Jonathan Howard - Katya's World

But she knew.

“Uncle.”

He tried to speak but no sounds came. His lips moved and she thought he said, “Katinka.” Then he reached forward, toppling as he did so. His hand slammed into the door control and the hatch slid shut.

Kane grabbed her by the shoulders and threw her to the floor at the same moment the fuse on the rocket he’d launched ran out. From the other side of the door, there was a ferocious concussion, a dull whump like a giant punching the wall. Instantly, alert sirens sounded.

Kane staggered back to his feet, collecting the laser carbine and stowing it away. “Rocket grenade. Nasty weapons, not really suitable for submarine actions. Blow down a bulkhead as soon as look at it.” He listened to the klaxons. “I think it may have hurt the Leviathan quite badly. We should go.”

She looked at him, dazed, then she shook her head. “My uncle,” she said and walked unsteadily back towards the hatch.

“Lukyan’s dead.”

She stopped, staring at the hatch, willing it to slide open and Lukyan to jump through, safe and sound.

“He gave his life to save you, Katya. You know that. The sphere was firing on him right from the moment he released you. I’ve never seen anything like it.” The hatch wasn’t opening. Katya thought it would probably never open again. Behind her, Kane was still talking, his voice low and intense. “I’m going to honour him by telling anybody who’ll listen about the bravest thing I ever saw, that I have ever even heard of. How are you going to honour him?”

She lowered her head. Then she turned and walked down the corridor towards the docking bay. “By living,” she said quietly as she passed him.

They reached the docking bay a minute later. Kane went in first, his gun drawn in case the docking cables were set to attack. The hemisphere in the ceiling was quiet, though; it seemed the Leviathan had other more pressing concerns.

“How do we get out of here without the Leviathan ’s cooperation?”

“We override. This place has maintenance hatches and access panels very deliberately kept out of the areas that I had access to.” He examined the apparently smooth wall, found a couple of shallow indentations and dug his thumbs into them. With agonising slowness, he unscrewed a small circular hatch.

Katya was pacing up and down. It wasn’t fair that she should lose her last relative, and have him restored to her only to see him die. It wasn’t fair that her father had died in the war. It wasn’t fair that her mother had died in a stupid avoidable accident that wasn’t even her own fault. “It’s not fair.”

Kane looked over his shoulder at her. “No,” he answered. He turned back to his work. “It isn’t. It never is.”

“You don’t know what it’s like.” She was getting angry with him, and she didn’t want to. She needed to hurt him, but she didn’t want to.

“What you’re going through this minute? No, I don’t. I don’t know at all.” He twisted a release control inside the hatch fiercely and, around them, the whole chamber started to reconfigure itself. The smooth wall panels slid back to expose pipes and girders and…

“Combat drones!” She waited for one or all of them to suddenly rise from their cradles and turn their destroying eyes upon Kane and her. Instead, they stayed utterly inanimate.

“They’re inactive. I’ve put this chamber on maintenance cycle so the Leviathan can’t access anything in here. Now if I can find the maintenance consoles… oh, wait.” Another click and three sections of floor started to rise. “One of these will have launch controls. Check that one over there, would you?” Without waiting for confirmation, he moved to one of the control consoles still deploying itself and locking into place.

Keep myself busy, thought Katya. Plenty of time later for grief. Stay focussed. She went to the rising section Kane had indicated. It wasn’t a console at all, she discovered when she reached it, but just a cover for a viewing porthole in the Leviathan ’s skin. She wondered briefly why it had such a thing, but then she looked out and all such questions flew from her mind. “Kane! Kane! Come here quickly!”

Kane ran to her side and looked down through the port. Beneath them was not the submarine darkness of the Russalka ocean. Instead, they could see waves crashing far, far below them. A moment later, clouds came between them and the water.

The Leviathan was flying.

“I hate flying,” said Katya Kuriakova as she watched Russalka fall rapidly away from them. Fine , thought Katya. Perfect . “This isn’t a submarine, is it?”

Kane raised his index finger in admonishment. “Now, I never actually said the Leviathan was a submarine. Not just a submarine”

Katya was only half listening. “This explains so much. Using lasers underwater is so incredibly inefficient. Tasya said it was a crazy way of arming the drones. Not if they were always meant to operate in the air.” She looked up at Kane. He looked faintly embarrassed. “Or space. This thing is space capable, isn’t it? It’s a starship?”

“How did you work that out?”

“Every time you talked about how you came to Russalka, you said you were inside this thing. That doesn’t really make sense unless there was no transporter starship carrying it. I actually wondered how big a ship would be needed to carry the Leviathan here and what happened to it after it finished its job. There’s no mention of such a large Terran ship in the war records I’ve read. So there never was such a vessel. The Leviathan came here under its own power.” She frowned. “Why did you never tell anybody? Why did you let everybody carry on thinking this was just a submarine?”

Kane sat down on one of the Baby ’s outrider rigs and sighed. “I’ve been having doubts about the Yagizba Conclaves for a while. I was in no hurry to tell them that a starfaring battleship was about to hand itself over to them. Actually, that’s not quite true. The Leviathan ’s stardrive is slag; they only work once. Still, it can reach space. The important thing was that it would have given the Yagizban control of the planet from orbit. I wasn’t sure if they deserved that advantage.” He scratched his nose. “I wasn’t sure if anybody on this benighted planet deserves that.”

Katya chose to ignore that last comment and looked out of the porthole again. “Why has it only chosen to fly now?”

“Because it’s hurt. Its stealth systems work well underwater, not so well in the air or space, but I think its stealth must have been damaged by the explosion. Probably its hull integrity too. It uses a forcefield to lend its hull strength.” He noticed Katya looking blankly at him. “A forcefield. It’s… well, it’s complicated. A projected energy field that exhibits some of the qualities of matter.” From her expression, that was not a good explanation. He gave up. “All you need to know is that the Leviathan ’s skin is protected by a very powerful forcefield. It deflects attacks that actually reach it and, just as importantly, holds the hull together when it’s under stress. It allowed the Leviathan to rest far deeper than a conventional boat’s hull could bear. Between losing its stealth and its hull not being able to bear the same pressures, it feels vulnerable. It’s running for high ground where it knows it can’t be reached.”

“Taking us with it.”

“It has to prioritise its problems. We’re probably pretty low in the list. It will use its damage control systems to fix itself up and then, when it’s got a minute, it will kill us.”