Katya's World

by Jonathan L. Howard

  “This? It’s a yo-yo. It’s just a toy.”

  “Where did you get it?”

  “A little curiosity shop on Earth.” The yo-yo rose quickly and slapped into Kane’s hand where he held it tightly. “I bought it for my daughter.”

  The admission startled her slightly. She looked around for her uncle, but he had walked over to the navigation officer’s position and was irritating him by reading the instruments over his shoulder. “You have a daughter?” She said finally just for something to say. As soon as she did, she realised how stupid a question it was, as if it were something he might be mistaken about.

  Kane didn’t seem to notice. He was looking intently at the yo-yo. Suddenly making his mind up, he carefully removed his finger from the loop at the end of the string and proffered the toy to her. “Would you like it?”

  Katya almost asked what about his daughter, but something stopped her. Instead, she took it from him. “Thank you.”

  Her acceptance seemed to please him and he smiled the tired, sad smile she’d come to know. “It’s all in the wrist action. There are tricks you can do with it, but I don’t know what they are. You’ll have to make some up for yourself.”

  The smile vanished as a low vibration thrummed through the Vodyanoi’s hull. “Sensors, what was that?”

  “An explosion, sir, five degrees off to larboard.”

  Larboard? mouthed Katya to Lukyan.

  “It’s an old way of saying port,” he explained, adding, “sometimes I think this lot have been playing ‘Pirates’ for too long.”

  A map of the area was flashed up on the main screen, the Vodyanoi’s position marked up at the centre. A flash mark indicated the direction and probable distance to the explosion. “The FP-1’s been hit,” said Kane. “I don’t think the Yagizban are going to take that lying down.”

  He was right. A moment later a volume of sea to the southwest of the platform was swarming with torpedoes hunting with active sonar pinging furiously.

  “There’s a lot of ambient sound energy out there,” said the sensors officer. “we may be detected, sir.”

  “Yes, we may be, but if we back off we may miss something important. Hold our position but keep us quiet, helm.”

  They watched as the bright flashing lights of the torpedoes ran around in search patterns for several minutes until, one by one, they flickered out without a single effective detection of the target, much less a hit. For five long minutes, they watched the unchanging screen in silence. Then another flash appeared. “That’s a boat,” reported sensors crisply. “It’s bad, she’s going down. I can hear bulkheads crumpling.” Another flash. “Another boat’s hit; she’s…” Another flash, and another. The sensor operator swore under his breath. “It’s a massacre out there, sir. Four hits. Five. One’s limping, I think. No, another hit, she’s been finished off.”

  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.”

  Strap
ped 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.

  Chapter 18

  Getting Up

  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.

  Another light flashed on her display, more insistent, brighter. At the same moment she realised what it was, the telltale pulsing tone started to sound through the hull.

  “Torpedo!” called Lukyan. He was already pulling the steering yoke over and down. “Evading!”

  Katya remembered the last time he’d done this, he’d trusted the Navcom to perform the evasion. Of course, on that occasion they were hit multiple times and almost died.

  She felt the Baby pitch sharply and perform a corkscrew descent as Lukyan made for the next deepest thermal layer scattering noisemakers in their wake. Through the din in her headset, she could still plainly hear the fast pulses of the Yagizban torpedo’s sonar and the hiss of its impeller motor until, abruptly, it stopped. The pinging ceased altogether and the hum of the impeller turned to a dying shriek even as it diminished in amplitude.

  “There’s something wrong with it,” she reported. “I think it’s sinking?” She checked for an IC resolution and it confirmed that the torpedo was tumbling into the depths. A moment later it exploded. She looked at the others. “I have no idea what happened there.”

  Kane looked around as if he could see through the hull. “I can make a guess.”

  Lukyan nodded and killed the Baby’s engines, neutralising their buoyancy so they coasted along for a few metres under no power. Katya suddenly understood.

  “The Leviathan?”

  Lukyan looked grim, and there was misery in his voice when he said, “Why didn’t I try harder to leave you behind, Katya?”

  “Where there’s life, there’s hope,” said Kane. “They say that where I come from.” He coughed. “Of course, they say all sorts of rubbish, but I think that one’s true. While we live, nothing is certain. We walked out of the Leviathan once; perhaps we can do it again.”

  Lukyan was unconvinced. “And what if it just sinks us?”

  “You’re a cheerful soul, aren’t you? Think about it; if it had wanted us dead, it would hardly have bothered stopping that torpedo. It saved us for a reason.” They gripped the sides of their seats as the Baby was abruptly jerked upwards. “We’re about to find out why.”

  “What exactly are those cables?” asked Lukyan as the Leviathan withdrew its grappling tentacles into the metallic hemisphere in the ceiling of the docking bay. A moment later, the chamber started to empty of water.

  “Biomechanics. Biological principles applied to technology. I never liked it. I like my machines to look like machines.” Kane patted one of the Baby’s structural ribs almost fondly.

  Inside a minute the chamber had been pumped so dry it was hard to believe it had been full of water anytime in the previous hour. Without discussion, they cracked the seal on the minisub’s aft hatch and clambered out. The exit door slid soundlessly open and they climbed the slight incline to reach it.

  On the other side of the door, Kane stopped them and pointed at the floor by the hatch’s edge. “There. That’s been worrying me.” Katya followed his finger and saw a quantity of dark powder. She started to bend to touch it, but he stopped her. “I wouldn’t get it on you, if I were you. Too easy for some to get in your mouth and that wouldn’t do you any good.”

  Katya stepped away from it, unsure. “What is it?”

  “I had my suspicions when we were last here so I took enough for an analysis. It’s a very, very fine powder made up all sorts of metals and metallic salts, some of them very heavy and very toxic, that’s why it’s not a good idea to risk ingesting it. Some very rare minerals in it.”

  “So what is it?”

  “Soup,” said Lukyan. “Dried out Soup from the ocean bed. Is that right, Kane?”

  Katya thought back. “We detected the Leviathan in the middle of the Weft. There’re lakes of this stuff there. It must have been lying in one. Maybe its airlock seal isn’t as tight as it should be and some of the stuff leaked in” She shrugged. “Okay, it’s interesting, but why should we care?”

  Kane sighed in sharp exasperation. “Why should..? Katya, use your eyes. We’re not in the airlock! How is it in the corridor but there’s not a trace of it in the airlock itself?”

  “Maybe there was but it washed out when it picked us up the first time,” she replied sharply.

  Kane opened his mouth and then shut it again; he hadn’t thought of that. “That’s possible. I’m just trying to understand why the Leviathan’s been behaving so oddly, even before Tokarov joined with it. I thought perhaps the matrix of its synthetic intelligence had been contaminated with particles of Soup.” He looked so crestfallen that Katya felt sorry she had snapped at him and even sorrier that she had shot down his theory. “I’m just trying to understand.”

  “If the airlock seal failed under the pressure,” she offered, “maybe some other seal did too. Perhaps Soup did get in and poison the AI.”

  That cheered Kane up. “Yes. Yes, of course, you’re right. If your idea’s right, that doesn’t mean mine isn’t right too. Or at least, some of it.”

  Lukyan was eager to get on. “Some of it?” he grumbled. “There’s more of it?”

  Mistaking Lukyan’s sarcasm for interest, Kane nodded. “Yes, I was also wondering if the trace of Soup was simply evidence that the airlock had been used after I left the first time and before coming back with you and Tokarov.”

  Lukyan’s disinterest faded slightly. “Are you suggesting somebody might have come aboard and sabotaged the Leviathan? Who? When?”

  “Why?” added Katya.

  “Three excellent questions and I have a single answer for all of them. I don’t know. It was just a thought. It just occurred to me that an accidental contamination would be mo
re likely to cripple the Leviathan. What happened seems so…”

  “Deliberate,” finished Katya. She was beginning to think he had a point. “But we don’t know who or how or why or when. You need motive, opportunity and method before you have a case, and you have nothing.”

  “No,” he admitted, “I don’t. Just an ugly sense of purpose behind everything that’s happened. That’s not much.” He sighed. “Oh, come on. Let’s get this over with.” The three of them continued walking up the blank white corridor towards the interface chamber.

  They paused at the door as Kane stopped them. “Do we have anything that, in poor visibility, might just possibly be mistaken for a plan? Once we’re through that door, things might happen very quickly.”

  “Talk to Tokarov,” said Katya. “We have to talk him around.”

  “I doubt there’s much of Tokarov left, at least mentally. It’s still worth a try. And if his personality has been completely destroyed, what then?”

  “We kill him,” said Lukyan.

  “Uncle!”

  “I’m sorry, Katya, I know that sounds cold. There’s no choice, though.”

  “You can try killing him, but you’d be wasting your time,” said Kane. “If the Leviathan has finished processing him, it will just be using his brain for extra storage space. If he dies, it’s a nuisance to the Leviathan, but that is all.”

  Lukyan crossed his arms. “What, then?”

  Kane looked uncomfortable. “Let’s just see how it goes, shall we?”

  “That’s it then? If there isn’t enough of Tokarov left to talk to, we don’t know what we’re going to do next?”

  “In a nutshell, yes.”

  Lukyan shook his head. “We’re doomed.”

  “War’s have been won on thinner plans than that,” said Kane.

  “Not as many as have been lost,” retorted Lukyan. He stepped up to the door. “Not much point in asking if we’re ready, is there?” He tapped the control and the hatch opened.