Katya's World

CHAPTER 15 Little Gun

A fait accompli, Kane helpfully told her after dropping it into one of his next comments, meant that the matter was settled before it had even really come to one side’s attention. In this case, by the time the FMA even found out that the Yagizba Conclaves had decided that they could do a better job running the planet than the Federals, the Yagizbans would already control Russalka’s storm-riven skies with their transport and strike aircraft and the seas would belong to the fleet of Vodyanoi-class warboats and, of course, the Leviathan.

Katya hugged herself against a chill that existed only in her mind. “Were there ever any pirates? Or was it just you?”

Kane smiled. “Nobody else has ever worked that out. No, we weren’t the only ones, but there were never more than five pirate vessels operating at any time. The transports could take us anywhere, drop us off and, as far as the Federals knew, it was another boat operating. You’ve seen the news reports. They thought there were as many as sixty pirate vessels out there and all the time it was just us, we few, keeping busy. If they’d stopped to think about it logically, they might have realised that there simply wasn’t enough trade to support that many pirates. They never did. You know, maybe they really don’t deserve to govern.”

“That’s why the Vodyanoi was so keen to bust you out. They couldn’t afford you talking under interrogation.”

“No, that would have been very bad for the Conclaves. I’m fairly feisty… I think I would have held out for a while. The Deeps, though, they have a bad, a fearsome bad reputation. Sooner or later, they’d have threatened to break a particularly favourite bone or dislocate some joint that I would rather stay correctly located and I’d have talked. It’s more or less impossible to break anybody out of the Deeps, so they always intended to rescue me before reaching the facility. Your little submarine was earmarked for interception as soon as that appalling little man Suhkarov commandeered it in his usual charmless fashion.”

“Or they might just have sunk us to stop you talking.”

“Yes,” replied Kane philosophically. “They might have sunk us. I like Tasya and, in her own faintly psychotic way, I think she likes me. She’d have fired without hesitation if she thought it was the only way, though.”

“Perhaps you can tell her, tell them, the Yagizbans, that there’s no need to hurt the Novgorod’s crew. You’ve already won the war. We can’t fight the Leviathan. Enough people have already died.”

“I know. I think they do too. That’s why Petrov and the rest are being held rather than being unceremoniously shot and dumped overboard. No point in starting the new world order with an unnecessary massacre.” He was speaking blithely, but Katya caught a note of bitterness there too.

“You’re on the winning side, Kane,” she said, “but you don’t sound very happy about it.”

Kane got up and paced the floor. “I’m happy that the FMA is finally going to be dissolved. It’s been a blight on the Russalkin ever since it was founded. It’s just a glorified customs and excise service, you know. How it was ever allowed to sprawl into so many other duties and roles I can’t imagine. Administrative creep, I suppose. Government by bureaucracy rarely bodes well.”

“It did the job.”

“It did it very badly. If it’s all you’ve ever seen, it’s hard to imagine other forms of government but they exist, I assure you. The Yagizban intend to run the planet as a meritocratic technocracy.”

Katya snorted derisively. “And what’s that?”

Kane stopped pacing and looked at her. “It means if you’re a good scientist, you get ahead. You have a good mind, Katya. You should do well.”

She ignored the compliment, if that was what it was meant to be. “And that’s it? No say in how things go? What if we don’t want a meritocratic technocracy? What then?”

“Not really your decision. It isn’t a democracy.”

“A what?”

“Never mind.” Kane checked his wristwatch. “Come on. I was supposed to collect you, not divulge all the Yagizbans’ nefarious schemes. Don’t let on that you already know. Let them have their moment of glory; it’s rude to spoil a gloat.”

For the second time in less than an hour, Katya went to the FP-1’s bridge. This time, however, she was in the company of both Kane and Mila Vetskya who turned up just as they were leaving Katya’s room, presumably to see why Kane was taking so long on a simple errand. The lift went up two decks further before moving sideways this time and here was no scenic view of the war fleet under construction. Katya noticed that Mila had entered the destination through the lift’s keypad rather than using the voice recognition, and must have programmed in the diversion around the manufacturing area. It appeared that there were a few things the Conclaves weren’t ready to gloat about just yet.

The bridge was still impressive when they arrived and Katya didn’t have to pretend too hard that its scale overawed her. It would take a few visits yet before she could walk in there and not be shocked by the size of the low-domed command centre. The only real difference was that the main holographic display had been reconfigured to no longer show Russalka in its entirety. Instead one section of ocean was being displayed as a great gently undulating square hung vertically like a banner. Katya watched the undulations and thought, is that just for show or do they really know what the wave patterns are from minute to minute? They’d need satellites to do that, wouldn’t they? If the Conclaves had got a surveillance satellite network back into orbit without anybody else knowing about it, then they were years ahead of the Federal settlements in development. She was comforted when Kane leaned towards her and whispered, “Don’t fall for the waves on the display. They’re just for show. They’ll have satellites up soon enough but not just yet.”

The display’s major points of interest were a large yellow dot labelled FP-1 in the upper right and an ominous red arrowhead icon marked Lev. in the lower left. They never seemed to change position, but the scale ratio in the display’s lower right was constantly ticking down as it adjusted to the dot and the arrowhead growing closer together.

Katya nodded at it. “It’s not making much effort to hide itself.” I don’t suppose it has to, she added to herself. Tokarov’s in friendly waters. I wonder if he expects some sort of hero’s welcome? She remembered Kane’s horror of the interface process and decided that there was probably precious little of Lieutenant Tokarov left to expect anything.

A senior ranking Yagizban walked in front of them to reach the operators sitting at the sensors position. “How long until it gets here?” he demanded.

“Two hours, sir.”

Satisfied, the senior officer turned to walk away and stopped with shock. He was looking full at Katya and, with an equal shock, she recognised him as one of the two men who’d been monitoring Kane’s debriefing.

“Who,” growled the officer, “is this?”

Missing all the danger signs, Mila said brightly, “This is Katya Kuriakova, sir. A civilian from the Federal settlements.”

“Really? Then perhaps you’d care to explain what she was doing on the bridge less than half an hour ago in administrative fatigues eavesdropping on a confidential conversation.”

Mila blanched. “Sir? But, but she’s…”

“She’s a spy. A Federal spy. Security!” He stepped back from Katya as if she was carrying something contagious and pointed at her. Two troopers ran up. “Take this girl and put her with the rest of the Federal prisoners. Now!”

Katya didn’t mind the humiliation of being bundled into the lift in front of the staring bridge crew. What really hurt was that Kane didn’t lift a finger to stop them. He just looked at her with disappointment as if her scout around the station had come as a surprise to him. It had certainly come as a surprise to Mila and Katya felt sorry for her; when it emerged that she hadn’t locked Katya into her room, Mila would be in all sorts of trouble.

The holding area on level Beta turned out to be almost as unpleasant as it sounded. It was obvious that the Yagizban had been anticipating taking large numbers of prisoners when they made their move against the Federal authorities and had built extensive holding facilities into the FP-1 and presumably its sister stations in anticipation of that day. It was equally obvious that “that day” wasn’t supposed to be today, as the facilities were not yet completed. The surviving Novgorod crew, perhaps twenty strong, had been locked into what seemed to be a building site. Eventually, it would probably be an imposing gaol. At present, it was as extemporised as the disused office that the pirates had locked them in just before the Leviathan had attacked.

Uncle Lukyan loomed up from the floor — there was nowhere else to sit — and came to greet her when she was half pushed, half thrown through the door.

“I was hoping you would be spared this,” he said, indicating the bare chamber, a couple of hastily placed chemical toilets in one corner its only nod to humanitarian facilities.

“I was, for a while,” said Katya. She sat down with him by Lieutenant Petrov and related what had happened to her since she’d been separated from them.

When she had finished, her uncle blustered angrily but Petrov seemed to have been expecting much of it.

“It all makes a sort of sense,” he said. “The pirates were obviously hand in glove with the Conclaves, that was clear as soon as we were picked up. I’ve been sitting here thinking abut it and, yes, it had occurred to me that most of our pirate problem might have been nothing but the Conclaves keeping us busy while they worked on all this. I’m disappointed about Tokarov, though. I’ve read his file, I knew he was born in the Conclaves. It’s not common for Yagizbans to join the FMA, but it’s not rare either. I really thought his loyalty to us was solid. It turns out he was not only a good officer, but a good actor.”

“So, what can we do?” asked Katya.

“Do? Nothing. We’ve already checked the walls and door and, believe me, we’re not getting out of here unless they let us. Even if we did, we’re trapped on a hostile station thousands of kilometres from the nearest Federal ship. We’d need a cogent plan of action once we’re out and we don’t have enough information to form one.”

They sat glumly for a few minutes. “If only I hadn’t got excited about seeing that damned thing on the scope when we were in the Weft, Katya,” said Lukyan. “I’d never have accidentally woken it and it could have stayed there for another ten years.”

“Not your fault, uncle. Who was to know? Besides, Leviathan or not, the Yagizba Conclaves would have launched their attack on the rest of the settlements and, really, what chance would we have had anyway? They’ve got the boats, the facilities…”

“They have surprise,” agreed Petrov. “They’ve always been difficult to deal with but we never thought they were intending anything like this. And now they have the Leviathan.”

“A fait accompli,” said Katya, remembering Kane’s words. The Yagizbans had effectively owned the planet for months. Only the sudden appearance of the Leviathan had brought forward the surprise party when they’d been intending to tell this rest of the Russalkin about it. She got to thinking about other things that Kane had said and as she did, a faint glimmer of hope appeared. “They might not have the Leviathan on their side,” she said quietly.

Petrov looked up at her sharply. “What do you mean, Ms Kuriakova?”

“Kane has always talked about the interface process like it was the worst thing he could imagine. The Yagizbans are acting like Tokarov has become the Leviathan’s captain, but that’s not the way Kane describes it. He says it’s more like whoever is in the chair is absorbed into the Leviathan’s artificial mind, giving a spark that turns it into a synthetic intelligence. Capable of imagination, cunning, lateral thinking, all the sorts of things that artificial intelligences aren’t so good at. If Kane is right, Tokarov isn’t really in full control of the Leviathan, he’s just a component. He can guide it, but its basic impulses will remain the same.”

“And what are those impulses?” asked Lukyan.

“Destroy the Russalkin resistance, prosecute the war, take targets important to the Terran invasion,” said Petrov, “exactly as they were ten years ago.” He sighed. “You’re thinking that it will attack the Yagizban, aren’t you, and they’d have to fight back, perhaps damage or destroy it? That might not be the case.”

Katya was excited by her idea and his reservations angered her. “Why not?”

“Because…” he looked at both of them uncertainly. Then he came to a conclusion and said, “I might as well tell you. We had evidence — not good evidence, it was weak, circumstantial stuff — that the Yagizba Conclaves were collaborating with the Terran invasion.”

Lukyan and Katya looked at him as if thunderstruck. “They… collaborated?” Lukyan managed to say after a shocked silence.

Katya shook her head. “That can’t be right! The first thing the Terrans did was bombard the Yagizban platforms from orbit. They killed hundreds!”

“The theory goes — and it is only a theory — that the Earth ships attacked before the Yagizban command managed to contact them and offer their services. As for the deaths, they just put them down to the fog of war and forgave the Terrans.” He looked at the floor. “It’s war. Stupid things happen in war and people die for all the wrong reasons.”

“Where’s the evidence?” asked Lukyan.

“There is none, nothing concrete. It’s just guesswork based on the question of how the Terran forces trapped on Russalka managed to fade away. We scoured the seas looking for them. The popular theory was that they’d become pirates. The less popular one was that they’d been given safe haven by the Conclaves. Now, it turns out that both theories might be the same thing. Most of the Vodyanoi’s crew, I haven’t said more than a couple of dozen words to them. They could easily be Terran for all we know. I didn’t know Kane was until he told us, not for certain. When Captain Zagadko had him arrested as a Terran aboard the Novgorod, I wasn’t convinced. There are other colony worlds out there, and some of them must use fixed-wing aircraft. Turned out the captain was right, though. Anyway,” he concluded, “that’s why the Leviathan sticking to its original orders might not help us if it regards the Conclaves as allies.”

Then Lukyan laughed and, knowing why he was laughing, Katya laughed too. Petrov looked at them as if they were mad. “I don’t see much to laugh about in our present predicament,” he snapped.

“I’m sorry,” said Lukyan. “You weren’t aboard the Leviathan. I hadn’t thought about it until now because I’d been thinking like the Yagizban, that Tokarov had total control. If he doesn’t… well!” He laughed again.

The usually cool Petrov looked like he might explode. He turned to Katya. “Your uncle seems to enjoy being obscure, Ms Kuriakova. Perhaps you..?”

Katya fought down her laughter, which she had noticed was becoming a little hysterical and said, “The Leviathan has no allies. Something had gone wrong with it, and it had lost its list of allies. As far as it’s concerned, every Russalkin on the planet — Federal or Yagizban — is a target. They might not know it yet, but the Yagizban are as dead as the rest of us.”

In the silence that followed that comment, even her uncle’s booming laugh dying immediately away, Katya realised that perhaps it wasn’t really that funny after all.

“I could have phrased that better,” she added quickly. “That’s a worst case scenario. That’s if Tokarov, or what’s left of him, has no control at all, that is,” Belatedly, she realised what Petrov already had — that almost every foreseeable scenario was a “worst case.”

Any further morale building was interrupted as the door slid open and a Yagizban trooper stepped in hefting a maser carbine. Letting the weapon’s barrel travel across the Novgorod’s crew, he checked the datapad in his free hand and said, “Petrov! I’m looking for a Lieutenant Petrov! Step forward!”

“The interrogations begin,” muttered Petrov sourly. He climbed to his feet. “Over here.”

The trooper turned to face him, putting the pad back into his belt. “You’re coming with me.”

Petrov crossed his arms and cocked his head. “For what purpose?”

The trooper wasn’t in the mood for backchat, and levelled the gun directly at Petrov. “Move!”

Katya saw movement behind the trooper and realised that one of the crew who had been sitting by the door had risen silently and was silently creeping up on him. No, she saw, not one of the crew. Suhkalev.

He almost made it. Perhaps he made a little noise or the trooper saw Katya looking raptly past him or he simply got the feeling that somebody was sneaking up on him, but the trooper wheeled around. Suhkalev threw himself forward, but the trooper was a big man. Suhkalev was too close to give the trooper time to aim, so instead he stopped Suhkalev’s charge with the body of the carbine and they struggled for a moment.

Too short a moment for the crew to act upon, though, as the trooper smashed Suhkalev in the face with a vicious head butt. The Federal staggered back clutching his broken nose, blood already streaming down his face, stumbled over his own feet and fell backwards. The trooper didn’t hesitate; he raised the carbine and brought it to a firing position aiming at the helpless form of Suhkalev. Everybody in the room heard the click of the weapon’s safety catch being released.

“No!” roared Petrov, but the trooper took no notice. There was the crack of a maser discharge, and it was all over.

The trooper lowered his carbine, stood looking at Suhkalev for a moment. Then he fell to his knees. He stayed there for a long, uncomprehending moment, then pitched forward onto his face.

“Oh,” said Lukyan gently, “my poor Katinka.”

Katya stood, shaking slightly, unable to move voluntarily. The little maser, pieces of surgical tape still dangling from it, shuddered in her two handed grip.

She couldn’t look away from the body of the man she had just killed, couldn’t believe that the silly little device that she’d been carrying around with her like a talisman could do that. A twitch of the finger, and a life evaporated.

“He was, he was going to kill him. I didn’t… he was going to kill him.” The words stumbled out in a welter of disbelief and horror and guilt.

Lukyan gently took the gun from her. “I know, Katinka. I know. There was no choice. We all saw.” He passed the gun to Petrov and shooed him off with a nod.

Katya wanted to speak but the words bubbled without meaning in her throat. She wanted to cry but her eyes burned dry. When Lukyan hugged her, she clung to him, wanting to roll back time, wanting to be a child again, a little girl who wouldn’t be in this insane mess.

“Lukyan…” It was Petrov. His crew had formed up and were ready to go. The guard’s body had miraculously gone, efficiently and quietly bundled up and hidden in one of the toilet cubicles. Now the only sign he’d been there was his maser carbine in the hands of one of the ratings regarded as the best shot amongst the survivors. Katya’s maser pistol, stripped of the last vestiges of tape, was in Petrov’s hand. “Lukyan, they’re going to start looking for that guard soon…”

Lukyan nodded curtly and turned back to look sadly at Katya. Innocence is chipped away at slowly, he thought. To see it torn away like this from his own niece was almost as painful for him as for her. “Katinka, always remember this. You saved a life.”

“I took a life!”

“If you’d done nothing, that boy would be dead and we’d all still be prisoners.”

“I could have warned him, told him to drop the gun…”

“He’d have ignored you, like he ignored Petrov. Or he would have shot you. Did you see the look in his face when he was about to shoot Suhkalev? He was enjoying it. You did the best thing any of us could have done.” He took her shoulder in one great hand and gently tilted her chin up with the other until she was looking him in the eye. “You’ve given us a chance, but we don’t have much time. We have to move, Katinka. Can you do it?”

She looked past him at the Novgorod’s crew arrayed around the door, some looking at her anxiously, some impatiently, some with pity. Something hardened inside her and she realised with regret that it was her heart.

I will not be pitied, she thought.

She shook herself loose from Lukyan and nodded. “I’m ready.”

“You’re sure?”

“Positive.” She walked to Petrov leaving her uncle looking at her back with an uncertain dismay. “I know where we can get Yagizban uniforms,” she told the lieutenant.

They worked the theft in two stages; most of the FMA crew hid in another unfinished room on the next level down while Katya, Petrov and the armed rating, a woman called Olya who seemed indecently happy to have a gun, took a lift car down to the lower levels. The area was as quiet as during Katya’s first visit, the code on the clothing store’s door hadn’t been updated, and they changed into Yagizban worker’s uniforms in frantic silence. Once disguised, they loaded up a trolley with more than enough uniforms for everyone else and took it back as if on an errand. If anybody challenged them and proved difficult to satisfy, Petrov had the pistol in his pocket and the carbine lay under the topmost clothing packet on the trolley, ready for a rapid draw.

They needn’t have worried; they passed almost nobody and the few people they did see seemed utterly uninterested in a pile of uniforms being moved around the complex. They reached the rest of the crew still without the alarm being sounded. “So much for the legendary Yagizban efficiency,” commented Petrov as he helped hand out the clothes, “they haven’t even noticed we’re gone yet.”

“What’s the plan, lieutenant?” Lukyan was trying to find overalls big enough for him and was having little luck.

“Two possibilities. We grab a boat and get out of here, try and warn the FMA. I don’t like that one. If the Leviathan is going to be friends with the Conclaves, we’re just giving them the chance to cement that.”

“It could be hostile,” said Katya. “Kane said…”

“Whatever the estimable Kane said, the Leviathan is making its way here with its stealth switched off. That doesn’t sound like an attack to me. I think Tokarov is still in control. But, as Kane suggested, that control might be weak. It might not take much to push the artificial part of the synthetic intelligence into the dominant role.”

“That’s Plan B?”

“Yes, Ms Kuriakova, that’s Plan B. The Leviathan is going to be attacked by the Conclaves. We’ll see what happens then.”

Lukyan grimaced. “This is too subtle for me. How are you going to make the Yagizban attack their own boat?”

“They’re not, uncle,” answered Katya. “We are, using FP-1’s defensive systems.”

Petrov laughed humourlessly. “Plan B in all its glory.” His smile vanished. “We’re going to take the bridge long enough to launch weapons against the Leviathan. Then we wreck the place and get out of there like our lives depended on it.” A shadow of his smile returned. “Actually, now I think about it…”

“What do we use for weapons, sir?” asked Olya.

“My pistol, your carbine, surprise, and animal ferocity. Battles have been won with less.”