Jonathan Howard - Katya's War

The Deeps looked roughly circular from the outside, but internally was based upon a regular pentagon, the only external expression of this being the five outrider ballast tanks on their dual pylon mounts. One of the five sectors comprised the docking areas, the guards’ barracks, and the administration sections arranged over four decks. Another three sectors contained the male prisoners, and the last was the female sector. Each of the four decks in the prisoner sectors was called a “wing,” although it was nothing of the sort. Dominika told Katya that at least once a year there was a “shakeup,” when all inmates were randomly assigned new cells. The official explanation was that it was to disrupt any long-term escape plans, but nobody believed that. It was believed the shakeup procedure was purely to break up any friendships that may have formed and to keep the inmates feeling stateless and with no control over their destinies.

Once a month, however, the wings within a sector were allowed common time, a brief hour to spend with friends split up by the spiteful churning of the shakeups. Katya had been in the Deeps for just under three weeks when she experienced the first of these. Immediately after lunch had been completed in the communal hall of her wing, the guards withdrew, leaving them under the watchful eyes of the security cameras with their coaxial masers, ready to burn down any troublemakers.

Then the access doors at the outer end of the wing opened automatically, sliding up into the walls. Several women who had gathered by the doors ran through as soon as they opened, while others hung back, waiting. Moments later, women from the wing below were running in to be greeted with cries of delight. Katya watched them embrace and wondered if their number would include her one day. She saw Dominika waving at a short woman with her cropped hair grey at the temples, and their joyful reunion. Feeling that she was intruding, she picked up one of the media pads that gave the inmates something to do, and went off to a bench to read.

She had been reading for perhaps ten minutes when a woman came to sit by her. Katya felt awkward, and looked fixedly at her screen in the hope the woman would take the hint.

“Don’t worry, Kuriakova,” the woman said. “I’m not here to make a woman of you. I doubt either of us are that desperate for human contact yet.”

Katya looked up sharply. Tasya Morevna, hair cropped and in prison uniform, sat by her side.

“They captured you?” said Katya, whispering in shock. “You? I always thought…” She dithered to a halt.

“You thought right. They’d kill me on sight. That’s why I’m…” she turned to Katya so she could show the name printed on her uniform, LITVYAK, T. THIEF “The T stands for ‘Tasya,’ still,” she explained. “I wanted to be a murderer, but Havilland thought that might draw too much attention. I wasn’t very keen on his counterproposal either, so we compromised on me being a thief.”

Katya was still having problems with the entire situation that extended far beyond which particular crime Tasya had decided to have on her uniform. “What are you doing here?” she whispered.

For once Tasya looked uncomfortable. “I’m here to help rescue you.”

“From the Deeps? How? It’s impossible! Tasya, it’s suicide! Kane’s crazy for sending you in here.”

Tasya looked at Katya for a long moment, wrestling with what she was to say next. “Kane didn’t send me, Katya. This is my plan.”

Katya could only gawp at her.

Tasya hurried on. “I screwed up. You should never have been left without support at Atlantis. Kane’s got this idea that you’re blessed, or lucky or something, and that you’d exfiltrate the Beta levels without any trouble. It went against my instincts, but I agreed. I shouldn’t have. Even if we couldn’t have gone onto the Beta corridors ourselves, I could have led a team to cover you going up to them and coming back. I should have led a team to cover you.”

“We’d never have got out. The lock defences…”

“There wouldn’t have been any lock defences by the time I’d finished with them. There’s no excuse. I failed you, Kuriakova.”

Tasya was apologising. To her. The She-Devil, the terror of the World Ocean, was apologising to her. And she’d broken into the most secure location in the world to do it.

Katya had sworn not to let the Deeps make her cry, ever, for any reason, but she had to swallow now. “You could just have said sorry,” she managed to say.

Tasya grinned wolfishly and lightly backhanded Katya’s arm. “This is my way of saying sorry.”

“How did you get in here?”

“There’s a lot of detail you don’t need to know right now. It’s best if you don’t hear it at all. From your point of view, you don’t have to do anything. There will come a time when I come and get you. When I do, you do as I tell you without questions or hesitation. Understand?”

Katya nodded, and said, “They were expecting you to try and rescue me on the way here. They set a trap.”

Tasya raised an eyebrow. “What? They told you that?”

“I worked it out.”

Tasya laughed. “I keep forgetting what a clever one you are. Yes, the Novgorod no less, and a couple of patrol boats in wide flanking positions a couple of isotherms above. We shadowed the Novgorod right from the minute it passed beyond the range of the picket sensors. We could have killed it easily.” She pulled a disgusted face. “That was a really boring three days.”

“So, why didn’t you?”

“The volume would have filled up with torpedoes. Ours, theirs, the patrol boats weighing in. Sooner or later one would have lost its lock, gone onto a search pattern and perhaps locked up your shuttle. It was too dangerous to risk.”

“I’m glad you didn’t, and not just for me. Petrov’s still an officer aboard her.”

“Petrov?” Tasya nodded appreciatively. “A worthy foe.”

“Maybe he made captain? The FMA fawned over everybody else who had anything to do with the Leviathan and FP-1 . Medals and promotions for everyone.”

“Maybe so. If he is the master and commander of the Novgorod these days, I’m glad we stayed well back.”

Before Katya could ask any more questions, Dominika walked over with the woman she’d greeted earlier. “Katya!” she said smiling. “This is my friend, Naida.”

“Pleased to meet you,” said Naida. She seemed like a very nice person at first impression, but her uniform carried the word MURDERER .

“Good to see you’re meeting people, too,” said Dominika, looking at Tasya. Tasya said nothing, but rose to her feet, smiling slightly. Dominika looked up at her and frowned slightly, as if victim to a nagging half memory. “Have we met before?” she asked.

Then the skin on her face grew taut and her eyes widened as she finally located the memory.

“I don’t know who you are,” Dominika said tonelessly.

“That’s right,” said Tasya. The slight smile was still there, and Katya recognised it as the contemplative one she wore when discussing favourite acts of violence. “You don’t know who I am.”

Dominika glanced at Katya, and Katya thought she saw fear and pity in her eyes. Dominika made some mumbled farewells and almost dragged the confused Naida away with her.

Tasya watched her go. “What sort of treason is she in here for?”

“She worked in a news service. Wrote something the FMA didn’t like. What was all that about, Tasya?”

“News. That makes sense. She recognised me.”

“She what? How can you be so calm about it? What if she…”

“She won’t say a thing. She’s scared of me. That friend of hers, though, that Naida, she might be trouble. She’s in my wing. I know her sort. She’ll be sniffing around trying to find some sort of advantage.” Tasya fell into a thoughtful silence.