The Russalkin worked desperately for a year, building new ships, preparing orbital defences, conscripting as many as they could into the FMA to be trained, drilled, prepared to fight to the death to protect their world against the invaders from Earth they knew were coming.
The war, when it came, was short, brutal, and inconclusive. The Terrans arrived, and attacked immediately.
First they destroyed everything the Russalkin had in space — their starships, defence satellites, and the irreplaceable FTL communications array that had been the world’s only link with its fellow colonies. Then the war moved from space into the seas. The Yagizban floating aerospace platforms were hunted down and destroyed within hours, and the Yagizban Enclaves were forced to flood their emergency ballast tanks and hide beneath the waves.
The FMA fought hard against a foe they barely understood. They outnumbered the Terrans, but the Terrans had brought with them advanced technologies that made up for their lack of troops. Settlements were destroyed with horrific losses of life. The Russalkin had prepared evacuation shelters where their children were to wait out the war; the truth of how many of their parents and older brothers and sisters were dying in the battles and massacres was kept from them. To the Russalkin the Terrans ceased to be human at all. They were merciless, degenerate killers. Dirty landgrubbers, come to wipe out the colony and take their world, grubbers who murdered and wrecked without hesitation or pity.
Then, after a little over a year, the war simply petered to a halt. The Terrans had given up, seemingly unable to maintain such a ferocious campaign over such a vast distance from their homeworld. The Russalkin watched the skies fearfully for months, and then they started to rebuild.
War leaves scars, though, and even ten years after the last shots were exchanged, the scars remain obvious. Almost a whole generation was lost, and the next generation found its childhood cut short as they were trained to take the places of their dead or missing parents, brothers, and sisters. The fear of a new attack runs deep, and the FMA has never stepped down from a war footing. New warboats were built, drowned settlements resealed and pumped out, martial law maintained. In the chaos of the aftermath, criminality broke out here and there, culminating in pirate attacks on civilian transports. It seemed that Russalka had fought off an enemy from without, only to find a new one within.
This is Russalka now.
Wounded. Isolated. Proud.
This is Katya’s world.
CHAPTER 1
Judas Box
The locksman took Katya’s identity card, looked at it briefly, and handed it back. The whole time, he never stopped chatting with her uncle.
She took it back feeling slightly cheated. She must have looked at that card a hundred times since it had arrived from the Department of Matriculation, reading and rereading the fine print. Her family had been so happy for her, Uncle Lukyan especially. “Now you’re an adult, Katya!” he’d said, picking her up under the armpits like he’d been doing since she’d been born. “Being an adult isn’t a matter of age. It’s a matter of responsibility. And this card shows you’re ready for that!” There had been a little impromptu party and everything.
And now nobody seemed to care. She hadn’t been expecting fireworks, but she’d hoped for a friendly nod from the locksman, an acknowledgment that she was entering a great fellowship. Instead she was being ignored, standing to one side as the locksman and Uncle Lukyan — she mentally pulled herself up — Captain Pushkin were gossiping like old women while they went through the boat’s documentation and journey plan.
Suddenly, the locksman turned to her. “Going to Lemuria with your uncle, eh?” he said. He didn’t quite say “little girl” but the sense of it floated around. “Seeing relatives or doing some shopping?”
Katya looked at him blankly. This wasn’t going properly at all. She was just trying to come up with a reply that made her sound grown-up when her uncle cut in. “God’s teeth, Mikhail, didn’t you even look at her card properly? She’s an apprentice. This is her first voyage in a crew chair.”
The locksman had the decency to look abashed. “I’m very sorry,” he said to Katya, “may I trouble you for your card again?”
This time the response was much better. “A navigator?” he read and looked at her. “Difficult discipline.” He was still looking at her but the words were clearly meant for her uncle.
“Not for my niece,” said Uncle Lukyan with visible pride. “She has the brains for it. You should have seen her examination results. I think the examiner thought she’d been cheating. ‘Well, Captain Pushkin,’” he imitated the examiner’s wheedling tone, “’they are remarkably good results. Remarkably good.’”
The locksman laughed. “Durchev thinks people need crib sheets to put on their boots in the morning.”
Katya watched them chat and thought, one day I’ll be able to talk like that, to know everybody. There goes Katya Kuriakova, the best navigator in the water, they’ll say. She concentrated on trying to make her blue eyes steely, her chin determined, her nose… Her damned nose. She was just going to end up looking sweet and, in all likelihood, adorable. It always happened. She could drown a hospital and they’d still let her off for being in possession of a button-nose. She stopped trying to look heroically competent and concentrated on just not looking chronically winsome.
“Straight light haul to Lemuria, two seats full of electronic components,” her uncle was saying, going through the folder containing their itineraries and permissions. “Sergei will ride shotgun in a passenger position while Katya takes the co-pilot’s seat. Show her what it looks like from the sharp end.”
“Is she going to draw your plot?”
“Yes, I am,” said Katya, tired of them talking about her like she wasn’t there.
The locksman looked at her uncle with a question he didn’t want to say out loud. Lukyan laughed again. “Yes, she can do it. I’d trust her to give me a plot through the Consequentials, never mind an easy haul like Lemuria. She’s got talent, real talent.” He ruffled her short blond hair affectionately. “She’s the family genius.” He closed the folder and put it back in his documents case. “We’d better move or we’ll miss our departure slot. Come on, Katya.”
Katya had been aboard the Baby several times, but always back in the passenger seats. “Don’t step over that line,” her father had once warned her, pointing at the yellow line that split off the pilot and co-pilots’ positions from the rest of the cramped interior, “or Lukyan will have you swimming home.” He had only been half joking. Safety aboard was always a primary concern and breaking the concentration of the crew was absolutely taboo while the controls were live. That yellow line might as well be a steel bulkhead.
Now she found she still couldn’t step over it. Lukyan was already in the left-hand seat and strapping himself in when he noticed she hadn’t joined him. He looked at her, his eyes gentle. “I’m sorry. I forget how important this is for you.” He cleared his throat. “Apprentice Kuriakova, please take the co-pilot’s position.”
“Aye-aye, captain,” she said, too nervous to smile. She stepped past him, over the yellow, and slipped into the co-pilot’s seat. It seemed enormous; all shaped plastic and restraint mountings. As she struggled to get the seat’s safety systems to adjust to her shape and to remember her in future, a dour face appeared around the open lock door.