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  “I’m looking, Colonel. I may.”

  Another shot landed uncomfortably close to Andy, who retreated behind the tank once more. Andy called out over the channel she had to the tank crew, “Any chance you can take out those watchtowers?”

  “Consider it done, Colonel.”

  “Anallin, tank turret will be turning. Watch yourself,” she called up next. She probably didn’t have to warn him, but the last thing she wanted was for him to get injured by their own tank.

  A loud crack from atop the tank suggested Anallin had found one of the snipers. Another crack from Andy’s left came as another one of their snipers took a shot. There was a delay of a few seconds when Anallin called, “Got him.” There was a shout of success from the left.

  A split-second later, the tank Anallin was on rocked as it fired at one of the watchtowers. The Marines felt and heard the concussive force, but held their stances. A second later, the targeted watchtower disintegrated.

  Andy kept scanning the strange, white Arkana buildings, looking for any remaining snipers.

  There was no more shooting for what felt like an eternity, but in reality could have been something like a minute. Andy had to wrestle with the fact that there was just no way to be sure, and they had to push forward.

  "Keep your eyes peeled. We're moving," Andy said into her comms, voice tight. She paused briefly, and then ordered, "Roll out." She watched as the tank got lumbering forward again.

  Andy walked more beside the tank now than behind it. Her Marines would be watching, and their colonel shouldn't be marching cowered behind cover. Quickly, everyone else also walked with less of that slight crouch of one who was cringing away from a potential hit.

  They moved slowly, warily, and with caution, but they still marched onward like Marines.

  Into the Arkana city.

  20

  As the dust of the crumbling tower dissipated, the ESS Marines of Second Company saw their opening into the city. Half was the opening that had been built there, and the other half was the crumbled remains of one edge of the wall.

  Just beyond that opening, however, they saw more of the enemy advancing toward them as they moved toward the city. This time, it wasn’t snipers in their towers but ground forces just like the ESS. Their gleaming white armor covering snow-white skin all but blended into the background of white-paved streets and white buildings.

  “Dad’s decorating sucks,” Andy murmured to Anath, who was on her other side. She said into her comms, “Incoming.”

  Soldiers moved back into cover just as the Arkana opened fire. Their energy pulses sizzled as they came into contact with the tank’s armor. They were streaks of colorful light against a pale backdrop that sliced through the dust still hanging in the air.

  In trained sequence, the Marines moved out to return fire. Meanwhile, the low rumble inside the tank built in the moments before it launched its own explosive volley into the enemy formation. A hole was opened, but enough Arkana soldiers remained on their feet to charge the ESS Marines before the tank got off its second shot.

  More shots were exchanged as the Marines used the tanks as cover, while the Arkana moved out in the open.

  Their numbers were drastically reduced by the time they reached the ESS lines, and those remaining were taken out swiftly.

  Andy didn’t like how easy that had seemed, and she knew deep down that there was much worse to come. Even so, she couldn’t do anything but order the Marine lines to continue their advance into the city.

  The Marines pressed forward through a more open area beyond the walls and were now coming up on another circle of buildings. The streets and alleys that appeared to wind deeper into the Arkana city were small, reminding the humans present of old European city streets. Streets that were formed around pedestrian traffic, not around vehicles, and certainly not around an ESS tank. Their armored vehicles were not going any further. Oorah, Dan thought as he pressed himself against a wall and peered down a narrow alley.

  "Colonel, it presses close here," he said into his comms.

  Colonel Dolan walked up to the alley and took the wall opposite Dan. She leaned over and looked down the alley, as he had.

  "Hold up along this outer wall, and wait for my go," the colonel announced into her comms to all the Marines in the area under her command. Dan looked left and right. Stretched out along this section of the city were groups of Marines dismounting from tanks and other vehicles and lining up around entrances to the inner city.

  "On my word, I want you to move in. Keep an even pace. I don't want some group trying to race us in and end up alone," she said. "Don't dawdle, either. It looks like we have a lot of randomly winding streets and close buildings. It's urban combat, you all know the drill. Watch out for friendlies. Don't just shoot anything that moves," the colonel finished. Dan watched as she craned her neck and looked both ways down the line. Satisfied everyone was dismounted and ready, she gave her command.

  "Okay, Marines. Go," she said.

  Dan raised his weapon and walked into the alley.

  After that initial wave and entering these streets that felt more like alleys than roads, things were noticeably...quiet.

  “Quiet” could have multiple meanings with an empath, of course, but the Arkana were notoriously hard to read, and they had been increasingly more difficult after every encounter. As they had learned, Arkana were able to amend their biology as well as manipulate their genetics, so they were clearly adding to their defenses against telepathy and empathy.

  It didn’t do much to make Roxanna’s tasks any easier. She often didn’t realize, or outright forgot, how much she relied on her Selerid senses in everything she did.

  As such, it was nearly impossible for her to be sure just how quiet this quiet was, but she knew she felt her commander’s attention on her, hoping for just that answer. The sergeant stretched her senses as far and as hard as she knew how to, but she just couldn’t be sure of what she was picking up on—or not, as the case may be.

  “It’s quiet,” the colonel said in a low voice. She was close enough to her sergeant to not have to use the comms.

  “Yes, it is,” Roxanna agreed, her purple eyes traveling everywhere at once. “If you’re hoping to have some sort of empathic insider information, I have to disappoint you. I sense...just noise. The tension of our own people is thick enough, but everything else is just...noise. Like white noise for the empathic senses.”

  “Fantastic,” she heard her colonel murmur.

  The feeling of oppressing tension only rose as they moved on, each squad or two taking to their own alleys to reconnoiter. It seemed that the longer they went without their lives coming under attack, the more fearful everyone became. Not that it stopped their advance, but to her, the feeling was impossible to miss.

  Suddenly, the colonel’s hand shot up with a fist in the silent ‘hold’ signal and everyone stopped. Dolan’s dark eyes flashed from side to side, and Roxanna knew that she had seen or heard something…

  Anath frowned, and the Selerid felt his recognition.

  “The drones!” he growled. “Find cover!”

  21

  Andy didn’t waste time giving the order, and then sending it over the comms, since it seemed unlikely they were the only ones about to come under automated fire.

  These narrow lanes were roughly three or four Marines wide, maybe five if they were slender, and the only cover to find were in the recessed doorways and the window alcoves along the otherwise smooth white buildings. There was barely enough for all of them, and sometimes it was a snug fit. Everyone settled themselves into opposing positions to be able to watch both directions, and they had barely made the move when the buzzing sound grew almost intolerably loud and the drones above opened fire.

  The energy weapons rapid-fired, sending a barrage of pulses that sounded a staccato rhythm against their own buildings. The initial fire came on so fast that they were hard-pressed to even return it.

  The colonel’s mind raced as she check
ed in with her various commanders, learning that almost everyone was pinned down the same way she and her immediate group was. It wasn’t that she hadn’t known about these drones. Anath had included their presence in his briefing about the city, so they knew they would encounter them at some point, but knowing in theory and planning was always a far different beast than actually dealing with it.

  “Does anyone have eyes on them?” Andy asked over her comms. “How many are we dealing with?”

  “I have spotted three so far,” Anallin reported back. “They’re fast.”

  “Can you get a shot on any of them?”

  “I’m working on it now, sir.”

  If anyone could do it, she knew it would be Anallin. The Hanaran had an uncanny ability, which made it so talented as a sniper in her squad. It had saved their butts with that skill on more than one occasion, and she couldn’t imagine having made it this far without it.

  And when the shots stopped impacting the building immediately to her left, she knew that Anallin had found a shot.

  That was, of course, when things got worse.

  The Arkana drones reminded Anallin of the elaranan back home, which translated roughly to “viper bird.” They were flying creatures with multiple heads that would fly fast and spin in mid-air just as fast, spitting out their venom like little bullets. These Arkana drones were much like that, with multiple “prong” structures sticking out around their circular bodies as they flew, spun, and spat.

  It was hard to see them, because they fired frequently. The firing pattern was not, however, an actual pattern—at least not one that Anallin was having any luck figuring out. It made observing it for more information hard, and getting a shot at it even harder.

  “I think I’ve figured it out,” Jade said suddenly.

  With its surprise, Anallin’s eyes stopped clicking for several beats before picking up again.

  “Figured what out?”

  She turned her head briefly toward it, and the Hanaran saw her bright green eyes flash behind her combat visor. “The firing and movement pattern,” she replied plainly, with an edge that suggested she was surprised the question had even been asked.

  Anallin opened its mouth to ask how she had managed to do that when it had not, but then it remembered that she was the technological expert in the group. Perhaps there was something to that in how she had been able to find any sort of pattern recognition. So instead of asking what would likely be a stupid and possibly insulting question, it just nodded once.

  “Get ready,” she said, and Anallin nodded with an acknowledgement as she pointed in a specific direction.

  The Hanaran shifted its body to face that way.

  “Three… Two… One…” she counted down in between the shots.

  As she said “one,” the firing coming from the direction she’d pointed stopped. Anallin wasted no time in sliding out of cover, completely trusting her knowledge, and lifted the rifle. In a moment, it spotted the viper-bird-drone and took a swift shot.

  The dull white metal clinked, fizzled, and fell to the ground.

  Just as Anallin was preparing to swing back into the cover of the broad doorway they had sheltered in, Jade let out a short, truncated scream. The Hanaran turned back just in time to see her vanishing inside a rapidly closing door.

  From all corners, Andy was getting reports of previously-thought empty doors and windows suddenly opening and snatching her Marines right off the bloody streets. They were trapped between the devil and the deep blue sea on this one, since they couldn’t move away from the potential traps without coming under fire from the drones circling in the air above these narrow city streets. And they couldn’t turn around and go into the buildings, guns blazing, lest they shoot their own comrades.

  Colonel Dolan, for a moment, felt like she was stuck between a rock and a gleaming white hard place.

  22

  The moment Jade felt hands on her, she let out a shout to alert the others, as well as just out of surprise. The buildings had all looked dark, and there hadn’t been any evidence that people were inside...but that was the chaotic nature of urban warfare.

  Not that she had time to wax philosophical.

  Her sound was cut short as she was hauled backwards into a darkened building, pushed back, and hit across the mouth. Her response was almost instantaneous, not even feeling the hit as she hauled back with her free hand to return the hit to her shadowy attacker. She couldn’t make out many details, even as her visor attempted to compensate for the dark, but she saw enough to know where the head was.

  She watched the silhouette stagger back just as she heard the shuffle of booted feet behind her. Gripping her rifle in both hands, she swung it back under her arm and jammed the butt of it into whoever was coming up from her flank. Her action was rewarded with a grunt and more feet-shuffling sounds that were clearly a stagger.

  Jade swung herself around to put her back toward where she remembered the door had been, at least so she hoped. She tried to put the two attackers she knew of in front of her, rather than at her back.

  By now, her eyes and visor were somewhat better adjusted to the incredibly low light level, so she was better able to make out the situation. It seemed that the two attackers she’d already hit were the only two around her, at least up close. If there were any others, they were buried far back in the truly impenetrable shadows ahead. If there were any there, she’d worry about them when they came at her.

  For now, she had two right in front of her at too close quarters for her gun.

  She wasted no time letting her gun hang from its sling around her shoulders and pulling her service knife. The one she’d punched in the face had recovered more quickly than the one she’d nailed in the middle, so that was the side that came at her first. The briefest, dimmest glint suggested to her that there was a weapon in her attacker’s hand too, but was it a blade or a gun?

  Either way, it was in the hand on the arm that she could just make out raising in attack.

  Her own hand shot up and caught the arm, managing to wrap her gloved fingers around his wrist—at least, she assumed it was a he. She held the arm up before it could reach her, but the battle of strength versus strength was notable. This Arkana was stronger than she was in sheer brute force, but she was quicker.

  While keeping his hand away, she reversed the knife in her hand, slashed out forward and up, aiming for whatever unarmed portion of the body she could find. A pained, strangled half-cry suggested her success as she turned her head and saw the other advancing on her.

  Still holding the one attacker’s arm, she shifted her weight back enough to kick the other in the gut and send (also presumed) him staggering back yet one more time. Turning back to the first one, she yanked his arm down and brought up her armored knee into his head. The spurt of blood from what she guessed was a broken nose was enough to make a sound against the floor.

  She pushed his groaning form away and heard him crash into the floor, and the groaning stopped in a way she could only think of as ominous...at least for him.

  Jade turned to see where the other one had gotten to, which was when she saw that he was upright again, because he came barreling into her. His momentum carried them both several steps backward and into the wall, which she hit first with a quiet thud and a grunt. Why his hands were empty enough to go for her throat, she didn’t know, but they were, and he did.

  Knowing that it would take a lot of effort for him to reach her throat with her armor and equipment on, she took that moment to jab forward with her knife. Unfortunately, this attempt hit a piece of armor and slid off. That was when his hands found her throat through and around everything, but she just gritted her teeth and focused.

  She brought her hands together and up through his arms, then turned. Her arm pressed against the joint of his elbow, breaking his stiff-armed hold enough for her to push into him and push him away. It was only a step, but it was enough to let her jam her boot into his knee and then aim for a better, more effective stab.


  This one scored, and he was down.

  Outside the building, Colonel Dolan was doing everything in her power to contain the chaos.

  On the upside, it seemed that the yanking of Marines off the street seemed to have stopped, since there were no more angry shouts coming in across the comms. On the downside, there were still drones hovering above the alleys and shooting at them. The snipers were still working on taking them down, but there had been a long operation pause during the grabs.

  “We have got to get those drones down now!” Andy shouted into her comms, which was responded to by a chorus of snipers—at least those that were still out and about. “Those who are able, break off and try to retr—”

  Her words stopped in their tracks when she saw it: a line of Arkana soldiers marching down the street, surrounded but not hit by their own drones’ continuous hail of energy pulses.

  “Belay that. Snipers, concentrate on the drones. Everyone else, fire on those incoming hostiles!” she shouted over the noise.

  It didn’t take an empath to feel the tension rising beyond all previously-known levels while they all wondered, in the not-so-back of their minds, if they were about to be grabbed and drawn away. Wondering what happened to their comrades. Trying to figure out how to shoot out drones and soldiers while barely being able to come out from their various places of cover in these recessed doorways and windows.

  Andy noticed now that these soldiers were dressed like riot officers, with full-body shields held out by the front line as they advanced forward. The projectile bullets of the ESS primarily bounced off, drawing a long list of highly creative cursing to scroll through her mind.