Kane caught Katya’s eye, nodded shrewdly in Tasya’s direction and mouthed Yagizban.
Still absorbed by the navigation display, Tasya didn’t notice. “They took the heaviest and most sustained attacks at the opening of the war and still managed to keep this world fighting back. They’ll realise how serious the situation is in plenty of time, believe you me.”
Katya thought she’d believe that when she saw it. The Yagizban might be the technological cutting edge of Russalka, but the Leviathan was an entire magnitude beyond anything that had ever been built in their factories. The only way to believe the Leviathan was to see it, and then it would be too late for anything.
Once she had been made aware of the plan, there seemed little point in staying on the bridge. Tasya told her that it would be four hours before they were in a safe position to transmit so Katya decided to take the opportunity to catch up on a little more sleep. She stole the remaining sandwiches and headed back to her cabin, where she ate in her bunk, filling it with crumbs, before dousing the light and finally getting some uninterrupted sleep.
Her watch’s alarm failed to penetrate the exhaustion that had settled upon her in full force and she slept a further two hours before finally stirring. She dressed quickly and went forward. Neither Kane nor Tasya were on the bridge, only Petrov with a skeleton bridge complement. He looked neat and alert and Katya wondered if he ever needed to sleep or just had his batteries replaced once every week or so.
“Good afternoon, Ms Kuriakova. You slept well?”
“Have we already signalled the Yagizba Conclaves?” she asked.
His eyes flickered up to the chronometer over the main screen. “Just over a hundred minutes ago.”
“And?”
He raised an eyebrow. “And… what?”
He could be so vague sometimes, she thought. “And how did they react to being told a synthetic intelligence displacing about seven million tonnes was coming to pay them a visit?”
“Oh, that. They were surprisingly unconcerned. Perhaps they were just being careful what was discussed over an open channel, but I was expecting a slightly more violent reaction to learning about the Leviathan.”
“So, what do they plan to do? What do we plan to do?”
“They gave us some coordinates and a time to make a rendezvous. I would guess they have a patrol vessel in the area and we’re supposed to be meeting up. Anyway, we’re supposed to get there, surface, and wait.”
“It won’t be an FMA vessel?”
Petrov shook his head, frowning slightly. “There are no FMA facilities in the Conclaves. They refuse to have them, regard the Federal administration as an obstruction to their work. Given that they’re so important to the planet’s defence if and when Earth ever try again, it was decided to cut them a little slack. That’s not something we’re inclined to advertise, though,” he added with a conspiratorial look.
“How long to the rendezvous?”
Another glance at the chronometer. “Not long. About another ten minutes now.” He looked at her again. “You know, Ms Kuriakova, you hold a very privileged position in this company.”
She looked at him with blank surprise. “I do?”
He nodded. “You do. Everybody seems to trust you with their confidence. Your uncle, obviously, but also the pirates. The Chertovka is remarkably tolerant of you. You’re aware of her reputation?”
Katya felt awkward discussing Tasya behind her back. “She says that reputation isn’t deserved.”
“Reputations rarely are, whether they’re good or bad. As for Kane, he treats you like a daughter. Ms Kuriakova,” he leaned towards her and spoke quietly, “I would be very careful of trusting him in any respect. Few people are quite what they appear, but he seems to make a hobby of being utterly unexpected. We just thought he was another lowlife at first, and then he turns out to be Terran and a failed component in a plan to commit genocide against us.”
“Genocide?” Katya started to grow angry, but then paused. Only she and probably the Chertovka knew of Kane’s sacrifice and his enforced addiction to that filthy Sin stuff. She longed to tell Petrov just how wrong he was, but didn’t feel the secret was hers to impart. Perhaps this was why she was trusted with so many confidences; she kept them even when she burned to tell. Unaware of her inner confusion, Petrov was talking.
“He knows so much about the Leviathan. He’s obviously only telling us what we need to know from minute to minute, never anything like the whole picture. For all we know, he has the secret of how to destroy it and is keeping it back for some reason. We cannot trust him.”
Katya shook her head firmly. “If he could destroy it, it would be in pieces right now.” She would have said more, but the bulkhead hatch opened and Tasya came in, graciously ushered through by Kane who followed her.
“About time, isn’t it?” said Kane, full of the heartiness and cheer that Katya now knew meant that he’d used Sin recently to stop the sickness of its addiction crushing him. The knowledge made her feel sick herself.
Petrov, pointedly staying in the command chair, nodded. “Another couple of minutes and then we’ll start the ascent. I hope we can convince the commander of whatever ship we’re meeting with of the urgency of the situation. With every wasted minute, the Leviathan is closing on their homes.”
“We’ll convince them,” said Tasya with a certainty that intrigued Katya. She could see Petrov had noticed it too, but – as with so much – he didn’t comment, just filed it away in the grey perfection of his memory.
As good as his word, two minutes after Kane and Tasya had entered the bridge, Petrov ordered the ascent by the book so exactly that Kane pronounced it drill perfect and as good as any he’d ever seen aboard a Terran boat. If it was meant as a compliment, it didn’t work.
The Vodyanoi surged up from the depths and hit the surface exactly on location and on schedule. A visual scan of the open sea only confirmed what their sensors had already told them; there was no boat to greet them.
Petrov settled back into the captain’s chair and smiled a little smugly. “So much for Yagizban efficiency.”
The Chertovka fumed, and Kane added warningly, “Give them a moment, lieutenant. We don’t know what they may have encountered en route.”
Suddenly, the pirate sweeping the horizon with the external cameras spoke up. “Visual contact! Bearing 12 degrees absolute!”
The FMA ensign at the sensors console was stunned. “Nothing on sonar, sir,” he reported in disbelief. “Nothing on hydrophones. Not a whisper.”
Katya saw the frown that passed over Petrov’s face and knew he was thinking the same as her. Did the Yagizban have stealth technology like the Leviathan’s on their boats? And, if so, why hadn’t they shared it with the FMA? Any such conjecture was blown away the very next second by what the ensign had to add.
“Speed estimated at two hundred klicks pee-aitch, altitude…”
Katya was thunderstruck. Altitude?
“…one thousand metres. Decelerating and descending. Three thousand metres and closing.”
She couldn’t believe it. The Yagizba Conclaves had sent an anti-gravity car out to meet them? At this range? They must be crazy; the elements would rip it to pieces if it had to fly more than a short distance. Perhaps it had been launched from a Yagizban ship to make the rendezvous in time. It is a poor habit to theorise without data and, when Petrov ordered the images from the camera relayed to the main screen, she saw she had been profoundly wrong in a very unexpected way.
“What,” said Petrov in clipped tones that somehow served to make him seem angrier than if he’d jumped to his feet and started swearing, “is that?”
It was no little AG car coming towards them. Flying close to the tops of the storm-tossed sea, the always furious sky of Russalka boiling and spitting lightning behind it, came a huge aircraft kept aloft by AG pods but propelled forward by the hideous blue light of quantum drives, as blue as cobalt, yet still flickering on the edge of perception. These were the man
oeuvre drives of starships; she’d never dreamt she’d see a craft use them in atmosphere. And it was a big craft, at least half as long again as the Vodyanoi and noticeably wider.
“Incoming message,” reported the signals officer. “Requests we order all stop to engines and batten down.”
Petrov was glaring at the image of the closing aircraft as if it were a personal insult. Katya guessed that the Yagizban had been keeping the development of a new air fleet to themselves. She could see why the FMA would not regard this as a pleasant surprise. “Tell them…”
“That we are complying,” interrupted Tasya. “All engines stop. Batten down and brace.”
Petrov shot her a look but did not countermand her order. They might have reached an agreement to share command, but the Vodyanoi was still a pirate vessel and Petrov would never feel he had the last word aboard.
The aircraft was close now, spinning about to approach the last few hundred metres backwards. As it made its final approach, a great seam in its belly opened and the fuselage skin slid back, revealing a great empty cavity within. Katya looked around at the others: Petrov and Lukyan were watching the spectacle grimly; Tasya’s expression was content; Kane seemed faintly bored. Was she the only one who was amazed by this? The craft was some sort of extraordinary transporter, but she’d never heard of the like. What other wonders would the Yagizban have back at the Conclaves?
“Brace!” ordered Tasya over the Vodyanoi’s public address speakers. Katya found an empty seat and strapped herself in. Barely had she done so when the transporter settled over them. The screen went dark and the boat lurched. Hollow metallic clangs sounded through her hull as grapnels secured her into the transport’s cavernous belly. Then the boat pitched back to about thirty degrees. As the realisation that the Vodyanoi had been picked up and was airborne hit home, lights flickered on outside and the camera revealed the inside of the transport aircraft around them, its girders and catwalks. They could see a hatch open and people in the distinctive yellow buff uniforms of the Conclaves enter. A minute later, there was a clanging on the metal of the Vodyanoi’s squat conning tower. The deck angle had returned more or less to the horizontal so Tasya unstrapped herself and climbed quickly up the ladder into the tower. They heard her open the hatch and a voice ask permission to come aboard. Moments later, the bridge was full of Yagizban troops.
Tasya made a point of introducing Petrov to them first although the leader of the boarding party – a solidly built major called Moltsyn who sported an impressively square jaw– had noticed the presence of FMA uniforms as soon as he’d come aboard. Petrov was cool and formal when he shook Moltsyn’s hand, but he made no comment about the nature of the craft that had gathered them up from the waves and was now, presumably, flying them back to the Conclaves. Katya was glad he didn’t. She didn’t like the way things were going and suspected Petrov was of the same opinion. The pirates and the Yagizban seemed to know each other of old, and it was a very comfortable relationship.
At the major’s invitation, the bridge crew went up top. Katya didn’t want to miss the opportunity to see what the transporter’s cargo bay looked like for herself and climbed up to the top of the conning tower. Standing there, the roof of the hanger-like bay was almost within her touch, still wet from the sea in which it had momentarily rested while grappling the Vodyanoi. Below, she could see the other members of the bridge crew on the deck, looking around the bay and chatting to the yellow-clad troops. It all seemed very friendly, but the FMA sailors looked like prisoners the way the Yagizban hedged around them.
“What’s going on?” she said quietly to herself.
“What’s going on indeed?” Petrov had joined her and was looking down at the scene on the deck grimly. “Look at this, Ms Kuriakova, just look at this. The major tells me that this is an experimental aircraft that just happened to be available. Yet the Vodyanoi fits into it like a hand in the glove. Look how closely even the conning tower fits in with just enough clearance. This bay has its grapples in exactly the right places and even the damned gangplank is in exactly the right place to go neatly up against the side hatch on the tower. This aircraft has been custom built to carry this submarine, there’s no question about it. As for the major and the Chertovka, they all but embraced when he came aboard. The Yagizban have been consorting with pirates and they’re not going to any great pains to hide it.” He shook his head in defeat. “They won’t allow anybody from the Novgorod back to report their complicity. I fear for our safety.”
Katya looked at the smiling faces of the Yagizban troops and saw them harden whenever they looked at anybody from the FMA. She suddenly felt afraid. “What will they do to you?”
Petrov looked at her with mild, tired surprise. Seeing him weary just compounded her sense of dismay. “Do to me? Do to us, Ms Kuriakova. In case you’ve forgotten, you’re wearing an FMA uniform. I think you may already have been earmarked for disposal just like the rest of us.”
Chapter 14
Cutting Edge
It seemed Petrov had a point. When Katya went down on deck, she found herself being treated with the same coolness as the real FMA personnel. She was relieved when Kane took her by the arm and made a point of introducing her to Major Moltsyn. “This is Ms Katya Kuriakova. She was aboard the minisub that the Leviathan first attacked.” She was grateful that he didn’t mention that they’d also been the ones who had unwittingly reactivated it in the first place. “She has been a great help since.”
Moltsyn regarded her with hooded eyes. “And how long have you been in the Federal forces, Ms Kuriakova?”
Kane laughed. “She’s not with the FMA, major. She’s a civilian. Her clothes were ruined by seawater so she was given these aboard the Novgorod.”
Katya felt pathetically thankful as the major’s slightly threatening expression abruptly lightened, but there was also a spasm of guilt that she was escaping whatever fate the Yagizban had lined up for the FMA people. She felt like she was abandoning Petrov and the rest, and yet she still felt relief. She simmered at her own cowardice. The major didn’t help when he said, “Well, we’ll have to get you some proper clothes, Ms Kuriakova,” as if she was wearing filthy rags.
“No,” she said, with a little iron in her voice, “I’m fine with these. I wouldn’t want to put you to any trouble.”
“Nonsense,” laughed Kane, even as he flashed her a don’t be stupid look. “I’m sure the major can find you something better than an old and, I hope you’ll forgive me for saying so, very ill-fitting uniform.”
“Yes, we can find you some civilian clothing when we reach the Conclaves.”
Katya pricked up her ears. “When will that be?”
The major checked his watch. “In about an hour, Ms Kuriakova.” He chuckled. “Can’t wait to be in some proper clothes, eh?”
She’d actually wanted to know so she could make a swift calculation as to how quickly the transport was flying – she estimated 600kph, perhaps a little more – but the major’s comment was revealing. He seemed to regard the FMA uniform as about as pleasant as a skin disease. She’d never been to the Yagizba Conclaves – very few had – and had never met anybody from there either but, even so, the difference in mindset, mores, and behaviour was surprising. She’d thought all Russalkin were as one; united by the war and unified in their hatred of Earth and trust in the Federal authorities. Yes, everybody grumbled about them, but there was no doubt that Federal leadership had brought the Terran invasion to a standstill and that the authorities did a good job in these difficult times. To meet somebody who regarded the FMA and its sister organisations with utter contempt was outside her experience and expectations.
The hour passed slowly. Katya felt uncomfortable around the Yagizban and the pirates, and felt like a traitor to the FMA sailors. The two groups quickly gravitated away from one another and it pained her to see men and women who’d been working so easily and efficiently together only hours ago starting to regard each other as enemies again. She found her uncle stan
ding on the Vodyanoi’s prow, looking down at the closed bay doors below with a thunderous frown.
“You look how I feel, uncle,” she said as she joined him.
“If you feel suspicious and uncomfortable, then you’re exactly right,” he growled, the closest he could usually manage to a whisper. “Always knew the Yags were a weird bunch, never realised how little I understood them. Look at ‘em, thick as thieves.”
Tasya and the major were still making some small effort to carry on the pretence that they were strangers, but it was cosmetic and everybody knew it.
“That Moltsyn,” muttered Lukyan, “he’s all pose. An administrator playing at soldiers. Yags… creepy bastards, all of ‘em.”
The tension in the bay was palpable and Katya was glad when the transporter nosed down and started its descent. The major asked everybody to sit down or otherwise brace themselves for a few shocks during the landing, but the pilot made such a good job of it that there was only the slightest lurch as the landing pylons touched down.
As everybody formed up to leave by the side ramp, Major Moltsyn raised his voice. “The ramp is facing the platform’s entrance, so head straight for it. There’s a storm blowing outside so expect to get wet, but keep your head down, don’t stop to sightsee, and you’ll be fine. Okay,” he nodded to the sergeant at the door controls. “Let ‘em out.”
When Katya reached the head of the queue and walked out of the side of the transport aircraft, she couldn’t help but pause for a moment. She’d expected the landing area to be like one of the small pads that some of the submersible settlements had on top of their domes, designed for little more than small AG craft to alight. What she found as she stepped through the doorframe and onto the ramp in the lashing rain was something else again.
The platform was immense, perhaps three hundred metres in radius and a good hundred and fifty metres above the waves. The flat circle was black, marked out with landing stripes and lights, the circumference dotted with meteorological units, sensor cowlings and an observation deck beneath which she could see a cave-like entrance into which those preceding her were scurrying. She could have gawped at it all for another minute at least but an impatient push in her back reminded her of the major’s words, and she dogtrotted down the ramp and across the rain-slicked surface of the platform for what seemed like a very long time until she reached the entrance beneath the observation deck. There, she waited with the surviving crews of the Novgorod and Vodyanoi until they had all made the journey. Then the great doors slid quickly and almost silently shut, clipping the sound of the storm off as neatly as flicking a switch.
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