Jonathan Howard - Katya's World

They watched it in silence for a minute or so. Katya was beginning to feel very tired. It was so cold in that sea, and she knew it was killing them slowly. She tried to wedge her arm into the spire’s frame so if she fell unconscious, she wouldn’t simply slip under the waves. The spire’s supports were too close together, though, and she couldn’t manage it. She looked at the dark sea beneath the sullen sky, and death felt all too close. “Do you think somebody will save us?” asked Katya.

Kane thought for a moment as if working out an exact answer, but then only said, “Maybe. At least whoever put that hole in the sub didn’t come after us to finish the job.”

“Who do you think that was?”

“I don’t know,” replied Kane, a little too quickly.

Katya had no intention of dying with questions unanswered. She was about to ask him again when her mouth stopped in mid-syllable, and she was left with a foolish expression. Kane looked at her oddly and then followed her line of sight.

Perhaps five hundred metres away, the sea had begun to boil. As they watched, the commotion grew more focussed, more kinetic and Katya realised it was coming closer. She also realised what it was.

“It’s a bow wave! There’s something headed right for us!”

“I’m glad you worked that out for yourself; it saves me having to explain it,” said Kane. “Survival tip, Katya. Take a deep breath just before it hits us. That should be enough, but keep your LoxPak handy in case.”

The mound of angry sea was almost upon them. “In case of what?” she screamed as the roaring of the waters grew deafening.

“Oh, you know,” said Kane, looking straight at the mound, which was quickly turning into a mountain, “stuff.”

The front of the great pile of sea charging towards them seemed to tear and sheer away as the great muzzle of the object was finally exposed. With a hideous, shuddering whine, the muzzle split into three equal jaws — one below and two opening up and away to the left and right. The waters, thrashed until they were milky, sluiced violently over them and back into the sea. The jaws devoured Katya, Kane and the distress buoy all, slowly closing again as the monstrous thing sank back into the ocean. In a few seconds, there was no sign that they had ever been there.

The petty officer who opened the airlock into the salvage maw was only expecting to find a distress buoy. The furious fifteen-year-old girl and the bedraggled man were definitely a surprise.

“What was that?” spat Katya in a fury, waving her arms around to take in the maw and, by implication, the whole process of being swallowed by a submarine. It wasn’t very pleasant in there. It was cold and wet — if not as wet as it had been before the bilge pumps drained it — and dark but for the flashing light on top of the buoy and a dim maintenance light over the door. The maw was like being in a tall conical room that had fallen on its side. Its use was simple; it opened wide, swallowed anything the boat’s captain wanted to look at and then clamped shut. They were also never used in rescues as there was too great a chance of a survivor slipping between the edges of the jaws as the maw shut and, regrettably, being snipped in half. “What did you think you were playing at? You could have killed us!”

Kane was weighing up the petty officer’s uniform; it seemed that an FMA vessel had picked them up. He decided, all things considered, that he’d prefer not to be taken back into custody. If they wanted to know who he was, they’d have to work it out themselves. The petty officer turned to the bulkhead and snapped open the cover on an intercom.

“Deliav to bridge!”

A voice replied almost immediately. “Bridge. What’s the matter, Deliav? Is the buoy damaged?”

“No, captain! At least, I don’t know, I haven’t checked it yet. Captain! We picked up survivors! They must have been hanging onto the buoy!”

As the sailor and his captain talked, Kane leaned close to Katya. “Do you believe in paying your debts?”

Katya grimaced and narrowed her lips. She’d been wondering how long it would take him to get around to this. “Yes, I know you saved my life. Don’t worry, I won’t tell them who you are. Then we’re even, okay.” It wasn’t a question.

“Okay,” said Kane, leaning away from her again. She thought he seemed oddly disappointed, as if she’d said the wrong thing.

The captain sent a small party down to get Katya and Kane, taking them first to the sickbay where the boat’s medic spent half an hour checking each for signs of nitrogen narcosis sickness, hypothermia, and shock. When they were warm in fresh dry clothes — Katya was glad she was quite tall and fitted the smallest uniform one-piece they could find — they were taken to the captain’s cabin for “debriefing.” She didn’t like the sound of that at all.

“It’s just questions,” the doctor told her when she asked. That still didn’t make her feel any better. How could she explain what had happened without dragging in the fact that Kane had been a prisoner aboard?

If Captain Zagadko had appeared at an audition for a production about the war, he’d have been turned down for looking too stereotypical. He was grizzled, lean and his eyes had the distant look of a man who has seen things he’d rather forget. He oozed competence and professionalism and, if Katya hadn’t been so worried about having to lie to him, she would have felt his presence reassuring. He offered them coffee from the pot on his table and began the debriefing.

“Firstly, I’d like to welcome you both aboard the shipping protection vessel RNS Novgorod .” Katya had heard of the Novgorod . She was a big boat, perhaps four hundred metres in length and the pride of the shipping protection fleet — the “pirate hunters” as they were popularly known. Kane seemed to have fallen out of the frying pan into the fire and then climbed back into the frying pan. “I’m truly sorry that you were brought aboard in such an unconventional manner. I’d made the assumption that there would be — forgive me — no survivors. I’d also assumed that whoever was responsible for this outrage would still be nearby, which is why the Novgorod made the quick grab at the surface. It appears I was wrong on both counts. I can only ask your forgiveness.”

“Nothing to forgive, captain,” said Kane. “Any competent captain would have made the same assumptions.”

“I agree,” added Katya, feeling quite grown-up in this conversation. “Please accept our thanks for rescuing us. Also, please extend my apologies to Petty Officer Deliav for anything unpleasant I may have called him when he discovered us in the salvage maw.”

Zagadko smiled. “I’ll do that. But, to business. Do you have any idea what sank Pushkin’s Baby ?”

Of course, Katya realised, this was bound to be about what happened to the sub, not about who was aboard and why they were there. Perhaps she could avoid talking about Kane at all. Any relief she felt at that was quickly overwhelmed by remembering the Baby , and her uncle’s fate.

“Not pirates,” said Kane with certainty.

“Oh? Why not?”

“There was no warning, no shot over the bows, nothing. They just came up and put a hole clean through us. It doesn’t make sense for pirates to sink a vessel. They’re after cargoes, not wrecks.”

The captain nodded and turned to Katya. “I understand you were the co-pilot, Ms Kuriakova?”

She nodded. “My first trip. I’d only just been rated.”

“You were in a good position to see the controls. What do you remember?”

Katya concentrated. “We had just given up on a survey. A ghost return. It looked as good as a mountain of gold for the few moments it was on screen. My uncle wasn’t happy about it turning out to be a mirage and he wasn’t happy that we were trying to cross the Weft with unreliable sensors…”