Katya's World

by Jonathan L. Howard

  “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.”

  Chapter 16

  Deep Black

  “The lift opens directly onto the command deck. It’s big so don’t let that surprise you. There are guards posted on either side of the door as you go in and there must be at least another four or five scattered around the place.”

  “Thank you, Ms Kuriakova,” said Petrov. They were already in the lift and on their way to the bridge. The cars, although large, could only hold ten people fairly close together and Petrov had said it would be better to take in ten people who had enough room to get out quickly than sixteen and be packed in there like krill on a manta whale’s baleen. Lukyan had argued against Katya going in, but she had insisted on going as the only one amongst them who had been to the command deck and knew how it was set out. Petrov had agreed and taken the furious Lukyan aside, talking quietly to him for a few minutes until Lukyan’s rage subsided. “You can’t protect her forever,” she’d overheard. “It’s what she wants to do.” Lukyan had come back and stared at her for the longest time before saying she could go. Then he added that he was coming too and he’d tear the head off anybody who said otherwise.

  “The plan is simple,” Petrov told the present crew. “We go in, deal with the guards, take their weapons and then it will probably turn into a fire fight with the remaining troopers. An alert will almost certainly be called. When that happens, the other half of our number will make their way to the docks and secure a boat. We target the Leviathan, launch everything we can and then destroy the command stations so they cannot issue destruct orders to the torpedoes after we leave. We head straight for the decks in time to board the boat that has been commandeered for us. Any questions?”

  There were none. Even to Katya, the plan seemed childishly simple. The best plans were always the simple ones, she’d heard. This was her chance to find out.

  “Ready?” Petrov asked Olya. She nodded and hefted the carbine. “Good. You go right, I’ll go left.” The lift door opened.

  The size of the FP-1’s bridge awed Katya a little even now, but her attention was drawn to something else. Or rather the lack of something else. The bridge was deserted. The idea slithered through her mind like mercury on steel and came out of her mouth before the doors had even finished opening. “It’s a trap!”

  Petrov slapped the door close control but it didn’t respond, overridden by the main computer. “Down!” he shouted. Olya wasn’t listening; she was still following Plan B, unaware that they were being forced to come up with a Plan C. She stepped out of the lift and headed right. There was no guard there and she stood uncertainly for a moment, looking for a target. Somewhere over by the starboard hologram projector, there was a crack of a maser, and she sprawled onto the deck.

  “Novgorods!” Lukyan roared the battlecry, and surged out of the lift like a torpedo from its tube.

  “Pushkin!” shouted Petrov after him. “Don’t be a fool, man!” Then he looked around at his huddled crew and realised that the only choice left to them might be whether to die fighting or trapped in that lift. “Novgorods!” he bellowed, running forward, the tiny maser pistol in his hand cracking repeatedly.

  It seemed that the Yagizban had been expecting the escaped prisoners to behave rationally and surrender. There was a stunned silence that lasted the few seconds before a lucky shot from Petrov’s maser caught a poorly concealed trooper in the arm and he fell screaming. Then the shooting really started.

  Lukyan snatched up Olya’s carbine and swung himself up against a wall behind a support stanchion. Using the small rifle as a large pistol he started laying down suppressing fire, giving the rest of the Novgorods a chance to scuttle out of the lift and to the cover of the nearest console stations.

  Katya slid
frantically across the floor until she reached cover. Petrov ducked down beside her, checking the charge left in the pistol.

  “Not going quite to plan, lieutenant,” said Katya as maser bolts cracked overhead. She wondered at her own apparent unconcern, as if they were playing a game. Maybe she couldn’t take this seriously because she still wasn’t quite used to the idea of people trying to kill her. It was a good state of mind, she decided. If she really accepted the danger she was in, she might never move again.

  “No battle plan survives first contact with the enemy, Ms Kuriakova,” he replied, ejecting the pistol’s depleted cell and replacing it with a new one, fresh from the manufacturer’s wrapper. Katya was going to ask him where he’d got it and the decided that she didn’t care very much under the circumstances.

  She looked over at Lukyan who was pushing himself as small as he could go behind the stanchion as a hail of maser bolts cracked and hissed off the metal. He saw her and shrugged, out of ideas himself. Katya smiled as bravely as she could manage and looked around. This was crazy, she concluded. There were nine of them altogether with only two guns between them. They should have had a contingency plan, but who could have guessed that they were heading into a trap? They weren’t going to be able to shoot their way out of this. Either they surrendered or… what?

  Katya wished that Kane was there with them; they could definitely have done with his infuriating habit of thinking off at tangents, seeing possibilities beyond the obvious. She made a mental effort and imagined him there, pinned down with the rest of them, and then she imagined what he might do, what ideas he might have.

  He’d say that not only their plan, but their plan’s objectives were no longer possible. Specifically the secondary objective of taking the bridge. That simply was not going to happen with them pinned down by any number of troopers…

  “Give it up, Petrov!” shouted a familiar voice. “Don’t get anybody else killed for no reason!”