Katya's War

CHAPTER NINE Fallen Angels

There was no sense of intervening time. Katya was standing near Tasya and Kane when Giroux called in. Then she was lying on the ground, Tasya leaning over her and shaking her roughly. “Get up, Kuriakova! Wake up, damn you!”

Katya blinked at her, trying to patch events together and failing. Tasya’s harness torch was playing its beam directly in her face, and she only had the vaguest impression of Tasya being behind it. The voice, tone, and the violence of the shaking was all the evidence Katya needed for a positive identification, however.

“What happened?” said Katya, trying to sit up and regretting it as nausea wracked her. “Where’s Kane? Giroux?”

“Oh, you found her!” she heard Kane say, answering the first question. Tasya turned as he arrived. Kane held up a handful of pieces of smashed plastic. “The orb didn’t ride the blast wave very well,” he said ruefully. “I don’t suppose the supplier does mail order deliveries at interstellar distances, so no chance of a replacement. Perhaps I can repair it.” So saying, he placed the fragments in a belt pouch with the guileless optimism of a young child who believes anything can be fixed.

“Where’s Giroux?”

Kane looked surprised. “Oh, you must have taken a knock, Katya. Your short term memory…”

“Giroux’s dead,” said Tasya bluntly. “He found a body and, like an idiot, searched it. It was booby trapped.”

“I remember a body with a grenade under it…” Katya’s memories were beginning to sort themselves out although she would never remember the few seconds before the explosion. She remembered the body, the maser marks, and then she remembered the flooded room. She felt cold and finally realised that there was a thin sheen of water on the floor, flowing past them in the direction of the auxiliary lock.

“The one Giroux disturbed must have been a detonator. That explosion sounded more like emplaced charges. The upper bulkhead’s been compromised. The sea’s getting in.” Tasya stood and held out her hand. Katya took it and allowed herself to be drawn to her feet. “We’re just lucky those Fed bastards aren’t as good at setting charges as they are at killing babies or we’d be sucking water now.”

A deep vibration thrummed through the structure, making them all look into the darkness in the direction of the damaged bulkhead. “It’s giving way,” said Tasya. “Run!”

The ingrained Russalkin fear of water was with them in that moment. They turned and ran for the auxiliary lock as they had never run before, Tasya pulling quickly ahead with long, loping strides, Katya following in a hard sprint, and Kane at the rear in an untidy kinetic mass of flailing arms and pumping legs.

They reached the first bulkhead at the head of the slope leading down to the auxiliary lock and stumbled through the small door in the large wall. The water level was already well over the door’s lower lintel and beginning to surge as a much greater volume of water entered the flooding section behind them. As soon as Kane was through, Tasya threw herself at the door to try and close it, but the water was on the side the builder’s had reasonably concluded was the less likely to be a threat. Now the pressure of water was forcing the door open, not shut, and that pressure was rising.

“Go, go, go!” she shouted at Katya and Kane. “I’ll hold it as closed as I can.”

Katya hesitated for a moment, but Kane grabbed her arm and pulled her away. They ran down the incline, the water sluicing past their legs. Ahead of them in the dancing beams of their torches, Katya could see the auxiliary lock’s doors open before them, fifty metres away, but she could also see the water climbing over the lintel and starting to flood the interior of the airlock. The realisation that simply reaching the lock might not be enough to save their lives chilled her for the moment it took for it to crystallise in her mind. Then she put it aside; there lay panic, and panic would kill them.

She reached the door ten strides ahead of Kane and jumped through. She was on her communicator the second her feet splashed down in the shin-deep water. “Tasya! We’re in — come on!”

“Close the doors.”

Katya frowned; she had misheard. She must have misheard. “Say again?”

“Close the airlock doors, Kuriakova.”

Katya looked uncomprehendingly at Kane. He gave her what was presumably intended as a reassuring nod, and said, “Understood. Closing doors now.” Before Katya could stop him, he had reached out and twisted the door controls. With a hum of power, they began to swing shut.

“Kane! What are you doing?”

He smiled a little nervously. “I’m trusting her. You have to remember one thing about Tasya.” He turned on the lock’s internal lights, then joined Katya where she stood. He pointed through the narrowing gap up the slope of the corridor. “She’s a survivor.”

Into the glow of the lights, the steady sheen of water abruptly became a wave, a surge that could only mean Tasya had abandoned the door and let the rising water through. And in the middle of that surge, she rode down. Almost standing, almost lying, leaning back into the wave with her legs together and her arms steering her, she shot down the corridor towards the closing doors.

At the very last, she folded her arms across her chest, straightened her legs and made an arrow of her body, an arrow that shot into the airlock, brushing both her shoulders against the steel doors. They slammed shut behind her, a single sardonic clap of applause for the latest exploit of the legendary Chertovka.

“You truly have the luck of the Devil,” said Kane casually, as if it was a dull day that only featured one death-defying escape. He set the lock controls to drain away the water that was lapping around their thighs. Katya just gawped.

“I’m soaked,” said Tasya, as she rose from the waters. “These coveralls are going to ride up in the ADS, there’s nothing more certain. Nothing’s ever comfortable in this world.”

Kane was leaning into the back of his diving suit and fiddling with the more powerful communications unit in it. “Still no signal. We’re going to have to get into the water before we can talk to the boat. Right, Katya first, I think.”

The airlock’s floor was now only wet, not flooded, and Kane helped her doff her gear and stow it away in the MMU. Then with help from Tasya, he lifted Katya up she could get into the suit once more. As they locked her in, Tasya said, “What about Giroux’s suit?”

Katya heard Kane’s bitter sigh. “Poor Bruno. Despite all we’ve seen in this world, he was probably the only Vodyanoi who wouldn’t have believed somebody could stoop so low as to booby trap a corpse. We’ll seal up his suit and Sahlberg can bring it in under drone control once he’s brought in Katya.”

“I was looking at the controls on the way in,” offered Katya. “I think I could pilot it. Well enough to get back to the Vodyanoi anyway.”

“It would save some time,” said Tasya, with a tone of approval that Katya was slightly embarrassed to realise she enjoyed. Now she cared about the opinion of war criminals, she thought. How much further could she fall? But she was only a war criminal because the Federal authorities said she was; the same people who had planned, sanctioned, and carried out the extermination of a civilian evacuation centre.

At least you knew where you were with the Chertovka. Usually in deep trouble.

They finished sealing Katya into her suit and turned their attention to other matters. While Tasya stored her and Kane’s gear — she found the pouch with the fragments of the light orb in and shook her head like a long-suffering mother emptying the pockets of her son’s clothes — Kane closed Giroux’s suit and assigned its MMU a drone control channel. Then he went to his own suit and tried gamely to clamber in, an action which, without a stepladder, proved challenging to him. Still showing a long-suffering expression, Tasya gave him a boost which he gratefully accepted. As Tasya closed his suit he asked, “How will you get into your suit, Tasya?”

“By being competent,” she answered, and Kane shut up after that.

“Pride comes before a fall” was proving to be an idiom with which Tasya had little if any experience. She got into her suit with ridiculous ease, and had it sealed and secure by herself faster than either Katya or Kane had managed with help. She had even had the foresight to “walk” her suit on the corners of the MMU’s base so she could reach the airlock controls once she was in it.

“Flooding airlock,” she called before pressing the valve controls.

As the water rose, Katya’s thoughts were very different to when she had last stood in a filling lock. Now she didn’t care about the trip, even if she was going to be piloting her suit this time. She was finding it hard to care about anything at all. Everything seemed to be becoming detached and inconsequential. She had lived her entire life as a citizen under Federal law, and Federal protection. The Federal administration was there to serve the people, to keep them safe, and to maintain services. They were the angels, the guardians, the heroes in advanced AD suits that could fly for a little while, damn them.

Damn them. Damn them.

But, no. They were just little people with too much power who did what little people always do when they have too much power. They abused it, and said it was for the greater good. Perhaps they even believed it. Perhaps when they entered the evacuation site and saw beyond any doubt that it offered no threat to them, they ordered the survivors massacred and traps placed because they honestly thought it was a necessary evil.

But, doesn’t every evil seem necessary at the time?

Katya didn’t want to think anymore. She just wanted to sleep for the rest of her life, or at least until some morning came that was like the mornings before the war, before the chaos. Before Kane.

“Opening the lock.” Tasya’s voice coming through her cap’s earpieces startled Katya momentarily. The outer doors moved ponderously aside and, as they did so, their communication units re-established contact with the Vodyanoi.

Katya looked at the channel acquisition alert projected on her helmet’s head-up display with confusion. The channel allocated to the Lukyan showed blank.

“Captain!” Ocello’s relieved voice sounded through all their suits. “I was just putting together a search party to go after you.”

“Hello, Genevra,” said Kane, blithely using her first name and breaking the Vodyanoi’s paramilitary disciplinary protocols at the same time, a privilege of rank. “No, the communications blackout was simply because the facility is shielded.”

“We were concerned…”

“I know, I know. It hasn’t all been clear sailing, though. I regret to say we’ve lost Bruno.”

There was a beat of silence. “How?” said Ocello, her previous excitement gone.

“The Federals mined the place. I’ll brief you when we get back. Please tell Mr Sahlberg to bring in Bruno’s suit on drone channel Epsilon. Ms Kuriakova will pilot herself back.”

“Kane?” said Katya.

Kane continued to speak to the Vodyanoi, but his next question showed he knew exactly what was on Katya’s mind. “Speaking of Ms Kuriakova, I suspect she’s feeling a little anxious that we’re not picking up her boat’s comms channel. What’s the Lukyan’s status, please?”

“Sir,” said Ocello, “I regret to say that we’ve lost contact with the Lukyan. We picked up some noise on the comms channel, sounded like shouting. Then she went silent, and headed away at best speed.”

“Didn’t you go after her?” demanded Katya, her impatience making her cut in.

“We couldn’t, Ms Kuriakova. Our orders were to stay on station in case you needed us.”

“Don’t worry,” said Kane. He seemed to be reaching for a sympathetic and encouraging tone, but he just sounded tired. “It will just be something silly. We’ll get back to the boat and then we’ll look for the Lukyan. Vodyanoi, we’re coming over now. Let us get clear and then bring in Mr Giroux’s suit last, please.”

“Going to neutral buoyancy,” reported Tasya. Katya put her worries about Sergei and the Lukyan to one side for a moment, and adjusted her suit’s buoyancy. The controls were simple and unambiguous, the MMU’s computer doing all the physics for her. She simply set the suit’s desired buoyancy level, and the MMU emptied its ballast tanks to exactly the right level to comply.

Tasya was first out of the lock, heading off into the gloom directly for the glowing marker on her HUD that told her the location and orientation of the Vodyanoi’s waiting salvage maw. Katya found the MMU controls mounted high on the “podium” front of the MMU at stomach height. The left control was a simple throttle, the right a twistable force stick. She had piloted utility pods to get her crew licence, and a pod’s simple controls were almost identical to this.

“It’s pretty straightforward, Katya,” said Kane. “The right hand control…”

Without answering, Katya gently opened the throttle, directed the manoeuvre jets with the force stick, and lifted her suit from the airlock floor. She moved out into the ocean with as much grace and assurance as Tasya had before her, and set course for the Vodyanoi.

“Oh,” said Kane, doing a poor job of hiding his surprise. “Well… I’m sure you’ll pick it up… as you go along.” A few seconds later, he announced that he, too, was seaborne.

“This is sensors,” called Sahlberg. “I’m bringing in the fourth suit now.”

Not “Giroux’s suit,” Katya noticed. There would be quiet commemorations for Bruno Giroux among the Vodyanois soon enough, but right now his fate was not something they could focus upon.

In silence, three survivors and a dead man’s suit were coming home.

The recording didn’t tell them anything at all. There was an incoherent shout which didn’t sound like Sergei, then a cry that might have been him, some tumbled ambient sound of a microphone being buffeted and then the transmission cut off. Since their return, Katya had listened to it through headphones five times, her eyes shut, trying to imagine what had occurred aboard the Lukyan. Nothing would form in her imagination that might explain it.

It sounded like a fight, but Sergei wasn’t the kind of man who looked for fights. Yes, he was surly, sarcastic, and opinionated, but on the occasions he had pushed someone too far, he’d backed down and apologised before it came to blows. At first she’d thought he did that just because he didn’t see the point of taking some bruises for the sake of a smart comment. More recently, however, now she was spending more time with him, with Uncle Lukyan dead and the war colouring every aspect of life, she’d realised Sergei didn’t just want to avoid unnecessary violence; he wanted to avoid it always, in any form, for any reason. Only an idiot went looking for trouble, but a refusal to deal with it in kind when the only alternative was to let trouble have its way? There was a word for that, and it was an ugly one.

Katya liked Sergei for all his faults, even that one, but it did make her fear for what might have happened to him. An indiscrete comment about pirates, raised tempers, an apology that was too little or too late — that would be all it would take.

“The man you put aboard the Lukyan,” demanded Katya of Kane, “who is he?”

Kane seemed nonplussed, and looked at Ocello questioningly.

“Vetsch,” said Ocello, pulling up a personnel file on the console in the Vodyanoi’s officers’ mess. “Laurent Vetsch, engineer, second class.”

“Vetsch?” Kane frowned. “But… he’s the most inoffensive man on the boat. Katya, I can’t believe Laurent Vetsch would start a fight, no matter how much Sergei pushed him.”

“Sergei’s not the fighting sort either.”

She was slightly distracted by noticing how much livelier Kane seemed since they’d got back. Of course, she realised, he hadn’t been tired at all. His Sin addiction had been making itself felt. He must have gone straight to his cabin to dose himself as soon as he was out of his suit. It was a terrible burden he would carry until he died, and Katya always felt ashamed by how she had reacted when she first found out about it.

She had been educated at school to believe that all drug addicts were victims of their own selfish weakness. That a totally addictive drug with fatal withdrawal effects had been developed purely as a method of enslavement was part of a further education she would rather have lived without. That Kane had deliberately addicted himself to it in a vain attempt to prevent an apocalypse — an apocalypse that almost came anyway — only served to impress upon her that life has too many random factors for comfort.

“Well, something happened.” Kane ran the sound file again. A shout of anger? Rage? Pain? Followed by Sergei — probably Sergei — crying out. “That doesn’t sound very friendly.” He leaned back in his chair. “It’s only been just over an hour. They can’t have got far. Set a pursuit course, Number One. Fifty percent faster than the Lukyan’s rated top speed, and broad passive scan in progress.”

“Aye, captain. We’ll pay special attention to the sea bed. There’s a lot of clutter that a little bug like that could hide amongst.” Ocello rose and left.

“That wasn’t very kind, calling your boat a ‘bug,’” said Kane when Ocello was safely out of earshot.

“I’ve heard her called worse,” said Katya.

She looked at the console display that Ocello had been examining and quickly skim read Vetsch’s profile before Kane could object. He didn’t, but just watched. Vetsch seemed exemplary. Apart for a couple of trifling offences that anyone would pick up out of sheer bad luck over a long period, he was entirely clean. Ocello had noted that it was unfortunate that, since the Vodyanoi’s crew had barely changed in the last ten years, there had been no opportunity to promote Vetsch. In the usual run of things, he would have made Chief years ago. That he was stuck as a second engineer was no reflection on his abilities or attitude. Words like “patient,” “tenacious,” “gregarious” did little to suggest Vetsch might suddenly turn into a raging…

“Have you noticed any… odd behaviour?” said Katya suddenly.

“What, with Vetsch?”

“With anyone. Not just in your crew. Just, you know… generally?”

“It’s a war, Katya. It’s all about odd behaviour.”

“I mean… crazy.”

“My last comment still applies.” He frowned. “What are you thinking?”

“I saw a Federal officer shoot an innocent, unarmed man dead in cold blood for no reason at all. He’d have carried on killing everyone in sight if he hadn’t been brought down.”

“It may seem a horrible thing to say, but my last comment still applies. War puts pressures on people. Psychotic breaks happen. People go crazy.”

“I’ve heard about other times it’s happened. The FMA tries to keep it quiet, but there’s gossip. People talk.” She saw Kane seemed unconvinced. “Secor interviewed me about it.”

That made Kane sit up. “They what?”

“They asked me a load of questions, and I really got a strong feeling they had asked those same questions before for other cases. When I asked if it had happened before, they were so keen not to say anything that they all but admitted it. It made me think. There has been that gossip, all that scuttlebutt between captains, but I didn’t give it much attention. I’m starting to wonder, now.”

“That’s strange. That’s really very strange. I’ll ask Tasya to see if the Yagizban are noticing a marked increase in psychosis amongst their people. More than is to be expected, anyway.” He leaned forward towards her. “Are you saying you think either Vetsch or Sergei may have suffered one of these… incidents?”

“Sergei would not go off station without a good reason. I can’t imagine him turning and running like that.” At least, she admitted to herself, unless he felt threatened. There had been nothing to threaten him, however, which left only one possibility. “I think Vetsch has done something to him. He cracked up and attacked Sergei.”

“Not the other way around?”

“Sergei wouldn’t.”

“That’s a coincidence, because I’ve got a lengthy personnel record here along with my personal experience of the man that says that Vetsch wouldn’t either.” He closed the file, revealing a navigation chart, showing the Vodyanoi’s current position, speed, depth, and heading.

“We’re heading deeper into the Red Water,” Katya commented. Kane didn’t answer, but just stared at the screen. There was a subtle change in his manner, as if she was watching his mood change in degrees, right before her eyes. She watched him in silence for some seconds, then asked, “Why is this Red Water still here anyway?”

“The Peklo Volume,” said Kane, watching the symbol representing his boat slowly moving across the map.

“This is the Peklo? I didn’t know. Uncle told me a bit about it, but not much. Who was Peklo?”

“Not a who. A what. It’s a word borrowed from a neighbour of your ancestors. It’s another word for ‘Hell,’ as if humanity hadn’t made enough hells for itself already.”

“Uncle told me that there was a sunken Terran vessel there, full of unstable weapons. They were too dangerous to disarm, so they just left them down there and interdicted the volume.”

Kane closed his eyes as if thinking, or remembering. When he opened them, he was looking directly at Katya. “Is that what he said? Well, he was largely correct. There is a sunken Terran vessel down there, and its contents are very dangerous. We’re heading in that direction, anyway,” he added, talking half to himself. He opened a line to the bridge. “Number One, any sign of the Lukyan?”

“Not yet, captain. If she was trying to get away from us, she’s bound to have changed her heading by now. I’d be running quiet and deep.”

“That’s what I thought. OK, let’s try something different. We’ll try a search grid. One thing, please make the first waypoint at the grave of the Zarya.”

There was a distinct pause.

“The Zarya, sir?”

“Yes. I’m of a mind to show Ms Kuriakova just what her world was up against when Earth first invaded.”

Another pause.

When Ocello spoke again, it was in a quiet and very serious voice. “Captain. You will appreciate why I have to ask twice. Are you sure you want us to go to the Zarya?”

Kane looked as if he wasn’t sure at all. It seemed to take an effort of will for him to say, “Quite sure, Genevra.”

As soon as he closed the link Katya said, “But what about the weapons? We’ll be right over them!”

“The weapons aren’t what you think at all, Katya.” He got up to go. At the doorway, he said, “I’ve already apologised for what we saw in the evacuation site. I had no idea that would be the first thing we would discover. What I will show you at the grave of the Zarya, however, I make no apologies for. You said I kept too many secrets from you. If you’re not already wishing that you could unlearn some of those secrets, you soon shall.”