When he had gone, Sergei said, “I don’t have any family left, Katya. Not blood family.”
“I know.”
“You’re the closest thing I have left. I’ll go with you.”
“Sergei, it’s not just going to be dangerous at the time, it’s going to be dangerous afterwards, too.” She closed her eyes and tried to marshal her thoughts. It was inevitable that she would have to tell him exactly what Kane and Tasya had asked of her sooner or later. It might as well be now.
She opened her eyes, looked Sergei in the face and said, “It’s treason. They want me to commit treason. If the Feds catch me, they’ll kill me. I doubt there’d even be a trial.”
Sergei’s mouth dropped open. He was a typical Federal citizen in so many ways — he would complain and whine and resent “those Fed bastards” every day, but they were still his bastards. His loyalties had lain with them so long, any ability to see them as anything but part of the natural scheme of Russalkin life had withered years ago. Treason was insane, beyond his capacity to understand.
Katya smiled wanly. “Exactly, and that’s why you’re not going. I can’t ask you to help me. I won’t ask you to help me. Just… when it happens, if I succeed… don’t think too badly of me. While you were gone, I saw… Everything has changed, Sergei. Russalka is dying, will die. It will take something… major to stop what’s happening here.”
“Katya. What do they want you to do?”
She shook her head. “It’s much, much better you don’t know. If you know, it makes you an accomplice.” She prepared to go, conscious she may already have said too much. “I’ll speak to Kane. Get you released.”
“Katya, please, whatever they’ve asked you to do, don’t do it. I’m begging you…”
It was more than she could bear. Sergei represented ever Federal citizen who would turn their backs on her, every friend she had, almost every face she knew. “No. You didn’t see…” The images flashed through her mind. Dark glass, shadowed forms, the murdered innocent. “Oh, Sergei. What they’ve done. What they’ve done in our names…” A deep grave, five thousand souls, blood in the Red Water. “It has to stop. It has to stop.”
She wrenched the door open and staggered out into the corridor, her eyes tearing up. She walked quickly past the astonished guard, forcing her emotions back inside until she could reach her cabin. There she sat on her bunk, refusing to sob while the tears ran down her cheeks.
She was dead, she knew it. Everything she had been had burnt in the truth of what she now knew. She was hollow, destroyed, nothing more than a walking bomb to end the world within which she had grown up. She would destroy it all in the slim hope that not doing so was worse.
She knew about fanatics, how they would push themselves to the utmost and willingly die for their ideals and their beliefs. But she wasn’t a fanatic. She didn’t feel a righteous, irresistible need to do anything. The FMA or, at least, the little group at the top of the FMA who made the decisions, they had betrayed her and every Federal citizen they represented. She wished she could feel vengeful, feel some passion for what she was going to do.
She wished she could feel anything at all. She only felt numb, detached, inhuman.
Then she felt something else, something that seeped from the numbness, a sense of order and methodical action, of doing what had to be done. She might be emotionally distanced from what was coming, but perhaps emotion, passion and commitment weren’t necessary. She could see the future mapped out as a series of events, like waypoints on a boat’s course.
She didn’t awaken, because she wasn’t really asleep, but the sense of regaining consciousness was still there. She could feel where her tears had dried. The sensation of them irritated her and she washed her face quickly in the cabin’s little basin. She checked her chronometer and discovered she had been sitting there for half an hour. That was OK, though, because now her mind was settled.
Whereas before, the future had been chaos and fear, now it was bright points on a good chart. Even the point that represented the moment she would be identified as a traitor and probably killed seemed of no more concern than any other. She wondered vaguely if this was how fanatics felt. She had expected more fire, not this cold indifference. She preferred it this way, though. She preferred to feel nothing.
At Kane’s door, she took his vague grunt at her knock to be assent, and entered. He was at his desk, running through what looked like crew timesheets. Beside him were the investigation reports, badly creased from being in his fist but showing signs he had tried to flatten them out.
“Kane,” began Katya, “Sergei’s been under watch for almost a day, now. You said yourself that…”
“He’s innocent,” said Kane, not looking up. “Obviously he’s innocent. Well, of Vetsch’s murder anyway. I can’t speak for what he gets up to in his own time.”
“So… he can be let out?”
Kane looked at her with a baffled expression. “Haven’t I already let him go? No?” He touched a button on his desk console. “Hello? Genevra? Katya’s friend…” He paused, tried to remember, failed, and looked at Katya.
“Sergei Ilyin,” she said patiently.
“Katya’s friend Sergei Ilyin didn’t kill Vetsch. Please release him. Thank you.” He terminated the link without waiting for a reply and went back to studying his screen.
“Yes. Well, anyway,” said Katya, trying to sound nonchalant, “when do you want me to do it? The…” she gestured vaguely, “the treason thing.”
“In a minute,” said Kane, comparing what was on the screen to the reports. He stopped abruptly and looked at her. “I mean to say, we’ll talk about that in a minute. Not that you’ll do it in a minute. You have to be in Atlantis to do it, as you know.” Finally realising he was making a fool of himself, he pointed at the screen. “This is interesting.”
Katya knew from past experience that when Kane was in one of these moods, it was best to indulge him. She looked at the display. “Timesheets. Capitalisation reports. I learned about them when I was studying for my crew card, but I’ve never actually used them. The Lukyan’s too small a concern to need that kind of detail.”
“Good for discipline on a boat like this,” said Kane. “Good to know who’s been doing what, who’s pushing themselves too hard, and who’s swinging the lead. That’s an old Terran term, you know? Very old. Anyway, recent history has cost me two good men, and I am not very happy about that. I am especially not happy about not knowing exactly what happened to them. If it can happen twice, it can happen a third, fourth, however many times.”
“You’re looking for clues in the timesheets?”
“It tells me what they were doing in half their waking hours, so it’s a start. Now, look here. Vetsch never had the opportunity to enter his time aboard your boat onto his sheet, but look at the last thing he did.”
Katya followed Kane’s pointing finger and read off, “Intake maintenance. So?”
“Now, look at Giroux’s. He was on munitions inventory, but that didn’t take his whole shift. The last hour or so…”
“‘Miscellaneous,’” Katya read, and then Giroux’s additional note, “‘Helped out in starboard drive room.’ Where was Vetsch working?”
“Ah, you’re seeing it, aren’t you? Vetsch was clearing the intake filters in the starboard drive room. He was the only one sheeted as working in there, so that’s who Giroux was helping.”
Katya leaned against the cabin wall and crossed her arms as she considered this. “With respect, Kane, the Vodyanoi’s no Novgorod. She’s not huge. People cross paths all the time aboard her.”
“Oh, I know, I know,” said Kane. He leaned back in his chair and crossed his arms too, unconsciously mimicking Katya. “It could well be a coincidence. Probably is a coincidence. I’m just trying to find a pattern where there may be none. Still, I’m going to have a look in the starboard drive room later just to see if…” He shook his head and sighed. “Sounds a bit desperate when I say it out loud; looking for clues. I can’t imagine what a clue that helps explain all this would even look like.”