Jonathan Howard - Katya's War

Sergei, on the other hand, wandered the corridors with impunity. Given his lifestyle, he had long since become immune to any discourtesy short of a slap in the face, and if the crew were distant with him, he didn’t notice. Instead, he walked around the ship like a man who’d found himself in the belly of a manta whale and didn’t want to miss any of the experience.

It was after one of these wide-eyed walks that he turned up knocking urgently on Katya’s cabin door early on the second day. Katya, bleary with disturbed sleep, opened up to find him frantic on the threshold, looking up and down the corridor as if he was being pursued. He pushed past her and wordlessly pantomimed that she should shut the door again quickly.

“Come in, Sergei,” she said with heavy irony. Sergei, being Sergei, didn’t notice.

“I was just on the bridge…” he began.

Katya sucked in a breath sharply. Sergei had never been formally trained in submarine operations, and had never been aboard anything bigger than a passenger shuttle or a transporter piloted by one of his cronies in his whole life. It occurred to Katya that perhaps she should have told him that bridges were routinely off-limits to non-crew. Just wandering in like that would not have made him popular. Yes, she’d marched in herself the other day, but she’d been angry and expected, so it wasn’t quite the same thing. Belatedly, she realised she’d probably set a bad example.

“They kicked you out?”

“No, I left myself. They didn’t seem to mind me being there.”

Katya doubted that, but let him continue.

“The thing is, I caught a glimpse of the navigator’s screen. Katya,” he lowered his voice to a horrified whisper, “they’ve taken us into Red Water!”

If he was expecting Katya to throw up her hands and faint dead away, he was to be disappointed.

“They’re pirates, Sergei. I don’t think Red Water bothers them very much one way or the other.”

“But we’re in interdicted waters! If a Federal boat finds us here, they’ll kill us!”

Katya sighed. She could almost feel her snug little bunk getting colder behind her. “This is a pirate boat, Sergei. What’s the FMA going to do if they find us? Sink us more than once?”

She sat on her bunk and thought wistfully of coffee. Real coffee, the expensive stuff from the hydroponics farms. If only the delivery job to Dunwich had been for real. She bet they grew coffee there. But, there was no coffee here and now. Only Sergei, panicking. Not really the same thing at all.

“But they’ll know we’re here now! The FMA’s going to have picket sensors all around Red Water, they’re bound to! There’ll be boats coming for us right now!”

“Calm down, Sergei. Just quieten down a bit. No, there won’t be any boats. Think about it. There’s a war on. Red Water’s just to warn off civilian traffic. Military boats on both sides will simply ignore it. There’ll just be undetonated weapons or a sunken boat here they’re planning to salvage or something boring like that.”

“Picket sensors…” said Sergei again, refusing to be fobbed off with common sense quite so quickly.

“Those things aren’t cheap. In their boots, where would you place them? Around some volume of water nobody much cares about or on guard around military facilities? Don’t worry. There are no pickets. The Feds will probably only ever find out if a civilian boat’s been in Red Water either because they have the lousy luck to run into a FMA boat while they’re in there, or because it shows up in their navigational data if customs bother to check.”

That, finally, reassured him on the subject of Red Water, although only by giving him something else to worry about. “The Baby … I mean, the Lukyan ’s nav data! How are we supposed to explain this side trip?”

“We won’t have to. There’s a tech on the Vodyanoi who can fake the data anyway you like. We’ll come up with some story about the drive going boggy on us for a while and slowing us down, and the nav data will back up every word.”

“You’re sure?”

“Positive. They’ve done it before. The Feds went through the Lukyan ’s memory — back when she was still Pushkin’s Baby — the last time she went for a ride in this boat. They didn’t find a thing out of place.” She stretched. “Well, I’m awake now. Might as well get a shower and some food. Kane’s got this big whatever-the-hell-it-is to show us today that’s supposed to change everything. I’d hate to be awe-inspired on an empty stomach.”

While the concept of a shower evaded Sergei, food was a much easier idea to grasp.

The summons came at just before midday, Standard Russalka Time. That almost the whole planetary population lived underwater and even the Yagizban in their floating towns never saw the sun above the dense cloud cover had made the question of time zones moot; midday was midday the world over.

Katya was called to the bridge by name and Sergei was not, so she took him along anyway just to irritate Kane. She found the bridge subdued, the usual interplay between the crew positions muted and serious.

“Range to station locks, three and a half klicks and closing,” called the navigator.

“Thank you,” said Kane. “Is that drone ready yet, Mr Quinn?”

“Reconnaissance drone prepped and ready for launch, sir.”

“Good. Stand by to launch at one kilometre.”

On the bridge’s main screen was displayed their current location. It clearly showed them in the heart of the FMA-declared Red Water, which raised an obvious question.

“What station?” asked Katya. “There shouldn’t be anything out here.”

“Shouldn’t there?” said Kane. “Depends on what you think Red Water really is.”

Katya looked at him curiously. “It’s a danger zone. Everybody knows that.”

“Ah,” said Kane, and Katya knew from infuriating experience that he was about to say something obscure. Nor did he disappoint. “But a danger to who?”

“Are you going to explain that?”

“I won’t have to, soon enough.”

Katya decided not to give him the pleasure of rising to the bait, and instead turned back to the screen with an expression of serene indifference. Inwardly, however, she was counting slowly to ten to avoid screaming at him.

The Vodyanoi crept closer and closer to its destination on one third engine power. Finally, Kane ordered the drives be cut and they drifted to a range of one thousand metres on the boat’s dwindling inertia. “Launch the drone, Mr Quinn,” said Kane.

Quinn lifted the safety cover from the Number Three fire control and pressed the button beneath. The pattern of lights above it changed. “Drone away, captain. Closing tube door.”

“Good. Sensors, do we have telemetry?”

“Telemetry is online, sir,” called the sensors officer. “Signal is strong. Manoeuvring in to five hundred metres before I begin the survey.”

Katya didn’t want to give Kane any further opportunities to be mysterious with her, but her curiosity was devouring her. As nonchalantly as she could, she wandered over to stand by the captain’s chair.

“Surveying what?” she said, trying to give the impression it was something of the mildest possible interest to her. “What are you looking for?”

Kane’s eyes never left the main screen. On it was displayed the Vodyanoi ’s current position, the rocky hillside they were investigating labelled NoDa3 , and a tiny pulsing dot representing the reconnaissance drone as it moved smoothly from the former to the latter. “A way in. If there’s one left.”

“Pulse imaging on,” said the sensors officer.

“Main screen, if you please.”