Jonathan Howard - Katya's World

“The torpedoes all detonated prematurely. They were intercepted somehow.”

“It launched combat drones. That’s obvious. Is it responding to hails?”

“No, colonel. We’ve lost it from sonar too.”

Tasya’s lips thinned. “It’s activated its stealth systems.” She shook her head. “Put all non-essential personnel on transports out of here, enact full evacuation protocols. That thing’s going to attack and I don’t know if we can beat it.” She looked up at Moltsyn narrowly, daring him to ruin her day further. “Any good news, major?”

“A little, I think. Air radar followed the stolen transport for about twenty kilometres. Its path was erratic. Then it lost altitude, tried to climb and ending up pitching into the sea. It looks like you shot it down after all, colonel.”

“Search units have been dispatched?”

“Of course. The ocean’s very angry today, but their air search radar did not detect anything and one reported seeing something in the water that looked like a downed aircraft. It sank before they had a chance to relay pictures.”

“I’d have preferred more solid evidence. Like Petrov’s head on a spike.” She unconsciously touched the closely grouped pock marks on her armour left by Petrov’s maser bolts. “It will have to do for the moment. We have a larger and more immediate problem.”

Across the hangar warning sirens suddenly wailed and red strobe lights flared into life. Moltsyn snapped his head to look. “What’s that?”

Tasya followed his glance, curiosity hardening into suspicion. “An emergency launch from one of the… That’s the Vodyanoi ’s bay! Moltsyn! Who authorised that launch?”

“Colonel!” A trooper ran up, very conscious that he was the bearer of bad news. “The control room! We… there was an injured woman in there. We sent a medical team and…”

Tasya reared up onto her feet and turned on the trooper. “Spit it out, man! What’s happened?”

The trooper looked at her as if he was expecting her to shoot him at any moment. “We went back to check on them and… They were tied up.”

Tasya frowned. “The injured woman was tied up? What are you blathering about?”

“No, colonel! The medical team were tied with suture tape from their own supplies! The woman, the other administrator and one of the Terrans, they had gone. They had stolen the stretcher!”

Tasya’s fury suddenly cooled, which only served to make her more threatening. “ What Terran?” But she already knew. With all the medical teams around, two men carrying an “injured” woman on a stretcher would go unremarked, even if they were heading towards the boat bays rather than the exits. “Out of my sight,” she said quietly and the trooper obeyed as quickly as he humanly could. She turned to Moltsyn. “Kane’s turned. The Vodyanoi is no longer to be considered a friendly vessel. It is to be destroyed on detection.”

“Shall we launch pursuit boats, colonel?”

“Launch all available warboats, but they’re not going after Kane. He’s tomorrow’s problem. We have to live through whatever the Leviathan has for us first.”

Kane leaned back in the Vodyanoi ’s captain’s seat like a king returned to his throne. “Take us out to about two klicks at one third and bring us about. Slow and steady, duck us under a good thermal layer. We’re going to wait and watch developments.”

“Kane.” Lukyan looked at Katya and then back at Kane. “Kane?”

Kane looked up at him. “What will become of you? I don’t know, Lukyan Pushkin. Not at the moment. We’ll just have to see what develops, won’t we?”

“Two thousand metres out from FP-1,” reported the helmsman. “Bringing us about.”

“I can hear launches,” reported the sensors operator. “Boat launches.” She paused listening intently. “Lots of them. Somewhere about forty.”

“Forty boats?” Katya was aghast. “Warboats?”

Kane leaned forward in his seat. “Probably. Mostly copies of this one, I should think. Not quite as good, but numbers count for a lot. Can you track them?” he asked the sensors officer.

She shook her head. “Sorry, sir. They’re running silent as quickly as they can. Everybody’s playing hide and seek.”

It was only to be expected; if the Leviathan saw them, it would kill them. A submarine battle is a strange mixture of tedium, terror and bewilderment, even more so than battles in other environments. It is perhaps the only battlefield where fortune always favours the cautious and firing first may be the worst thing to do. As a result, the best submarine commanders are cool, sanguine men and women who not only think clearly under pressure, but — just as importantly — think clearly when nothing is apparently happening. Still, Kane may have been pushing the stereotype of the unflappable submarine commander when he produced a yo-yo. Katya had never seen one before and watched in fascination as it descended and rose on its string with little apparent effort on Kane’s part. “What is that?” she asked finally.

“This? It’s a yo-yo. It’s just a toy.”

“Where did you get it?”

“A little curiosity shop on Earth.” The yo-yo rose quickly and slapped into Kane’s hand where he held it tightly. “I bought it for my daughter.”

The admission startled her slightly. She looked around for her uncle, but he had walked over to the navigation officer’s position and was irritating him by reading the instruments over his shoulder. “You have a daughter?” She said finally just for something to say. As soon as she did, she realised how stupid a question it was, as if it were something he might be mistaken about.

Kane didn’t seem to notice. He was looking intently at the yo-yo. Suddenly making his mind up, he carefully removed his finger from the loop at the end of the string and proffered the toy to her. “Would you like it?”

Katya almost asked what about his daughter, but something stopped her. Instead, she took it from him. “Thank you.”

Her acceptance seemed to please him and he smiled the tired, sad smile she’d come to know. “It’s all in the wrist action. There are tricks you can do with it, but I don’t know what they are. You’ll have to make some up for yourself.”

The smile vanished as a low vibration thrummed through the Vodyanoi ’s hull. “Sensors, what was that?”

“An explosion, sir, five degrees off to larboard.”

Larboard? mouthed Katya to Lukyan.

“It’s an old way of saying port ,” he explained, adding, “sometimes I think this lot have been playing ‘Pirates’ for too long.”

A map of the area was flashed up on the main screen, the Vodyanoi ’s position marked up at the centre. A flash mark indicated the direction and probable distance to the explosion. “The FP-1’s been hit,” said Kane. “I don’t think the Yagizban are going to take that lying down.”

He was right. A moment later a volume of sea to the southwest of the platform was swarming with torpedoes hunting with active sonar pinging furiously.

“There’s a lot of ambient sound energy out there,” said the sensors officer. “we may be detected, sir.”

“Yes, we may be, but if we back off we may miss something important. Hold our position but keep us quiet, helm.”

They watched as the bright flashing lights of the torpedoes ran around in search patterns for several minutes until, one by one, they flickered out without a single effective detection of the target, much less a hit. For five long minutes, they watched the unchanging screen in silence. Then another flash appeared. “That’s a boat,” reported sensors crisply. “It’s bad, she’s going down. I can hear bulkheads crumpling.” Another flash. “Another boat’s hit; she’s…” Another flash, and another. The sensor operator swore under his breath. “It’s a massacre out there, sir. Four hits. Five. One’s limping, I think. No, another hit, she’s been finished off.”