— Chapter 36 —
Indiya strained to see into the distance of the deployment tube. According to Heidi, she should see Arun shooting toward her any moment now.
She was so intent on Arun’s arrival, that she scarcely registered the hatch opening behind her.
“You’re to come with me now,” snapped a voice from behind. “You must report to the reserve captain.”
It was Petty Officer Lock, hovering just inside the tube. Her face was practically indigo with rage. “You’ll pay for this!” she whispered. “Me playing escort to a pig-licking freak.”
“But please, petty officer, you have no idea. I’ve got to…” Indiya started to remove her glove “I’ve got to deliver a message. It’s vital…”
She stopped. Lock had drawn her sidearm.
“Oh, no you don’t. Put your glove back on, freak. The reserve captain’s instructions were very specific. One: if you remove gloves I am to shoot you. Two: if you mention the name Arun McEwan, I am to shoot you. If you go within ten meters of Arun McEwan, I am to shoot you first, and then him.”
Indiya shook her head helplessly. This couldn’t be happening. Not now. There had to be a way.
“Furthermore, the reserve captain doesn’t trust the security systems,” continued Lock, “so I’m recording these events with a device of her own construction. Sounds like she’s right, because ship-wide comms went black a while back, but her device is still functioning. So even if you’ve some secret freakery that disables me, the reserve captain will know still what you’ve done. There’s no way out for you. Come with me, spacer.”
She couldn’t. She believed everything Lock was telling her but she couldn’t abandon Arun.
“Is that him?” asked Lock, pointing up the tube at a fast-approaching figure.
Indiya nodded mournfully.
“Then you have a few seconds to choose. Unlike you, I have no intention of disobeying an officer.” Lock brandished her sidearm, looking eager to be given an excuse to fire.
Indiya shook her head. She couldn’t do it. Lock would have to shoot.
Lock ground her jaws. She fought to control herself before spitting out her words in distaste: “The officer said there was one word that would explain everything. Would get you to move. I don’t know she meant by the word, but I don’t like it one bit.” Lock’s eyes blazed with fury. “One word: alibi.”
Alibi? For whom? Not Arun…
Understanding locked into place, like gears engaging in a complex mechanical artifact. When she had met the reserve captain with Arun, the Jotun had believed about the mutiny all along. The officer had been playing her own game.
“Sorry, Arun,” she said under her breath. “I can’t help you if I’m dead.”
Knowing the petty officer would hate her doing this, Indiya opened the hatch using her mind, and pushed herself through, abandoning Arun to his fate.
For now.
— Chapter 37 —
By the time he reached the deployment tube, Arun’s confidence had grown. Using the full capability of his suit’s propulsion system, he shot through this ship, his bones creaking under the acceleration, and his shoulder and arm wounds anesthetized by Barney. He felt like a fighting machine with a fresh oil and recharged powerplant, eager to confront his enemies.
Barney fed his speculation into Arun’s mind that the splinter device Krimkrak had inserted into Arun’s shoulders had been quantum–entangled with a twin held by the ensign. Arun hoped his AI was right because communications based on quantum-entanglement could not be intercepted.
Even if they couldn’t hear him talk with the loyal officer, an armed and armored Marine flying around a ship at condition nominal – the default state of readiness – looked as suspicious as a drill instructor offering to carry a tired-looking cadet’s kit, but he encountered neither Marine patrols nor ship crew on his way here. Between Fraser and Indiya’s freaks, he reasoned he must have guardian angels watching over him.
Don’t you worry, Indiya, he thought to himself. I’ve got this covered.
Arun felt his skin being pulled back as he screamed to a halt just in time to slap the access stud for compartment 18-07-05, swinging inside with a fluid movement.
The automatic lighting had been disabled, making Arun grateful for the blue glow of his low-light visor enhancement. It was enough to see he was in a large and irregular space that provided access to the segmented cooling tubes connected to the main engine.
Spinning through 150 degrees, he oriented himself so the tubes were down. From this perspective what he’d initially taken to be angled sheets irrupting from the bulkheads now made sense as high-grip platforms to which tool cupboards had been bolted.
A six-limbed figure in a battlesuit figure emerged from behind one of these boxes.
Human and Jotun pinged each other simultaneously with tight beam links. Barney confirmed the figure was Ensign Krimkrak.
“Report!” commanded the officer.
Arun gave a concise summary of the key points, holding nothing back that he felt would be of interest.
“So,” Arun concluded, “a coup is imminent or underway. Charlie Company have been drugged to obey anyone with even the slightest authority. That is our enemies’ mistake. Sir, if the order to take over the ship comes from you then we shall prevail. We must give the order before the enemy. The Marines will assemble in the main Hanger A in–” Arun checked his internal chronometer– “48 minutes. You must be there to lead us, sir.”
The Jotun gave a human-like smile. “You have done well. But operational details can still defeat us. On what basis have you arranged the company to assemble?”
“It was my brother’s idea, sir. Sergeant McEwan.”
The ensign’s ears went back, eyes widened. His snout elongated into a snarl, his helmet altering shape to match the changes in the Jotun’s head.
“You fool! You stupid human fool! You have killed us all.”
“Sir, I don’t understand.”
The Jotun nudged backward – eyes glazing.
“Sir?”
Globules of blood sprayed through holes in the officer’s battlesuit, viscous crimson blobs that span in the air before hanging at rest.
The ensign’s suit quickly sealed itself.
For a violent murder, the scene was strangely muted, but Arun had no doubt the ensign had been murdered and by whom.
“Still don’t understand, little brother?”
He turned and saw Fraser with two other Marines framed in the hatchway. Their SA-71s were all trained on him.
“What are you waiting for?” asked Arun. “Shoot me!” He would rather die than reveal his allies under interrogation. His surviving allies. Springer and Indiya were still alive. If Arun died, they might make it through.
There was no way out for him now. He’d shoot himself if he could, but the ability to commit suicide had been engineered out of all Marines.
“Throw away your weapon,” Fraser ordered.
“Make me,” taunted Arun. When the mutineers neither shot him nor closed to grab him, he added: “What’s the matter? Scared you would miss?”
“Don’t waste your breath trying to goad me while we wait for…” said Fraser. “Ah… Here she is now.”
Captain Flayer shot into the compartment, looking invincible in her armor.
“Caught him, sir,” said Fraser. “Here is your saboteur and murderer. He lured Ensign Krimkrak to his death, and sent the traitors to ambush you the instant you stepped outside of your cabin. Thank Fate we got to you in time.”
The captain was so busy hissing her hatred that they had to wait some while before she could speak.
Jotuns were big but they were also lightning fast. In a blur of motion, Captain Flayer drew her sidearm and fired. Arun had been shot before, but this felt different. He looked down at his chest where he’d felt an impact. The captain had fired a wad of blue fabric that had stuck onto his battlesuit.
Out of ammo, sir?
He’d meant to say the words bu
t couldn’t! His lips wouldn’t move. Breathing still functioned. His eyes could move and track motion. Everything else was paralyzed.
“Your model of human battlesuit has been designed with an interrogation mode,” said the captain through her synthesizer. “You didn’t know that of course,” she said “but you shall learn a great deal before I discard you.”
Summoning every last reserve of mental strength, Arun commanded Barney to evade and flee.
Nothing happened. Barney was locked out.
Captain Flayer sneered. “I do not know how many years of searing pain you can endure before your brain surrenders to insanity.” She came close enough for Arun to smell the Jotun’s musty scent, to cringe before those huge serrated teeth. Every instinct screamed at him to flee from this invincible predator but his paralysis denied him. The discord between his mind and his muscles was so profound that he had an inkling of how the captain might stretch out his torment for years.
“I look forward to exploring the limits of your endurance, human.”
The captain turned to her seemingly loyal human subordinate, Fraser McEwan. “Take him away! Freeze him with the other traitors.”
Arun tried to shut his eyes, to escape from this harsh world. Even that was denied him. His eyes would not close.
He saw the confused look on some Marines he passed, and the look of triumph on a few others. Helplessly, he watched his captors strip him and then place him inside a cryo pod.
The worst part of all was as he looked through the pod window in the last moment before sleep was forced upon him. He saw Springer being dragged past, alive but as naked and helpless as himself.
He’d had such a long time to plan how to defeat the mutineers.
And when the moment of action had come. He hadn’t even come close.
— PART II —
Trust
No One
— Chapter 38 —
“Hurry! Someone’s coming,” called Loobie from the corridor, where she was acting as lookout.
“What… what should I do?” asked Finfth.
With a last look to check the cryo pod had entered the emergency thaw process, Indiya turned round to tell Finfth that the most useful thing he could do right now would be to grow a pair. But when she saw Finfth and Fant straining hard to prop up the enormous bulk of the dead Marine, she didn’t have the heart.
We’re not all heroes like McEwan, she thought. Finfth is terrified. Maybe that makes him the biggest hero of all, because he’s still here.
“Hide him out of sight, best you can,” she suggested, wishing Furn had been able to free himself from his duties and lend his cunning brain.
She looked around the cryo chamber. It was just as well that the sleeping residents never complained about the lack of space. Banks of cryo pods were crammed into six levels, each serviced by metal grid walkways. No storage cupboards or dead areas. “Do the best you can,” she added weakly.
To the sound of Finfth and Fant laboring to pull the stiffened corpse out of sight, she set her mind to hiding herself. She squeezed into the narrow gap between Arun’s cryo pod and the one next to him, a Lance Corporal Sandure. The hollow grid pattern of the walkway extended a short distance behind the pods. She crouched low and immediately felt the vibration of approaching footsteps on the walkway. If she stayed put, she would be spotted. Even if the boys were caught, she still had to be there for McEwan when he thawed. She put her fingers into the holes in the walkway grid and dropped off the edge of the walkway.
Fuck! The metal sliced white hot pain into her fingers. The ship’s engine was only producing 0.8g acceleration, but that gave her far too much weight. Life was so much simpler in zero-g.
She tried to shift to a more comfortable position, but that only made the pain worse.
Mader wixering zagh! She couldn’t keep this up for long.
She looked down. Fifteen meters of empty space separated her dangling boots from the heat exchanger below. Letting go wasn’t an option.
“I saw a disturbance from my station,” said a woman’s voice from the other side of Arun’s pod. “Never thought it would be you two freaks. Finfth and Fant. Or to give you your proper names. Double-barreled girls’ names. Spacer Food-Synthesizer and Spacer Fusion-Plant.”
It was Petty Officer Lock, she realized. Incongruously, she winced in sympathy for Finfth and Fant who were utterly ashamed of the half-Jotun names the reserve captain had given them as orphans.
Lock was dutiful and dull. Please, let the dull outweigh the dutiful this time!
“We’re here…” started Finfth, but dried up.
“Here for a walk,” said Fant.
“Yes, exercise,” said Finfth. “I get nervous. It’s a good tension release.”
Lock waited a few seconds to let her internal pressure build. Then she exploded. “Tension release. Tension…!” Indiya didn’t need to see Lock to know the petty officer’s face would be glowing red and that indignant vein was throbbing at her temple. “So you spittle-licking freaks thought you’d take a lunchtime stroll, promenading hand-in-hand along the cryo walkways. How romantic. I’m so happy for you both.” Lock spat; Indiya hoped it wasn’t in the boys’ faces. “Neither of you ugly lizards has a good reason to be in the cryo area. Whatever you think you’re doing here, I don’t want to know. I don’t need to. I already know that I don’t like it, and that’s the only fact you need to hold in your super-intelligent numbskulls.”
Loobie appeared, gasping as she thundered along the walkway. “Oh, it’s you, petty officer. I heard a disturbance and rushed to investigate.”
“Find anything untoward, Leading Spacer Lubricant?” asked Lock. Indiya could see the petty officer’s face now, because she was inspecting McEwan’s pod. Its status panel would by now be flashing vivid colored lights to warn of imminent thawing. The permanent scowl on Lock’s face deepened. “I’ve already seen what looks to me like a pair of abandoned boots over there behind that pod.”
Indiya followed the petty officer’s pointing finger. The boys had stuffed the dead Marine between two pods farther along the pod bank. Clint Langer, his name was. He’d died in a resuscitation failure, which wasn’t a calm way to go. The dead man’s face was frozen in a scream of agony. He stared straight at Indiya, as if condemning her for the violation she planned for his corpse.
“You’ve got eyes in your asses,” bellowed Petty Officer Lock. “You couldn’t spot a problem if it crawled out your butt and waggled its finger in your ear. Looks to me like you’ve a problem with workspace cleanliness.”
“Sorry, petty officer.”
“I don’t want your apologies, Leading Spacer. I want you to sort it out. ‘C’ Crew are doing an inspection of the deck commencing 13:52. That bunch of bakri-chodding wastes of mass are so clueless they couldn’t find their own asses without a diagram to help show the way, but it would be just my luck if they did find your clutter.”
13:52? What was the time? Indiya couldn’t get her portable comp out, but reckoned that gave them about twenty minutes.
“What are you waiting for!” barked Lock. “Move it, Loobie!”
Lock made a cutting gesture as if disowning the specials and their fate. She stormed off, muttering under her breath.
Indiya didn’t wait for her to leave the walkway. She swung herself up until her feet hooked onto the end of the walkway and she rolled clumsily back to safety, wondering all the while how she’d managed to underestimate the petty officer all this time.
Loobie mind-linked a doctored image of Lock. Instead of exaggerating her ugliness, Loobie had removed her puffiness, the scowl, and the misshapen skeleton. If Lock hadn’t been cursed with a faulty adaptation to life in zero-g, this is how she might have looked. The image stunned Indiya. Lock looked so beautiful.
Indiya felt a flood of sympathy for the older woman. Loobie was right. Lock had done them a huge favor by looking the other way.
Behind her the cryo pod lid hissed open, lifting up like a mechanized eggshell. A
bewildered groan emerged. Arun!
Eyes flickering, skin pallid but awake – here was their only chance of salvation.
“Whaa–who are you?” he said.
“Arun. It’s me. Indiya.”
He struggled to focus his eyes. Emergency resuscitation was rough and risky, but she’d had no choice.
“Who?” He sounded suspicious. Paranoia was a common symptom of a resuscitation going wrong. She pictured Langer’s rictus grin, mocking her, but she wasn’t going to let Arun go the same way.
“Stay with me,” she said. Peeling off her gloves, she placed her hands to his chilly and damp forehead. She pumped in hormone triggers, adrenaline, and nano-scale communication jammers, a cocktail she’d been working on with Furn for two weeks. Stok had said the Sergeant of Marines – Fraser McEwan – could track his brother when even Heidi looked the other way. She figured only one way he could have done that: implanting a nano-scale tracker, which would make Fraser just as much a freak as she was.
Furn was confident their brew would counter any trackers planted by Fraser.
Arun’s head lolled in his pod. During sleep the muscles locked and the body fluids were flash-frozen into uncrystallized solids. Thawed out, his neck muscles had to bear the full weight of his head. Even in 0.8g they were struggling.
She rubbed her palms against his skin, squeezing out every last product of her subcutaneous implants.
Arun’s eyes widened. Capillaries in their corners burst. Worst by far, he gave a primal scream that made her curl her fingers and screw up her face.
Then his eyes rolled up and his head lolled forward onto his chest.
“Arun!” she slapped his cheek with all of her strength. The meaty sound echoed around the cryo deck. “I need you.”
Arun’s eyes popped open and focused on Indiya. “You! Who? Who’s on our side? Report! Report!”
“It’s the four of us specials… freaks. Augments. And… one other. I’d better not say who.”
“Not enough. You need more muscle. My comrades,” he said, looking around at his frozen squad mates. How did he know that the rest of Indigo Squad had been frozen with him?
Indigo Squad Page 14