Lukyan nodded curtly and turned back to look sadly at Katya. Innocence is chipped away at slowly, he thought. To see it torn away like this from his own niece was almost as painful for him as for her. “Katinka, always remember this. You saved a life.”
“I took a life!”
“If you’d done nothing, that boy would be dead and we’d all still be prisoners.”
“I could have warned him, told him to drop the gun…”
“He’d have ignored you, like he ignored Petrov. Or he would have shot you. Did you see the look in his face when he was about to shoot Suhkalev? He was enjoying it. You did the best thing any of us could have done.” He took her shoulder in one great hand and gently tilted her chin up with the other until she was looking him in the eye. “You’ve given us a chance, but we don’t have much time. We have to move, Katinka. Can you do it?”
She looked past him at the Novgorod’s crew arrayed around the door, some looking at her anxiously, some impatiently, some with pity. Something hardened inside her and she realised with regret that it was her heart.
I will not be pitied, she thought.
She shook herself loose from Lukyan and nodded. “I’m ready.”
“You’re sure?”
“Positive.” She walked to Petrov leaving her uncle looking at her back with an uncertain dismay. “I know where we can get Yagizban uniforms,” she told the lieutenant.
They worked the theft in two stages; most of the FMA crew hid in another unfinished room on the next level down while Katya, Petrov and the armed rating, a woman called Olya who seemed indecently happy to have a gun, took a lift car down to the lower levels. The area was as quiet as during Katya’s first visit, the code on the clothing store’s door hadn’t been updated, and they changed into Yagizban worker’s uniforms in frantic silence. Once disguised, they loaded up a trolley with more than enough uniforms for everyone else and took it back as if on an errand. If anybody challenged them and proved difficult to satisfy, Petrov had the pistol in his pocket and the carbine lay under the topmost clothing packet on the trolley, ready for a rapid draw.
They needn’t have worried; they passed almost nobody and the few people they did see seemed utterly uninterested in a pile of uniforms being moved around the complex. They reached the rest of the crew still without the alarm being sounded. “So much for the legendary Yagizban efficiency,” commented Petrov as he helped hand out the clothes, “they haven’t even noticed we’re gone yet.”
“What’s the plan, lieutenant?” Lukyan was trying to find overalls big enough for him and was having little luck.
“Two possibilities. We grab a boat and get out of here, try and warn the FMA. I don’t like that one. If the Leviathan is going to be friends with the Conclaves, we’re just giving them the chance to cement that.”
“It could be hostile,” said Katya. “Kane said…”
“Whatever the estimable Kane said, the Leviathan is making its way here with its stealth switched off. That doesn’t sound like an attack to me. I think Tokarov is still in control. But, as Kane suggested, that control might be weak. It might not take much to push the artificial part of the synthetic intelligence into the dominant role.”
“That’s Plan B?”
“Yes, Ms Kuriakova, that’s Plan B. The Leviathan is going to be attacked by the Conclaves. We’ll see what happens then.”
Lukyan grimaced. “This is too subtle for me. How are you going to make the Yagizban attack their own boat?”
“They’re not, uncle,” answered Katya. “We are, using FP-1’s defensive systems.”
Petrov laughed humourlessly. “Plan B in all its glory.” His smile vanished. “We’re going to take the bridge long enough to launch weapons against the Leviathan. Then we wreck the place and get out of there like our lives depended on it.” A shadow of his smile returned. “Actually, now I think about it…”
“What do we use for weapons, sir?” asked Olya.
“My pistol, your carbine, surprise, and animal ferocity. Battles have been won with less.”
CHAPTER 16
Deep Black
“The lift opens directly onto the command deck. It’s big so don’t let that surprise you. There are guards posted on either side of the door as you go in and there must be at least another four or five scattered around the place.”
“Thank you, Ms Kuriakova,” said Petrov. They were already in the lift and on their way to the bridge. The cars, although large, could only hold ten people fairly close together and Petrov had said it would be better to take in ten people who had enough room to get out quickly than sixteen and be packed in there like krill on a manta whale’s baleen. Lukyan had argued against Katya going in, but she had insisted on going as the only one amongst them who had been to the command deck and knew how it was set out. Petrov had agreed and taken the furious Lukyan aside, talking quietly to him for a few minutes until Lukyan’s rage subsided. “You can’t protect her forever,” she’d overheard. “It’s what she wants to do.” Lukyan had come back and stared at her for the longest time before saying she could go. Then he added that he was coming too and he’d tear the head off anybody who said otherwise.
“The plan is simple,” Petrov told the present crew. “We go in, deal with the guards, take their weapons and then it will probably turn into a fire fight with the remaining troopers. An alert will almost certainly be called. When that happens, the other half of our number will make their way to the docks and secure a boat. We target the Leviathan, launch everything we can and then destroy the command stations so they cannot issue destruct orders to the torpedoes after we leave. We head straight for the decks in time to board the boat that has been commandeered for us. Any questions?”
There were none. Even to Katya, the plan seemed childishly simple. The best plans were always the simple ones, she’d heard. This was her chance to find out.
“Ready?” Petrov asked Olya. She nodded and hefted the carbine. “Good. You go right, I’ll go left.” The lift door opened.
The size of the FP-1’s bridge awed Katya a little even now, but her attention was drawn to something else. Or rather the lack of something else. The bridge was deserted. The idea slithered through her mind like mercury on steel and came out of her mouth before the doors had even finished opening. “It’s a trap!”
Petrov slapped the door close control but it didn’t respond, overridden by the main computer. “Down!” he shouted. Olya wasn’t listening; she was still following Plan B, unaware that they were being forced to come up with a Plan C. She stepped out of the lift and headed right. There was no guard there and she stood uncertainly for a moment, looking for a target. Somewhere over by the starboard hologram projector, there was a crack of a maser, and she sprawled onto the deck.
“Novgorods!” Lukyan roared the battlecry, and surged out of the lift like a torpedo from its tube.
“Pushkin!” shouted Petrov after him. “Don’t be a fool, man!” Then he looked around at his huddled crew and realised that the only choice left to them might be whether to die fighting or trapped in that lift. “Novgorods!” he bellowed, running forward, the tiny maser pistol in his hand cracking repeatedly.
It seemed that the Yagizban had been expecting the escaped prisoners to behave rationally and surrender. There was a stunned silence that lasted the few seconds before a lucky shot from Petrov’s maser caught a poorly concealed trooper in the arm and he fell screaming. Then the shooting really started.