Katya's World (4 page)

The journey continued in a strained silence apart from the quiet curses of Uncle Lukyan as they entered the Weft. As predicted, the random currents were not their friends. The boat started to go off-course almost immediately and Katya and he had to wrestle the controls around before extemporising some new intermediate waypoints to try and get them out of the cross current that had them. They succeeded in that but ran quickly into a lazily twisting vortex that turned them around again and again. Lukyan was concerned that the extreme manoeuvring might upset their inertial guidance; Katya could see the strain on his face as he watched their coordinates like a hawk, waiting for a telltale lurch in their apparent location. After the vortex, they hit a head current that the
Baby
forged against with agonising slowness.
“
One hour it would have taken us to go around,
”
hissed Lukyan loudly enough for the Fed to hear.
“
We’ll be lucky to get out of here in five at this rate.
”

Finally, the going became easier as they reached the centre of the system of complex currents. It was only a respite; things would become difficult again when they tried to leave, but at least they had a few minutes’ peace.

Katya spent the time thinking about their handcuffed passenger. She couldn’t believe it; Havilland Kane sitting right behind her. She didn’t know whether to be excited or scared and settled on faintly worried. Kane had been all over the news bulletins for the last six months. Commerce raids, drone intercepts, the disappearances of any vessels in the region had all been put at his door. There had been talk of crews murdered, too. The FMA hadn’t had an image to show
, given any background on him,
or even a reliable description and the idea had grown in her head that Kane must be some sort of monster. She’d envisioned him as ugly and hulking, unshaven and eyes devoid of the faintest glimmer of mercy. Now it turned out that he looked just like anybody else. If she’d passed him in a corridor, she’d have thought he was a tutor or a researcher. She frowned to herself. Maybe the FMA
had
messed it up. Looking at Officer Suhkalev, it was difficult to believe that they were infallible.

Any further reflections were blown away by one of the
Baby
’s automated alarms. It wasn’t one of the danger alerts – she knew
well
enough the difference between a status alert and the urgency of a failing major system alarm, but it made her jump all the same. Not nearly as far as Suhkalev, though.

“
What’s that?
”
he blurted.
“
What’s happening?
”

Lukyan had already switched his largest multi-function display to show a sonar map of the seabed. The computer represented it as interconnecting triangles of dull blue and red light drawn against blackness.

In the centre of the display, the seabed rose up to form a hump described in triangles that dimmed to orange where they joined the ocean floor.
Pushkin’s Baby
was, like many other private submarines, a jack-of-all-trades. Its insect-like yellow hull contained and carried many different types of equipment allowing it to do many jobs from geological survey to cargo carrier to salvage vessel. Katya knew the display was relaying data from the geological sensor array, but she had no idea what the hump was or why it was worth an alarm. She started to ask her uncle, but she saw the expression on his face and the question died. He had a rapt, focussed expression, like a man who has seen the merest hint that all his dreams were about to come true.

“
Katya,
”
he said slowly.
“
We might be very, very rich.
”

“
A deposit?
”
she said. Russalka was rich in minerals, one of the reasons the Grubbers wanted it so much. Submarine mining, however, was difficult. Finding large deposits of ore just lying on the seabed wasn’t unknown, but it was very rare, and the savings meant the discoverer of such a deposit could more or less name their price. Katya read off the scale information on the
nuclear magnetic resonance
display and felt her own eyes widen with disbelief. It was
huge
.

Lukyan brought the
Baby
to a halt and adjusted the active sonar, increasing the frequency of the pulses to get a better picture.

“
What? What are you doing?
”
The Fed spluttered in his outrage.
“
We have a
prisoner
to deliver here! We don’t have time…
”

“
You
don’t have time. I’ve got all the time in the world for a beautiful sight like that.
”
Lukyan tapped the screen.
“
I can’t run a business running errands for the FMA. This is a once in a lifetime opportunity.
”

“
You’ll be recompensed for your journey,
”
said Suhkalev, perhaps realising that he should have mentioned payment earlier.

“
Oh, yes. An FMA scrip that will take years to be honoured, if it ever is. You can hold your water for a few minutes. Look at this, look at this!
”
He studied the sonar returns.
“
The signal’s good. No, the signal’s excellent. There’s a mound of ore down there. A hill of the stuff! It must be, I don't know, a hundred and fifty thousand tonnes. If it extends beneath the bed, maybe quarter of a million. Katya, arm a probe.
”

Katya turned back to her controls, trying to look efficient. Although munitions and ordnance were among the co-pilot’s jobs, she’d never even studied the systems outside a training manual. She checked the launch tube’s inventory and found they were, indeed, carrying a couple of geo-survey probes. Getting them from their magazine into the tube was another matter. Her mouth felt very dry as she tried to work out how to do it quickly. The silence in the submarine drew out, punctuated only by the wheedling survey alarm. She felt they were all watching her make a mess of it and blushed, which just made her feel even more embarrassed.

Then her Uncle Lukyan lost his patience, leaned across and hit the right keys and switches to load and arm a probe, completing her humiliation. She just sat there feeling childish and useless as he returned to his own console and fired the device off. The hiss of the compressed air driving the stubby cylindrical torpedo out of its tube resonated through the hull.

“
Survey probe away,
”
reported the computer primly.

Lukyan settled back in his seat, very pleased with himself and insensitive to Katya’s burning face.
“
On its way. Man alive, even if the quality's poor, there's so much of it, it's as makes no difference. You’re crew, Katya, you get a share too. What do you…
”
He turned and saw her expression. He seemed surprised for a moment and then his face fell as he realised how he’d inadvertently humiliated her in front of the Fed and Kane.
“
Oh, Katya. I’m…
”

The computer interrupted.
“
Probe link lost.
”
Lukyan’s attention was back on the sensor readouts in an instant.

“
What? But it’s right on the scope.
”

But it wasn’t. The probe had vanished. And, quickly, before their startled eyes, so did the ore deposit. The great mound simply seemed to flow back into the seabed, flattening out in seconds, the polygons that it had been drawn in fading from the brilliant gold they had been a moment before to dull reds and blues, indistinguishable from the rest of the submarine landscape.

“
That’s…
”
said Lukyan,
“
…that’s just not possible.
”

“
Maybe it was methane,
”
said a voice from the back, Kane.
“
Perhaps it was methane gas from rotting plant matter caught in a mat of sunken vegetation. You punctured it with your probe and it just…
”
he shrugged,
“
deflated.
”

Lukyan turned slowly in his chair, his surprise and disappointment turning to sneering anger.
“
The only gasbag around here is sitting in handcuffs. The NMR was lit up like a birthday cake, that thing was magnetically aglow. Methane…
”
He turned back to face forward, still muttering angrily.
“
Methane, he says.
”

“
Whatever it was, it’s gone now. Maybe we ought to get moving,
”
said Kane. Suhkalev looked at him suspiciously.

“
You seem to be in a big hurry to get to a holding cell, Kane.
”

“
I just don’t like…
”
Kane shrugged and laughed lightly.
“
I just don’t like hanging around under three hundred metres of water in the middle of the Weft. It’s a bad place to be.
”

Katya didn’t need to look back at Kane to know there was something else bothering him.
A submariner of his experience
must know that the Weft was a nuisance but certainly no danger. That laugh had been altogether too mannered and a little strained.

“
No,
”
said Lukyan, his disappointment still evident in his voice.
“
We’re going nowhere until I’ve run a diagnostic analysis of the sensors. I’ve never seen a ghost return like that. If they’re feeding us garbage data, then we’re blind. Worse than blind. I’m not risking going through the rest of the Weft until I’m happy.
”

Predictably, Suhkalev was
not
happy.
“
You’ve wasted enough time here, captain. Get us under way!
”

“
No. My authority over my vessel is absolute in matters of operational safety. You can’t tell me to go anywhere until I’m happy with the operation of this boat.
”

“
He’s right,
”
said Kane. Suhkalev shot him a dirty look. Kane grinned unapologetically back.
“
It’s no good getting shirty over it with me. It’s in the maritime regulations. The
FMA
maritime regs, that is. Like I say, you
really
ought to read them some time. Gripping stuff. I laughed, I cried.
”

Katya tried to ignore them. Why did Kane keep provoking Suhkalev? All it would get him would be
another beating
.

Abruptly, another alarm sounded; the proximity alarm. Now it seemed the
Baby
thought there was danger of collision with something. She toggled the alarm off and nestled her headset on more comfortably.

Lukyan watched her silently while she – her hearing younger and more acute than his – listened carefully through the submarine’s ears. In the
Baby
’s hull were mounted highly sensitive microphones. When relayed to a human listener, they provided a stereophonic sound image of the marine environment. She sat in absolute silence, her eyes shut as she concentrated entirely on what was coming through the headset speakers.

“
Hydrophones are picking something up,
”
she said finally, eyes still shut.
“
Can’t make it out. Very low frequency.
”

“
Manta-whale?
”
asked her uncle.

“
No, nothing like a manta. There’s no song. Just a hum, slight pulse.
”
She dipped the hydrophones’ active frequencies so they translated sounds normally too low to be heard by the human ear up into the audible range.
“
Really quiet. Almost silent, but it’s there.
”

Kane said, almost to himself,
“
We really ought to go,
”
but everybody ignored him.

Katya’s eyes fluttered open, her expression confused like somebody
wak
ing from a cryptic dream.
“
I thought I heard cavitation. Just for a moment.
”

“
A sub?
”
said Lukyan, his frown as puzzled as his niece’s. Cavitation was
the sound
caused by water travelling swiftly over an imperfectly streamlined surface. It developed into tiny water vapour-filled bubbles that hissed in the water and sounded clearly through audio sensors. It had long been the bane of war submarines; the faster you went, the greater the cavitation noise. In submarine warfare, silence is life. A loud boat is a dead boat.

Lukyan had fought before and he knew that golden rule. Katya seemed to be describing the barely-detectable sound of a war sub. Lukyan knew that an opening torpedo tube door, the gap in the hull flawing the otherwise perfect teardrop design, could have caused the momentary sound of cavitation.

Perhaps he was being paranoid, but he’d rather be paranoid than dead.

“
Nobody make any noise,
”
he whispered as he switched off the impellers that were holding their position, the sound relays, even the ventilator fans.
Pushkin’s Baby
drifted freely, silent and – Lukyan fervently hoped – invisible to hostile hydrophones and passive sonar.

“
Pirates!
”
hissed Suhkalev at Kane.
“
Your crew, no doubt?
”

“
I said
quiet
!
”
whispered Lukyan, only keeping his voice down with a massive effort of will.

Kane said nothing. He just sat looking at the deck, his hands clasped in front of him. Katya was meanwhile trying to get more of an idea of what they were dealing with, or at least where it was. About the only thing she could think of that might work in this situation was a complex technique called integrated coordination. This combined simple triangulation with examining the Doppler shift in any sound data. It usually needed so much data drawn over such a long period that it was of very limited use when dealing with a moving target. It could, however, at least give an idea of range.