Katya's World

by Jonathan L. Howard

  The Yagizban were strong, the FMA was weak. She couldn’t see how the rest of the Russalkin could hope to stand against the Yagizban wolf pack. As if to punctuate her thoughts, the lift car emerged once more into the manufacturing facility and she watched with deepening dread the row of partially completed warboats. Every one of them was a mute threat against a peaceful future.

  And Kane must have known every detail of this plan. Judging from what she’d overheard on the FP-1’s bridge, they might not entirely trust him but he was necessary to them. She wondered why. There were too many secrets around Havilland Kane, she thought; they followed him around like black smoke, obscuring his motivations, hiding the truth. A truth Katya knew she wouldn’t like.

  This was not to ignore one last minor, trifling, unimportant little factor, of course. That given half a chance the Leviathan would kill the lot of them, Federal and Yagizban alike.

  The lift compartment came to a halt and she walked out into the accommodation deck. It was as quiet as before and she saw nobody as she walked quickly but without obviously rushing to her door. A quick look around to make sure she was unobserved and she ducked inside. She could not repress a sigh of relief that she had got away with it and she leaned with her forehead against the cool plating of the door for a moment while she felt the tension drain from her.

  “Enjoy your walk?” asked a voice behind her. “I’m not sure that uniform suits you, though.” She turned very slowly. Kane was sitting in a chair off to one side of the spacious stateroom. She’d missed him when she’d come in. “Then again, I don’t think that shade of yellow really suits anybody.”

  Trying to look unconcerned, she walked to the bed, opened the case and took out the civilian clothes Mila had given her. As she straightened them out she asked casually, “Are you going to report me?”

  “If I do, the chances are they’ll execute you. They’re very touchy about security at the moment. I’m concerned about what they may have planned for Lieutenant Petrov and his crew.”

  “You’re concerned?” She tried to keep an edge of cynicism out of her voice but only partially succeeded.

  If he heard it, he didn’t acknowledge it. “Yes, concerned. I’m hoping they’ll be declared prisoners of war, but as there’s no war actually on at the moment, that might be complicated. The Yagizban are sticklers for the formalities. The plan was always to declare war against the Federal Maritime Authority just before the first torpedoes struck.”

  “How noble. To legitimise a sneak attack? To make themselves feel better?”

  “The former, obviously. There have been similar events throughout history.”

  “Earth history, you mean.” This time Katya made no attempt to take the venom out of her voice.

  “Yes, Earth history. You don’t have a great deal to draw on yourselves here just yet. Just because it happened light years away and centuries ago doesn’t make it less relevant to your situation, Katya Kuriakova. History is about people and the Russalka and the Terrans are the same people. The geography may differ, but what goes on here,” he tapped his head, “and here,” he placed his hand on his heart, “is just the same.”

  Katya started to say something, but the effort wasn’t worth the thin meanings her words would have carried. Instead she started to change back into the civilian clothes. She shot Kane a look and he swivelled in his chair until his back was to her. She changed quickly, intent on keeping her possession of the maser strapped to her leg secret from him. She was relieved to find the tape holding well.

  As she changed, she said, “Not going so well now, though, is it? The whole question of prisoners of war is about to go out of the locks.”

  “Oh?” Kane was studiously looking at the wall fittings. “And why is that?”

  “Am I the only one who remembers that the Leviathan is coming this way? Your Yagizban friends had better get everything that can fly and swim out there right now if they’re going to stand any chance against that… that monstrosity.”

  “That’s an interesting… Have you finished yet? I dislike talking to walls.”

  Katya locked off her belt and sat on the bed to pull on the boots. “Yes, you can turn around now.”

  Kane turned back to face her. “Where was I? Oh, yes. It’s interesting that you seem to be alone in thinking the Conclaves should be scrambling to the defence.”

  “Yes.” Her eyes narrowed. “Why is that?”

  “Because the Leviathan that sank your minisub, holed the Novgorod and killed so many good people at the mine is gone. Tokarov has been…” Kane suddenly seemed overcome with emotion. He touched his brow and lowered his head and he distinctly paled. “That poor man. He had no idea what it was going to be like, that particular Siege Perilous. Poor holy fool.”

  Katya didn’t recognise the allusion and it angered her, although she wasn’t sure why. A suspicion was forming and she didn’t like the way it was going. “What do you mean? Talk straight for just once in your life, Kane! I’m tired of your stupid games. People are dying! You say we’re just the same. I don’t think so!”

  Kane looked at her seriously. “I’m sorry, Katya. Sometimes, sometimes I think I’ve grown old before my time, watching things collapse and not being able to do anything about it. Or doing the wrong thing. It’s been that way for so long, I’m beginning to think it’s my role in the universe, to make sure things go wrong.”

  Katya’s voice was cold. “I don’t have time for your self-pity either.”

  “No. No, of course not. On Earth, there’s a very old story about an order of warriors. They used to meet at a round table, so nobody could have the honour of sitting at the head of it. They would all be equal. But there was one place that was never taken. It was called the Siege Perilous and it was cursed. Only the most perfect knight in the land could sit there without dying instantly. Nobody ever sat there until one day, a knight turned up who was… unworldly. He knew nothing about the wickedness of life. Good, noble, and so unsullied by the sins of the world that he actually seemed a bit stupid. He sat in the Siege Perilous and was not destroyed. He was the perfect knight, utterly pure. The holy fool.”

  “What has this got to do with Tokarov?” asked Katya.

  “I’m sure you already know. Tokarov wasn’t forced into the interface throne aboard the Leviathan. He didn’t have a sudden nervous breakdown. He made a cool, rational decision to sit there. I had no idea he would. I never dreamt he would.” He smiled bleakly. “Perhaps I’m not as good at reading people as I thought.”

  “Out of nobility,” said Katya. Kane nodded. “Out of loyalty?” Another nod. “Kane, Tokarov is… was… from the Yagizba Conclaves, wasn’t he?”

  Kane nodded again. “The Yagizban’s aren’t running around in a panic because they know the Leviathan isn’t coming here to attack. It’s coming home. Tokarov’s coming home.”

  Chapter 15

  Little Gun

  A fait accompli, Kane helpfully told her after dropping it into one of his next comments, meant that the matter was settled before it had even really come to one side’s attention. In this case, by the time the FMA even found out that the Yagizba Conclaves had decided that they could do a better job running the planet than the Federals, the Yagizbans would already control Russalka’s storm-riven skies with their transport and strike aircraft and the seas would belong to the fleet of Vodyanoi-class warboats and, of course, the Leviathan.

  Katya hugged herself against a chill that existed only in her mind. “Were there ever any pirates? Or was it just you?”

  Kane smiled. “Nobody else has ever worked that out. No, we weren’t the only ones, but there were never more than five pirate vessels operating at any time. The transports could take us anywhere, drop us off and, as far as the Federals knew, it was another boat operating. You’ve seen the news reports. They thought there were as many as sixty pirate vessels out there and all the time it was just us, we few, keeping busy. If they’d stopped to think about it logically, they might have realised that there si
mply wasn’t enough trade to support that many pirates. They never did. You know, maybe they really don’t deserve to govern.”

  “That’s why the Vodyanoi was so keen to bust you out. They couldn’t afford you talking under interrogation.”

  “No, that would have been very bad for the Conclaves. I’m fairly feisty... I think I would have held out for a while. The Deeps, though, they have a bad, a fearsome bad reputation. Sooner or later, they’d have threatened to break a particularly favourite bone or dislocate some joint that I would rather stay correctly located and I’d have talked. It’s more or less impossible to break anybody out of the Deeps, so they always intended to rescue me before reaching the facility. Your little submarine was earmarked for interception as soon as that appalling little man Suhkarov commandeered it in his usual charmless fashion.”

  “Or they might just have sunk us to stop you talking.”

  “Yes,” replied Kane philosophically. “They might have sunk us. I like Tasya and, in her own faintly psychotic way, I think she likes me. She’d have fired without hesitation if she thought it was the only way, though.”

  “Perhaps you can tell her, tell them, the Yagizbans, that there’s no need to hurt the Novgorod’s crew. You’ve already won the war. We can’t fight the Leviathan. Enough people have already died.”

  “I know. I think they do too. That’s why Petrov and the rest are being held rather than being unceremoniously shot and dumped overboard. No point in starting the new world order with an unnecessary massacre.” He was speaking blithely, but Katya caught a note of bitterness there too.

  “You’re on the winning side, Kane,” she said, “but you don’t sound very happy about it.”

  Kane got up and paced the floor. “I’m happy that the FMA is finally going to be dissolved. It’s been a blight on the Russalkin ever since it was founded. It’s just a glorified customs and excise service, you know. How it was ever allowed to sprawl into so many other duties and roles I can’t imagine. Administrative creep, I suppose. Government by bureaucracy rarely bodes well.”

  “It did the job.”

  “It did it very badly. If it’s all you’ve ever seen, it’s hard to imagine other forms of government but they exist, I assure you. The Yagizban intend to run the planet as a meritocratic technocracy.”

  Katya snorted derisively. “And what’s that?”

  Kane stopped pacing and looked at her. “It means if you’re a good scientist, you get ahead. You have a good mind, Katya. You should do well.”

  She ignored the compliment, if that was what it was meant to be. “And that’s it? No say in how things go? What if we don’t want a meritocratic technocracy? What then?”

  “Not really your decision. It isn’t a democracy.”

  “A what?”

  “Never mind.” Kane checked his wristwatch. “Come on. I was supposed to collect you, not divulge all the Yagizbans’ nefarious schemes. Don’t let on that you already know. Let them have their moment of glory; it’s rude to spoil a gloat.”

  For the second time in less than an hour, Katya went to the FP-1’s bridge. This time, however, she was in the company of both Kane and Mila Vetskya who turned up just as they were leaving Katya’s room, presumably to see why Kane was taking so long on a simple errand. The lift went up two decks further before moving sideways this time and here was no scenic view of the war fleet under construction. Katya noticed that Mila had entered the destination through the lift’s keypad rather than using the voice recognition, and must have programmed in the diversion around the manufacturing area. It appeared that there were a few things the Conclaves weren’t ready to gloat about just yet.

  The bridge was still impressive when they arrived and Katya didn’t have to pretend too hard that its scale overawed her. It would take a few visits yet before she could walk in there and not be shocked by the size of the low-domed command centre. The only real difference was that the main holographic display had been reconfigured to no longer show Russalka in its entirety. Instead one section of ocean was being displayed as a great gently undulating square hung vertically like a banner. Katya watched the undulations and thought, is that just for show or do they really know what the wave patterns are from minute to minute? They’d need satellites to do that, wouldn’t they? If the Conclaves had got a surveillance satellite network back into orbit without anybody else knowing about it, then they were years ahead of the Federal settlements in development. She was comforted when Kane leaned towards her and whispered, “Don’t fall for the waves on the display. They’re just for show. They’ll have satellites up soon enough but not just yet.”

  The display’s major points of interest were a large yellow dot labelled FP-1 in the upper right and an ominous red arrowhead icon marked Lev. in the lower left. They never seemed to change position, but the scale ratio in the display’s lower right was constantly ticking down as it adjusted to the dot and the arrowhead growing closer together.

  Katya nodded at it. “It’s not making much effort to hide itself.” I don’t suppose it has to, she added to herself. Tokarov’s in friendly waters. I wonder if he expects some sort of hero’s welcome? She remembered Kane’s horror of the interface process and decided that there was probably precious little of Lieutenant Tokarov left to expect anything.

  A senior ranking Yagizban walked in front of them to reach the operators sitting at the sensors position. “How long until it gets here?” he demanded.

  “Two hours, sir.”

  Satisfied, the senior officer turned to walk away and stopped with shock. He was looking full at Katya and, with an equal shock, she recognised him as one of the two men who’d been monitoring Kane’s debriefing.

  “Who,” growled the officer, “is this?”

  Missing all the danger signs, Mila said brightly, “This is Katya Kuriakova, sir. A civilian from the Federal settlements.”

  “Really? Then perhaps you’d care to explain what she was doing on the bridge less than half an hour ago in administrative fatigues eavesdropping on a confidential conversation.”

  Mila blanched. “Sir? But, but she’s…”

  “She’s a spy. A Federal spy. Security!” He stepped back from Katya as if she was carrying something contagious and pointed at her. Two troopers ran up. “Take this girl and put her with the rest of the Federal prisoners. Now!”

  Katya didn’t mind the humiliation of being bundled into the lift in front of the staring bridge crew. What really hurt was that Kane didn’t lift a finger to stop them. He just looked at her with disappointment as if her scout around the station had come as a surprise to him. It had certainly come as a surprise to Mila and Katya felt sorry for her; when it emerged that she hadn’t locked Katya into her room, Mila would be in all sorts of trouble.

  The holding area on level Beta turned out to be almost as unpleasant as it sounded. It was obvious that the Yagizban had been anticipating taking large numbers of prisoners when they made their move against the Federal authorities and had built extensive holding facilities into the FP-1 and presumably its sister stations in anticipation of that day. It was equally obvious that “that day” wasn’t supposed to be today, as the facilities were not yet completed. The surviving Novgorod crew, perhaps twenty strong, had been locked into what seemed to be a building site. Eventually, it would probably be an imposing gaol. At present, it was as extemporised as the disused office that the pirates had locked them in just before the Leviathan had attacked.

  Uncle Lukyan loomed up from the floor – there was nowhere else to sit – and came to greet her when she was half pushed, half thrown through the door.

  “I was hoping you would be spared this,” he said, indicating the bare chamber, a couple of hastily placed chemical toilets in one corner its only nod to humanitarian facilities.

  “I was, for a while,” said Katya. She sat down with him by Lieutenant Petrov and related what had happened to her since she’d been separated from them.

  When she had finished, her uncle blustered angrily
but Petrov seemed to have been expecting much of it.

  “It all makes a sort of sense,” he said. “The pirates were obviously hand in glove with the Conclaves, that was clear as soon as we were picked up. I’ve been sitting here thinking abut it and, yes, it had occurred to me that most of our pirate problem might have been nothing but the Conclaves keeping us busy while they worked on all this. I’m disappointed about Tokarov, though. I’ve read his file, I knew he was born in the Conclaves. It’s not common for Yagizbans to join the FMA, but it’s not rare either. I really thought his loyalty to us was solid. It turns out he was not only a good officer, but a good actor.”

  “So, what can we do?” asked Katya.

  “Do? Nothing. We’ve already checked the walls and door and, believe me, we’re not getting out of here unless they let us. Even if we did, we’re trapped on a hostile station thousands of kilometres from the nearest Federal ship. We’d need a cogent plan of action once we’re out and we don’t have enough information to form one.”

  They sat glumly for a few minutes. “If only I hadn’t got excited about seeing that damned thing on the scope when we were in the Weft, Katya,” said Lukyan. “I’d never have accidentally woken it and it could have stayed there for another ten years.”

  “Not your fault, uncle. Who was to know? Besides, Leviathan or not, the Yagizba Conclaves would have launched their attack on the rest of the settlements and, really, what chance would we have had anyway? They’ve got the boats, the facilities…”

  “They have surprise,” agreed Petrov. “They’ve always been difficult to deal with but we never thought they were intending anything like this. And now they have the Leviathan.”