Indigo Squad (11 page)

“We all agree with your interpretation of events,” said Finfth, “and now we need to decide whether we should act.” He looked meaningfully at Furn. “Whether
any
of us should act.”

Furn seethed.
Let him
, thought Indiya.

“Our own have been murdered,” said Fant. “And when I hear about your uncle in this darker light, Indiya, I’m sure we’re all casting our mind to other recent deaths and transfers and wondering how many were engineered. If we sit back and do nothing, we will be murdered in our beds one-by one. We must stand and fight.”

Furn gave a slow clap. “Very impressive, brother. If only we were all as brave as you.”

“What do you suggest we do?” yelled Fant.

“I don’t know,” replied Furn. “Not yet. But a sure way to die is to walk out of that hatch and start yelling at the mutineers to reveal themselves so you can demonstrate your bravery with your fists. We need more information and more analysis first. Who the hell would take over a ship? That’s our first question. Mutiny demands long planning and high-ranking officers in on the plot.”

“Who would possibly be insane enough to go against the White Knights?” said Indiya. “Even if
Themistocles
is part of the plot. Two small ships and a pair of understrength Human Marine Corps battalions. It’s not exactly a force that’s going to take over the empire.”

“Maybe…” said Fant reluctantly.

“There’s no
maybe
about it,” snapped Furn. “We need to think first before we act.”

“Shut up and let me speak.”

“Go on, Fant,” said Loobie. “Take your time.”

Fant collected his thoughts. “Maybe it’s more widespread than you think. This might be nothing but… there was something the reserve captain told me once. I remembered it because she regretted her openness immediately she’d spoken, judging by the way she kept bouncing her mid-limbs nervously. She said the White Knight obsession with mutation and change was the reason they were prone to endless cycles of civil war.”

Indiya thought on that for a moment. “It does fit,” she said. “The only mad dog brave and ugly enough to square up to the White Knights would be another White Knight. My uncle’s murder was an opening act in a civil war.”

“I agree,” said Finfth. “If we are to get involved, then first we need to know who in authority we can go to… who’s still loyal. And we need airtight evidence so we aren’t executed for leveling false accusations against officers.”

“And muscle,” added Loobie. “There are over three thousand Marines on board, every single one programed to kill. Whoever controls them controls the ship.”

Silence returned as they all tried to come to terms with the situation. Fant was right about resisting, but the thought of standing up to the mutiny made Indiya’s muscles feel leaden. Whoever they were up against had already made their move to control the Marines – had probably planned this for months or years.

The others gave her space to collect her thoughts. “Our minds are trained to leap ahead of the facts and dive into speculation,” she said when she was ready. “There’s no shame in that – it’s how the reserve captain built us. But we must calm down and answer this question first. Why the fuck should we get involved?”

“Arun McEwan saved my life,” said Loobie. “I owe him.”

“We all do,” said Fant. “If we stand by and do nothing, we will be aiding the murderers as surely as if we had carried out the murders ourselves.”

“You’re thinking with your fists again,” said Furn. “I wonder who you think that impresses. If I had the power, I’d flush the mind control drugs from our passengers, use them to round up the rebel leaders, and then throw the murdering shunters out an airlock. But it’s not that easy. We’ve uncovered a conspiracy that is already reaching its climax. Traps have already been sprung. Good people killed. We’re all highly capable individuals, but let’s be realistic: defeating the rebels at this late stage looks hopelessly unlikely.”

“So you want to hide under the sheets and hope it all goes away,” said Fant. “That’s not thinking things through. It’s cowardice.”

Furn rolled his eyes. “It make me feel sick to say this,” he said, “but I vote we use Heidi to be our eyes and ears while we keep our heads down. The mutineers are murdering anyone they think is in their way. All they want is control of the ship. Once they have that, we won’t be a threat to them. The killing will stop and we will carry on as before, just with a different set of officers. I’ll hate the murdering vecks until the end of my days, but getting ourselves killed won’t bring your uncle back, Indiya.”

Loobie went over to Furn and rubbed her hand over his temple, gifting him a nano-packet to show her displeasure. She’d loaded her nano-transporters with nerve toxins. To most of the crew that would be the kiss of death, but Furn could defeat her invasion easily using his own implants.

As a means of indicating displeasure, though, nerve toxins sure sent a powerful message.

“Your opinion is noted,” she told Furn. “However, this is not a democracy. This is the Navy and I am your superior. You will obey my orders, and I order all of you to follow Indiya’s advice.” She turned to Indiya. “What is it to be?”

“We fight them,” Indiya said without hesitation, even though she wasn’t anything like so sure inside.

“Very well,” said Furn sourly. “Let’s start with recruiting allies because it’s obvious to me where we find them.” He cast a knowing look in Indiya’s direction. “You have already established an intimate link: your personal route in to those thousands of Marines that Leading Spacer Lubricant mentioned.”

Dirty little bakri chodder.

“Explain,” said Loobie.

“He means Arun McEwan, of course,” said Indiya primly. “The drugs are not affecting him as much–”

“I know that,” said Loobie. “I meant your relationship… Is this romance?”

“Certainly not!”

“Although
they have kissed
,” said Furn. His sly expression suddenly evaporated under Indiya’s glare, and he looked down at the deck in shame.

So he should
, she thought.
He only knows about Arun because he was such a skangat sneak.

Indiya sighed. “This Marine says he’s attracted to me. He also planted surveillance equipment on me.”

“He wants to know whether he can trust you,” blurted Finfth, giving them the benefit of his empathetic ability to interpret people’s behavior. “I think he’s even more isolated than us.”

“Heidi’s jamming McEwan’s signal feed,” said Furn.

“Can we spy on him?” Loobie asked Furn.

He gave a victorious look at Fant before retreating into a microwave-link conversation from his mind directly to Heidi’s.

“He’s talking with his unit now,” said Furn. “Heidi’s going to pick up the start of the interaction from about seven minutes ago.”

An image from internal security monitors appeared on a viewscreen set into one of the bulkheads. The augments clustered around for a good look. It showed Arun hesitating before entering the hatch to one of the recreation areas on Deck 11.

“I want you all to watch him closely,” said Indiya while Arun seemed to be summoning his courage. “Is this someone we can trust as an ally?”

She gasped when she noticed the wounds to his shoulders. When they’d met less than an hour earlier, she’d noted dark patches on the shoulders of Arun’s green fatigues. Now she could see the fabric was stuck to his flesh, soaked through with blood. She didn’t think that was what was causing him to waver. Physical pain he could cope with. It was the prospect of meeting whatever was on the other side of that hatch that filled him with horror.

Arun blew out the breath he’d been keeping in, pressed the hatch opening stud and jumped in head–first.

It was as he’d feared and hoped at the same time: other than Sergeant Gupta, the whole of Indigo Squad was here, a sight that both bolstered him with courage to be reunited with his comrades and sent shivers of dismay through his body to see their diminished state.

Beowulf
was transporting 88th battalion, 412th Tactical Marine Regiment – an understrength scratch force of green cadets hurriedly reclassified as trained Marines. Deck 11 was the rec-deck, easily able to accommodate the entire three thousand Marine battalion, but only Charlie Company was awake, the rest frozen in deck after deck of cryo-pods.

His Indigo Squad comrades floated in loose clusters around the perching spheres that were the zero-g equivalent of tables. The occasional bursts of small talk quickly fizzled out.

It was a lifeless scene. They should be wondering what fate awaited them at their destination of Wolf-3 and why they’d been rushed out there in such a hurry. Indigo Squad were on their own, which made this the perfect opportunity to plan how to play humiliating tricks on the dongwits of Checker Squad. There was none of that. Worst of all, there was no grumbling. Cramped quarters, the lumpy slop they labeled food, the way the ship-rats talked as if the 412th were boneheads… there were endless reasons to grumble, but none of them occurred to Indigo Squad.

Arun shook his head sadly.

A sudden thought reached through his funk.

Where was Springer?

Then the breath was knocked from him and he was fighting for air, for orientation as something infinitely hard slammed into his ribs and sent him shooting across the compartment, aiming at the bulkhead like a missile.

Desperately he tried to kick down and get away but an invisible viselike grip only tightened on his upper arms.

All he could see was the almost-empty rec-deck screaming past, but there was something with him all right. He knew exactly what it must be: a Marine with battlesuit set to stealth mode.

A face appeared. Just a visor shaped-slice of a face from which Umarov’s accusing eyes glared at him.

“Someone wants a word with you, pal.”

“Slow down!” gasped Arun. Umarov looked pissed. Not enough to kill him deliberately, but without his battlesuit, Arun could die through Umarov’s carelessness just as easily as his intent.

“If you don’t slow down,” Arun squeezed out, “I’m going to hit that bulkhead so hard I won’t be talking to anyone ever again.”

Umarov got the hint. He decelerated so rapidly that Arun felt winded and his vision fuzzed. Arun retched, something he thought impossible since most of his vomit reflexes had been removed.

“I’m not in a battlesuit, you twonk,” shouted Arun when he recovered, but Umarov didn’t appear to register what he meant. “Too many gees will kill me. Yeah?”

“You can die in your own time,” growled Umarov. “Talk to the lady first.” They’d come to a halt within arm’s length of a hatch, which Umarov now gestured toward.

“What’s the matter, Umarov? We’re comrades. More than that, we’re friends.”

“The matter, McEwan, is that I’ve asked you to do something politely, and you haven’t done it yet.”

“Okay,” said Arun putting his hands up in surrender. “I get it.”

Arun used Umarov’s body to push off to the hatch access panel and entered.

“I will be waiting,” Arun heard from behind, just before the hatch irised shut behind them.

“Hi, Springer,” he said, guessing who was waiting for him as he entered the compartment.

It was a bar, he realized. A counter with drinks and drinking vessels was secured onto the aft bulkhead – what would become a floor when the main engine was operating.

About a dozen zero-g tables floated around the bar. Heated spheres rather like heavily pitted miniature planetoids, not flat surfaces like the kind of table you found on a planet.

Arun made for the first one pushing off from one sphere to another until he slotted his feet into the boot straps next to Springer’s perch.

He grimaced. Only Springer’s left foot was strapped in. Her right leg ended above the knee. Trying not to look at her missing limb only pulled his gaze more strongly.

“It itches, Arun.”

“I’m sorry.”

“The prosthetic is a waste of time in zero-g, but when it’s off, I keep thinking my real leg was still there.”

“Easy, Springer, don’t drag up bad memories.”

She screwed up her face, which made him feel desolate until he recognized her expression was vintage Springer. For a while his old friend was back from being buried under a fug of confusion. “I like to remember,” she said. “Pain keeps me sharp.” But even as she spoke, her words were already faltering into silence.

Arun gave her time. Soon a little clarity returned to her eyes.

“Remembering is important, Arun. Most of us can’t even remember our names.”

“I know.” He took a deep breath.
Knowing was a curse as much as a blessing.

She pointed at him. “You do. No one else. I’m rough and I get flashes, but not much. Umarov and I happened to be awake enough to see what you’ve helped yourself to from the stores.”

“Quiet,” he whispered angrily.

“What are you up to, Arun?”

“Keeping us all safe.”

“What the frakk does that mean?”

“Don’t worry. It’s complicated.”

“
Don’t worry your pretty head
. Is that it? We’re more than just a squad comrades, Arun. You frakking well know that. If you need help, you should come to me first.”

Arun looked into his friend’s face. The left side was puckered and ridged after the plasma burst that had nearly killed her in the Battle of the Swoons. Arun had known her since they were kids. Scattered amid the scarring, he could still see her freckles, still thought they made her look cute. Her eyes narrowed, anger energizing her, driving away the drug-induced confusion. Her mutant eyes lit with their inner violet glow as they always did when she was roused to passion.

He snapped out of it. Springer was still sexy, but more to the point, she was scary when angry.

“I’m sorry,” he said hurriedly. “You’re right. I should have come to you first. Will you help me?”

“With what?”

“Well…” To buy time to think, he gave the kind of cheeky grin she used to love when they were novices.
Frakk, that was only eighteen months ago.
Could he really bring Springer in on all he’d learned?

“I could use your specialist knowledge,” he said.