Katya's World

CHAPTER 7 Scuttling Code

Katya was having trouble breathing.

Uncle Lukyan was showing no sign of releasing her from the bearhug he’d flung around her the first chance he had. “I thought you were dead, Katinka,” he kept saying, more than a suspicion of a sob in his voice, “I thought you were dead.” He rarely used the familiar form of her name, preferring Katya. It took a lot to make him use Katinka.

When he finally let her go, she said, “I thought the same of you, uncle.” She could feel the tears running down her cheeks and was aware of some of the pirates watching their reunion and not being subtle about it. She really didn’t care. “Yet here you are. Here we are. Here we are.” She couldn’t speak anymore and hugged him close, her eyes clenched shut.

“I tried to save you, Katinka. But the damned LoxPak wouldn’t go on and, by the time I had it secure, you’d vanished. I saw that the top hatch had been blown and hoped… prayed for you to have got clear. The next thing I know, that filthy pirate scow had swallowed the Baby whole. As soon as they’d drained the salvage maw, they were waving guns in our faces and demanding to know where Kane was. That Federal cur, Suhkalev, he’d have sold them his own grandmother he was so scared.”

Katya let Lukyan go, and wiped her eyes on her sleeve. She looked over where Suhkalev sat on the rock floor of the dock, separate from the Novgorod’s crew. They’d treated him with contempt ever since the pirates had concentrated all their prisoners into one group under the unnerving gaze of the deck-sweeper guns aboard the pirate boat. The Fed had his knees drawn up, his chin resting on them, a look of abject misery on his face. He knew he’d disgraced himself and his uniform. Katya thought he looked like he wanted to die. She hoped he wouldn’t do anything stupid.

“We really didn’t know what had happened, though. The acting captain, Tasya something — the one they call the Chertovka — she’s a clever one. She put the boat on silent running and we just hung at neutral buoyancy for what seemed like hours while they listened for whatever had attacked us. They heard something in the distance, but couldn’t get a decent lock until it hit the surface. She went up on one third ahead to investigate but there was nothing there. The Baby’s distress beacon cut out at the same time and she guessed it had been picked up.”

“It had. Kane and I were hanging onto it when the Novgorod picked it up,” said Katya.

Lukyan nodded. “So they brought us here while they figured out what to do next. Next thing we know the pirates are running around because they thought the mining site was under attack by the Feds.” He sighed. “She played the FMA people for fools and they fell for it. What happened to bring you here in such a great hurry, Katya?” Katya noticed he’d dropped the familiar form of her name. He must be calming down.

Slowly, putting in as much detail as she could remember, she told Lukyan about how they’d been attacked again by the same thing that had attacked the Baby, the thing Kane called Leviathan. He listened quietly, asking only a few questions to clarify her story and iron out ambiguities.

“Leviathan,” he said when she’d finished. “That’s an old Earth name for a sea monster. Is…?”

“He’s from Earth,” she confirmed. “He didn’t even try to deny it when I confronted him with it. He seems proud of it.”

“He would be. He should be. A man who has no pride for his birthplace is a hollow man. I don’t begrudge him that much. Still…” his expression darkened, “…Earth.”

It was no secret that there were still Grubbers on Russalka even ten years after they’d lost the war. Stranded away from their units, trapped when the Terran ships ignited their drives and ran back to Earth with their tails between their legs. Abominated and loathed by the Russalkin, it was hardly surprising that most ended up in the world of crime. She’d seen lots in action dramas; pirates, terrorists and insane killers. They’d always seemed so ineffectual, though. Perhaps, she thought, it was time to stop watching everything that came out of the drama studios of the Department of Public Enlightenment quite so uncritically.

“What about the Chertovka?” she asked. “She seems Russalkin.”

“She is,” growled Lukyan, “to our shame. She was a collaborator during the war. She worked for the Grubbers against her own kind. If the FMA ever capture her, there’s nothing waiting for her but a maser bolt through the brain in a quiet cell.”

“And Secor?”

He looked at her suspiciously. “What about Secor?”

“The captain of the Novgorod, Captain Zagadko, he was going to hand Kane over to Secor.”

Lukyan frowned. “Well, I don’t suppose it’s any less than he deserves,” he muttered, but Katya doubted he really meant it. He looked past her and his frown deepened. “Speak of the devil…”

Kane and Tasya were approaching with a couple of pirates acting as bodyguards. Tasya looked like she could look after herself pretty well and wouldn’t need guards, but Kane looked tired and ill.

“Captain Pushkin, Ms Kuriakova,” said Tasya, nodding politely at each.

“Hello again, Katya,” said Kane. His voice sounded strained, the pleasantries forced. “We meet again, Captain Pushkin. I’m very happy you made it.”

Lukyan said nothing but glared at them both.

“The Novgorod’s captain,” said Tasya, “Zagadko. Where is he?”

“We’re telling you nothing,” spat Lukyan.

“He’s dead,” said Katya. She caught her uncle’s furious glance. “So what if I tell them, uncle? None of us are ever leaving this place.”

Tasya laughed, a pleasantly throaty sound. “This sea monster Havilland has been telling me about?” It took Katya a moment to remember that was Kane’s first name. “We travelled from the North docks right around the mountain and came into the moon pool at speed, making plenty of noise. We weren’t attacked. Whatever it is, it’s long gone.”

Kane shook his head slowly like an old man. Katya couldn’t believe the change that had come over him so quickly. It was as if he was dying before her eyes. “Oh, Tasya, no. Whatever it is, it’s outside. It has cunning, you see.”

Tasya gave him an exasperated look and, Katya realised, one with some underlying affection. “So why didn’t it attack, hmmm? Tell me that.”

Kane opened his mouth, but it was Katya who answered. “Now it only has to watch one docking tunnel. It’s got both boats trapped in the same moon pool. You won’t get out as easily as you got in.”

“She’s right,” said Kane. His voice was so weak that even Tasya, who’d seemed blind to his rapid deterioration, noticed.

“You ought to go aboard,” she whispered urgently, moving closer to Kane in an attempt to make the conversation private.

“I will,” replied Kane in a croak that wouldn’t have seemed out of place coming from a man in his last minutes. “Don’t fuss so, Tasya. I’ll be fine.”

“Captain!” the shout floated across from the pirates who were securing the Novgorod.

“Damn,” said Kane. “Now what?”

Kane had insisted on coming aboard the Novgorod to see what the problem was, overriding Tasya’s increasingly forceful demands that he go back to the pirate boat. They’d been gone for a few minutes when the pirate who’d called across came back up on deck and called to Katya that Captain Kane wanted her present. With a few calming words to her uncle, she climbed up the gangway that had been placed up against the prow, walked down the tilted deck and climbed back down the hatch into the bridge.

It was very different from the last time she’d seen it. The lights were out, illumination now being provided by work lanterns and torches the pirates had brought. A cluster of pirates was grouped around the captain’s chair, speaking quietly. They moved aside to allow Kane through.

“Something you should see, Katya.” He looked back as if internally debating something. “Though you won’t thank me for it.” He stepped back and parted a way for her. She took a step forward and stopped, horrified.

Lit obliquely by the harsh white lights of the work lanterns, Captain Zagadko sat in his command chair quite at peace. He seemed so serene, almost happy with a faint smile on his lips, that the realisation that he was dead was a long time coming. “Oh, captain,” said Katya in a tiny whisper. “Oh, Captain Zagadko.”

“It looks like he was hit by a round from the Gatling gun,” said Kane. Out of the circle of light, Katya realised that the captain’s uniform was glistening slightly, soaked. She took an unconscious step back and was appalled when her boot stuck to the floor for a moment. “Yes,” Kane spoke again. “I’m afraid it’s blood. The floor’s thick with it. At a guess, the femoral artery in his leg was nicked. He bled out quite quickly.”

“Why,” said Katya, her voice shuddering with revulsion, “are you showing me this?”

For his answer, Kane shone his torch on the dead man’s left hand. It lay on a panel of the captain’s status board; a security plate over the panel had been unlocked and lifted.

“You recognise a handprint scanner of course. This one’s special. Between needing a key to access it, requiring the handprint of a senior officer and then the inputting of a code, it’s very secure. Not the sort of thing you can do by accident.”

“A code…” Katya knew what the captain had done and so she knew why all the lights were out.

“The scuttle code. The captain crawled back in here after being blown off the deck with half his leg dangling off by a thread — don’t look, it really isn’t a pretty sight. He must have come in by one of the rear locks. I can’t even imagine swimming while that badly injured. Then he crawled forward, straight past the sickbay where he might, just conceivably, have managed to save his own life by getting into the automedic. Of course, that would have drugged him into a dreamless sleep where we’d have found him. He knew that and that’s why he kept crawling. All the way back to the bridge and into his chair, to open that panel and issue the scuttling code, killing his beloved ship rather than let her fall into our hands. Then he sat back and fell asleep.” Kane drew strength from somewhere and straightened up. “In a fairer universe, captain, they’d sing songs about you. I salute you.” He snapped a salute of a type she’d seen in the same stupid dramas that said the Grubbers had no honour, that showed them spitting on the corpses of their enemies. He held it for a long moment and then finished it, and seemed to age even as he did it. “Organise the funerals for tomorrow morning, please, Tasya. Ours and theirs. I want a full turn out.”

He started walking slowly, almost shambling towards the hatch. “Why did you show me this?” asked Katya again.

“Duty, Katya Kuriakova. He knew his duty, as I know mine.” He paused to look back at her. “Do you know yours, Katya Kuriakova?” He turned to continue walking but paused instead, touching his brow with his fingers. “Oh dear,” he said to himself, and collapsed.

The crew of the Novgorod and the Baby were moved off the waterside and put into a large low room that appeared to have been an open plan office at some point in the past. It only had two exits and the pirates welded one of them shut, putting a chain and lock on the other. Petrov and the other surviving commissioned officers gathered around and listened grim-faced as Katya told them what had happened aboard the crippled war-boat. They showed little reaction, but the way Zagadko had chosen to die seemed to give them some satisfaction. Petrov nodded when she told them the Novgorod was dead at her captain’s hand and another officer muttered, “good man” under his breath. They seemed uninterested in Kane’s health beyond hoping that, whatever was wrong with him, it was terminal. In this they were to be disappointed.

A couple of hours later, the door was unchained and Lieutenant Tokarov and the marines were escorted in at gunpoint. Once they were clear of the door, Kane entered with Tasya the Chertovka close behind, flanked by guards. “As you’re doubtless aware,” said Kane, “your captain is dead.” His voice was strong again and he carried himself with authority. “I regret that. I had a little time to know him and, well, I regret his death. You also know that he issued the Novgorod’s scuttling code. Your boat is dead. It will take months to strip out all the systems permanently damaged by the code and replace them.” A ragged cheer went up from the Novgorod crew. Kane waited until they’d quietened down again. “He did the right thing, as far as he knew. We, however, know the bigger picture. Beyond these stone walls is the Russalka ocean and somewhere in that, very close at hand, is the Leviathan. It sank their boat,” he pointed at where Katya and Lukyan sat, “it crippled yours. Now it has our boat, the Vodyanoi, stoppered up too. Before long, it will realise that we haven’t run to a settlement after all and there will be no more boats coming and going. When it realises that, it will go on and search for settlements. Lemuria’s closest; it will probably be the first. Before the Leviathan leaves here, though, it will make damn sure we’re all dead. Novgorods, Vodyanois, it really doesn’t care.”

“How does he know so much about it?” murmured Tokarov to Petrov. Petrov only nodded slightly in agreement.

“With the Novgorod operational and reparable, we might have been able to bluff it. Now we’ve got just one boat. We’ll be working on a plan to try and get past it, to get us all past it. In the meantime, it would be appreciated if you would curtail any attempts to escape. We really don’t need the distraction. If you, however, feel obliged to try, be warned that all your guards have been ordered to fire first and not bother asking questions afterwards. I’m not in the mood for FMA heroics; you either stay in line or you die. Just remember, we’re trying to save your lives too.” They left to a chorus of catcalls and swearing.

“You know what I don’t like?” said Lukyan. “What I really don’t like is the way he kept calling whatever’s out there it. You saw it on camera, didn’t you, Katya? You said it looked like a submarine?”

She nodded. “Yes, but I’ve never seen a boat so featureless. And it’s size…” She shook her head in disbelief. “Colossal.”

“That’s what I don’t like. Kane may be a Grubber by birth but he’s a submariner by adoption. He would never call a boat it. A boat is always a lady. All the way through that little speech, though, he kept saying it’s this and it’s that. Never once she’s this, she’s that. Perhaps it is a monster after all.”

Lieutenant Petrov was listening. “It’s a sub. We all saw it. Besides, it launched torpedoes.”

“That’s as may be,” replied Uncle Lukyan, his frown heavy and dark, “but even a submarine can be a monster.”

Katya looked closely at him, wondering why he’d become so abstruse all of a sudden. Then she understood and coldness curled around her guts; he was frightened. Nothing frightened Uncle Lukyan. At least, nothing had. What, she thought, do you do when the man who has always been there, always met every emergency, always been the anchor of your life, what do you do when he is afraid? Except grow afraid yourself?

“He knows what it is,” said Tokarov.

“What?” blurted Katya, startled by the intrusion into her own thoughts.

“Kane. He knows what that thing is. How, I don’t know.” He pursed his lips. “Hold on, he’s a Grubber, isn’t he?”

“My own suspicion exactly,” agreed Petrov, cutting straight to the conclusion. “This Leviathan is some sort of Terran weapon. It must have malfunctioned during the war so it was never used against us.”

“Thank God,” said Lukyan.

“Yes. It’s highly formidable. Perhaps it lost the ability to tell friend from foe and was deactivated. That would explain Kane’s comment about us all being at risk.”

“And it’s been sitting there at the bottom of the Weft ever since,” finished Tokarov excitedly. He paused. “I wonder what reactivated it.”

“It came under fire,” said Katya wearily. It all made a sort of sense now and the worst of it was that they were indirectly responsible.

The others were looking at her. Lukyan’s widening eyes showed he was reaching the same conclusion. “What do you mean, it came under fire?” asked Petrov.

“We detected it on the seabed and thought it was a metal deposit. We were probably the first boat to have gone through there since the war. Nobody’s stupid enough to go through the Weft unless some dimwit Fed orders them. We detected what looked like enough high quality metal ore for us all to retire on, even me.”

“We fired a probe at it,” said Lukyan in a ghastly voice, disbelief at their staggeringly bad luck etched in every syllable.

It all made horrible but perfectly logical sense, Katya found, as she reran the events through her mind. The Leviathan had probably heard them coming — they’d made no attempt to be stealthy — and gone to a low level of alert. Then they’d pinged it hard with sonar and as good as told it that they were looking right at it, taking it to still higher states of alert. The probe torpedo was the last straw, the moment when it believed it had been located and attacked by hostile forces, and its old wartime programs took over.

“There was never anything wrong with the Baby’s sensors,” said Lukyan. “That thing must have some sort of stealth gear well beyond anything we have. Even active sonar didn’t show it up.”

“It came for us,” said Katya. “It launched torpedoes. That was the cavitation I heard, wasn’t it, uncle? The sound of the launch tubes opening.”

“Torpedoes,” Lukyan echoed. “Strangest damn torpedoes I’ve ever come across. No motor sound, no active sonar pulses, and no explosion.”

“It was the same with the Novgorod,” agreed Petrov. “Just holes punched through. What kind of warhead could do that?”

Katya was thinking back to something Kane had said. “Kane said the Novgorod was deliberately damaged just enough to force her back to port.”

“Rubbish,” scoffed Lukyan. “No torpedo is that accurate.”

“Yes,” said Petrov quietly. “No torpedo is that accurate. So what exactly was used against our boats, Captain Pushkin?”

The men fell silent, unable to make anything but vague guesses.

Katya couldn’t guess what form these mysterious weapons might take, but, then, she didn’t need to guess, not when Kane definitely knew.

“I need to talk to Havilland Kane,” she said standing.

“Kane certainly has some answers,” agreed Petrov, “but why would he talk to you?”

To be honest, Katya wasn’t entirely sure, but she knew he would. “I think he feels obligated somehow, responsible for dragging me into this. He won’t talk to any of you; you’re the enemy. You were taking him to be delivered to Secor. He’ll talk to me.”

“He’ll talk to us,” said Lukyan, joining her. “I’m not letting you wander off in the company of a bunch of pirates.”

Katya didn’t argue. It would be pointless and, anyway, she would be very glad of his company.

They walked to the door and opened it as far as the chain would allow. The pirate on the other side stepped away and raised his gun. “You should pay attention, girl. The captain’s orders are to kill anybody who even looks like they’re thinking about escaping.”

“I’m not escaping,” she said, trying to look waif-like and unthreatening with her face framed between the door and jamb. She was glad that Lukyan was out of sight behind the door. It would be hard to stir sympathy with his glowering face visible above hers. “We need to talk to Captain Kane.”

“Yeah, of course you do,” said the pirate in a bored tone. “Now get back in there before I give you a maser burn.”

“I’m serious. Tell him Katya Kuriakova wants to talk to him urgently.”

“And I’m serious. Get your head back in there before I kill you! I’m not joking, girl.”

“Please…”

The pirate made a show of releasing his gun’s safety catch and levelling it at her face. Katya decided that she’d rather back down than be shot down and moved away. Lukyan’s expression indicated that he might be about to attempt punching through the door and strangling the guard, which probably would not work out well for him or any of the prisoners. As soon as the pirate closed the door, she shot her uncle a “Don’t you dare” face. He shrugged and stepped away from it with surly grace.

They turned to the corner where Petrov and Tokarov waited and Katya shook her head. Her uncle walked back to them, but she paused and looked at the door. Perhaps if she left it a couple of hours and tried again, there might be a more sympathetic guard on duty? It was worth a go. She started walking back to the corner to suggest a second attempt later, and had perhaps taken five paces when the thin steel wall between their makeshift prison and the corridor exploded behind her.

Katya was thrown headlong and finished sprawled untidily on the floor. The lights flickered frantically before going out altogether except for some red emergency lights out in the corridor. She looked aghast at the damage. It seemed like a great claw had torn an untidy rent across the metal wall six metres long. The door was about two thirds of the way along the cut and had lost its upper hinges as well as half its height. Katya blinked in disbelief; the edges of the tear were glowing in the dim light. The wall hadn’t been torn or blasted. It had been melted. It seemed that the Leviathan had finally run out of patience.

Out in the corridor from the direction of the moon pool, the sound of shooting started.