Jonathan Howard - Katya's World

Katya shook her head, smiling at a private joke. “The FMA isn’t for me. I don’t respond well to military discipline. I’ve got the Baby to look after now, anyway. Operating a minisub for conveyance and maybe recovery work will probably get me listed in a reserved occupation. I’ll be more useful to them as a civilian than in uniform. I know that will cheer Sergei up; he hates the Federals.” She closed her eyes and opened them again as a sharp pang of inner misery troubled her. “I have to tell him Lukyan’s dead. They’ve been friends since they were boys.” She steeled herself and put that where it belonged, in the future. “Anyway, yes. I’ve got the sub. I’ve got a business to run.”

“You sound very grown up,” said Kane, sadness in his voice.

“Of course I’m grown up. I’ve got a card somewhere to prove it.” She patted her pocket, but it was empty. She laughed a small, bitter laugh. “I think it’s still on the Novgorod . That’s a point. I’d better tell the FMA where she’s lying. It shouldn’t take long to get her seaworthy again and, the devil knows, they’ll need every boat they can get.”

Kane checked his cup. It was down to the dregs. “There’s an alternative.”

Katya looked up at him, mildly interested.

“We could go back to the locks, take the Baby back to the Vodyanoi and keep our heads down until this is all over. There are plenty of places to hide, plenty of small settlements who won’t want any part of what’s coming. You’d be welcome to join the crew.”

“And why would I want to do that?”

“So you don’t die.”

Katya thought about it, but not for long. “No, Kane, I won’t do that. I’ll take my chances here.”

Kane was unsurprised but felt he had to ask. “May I ask why?”

Katya thought longer this time, remembering what had happened to her, what she had learned, what she hungered to forget and never would. When she had her thoughts ordered and her mind clear, she replied.

“I don’t like to be near you, Kane. People die near you. You go around wide-eyed and clueless as if you don’t understand how these things could happen and then, five minutes later, you say, ‘Oh, well, that happened for this reason that I didn’t bother telling you about until it was too late.’ All this,” she swept her hand across the tabletop, but the gesture encompassed the Leviathan , the FP-1, the Chertovka, the dead and the lost, “all this is your fault. You brought the Leviathan here. Then you abandoned it and just hoped it was a problem that would go away if you didn’t think about it. But it didn’t go away. Ten years later, it gets stirred up and you are right there when it happens. And what do you do? Nothing. You don’t say a word. You didn’t give Captain Zagadko enough information to fight it or even to realise he couldn’t. You’d lost control of the situation and you couldn’t even be bothered to tell us what that situation was. Why? You’d spent ten years hoping it would all just go away and it hadn’t. What made you think it would just fade away now?

“And then it turns out you’ve been collaborating with the Yagizba Conclaves in treason. Treason , Kane! Without access to your boat, they wouldn’t have been able to churn out copies. They’ve got a whole war effort based on technologies that you gave them! And now hundreds, thousands of people are going to die because of a war you helped start.”

Kane was looking grey. “Katya, it’s not…”

“No!” she spat at him. “Shut up! I liked Captain Zagadko. I liked Petrov. I liked Tokarov. I loved my uncle. Unless you can bring them back, then shut up. You have nothing to say to me.” She wanted to cry but she would not, not in front of him. Later, she would discover that she could not cry at all and she would hate him for that too.

Kane sat silently, looking unblinkingly at his empty cup. Then he glanced up at the chronometer on the wall and back down again. “The Vodyanoi will be standing off the auxiliary locks by now. It will take me five minutes to get there, five minutes to get aboard, ten minutes to get out of the sensor cordon.” He nodded in the direction of the corridor leading into the administrative area. “There’s an FMA office just down there, first on the left. You can go and make a report there after you’ve finished your coffee. If you nurse it, it might last twenty minutes.” He looked up but he couldn’t meet her eyes. “Would you do that much for me?”

Katya didn’t reply for a long moment. Then she said, “Go.”

She didn’t see his eyes widen as he remembered the last word of the Leviathan , and finally realised whose voice it had been spoken in.

Abruptly, like a man who’d forgotten something, he climbed to his feet and walked quickly away without looking back. Katya watched him until he turned the corner to the auxiliary facilities sector and was lost to sight. She sipped her coffee. It was cold and she couldn’t taste it anyway.

It took her twenty-five minutes to finish her cup. Then she ordered another.