Jonathan Howard - Katya's War

“That puts him physically outside the base,” said Sahlberg. “How did he manage that?”

Kane said nothing, but watched as the search area shrank steadily as they grew closer. Suddenly he leaned forward. “Mr Sahlberg, that area seems to be on the move. Is that an effect of varying signal strength, or…”

“No, sir,” said Sahlberg, studying the figures on his console. “He’s moving. Just a moment, we should be just about… There!”

On the main display, the search area resolved into a single point. “He’s descending the mountainside,” said Sahlberg, astonished. “What does he think he’s doing?”

“Is he falling?”

“I don’t think so, captain. His path is following a ridge line. No, look! He’s following the escarpment downwards. He’s not falling, sir. He’s climbing down.”

“Do we have any sort of inventory for the evacuation site? Would they have AD suits?”

“Unlikely, sir. Just soft suits for maintenance.”

Katya knew why Kane was asking. Giroux was descending too fast. In a soft suit, he would be breathing a mixture of gases that included helium rather than nitrogen, and he should be taking rests to allow his body to acclimatise.

“He’s approaching a cliff, captain. He’ll have to stop.”

The bridge fell silent but for Ocello trying to raise Giroux on the radio. They watched as the sharp contact point moved closer to the edge of a great cliff that stood above a gorge.

They watched as he reached it.

They watched as he jumped.

“Range, damn it! How far away are we?” shouted Kane.

“Three kilometres, sir. We’ll never get there in time.”

They could only watch as Giroux plunged into the abyss, deeper than their test depth, then deeper than their design depth, and then the contact went dark.

“There’s a Soup lake down there,” said Ocello quietly. “He’s gone in.”

However Giroux had survived the explosion, however he had had escaped the site, they would never know. The Soup was a dense emulsion of heavy metals in particle form, created in a natural process that had baffled Russalkin scientists ever since it was discovered in the early seabed surveys. No submarine dared enter it; no diver could hope to return from the crushing pressures within the toxic lakes.

“He must have been dead long before he reached it,” she said. “The pressure change was too rapid. Nobody could have survived it.”

“Nobody could have survived that explosion,” said Kane to himself, but Katya caught his muttered words. Abruptly he stood. “I shall be in my cabin. You have the bridge, Ms Ocello.” Without waiting for confirmation, Kane left the bridge in deep thought, the reports still clenched in his hand.

Katya went to see Sergei. The Vodyanoi who had been left to keep an eye on him was visibly relieved when she came in, and she could understand why; being in a confined space with a despondent Sergei would depress anyone. She had years of experience and had developed a resistance to it, but she could imagine what a drag it would be on the soul of somebody exposed to such accomplished passive-aggressive semi-professional martyrdom for the first time.

“Just wanted to tell you what’s happening, Sergei. I can’t tell you what the final conclusion will be for sure, but the evidence corroborated your story, so…”

“It wasn’t a story,” he said sullenly. “It’s the way it happened.”

“Don’t, Sergei. I have enough to deal with without you being miserable about good news. The captain believes your account, and even Tasya’s come around to it. Considering she was all for shooting you at first, that’s got be good, hasn’t it?”

Sergei managed a small reluctant nod, as if being found innocent and being allowed to live was only fractionally better than a maser bolt in the brain and an undignified burial at sea through a torpedo tube.

Satisfied that this was going to be the biggest outpouring of emotion she could expect from him, Katya turned to leave, but Sergei stopped her.

“Katya, what’s all this about? Why do they need you so much?”

It suddenly struck her that he would know nothing about what had happened in the evacuation site, no idea of what they had found there, what they had seen. Nor had he seen the wreck of the Zarya . To him the Feds were still just a bunch of snotty official types who ran things because they always had. “They want me to do something. Something scary. It will be dangerous, too. I don’t want you to go with me, Sergei. I’ll drop you off at Dunwich.”

The Vodyanoi crew man coughed and said, “I’ll just wait outside. I’ll be right outside if you need me.” He stepped through the doorway, sliding the door shut behind him.

When he had gone, Sergei said, “I don’t have any family left, Katya. Not blood family.”

“I know.”

“You’re the closest thing I have left. I’ll go with you.”

“Sergei, it’s not just going to be dangerous at the time, it’s going to be dangerous afterwards, too.” She closed her eyes and tried to marshal her thoughts. It was inevitable that she would have to tell him exactly what Kane and Tasya had asked of her sooner or later. It might as well be now.

She opened her eyes, looked Sergei in the face and said, “It’s treason. They want me to commit treason. If the Feds catch me, they’ll kill me. I doubt there’d even be a trial.”

Sergei’s mouth dropped open. He was a typical Federal citizen in so many ways — he would complain and whine and resent “those Fed bastards” every day, but they were still his bastards. His loyalties had lain with them so long, any ability to see them as anything but part of the natural scheme of Russalkin life had withered years ago. Treason was insane, beyond his capacity to understand.

Katya smiled wanly. “Exactly, and that’s why you’re not going. I can’t ask you to help me. I won’t ask you to help me. Just… when it happens, if I succeed… don’t think too badly of me. While you were gone, I saw… Everything has changed, Sergei. Russalka is dying, will die. It will take something… major to stop what’s happening here.”

“Katya. What do they want you to do?”

She shook her head. “It’s much, much better you don’t know. If you know, it makes you an accomplice.” She prepared to go, conscious she may already have said too much. “I’ll speak to Kane. Get you released.”

“Katya, please, whatever they’ve asked you to do, don’t do it. I’m begging you…”

It was more than she could bear. Sergei represented ever Federal citizen who would turn their backs on her, every friend she had, almost every face she knew. “No. You didn’t see…” The images flashed through her mind. Dark glass, shadowed forms, the murdered innocent. “Oh, Sergei. What they’ve done. What they’ve done in our names…” A deep grave, five thousand souls, blood in the Red Water. “It has to stop. It has to stop.”

She wrenched the door open and staggered out into the corridor, her eyes tearing up. She walked quickly past the astonished guard, forcing her emotions back inside until she could reach her cabin. There she sat on her bunk, refusing to sob while the tears ran down her cheeks.

She was dead, she knew it. Everything she had been had burnt in the truth of what she now knew. She was hollow, destroyed, nothing more than a walking bomb to end the world within which she had grown up. She would destroy it all in the slim hope that not doing so was worse.

She knew about fanatics, how they would push themselves to the utmost and willingly die for their ideals and their beliefs. But she wasn’t a fanatic. She didn’t feel a righteous, irresistible need to do anything. The FMA or, at least, the little group at the top of the FMA who made the decisions, they had betrayed her and every Federal citizen they represented. She wished she could feel vengeful, feel some passion for what she was going to do.