“He tried to save me,” said Katya. She wanted to cry, but something seemed broken inside. She could only talk, she didn’t seem able to feel anymore. “He was shouting about the Lox packs.” She touched the emergency respirator. Its trademark name was a LoxPak, Lox supposedly meaning liquid oxygen. It was a misnomer and unpopular among mechanics who dealt in the real thing; real liquid oxygen would kill anybody who tried to fill their lungs with it, an agonising death as their throat and chest froze solid. In contrast, the green fluid in LoxPaks was merely saturated in oxygen, releasing it directly into the lung tissue.
The fluid also scrubbed nitrogen rapidly from the blood, vital if a victim of a submarine disaster was to stand any chance of surviving a rapid ascent from a few hundred metres down to the surface. She wasn’t in agony, blind or dead, so at least she knew her LoxPak had saved her from the worst symptoms of decompression sickness. The worst symptoms, but Katya now realised, not all the symptoms.
One of the lesser symptoms was the “rapture of the deep.” Hallucinations. Katya knew she’d suffered from them now. Her guardian angel bearing her to a better place had been a notorious pirate taking her to the surface, where she could die more slowly. She laughed out loud, surprising Kane, but the laugh finished with her bringing up more Lox liquid and by the time she’d stopped coughing, the opportunity to ask her what she thought was so funny had passed.
They floated in silence for some time. Then Katya said, “What happened to your handcuffs?”
“They were an inconvenience,” said Kane. “I got rid of them.” He caught Katya’s expression. “I’m sorry, that sounded fatuous, but they were a nuisance. While you were tending to the cut on my head, I borrowed a probe from the medical kit. FMA ‘cuffs really are primitive. I could teach you how to pick them in ten minutes.”
“You’ve practised?”
“Of course I’ve practised. The Feds might not be the brightest intellects in the universe but even the stupid get lucky sometimes. I like to be prepared.”
Another minute passed. “How did they catch you anyway?” asked Katya.
“You ask a lot of questions,” replied Kane.
“I can’t feel my feet.”
Kane looked at her seriously. Hypothermia would be setting in soon. The sea was freezing and slowly leaching the heat from them. They needed to concentrate and talking might be the thing to give them a few more minutes.
“How did they catch me,” repeated Kane. “It wasn’t brilliant detective work, put it that way. It was the reward money that did it. I was informed on.” He noted Katya’s blank expression. “I was grassed on. Done up like a kipper.” None of this seemed to be getting through. He tried again. “Sold out?”
Katya finally seemed to understand what he meant, so he continued. “Did a bit of business with a man who I’d have thought would know better, walked out straight into three officers waiting for me with masers drawn. That’s the trouble with this planet; all the criminals are such amateurs. How is Russalka ever going to get a real criminal underworld going if anybody will grass up anybody for a fistful of small change? It’s divisive.”
“You’re not from Russalka?” She’d thought not. Not with that name and that accent. She’d met people from other colonies before. Now they were all trapped on Russalka since the Grubbers had attacked and destroyed their few starships.
“No, I’m not from Russalka. If I could leave tomorrow, I would, too. This place is a dump. Why did anybody ever decide it was a good idea to colonise a planet with no dry land at all?”
“Minerals.”
“I know. I was talking rhetorically.”
“So if you hate it so much, why did you come?” She knew Russalka was considered a freak world to colonise. No land to speak of, just one great global rolling ocean with a couple of icecaps. Nothing had ever evolved to grow on them though. The ocean teemed with life, but the icecaps and the sky were dead. Everybody else from the Grubbers — the Terrans — through to the other colonies had land to stand on. Out of all the colony worlds, Russalka was unique and difficult, and the Russalkins were proud of that.
“I didn’t want to. Circumstances dictated it.”
Katya wondered what he meant by that, but something in his tone warned her off, and she didn’t press him for an explanation. “Well, you’re stuck here for a while then,” she said.
During the war, all Russalka’s space assets had been destroyed; her communication, navigation and meteorological satellites, the launch platforms and the handful of starships held in the great floating hangars had all been wrecked by the Grubbers to deny Russalka any line of defence from orbit out to the transition shelf where starships entered the star system.
In the end it had all been for nothing — the war had just stopped. The Grubbers never sent any diplomats or anybody to explain why they weren’t going to fight anymore, they’d just stopped coming. One morning Russalka woke up and there were no new incursions, no more targeted asteroid hits, no more robot hunter/killers splashing down. The war just stopped. The wise money was that the Grubbers had trouble at home or another colony closer to them had agitated for independence and they’d redirected their war budget at them instead. Whatever the reason, after eighteen months of fierce combat the Grubbers went home and took their war with them, leaving Russalka badly wounded and gasping on the ropes.
As far as it went, Kane was right about organised crime on Russalka being a bad joke, but that was true of everything. They’d lost a lot of people and a lot of technology. Thankfully Russalka was a mineral rich planet with a lot of energy to be had; they would rebuild, but it would take time.
There was a lot to do before Kane could leave Russalka for somewhere more suitable for a career criminal. New launch platforms would have to be built, new starships built to be launched from them, new satellites put up to feed the ships the accurate astronomical data they needed before hitting the transition shelf and initiating quantum drive. It would take a lot of effort, a lot of will, a lot of money and, the worst thing for Kane, a lot of time.
“I heard Lyonesse was building a platform,” said Kane conversationally. A wave rolled over him and Katya waited until he’d finished coughing before answering.
“I heard it was just for sub-orbital transports. Nobody’s interested in space, Kane. We’ve got enough problems on planet without worrying about what’s overhead.”
“What if it’s the Grubbers who are overhead?”
“Then…” Katya paused. She was glad her uncle wasn’t here to hear her say this, but she believed it all the same. “We should surrender.”
Kane made a point of getting eye contact before he replied. “Do you really think so?”
“Yes,” she said without hesitation. “If they attack again, they’ll kill us all. Let them bring their stormtroopers. They can’t be any worse than the FMA.”
“I wouldn’t bet on that. The FMA are light entertainment compared to stormtroopers.”
“It doesn’t matter. The travel time is what will do the trick. It takes a year to get to Russalka; it’s not a cheap trip to take. Anybody they send will end up going native, just like we did. They won’t be sending occupiers, they’ll be sending new colonists.”
“Interesting thought. I think you underestimate the Terrans, but you’re right about surrendering. If they can scrape together the budget for another invasion taskforce, this world’s in no shape to resist.” He looked up at the tip of the buoy’s spire, a metre above them. Upon it, a brilliant white light flashed rhythmically.
They watched it in silence for a minute or so. Katya was beginning to feel very tired. It was so cold in that sea, and she knew it was killing them slowly. She tried to wedge her arm into the spire’s frame so if she fell unconscious, she wouldn’t simply slip under the waves. The spire’s supports were too close together, though, and she couldn’t manage it. She looked at the dark sea beneath the sullen sky, and death felt all too close. “Do you think somebody will save us?” asked Katya.