Jonathan Howard - Katya's War

Kane fished in his equipment bag and produced a translucent ball perhaps fifteen centimetres in diameter. “Here’s a pretty gadget from Earth,” he said, held the ball out in one hand and clicked a small device he had mounted on his harness with the other. Instantly the ball started to glow fiercely, rose from his hand and travelled forward three or four metres just above head height. It flew through the open doorway and hovered there, as if waiting for them to catch up.

“Not even military issue on Earth,” he said. “I picked it up from a camping supplies vendor.” Without pausing to explain what “camping” was, he walked forward, and the orb flew ahead, always maintaining the same distance from him and lighting the way. The others fell in behind him. Tasya was right behind Kane; she looked as cool and calm as she always did, but Katya noticed her unconsciously slip her holster’s retention band off the maser’s frame, freeing it for a fast draw. That a killer like Tasya found the facility unnerving did little for Katya’s state of mind.

They made their way slowly up a slight slope in the broad, dark corridor. The construction was of the lowest practical finish, and the speed with which the place had been built was evident in every economy. The corridor was wide and the walls were concave, caused by two overlapping fusion bores being used to cut it through the rock of the mountain. The floor had been levelled, filled with some black synthetic, but the walls and ceiling were bare stone. Over their heads cables ran in bundles, crudely stapled to the rock at frequent intervals by large steel “U” pins. Equally crude was the corridor lighting, consisting of utility lamps not even attached to the rock but simply hung from the underside of each staple and wired into a power cable in the bundle. With the base’s power off, the lamps hung dark and useless.

Ahead of them the corridor was blocked by a bulkhead that filled the six metre wide corridor, secured around its edge by more of the black synthetic used for the floor. In the middle of the bulkhead was a metre wide manual door, looking strange and out of proportion in the middle of the large bulkhead. It stood open, swung towards them on its hinges.

Katya coughed and everybody looked at her, startled. Kane noticed Tasya’s hand had fallen onto her pistol, and said. “I think we all need to take a moment. This facility is dead. We have no reason to think anyone but us is alive here. Not a nice thought, but nor is it a threatening one in the most realistic sense. Let us not have any… accidents, hmm?” Out of the corner of her eye, Katya saw Tasya thumb the retention band back into position and drop her hand away from the weapon. Katya thought this was probably the closest that the Chertovka would ever come to expressing shame.

Kane played around with the light globe’s control until he induced it to fly through the open hatch. It was fascinating to watch the device, which flew easily and quickly yet never let itself get closer than twenty or thirty centimetres to any surface. It clearly contained a contragravitic drive, but anything so small was unknown on Russalka. That it wasn’t even new technology to the Terrans was unsettling.

They followed Kane through the hatch and found themselves on a level section of corridor. It seemed likely that the previous section had been intended as a safety buffer between the auxiliary lock and the main body of the base, as subsidiary corridors were now visible branching off the main one.

“Mr Giroux,” said Kane. “Scout on ahead, will you, please? Find the next main bulkhead, but don’t go beyond it. Call in when you get there, yes?”

“Yes, captain,” said Giroux and went ahead in a dogtrot.

Katya had glanced at her own communications unit when Kane had mentioned Giroux calling in and noticed the display had changed. “Kane. I’ve got a problem with my gear. I’m not picking up the Vodyanoi ’s channel anymore.”

“Really? Let me see.”

“None of us are,” said Tasya. “Not this side of the airlock, I’d say. This facility must be EM secure. It was supposed to be hidden, after all.”

“Ah,” said Kane. “That is a nuisance.”

“EM?” said Katya. “Electromagnetic?”

“The whole base is effectively inside a giant Faraday cage,” explained Kane. “No electromagnetic radiation gets in or out. It’s to hide the place from sensors. There’ll be a comms relay outside the cage that’s hardwired to the command centre by cable. We don’t have that luxury.”

“So… there’s no way we can talk to the Vodyanoi or the Lukyan ?”

“None.” He brightened. “Still, we shouldn’t need to. We’ll just see what we need to see, and then leave.”

“And what exactly is that? Why can’t you just tell me?”

“You wouldn’t believe me.” Katya started to say something snide, but he stopped her. “And… even if you did, it’s not enough that you believe me. It’s not enough. You have to know . Know it first-hand. Know it for yourself so there’s no denial.” He looked around, searching. “No denial,” he repeated to himself. Then, “This way.”

“Why?” asked Katya, curious despite her desire to stay cold to Kane and his plans. “What’s this way?”

“I don’t know. But, whatever it is, it will probably be as good as anywhere else.” He walked on, unaware of the look Katya was giving him.

“That doesn’t work,” said Tasya, amused. “Believe me, if looks could kill, Kane would have been fish bait years ago.”

They followed him down one of the spur corridors, the glow of the light orb turning him into a walking shadow ahead of them. Katya kept looking around, trying to glimpse just what was so astounding that she had to see it with her own eyes. It was hard to believe it was the spy base itself; it was competently built for all the obvious haste, but otherwise entirely unremarkable. She had once been in an abandoned mining site and it had looked a little like this. The one thing that seemed odd was that it was so large. The phrase “spy base” had put images in her mind of some small stealthy facility tucked into a cleft in a mountainside, just large enough to serve a small sub crew in their work of sneaking around and monitoring Federal transmissions, and watching traffic from the edge of the Red Water. This place was an altogether larger proposition. They hadn’t even seen the living quarters yet, just a medical section and… She looked up at a sign stencilled onto the rock and stopped.

“Hold on,” she said. “We’re walking in a circle. This is the way to the medical section, but that was on the other side of the main corridor.”

Kane came to a halt. “Perhaps there is more than one medical section.” His voice was neutral and the flying globe kept him limned with light, reducing him to a silhouette, yet Katya caught something hidden in the comment.

“Why would a spy base have more than one medical section?” she demanded. “Hell, why does it even have one? All they’d need would be a sick bay. What were they doing here, Kane?”

But Kane wasn’t listening. He had moved to the wall and was examining it. Even in the oblique light cast by the orb, Katya could see there were windows set into the wall and, a little beyond, a door. For the first time she realised that every doorframe she’d seen had been sealed into its surround, every door had been waterproof.

Usually doors within the areas between bulkheads were conventional, both for reasons of economy and convenience. If something terrible happened and a section flooded, the bulkheads would contain the water within that section, but the doors of the rooms in the section would not stop the water for a second.

Yet this place was heavily compartmentalised. Why the paranoia?