Jonathan Howard - Katya's War

They were far more intrigued by Tasya Morevna. “Is it true she collects the heads of those she kills in battle?” asked Alina with an artlessness Katya expected more from Oksana.

“No,” said Katya. “She a real warrior, but she’s not a sadist or a lunatic; not most of the time, anyway.”

“Is it true she wears Terran armour?” asked Oksana.

“Yes, she does. She’s painted it up a bit, and it’s not a complete suit — the torso section mainly — but, yes, it’s definitely not Russalkin.”

“How does she look in it?”

“I bet she looks awesome !” said Alina, and they all laughed. It seemed, Katya thought, that Tasya’s fan club extended even beyond the Yagizban, who certainly held her in awe.

Yet, slow as the journey was, it still had to come to an end. Katya found the shadow of her uncertain future deepening around her again, and her guards were sorry too, for they had come to like one another. They spent the last six hours of the approach tidying up the inside of the shuttle, which had begun to look like a dormitory, chatting about almost anything but their destination. Alina said at least they’d been going about as fast as the shuttle could manage; the shadowing warboat or boats would only have been making a fraction of their usual cruising speed. She mimed the helmsman pushing forward an imaginary throttle control a tiny bit and then slowly tapping his fingers while wearing an expression of slack-jawed boredom. She snapped back to herself, announced “Three days later!” and instantly returned to the same expression and finger tapping. Oksana and Katya laughed and Alina joined in.

Katya decided not to mention how glad she was that she hadn’t murdered the pair of them earlier, no matter how kindly meant the comment was.

With an hour to go, the shuttle was in pristine order. Officers Volkova and Shepitko were in their duty uniforms, masers holstered. The prisoner, Katya Kuriakova, was in her yellow convict uniform sitting in restraints opposite to them. While the scene was very similar to that of three days earlier, the tone was very different. Officer Alina Shepitko had apologised when one of Prisoner Kuriakova’s wrists was nipped by its restraining strap as it was tightened. Where once they had glared at her, now they cast her sympathetic glances.

“It’ll be OK,” Officer Oksana Volkova told the prisoner. “Just keep your head down. Don’t piss off the guards. We’ll give you a great report when we’re debriefed. Model prisoner. They’ll go easy on you.”

Katya smiled. It was a weak, unconvincing smile, for she was touched by the kindness of her escorts, but she also knew what was waiting for her, and she was afraid. “Thanks, Oksa… Officer Volkova. I appreciate that. They’re not bringing me to the Deeps just to lock me away, though.” Her smile dissolved away altogether. “They’re taking me there because it has the main Secor interrogation facility. They’re going to torture me, and then they’re going to kill me.” She made a half sob sound in her throat and looked at them without hope. “I’m really scared.”

“No,” said Alina. “No, they won’t do that.”

“Two Secor agents have told me that is exactly what they’re going to do.” She tried to smile to reassure them that it was alright, none of this was their fault, but the muscles in her face twisted it into a grimace.

The shuttle carried out the approach to the Deeps perfectly, handing over to the prison station’s drone control for the final docking. The screen on the forward bulkhead flickered from the status display to an image from the shuttle’s nose-camera, enhanced and augmented with sonar, transponder, and positional data to summon the great bulk of the notorious prison out of its submarine gloom.

It was vast. She knew it would be, but seeing the scale metrics define it, brought it home to her. The only other thing she’d ever seen that huge had been the Yagizban floating settlement FP-1 . The Deeps was not quite as big as that artificial island, but at a little over half a kilometre in diameter and eighty metres or so high, it was big enough. It was also, in a small irony, of Yagizban design, an artefact from the days when the FMA fondly believed that the Yagizban were happy with Federal rule.

The Deeps was unique, a tethered station; essentially a great submarine without impellers, its ballast tanks adjusted to be just on the positive side of neutral buoyancy. They could plainly see the metre-thick cables running from the boom-mounted ballast tanks down to huge pitons driven into the narrow plateau over which it hung, holding the prison in place.

“It was supposed to be a mobile originally, but they couldn’t get it to move fast enough,” said Alina, unable to keep the awe from her voice.

“Why would they want a mobile prison?” asked Oksana.

Alina grimaced at her. “It wasn’t supposed to be a prison, stupid. It was supposed to be a military base. Rather than scrap it, they made it into the Deeps.” She turned her attention back to the screen. “Nobody’s ever escaped from it.”

“Good to know,” said Katya in a small voice.

Alina blushed.

The airlock cycled out the water, the doors opened and Prisoner Kuriakova stepped through, her hands in restraining tapes behind her back, followed a few paces behind by her guards. Four prison guards were waiting, along with a man in the uniform of a colonel of the marines, and a woman who looked so commonplace, inoffensive and every-day, that she might as well have had “Secor” tattooed across her forehead.

Officer Shepitko saluted the colonel and offered him her memo pad. “Prisoner Katya Kuriakova, sir. Please sign.”

The colonel took the pad, signed it with the stylus and placed his thumb on the pad’s reader to confirm receipt of the prisoner. As he did so, his gaze never left Katya.

Shepitko took the pad back and stowed it in her jerkin pocket. “Thank you, sir. You’ll have our reports on the journey within the hour.” Katya knew what was going to be in the reports; she’d helped the officers write much of them.

“There’s no hurry,” said the colonel. Katya didn’t like his voice at all. She’d been expecting something gruff and military, but instead he spoke quietly with an undercurrent of subtle menace.

She’d once seen a domovoi, a type of Russalkin eel with short horns jutting out on either side of its jaws. Its body was as thick as a man’s, and its teeth could penetrate a light ADS. Something about the cast of its face, however, gave it an undeserved air of intelligence. Domovoi lay in small caves, their heads at the entrance, watching the world go by with an expression of mild interest. When anything edible made the mistake of coming too close, however, it generally didn’t last long enough to realise the error.

There was something of the domovoi about the colonel, and Katya decided it would be wise not to antagonise him unless absolutely necessary.

“No hurry at all,” he continued. “You’ll be shown to your quarters and you can finish your reports once you’ve settled in.”

“Settled in, sir?” Officer Shepitko shot an uncertain glance back at Officer Volkova. “Our orders were to return to Atlantis as soon as possible.”

“We’re with Atlantis Base Security,” said Volkova, a little unnecessarily.

“You’ve been seconded,” said the colonel.

Shepitko started to say something, but a look from the colonel made her response die in her throat. “Yes, sir,” she said, saluted, and stepped back.

Behind her, Katya could hear Volkova whisper urgently, “But we can’t stay here! My mother and father are expecting me back before the end of the week!” Shepitko shushed her, and they fell silent.