Indigo Squad

by Tim C. Taylor

  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.”

  — Chapter 49 —

  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.”

  “We are amongst allies, McEwan,” said Captain Wotun. Fraser tried to read his superior’s body language, but the alien was impenetrable. “No need to hide your inadequacies. This work is over your head. The crew we once had who were capable of carrying out this work met with unfortunate accidents. Accidents that I deemed necessary.”

  “Understood,” said Rheenisowill. Turning to Fraser, she flicked both ears forward, a gesture of withering contempt. “Never evade the truth by using the cowardly words that pollute your human language. A mark of a good officer is to acknowledge her weakness as much as her strength. Don’t forget that, human.”

  The captain of Themistocles held Fraser’s gaze for a painfully extended time, making him squirm before finally releasing him with a pounding heart and legs that wouldn’t support him if the meeting had been held in a gravity field.

  “Nonetheless,” said Rheenisowill, “you are right to raise this. My crew shall delete Beowulf’s security AI as an urgent priority.”

  — Chapter 50 —

  Corporal Lee Xin sighed out the tensions of the day. It’d been a long six-hour shift spent patrolling Decks 12 through 14 with her section. Treading the walkways and flying along tubes was no problem for her. What made it exhausting was shepherding her seven brain-dead Marines so they didn’t stray or sit down and start drooling like teething infants. With the two ships converging, today had been particularly bad, Themistocles shifting from zero- to low-g and back again with only a few minutes’ warning, as she adjusted her velocity to match Beowulf’s.

  Xin was one of the few relatively unaffected by the chronic stupidity that no one talked about openly. At first she’d been proud to be promoted as a result. Now she wished she’d played dumb. Standing out wasn’t a great plan at the moment.

  And all the while she suffered the boredom of endless patrolling, she worried about why they were patrolling the ship at all. The entire battalion was in the process of being woken and they had endured weeks of confinement to acceleration stations. No one would tell her why they’d made the unexpected course changes, or awoken mid-journey. Certainly not those amongst the ship’s human officers who had disappeared from the crew roster.

  Her only refuge was here, in the head.

  With her butt stuck into a zero-g waste extractor, directed air flow freezing her nethers, no one had expectations of her. Not even herself.

  “Hello, Xin Lee.”

  “What the frakk?” She twirled around, looking for the perv who’d said that. The waste unit protested that she’d twisted the tube and constricted the airflow. She righted herself before she had the kind of accident that would scar her mind for life.

  “Ritter?” she said. “Is that you? I’ll tear your balls off for this.”

  “I am not Ritter, ma’am.”

  Xin nearly ripped herself out of the waste tube in surprise when a drone hovered in front of her face. It looked like a novice’s science project. Not a good one either. It was modeled to look like a humanoid robot with simple claws for hands and a cutesy head with over-large eyes.

  “I am an emissary from…” The robo-toy’s mouth opened and closed as it talked. Neat. “Actually,” said the robot, “I’d better not say.”

  “You’re not convincing me. Sounds like just the sort of prank Ritter would play…” She hesitated. “Would have played,” she added quietly. In his present state, Ritter could barely remember his own name.

  “In case we are overheard, I shan’t use names,” said the robo-toy, “but
I can describe the person I represent. He is a young Marine with, may I say, an overactive sense of his own destiny.”

  “Guess that narrows it down to half the people I know.”

  “When you last saw him, you had just left the First Antilles Brigade. You told him you and he would be each other’s little secret. That you–

  Robo-toy stopped when Xin raised a hand. “Okay. I got it on the word ‘Antilles’.” She rolled her eyes. “Catch a girl with her pants down. Yeah that’s his style. So where is Twinkle Eyes?”

  “In great peril.”

  “Goes without saying. And he wants my help too, right?”

  “How did you know?”

  Xin shrugged. “Lucky guess. What does he want me to do?”

  The toy robot turned its little head left, then right, as if furtively checking they couldn’t be overheard. Whoever had built the AI’s personality had a sense of humor, all right. She’d give the nerdy dongwit that much. Then it made a disgusting retching noise before ejecting a data chip from its mouth. The mini-robot took the chip in one pincer hand and presented it to Xin.

  “Guess it was a guy who designed you, eh?”

  The robot didn’t answer, but Xin didn’t care. She pocketed the chip, cracking a grin.

  Things were about to get interesting.

  — Chapter 51 —

  Set halfway up the ventral bulkhead of Beowulf’s Hangar A was a breakout room used by the flight deck techs as a refuge from the lethal pandemonium of busy flight operations. From this cubbyhole, Fraser McEwan swung the monitor feed view around the mass of Marines filling the hangar on the far side of the hatch. Maneuvering thrusters were putting a 0.3g acceleration in the direction of the dorsal hull. The effect was to transform the hangar’s Frame 14 ventral bulkhead into a floor, a floor into which Fraser’s refuge was sunk.

  Fraser approved of the low-g. Parading in zero-g didn’t have the same dignity.