Katya's War (Russalka Chronicles) (8 page)

Atlantis Traffic Control ran them quickly through the departure protocols and bid them the traditional wish for a safe journey as the
Lukyan
slipped out of her lock and into the open sea. Within her, the atmosphere was a great deal more relaxed than when she’d docked. Sergei was a pragmatist at the core, even if he hid it beneath a deep crust of cynical pessimism. Rationally, he was satisfied that Katya’s actions had been reasonable after all, even if they hadn’t seemed that way at the time. Emotionally, he had no desire to stay angry at her for long. Katya might not have been blood family, but he felt like an honorary uncle to her, always had done, and now Lukyan was gone he took that role all the more seriously. An hour out of Atlantis he expressed his desire to put the past behind them in the manner time-honoured within the little submarine.

“Would you like a game of chess?” he said with an unconvincing attempt at casualness.

Katya looked over at him and grinned.
Only an hour
, she thought.
He’s mellowing
.
 

“I’d love a game, sure. Let me just get us to the first deep waypoint and I’ll hand over to the autopilot.” She had plotted a tortuous route to Dunwich Down, a small fish farming, protein processing, and hydroponics food facility built into a former mining site. The facility was in a cleft in the ocean bed, and there were few submarine mountains or even hills near it. This meant there was little cover on the approaches and unwary submarines could potentially be detected from kilometres away. In peacetime that was unimportant; Dunwich was not the sort of high value target that attracted pirates, and so civilian boats had travelled there and back without fear of attack. All the rules changed in war, however. Food was vital to the Federal war effort. A single Vodyanoi class warboat could target every transporter in the volume around Dunwich from a safe distance, and be away before the first torpedoes were even detected. This was hunters’ territory now, and the transport captains were justifiably fearful to go there.

Stretched tight, the FMA could only afford to have a single obsolete Sadko class patrol boat circle the site, its drives adjusted to give the impression to listening enemies that it was something larger and more dangerous. If the Yagizban had any sort of intelligence network in place, this was a wasted effort, as everybody knew about the hapless Sadko and its fake acoustic signature. Indeed, it was joked about in every base in Federal waters.

Given the high likelihood that the Yagizban knew all about Dunwich’s paper tiger, this meant that civilian pilots remained very cautious approaching and leaving the facility. In Katya’s case, she had plotted a complex route that took advantage of every rockfall, mound, and isotherm she could find in the newest navigational charts. The
Lukyan
was programmed to creep, dash, and scuttle its way from cover to cover like a nervous parack, a form of five-legged crustacean native to Russalka that would never be a byword for bravery. To have steered the route manually would have been painfully wearing on anyone’s nerves. Katya, grown as pragmatic as Sergei in her experiences, was content to leave it to the computer. She still had her pride, however; she would steer to the first waypoint on the evasive pattern close to the sea bed before handing over.

As they descended in a long gentle arc into the depths, Katya experimentally waggled the control yoke, listening to the whine of the manoeuvre impellers through the hull as she did. Frowning, she took her hands from the controls and looked at the yoke, which did nothing at all in response.

“Sergei, is the feedback broken on this side?”

Sergei looked over at the motionless control yoke and sniffed haughtily. “No. I just turned it off. I don’t like feeling it move in my hand. Why?” He looked suspiciously at the co-pilot’s yoke before him. “Have you turned on the feedback for this one?”

“Don’t worry, it’s not going to jump at your throat. I returned it to your settings when I handed it over. If you had feedback turned off in those, then it’s off now.” She opened the system controls screen on her main multifunction display and selected the yoke options. “I’m just used to having some feedback. Feels weird and dead without it. Here we go.”

She checked the box against “Yoke Feedback” and confirmed her choice. Immediately the control yoke started to shake. With mild surprise, they both looked at it juddering a centimetre or so from true. “Well, that’s not right,” said Katya finally.

“The feedback relays must be buggered,” said Sergei knowledgeably. “I’ll have a look at them when we get to Dunwich.”

Katya was still frowning. She pointed at the co-pilot yoke. “Turn your feedback on, just for a minute.”

Sergei nodded; it was a sensible suggestion. In a few moments he had his position’s controls screen active and selected the feedback option. The instant he confirmed, his yolk began to shake too. He watched it for a few seconds before deactivating it. “Not the relays, then,” he said.

Katya swore. It was a particularly harsh term she had never used before, which combined disrespect for the subject’s mother with an unambiguous accusation of incest.

Sergei raised his eyebrows. Katya looked at him, her anger slightly tempered by embarrassment at her outburst. “Not you, Sergei. It’s that… that…” She could feel the bile of her anger rising again. “There’s nothing wrong with the damn controls.” She slowly throttled back the
Lukyan
’s main impellers, bringing them to a gentle halt. As they did so, the shuddering in the yoke became less violent before fading away altogether.

Sergei began to suspect he should be worried. “What’s going on, Katya?”

For her answer, she twisted the yaw controls, making the boat turn on the spot until it was facing directly back in the direction they had come. Then she lit the powerful light array mounted around the large semi-spherical cockpit portal before them. The water was slightly murky, and the lights could penetrate only some twenty metres before the gloom grew too strong for them, but that was enough to show the submarine prow before them.

“Nothing wrong with the controls,” repeated Katya. “We were caught in that thing’s bow wave.”

Sergei was staring wide-eyed at the shadowy shape before them. “That’s no Fed boat,” he said in a horrified undertone. “That’s a Yag.”

“No,” replied Katya. She was grim, her anger simmering beneath the surface. “It’s not a Yag. It’s a pirate.”

This news failed to calm Sergei. As they watched, the pirate’s bow split along three seams and yawned wide like the maw of some horror of the deep. As they watched – Sergei wide-eyed, Katya with her arms crossed and a scowl upon her face – the pirate moved forward in a slow creep, the open jaws moving closer and closer. Sergei reached for the controls, but Katya said, “No!” sharply, and his hands fell away from the yoke.

“We can’t outrun them, and if we try and manoeuvre while those jaws are closing, they might breach us by accident.”

“By
accident
?” said Sergei. “If they’re pirates, why would they care one way or…?”

“I know that boat. I’ve been on it before.”

Sergei’s jaw dropped. “It’s the
Vodyanoi
? Killer Kane’s boat?”

Katya snorted. “Killer? Him? Ha.”

The
Vodyanoi
came on until the
Lukyan
was entirely engulfed within the salvage maw, and then slowly and carefully closed its jaws.

Once the maw had been pumped empty, the hatchway into the main forward compartment opened. On the dry side stood two of the
Vodyanoi
’s crew accompanying Tasya Morevna, now looking far more comfortable in Yagizban fatigues with a colonel’s flash on her epaulettes than she ever had in her stolen Secor uniform. On the wet side stood a silently fuming Katya Kuriakova and Sergei, who kept swallowing nervously. When he saw Tasya, he blurted out, “You’re that Secor officer!”

“And you must be Sergei?” she replied sweetly. “How do you do? I’m Tasya Morevna.” He blanched as he recognised the name, and she smiled a true killer’s smile as she watched the fear grow in him. “You probably know me better as the Chertovka, yes?”

“Leave him alone, Morevna,” snapped Katya. “What’s this all about?”

“Another one of Kane’s little schemes, I’m afraid, Katya,” said Tasya, entirely unaffected by the waves of hostility emanating from Katya. “I told him he was wasting his time, but he’s got this idea from somewhere that you’re more than just a stupid little girl.”

Katya scowled. “You’re trying to provoke me.”

“Ah,” said Tasya lightly. “Not so stupid after all.”

“It won’t work because I’m already as provoked as all hell. I told you
No
, and I meant it.”

“I’m not the one you have to convince. I’m just a passenger myself. You’ll have to talk to the captain.” She stepped to one side and bowed mockingly as she indicated the direction of the
Vodyanoi
’s bridge. “This way.”

Katya ground her teeth for a second, mastering her rage. “Fine,” she said, walking past Tasya. “Fine. I’ll see Kane, tell him what he can do with his plan, and then we’re leaving. We’ve got a cargo to deliver.”

Tasya let her walk precisely three paces before saying casually, “Yes. Plumbing supplies, isn’t it?”

Katya stopped so abruptly that Sergei, who was looking over his shoulder at Tasya, bumped into her. Katya stepped around him and narrowed her eyes. “How did you know that?”

Tasya smiled pleasantly and shrugged. “Lucky guess.”

Katya glared at her for a long moment during which Tasya’s smile never wavered. Only a small, sensible voice at the back of her mind, telling Katya that Tasya was a highly trained soldier who could likely kill Katya a dozen different ways with one hand tied behind her back, stopped her running at Tasya with her fists flying. Instead, she turned on her heel and strode off, Sergei close behind her.

She led the way directly to the bridge and made an unannounced entry that silenced the place. “What are you, Kane?” she demanded of the somewhat bewildered captain in his command chair. “Stupid? Don’t you understand ‘No’ means ‘No’?”

One of the bridge crew smirked at this, which was a mistake. Katya was by him, glaring into his face in a second. “Shut up,” she said. “You
child
.” The smirk melted away instantly.

Katya turned back to Kane as Tasya arrived, having dispensed with her escort en route. She looked at the scene and said, “That’s alright, Kuriakova. Make yourself at home.”

“Sorry about… this, Katya,” said Kane, seemingly sincere. “It’s just… well… There is so much at stake.”

Katya wasn’t interested. “Our cargo, Kane. The plumbing stuff. You placed it, didn’t you?” Sergei glanced at her with puzzlement, and then realisation dawned.

“So you’d know where we were going,” he said, half to himself.

“Yes,” admitted Kane. “Sorry about that, too. A small deceit.” He was wearing dark grey trousers, a pale cream shirt and, over it, some sort of buttoned sleeveless top similar to an armoured vest except with a V at the front and made out of normal looking cloth in a shade of brown. It didn’t seem very functional to Katya’s eye, undoubtedly some fatuous item of Terran clothing. From one of the small pockets on the garment protruded a clumsily folded envelope, and this Kane took and held out to her.

“This is twice the agreed transport fee, in Federal notes. Please, take it for putting up with the imposition.” He smiled, a little weakly. “You can keep the supplies, too. If you like. You should be able to get something for them.”

“I don’t want your money, Kane.”

“Yes, she does,” said Sergei quickly. He stepped forward and took the money. As he returned to Katya, he said quietly. “Money, Katya! Actual money! Don’t let your pride get in the way of eating.”

“OK,” conceded Katya with poor grace. “We’ll take your money, and now we’re done. Let us go.”

“Sorry. Again,” said Kane. “I can’t do that. Not after going to all this trouble.”

Katya glanced around, trying and failing to formulate an escape plan.

“You could try screaming and seeing if help comes,” said Tasya, with mock concern.

Kane shot Tasya an impatient look that she accepted with a bored nod of her head. Kane turned to Katya. “Katya, you once said that the worst thing I do… that I’ve done… is not to tell people what’s going on until… well, sometimes, when it’s too late to help.”

“I remember. I also remember saying that I never wanted to see you again.”

Kane bridled at that, and some of the steel Katya knew lurked beneath the scatter-brained persona he wore like a shield glinted for a second. “I don’t need some truculent schoolgirl lecturing me. I need you… this whole
world
needs you… to help steer it away from Armageddon.”

“I don’t know what that word means.”

“I doubt any Russalkin has ever even heard it before. It’s nothing good, believe me. I just need a couple of days of your time to show you what is happening. Then you can make your own mind up. And you can help us, or you can go. I won’t stop you.” He glanced at Tasya. “
We
won’t stop you.”

Katya wasn’t so angry that she couldn’t see that a fait accompli had been dumped in her lap. She could spend the next ten minutes shouting at Kane, but she knew it would be ten minutes opposed by his particularly impenetrable brand of apologetic stonewalling, and with an accompaniment of languid sarcasm from Tasya. It was not, she bitterly admitted to herself, a winning proposition. The best she could hope for was to hang onto a few shreds of dignity.

“Two days, then. And you’d better have something worthwhile to show us at the end of it. Oh, and twice the transport fee isn’t going to come close to paying for the trouble we’re going to have with the Feds when they find out we apparently went off in a random direction instead of going to Dunwich – you’re going to have to up that sweetener.” Without waiting for a reply – Kane’s startled expression showed her response had hit home – she said, “C’mon, Sergei. Let’s get our stuff from the
Lukyan
. Then they can show us our cabins.”

She walked out of the bridge with Sergei, his nervousness evident, following in her wake. As soon as they were a couple of metres through the exit into the corridor, she gestured for Sergei to hold his tongue and stepped silently back to stand in the shadow of the bulkhead by the hatch. She listened intently, trying to make out specific voices over the usual hum and report chatter of an active bridge.