Indigo Squad (28 page)

The hangar doors retracted. Furn and Fant must have succeeded! Finfth’s doubting thoughts about heroism went with it.

One moment the hangar was pressurized, the next people were erupting into the vacuum of deep space. Marines, yes, but they were also losing far too many unprotected crew. They always knew they would lose a few but so many?

Even the heavy Lysander-Class shuttle was slowly easing out, straining at the cables in its mooring harness. When fog condensed instantly out of the air, Finfth chose that moment to detach the mooring.

This was the worst part yet. Finfth’s hands trembled but he waited his turn.

Then
Beowulf
fell away beneath him as the reserve captain maneuvered the ship away, according to Arun’s plan. The shuttle’s AI reported
Beowulf
had closed hangar doors. That was Finfth’s signal.

He had already selected his rescue target – the nearest crewmember trying to breathe vacuum – and slung the shuttle over to help.

With no pressure suit and no air, if they had followed emergency drill, his shipmates would have breathed out immediately, helped by the emergency nitrogen-purging system implanted when infants. If they hadn’t, the insides of their chests would be red slurry by now as the air pressure inside them would have pumped up their lungs until they burst. If they’d followed the drill, their eyes would still bulge and haze, skin balloon out, and extremities freeze. They would feel the moisture on their tongue boil as they breathed out, but they would not die. Not immediately.

Baseline humans who followed emergency decompression drills could survive around fifteen seconds in vacuum.

Spacers could survive around two minutes.

The Lysander was big enough to have multiple passenger/ hold compartments. He shot three emergency tethers out from Compartment Gamma. Finfth punch the air when she saw the crewmember grab one. As Finfth reeled in the tethers, the rescued shipmate grabbed the lifeline’s facemask and breathed pure oxygen, warmed slightly.

“To all Marines stranded in space, hear this!” The comm screen reported this message was being received from
Beowulf
. The words were spoken in synthetic human. “Those who wish to join the loyalist crew and Marines, board the shuttle, and we will return you to
Beowulf
.” A Jotun growl followed. It was the reserve captain all right. “Those who are still loyal to the so-called Free Corps are granted safe passage to cross to
Themistocles
. We will carry on with our assigned mission, you with whatever murderous scheme your masters have concocted for you. We both win a tactical victory. We will never meet again.”

“Wixering skangat!” Under his breath, Finfth muttered curses at the reserve captain, who sounded as if she’d already written off the human crew shot into the void.

Well, the officer could go tongue a pig. Finfth hadn’t given up on them.

For the benefit of Marines trying to embark, he opened the three unpressurized compartments to space.

Knowing how the suit propulsion worked, he was confident they could reach the shuttle. He left them to get on with it and pointed the shuttle at the nearest stricken crewmate.

As he drew alongside, he shot out more emergency tethers. They identified the human and snaked directly toward them, but… no response. The crewmate was dead or too injured to know that salvation was literally in front of their face.

Safe in their battlesuits, Marines were now pouring into the open shuttle compartments.

Finfth had waited long enough for his crewmate to grab the tether. He wrote off that life and sped toward another victim of the hangar depressurization. This one was waving for attention. Clever. Finfth threw out the lifelines again and this time felt a thrill of elation as the shipmate grabbed the line and used the facemask.

An alarm blared in the cockpit. Mader Zagh! The threat display console reported someone was shooting at the shuttle. “Projectiles fired at Compartment Gamma,” came the unnecessary spoken confirmation.

The damage control screen didn’t show any effect, though, and so Finfth kept the shuttle still, waiting for the tether to bring his shipmate back safely.

“Don’t listen to these lies.” The words were being broadcast from one of the Marines out there in the void. “A handful of deserters have taken
Beowulf
CIC, that is all. Marines, make for
Themistocles
immediately.”

Finfth activated the cameras in Compartment Gamma. It was one of the depressurized compartments starting to fill with Marines. A Marine corpse floated there, half-strapped into a seat.

Finfth zoomed the view in toward the body. He was no expert, but it looked to him as if the Marine had been shot with railgun darts.

A glance across at the lifeline tether status reported that it hadn’t yet retrieved the victim, so Finfth did nothing, except start to sweat.

“
Beowulf
to rebel Marines,” announced the reserve captain. “Throw away your weapons. We have targeting solutions on all of you, even those of you who have stealthed. If you fire upon anyone I’ll slice you in two with a laser in less than a heartbeat.”

Finfth scanned space nearby for the next depressurization victim to rescue, but his sinking heart told him that the brief window when rescue was possible had shut. Instead, he saw the legs and hips of a Marine who had been sliced cleanly in two. The reserve captain’s threat was not idle.

He closed the doors to the compartment containing the two rescued crewmates and began repressurizing and heating it as rapidly as he dared.

The lifeline tethers had wrapped around the rescues to heat and cradle them like tentacles from a caring sea monster. The Marines weren’t so secure. They were starting to argue. A few were armed. Merde!

He clicked on the PA system. “Pilot to all Marines on board shuttle. Secure yourself ASAP. Violent maneuvers imminent.”

That did the trick. The Marines decided that taking thrust stations was more important than killing each other. For now.

Whether Finfth really would have to throw the shuttle around was another matter entirely. It was sitting like a beginner’s gunnery target within point blank range of two warships. No amount of jinking could ever escape that firepower.

The knowledge translated into a ferocious itching on his back.

Beowulf
was now 300 meters away. He checked her hangar door. Still closed.

He edged the shuttle closer to the ship.

Come on, Indiya. Do something!

“I have tactical lock on
Themistocles
,” Loobie reported from the chief gunnery officer’s post in the CIC. “Missile batteries ready. Plasma cannon ready. Main laser batteries on standby.”

To Loobie it felt as if someone else were saying her words. They felt alien in her mouth. Indiya must be feeling something similar because she asked: “Are we really going to fire upon them?”

“Idiot!” snapped the reserve captain. “Do you think they would hesitate to fire on us?”

When Indiya didn’t react, Loobie glanced over to her post at the pilot’s station. Her friend looked distracted; Loobie wasn’t surprised.

Finfth had done his best to explain to them how to pilot the ship, but Indiya was still busy familiarizing herself with the controls.

Dear Finfth. None of them had any idea he could fly that Lysander the way he had.
Guess all of us have our secrets.

A beep Indiya had programmed into the CIC comm unit warned them that there was an incoming call through their FTL rigs.

“Lee reporting. We’re on the shuttle. There’s been fighting here but calmed down now. Oh… would you believe it? I can see Twinkle Eyes coming to join us.”

Twinkle Eyes? Lee had to be referring to Arun. McEwan hadn’t told them he’d been shot into space. Maybe it would have been better if he’d been lost out in the void. Indiya was infatuated with that bonehead and that wouldn’t end well. Matters of the heart never did with Indiya.

“Well done, Corporal Lee,” said the reserve captain.

“Did you do it?” asked Loobie.

“Well, I don’t know,” said Lee nonchalantly. Loobie had never met her, but disliked the wixering pig-licker already. “We followed your instructions, Lubricant. Maybe we locked
Themistocles’
missile ports, and confused the hell out of the engine control system like you said we would. Or then again, maybe your instructions were drent. Guess we’ll find out soon enough.”

The gunnery console pinged with alerts. “
Themistocles
has a lock on us,” Loobie reported. “Standby…” She split her console display to see what was happening on the other ship. There was a whole upper CIC deck dedicated to the Sensor Team, but she was handling that team’s role herself. It took precious seconds until she was confident enough in her readings.

“Explosions…” she said “Corporal Lee’s team did it!
Themistocles’
dorsal and port missile batteries blew themselves up.”

“Let that be a lesson to you both,” said the reserve captain. “Lieutenant Commander Wotun should have executed me when he had the chance. Never mistake age for stupidity, Indiya.”

“No, sir.”

“They’ll survive losing the missile batteries. But, Lubricant, if they fire lasers, launch our missiles at them.”

“Yes, sir.”

It wasn’t remotely easy, taking the role of both Gunnery and Sensor Teams, but she’d had gunnery training, and it took her only a few seconds to set up a full spread of missiles to launch at
Themistocles
automatically if their sister ship fired her lasers.

When she looked up, job done, she marveled that
Themistocles
had granted them the time to fumble through their ignorance. Was the other ship’s CIC as undermanned as theirs? Maybe they didn’t realize that
Beowulf
no longer held the Marines and crew for both ships – that they’d been blasted into space?

The lull reminded her of all those frozen crewmates. She had to take deep breaths. It wasn’t just her heart that felt empty. So too was the ship’s roster. Even if they survived the standoff with
Themistocles
, who would be left to crew
Beowulf
?

An augmented empathy sense told her that Indiya was feeling the pressure too. Probably stopping to feel the crushing weight of all that death, same as Loobie.

That wouldn’t do. Loobie could bottle it all up and scream and cry afterward. Indiya couldn’t.

Loobie rolled her eyes high up into her head to look through her library of mind message images. She found what she needed and animated an image of a pig-faced version of Petty Officer Lock jabbing a trotter. She cast her message to Indiya.

“You, freak!” squealed piggy-Lock in Indiya’s mind. “Work harder, you bakri-wrangling, gunja-chodding wastes of mass and ting.”

The real Lock had an impressive ability to string curses together into a seamless flow of endless invective, but the joke was on the petty officer. The vilest curses were mined from half-remembered human languages corrupted by centuries of misuse. Loobie had unearthed more about those ancient languages than anyone else, and knew that in most cases, Lock wasn’t saying the words correctly. Indiya didn’t do much better, though Loobie never told her that.

Guilt unexpectedly spiked through her gut. Lock’s corpse was probably out there in the vacuum, her scowl frozen on her face for eternity.

Indiya wasn’t as adept at mind messages, but she sent back a face with a half-hidden secret smile. It was enough: job done, friend supported.

That was Loobie’s role. If Indiya was captain of the Freaks, Loobie was their XO. She provided the supportive backbone that Indiya required before she could lead.

It was a backup role that Loobie was proud to fulfill. She didn’t envy her friend one bit.

The communication officer’s view she’d slaved to her pilot’s console flashed at Indiya.

“Incoming communication…” she said, pausing to work out who was talking. “It’s coming from the fire control station on Deck 3.”

“Don’t dither, human,” the reserve captain snapped, lighting a flame of resentment in Indiya’s gut. “Put it on, voice only.”

“Fire Control to CIC,” said a male human voice.

“CIC here,” said the reserve captain. “Identify yourself.”

They heard a deep intake of breath. “Ensign Dock, the
legitimate
watch officer.”

“Don’t be a sore loser, Dock.”

“Far from it, sir,” said Dock. “I have been speaking with Lieutenant Commander Kernisegg on
Themistocles
. I understand everything and I must say I admire your resourcefulness. Nonetheless, Captain Wotun was more resourceful than you realize. I have used the backdoor the captain provided to enable a fire control override.
Beowulf’s
weapons are useless unless I permit them to fire. I need hardly point out that
Themistocles
has no such limitation, other than your crude missile port sabotage. Surrender CIC to me immediately.”

Merde! Indiya waited for someone else to point out that if
Themistocles
fired on
Beowulf
, then Ensign Dock would die along with anyone else. She knew the idea that he might be bluffing wouldn’t occur to the alien reserve captain.

“Sir,” said Loobie, “enemy lasers firing on port beam. Low power but…”

“But can up to lethal levels within a microsecond,” finished the officer. “Let’s see. At this range, laser batteries on full power will penetrate our armor in approximately five seconds. Launch defensive munitions.”

“Negative, sir,” said Loobie. “Rebels have fire control. I am locked out. I must have lost missiles too, or they would have launched as soon as the lasers hit us.”

“I still have helm control, sir,” said Indiya. “Main engine is on standby.”

Ensign Dock had said
Themistocles
had no limitations but he didn’t know that Lee had scrambled the ship’s thrust control.
Themistocles
was stranded. Or… a chilling thought froze her. Maybe the sabotage had failed.

“Excellent,” said the reserve captain. “Power the main engine.”

“You have ten seconds,” said Dock. “9…”