Katya's War (Russalka Chronicles)

by Howard, Jonathan L

  Poor Shurygin, she thought. What will they put on his post mortem report? Killed while being helpful?

  CHAPTER FIVE

  PLUMBING SUPPLIES

  Katya had her second encounter with Secor in one day, although this time they were the real thing. She thought it odd that they should have taken an interest in what seemed to be simply somebody cracking under the stress of war. It was tragic, of course, but it happened.

  Katya was expecting the station police to deal with it, but they just took her statement while Secor sat in on the interview, occasionally throwing in questions of their own. Katya had heard that the “packaging directive” that the lieutenant – it transpired his name was “Loktev” – had been so obsessed by had indeed been announced that morning, but was only coming into effect in ten days’ time. All that the directive demanded was that cargo packaging be kept unlocked to speed up security checks. That was all, and for this a man had died.

  Secor seemed very uninterested in that. They just wanted to correlate her story against that of the other witnesses, confirm that it was highly unlikely that Shurygin was actually an enemy spy – Katya undiplomatically snorted in derision at such an assertion – and only seemed to grow interested in their jobs when they got around to threatening her with dire consequences should she speak to anyone about the event. She’d agreed, neglecting to mention that she fully intended to tell Shurygin’s family what had happened the very next time she got over to Tartessos, if only to assure them that he hadn’t suffered.

  Then after she had been dismissed and was getting up to leave, she had paused. The slightly routine way the men from Secor had demanded her silence had rankled at first, but now it made her suspicious “Have there been other incidents like this?” she asked.

  “The interview is over, citizen,” said the senior agent, and that had been that.

  There was one small piece of good news awaiting her return to the Lukyan, however: Sergei had secured a cargo.

  “Plumbing parts?” said Katya, reading the manifest.

  Like most Russalkin, Katya didn’t actually like water very much. She had the mandatory basic swimming standard that all Russalkin were required to attain, but hadn’t been near a swimming pool since. She would drink water happily enough, and shower in it, but quantities much larger than a sinkful of the stuff made her nervous. It felt like an enemy within, a little brother of its vast sibling waiting just beyond the next airlock or on the other side of the submarine hull. Waiting to rush in and crush, drown, drain the life heat from your very body. The Russalkin respected the sea, because the Russalkin feared it.

  Plumbing just seemed like a good way to aggravate it.

  Sergei shrugged. He tolerated drinking water, but regarded showers as agents of the great elemental enemy and usually made do with a wet sponge and no shame. Why anybody would want to shift a consignment of pipes, heaters, and shower heads around was one of the intractable mysteries of the universe as far as he was concerned. That they would get paid for it, however, was something he could understand. The plumbing supplies themselves he would leave to the dangerous intellectuals who had uses for such things.

  The supplies were delivered sharply on schedule the following morning and loaded carefully. On an impulse, Katya made sure the boxes were unlocked. The directive was still days away from becoming mandatory, but it couldn’t do any harm to get into the habit ahead of time.

  When she was returning from picking up some fresh food for the journey, she walked past a law enforcement agent talking to one of the pen managers by the hatch to Shurygin’s boat, the Lastochka. From what she overheard, they were discussing what they were going to do with it.

  “Well, the family can’t get anyone here, and it’s not as if we can spare anyone,” said the manager.

  She stepped through the Lukyan’s hatch and sealed it. She sidled forward past the pallet loaded with plumbing supplies, saying, “They don’t know what to do with Shurygin’s boat.”

  “It’ll just end up being used in the war effort,” said Sergei, running through the pre-launch checks. “Everything gets used in the war effort, one way or another.”

  “Sergei,” said Katya. She waited until he looked back at her before continuing. “Mind if I take that seat?”

  He raised an eyebrow, surprised. “She’s your boat, Katya. You sit where you like, but…”

  “I just thought, you know… Just… Well, I don’t think Lukyan would be very happy with me being pilot and not…” She shook her head. “And not behaving like it. Responsibilities. He was always very keen on people accepting responsibilities.”

  “He was.” Sergei nodded, and smiled. “I’ll be glad to be out of this seat, to tell the truth.” He unlocked his harness and climbed into the co-pilot’s seat with a blissful sigh. “I’m a right-hand seat kind of feller. Never felt comfortable over there. Too much responsibility.”

  Katya took the pilot’s seat, adjusted it, locked her harness and put on her headset. “Sergei. That business on the way here…”

  Sergei interrupted her. “Nobody died.”

  “What? How can you know that?”

  “While you were in here doing all that mad brooding after Secor had finished with you, I went to the cafe, remember? Next table, the weapons officers of the two – count ‘em – two warboats that were shadowing the Jarilo, arguing over what happened. They can’t have heard about your report, yet. Anyway, gist of the discussion, lots of torpedoes, lots of confusion, no hits. Not even the Jarilo got tabbed.”

  Katya sighed deeply. “I was lucky.”

  Sergei made a dismissive sound. “We make our luck.”

  Atlantis Traffic Control ran them quickly through the departure protocols and bid them the traditional wish for a safe journey as the Lukyan slipped out of her lock and into the open sea. Within her, the atmosphere was a great deal more relaxed than when she’d docked. Sergei was a pragmatist at the core, even if he hid it beneath a deep crust of cynical pessimism. Rationally, he was satisfied that Katya’s actions had been reasonable after all, even if they hadn’t seemed that way at the time. Emotionally, he had no desire to stay angry at her for long. Katya might not have been blood family, but he felt like an honorary uncle to her, always had done, and now Lukyan was gone he took that role all the more seriously. An hour out of Atlantis he expressed his desire to put the past behind them in the manner time-honoured within the little submarine.

  “Would you like a game of chess?” he said with an unconvincing attempt at casualness.

  Katya looked over at him and grinned. Only an hour, she thought. He’s mellowing.

  “I’d love a game, sure. Let me just get us to the first deep waypoint and I’ll hand over to the autopilot.” She had plotted a tortuous route to Dunwich Down, a small fish farming, protein processing, and hydroponics food facility built into a former mining site. The facility was in a cleft in the ocean bed, and there were few submarine mountains or even hills near it. This meant there was little cover on the approaches and unwary submarines could potentially be detected from kilometres away. In peacetime that was unimportant; Dunwich was not the sort of high value target that attracted pirates, and so civilian boats had travelled there and back without fear of attack. All the rules changed in war, however. Food was vital to the Federal war effort. A single Vodyanoi class warboat could target every transporter in the volume around Dunwich from a safe distance, and be away before the first torpedoes were even detected. This was hunters’ territory now, and the transport captains were justifiably fearful to go there.

  Stretched tight, the FMA could only afford to have a single obsolete Sadko class patrol boat circle the site, its drives adjusted to give the impression to listening enemies that it was something larger and more dangerous. If the Yagizban had any sort of intelligence network in place, this was a wasted effort, as everybody knew about the hapless Sadko and its fake acoustic signature. Indeed, it was joked about in every base in Federal waters.

  Given the high likelihood t
hat the Yagizban knew all about Dunwich’s paper tiger, this meant that civilian pilots remained very cautious approaching and leaving the facility. In Katya’s case, she had plotted a complex route that took advantage of every rockfall, mound, and isotherm she could find in the newest navigational charts. The Lukyan was programmed to creep, dash, and scuttle its way from cover to cover like a nervous parack, a form of five-legged crustacean native to Russalka that would never be a byword for bravery. To have steered the route manually would have been painfully wearing on anyone’s nerves. Katya, grown as pragmatic as Sergei in her experiences, was content to leave it to the computer. She still had her pride, however; she would steer to the first waypoint on the evasive pattern close to the sea bed before handing over.

  As they descended in a long gentle arc into the depths, Katya experimentally waggled the control yoke, listening to the whine of the manoeuvre impellers through the hull as she did. Frowning, she took her hands from the controls and looked at the yoke, which did nothing at all in response.

  “Sergei, is the feedback broken on this side?”

  Sergei looked over at the motionless control yoke and sniffed haughtily. “No. I just turned it off. I don’t like feeling it move in my hand. Why?” He looked suspiciously at the co-pilot’s yoke before him. “Have you turned on the feedback for this one?”

  “Don’t worry, it’s not going to jump at your throat. I returned it to your settings when I handed it over. If you had feedback turned off in those, then it’s off now.” She opened the system controls screen on her main multifunction display and selected the yoke options. “I’m just used to having some feedback. Feels weird and dead without it. Here we go.”

  She checked the box against “Yoke Feedback” and confirmed her choice. Immediately the control yoke started to shake. With mild surprise, they both looked at it juddering a centimetre or so from true. “Well, that’s not right,” said Katya finally.

  “The feedback relays must be buggered,” said Sergei knowledgeably. “I’ll have a look at them when we get to Dunwich.”

  Katya was still frowning. She pointed at the co-pilot yoke. “Turn your feedback on, just for a minute.”

  Sergei nodded; it was a sensible suggestion. In a few moments he had his position’s controls screen active and selected the feedback option. The instant he confirmed, his yolk began to shake too. He watched it for a few seconds before deactivating it. “Not the relays, then,” he said.

  Katya swore. It was a particularly harsh term she had never used before, which combined disrespect for the subject’s mother with an unambiguous accusation of incest.

  Sergei raised his eyebrows. Katya looked at him, her anger slightly tempered by embarrassment at her outburst. “Not you, Sergei. It’s that… that…” She could feel the bile of her anger rising again. “There’s nothing wrong with the damn controls.” She slowly throttled back the Lukyan’s main impellers, bringing them to a gentle halt. As they did so, the shuddering in the yoke became less violent before fading away altogether.

  Sergei began to suspect he should be worried. “What’s going on, Katya?”

  For her answer, she twisted the yaw controls, making the boat turn on the spot until it was facing directly back in the direction they had come. Then she lit the powerful light array mounted around the large semi-spherical cockpit portal before them. The water was slightly murky, and the lights could penetrate only some twenty metres before the gloom grew too strong for them, but that was enough to show the submarine prow before them.

  “Nothing wrong with the controls,” repeated Katya. “We were caught in that thing’s bow wave.”

  Sergei was staring wide-eyed at the shadowy shape before them. “That’s no Fed boat,” he said in a horrified undertone. “That’s a Yag.”

  “No,” replied Katya. She was grim, her anger simmering beneath the surface. “It’s not a Yag. It’s a pirate.”

  This news failed to calm Sergei. As they watched, the pirate’s bow split along three seams and yawned wide like the maw of some horror of the deep. As they watched – Sergei wide-eyed, Katya with her arms crossed and a scowl upon her face – the pirate moved forward in a slow creep, the open jaws moving closer and closer. Sergei reached for the controls, but Katya said, “No!” sharply, and his hands fell away from the yoke.

  “We can’t outrun them, and if we try and manoeuvre while those jaws are closing, they might breach us by accident.”

  “By accident?” said Sergei. “If they’re pirates, why would they care one way or…?”

  “I know that boat. I’ve been on it before.”

  Sergei’s jaw dropped. “It’s the Vodyanoi? Killer Kane’s boat?”

  Katya snorted. “Killer? Him? Ha.”

  The Vodyanoi came on until the Lukyan was entirely engulfed within the salvage maw, and then slowly and carefully closed its jaws.

  Once the maw had been pumped empty, the hatchway into the main forward compartment opened. On the dry side stood two of the Vodyanoi’s crew accompanying Tasya Morevna, now looking far more comfortable in Yagizban fatigues with a colonel’s flash on her epaulettes than she ever had in her stolen Secor uniform. On the wet side stood a silently fuming Katya Kuriakova and Sergei, who kept swallowing nervously. When he saw Tasya, he blurted out, “You’re that Secor officer!”

  “And you must be Sergei?” she replied sweetly. “How do you do? I’m Tasya Morevna.” He blanched as he recognised the name, and she smiled a true killer’s smile as she watched the fear grow in him. “You probably know me better as the Chertovka, yes?”

  “Leave him alone, Morevna,” snapped Katya. “What’s this all about?”

  “Another one of Kane’s little schemes, I’m afraid, Katya,” said Tasya, entirely unaffected by the waves of hostility emanating from Katya. “I told him he was wasting his time, but he’s got this idea from somewhere that you’re more than just a stupid little girl.”

  Katya scowled. “You’re trying to provoke me.”

  “Ah,” said Tasya lightly. “Not so stupid after all.”

  “It won’t work because I’m already as provoked as all hell. I told you No, and I meant it.”

  “I’m not the one you have to convince. I’m just a passenger myself. You’ll have to talk to the captain.” She stepped to one side and bowed mockingly as she indicated the direction of the Vodyanoi’s bridge. “This way.”

  Katya ground her teeth for a second, mastering her rage. “Fine,” she said, walking past Tasya. “Fine. I’ll see Kane, tell him what he can do with his plan, and then we’re leaving. We’ve got a cargo to deliver.”

  Tasya let her walk precisely three paces before saying casually, “Yes. Plumbing supplies, isn’t it?”

  Katya stopped so abruptly that Sergei, who was looking over his shoulder at Tasya, bumped into her. Katya stepped around him and narrowed her eyes. “How did you know that?”

  Tasya smiled pleasantly and shrugged. “Lucky guess.”

  Katya glared at her for a long moment during which Tasya’s smile never wavered. Only a small, sensible voice at the back of her mind, telling Katya that Tasya was a highly trained soldier who could likely kill Katya a dozen different ways with one hand tied behind her back, stopped her running at Tasya with her fists flying. Instead, she turned on her heel and strode off, Sergei close behind her.

  She led the way directly to the bridge and made an unannounced entry that silenced the place. “What are you, Kane?” she demanded of the somewhat bewildered captain in his command chair. “Stupid? Don’t you understand ‘No’ means ‘No’?”

  One of the bridge crew smirked at this, which was a mistake. Katya was by him, glaring into his face in a second. “Shut up,” she said. “You child.” The smirk melted away instantly.

  Katya turned back to Kane as Tasya arrived, having dispensed with her escort en route. She looked at the scene and said, “That’s alright, Kuriakova. Make yourself at home.”

  “Sorry about… this, Katya,” said Kane, seemingly sincere. “It’s j
ust… well… There is so much at stake.”

  Katya wasn’t interested. “Our cargo, Kane. The plumbing stuff. You placed it, didn’t you?” Sergei glanced at her with puzzlement, and then realisation dawned.

  “So you’d know where we were going,” he said, half to himself.

  “Yes,” admitted Kane. “Sorry about that, too. A small deceit.” He was wearing dark grey trousers, a pale cream shirt and, over it, some sort of buttoned sleeveless top similar to an armoured vest except with a V at the front and made out of normal looking cloth in a shade of brown. It didn’t seem very functional to Katya’s eye, undoubtedly some fatuous item of Terran clothing. From one of the small pockets on the garment protruded a clumsily folded envelope, and this Kane took and held out to her.

  “This is twice the agreed transport fee, in Federal notes. Please, take it for putting up with the imposition.” He smiled, a little weakly. “You can keep the supplies, too. If you like. You should be able to get something for them.”

  “I don’t want your money, Kane.”

  “Yes, she does,” said Sergei quickly. He stepped forward and took the money. As he returned to Katya, he said quietly. “Money, Katya! Actual money! Don’t let your pride get in the way of eating.”

  “OK,” conceded Katya with poor grace. “We’ll take your money, and now we’re done. Let us go.”

  “Sorry. Again,” said Kane. “I can’t do that. Not after going to all this trouble.”

  Katya glanced around, trying and failing to formulate an escape plan.

  “You could try screaming and seeing if help comes,” said Tasya, with mock concern.

  Kane shot Tasya an impatient look that she accepted with a bored nod of her head. Kane turned to Katya. “Katya, you once said that the worst thing I do… that I’ve done… is not to tell people what’s going on until… well, sometimes, when it’s too late to help.”