Suddenly the door release wheel was turning of its own accord. The door opened, revealing two Marines in battlesuits, the silver and black mirrored surfaces of their helmets making them look more machine than human.
“Your door is stiff,” said one through his helmet speaker.
“Shut up, Carabinier,” said the other, a woman.
Carabinier, what was that – a new rank? No, Activation corrected herself, it was a very old one.
The female Marine pointed at Activation. “You.”
Petty Officer Activation squared her jaw, but her insides were melting under the cyborg’s scrutiny.
The Marine stood there, pointing, as if she’d forgotten the rest of her script. “You, cryo team petty officer. Come, follow me, and bring your team. Fox Company are waking from their pods.”
“Impossible!” By instinct Activation glanced at her viewscreen, but, of course, it was still unpowered and uncommunicative. “The pods are self-powered. Central power outage won’t cause resuscitation.”
“Negative, petty officer. We’ve seen this with our own eyes. Maybe someone’s hooked up a portable power supply and are resuscitating deliberately.”
Activation’s eyes went wild. With all the weird stuff going on, maybe they were telling the truth.
“Let’s get this straight,” she said, “you were there on Deck 6?”
“Yes.”
“When?”
“We went to check after we lost power.”
“And then came here? All of that in about six minutes…?” She shuddered. The cryo pods were two decks away. Marine battlesuits were lethally fast.
Trying not to think of passageways filled with flying suits, Activation barged past the Marines on her way to the pods on Deck 6, closely followed by Navi and Conduit.
When he’d heard that Purify had killed himself while they slept, Activation hadn’t believed the day could get any worse.
She hoped she wasn’t going to be proved wrong.
——
Marine Umarov looked at his partner and struggled to find the words, but they came eventually. “Did we do right, Springer?”
“I think so. But we haven’t finished. There’s something we have to do next.”
Springer dried up, trying to remember. She’d sparked a memory in Umarov. It took a while but it made its way to his head at its own pace.
“I remember now,” he said. It felt good to get a semblance of control back. “Heidi, are you listening?”
The security AI didn’t reply directly, but fed a disembodied sense of acknowledgment back through Umarov’s suit AI.
“Heidi, tell…” Crap, he’d forgotten their stupid names again. “Feen, Foot and Foobar. Is that what they call themselves? Tell them we’ve cleared the way. Better put the power back on while you’re at it because the little people aren’t strong enough to open their own doors on manual.”
The lights came on a few moments later.
— Chapter 25 —
Beowulf’s morgue was a wall of drawers. Of various sizes, they were suitable for storing the corpses of a range of crew species. The handles of these drawers were solid and finished in a high friction coating so they could double as hand and foot holds when the ship was in its natural state of zero-g.
A pair of examination tables were bolted to the deck of the morgue. On one of them lay a blue body bag, a charged strip holding it securely to the tabletop.
Two people floated over the bag.
“Remind me why you’ve brought me here, Marine.”
“A secret mission, lance corporal. This man’s death might be foul play.” Arun thought he’d explained enough, but Puja just looked at him blankly, so he carried on. “Tell me how you think this man died. He’s supposed to have killed himself by slitting his wrists. That’s too convenient.”
“Arun, I’m not sure,” said Puja, worry creasing her brow. “I’ve not been feeling well. Woozy. Told Sergeant Gupta. He says others have reported it too and he’s passed it up the line. Told me not to tell anyone else. He doesn’t want a panic.”
“I understand, lance corporal. Just follow your gut instinct about this cadaver. Don’t try to analyze too hard.”
“Okay.”
Puja unzipped the bag and began a visual inspection of Indiya’s uncle.
She froze.
“Something wrong?”
“Pictures. There should be pictures. Where are the pictures?”
“Heidi, show footage of Deputy Chief Cryo Officer Purify’s discovery this morning.”
The diagnostic console, set into the bulkhead opposite the wall of corpse-drawers, woke up and began displaying a recording of Purify’s discovery. Of his dying there were no images to see – his death had occurred while Heidi was offline.
The old man was slumped over his work desk, blood pooling from this slit wrist. Such a lonely way to die.
If Puja was upset by these images of death, she showed no sign. In fact, she looked more focused and alert than he’d seen her in a long while.
“Have you spotted anything?” he asked.
“So much blood. So much…”
Arun winced. He must have misjudged her expression. “Sorry, it’s not a pleasant sight. Even to a medic.”
She turned back to the cadaver on the examination table and stared at its heart. “Arun, I meant so much blood left in the body. If you really slit wrists you bleed out, leaving behind a sea of blood. Or a halo in zero-g. The footage shows only a splatter. Look!” She indicated Heidi’s image.
“His wrists were slit post-mortem,” Puja stated. Then her flicker of determination left her, and a crease came to her forehead. “McEwan, tell me again why I’m doing this for you.”
“Officer’s orders, lance corporal. Can’t say more.”
She pointed to marks on the corpse. See those dots? Cause of death, shot repeatedly through the heart using microdarts. His wrists were a post-mortem cover up. Deceased’s heart would stop pumping immediately so not much blood came out.” She paused, a faraway look coming to her eyes. “Do you remember when we were novices, Arun?”
He smiled. “I remember when the most beautiful girl in the whole of novice school kissed me. I was so pumped afterward they had to peel me off the overhead.”
Arun watched as that girl, Puja Narciso, now Indigo Squad’s senior medic, put her fingers to her temples and pressed hard. “It’s no good. I can’t remember much since then. It’s not a blank, it’s just… fuzzy, you know? Sometimes I get snatches of memories but I can’t connect them up.”
“Maybe nothing much else counted after we kissed at school?”
“Shut your frakking hole, McEwan. We’re not kids anymore and this is important. Something’s wrong.” She straightened herself, pivoting so she was oriented perpendicular to the deck.
“Take your shirt off, McEwan.”
Arun hesitated momentarily before complying.
Puja’s fingertips roamed Arun’s torso. Her delicate touch sent tingles down his back. Frakk, what he’d give for her tender caresses to be a lover’s touch. But the medic was seeking out very specific patches of his skin: the scars he’d won at the Battle of the Swoons.
“Yes…” she said dreamily. “You’ve your own standard dart round wounds. I patched you up in the field didn’t I? I saved your life.”
“You did that, Lance Corporal Narciso. I’ve never forgotten.”
“I have,” she whispered. Her eyes squeezed out tears, but without gravity to draw them down, the drips caught in her eyelashes like glittering jewels. “It is so frakking frustrating,” she fumed. “I can’t remember why I patched you up. Who was shooting at us?” She twisted around violently and punched the deck, which launched her slowly up toward the overhead.
Arun pushed off against the deck, grabbing Puja and pulling her to him. She felt limp, broken. He nuzzled against the glossy black hair at her neck, whispering into her ear: “I know it’s bad but what you’re doing right now will help. You’ll get your mind and
your spirit back, Puja, and your revenge on the people who did this to you. I promise.”
“But what have they done?”
The spirit was returning to her voice. Arun quickly moved his head back to a more respectful distance before Puja shot him for taking liberties with a superior.
“Have I been poisoned?”
“That’s need to know, lance corporal.”
She straightened, looking again like the fine Marine he knew her to be. “If you need me to fight, Arun, I’ll be there for you. I promise you. I know my mind’s not up to much, but if you call, I will come.”
“Thank you, lance corporal.”
Heidi let out an incoming comm tone. “Now forgive me,” said Arun, “but I must ask you to leave and say nothing of what we’ve done here.”
“Of course.”
Arun watched her push away before answering the call coming in from Cryo room ‘C’. Heidi, I hope you’re keeping this call to yourself.
“We’re here and working,” said one of the ship-freak boys.
“Which one of you is this?” asked Arun.
“Fant.”
“Did you find evidence of dart impacts, Fant?” He hesitated, still finding the ship-rat names to be ridiculous. “Microdart rounds?”
“Finfth here. That could be it. We saw shallow scrapes in the floor where the deputy chief officer sat. But there’s no evidence of what caused them.”
“Except for the dart-sized holes in Purify’s chest,” said Arun. “There should be more evidence in the room that you could collect. Carbine sabots aren’t stored in the ammo carousel, they are created on the fly each time a round is fired. Micro darts require extra-large sabots and have high fire rate, which means their sabots can be a little wet. Scrape the area for traces left by expelled sabots. “
“If only we could prove who fired the gun.”
“Perhaps we already can,” said Arun grimly. “Microdarts are a highly specialized round. Far as I know the Marine-issue SA-71 is the only weapon onboard that could shoot them. The murderer was a Marine or had access to a Marine’s armory, and we don’t give out the keys to any passing rat. I mean, crewmember.”
“Understood,” said the rat-freak.
“Good. Now shut up and let me record my autopsy report. None of this will mean anything if we’re caught in the act, so get moving!”
Arun set to work dictating the essence of Puja’s findings over video he recorded of the corpse in the body bag.
Maybe this would prove a waste of time, he thought to himself, but it had at least dispelled one doubt. Marine officers and ship officers were in this together. Oh, yes!
— Chapter 26 —
“Slow down, Arun. The turning’s just ahead and to starboard.”
“I am used to zero-g, you know,” replied the clumsy Marine, panting as he tried to decelerate by grabbing onto the handholds.
Indiya laughed, suddenly carefree because the confidence and belief that they would triumph against all the odds were making her feel invincible. All the way to the reserve captain’s cabin, she’d expected to meet an armed Marine waiting for her around every corner. But they’d made it!
Even the tension from their meeting after collecting the evidence of uncle’s murder had relaxed somewhat. Furn had argued for gathering more evidence, and Arun for going to his brother to assemble a scratch unit of loyal Marines to take the ship by force. Indiya knew there was one more step to take first. Arun had protested, but his will was slaved to hers and he inevitably caved in.
“You’ve trained in zero-g, McEwan, I was born and raised without gravity. Watch this!”
She braked effortlessly against the handholds, before pushing off the bulkhead to cross to the opposite wall, somersaulting as she did. Then she coiled her legs to spring off the wall and aim herself like an arrow down the short approach corridor to the reserve captain’s cabin.
She glanced at Arun. Some of the fizz went out of her when she saw he was too busy struggling to slow his velocity to admire her prowess. No matter, she told herself. Showing off was just the gloss, the real pleasure was to revel in her natural medium of weightlessness. Birds probably felt the same way about their swooping flights through planetary atmospheres.
Abandoning Arun to his struggles, she looked up… and stared down the barrel of a gun gripped by an armored Marine.
“Halt!” he ordered.
“I can’t!”
The guard was at the far end of the corridor, twenty meters away. If she’d used the walkways, she would have frozen, but she’d made too good a job of flying dead center down the corridor. Her heart fluttered as she frantically flung out her arms, but she couldn’t reach the sides!
“Halt or I fire!”
Indiya tried to settle her racing heart. She shifted her center of mass, pivoting through ninety degrees and wriggling for her life.
McEwan shouted from the junction behind them. “Hold your fire, Marine! She’s only an unarmed ship-rat for frakk’s sake.”
Indiya growled in the back of her throat. She’d show the bonehead lunk. By stretching her toes till they were fit to pop from their sockets she managed to catch against a rung set into the bulkhead. It was far from a firm anchor, but it was just enough to twist her gracefully into a slow motion arc that would push her against the wall.
But too slowly. To the guard staring at her from behind his opaque helmet visor, it would look as if she were trying to slip past him. Her heart dropped through her stomach. The weightlessness that had invigorated her moments before had betrayed her. She flailed but she had nothing to grab onto – no means to alter her momentum. It was a slow motion crash – she was going to kiss the wall right alongside the guard.
A hand as strong as a cargo grabber gripped her ankle and swung her around to bang against McEwan’s powerful embrace. He was hanging by one hand from the far bulkhead, ten meters short of the guard.
Her Marine might be strong but he could still feel pain, judging by the loud grunt when his back absorbed all their combined momentum as they banged against the bulkhead.
She screwed her face. If she’d taken that impact, it might have snapped her spine.
Then she remembered what he’d said.
“Ship-rat,” she hissed. “What do you mean only a ship-rat?”
“Shut up!” ordered the guard.
“You’re a ship’s detachment Marine,” McEwan told him. “I can tell by your suit insignia.”
“Well done,” sneered the guard. “Give the boy a prize. You win thirty seconds. That’s how long you’ve got before I shoot you.”
“What I mean,” said Arun hastily, “is that you must recognize Indiya, and appreciate the bond between the reserve captain and these… augments. This rat-girl thinks there’s a plot to kill the augments. Come on, you know many of the other ship-rats think they’re freaks. They hate her sort. But the reserve captain regards them as her greatest experiments. What would the reserve captain do to you if you were to blame for losing her precious freaks?”
“Countdown’s already started, dongwit. Better hurry.”
“Can’t we talk to the officer from here?” McEwan asked. Indiya thought he was trying to be polite, but a jagged edge came to his word.
“No one allowed in. The reserve captain is out of communication.”
“Why?” asked McEwan. “Is she in danger?”
“Not as much as you. Twelve seconds left.” As he leveled his gun at Arun, Indiya heard a faint whine as the gun charged, ready to fire.
She bunched her legs and pushed away from McEwan, aiming at the guard. “Please!” she wailed in her best little girl voice. “I need to see the reserve captain.”
Her fate was in the guard’s hands. Was it Lance Corporal Katschinski or Marine Quail? If only she could see a face. She used to get on well with the Marines in the ship’s detachment, all the specials did. But during their last time at Tranquility, most of Beowulf’s detachment of Marines had been replaced by strangers.
Whoeve
r he was, he clearly thought Arun the greater threat. Idiot!
He kept his gun leveled on Arun until the very last moment, when with a growl from his suit motors, he turned and used it to swipe Indiya aside.
But he’d left it too late. She ripped off one glove and grabbed the arm of his suit, rubbing her naked palm against him. She screamed in a panic that was only partially pretense. Then she let her grip slip and allowed the guard’s swipe to propel her against the bulkhead.
By then the guard had already trained his weapon on McEwan. “Six seconds left. I’ll arrest the girl but you… you… I don’t care about you… you… shoot you dead - d - d - dedddd.”
Augments all had tricks up their sleeves – or hidden under their gloves.
She flinched as the guard jerked and thrashed, his helmet speaker emitting a mix of mechanical noises and snatches of human speech. The sounds ground together until they lost all definition, leaving nothing more than white noise.
Eventually the thrashing stopped. Locked in a hideous contortion, the guard spilled away down the passageway, bouncing off the bulkheads on his way.
“Is he dead?” whispered McEwan. For a cyborg war machine, his voice sounded very unsteady.
Indiya looked into his pale face and was relieved not to see anger there.
“The suit is,” she replied. “Its wearer is stunned.”
She bit her lip but he bought her lie. The Marine’s body was probably still alive but the truth was that she’d sent a killer nano-package to strike at the intimate brain-AI link. She’d fried the AI and the feedback would have pulped the mind of the linked human.
“You’ve made your point quite eloquently.” The reserve captain’s voice came from the hatch speaker. She sounded tired. “I can see you feel what you have to say to me is important. Pray that I regard this matter the same way. You’d better come in. Both of you.”
The hatch irised open into a dark ante chamber.
Indiya glanced at Arun before they both pushed inside.
— Chapter 27 —
Indigo Squad Page 11
