Indigo Squad

by Tim C. Taylor

  “We’ve done well enough so far,” spat Fant.

  “I agree,” said Arun. “Indiya, remember when you saw me in the shooting range? Could you do what I did?”

  “No…” She paused. They’d only planned on liberating Arun, but… fuck him. He was right. “Okay, we’ll bring out one more, but we can’t thaw them all.”

  “Don’t need all. Just Springer.”

  Indiya scowled. Precisely which organ was he thinking with when he said that? She was saving his life and his first waking thought was of her. What did this girl, Marine Phaedra Tremayne – she wouldn’t call her Springer as it was such as dumb name – what hold did this bonehead sow have over him?

  Not as strong as my hold, she told herself. I control your hormones, Arun. I have ordered you to love me.

  She made her decision. “Loobie, help drag out McEwan.” The life in his eyes was fading fast; he wouldn’t escape into hiding without help. “You too, Fant. Look sharp because we’ve another to thaw and extract before ‘C’ Crew get here.”

  She went over to Tremayne’s pod and activated the emergency thaw, pushing the process right to the emergency safety limit. And beyond.

  She glanced over at McEwan who was sprawled on the walkway, pointing in horror at Langer’s corpse. Finfth and Fant were dragging the dead Marine into Arun’s empty cryo pod.

  “Who’s that?” wailed Arun.

  Fant answered testily. “He’s you, you twonk. Don’t you get it? He gets to be Arun McEwan.”

  The look on Arun’s face answered that he didn’t understand in the slightest.

  Indiya rarely prayed, but she expended valuable time now praying for good fortune.

  If they were to get Arun and his Marine girlfriend to safety without getting caught, they were going to need all the help they could get.

  — Chapter 39 —

  Three decks and four frames of narrow escapes after the cryo breakout, Springer came to a halt in a deployment tube, screaming in horror.

  “What the frakk is that?” she wailed.

  Arun followed Springer’s pointing finger to a ship systems access console. It was nothing unusual: they were scattered throughout the ship, and this looked no different to any other.

  He bit his lip. After thawing, Springer had acted out weird paranoid fantasies. They’d waxed and waned but he’d thought she was trending toward sanity.

  The screen showed a stylized icon of a multi-headed mythical beast. Without warning, the beast colored, irrupting into life. It turned four of its heads to look up the corridor, blinking furiously. Then it was gone, back to a lifeless icon.

  “Trouble,” said Fant, the augmented ship boy who thought himself a man of action. “You need to get out of sight.”

  “Us?” said Arun. “What about you?”

  Fant raised an eyebrow. He had a point. Arun and Springer were dressed in jump suits and charged slippers – stolen from one of the emergency showers designed to wash away chemical spillage or to cool burns. As a disguise it was scarcely better than the state of nudity in which they had emerged from their pods.

  Arun firmed his grip on Springer’s shoulder and quickened his step, searching ahead for signs of anyone approaching.

  “Forty meters, on your right,” Fant said. “There’s a hatch through to a transit corridor. Wait for us there.”

  “We’ll be your distraction,” said Indiya. “Hurry!”

  Arun picked up pace, but lost his footing. Only Springer’s foot kept them to the charged walkway.

  Before they’d even left the cryo deck, the engine had completed its thrust and Beowulf had returned to zero-g. It had the advantage of opening up the deployment tubes for their use without having to climb all the way while still groggy from their thawing. But Springer had it hard: she had no stick and no right leg. Arun did his best to substitute for both.

  Arun could see the hatch up ahead on the starboard side.

  “It’s no use,” he hissed at Springer. “Pull yourself along the wall.”

  “Too late. Look.”

  Four Marines were approaching, dressed in the familiar olive-green fatigues and sharing a laugh. Not on patrol, then.

  “Pretend we haven’t seen them,” Springer whispered. “It’s our only chance.”

  Arun’s heart thumped. Would they be recaptured so soon after their escape? He wouldn’t go down without a fight.

  “Would you look at that,” one of the Marines said.

  “Ignore him,” Springer urged.

  “Sylphs,” said another.

  Arun couldn’t ignore them. Not with their leering voices that he recognized: Leiter and Allesandri from Black Squad. These vecks were supposed to be his comrades.

  Arun was at the hatch now. Springer hit the opening stud.

  “Hey, where are you two going?” called Leiter.

  “Don’t worry about them,” said another voice, Arun recognized as Marine Slayman Feg. “All the more fun for us with those slinky sylphs.”

  The fugitives pushed through the hatch and into a much narrower corridor. It was deserted.

  As soon as the hatch had closed, Arun shouted: “Heidi, can you get me a view of what’s happening with Indiya’s group?”

  A short distance along the passageway a dormant access console sprang into life. A camera showed Indiya’s group looking apprehensive. Then the view faded to a shot from behind the Marine that tracked them as they passed the hatch and continued on their way.

  Horden’s Children! Could Heidi see everything at any time from every angle?

  “Is that Heidi?” said Springer thoughtfully.

  Arun felt a pang of guilt. He’d hardly spoken to his best friend and she had no idea of what was going on.

  “The hydra image on the console,” she continued. “She’s the ship’s security AI, right? Nano spies seeing everything everywhere. That explains how we managed to get this far. Your ship-rat allies have hacked the security AI.”

  Arun could feel his face light up with delight. He pushed over to Springer and kissed her unruly auburn hair.

  “Welcome back, Springer. Right on nearly every count.”

  The console screen showed the Marines halting, daring Indiya’s group to come to them.

  “You wake drug free for the first time in over half a year, only to learn that you’re a fugitive, and our situation is hopeless. Sorry, Phaedra.”

  “No dramas, Arun. Situation normal. You said I was right on nearly every count. What did I get wrong?”

  Frakk, it was good to have Springer back.

  “It’s Heidi,” he said. “She’s helping us because we’re playing a game, and Heidi is our best player. She’s not really been hacked. You’ll upset her if you say rude things like that.”

  “I’m sorry, Heidi,” said Springer. “I didn’t mean to offend. I think you’re amazingly competent, in fact, because you’re so good at your game role that I forgot it was a game. How do you do that?”

  The screen in the corridor bulkhead winked at them. Winked! Heidi had never done anything like that for Arun.

  He shook his head in wonder at his friend. Springer was magnificent.

  “Those Blackies out there aren’t acting right,” Springer said. “Is that how I seemed when I was drugged?”

  “No,” Arun whispered, reluctant to say the truth because he didn’t want to think where the scene outside was headed. “The Blackies look more dangerous.”

  The confrontation began with the ship-rats trying to edge past the Marines from Black Squad. Leiter pushed Fant, driving him into Finfth. He kept pushing until he had the two rat boys flying helplessly back down the deployment tube, arms flailing. “Sorry,” he called out. “I must have slipped.”

  Arun clenched his fists, but he couldn’t focus his anger on Leiter because back when they were cadets, Leiter had been a decent guy. If only Fraser were here in this passageway… his neck in Arun’s grip. He fantasized snapping his brother’s spine, though he never took his focus away from the screen.

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nbsp; The tube was wide enough for three walkways, running along the circular tube, each separated from the next by 120 degrees. The Black Squad Marines had shifted to the red walkway, leaving the green one to the ship-rats.

  Finfth and Fant had rejoined the two girls and tried again to pass. This idea of multiple up/down frames of reference in the same space still made Arun’s head spin. Heidi didn’t help by rotating the view of her image as if she were someone using the yellow walkway. Now the ship-rats appeared to be glued to the top-left of the tube, and the Marines to the top-right.

  Feg made a display of sniffing disdainfully, but Arun’s gaze was glued to Allesandri who ran his hands through Indiya’s violet hair as she passed beneath him.

  “Nice,” leered the slimy shunter. “Are you as prongtastic under your fatigues?”

  “Easy,” said Springer, resting a hand on Arun’s shoulder. His breath was coming in short rasps, his teeth grinding so loudly they could probably hear the far side of the hatch.

  “Nah,” said Leiter. “Keep violet to your vulley-dreams. I bet she’s a bird-boned skank under the sheets.”

  Arun’s lip rose into a sneer, but at least the Blackies had let Indiya’s group pass by.

  “When this is all over,” mumbled Arun, “I’ll introduce Leiter’s face to my boot. Let’s see if he calls that bird-boned.”

  “Hey!” said Springer. “Focus! You’re wearing slippers and we’re fugitives… in… in this game.”

  The ship-rats had barely passed before the tallest of the Marines turned to regard them. She was Lance Corporal DuMourier. Even as a novice, she’d been one of the most vindictive vecks Arun had ever known.

  “Halt!” ordered DuMourier. “Turn and face me.”

  The ship-rats hadn’t much choice. They obeyed.

  “I’ve heard of you,” said DuMourier. “You, the taller rat girl, what’s your name?”

  “Loobie.”

  “No,” sneered the lance corporal. “Your full name.”

  “Leading Spacer Lubricant.”

  The Blackies looked at each other for a moment, wide-eyed, before transforming into floating bundles of caustic laughter.

  “Lubricant!”

  “Use a lot, do you?”

  “You’ll need it,” laughed Allesandri. Then his voice turned serious. “When I take you back to my rack, we’ll see if you can earn a positive prongnosis.”

  That was too much for Fant. He launched himself at Allesandri.

  Arun couldn’t make sense of the complex relationships between the freaks. Like the other two boys, Fant was driven by an unrequited love of Indiya, but he also had a weird settle-for-second-best thing with Loobie.

  In unarmed zero-g combat, body mass counted for a lot, so did skill. Compared with Allesandri, Fant had neither. The Marine brushed the boy away as if assaulted by a vengeful fly. Fant slammed into the tube wall, bounced off and was halfway back to the far wall before Indiya managed to reach out and grab her stunned friend.

  “You shouldn’t have done that,” Feg told Fant. There was a menace to his voice that made Arun’s skin itch. He’d never heard Feg sound like that.

  “Summary punishment is required,” announced DuMourier. “What’s appropriate, boys?”

  Arun shouted at the screen. “Run! Get out of there.”

  “No,” said Springer. “They need to make this a distraction. Over and done with. Suck it up for later revenge.” Her eyes narrowed. “Are those Blackie boys muscling in on your territory, Arun?”

  “I don’t follow.”

  “Indiya. Are you in love with her?”

  “No, of course not.”

  “Then you have no excuse for being so weak. If those kids out there can stand and take abuse to cover for us, the least you can do is keep calm. What would Corporal Majanita think if she could see you now?”

  Arun didn’t say anything. He didn’t need to. Springer was right.

  While she’d given him his pep-talk, the Blackies had conferred in whispers.

  “It is decided,” DuMourier told Indiya’s group. “For your childish disrespect, you will receive a spanking.”

  The ship-rats had acted cowed. Now a spark of fury lit their eyes, but they were too slow. Before they’d fully grasped what was happening, the Black Squad Marines had each grabbed one rat, ripped them off the walkway and held them upside down by the ankles. Or tried to. With no gravity. The Marines had to hold the rat up high in one hand and use the other to stretch the rat down as if holding out a scarf.

  The rats wriggled and squirmed for all they were worth, but without gravity to add to their momentum, they could not escape the Marine clutches.

  “Begin!”

  At the NCO’s command, each Marine tried to swat at the backside of their wriggling captive. Tried… and mostly failed. They found the swatting wasn’t easy, other than Allesandri whose captive, Fant, was still stunned. But the Marines didn’t care. Ever growing waves of laughter billowed up the deployment tube. When Loobie squirmed so effectively that she wrenched DuMourier off the charged walkway, the laughs only grew louder.

  As beatings went, thought Arun, this ranked less than one out of a hundred. If you want to punch or smack someone in zero-g, you had to anchor them, otherwise, you simply swatted them out of reach. But that wasn’t the point.

  Hitting the ship-rats wasn’t what made this ‘fun’ for the Blackies. Making them wriggle evidently was.

  A little voice of reason in Arun’s mind pointed out that the Blackies were holding back. If they had hit the ship-rats with full force, they would fly away until reeled in by the anchor of the Marine’s grip, at which point their ankles would snap.

  “They might look like helpless kids–” said Arun.

  “They are helpless kids,” Springer interrupted. “That’s why they need us.”

  Arun shook his head. “They could kill the Blackies with ease. They’re keeping their weapons hidden.”

  “What weapons?”

  Arun brought out a memory of the suit AI driven insane by one touch from Indiya. Battlesuits were super-hardened against cyber-attack. If she could do that to a suit, what could she do to the unarmored person underneath?

  “Best I don’t reveal,” was all he would say.

  “Then these rats shame me,” said Springer.

  Arun glanced across in surprise. Her eyes glowed, beams of dazzling violet. Her knuckles were white and she looked as tense as a missile locked in and ready to launch. He’d been so wrapped in his anger, he hadn’t thought about hers.

  “Here we are, barely able to control ourselves and those kids out there could end their humiliation at any moment. Such discipline! No wonder they think we’re animals.”

  “Turn it off, Heidi,” said Arun. “We’ve seen enough.”

  The screen shut off. The room was lonelier now. Darker.

  Springer took Arun’s hand in hers and squeezed hard.

  “You poor boy,” she said, squeezing his hand in her vise-like grip. “I have it so much easier than you.”

  “How come?”

  “I already know you get through this. I’ve foreseen it.”

  “And you? You make it too?”

  Springer didn’t answer.

  ——

  The route to the starboard access hatch was an uneventful walk through a resentful silence. None of the rats would allow Arun to catch their eye – he couldn’t blame them. When he tried to plant a comforting hand on Indiya’s shoulder, she shrugged him off.

  It’s ironic, he thought to himself. These rat-freaks are in love with sitting down and discussing their problems, and now they aren’t talking enough. If they had a destination or a plan, they weren’t willing to share either. Not yet.

  Arun left them to their resentment.

  It was only when they reached an airlock set into the starboard hull that the plan became clearer. Fant and Finfth brought them a pair of Marine-sized pressure suits that they’d hidden behind an oxygen tank. Loobie stayed outside, acting as lookout.
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  Unlike battlesuits with all the catheters, tubes and other bodily connections, pressure suits were designed for a wearer to put them on and get a good seal within seconds.

  “Hide in compartment B02-09-A04,” said Indiya.

  “Starboard nacelle,” added Fant.

  “B02-09-A04. Aye,” confirmed Springer in a voice that gave Arun hope that she knew where the hell that was.

  She put her helmet on, so she must know. He had no idea. He mentally went to ask Barney for a schematic of the ship… but, of course, Barney was missing.

  Arun was about to put his own helmet on when he felt a small hand grip his shoulder…

  ——

  Loobie accompanied her mind-link message with an image of four fat and squealing pigs waddling down the corridor, evil flashing from their demonic red eyes.

  Indiya cut the link and set up a new one with Fant.

  Arun had his helmet in his hands, about to lift it over his head. Once sealed inside, Indiya wouldn’t be able to talk with him, maybe never again. And the rescue had left too much unsaid.

  Fant was on his way out to join Loobie but hesitated long enough to glare at Indiya.

  Indiya reminded him.

  He flashed her a look of betrayal before joining Loobie on decoy duty.

  “Problem?” asked McEwan.

  Problem? Problem? Where should she start? The latest humiliation at the hands of the Marines who were swaggering at will around her ship as if they owned it. Or Phaedra Tremayne? Freeing McEwan and replacing him with a victim of resuscitation hadn’t happened on a whim. Nor did their plans for keeping him alive afterward. It had taken a great deal of planning, and whenever she had rehearsed the rescue in her head the principal actors were herself and McEwan. Tremayne should be safely frozen with the rest of Indigo Squad, waiting to be rescued with the rest of them when Indiya had finished her adventure with Arun.

  She glanced at the Marine girl, who was opening the airlock. Tremayne’s body had more curves and dips than Indiya could dream of, but the Marine was curved like an external fuel tank: hard and functional. Even Tremayne’s skin was covered in scar tissue from plasma burns. What the hell did Arun see in the half-broken skangat?