Jonathan Howard - Katya's War

“No! Don’t shoot!” said Katya, running to catch up. “It’s OK, Tasya’s OK!”

The young guards saw her and wavered. In that moment, Tasya reached them. “Do as I tell you and we will live through this,” she said to Alina while simultaneously and in a single smooth motion putting Oksana’s gun arm into a lock hold and taking the maser from her momentarily paralysed hand. Tasya released Oksana, who sank to her knees, clutching her wrist.

The men shouted their approval at seeing a gun in the hands of a fellow inmate and started to surge forward. They got less than two steps before the leaders realised that the fellow inmate in question was pointing the maser at them. In the sudden quiet, the sound of Tasya thumbing the maser’s safety catch to the “off” position seemed very loud. Alina started to point her gun at Tasya but Katya quickly stepped between them, shaking her head and mouthing “No!” urgently.

“What these girls wanted you to do still stands. Back the way you came, and don’t come back through here if you value your lives.”

One of the men’s leaders was a massively built specimen, whose uniform predictably bore the crime MURDERER . The sleeves of his coveralls were rolled up to reveal densely muscled forearms, covered in gang scars. He laughed at Tasya. “Is that so, bitch?” he said, took a mocking step forward, grinning malevolently as he did so.

He died instantly, a maser wound appearing exactly at the top of his nose, between his eyes.

The men shuffled a horrified half step backwards as they looked at the dead man and then at Tasya.

“I am Colonel Tasya Morevna of the Yagizban Special Forces Executive,” she said in loud, clear tones. “Sometimes called the Chertovka. I have killed many, many times. If I kill every one of you, it won’t even come close to doubling the number of lives I have taken.” The group of about thirty men stood indecisive. “I will start shooting at the count of three. I rarely miss. One…”

The men ran.

Tasya watched them go with evident distaste. “ Such children. Playing in gangs at their age.”

Oksana had climbed back to her feet and was looking at Tasya with wide eyes. “You’re… not really the She-Devil… are you?”

“I am Tasya Morevna. I’m not much concerned with what people choose to call me. Keep rubbing your wrist. The sensation will return soon.” She nodded at the corridor through to the wing, now populated only by the corpse of an over-confident man. “Can you seal that door?”

“No,” said Alina, her gun now down by her side. “The governor’s overridden all the lock codes. We can’t do a thing with them. We were trying when the inmates came through.”

“Never mind,” said Tasya. “Where’s the nearest escape pod?”

“What?”

“We’re escaping. There are pods for that. Where’s the nearest one?”

“We can’t…”

“We’re coming with you,” said Oksana. They all looked at her, Alina with her jaw dropping open. “The Deeps is screwed, Alina. If we can’t keep the inmates back, we’re worse than dead.”

“We’ve got the guns!”

“Alina! Don’t you get it? The governor has unlocked all the doors. All of them!”

Alina suddenly understood. “Oh, gods. The weapon lockers.”

“Weapon lockers?” said Tasya. “We have to get moving right away.”

“The nearest escape pod is this way,” said Oksana. She ran off up the corridor.

It was close, no more than fifty metres away, but even before they reached it, the red lights on the status board next to the pod’s entrance hatch did not bode well.

“Has somebody already taken it?” said Katya.

Alina looked at the board while Oksana ran her identity card through the hatch control reader to no effect. “It’s locked,” Alina said. “The governor’s ahead of us. He’s locked down all the escape pods.”

“Then I shall just have to persuade him to unlock them. The security systems, I see they use retinal scanners. Do they check whether the eye is in a living body?”

Oksana looked sick. Alina said, “Yes, they check whether there’s a pulse in the eye’s blood vessels.”

Tasya was disgruntled. “Damn,” she said. “There goes my first plan. OK, lead us to the governor’s office. We’ll have to take him alive.”

All of the lifts had been immobilised, so the party took to the stairwell to get to the command level of the administration sector.

As a submariner, Katya had already thought of the alternative escape route of taking any boat that happened to be in dock, but Oksana said the docking ports were all unoccupied. Even the shuttle that had brought them had long since departed on other Federal business. There was no alternative but to force the governor into enabling the escape pods. Katya wasn’t looking forward to seeing what sort of force Tasya would bring to bear.

The stairwell was imposing in itself; a great spiral in a steel tube running up the full height of the Deeps. Between every level a horizontal bulkhead ran across the shaft, a wide arced opening in it allowing personnel to climb and descend through it. If the bulkheads were to be closed, a heavy hatch slid across to cover the opening, its leading edge engaging with a step’s riser and then the whole thing locking and sealing. Russalkin tended not to dither in the openings of bulkheads equipped with automated doors — the spectre of being crushed by an emergency closure haunted their nightmares. A doorway can be stepped through in a moment, though; it took several to climb the steps through one of these horizontal guillotines. Even Tasya noticeably sped up as she passed through them, the quicker to be clear.

They reached the door leading out onto the topmost corridor and paused to listen.

“Can I have my gun back?” whispered Oksana.

“No,” said Tasya, and that was that.

Satisfied that there was no sound ahead, Tasya signalled that they should follow and moved forward. The group of them breasted the curve of the corridor together to discover several frustrated looking guards standing outside the governor’s office.

There was an astonished pause, and then Katya and Tasya found themselves looking down the barrels of six pistols, one of them — judging from his uniform — held by a sector leader. Katya froze from fear, Tasya from tactical common sense. She could see the guards were confused rather than aggressive — perhaps they could talk their way out of this. She just needed to come up with a convincing lie…

“Lower your guns, you idiots!” said Oksana. “They’re Secor!” She stepped past Tasya to speak to the guards. “They’re agents!”

The sector leader had a black eye and a bloody nose, apparently having already run into prisoners out of bounds. “What are you talking about?” he demanded, “they’re prisoners!”

“No, the White Death had them in here to spy on the inmates. Why did you think they had her,” she nodded sideways at Katya, “in for interrogation so many times? She was making her reports.”

The other guards looked confused enough to accept anything at this point, but the sector leader wasn’t going to be convinced so easily. “She’s got a gun,” he said, levelling his own at Tasya’s. “How do I know you haven’t been threatened into saying this?”

Oksana let her shoulders droop with visible exasperation. “I gave her my gun,” she said. “She’s a better shot than I am, to be honest. We’re not being held at gunpoint. Look…” She turned to Tasya and held her hand out. Without hesitation Tasya reversed the pistol and placed it in Oksana’s hand grip first. Oksana took it, held it up to show the sector leader that she was in full control of it, then returned it to Tasya in the same way. “She’s Secor. And an amazing shot. She put down Bubnov when he and his gang tried to get us.”