Indigo Squad

Indigo Squad

Book2 of The Human Legion

Copyright © Tim C. Taylor 2014

Cover image © TsuneoMP / shutterstock.com

Square logo image © Algol / shutterstock.com

Published by Human Legion Publications

Also available in paperback (ISBN: 978-1505630848)

All Rights Reserved

HumanLegion.com

The author wishes to thank all those who work-shopped, proof read, or otherwise supported the making of this book. In particular, Paul Melhuish for allowing me to raid his vault of filthy Skyfirean vernacular, the Northampton Science Fiction Writers Group, James D. Kelker, Melissa Bryan, and Mark Boss, for help and encouragement. And Ian Watson for persuading me to turn a short story into a book series.

Extract from the
NEW ENGLISH DICTIONARY
, Patriot Publishing, Human Autonomous Region, 2671CE

human
.

n
. 1.
An individual of the species
Homo sapiens
, possibly also of derivative species.
See also:
augmented-human.

adj
. 2.
Characterizing mankind, as opposed to aliens, animals, and machines (including AIs).

adj
.
3.
[
meaning derived from common alien usage
] oppressed, the ultimate underclass, the hopeless ones, unwashed :
as in
The Human Legion.

Power from the scores of heat exchangers and hibernation monitors thrummed through the metal walkway where Indiya sat, legs dangling over the edge into the sea of frozen heads. The deep power hum beckoned her to sleep. Soon she would, but not just yet. Not without a last look at the one sleeping Marine who mattered to her.

Her mystery boy.

Who was he? And what?

Mamma had always said that the older Marines would flirt outrageously while they waited for the crew to put them to sleep, but the younger ones would be so blissed out on drugs that they scarcely knew what they were doing or where they were looking. She always said that to Indiya with a gleam in her eye, but a wistful look that told of a lifetime of memories, not all of them pleasant.
The Marines have a lot to be nervous about
, Mamma had explained.
The ship could be destroyed while they’re still in cryo. And if they do wake, it will be to fight. And when they fight many of them will die. Smile on them, because by the time they meet us, their lives are already nearly spent.

If you had to die, thought Indiya, going in your sleep was the gentlest way. But the Marines were not like the ship’s crew. They were great hulking beasts bred for one reason only: to kill. For them, death was something to be faced head on, eyes wide open, kicking and screaming all the way to damnation.

They would not die in their sleep, though. Not here; Indiya would never permit that. She was a member of
Beowulf’s
human cryogenics team, and they were diligent about maintenance checks, running diagnostics far beyond the level called for by operational guidelines. Pod maintenance was almost a religion, and she was proud to keep the failure rate for the Marine cryo pods below one percent, which was maybe another reason why she couldn’t leave this one alone.

Give them a wink and a smile
, Mamma had said.
The Tranquility run is the worst because they’re mostly just kids. Children going off to war. If you bust them ogling your behind, just laugh it off. That way they’ll sleep with a smile on their face and have a reason to wake.

Indiya smiled at the memory. Mamma wasn’t around anymore, couldn’t answer the one question that had worried at her these past six months of flight: who was this Marine?

The roving eyes of the freshly minted Marines hadn’t bothered her. Indiya had been happy enough to smile and flirt, to allow her fingertips to brush against the brow of a troubled Marine, anything to send those boys, and some girls, to sleep smiling.

All of them, that was, except for the boy in front of her. She reached forward and slid back the view panel, which revealed a transparent window and a light shining onto the occupant’s face. His eyes were closed now, but she’d seen those passionate brown eyes that looked out of place in that battle-scared giant’s face, which looked like a skin façade stretched over a metal skull.

There was no smile on this Marine’s face, only shock.

The view panel was only meant as a backup check to verify that the occupant of the cryo pod matched the name on the status panel. She covered her tracks by sliding the panel back into place. The face meant nothing to her anyway. All she really knew about him was his name:
Marine
Arun McEwan: 88th battalion, 412th-TAC, ‘C’ Company, Indigo Squad.

She ran the name around her memories for the thousandth time, but she could draw no spark of recognition. The name meant nothing to her.

But
she
had meant something to
him.
Something unexpected and vital. But what?

At first he’d given her a dreamily flirtatious look, same as the others. Mellowed on sleeper drugs, he’d remarked in a slow slur about her purple hair. Her color was natural, she’d explained. By which she meant she never dyed it. It was an innocent enough answer, and then she’d dismissed him with a throwaway comment about chatting when he woke. But in the moment when she’d turned to attend to the next cryo pod, she’d glimpsed astonishment bloom on his face. The shock of recognition.

And the strangest thing, what she needed Mamma to explain to her most, was that she had instantly felt connected to him too.

In the days and months that followed, she’d replayed footage of McEwan going under. His dreamy contentment churned into a raging panic. In the end he’d fought sleep, desperate to attract her attention before he went under.

He succeeded, but too late. Before she’d finished setting the next Marine to sleep she’d gone back to McEwan, reeled in by Creator knew what. She’d checked and rechecked his pod; everything was working perfectly.

When Petty Officer Lock had commed her to ask why she was behind schedule, Indiya didn’t have an answer and had to leave McEwan and attend to the other Marines in his company.

She smiled at the memory of all those corny pledges of love and sidelong glances, flattered really, though she’d never admit that when they woke.

Indiya knew she wasn’t anything special to look at. She was young; that was all. At 17 Terran standard, she was the same age as some of the Marine kids. They probably thought she looked exotic with her violet hair and slender, supple limbs, not at all like the musclebound hulks they raised on heavy-gravity worlds such as Tranquility. She was a sleek attack cruiser to their inertia-bound heavy battleships.

No, she told herself, comparing people to spacecraft was crass. She was a cat, she decided, the Marines were water buffaloes – the human ones were at any rate.

But there were wolves on board too. Predators sniffing out McEwan. His cryo unit’s diagnostics had been accessed far more times that was routine. The pod’s activity log registered its systems had been controlled on two occasions by a remote process thread hidden by privacy locks so secure that Indiya was too scared to breach them.

She was not the only one with an interest in Arun McEwan.

And not just McEwan. All of the Marines were being fed such quantities of mind-altering drugs that even Petty Officer Lock was worried, although she ordered Indiya to ignore them.

Indiya sighed. “Good luck,” she mouthed, nearly blowing him a kiss, but that would be going too far. She felt a clawing at her gut, tears threatening to burst from her eyes. She pictured poor Tizer from ‘A’ Crew, in storage on Deck 10. While Tizer was frozen during the flight to Tranquility, his girlfriend had lived a waking shipboard life for nearly twenty years, and then died in an accident before reaching their destination. Indiya kept telling herself she should learn from Tizer’s tragedy and burn away any ties to someone such as McEwan, whose future was so damned.

She rose, turning her back on the Marine so he couldn’t see her sadness, not that he could see anything in his deep sleep.

Try as she might to put him from her mind, she couldn’t help wondering whether this Arun McEwan would still be there when she came back on shift in six months’ time.

Clad only in the paper cryo tunic that would disintegrate safely during freezing, her bare feet padded softly on the walkway as she made her way to the higher-spec cryo units reserved for the crew.

Without her, Arun McEwan was alone.

And defenseless.

Her musing was interrupted by a thought message:

She shot an answer back.

ours
. They all are.> The thought link didn’t convey emotion with the same fidelity as skin-to-skin comms, but the jagged barbs of Furn’s jealousy were sharp enough to color his words.

Indiya felt exhilaration surge through Furn even before he answered.