Marine Cadet (The Human Legion Book 1) (60 page)

“I hope you aren’t including me in your assessment!”

Arun span around. “Springer!”

There she was, framed in the doorway. Other than a walking stick, her outline looked the same as ever. A grin split her face from ear to ear. Those wild brown curls and violet eyes gleaming from her playful face were still there, despite the burns. But the dimples when she smiled had gone.

“Hello, Arun.” She swung her kit bag onto the nearest rack. “Anyone miss me?”

Arun hung back while the others mobbed Springer with high-fives. Even Del planted a lingering kiss on her head.

The others gave them space, Arun and Springer facing each other an arm’s length apart.

“I crept back in so as not to wake you all,” Springer said. “I should have guessed you’d still be up, discussing Xin. Nothing changes, eh?”

“Just passing the time till you came back,” Arun said, feeling more awkward than he believed was possible.

She gave him a look that said she didn’t believe that.

Arun tried again. “She was lonely. She just wanted someone to hold her on her last night.”

“Dear Arun, there’s more to it than that. They brought me in early on the same shuttle that’s transferring Xin’s squad to the troopship. By the look on her face, when I passed by, I could tell she was leaving something precious behind. Surprise, surprise! That turns out to be you.”

There was an acidic edge to her words, but the teasing glint in her eye was vintage Springer.

It was enough.

He closed the gap, trying not to look at her burn-damaged face, and kissed her.

Her lips felt as cold as stone, and her flesh didn’t move quite as it should.

He hated himself for noticing these details when all that mattered was that she was alive and back with him.

He embraced her. She should fit perfectly into the snug of his shoulder as if they were built for each other, but her stance was wooden, her weight in the wrong place.

No matter. He would hold her in his arms for as long as it took until she could feel the love that permeated his embrace reach through her injuries and touch her heart.

He wanted to let her know how sexy she was too, but… but Springer could see through any lie. She was damaged and he hadn’t gotten used to that yet. But he would. They had plenty of time.

Del-Marie rescued him. “Still getting used to your new leg, Springer? I noticed you limping.”

Springer drew back, winking at Arun as she did.

“I’m getting there, lance corporal,” she said. She walked over to the rack she’d claimed. Del was right: she limped, the soft plastic tip of her stick going
tap… tap… tap…

“Is that permanent?” Arun asked. “I mean the new leg.”

“Yeah.”

“But you can’t walk properly.”

“So?” She shrugged. “It’s powered. My new leg works well inside armor. Better than your flesh one.”

Springer sounded genuine. But that was horrendous.

She must have caught Arun’s look because she asked him: “Do you remember when we were novices running through the fields near Alabama? The instructors were in our face all the frakking time, telling us what pathetic weaklings we were every step of the way?”

Arun laughed. “It was easy to believe we were hopeless. We’d be gasping but they never seemed to even break sweat. The countryside was beautiful, but I used to hate those runs.”

“Good, because none of that matters now. None of us will ever run through those fields again, nor anywhere else. Not in the flesh. The next time we run will be in armor.”

“No,” said Arun. “The Trogs can build tunnels so quickly it scares me. Even stuck here on this moon, we’ll get things settled down and have miles of tunnels to run through before breakfast. Just like the old days.”

Springer swung her legs over so she could lie back on her rack. “Today was Xin’s turn to go to war. I expect tomorrow it will be ours. The rest of our lives will be spent either in cryo, zero-g or combat armor. No, I don’t miss my leg. Now someone turn the volume down on Umarov, ’cause I want to grab some kip while I can.”

Arun moved to Umarov’s rack to roll him over, but stopped when he saw Springer was already asleep.

“Do you think she’s right, corporal,” he asked Madge. “Will we be called up tomorrow?”

Zug laughed, a sound Arun hadn’t heard for a long while. “She was speaking figuratively,” he said.

“True,” Madge agreed with a fleeting smile, “but to answer your question, McEwan. When was the last time Springer was wrong about anything? Now, everyone, get some sleep!”

Arun tried, but he wasn’t like Umarov or Springer. The room could be shaking with the retort of field artillery, the levels above collapsing under an orbital bombardment of kinetic torpedoes, but those two would sleep right through.

But when Arun closed his eyes, his mind only filled with the rhythmic
tap… tap… tap…
of Springer’s walking stick.

It sounded like a countdown.

Clang… clang… clang…

A metallic beat advanced on Arun, wrenching him out of his sleepy fog.

He’d been dreaming of Springer’s walking stick again — as he had done every time he’d slept in the two weeks since she’d returned — but his brain composed itself enough to insist that this noise was real. And could be a threat. He opened his eyes – muscles firing up ready for action – but the sound was only one of the ship-rats up on the walkway, here to make final sleep checks on her crop of cryo pods.

It was a surreal sight. With the pods recessed into the floor at shoulder height, the chamber did look like a field of decapitated heads, with the ship-rats their farmers.

The cryo-drugs were adding drag to every thought, making the rats walking above Arun’s head look even more otherworldly than when he had boarded the
Beowulf
.

It was difficult to believe the runty ship-rats had come from the same stock of Horden’s children as the Marines. With their long, slender necks — and limbs to match — they could be elves of human myth, if not for the spiky hair dyed in bright primary colors. Their childlike stature brought out a protective urge in Arun, but unlike the children on Tranquility, who were bred to be Marines, the ship-rats possessed an ethereal, exotic beauty.

Arun grinned. Ship girls were hot!

He made himself think of Xin, about two light days away on the
Themistocles
. Did he still feel she was a slender bundle of cuteness? Oh, yes… but compared to the graceful ship girl — who was now close enough for him to smell her perfume of machine lubricants and cryo chemicals — Xin was as bulky as… as an elephant.

He laughed, remembering his first conversation with Pedro, when the big insect had agreed that only an idiot would compare anything to an elephant.

No, this was no good. The girl had distracted him. He should be drifting away by now.

Once again he activated the calming process embedded in his mind, and felt the endorphins surge and mix with the cryo drugs in a cascade of blissful fuzziness.

A positive mental state increased the chance of surviving the revival process. The trick was to concentrate on the good things in life, to go into cryo-sleep with your head filled with all the reasons why you wanted to wake up.

He let his mind touch on memories of his unlikely friendship with Pedro, of other friends: Zug, Springer… and Fraser, who had been promoted to lead the
Beowulf
’s small Marine detachment, and had been so pleasantly surprised to meet his brother on board that his handshake had carried on for ages. Then there was Xin… Umarov too… And Osman… Hortez…

Hortez.

He felt a pang of regret — he would never know how Hortez had met his end.

A new shame scoured him, guilt at how easily he’d shrugged off Cristina’s death.

No! These negative thoughts were getting dangerous. If you went into cryo with worries on your mind, you’d come out a paranoid wreck.

He directed his thoughts to once again play over Xin. When he’d gone into those Troggie tunnels, she’d been nothing more than a dream. He wasn’t sure what they were to each other now, but whatever it was, it was real.

As his thoughts slowed, merging into an ocean of tranquility, he felt his jaw unclench. Xin and Hortez were the kind of loose end left after every campaign. What mattered was that as a cadet he’d had just one primary objective: to become a Marine.

Arun had done that. His first campaign had ended in victory.

Now he was going to war. Two weeks after an executive order had redesignated Xin’s year as Marines, the same had happened to Arun’s. Calling him a Marine was an even bigger stretch of the truth than it had been for Xin, but what mattered right now was that somewhere on this ship was a full ACE-2 battlesuit allotted specifically to him — Arun McEwan — and he couldn’t wait to try it on. Of course he couldn’t: he’d been bred for this.

The ship-rat had reappeared over his head, checking his details on her softscreen. Her face was creamy soft, and when she glanced at him, gifting him a flirtatious smile, her brown eyes lit with character.

His drooping eyelids narrowed on the sight of her moving on to the neighboring cryo pod, fixing an image of her beautiful hair: shades of indigo and violet that ran to bright lilac at its tips.

No! He mustn’t sleep. Not yet!

Suddenly Arun was fighting the drugs that were trying to still his heart before freezing him. He was swimming up from the depths of an icy sea, desperate to break the surface before everything went black.

Who are you?
he asked the girl, not sure whether he’d actually spoken the words aloud. If he made any sound at all, the girl with the purple hair showed no sign of hearing him.

He closed his eyes. The icy depths claimed him, and he was sinking into darkness

Her voice penetrated his dark tomb. “Problem?”

“Your hair,” he whispered.

“My what? My hair? What about it?”

He wrenched open one eye. She was crouching down over him, her face shimmering.

He frowned. Trying to force his fading brain processes to explain why her hair was so vital.

Ship-rat fashion was to dye hair, the more vibrant and unnatural the shade the better. This girl’s hair was more natural — subtle, blended shades of… Almost like…

“Your hair… it’s like Springer’s eyes.”

She smiled but looked confused.

“I mean,” he added, every word now a life-or-death struggle. “I like the way you. Color. It.”

She laughed. “Thank you,” she said. “Although, actually I don’t color it. It’s a mutation. Listen—” she paused a moment — “you really need to stop talking, Marine… Arun McEwan. But I
will
remember you. I promise. Tell me again how you like my hair when you wake. See you in six months, Arun.”

The ship-rat closed the lid, sealing him inside. With his last flickers of consciousness he finally remembered what was important about her hair. This had to be the purple girl Little Scar had spoken of. The transparent lid was frosting over, but he could still see her walking to the neighboring pod, where Umarov awaited his turn. Arun wanted to shout out but the power of speech had left him.

A yearning for the purple girl was the thought that froze in his mind as his body locked solid in stasis.

——

Elsewhere on the ship, Arun’s slide into unconsciousness had not gone unnoticed.

“Is he under?”

“Sleeping like a baby, ready for freezing.”

“And you’re set up to give him our little present before he’s frozen?”

“No need. I’ve already delivered my package.”

“Good. I don’t know what makes you so special, Arun McEwan. But I
will
find out. And once I have, I’ll kill you myself.”

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Category: Equipment - personal weapons