“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.”
CHAPTER TWENTY
Retinal Identification
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.”
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.”