Jonathan Howard - Katya's War

This news did more to convince the sector leader than even the demonstration with the gun. He lowered his own and said, “Bubnov? You killed Bubnov?”

“He was a threat,” said Tasya without emotion.

The sector leader smiled. “Oh, madam, you’re an angel among us all. You killed Bubnov. That’s the first piece of good news I’ve heard today.”

Tasya went to join the group of guards. Katya followed a pace behind, reapplying the mindset she had adopted while pretending to be a Secor operative in Atlantis. She found it in herself quite easily — mild arrogance, some impatience, and a limited sense of humour, all of it acid.

“He’s locked us out of his office,” said the sector head, “as well as the entire security system. There’s only one fully operational console in the whole facility, and it’s on the other side of this door.”

Katya weighed the door up, then looked at the group of guards. She pointed at the maser carbine that hung at the shoulder of one of them. “I’ll take that,” she said, fighting down the urge to say “please.”

With the reluctance of a child giving up a favourite toy, the guard handed the gun over. “OK,” said Katya, feeling very professional as she put the carbine’s shoulder sling over her head and let the weapon hang by her side. “We’re going to need a perimeter to protect this location while we work. If you could place a fire team one bulkhead down on the stairs, and then station some sentries to keep the other approaches covered, then that would do the job. Can you organise that for us, sir?” She said “sir” in the tone beloved of officials who mean “I am saying this as a courtesy, but we both know I am the more important one here.” Then she looked the sector leader in the eye.

“Yes, ma’am,” he said immediately. “Team 2! On the stairs, one bulkhead down. The rest of you, with me!” Four guards headed for the stairs while the rest ran off around the curve of the corridor until they were lost from sight. Katya waited until even the thumping of their boots had faded before sagging with relief.

“Good work, Kuriakova,” said Tasya. She looked at the door. “Now, our next problem. How do…”

She was interrupted by Katya raising her carbine and firing at the wall beside the door at about head height. She aimed down at knee height and fired again. “My mother worked in maintenance,” she explained. She shouldered the carbine again, put the flats of her hands against the metal of the door and started to drag her hands horizontally across it. Remarkably, it started to slide under her grip. “She once showed me that these internal doors are much less secure than they look. Two little metal catches holds them shut. That’s all.” The door was a few centimetres over in its frame by now, almost starting to show an open crack at the frame. “When the lock jams, they drill these catches out. Maser’s faster.”

The edge of the door was far enough clear of the frame to get fingers through. Alina grabbed it and pulled. Inside, Katya saw the large desk so familiar from the weekly “Words from the Governor” broadcasts, Radomir Senyavin himself sitting at it, regarding them with tranquil equanimity. But on the floor behind him, Katya could see the bodies of the security chief and of Dr Durova.

The governor rose from his chair as if to welcome them, and Katya thought this might go easier than she’d been anticipating. Then she saw his right hand rising, the heavy maser gripped in it.

The crack of a maser discharge was shockingly loud, but then, it wasn’t the governor’s that was firing. Tasya’s gun had gone off only a few centimetres from Katya’s ear. It wasn’t a very loud noise, but it was sharp, and would be ringing in her hearing for a few minutes.

The governor’s gun fell to the floor, and for a moment Katya feared Tasya had killed him. Then she noticed the governor’s middle and ring fingers were lying beside the dropped gun.

Senyavin looked down to examine his maimed hand with utter detachment, as if he had just noticed a hang nail. They were barely bleeding, the maser having cauterised the wounds as it made them. “You blew off my fingers,” he observed. “You’re a very good shot.”

Tasya walked quickly to him, kicked one of his legs out from beneath him and, moving behind him, applied a foot to the back of the other knee to bring him to his knees. “Thank you,” she said. “And just think, you have another six fingers and a couple of thumbs for me to amputate if you don’t do exactly as you’re told. Katya, get his identity card.”

As Katya went through the governor’s jerkin, giving him an apologetic smile as she patted his pockets, he said to Tasya, “So, you’re the Chertovka.”

“I am. How long have you known?”

“I knew they were contaminated,” he said, looking back at the bodies. “I planted surveillance bugs in the interrogation rooms and in the chief’s office. I listened to him making deals, misappropriating supplies. I listened to her making deals too. I knew it was too late for all of us then.” He nodded at Oksana and Alina, standing nervously by the door. “Even the newest guards have been corrupted by this sink of filth. Criminals, and deviants, and perverts. All of you.”

He looked at Katya then, and his eyes narrowed as if seeing something new. “But, what are you? The light burns… I can smell the truth in you…”

Katya had found the card and held it in her fingers. Governor Senyavin’s unblinking stare froze her, though. Froze her with a fear she hadn’t felt for a long time. A squirming in her mind that hinted that somehow she knew exactly what he was talking about.

Then Tasya impatiently snatched the card from her, and the moment was gone. Senyavin was just a raving maniac again, not the holder of some secret reality that Katya could almost, almost see.

Tasya swiped the card through the desk console’s reader. An eye scanner mounted by the display activated, its red targeting beams spiralling across the governor’s face as Tasya pulled him toward it. She noticed he had clamped his eyes tightly shut, a small act of defiance that did nothing for her temper.

“Open your eyes right now, you worthless bucket of vomit, or I will cut out your eyelids,” she hissed in his ear.

The threat apparently did little to frighten him, despite its undoubted sincerity. Instead, he smiled slowly and, just as slowly, opened his eyes. The red beam found his right eye, locked onto it and in a moment the screen displayed the Deeps’ top level system administration protocols.

Tasya shoved the governor to one side, sending him sprawling on the floor. He lay there watching her as she started to sort through the operations menus, seeking out the one that she wanted. The whole time, his smile did not waver.

Katya spared the display a sideways look, but she found she couldn’t look away from Senyavin. She had a feeling something was coming, something that was burning inside his head, that flooded him with a religious ecstasy, something she could almost perceive.

“Tasya…” she said. The sense of menace growing by the moment made her voice waver.

“In a moment,” said Tasya. “There! That’s what we want.” She tapped on the board display and was rewarded by a perky little upbeat bleep. “Escape pods are enabled. Now let’s get the hell out of here before the guards steal them all.”

“I embrace my destiny,” said Senyavin.

The console’s screen suddenly changed to a display of a complex waveform. “What the hell…?” said Tasya under her breath.

“By my sacrifice, I absolve us all,” said Governor Senyavin, and closed his eyes. His smile grew rapturous.

Too late, Tasya recognised a speech analysis program accepting a verbal trigger. She reached for the board, but the display had already changed to read, “Project: REVELATION active,” and then went blank. Tasya snatched up the governor’s identity card from where it lay on the desk and swiped it through. The console remained inactive, with not even a tone to indicate a failed card reading.