Free Indigo Squad by Tim C. Taylor Page B

uncle had died – killed himself. They had sent Indiya back to her quarters to grieve.
    “She won’t be there,” one of the cryo rats had said. “She’ll hide herself in her freak lab experiments.”
    He’d risked asking questions openly but what else could he do? He was a Marine not a spy. All the crewmembers talked about Indiya and her fellow friends as hyper-intelligent weirdoes. A little too intelligent for comfort.
    The more he heard about her, the more this Indiya sounded a right little veck, but if she were half as intelligent as people said, she would be better at this espionage drent than a poor grunting Marine like him.
    There’s someone ahead!
    His mouth dried and he lost his grip on the handholds.
    Keep calm! It’s just another flyweight ship-rat.
    As he sailed from one side of the passageway to the other, he tried to tell himself that his nervousness was nothing to be ashamed of. Ever since birth he’d done everything as a team. Now he was on his own, far beyond help. Even the ship felt alien. Flying through the dark and airless decks of training hulks was something he was very used to. But Beowulf ’s passageways were all brightly lit, and they had air! And weirdest of all, the ship designers had added visual cues to suggest a sense of down.
    Arun hit the passageway wall, grabbed and held onto the handholds on that side. While he built up speed again, he squeezed his eyes to zoom his vision onto the figure ahead. It was obviously a ship-rat, with elfin limbs, graceful and almost childlike… he stopped that last thought, cocking an eyebrow in amusement. Once he’d magnified the image enough, he could tell that was a woman, not a child… not by the way her flanks and thighs bulged against her pants. And her hair. Her hair was purple.
    He pulled harder at the handholds.
    “Indiya!” he yelled. “Wait up!”
    He sensed by the way she’d hesitated that she’d heard. She chose to ignore him.
    “Can we talk?” he asked when he’d caught her. “Somewhere private?”
    “Later,” she said, half-turning her head toward him. It wasn’t much of an acknowledgment. “Sorry, I’m busy.” Even with the brittle edge she was adding, her voice had a lazy, creamy smoothness that was an exotic delight compared to the curt rapid fire of Marine speech.
    “I appreciate you have your duties – and your grief – but I would really love to talk. And you did promise, back when you put me in cryo.”
    She frowned at his mention of grief, but soon a curious change took her. A dozen conflicting emotions registered across her face before she gave a half-shrug and ended with a warm smile. Perhaps this expression revealed her natural state, the others being masks she’d tried on but didn’t quite fit. He hoped so.
    “I did,” she said. “And I will.”
    Arun groaned inwardly. Her honeyed voice and innocent eyes were melting his discipline like a bacteria bomb making a hull breach. For once in his life, he didn’t want a complicating obsession with an impossible girl. Not now.
    Indiya looked him in the eye. “You’re intriguing, Arun McEwan. Even handsome for a … a–”
    “A what?”
    “A lumbering water buffalo.”
    “Thank you.” Arun’s lips tightened as he tried not to laugh. He didn’t need to know what a water buffalo was to know she was gently teasing him. With a voice like that, she could tease him all day long.
    “You’re welcome,” she said. “Really…”
    Suddenly the warmth in her face snapped off to reveal the implacable hardness underneath. He’d seen the same look come over NCOs faces when he’d pushed familiarity too far and had to brace for the imminent shitstorm.
    “But this isn’t the right time,” Indiya said bluntly. “That’s all. Now fuck off!”
    She turned her back on him and set off.
    He was so stunned by her sudden change that he’d let her go several paces before he came to his senses.
    Arun laughed, a sound so forced it wouldn’t fool any human listening in.