Indigo Squad (24 page)

“Luck? We don’t need luck, Arun. What we need is to be there at
Themistocles
waiting when the shuttle comes in. Come on, we’ve got a shuttle to race. There’s no time to lose.”

Darius only just dodged out of their way in time as they swept out of their self-imposed prison. After weeks spent yielding all initiative to their enemies, waiting passively to be captured, it felt unbelievably good to take the fight to the enemy.

Payback would be sweet.

Stealthed, Springer and Arun hid a short distance off the starboard beam of
Themistocles
. They didn’t wait long before the Stork-class shuttle arrived from
Beowulf
.

The timing of their intel was spot on, but they didn’t know which hangar the shuttle would use. As
Beowulf’s
craft braked in an arc toward the ventral hangar, they accelerated their stolen battlesuits to bruising levels that made Arun grunt with the pain from the wounds Krimkrak had clawed into his shoulders, and the railgun wounds in his arm he’d taken in the assault on
Bonaventure
’s CIC.

He was grateful that Springer couldn’t hear him. She’d only worry.

The two Marines shot into the hangar in the shuttle’s wake, seconds before the hangar door closed.

While the flight crew was busy shooting the mooring harness cables around the Stork, the escaped Marines put their faith in their unfamiliar suit AIs to swoop them down to a safe halt near the main airlock into the ship’s interior.

Arun felt his neck tingle when they unstealthed. When no shouts came to his ears or volley fire pierced his flesh, he walked casually with Springer along a charged walkway on the deck to take up position by the airlock, as if an honor guard waiting for the shuttle party to pass though into the airlock first.

Hopping down from the shuttle came three Jotun Navy officers and one human Marine sergeant, all in dress uniforms. They were greeted by the XO of
Themistocles
, who was large, even by Jotun standards. His fur was shot through with hazel strands except the side of his head where a patch of fur had been burned away, revealing pallid scar tissue underneath.

After the XO offered a greeting that appeared formal rather than friendly (although Arun didn’t know Jotuns well enough to be sure) the party marched as formally as they could in zero-g toward the airlock.

Arun’s head was positioned straight ahead, but the view in his visor was tilted around to focus on the human at the rear of the group wearing the blue dress tunic and creased cream trousers of a Marine. He was tall for a human with a battle-scarred face, and he made Arun’s nerves tingle with hatred.

Fraser McEwan passed by within punching reach, oblivious that behind the anonymous black visor of the politely waiting Marine, his brother’s eyes stared back.

“You all right, Arun?” Springer asked on a secure link.

“Not a problem,” he replied. “Fraser’s my kill. Just not today.”

Springer fell in behind Fraser, followed by Arun. At the first opportunity, the two Indigo Squad Marines split away from the shuttle group.

“Where to now?” said Arun after putting a few compartments between them and his twin. “This ship’s even bigger than
Beowulf
.”

Springer slapped a hand on Arun’s shoulder. “Relax, boy. We’re after Xin, right? There’s only six thousand Marines on board. That’s nowhere near enough of a crowd to hide her.”

He laughed. “Guess we agree about Xin on that point if nothing else.”

They headed deeper into the ship and soon chanced across a pair of Marines up ahead in a transit passageway. They were wearing fatigues. Without suit AIs to help them identify the
Beowulf
Marines, that made this easier.

“Hey! Hold up, guys!” called Springer.

They didn’t stop.

Springer shot over the heads of the Marines, slamming down with a thud right in front of them, her armored bulk barring their way. “Hey, I just want a word, guys.”

The two
Themistocles
Marines look dazed, but soon stirred. They weren’t as badly doped as he remembered his comrades before the mutiny started, but clearly a similar kind of suggestive mind-control had been in play on this vessel too.

“It’s my friend,” said Springer. “He wants to ask out that hot girl, Xin Lee? But it’s taken me to make him do it because he’s too yellow-livered. Now we can’t find her. Do you know where she is?”

Both the unarmored Marines screwed up their faces in thought.

“Xin Lee?” said one blankly.

“She makes every guy weak at the knees,” said Springer bitterly, adding huskily: “half the girls too.”

Arun snapped a glance at her, but she pretended not to notice.

“Yes,” said one of the
Themistocles
Marines, nodding. “That description fits Corporal Lee.”

“Well, do you know where she is?”

“No.”

“I don’t know where she is either,” said the other helpfully.

Just their luck, thought Arun. They’d chanced across a pair of clowns.

“But I do know her unit,” said the second
Themistocles
Marine. He walked to an access point at the side of the corridor and brought up a map. “Her mess is on deck 4 round about Frame 9.”

“Thanks.”

The two 87th battalion Marines walked away, leaving Arun and Springer to turn around and head off for Deck 4.

“Corporal Lee, you say.”

The woman’s voice came through a tight comm link. Athena finally got around to switching Arun’s visor to tac-display, marking the newcomer with a dot positioned five meters behind him.

“You could have asked me,” said the woman, whose voice sounded oddly familiar. Arun pivoted around to face her. “She’s in my unit. Yes, I know her.”

Arun felt his blood freeze when Athena identified the armored Marine as Sergeant Tirunesh Nhlappo.

The colonel of the 412th Marines had busted Senior Instructor Nhlappo down to the lowest rank and sent her off to die. Nhlappo blamed Arun. No one in the Universe hated him more.

“I know you too, McEwan,” said Nhlappo. “I don’t have to hear your voice to recognize you. Stolen suits?” she tutted. “That doesn’t fool me any more than it did the security scanner at the airlock. The poor thing didn’t understand where you’d come from. I must say, though, that I am thrown by such an unexpected reunion after we’d been told you were finally dead. And I had such an enjoyable time celebrating your death.”

Springer flew at Nhlappo but the veteran ducked at the last moment and leaped at Arun who was closing in for his own attack.

Arun grappled as he’d been taught, but Nhlappo had been his teacher and knew all the counter-moves. Effortlessly she broke Arun’s hold and dove under Springer’s clumsy second attack.

The fight was over so fast that Arun wasn’t sure how it had all gone to drent so quickly.

Springer and Arun found themselves battered but alive, floating halfway up a bulkhead, looking into Nhlappo’s plasma pistol.

“I’m guessing stolen AIs to match your stolen suits,” said Nhlappo. “That explains the need for more suit calibration work, but that’s no excuse. McEwan, you still broadcast your attacks so badly that I know what you’re going to do before you do. Idiot! I’m guessing that’s your girlfriend, Tremayne, in the other suit. You disappoint me, Tremayne. All your attacks were compromised because you concentrated on protecting that worthless veck you care so much about, when you should have focused every effort on disabling me. They might call you two Marines, but your competence says otherwise. You’re still cadets. At least you, Tremayne, were once a promising cadet.”

“What are you going to do with us?” asked Arun.

“Do? Now that you’re dead, McEwan, what should I do with you?” She made a show of scratching the chin of her helmet.
Get on with it,
thought Arun
.
“I believe it is the duty of those who survive to honor the memory of our fallen comrades we once cared for. In your case… I never cared for you in the first place, so I don’t think I’ll bother with any remembering… do you?”

Nhlappo had backed away slightly, to leave ten meters between her and the two fugitives. Arun considered his attack options. If he went straight for Nhlappo, he’d catch a plasma blast, but it just might be enough of a distraction for Springer to flank her. His head said to do it without delay, but his heart hesitated. Everything the veteran had said was true. Their chances of getting out alive were minimal. But that was no excuse not to try.

Nhlappo lifted her aim to point the gun at Arun’s head. “Where is Xin? That’s what you wanted to know. She goes off duty at 23:43 hours. Her quarters are compartment 04-09-03. Right now she’s on patrol. Those of us who are more alert and loyal to the new order – or appear to be – seem to have been permitted clearer heads recently. We patrol to deter counter-rebellion. It’s so difficult to know whom to trust these days. All these strange rumors. Like that
false alarm
I was given by the hangar security scan.”

Was Nhlappo letting them off? After so much betrayal, Arun struggled to believe the veteran was loyal. Her sense of duty was making the corporal risk her life for the most hated person in her life. Inside that suit she must be twisted with the injustice.

He shook his head. Nhlappo had always taught her cadets that a true Marine does the right thing first time, every time. No question. Guess she’d meant every word of that.

“For frakk’s sake, McEwan,” shouted Nhlappo, “what are you waiting for? Go!”

They raced off, keeping their visors in tac-display to check whether they were being followed.

“I always said you misjudged Nhlappo,” Springer told him after a few minutes of threading their way into the ship’s interior.

“Maybe,” said Arun. “I guess she’ll kill me in her own time, like I’ll kill my brother.”

Athena and Saraswati had loaded up a map of
Themistocles
and plotted possible routes to Xin’s mess on Deck 4. While they were considering the routes, Springer asked: “What are you planning, Arun? To wait under the covers in her rack? Isn’t that what you did back on the moon?”

“Nah. This time I’m going to catch her with her pants down.”

As the sole human member of
Beowulf’s
delegation to
Themistocles
, Fraser McEwan had taken his humble place at the rear of the column escorted to the conference chamber. Captain Wotun took the lead, followed by the chief tactical officer and then the chief cryo officer. They had left the XO in
Beowulf’s
CIC.

Fraser didn’t mind taking the rear. Just being here was a victory in itself.

An irresistible combination of training and breeding compelled Fraser to assess the tactical situation at all times. He noted the sullen and often bruised faces of the human Navy crew. The humans of the 87th battalion were armed but not armored, and were fewer in number than evident on
Beowulf
but looked more drug-free. There was a cruelty in their eyes that betrayed the origin of the ship-rat bruises. None of them caught Fraser’s eye, but he sensed their curious attention.
Why was a Marine human accompanying these officers?

The conference chamber they were ushered into was a far more glamorous affair than
Beowulf’s
captain’s cabin. For a start the bulkheads were shaped like the interior of an icosahedron and clad in the same polished stone that topped the triangular table in
Beowulf
.

Representing
Themistocles
on the polished metal meeting sphere that floated in the center of the chamber were Captain Rheenisowill, Executive Officer Lieutenant Commander Kernisegg, the chief tactical officer, and Ensign Decryption, the human junior security officer, a mature woman who doubtless had been ordered here to match Fraser’s presence in a calculated balance of prestige.

When the situation warranted, Fraser considered himself brave enough to take risks without hesitation. This wasn’t one of those times. He kept his mouth shut, a humble attitude that was made easier by the Jotuns speaking amongst themselves in their own language of whistles, peeps, and yodels that sounded incongruously cute in contrast to their brutal physicality.

Then, out of the void, Kernisegg asked in the human language whether there were any issues where her ship could assist
Beowulf
or vice versa.

As the only two humans, Fraser and Decryption glanced at each other. Neither had expected to contribute.

Fraser watched at Captain Wotun. Was that brief flick of one ear intended to carry meaning?

Taking a deep breath, Fraser indicated a desire to speak. He placed a hand into one of the meeting sphere’s iridescent channels that resembled a gas giant’s bands.

More than once, Captain Wotun had already dismissed the point Fraser was about to make. The officer now rumbled displeasure at the back of his throat. Fraser steeled his nerve, reminding himself that, like many senior Jotun males, Wotun was a preening fool who cut an impressive figure but had no time for the inconvenient details of his command. There were good reasons why most Jotun officers were female; Wotun was a living reminder of them.

“Speak!” commanded Captain Rheenisowill in human words.

“Sirs, there is one thing I am keen to do and that’s erase
Beowulf’s
security AI and replace with a copy of your AI personality from
Themistocles
. Although any resistance among our crew and Marines has been crushed, our AI has been compromised.”

“That is serious,” said Rheenisowill. Turning to Ensign Decryption, she asked: “This work… How risky is it?”

Decryption took time to think through her answer. Fraser admired that. “If we take care and do not rush – yes, we can do this, although we will need to update physical security activity, such as patrols, while the security systems are down. Complex yet achievable.” Decryption looked at Fraser. “In fact, we recently followed a similar procedure to reset our own security AI to its default. I don’t understand why you haven’t done the same. Why not reset to default?”

Fraser pursed his lips. “These things are better peer reviewed. As a precaution, I have upped patrols but kept the AI running in its compromised state until your arrival.”