Katya's War (Russalka Chronicles) (32 page)

“That’s dissident talk, Ms Kuriak…”

“No! You haven’t seen the bodies. You haven’t seen just what’s lying in the middle of the Peklo Volume. I’m not guessing at the truth – I’ve
seen
it. The FMA is as good as dead. You should start thinking about what’s coming next.”

“And what precisely is coming next?” He sounded impatient, a man talking to a fanatic. Katya realised that he’d put her into a nicely stereotyped category in his mind so that he didn’t have to think very hard about what she said. She couldn’t blame him. How many times had she heard similarly dark muttering from others, usually put down by a friend’s concerned whisper of, “Careful. Don’t let Secor hear you talking like that.”

“I’ll tell you what I wouldn’t tell Secor. I’ll tell you what I did in Atlantis, what made me a traitor. I placed a transmitter box in a disused relay station.”

“A microwave relay. I know. I saw the report. To communicate with all the surface Yagizban elements. To what end?”

“Is that what the report said? It’s wrong. Atlantis is the oldest settlement, with equipment not found at any other station. Equipment we’ve lost the ability to replicate elsewhere. The microwave relay I plugged that box into was the old satellite communications link.”

“There are no satellites left. The Terrans destroyed them.”

Petrov was sounding angrier than she’d ever heard him. Was he beginning to suspect? If so, it didn’t surprise her. He was a clever man.

“The Terrans destroyed all of our satellites, that’s true. Then they deployed their own.”

Across the water between the two boats, Katya saw Petrov lower his communicator as he understood exactly what Katya had done. She continued to speak. Perhaps he could still hear her.

“The Yagizban collaborated with the Terrans and were given the satellite network’s access codes. Anatoly… one of them is a long range faster-than-light communications array.”

In the clouds above
FP-1
, the lightning flashed long after the thunder had died away. Blue, unnatural lightning. As they watched the flickering blue grew stronger and brighter, illuminating the whole cloud bank above the waiting platform. Then the clouds rolled aside.

It was beautiful. It was terrifying. Katya thought of how the
Novgorod
had looked as she broke the surface. This seemed so similar, as if the clouds were the surface of an angry sea and they were looking down upon it.

Petrov’s voice came through the communicator, taut, angry, fearful. “Katya. What have you done?”

She turned it off. There was no point talking now. She had either helped save a world on the edge of destruction, or pushed it over the precipice. She had called across the stars, and her call had been heard.

The Terrans were here.

STRANGE CHEMISTRY
An Angry Robot imprint
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Strange Chemistry #21
A Strange Chemistry paperback original 2013
1
Copyright © Jonathan L Howard 2013
Jonathan L Howard asserts the moral right to be
identified as the author of this work.
Cover art by Lee Gibbons
Distributed in the United States by Random House, Inc., New York.
All rights reserved.
Angry Robot is a registered trademark and the Angry Robot icon a
trademark of Angry Robot Ltd.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the
products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance
to actual events, locales, organizations or persons, living or dead, is entirely
coincidental.
Sales of this book without a front cover may be unauthorized. If this book is
coverless, it may have been reported to the publisher as “unsoldand destroyed”
and neither the author nor the publisher may have received payment for it.
UK ISBN 978 190884 418 7
US ISBN 978 1 90884 419 4
Ebook ISBN 978 1 90884 420 0
9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

1. Title Page
   
2. Dedication
   
3. Chapter One: Lukyan
   
4. Chapter Two: Jarilo
   
5. Chapter Three: False Flag
   
6. Chapter Four: Total War
   
7. Chapter Five: Plumbing Supplies
   
8. Chapter Six: Armoured Merpeople
   
9. Chapter Seven: Red Water
   
10. Chapter Eight: Dead Water
    
11. Chapter Nine: Fallen Angels
    
12. Chapter Ten: Zarya
    
13. Chapter Eleven: Psychotic Break
    
14. Chapter Twelve: Last Request
    
15. Chapter Thirteen: Dangerous Corridors
    
16. Chapter Fourteen: Little Flag
    
17. Chapter Fifteen: Traitor's Gate
    
18. Chapter Sixteen: Admiral's Launch
    
19. Chapter Seventeen: Hard Time
    
20. Chapter Eighteen: White Death
    
21. Chapter Nineteen: Extraordinary Freedom
    
22. Chapter Twenty: Retinal Identification
    
23. Chapter Twenty-One: Falling Forward
    
24. Chapter Twenty-Two: Desperate Times
    
25. Imprint