“Not sure yet, Ms,” said the sensors operator. “Working on it.”
Katya looked around and saw the navigator’s position was empty. She knew the Novgorod’s navigator had died in the pirate attack. It seemed that the pirates had lost their own to the combat drone. Without asking permission, she sat at the post and pulled on the headset. Behind her Tasya shot a glance at Kane, who just smiled slightly and shrugged.
Katya took a few moments to familiarise herself with the layout of the position’s interface and a few moments more to reorganise it to her liking. The Terran-designed interface wasn’t hugely different from its Russalkin counterpart, but that was hardly surprising. There had to be a point where the interface couldn’t be improved much further and all versions would tend towards that. The only thing she could think of that might move it on would be interfacing directly with the computer. An image of the Leviathan’s interface throne loomed in her mind and she pushed it away, nauseated. No, she’d stick with the sort of interface you could walk away from afterwards.
She requested the sensor data via her console and fed it to the navigational systems. It was simple stuff; she’d done far more complicated plots to get her card. When she was satisfied she’d got it right, she issued the data to the main screen. A relief map of Russalka sprang up upon the screen. Marked in exaggerated size was the Vodyanoi and, not nearly so exaggerated, the Leviathan, the pair hanging between the submerged mountain ranges like airships traversing a valley. Katya tapped in a command and a red line sprang out of the Leviathan’s prow, streaking away until it was lost off the edge of the screen. Katya pulled back the viewpoint, further and further until some objects appeared, the red line of the Leviathan’s projected path running neatly through the tight cluster. Katya selected them and zoomed rapidly in.
Kane slowly stood, his face grim. “That would make a lot of sense.”
Tasya stood too, but her expression was in stark contrast to Kane’s. Where he seemed sanguine, she was horrified. “The Yagizba Conclaves!”
Katya could see Kane’s point, but she couldn’t move herself to feel empathy with Tasya. The Yagizba Conclaves were a confederation of floating towns. The fact they spent most of their time on Russalka’s angry surface was strange enough when they could withdraw easily to the serene depths, but the Yagizban also bore reputations of arrogance and vile eccentricities. They were, however, also the production powerhouses for the whole planet. In their robot factories were built almost all the machines that the submarine communities depended upon. Yes, there were other production facilities elsewhere, but Yagizban technology was of a consistently high quality and reasonably priced. When the war against Earth had opened, their floating cities had been obvious targets, especially since the Conclaves were the only serious users of aircraft and had floating airstrips dotted around the seas. The first Terran attacks had sunk every one of the airstrips and two of the smaller towns before the others had managed to flood their ballast tanks and sink to a safe depth of their own volition and choosing.
The Yagizban had been the backbone of the resistance, supplying boats and war materiel wherever it was needed. Towards the end, however, even their resources had drawn thin. It was just as well, Katya reflected, that the Terrans’ had drawn even thinner.
The Conclaves had remained aloof from the victory celebrations when the embattled Russalkin finally realised that the Terrans had given up. They had pulled together what floating towns they had left and moved off to rebuild. Now they held their distance from the rest of the planet’s settlements, supplying technology as they had always done and being paid in resources but never going any further towards integrating themselves. Uncle Lukyan called them a strange people. Katya had heard others call them much worse.
She zoomed in still further until the mapping image resolved into a cluster of five main domes and perhaps eight smaller ones. The red line ran unerringly right through the middle of the group. “It means to destroy our main means of production.”
“It would seem so.” Despite his words, Kane seemed unconvinced. “Lemuria can breathe easy, at least for the moment.” He rubbed his chin and stared at the screen, deep in thought.
“If it attacks them, we’ve lost before we start,” said Tasya. Her face was taut with some emotion. Concern? Indecision? Fear? Katya couldn’t identify it, but she would never have expected it on the Chertovka’s face, whatever it was. Even from their brief acquaintance, Tasya had only ever seemed to run from grim determination to grim humour. “We have to warn them.”
“We can’t, Tasya,” said Kane gently. “You know we can’t.”
“Why not?” said Katya.
Kane turned and spoke abruptly, angered at her breaking into his conversation. “Because we don’t carry a long wave array. Who would we want to talk to? And if we use a narrow-beam submarine transmission, it will go straight past the Leviathan who will certainly intercept it and probably jam it. If we’re lucky, that’s all it would do.”
Katya decided not to ask what might happen if they were unlucky. Instead, she turned back to her console, trying to hide the fact that her cheeks had turned red. Kane had been right to bark at her, she knew; butting in like that had just made her look like a big-mouthed kid.
She busied herself with the navigational data, trying to take her mind off what an idiot she was. She concentrated on plotting and replotting the Leviathan’s course, on the small chance that she had made some sort of childish mistake in her earlier plots, but no. Every time she went through the stages, the red line still struck neatly through the middle of the Conclaves. It was a sharp piece of navigating on the part of the Leviathan, she thought. Considering that the Yagizba Conclaves weren’t even permanently anchored…
A horrible thought occurred to her. The Yagizba Conclaves weren’t permanently anchored. Ten years ago, they’d been in an entirely different part of the Russalkin ocean.
“Hail the Leviathan.” Kane’s sudden order cut across her train of thought and she looked up at him in confusion.
“What?” Lukyan roused himself from where he’d been leaning against the wall looking over the sensor officer’s shoulder. “Are you mad? You’ve said yourself that monstrosity is trigger-happy. If an active sonar ping is enough to put it on the warpath, what will it make of a tight-beam transmission right up its baffles?”
Kane looked seriously at him. “I am very much afraid, very much afraid that the situation has changed, and not for the better. Communications, hail the Leviathan.”
The communications officer looked at him uncertainly and looked back at Tasya for confirmation. She seemed worried herself, not the confident and commanding personality Katya was used to at all. Finally she nodded quickly, as if wanting the act over and done with.
With obvious misgivings, the communications officer opened a channel. “Leviathan from Vodyanoi, Leviathan from Vodyanoi. Come in, please.”
“Put it on the speakers,” ordered Kane. Immediately the bridge was filled with the gentle hiss of an empty communications channel, rising and falling slowly. They listened in silence for almost a minute before Kane ordered another hail.
No happier than last time, the communications officer complied. “Leviathan from Vodyanoi, Leviathan from Vodyanoi. Are you receiving, please?”
Silence was the only reply. Kane waited impatiently. After a minute there was still no response. “Sensors, any change in the Leviathan’s speed and heading?” The sensors officer shook his head without looking away from his instruments. On Katya’s console, the red line never wavered. Kane grunted with frustration. “Hail it again.”
The communications officer looked beseechingly at Tasya, but she only nodded curtly. For the third time, he sent a hail.
This time, Leviathan spoke.
“This is… is Leviath…” The rest of the sentence seemed to fade away. They waited for a moment, but nothing more came.
“Hail it again,” said Kane slowly, brooking no argument.
“Leviathan from Vodyanoi,
Leviathan from…”
“This… is… Lev… i… a…” Every syllable seemed to be a gargantuan effort. Katya listened to it with a mixture of trepidation and hope. Perhaps Tokarov had somehow managed to sabotage it. Even its voice, so controlled and sterile before, seemed shot through now with uncertainty and, what was that? Fear? Fear; now she realised it had been fear on Tasya’s face. How odd. But not as odd as a machine showing fear. That was so…
“Oh no,” she said out loud. “Oh no!”
The voice of the Leviathan continued, still halting, but becoming stronger now. “This is… Leviath… This… This… is… I… I am…”
Katya couldn’t speak anymore. Her hands were over her mouth in revulsion and terror and in pity. Kane’s eyes were shut as he awaited the inevitable.
“I…” the machine’s voice was strong now, certain, “…am…” and it contained tones and undertones that had never been programmed into it.
“Tokarov,” said Kane. “You fool.”
And the machine that was now more than a machine and the man who was now less than a human spoke as one, filling the bridge with their unified voice.
“I AM LEVIATHAN!”
Chapter 13
Vodyanoi
Through nameless waters, the Vodyanoi pursued the Leviathan. Near her maximum speed, although still comfortably short of what they knew the Leviathan was capable, the Vodyanoi struggled to maintain sensor contact. If it had wanted to, the Leviathan could have shaken them off in a minute either through accelerating or by performing its feat of near invisible stealth and vanishing from the passive sonar screens. Yet it did neither, as if contemptuous of anything the little Vodyanoi could throw against it.
Kane had called an immediate council of war with Tasya, Petrov, and even Uncle Lukyan. Katya, however, had been excluded. She felt she should have been insulted, but instead felt oddly relieved. She had hardly had a moment to herself since the Baby had left the locks. And how long ago had that been? She was losing track of time. Two days ago? Three? Brief moments of sleep had broken the time into awkward irregular lumps of recollection, and she longed to simply put her head down and sleep eight hours at a stretch so she could start counting days once more. She’d never thought that something as simple as a handful of hours sleep could mean so much to her.
Now she had a little while to collect her thoughts and stop pretending to have all the answers. On the one hand she was flattered that intelligent men like Kane and Petrov thought she, too, was intelligent. On the other, she just wanted to be divorced from responsibility for a little while. Just for a few minutes, she wanted to be fifteen-almost-sixteen again.
She found the senior officers’ mess, or what would have been the senior officer’s mess if the Vodyanoi still had any senior officers after the carnage at the mining complex. She thought it was empty at first and stepped in. By the time she realised her mistake it was too late to back out. Suhkalev was sitting in the corner at the far end of the bench at the table.
She hadn’t seen him at all since they’d arrived at the mine’s northern docking area and, she realised with a small shock, hadn’t thought of him at all since then either. Despite their successful sally against the Leviathan’s combat drone, he’d fallen completely off her list of things and people to worry about. She felt slightly ashamed for that and sat down on the opposing bench at the end nearest the door. She might spend a little time with him, but that didn’t mean it had to be spent very close to him.
He managed a wan smile as she sat. “I hear you’ve been having adventures. Been aboard the Leviathan.” He shook his head. “What’s happening there? Something to do with Lieutenant Tokarov. Nobody will give me a straight answer.”
Katya sighed. This was going to be difficult. Slowly, as much to explain recent events to herself as him, she went through the recent developments, the nature of the Leviathan’s artificial intelligence, its capability for synthetic intelligence and the fact that this capability had now been achieved. She didn’t explain why Kane had been unsuitable as the seed from which the Leviathan’s synthetic intelligence had been intended to grow ten years before. That was Kane’s business. She half wished she didn’t know about it either.
When she had finished, Suhkalev didn’t seem very much the wiser. “So the Leviathan must have absorbed Lieutenant Tokarov against his will?”
“Not according to Kane. The Leviathan was never programmed to expect anybody but a volunteer. The lieutenant would have had to sit in the interface chair himself.”
Suhkalev looked at her dubiously. “But the way you tell it, it’s suicide. Why would he do it after only a few hours? I can imagine a man doing it if he was trapped in there for months and months…” Like Kane had been, thought Katya. “…but he was only in there for, what? Three hours? Why would he do it?”
Katya shrugged; she had no idea. She wasn’t the only one.
The first thing Kane had asked Petrov as soon as the communications channel with the Leviathan was closed was, “Lieutenant Petrov, you know Tokarov best here. In your opinion, is he, was he sane?”
Petrov had not hesitated. “He’s a good officer, a rock solid man. I’ve entrusted my life to him on more than one occasion in the past. I would have done so again without any reservations. I cannot explain why he has done this.” For once, even Petrov’s cool demeanour seemed shaken. “I cannot explain it at all.”
All she could offer Suhkalev was, “Maybe we can board the Leviathan again, try and find out what happened.”
“You think it will let you?”
“Maybe. We can barely keep up with it at the moment, though, and the Vodyanoi’s a fast boat. The Baby wouldn’t have a chance. Anyway,” she said, changing the subject, “how are you? Aren’t the Novgorods talking to you still?”
“They’re not so bad, now. I think helping to kill that drone and get it’s IFF unit got me some respect. They’re glad a Fed was involved, even if it was just some punk from base security.”
“You can’t blame them. Secor mainly draws from the bases.” She looked at him, trying to work him out. “Why’d you join base security in the first place? You know everybody hates them.”
“Fast career track. I wouldn’t mind ending up in Secor. You’re bright, you must have thought of it.”
“Hah!” she laughed sarcastically. “For about half a second!” She could see him flushing with humiliation and made an effort to tone down her contempt. “Oh, c’mon. People are scared of Secor. I don’t want to scare people. It doesn’t matter how good the job is; they’ve got reputations out of horror stories. You can’t want that.”
He didn’t answer her or even meet her eyes. Her shoulders sagged with dismay. “That’s a selling point with you, is it? Look,” she got up to leave, “Suhkalev, there are better ways to get respect. What you did in the mine workings, staying cool getting that machine working with the drone bearing down on us, that was brave. That’s got you some respect. Real respect, not that fake stuff that Secor have. That’s just fear by another name. If that’s all you want, be my guest. I think you’re a better man than that.”
She left the officers’ mess and headed back to the small cabin she’d been given wondering whether her words had made any impact at all.
She managed ninety minutes sleep before her cabin’s communicator woke her with a request to go to the bridge. She was too sleepy to be sure, but she thought it sounded like Kane. Why couldn’t everybody just leave her alone? She struggled back into the Novgorod uniform coverall – which wasn’t fitting her any better then when she’d gone to sleep, she was disappointed to note – and headed forward to the bridge while she tried to remember the last time she'd eaten.
On entering the bridge, she was greeted by Kane who’d reclaimed the captain’s chair. She was rather more pleased to see the plate of sandwiches from the galley than she was to see him and helped herself with only the briefest of requests and no waiting for an answer.
Kane let her eat in silence for a couple of minutes
before speaking. “I thought you might like to know what we’ve decided to do, Katya Kuriakova. We’re breaking off the pursuit of the Leviathan.” Katya didn’t say anything – her mouth was full of mulched bread and reconstituted turkey analogue – but her expression conveyed a great deal. Kane answered her unspoken criticism. “No, we’re not giving up. We’re going to break off onto a perpendicular so that we can attempt to send a message to the Yagizba Conclaves without the Leviathan intercepting it. My former experiences with that monstrosity count for nothing now; with the synthetic intelligence finally in command, it’s drawing on Tokarov’s own knowledge and instincts. It’s no longer just a machine. Before, if it had intercepted the message, it would have ignored it, possibly only turning to attack us instead if the conditions were right. Now, we have no idea what it might do. Therefore, we can’t allow any chance of interception. We’re already heading away to get some clear water between the pair of us.”
Katya swallowed, took a drink of water and asked, “What will you tell them?”
“The truth. That an artefact of the War of Independence, an automated Terran battleship, is heading their way and they can’t hope to fight it. If they take us seriously, and without FMA codes there’s no reason they should, they may try and disperse the cluster or even evacuate there and then. I don’t know.”
“They’ll wait,” said Katya. “They’ll wait to see if it’s a real threat and, by the time they realise it is, it’ll be too late.”
“Don’t underestimate the Yagizban,” said Tasya. She’d commandeered the navigation position and had given no indication she was listening. Katya noticed, with some irrational irritation, that the Chertovka had reconfigured the display away from Katya’s favoured layout.
Katya's World Page 17