“Damn you snivelling cowards!” It was Tasya, her fury almost incandescent as she swept through the clutter of stations and consoles, indomitable and unstoppable. Lukyan fired on her but her return fire was so accurate that he was forced to break the partial cover of the stanchion and seek more complete protection behind a processor bank.
“Weapons free,” intoned the computer. “Launch in progress. Stand by.”
The room seemed to freeze but for every face turning to the main display. On the holographic image, green crosses trailing short green dotted tails were squirming away from the circle labelled FP-1 towards the arrowhead called LEV. Tasya looked at it for a long moment, anger and dismay working her features.
Then she saw movement and levelled her gun as Petrov rose, his rifle already aimed directly at her. Tasya was faster but Petrov was cooler, taking his time while her maser bolts fanned harmlessly around him. He returned fire, a three pulse burst, and she crumpled without a sound.
Then every console and all three displays in the place went dark. A moment later, they flickered back into subdued life, diagnostic data sliding across them.
Petrov was suddenly by Katya. “What did you do?” he demanded.
“Re-initialised their system. By the time it’s up and running again, it will be too late to stop the torpedoes.” She looked around at the dim flickering lights. “Can we go now?”
“Good time for it,” agreed Petrov. He stood up and laid down a withering fire on the Yagizbans, already in disarray from the reversal of the ambush and the loss of the Chertovka. Lukyan, a second lieutenant who’d taken Katya’s pistol, and another who’d grabbed a carbine dropped by one of the injured troopers all joined in. The Yagizban weren’t in flat retreat, but the FMA crew were able to force a pass to a secondary exit and went through in a run.
“Now what?” asked Lukyan from one side of the doorway as he laid down covering fire for the FMA withdrawal.
Petrov scattered some shots from his position on the other side of the door. “The docks. Let’s hope and pray the other party were able to secure a ride out of here.” As the last of their number ran crouching past them, Lukyan dragged the door shut and melted the lock with a welter of closely placed bolts.
They didn’t trust the lifts to get them where they wanted to go and used the emergency stairs instead. They’d hardly got through the doors into the stair well with its horizontal bulkheads separating each level when they found everybody just standing there. Petrov forced himself through the mass. “What’s going on? They’re going to be after us in a minute and they’re not going to be taking prisoners!”
“Sir!” An ensign, pale and sweating stepped forward. Katya recognised him from the other group, the ones who’d gone to steal a boat.
Petrov regarded him with foreboding. “What’s the news, ensign?”
“We couldn’t get to the boat bays, sir! They were waiting for us. We lost Tobin and Keretsky.”
Petrov nodded; it was only to be expected after the ambush in the bridge that the Yagizban would throw a perimeter around their boats. “So where are the rest of you?”
“Sir, we went the other way, towards the aircraft decks.” The ensign smiled wanly. “I don’t think they expected us to think about flying.”
Petrov grinned wolfishly. “Tell me you’ve grabbed an aircraft.”
The ensign nodded emphatically. “We’ve got a transporter, but they were hard pressed to hold it when I left to fetch you, sir. Mr Lubarin requests your company as quickly as possible.”
Petrov looked up the well. “I’d be delighted to give him my reply in person.” The Novgorods surged up the stairs, bristling stolen guns front and rear.
“They depend on their technology too much,” Lukyan told Katya as they ran upwards. “They fight like children, terrified of being hurt.”
The stairs seemed to go on forever, and Katya was too breathless to reply although she was impressed that her uncle hardly seemed to be breaking a sweat. He was right, though. The Yagizban were badly coordinated and their response to the threat posed to them by a partially armed mob of Federal Marines had been piecemeal and ineffectual. A couple of troopers had stuck their heads out of a door on the stairs and fired a brace of wild shots before ducking back and locking it, duty done. Katya could see that the idea of having the Leviathan fight and win a war for them more or less by itself would appeal greatly to them. They’d had some structure and competence while Tasya had been in command, but without her they were a joke.
She felt ambivalent about Tasya’s death. She was clearly very dangerous and would have been a significant part of the Conclave’s war effort, with or without the Leviathan. With her gone, she wondered if officers like Major Moltsyn represented their best. She hoped so; Moltsyn behaved like a middle-ranking bureaucrat, not a military man. Putting him into a uniform just looked like a good way to lose wars without the enemy even having to get out of bed.
On the other hand, she’d respected Tasya even if she hadn’t actually liked her much. She would remember for the rest of her life the sight of Tasya — no, she hadn’t been Tasya at that exact moment — she would remember the Chertovka, the She-Devil, leaping upon the deadly form of the Leviathan’s drone. She’d never seen such an act of reckless bravery before, and doubted she would ever see its like again. Petrov had shown great courage in the bridge, but Tasya…. She was simply breathtaking. And now she was dead. Dead like Olya and those troopers and Tobin and Keretsky and who knew who else in this war that was stumbling into existence without anybody troubling to declare it. If they didn’t stop this before it went any further, Olya’s and the others only distinction would be that they were at the head of a very long list of the dead.
The stairs opened out into a staging area on the aircraft deck. A group of Yagizban troopers had taken cover behind packing crates and were firing steadily at a transporter like the one that had brought the Vodyanoi to the FP-1 platform. From the transport’s open flight deck hatch and from behind its forward landing pylon, some little fire was being returned. It looked like the FMA team had only been able to steal a couple of guns.
A couple of the troopers saw Petrov’s team heading for them and smiled, seeing only friendly uniforms and guns. “Glad you lot finally got here,” said one of them cheerfully, “if we set up a cross fire with you firing across from…” His voice trailed away as he realised that his “reinforcements” had their guns levelled at him and his comrades.
A nearby first aid box yielded a medical tape dispenser and Petrov didn’t hesitate to dial it up to maximum adhesiveness before taping the captured troopers hands behind their backs. Taking their weapons, the FMA team, Katya and Lukyan ran across the open deck to where they were enthusiastically greeted by the rest of their number.
“Does anybody actually know how to fly this thing?” asked Petrov when he’d got some hush.
“I do,” said Suhkalev, stepping forward with an air of slight embarrassment.
“You do?” Katya couldn’t keep the disbelief out of her voice but, then, she didn’t try very hard.
“I logged fifteen hours flying time.” He didn’t sound defensive, just embarrassed still.
“Real flight or simulator?”
His voiced dipped. “Simulator. You need twenty hours before they’ll trust you with a real AG flyer.”
“This isn’t a little reconnaissance craft, Suhkalev,” said Petrov, “just remember that and don’t try any fancy flying.” Katya looked at him with surprise. He surely wasn’t going to trust Suhkalev with all their lives? Petrov caught her look. “Submarines don’t carry more than two air pilots for their flyers, Ms Kuriakova. Of ours, one died in the mines and the other is, was Tokarov. Fifteen hours in the simulator will have to do.”