Indigo Squad (25 page)

“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.”

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.

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.

He caught himself adjusting the angle of his officer’s flattop hat. Dignity wasn’t coming easily. Only moments away from his big moment and Fraser found his heart fluttering.

Frakk you, little brother.

Uncertainty was as alien an emotion as it was unwelcome. Arun was to blame for these weakling feelings.

The time for doubts had been when Fraser first listened to the treacherous whispers of the rebel faction. The doubts had left him once he’d placed his bet and picked a side in the civil war – not because victory was certain but because there was no going back. He’d sided with the rebels because they represented the best hope for humanity. That belief put steel in his backbone when the path he’d chosen became treacherous.

But the sight of all those people outside in the hangar had rallied his doubts, bolstering them until they threatened to overwhelm him. Now he’d won this first campaign, he’d also won the time to think about what came next. And the thought that he could be failing all those brother and sister Marines burned him.

Fraser shook his head. In a few moments he had an important part to play. Showing nerves would be disastrous. He used his implants to gift himself a hormonal message of calmness.

He took a last look at the hangar deck. Three thousand Marines from the understrength 88th battalion were on parade, together with over six thousand from 87th battalion. They were observed by the crew of both ships, most of them cowering against the bulkheads. The sight sent a feeling like molten steel flowing through his arteries. He’d tried programming himself with
calm
, but landed himself with intoxicating levels of
pride
. These experimental hormone gizmos were tricky little vecks.

Fingertips tracing the soft ridges of the unfamiliar gold braid gracing his new dress uniform, Fraser hoped his mother was still alive and would hear of this day. She would understand. Sacrifices had to be made in the cause of humanity, even sacrifices like her other son’s life.

Enough procrastination
. Fraser opened the hatch in the overhead and ascended the rungs to his destiny.

“You still there, Twinkle Eyes?”

Relief flooded through Arun. Every element of his plan had to fall in place at the right time. It was brittle, but the best he could come up with. “You have no idea how good it feels to hear you, Xin.”

“Always had that effect on you, didn’t I? We’re all done here, lover. On our way over to your ship now. Don’t get distracted thinking of me.”

“I’m in position outside CIC with the reserve captain and Loobie,” added Indiya.
She sure sounded pissed.
“Commencing our approach now.”

“Oho. You must be our hero’s latest girlfriend,” said Xin. “I’ve heard so much. How’s my boy shaping up?”

“I can see the others ready on the hangar deck,” Arun interrupted hurriedly, silently cursing Xin for winding up the ship girl. Deep inside the ship, Indiya’s group had to capture CIC. If they failed, then whatever Arun and the others accomplished in the hangar wouldn’t be worth a thing.

Arun checked to make sure what he’d just said wasn’t a lie. The deck below him was the largest open area on either of the two transport ships, with the space to house vessels vastly bigger than the shuttles in their mooring cradles. With so many Marines, there wasn’t much space left now. He spotted the sullen Navy rats lined up against the aft bulkhead who were being made to watch the triumph of the rebel Marines. Two small figures, Furn and Fant, were in position at the far end of the line, close to the Hangar Control Room. An armored Marine in the crimson red of the traitors stood on guard outside the control room, which was little more than a pressurized hut. The fate of millions could rest on how alert that Marine was today. As for the two teenaged ship-rats, in the coming moments they would have to prove themselves as real men.

“What are you waiting for?” said Xin. “A round of applause?”

“Everything’s in place,” said Arun. “Go! Go! Go!”

Fraser’s route put him in full view of both
Free Corps
battalions, as his side in the civil war were now calling human units. He was in sight of the ship-rats too, though they were of little consequence. He was now an ensign – the first human Marine officer ever. Behind their expressionless black visors, every human eye would be zoomed on him. Compared with their battlesuits, reprogrammed in the new Free Corps colors of crimson red bodies and cream legs, Fraser felt vulnerable in his dress uniform.

His composure deserting him, Fraser squared his shoulders and tried to stiffen his resolve by reminding himself what this day was about.

History would remember the name of Fraser McEwan for leading the human race on the first step of the path to
relevance
. His actions would only be worth a few sentences in the more detailed histories, but he would be there nonetheless.

The Jotuns back on Tranquility had already hinted that the Marines had bred beyond the expectations of their alien masters. Fraser’s vision was that in the centuries to come, humans would seed themselves across the stars, breeding like the vermin other races already regarded them to be. Like the rats of Earth, once established beyond a certain threshold, you could never stamp them out. You could burn a nest here and there, destroy billions of individuals. But the race… never.

Humans would be invincible.

And today he would help bring about that future. His actions might only merit a minor note in future histories, but that was no excuse to cower and do nothing.

His thoughts were interrupted by something overhead that caught his eye.

Damn, he missed his battlesuit AI.

He had to squint up, scanning around until his attention caught on one of the big Lysander-class shuttles hanging overhead in its mooring harness. A pale blue glow was coming from the flight deck, as if it were on standby.

Fraser frowned.
There weren’t any authorized flight plans
.

Arun glanced over to where Springer should, by now, have taken up position. She was stealthed, but he guessed that, like him, she was hovering above the parade, using the shuttles in their harnesses as cover.

She couldn’t have heard the conversation with Indiya and Xin, not having one of the FTL comm units that the freaks had built out of Indiya’s black box experiment. But he still whispered to her: “Good luck.”

rumbled an electronic voice.

Oh, great! Arun had forgotten about his stolen suit AI. Athena had gone from prim disapproval of everything Arun did to making a fair attempt of falling in love with him – although he still suspected it was all an elaborate plan for his humiliation. She tried to make her voice sexy – though it sounded more like a serious lung disease – but they were at least getting better at communicating. He only had to mutter occasional command words and she would whisper her breathless responses so subtly he was beginning to think he was hearing them directly with his mind.

“Give me a closer view of unarmored targets. Then link to targeting control.”

Athena zoomed into the targets standing on the podium – in reality a raised servicing platform. They were all there: the senior officers from the crew and Marine battalions of both ships. The paraded Marines were unarmed, other than NCOs, committed rebels, and junior Jotun officers. Even so, the senior officers must be supremely confident to assemble themselves in one place. He supposed that was the point the officers were trying to make. They had won, with nothing to fear.

They would have been right too, if not for one officer so frail that they had discounted her as a possible threat.
Beowulf’s
ancient reserve captain would punish them. Arun was her instrument of death.

As he cradled his carbine, ready to give the signal by opening fire, he noticed a figure march from hiding at the back of the platform around to the front.

It was his brother. His twin brother
in an officer’s dress uniform
.

Fraser halted abruptly and looked up.

Arun knew precisely what had caught his attention because it had been Arun who’d told Finfth to put the shuttle into standby power. That craft had to move like a missile when the right moment came.

“You spotted that too late, brother.”

The targeting reticle in his visor held his brother’s form in a firm, red grip.

Distance to target: 120 meters.

Fraser pointed up at the powered shuttle, and opened a comm channel he’d set up for his loyal NCOs, those that he’d insisted must be armed. “What the–?” he started.