Kane was weighing up the petty officer’s uniform; it seemed that an FMA vessel had picked them up. He decided, all things considered, that he’d prefer not to be taken back into custody. If they wanted to know who he was, they’d have to work it out themselves. The petty officer turned to the bulkhead and snapped open the cover on an intercom.
“Deliav to bridge!”
A voice replied almost immediately. “Bridge. What’s the matter, Deliav? Is the buoy damaged?”
“No, captain! At least, I don’t know, I haven’t checked it yet. Captain! We picked up survivors! They must have been hanging onto the buoy!”
As the sailor and his captain talked, Kane leaned close to Katya. “Do you believe in paying your debts?”
Katya grimaced and narrowed her lips. She’d been wondering how long it would take him to get around to this. “Yes, I know you saved my life. Don’t worry, I won’t tell them who you are. Then we’re even, okay.” It wasn’t a question.
“Okay,” said Kane, leaning away from her again. She thought he seemed oddly disappointed, as if she’d said the wrong thing.
The captain sent a small party down to get Katya and Kane, taking them first to the sickbay where the boat’s medic spent half an hour checking each for signs of nitrogen narcosis sickness, hypothermia, and shock. When they were warm in fresh dry clothes – Katya was glad she was quite tall and fitted the smallest uniform one-piece they could find – they were taken to the captain’s cabin for “debriefing.” She didn’t like the sound of that at all.
“It’s just questions,” the doctor told her when she asked. That still didn’t make her feel any better. How could she explain what had happened without dragging in the fact that Kane had been a prisoner aboard?
If Captain Zagadko had appeared at an audition for a production about the war, he’d have been turned down for looking too stereotypical. He was grizzled, lean and his eyes had the distant look of a man who has seen things he’d rather forget. He oozed competence and professionalism and, if Katya hadn’t been so worried about having to lie to him, she would have felt his presence reassuring. He offered them coffee from the pot on his table and began the debriefing.
“Firstly, I’d like to welcome you both aboard the shipping protection vessel RNS Novgorod.” Katya had heard of the Novgorod. She was a big boat, perhaps four hundred metres in length and the pride of the shipping protection fleet – the “pirate hunters” as they were popularly known. Kane seemed to have fallen out of the frying pan into the fire and then climbed back into the frying pan. “I’m truly sorry that you were brought aboard in such an unconventional manner. I’d made the assumption that there would be – forgive me – no survivors. I’d also assumed that whoever was responsible for this outrage would still be nearby, which is why the Novgorod made the quick grab at the surface. It appears I was wrong on both counts. I can only ask your forgiveness.”
“Nothing to forgive, captain,” said Kane. “Any competent captain would have made the same assumptions.”
“I agree,” added Katya, feeling quite grown-up in this conversation. “Please accept our thanks for rescuing us. Also, please extend my apologies to Petty Officer Deliav for anything unpleasant I may have called him when he discovered us in the salvage maw.”
Zagadko smiled. “I’ll do that. But, to business. Do you have any idea what sank Pushkin’s Baby?”
Of course, Katya realised, this was bound to be about what happened to the sub, not about who was aboard and why they were there. Perhaps she could avoid talking about Kane at all. Any relief she felt at that was quickly overwhelmed by remembering the Baby, and her uncle’s fate.
“Not pirates,” said Kane with certainty.
“Oh? Why not?”
“There was no warning, no shot over the bows, nothing. They just came up and put a hole clean through us. It doesn’t make sense for pirates to sink a vessel. They’re after cargoes, not wrecks.”
The captain nodded and turned to Katya. “I understand you were the co-pilot, Ms Kuriakova?”
She nodded. “My first trip. I’d only just been rated.”
“You were in a good position to see the controls. What do you remember?”
Katya concentrated. “We had just given up on a survey. A ghost return. It looked as good as a mountain of gold for the few moments it was on screen. My uncle wasn’t happy about it turning out to be a mirage and he wasn’t happy that we were trying to cross the Weft with unreliable sensors…”
“The Weft?” interrupted Captain Zagadko. “What were you doing in the Weft?”
“We had a passenger, one of your lot, actually. FMA.” She became aware of Kane tensing slightly in the chair next to her. “He had some business at the Deeps and wouldn’t listen to reason about how much the Weft could slow us down. He insisted we go through it.”
“What business?” said Zagadko. Katya could have sworn his eyes flickered over to look at Kane when he said it.
Katya wondered if she should just tell him that Kane had been Suhkalev’s prisoner. Then she thought of Lukyan.
Once he had made some silly promise to her when she was a little girl and she had laughed and said he was lying. She remembered his smile dying a little, and that had sobered her. “Little Katya, a man is only as good as his word. A man whose word is worthless is a worthless man. If I promise a thing, I will do everything in my power to keep that promise.” And he had, going halfway around the world to get her some silly little trinket for her birthday.
Now she had given her word, or as good as. Uncle Lukyan was dead; she knew that. She owed it to him to keep her word.
“I’m not sure,” she replied. “He talked to my Uncle Lukyan outside the lock. When my uncle came back in, he had a face like thunder. I think the Fed… the Federal officer had pulled a commandeering order on him or something.”
“Indeed.” Captain Zagadko turned to Kane. “That must have been very inconvenient for you, sir?”
Kane flipped a hand dismissively. “Not so bad, captain. It was only a short diversion or, at least, it would have been. Going into the Weft was a mistake, but the officer was just a kid and a corridor rat at that, by the look of him. He didn’t know any better.”
“You’re a submariner yourself, Mr Kane?” Katya was partially appalled that Kane had given his real name and partially relieved that she didn’t have to remember any alias he might have thought up.
“In years past. I’m happy to be a passenger these days.”
Zagadko narrowed his eyes. “Do I know you, Mr Kane?”
The intercom popped and barked into life. “Captain to the bridge!” They all heard the urgency in the voice. With one last curious glance at Kane, the captain stood and ran out into the corridor.
Kane stood and looked at the open door. “Thanks,” he said. “I appreciated that.”
“I won’t cover for you indefinitely.”
“You won’t need to. He’s a wily one, that Zagadko. He’ll work out soon enough who I am. Whether he gets a chance to act on it is another matter.” He stepped towards the door.
“What do you mean?” Surely he didn’t mean to kill Zagadko?
Kane paused to look back at her. “Why do you think the captain’s been called to the bridge so urgently? Whatever attacked us… it’s back.”
Chapter 4
Leviathan
The bridge was busy when they arrived. Deliav was just saluting the Captain. “I’ve recovered the data card from the distress buoy, captain.”
“Hold onto it for the moment, Deliav. We have more pressing business at present.”
“Permission to enter the bridge, captain,” said Katya crisply. She knew enough about the military not to go barging around on their boats like they were on a pleasure trip.
Zagadko shot them a look. “I’m afraid not, Ms Kuriakova. We’re in a state of battle readiness. There’s no place for you here. Go to the ready room, please.”
Kane cleared his throat. “With respect, captain, Katya was at the
controls when her boat was attacked. If you may be engaging the same foe..?”
Zagadko was not the sort of man to dither. “Point taken. If you could stand just over there, Ms Kuriakova, and endeavour to stay out of the way.” They made a move towards the bulkhead the captain had pointed at, but he stopped them. “Not you, Mr Kane.”
Kane blinked with surprise. “But, captain…”
“You weren’t at the controls, were you? Unless there’s something you’re not telling me?”
The two men looked at each other for a moment. It was Kane who broke eye contact first. “I’ll be in the ready room if you need me,” he said and walked out with what dignity he could.
Zagadko watched him go. When the hatch had closed behind Kane, he said to Katya, “You and I are going to have a conversation when Mr Kane isn’t present. Count on it.” He turned away from her, leaving her feeling guilty and worried.
“Range to the wreck?”
“Three thousand metres.”
Katya started. They’d been hunting the wreck of the Baby? The captain noticed her surprise when he turned back. “I wasn’t about to leave her lying there for pirates to pick over, Ms Kuriakova.”
“Captain!” Zagadko turned to one of the sensor technicians. “I have something on hydrophones. Low, really low.”
Katya remembered the ghostly sound she’d picked up herself over the Baby’s hydrophones. She watched as the operator dropped the frequency translation range, just as she had done. This was a military vessel; she wondered how much better the Novgorod’s sensors were in comparison.
“Sonar?” demanded Zagadko.
The sonar operator sat hunched over his screen, looking carefully over every square millimetre of it. “Nothing, sir. Nothing on passive.”
Zagadko humphed. “Pulse.”
“Sir?” It was the first officer, a thin, dark man with heavy-lidded eyes. “We’ll give away our position.”
Katya thought that was a redundant thing to say. Zagadko was a veteran; of course he knew sending an active sonar pulse would be like lighting a match in a dark room. They would be able to see better, but everything else would be able to see them all the more easily.
“They already know full well where we are, Petrov. Active pulse, sensors.”
The sonar pulse rang through the hull as it emanated out from the Novgorod. The Baby’s sonar had made a chirpy little “ping!” It had sounded somehow friendly to Katya. The Novgorod’s pulse, however, was a dull, mournful beat of sound that seemed to buzz inside her bones long after her ears had ceased to hear it.
The sonar officer checked his screen again. “I don’t understand it, sir. We’re picking up some sound; we should be able to get a passive lock on it.” He waited for the sonar echoes to return. He seemed to wait a long time. “No bounce from the pulse, sir. I’m trying for an IC resolution – it’s giving me a range of a thousand metres but won’t give me a full solution. It’s like hunting a ghost.”
Katya remembered her own encounter. She realised that she was sweating. The Novgorod was a hundred times bigger than the Pushkin’s Baby but she still had a horrible feeling, squirming in her gut, that history was about to repeat itself.
The hydrophones operator looked up. “I’m getting something… Cavitation noise, captain!”
Katya blanched. “Oh no,” she said in a desperate little voice. Captain Zagadko looked around at the sound and was surprised to see her almost hugging herself in fear. “Cavitation,” she said in a whisper. “Then it attacks.”
Captain Zagadko was becoming quite sick of this mysterious foe. He didn’t like the way it was avoiding detection, he didn’t like the way it had moved into an attack with none of the usual preamble of submarine combat, and – very especially – he didn’t like the way it kept being referred to as “it” all the time.
He was sure it was a submarine, and a submarine is a “she,” just like any ocean-going vessel. There was an atmosphere on the bridge as if they were facing some mythical sea monster and he wasn’t having it.
“Petrov!” he barked, “sweep the external cameras, floodlights on!”
“Aye-aye, captain.” The first officer moved to the salvage controls. “The water’s not too bad,” he reported as the cameras flicked into instant life. “With enhancement running we should be able to see anything within a thousand. Nothing in the forward quarter, searching…”
“Incoming!” called out the sensors operator. “Single contact. Eight o’clock high. Fast, very fast.”
“Eight o’clock high!” snapped Zagadko at Petrov. Petrov started swinging the lights and cameras to look that way. Zagadko was already standing over another crewmember at her position. “Weapons! Two torpedoes on a reciprocal, forty-five degree search cones, three minute dry. Helm! Hard to port, dive for the isotherm, flank speed.”
“Torpedoes away, launched and running. Noisemakers, Captain.?”
“Yes, and wait for my signal. Petrov, have you..?”
But Petrov was looking at the main viewing screen on the forward bulkhead with sheer astonishment. Zagadko looked too and was struck dumb himself for several long seconds. All across the bridge, the crew paused to look up from their stations. Katya didn’t want to look, but she really couldn’t help herself.
“What,” said one of the crew in blank disbelief, “is that?”
On the screen, a shape, a massive shape loomed out of the dark, the smallest part of it illuminated by the Novgorod’s searchlights. It was unbelievably, shockingly huge, dwarfing the Novgorod. Smooth and almost featureless, it was impossible to say whether it was a machine or a creature. It swept gracefully by them, almost silent and invisible to sonar, and it never seemed to end.
Kaya heard a voice in the silence speak, so quietly that she was sure she was the only one to hear it. “Leviathan.” She looked sharply at the speaker.
It was Kane, standing by the hatch. Before she had a chance to speak, an alarm klaxon suddenly started bleating raucously, shattering the awful moment.
“We’re taking on water forward!” called an officer.
“What?” Zagadko was bemused. “With no detonation?”
“No explosion, sir,” reported the hydrophones operator, “but there was a lot of hiss, a little cavitation. It reminded me of the steam bubbles rising from a volcanic vent, very similar sound.”
“Sonar? Are you getting anything?”
The sonar operator shook his head. “I don’t know what’s going on, captain. That contact I took to be a torpedo of some sort made a close pass and then pulled away. It’s returning to… that thing – whatever it is – now. And,” he looked embarrassed and confused, “I’ve lost our torpedoes. They just… disappeared.”
“Damage control, what’s the flooding situation?”
“Much faster than the pumps can deal with, captain. We’re taking about four tonnes a minute. We’re losing trim.”
“Can we surface?”
“No, sir. We’re already too far gone.”
Zagadko stood a moment in deep thought, rubbing his earlobe. Every captain loves his vessel almost more than life itself, but every captain has to be ready to abandon that vessel at a moment’s notice if there is no alternative. “Where’s the hostile now?” he asked.
Neither the hydrophones nor the sonar operator could find any trace of the huge shape that had attacked them. “It’s gone, captain. It’s just vanished.”
“This is very calculated,” said Captain Zagadko. “It hurts us just enough to sink us and then withdraws. What’s it up to?”
Katya was wondering about that too. “Captain? He turned to her with a mild expression of surprise and she realised he’d forgotten she was there. “Captain, when it attacked us, we had multiple contacts. The Baby never stood a chance..”
“She’s right,” said Kane from the hatchway. “I was conscious throughout. It really laid into us.”
“I thought I told you to go to the ready room, Mr Kane.”
“Yes, you did. It was rather du
ll so I came back again.”
“You are not helping,” said Zagadko, his irritation starting to show. “Leave my bridge and…”
“What’s the point, captain? We’re sinking and you can’t stop that. There’s nothing out here but the Soup. We really don’t stand much of a chance.”
Just when she thought it couldn’t get any worse, it did. “We’re over the Soup here?” she said, pleasing herself by keeping a waver out of her voice.
The Soup was one of the great mysteries and attractions of Russalka. In the deepest parts of the world ocean, beneath the crush depths of all but the strongest hulls, a thick mineral solution formed lakes and submarine seas. It was far denser than water but still liquid and it existed in standing bodies all over the planet. Little was known of it. A few small experimental samples had been taken and these showed the Soup, as it quickly became known, was rich in metallic salts including some of rare elements. Simply put, the Soup was worth a fortune to whoever worked out a way of extracting it. Many rich men had tried and left poorer. Many poor men had tried and their bodies had not been recovered. The sheer density of the Soup was one of the things that made it so difficult to manipulate and the depth at which it existed made for a very dangerous working environment. Even a vessel capable of diving to great depths like the Novgorod could not hope to enter the Soup and survive. Every litre of Soup weighed – depending where in the world it had been gathered – as much as twenty kilograms, twenty times denser than water. Diving five metres into the Soup was like diving a hundred metres of water. The few boats that could dive that deep were already past their test depth if they reached the surface of the Soup. A few metres down would send the pressure rocketing past the crush depth equivalent and the submarine would be crumpled like a paper boat in a giant’s hand.
Katya's World Page 5