Katya's World

CHAPTER 17 Stormy Weather

Petrov remained calm. “Take your time, Suhkalev. They can’t penetrate the hull. Take your time and get it right.” He did not voice his concerns that they might bring up weapons that could penetrate the hull soon; he didn’t want Suhkalev to panic and crash the lot of them into the hangar wall at close to the speed of sound.

“I can do this,” Suhkalev kept muttering to himself as he examined the controls, “I can do this.” The sweat beading his lip did not lend confidence. “The lift controls are normal contragravity but, these,” he waved at a display of inscrutably complex figures and status levels, “I don’t know what they are. They should be the thrusters, but I’ve never seen anything like them.”

Petrov thought back to the blue fire streaming from the engines of the transporter that had collected the Vodyanoi from the ocean. “They’re Goddard units. Space manoeuvre drive, almost reactionless. Rediscovering how to build them is something else they didn’t bother telling the FMA.”

“You know how they work?” asked Suhkalev with pathetic hope.

“Of course I don’t. The principle was lost during the original colonisation. Try and use the lift units to get us into the open air before engaging the thrusters. At least we won’t have walls in front of us when you light them up.”

Suhkalev visibly steeled himself and put his hand on the lift controls. As they wound up to power, the transporter jolted slightly on its landing-pylons. Slowly, the hydraulic shock absorbers extended as the aircraft lifted uncertainly from the deck. Almost immediately, one corner sagged lower than the others and the whole vehicle started to slowly drift to one side as it spun gently, if not actually out of control, certainly not entirely within it.

“What are you doing, Suhkalev?”

Suhkalev was barely listening. He was chanting “I can do this, I can do this, I can do this,” under his breath as he manually rebalanced the lifters, slowing the spin and angling the drift to take them under the open hatches.

Looking out of the cockpit window Petrov saw something to worry him. He walked back, keeping his balance by gripping the rails that ran along the ceiling for exactly that purpose until he was back in the crew disembarkation room aft of the flight deck. The remaining crew of the Novgorod looked up at him from where they sat cross-legged on the floor. All of them had weapons lying across their laps taken from the transporter’s arms locker. They looked about as confident as Petrov felt. “They’ve brought up some sort of support weapon. I don’t know what it is, but it’s about two metres long and looks like it’s shoulder-fired. Best shots to the door so they don’t have an easy time using it.”

Three Novgorods moved to the main external hatch, pleased to have something to do rather than sitting and waiting for Suhkalev to fly them into a steel wall.

The hatch slid open and the storm blew in. Suhkalev had managed to manoeuvre the transporter beneath the open hatch in the FP-1’s topmost landing area and was now gingerly making it ascend. The rate of climb was slow and it would be almost a minute before they were hidden from the Yagizban troopers scattered around the deck below, plenty of time for them to score several hits. The Novgorod’s best surviving shots braced themselves against the door frame and took aim.

The Yagizban weapons team had been drilled in using the rocket launcher, they had been trained in maintaining it and its ammunition, they had even been trained in how to carry it in victory parades. Nobody, however, had ever shown them what to do in the event of the target shooting back. As the first maser bolts, fired more in hope than expectation of hitting anything, came raining down from the escaping aircraft, the weapons team dumped the launcher and scattered for cover.

Interesting, thought Petrov. Once again they have the technology but they don’t have the training, or perhaps the will to fight. They want their toys to take all the risks for them. That’s a weakness.

It was not a weakness shared by all the Yagizban, though. The Chertovka was living up to her name, throwing terrified troopers out of her path as she made a bee-line for the discarded rocket launcher.

“A standard FMA reward bonus to whoever kills that woman,” said Petrov.

Bonuses were handed out by the FMA with miserly tight-fistedness. Instantly, all three rifle barrels twitched onto the new target and started firing careful bursts. Petrov knew that the chances of hitting her at this range from a moving platform with what felt like half of Russalka’s oceans pouring down on it were vanishingly small, but they only had to slow down her advance for the few seconds it would take the transporter to clear the lip of the hatch and get into the open sky.

Tasya was built of much sterner stuff than the rocket team, that much was clear. She zig-zagged from cover to cover, reaching the dropped weapon far too quickly for Petrov’s comfort. She was down on one knee with the launcher tube over her shoulder and her eye to the targeting scope inside five seconds. A second after that, fire flared from the rear of the tube and a rocket zipped from the front. Petrov heaved his snipers back inside and slammed the door shut. “Brace for impact!” he barked at his crew. The command was usually applied to a submarine crew when a torpedo was about to hit or the boat was about to ram or be rammed. Petrov had never used it except in exercises and hoped they would understand what he meant by it in this situation. They seemed to, as they scurried for places where they could hang on if the transporter was thrown about. He didn’t have time to make sure they were all safe, he was already throwing himself into the cockpit. He landed at full stretch, grabbed the supports at the back of the co-pilot’s seat and shouted at Suhkalev, “Thrusters! Now!”

Suhkalev had been listening to the situation in the disembarkation area over his headset and didn’t need telling twice. They were still an agonising five metres short of the hatch, but he cut the aft lifters and the transport suddenly swung nose upwards. The forward lifters whined alarmingly as they tried to take the full weight of the transporter by themselves and their status displays flashed red. Suhkalev was aware of Petrov’s grunt of surprise as he suddenly found himself dangling from the co-pilot’s chair by his arms but didn’t have time to pay him any more heed than that. Suhkalev reckoned he’d figured out the thruster controls. Now was the moment to discover whether he was right. Already the transporter was falling backwards, the forward lifters unable to take the whole weight.

I can do this, he thought, and opened the main thruster throttles.

From the control room Katya, Lukyan and Kane watched the transporter suddenly stand on blue columns of iridescent fire. “Down!” shouted Lukyan putting one great hand on the scruffs of Katya and Kane’s necks and pulling them to the ground. As they hit the floor, the observation window exploded inwards. The room filled with the furious blue light and a million glittering shards of reinforced glass. Then, as abruptly as it had appeared, it vanished. Kane crawled rapidly to the console and activated a traffic control camera. The blue light of the transporter’s thrusters were already fading into the stormy sky.

“They made it!” gasped Katya, her face filling up with a grin.

“Maybe,” said Lukyan doubtfully. “Look. They’re trailing smoke.”

“And there should be two thruster flares visible,” said Kane. “Tasya must have hit them with that rocket.”

Katya’s joy evaporated. “Can they fly on one engine?”

“I’ve no idea. Given it’s Suhkalev in the pilot’s seat, I’m astonished they can fly with two.” He saw Katya’s face. “I’m sorry, that was flippant. I don’t know if they can fly on one engine.”

Lukyan had gone to the shattered window and was cautiously looking down at the hanger deck. “Firing their engines in here has caused a lot of damage. Casualties too. There’ll be medics up here soon. Hmm, your friend the Chertovka has survived yet again, I’m sorry to say.”

“My friend?” Kane and Katya chorused. They looked at one another.

“You shared a command with her, didn’t you?” said Lukyan turning to Kane.

“Not really my choice. She was a condition of getting operational support for the Vodyanoi from the Conclaves. Oh,” he nodded. “I see. You’re trying to needle me. Sorry for not picking up on that immediately.”

“Can we save the cat fight for later?” said Katya. “The area’s full of troopers and they’re bound to check on this room before long. Shouldn’t we be leaving?”

“Too late,” said Lukyan, looking out of the jagged frame of the observation window, “there are a couple of them coming this way now.”

The troopers entered the control room to find a couple of administrators, one a huge man, the other a young woman. The woman lay amidst a dune of fragments from the destroyed observation window, the other administrator kneeling over her checking her pulse. One of the Terran mercenaries, the one who sailed with Colonel Morevna, was standing over them with an expression of great concern. When he saw the troopers, he implored them, “Please! She was caught in the blast when those Federals fired the engines! She needs a stretcher team immediately!”

The troopers gave the room a quick look over to make sure that none of the Federals had been left behind and left, assuring the mercenary they’d send one of the many medical teams that were now entering the hangar to deal with the injured from the gun battle and the obviously coldly calculated use of the transport’s drives as weapons.

One of the teams was currently treating Colonel Tasya “The Chertovka” Morevna, who was submitting to their ministrations with very poor grace. “Damn them! Damn their eyes! Where did those cold fish learn to fly like that? Their pilots were supposed to be dead! Careful, you idiot!” The medic putting her broken arm in a temporary field cast muttered something nervous and respectful. Tasya turned her white hot attention to Major Moltsyn. “What’s the situation with the Leviathan?”

“The torpedoes all detonated prematurely. They were intercepted somehow.”

“It launched combat drones. That’s obvious. Is it responding to hails?”

“No, colonel. We’ve lost it from sonar too.”

Tasya’s lips thinned. “It’s activated its stealth systems.” She shook her head. “Put all non-essential personnel on transports out of here, enact full evacuation protocols. That thing’s going to attack and I don’t know if we can beat it.” She looked up at Moltsyn narrowly, daring him to ruin her day further. “Any good news, major?”

“A little, I think. Air radar followed the stolen transport for about twenty kilometres. Its path was erratic. Then it lost altitude, tried to climb and ending up pitching into the sea. It looks like you shot it down after all, colonel.”

“Search units have been dispatched?”

“Of course. The ocean’s very angry today, but their air search radar did not detect anything and one reported seeing something in the water that looked like a downed aircraft. It sank before they had a chance to relay pictures.”

“I’d have preferred more solid evidence. Like Petrov’s head on a spike.” She unconsciously touched the closely grouped pock marks on her armour left by Petrov’s maser bolts. “It will have to do for the moment. We have a larger and more immediate problem.”

Across the hangar warning sirens suddenly wailed and red strobe lights flared into life. Moltsyn snapped his head to look. “What’s that?”

Tasya followed his glance, curiosity hardening into suspicion. “An emergency launch from one of the… That’s the Vodyanoi’s bay! Moltsyn! Who authorised that launch?”

“Colonel!” A trooper ran up, very conscious that he was the bearer of bad news. “The control room! We… there was an injured woman in there. We sent a medical team and…”

Tasya reared up onto her feet and turned on the trooper. “Spit it out, man! What’s happened?”

The trooper looked at her as if he was expecting her to shoot him at any moment. “We went back to check on them and… They were tied up.”

Tasya frowned. “The injured woman was tied up? What are you blathering about?”

“No, colonel! The medical team were tied with suture tape from their own supplies! The woman, the other administrator and one of the Terrans, they had gone. They had stolen the stretcher!”

Tasya’s fury suddenly cooled, which only served to make her more threatening. “What Terran?” But she already knew. With all the medical teams around, two men carrying an “injured” woman on a stretcher would go unremarked, even if they were heading towards the boat bays rather than the exits. “Out of my sight,” she said quietly and the trooper obeyed as quickly as he humanly could. She turned to Moltsyn. “Kane’s turned. The Vodyanoi is no longer to be considered a friendly vessel. It is to be destroyed on detection.”

“Shall we launch pursuit boats, colonel?”

“Launch all available warboats, but they’re not going after Kane. He’s tomorrow’s problem. We have to live through whatever the Leviathan has for us first.”

Kane leaned back in the Vodyanoi’s captain’s seat like a king returned to his throne. “Take us out to about two klicks at one third and bring us about. Slow and steady, duck us under a good thermal layer. We’re going to wait and watch developments.”

“Kane.” Lukyan looked at Katya and then back at Kane. “Kane?”

Kane looked up at him. “What will become of you? I don’t know, Lukyan Pushkin. Not at the moment. We’ll just have to see what develops, won’t we?”

“Two thousand metres out from FP-1,” reported the helmsman. “Bringing us about.”

“I can hear launches,” reported the sensors operator. “Boat launches.” She paused listening intently. “Lots of them. Somewhere about forty.”

“Forty boats?” Katya was aghast. “Warboats?”

Kane leaned forward in his seat. “Probably. Mostly copies of this one, I should think. Not quite as good, but numbers count for a lot. Can you track them?” he asked the sensors officer.

She shook her head. “Sorry, sir. They’re running silent as quickly as they can. Everybody’s playing hide and seek.”

It was only to be expected; if the Leviathan saw them, it would kill them. A submarine battle is a strange mixture of tedium, terror and bewilderment, even more so than battles in other environments. It is perhaps the only battlefield where fortune always favours the cautious and firing first may be the worst thing to do. As a result, the best submarine commanders are cool, sanguine men and women who not only think clearly under pressure, but — just as importantly — think clearly when nothing is apparently happening. Still, Kane may have been pushing the stereotype of the unflappable submarine commander when he produced a yo-yo. Katya had never seen one before and watched in fascination as it descended and rose on its string with little apparent effort on Kane’s part. “What is that?” she asked finally.

“This? It’s a yo-yo. It’s just a toy.”

“Where did you get it?”

“A little curiosity shop on Earth.” The yo-yo rose quickly and slapped into Kane’s hand where he held it tightly. “I bought it for my daughter.”

The admission startled her slightly. She looked around for her uncle, but he had walked over to the navigation officer’s position and was irritating him by reading the instruments over his shoulder. “You have a daughter?” She said finally just for something to say. As soon as she did, she realised how stupid a question it was, as if it were something he might be mistaken about.

Kane didn’t seem to notice. He was looking intently at the yo-yo. Suddenly making his mind up, he carefully removed his finger from the loop at the end of the string and proffered the toy to her. “Would you like it?”

Katya almost asked what about his daughter, but something stopped her. Instead, she took it from him. “Thank you.”

Her acceptance seemed to please him and he smiled the tired, sad smile she’d come to know. “It’s all in the wrist action. There are tricks you can do with it, but I don’t know what they are. You’ll have to make some up for yourself.”

The smile vanished as a low vibration thrummed through the Vodyanoi’s hull. “Sensors, what was that?”

“An explosion, sir, five degrees off to larboard.”

Larboard? mouthed Katya to Lukyan.

“It’s an old way of saying port,” he explained, adding, “sometimes I think this lot have been playing ‘Pirates’ for too long.”

A map of the area was flashed up on the main screen, the Vodyanoi’s position marked up at the centre. A flash mark indicated the direction and probable distance to the explosion. “The FP-1’s been hit,” said Kane. “I don’t think the Yagizban are going to take that lying down.”

He was right. A moment later a volume of sea to the southwest of the platform was swarming with torpedoes hunting with active sonar pinging furiously.

“There’s a lot of ambient sound energy out there,” said the sensors officer. “we may be detected, sir.”

“Yes, we may be, but if we back off we may miss something important. Hold our position but keep us quiet, helm.”

They watched as the bright flashing lights of the torpedoes ran around in search patterns for several minutes until, one by one, they flickered out without a single effective detection of the target, much less a hit. For five long minutes, they watched the unchanging screen in silence. Then another flash appeared. “That’s a boat,” reported sensors crisply. “It’s bad, she’s going down. I can hear bulkheads crumpling.” Another flash. “Another boat’s hit; she’s…” Another flash, and another. The sensor operator swore under his breath. “It’s a massacre out there, sir. Four hits. Five. One’s limping, I think. No, another hit, she’s been finished off.”

Katya spoke to Kane, but couldn’t take her eyes off the screen as new flashes appeared. “What’s the Vodyanoi’s full crew complement?”

“Thirty-seven,” replied Kane in a hoarse whisper, unable to tear his eyes away from the carnage being relayed to them as neat little symbols on a display screen.

“And the Yagizban versions?”

“The same.” Another flash, another thirty-seven lives extinguished. “We have to do something. When it’s finished with the boats, it will turn on FP-1.”

“Good riddance,” said Lukyan, but he flinched as a new flash appeared.

“I think you’re labouring under a misapprehension if you think the FP-1 is purely a military facility, Lukyan Pushkin,” said Kane, rage flickering in his voice. “There are family accommodations aboard. You just blithely wished ‘good riddance’ upon perhaps two hundred young children.”

Lukyan looked at him aghast, his eyes widening. “What? I had no idea…”

“Well, now you do.” Kane gestured hopelessly at the screen. “If anybody has any bright ideas, now would be a good time to share them.”

There was silence. And then Katya said in a small voice, “Is the Baby still aboard?”

It felt strange to her, how her attitude to the minisub Pushkin’s Baby had changed in only the space of a few days. Once she had regarded it as purely her uncle’s, something that was always there. Then, when she had got her card, it had changed in her view into a place of work and she looked forward to knowing every kink and corner of her as well as Uncle Lukyan and Sergei did.

She stopped for a moment in the corridor leading forward to the salvage maw. “What’s wrong?” asked Lukyan.

“Poor Sergei. He thinks we’re dead.” They started walking again.

Now, the Baby was the submarine that refused to die. The Leviathan had killed it and the Vodyanoi and her crew had resurrected it. Every time she saw it now, it was a faint shock. They stepped through the hatch into the sealed maw and Katya experienced the shock again.

The Baby, for its part, sat patiently and awaited whatever they might ask of it. Katya walked to it and ran her hand over the curve of the hull. The urge to say, “Good girl” to it was quite powerful. She looked over her shoulder at Lukyan and found him smiling.

“It’s just a machine. Boats and ships have always been just machines for getting from one place to another. Yet we develop a… I don’t know, a bond, I suppose. Life crawled from the sea back on Earth and, one way and another, eventually turned into us, but I don’t think the sea ever really got out of our blood. Not even here.”

Kane was checking the Leviathan’s IFF identification module mounted on the Baby’s side, nestled amongst all the other equipment she carried. “You have a poetical soul, Lukyan Pushkin,” he commented without pausing in his work. “Just like your Russian ancestors.”

Lukyan’s smile faded. “I have nothing of Earth in me.”

“Nonsense. Russian blood is far fresher in you than the lung fish blood you were waxing lyrical about a moment ago.” Kane gestured offhandedly at Katya. “I gave Katya here the lecture on the importance of history a little while ago. I’m sure it’s still burned into her memory and she can give you the benefit of my wisdom, if at one remove.” He finally looked up to find both Katya and Lukyan glaring stonily at him. He sighed and went back to his work. “Yes, well. Perhaps we can work on the sense of humour before the sense of history.” He resealed the unit and stepped away from it. “Okay, are we sure this is what we want to do? The chances are the Leviathan won’t fall for this a second time.”

“I wouldn’t say it was something I wanted to do…” began Katya.

“We have to try,” said Lukyan simply.

“We have to try,” echoed Kane. He stood motionless as if listening to the words die against the metal walls. He nodded sharply, his mind made up. “We have to try.” Katya noticed both men were looking at her. “Katya, Lukyan’s the pilot. I’m going because I know the Leviathan. You’re not needed. You should stay.”

“Okay,” said Katya. Both men visibly relaxed. Then she boarded the Baby. She was already strapping herself into the co-pilot’s seat when Kane stuck his head around the open hatch, his expression perplexed.

“I’m sorry, did we just miss something then? I thought I heard you agree to stay behind.”

“No. I was just agreeing that you’d done the decent thing and tried to talk me into staying behind. I’ve no intention of letting you two go off without me.”

“Katya…”

She turned in her seat, her face tight with anger. “Do I look like I’m going to let you leave me behind? Do I?”

Lukyan pushed past Kane and went to take the pilot’s seat. “You’re wasting your time, Kane. I’ve seen that face before and you won’t talk your way around it.” He started strapping in. “Exactly like my sister. It’s uncanny sometimes.”

Kane accepted defeat philosophically. He climbed aboard and settled into the same passenger seat he’d taken the first time he’d been bought aboard the Baby as a prisoner. “It’s the blood. Thicker than water. Blood will always out.”

Strapped in, he slapped the hatch control and watched the door close and seal. The maw started to flood. Five minutes later they were clear of the Vodyanoi, moving slowly in the direction of the invisible battle being fought between the Yagizban warboats and the Leviathan.