Katya was trying to drag Oksana to the escape pod door when the others reached them. The corridor was flat by then, but already starting to pitch over again as the Deeps toppled towards destruction. Tasya was with her in a moment, pulling Oksana’s arm over her neck and pulling her along.
“Get that hatch open!” she barked at the guards. They needed no second telling.
“Is she still alive?” asked Katya gripping her side. The pain was blossoming, blazing through her ribs every time she took a breath.
“Don’t know,” replied Tasya, and they carried the limp body to the opening hatch.
Whatever formalities about boarding an escape pod the guards may have learned during training was largely ignored in the rush to get clear of the doomed prison. Two guards took positions on either side of the entry into the circular pod, and more or less threw the others inside as they reached the doorway. The pod’s circumference was occupied by ten inset seats, albeit seats currently over the heads of the escapers, and they moved under the seat they planned to take, possibly the only bit of the escape drill that had survived the chaos.
Alina was one of the guards and helped Tasya and Katya get Oksana inside. As soon as they were all in, she hit the door closure control.
“Don’t eject until we’re more or less upright,” warned Tasya. “It was never built to work upside down.” Then to the others, “Grab hold of anything solid.”
The pod, and the Deeps around it, slowly performed another one hundred and eighty degree flip. Long before it had completed it, the seats were at an angle they could all climb into and pull on the safety harnesses. Katya stayed with Oksana to lock her into her seat. Before she ran to her own, she quickly checked Oksana’s throat for a pulse. It was there; not strong, but at least she still lived.
For a brief moment, the escape pod was perfectly the right way up. Alina needed no prompting to arm and trigger the release mechanism.
For a moment nothing happened, and despair sparked in more than one heart. Then there was a dull thud beneath their feet and a sense of movement. No longer the slow tumble of the sinking prison, but a slight rocking as the escape pod — a convex underside and a conical upper, connected by a metre and a half high cylindrical section — rose towards the surface.
“Evacuation unit Alpha-4 has successfully disengaged and is operating normally,” announced the pod’s computer in the soothing tones somebody had decided would be most beneficial to those in an emergency. “A distress signal is already being transmitted. Help is on its way.”
“Does it know that, or is it just saying it?” asked one of the guards.
Katya knew a signal wouldn’t reach anyone until they got to the surface, but she didn’t want to speak because that meant taking a breath, and breathing really hurt.
“You’ve cracked some ribs, Kuriakova,” said Tasya. She nodded at Oksana. “She probably has, too. That was quite an impact you took.” Suddenly she grinned. “I loved it when you said ‘Let go.’ I could just see the calculations going on inside your head. You’re like me. You figure out the odds and take the crazy risk, even if it’s not quite as crazy as it looks.”
“I didn’t take a risk,” said Katya and winced. Cracked ribs. Yes, that would explain a lot. “You were going to let me go anyway.”
Tasya looked like she might deny it, then shrugged. “So why did you tell me to let you go?”
“So, if it was the last thing that ever happened to me, it was because I asked for it. It was my choice.”
Tasya looked at Katya with appraising eyes. “Is that pride I hear, Kuriakova?”
Katya said nothing. It hurt too much to say.
The pod broke the surface to find fourteen others already there and, while they watched, another surfaced about a kilometre away.
Russalka’s weather system was having close to the best weather it seemed capable of — a stiff breeze and a fine rain. Above them some of the dense cloud cover was distinctly thinner than others areas, allowing moderate amounts of light in. In Russalkin terms, this was balmy weather. It was more than calm enough for them to have opened the evacuation hatches on the pod’s upper surface to look around.
“Well, that’s sixteen transmitters squawking,” said Glazov, the guard. “That should draw something.”
As if answering him, the water boiled some two hundred metres away. Rising slowly from the depths, they saw a rakish conning tower break the surface, followed by the lean and lethal form of an attack boat.
“Is that the Vengeance?” said Glazov a little nervously. It certainly wasn’t a standard Federal design. The only boat on the Federal lists that looked like that was the Vengeance, stolen from the Yagizban. “If it isn’t, then it’s Yag.”
“It’s neither,” said Tasya airily, “it’s the Vodyanoi,” and launched a flare to attract the boat’s attention.
“What are you doing?” shouted Glazov. He dropped back inside the pod to remonstrate, but found Tasya was already back inside and had her gun drawn.
“You’re not Secor,” he said. He turned on Oksana, but she was still unconscious, so he turned on Alina instead. “You lied!”
“To save your lives,” said Katya wearily. “Feds,” she pointed at Tasya, “the Chertovka. The Chertovka,” she wafted her finger around to take in the increasingly worried Federal guards, “Feds. There, now you’re properly introduced and perhaps you’re beginning to understand why Oksana and Alina lied. Put down your weapons and don’t do anything stupid, and there’s no reason you shouldn’t live through this.” The pod began to bob violently in the water as the Vodyanoi came alongside. “And here’s our ride.”
The pod was cleared with less urgency than it had been filled. None of the guards seemed very keen to throw themselves upon the mercy of a notorious pirate and his crew of cut-throats. When the notorious pirate turned out to be a mild-looking man of perhaps forty years who insisted on shaking their hands and welcoming them aboard, and when the cut-throats just looked like a regular crew, they calmed down a little.
The guards were taken below to be checked over and placed in the brig, with the exception of Oksana who was taken to the sickbay, and Alina because Katya feared the other guards might turn on her for her deception. Despite her ribs, Katya stayed topside with Kane. He was looking ruefully at the pods bobbing in the waves.
“Awful. Even if every one of those pods is full, that still means close on a thousand lives lost. Another psychotic break, you say?”
“Governor Senyavin went mad,” said Katya. Only now did she have time to think of all those who’d died. She thought of Dominika and the others. More deaths to haunt her.
“Mad. Mad is such a simple term for something so complicated. As for went mad, I have my doubts about that. He may have been driven to it.”
Abruptly the ocean erupted with a great rushing gout of air and debris some three kilometres away. Kane’s binoculars were at his eyes in a moment, and he watched it grimly. Neither needed to say what it meant; that the Deeps was crushed.
Katya turned away, unable to look. Kane lowered the binoculars and looked at her; she was crying silently, misery in her every fibre.