Katya's World

CHAPTER 8 Devil Driven

“Orders, sir?”

Katya rolled over and found Petrov crouching nearby the engineer who’d asked the question. Of course, she thought; with Captain Zagadko dead then Petrov was the new commanding officer. As in any military hierarchy, the chain of command is never broken.

“We’re leaving,” said Petrov bluntly. “I think the Vodyanoi’s crew have their hands full and don’t sound as if they’re having an easy time of it. If we stay here, whatever is killing them will exterminate us like fish in a liquidiser.” He stood up. “Everybody! We’re leaving here and heading for the second dock. This place is still well signposted, Lieutenant Tokarov? Good. Make your own way there and don’t be afraid to take circuitous routes. Getting there quickly isn’t important, only getting there alive matters. Don’t bunch up and don’t get killed. Go!”

He was the first to the door and, after a fast look to check that the pirates really were too involved in combat to notice them, led the way. Katya felt her uncle take her hand in his but didn’t look up at him. “Is he doing the right thing, uncle?” she asked.

“It’s crazy to go out there. It’s suicide to stay. Yes, it’s the right thing to do. Let some more Feds go and then we’ll take our chance.” They waited in the shadows as the room thinned out by ones and twos. Katya had assumed some crewmembers were behind them so it was a shock when they found that they were the last ones. They crept closer to the destroyed wall and listened but could only hear the occasional crack of maser fire, now sporadic and reflexive. Lukyan squeezed her hand and they stepped out into the corridor.

Tasya the Chertovka, the She-Devil, was waiting for them, her gun levelled and ready. “Kane sent me to let you out. Said you deserved a chance. And here I find you scurrying into the shadows like vermin.” Her lips thinned and she raised the gun to aim at the ceiling. “Very wise.”

“What’s attacked?” demanded Katya. “How can the Leviathan reach us in here? It’s too big, it can’t possibly have got up that tunnel.”

“It didn’t need to. Come on, we have to get moving unless you want to end up like that.” She gestured casually at the floor. Katya looked down and found the pirate who’d threatened her at the door - or half of him at least. From the navel upwards he’d been vaporised. He’d been right on the other side when whatever had hit the wall had struck. He had never stood a chance. Strangely, the sight was less horrifying than she would have thought; grotesque rather than nauseating. The stench of burnt human flesh was something else altogether, though, and she covered her mouth and nostrils with her hand until the half-corpse was behind them. Katya and Lukyan followed Tasya into the warren of tunnels at a trot.

The emergency lighting was patchy; whole stretches of corridor were in darkness and they had to stumble along holding hands. “We can’t slow down,” hissed Tasya at one point, “it can see in the dark.”

“What is it?” asked Lukyan, full of frustration, but the She-Devil didn’t answer. Perhaps she just wants to get us out of the way and then abandon us, thought Katya. Or perhaps shoot us and report back to Kane that she couldn’t find us. This was the woman who’d led Terran troops through the maintenance tunnels beneath the Dory industrial complex to launch an attack on half-built warboats as they sat in their dry docks, the woman who’d murdered the yard’s supervisor in front of the workers because he wouldn’t open the hatches to the munitions stores. She was a war-criminal, a cold-blooded killer, a traitor to the Russalkin people and she was holding Katya’s hand right that minute. Katya tried to concentrate on not tripping over anything rather than the possibility that the last thing she’d ever know would be the Chertovka’s gun barrel being clapped to her temple. It wasn’t easy.

Then the darkness started to thin with red light leaking around the angle of the corridor ahead and Katya could see a little again. What she couldn’t see was Lukyan.

“Where’s your uncle?” asked Tasya suspiciously.

“He was holding your hand,” Katya snapped back. “What have you done?”

“My hand? He was holding your hand.” She looked back into the gloom from which they were emerging. “He’ll have to make his own way. Come on.”

“No!” Katya shook herself free from the Chertovka’s grip. “I’m going back for him!”

“Suit yourself.” The Chertovka started on ahead. “But you’ll never find him. We’ve passed the heads of a dozen corridors in the dark. He could have wandered down any of them. You’ve more chance of running into…” She paused and looked back. “Come on, girl. You don’t know what’s back there. I wouldn’t leave my worst enemy to that thing.”

“What about my uncle?”

“He’s a survivor. I know his type — clever and cautious. He won’t take any chances. You’ve got a rendezvous point, haven’t you?” Katya reluctantly nodded. “Then he’ll be there. You should be concentrating on reaching it too. He’ll be worried if you’re not there to meet him.” Katya knew she was right, but pride made her hesitate for a moment before following.

They walked in silence for a few minutes before Katya asked, “What attacked you?”

Tasya chuckled dryly. “You’ve been bursting to ask me that ever since we met in that corridor, haven’t you?” She sobered. “Some sort of robotic drone. It came out of the moon pool and opened fire before we knew it was there.”

“It carries a laser, doesn’t it?”

The Chertovka paused in her walking and looked at Katya with an eyebrow raised as if examining an interesting specimen. She started walking again. “Havilland has quite a high opinion of you, Katya Kuriakova. I can see why. What makes you say it has a laser?”

“I saw what it did to the wall of the room we were being held in. A maser wouldn’t do that. I’ve read about lasers but I’ve never seen one in operation.” She frowned. “None of this makes sense.”

“Why not?” Katya noticed that Tasya had slowed her walk, the better to look at her. She didn’t know whether being of such interest to a woman like the Chertovka was a desirable situation.

“Look, masers are common sidearms because they’re great for killing people, but not so good for punching through metal and plastic, right?” Tasya nodded. Of course, Katya thought, she would know all about weapons. “Lasers and bullets penetrate; that makes them bad choices. A gunfight that lets the ocean in doesn’t leave any winners.”

“Then we should be careful because, believe me, that drone carries a big laser.”

Katya shook her head. “But that’s not the point. Why is it carrying a laser at all? We went through all this in tech classes. High energy lasers are expensive to build, and they’d make pathetic weapons underwater anyway. Even with an X-ray laser, water refracts the beams. That’s apart from the water boiling and then turning into plasma in front of the beam, giving you even worse scattering. The effective range of a laser with a range of hundreds of kilometres in air will be a few metres at most underwater.”

“That’s all they needed. I’ve looked at your uncle’s minisub. One of those drones sunk it with a laser bolt; same with the hole in the Novgorod’s salvage maw. They can get close enough, that’s a given.”

“But why? Why go to all the trouble when a normal torpedo with a simple explosive warhead could do the same with none of the cost and trouble? It makes no sense. The Leviathan’s drones have only shown what they’re really capable of when one has got out of the water.”

“And that’s your conclusion?”

Katya hadn’t been deliberately working towards a conclusion, but suddenly realised that this answered the questions that had been bothering her all along. “It was never designed for submarine combat. Its drones can do the job, but its real function is to fight in the dry.” She imagined what would happen if it reached Lemuria, standing off while its drones patrolled the corridors, cutting down all resistance with their terrible laser cannon, not caring if they brought the ocean crashing through ruptured walls. “We can’t let it reach Lemuria,” she breathed, shaken by the terrible vision.

“Very much what Havilland said,” replied Tasya, “but he was short on details as to how to manage it too. One drone killed five or six of the Vodyanois before they had a chance to draw their guns. Even when we returned fire, we did nothing to it. Maser bolts barely register and bullets bounce off. If you’ve got any bright ideas on how we can stop it, I’d be fascinated to hear them.” Katya was silent. “Thought as much. In that case, we’ll just carry on running.”

Two hundred metres further down the corridor, Tasya abruptly pulled Katya to one side, putting her hand over her mouth, and Katya thought she’d finally lost her patience and was going to kill her. Instead, she signalled Katya to be silent and left her crouching in the shadows while she moved ahead in utter silence, her gun drawn. She braced against the edge of an alcove where some equipment must once have stood before the base was stripped, focussed, and spun around the edge as she brought the maser pistol to bear. Katya thought she heard a gasp of surprise and terror. The Chertovka growled with exasperation and reached into the alcove with her free hand.

“Get out of there, you worm,” she hissed, and dragged Suhkalev out into the open. He was whimpering so pathetically that Katya couldn’t help but feel at least a little sorry for him.

“You’re a poor excuse for a Federal agent, aren’t you?” Tasya said as he sprawled on the plastic decking plates. “If they were all like you, life would be a lot easier for the likes of me. Stop that blubbering before I stop it for you.”

“Leave him alone,” Katya found herself saying. “He’s been through a lot.”

Tasya looked at her with surprise. “No more than you, Katya Kuriakova, and you’re bearing up well.”

Katya knew it was true but wasn’t going to agree. She didn’t know why she hadn’t come apart at the seams yet; she found it hard to believe it had anything to do with bravery. She didn’t feel brave and surely you felt it when you were brave? She felt scared most of the time. The only thing that seemed to keep her going was the pragmatic streak that had used to drive her friends mad whenever they wanted to just be crazy and have some fun once in a while. “I’m scared,” she said to Suhkalev, “I’m scared too. But we have to keep moving.”

“We’re all scared,” growled Tasya, exasperated. She was looking back down the corridor as if she expected the Leviathan’s drone to appear at any moment.

She probably did. It possibly might.

“Show me a man without fear and I’ll show you someone with a death wish. They make poor brothers in arms, believe me.”

“I didn’t…” Suhkalev spoke in a careful voice, terror threatening to flood over every syllable, “I didn’t want this… I don’t like it. I don’t like it.” He sounded like a frightened child.

Please don’t say his mind has broken, thought Katya. If he can’t function, how can we save him as well as ourselves?

Tasya, apparently a disciple of applied practical psychiatry, simple backhanded Suhkalev hard. He was sent sprawling on the floor. In a second he was back on his feet and charging at her in a fury. Getting the muzzle of her maser pistol, a big ugly gun that made Zagadko’s look quite civilised, placed neatly between his eyes slowed him to a stony halt.

“Better,” said Tasya. “You do have some fight in you after all.” She reached around to the small of her back, drew a gun and lobbed it at him. He caught it and stood there uncomprehendingly. “It won’t do you much good against what’s after us, but it may come in handy.”

It certainly did. He snapped it up to a firing pose and barked, “You’re under arrest! Drop your weapon!”

“Yes, yes. Plenty of time for that later. Come along.” She carried on up the corridor. Suhkalev followed a few paces behind, assuring her that, really, she was under arrest. He meant it. He did. Katya sighed and followed him.

He continued to inform Tasya she was under arrest for the next fifteen minutes and Tasya ignored him for every second of it. Katya tried telling him he was wasting his time, but he just looked at her with an expression of faint embarrassment and carried on. Eventually, Katya started to wonder if the whole pantomime to appear competent and capable was being put on for her behalf.

Tasya put up with being arrested three to four times a minute very well for quite a while until even her patience finally gave out as they were entering a T–junction. “Look. I’m pleased you’re not blubbing like a baby anymore. I’m pleased we have somebody else along who’s had arms training. I’m pleased you’re so motivated now. On the other hand, if you offer to put me in FMA custody once more, I’m going to forget all about how pleased I am and burn your head into a smoking stump just to make you shut up. Do you get a faint feeling for how irritated you’re making me? Hmm?”

For his answer, he pushed her to one side and opened fire down the corridor. Tasya braced herself and looked, brought her gun up and fired a couple of shots before shouting, “It’s useless! Run!”

Before they hared back down the corridor they’d just walked up, Katya risked a quick peek around the corner at what was pursuing them.

When Tasya had spoken of a “robotic drone,” Katya had formed a mental picture of something like a mining drone; a fat little body, tracks, stubby arms with tools or, in this case, weapons at the ends. The reality was entirely different. The drone looked like nothing so much as a torpedo three metres in length and half a metre in diameter. It hung effortlessly a metre from the floor and glided soundlessly but with infinite menace towards her. The end towards her was fronted with a reflective port like the lensed casing of a searchlight. That seemed likely to contain its sensors, she thought. Belatedly, it also struck her that this would be the focussing element for the drone’s devastating laser. She threw herself sideways barely in time. The corridor bloomed with brilliant light and the corridor junction was suddenly full of smoke and flying droplets of molten rock. One pattered to the floor right in front of her face where she lay prone. The drone could reduce cold stone to lava in less than a blink of an eye. This is what had sunk the Baby and crippled the Novgorod. How could they possibly beat it? Katya got her feet back underneath her and ran madly in pursuit of Tasya and Suhkalev.

Suhkalev had slowed to flag her down a side corridor, Tasya was nowhere to be seen but the rhythmic pounding of her combat boots as she sprinted in the half darkness could still be heard. “Where’s the Chertovka gone?” demanded Katya.

“She said she was scouting ahead,” replied Suhkalev. “I wish it wasn’t quite so far ahead.” He smiled unexpectedly and then ran down the corridor too, Katya close on his heels.

They almost ploughed into Tasya coming back. “Dead… end…” she said between trying to get her breath back. “Old… mine workings. We have to… get back to the main corridor before it cuts us off.”

It was too late. The silent cigar shape of the drone was already turning the corner ahead of them. They pulled back and dog-trotted in as near silence as they could manage down a side gallery. Soon, the corridors became more and more roughly fashioned until they were moving through mine workings. The floor had been smoothed for equipment to track more easily across, but all manner of tools and debris littered the tunnels — a strange mix of mechanically excavated shafts and plasma-melted passages — making it almost impossible to move quickly and quietly. “This is hopeless,” muttered Katya, “a blind man could find us with all the noise we’re making.”

“What’s that?” Up ahead a dark shape lurked in the patchy illumination of work lights that might well have been running for the last five years. Tasya pulled a torch from her belt and revealed the shape to be some great hulking piece of mining equipment. “Well,” she said sourly, “I suppose we could hide behind that for the few milliseconds it takes the drone to vaporise it.”

“It’s a plasma cutter,” said Suhkalev slowly.

“How would you know?”

“Mining family,” he replied. “You see some of the work-related injuries miners get, and joining the Federal services looks pretty good. What I’m saying is, it’s a plasma cutter. Why’s it still here?” He walked up to it and started pressing buttons.

“Suhkalev!” gasped Katya. “What do you think you’re doing?”

He didn’t look up, but spoke as he worked. “These things cost a fortune. My father spent ages scraping together enough money to buy one with my uncle and aunts. If it had come down to a choice between leaving a cutter behind or a family member, they’d have had to think hard about it. These don’t just get dumped. If I can get this running…”

“We might be able to do to the drone what it was planning on doing to us. Best plan we’ve got. Only plan we’ve got.” The Chertovka kicked among some of the junk on the floor and picked up a handheld plasma cutter, a tiny cousin of the mining machine. “I don’t think it’ll let us get close enough to use something like this on it.” She moved to the bend in the tunnel and peered cautiously around it. “Quick as you like, Fed. It’ll be here soon.”

Katya stood beside Suhkalev and watched him punch buttons with increasing irritation while he watched a small display screen set in the cutter’s side. There seemed to be a lot of red print appearing. “How bad is it?”

“It’s a crock,” he said as he read the diagnostic report. He winced. “It might be reparable, but not in the time we have. The fusion generator’s working and the coolant system is running. It’s sucking and liquefying nitrogen out of the atmosphere right now. Stupid of me; even if the plasma torch had been working, the safety cut-outs would have prevented ignition until the coolant tanks were full. I guess we’re sunk.”

“How long to fill those tanks?” asked Tasya, who’d been listening to the bad news.

“They hold twenty litres full. They’re up to about eight litres now.”

“Eight, in the couple of minutes it’s been running? That’s impressive.” She looked at the machine, her eyes narrowing with concentration. “Is that thing mobile?”

“Too cheap a model to have a contragravitic system,” he reported as he bent to look underneath. “Just tracks.”

“Okay,” she nodded. “Anybody want to hear my stupid plan that’s going to get us all killed?”

Ninety seconds later, the drone turned the corner. Silent and implacable, it scanned the area with infrared sensors and detected human heat signatures coming from behind a piece of machinery. The focussing elements in its single eye clicked and shifted as it prepared to fire, moving a little way into the chamber to achieve maximum destructive effect.

Behind the plasma cutter, Katya, Suhkalev, and Tasya crouched, their backs braced against the machine’s metal hull. Katya hardly dared breathe, and she could see that Suhkalev was pale with terror. Only Tasya was calm, watching the drone’s advance reflected in the surface of an old metal box she had found and placed as a mirror. Katya watched her nervously, waiting for the signal. Tasya’s coolness was almost as inhuman as the thing hunting them, she thought. That they might all be dead in a few seconds did not seem to disturb or distract her in the slightest. She simply watched and waited for her moment.

Tasya gave a sudden nod and started pushing backwards, heaving the maimed plasma cutter forward on its tracks. Taken by surprise, it was a second before Katya and Suhkalev joined her, pushing as hard as they could.

The drone halted and watched this new development for the moment it took for it to decide upon a response. What that response would be was never in doubt. The lens elements clicked and rotated once more, and then the drone’s eye emitted ten megawatts of laser energy directly at the plasma cutter.

The drone was only as intelligent as it needed to be, and so it was no surprise that at no stage of its programming had anyone ever bothered to tell it what happens when a laser bolt ruptures a liquid nitrogen tank.

Katya was surprised into crying out by the sharp bang from beyond the cutter, and the battered hulk of the cutter jumped back at them as if surprised itself. Tasya was already moving, though. She’d pulled the small plasma torch she’d found from her belt and was already running out of cover. Suhkalev watched her go and then shot a look of horrified astonishment at Katya, as if to say, “She’s insane!” For her part, Katya leaned out the other way and peeked past the bulk of the mining cutter to see what was happening.

The liquid nitrogen tank had exploded, spewing first nitrogen superheated by the blast and then the liquefied gas, hundreds of degrees cooler. Katya could barely make the shape of the drone out in the billowing clouds of vapour, but she caught a momentary glimpse of the drone’s eye covered with ice where the liquid nitrogen had splashed it and frozen the moisture out of the air onto the smooth casing.

The drone was blinded and, judging by the tortured clicking and ratcheting sound coming from its eye, was unable to do much about it. It was running through its protocols, but this situation was beyond it. Until it could restore its sensors, it knew of no other options.

It certainly had no plans in place for what to do if a human with a plasma cutter was to leap astride it and, swearing fluently, cut open a small ragged hole in the drone’s hull and fire a maser bolt inside. The drone started to bob and sway erratically as a general systems failure occurred.

Katya and Suhkalev spent the first few seconds after the drone fired getting away from the damaged cutter and the pool of liquid nitrogen that was forming around it. They both knew that, if it touched them, it might not kill them but it would freeze blood solid in a second and give them an agonising case of frost bite that would take flesh cloning and surgical transplanting to repair. Having fingers or toes fall off would not be advantageous in their current situation. They got to a safe position at about the same moment the drone crashed to the floor. Tasya stood over it panting heavily with a maniacal grin on her face, her maser pistol in one hand, the handheld cutter in the other sparking evilly and under lighting her. Katya could easily see where the Chertovka label had come from.

“There now,” said Tasya, thumbing her cutter’s power off and sticking it into her equipment belt, “that wasn’t so difficult.”

“We just need an infinite supply of large machines with liquid nitrogen tanks,” said Suhkalev as Katya helped him to his feet.

“How many more of those do you think we need to worry about?” said Katya.

Tasya shrugged. “Don’t know. But I know a man who might. Let’s find Havilland and ask him, shall we?”