Indigo Squad Read Online Free PDF Page A

AI chip. Arun waited for Barney to make his way to the surface, opened the patch in the outer skin of his suit, and removed the thumb-sized sliver of crystal that was his most intimate companion.
    Instantly, the suit grew heavier, Arun’s movements clumsy. The suit was still operational, but without the AI to marshal the suit’s functions, Arun had to use crude backup controls.
    No matter. Arun inserted the crystal containing Barney into the console port, which lit in green and sucked the AI inside.
    Arun shook his head, bewildered that this enemy ship had compatible systems. They’d expected to encounter incomprehensible quadruped aliens. Instead, this strange ship was feeling ever more like home.
     Barney wrote the words onto Arun’s visor display.
    “Can you control the ship from here?” asked Arun, feeling strange to speak aloud. Normally he talked to his AI in a fuzzy area between sub-vocalization and direct mind-link.
    
    
    “Can you at least distract the ship?”
    
    “Let’s blow up this thing,” said Sergeant Gupta. Until now, the squad had milled around aimlessly with no enemy to fight. “Laskosk, set a breaching charge against that control bank.”
    “Sergeant, wait!”
    “What now, McEwan?”
    “My AI chip is in there.”
    “You what ?”
    “It’s trying to hack in.”
    “And you were going to tell me this when?”
    Arun flinched from the hot blast of Gupta’s fury.
    He braced himself for the shitstorm but it never came. For a fleeting moment, Gupta had been himself. Now that moment had gone.
    His sergeant stood motionless. If Gupta set his visor to be transparent, Arun expected to see a blank expression of utter bewilderment.
    
    Screens came to life across the console bank. One showed a ship schematic. Others showed the approaches to the CIC while the one that interested Arun most showed Lieutenant Balor and Ensign Geror leading the other squads to the powerplant.
    The deck was a command information center once more. This time on the side of the Human Marine Corps.
    “Sergeant, we have control.”
    Gupta didn’t reply. Arun hadn’t expected him to, but somewhere in the record for this action, Arun’s words would be proof that he had at least remembered the chain of command.
     said Barney.
    “Can the officers hear me?”
    
    “Lieutenant Balor, sir. Can you hear me?”
    On the screen, Arun saw both Jotuns jerk in surprise.
    “Who is this?” asked Balor.
    “Marine McEwan, sir. Indigo Squad.”
    “Bring on Sergeant Gupta.”
    “Negative, sir. The sergeant is suffering from… combat fugue.”
    “And so is everyone else. Right?” added Ensign Geror.
    “Yes, ma’am.”
    “Same here. We’ll uncover why you are different later, McEwan. Now stop jabbering and give me a sitrep, Marine.”
    While Arun updated the officers – talking care to describe the effectiveness of the enemy’s armor – he watched the screens flicker and then begin to shut down.
     Barney warned.
    No, shit.
    But Barney wasn’t giving up. While his control was increasingly intermittent, when he did have control, the AI was showing better camera angles and joining up the screens so Arun had a sense of what lay in front and behind Lieutenant Balor’s team.
    Arun went cold. He caught a snatch of the battle about to unfold. Lieutenant Balor’s squads were just one compartment away from the powerplant. And that next room had a barricade with a dozen defenders behind it. Twenty more were waiting thirty meters away to Balor’s rear, just out of sight. This hidden force had heavy