Jonathan Howard - Katya's War

As the gun lowered, Sergei’s fear ebbed just a little. “I didn’t throw him out. He… climbed out himself.”

Katya frowned; she must have misunderstood something. “So, you didn’t kill him after all. Obviously.”

“I couldn’t find a pulse. I… I felt his skull break when I hit him the last time. That’s why I stopped. I didn’t want to kill him. Just knock him out. But I’d hit him too hard. So I checked for a pulse, and there wasn’t one. I even used the monitor from the medical kit. It said he was dead, too. I thought the pirates would kill me. So I ran. I’m sorry, Katya. You know them, I thought you’d be OK. But they don’t know me. I’m so sorry.”

Katya couldn’t find it in herself to be angry with him. There he was, injured, bloodied, terrified, and so scared of pain and death. Of course he had run. “It’s OK, Sergei. I understand.”

Tasya had no interest in forgiveness. “He was either dead or he wasn’t. What did you do with the body?”

“I was in my seat, trying to get away. I had the hydrophones turned up, listening for if you were chasing me. I didn’t hear him at all until the inner hatch closed and the controls showed the airlock was cycling. I thought he’d gone mad… more mad, or the head wound had made him confused. I tried to stop him! I swear! I tried to stop the cycle, but by the time I put in an abort command, the outer hatch was open. It was too late. Katya, tell them! Tell them how quickly the lock can fill!”

Katya shrugged helplessly. “I’ve never had any reason to use it,” she said to the others. “I’ve never seen it filled. But it isn’t very big. You can just about get one average person in a flexible diving suit into it. It must fill pretty quickly, especially if there’s someone in there.”

“Stow the pistol, please, Tasya,” said Kane. “Mr Ilyin’s story is easy enough to confirm or refute using the available evidence.” He waved the two Vodyanois behind him in and said, “Take Mr Ilyin to a secure cabin and keep an eye on him. Kid gloves, please; he’s a friend of a friend. I also want pictures of his injuries before the medic gets to work on him.”

Sergei was led away, subdued and silent. As he was taken past her, Katya said, “Don’t worry. We’ll get this all sorted out. Just rest, OK?” He looked sideways at her, but his expression seemed resentful rather than hopeful or grateful. Katya had a bad feeling in her gut that their relationship would be forever changed by this incident, and not for the better.

The Vodyanoi couldn’t provide much in the way of forensic equipment, but it didn’t need much to prove that what evidence there was of the fight aboard the Lukyan entirely corroborated Sergei’s account. The small handheld extinguisher that had been used as a weapon was from the bracket to the left of the pilot’s position, out of reach for anyone in the co-pilot’s seat. The pilot’s communications set had been adjusted for Vetsch, the co-pilot for Sergei. All steering data apart from some random inputs at the time of the fight was from the co-pilot’s seat, the interface configured in Sergei’s own idiosyncratic pattern. While the medic couldn’t gene type the blood found, he could at least test it for antigens, and so was able to differentiate between Sergei’s and Vetsch’s. Both types were found on the buckled edge of the extinguisher, Sergei’s in a spray across the co-pilot side, Vetsch’s pooled by the crate in the passenger section. The blood on the medical kit’s monitor handle and touch screen was Sergei’s; that on its sensor pad Vetsch’s.

There was a lot of Vetsch’s blood found beneath the floor grill. Watson, the medic, thought it likely that anybody losing that much would at least suffer shock. Thus, she was at a loss to explain more of Vetsch’s blood smeared on the hatch release, leaving an easily identified set of fingerprints. The clinching evidence was that the Lukyan ’s activity log had recorded a manual cycling of the dorsal airlock from within the airlock itself.

“Could the log have been faked?” asked Kane, when he, Ocello, Katya, and Tasya were considering the gathered evidence.

“Of course,” said Vymann, the Vodyanoi ’s senior technician who had also helped in the investigation. “But not quickly, and you’d have to know exactly what you were doing and be using specialised equipment to do it undetectably.”

Kane sighed loudly and pushed the medical hard copies away from him. “Ilyin’s telling the truth, then.”

“No,” said Tasya stubbornly. “His story fits the facts. That’s not the same thing.”

“He’s not lying,” said Katya. “I know him. I know how he lies. He just keeps denying things and hopes people will believe him. But he won’t come up with a story more complicated than ‘It wasn’t me.’ He can’t.”

“He isn’t very intelligent.”

“He isn’t very imaginative ,” replied Katya sharply.

“Finished, Tasya?” asked Kane. “Yes? Good. So, Ilyin’s telling the truth, then. Y’know, I honestly wish he wasn’t. I wish he’d killed Vetsch, got the body into the dorsal lock somehow and spat him out into the ocean. Then we could just interrogate him to find out why. Instead we’ve got a sudden breakdown in one of the nicest people you could hope to meet, resulting in delusions, paranoia, psychosis and then, just when it can’t get any stranger, he rises from the dead long enough to commit suicide. No offence, Katya, but you can see why this would all be a lot easier if Sergei were the prime mover behind the incident.”

He drew the papers back towards him and flipped through them in a desultory way, only half examining them as he tried to understand the affair. “It’s all a bit mysterious, and I can’t say I’m very fond of mysteries.”

He seemed glad of the distraction when Quinn appeared in the doorway, although that gladness diminished somewhat when he saw Quinn’s expression. “What’s wrong, Mr Quinn?” he asked, already rising to his feet.

“It’s Giroux,” said Quinn. “We just picked up his communicator signal. He got out somehow, captain.”

“Impossible,” said Tasya, now on her feet too.

“He doesn’t have a suit,” said Kane, utterly astonished. “Never mind how he survived the explosion, he doesn’t have a suit.”

They were on the bridge seconds later. “It’s faint, but the signal’s good enough to detect the encryption assigned to Giroux’s channel,” reported Sahlberg.

“Where is he?”

“Back at the evacuation site, sir.”

“We were not far from there when we came back from the Zarya . Why didn’t we hear him then?”

Sahlberg shook his head. “I can’t tell you, captain. Maybe he found the facility’s communications room and is using its relay to get a message outside the Faraday cage.”

“Oh, gods. Poor Bruno.” Kane was horror-struck. “Set course. Best speed. We have to do what we can.”

The course had already been set in anticipation of the command, and the lean shape of the Vodyanoi , the fastest boat in all the seas of Russalka, surged forward. It was only when Kane took the captain’s seat that he realised he was still holding the evidence reports from the Vetsch investigation. He looked from them to the main display — currently showing the boat’s course and an area of likelihood where Giroux’s signal probably lay — back to the reports and finally at Katya who was standing to his right.

“This has been a very odd day,” said Kane.

It was to become odder still. While the Vodyanoi had been on station outside the evacuation facility waiting for contact to be re-established with the expedition, it had continued its survey of the mountain within which the facility lay. One of the elements it had positively identified was the disguised communications relay by which the facility kept in touch with the Yagizba Enclaves. As they grew closer to the mountain, and the probable location of Giroux’s transmission was refined into a smaller and smaller area, it became obvious that the two did not match up at all.