There was a silence. Then Oksana said, “The Yagizban base. It must have been a set-up. The Yags conned you, Katya.”
“And they built a full scale replica of a Terran colony ship and sank it in the middle of the Peklo Volume? I know what I saw. I always thought the FMA was there for all of us. It never crossed my mind to ask what was going on in the governmental corridors.”
She thought of something Kane had once said. He’d been right, damn him.
“People are people,” she said. “Our ancestors put power into the hands of a small council with insufficient checks and balances as to how they used that power. Corruption had set in long before the Terrans returned, but that was a perfect opportunity to declare martial law. Since then it’s been endless wars. War against the Grubbers, or war against the pirates, and now war against the Yagizban. We’re so busy trying to be patriotic heroes we never even question if the wars were ever necessary.”
Oksana wasn’t having it. She shook her head defiantly. “The Federal government would never do any of these things you’ve said they have.”
Alina looked sideways at her. “That’s a pretty nice thing to say considering they’ve staked us out here like kraken bait.”
“I’m sure they thought it was necessary.” Katya saw the light of desperation in Oksana’s eye, the fear of change. She’d seen it in Sergei’s, too. “They know what they’re doing.”
“Yeah,” agreed Alina, “they know exactly what they’re doing. What they’re not doing is caring a bucket of fish guts what happens to us. Think about it, Oks. They could have programmed this shuttle to wait in the moon pool exit tunnel while an empty one went out instead on full automatic. Then the Novgorod or whatever followed us out could have picked us up in its salvage maw. We’d be nice and safe in a big warboat, and who cares what happens to the shuttle? Let Kane and the She-Devil go after it, good riddance to it.”
It was a good idea, Katya admitted to herself, and must surely have occurred to the people behind their current situation. It would, of course, have required substantial extra organisation. However much trouble it would have taken, apparently the three women weren’t worth it in the eyes of the Federal Government. And, of course, if Katya died out there, it would be claimed the Yagizban had murdered her to keep her silent, no matter whose torpedo actually made the kill. Alina and Oksana’s deaths would be entirely acceptable collateral damage.
Katya didn’t think either of them really believed her about what she’d seen in the Red Water. Oksana clung to the notion that the Yagizban had somehow fooled Katya into doing their dirty work for them, while Alina somehow heard what Katya had said, accepted it, and then partially forgot about it. It was as if Katya’s experiences ran contrary to the universe Alina thought she had grown up within, the resulting cognitive dissonance weakening the newer and less established thoughts. Katya couldn’t really blame her; for all her apparent cynicism, the FMA was a godlike entity to Alina, and it would take more than some hearsay to break her faith.
The one thing that did stick with both her guards was that they would not be intercepted by pirates or Yagizban, so they relaxed, played games, and told one another anecdotes. Here, at least, they had no problems of belief or comprehension when Katya told them about Killer Kane and the Chertovka. Oksana was disappointed and Alina unsurprised that Kane was polite and thoughtful, and was not very keen on killing people as a rule. “Where’s the return in being a mass murderer?” Alina pointed out. “Piracy is a business. Kane’s a businessman.” She nodded sagely at this wisdom.
They were far more intrigued by Tasya Morevna. “Is it true she collects the heads of those she kills in battle?” asked Alina with an artlessness Katya expected more from Oksana.
“No,” said Katya. “She a real warrior, but she’s not a sadist or a lunatic; not most of the time, anyway.”
“Is it true she wears Terran armour?” asked Oksana.
“Yes, she does. She’s painted it up a bit, and it’s not a complete suit — the torso section mainly — but, yes, it’s definitely not Russalkin.”
“How does she look in it?”
“I bet she looks awesome!” said Alina, and they all laughed. It seemed, Katya thought, that Tasya’s fan club extended even beyond the Yagizban, who certainly held her in awe.
Yet, slow as the journey was, it still had to come to an end. Katya found the shadow of her uncertain future deepening around her again, and her guards were sorry too, for they had come to like one another. They spent the last six hours of the approach tidying up the inside of the shuttle, which had begun to look like a dormitory, chatting about almost anything but their destination. Alina said at least they’d been going about as fast as the shuttle could manage; the shadowing warboat or boats would only have been making a fraction of their usual cruising speed. She mimed the helmsman pushing forward an imaginary throttle control a tiny bit and then slowly tapping his fingers while wearing an expression of slack-jawed boredom. She snapped back to herself, announced “Three days later!” and instantly returned to the same expression and finger tapping. Oksana and Katya laughed and Alina joined in.
Katya decided not to mention how glad she was that she hadn’t murdered the pair of them earlier, no matter how kindly meant the comment was.
With an hour to go, the shuttle was in pristine order. Officers Volkova and Shepitko were in their duty uniforms, masers holstered. The prisoner, Katya Kuriakova, was in her yellow convict uniform sitting in restraints opposite to them. While the scene was very similar to that of three days earlier, the tone was very different. Officer Alina Shepitko had apologised when one of Prisoner Kuriakova’s wrists was nipped by its restraining strap as it was tightened. Where once they had glared at her, now they cast her sympathetic glances.
“It’ll be OK,” Officer Oksana Volkova told the prisoner. “Just keep your head down. Don’t piss off the guards. We’ll give you a great report when we’re debriefed. Model prisoner. They’ll go easy on you.”
Katya smiled. It was a weak, unconvincing smile, for she was touched by the kindness of her escorts, but she also knew what was waiting for her, and she was afraid. “Thanks, Oksa… Officer Volkova. I appreciate that. They’re not bringing me to the Deeps just to lock me away, though.” Her smile dissolved away altogether. “They’re taking me there because it has the main Secor interrogation facility. They’re going to torture me, and then they’re going to kill me.” She made a half sob sound in her throat and looked at them without hope. “I’m really scared.”
“No,” said Alina. “No, they won’t do that.”
“Two Secor agents have told me that is exactly what they’re going to do.” She tried to smile to reassure them that it was alright, none of this was their fault, but the muscles in her face twisted it into a grimace.
The shuttle carried out the approach to the Deeps perfectly, handing over to the prison station’s drone control for the final docking. The screen on the forward bulkhead flickered from the status display to an image from the shuttle’s nose-camera, enhanced and augmented with sonar, transponder, and positional data to summon the great bulk of the notorious prison out of its submarine gloom.
It was vast. She knew it would be, but seeing the scale metrics define it, brought it home to her. The only other thing she’d ever seen that huge had been the Yagizban floating settlement FP-1. The Deeps was not quite as big as that artificial island, but at a little over half a kilometre in diameter and eighty metres or so high, it was big enough. It was also, in a small irony, of Yagizban design, an artefact from the days when the FMA fondly believed that the Yagizban were happy with Federal rule.