Katya's World

CHAPTER 3 Novgorod

If Russalka had a global religion, it was atheism.

Colonising a new planet had given the settlers a long-range perspective on the workings of religion and it all seemed so distant to them here; so irrelevant, so faintly childish. Religions were still studied, though, if only as mythologies, and as a way of understanding some aspects of Terran politics and history.

But nobody was very interested in knowing much about the past of that distant world now, anyway. People had much more important things to worry about.

Katya was raised as an atheist from birth, but she knew about angels. When she died, she was slightly surprised to find herself taken to Heaven by one.

The angel carried her upwards through the darkness of space, leaving Russalka behind. Higher and higher they rose, until she saw the distant lights of the Celestial City.

She wondered how she was going to apologise to God for being wrong all the time about Him. Still, she wouldn’t be being taken up in rapture from her worldly existence unless He was a forgiving God; the vengeful version suggested in other comparative religion files would have left her in Limbo or worse. No, she was sure He’d be able to accept an apology in the spirit in which it was meant and they could start afresh. She wondered if He played chess.

Then the light grew bright and she flew strongly and happily towards it, borne by her angel. They struck it and the light shattered into a thousand million fragments, scattering around her, droplets of Heaven falling back into the sea.

The sea.

The sea?

Where she had been in rapturous certainty a moment ago, now she felt panic and confusion. She wasn’t in Heaven at all. There was no God waiting for her with the chess pieces already set out. There was only the sea and the lightning flashing spasmodically across an angry sky. Was this Hell? Was she still on Russalka? Were they — the thought flittered momentarily and vanished before she could settle upon its intimations — the same thing?

More lightning, distorted through water drops on plastic. She realised she was wearing goggles, but how..?

She was wearing an emergency respirator pack, but she could not remember putting it on, nor could she remember escaping the Baby. She couldn’t even remember managing to undo her seatbelt. Her tongue felt strange in her mouth, impeded somehow and she suddenly realised her mouth was full of liquid. She moved to tear away the respirator pack’s mask but a hand restrained her. She spun around in the water and found herself face to face with Kane.

His emergency respirator mask made him look insect-like and sinister. Part of the breathing mechanism itself was clear and she could see a green fluid inside. She cursed herself for her stupidity. The whole near-death experience suddenly made perfect, if humiliating, sense.

He gestured to her to follow and swam towards a beacon-buoy floating a few metres away. With a sick feeling, she knew it was the Baby’s beacon, automatically released when all else had failed, and she knew what it meant. The Baby was gone, and Uncle Lukyan was dead.

They clung to the side of the small buoy as the waves slapped half-heartedly at them. The weather report had been right; the sea wouldn’t go out of its way to drown them. It didn’t have to; Russalka’s electrical storms were notoriously disruptive to communications. They’d be lucky if anybody detected the distress signal the buoy was transmitting for hours. They’d be dead from exposure long before then.

Kane hooked his arm around a stanchion on the buoy, closed the respirator’s valves and took it off. The green fluid ran from his nostrils as he vomited up the fluid that was in his lungs. It wasn’t really vomiting — lungs simply aren’t equipped for dumping liquid contents like stomachs — but it allowed him to breathe the thick Russalka atmosphere.

When he’d got about as much out as he was likely to under the circumstances, he helped Katya to do the same. It was an ugly sensation; she’d grown used to the feel of the liquid in her throat and lungs since she’d come around. Feeling cold air flooding her mouth and trachea right down inside her chest was uniquely unpleasant.

“Are… are you all right?” asked Kane, coughing up more of the fluid.

“My uncle, what happened?”

Kane looked away from her, out across the choppy sea. “I’m sorry. I could only try and save whoever was closest to me. That was either going to be you or that worthless FMA bletherskite. I couldn’t have got to your uncle in time.”

“He tried to save me,” said Katya. She wanted to cry, but something seemed broken inside. She could only talk, she didn’t seem able to feel anymore. “He was shouting about the Lox packs.” She touched the emergency respirator. Its trademark name was a LoxPak, Lox supposedly meaning liquid oxygen. It was a misnomer and unpopular among mechanics who dealt in the real thing; real liquid oxygen would kill anybody who tried to fill their lungs with it, an agonising death as their throat and chest froze solid. In contrast, the green fluid in LoxPaks was merely saturated in oxygen, releasing it directly into the lung tissue.

The fluid also scrubbed nitrogen rapidly from the blood, vital if a victim of a submarine disaster was to stand any chance of surviving a rapid ascent from a few hundred metres down to the surface. She wasn’t in agony, blind or dead, so at least she knew her LoxPak had saved her from the worst symptoms of decompression sickness. The worst symptoms, but Katya now realised, not all the symptoms.

One of the lesser symptoms was the “rapture of the deep.” Hallucinations. Katya knew she’d suffered from them now. Her guardian angel bearing her to a better place had been a notorious pirate taking her to the surface, where she could die more slowly. She laughed out loud, surprising Kane, but the laugh finished with her bringing up more Lox liquid and by the time she’d stopped coughing, the opportunity to ask her what she thought was so funny had passed.

They floated in silence for some time. Then Katya said, “What happened to your handcuffs?”

“They were an inconvenience,” said Kane. “I got rid of them.” He caught Katya’s expression. “I’m sorry, that sounded fatuous, but they were a nuisance. While you were tending to the cut on my head, I borrowed a probe from the medical kit. FMA ‘cuffs really are primitive. I could teach you how to pick them in ten minutes.”

“You’ve practised?”

“Of course I’ve practised. The Feds might not be the brightest intellects in the universe but even the stupid get lucky sometimes. I like to be prepared.”

Another minute passed. “How did they catch you anyway?” asked Katya.

“You ask a lot of questions,” replied Kane.

“I can’t feel my feet.”

Kane looked at her seriously. Hypothermia would be setting in soon. The sea was freezing and slowly leaching the heat from them. They needed to concentrate and talking might be the thing to give them a few more minutes.

“How did they catch me,” repeated Kane. “It wasn’t brilliant detective work, put it that way. It was the reward money that did it. I was informed on.” He noted Katya’s blank expression. “I was grassed on. Done up like a kipper.” None of this seemed to be getting through. He tried again. “Sold out?”

Katya finally seemed to understand what he meant, so he continued. “Did a bit of business with a man who I’d have thought would know better, walked out straight into three officers waiting for me with masers drawn. That’s the trouble with this planet; all the criminals are such amateurs. How is Russalka ever going to get a real criminal underworld going if anybody will grass up anybody for a fistful of small change? It’s divisive.”

“You’re not from Russalka?” She’d thought not. Not with that name and that accent. She’d met people from other colonies before. Now they were all trapped on Russalka since the Grubbers had attacked and destroyed their few starships.

“No, I’m not from Russalka. If I could leave tomorrow, I would, too. This place is a dump. Why did anybody ever decide it was a good idea to colonise a planet with no dry land at all?”

“Minerals.”

“I know. I was talking rhetorically.”

“So if you hate it so much, why did you come?” She knew Russalka was considered a freak world to colonise. No land to speak of, just one great global rolling ocean with a couple of icecaps. Nothing had ever evolved to grow on them though. The ocean teemed with life, but the icecaps and the sky were dead. Everybody else from the Grubbers — the Terrans — through to the other colonies had land to stand on. Out of all the colony worlds, Russalka was unique and difficult, and the Russalkins were proud of that.

“I didn’t want to. Circumstances dictated it.”

Katya wondered what he meant by that, but something in his tone warned her off, and she didn’t press him for an explanation. “Well, you’re stuck here for a while then,” she said.

During the war, all Russalka’s space assets had been destroyed; her communication, navigation and meteorological satellites, the launch platforms and the handful of starships held in the great floating hangars had all been wrecked by the Grubbers to deny Russalka any line of defence from orbit out to the transition shelf where starships entered the star system.

In the end it had all been for nothing — the war had just stopped. The Grubbers never sent any diplomats or anybody to explain why they weren’t going to fight anymore, they’d just stopped coming. One morning Russalka woke up and there were no new incursions, no more targeted asteroid hits, no more robot hunter/killers splashing down. The war just stopped. The wise money was that the Grubbers had trouble at home or another colony closer to them had agitated for independence and they’d redirected their war budget at them instead. Whatever the reason, after eighteen months of fierce combat the Grubbers went home and took their war with them, leaving Russalka badly wounded and gasping on the ropes.

As far as it went, Kane was right about organised crime on Russalka being a bad joke, but that was true of everything. They’d lost a lot of people and a lot of technology. Thankfully Russalka was a mineral rich planet with a lot of energy to be had; they would rebuild, but it would take time.

There was a lot to do before Kane could leave Russalka for somewhere more suitable for a career criminal. New launch platforms would have to be built, new starships built to be launched from them, new satellites put up to feed the ships the accurate astronomical data they needed before hitting the transition shelf and initiating quantum drive. It would take a lot of effort, a lot of will, a lot of money and, the worst thing for Kane, a lot of time.

“I heard Lyonesse was building a platform,” said Kane conversationally. A wave rolled over him and Katya waited until he’d finished coughing before answering.

“I heard it was just for sub-orbital transports. Nobody’s interested in space, Kane. We’ve got enough problems on planet without worrying about what’s overhead.”

“What if it’s the Grubbers who are overhead?”

“Then…” Katya paused. She was glad her uncle wasn’t here to hear her say this, but she believed it all the same. “We should surrender.”

Kane made a point of getting eye contact before he replied. “Do you really think so?”

“Yes,” she said without hesitation. “If they attack again, they’ll kill us all. Let them bring their stormtroopers. They can’t be any worse than the FMA.”

“I wouldn’t bet on that. The FMA are light entertainment compared to stormtroopers.”

“It doesn’t matter. The travel time is what will do the trick. It takes a year to get to Russalka; it’s not a cheap trip to take. Anybody they send will end up going native, just like we did. They won’t be sending occupiers, they’ll be sending new colonists.”

“Interesting thought. I think you underestimate the Terrans, but you’re right about surrendering. If they can scrape together the budget for another invasion taskforce, this world’s in no shape to resist.” He looked up at the tip of the buoy’s spire, a metre above them. Upon it, a brilliant white light flashed rhythmically.

They watched it in silence for a minute or so. Katya was beginning to feel very tired. It was so cold in that sea, and she knew it was killing them slowly. She tried to wedge her arm into the spire’s frame so if she fell unconscious, she wouldn’t simply slip under the waves. The spire’s supports were too close together, though, and she couldn’t manage it. She looked at the dark sea beneath the sullen sky, and death felt all too close. “Do you think somebody will save us?” asked Katya.

Kane thought for a moment as if working out an exact answer, but then only said, “Maybe. At least whoever put that hole in the sub didn’t come after us to finish the job.”

“Who do you think that was?”

“I don’t know,” replied Kane, a little too quickly.

Katya had no intention of dying with questions unanswered. She was about to ask him again when her mouth stopped in mid-syllable, and she was left with a foolish expression. Kane looked at her oddly and then followed her line of sight.

Perhaps five hundred metres away, the sea had begun to boil. As they watched, the commotion grew more focussed, more kinetic and Katya realised it was coming closer. She also realised what it was.

“It’s a bow wave! There’s something headed right for us!”

“I’m glad you worked that out for yourself; it saves me having to explain it,” said Kane. “Survival tip, Katya. Take a deep breath just before it hits us. That should be enough, but keep your LoxPak handy in case.”

The mound of angry sea was almost upon them. “In case of what?” she screamed as the roaring of the waters grew deafening.

“Oh, you know,” said Kane, looking straight at the mound, which was quickly turning into a mountain, “stuff.”

The front of the great pile of sea charging towards them seemed to tear and sheer away as the great muzzle of the object was finally exposed. With a hideous, shuddering whine, the muzzle split into three equal jaws — one below and two opening up and away to the left and right. The waters, thrashed until they were milky, sluiced violently over them and back into the sea. The jaws devoured Katya, Kane and the distress buoy all, slowly closing again as the monstrous thing sank back into the ocean. In a few seconds, there was no sign that they had ever been there.

The petty officer who opened the airlock into the salvage maw was only expecting to find a distress buoy. The furious fifteen-year-old girl and the bedraggled man were definitely a surprise.

“What was that?” spat Katya in a fury, waving her arms around to take in the maw and, by implication, the whole process of being swallowed by a submarine. It wasn’t very pleasant in there. It was cold and wet — if not as wet as it had been before the bilge pumps drained it — and dark but for the flashing light on top of the buoy and a dim maintenance light over the door. The maw was like being in a tall conical room that had fallen on its side. Its use was simple; it opened wide, swallowed anything the boat’s captain wanted to look at and then clamped shut. They were also never used in rescues as there was too great a chance of a survivor slipping between the edges of the jaws as the maw shut and, regrettably, being snipped in half. “What did you think you were playing at? You could have killed us!”

Kane was weighing up the petty officer’s uniform; it seemed that an FMA vessel had picked them up. He decided, all things considered, that he’d prefer not to be taken back into custody. If they wanted to know who he was, they’d have to work it out themselves. The petty officer turned to the bulkhead and snapped open the cover on an intercom.

“Deliav to bridge!”

A voice replied almost immediately. “Bridge. What’s the matter, Deliav? Is the buoy damaged?”

“No, captain! At least, I don’t know, I haven’t checked it yet. Captain! We picked up survivors! They must have been hanging onto the buoy!”

As the sailor and his captain talked, Kane leaned close to Katya. “Do you believe in paying your debts?”

Katya grimaced and narrowed her lips. She’d been wondering how long it would take him to get around to this. “Yes, I know you saved my life. Don’t worry, I won’t tell them who you are. Then we’re even, okay.” It wasn’t a question.

“Okay,” said Kane, leaning away from her again. She thought he seemed oddly disappointed, as if she’d said the wrong thing.

The captain sent a small party down to get Katya and Kane, taking them first to the sickbay where the boat’s medic spent half an hour checking each for signs of nitrogen narcosis sickness, hypothermia, and shock. When they were warm in fresh dry clothes — Katya was glad she was quite tall and fitted the smallest uniform one-piece they could find — they were taken to the captain’s cabin for “debriefing.” She didn’t like the sound of that at all.

“It’s just questions,” the doctor told her when she asked. That still didn’t make her feel any better. How could she explain what had happened without dragging in the fact that Kane had been a prisoner aboard?

If Captain Zagadko had appeared at an audition for a production about the war, he’d have been turned down for looking too stereotypical. He was grizzled, lean and his eyes had the distant look of a man who has seen things he’d rather forget. He oozed competence and professionalism and, if Katya hadn’t been so worried about having to lie to him, she would have felt his presence reassuring. He offered them coffee from the pot on his table and began the debriefing.

“Firstly, I’d like to welcome you both aboard the shipping protection vessel RNS Novgorod.” Katya had heard of the Novgorod. She was a big boat, perhaps four hundred metres in length and the pride of the shipping protection fleet — the “pirate hunters” as they were popularly known. Kane seemed to have fallen out of the frying pan into the fire and then climbed back into the frying pan. “I’m truly sorry that you were brought aboard in such an unconventional manner. I’d made the assumption that there would be — forgive me — no survivors. I’d also assumed that whoever was responsible for this outrage would still be nearby, which is why the Novgorod made the quick grab at the surface. It appears I was wrong on both counts. I can only ask your forgiveness.”

“Nothing to forgive, captain,” said Kane. “Any competent captain would have made the same assumptions.”

“I agree,” added Katya, feeling quite grown-up in this conversation. “Please accept our thanks for rescuing us. Also, please extend my apologies to Petty Officer Deliav for anything unpleasant I may have called him when he discovered us in the salvage maw.”

Zagadko smiled. “I’ll do that. But, to business. Do you have any idea what sank Pushkin’s Baby?”

Of course, Katya realised, this was bound to be about what happened to the sub, not about who was aboard and why they were there. Perhaps she could avoid talking about Kane at all. Any relief she felt at that was quickly overwhelmed by remembering the Baby, and her uncle’s fate.

“Not pirates,” said Kane with certainty.

“Oh? Why not?”

“There was no warning, no shot over the bows, nothing. They just came up and put a hole clean through us. It doesn’t make sense for pirates to sink a vessel. They’re after cargoes, not wrecks.”

The captain nodded and turned to Katya. “I understand you were the co-pilot, Ms Kuriakova?”

She nodded. “My first trip. I’d only just been rated.”

“You were in a good position to see the controls. What do you remember?”

Katya concentrated. “We had just given up on a survey. A ghost return. It looked as good as a mountain of gold for the few moments it was on screen. My uncle wasn’t happy about it turning out to be a mirage and he wasn’t happy that we were trying to cross the Weft with unreliable sensors…”

“The Weft?” interrupted Captain Zagadko. “What were you doing in the Weft?”

“We had a passenger, one of your lot, actually. FMA.” She became aware of Kane tensing slightly in the chair next to her. “He had some business at the Deeps and wouldn’t listen to reason about how much the Weft could slow us down. He insisted we go through it.”

“What business?” said Zagadko. Katya could have sworn his eyes flickered over to look at Kane when he said it.

Katya wondered if she should just tell him that Kane had been Suhkalev’s prisoner. Then she thought of Lukyan.

Once he had made some silly promise to her when she was a little girl and she had laughed and said he was lying. She remembered his smile dying a little, and that had sobered her. “Little Katya, a man is only as good as his word. A man whose word is worthless is a worthless man. If I promise a thing, I will do everything in my power to keep that promise.” And he had, going halfway around the world to get her some silly little trinket for her birthday.

Now she had given her word, or as good as. Uncle Lukyan was dead; she knew that. She owed it to him to keep her word.

“I’m not sure,” she replied. “He talked to my Uncle Lukyan outside the lock. When my uncle came back in, he had a face like thunder. I think the Fed… the Federal officer had pulled a commandeering order on him or something.”

“Indeed.” Captain Zagadko turned to Kane. “That must have been very inconvenient for you, sir?”

Kane flipped a hand dismissively. “Not so bad, captain. It was only a short diversion or, at least, it would have been. Going into the Weft was a mistake, but the officer was just a kid and a corridor rat at that, by the look of him. He didn’t know any better.”

“You’re a submariner yourself, Mr Kane?” Katya was partially appalled that Kane had given his real name and partially relieved that she didn’t have to remember any alias he might have thought up.

“In years past. I’m happy to be a passenger these days.”

Zagadko narrowed his eyes. “Do I know you, Mr Kane?”

The intercom popped and barked into life. “Captain to the bridge!” They all heard the urgency in the voice. With one last curious glance at Kane, the captain stood and ran out into the corridor.

Kane stood and looked at the open door. “Thanks,” he said. “I appreciated that.”

“I won’t cover for you indefinitely.”

“You won’t need to. He’s a wily one, that Zagadko. He’ll work out soon enough who I am. Whether he gets a chance to act on it is another matter.” He stepped towards the door.

“What do you mean?” Surely he didn’t mean to kill Zagadko?

Kane paused to look back at her. “Why do you think the captain’s been called to the bridge so urgently? Whatever attacked us… it’s back.”