Katya's War

CHAPTER ELEVEN Psychotic Break

The Vodyanoi couldn’t provide much in the way of forensic equipment, but it didn’t need much to prove that what evidence there was of the fight aboard the Lukyan entirely corroborated Sergei’s account. The small handheld extinguisher that had been used as a weapon was from the bracket to the left of the pilot’s position, out of reach for anyone in the co-pilot’s seat. The pilot’s communications set had been adjusted for Vetsch, the co-pilot for Sergei. All steering data apart from some random inputs at the time of the fight was from the co-pilot’s seat, the interface configured in Sergei’s own idiosyncratic pattern. While the medic couldn’t gene type the blood found, he could at least test it for antigens, and so was able to differentiate between Sergei’s and Vetsch’s. Both types were found on the buckled edge of the extinguisher, Sergei’s in a spray across the co-pilot side, Vetsch’s pooled by the crate in the passenger section. The blood on the medical kit’s monitor handle and touch screen was Sergei’s; that on its sensor pad Vetsch’s.

There was a lot of Vetsch’s blood found beneath the floor grill. Watson, the medic, thought it likely that anybody losing that much would at least suffer shock. Thus, she was at a loss to explain more of Vetsch’s blood smeared on the hatch release, leaving an easily identified set of fingerprints. The clinching evidence was that the Lukyan’s activity log had recorded a manual cycling of the dorsal airlock from within the airlock itself.

“Could the log have been faked?” asked Kane, when he, Ocello, Katya, and Tasya were considering the gathered evidence.

“Of course,” said Vymann, the Vodyanoi’s senior technician who had also helped in the investigation. “But not quickly, and you’d have to know exactly what you were doing and be using specialised equipment to do it undetectably.”

Kane sighed loudly and pushed the medical hard copies away from him. “Ilyin’s telling the truth, then.”

“No,” said Tasya stubbornly. “His story fits the facts. That’s not the same thing.”

“He’s not lying,” said Katya. “I know him. I know how he lies. He just keeps denying things and hopes people will believe him. But he won’t come up with a story more complicated than ‘It wasn’t me.’ He can’t.”

“He isn’t very intelligent.”

“He isn’t very imaginative,” replied Katya sharply.

“Finished, Tasya?” asked Kane. “Yes? Good. So, Ilyin’s telling the truth, then. Y’know, I honestly wish he wasn’t. I wish he’d killed Vetsch, got the body into the dorsal lock somehow and spat him out into the ocean. Then we could just interrogate him to find out why. Instead we’ve got a sudden breakdown in one of the nicest people you could hope to meet, resulting in delusions, paranoia, psychosis and then, just when it can’t get any stranger, he rises from the dead long enough to commit suicide. No offence, Katya, but you can see why this would all be a lot easier if Sergei were the prime mover behind the incident.”

He drew the papers back towards him and flipped through them in a desultory way, only half examining them as he tried to understand the affair. “It’s all a bit mysterious, and I can’t say I’m very fond of mysteries.”

He seemed glad of the distraction when Quinn appeared in the doorway, although that gladness diminished somewhat when he saw Quinn’s expression. “What’s wrong, Mr Quinn?” he asked, already rising to his feet.

“It’s Giroux,” said Quinn. “We just picked up his communicator signal. He got out somehow, captain.”

“Impossible,” said Tasya, now on her feet too.

“He doesn’t have a suit,” said Kane, utterly astonished. “Never mind how he survived the explosion, he doesn’t have a suit.”

They were on the bridge seconds later. “It’s faint, but the signal’s good enough to detect the encryption assigned to Giroux’s channel,” reported Sahlberg.

“Where is he?”

“Back at the evacuation site, sir.”

“We were not far from there when we came back from the Zarya. Why didn’t we hear him then?”

Sahlberg shook his head. “I can’t tell you, captain. Maybe he found the facility’s communications room and is using its relay to get a message outside the Faraday cage.”

“Oh, gods. Poor Bruno.” Kane was horror-struck. “Set course. Best speed. We have to do what we can.”

The course had already been set in anticipation of the command, and the lean shape of the Vodyanoi, the fastest boat in all the seas of Russalka, surged forward. It was only when Kane took the captain’s seat that he realised he was still holding the evidence reports from the Vetsch investigation. He looked from them to the main display — currently showing the boat’s course and an area of likelihood where Giroux’s signal probably lay — back to the reports and finally at Katya who was standing to his right.

“This has been a very odd day,” said Kane.

It was to become odder still. While the Vodyanoi had been on station outside the evacuation facility waiting for contact to be re-established with the expedition, it had continued its survey of the mountain within which the facility lay. One of the elements it had positively identified was the disguised communications relay by which the facility kept in touch with the Yagizba Enclaves. As they grew closer to the mountain, and the probable location of Giroux’s transmission was refined into a smaller and smaller area, it became obvious that the two did not match up at all.

“That puts him physically outside the base,” said Sahlberg. “How did he manage that?”

Kane said nothing, but watched as the search area shrank steadily as they grew closer. Suddenly he leaned forward. “Mr Sahlberg, that area seems to be on the move. Is that an effect of varying signal strength, or…”

“No, sir,” said Sahlberg, studying the figures on his console. “He’s moving. Just a moment, we should be just about… There!”

On the main display, the search area resolved into a single point. “He’s descending the mountainside,” said Sahlberg, astonished. “What does he think he’s doing?”

“Is he falling?”

“I don’t think so, captain. His path is following a ridge line. No, look! He’s following the escarpment downwards. He’s not falling, sir. He’s climbing down.”

“Do we have any sort of inventory for the evacuation site? Would they have AD suits?”

“Unlikely, sir. Just soft suits for maintenance.”

Katya knew why Kane was asking. Giroux was descending too fast. In a soft suit, he would be breathing a mixture of gases that included helium rather than nitrogen, and he should be taking rests to allow his body to acclimatise.

“He’s approaching a cliff, captain. He’ll have to stop.”

The bridge fell silent but for Ocello trying to raise Giroux on the radio. They watched as the sharp contact point moved closer to the edge of a great cliff that stood above a gorge.

They watched as he reached it.

They watched as he jumped.

“Range, damn it! How far away are we?” shouted Kane.

“Three kilometres, sir. We’ll never get there in time.”

They could only watch as Giroux plunged into the abyss, deeper than their test depth, then deeper than their design depth, and then the contact went dark.

“There’s a Soup lake down there,” said Ocello quietly. “He’s gone in.”

However Giroux had survived the explosion, however he had had escaped the site, they would never know. The Soup was a dense emulsion of heavy metals in particle form, created in a natural process that had baffled Russalkin scientists ever since it was discovered in the early seabed surveys. No submarine dared enter it; no diver could hope to return from the crushing pressures within the toxic lakes.

“He must have been dead long before he reached it,” she said. “The pressure change was too rapid. Nobody could have survived it.”

“Nobody could have survived that explosion,” said Kane to himself, but Katya caught his muttered words. Abruptly he stood. “I shall be in my cabin. You have the bridge, Ms Ocello.” Without waiting for confirmation, Kane left the bridge in deep thought, the reports still clenched in his hand.

Katya went to see Sergei. The Vodyanoi who had been left to keep an eye on him was visibly relieved when she came in, and she could understand why; being in a confined space with a despondent Sergei would depress anyone. She had years of experience and had developed a resistance to it, but she could imagine what a drag it would be on the soul of somebody exposed to such accomplished passive-aggressive semi-professional martyrdom for the first time.

“Just wanted to tell you what’s happening, Sergei. I can’t tell you what the final conclusion will be for sure, but the evidence corroborated your story, so…”

“It wasn’t a story,” he said sullenly. “It’s the way it happened.”

“Don’t, Sergei. I have enough to deal with without you being miserable about good news. The captain believes your account, and even Tasya’s come around to it. Considering she was all for shooting you at first, that’s got be good, hasn’t it?”

Sergei managed a small reluctant nod, as if being found innocent and being allowed to live was only fractionally better than a maser bolt in the brain and an undignified burial at sea through a torpedo tube.

Satisfied that this was going to be the biggest outpouring of emotion she could expect from him, Katya turned to leave, but Sergei stopped her.

“Katya, what’s all this about? Why do they need you so much?”

It suddenly struck her that he would know nothing about what had happened in the evacuation site, no idea of what they had found there, what they had seen. Nor had he seen the wreck of the Zarya. To him the Feds were still just a bunch of snotty official types who ran things because they always had. “They want me to do something. Something scary. It will be dangerous, too. I don’t want you to go with me, Sergei. I’ll drop you off at Dunwich.”

The Vodyanoi crew man coughed and said, “I’ll just wait outside. I’ll be right outside if you need me.” He stepped through the doorway, sliding the door shut behind him.

When he had gone, Sergei said, “I don’t have any family left, Katya. Not blood family.”

“I know.”

“You’re the closest thing I have left. I’ll go with you.”

“Sergei, it’s not just going to be dangerous at the time, it’s going to be dangerous afterwards, too.” She closed her eyes and tried to marshal her thoughts. It was inevitable that she would have to tell him exactly what Kane and Tasya had asked of her sooner or later. It might as well be now.

She opened her eyes, looked Sergei in the face and said, “It’s treason. They want me to commit treason. If the Feds catch me, they’ll kill me. I doubt there’d even be a trial.”

Sergei’s mouth dropped open. He was a typical Federal citizen in so many ways — he would complain and whine and resent “those Fed bastards” every day, but they were still his bastards. His loyalties had lain with them so long, any ability to see them as anything but part of the natural scheme of Russalkin life had withered years ago. Treason was insane, beyond his capacity to understand.

Katya smiled wanly. “Exactly, and that’s why you’re not going. I can’t ask you to help me. I won’t ask you to help me. Just… when it happens, if I succeed… don’t think too badly of me. While you were gone, I saw… Everything has changed, Sergei. Russalka is dying, will die. It will take something… major to stop what’s happening here.”

“Katya. What do they want you to do?”

She shook her head. “It’s much, much better you don’t know. If you know, it makes you an accomplice.” She prepared to go, conscious she may already have said too much. “I’ll speak to Kane. Get you released.”

“Katya, please, whatever they’ve asked you to do, don’t do it. I’m begging you…”

It was more than she could bear. Sergei represented ever Federal citizen who would turn their backs on her, every friend she had, almost every face she knew. “No. You didn’t see…” The images flashed through her mind. Dark glass, shadowed forms, the murdered innocent. “Oh, Sergei. What they’ve done. What they’ve done in our names…” A deep grave, five thousand souls, blood in the Red Water. “It has to stop. It has to stop.”

She wrenched the door open and staggered out into the corridor, her eyes tearing up. She walked quickly past the astonished guard, forcing her emotions back inside until she could reach her cabin. There she sat on her bunk, refusing to sob while the tears ran down her cheeks.

She was dead, she knew it. Everything she had been had burnt in the truth of what she now knew. She was hollow, destroyed, nothing more than a walking bomb to end the world within which she had grown up. She would destroy it all in the slim hope that not doing so was worse.

She knew about fanatics, how they would push themselves to the utmost and willingly die for their ideals and their beliefs. But she wasn’t a fanatic. She didn’t feel a righteous, irresistible need to do anything. The FMA or, at least, the little group at the top of the FMA who made the decisions, they had betrayed her and every Federal citizen they represented. She wished she could feel vengeful, feel some passion for what she was going to do.

She wished she could feel anything at all. She only felt numb, detached, inhuman.

Then she felt something else, something that seeped from the numbness, a sense of order and methodical action, of doing what had to be done. She might be emotionally distanced from what was coming, but perhaps emotion, passion and commitment weren’t necessary. She could see the future mapped out as a series of events, like waypoints on a boat’s course.

She didn’t awaken, because she wasn’t really asleep, but the sense of regaining consciousness was still there. She could feel where her tears had dried. The sensation of them irritated her and she washed her face quickly in the cabin’s little basin. She checked her chronometer and discovered she had been sitting there for half an hour. That was OK, though, because now her mind was settled.

Whereas before, the future had been chaos and fear, now it was bright points on a good chart. Even the point that represented the moment she would be identified as a traitor and probably killed seemed of no more concern than any other. She wondered vaguely if this was how fanatics felt. She had expected more fire, not this cold indifference. She preferred it this way, though. She preferred to feel nothing.

At Kane’s door, she took his vague grunt at her knock to be assent, and entered. He was at his desk, running through what looked like crew timesheets. Beside him were the investigation reports, badly creased from being in his fist but showing signs he had tried to flatten them out.

“Kane,” began Katya, “Sergei’s been under watch for almost a day, now. You said yourself that…”

“He’s innocent,” said Kane, not looking up. “Obviously he’s innocent. Well, of Vetsch’s murder anyway. I can’t speak for what he gets up to in his own time.”

“So… he can be let out?”

Kane looked at her with a baffled expression. “Haven’t I already let him go? No?” He touched a button on his desk console. “Hello? Genevra? Katya’s friend…” He paused, tried to remember, failed, and looked at Katya.

“Sergei Ilyin,” she said patiently.

“Katya’s friend Sergei Ilyin didn’t kill Vetsch. Please release him. Thank you.” He terminated the link without waiting for a reply and went back to studying his screen.

“Yes. Well, anyway,” said Katya, trying to sound nonchalant, “when do you want me to do it? The…” she gestured vaguely, “the treason thing.”

“In a minute,” said Kane, comparing what was on the screen to the reports. He stopped abruptly and looked at her. “I mean to say, we’ll talk about that in a minute. Not that you’ll do it in a minute. You have to be in Atlantis to do it, as you know.” Finally realising he was making a fool of himself, he pointed at the screen. “This is interesting.”

Katya knew from past experience that when Kane was in one of these moods, it was best to indulge him. She looked at the display. “Timesheets. Capitalisation reports. I learned about them when I was studying for my crew card, but I’ve never actually used them. The Lukyan’s too small a concern to need that kind of detail.”

“Good for discipline on a boat like this,” said Kane. “Good to know who’s been doing what, who’s pushing themselves too hard, and who’s swinging the lead. That’s an old Terran term, you know? Very old. Anyway, recent history has cost me two good men, and I am not very happy about that. I am especially not happy about not knowing exactly what happened to them. If it can happen twice, it can happen a third, fourth, however many times.”

“You’re looking for clues in the timesheets?”

“It tells me what they were doing in half their waking hours, so it’s a start. Now, look here. Vetsch never had the opportunity to enter his time aboard your boat onto his sheet, but look at the last thing he did.”

Katya followed Kane’s pointing finger and read off, “Intake maintenance. So?”

“Now, look at Giroux’s. He was on munitions inventory, but that didn’t take his whole shift. The last hour or so…”

“‘Miscellaneous,’” Katya read, and then Giroux’s additional note, “‘Helped out in starboard drive room.’ Where was Vetsch working?”

“Ah, you’re seeing it, aren’t you? Vetsch was clearing the intake filters in the starboard drive room. He was the only one sheeted as working in there, so that’s who Giroux was helping.”

Katya leaned against the cabin wall and crossed her arms as she considered this. “With respect, Kane, the Vodyanoi’s no Novgorod. She’s not huge. People cross paths all the time aboard her.”

“Oh, I know, I know,” said Kane. He leaned back in his chair and crossed his arms too, unconsciously mimicking Katya. “It could well be a coincidence. Probably is a coincidence. I’m just trying to find a pattern where there may be none. Still, I’m going to have a look in the starboard drive room later just to see if…” He shook his head and sighed. “Sounds a bit desperate when I say it out loud; looking for clues. I can’t imagine what a clue that helps explain all this would even look like.”

“Perhaps they were just talking and said something that set one another off. Yes, I know — like what? I have no idea, Kane.”

“This planet of yours, Katya. No other world amongst the colonies is a water world. Well, there’s Novus Hellespont, I suppose, but they’ve got an archipelago they built on there, and it doesn’t storm all the time either. Perhaps extended submarine living drives people crazy after a while.”

“These cases are recent, Kane. We’ve been fine up to now.”

“Ah, but the war. And now another war. A combination of factors, resulting in psychosis. Vetsch, possibly Giroux, the Fed you saw, the other cases they seem to be covering up.” He grunted a semi-laugh. “Even the Leviathan went mad.” He suddenly fell silent. When he looked at Katya again, his expression was serious. “Even the Leviathan went mad,” he repeated. He unfolded his arms and started sifting through files on the console. “There’s a pattern. There’s something going on here. And,” he concluded, “it’s not going to be among the timesheets.”

He switched off the display and turned to her. “You said you’d take the mission, but you said it when you were shocked. You’ve had a chance to think about it now.”

In her mind, waypoints glittered, charting her path through the next few days. It was all she had. “I’ll do it.”