The speakers clicked into life. “On ancient Earth, we came from the sea,” spoke the governor’s voice, “and now, we are consigned to it; to wipe away our sins, to expunge us from a universe that will do better without us.”
Sevnik turned to Katya. “I thought you said the governor was no longer a threat?”
“He isn’t. It’s a recording. He had this planned all along.” The tilt in the corridor floors was becoming obvious. “What’s he done?”
Sevnik swallowed hard. His complexion was grey. “He’s blown the ballast tanks.”
“He’s blown the tanks?” That didn’t seem so bad to Katya. To a submariner, “blowing the tanks” just meant driving out all the water with compressed air to give them maximum positive buoyancy. “So we’re rising?”
Sevnik shook his head urgently. “No, I don’t mean he’s blown the tanks empty. I mean he’s blown them clear off.”
One of the desks making up the barricade fell over.
Katya saw sweat starting to appear on Sevnik’s brow. Being shot at had not bothered him unduly, but now he was afraid. “There’s an emergency protocol in case the prisoners ever took control of the facility. It detonates charges on the tanks’ pylons. We’re sinking like a rock.”
“Tasya!” shouted Katya. “The governor’s scuttled the whole station!”
“I was beginning to work that out myself,” she shouted back. “Better to kill the prisoners and the surviving guards than allow a mass escape. Wish I could meet the genius who came up with that and bang his head off the wall a few times. Captain! No time for subtlety. We have minutes to live unless we reach that pod.”
All caution gone, the captain hurdled the barricade. “Come on!” he shouted to those still sheltering behind him. “Follow me! If it moves, shoot it!”
Tasya and her team were out of the office door in a second following him and, as soon as they could get over the barricade, so was the remainder of the captain’s team, Oksana, and Katya.
The inmate who’d thrown the grenade watched it roll back past his doorway. “Hey!” he shouted to anyone who might reply. “Hey, what’s…?” As he spoke, he leaned out of cover and was shot by Captain Sevnik.
As they ran, Katya’s mind was working quickly. Why was the Deeps tilting like this? Why didn’t it just sink?
Because it was roughly saucer shaped and one edge of it was slightly heavier, she told herself. Out of the five sectors, the administration sector contained the main boat docks. That was why it was heavier, and that was why, without the ballast tanks in place to keep the station trimmed, it was sinking a little faster.
Above them there was nothing but the corridor ceiling, some service utilities, and the inner hull. Through it, she could hear a slowly growing roar. The Deeps may once have been intended to be mobile, but that scheme had been dropped early. Now its outer skin was festooned with sensors and other equipment that rendered it well short of perfectly hydrodynamic. The roaring was the sound of the sea moving more and more quickly over the station’s skin as it sank.
Katya recalled what she could remember of the Deeps and its location; she’d once had to plot a course to it what seemed like a lifetime ago, but which wasn’t even a year. The first time she’d ever met Kane, that accursed day.
The Deeps was held in place by cables running from the ballast tanks; with the tanks gone, so had the tethers. The station was anchored over a small plateau, the shoulder of an extinct submarine volcano. The approach was from open water, heading towards the mountain. At this sort of angle, that meant…
“Wait!” Katya shouted. “We’re going to crash!”
She grabbed Oksana’s wrist and the back of Tasya’s coveralls. Tasya whirled, her natural assumption being that anything unexpected was potentially dangerous. The rest of the party slowed to a confused halt, except Captain Sevnik.
The impact was a moment later. They all fell and rolled along the corridor floor. Sevnik, however, had been running too fast. He couldn’t stop and, to his horror, felt the deck sloping even more rapidly now. With a cry of impotent anger, he was airborne.
“The offices! Quickly!” cried Katya. “The whole place is turning over!”
Tasya was on her feet in a second, bodily throwing Alina through an office doorway next to them. There was a male shout from inside, and the crack of a maser going off. It seemed that Tasya had found an armed inmate to take her wrath out on after all.
Quickly they streamed through the door, Katya and Oksana last, but as Oksana reached the doorway, an office chair from the barricade rolled by and clipped her, knocking her off balance.
The tilt of the corridor was too great for her to climb the flooring and, terrified, she started to slide away from them.
Tasya had stayed on the door. She saw Katya look back and started to say, “Leave her.”
“Grab my feet,” said Katya, and dived after Oksana.
Oksana had, naturally, been reaching out with her injured arm, and naturally, that was the one Katya grabbed at. She locked both hands around Oksana’s wrist and felt Tasya’s hands clasp around her own ankle just as the corridor became less like a corridor and started to remind Katya of the lift shaft she’d enjoyed so much in Atlantis.
“Oh, gods, Katya! Please! Don’t let go!” Oksana begged as gravity swung her off the floor.
Beyond her, Katya had an impression of a body spread-eagled a hundred metres away against a bulkhead surround. She tried to ignore it, although she knew it must be Captain Sevnik.
Everything was in chaos, the crash of the furniture as it left the office floors and fell against the walls, cries from all around, and Tasya swearing in grunts as she held onto Katya’s ankle, bearing the weight of both her and Oksana.
Behind them, a rumbling was growing louder. Katya saw Oksana’s eyes look past her and widen. The barricade that so recently had sheltered them from harm was coming to kill them.
Katya risked a look over her shoulder. Tasya, always sensitive to danger was already looking into an “up” that was recently a “back.” Above them on the slope, the desk was barely in contact with the floor anymore, accelerating rapidly towards them.
It was impossible for Tasya to pull both Katya and Oksana back in time and, if she stayed where she was, she would be hit too.
Tasya looked down and her eyes met Katya’s.
“Let go,” said Katya.
Without hesitation, Tasya did.
Oksana screamed as they fell. Katya didn’t have time for such a luxury. She drew up her legs and kicked against the wall, pulling Oksana closer as she did. The desk, heavy and already travelling at speed, clipped her hard enough to hurt but not to disable. She ignored the pain and grabbed the edge of it with her left hand. As she wrestled herself and Oksana across its underside, its corners kept scraping the floor and wall, threatening to flip it.
Suddenly, they hit the bulkhead surround she’d seen from above. The impact drove the breath from her, and she felt something break inside. Through the wave of pain, she had a momentary vision of Sevnik’s body on the other side of the surround, his eyes open, the left of his skull crushed. Then the desk flipped over the edge of the support and they were falling again.
Oksana was no longer screaming. Perhaps she’s dead and all this was for nothing, thought Katya. But she’d had to try.
But now “down” wasn’t neatly along the corridor anymore. Katya kicked against the floor with her failing strength and the desk moved towards the ceiling. As it slowly became the floor, she hoped that it wasn’t just made of cosmetic tiling, or they would be falling through it in a moment. The surface of the desk touched down tentatively, then solidly, and Katya found herself sledging along the ceiling. As the angle grew less, the desk started to slow. Behind her she could hear shouting, and she looked back to see the guards and Tasya running down the ridiculously steep slope of the ceiling. She knew they had no choice; the fact that there had been no further impacts beneath their feet meant that the Deeps had rolled off the edge of the plateau and was falling. Below them was a drop of two thousand metres ending in a lake of the Soup. If the water pressure didn’t crush the prison, the massive pressures within the heavy metal cocktail of the Soup definitely would.