Jonathan Howard - Katya's War

But the camera/gun did neither. It just watched the fight as it developed, now drawing in more men from the original antagonists’ respective gangs.

Katya noticed a lot of the women looking up at the cameras with confused expressions. It had always been explained in terrifying detail what would happen if any prisoner laid hands upon another and, now that maser bolts were not raining down into the rapidly developing brawl, it was as if righteous believers in a wrathful god had just discovered that the atheists had been right all along.

Then, God spoke. Or, at least, the public address system hummed into life with its usual introductory three notes to gain the attention of the inmates. At the same time the main display screens changed from their usual image of the Federal Penal Office logotype to show Governor Senyavin at his desk. He was flanked to his right by the head of security, a man whose name Katya had never heard but who wore a major’s uniform, and to his right by Dr Durova. The major was looking red in the face, like a man who’d just been overruled in an argument. The doctor looked even paler and more drawn than usual. Only the governor seemed relaxed, even pleased.

“Inmates,” he said, and his voice boomed into every corner and crevice of the facility, bringing an end to fights that the notice announcement chimes had not.

Senyavin paused, and smiled beatifically out of the screen.

“Inmates. Today is a truly extraordinary day, a propitious day, a day that may well live in history. I want to share with you, with all of you, a few deep truths about our existence here on Russalka, a few revelations that I have recently been blessed by, and that will light all our paths in what must follow.” He clasped his hands together and continued. “I would like you all to ask yourselves a very important question: why are we here?”

“Because we got caught!” shouted one of the men who’d only recently been fighting. Those around him laughed, even those from the opposing gang.

“Why are we here on this world? Russalka got along perfectly well for untold millions of years all by itself. What did we bring? We brought ourselves. We brought filth. We brought evil. We have taken from this world, and we have given… nothing. Nothing but pollution and corruption and the cancer we call humanity . Oh, we speak of high aims and morality and such, but really, look at us. We are just a virus that spreads across planets. But, and here is the vital point, at least we are a virus that may recognise ourselves as such. I have a dream, a recurring dream. In it, I see us for what we are, a pestilence, and I see you, the inmates of this foul, pus-filled abscess it pleases us to call a correctional facility, as a particularly malignant strain.”

“Insane,” said Tasya.

Katya was watching Dr Durova. She was looking at the back of the governor’s head as if she could see within, to where twisting worms of madness were eating the governor’s mind. Katya knew the doctor was thinking of the Secor reports of clinical paranoia. Durova looked sideways at the security chief, but he was looking straight ahead, his astonishment at his senior officer’s speech apparent in his eyes.

“You corrupt others.” The governor seemed to be talking to every one of the inmates. “Did you know that? Your sins have put you not only beyond correction, but you are causing others — good, decent people — to become monsters too. I know, I know. I couldn’t believe it at first, either, but then I started to look, to really look, and what I found horrified me.

“It humbled me, too. I am only human, and I know I am no stronger than those around me. I am contaminated by your evil. I am corrupted by your sin. There is no hope for me, but by my actions, perhaps there is still hope for Russalka.”

“Oh, no,” breathed Katya. “Oh, no!” She could almost sense Senyavin’s madness, and worse yet, she knew how it would find expression. “Tasya! He means…”

Senyavin rose from his chair, and all the inmates and the guards saw the heavy maser pistol in his hand. The doctor and the major were the only people in the Deeps who, standing behind the governor, could not.

Senyavin turned to the major. “Thief,” he said simply, and shot the man in the head before he could react.

Doctor Durova cried out in surprise and backed away. Senyavin brought the gun to bear on her calmly, almost leisurely. “Traitor,” he said, and shot her.

There were shouts and gasps of disbelief from the inmates. On the screens, Senyavin sat down again, placed the pistol on the desk top, and looked into the camera. “Two good, reliable, honest people, turned to scum by contact with you. As for the guards, they are in contact with you every day. They are all compromised. We all are. We are all inmates. We are all beyond redemption.” He turned to his desk console and tapped in a few commands.

“Warning. All secure bulkheads are opening,” said the automated voice of the central computer in the slightly testy tone computers the planet over always took when issuing a warning. The bulkhead doors that had closed off the areas the guards had withdrawn to less than half an hour earlier started to slide back.

“The inmates outnumber the guards five to one,” said Tasya. “This is going to turn into a massacre.”

“But the guards are armed,” said Katya, watching in growing anxiety as the two formerly opposed gangs started to move together towards an opened door. By it a sign read “No Inmates Beyond This Point.”

“I’m not saying it’s the guards who’ll be massacred. Some of these scum are wily, though. If there’s a way to get their hands on guns, they’ll find it. This is going to get messy really quickly.” Tasya took Katya’s wrist. “We’re going to have to get moving.”

“Where to?”

“We’ll find an escape pod and a guard or somebody else with clearance to open it for us.”

“What? Why do we need clearance?”

“In case you haven’t noticed, this is a prison. You can’t have the escape pods being easy to get into. The late Dr Durova was supposed to be doing the honours for us, but I think we can say that whole plan is in ashes now. We’re just going to have to make this up as we go along.”

Tasya pulled Katya along, heading for the door the gang of men had just gone through. As she was dragged along in the Chertovka’s wake, Katya was muttering balefully.

“It’s a simple plan. Nothing can possibly go wrong.”

By the time they reached the door, there was shouting beyond it. The male inmates were challenging and swearing at the guards, invisible beyond the wall of yellow convicts’ uniforms. The guards were telling the inmates to return to the hall immediately or suffer the consequences. The guards sounded young and frightened. Katya recognised them.

“That’s Oksana and Alina!” she said. Tasya looked at her questioningly. “The guards who brought me from Atlantis.”

“The guards who…? And you’re on first name terms? You really do know how to make friends and influence people, don’t you, Kuriakova?”

Through the crowded corridor, Katya caught a glimpse of them and realised that Oksana and Alina were alone, backing away from the advancing inmates, masers drawn and levelled, but looking terrified all the same.

“Those are the sorts of friends we could do with at the moment,” said Tasya, a calculating look in her eye. “Stay right behind me. Don’t stop for anything.”

Without waiting for Katya to say anything Tasya strode forward. When she reached the men, she started shoving them aside. “Stand aside. Coming through. Make a hole there.”

The men parted, the conditioned reflex of any Russalkin to step aside at the sound of the magical phrase “Make a hole” too deeply ingrained to be resisted. Tasya cleared the front rank of the men and walked steadily towards Oksana and Alina. Both of them swung their guns to aim at her.