Indigo Squad (12 page)

“Specialist?”

“Well, you’re a woman, Springer.”

“Oh, for frakk’s sake. Is that what this is all about? Who is she this time?”

Her eyes glowed. Springer was back in the room all right, and, boy, was she pissed! She growled. “You’re not in contact with that dirty skangat bitch on
Themistocles
are you?”

“No, it’s not Xin. It’s…”

Her eyes captured his hesitation, and held onto his gaze, demanding an explanation.

He groaned. More than anything, he wanted to tell Springer that she was the woman foremost in his thoughts. He supposed it was true that this Indiya was beautiful in her freakish ship-rat way. And after that spat in the storage compartment, nothing could be calculated more to electrify his interest. But the girl he wanted to spin around in a complex zero-g embrace was hooked into a perch right in front of him.

“It’s who?” she prompted.

“A ship-rat.”

Pain flickered across Springer’s face, and he regretted his words immediately. He was treating his best friend like drent, and she deserved far better than that. But she deserved even more to stay alive long enough for Arun to defeat the rebels.

You matter more to me than any ship-rat
, he told himself. But it made no difference, and he felt even dirtier when Springer stretched across and kissed him on his cheek.

“You never change,” she sighed. “Please don’t ever.” She frowned, thinking. “The surveillance gear… that was all about her?”

He nodded. “So I know where to bump into her accidentally. Maybe learn more about her. Mostly, to hear her voice again.”

Springer’s eyebrows raised. “Do you meant you’ve actually talked with her? In real life, I mean, not some vulley-dream.”

“I’ve done more than that,” he said, feeling angry. “I’ve kissed her.”

“And how did she react?”

“She said if I kissed her again, she’d kill me.”

Springer laughed, bringing her old dimple back, though only on the unscarred side of her face. “That’s something we can work on, I guess. You’re doing better than you managed with Xin.”

He grinned.

“But only by a nanometer. You’re such a dongwit guffoon sometimes, Arun. If you’d had any sense, you’d have asked for my advice about girls years ago. Why didn’t you? Did you think I’d be jealous?”

“Well, I…”

“On second thoughts, don’t answer that.
A ship-rat!
You’re a weird one, Arun. That’s why you and I make such a good team.” She rubbed at her chin. “No guarantees, mind, but if you want to win her heart, here’s what you do…”

Indiya could have strangled Furn for cutting the recording just when Springer was about to give her advice.

She stopped herself from shouting at him just in time. The others expected her to keep in control.

“Those two have a very deep and complex serial misunderstanding,” said Finfth.

“Lovers?” Loobie asked. Probably on Indiya’s behalf, the dear.

“Much more complex than that.”

“Did you see those eyes?” Fant interjected. “That girl’s mutant eyes glowed violet like…” He shot a glance at Indiya.

“Like my hair,” she completed for him. “Finfth, you’re the empath. Can we trust McEwan? We would be putting all our lives in his hands if we do.”

Finfth rubbed at his temples. He was the opposite of Fant in many ways, so quiet because he thought deeply and took his time to bring out the words. His ability to read emotions was uncanny, even when he couldn’t smell hormones.

“When Springer challenged him,” said Finfth, “I’d stake my life that McEwan really wanted to say that Springer was the one he loved.”

Indiya sighed in relief to hear that.
So why did she feel so resentful of Springer?

“Can we replay his face at that point?” asked Finfth.

Furn zoomed Heidi’s footage and set it looping.

“McEwan is conflicted,” said Finfth. “He feels he’s being disloyal and hates it. He is extremely anxious. Concern for his friends is his primary motivating force, but that spawns self-loathing because he feels powerless to protect those he loves from the coming storm.”

“So what you’re saying is that he isn’t a traitor,” said Loobie. “That we should trust him?”

Finfth’s eyes went wide in horror. “No! Absolutely not! Sure, he’s not a traitor, but that doesn’t mean he won’t hurt us. He’s as dangerous as any cornered animal defending its pack. Never forget that beneath a thin veneer of civility, Arun McEwan is a
Marine
. He is the product of a centuries-long breeding program to enhance one human trait above all else: the ability to apply extreme violence without remorse.”

“Your caution is noted,” said Loobie. “Marine allies are vital, though.”

“We can all kill,” said Indiya. “But only because the Marines and other crew see us as harmless kids. We will only get one chance to prove them wrong.”

“If it comes to a fight,” said Fant, “having loyalists strike unexpectedly from two places at once could make all the difference.”

“So you’re saying I should play along with this brute?” said Indiya.

“Do more than that,” said Finfth. “He thinks he needs to seduce you to secure your alliance. Persuade him that you’re attracted to him. Do more. Seduce him.”

Indiya shook her head. “That won’t work. He’s too worried about his friends to be distracted by romance. So am I.”

“He’s not a crewmember,” said Loobie. “You can take your gloves off, if you’ll excuse the pun.”

Indiya joined in with the group’s mischievous laughter. She knew she wasn’t fooling anyone. Inside she flailed herself for missing the obvious, leaving it to Loobie to point out what she should do. The others looked to her as their leader but she lacked the ruthlessness to be a good one.

Loobie was right. Indiya didn’t need to trust the Marine. Nor did she need to do more than say a few words to bind him to her.

She could enslave him with a single touch.

From the crushing depths of his slumber, Marine Stok Laskosk, Stopcock to his comrades, began to stir, rising swiftly into those confusing shallows where dreams churn with reality.

Dreams? Nightmares more like.

You dumb maggot, Gupta. Tell your heavy section to swap their missiles for carbines! Your stupid vecks would blow us all to atoms before they’d even left the hangar.

That shunter of a sergeant had said that to his squad leader. The memory was from far away. Perhaps it was a nightmare, not real.

The proper handling of his missile launcher took a lot of skill and training. Stopcock was proud to be the best. He’d hated the sergeant ever since. His hatred sure felt real.

McEwan: that was the skangat NCO’s name. Sergeant
Fraser
McEwan. He wasn’t even part of the 412th Marines; he led the ship’s tiny detachment.

McEwan.

Something about that name was very odd.

He was dreaming about Fraser McEwan now. The sergeant had just said something.

Something bad enough to rouse Stok from his stupor.

What was it?

Stok couldn’t fix the memory because it hadn’t been a direct order. Orders were something he could remember, shining as brightly as a fusion bomb, bright enough that anything else was so dark by comparison that he couldn’t remember.

He looked around, expanding the focus of this dream. Stok was on
Beowulf’s
engineering deck, part of an Indigo Squad detail providing escort to Sergeant McEwan and a Navy officer, a sharp-faced scrap of a woman who looked uncomfortable around McEwan.

Escort?
Why would anyone need an escort?

Stok had no answer for that.

He did know that McEwan’s words had been plans spoken aloud. Plans that would become orders soon. Orders were good. Orders gave Stok meaning and purpose. He relaxed slightly.

But there was a comforting hierarchy that gave orders their strength.

Stok couldn’t remember what Sergeant McEwan was planning but he definitely wasn’t senior enough to give the sort of orders that he’d discussed with the Navy officer.

Frakk it! McEwan wasn’t even part of the regiment.

And yet, here he was, a mere sergeant talking like a Jotun colonel.

And that was plain
wrong. Unnatural.

Wrong enough to wake Stopcock.

What about this Navy officer? Who was she?

Stopcock furrowed his brow, trying to squeeze sense and recall into his head.

He couldn’t.

Thoughts were an impossibly heavy burden. The effort of struggling to hold onto them forced Stok back down into the depths of his confusion. To connect thoughts together was unimaginably difficult.

But he would never give up. He – Stok Laskosk – was a Marine!

The officer had noticed Stok’s scrutiny and was staring back, a mirror image to the missile specialist’s own face.

Except there was something else Stok remembered in the Navy officer’s expression: fear.

“You should keep your mouth shut,” said the Navy woman. Her gaze never left Stok, but she seemed to be talking to Sergeant McEwan.

“Relax, Ensign Purge. This lot are so drugged I could order them to walk out an airlock without a suit and they wouldn’t even blink.”

“All I hear in your words is complacency and arrogance, McEwan. You Marines are all the same. They bred you to fight, not to win. In fact… Yes, I see now. I think you love the fighting so much that you hate winning, don’t you? Rather than claim an easy victory, you would rather goad the universe into giving you stronger enemies to fight. Your idea of heaven is unceasing war for all eternity. Isn’t it?”

McEwan gave a contemptuous laugh. “I think it’s not me but my little brother who’s really bothering you. That’s why we need a Marine in charge. Someone who won’t wobble under pressure. For the last time, he might have defeated your security systems. But I can track my brother’s every movement, he’ll lead us–”

Purge silenced the sergeant with a furious glare, her hand moving pointedly toward the sidearm at her hip.

I can track my brother’s every movement… That’s what the sergeant had said.

“Okay, Ensign.” Sergeant McEwan raised his hands in good-natured surrender. “Point taken.”

McEwan.
Arun McEwan
. That was the brother the sergeant was talking about. Yes, the idiot from Delta Section who’d gotten prong-tied with that babe from the year ahead. What was her name? Xin Lee.

When hot girls weren’t overheating his brain, Arun meant well, even though he was a magnet for trouble.
Even though Stok had never liked him.

Thinking of Arun sparked another memory to surface… The battle… the fight on the other ship. Had they really fought humans or was that another dream? That memory was substantial as smoke, but Stok could picture himself walking behind a breaching charge. Arun had saved him from the backblast. That memory didn’t waver.
It had actually happened.

Stok allowed his eyes to glaze over, but behind them, his mind fought to break through to the surface, to breathe the sweet air of clarity.

In the midst of so much confusion, twin ideals shone like beacons, drawing him upward.

Honor and loyalty.

I can track my brother’s every movement…

He owed Arun.

And his brother Marine was in deep shit.

Indiya watched in awed silence as the Marine pumped out shot after shot, each railgun dart hitting its intended target with unerring accuracy.

Her plan had been to creep up behind Arun and throw him a teasing comment when he paused in his firing. But he never stopped, and though Indiya told herself that McEwan didn’t intimidate her, the battlesuit he wore set her nerves jangling. So she hung back by the hatch she’d used to enter the firing range.

The range was a stubby section of tube with lockers and target computer access panels that terminated with a dashed yellow baseline. Beyond that, the compartment blew up into a hemispherical target zone. Arun was blasting anything in the target zone that moved.

When Indiya used this range, she placed her feet just behind the baseline where a charged ring anchored her boots to the bulkhead. Not McEwan.

He was the most dangerous thing she’d ever witnessed.

His firing position was a silvery blur of motion that used every millimeter of the area behind the baseline. Each time he fired his carbine, his suit propelled him to a new position, scattering spent rounds as he moved and leaving him momentarily in a static position. If he had a shot, he fired. If not, he moved to a fresh position anyway. And, fuck, did he move fast!

“It’s safe now,” he said via speakers mounted in his suit. “I’ve finished.” He clamped his carbine to his back and approached her at a restrained velocity. With his battlesuit set to the default pattern of gleaming silver, he looked like a medieval knight in gleaming plate armor. The sight sparked memories of romantic tales that Mamma had read long ago, of chivalrous knights who performed heroic deeds to protect the honor of fair damsels.

With a hiss of pressure seals opening, McEwan removed his helm. “Is that better?” he asked, with a cheeky, boyish grin that didn’t belong on any kind of knight: historical or romantic. “It’s just that you look, well, intimidated.”

“I wasn’t scared,” snapped Indiya.

“I was careful not to use that word. There’s no shame, Indiya. You
are
very small.”

Was this bonehead mocking her? She gave herself calming hormones. She wasn’t here for chitchat. There was a job to be done.
Seduction
.

Feeling embarrassed, she pushed off from the floor, coasting up to the halo of debris his rounds had left behind. Talking of seduction made her feel as dirty as Furn. Even with the advantage of her hormone-gifting implants, she wasn’t sure how to go about it.

“Why come here and make all this mess?” she asked. “It’s not as if you need the practice. You didn’t miss once.”

“I shoot to clear my head.”

McEwan followed. Which was just as well, because she wasn’t wearing a propulsion unit: she had no way of arresting her momentum before she eventually crashed into the opposite bulkhead. Maybe she’d pass for a maiden in distress after all.