Jonathan Howard - Katya's World

Katya spoke to Kane, but couldn’t take her eyes off the screen as new flashes appeared. “What’s the Vodyanoi ’s full crew complement?”

“Thirty-seven,” replied Kane in a hoarse whisper, unable to tear his eyes away from the carnage being relayed to them as neat little symbols on a display screen.

“And the Yagizban versions?”

“The same.” Another flash, another thirty-seven lives extinguished. “We have to do something. When it’s finished with the boats, it will turn on FP-1.”

“Good riddance,” said Lukyan, but he flinched as a new flash appeared.

“I think you’re labouring under a misapprehension if you think the FP-1 is purely a military facility, Lukyan Pushkin,” said Kane, rage flickering in his voice. “There are family accommodations aboard. You just blithely wished ‘good riddance’ upon perhaps two hundred young children.”

Lukyan looked at him aghast, his eyes widening. “What? I had no idea…”

“Well, now you do.” Kane gestured hopelessly at the screen. “If anybody has any bright ideas, now would be a good time to share them.”

There was silence. And then Katya said in a small voice, “Is the Baby still aboard?”

It felt strange to her, how her attitude to the minisub Pushkin’s Baby had changed in only the space of a few days. Once she had regarded it as purely her uncle’s, something that was always there. Then, when she had got her card, it had changed in her view into a place of work and she looked forward to knowing every kink and corner of her as well as Uncle Lukyan and Sergei did.

She stopped for a moment in the corridor leading forward to the salvage maw. “What’s wrong?” asked Lukyan.

“Poor Sergei. He thinks we’re dead.” They started walking again.

Now, the Baby was the submarine that refused to die. The Leviathan had killed it and the Vodyanoi and her crew had resurrected it. Every time she saw it now, it was a faint shock. They stepped through the hatch into the sealed maw and Katya experienced the shock again.

The Baby , for its part, sat patiently and awaited whatever they might ask of it. Katya walked to it and ran her hand over the curve of the hull. The urge to say, “Good girl” to it was quite powerful. She looked over her shoulder at Lukyan and found him smiling.

“It’s just a machine. Boats and ships have always been just machines for getting from one place to another. Yet we develop a… I don’t know, a bond, I suppose. Life crawled from the sea back on Earth and, one way and another, eventually turned into us, but I don’t think the sea ever really got out of our blood. Not even here.”

Kane was checking the Leviathan ’s IFF identification module mounted on the Baby’s side, nestled amongst all the other equipment she carried. “You have a poetical soul, Lukyan Pushkin,” he commented without pausing in his work. “Just like your Russian ancestors.”

Lukyan’s smile faded. “I have nothing of Earth in me.”

“Nonsense. Russian blood is far fresher in you than the lung fish blood you were waxing lyrical about a moment ago.” Kane gestured offhandedly at Katya. “I gave Katya here the lecture on the importance of history a little while ago. I’m sure it’s still burned into her memory and she can give you the benefit of my wisdom, if at one remove.” He finally looked up to find both Katya and Lukyan glaring stonily at him. He sighed and went back to his work. “Yes, well. Perhaps we can work on the sense of humour before the sense of history.” He resealed the unit and stepped away from it. “Okay, are we sure this is what we want to do? The chances are the Leviathan won’t fall for this a second time.”

“I wouldn’t say it was something I wanted to do…” began Katya.

“We have to try,” said Lukyan simply.

“We have to try,” echoed Kane. He stood motionless as if listening to the words die against the metal walls. He nodded sharply, his mind made up. “We have to try.” Katya noticed both men were looking at her. “Katya, Lukyan’s the pilot. I’m going because I know the Leviathan . You’re not needed. You should stay.”

“Okay,” said Katya. Both men visibly relaxed. Then she boarded the Baby . She was already strapping herself into the co-pilot’s seat when Kane stuck his head around the open hatch, his expression perplexed.

“I’m sorry, did we just miss something then? I thought I heard you agree to stay behind.”

“No. I was just agreeing that you’d done the decent thing and tried to talk me into staying behind. I’ve no intention of letting you two go off without me.”

“Katya…”

She turned in her seat, her face tight with anger. “Do I look like I’m going to let you leave me behind? Do I?”

Lukyan pushed past Kane and went to take the pilot’s seat. “You’re wasting your time, Kane. I’ve seen that face before and you won’t talk your way around it.” He started strapping in. “Exactly like my sister. It’s uncanny sometimes.”

Kane accepted defeat philosophically. He climbed aboard and settled into the same passenger seat he’d taken the first time he’d been bought aboard the Baby as a prisoner. “It’s the blood. Thicker than water. Blood will always out.”

Strapped in, he slapped the hatch control and watched the door close and seal. The maw started to flood. Five minutes later they were clear of the Vodyanoi, moving slowly in the direction of the invisible battle being fought between the Yagizban warboats and the Leviathan .

The Baby ’s sensors were nowhere near as sensitive as the Vodyanoi ’s, nor was her computing power sufficient to create sonar maps of the same sophistication Katya had seen of the battle while they were still aboard the Terran boat. None of that mattered when you were actually travelling through the battleground, Katya thought. Her displays were full of explosions, cavitation noise, imploding compartments.

“I don’t think they’ve managed to lay a finger on the Leviathan ,” she reported. “It’s like fighting a shadow.” Another flash on a display board, sound converted into light for easy viewing. “That was the FP-1. She’s taking a real beating. She’ll sink if the Leviathan doesn’t cease fire.”

Lukyan didn’t comment on it. Instead he flicked the switch that activated the IFF unit.

Katya watched the green light on the Judas box cycle on and off, sending out an electronic lie to the Leviathan , that the Baby was its long lost #6 combat drone. “If it sees through this, Kane, what will it do?”

Kane considered. “If it was just the Leviathan , it would ignore it. If it detected us, it would kill us without hesitation, now its list of enemies is so extensive. But it’s not just the Leviathan . Its behaviour is moderated by Tokarov and I didn’t know Tokarov well enough to be able to make any guesses.”

“None of us did.” Lukyan’s voice was cold. “None of us. I still can’t understand how a man could… do that. It’s worse than suicide.”

“No.” Kane was quiet. “No, it’s a lot like suicide. If Zagadko was still alive - or Petrov - they might have been able to predict his behaviour. Especially Petrov. He’d have made captain soon enough. Good judge of character.”

They sat in silence. Katya had been trying not to think about the message the Vodyanoi had intercepted from the aircraft sent to hunt Petrov’s stolen transporter. So Tasya had shot them down. They were all dead, Petrov, Suhkalev and all the others. She thought back to how it had been Petrov who’d tried to comfort her in his own distant fashion when she’d thought her uncle was dead. “I liked him,” she said into the silence.