Katya's World

CHAPTER 13 Vodyanoi

Through nameless waters, the Vodyanoi pursued the Leviathan. Near her maximum speed, although still comfortably short of what they knew the Leviathan was capable, the Vodyanoi struggled to maintain sensor contact. If it had wanted to, the Leviathan could have shaken them off in a minute either through accelerating or by performing its feat of near invisible stealth and vanishing from the passive sonar screens. Yet it did neither, as if contemptuous of anything the little Vodyanoi could throw against it.

Kane had called an immediate council of war with Tasya, Petrov, and even Uncle Lukyan. Katya, however, had been excluded. She felt she should have been insulted, but instead felt oddly relieved. She had hardly had a moment to herself since the Baby had left the locks. And how long ago had that been? She was losing track of time. Two days ago? Three? Brief moments of sleep had broken the time into awkward irregular lumps of recollection, and she longed to simply put her head down and sleep eight hours at a stretch so she could start counting days once more. She’d never thought that something as simple as a handful of hours sleep could mean so much to her.

Now she had a little while to collect her thoughts and stop pretending to have all the answers. On the one hand she was flattered that intelligent men like Kane and Petrov thought she, too, was intelligent. On the other, she just wanted to be divorced from responsibility for a little while. Just for a few minutes, she wanted to be fifteen-almost-sixteen again.

She found the senior officers’ mess, or what would have been the senior officer’s mess if the Vodyanoi still had any senior officers after the carnage at the mining complex. She thought it was empty at first and stepped in. By the time she realised her mistake it was too late to back out. Suhkalev was sitting in the corner at the far end of the bench at the table.

She hadn’t seen him at all since they’d arrived at the mine’s northern docking area and, she realised with a small shock, hadn’t thought of him at all since then either. Despite their successful sally against the Leviathan’s combat drone, he’d fallen completely off her list of things and people to worry about. She felt slightly ashamed for that and sat down on the opposing bench at the end nearest the door. She might spend a little time with him, but that didn’t mean it had to be spent very close to him.

He managed a wan smile as she sat. “I hear you’ve been having adventures. Been aboard the Leviathan.” He shook his head. “What’s happening there? Something to do with Lieutenant Tokarov. Nobody will give me a straight answer.”

Katya sighed. This was going to be difficult. Slowly, as much to explain recent events to herself as him, she went through the recent developments, the nature of the Leviathan’s artificial intelligence, its capability for synthetic intelligence and the fact that this capability had now been achieved. She didn’t explain why Kane had been unsuitable as the seed from which the Leviathan’s synthetic intelligence had been intended to grow ten years before. That was Kane’s business. She half wished she didn’t know about it either.

When she had finished, Suhkalev didn’t seem very much the wiser. “So the Leviathan must have absorbed Lieutenant Tokarov against his will?”

“Not according to Kane. The Leviathan was never programmed to expect anybody but a volunteer. The lieutenant would have had to sit in the interface chair himself.”

Suhkalev looked at her dubiously. “But the way you tell it, it’s suicide. Why would he do it after only a few hours? I can imagine a man doing it if he was trapped in there for months and months…” Like Kane had been, thought Katya. “…but he was only in there for, what? Three hours? Why would he do it?”

Katya shrugged; she had no idea. She wasn’t the only one.

The first thing Kane had asked Petrov as soon as the communications channel with the Leviathan was closed was, “Lieutenant Petrov, you know Tokarov best here. In your opinion, is he, was he sane?”

Petrov had not hesitated. “He’s a good officer, a rock solid man. I’ve entrusted my life to him on more than one occasion in the past. I would have done so again without any reservations. I cannot explain why he has done this.” For once, even Petrov’s cool demeanour seemed shaken. “I cannot explain it at all.”

All she could offer Suhkalev was, “Maybe we can board the Leviathan again, try and find out what happened.”

“You think it will let you?”

“Maybe. We can barely keep up with it at the moment, though, and the Vodyanoi’s a fast boat. The Baby wouldn’t have a chance. Anyway,” she said, changing the subject, “how are you? Aren’t the Novgorods talking to you still?”

“They’re not so bad, now. I think helping to kill that drone and get it’s IFF unit got me some respect. They’re glad a Fed was involved, even if it was just some punk from base security.”

“You can’t blame them. Secor mainly draws from the bases.” She looked at him, trying to work him out. “Why’d you join base security in the first place? You know everybody hates them.”

“Fast career track. I wouldn’t mind ending up in Secor. You’re bright, you must have thought of it.”

“Hah!” she laughed sarcastically. “For about half a second!” She could see him flushing with humiliation and made an effort to tone down her contempt. “Oh, c’mon. People are scared of Secor. I don’t want to scare people. It doesn’t matter how good the job is; they’ve got reputations out of horror stories. You can’t want that.”

He didn’t answer her or even meet her eyes. Her shoulders sagged with dismay. “That’s a selling point with you, is it? Look,” she got up to leave, “Suhkalev, there are better ways to get respect. What you did in the mine workings, staying cool getting that machine working with the drone bearing down on us, that was brave. That’s got you some respect. Real respect, not that fake stuff that Secor have. That’s just fear by another name. If that’s all you want, be my guest. I think you’re a better man than that.”

She left the officers’ mess and headed back to the small cabin she’d been given wondering whether her words had made any impact at all.

She managed ninety minutes sleep before her cabin’s communicator woke her with a request to go to the bridge. She was too sleepy to be sure, but she thought it sounded like Kane. Why couldn’t everybody just leave her alone? She struggled back into the Novgorod uniform coverall — which wasn’t fitting her any better then when she’d gone to sleep, she was disappointed to note — and headed forward to the bridge while she tried to remember the last time she'd eaten.

On entering the bridge, she was greeted by Kane who’d reclaimed the captain’s chair. She was rather more pleased to see the plate of sandwiches from the galley than she was to see him and helped herself with only the briefest of requests and no waiting for an answer.

Kane let her eat in silence for a couple of minutes before speaking. “I thought you might like to know what we’ve decided to do, Katya Kuriakova. We’re breaking off the pursuit of the Leviathan.” Katya didn’t say anything — her mouth was full of mulched bread and reconstituted turkey analogue — but her expression conveyed a great deal. Kane answered her unspoken criticism. “No, we’re not giving up. We’re going to break off onto a perpendicular so that we can attempt to send a message to the Yagizba Conclaves without the Leviathan intercepting it. My former experiences with that monstrosity count for nothing now; with the synthetic intelligence finally in command, it’s drawing on Tokarov’s own knowledge and instincts. It’s no longer just a machine. Before, if it had intercepted the message, it would have ignored it, possibly only turning to attack us instead if the conditions were right. Now, we have no idea what it might do. Therefore, we can’t allow any chance of interception. We’re already heading away to get some clear water between the pair of us.”

Katya swallowed, took a drink of water and asked, “What will you tell them?”

“The truth. That an artefact of the War of Independence, an automated Terran battleship, is heading their way and they can’t hope to fight it. If they take us seriously, and without FMA codes there’s no reason they should, they may try and disperse the cluster or even evacuate there and then. I don’t know.”

“They’ll wait,” said Katya. “They’ll wait to see if it’s a real threat and, by the time they realise it is, it’ll be too late.”

“Don’t underestimate the Yagizban,” said Tasya. She’d commandeered the navigation position and had given no indication she was listening. Katya noticed, with some irrational irritation, that the Chertovka had reconfigured the display away from Katya’s favoured layout.

Kane caught Katya’s eye, nodded shrewdly in Tasya’s direction and mouthed Yagizban.

Still absorbed by the navigation display, Tasya didn’t notice. “They took the heaviest and most sustained attacks at the opening of the war and still managed to keep this world fighting back. They’ll realise how serious the situation is in plenty of time, believe you me.”

Katya thought she’d believe that when she saw it. The Yagizban might be the technological cutting edge of Russalka, but the Leviathan was an entire magnitude beyond anything that had ever been built in their factories. The only way to believe the Leviathan was to see it, and then it would be too late for anything.

Once she had been made aware of the plan, there seemed little point in staying on the bridge. Tasya told her that it would be four hours before they were in a safe position to transmit so Katya decided to take the opportunity to catch up on a little more sleep. She stole the remaining sandwiches and headed back to her cabin, where she ate in her bunk, filling it with crumbs, before dousing the light and finally getting some uninterrupted sleep.

Her watch’s alarm failed to penetrate the exhaustion that had settled upon her in full force and she slept a further two hours before finally stirring. She dressed quickly and went forward. Neither Kane nor Tasya were on the bridge, only Petrov with a skeleton bridge complement. He looked neat and alert and Katya wondered if he ever needed to sleep or just had his batteries replaced once every week or so.

“Good afternoon, Ms Kuriakova. You slept well?”

“Have we already signalled the Yagizba Conclaves?” she asked.

His eyes flickered up to the chronometer over the main screen. “Just over a hundred minutes ago.”

“And?”

He raised an eyebrow. “And… what?”

He could be so vague sometimes, she thought. “And how did they react to being told a synthetic intelligence displacing about seven million tonnes was coming to pay them a visit?”

“Oh, that. They were surprisingly unconcerned. Perhaps they were just being careful what was discussed over an open channel, but I was expecting a slightly more violent reaction to learning about the Leviathan.”

“So, what do they plan to do? What do we plan to do?”

“They gave us some coordinates and a time to make a rendezvous. I would guess they have a patrol vessel in the area and we’re supposed to be meeting up. Anyway, we’re supposed to get there, surface, and wait.”

“It won’t be an FMA vessel?”

Petrov shook his head, frowning slightly. “There are no FMA facilities in the Conclaves. They refuse to have them, regard the Federal administration as an obstruction to their work. Given that they’re so important to the planet’s defence if and when Earth ever try again, it was decided to cut them a little slack. That’s not something we’re inclined to advertise, though,” he added with a conspiratorial look.

“How long to the rendezvous?”

Another glance at the chronometer. “Not long. About another ten minutes now.” He looked at her again. “You know, Ms Kuriakova, you hold a very privileged position in this company.”

She looked at him with blank surprise. “I do?”

He nodded. “You do. Everybody seems to trust you with their confidence. Your uncle, obviously, but also the pirates. The Chertovka is remarkably tolerant of you. You’re aware of her reputation?”

Katya felt awkward discussing Tasya behind her back. “She says that reputation isn’t deserved.”

“Reputations rarely are, whether they’re good or bad. As for Kane, he treats you like a daughter. Ms Kuriakova,” he leaned towards her and spoke quietly, “I would be very careful of trusting him in any respect. Few people are quite what they appear, but he seems to make a hobby of being utterly unexpected. We just thought he was another lowlife at first, and then he turns out to be Terran and a failed component in a plan to commit genocide against us.”

“Genocide?” Katya started to grow angry, but then paused. Only she and probably the Chertovka knew of Kane’s sacrifice and his enforced addiction to that filthy Sin stuff. She longed to tell Petrov just how wrong he was, but didn’t feel the secret was hers to impart. Perhaps this was why she was trusted with so many confidences; she kept them even when she burned to tell. Unaware of her inner confusion, Petrov was talking.

“He knows so much about the Leviathan. He’s obviously only telling us what we need to know from minute to minute, never anything like the whole picture. For all we know, he has the secret of how to destroy it and is keeping it back for some reason. We cannot trust him.”

Katya shook her head firmly. “If he could destroy it, it would be in pieces right now.” She would have said more, but the bulkhead hatch opened and Tasya came in, graciously ushered through by Kane who followed her.

“About time, isn’t it?” said Kane, full of the heartiness and cheer that Katya now knew meant that he’d used Sin recently to stop the sickness of its addiction crushing him. The knowledge made her feel sick herself.

Petrov, pointedly staying in the command chair, nodded. “Another couple of minutes and then we’ll start the ascent. I hope we can convince the commander of whatever ship we’re meeting with of the urgency of the situation. With every wasted minute, the Leviathan is closing on their homes.”

“We’ll convince them,” said Tasya with a certainty that intrigued Katya. She could see Petrov had noticed it too, but — as with so much — he didn’t comment, just filed it away in the grey perfection of his memory.

As good as his word, two minutes after Kane and Tasya had entered the bridge, Petrov ordered the ascent by the book so exactly that Kane pronounced it drill perfect and as good as any he’d ever seen aboard a Terran boat. If it was meant as a compliment, it didn’t work.

The Vodyanoi surged up from the depths and hit the surface exactly on location and on schedule. A visual scan of the open sea only confirmed what their sensors had already told them; there was no boat to greet them.

Petrov settled back into the captain’s chair and smiled a little smugly. “So much for Yagizban efficiency.”

The Chertovka fumed, and Kane added warningly, “Give them a moment, lieutenant. We don’t know what they may have encountered en route.”

Suddenly, the pirate sweeping the horizon with the external cameras spoke up. “Visual contact! Bearing 12 degrees absolute!”

The FMA ensign at the sensors console was stunned. “Nothing on sonar, sir,” he reported in disbelief. “Nothing on hydrophones. Not a whisper.”

Katya saw the frown that passed over Petrov’s face and knew he was thinking the same as her. Did the Yagizban have stealth technology like the Leviathan’s on their boats? And, if so, why hadn’t they shared it with the FMA? Any such conjecture was blown away the very next second by what the ensign had to add.

“Speed estimated at two hundred klicks pee-aitch, altitude…”

Katya was thunderstruck. Altitude?

“…one thousand metres. Decelerating and descending. Three thousand metres and closing.”

She couldn’t believe it. The Yagizba Conclaves had sent an anti-gravity car out to meet them? At this range? They must be crazy; the elements would rip it to pieces if it had to fly more than a short distance. Perhaps it had been launched from a Yagizban ship to make the rendezvous in time. It is a poor habit to theorise without data and, when Petrov ordered the images from the camera relayed to the main screen, she saw she had been profoundly wrong in a very unexpected way.

“What,” said Petrov in clipped tones that somehow served to make him seem angrier than if he’d jumped to his feet and started swearing, “is that?”

It was no little AG car coming towards them. Flying close to the tops of the storm-tossed sea, the always furious sky of Russalka boiling and spitting lightning behind it, came a huge aircraft kept aloft by AG pods but propelled forward by the hideous blue light of quantum drives, as blue as cobalt, yet still flickering on the edge of perception. These were the manoeuvre drives of starships; she’d never dreamt she’d see a craft use them in atmosphere. And it was a big craft, at least half as long again as the Vodyanoi and noticeably wider.

“Incoming message,” reported the signals officer. “Requests we order all stop to engines and batten down.”

Petrov was glaring at the image of the closing aircraft as if it were a personal insult. Katya guessed that the Yagizban had been keeping the development of a new air fleet to themselves. She could see why the FMA would not regard this as a pleasant surprise. “Tell them…”

“That we are complying,” interrupted Tasya. “All engines stop. Batten down and brace.”

Petrov shot her a look but did not countermand her order. They might have reached an agreement to share command, but the Vodyanoi was still a pirate vessel and Petrov would never feel he had the last word aboard.

The aircraft was close now, spinning about to approach the last few hundred metres backwards. As it made its final approach, a great seam in its belly opened and the fuselage skin slid back, revealing a great empty cavity within. Katya looked around at the others: Petrov and Lukyan were watching the spectacle grimly; Tasya’s expression was content; Kane seemed faintly bored. Was she the only one who was amazed by this? The craft was some sort of extraordinary transporter, but she’d never heard of the like. What other wonders would the Yagizban have back at the Conclaves?

“Brace!” ordered Tasya over the Vodyanoi’s public address speakers. Katya found an empty seat and strapped herself in. Barely had she done so when the transporter settled over them. The screen went dark and the boat lurched. Hollow metallic clangs sounded through her hull as grapnels secured her into the transport’s cavernous belly. Then the boat pitched back to about thirty degrees. As the realisation that the Vodyanoi had been picked up and was airborne hit home, lights flickered on outside and the camera revealed the inside of the transport aircraft around them, its girders and catwalks. They could see a hatch open and people in the distinctive yellow buff uniforms of the Conclaves enter. A minute later, there was a clanging on the metal of the Vodyanoi’s squat conning tower. The deck angle had returned more or less to the horizontal so Tasya unstrapped herself and climbed quickly up the ladder into the tower. They heard her open the hatch and a voice ask permission to come aboard. Moments later, the bridge was full of Yagizban troops.

Tasya made a point of introducing Petrov to them first although the leader of the boarding party — a solidly built major called Moltsyn who sported an impressively square jaw– had noticed the presence of FMA uniforms as soon as he’d come aboard. Petrov was cool and formal when he shook Moltsyn’s hand, but he made no comment about the nature of the craft that had gathered them up from the waves and was now, presumably, flying them back to the Conclaves. Katya was glad he didn’t. She didn’t like the way things were going and suspected Petrov was of the same opinion. The pirates and the Yagizban seemed to know each other of old, and it was a very comfortable relationship.

At the major’s invitation, the bridge crew went up top. Katya didn’t want to miss the opportunity to see what the transporter’s cargo bay looked like for herself and climbed up to the top of the conning tower. Standing there, the roof of the hanger-like bay was almost within her touch, still wet from the sea in which it had momentarily rested while grappling the Vodyanoi. Below, she could see the other members of the bridge crew on the deck, looking around the bay and chatting to the yellow-clad troops. It all seemed very friendly, but the FMA sailors looked like prisoners the way the Yagizban hedged around them.

“What’s going on?” she said quietly to herself.

“What’s going on indeed?” Petrov had joined her and was looking down at the scene on the deck grimly. “Look at this, Ms Kuriakova, just look at this. The major tells me that this is an experimental aircraft that just happened to be available. Yet the Vodyanoi fits into it like a hand in the glove. Look how closely even the conning tower fits in with just enough clearance. This bay has its grapples in exactly the right places and even the damned gangplank is in exactly the right place to go neatly up against the side hatch on the tower. This aircraft has been custom built to carry this submarine, there’s no question about it. As for the major and the Chertovka, they all but embraced when he came aboard. The Yagizban have been consorting with pirates and they’re not going to any great pains to hide it.” He shook his head in defeat. “They won’t allow anybody from the Novgorod back to report their complicity. I fear for our safety.”

Katya looked at the smiling faces of the Yagizban troops and saw them harden whenever they looked at anybody from the FMA. She suddenly felt afraid. “What will they do to you?”

Petrov looked at her with mild, tired surprise. Seeing him weary just compounded her sense of dismay. “Do to me? Do to us, Ms Kuriakova. In case you’ve forgotten, you’re wearing an FMA uniform. I think you may already have been earmarked for disposal just like the rest of us.”