Behind them, a rumbling was growing louder. Katya saw Oksana’s eyes look past her and widen. The barricade that so recently had sheltered them from harm was coming to kill them.
Katya risked a look over her shoulder. Tasya, always sensitive to danger was already looking into an “up” that was recently a “back.” Above them on the slope, the desk was barely in contact with the floor anymore, accelerating rapidly towards them.
It was impossible for Tasya to pull both Katya and Oksana back in time and, if she stayed where she was, she would be hit too.
Tasya looked down and her eyes met Katya’s.
“Let go,” said Katya.
Without hesitation, Tasya did.
Oksana screamed as they fell. Katya didn’t have time for such a luxury. She drew up her legs and kicked against the wall, pulling Oksana closer as she did. The desk, heavy and already travelling at speed, clipped her hard enough to hurt but not to disable. She ignored the pain and grabbed the edge of it with her left hand. As she wrestled herself and Oksana across its underside, its corners kept scraping the floor and wall, threatening to flip it.
Suddenly, they hit the bulkhead surround she’d seen from above. The impact drove the breath from her, and she felt something break inside. Through the wave of pain, she had a momentary vision of Sevnik’s body on the other side of the surround, his eyes open, the left of his skull crushed. Then the desk flipped over the edge of the support and they were falling again.
Oksana was no longer screaming. Perhaps she’s dead and all this was for nothing, thought Katya. But she’d had to try.
But now “down” wasn’t neatly along the corridor anymore. Katya kicked against the floor with her failing strength and the desk moved towards the ceiling. As it slowly became the floor, she hoped that it wasn’t just made of cosmetic tiling, or they would be falling through it in a moment. The surface of the desk touched down tentatively, then solidly, and Katya found herself sledging along the ceiling. As the angle grew less, the desk started to slow. Behind her she could hear shouting, and she looked back to see the guards and Tasya running down the ridiculously steep slope of the ceiling. She knew they had no choice; the fact that there had been no further impacts beneath their feet meant that the Deeps had rolled off the edge of the plateau and was falling. Below them was a drop of two thousand metres ending in a lake of the Soup. If the water pressure didn’t crush the prison, the massive pressures within the heavy metal cocktail of the Soup definitely would.
Katya was trying to drag Oksana to the escape pod door when the others reached them. The corridor was flat by then, but already starting to pitch over again as the Deeps toppled towards destruction. Tasya was with her in a moment, pulling Oksana’s arm over her neck and pulling her along.
“Get that hatch open!” she barked at the guards. They needed no second telling.
“Is she still alive?” asked Katya gripping her side. The pain was blossoming, blazing through her ribs every time she took a breath.
“Don’t know,” replied Tasya, and they carried the limp body to the opening hatch.
Whatever formalities about boarding an escape pod the guards may have learned during training was largely ignored in the rush to get clear of the doomed prison. Two guards took positions on either side of the entry into the circular pod, and more or less threw the others inside as they reached the doorway. The pod’s circumference was occupied by ten inset seats, albeit seats currently over the heads of the escapers, and they moved under the seat they planned to take, possibly the only bit of the escape drill that had survived the chaos.
Alina was one of the guards and helped Tasya and Katya get Oksana inside. As soon as they were all in, she hit the door closure control.
“Don’t eject until we’re more or less upright,” warned Tasya. “It was never built to work upside down.” Then to the others, “Grab hold of anything solid.”
The pod, and the Deeps around it, slowly performed another one hundred and eighty degree flip. Long before it had completed it, the seats were at an angle they could all climb into and pull on the safety harnesses. Katya stayed with Oksana to lock her into her seat. Before she ran to her own, she quickly checked Oksana’s throat for a pulse. It was there; not strong, but at least she still lived.
For a brief moment, the escape pod was perfectly the right way up. Alina needed no prompting to arm and trigger the release mechanism.
For a moment nothing happened, and despair sparked in more than one heart. Then there was a dull thud beneath their feet and a sense of movement. No longer the slow tumble of the sinking prison, but a slight rocking as the escape pod – a convex underside and a conical upper, connected by a metre and a half high cylindrical section – rose towards the surface.
“Evacuation unit Alpha-4 has successfully disengaged and is operating normally,” announced the pod’s computer in the soothing tones somebody had decided would be most beneficial to those in an emergency. “A distress signal is already being transmitted. Help is on its way.”
“Does it know that, or is it just saying it?” asked one of the guards.
Katya knew a signal wouldn’t reach anyone until they got to the surface, but she didn’t want to speak because that meant taking a breath, and breathing really hurt.
“You’ve cracked some ribs, Kuriakova,” said Tasya. She nodded at Oksana. “She probably has, too. That was quite an impact you took.” Suddenly she grinned. “I loved it when you said ‘Let go.’ I could just see the calculations going on inside your head. You’re like me. You figure out the odds and take the crazy risk, even if it’s not quite as crazy as it looks.”
“I didn’t take a risk,” said Katya and winced. Cracked ribs. Yes, that would explain a lot. “You were going to let me go anyway.”
Tasya looked like she might deny it, then shrugged. “So why did you tell me to let you go?”
“So, if it was the last thing that ever happened to me, it was because I asked for it. It was my choice.”
Tasya looked at Katya with appraising eyes. “Is that pride I hear, Kuriakova?”
Katya said nothing. It hurt too much to say.
The pod broke the surface to find fourteen others already there and, while they watched, another surfaced about a kilometre away.
Russalka’s weather system was having close to the best weather it seemed capable of – a stiff breeze and a fine rain. Above them some of the dense cloud cover was distinctly thinner than others areas, allowing moderate amounts of light in. In Russalkin terms, this was balmy weather. It was more than calm enough for them to have opened the evacuation hatches on the pod’s upper surface to look around.
“Well, that’s sixteen transmitters squawking,” said Glazov, the guard. “That should draw something.”
As if answering him, the water boiled some two hundred metres away. Rising slowly from the depths, they saw a rakish conning tower break the surface, followed by the lean and lethal form of an attack boat.
“Is that the Vengeance?” said Glazov a little nervously. It certainly wasn’t a standard Federal design. The only boat on the Federal lists that looked like that was the Vengeance, stolen from the Yagizban. “If it isn’t, then it’s Yag.”
“It’s neither,” said Tasya airily, “it’s the Vodyanoi,” and launched a flare to attract the boat’s attention.
“What are you doing?” shouted Glazov. He dropped back inside the pod to remonstrate, but found Tasya was already back inside and had her gun drawn.
“You’re not Secor,” he said. He turned on Oksana, but she was still unconscious, so he turned on Alina instead. “You lied!”
“To save your lives,” said Katya wearily. “Feds,” she pointed at Tasya, “the Chertovka. The Chertovka,” she wafted her finger around to take in the increasingly worried Federal guards, “Feds. There, now you’re properly introduced and perhaps you’re beginning to understand why Oksana and Alina lied. Put down your weapons and don’t do anything stupid, and there’s no reason you shouldn’t live
through this.” The pod began to bob violently in the water as the Vodyanoi came alongside. “And here’s our ride.”
The pod was cleared with less urgency than it had been filled. None of the guards seemed very keen to throw themselves upon the mercy of a notorious pirate and his crew of cut-throats. When the notorious pirate turned out to be a mild-looking man of perhaps forty years who insisted on shaking their hands and welcoming them aboard, and when the cut-throats just looked like a regular crew, they calmed down a little.
The guards were taken below to be checked over and placed in the brig, with the exception of Oksana who was taken to the sickbay, and Alina because Katya feared the other guards might turn on her for her deception. Despite her ribs, Katya stayed topside with Kane. He was looking ruefully at the pods bobbing in the waves.
“Awful. Even if every one of those pods is full, that still means close on a thousand lives lost. Another psychotic break, you say?”
“Governor Senyavin went mad,” said Katya. Only now did she have time to think of all those who’d died. She thought of Dominika and the others. More deaths to haunt her.
“Mad. Mad is such a simple term for something so complicated. As for went mad, I have my doubts about that. He may have been driven to it.”
Abruptly the ocean erupted with a great rushing gout of air and debris some three kilometres away. Kane’s binoculars were at his eyes in a moment, and he watched it grimly. Neither needed to say what it meant; that the Deeps was crushed.
Katya turned away, unable to look. Kane lowered the binoculars and looked at her; she was crying silently, misery in her every fibre.
“It would have happened whether you were there or not, Katya,” he said gently. “This was Senyavin’s doing.”
“Can’t I just weep for the dead, Kane? There were a lot of scum in there, but there were good people, too. Political prisoners, dissidents. People whose faces just didn’t fit.” She looked at him, furious. “Tell me they died for something, Kane. Tell me they’ll be the last.”
Kane looked at her, rocked his head from side to side as if considering. “Let’s go for a cruise,” he said finally. He pulled a communicator from his pocket and said, “Ms Ocello, make for the rendezvous, would you, please?”
Katya heard the first officer reply. “Aye, captain. If you’ll come below, we’ll secure for diving.”
“No,” said Kane, drawling the word out. “It’s such a nice day. Let’s stay on the surface.”
“Captain?”
“Seriously, Genevra. We’re staying on the surface. Que será, será as they say.” To Katya he said, “On Earth. Somewhere. I forget where. Oh, and, Genevra, start transmitting a truce signal.” He put away the communicator. He smiled at Katya, but she could see the nervousness under the surface. “Que será, será. It means ‘Whatever will be, will be.’ We’ve done all we can. You, far more than most.”
“Did it work?”
“I hope so.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
DESPERATE TIMES
The Vodyanoi moved away from the group of escape pods at surface cruise speed, which was only two thirds of the maximum. Slowly the pods dwindled into the distance. With Katya on the conning tower, Kane watched them go through his binoculars, impatience making him fractious.
“Oh, come on. Where are you? There’s a whole high security facility been destroyed and you can’t…”
Sudden rapid boot falls on the ladder made him pause. A moment later, Tasya emerged from the hatch. She’d changed into her trademark Terran trooper’s partial armour, Yagizban combat fatigues visible beneath it. “It’s the Feds.”
“Oh, super,” said Kane with unfeigned pleasure. “I was getting worried.”
“It’s the Novgorod. They’re in our baffles, communicating through the hydrophones.”
Kane produced his communicator again. “Hello, Number One,” he said into it. “Could you relay comms through my handset, please? Thanks. Thanks ever so.”
There was a pause and then, loud enough for them to all hear, “…ovgorod to hostile vessel. You are to surrender immediately. Failure to comply will result in…”
“Hello!” said Kane brightly. “Hello, is Petrov there? Captain Petrov, that is? This is Havilland Kane. Hello?” He waited, but there was near silence, only moderated by the artefacts of normal oceanic sounds that were being filtered out by the communications system. The two submarines were talking using the sea itself as the connecting medium, transmitting sound through their sonar grids and receiving it through their hydrophones.
“You’ve gone all quiet,” persisted Kane. “Hello? Anyone there?”
“This is Petrov. Surrender the Vodyanoi immediately, Kane, and prepare for boarding.”
“Yes, and lovely to hear from you, too. How are things?”
“I’m not playing games, Kane. Heave to, or we will launch torpedoes.”
“That would be rude of you. I’m transmitting a truce signal and everything.”
“You’re asking for a truce?”
“Mmhm. As is every Yagizban vessel and floating facility. In fact…” Kane looked ahead through his binoculars, “in fact, I can see FP-1 ahead. I know you didn’t have a very good experience there last time, but if you listen, you’ll find they’re transmitting for a truce, too.”
“What are you playing at, Kane?”
“Captain, I have a great deal of respect for you. You are an honourable and intelligent man. I will not lie to you. We have done a very desperate thing. If it comes off, the war will be over and there will still be Russalkin alive at the end of it. If it doesn’t, the two sides will just keep on hitting one another until there’s no one left. The truce is entirely sincere. Our tubes are closed and loaded only with noisemakers. You are in our baffles. We are at your mercy. Please, surface. We will not engage. You can keep your tubes open and blow us out of the water if we try anything.”
“Your reputation for cunning makes me distrust you.”
Katya gestured to Kane to hand her the communicator. He nodded and gave it to her without hesitation. “Petrov? Captain Petrov?”
“Who is this?”
“Katya, sir. Katya Kuriakova. Please, Kane’s telling the truth. If you don’t trust him, maybe you can trust me.”
“Ms Kuriakova.” Petrov seemed unsettled. “I thought you must have died in the Deeps.”
“I nearly did. But even if I had, it wouldn’t have mattered, not to Russalka. Please, this is bigger than the war. This is about everything.” She tried to think of something to convince him, something she would never offer up under duress. When she thought of it, she had to take a second to steel herself to say it in an even voice. “I swear it on my love for my uncle, Lukyan Pushkin.”
“I see.” Petrov was silent for a moment, then said, “Kane? Are you there?”
“Yes, captain.”
“If I get even the ghost of a bad feeling about this, I will engage you without a second thought. Do you understand?”
“The truce is genuine, captain.”
“If you’ve made a liar of Ms Kuriakova,” said Petrov evenly, “I will kill you myself. Petrov out.”
Kane pulled a face. “He sounded quite impassioned there, didn’t he? By his standards, anyway.” He lifted the communicator to his mouth. “Ms Ocello. The Novgorod will be surfacing off our stern in a moment. Please don’t do anything to make them more excited than they already are. They’re on a bit of a hair-trigger.”
“Aye, captain.”
Two minutes later, the waters three hundred metres aft of the Vodyanoi heaved and split, cascading from the Novgorod’s conning tower as she rose, huge and ominous. Almost twice the length of the Vodyanoi, she was as capable and as deadly as she looked. Formerly she’d been called a “shipping protection vessel,” but that had just been a polite name for a warboat built in peacetime. Her bow torpedo tubes were open, their threat explicit.
Kane gave them enough time for the water to clear her hull cameras, and for the forward facing l
enses to find him. Then he smiled and waved.
“Provocative as always,” said Tasya.
“Just being friendly,” said Kane. “You can’t launch torpedoes at someone who’s waving at you. It’d be inhuman.” He noticed Katya wince. “Just trying to lighten the mood,” he apologised. “I… oh. It’s your ribs, isn’t it?”
The Vodyanoi’s medic had checked Katya over and told her that she’d cracked three ribs and would be in “some discomfort” for the month or so it would take for the bones to set. She’d been given some pain medication and told to come back the next day. Oksana’s breaks were far more severe, one rib threatening to puncture a lung. The medic assured Katya that he’d dealt with much worse, and shooed her out of the sickbay so that he could get on with his job.
“Yes, it’s my ribs.” She felt very tired, and the thought of having trouble lying on her left side whilst trying to sleep didn’t appeal to her at all. Yes, she had sedatives to help with that, but she didn’t enjoy the prospect of swallowing so many drugs. The Russalkin distrust of drugs ran deep, even medicinal ones. “There’s somebody over there!”
Indeed there was. Petrov had appeared on the Novgorod’s conning tower along with another officer and two marines. Both the latter took firing positions on the rail, and levelled maser carbines at Kane, Tasya, and Katya.
“You know, I don’t think he trusts us,” said Kane.
“No,” corrected Katya. “He doesn’t trust you.”
“Hurtful,” said Kane philosophically.
A shortwave signal came in and the captains spoke. “Very well, Kane. What is the purpose of this truce?”
“Well, probably easier to show than tell, Captain Petrov. Let me just check my chronometer.” He looked up, lips pursed. “Does anyone know why we don’t just call chronometers watches? Sorry. Random thought. Can you see FP-1, captain?”
It was a somewhat patronising comment; Petrov would have had to have his eyes shut or be facing the other way not to see the massive floating military airfield. It was close enough now to be filling a good section of the visible horizon. Vast, grey, and imposing.
Katya's War (Russalka Chronicles) Page 24