Jonathan Howard - Katya's World

“A minute? I think so.”

His arm burned with exhaustion. Even a minute seemed an eternity. He counted slowly to sixty to take his mind off the pain of the tortured muscles, deliberately losing count a couple of times and starting back a few numbers. He wondered what her plan was. He assumed the Baby might have a manipulator arm folded away somewhere that could hold onto him, but he couldn’t see such an arm and, anyway, what would it be doing at the back of the minisub?

He was just about to ask Katya what the plan really was when he discovered it for himself. The aft hatch unsealed and started to open before him. His eyes widened; Katya was going to get herself killed to save him.

He knew it was already too late to try and stop her — the compartment would already have lost its air — now he had to think of some way to get inside and repressurise the Baby rapidly. A couple of plans flitted through his mind, but they foundered on the immediate fact that he was trailing from a plummeting minisub several kilometres in the air by the fingertips of one hand. Then the hatch finished opening and there was Katya, as grim as death.

As grim as death, but very much alive. Strapped over her face was an emergency respirator pack. She’d punched a small hole at the base from which the green oxygen-rich fluid was fountaining across her clothes. Through the transparent mouth piece of the LoxPak, he could see the stuff foaming violently as the oxygen boiled out of it in the very low pressure. She’d known enough not to try and use the breather as a simple life-support unit — the pressure difference between her lungs and outside could have been fatal. Instead she was letting it make a breathable atmosphere inside the mask, the gases making their way into her lungs under their own pressure while she just kept her mouth open. It would be like breathing at the top of a mountain, but it was breathing. Not for the first time, Kane was astonished by her ability to think clearly when danger threatened and time was short. He would have hugged her but for that small detail of trailing behind a plummeting minisub by the fingertips of one hand.

She reached out and snapped a lanyard loop around his wrist, drawing it tight with a reflexive tug. Then she braced herself against the hatchway and started to pull him in on the line, hand over hand. The flow of fluid stuttered and stopped. She was running only on the oxygen in her bloodstream now. Summoning up his every reserve, Kane reached forward with his free hand and managed to grab hers. She placed one foot on either side of the hatch so she was horizontal to the Baby ’s floor and, screaming silently with a desperate rage, she straightened her legs. Kane was half through the hatch now. He used the hand with the line wrapped around it to grab the internal stanchion rail above the door and heaved himself in. It took achingly long seconds to clamber around so he could close the hatch without falling out again, seconds in which he knew Katya was suffocating. Finally, the hatch slammed shut and he released the automatic pressure valves Katya had disabled to prevent the minisub venting all its air in a vain attempt to repressurise a compartment open to space.

Air flooded in. Katya lay on her back hyperventilating, her colour an ugly blue. Kane cursed the slowness of the pressure gauge, tore open the medical kit and gave her oxygen directly from its emergency cylinder.

With a rapidity that surprised and relieved him, her colour and breathing returned to normal.

“Katya? Katya?”

Her eyes flickered open, but she could say nothing more cogent than “Nnnh?”

He levelled a finger at her. “Don’t you ever save my life again.” He didn’t know whether his anger was mock or real.

Katya nodded slightly. “’Kay.”

He had the ugly sense he had overslept, but it felt so nice to lie there in his bunk. Maybe just another minute, then he’d get up. Just another minute. Maybe five.

“Lieutenant?” The voice was tentative, respectful.

“What is it, ensign?” he said. He didn’t want to open his eyes, he had a feeling it would be too bright on the other side of his eyelids, and would give him a headache. Perhaps he already had a headache, he mused. His mouth felt dry, too.

“You’re awake!” The relief in the voice was unmistakable.

Oh, dear. Was he meant to be on duty? That would explain why he felt so guilty for oversleeping. But why couldn’t he remember going to bed in the first place?

He took a deep breath. “Tell Captain Zagadko that Lieutenant Petrov sends his apologies, and will be on bridge presently.” Oh, he was in trouble now.

“Sir? Sir… Captain Zagadko is dead.”

Petrov’s eyes snapped open and he instantly regretted it. He’d been right; it was far too bright outside his skull. He tried to sit up but whoever had been talking to him took a gentle but firm grip of his shoulders and forced him back supine. “You shouldn’t get up too quickly, sir. You took quite a knock.”

It certainly felt like it. How could he have forgotten the captain was dead?

He looked around the room. He was lying in a sickbay, but of no boat or class he recognised. “What happened?” He looked up and recognised Officer Suhkalev. “I remember lifting from the Yagizban place — what was it? FP-1 — and then… not much. We were hit, weren’t we?” Try as he might, the events in his memory just came to a ragged end and no amount of clawing after details seemed to help fill the blank. “Were we?”

Suhkalev nodded. “One engine took a missile. I lost control for a minute. You were hanging on behind me and, the next time I looked, you weren’t there. You must have been thrown around in the manoeuvres and kissed a bulkhead. You were hurt. Hurt badly.” Petrov reached up and found his head was bandaged. “We thought we might lose you for a while. I patched you up as best I could and…”

“ You did?”

Suhkalev nodded again, slightly embarrassed. “The Novgorod ’s medic was lost during the escape. I did a paramedic course. It didn’t really cover severe head trauma, but luckily this place,” he indicated the sickbay with a jerk of his thumb, “is well equipped. Lots of automated stuff.”

“Where is ‘this place’ anyway? We’re not still on the transporter, are we?”

“No, sir. We had to ditch in the ocean. I had to ditch in the ocean. We’d already detected the FP-1 launching pursuit craft and, if we didn’t sink and drown, they’d have blown us out of the water anyway. The thing is, the transporter handling so badly even under one engine surprised me. It made me think.” That slightly embarrassed smile again. “It made me think maybe the reason she handled like a manta whale in calf was maybe she was carrying something big and heavy in her hold.”

The surroundings suddenly made perfect sense to Petrov and he settled back into his sick bed with a pleased smile. “This is a Yagizban boat? One of those Vodyanoi copies?”

“It was just sitting there in the belly. So we all got aboard, opened the transporter’s ventral doors and swam out in this thing. The transporter sank like a stone after the hold flooded. The Yagizban interceptors must have thought we’d died in the crash or drowned in the sinking. They didn’t drop depth charges or torpedoes or even sonar buoys. They just went home.”

It didn’t surprise Petrov. “They may have the toys, but they don’t know how to play with them.”

“We’re making best speed towards FMA waters, but being quiet about it. There’s always the chance they might send in search boats to look for wreckage and Mr Retsky thinks running into them at full speed or trying to get a message out could bring this trip to a sudden end. Another day and it should be safe to hail for FMA vessels.”