as always. We are hopeful that this meeting will avoid the notice of the Arkana, but if it doesn’t, we will have to be prepared to defend the ship. Assuming we make it from Forty-Six to the meeting place, we will also be responsible for getting him back to the starbase to be picked up by his own people.”

  One of the Marines of Beta Squad raised his hand and she nodded. “Will we be responsible for the ambassador at the meeting place?”

  Andy shook her head. “No, this is a drop and then pickup. The meeting will have their own ESS Security Force.”

  “Are the Kaijian one of those that don’t particularly like us?” a Marine from Theta Squad asked, one of the youngest in her detachment. He had come on board after the war began. She still wasn’t convinced he was old enough to have joined up and gotten through basic training, but there he was. She really didn’t think she was getting old, but the recruits were definitely getting younger.

  “They’ve never been hostile toward the ESS,” she answered. “But they haven’t been very cordial either. The ESS has extended invitations to the alliance and for treaties and always been...politely refused. However, war makes for strange bedfellows, as it is said, and here we are. We know what our jobs will be. Plan for the worst, hope for the best.” She looked around the room, catching as many eyes as she could. “For now, we continue our usual training regimen in both combat practice and exercise.

  “We must be prepared for anything, since it seems that anything is always what ends up happening...”

  Chapter 5

  The rec-room doors slid open and the five Marines of Alpha Squad sauntered in. Dan was grinning like a fool at Anallin, but as usual, the Hanaran didn’t seem to share the humor. And, as usual, no one could really be sure whether it did or not.

  “You should have ducked,” Dan said, eyeing the blue bruise rising on Anallin’s face.

  “Yes, you have told me this repeatedly and my own evaluation of my performance revealed the same idea,” the Hanaran replied.

  Andy glanced back at them. “That almost sounded like sarcasm, Anallin.”

  The Hanaran’s blue brow ridges rose in a decidedly human gesture, and she knew that Anallin had been spending too much time around them.

  “I second the motion,” Jade said with a smaller, but still amused smile, as they found their way to the opposite side of the room, each taking their personal data-tablets and tapping in a few commands. The room filled with high-pitched beeps to note the messages that each one had gotten, as they wandered to a table to sit down and read or watch.

  Andy knew that she wouldn’t be getting any messages from family. Her mother was dead, and her father was...well, the enemy. The only sibling she knew of was here on the ship with her. She did have some friends on other ESS ships that she kept in touch with occasionally, but there weren’t any message today. She stifled a sigh as she set the tablet on the table.

  She looked around at her squad-mates, taking note of each one.

  Anallin’s eyes were clicking rapidly but quietly. She interpreted that as happiness or excitement. Dan was easier to recognize, because he was just grinning like an idiot again, but this time, it was a different shade of idiot.

  “I think Dan got a letter from his mom,” Jade said, looking up at him without lifting her head. “He always smiles like that when he hears from her.”

  Dan laughed. “You got me,” he said. “She’s just catching me up on stuff going on at home. My brother’s wife is pregnant again. This will make baby number five.”

  Roxanna, Andy’s sergeant and the group’s Selerid, looked up. Her purple eyes flashed in the room’s light as she smiled. “You say that like it’s a lot,” she said, almost innocently. “I didn’t go medical, so I haven’t talked to people about their perceptions of family size.”

  “Five is...a healthy number, we’ll say,” Dan laughed. “It kinda runs in my family, though. I’m one of four and my mother is one of seven. My dad, on the other hand, was one of two.”

  “Only two...” Roxanna said thoughtfully. “I’m one of nine, and that’s rather small for a Selerid family.”

  This wasn’t news to Andy, who knew her squad pretty well, but it never ceased to amaze her. She had been her mother’s only child, as far as she knew, and the idea of siblings, in any number, was foreign to her.

  “But we usually have children three or four at a time,” Roxanna added.

  “Ow,” was all Jade managed to say, wincing as she looked at her tablet again and very obviously tried to think of anything but what delivering four children would be like.

  Frankly, Andy didn’t want to think about it either.

  “Hanarans only have one,” Anallin joined in.

  “At a time?” Roxanna asked, brushing loose purple curls off her forehead.

  Andy was amazed at how they had spent all this time together and there were still things they didn’t all know about each other and each others’ races.

  “Ever,” Anallin said. “Hanarans only have one time that they are ready to bear a child in their lives. They do so, and that is that.”

  Roxanna’s eyes opened a little wider as she tried to grasp that. “How strange.”

  “Not to us.”

  “Sorry,” she said sheepishly.

  Anallin shrugged, another human gesture. Andy considered sending it home for a while to get used to being more Hanaran again.

  “My mother still calls you my girlfriend by the way,” Dan said directly to Andy, his expression a combination of humor and embarrassment. “I keep telling her that you’re not, but she won’t listen.”

  “If she sends enough cookies for everyone in the next care package, she can call me anything she likes,” Andy said with an indulgent smile. It wasn’t like it hurt anyone. If his mother had been part of her unit, then it might be trouble. But she was just a kindly woman, and fantastic cook, back home on Earth who happened to like Andy.

  Truth was, Andy liked her too. Dan’s mother was everything that her own mother hadn’t been, considering her mother had spent more of Andy’s life in prison than out and Andy had spent her childhood in group homes until she enlisted in the Marines.

  Dan chuckled and went back to reading. “I’ll be sure to let her know to send plenty.”

  Andy looked at Jade. “Any good news from home for you, Martin?”

  “Oh, yes,” Jade said, blinking her big green eyes and looking up like she was surprised that someone was directing a question to her. “My mother and father are celebrating their twenty-fifth wedding anniversary.” She blinked and her gaze drifted for a moment. “It’s the first year I haven’t been able to make it home for the dinner, but my sisters are there.”

  “How many sisters do you have?” Roxanna asked, her tone curious but also gentle as she tried to pull Jade’s mind away from not being home.

  “Two,” Jade said, looking up again with a smile. “Sixteen and three. You can guess my youngest sister was a surprise.”

  Andy chuckled. “That is a bit of an age difference.”

  The youngest Marine nodded. “There’s only three years between me and Amber, but Crystal...yeah, they didn’t expect her.”

  “Your name’s are Jade, Amber, and Crystal?” Dan asked with a laugh.

  “Yeah,” Jade chuckled, a little embarrassed. “My mother is Ruby and she decided to continue the tradition, I guess.”

  Meanwhile, Andy was stuck on the reminder of just how young Jade was. She was only nineteen, and here she was, fighting a war in the darkness of space. The major tried to not get stuck on that thought, however, because she knew that it wasn’t productive. It wouldn’t help her, and it wouldn’t help Jade. The young woman was a well-trained Marine. She had already fought at Andy’s side many, many times and always carried herself well. There was nothing good in looking at her for her age rather than their experiences together.

  She came back into the conversation to h
ear Roxanna saying, “My mother and father have moved to Unaria along with my three youngest siblings that still live at home.” She looked around the table. “Unaria is the city under the ocean.” Her purple eyes lit up with excitement, and they all remembered her saying how much she loved that city. “They’ve extended the invitation to all of you if we ever get leave and can get to Seler.”

  Chapter 6

  No matter how many times it had already happened, being woken up by the flashing red lights and klaxons was a jarring experience.

  Andy’s eyes flew open in an instant and she was fully conscious within a moment. Her heart pounded as adrenaline surged through her body, but the rest of her was tense and still. An alert meant that an enemy ship was on approach. With the ability of Arkana ships to teleport people from one ship to another, that meant there was a chance of intruders.

  And when there were intruders, it was the job of the 33rd to sort it out.

  Major Dolan pushed herself quickly out of bed, bare feet hitting the cold deckplates. All of her gear was in the locker room, which was situated close to the Marines’ sleeping quarters. She raced out of her room and to the locker room.

  Just as she was taking the corner into the room, the ship shook from the impact of a direct, throwing her into the doorframe. Andy caught herself and steadied herself for a moment. She saw that Anallin was already there, but that was no surprise. The Hanaran was pretty much always first in, probably because it didn’t sleep as deeply as other species. She wasn’t really sure what even qualified as sleep for a Hanaran.

  “Never a dull moment, eh?” Andy said as she opened the locker door and pulled out her uniform, putting it on.

  The ship shook a second time and the Marines swayed.

  “Indeed,” Anallin agreed.

  Just then, she heard footsteps from the door. Jade and Dan collided at the entrance and he all but picked her up and put her inside before following her. It was one of those moments where the height difference was especially pronounced, but they were both at their lockers a moment later, with Roxanna a few seconds later.