Katya's War

CHAPTER SIX Armoured Merpeople

It was strange being aboard the Vodyanoi again. Katya could never quite get past the feeling that this was not just a hostile boat, but that a strange air of otherness hung around the cabins and corridors. She knew why, too — this boat was alien. The Vodyanoi had been borne to Russalka in the belly of a Terran invasion ship, and that sense of enmity could never be purged. Her design philosophies were a little different too; she felt sleeker and more confident, almost smug, in her lines both inside and out. Equipment was stowed a little more efficiently than aboard a Russalkin boat; a hundred little gimmicks and gadgets made life aboard just that pleasurable shade of convenience better.

It had taken her a while to understand that Russalka had never really won the war against the invaders from Earth — it had just weathered it longer than the Terrans were prepared to fight. Presumably the decision makers of Earth had looked at their spreadsheets and decided Russalka was worth no further effort. The initial invasion force had proved insufficient, and even the dreadful Leviathan had failed to crush all resistance. That was all they were prepared to waste, and so they abandoned the attempt, the machines, and even the men and women of the assault forces. These had done the best they could, throwing in their lot with the Yagizban.

The crew of the Vodyanoi was entirely Terran, she knew. It disturbed her that she found them perfectly human, even likeable in some cases. Part of her hated them for what they were, what they had come to Russalka to do, but it was a small part. In the flesh, they were just people who were doing their jobs. For all that, however, she didn’t speak to them much. Casual conversation would sooner or later touch upon the invasion, and that was not something she wanted to talk about to people who may have been personally responsible for her father’s death.

Sergei had watched her easy familiarity with the Vodyanoi’s layout with something like superstitious fear, as if knowing where the head was required witchcraft. Yes, he knew she had travelled in the Vodyanoi before, but the proof of that tale still came as a shock to him. Katya had the uncomfortable feeling that the simple fact that she knew her way around was somehow treasonous in his eyes.

Sergei and she ate together in one or other of their cabins — never with the crew. She’d wandered around the boat for a while after she’d slept the first night, but the atmosphere in the corridors was unwelcoming.

Last time she’d been here, the crew had been open and friendly. She had been a hero then, after all. She’d saved the day, and all the days after it. Now, however, the battle lines had resolidified. She was no longer a hero who happened to live under Federal rule. Now she was a Federal citizen who was once a hero, and the Federal Maritime Authority wanted the Vodyanois dead.

Life was tough even for Knights of the Deep, she told herself.

At least things were just as unpleasant for Tasya. The Chertovka rarely left her cabin either, from what Katya had observed, and when she did the Vodyanois treated her with the same coolness. Perhaps they had discovered that in her role as a Yagizban colonel, Tasya had once given orders for the Vodyanoi to be hunted down and sunk without mercy. If not, Katya would be delighted to tell them.

Sergei, on the other hand, wandered the corridors with impunity. Given his lifestyle, he had long since become immune to any discourtesy short of a slap in the face, and if the crew were distant with him, he didn’t notice. Instead, he walked around the ship like a man who’d found himself in the belly of a manta whale and didn’t want to miss any of the experience.

It was after one of these wide-eyed walks that he turned up knocking urgently on Katya’s cabin door early on the second day. Katya, bleary with disturbed sleep, opened up to find him frantic on the threshold, looking up and down the corridor as if he was being pursued. He pushed past her and wordlessly pantomimed that she should shut the door again quickly.

“Come in, Sergei,” she said with heavy irony. Sergei, being Sergei, didn’t notice.

“I was just on the bridge…” he began.

Katya sucked in a breath sharply. Sergei had never been formally trained in submarine operations, and had never been aboard anything bigger than a passenger shuttle or a transporter piloted by one of his cronies in his whole life. It occurred to Katya that perhaps she should have told him that bridges were routinely off-limits to non-crew. Just wandering in like that would not have made him popular. Yes, she’d marched in herself the other day, but she’d been angry and expected, so it wasn’t quite the same thing. Belatedly, she realised she’d probably set a bad example.

“They kicked you out?”

“No, I left myself. They didn’t seem to mind me being there.”

Katya doubted that, but let him continue.

“The thing is, I caught a glimpse of the navigator’s screen. Katya,” he lowered his voice to a horrified whisper, “they’ve taken us into Red Water!”

If he was expecting Katya to throw up her hands and faint dead away, he was to be disappointed.

“They’re pirates, Sergei. I don’t think Red Water bothers them very much one way or the other.”

“But we’re in interdicted waters! If a Federal boat finds us here, they’ll kill us!”

Katya sighed. She could almost feel her snug little bunk getting colder behind her. “This is a pirate boat, Sergei. What’s the FMA going to do if they find us? Sink us more than once?”

She sat on her bunk and thought wistfully of coffee. Real coffee, the expensive stuff from the hydroponics farms. If only the delivery job to Dunwich had been for real. She bet they grew coffee there. But, there was no coffee here and now. Only Sergei, panicking. Not really the same thing at all.

“But they’ll know we’re here now! The FMA’s going to have picket sensors all around Red Water, they’re bound to! There’ll be boats coming for us right now!”

“Calm down, Sergei. Just quieten down a bit. No, there won’t be any boats. Think about it. There’s a war on. Red Water’s just to warn off civilian traffic. Military boats on both sides will simply ignore it. There’ll just be undetonated weapons or a sunken boat here they’re planning to salvage or something boring like that.”

“Picket sensors…” said Sergei again, refusing to be fobbed off with common sense quite so quickly.

“Those things aren’t cheap. In their boots, where would you place them? Around some volume of water nobody much cares about or on guard around military facilities? Don’t worry. There are no pickets. The Feds will probably only ever find out if a civilian boat’s been in Red Water either because they have the lousy luck to run into a FMA boat while they’re in there, or because it shows up in their navigational data if customs bother to check.”

That, finally, reassured him on the subject of Red Water, although only by giving him something else to worry about. “The Baby… I mean, the Lukyan’s nav data! How are we supposed to explain this side trip?”

“We won’t have to. There’s a tech on the Vodyanoi who can fake the data anyway you like. We’ll come up with some story about the drive going boggy on us for a while and slowing us down, and the nav data will back up every word.”

“You’re sure?”

“Positive. They’ve done it before. The Feds went through the Lukyan’s memory — back when she was still Pushkin’s Baby — the last time she went for a ride in this boat. They didn’t find a thing out of place.” She stretched. “Well, I’m awake now. Might as well get a shower and some food. Kane’s got this big whatever-the-hell-it-is to show us today that’s supposed to change everything. I’d hate to be awe-inspired on an empty stomach.”

While the concept of a shower evaded Sergei, food was a much easier idea to grasp.

The summons came at just before midday, Standard Russalka Time. That almost the whole planetary population lived underwater and even the Yagizban in their floating towns never saw the sun above the dense cloud cover had made the question of time zones moot; midday was midday the world over.

Katya was called to the bridge by name and Sergei was not, so she took him along anyway just to irritate Kane. She found the bridge subdued, the usual interplay between the crew positions muted and serious.

“Range to station locks, three and a half klicks and closing,” called the navigator.

“Thank you,” said Kane. “Is that drone ready yet, Mr Quinn?”

“Reconnaissance drone prepped and ready for launch, sir.”

“Good. Stand by to launch at one kilometre.”

On the bridge’s main screen was displayed their current location. It clearly showed them in the heart of the FMA-declared Red Water, which raised an obvious question.

“What station?” asked Katya. “There shouldn’t be anything out here.”

“Shouldn’t there?” said Kane. “Depends on what you think Red Water really is.”

Katya looked at him curiously. “It’s a danger zone. Everybody knows that.”

“Ah,” said Kane, and Katya knew from infuriating experience that he was about to say something obscure. Nor did he disappoint. “But a danger to who?”

“Are you going to explain that?”

“I won’t have to, soon enough.”

Katya decided not to give him the pleasure of rising to the bait, and instead turned back to the screen with an expression of serene indifference. Inwardly, however, she was counting slowly to ten to avoid screaming at him.

The Vodyanoi crept closer and closer to its destination on one third engine power. Finally, Kane ordered the drives be cut and they drifted to a range of one thousand metres on the boat’s dwindling inertia. “Launch the drone, Mr Quinn,” said Kane.

Quinn lifted the safety cover from the Number Three fire control and pressed the button beneath. The pattern of lights above it changed. “Drone away, captain. Closing tube door.”

“Good. Sensors, do we have telemetry?”

“Telemetry is online, sir,” called the sensors officer. “Signal is strong. Manoeuvring in to five hundred metres before I begin the survey.”

Katya didn’t want to give Kane any further opportunities to be mysterious with her, but her curiosity was devouring her. As nonchalantly as she could, she wandered over to stand by the captain’s chair.

“Surveying what?” she said, trying to give the impression it was something of the mildest possible interest to her. “What are you looking for?”

Kane’s eyes never left the main screen. On it was displayed the Vodyanoi’s current position, the rocky hillside they were investigating labelled NoDa3, and a tiny pulsing dot representing the reconnaissance drone as it moved smoothly from the former to the latter. “A way in. If there’s one left.”

“Pulse imaging on,” said the sensors officer.

“Main screen, if you please.”

The tactical display was replaced by a sonar image generated by the drone emitting a complex sequence of active pings across a spectrum of frequencies in a sixty degree cone. The returns were instantly processed and presented as a startlingly precise virtual model on screen. It was like looking at the actual structure in clear air, albeit painted in shades of red, yellow, and blue to represent differing materials. The rock of the hillside was blue, the concrete emplacement in its side red, and the metal of the docking positions yellow. But what should have been clean, hard lines of the construction were crumbled and askew.

“They’re ruined,” said Katya under her breath.

“Have you heard the news recently, Katya?” said Kane in so casual a voice that she didn’t realise he was talking to her for a moment. She shook herself from her reverie.

“When I can. It’s hard to avoid.”

“Then you know of the Federal Maritime Authority’s recent great victory over the craven, sneaking scum of the Yagizba Enclaves?”

She thought back to the story she had mentioned to Sergei when they’d been at Mologa. “The spy base? That’s it?” She looked more keenly at the sonar image. To cause that sort of damage, it must have come under sustained attack with some very heavy weapons.

“That’s it. Thank heavens the FMA were able to find it and save you all from such a nest of assassins and saboteurs.” Kane spoke tonelessly, as if reciting a news story in his sleep. His eyes never once left the image of the ruin.

“It’s a real mess, sir,” said the sensors officer. “I’m filtering out returns from tumbled concrete fragments and there’s a lot of wreck contamination in the water.”

“We can’t dock, captain,” added the first officer. She entered some data on her station and an overlay appeared on the main screen showing a wireframe representation of what the docking area should have looked like superimposed upon the sonar image. The two images had little in common. “Only Dock Two isn’t covered in debris, but the outer door is buckled. Probably the inner one too.”

Katya swallowed hard as fear fluttered through her. No submariner likes to hear of a hull breach.

Kane breathed slowly out through his nostrils as he regarded the scene. “Forget the frontal approach, then. Plan B. Sensors, take the drone around to the secondary lock. Helm, take us around wide and clear. Don’t crowd the drone.”

The drone set off on a trip around the drowned hill. On the main display, the sonar image returned to the tactical map view and Katya could see the drone was making for a location on the far side of the feature marked Aux.Lock. The Vodyanoi followed slowly, crabbing around the waters above the hillside on its lateral impellers. The drone reached Aux.Lock long before the submarine did, and was already building a sonar model of the location by the time the Vodyanoi was in position five hundred metres behind it.

In contrast to the image of the main locks, this one was clean and well-defined. “No damage, sir,” said the sensors officer, stating the obvious. “The Feds never found this.”

“But,” said Kane, “it’s only an auxiliary lock. Too small for us.” He glanced at Katya and seemed to read her thoughts. “Yes, a minisub like the Lukyan could make it, but there’s no power on the lock doors. Is she fitted with an external bus arm at the moment?”

Minisubs were the multirole vessels of Russalka’s seas, capable of most jobs, but only if they were fitted for them.

“No,” said Katya. “It’s all been cargo work recently. She has the lighting array and one small manipulator arm on her at the moment, mainly because there’s nowhere else to store the array, and the arm’s a bastard to remove. No power gear, though.”

“Don’t suppose we’ve got one in stores, have we, Number One?” Kane asked his first officer.

She took a moment to pull up a list of inventory, but from the way her head started shaking before she was halfway through searching, she was already sure of the answer. “No, sir. I don’t think we’ve ever carried one compatible with a minisub. We have a man-portable unit, but it won’t have any of the automatic locking mechanisms a sub’s would. It wouldn’t work, even mounted on a manipulator.”

“Right,” said Kane. Apparently the answer came as no surprise to him, and he had already moved onto a new plan. “Nothing for it. Prep four ADS units, please.”

“With MMUs, sir?”

“Gods, yes. I wasn’t planning on walking. And break that power unit out of stores. I don’t fancy manually pumping the airlock dry, either.”

“Understood. Who’s going, captain?”

“Me, obviously, because I love risking my life. Ms Kuriakova here, also obviously, as she’s the one this is all being done for.”

“What? Me?” Katya looked at him as if he’d just ordered her shot.

“Well, yes, you. Why do you…”

“No. I mean, an ADS? Me? You want me to go outside?”

“Yes. You in an ADS. You could try swimming over there in your underwear, I suppose, but I wouldn’t rate your chances of making it.”

Katya was not in the mood for jokes; as far as she could see, sending her out in an atmospheric diving suit — an ADS — was tantamount to a death sentence anyway. “I… I can’t,” she stammered. “I’m not rated. No training. I’m not certified.”

Kane frowned. “Russalkin hydrophobia rears its ugly head again. I have to say, Katya, I’m surprised. After the things you’ve done, I really didn’t expect a drop of water to bother you unduly.”

“A drop… A drop of water? It’s Russalka, Kane! It’s the whole planet! The whole thing wants to kill us every day! Every single day! And you want to go for a stroll out there?”

“Heavens, no. That’s why I’ve asked for manned-manoeuvre units to be prepared, too. We’re going over there in style, like merpeople. Big, scary, jet-propelled armoured merpeople.” A thought occurred to him, and he smiled suddenly, “Like real Russalki and Vodyanois!” He noted this did not modify her attitude in the slightest, and the smile wavered. “Little cultural reference there. Thought you might have appreciated it, but never mind.”

“Ms Kuriakova.” The First Officer, Ocello, had risen from her chair and joined them. “You don’t need to operate your MMU. We can control it remotely from here. You saw how good Mr Sahlberg is with a drone — you would be in very safe hands.”

Sahlberg turned at the mention of his name, and managed a nod that was both modest and reassuring.

In truth, Katya was beginning to feel reassured about the whole endeavour. She would be placing her life in the hands of the Vodyanoi’s crew, but they were very probably the best and most experienced crew on Russalka. They’d fought for Terra against Russalka, and then spent the next ten years successfully running and hiding from a concerted Federal hunt. Yes, they’d had Yagizban help, but that was still a very long way short of invulnerability when a pack of FMA shipping protection vessels were hot on your trail.

Katya took a deep breath. “OK. OK. Just… don’t get me killed.”

“There,” said Kane encouragingly. “That’s the can-do, two-fisted, afraid-of-nothing Katya I know. Very nearly.”

Katya ignored the snipe, however well meant it was, and said, “Who’s going in the other two suits?”

“Me,” said Tasya.

“No,” said Kane. “Not you.”

“What do you mean, Kane?” she said, her tone dangerously calm. “That is a Yagizban facility. I have more right than anyone else on this boat to go there.”

“That is as maybe, Tasya. I’m just… Forgive me, Tasya, but I’m worried that you may lose your temper when you’re actually in there, when you see what’s over there. You’re dangerous enough when you’re calm. I don’t want to have to deal with you if you lose control.”

Katya noticed that even Tasya’s lips had paled. Her anger was almost palpable, warded behind walls of iron self-control though it was. “I lose control when and only when I want to lose control,” she said. “When and only when I believe it would be tactically wise.”

Kane looked up at her from the captain’s seat. He regarded her in silence for a moment, as if weighing her words carefully. “Very well, Tasya, I’ll take your word on that. If you let me down, if you put us into even the shadow of danger because you let your temper slip, I shall kill you.”

They locked eyes for a few seconds, and it was Tasya who broke contact first with a careless nod of acceptance. Apparently death threats were an everyday occurrence for the She-Devil.

“As for the fourth member of our merry band, Mr…” he nodded to Sergei. “I’m sorry, I’ve entirely forgotten your name.”

“I’m not going,” said Sergei without hesitation.

“An ADS is just like a mini-minisub,” said Katya, who was beginning to look forward to the experience despite her earlier misgivings. “You’ll be fine.”

“It’s not safe,” said Sergei, and Katya noticed he looked at Tasya when he said it. So that was it. Katya tried to look for an argument that might sway him into going on an expedition mounted by pirates and featuring a feared war criminal, but couldn’t think of anything at all.

“It’s OK, Sergei. You don’t have to go if you don’t want to.”

“I’m not scared. I just don’t see the point.”

But he was scared. Poor Sergei, she thought. If it was my choice, you wouldn’t be in this situation at all. “You’re right. There’s no point us both going.”

Kane had watched the conversation between them and the look in his eye when he momentarily caught hers told her he understood exactly what was going on. “Ms Ocello, please assign Mr Giroux to the fourth suit. We may have need of his muscle.”

As Ocello returned to her seat, Kane said to Katya, “ADS EVAs are fun.” He saw her blink and added, “EVA, extra-vehicular activity. Sorry, that’s more space jargon than anything. From my brief time as a cosmonaut.” His half smile became bleak. “Make the most of the EVA. What we find at the other end won’t be fun at all.”