by David Adams
“The Miranda Caves,” said Pavlov, smiling appreciatively despite it all. “The thick iron deposits would hide you from our sensors, and there’s plenty of fresh water…”
“Astute,” said Dmitriev.
“You must trust me a lot to show me this.”
Dmitriev waved his hand dismissively. “Not as much as you think. These caves are extensive, and without knowledge of where the exit is, you’d never find this place in a hundred years of searching.”
He didn’t have enough knowledge of the local geography to dispute that claim. “If you say so.”
Dmitriev shouldered Pavlov’s weapon. So that’s where it had ended up. “I have to give my report,” he said. “The three of you should stay here.” His voice took on a slightly ominous tone. “I’ve put some trust in you by bringing you here. You’ve earned an inch. I’m hoping that you won’t take a mile.”
Pavlov squatted and pointed to the ground. “I’ll wait right here,” he said, and he meant it.
Dmitriev left them with two guards.
Chuchnova came over and sat with him, Ilyukhina beside her.
“You two okay?” he asked.
“My wrists hurt,” said Chuchnova, rubbing them idly.
“I’m fine,” said Ilyukhina. She still looked pissed, her voice low and quiet, almost a whisper. “I can’t believe this. I always said, ‘If I ever get taken hostage, I hope my ship will just drop an orbital strike right on my head’. I’d rather die in the holy fire of St. Danger Close than get my head sawed off by some second-rate thug playing pretend at revolutionary soldier, you know what I’m saying?”
He did, really. “I don’t think they’re going to kill us,” said Pavlov. “Not right away, at least. Whatever’s going down with this crazy sickness really has them rattled.”
Ilyukhina snorted. “And here I was thinking you were working on a plan to get us out of here.”
He had a few thoughts, nothing that was worth anything. “Best plan is, for now, to go along with them.” His eyes flicked to the guards, voice soft. “Sincerely or not.”
“Right,” said Ilyukhina. She clicked her tongue. “So. What do you make of this Captain Dmitriev?”
“Captain of what, exactly?” asked Pavlov. “He doesn’t move like a soldier. Unpractised. Too calm. Too polite.”
“Cop?” asked Chuchnova.
Pavlov grinned. “You think a cop is less likely to shoot us?”
“My father was a police officer,” she said, her nose wrinkling. “He was a good man, ‘till some punk took him out so she could join a gang. My father died a hero.”
Pavlov held up a hand. “Well, okay, okay. Fair enough.” Deep breath. “Okay, look. I really think they might be able to help us.”
Ilyukhina scowled darker than a coming storm. “Help us do what, exactly?”
“Fight the madness,” he said. “However we need to.”
Ilyukhina rolled her eyes. “How are we supposed to do that?”
Pavlov considered. “We want to stop what’s happening at Hammerfall, right?” he said, the seeds of an idea beginning to form in his mind. “Look, I have a plan, okay?”
CHAPTER 24
Pavlov’s Cell
“THEY TRUSTED YOU WITH A plan?” asked Chainsaw, her laughter echoing through the brig. “Oh, comrade…wow.”
“Jesus,” said Pavlov, taking in a breath. He’d almost forgotten the pilot was there. “Be even more of a total arsehole. I dare you.”
Yanovna turned to Chainsaw. “You’re in a cell too, you know,” she said. “You haven’t exactly exonerated yourself either, Lieutenant.”
“I know,” said Chainsaw. “But listen. It wasn’t my fault.”
“Oh?” asked Yanovna. “Don’t they say that if you save someone’s life, that person’s life becomes your responsibility?”
Pavlov shook his head. “Wait, are you talking about me, or the stowaway?”
“The stowaway,” said Chainsaw. “Obviously.”
Obvious? What was obvious about it? Pavlov squinted. “Wait,” he said, “there’s more to this stowaway than some refugee trying to escape a warzone, isn’t there?”
Neither of them answered.
Pavlov ground his teeth. “What aren’t you telling me?”
* * *
Cockpit
Dropship Anarchy
With the little stowaway carefully strapped into a seat in the passenger compartment, Chainsaw focused on doing what she was supposed to do: land on the Varyag. She turned toward her mothership, the huge, metal vessel floating in the inky blackness of space, long and thick and bristling with weapons, Syrene’s star bathing the ship in a vaguely red hue.
The ground-pounders thought that the Varyag was not beautiful. That was because they were retarded. The Varyag was strong in the way that a weightlifter was strong; they had protruding bits, certainly, and they were strangely bulbous and hard and misshapen even, but the things they could do…the demonstrable power in their arms and legs. Their potential.
That was what made the Varyag great.
As she drew closer, Chainsaw switched ‘languages’ to the pilot’s lingo that came so naturally to airmen, waited for a break in traffic, and then transmitted.
“Dropship Anarchy to Varyag, request landing and ILS linkup.”
“Request acknowledged,” came the voice of the Landing Signal Officer, Ivanski. He was a little more annoyed than usual. “Call the ball, Anarchy. Be advised: we are host to a lot of traffic at this time.”
Anne worked her magic with the Varyag’s computers. “Linkup established,” she said, as a floating red ball appeared on the cockpit canopy. “Take me home, butterfly.”
“Varyag, Anarchy, ball. Ballistic and in the groove. Your advisory is acknowledged. Be advised: a stowaway is aboard this vessel, have marines ready to receive.”
Ivanski’s voice shifted, moving from annoyance to barely concealed anger. “Acknowledged, Anarchy. We’ll send someone to collect your garbage.”
What an arsehole. Then again, Chainsaw could hardly blame him. Spending all day trying to get pilots to not crash and kill themselves would drive anyone to fury and drink. Controlling aviators was like herding cats. Cats with rocket boots.
Anarchy coasted toward the Varyag’s hangar bay, a little tiny maw opening to allow her passage. Chainsaw adjusted her course as the red ball moved on her screen, accounting for her spaceship’s drift and inaccuracies. She could have let Anna land it, but even though Ivanski was a huge arsehole, they agreed on one thing:
AIs were not to be trusted.
The ball guided Chainsaw into the hangar bay, reverse thrust slowing her passage, the ship shuddering as it encountered the Varyag’s artificial gravity. She extended her landing struts, aligned the ship to the landing space, and prepared to land.
The flight deck exploded beneath her, a massive wall of flame that sent her craft spinning.
Alarms screamed. A wave of shrapnel tore up Anarchy’s underside. The world became blurry, tumbling flashes of the inner hangar bay, angry orange flames, and the inky black of space. Flames, wall, space, flames, wall, space, flames, wall, space…
Anne took over, applying opposite thrust, her digital reactions working to correct the imbalance of the craft. Anarchy’s port wing clipped the cavernous mouth of the hangar bay and spun out into space as flames licked hungrily out of the hangar bay. They consumed the air that escaped with them then flickered out, leaving the edges of the blast glowing red.
Chainsaw’s head continued to spin as the craft stopped, floating in space near the scorched hangar bay. The landing deck was ruined; inside, she could see the bones of the ship, metal struts, and beyond, spacecraft storage.
The Varyag had lost a dozen fighters at least, and there was no way she was landing on that. Captain Alexi would be pissed if she crashed her dropship, and given the scope of the devastation, the captain would have a lot on her hands.
“Wave off,” said Ivanski. “Abort landing. Abort.”
&n
bsp; No shit. She thumbed the radio. “Confirmed, Varyag. Also, I’m fine, thank you for asking.” Was she fine, though? “Anne, damage report.”
“Oh, I thought you’d never ask,” she said, her tone emotionless but also, somehow, charged with an injury she never would have expected. “How accurate do you want me to be?”
That was a strange question. “Accurate,” said Chainsaw. She squinted, trying to clear her head. So dizzy…
“Well,” said Anne, “here’s the good news. The armour and re-entry shield caught most of the blast. The hull is intact; we’re not losing atmosphere, although our passenger is pretty rattled. Making one hell of a racket. Biologicals and their panic responses.”
The kid was strapped in. He was going nowhere. It was okay if he was worried for a little bit. “Lock his seat in,” said Chainsaw. “Make sure he doesn’t get out.”
“Way ahead of you,” she said. “But we haven’t gotten to the bad news.”
“Oh, that?” asked Chainsaw, her head aching. “I was kind of hoping that you’d forget about it. It can’t be that important, can it? C’mon. Do me a favour. Help me out. Pretend everything’s going to be fine.”
“Certainly,” said Anne. “Well, in that case, I can truthfully say: I’m going to be fine.”
“Uh oh.”
“You and your passenger, though, well, you’re in a bit of a pickle. I had to vent the O2 tanks. All we got left is what’s in the cockpit and passenger compartment; given the rate of your breathing, and his shouting, you’re going to be out of oxygen in about twenty minutes.”
Chainsaw struggled though the dizziness and headache to process this. “What? Why did you vent the O2?”
“Well,” she said, “it’s simple, really. The blast was going to throw us into the side of the Varyag, which would have cracked the hull like an egg. I worked out that we didn’t have enough thrust to right the ship before that happened, unless I corrected somehow; I figured the Varyag would not have appreciated me firing the missiles, nor would those little rockets have provided enough thrust, but an emergency vent would have done it.”
The blast had happened so fast. “You figured that out that quickly?”
“I ran through about five hundred or so simulations to try and come up with a better solution. Fortunately, I have a solution for our—or should I say your—air problems, too.”
Chainsaw groaned. “Can you turn your snarkiness down by about fifty per cent, and also tell me how to fix this?”
“Certainly,” said Anne. “Fly to Druzhba City, land at the spaceport there, get the damage fixed up, and then return home to the Varyag.”
That was actually a good plan. “Let’s do that,” said Chainsaw.
“I’ve already programmed in a course, cleared the flight path with the Varyag, and received landing permission from Druzhba City spaceport control.”
“Well,” said Chainsaw, “what am I even here for?”
“You know,” said Anne as the dropship swung around and pointed its nose toward Syrene, the large blue planet filling up her cockpit, “I sometimes ask myself the same question.”
CHAPTER 25
Pavlov’s Cell
“OKAY,” SAID PAVLOV, “THAT EXPLAINS the damage I saw on the way in. But what caused the explosion?”
“We’re still investigating that,” said Yanovna, bristling slightly. “Just as we’re still investigating you, Pavlov.”
“Right,” said Pavlov.
“We think it was a bomb,” said Chainsaw. “Someone planted timed explosives in the flight deck. By coincidence, I just picked the worst possible time to try and land.”
“Or the best,” said Pavlov. “You survived, right?”
“Right,” said Chainsaw.
Yanovna tapped the edge of her tablet expectantly.
Pavlov gathered his thoughts for a moment. “So, anyway. They left us alone for a bit…”
* * *
The Separatist camp
Syrene
The three of them talked it over amongst themselves until Dmitriev returned, Pavlov’s rifle slung over his shoulder.
“Welcome back,” said Pavlov, groaning slightly as he stood up. “Report all given?”
“Something like that,” said Dmitriev, the edge of his mouth turned down. “My CO wasn’t exactly thrilled—I wasn’t authorised to take any prisoners, apparently—but fortunately they’ve decided that any intel and material support you could potentially provide might allow you to, uhh, earn your keep, so to speak.”
“This is a truce,” said Pavlov cautiously. “We’re not signing up for your cause. We just want to deal with this…sickness. This spreading madness.”
Dmitriev considered. “And how do you propose we do that?”
“Well,” said Pavlov, “we have the equipment and the skills, and you have the men. If we attack Hammerfall—”
“No.” Dmitriev shook his head. “Sorry, that place is too well defended.”
But his plan. Pavlov tried again. “We know you have mortars. We could use them to soften the place up a bit—”
“No,” said Dmitriev again, more firmly this time. “Besides, we need that facility intact. We can’t have it too badly damaged. We don’t have the resources or knowledge for extensive repairs.”
“Why do you care so much? For its research, right?” Pavlov gestured to Chuchnova. “She’s one of the scientists at that place.” Wait, the lie…“Or, you know, was going to be, before we were waylaid. She was fully briefed before her arrival, though.”
To Pavlov’s surprise, Dmitriev scrunched up his face in confusion. “Research…? No, we’re not interested in that. For the last few years, the excess meat has been given to the local populace, but all that stopped recently, so we wanted to re-establish that. It’s important for local morale.”
He snorted. “You’re going to eat their science? After they’ve done who-knows-what-kind-of weird experiments on the cows?”
Chuchnova’s sour tone returned. “The scientists there do not do anything weird to the cows, they’re only doing research into genetic diversification…the cows are totally unharmed and unaltered. When they’re done analysing their genetic markers, they’re slaughtered, and the meat is sent to the city and other local areas.”
Pavlov wanted to say more, but a dark thought danced at the edge of his consciousness, teasing him with its implications and pushing the details of his complex plan out of his mind. “Huh,” he said, squinting as the cogs in his head turned over. Meat…distributed…something about that rang alarm bells with him. “Wait,” he said carefully. “This, you know, this craziness. Is there any chance it could be put into food?”
“I guess,” said Chuchnova. “They’ve always touched us with it to spread it. Bare flesh. It could work, I suppose. Humans are basically meat after all.”
“So maybe,” said Pavlov, “if they had access to a fully stocked laboratory, and a whole bunch of cows to experiment on—along with the cooperation of some of those scientists—they might be able to manufacture some way of putting it in the cows.” He snapped his fingers. “Holy shit. That’s it. That’s why the crazy people want the facility—why they didn’t follow us very far out, why they haven’t chased us down, why they let us meet up with the Separatists…they want to spread the crazy.”
“Oh shit,” said Chuchnova, her eyes widening. “That stuff goes a long way…out to Druzhba City. A single cow can provide a lot of meat, and there’s at least fifty head of cattle at Hammerfall, so…if they’re all infected, and people eat that meat, then go on to infect others—”
“It’d be a pandemic.” Pavlov ran a hand through his hair. “At that point, it could even get offworld. To other planets.”
A sobering conclusion.
“Okay,” said Dmitriev, “so. What do we do about all this?”
That was the ten-billion-rouble question, wasn’t it? “Well…” Pavlov thought a moment. “We gotta blow that facility sky high. Just wipe it out. The Varyag has more than enough firepo
wer to do the job, so we have to get to Druzbha City on the double. Convince them to do it.”
Dmitriev raised an eyebrow. “You think you can do that? Convince them to launch a full-on orbital strike on their own facility based on nothing more than your word?”
“Maybe.”
“That’s a lot to risk on a maybe. And if you can’t, they’ll probably send more reinforcements, who won’t know about the madness…and we’ll be too far away to attack it again.”
“So,” said Pavlov, “it has to be us.”
“Pardon?”
The thoughts churned in Pavlov’s mind. Scenarios and ideas and images… “What if—what if…we blew up Hammerfall’s reactor? Do you think the Varyag would be able to see it from orbit?”
Ilyukhina hissed through her teeth. “You can’t be serious. Aren’t we supposed to be protecting that facility?”
“We were,” Pavlov said, “but I think we need to consider that this craziness is a little beyond defending the playroom of some cow-fuckers.” He glanced to Chuchnova. “No offence.”
She glared at him. “No idea how I’m not supposed to be offended by that.”
“Well, artificial insemination was part of your job, so, I mean, you literally were…” He shook his head. “Doesn’t matter. Look, we kill the reactor, we kill the facility. The Varyag will see the blast, my team will meet them there, they’ll come extract us, and we’ll explain everything.”
Ilyukhina shook her head, blonde hair going everywhere. “You don’t know how to overload the reactor, assuming such a thing is even possible without the mainframe, which, let me remind you, we blew up.”
“Actually,” said Pavlov, “I was thinking we could use our high-velocity, armour-piercing rifles to break the reactor’s coolant pipes. That should give us enough time to escape before it blows, and enough time to return afterwards before the Varyag sends dropships to investigate. No infected meat, and bonus: no more infected people either. An explosion of that size and intensity would vaporise whatever crazy stuff they’re putting in the meat.”
