Jonathan Howard - Katya's War

Until now. Right at that exact moment, the entry database was disconnected from the internal usage logs. Usually, the facility computer logged people into the site when they entered, and off it when they left. If a card was used on site that had not been logged in, there would have been a security alert. Currently, however, a small piece of computer code that had begun life in a Yagizban espionage sciences facility had separated the two and would continue to do so for another twelve hours. During that time, anybody with a Beta grade or above could wander around the place whether they had been logged in at an entrance or not. The security failure would only be discovered if and when somebody decided to go through the usage logs themselves.

Katya thought it was very likely that some poor soul would end up doing exactly that when the FMA discovered what she had done. Assuming she had a chance to do it.

The chamber was in the form of a hemisphere with its floor lower than the entry corridor. In the centre was the group of computers that handled traffic control and communications. They rose high, embraced with coolant systems, and ringed with a mesh walkway. Destroying them would cause the Federal forces perhaps a day of disruption before the workload could be fully assumed by the multiple redundancy back-ups dispersed elsewhere in the mountain. Katya, however, was not there to do anything as mundane as simple sabotage.

The situation was complicated by the discovery that the room was not unmanned. This was a surprise — the computers were very low maintenance, and would be left entirely alone for days at a time. It was just her lousy luck to walk in on one of the rare occasions when somebody else was working on something there.

A technician in white coveralls, his Beta card clipped to his pocket, was checking the valves feeding the coolant system. He looked up in surprise when Katya entered. “Oh! You made me jump,” he said. “I thought I was alone.” He smiled awkwardly.

Katya didn’t smile at all. “This is the traffic control and communications hub, yes?” she said curtly. She nodded at the open doorway. “I’m surprised there’s no secure access to this room. Why is that?” She said it as if it was his idea not to bother installing a pass-locked door.

“I… don’t know. I could ask?” The technician was in his twenties, possibly ten years older than Katya, but two wars had made such a mess of Russalka’s demographic spread, it was unsurprising to find seniority was not necessarily attached to age.

“Don’t bother,” she said. “I shall include it in my report.”

“Your report?” He looked her up and down, trying to decide who she might be. “Pardon me for asking, but may I see your identification?” Katya looked at him icily, trying to mimic the marrow-freezing effect that Tasya managed so well. “Please?” added the technician.

With an expression that indicated she was now sure she was talking to the facility idiot, she smoothly withdrew her pass from her breast pocket. There was no indication of job on it, but it did contain an entry for “Domicile.” Hers was marked “None.” On a Gamma card this wouldn’t have earned it a second glance; lots of submariners lived like Katya aboard their boats with the occasional night in rented rooms or a capsule hotel. Beta card holders didn’t live that sort of life, and a Beta Plus definitely wouldn’t. “Domicile: None” meant a senior grade that travelled constantly, and there weren’t many reasons for that.

All these thoughts had run through the technician’s head so obviously that Katya felt like a mind reader. He licked his lips nervously. “May I ask what your role is, please? Ma’am?”

“You may,” she conceded. “But do you really want to know?”

In a small psychological coup that she had not entirely understood until now, Tasya had ensured that Katya’s replacement coveralls would be dark grey, a shade not formally used by any section of the Federal apparatus. The impression thus created screamed, “Secor field agent” to all.

“No, ma’am,” he said meekly.

“I am merely having a look around. That, for example,” she pointed at a spiral metal staircase that ascended to a sealed hatch in the ceiling. “What’s up there?” Of course, she knew full well what was up there.

“Uh, nothing. Well, something, but nothing very important. Not really important. Just the data lines to the comms arrays.”

“Show me.”

“I can’t, ma’am. It’s a Beta Plus lock. But,” he waved vaguely at her left breast pocket, trying to indicate her card and not the breast. “But you can.”

Inwardly, she quailed. This would be the first time she had actually used the card here, and this would be the point where she discovered whether the Yagizban computer exploit had worked. If not, she would have armed company very quickly.

Showing substantially more confidence than she felt, she mounted the steps. She noticed the technician was following her and stopped.

“Where do you think you’re going?” she demanded of him. “Beta Plus, remember? Go back to your work.”

He nodded, embarrassed, muttered some apologetic noises and descended again. She watched until he’d returned to the computers, then continued up to the sealed hatch.

The reader was mounted against the axis shaft of the steps. “This is a Beta Plus security point,” she read on its small screen. “Insert identification card to proceed.” Trusting to the distant genii of the Yagizba Enclaves, she slid her card into the reader’s slot.

No alarms went off. Instead the screen now read, “Retinal scan confirmation required. Please look at the red dot in the scanner with your right eye. Do not blink.”

Katya had to lift herself on her toes a little to get the scanner level with her eye. She had barely got herself in position when the scan was complete. “Identity confirmed. Welcome, Katya Kuriakova.” She read her name with a tight cold feeling in the pit of her stomach. Now there was incontrovertible proof that she had been here. Her last opportunity to walk away from the mission had just been destroyed before her eyes. Specifically, she corrected herself, her right eye.

Above her, with a thump of disengaging bolts and the hum of servo motors, the hatch slid back. Parsecs away on old Earth, condemned criminals had once mounted the hangman’s scaffold with the same slow tread that Katya now used as she climbed the steps into the restricted area.

The room at the top of the spiral staircase was small and spectacularly cluttered. The sheer profusion of wall-mounted boxes and identical blackly insulated cables running around the place like the limbs of a cybernetically-enhanced eikosipus family — a species similar to the terrestrial octopus, but with twenty tentacles rather than eight — panicked Katya for a second; how could she possibly find the right junction in this mess?

After she swallowed down her nerves, however, and looked again, she saw that there was actually an order underlying the apparent chaos. Indeed, when she looked closer still she found that all the boxes and all the cable sockets were clearly labelled. Thirty seconds of searching found her the one she was looking for.

Working quickly, conscious of the technician below who was probably bursting with curiosity to know what she was up to, Katya took the bland metal box from her bag. It was bare metal, a coolly glinting titanium alloy, whereas the boxes already there were all finished in a silken black. Yet it didn’t look too badly out of place once she had pulled out a lead from the wall box, and replaced it with one of the leads from hers. Its other lead was pushed into a power feed and that was that. She stowed it behind a mass of cables where they fed into the floor, arranging them to hide it as best as she could.