Katya's War

CHAPTER FOURTEEN Little Flag

Katya didn’t hesitate. She drew the keystick, stabbed it into the lock, and was through the door before the startled marine troopers could even reach for their sidearms. She slammed the door behind her and was rewarded by the solid clicks of bolts being inserted into all four sides of the frame. There were heavy footfalls on the other side of the door, and the handle was wrenched up and down in frustrated fury from the other side.

On an impulse Katya placed the contact plate of the taser on the metal of the handle and triggered a charge. There was a cry of pain, and the sound of a fall. She moved away from the door just as she heard the cracks of maser bolts hitting the door. They didn’t penetrate, but it had been ridiculous using them against the metal of the door in the first place — the whole point of using masers was that they were as bad at penetrating metal as they were good at punching through flesh. This way a missed shot wouldn’t result in letting in the whole ocean.

Katya had the torch on and was running back the way she had come. At the same time, she was trying to think of a way out of Atlantis. The escape route she had been given was broken, and somehow the Feds had found out who she was.

Her first thought was that the Yagizban computer hack had failed, but then she realised that this could not be so. If it had failed, then the reader on the communications room would have interrogated the entry system, found she wasn’t supposed to be there, and refused to open.

Had somebody found the technician? Had he woken up within seconds of her leaving rather than minutes, and raised the alarm himself? But the empty corridors, if not a coincidence, suggested a quiet evacuation of the area had been taking place even while she’d been installing the Yagizban electronics unit.

None of it made sense. She was missing something.

Any further thoughts on the matter were interrupted by finding herself at the lift shaft. Three levels down was a gap in the ladder that she wouldn’t have tried to negotiate in full light and a drop of three metres onto a foam mattress. That she would be trying it in the deep shadows cast by a torch pointing almost everywhere except where it would do some good, and that the drop was five levels and finished in water that had, at the very least, a jagged section of ladder waiting beneath the surface, put her right off the idea.

Should she stay on the same level, then, or try her luck on one of the others she could reach from the lift shaft? She would have to prise the doors open, but doubted that would be too difficult. In a nearby office she found a chair, its seat broken, lying on its side. A minute’s work with her multi-tool’s screwdriver had a leg off. She slipped it into her bag and went back to the shaft.

Trusting to obtuse light and ageing architectural fittings with all the enthusiasm she had displayed last time, Katya stepped into the void and found the ladder with her hands and leading foot. The ladder creaked alarmingly under her weight, but obliged her by not coming away from the wall and dropping her eight levels into the inky waters that waited below. She paused; from somewhere she heard a loud bang that echoed around the walls of the abandoned level. They were through the door, and would be following the trail through the dirt soon enough right to the lift shaft. Fear spurring her, she started to climb.

One level didn’t seem to be enough, so she pushed on to the next. Here she climbed up far enough that she could step across to the concrete lintel below the door edge with one foot, her other still on the ladder. Bracing herself against the cool metal of the doors, she drew the chair leg from her bag and jammed it into the crack that separated them and heaved. The door slid over a centimetre or so, then stopped dead with solid certainty.

Katya glared at it as if it had personally insulted her, and leaned hard against the chair leg. She could see it bowing slightly under the force, but the lift door remained solid. Below her she could hear boots running, echoing, growing closer. The fear grew in her; they were almost there. In a moment they would be at the lift shaft, they would look up, and it would all be over. In desperation she put her body weight into it, pushing as hard as she humanly could in such a position. Something gave inside the door, the chair leg slid free, and she found herself thrown against the inner side of the left hand door. Her hands scrabbled hopelessly at the sheet steel for a moment, and then she fell, the chair leg falling down the shaft, ricocheting off the sides as it went, announcing her presence to all.

She cried out and grabbed at anything she could find. Nothing for a moment, then she crashed heavily against the concrete lintel, knocking the breath from her. Her hand found a structural stanchion beneath the lintel and she held on for her life.

A torch beam shone up at her from the open door two levels below her. “She’s here!” a male voice called. “I found her!”

The lift shaft was illuminated by another torch. Looking up, she could see the shaft in better detail than ever before. The door she had bounced off stood open perhaps thirty centimetres. It looked like whatever had been holding it shut had finally given way. She could see the ladder not far away. If she swung her right foot into it, she could be on it in a couple of seconds, another three or so to climb up to where she’d been a moment ago, step across, grab the door edges, open it, dive through. In fifteen seconds she could be running again.

“Shoot her,” said the lieutenant.

Katya realised she was never going to run again, because in fifteen seconds her corpse would be in the water, ten levels down.

There was nothing she could do. A half-formed thought that perhaps it would be better to fall than be shot and fall. At least she would be the one who made the final decision of her life.

“Belay that order!” A new voice, confident, authoritative, and angry. “Do not fire!”

“Sir!” she heard the lieutenant say, then they stepped away from the mouth of the shaft and she couldn’t make out anymore.

Then there was a distinct, “Yes, sir!” and the lieutenant was leaning out to look at her.

“Can you reach the ladder?”

“I think so,” she called back.

“Then do so. You have my gun at your back. If you attempt to escape, I will kill you without hesitation, Kuriakova. Do you understand?”

She understood very well. Moving slowly, she got her foot onto the ladder and slid her hands along the stanchion until she could reach the rungs. Here she rearranged her shoulder bag so that the strap was no longer across her chest, but only hung on one shoulder.

“What are you doing?”

“The strap’s caught on the rung,” she called back. “It’s alright. It’s free now.” She climbed down at half the speed she had ascended, giving the lieutenant no excuse to fire. When she reached the level where he waited, she stepped across and stumbled very deliberately. Her bag slid from her shoulder and fell down the shaft. “My torch!” she cried as she grabbed the doorframe, trying to give the impression that was all she was concerned about, and not that she was trying to get rid of any evidence that it might contain. A taser of Grubber manufacture would be hard enough to explain by itself.

Her upper arms were grabbed painfully hard and she was half lifted, half dragged out of the lift shaft, before being dumped on the filthy floor of the corridor.

She looked up and found herself ringed by the four Federal troops she had seen in the corridor. Then she saw the fifth man and her heart sank. He was one of the Secor agents who had interrogated her after Shurygin was shot. She’d always had a feeling that she might cross paths with Secor again sooner or later, but had been very much hoping for “later.”

“You owe me your life, Ms Kuriakova,” said the agent.

Ringed in harsh torch light, she squinted up at him. “I’d rather they’d killed me.”

Her arms were dragged behind her and she felt restraint strips being wound around her wrists. She started to struggle, but they were too strong. A fabric bag was pulled down over her head and secured around her neck.

“Yes,” admitted the agent. “You’ll find yourself thinking that often over the next few days.”

They led her back to the door into the Beta grade section. When they reached the door, they had her lift her feet high and she thought it must be because they had blown down or cut through the door, and there was still a bit of it in the bottom of the frame. She never knew for sure.

After that, she had no idea where they took her. The corridors were silent and she guessed they were still evacuated. They took her to another level in a lift, along more corridors, and nobody spoke. It was only when they took her through another door and the sound ambience seemed to change that she realised that she was now in a room, and not a large one. She was put in a chair and she felt straps being secured around her upper arms even though her wrists were still restrained. They double checked her wrists, then she heard the door close.

Katya listened for a minute or two but couldn’t hear anything at all; no breathing, no sound of somebody shifting their weight from one foot to another. Experimentally, she tried pushing down with her feet, but the chair wouldn’t move at all. It seemed to be bolted to the floor.

In a strange way, it was a relief to be caught. She had no idea what Secor had planned for her, but they weren’t there for the moment, so she found it hard to care. She’d worry about it when they came back. Right then, however, she could just feel the tension fading from her to be replaced by an exhaustion that seemed to soak through her flesh down to her bones. She leaned forward as far as the straps would let her and her head sagged until her chin touched her chest. They would probably use sleep deprivation against her soon, she thought. She’d better grab any sleep she could now.

She was asleep when they came for her. She had no idea how long she’d slept, but it didn’t feel nearly long enough. She was roused by the arm straps being released and was still drowsy and only half aware when she was dragged to her feet. She guessed they were taking her somewhere new, so she stood straight and waited to be guided from the room.

The punch to her stomach was completely unexpected. She grunted and doubled up, but somebody grabbed the back of the bag over her head and pulled her upright again, the cloth stretching tautly across her face. Then she was punched in the stomach again. This time she was allowed to fall, her head banging smartly against the edge of something — The chair? A table? — as she did.

“Careful,” she heard someone say, but they said it as if a cup was at risk and not a fellow human’s skull.

The blow to her head stunned her, and she felt disorientated, her sense of which way was up wavering badly. She could offer no resistance when she was pulled back to her feet and held while somebody punched her once, twice, in the face. She tasted blood in her mouth and could feel that a tooth was loose. Every blow disconnected her further from reality. It was becoming harder to believe she had ever woken up.

Her feet were kicked out from beneath her and, unable to use her hands to break her fall, she went down heavily, her head banging on the floor. Somewhere away from the pain, she distractedly thought, They’re going to beat me to death.

A boot caught her in the pit of her stomach, a new agony borne upon her. She vomited violently, bringing up little but water that reminded her vaguely of expensive coffee. It soaked into the fabric of the hood, the stomach acid stinging her skin.

“Don’t let her choke,” said the voice again, offhand with a mild air of disgust. “Secor want her.”

So she wasn’t going to be beaten to death here and now after all. She had no idea whether to be relieved or disappointed.

The hood was untied and pulled off. While she screwed her eyes shut against the brilliant light of the interrogation room they gagged her mouth open with the end of a baton. One of them cleared her mouth with a gloved finger and made sure her tongue was clear of her airway.

“She’s fine. Pass me the water.” The officer washed the vomit from his hand and threw the rest of the beaker’s contents in her face. “The bag will need rinsing,” he added offhandedly.

There were voices elsewhere. Orders given and accepted. Still groggy, Katya was pulled back to her feet. She grimaced, tensing her stomach for another blow, but they only put her back in the chair and strapped her upper arms to it once again. There was a table, she saw, and another chair opposite to her. That one didn’t have restraints. The FMA officers left her then, leaving the door open.

A moment later the Secor agent entered. The door closed unbidden behind him as he walked over to the table and sat in the free chair, placing a metal briefcase by his chair.

He looked at her, and then at the discarded bag and pool of watery vomit streaked with blood on the floor.

“This isn’t how it works in the dramas,” said Katya, her speech slurred. “The hero on your side of the table asks questions, the fellow on my side lies, gets caught in a lie. ‘Curses, you caught me out. I’ll tell you everything.’ Maybe I missed where the hero beats the crap out of the fellow.”

“Oh, that wasn’t part of the interrogation, Katya,” he said. “That was just some patriotic citizens expressing contempt for a traitor. This,” he waved a hand back and forth to indicate the both of them, “this is the interrogation. The first of many, I’m sure.”

He lifted the briefcase onto the table and opened it, the lid blocking Katya’s view of the contents. “We don’t get many traitors, Katya,” he said conversationally as he took out a memo pad and placed it on the table beside the case. “Not proper ones. Federal citizens are very loyal to their fellow citizens.” A recorder joined the memo pad. “You’re really something of a rarity.” He took out one last item and held it in one hand while he closed the case and returned it to the floor with the other. Katya’s felt cold; it was the Yagizban device she had planted.

He placed the device on the area of empty table between them, rested his hands on the table edge, steepled his fingers, and looked at her expectantly. Katya returned the look defiantly, although she was having trouble keeping one eye open. One of the punches to her face had caught the cheek bone, and the flesh was swelling. If she had seen him on the halls, she would have thought he possibly worked in engineering, he had that air of practicality about him. Dark, close cut hair, somewhere in his mid-thirties. Otherwise, it was difficult to get a grip on what sort of person he was. His clothes were the sort of thing an engineer might wear, too, right down to the sleeveless jacket. People who worked in the docks often wore them because it could get cold there, and the jackets provided extra pockets for gear.

He tapped the box. “What is it?”

Katya shrugged.

He watched her keenly for a moment, and then made a note on the pad. Then he asked again, “What is it?”

Katya shrugged again.

The Secor agent pursed his lips, thinking. Then he reached inside his jacket and produced a maser. He placed it carefully on the table and gestured at it.

“You’re a traitor, Katya. You will never be interrogated to find out if you are or not, because we know you are. It’s an empirical fact.” He smiled warmly, and laughed. “We don’t even care why. Maybe later, but not right now. Our concern at this immediate moment is what were you doing in the traffic control centre? What were you doing with this?” Again, the light tap of a fingertip on the box’s metal casing.

She looked at the gun, then at him, but still didn’t reply.

He looked at the gun with the mildest mannered surprise, as if he’d forgotten he put it there. “What’s this for? That’s what you’re wondering, isn’t it? Well, I’ll tell you. It’s your ticket out of this. I’ve seen your file, Katya. You’re no idiot. You know what happens to traitors, and you know what’s going to happen to you. There are still choices you can make, however. A maser bolt to the head, in the right place, will kill instantly. You’re not even aware of it.” He snapped his fingers, a life going out. “Or, you can live. Day in, day out. Week in, week out. Months, and years. The men who beat you, look at the mess they made. No training. We can make your every day a hell, Katya. Your every living day.” He laughed again, leaning back in his chair and shaking his finger at her. “I know what you’re thinking! You’re thinking, ‘Where there’s life, there’s hope,’ aren’t you?”

His smile slowly faded. He leaned forward again. “Life is pain, Katya Kuriakova. You can guess how much pain. Now, answer my questions, and I can save you living a life that is ten shades worse than death. The box. What was its function?”

Katya looked at the box. Then slowly, she turned her head to one side and spat blood on the table.

“I can see cut marks on it,” she said. “You’ve already had it open. You know what it is.” She could also see a band of discolouration across the bare metal where it seemed to have oxidised. She hoped it meant what she thought it did.

The Secor agent sighed. He peeled a few tabs of tape from the box’s edges and lifted off the top.

The box had indeed been opened, and its contents had told the FMA technicians precisely nothing. Inside was a mess of burnt wiring and components, the partially melted remains dusted with white powder and globs of metal.

Katya smiled, though her lip was split and the smile made it bleed again. “Oh, dear.”

“Oh, dear,” agreed the agent. “Yagizban design, of course. They’re very ingenious like this. It did its job, and then a thermite charge melted the processor and memory core. However, not to worry.” His eyes narrowed. “We still have you.”

Katya looked at him coldly. Then she giggled. “Do you always talk like that? ‘I’m with Secor. We’re so threatening’?” She couldn’t help but laugh. She shook her head, grinning at him. “You idiot. Thanks for that, by the way.” She nodded at the box. “Until you showed me that, I didn’t know if I’d succeeded or not. Now I do.”

The agent wasn’t smiling. “You don’t seem to appreciate exactly what is going to happen to you.”

“No,” she said. “No, you don’t seem to appreciate exactly what is going to happen to you. You joined Secor because it looked like a nice, safe berth, didn’t you? You get respect, decent money I would think, and you get to feel important. You’re probably a bit of a failure as a human being, aren’t you? Oh, and you get to work out those sadistic impulses you feel now and then, torturing prisoners.”

Now he smiled, but it was just a pattern of tightened muscles and stretched skin across his face. His eyes said something different. “This isn’t about me, Kuriakova…”

“It is exactly about you.” She couldn’t tell if she was being brave or just reckless. Either way she was as good as sunk, so she decided to just let herself go with the delightful flow of hatred that was running through her now. “The FMA is finished. Everything you have hung your little flag on is finished. It might take a while, but this war is as good as over. And when it is, and Secor is closed down, what’s going to keep you safe then, Mr Above-The-Law?”

The Secor agent’s eye twitched. Abruptly, he leapt to his feet, snatching up his pistol. He clamped the muzzle against Katya’s forehead, released the safety catch, and she would not, could not stop laughing.

“Go on!” she snarled at him through bloodied teeth. “Fire! Something else for the judges when they try you for war crimes! Fire, you bloody coward!”