Jonathan Howard - Katya's World

“Mr Retsky is very prudent. Send him my compliments and… No, I’ll tell him myself.” He started to get up to Suhkalev’s alarm.

“No! Sir! You’re not fit to command yet! You’ll…”

“My mother’s not dead, Suhkalev. You can’t have her job. Anyway, relax. I’m just going to show my face and then come straight back here. I want to congratulate the crew on a job well done. You, too. Now help me up.” As he got slowly to his feet, he rested his hand against the bulkhead for support. He looked at the metal, patted it gently. “What’s she called?”

“The boat? She doesn’t have a name, sir. You know what they’re like in the Conclaves; she’s got a number. YCV-K2301 , I think. Something like that anyway”

Petrov curled his lip. “ YCV-K2301 ?” he said, disgusted. “What goes through their minds? How can anybody develop a sense of belonging to something called the YCV-K2301 ? No sense of esprit de corps , the Yagizban. Is she a good boat?”

“Your crew seem to like her. The general opinion is that she’s not quite as nice as the Vodyanoi because she doesn’t have Terran equipment aboard, but she’s a good copy. Oh, the big difference is she doesn’t have a salvage maw like the Vodyanoi . The bow’s taken up with an extended weapons room. More fish, more tubes.”

Petrov smiled a predatory smile. “I like her already. But that name’s got to go.”

“As senior officer it’s your privilege to rename the prize, sir.”

Petrov nodded slowly to avoid provoking his headache. If the Yagizba Conclaves thought they were going to have their surprise attack against the Federal settlements as planned, they were going to be bitterly disappointed. The counterstrike started now.

“Then take a note, Officer Suhkalev. As of this moment, the vessel formerly known as the YCV-K2301 , taken in combat by the surviving crew of the RMV Novgorod and an element of the Federal law-enforcement fraternity on behalf of the Federal Maritime Authority, will now and henceforth be known as the RMV…”

He paused. He didn’t even have to wait for inspiration; a name had already offered itself. The pause was his doubt about its suitability. Was it really an appropriate name for an FMA boat? A warboat should have a noble name, not what he had in mind. Then he thought of what the Yagizban had planned, their lying and treason and he knew it was perfect. There would be no nobility in the next war fought in the seas of Russalka.

“…the RMV Vengeance .”

The Vodyanoi had drifted at a depth of two hundred metres, watching, waiting and doing very little else while the Leviathan mauled the FP-1. The crew had spent ten years learning pragmatism and they practised it now, ignoring the desperate distress signals from their sister vessels as the hulking killer-ship slid unheard and unseen through their midst, seeding death among the Yagizban boats with its combat drones. They listened as the battlefield grew quieter and quieter and they wondered how long it would be before the Leviathan sighted and destroyed them. Instead, the carnage halted abruptly. The Yagizban recalled their remaining forces and the great floating station had moved slowly away, listing badly in the water.

The Vodyanoi had started to cautiously follow, assuming that the Leviathan , invisible to their sensors, would be doing the same. Instead they had detected a massive disturbance behind them; almost seven million displacement tonnes of vessel surfacing at speed and tearing itself from the ocean top. They had released a camera buoy to the surface and watched the Leviathan fly upwards, upwards until it was lost in the boiling clouds.

For lack of anything else that they could do, they waited. Thirty minutes later, the clouds glowed white above them and the communication channels filled with random noise.

For lack of anything else it could be, they knew the Leviathan was destroyed, and that their captain was dead.

They were debating what to do next when, through the slowly clearing channels, they detected the transponder signal of the Baby . Triangulation showed it was not in the sea, but in the air. A long way up in the air. The most likely explanation was it had been blown free in the blast and was falling back to Russalka like an artificial meteorite. But it fell, and it fell and it fell and it took its own sweet time doing it. The camera buoy, coming back online after the radiation wave had temporarily silenced it, showed them the truth. The Baby , lightened to the point of almost no effective weight by the combat drones strapped to it, floating slowly towards the ocean, as slow as a soap bubble.

Finally, it touched down. The Vodyanoi was waiting for it.

When the minisub Pushkin’s Baby finally reached Lemuria Station, it was ten days late. There was no fuss, no crowds at the locks when she arrived hungry for news of what had happened to her, not even anybody demanding to know where her cargo was. The official who processed her was new to the station and didn’t know the local boats and masters, so nobody even asked about Lukyan Pushkin.

Katya Kuriakova signed the cargo — newly returned from the Vodyanoi ’s stores — into the warehouse to await collection and left the locks for the station’s commercial sector. With her went a passenger, a man travelling under false papers.

Now they sat in a small and almost empty coffee shop in the middle of the shopping area, watching people walk by and drinking real — and therefore expensive — coffee. Kane’s treat.

“What are you thinking, Katya Kuriakova?”

She watched a mother argue with her children for a moment before replying. “Wondering how many of these people will still be alive in a year.”

“Oh,” said Kane. He drank a little of his cup. “You’ve become a fatalist.”

“A realist.”

“No, not necessarily. Things might not come to a full war. There’s always the possibility of a cold war. Both sides bristle at each other, but nobody shoots.” He noticed Katya’s eyes upon him and shook his head in resignation. “No, they’ll shoot. The FMA have been used to getting their own way for too long, and the Yagizban have invested too much to just step back. There’ll be war.” He drank a little more. “Nice coffee.”

“Grown hydroponically. That’s what it says in the menu. What will you do, Kane?”

“Me? Oh, I don’t know. The usual. Make it up as we go along. We can start by selling off those combat drones. They can be reverse-engineered and, anyway, Terran components are always much sought after.”

“Who will you sell them to?”

“Happily, there’s two, so we can sell one to the FMA and flog the other off to the Yagizban. I know what you’re thinking,” he added quickly, “playing both sides off against the middle, but you’re… actually, no, that’s partially true. The idea is that neither side gets an advantage over the other and we get ourselves some leeway, build some bridges. We’d like to stay neutral, but that will be impossible. People get into this ‘if you’re not with us, you’re against us’ mindset. It’s shallow and inflexible, but that’s what happens when people start thinking like a mob, and that’s what happens in war. I can’t say I’m looking forward to it.”

“You won’t live long on the proceeds from two combat drones.”

“No. ‘Honest, mate, lovely combat drone, one careful owner, fell off the back of an artificially intelligent battleship.’ No, that won’t set us up for life.” He shrugged. “There’s always piracy, I suppose. But what about you, Katya? What are you going to do? Are you going to sign up for the FMA? They’ll be needing good officers.”