Jonathan Howard - Katya's War

“The one thing they didn’t anticipate was the Yagizban actually believing what the Terrans told them. When the war fizzled out and Earth didn’t send reinforcements, the Feds believed it was business as usual. You can see how well that worked out. Ten years of growing Yagizban resentment and a lovely new war that the Federal government thinks is worth fighting to the last drop of somebody else’s blood.”

Katya felt empty, exhausted, sickened. She wanted to cling to the reality she had grown up in, but now everywhere she touched it with her mind, it crumbled and rotted away.

She kept thinking of little things that she had always simply accepted, but that now made a new and terrible sense. The existence of Secor boats, and how it was always just expected that they would be part of flotillas and wolf packs. How many times had decent people fired on innocent targets using data and “pirate” identifications provided by the Secor command boats? The Russalkin had suffered, been called “heroes,” and regarded those who complained as verging on traitors. All the time they thought they had been proud warriors, they had been nothing but patsies for the biggest confidence game in the galaxy.

“You’re wasting your time searching a grid,” she said. “If Sergei is still at the controls, he’ll run for the nearest station where he feels safe. That will be Dunwich. Find him and the Lukyan , Kane. We can’t do this without them.” She left the bridge without another word.

They picked up the Lukyan twenty kilometres from Dunwich’s sensor line. Kane wasn’t in the mood for subtlety — the Vodyanoi swooped quickly on the minisub, approaching in her baffles so it wasn’t detected until it was too late. The salvage maw gaped wide and swallowed the Lukyan in a perfectly performed manoeuvre that hinted at how many times the crew had practised it in the past.

Tasya wanted to go into the maw with two others, all armed, but Katya wouldn’t hear of it. Sergei was her friend, her employee and her crew, the Lukyan her vessel, and every Russalkin knew better than to get between a captain and her boat. She climbed through the hatch into the maw as soon as it was drained, Tasya — armed of course — at her heels.

Katya cast an eye already rendered professional by a few months of ownership over the Lukyan , noting the damage caused by its violent capture. Scuffed paintwork, punctured air tank, snapped strut on the lighting rig — four to six hours to repair if she and Sergei worked on it together.

She walked around the front to look in through the forward observation bubble, but the internal lights were out. The light from the maw’s own illumination strips seemed to show a dark bundle on the floor next to the crate of plumbing supplies which Sergei had insisted on keeping aboard.

Katya walked back to the minisub’s aft hatch where Tasya was waiting. “I can see something on the floor in there. It might be a body.”

“Only one?”

“Why guess?” said Katya, and operated the hatch control.

A strange organic smell rolled out of the open door, and it took Katya a moment to identify the mixed scent of blood and urine. Tasya didn’t wait that moment; she stepped inside, drawing and aiming her maser at the shape as she did so. She kicked it, and it whimpered.

“On your feet,” she ordered.

The shape clambered painfully up, and Katya saw it was Sergei. Her joy at seeing him alive was immediately dissipated by the state he was in. He had a deep cut down the left side of his brow, and the blood had splashed all the way down his habitual green coveralls to the waist. But there was blood, too, on his sleeve cuffs.

“We need a medic,” Katya called back to the open maw hatch where Kane and a couple of the crew stood watching. Sergei cried out, making her turn quickly back.

Tasya had him held against the wall of the minisub by his throat with one hand while the other held her gun unwaveringly between his eyes. The last time Katya had seen a gun held to someone like that, a second later Filipp Shurygin was dead. “Tasya? What the hell are you doing?”

“ Where’s Vetsch ?” demanded Tasya, her voice cold with suppressed violence.

“Katya!” croaked Sergei through Tasya’s firm grip on his windpipe. “Help!”

“Tasya, let him go! He can hardly breathe!”

Tasya released his throat, but kept the maser’s muzzle aiming steadily between his eyes. “Don’t make me wait for my answer, Ilyin,” she said.

Sergei shot her a terrified glance, although somebody unexpectedly knowing his surname was probably enough to do that. “He attacked me. Look!” He pointed at the cut.

“Sergei,” said Katya gently in an attempt to calm him, “please, tell us what exactly happened.”

“He was as nice as anything to start with. I thought he was OK for a pirate.” Belatedly realising what he had said, he started to stumble out some apologies, but Tasya just waved the barrel of her gun impatiently. This served to concentrate his mind wonderfully.

“Then he said the boat was his.”

“The Vodyanoi ?” asked Kane, stepping into the maw. He noticed Tasya bristle, and added, “Never mind me. Just an interested party. Carry on. You were saying?”

“No,” said Sergei. “The Lukyan . Katya’s boat. He said he was in the captain’s seat so that made him the captain. I’d taken the co-pilot’s seat. I’m happier there.”

“He is,” said Katya to no one in particular.

“So I gave him the pilot’s seat. Then he says the Lukyan belongs to him, because he’s the captain. I thought he was joking, but then he gave me a bad look, a real bad look, and I thought He’s stealing her because Kane told him to, because they’re pirates .”

“Word of honour, for whatever that’s worth,” said Kane. “I told him to do no such thing.”

“And I said she belongs to Captain Kuriakova, and he said, no, she belongs to him because… because he was sitting in the captain’s seat, and that meant he owned her now. He meant it, too.”

“What happened then?” demanded Tasya.

“I laughed. I sort of thought he might still be joking. And… he went crazy. He grabbed the extinguisher and smacked me in the side of the head with it. I unstrapped and got into the back, trying to get away from him. He came after me. He was crazy. He was shouting about how I was trespassing aboard his command and he would kill me before giving her up.” He was looking pleadingly at Katya. “I sort of danced around that crate full of plumbing gear, just trying to keep away from him. He was getting angrier and angrier. I’ve never seen anyone go like that before. His face was all scrunched up but he was dead white. Then he tried to dodge past the crate and hit me and he fell over.” He fell silent, his eyes on the maser and Tasya’s face.

“What then?” she said.

“I… hit him. He’d dropped the extinguisher when he fell over, and I grabbed it and I hit him.” He gulped, the sweat showing on his face. “I hit him a lot of times. I didn’t want him to get up again.”

“Did you kill him?”

Sergei nodded miserably. “I think so.”

“And then what? You dumped the body out of the dorsal lock?”

If Sergei had been reluctant to admit that he had killed Vetsch, even in self-defence, it was nothing compared to now. His gaze flickered from face to face, cornered and desperate.

“What did you do with him, Sergei?” said Katya gently, then far less gently, “Lower your gun, Tasya, for crying out loud!”

Tasya kept it aimed at Sergei’s forehead for another three seconds and then slowly, very slowly, lowered it, leaving them all in no doubt she could still put a maser bolt between his eyes in an instant if he tried anything.