Lykos Read online

  “Been too quiet, eh, Major?” Dan said as he came up beside her, opening his locker and pulling his armor out. The tall man made quick work of putting it on, the same way Andy was.

  They had spent the space flight training with the new weapons, re-training with their current weapons, and generally just…training, and studying what they knew about Lykos. They were as ready as they could be.

  In less than ten minutes, five squads of Marines were loading into shuttles. The pilots were already in their seats doing pre-flight checks.

  “The ESS Galaxy is alongside us,” the sensor officer announced to the ship from the bridge. “We are going to try to make it into range of the colony before sending out the fighters, but it may make for a bumpy ride.”

  “Marine shuttles, be in your seats and ready to deploy in ten minutes.”

  Andy shouted through the bay. “You heard the man. In your shuttles! Sit down, buckle up, and hold on.”

  Hurry up… Hurry up… Hurry up…

  Wait.

  Andy and her squad—including Anath—sat in the shuttle. The lights were dim, ready for takeoff at a moment’s notice. There was a faint red light flashing from the front, bathing the interior in foreboding. It didn’t take an empath to feel the tension, the readiness.

  Suddenly, the ship gave one big shake. Andy grit her teeth.

  “Looks like we found the Arkana,” Dan commented, his voice low and his face tight as he stared at the front viewscreen. All it showed right now was the inside of the shuttle bay door, where they waited as the first in line to depart.

  The ship shook again.

  They couldn’t hear anything from inside the shuttle.

  The moments ticked by. No one else said anything.

  When the captain’s voice came over the speakers, it was almost enough to make Andy jump. She didn’t, but it was close.

  “We are in range and have engaged an Arkana cruiser and their compliment of fighter craft. There is another inbound, so you have less than four minutes to launch and head toward the colony before they add to the trouble. The Galaxy has launched her fighters. They will provide cover, but stay out of their way.”

  “Acknowledged, Captain,” the shuttle pilot replied. Then she turned her head back slightly to the rest. “Prepare for launch. Hold tight.”

  They could see the shuttle bay doors open through the view screen and feel their craft shudder beneath them as it prepared to lift.

  The hornet’s nest she had seen kicked over before, she could now see had been spilled out into the space around the ships as well. The Star Chaser was holding steady just long enough for the shuttles to launch, but the Galaxy was on the move. There had to be well over two dozen fighter jets in the space nearby, like those tiny fish that hang around bigger fish. They were fast and agile, moving in pairs dancing from one point to the next and seemingly never letting up on the fire.

  “Commander Thomas to Shuttle Alpha,” came over the speakers.

  Andy’s brows rose. “Major Dolan here.”

  “I’m in the bird coming up and around your exit,” he went on. “We’re going to cover you on your flight down. Move fast. The Arkana bastards seem to have added a few gun turrets to their ships.”

  “Understood, Commander.”

  The channel closed, and there came that subtle shift as the shuttle began to rise and prepare to make its escape from the Star Chaser. She could see two of the fighters up close now as they came up beside the shuttle bay doors. They didn’t hold position though, crossing and diving in front of the doors as they engaged the pale white metal Arkana fighter jets.

  “There is nothing we have that they do not,” Andy said quietly. Knowing that the Arkana had evolved from their human-created origins brought to mind the phrase, “the chickens coming home to roost,” even though she’d never done anything with actual chickens. Still, this enemy was as close as it came to them fighting themselves without actually fighting themselves.

  However, they were not just beings created from humanity, but engineered and built upon. Made into a “better” version that was nearly impossible to defeat.

  The ESS had big ships. Fighter jets. Soldiers. Weapons. Science. Intelligence. Technology…

  The Arkana had big ships. Fighter jets. Soldiers. Weapons. Science. Intelligence. Technology…

  The shuttle lurched and yanked Andy out of her moment of reverie. She looked up again to watch their ship emerge into the light show, the chaotic dance.

  The ESS Marines vaulted out into the madness.

  7

  Every stomach was in every throat by the time they were descending through the atmosphere. It felt so rough that some stomachs might have been in someone else’s throat by that time.

  The fighter jets had done their job, dancing like birds around the bulkier, slightly slower platoon of shuttle craft as they carted the Marines from the Star Chaser toward the moon’s atmosphere, but the too-close detonations, and the near-misses during the process, made the journey anything but smooth.

  By the time the thunderous shuddering of atmospheric entry began, it was almost a relief.

  Once they were deep enough to avoid Arkana fighters, the pilot thanked Commander Thomas and dismissed the fighters to re-enter the battle raging above.

  “Major Dolan to all shuttles,” Andy said, breathing deep through her nose. “Status check.”

  The other four shuttles and their squad leaders reported readiness, and down to the surface they all went.

  “I considered joining the ESS Aerocorps for a while,” Dan commented, still looking a little pale. “I think I just confirmed that I made the right choice.”

  Andy snorted a half-laugh.

  Each shuttle had its own landing area, spaced apart from the others so they would not be caught in the same trouble, if they found any. The landing zones also put each in line for their designated ingress points.

  Everyone unfastened themselves as the craft was on final descent, bringing up their weapons to be ready in case anything happened the moment they were on the ground. The shuttle had sensors, but better safe than sorry, as the saying went.

  “Keep it locked down for us,” Andy told the pilot as they got ready. “Don’t want any unwelcome visitors when we come back.”

  “You got it, Major.”

  Andy and Dan took point with Jade and Anath between, Roxanna and Anallin took up the rear guard. The hatch hissed and rose, and they made their tactical exit.

  The area was clear. They had landed in a small forest to the west of the main colony compound, which had been the building secure enough on the colony to be a stronghold and contain prisoners. It could withstand most assaults upon it, but knowing as much about it as they did offered at least a leg up. What little they had been able to see on sensors on their descent showed no major structural changes, externally at least.

  “Forward,” Andy ordered, and they began on their path to the compound. “Eyes open.” Strategic logic said there would be patrols, and more the closer to the building they got.

  This forest was oddly quiet. There wasn’t the same ambient noise that she was used to from Earth, or other planets she had visited for that matter. Had this place always been like this, or had the Arkana somehow chased away or killed off the wildlife?

  Whatever the reason, it made it really easy to hear almost everything as they moved. The silence followed them for a while, telling her that no one else was near. They had several minutes to walk, since the available landing zone had been a good distance and they didn’t want to land too close to the building.

  The edge of the forest was approaching, and that was when they heard a telltale snap.

  Andy held up her hand. The squad stopped, forming up defensively.

  Four Marines and Anath had the new weaponry in hand, with traditional weapons as holstered sidearms. Anallin had the old weapon in hand. As the best marksman in the group, Andy wanted it as backup in case the first “field test” was a failure.

  There was ano
ther long stretch of silence. Andy felt tension stretching her muscles taut, but she pushed the feeling back down. She couldn’t afford to feel that now.

  There was another snapping sound. She spun to where the sound had come from and stared at the trees. It was a sea of light brown and light red between trunks and leaves, so the pair of Arkana coming through them were pretty obvious. Their snow-white bodies stood out like sore thumbs. Unlike the ESS Marines, whose combat gear allowed them to blend in at least a little.

  “Two approaching,” she said in a low voice.

  From the slow approach, she knew that the enemy had not spotted the Marines, but the latter knew that they were not yet in range, not in the trees.

  “Anath?” Andy asked without moving her gaze.

  “Just a few moments and we’ll have range,” he replied, knowing the weapons better than any of them, even with all the training they’d done.

  Behind her, she could hear the increasing clicks of Anallin’s eyes. It was the way the Hanaran showed agitation or tension. Andy had almost come to find the noise…a comfort. An audible reminder that it and the others were all there with her.

  “Now.”

  Andy and Dan immediately took aim, crossed their emotional fingers, and fired off two shots of their new weapons. The venomous rounds flew through the trees. Andy’s target took a kill-shot and dropped immediately. Dan’s target took a shot to center mass but stayed on its feet long enough to fire off a shot in return.

  It went wild and lodged in a tree.

  Andy got in the second shot. It caught the soldier and put him down, where both Arkana writhed for a short time as the venom took effect and they seemingly lost all motor control skills within moments of the shot.

  “Well,” Dan began dryly, “I guess the field test is successful.”

  8

  The second two-man patrol fell to the new weapons just as easily as the first had.

  With that patrol group down and no one else in sight, the squad hurried across the open space to the door. This section of the compound had no windows near ground level, so it was just the door. Sure, it would be easy enough to blow it up, but that definitely wouldn’t help them enter undetected.

  Sending a giant piece of building flying in all directions usually made a pretty big ‘we are here’ sign.

  They reached the door and Jade immediately slung back her weapon and knelt in front of the control panel. She was the squad’s technological expert, so if anyone could break into it, it was her.

  “Sadly, I’m sure they’ll have changed the codes already,” she said as she examined the panel with quick eyes.

  “You could try the code just to see,” Dan suggested.

  She shook her head and replied without looking at them. “I don’t trust them. They may have rigged it so that there would be an alert if someone tried to use that code. I don’t want to risk it. She pulled a toolkit out of the cargo pocket on her pants. She opened it up and pulled out a small, silver-colored tool.

  “Isn’t it going to be rigged to let them know if someone is tampering with it?” Roxanna asked.

  Everyone was standing in a defensive formation around her, looking out for any trouble coming from the outside with the occasional look at the door in case any showed up from within.

  “It’s possible,” Jade answered, “but unlikely. That requires a hardware change for each individual panel, rather than a system wide programming change.” She slid the tool along the edges of the panel. “Chances are good that they wouldn’t take the time to do a hardware upgrade on every panel.”

  “I would tend to agree with you,” Anath said. “My people can be…lazy, of a sort, and would want to focus their efforts inside.”

  “Plus,” Jade went on without looking away from her work, or seemingly blinking, “there will be an alarm for if this panel goes dead entirely. They likely won’t assume that anyone can tamper with it without disrupting service.”

  Andy glanced back at the young woman with a small smirk. “But you can?”

  Jade laughed softly, mirthlessly. “In theory,” she agreed. “Although I don’t think it’s going to be easy.”

  “Since when has anything we’ve ever done been easy?” Dan returned without missing a beat. One could always count on him for the quip.

  “It would be a nice change of pace,” Roxanna murmured.

  The tension rose with each passing minute, and again with each curse that Jade spat out and tiny zapping noise from the panel…which was usually what preceded the cursing.

  Every second was an extra chance that something would go wrong, or that another patrol would come around and find them. Andy had to keep herself from asking Jade how it was going on multiple occasions, because she knew it would not help the process along. It would likely just frustrate everyone further, but not asking proved difficult.

  “We could still just blow it up and move fast,” Dan offered, only half-joking.

  “Not helping,” Jade replied immediately, showing she was listening far more than it looked like she could be.

  “They don’t seem to be patrolling very heavily,” Roxanna commented after a moment. “Two two-man patrols hardly seems like much for a headquarters like this in the middle of the whole colony. This should be their center of operations, so it should be heavily guarded.”

  Andy also would have expected another patrol to have come around by now, but they hadn’t seen anyone. She agreed with her sergeant’s assessment, and the lack of further trouble had actually been unnerving her more than if they’d been in a constant stream of battle.

  Seeing that Jade was still working, Andy pressed the button on her earpiece and called the other squad leaders for a report while the others kept talking in low tones

  “They’ve been entrenched here for a while,” Anallin said pragmatically. “They probably are not expecting anyone to attempt this? Or maybe are understaffed at this location. They must be stretching thin in their range of attacks.”

  “Unlikely,” Anath said. “It’s hard to say, though. It could just be overconfidence.”

  Beta had only met one patrol and was working to breach. Gamma, two, and working to breach. Delta had met two and were currently approaching the compound. Epsilon had breached and was beginning their search through the building.

  Andy looked back at Jade, opening her mouth to—

  “Got it!” the blonde exclaimed in a half-hiss, trying to temper her excitement with the need for caution.

  “Good work, Martin,” Andy said with a firm nod.

  Alpha Squad reformed their formation, and quickly proceeded into the primary compound of the Arkana-controlled Lykos Colony.

  9

  “Do you sense anyone?”

  Roxanna’s purple skin swirled with the faint opalescent shades that indicated her tension over the situation. The strong, industrial lighting that lined the ceiling gave it a hue that Andy wasn’t used to seeing, but was managing to otherwise ignore. Instead, she focused on her sergeant’s gaze as she swung it from side to side, but without focus.

  “Not close by, no,” she finally replied. “There are plenty of people in the compound, like…distant white noise, but no one in our immediate area.”

  Andy nodded her acknowledgement. “Alright, let’s move.”

  During their research and planning, they had identified several locations within the compound most likely to house the POWs. It would be somewhere fortified to prevent exactly what they were trying to do, and difficult for someone coming in from the outside to reach for just that reason.

  Of course, nothing about this mission was going quite as anticipated. It was going easier, especially in light of a mission originally deemed as difficult and high risk. A pit of nerves was forming in Andy’s stomach that was becoming increasingly difficult to suppress.

  Each probable location had been assigned to one of the squads. Alpha Squad had two locations to check—those closest to the entrance they’d used.

  The main compound was buil
t by an architect obsessed with ninety-degree angles, since there wasn’t a single curve to any hallway to be found. Everything was straight lines, L-turns, and T-junctions. Smooth stone floors, and matte walls of a uniform grey color. Andy had to wonder about the sanity of the person who’d designed the place. In addition to being aesthetically boring, it had the added side effect of making it easy to feel lost.

  Each turn looked like every other turn, and every hallway appeared the same as the last. Even with the bright—too bright—lights overhead, it took their scanners to make sure they were going in the right direction.

  “Thrilling building to live in,” Dan gave sarcastic voice to Andy’s inner monologue. Sometimes, his sense of humor seemed telepathic.

  “We’re not decorating critics,” Andy said quietly.

  He grunted.

  After several more minutes of walking, Anallin said, “Go left at the next intersection. There will be a room on the left. That’s our first destination.”

  “Understood,” Andy replied.

  They walked to the T-junction, carefully peering around each corner to check both directions before proceeding left. The pit in her stomach began widening as they walked down yet another corridor that lacked any sign of guards. Had a silent alarm been tripped that their scanners weren’t picking up on? Perhaps well-hidden surveillance that would let them get in deeper before springing a trap. Her mind raced through as many scenarios as it could, but without more to go on, they were all just guesses.

  “Just ahead, Major,” Anallin said.

  They reached a door, and there was another panel set just beside it. Andy stepped forward and tried to open the door, but it was locked, so she immediately stepped back and let Jade come forward to do her job. She was on one knee with her toolkit out in an instant, poking and wiggling at the panel.

  “This one isn’t as complex as the one outside,” the young Marine commented.

  Only a minute or so, and far less cursing, and the door slid open. Jade leapt back, onto her feet with her gun up.