Katya's World (16 page)

She probably did. It possibly might.

“
Show me a man without fear and I’ll show you someone with a death wish. They make poor brothers in arms, believe me.
”

“
I didn’t…
”
Suhkalev spoke in a careful voice, terror threatening to flood over every syllable,
“
I didn’t want this… I don’t like it. I don’t like it.
”
He sounded like a frightened child.

Please don’t say his mind has broken
, thought Katya.
If he can’t function, how can we save him as well as ourselves?

Tasya, apparently a disciple of applied practical psychiatry, simple backhanded Suhkalev hard. He was sent sprawling on the floor. In a second he was back on his feet and charging at her in a fury. Getting the muzzle of her maser pistol, a big ugly gun that made Zagadko’s look quite civilised, placed neatly between his eyes slowed him to a stony halt.

“
Better,
”
said Tasya.
“
You do have some fight in you after all.
”
She reached around to the small of her ba
ck, drew a gun and lobbed it at
him. He caught it and stood there uncomprehendingly.
“
It won’t do you much good against what’s after us, but it may come in handy.
”

It certainly did. He snapped it up to a firing pose and barked,
“
You’re under arrest! Drop your weapon!
”

“
Yes, yes. Plenty of time for that later. Come along.
”
She carried on up the corridor. Suhkalev followed a few paces behind, assuring her that, really, she was under arrest. He meant it. He did. Katya sighed and followed him.

He continued to inform Tasya she was under arrest for the next fifteen minutes and Tasya ignored him for every second of it. Katya tried telling him he was wasting his time, but he just looked at her with an expression of faint embarrassment and carried on. Eventually, Katya started to wonder if the whole pantomime to appear competent and capable was being put on for her behalf.

Tasya put up with being arrested three to four times a minute very well for quite a while until even her patience finally gave out as they were entering a T–junction.
“
Look. I’m pleased you’re not blubbing like a baby anymore. I’m pleased we have somebody else along who’s had arms training. I’m pleased you’re so motivated now. On the other hand, if you offer to put me in FMA custody once more, I’m going to forget all about how pleased I am and burn your head into a smoking stump just to make you shut up. Do you get a faint feeling for how irritated you’re making me? Hmm?
”

For his answer, he pushed her to one side and opened fire down the corridor. Tasya braced herself and looked, brought her gun up and fired a couple of shots before shouting,
“
It’s useless! Run!
”

Before they hared back do
wn the corridor they’d just walked
up, Katya risked a quick peek around the corner at what was pursuing them.

When Tasya had spoken of a
“
robotic drone,
”
Katya had formed a mental picture of something like a mining drone; a fat little body, tracks, stubby arms with tools or, in this case, weapons at the ends. The reality was entirely different. The drone looked like nothing so much as a torpedo three metres in length and half a metre in diameter. It hung effortlessly a metre from the floor and glided soundlessly but with infinite menace towards her. The end towards her was fronted with a reflective port like the lensed casing of a searchlight. That seemed likely to contain its sensors, she thought. Belatedly, it also struck her that this would be the focussing element for the drone’s devastating laser. She threw herself sideways barely in time. The corridor bloomed with brilliant light and the corridor junction was suddenly full of smoke and flying droplets of molten rock. One pattered to the floor right in front of her face where she lay prone. The drone could reduce cold stone to lava in less than a blink of an eye. This is what had sunk the
Baby
and crippled the
Novgorod
. How could they possibly beat it? Katya got her feet back underneath her and ran madly in pursuit of Tasya and Suhkalev.

Suhkalev had slowed to flag her down a side corridor, Tasya was nowhere to be seen but the rhythmic pounding of her combat boots as she sprinted in the half darkness could still be heard.
“
Where’s the Chertovka gone?
”
demanded Katya.

“
She said she was scouting ahead,
”
replied Suhkalev.
“
I wish it wasn’t quite so far ahead.
”
He smiled unexpectedly and then ran down the corridor too, Katya close on his heels.

They almost ploughed into Tasya coming back.
“
Dead… end…
”
she said between trying to get her breath back.
“
Old… mine workings. We have to… get back to the main corridor before it cuts us off.
”

It was too late. The silent cigar shape of the drone was already turning the corner ahead of them. They pulled back and dog-trotted in as near silence as they could manage down a side gallery. Soon, the corridors became more and more roughly fashioned until they were moving through mine workings. The floor had bee
n smoothed for equipment to track
more easily across, but all manner of tools and debris littered the tunnels – a strange mix of mechanically excavated shafts and plasma-melted passages – making it almost impossible to move quickly and quietly.
“
This is hopeless,
”
muttered Katya,
“
a blind man could find us with all the noise we’re making.
”

“
What’s that?
”
Up ahead a dark shape lurked in the patchy illumination of work lights that might well have been running for the last five years. Tasya pulled a torch from her belt and revealed the shape to be some great hulking piece of mining equipment.
“
Well,
”
she said sourly,
“
I suppose we could hide behind that for the few milliseconds it takes the drone to vaporise it.
”

“
It’s a plasma cutter,
”
said Suhkalev slowly.

“
How would you know?
”

“
Mining family,
”
he replied.
“
You see some of the work-related injuries miners get, and joining the Federal services looks pretty good. What I’m saying is, it’s a plasma cutter. Why’s it still here?
”
He walked up to it and started pressing buttons.

“
Suhkalev!
”
gasped Katya.
“
What do you think you’re doing?
”

He didn’t look up, but spoke as he worked.
“
These things cost a fortune. My father spent ages scraping together enough money to buy one with my uncle and aunts. If it had come down to a choice between leaving a cutter behind or a family member, they’d have had to think hard about it. These don’t just get dumped.
If I can get this running…
”

“
We might be able to do to the drone what it was planning on doing to us. Best plan we’ve got. Only plan we’ve got.
”
The Chertovka kicked among some of the junk on the floor and picked up a handheld plasma cutter, a tiny cousin of the mining machine.
“
I don’t think it’ll let us get close enough to use something like this on it.
”
She moved to the bend in the tunnel and peered cautiously around it.
“
Quick as you like, Fed. It’ll be here soon.
”

Katya stood beside Suhkalev and watched him punch buttons with increasing irritation while he watched a small display screen set in the cutter’s side. There seemed to be a lot of red print appearing.
“
How bad is it?
”

“
It’s a crock,
”
he said
as he read the diagnostic report
.
He winced.
“
It might be reparable, but not in the time we have. The fusion generator’s working and the coolant system is running. It’s sucking and liquefying nitrogen out of the atmosphere right now. Stupid of me; even if the plasma torch had been working, the safety cut
-
outs would have prevented ignition until the coolant tanks were full. I guess we’re sunk.
”

“
How long to fill those tanks?
”
asked Tasya, who’d been listening to the bad news.

“
They hold twenty litres full. They’re up to about eight litres now.
”

“
Eight, in the couple of minutes it’s been running? That’s impressive.
”
She looked at the machine, her eyes narrowing with concentration.
“
Is that thing mobile?
”

“
Too cheap a model to have a contragravitic system,
”
he reported as he bent to look underneath.
“
Just tracks.
”

“
Okay,
”
she nodded.
“
Anybody want to hear my stupid plan that’s going to get us all killed?
”

Ninety seconds later, the drone turned the corner. Silent and implacable, it scanned the area with infrared sensors and detected human heat signatures coming from behind a piece of machinery. The focussing elements in its single eye clicked and shifted as it prepared to fire, moving a little way into the chamber to achieve maximum destructive effect.

Behind the plasma cutter, Katya, Suhkalev, and Tasya crouched, their backs braced against the machine’s metal hull. Katya hardly dared breathe, and she could see that Suhkalev was pale with terror. Only Tasya was calm, watching the drone’s advance reflected in the surface of an old metal box she had found and placed as a mirror. Katya watched her nervously, waiting for the signal. Tasya’s coolness was almost as inhuman as the thing hunting them, she thought. That they might all be dead in a few seconds did not seem to disturb
o
r distract her in the slightest. She simply watched and waited for her moment.

Tasya gave a sudden nod and started pushing backwards, heaving the maimed plasma cutter forward on its tracks. Taken by surprise, it was a second before Katya and Suhkalev joined her, pushing as hard as they could.

The drone halted and watched this new development for the moment it took for it to decide upon a response. What that response would be was never in doubt. The lens elements clicked and rotated once more, and then the drone’s eye emitted ten megawatts of laser energy directly at the plasma cutter.

The drone was only as intelligent as it needed to be, and so it was no surprise that at no stage of its programming had anyone ever bothered to tell it what happens when a laser bolt ruptures a liquid nitrogen tank.

Katya was surprised into crying out by the sharp bang from beyond the cutter, and the battered hulk of the cutter jumped back at them as if surprised itself. Tasya was already moving, though. She’d pulled the small plasma torch she’d found from her belt and was already running out of cover. Suhkalev watched her go and then shot a look of horrified astonishment at Katya, as if to say,
“
She’s insane!
”
For her part, Katya leaned out the other way and peeked past the bulk of the mining cutter to see what was happening.

The liquid nitrogen tank had exploded, spewing first nitrogen superheated by the blast and then the liquefied gas, hundreds of degrees cooler. Katya could barely make the shape of the drone out in the billowing clouds of vapour, but she caught a momentary glimpse of the drone’s eye covered with i
ce where the liquid nitrogen had
splashed it and frozen the moisture out of the air onto the smooth casing.

The drone was blinded and, judging by the tortured clicking and ratcheting sound coming from its eye, was unable to do much about it. It was running through its protocols, but this situation was beyond it. Until it could restore its sensors, it knew of no other options.

It certainly had no plans in place for what to do if a human with a plasma cutter was to leap astride it and, swearing fluently, cut open a small ragged ho
le in the drone’s hull and fire
a maser bolt inside. The drone started to bob and sway erratically as a general sys
tems failure occurred
.

Katya and Suhkalev spent the first few seconds after the drone fired getting away from the damaged cutter and the pool of liquid nitrogen that was forming around it. They both knew that, if it touched them, it might not kill them but it would freeze blood solid in a second and give them an agonising case of frost bite that would take flesh cloning and surgical transplanting to repair. Having fingers or toes fall off would not be advantageous in their current situation. They got to a safe position at about the same moment the drone crashed to the floor. Tasya stood over it panting heavily with a maniac
al
grin on her face,
her maser pistol in one hand,
the handheld cutter
in the other
sparking evilly and under lighting her. Katya could easily see where the Chertovka label had come from.

“
There now,
”
said Tasya, thumbing her cutter’s power off and sticking it into her equipment belt,
“
that wasn’t so difficult.
”

“
We just need an infinite supply of large machines with liquid nitrogen tanks,
”
said Suhkalev as Katya helped him to his feet.

“
How many more of those do you think we need to worry about?
”
said Katya.

Tasya shrugged.
“
Don’t know. But I know a man who might. Let’s find Havilland and ask him, shall we?
”