Katya's World (12 page)

She found the arms locker easily enough. It was still unlocked; after the urgent arming to repel boarders, they’d obviously been in too much of a hurry to secure it. Besides which it was empty, stripped bare.

Almost bare. In one corner there were some small drawers containing spare parts, cleaning kits and manuals. In the lowermost, she found a box that held what she needed.

Havilland Kane was lying on the bunk in the brig when Katya opened the door. He looked at her out of the corner of his eye and then went back to considering the ceiling.

“
Noisy outside,
”
he commented.
“
I gather my Brethren of the Deep, to coin a phrase, are making life difficult for the good captain?
”

“
The captain’s dead.
”

“
I’m sorry to hear that. Truly I am. My colleagues can be a little heavy-handed at times.
”

“
You planned all this.
”
Katya’s hand closed around the little maser pistol concealed in her pocket. Lukyan had never balked at showing her how to maintain, activate and operate weapons. The very fact that she didn’t like guns had encouraged him. If she’d been fascinated by them, he’d once told her, he would have taught her about hydroponics gardens instead.

“
Planned? No, that’s a very strong term for what I’ve done. I’ve extemporised. Made it up as I went along. I certainly didn’t plan for your uncle’s craft to be attacked or this one, for that matter. I just took advantage of opportunities as they’ve presented themselves. I’m sorry about the violence, though. Without my calming influence, my crew can get… excitable.
”

His self-control and the knowledge that he’d been stringing them along all the way were almost more than she could bear.
“
You dirty Grubber,
”
she snarled.

Nothing seemed to bother him.
“
You know, I’ve never liked that term. It says more about some vague Russalkin sense of inadequacy than anything bad about Earth. Land-grubbers…
”
He snorted.
“
W
hat do most Russalkin
know about it? You’ve never had real ground under your feet, just blasted rock or deck sections. You’ve never lain on your back in a field and reached up,
”
he raised his arm towards the ceiling,
“
feeling you can almost touch the clouds. Fluffy white clouds against a cobalt blue sky this is, not those filthy dark clouds that Russalka gets all the time.
Y
ou think I want to be on your foul little planet? If I could leave, I would have left ten years ago.
”

“
Get up.
”

“
No.
”
He lowered his hand, but still didn’t look at her.
“
I’m quite happy here, thank you.
”

“
Get up!
”

“
Or what?
”
He sounded bored or perhaps just tired.
“
You’ll shoot me?
”
He finally turned his head to look at her. She had the gun drawn and levelled at him. His eyebrows raised.
“
Oh. Perhaps that was an ill-considered thing to say.
”

She stood
with
feet apart and both hands gripping the pistol.
“
I’m not joking. Get up or I
will
shoot you.
”

He turned away from her to look at the ceiling again.
“
You won’t shoot. You’re too well mannered to shoot anybody, never mind an unarmed man.
”

The pistol made a surprisingly loud
krak!-hisss!
in the small room. Katya did a better job of hiding her startled reaction to the sound than Kane. Then again, a maser bolt hadn’t just gone past the tip of Katya’s nose to fry and bubble the paint on the wall by her head.

“
You don’t know anything about me,
”
said Katya,
“
and I’m not that well mannered.
”

Kane swung his feet onto the floor and looked at her, trying not to
appear
worried.
“
Okay, so I’m up. Now what?
”

The shooting had died down by the time Kane emerged on deck, Katya standing close behind him with the barrel of the maser pushed hard into the small of his back. Kane’s boat sat at an angle across the moon pool, her guns trained on the surviving members of the
Novgorod
’s crew lining up on the dock side with their hands behind their heads. There were some unmoving bodies on the stone floor and a couple floating facedown in the pool itself. Katya found she accepted this without a qualm and the ease of that acceptance nauseated her far more than the sight of death itself.

Armed pirates were moving onto their boats
’
deck to back up the remaining Gatling gunner, sweeping their muzzles to cover the area. They were looking in every direction except hers and, for a crazy moment, Katya considered sneaking back below. Then one looked over at the
Novgorod
. Instantly, she had six or seven long arms trained on her. More specifically, they were trained on Kane, behind whom she was hiding. For a less crazy and more fearful moment, she wondered if they’d recognise him from sixty metres away and, even if they did, who was to say his captaincy hadn’t been usurped in his absence? Perhaps even the pirates wanted him dead.

But they didn’t fire, neither before or after one of them cried out,
“
It’s the captain!
”

“
Are you all right, captain?
”
shouted another.

“
Fine, thank you,
”
called Kane, as casually as if they were meeting in a corridor.
“
Well, apart from the maser being stuck in my back by this young lady.
”

The pirates’ weapons, which had been lowered when they recognised him, snapped back into aiming positions.

“
I think I can get her,
”
Katya heard one say, the sound floating across the water with great clarity.

“
You are to do no such thing,
”
said Kane, in a cold, hard voice that carried at least as much threat and authority as Zagadko’s roar.
“
I don’t want any more shooting. The time for violence has passed.
”

“
But you agree that violence was necessary?
”
said a new voice.

A figure stepped aside from the rest of the pirates, a woman somewhere in her late twenties or early thirties,
with
short black hair that barely reached her collar and an angular face that hinted at determination. She was wearing the distinctive body-armour of an FMA marine from the war, but without the helmet. The black ceramic armour panels had been recoloured, however, in dark reds and oranges to create a striped effect that Katya knew were called
“
tiger stripes
”
after some animal the Grubbers had driven into extinction.

“
Hello, Tasya,
”
called Kane. He waved at the churned surface of the
Novgorod
’s hull.
“
Was the deck-sweeper really necessary?
”

“
Yes,
”
she replied brusquely.
“
We’ve lost Daliev doing this. I think it was necessary.
”

“
Well, you were the one on the spot. I’ll leave it to your discretion. I’m back now, though, and I don’t want the girl shot if it can be avoided.
”

“
Who is she?
”

“
A waif and a stray. Katya Kuriakova. She’s the surviving crew of the boat the Feds commandeered to take me to the Deeps. She’s not FMA. It’s just lousy luck
that
has brought her here.
”

“
Hey!
”
hissed Katya, jamming the gun more firmly into his back.
“
Stop it! I’ve got the gun here. You don’t talk unless I say so.
”

“
What was the name?
”
called the woman Kane had called Tasya.
“
Did you say Kuriakova?
”

Kane raised his hands.
“
Sorry. She’s armed and a bit nervous. I should shut up.
”

There was activity aboard the pirate vessel. Some crewmembers disappeared below.
“
What are they doing?
”
Katya demanded of Kane.

“
I don’t know. How should I know?
”

Her curiosity only had to wait a couple of minutes to be sated. The pirates returned and this time they had company, a
huge and distinctive figure
.

“
Uncle Lukyan!
”
cried Katya as he was forced to his knees on the pirate vessel’s deck. A moment later, the equally bedraggled figure of Suhkalev joined him.

Kane laughed out loud.
“
You were shadowing us the whole time?
”

Katya hardly heard him. She stared at Lukyan, a miracle in the flesh. Part of her wanted everyone to just vanish so she could hug her uncle so hard that he would never, ever die
, t
hat she would never have to feel grie
f and loss like that again. This
part of her would have flung the gun down right away, filled as she was with a joyous, childish belief that everyone would smile at her happiness and would not stand in her way.

But the greater part of her could still smell the blood and
the
tang of air ionised by maser bolts. She could feel the deck beneath her feet, the gun in her hand, and Kane’s spine beneath the muzzle as she dug it into his back. She’d been taught from when she was old enough to reach an airlock control that curiosity could kill, that panic could kill, that impatience could kill. For the first time, she realised that even joy can kill you on Russalka.

With an effort, she forced herself to be cold and rational, to think through what had happened and what was likely to happen.

Step by step, she worked it out.
Kane’s boat had been in the sonar dead zone behind them – their baffles – as soon as they’d left the locks. It had tracked them with the intention of scooping up the
Baby
in its great salvage maw when they were halfway through the trip and boats responding to a distress signal would have taken too long to reach their location to do any good.

“
We lost you in the Weft. Then we heard all sorts of noise on the hydrophones. We got there to find that little sub going down and we grabbed it.
”
Tasya crossed her arms.
“
Typically, you’d already left. Never where you’re meant to be, are you, Captain?
”

“
I got bored of waiting for you,
”
replied Kane nonchalantly.

Tasya stood over the kneeling prisoners and drew her gun.
“
Drop your weapon and surrender, girl, or your uncle dies.
”

“
I’d do it,
”
said Kane quietly to Katya.
“
She’s more than capable of squeezing that trigger.
”

Katya looked at all the forces ranged against her and suddenly the maser in her hand seemed a pathetic sort of thing to have put her hopes in. If she surrendered, what then? The pirates didn’t need her, didn’t need Lukyan. They knew that the pirates used the old mining site as a hideout, too. Surely they’d be murdered? But if she didn’t surrender, what could she hope to accomplish? She didn’t stand a chance of hitting anything on the pirate boat at this range, all she could do
was
shoot Kane and then they’d shoot her anyway.

“
You know who Tasya is, don’t you?
”
murmured Kane, interrupting her train of thought.
“
She’s the Chertovka. You know that name, surely?
”

The Chertovka. The She-Devil.

“
She’s a war criminal,
”
said Katya, an awful sense of dread welling in her. A war criminal, and worse.
“
You sail with a… a… a monster like her?
”

“
She’s no angel,
”
admitted Kane,
“
but you should be a lot more suspicious about what the Feds put on criminal records. Don’t underestimate her, though. She doesn’t do threats, just warnings.
”

“
I’m getting bored,
”
called Tasya.
“
Maybe you don’t think I’ll do it.
”
She jammed the gun against the back of Suhkalev’s head.
“
He’s expendable. Here’s your demonstration, girl.
”
Katya could hear Suhkalev
’s
whimpers turn to panicked hyperventilating, a sob of fear on every outward breath.

She’s going to kill him, thought Katya, she really is. She thought of her experiences with the arrogant young Federal officer and how all this was his fault. If he’d just bothered somebody else with his stupid little problems, Lukyan, Sergei and she could have done the round trip and been home celebrating by now. Stupid, stupid Fed.

Just for a second, one tiny fleeting second, she thought,
Go ahead. Kill him
and she was ashamed.

She dropped the gun and stepped away from Kane.
“
You win. Leave him alone.
”
The Chertovka – Katya couldn’t think of her in any other way now – stood over the sobbing man for a moment longer, apparently disappointed. She stepped back and sent Suhkalev sprawling on his face with a kick in his back.

Kane picked up Katya’s gun. He looked at her grimly, but made no move to point it at her.
“
Very wise, Ms Kuriakova. I’m glad that’s over. Now, if you’ve finished waving guns around and otherwise demonstrating what you’re not very good at, we can concentrate on the real problem.
”

“
Real problem? I… I don’t understand?
”

Kane sighed.
“
Nothing like a bit of a firefight to distract people from the big picture, is there?
”
He shook his head and walked towards the
Novgorod
’s prow and the dockside, not even making Katya go first or
ensuring
she was following. She stood for a moment, wondering what he meant. Realisation was cold and fearful.

The Leviathan.