Katya's World

CHAPTER 1 Judas Box

The locksman took Katya’s identity card, looked at it briefly, and handed it back. The whole time, he never stopped chatting with her uncle.

She took it back feeling slightly cheated. She must have looked at that card a hundred times since it had arrived from the Department of Matriculation, reading and rereading the fine print. Her family had been so happy for her, Uncle Lukyan especially. “Now you’re an adult, Katya!” he’d said, picking her up under the armpits like he’d been doing since she’d been born. “Being an adult isn’t a matter of age. It’s a matter of responsibility. And this card shows you’re ready for that!” There had been a little impromptu party and everything.

And now nobody seemed to care. She hadn’t been expecting fireworks, but she’d hoped for a friendly nod from the locksman, an acknowledgment that she was entering a great fellowship. Instead she was being ignored, standing to one side as the locksman and Uncle Lukyan — she mentally pulled herself up — Captain Pushkin were gossiping like old women while they went through the boat’s documentation and journey plan.

Suddenly, the locksman turned to her. “Going to Lemuria with your uncle, eh?” he said. He didn’t quite say “little girl” but the sense of it floated around. “Seeing relatives or doing some shopping?”

Katya looked at him blankly. This wasn’t going properly at all. She was just trying to come up with a reply that made her sound grown-up when her uncle cut in. “God’s teeth, Mikhail, didn’t you even look at her card properly? She’s an apprentice. This is her first voyage in a crew chair.”

The locksman had the decency to look abashed. “I’m very sorry,” he said to Katya, “may I trouble you for your card again?”

This time the response was much better. “A navigator?” he read and looked at her. “Difficult discipline.” He was still looking at her but the words were clearly meant for her uncle.

“Not for my niece,” said Uncle Lukyan with visible pride. “She has the brains for it. You should have seen her examination results. I think the examiner thought she’d been cheating. ‘Well, Captain Pushkin,’” he imitated the examiner’s wheedling tone, “’they are remarkably good results. Remarkably good.’”

The locksman laughed. “Durchev thinks people need crib sheets to put on their boots in the morning.”

Katya watched them chat and thought, one day I’ll be able to talk like that, to know everybody. There goes Katya Kuriakova, the best navigator in the water, they’ll say. She concentrated on trying to make her blue eyes steely, her chin determined, her nose… Her damned nose. She was just going to end up looking sweet and, in all likelihood, adorable. It always happened. She could drown a hospital and they’d still let her off for being in possession of a button-nose. She stopped trying to look heroically competent and concentrated on just not looking chronically winsome.

“Straight light haul to Lemuria, two seats full of electronic components,” her uncle was saying, going through the folder containing their itineraries and permissions. “Sergei will ride shotgun in a passenger position while Katya takes the co-pilot’s seat. Show her what it looks like from the sharp end.”

“Is she going to draw your plot?”

“Yes, I am,” said Katya, tired of them talking about her like she wasn’t there.

The locksman looked at her uncle with a question he didn’t want to say out loud. Lukyan laughed again. “Yes, she can do it. I’d trust her to give me a plot through the Consequentials, never mind an easy haul like Lemuria. She’s got talent, real talent.” He ruffled her short blond hair affectionately. “She’s the family genius.” He closed the folder and put it back in his documents case. “We’d better move or we’ll miss our departure slot. Come on, Katya.”

Katya had been aboard the Baby several times, but always back in the passenger seats. “Don’t step over that line,” her father had once warned her, pointing at the yellow line that split off the pilot and co-pilots’ positions from the rest of the cramped interior, “or Lukyan will have you swimming home.” He had only been half joking. Safety aboard was always a primary concern and breaking the concentration of the crew was absolutely taboo while the controls were live. That yellow line might as well be a steel bulkhead.

Now she found she still couldn’t step over it. Lukyan was already in the left-hand seat and strapping himself in when he noticed she hadn’t joined him. He looked at her, his eyes gentle. “I’m sorry. I forget how important this is for you.” He cleared his throat. “Apprentice Kuriakova, please take the co-pilot’s position.”

“Aye-aye, captain,” she said, too nervous to smile. She stepped past him, over the yellow, and slipped into the co-pilot’s seat. It seemed enormous; all shaped plastic and restraint mountings. As she struggled to get the seat’s safety systems to adjust to her shape and to remember her in future, a dour face appeared around the open lock door.

“Who’s that little snot in my chair?”

“Hi, Sergei,” said Katya. She pressed the memory button on the chair. Instead of remembering her settings, it reset them back to Sergei’s. She swore mildly.

“Cursing already,” said Sergei, stepping forward. “One minute at the con and she’s Captain Ahab. Here,” he pressed the memory button and another unmarked one lurking nearby. The chair finally acknowledged the new settings. “It’s not very intuitive. Just one of those little things you don’t learn from simulators.” He plumped himself in one of the two empty passenger seats, the two opposite him being folded up and the space taken with plastic wrapped boxes, their cargo for Lemuria Station. “Experience. It’s a grand thing. Learning by getting your hands dirty. Loads more fun than the classroom.”

Katya prickled slightly. Was he getting at her? She’d always been good in school. She slid a look at Lukyan but he was checking his wristwatch against the Baby’s chronometer.

“Ten minutes before MTC will let us out. Might as well use the time.” Lukyan waved his big slab of a hand at the three screens ranged in front of her beneath the forward viewport. “How similar is this to your simulator?”

For her answer, Katya reached forward and tapped the screens one after another. They immediately glowed into life. She looked briefly at each and said over her shoulder, “Is this your set-up, Sergei?”

“Yes. Why? Are you going to tell me I’ve been doing it wrong all these years?”

“No,” she said lightly, “I was just going to congratulate you for doing it exactly as per the textbooks.” She heard him grumble under his breath and smiled; he’d probably reprogram it the first chance he got now rather than do it the way the schools did. He was almost pathetically proud of being self-taught.

She pointed out the screens to her uncle. “Navigational, waypoints. Sonar returns. Navigational, plot. Shall I write up a plot or pull one from memory?” She quickly added, “Sir.” It was tricky to remember that, for the time being, her big friendly bear of an uncle was her captain and was to be treated with respect.

“You’ll learn nothing by using an old plot. Draw up a fresh one. Apprentice.”

Katya barely had time to shift the data from the right-hand multi-function display onto the more convenient and larger middle one when they were hailed by Maritime Traffic Control.

“Petrograd MTC to RRS 15743 Kilo Pushkin’s Baby.” Uncle Lukyan responded and Control continued, “Please hold until advised.”

“What?” Lukyan bridled. “What’s the problem, Control? Don’t tell me we’ve been bumped?”

“No problem, Lukyan. Please hold.” Traffic Control broke the link before Lukyan could ask for clarification.

“No problem,” he said, seething. “No problem. That means there’s a fat problem.” He looked apologetically at her. “I’m sorry this isn’t going to plan, Katya. Today of all days.”

“These things usually don’t,” said Sergei from the back. “All part of the learning experience. Lesson one: expect to get screwed over for the convenience of others on a regular basis.”

Uncle Lukyan looked back at him and then at Katya. He shrugged. “He’s right, unfortunately, miserable bilger that he is. Well, we might as well make the best of a bad lot. You know your MFDs. How are you on the rest of the instruments?”

Katya looked at the banks of instruments. They had never looked quite this threatening when reduced to computer graphics on a simulator panel. Her wan smile told Lukyan everything he needed to know. He pointed at a box mounted up and to the right. “Judas box. That’s got all your warning lights on there and a couple of telemetry monitors. Should always be a healthy green like it is now. If it starts getting spotty, you’re in trouble. The closer to the top of the display the light is, the more vital the system.”

“But isn’t this stuff on the MFDs?”

“It is,” said Sergei, “if you can be bothered to page through to find it. The point is that the Judas box is always in the same place. You want to know your system status, you look right there. Fast and easy.”

“Same goes for these other instruments,” agreed Lukyan. “You need to be able to find this information quickly.” He tapped another display. “Depth gauge. If the figures are green…”

“Then you’re safe,” finished Katya. “If they’re yellow…”

“Amber,” muttered Sergei.

“…it means you’re below your test depth and if they’re red, then you’re beneath your crush depth.”

“I’ve only seen them amber a couple of times,” said Lukyan. “That was during the war. I’ve never seen them go red outside an instrument test. I hope to God I never see them do so otherwise.”

Katya looked at him with interest. He rarely spoke about his experiences in the war. Like many, he regarded it as a penance the world had suffered to remain free. “Why did you dive so deep, uncle? Sir?”

“Dodging a torpedo. We were already beneath the thermocline so there were no thermal layers beneath us to dive for. Our last hope was to lose the fish in the geography of the sea bed. Find a canyon to hide in or a spire to duck behind. You could hear the torpedo’s active sonar pinging off the hull. It sounds nothing like a boat’s sonar. High and fast. If we could drop a noisemaker and move into cover at about the same time, we might be able to fool the torpedo into attacking the wrong thing. A few metres above the gully we found, the depth gauge went amber. By the time we were safely in cover, the hull was groaning. Not much, but the torpedo had already put a powerful fear of death in us. Hearing the boat’s ribs creak just about put the jam on it.” He shook himself slightly, bringing himself back to the here and now. “Anybody who says war is glorious is a damned fool, Katya.”

“But you managed to dodge the torpedo, didn’t you?”

“No,” butted in Sergei. “It hit them and they all died horribly. That’s why he’s here to tell the story.”

“Thermal layer detector,” said Lukyan, ignoring him. He pointed out a vertical display. “There’s not many torpedoes to dodge these days but a thermal layer will still mess up your sonar so you need to know where they are. They can make life very difficult when you’re prospecting with high intensity sonar pulses or surveying charges.” He waved at the instruments. “Even with all this, travelling through the seas of Russalka is like running through clouds of teargas. Everything makes navigation difficult. The thermocline is..?”

It took a moment before she realised he was questioning her. “Uh. The thermocline is the layer of water heated by solar energy. Not much of that gets through the storm clouds on Russalka, so it’s not as deep as on some other worlds. As you get deeper, it gets colder, the water gets denser…”

“…and it screws up your sonar,” commented Sergei.

“Then there’s the halocline. As you get deeper, more mineral salts are dissolved into the sea water, making it denser…”

“…and it screws up your sonar,” repeated Sergei.

“There’s the pycnocline, which is a combination of the effects of the minerals and the temperature. Oh, and there’s the rusocline, which is unique to our world. That’s a sort of halocline but caused by the mineral spouts in the sea bed.”

“And guess what it does to your sonar?” said Sergei.

The communicator bleeped into life again. “Petrograd MTC to RRS 15743 Kilo Pushkin’s Baby.” They actually heard the controller sigh. “I’m really sorry about this, Lukyan. You’ve got visitors.”

“Visitors? Who?”

There was a banging on the hatch Sergei had sealed after himself. Uncle Lukyan’s face grew dark with anger. “Sergei…”

“Yeah, yeah.” Sergei had already unstrapped himself and was moving aft. “Tell them we don’t want any.” They looked back as he opened the hatch and stepped out. They heard voices for a minute and then Sergei stuck his head inside. “You’d best step out, captain. It’s the Feds.”

Lukyan’s temper cooled slightly. It never helped to antagonise the Federal Maritime Authority. He quickly unstrapped himself and left the Baby, Katya following close behind.

On the lockside, Sergei was standing talking to a man in a Federal Security uniform. Actually, thought Katya, “man” was probably putting it a bit strongly. He only looked two or three years older than her. He was neatly turned out in the utilitarian black jumpsuit, short peaked cap and combat boots of the Authority, but his crop of acne damaged the overall effect. What presence he had was mainly the result of the large handgun in his belt holster; a standard issue maser. It took her a moment to notice there was another man standing a couple of metres back from the officer. She realised with a shock that he was handcuffed.

“What’s this about?” Uncle Lukyan demanded of the officer. He jerked his thumb at the man in the handcuffs. “Who’s he?”

The officer held a piece of paper in Lukyan’s face. “FMA business. I’m commandeering your boat.”

Lukyans’s eyes bulged. “You’re what?”

“You are to transport me and my prisoner to the FMA penal facility at the Deeps with all dispatch.”

“The Deeps? That’s nowhere near our…”

“Failure to comply with the terms of a Federal warrant is a criminal offence. Do you comply?”

Katya had never seen her uncle so angry. His clothes almost seemed too small for him as his muscles bunched with fury.

“Listen, you officious little snot, I didn’t fight a war just so the likes of you…”

“Do you comply?” shouted the officer in his face. Katya would almost have been impressed with his bravery except for the gun. She had noticed the officer’s free hand move down to rest on the pistol grip and it looked like Lukyan had seen it too.

“Give that here,” snapped Lukyan and snatched the paper from the officer’s hand. He made a great show of examining it, but everybody there knew that he had already lost and the Fed had won. If Lukyan wanted to keep his master’s license, his boat and his liberty, he really had no choice but to obey. Finally, he folded up the paper and gave it back. “Academic, anyway. We don’t have sufficient space for two passengers.”

That took the officer aback, the first time his careful façade of authority had wavered. Katya reckoned he probably spent hours in front of the mirror, practising being cool and official.

“Your boat’s rated for two crew and four passengers.”

Lukyan smiled. “Half the passenger space has been given over to cargo and we’re carrying three crew today. It’s all in our itinerary and manifest. Nice and legal.”

“You don’t need three crew for a bucket like that.”

Lukyan’s smile faded quickly. The officer didn’t notice, he was pointing at Katya. “What does she do?”

Without being asked, Katya snapped out her card and held it out to him, open. “I’m the navigator.”

“You?” The Fed didn’t even try to conceal his disgust. “You’re just a kid.”

“Not in the eyes of the law.” They all turned to look at the prisoner in surprise. He was somewhere in his late thirties, thin rather than lean, with dishevelled light brown hair worn at collar length. He was wearing loose clothing, a baggy shirt, a long jacket of some light material. Katya had never seen anybody dressed like that, couldn’t even remember ever seeing clothes like that. They were soiled and dirty; he had plainly been in a fight recently. One lapel and shoulder of the coat were speckled with blood from an untended cut on his forehead. He spoke again, quiet and controlled. “She’s rated as an apprentice navigator, which is about equivalent to a junior commissioned rank in the FMA. That should be good enough for you, officer. After all, you’ve got a Federal ID, which qualifies you as some sort of crime-busting hero rather than the chimp in a uniform that you first appear.”

Katya had no idea what a “chimp” was, but it didn’t sound like a compliment to her. It apparently didn’t sound like one to the officer either. He drew his baton in one smooth move and slammed it across his prisoner’s thigh so hard that she wouldn’t have been surprised to hear the bone snap. The prisoner grunted and fell to the floor. The Fed stepped up to kick him where he lay when Sergei cleared his throat.

“Ahem,” he coughed theatrically. The Fed stopped and looked at him. “Officer, educate me. Aren’t there regulations about the handling of prisoners?”

The Fed’s face was pale with anger, which only served to make his acne stand out. “He… he was… Allowances are made for subduing prisoners.”

Sergei nodded sagely and cocked his head on one side to look at where the prisoner lay on the floor clutching his thigh. “Subduing. Right. Seems fair enough. He looks pretty subdued now, wouldn’t you say?”

The Fed scowled, grabbed the prisoner by the arm and pulled him back to his feet. “You,” he said to Sergei, “are you the usual navigator?” Sergei nodded. “Then she stays behind. We don’t need two navigators.”

Uncle Lukyan still didn’t look happy, but she knew that he had no choice. She was already braced for the bad news when he turned to her. “Katya. I’m so sorry…”

“Miss your first voyage in a crew position?” butted in Sergei. “I don’t think so. It’s not a long trip to the Deeps. You can head straight to Lemuria from there and be back here halfway through third shift easy. I’ll sit it out.”

Katya could almost have kissed him. Almost, but not quite. Instead she made do with a grateful smile.

Leaving Sergei on the dry side of the lock, they trooped back into the Baby. Katya and Lukyan strapped themselves back into their seats as the Fed secured his prisoner in the passenger position behind Katya. Then he moved forward, blithely stepping over the yellow line to lean on the crew seats. Lukyan glared at him, but the Fed was utterly unaware of the faux pas. He watched as Katya laid in a new course that would take them to the FMA facility. After a few seconds he snapped, “What are you doing?”

Katya bit back the sarcastic comment she was dying to make and tried to be helpful and friendly. “I’m plotting a course to the Deeps, as you wished.”

“You’re deliberately wasting time. Why isn’t the course direct? Why this detour? Explain yourself!”

Katya couldn’t believe it. Were there people who really believed that the quickest route from A to B was always a straight line? “If we go there directly,” she said slowly, as if talking to an idiot, “we will have to go through this volume. See? This bright yellow place on the map? That’s amber for caution. That’s the Weft, a volume of random currents, Russalka has lots of places like that.”

“Is that area dangerous?”

Katya realised that the Fed truly knew nothing about submarine operations. He was thinking in two dimensional areas, not three dimensional volumes. She fought down the urge to lecture him on the subject; the Weft was clearly going to be hard enough to explain.

“No, but the Baby doesn’t have the big drives of a military boat. If we get caught in a tow, it could put hours on the journey while we break free. Believe me, it makes more sense…”

“Use a direct course. That’s an order.”

“You,” said Lukyan, quiet and dangerous, “do not order my crew. I‘m still captain here.”

“Then tell her to set a direct course.” The officer moved aft without waiting for a reply and strapped himself in.

Katya looked to Lukyan. He plainly had murder in his heart, but crushed it down by effort of will. He nodded.

As Katya scrubbed her previous plot and started inputting the insane new one, her uncle hailed Traffic Control to explain what was happening. “Tell Lemuria they’ll get their parts a few hours late,” he finished.

“We’ll try but the comms hardlink is down, has been for a week. I’ll try to get a slot on the long wave array but I don’t fancy the chances. The weather-buoys have been squawking all day about an electrical storm up top. Not too choppy for a change, but there’s a lot of interference.”

Lukyan heaved a sigh. “Today’s not been easy so far. I can see it’s not going to improve. Do what you can, please, Control. Katya, how’s the plot coming along?”

She leaned back and spread her hands in disgust. There was no art and precious little science to a straight-line plot. It had taken her perhaps twenty seconds to complete it, most of which had been for the Petrograd departure and the Deeps approach waypoints. It was impossible to dignify it as “navigation.”

Uncle Lukyan looked at it for a moment, sighed in sorrow and relayed it to Traffic Control’s computers for the records. After a moment, the controller spoke. “You’re going straight through the Weft,” he said in a careful monotone.

“Not my choice or my navigator’s. Our Federal commodore here ordered it.”

“Does he know it will take you off the FMA patrolled routes?”

“I don’t think he cares very much. I could ask, if you like?”

“Would there be any point?”

“None. Are we cleared for departure?”

A pause. Then, “You’re cleared for departure, RRS 15743 Kilo.”

“Thank you, Control. Opening lock now.” Uncle Lukyan reached up and toggled a switch. Ahead of them, a crack of dim light appeared in the pitch darkness. Katya watched it widening in expectant silence until her uncle ordered, “Wake her up, Katya.”

“Aye-aye, captain,” she said, almost light-headed with excitement. Despite the change in plans, the idiotic Federal officer and his prisoner and the insultingly simple course she’d had to lay in, this was still her first time out and it would never be repeated. This was the first time she’d prepared to leave dock and she wasn’t about to mess it up. “Sonar to passive. Check. Wayfinder online. Check. Trim adjusted. Check.” With each “Check,” the Baby’s computer marked off another box on the list. “Navigational lights, on.” She flicked the switches and the inside of the lock suddenly illuminated. Just beyond the port, she could see plankton floating, so close she could have reached out and touched it. “Check. Status lights,” she looked up at the Judas box. All its lights glowed a reassuring green. “Check. We’re clear to disengage, captain.”

“Thank you, Katya.” He swept his gaze over his own screens. “Confirmed. Disengaging… now!”

With a dull thud of metal on metal, RRS 15743 Kilo Pushkin’s Baby was seaborne, moving out of the docking lock under her own impellers. Within moments, Petrograd Station was lost in the submarine gloom behind them.