Katya's World

CHAPTER 19 Falling Down

“I hate flying,” said Katya Kuriakova as she watched Russalka fall rapidly away from them. Fine, thought Katya. Perfect. “This isn’t a submarine, is it?”

Kane raised his index finger in admonishment. “Now, I never actually said the Leviathan was a submarine. Not just a submarine”

Katya was only half listening. “This explains so much. Using lasers underwater is so incredibly inefficient. Tasya said it was a crazy way of arming the drones. Not if they were always meant to operate in the air.” She looked up at Kane. He looked faintly embarrassed. “Or space. This thing is space capable, isn’t it? It’s a starship?”

“How did you work that out?”

“Every time you talked about how you came to Russalka, you said you were inside this thing. That doesn’t really make sense unless there was no transporter starship carrying it. I actually wondered how big a ship would be needed to carry the Leviathan here and what happened to it after it finished its job. There’s no mention of such a large Terran ship in the war records I’ve read. So there never was such a vessel. The Leviathan came here under its own power.” She frowned. “Why did you never tell anybody? Why did you let everybody carry on thinking this was just a submarine?”

Kane sat down on one of the Baby’s outrider rigs and sighed. “I’ve been having doubts about the Yagizba Conclaves for a while. I was in no hurry to tell them that a starfaring battleship was about to hand itself over to them. Actually, that’s not quite true. The Leviathan’s stardrive is slag; they only work once. Still, it can reach space. The important thing was that it would have given the Yagizban control of the planet from orbit. I wasn’t sure if they deserved that advantage.” He scratched his nose. “I wasn’t sure if anybody on this benighted planet deserves that.”

Katya chose to ignore that last comment and looked out of the porthole again. “Why has it only chosen to fly now?”

“Because it’s hurt. Its stealth systems work well underwater, not so well in the air or space, but I think its stealth must have been damaged by the explosion. Probably its hull integrity too. It uses a forcefield to lend its hull strength.” He noticed Katya looking blankly at him. “A forcefield. It’s… well, it’s complicated. A projected energy field that exhibits some of the qualities of matter.” From her expression, that was not a good explanation. He gave up. “All you need to know is that the Leviathan’s skin is protected by a very powerful forcefield. It deflects attacks that actually reach it and, just as importantly, holds the hull together when it’s under stress. It allowed the Leviathan to rest far deeper than a conventional boat’s hull could bear. Between losing its stealth and its hull not being able to bear the same pressures, it feels vulnerable. It’s running for high ground where it knows it can’t be reached.”

“Taking us with it.”

“It has to prioritise its problems. We’re probably pretty low in the list. It will use its damage control systems to fix itself up and then, when it’s got a minute, it will kill us.”

“I know. We have to get out of here.” She looked down through the porthole. Russalka looked a long way away. “Any ideas?”

Kane walked over to join her and they watched the clouds become distant. “In a word, no.” He cocked his head and admitted, “Well, one, but it isn’t to get us out of here. Let me show you something.” They walked to the console Kane had been studying. “The Leviathan uses two power sources. When it can get water, it uses simple electrolysis to break it down into oxygen and hydrogen and stores the hydrogen.”

“To use as fuel for a fusion power plant. Any boat much bigger than the Baby does that.”

“True, but fusion doesn’t give the large amounts of quick I need it now power something as big as this needs in, say, combat. Which brings us to the second power source.” He tapped the display where a figure read 5.56Kg.

“So educate me. What masses 5.56 kilograms?”

Kane looked seriously at her. “Antimatter. It certainly didn’t have that much when I left it. It must have been sitting at the bottom of the sea for ten years using fusion energy to make the stuff. Something else it’s not supposed to do. If it had lost power to the antimatter containment field and it had come in contact with the side of its container… Katya, do you have the faintest idea what antimatter is?”

She shook her head. “I was hoping you’d tell me that.”

Kane sighed. “Simply put, it’s matter’s evil twin. When matter and antimatter come in contact, they obliterate each other, right down to the subatomic level. BANG!” Katya jumped. “Total conversion into energy! The amount of the stuff the Leviathan is carrying would produce a staggeringly huge explosion. It would have been suicide to destroy the Leviathan while it was still in the ocean; it would have caused a shockwave that would have travelled around the world wreaking untold damage. At least we can prevent that.”

Katya looked curiously at the console readings. “How?”

“By making it explode up here where it won’t do any harm. I can access the antimatter containment field from here, turn it off. A few minutes later it will decay to the point where the antimatter comes in contact with the matter wall of its container, and that will be that. The jig will be over for the Leviathan.”

“And us.”

“And us. Yes. What can I say? This always had the air of a suicide mission. All we can do is to try and protect Russalka.”

Katya thought about it. Was it really such a loss, to give her life up like this? She had no family left. She had never really had any friends. It was a shame that the people down there would never know the sacrifice she made for them, but that was little enough compared to the lives that would be saved. “Why should you care, anyway? You’re not even Russalkin.”

“We’re all human,” said Kane simply. He gestured at the controls. “What do you say? Shall we?”

Katya nodded quickly, not trusting herself to speak. Kane reached for the controls, his hands hesitated above them momentarily, his fingers twitched once, then he tapped out some instructions. It took him less than five seconds to sign their death warrants. When he was finished, he stepped back.

“It’s done. The Leviathan will try and run auxiliary power to the containment field, but I’ve put other demands on it. It will only delay the inevitable by a little while.”

Somebody once said that the prospect of imminent death concentrates the mind. Katya looked around the chamber with all its exposed workings, units and equipment as a collection of entities for the first time instead of just a setting for her last moments. “What,” she asked slowly, an idea starting to form, “is the pressure in low Russalkin orbit?”

Kane was surprised by the question. “The pressure? So close to zero to make little difference.”

Katya walked over to the Baby and ran her hand over the hull. “The Baby’s rated down to four kilometres of ocean on her back. If she can stand that number of positive atmospheres, I’m sure she can bear no atmosphere at all.”

Kane stood up very straight. “Are you suggesting we use it as an escape pod?” Katya nodded, but Kane shook his head. “Yes, we’ll get caught in Russalka’s gravity and re-enter the atmosphere, but we’d come down like a meteorite. We’d burn up.”

“We have to be travelling fast to burn on re-entry.” And she pointed at the combat drones.

Kane looked at them, understanding visibly growing in his face. “Use the drone’s antigravity systems to neutralise most of the Baby’s mass? Like your Novgorod gambit?”

“Like my Novgorod gambit. I’m only ever going to have one bright idea in my life; I’m trying to get as much use out of it as I can.”

“Don’t do yourself down. If the drone’s AG units were activated once we were inside the outer atmosphere, it would be like deploying drogue parachutes. We might just survive it.”

“It’s a plan. Re-energise the antimatter containment while we get this worked out and you can switch it off again when we’re about to leave.”

Kane’s jubilant expression faded. “Ah,” he said quietly.

Katya’s own face fell. “You can’t.”

“If I could, so could the Leviathan. I had to lock out any attempt to re-activate it.” He moved quickly to the console. “The Leviathan’s doing everything it can to keep the antimatter safe, but it’s losing. We’ve got fifteen minutes at most, probably less.” He gestured hopelessly at the drones. “It would take that long to dismantle a drone to get the antigravity unit out and it would take at least two for us to stand a chance. There’s just no time. I’m sorry, Katya, it was a good idea. Fate doesn’t come much crueller.”

Katya wasn’t listening. She was already at one of the combat drones, opening its inspection hatch. “We’re not finished yet. If we can’t get the unit out in time, the whole damned drone is just going to have to come with us!”

She had the first drone’s contragravitic system’s fired up, before Kane got over his surprise. “I like you, Katya Kuriakova,” he said finally. “You’re mad, but I like that in moderation.”

She was too busy wrestling the great cylinder -- rendered almost weightless but still with all its inertia, out of its cradle and over to the Baby -- to reply. She did notice that he wasn’t helping, though.

She looked up from working on a second drone to see him opening a locker and pulling out a one piece suit, white and helmeted. “What’s that?” She bent back to her work.

“EVA suit. Extra-vehicular activity, that is. A spacesuit.” He pulled off his jacket and boots and started shrugging the suit on over the rest of his clothes. “Pretty good underwater, too.”

“Is there one for me?”

“No, but you won’t need one. You’ll be in the minisub.”

She stopped and looked suspiciously at him. “And where will you be?”

He pointed under the Baby. “Opening that hatch. It has to be done from the console. The chamber will have decompressed before I can get back so I’ll need an air supply. The plan is I open the hatch, run over and come in through your minisub’s dorsal airlock. You, meanwhile, sit tight in the pilot’s seat and bring the drones online slowly as we start to fall through the atmosphere. Like it?”

“Not much, but I don’t have anything better. When you’ve got that thing on, fetch me six connector leads from locker two and the tape gun in locker four.”

“Aye-aye, captain,” replied Kane and hurried himself into the suit.

‘Aye-aye, captain,’ thought Katya. ‘Your minisub’s airlock.’ He’s right; Uncle Lukyan never made a secret of his will. I own the Baby. I am her captain. My first command.

She busied herself with the drone before the thought that the Baby might also be her last command had time to crystallise.

The Baby’s hull was pocked at frequent intervals with socket covers, each covering two sockets that allowed her to interface with equipment attached to her hull. A standard minisub would never be the master of any trade, so it had to content itself being a jack of many. The Baby had, at various times, mounted manipulator waldo arms, extra light banks, cable laying gear, a specialised magnetometer array and a thermic lance. It was unlikely the manufacturers had ever imagined her with two combat drones strapped to her hull. Katya had been counting on the drones complying with the same interface standards as the Vodyanoi, which she had noticed used the types of plugs and sockets that were Russalka standard. It made sense; Russalka may have won its independence from Earth, but the Terran technical conventions they’d inherited were well tried and tested. There was little point in changing things simply for a misguided show of independence from the old world. Even so, she gave an audible sigh of relief when the connector cables snapped home at both ends and the communication lights glowed, showing that the Baby had successfully detected the drone’s anti-gravity units and could control them.

Kane looked at the web of metal tape that Katya had created to clamp the drones in position to make sure the aft hatch and the dorsal airlock were clear and accessible. Satisfied, he hurried back to the console and checked the state of the Leviathan. “How are we doing?” called Katya as she stowed Kane’s coat and boots into a locker.

“Just barely in time. Two minutes, I think. Get that hatch sealed, we’re doing it now.”

Katya slammed that aft hatch and locked it shut, made her way forward to the plot’s seat and strapped herself in. She checked the Judas box — all lights were green. “Just you stay that way,” she muttered.

Outside, Kane sealed his suit’s helmet, made a quick check that its life-support systems were working correctly, and turned his attention to the active console. The antimatter containment was in a bad way. He guessed it would fail in ninety seconds, perhaps even less. He pulled up the ship’s operations controls and ordered the docking bay’s hatch to open. The control flashed green and the hatch started to dilate. Somewhere a decompression warning sounded.

“Category one,” said a voice in Kane’s ear, so close he turned expecting somebody to be standing by him. It took him a moment to realise it was coming through his suit’s communicator. A sense of great and immediate peril, even beyond the Leviathan’s imminent death, overtook him and he started to run for the Baby. He was a metre away when the grappling cable snaked down from the chamber’s roof and grabbed his leg. Suddenly he was dangling upside down over the Baby. He could see how wide the hatch had opened beneath the minisub and knew it must start falling slowly through in any moment. He reached and his hand barely touched the rail beside the dorsal lock before he was pulled still higher.

“Kane?” Katya’s voice was loud inside the suit’s helmet. “What was that? What’s happening?”

Kane swung up and grabbed the tentacle-like cable. He tugged frantically, but it didn’t budge a centimetre. “I… Unh! The Leviathan. It won’t let me go!” He felt utterly helpless and allowed himself to flop limply like a rag doll in the cable’s grip. “Sorry, Katya. You’re going to have to make the descent yourself.”

“No! No! I will not…”

“Out of our hands, Katya. For what it’s worth, I’m glad I met you.”

“Shut up! I’m not letting that thing have you!”

“Look after yourself, Katya. Don’t think about me. You need to…”

The tentacle dropped him. He fell slowly; the chambers artificial gravity had been deactivated when the hatch started to open. Even with only Russalka’s gravity, weakened by their distance above it, he still hit the top of the Baby hard and rolled off it. As he lay stunned, he heard the Leviathan speak to him for the last time.

“Go.”

Beside him, the Baby fell through the hatch, but all he could do was gaze up at the cable retracting lazily into the ceiling. Its voice… there had been something about its voice…

Suddenly, he realised his ride was leaving without him. He rolled over and pushed himself out after the Baby, shunting himself off from the hatch edge. It was little enough impetus, but just barely enough to catch up with the minisub. He grabbed one of the metal strips that secured the drones and then quickly transferred his grip to a stanchion rail running down beside the aft hatch before the sharp-edged tape had a chance to cut his glove.

“Kane! Speak to me! I can’t see you!”

“I’m clear of the Leviathan. I’m hanging onto the Baby.”

“You’re clear? How?”

“I don’t know.” He looked upwards to where he could see the diminishing shape of the Leviathan between his feet, accelerating hard away from Russalka, away from them. In a moment, it was almost too small to see “It just… let me go.”

“Can you reach the dorsal hatch?”

He laughed. “No. Not a chance. I’m only holding on with one hand. I can’t move anywhere.”

There was silence for a moment. Then Katya said, “Kane, even with the drones, the passage through the atmos…”

Behind them, the Leviathan exploded. For a moment, it glowed brighter than any sun as matter and antimatter combined in its heart and eliminated one another, changing directly to energy in the process. In an instant, the vessel, its huge but corrupt artificial mind and the bodies of two brave men were turned to plasma.

Kane was looking away and that saved his sight as the flash enveloped them, and made the cloud tops so far below turn to a rolling sea of white fire for achingly long seconds. Kane’s helmet filled with interference as the communication frequencies were jammed by the brief burst of radiation generated by the explosion. Kane knew his suit would absorb it and that the minisub’s hull would protect Katya. What he was more worried about was the possibility of debris raining across them and puncturing his suit.

Long seconds passed, but he was not perforated by a storm of metal particles travelling at hyperkinetic speeds.

This was small comfort. The re-entry into the atmosphere was still sure to kill him.

He heard Katya’s voice penetrate and grow in clarity as the radiation died away. “Kane? Are you there? Did you say something?”

“I just said that today has just been one long round of jumping out of frying pans into successively larger fires.”

“What? I don’t understand you.”

“I’ll explain later.” The Baby was starting to shudder as they entered the thickening atmosphere. Should there be a later, he thought. “Activate the drones, Katya.”

“I already have. We need to get you in quickly. You won’t be able to hang on during the turbulence.”

Feeling the strain on his arm, Kane strongly doubted he would even last until the turbulence. “Don’t worry about me.”

“I’ve heard your brave farewell speech once, Kane. You’re not dying today.”

Kane’s heart froze as he realised what was going through her mind. “Do not open the hatch, Katya! You will die!”

“What kind of idiot do you take me for?” He was never so glad to have somebody talk to him so contemptuously. “I’ve got an idea, but you’ll have to be strong and hang on just for a minute. Can you do that?”

“A minute? I think so.”

His arm burned with exhaustion. Even a minute seemed an eternity. He counted slowly to sixty to take his mind off the pain of the tortured muscles, deliberately losing count a couple of times and starting back a few numbers. He wondered what her plan was. He assumed the Baby might have a manipulator arm folded away somewhere that could hold onto him, but he couldn’t see such an arm and, anyway, what would it be doing at the back of the minisub?

He was just about to ask Katya what the plan really was when he discovered it for himself. The aft hatch unsealed and started to open before him. His eyes widened; Katya was going to get herself killed to save him.

He knew it was already too late to try and stop her — the compartment would already have lost its air — now he had to think of some way to get inside and repressurise the Baby rapidly. A couple of plans flitted through his mind, but they foundered on the immediate fact that he was trailing from a plummeting minisub several kilometres in the air by the fingertips of one hand. Then the hatch finished opening and there was Katya, as grim as death.

As grim as death, but very much alive. Strapped over her face was an emergency respirator pack. She’d punched a small hole at the base from which the green oxygen-rich fluid was fountaining across her clothes. Through the transparent mouth piece of the LoxPak, he could see the stuff foaming violently as the oxygen boiled out of it in the very low pressure. She’d known enough not to try and use the breather as a simple life-support unit — the pressure difference between her lungs and outside could have been fatal. Instead she was letting it make a breathable atmosphere inside the mask, the gases making their way into her lungs under their own pressure while she just kept her mouth open. It would be like breathing at the top of a mountain, but it was breathing. Not for the first time, Kane was astonished by her ability to think clearly when danger threatened and time was short. He would have hugged her but for that small detail of trailing behind a plummeting minisub by the fingertips of one hand.

She reached out and snapped a lanyard loop around his wrist, drawing it tight with a reflexive tug. Then she braced herself against the hatchway and started to pull him in on the line, hand over hand. The flow of fluid stuttered and stopped. She was running only on the oxygen in her bloodstream now. Summoning up his every reserve, Kane reached forward with his free hand and managed to grab hers. She placed one foot on either side of the hatch so she was horizontal to the Baby’s floor and, screaming silently with a desperate rage, she straightened her legs. Kane was half through the hatch now. He used the hand with the line wrapped around it to grab the internal stanchion rail above the door and heaved himself in. It took achingly long seconds to clamber around so he could close the hatch without falling out again, seconds in which he knew Katya was suffocating. Finally, the hatch slammed shut and he released the automatic pressure valves Katya had disabled to prevent the minisub venting all its air in a vain attempt to repressurise a compartment open to space.

Air flooded in. Katya lay on her back hyperventilating, her colour an ugly blue. Kane cursed the slowness of the pressure gauge, tore open the medical kit and gave her oxygen directly from its emergency cylinder.

With a rapidity that surprised and relieved him, her colour and breathing returned to normal.

“Katya? Katya?”

Her eyes flickered open, but she could say nothing more cogent than “Nnnh?”

He levelled a finger at her. “Don’t you ever save my life again.” He didn’t know whether his anger was mock or real.

Katya nodded slightly. “’Kay.”