As they descended in a long gentle arc into the depths, Katya experimentally waggled the control yoke, listening to the whine of the manoeuvre impellers through the hull as she did. Frowning, she took her hands from the controls and looked at the yoke, which did nothing at all in response.
“Sergei, is the feedback broken on this side?”
Sergei looked over at the motionless control yoke and sniffed haughtily. “No. I just turned it off. I don’t like feeling it move in my hand. Why?” He looked suspiciously at the co-pilot’s yoke before him. “Have you turned on the feedback for this one?”
“Don’t worry, it’s not going to jump at your throat. I returned it to your settings when I handed it over. If you had feedback turned off in those, then it’s off now.” She opened the system controls screen on her main multifunction display and selected the yoke options. “I’m just used to having some feedback. Feels weird and dead without it. Here we go.”
She checked the box against “Yoke Feedback” and confirmed her choice. Immediately the control yoke started to shake. With mild surprise, they both looked at it juddering a centimetre or so from true. “Well, that’s not right,” said Katya finally.
“The feedback relays must be buggered,” said Sergei knowledgeably. “I’ll have a look at them when we get to Dunwich.”
Katya was still frowning. She pointed at the co-pilot yoke. “Turn your feedback on, just for a minute.”
Sergei nodded; it was a sensible suggestion. In a few moments he had his position’s controls screen active and selected the feedback option. The instant he confirmed, his yolk began to shake too. He watched it for a few seconds before deactivating it. “Not the relays, then,” he said.
Katya swore. It was a particularly harsh term she had never used before, which combined disrespect for the subject’s mother with an unambiguous accusation of incest.
Sergei raised his eyebrows. Katya looked at him, her anger slightly tempered by embarrassment at her outburst. “Not you, Sergei. It’s that… that…” She could feel the bile of her anger rising again. “There’s nothing wrong with the damn controls.” She slowly throttled back the Lukyan’s main impellers, bringing them to a gentle halt. As they did so, the shuddering in the yoke became less violent before fading away altogether.
Sergei began to suspect he should be worried. “What’s going on, Katya?”
For her answer, she twisted the yaw controls, making the boat turn on the spot until it was facing directly back in the direction they had come. Then she lit the powerful light array mounted around the large semi-spherical cockpit portal before them. The water was slightly murky, and the lights could penetrate only some twenty metres before the gloom grew too strong for them, but that was enough to show the submarine prow before them.
“Nothing wrong with the controls,” repeated Katya. “We were caught in that thing’s bow wave.”
Sergei was staring wide-eyed at the shadowy shape before them. “That’s no Fed boat,” he said in a horrified undertone. “That’s a Yag.”
“No,” replied Katya. She was grim, her anger simmering beneath the surface. “It’s not a Yag. It’s a pirate.”
This news failed to calm Sergei. As they watched, the pirate’s bow split along three seams and yawned wide like the maw of some horror of the deep. As they watched — Sergei wide-eyed, Katya with her arms crossed and a scowl upon her face — the pirate moved forward in a slow creep, the open jaws moving closer and closer. Sergei reached for the controls, but Katya said, “No!” sharply, and his hands fell away from the yoke.
“We can’t outrun them, and if we try and manoeuvre while those jaws are closing, they might breach us by accident.”
“By accident?” said Sergei. “If they’re pirates, why would they care one way or…?”
“I know that boat. I’ve been on it before.”
Sergei’s jaw dropped. “It’s the Vodyanoi? Killer Kane’s boat?”
Katya snorted. “Killer? Him? Ha.”
The Vodyanoi came on until the Lukyan was entirely engulfed within the salvage maw, and then slowly and carefully closed its jaws.
Once the maw had been pumped empty, the hatchway into the main forward compartment opened. On the dry side stood two of the Vodyanoi’s crew accompanying Tasya Morevna, now looking far more comfortable in Yagizban fatigues with a colonel’s flash on her epaulettes than she ever had in her stolen Secor uniform. On the wet side stood a silently fuming Katya Kuriakova and Sergei, who kept swallowing nervously. When he saw Tasya, he blurted out, “You’re that Secor officer!”
“And you must be Sergei?” she replied sweetly. “How do you do? I’m Tasya Morevna.” He blanched as he recognised the name, and she smiled a true killer’s smile as she watched the fear grow in him. “You probably know me better as the Chertovka, yes?”
“Leave him alone, Morevna,” snapped Katya. “What’s this all about?”
“Another one of Kane’s little schemes, I’m afraid, Katya,” said Tasya, entirely unaffected by the waves of hostility emanating from Katya. “I told him he was wasting his time, but he’s got this idea from somewhere that you’re more than just a stupid little girl.”
Katya scowled. “You’re trying to provoke me.”
“Ah,” said Tasya lightly. “Not so stupid after all.”
“It won’t work because I’m already as provoked as all hell. I told you No, and I meant it.”
“I’m not the one you have to convince. I’m just a passenger myself. You’ll have to talk to the captain.” She stepped to one side and bowed mockingly as she indicated the direction of the Vodyanoi’s bridge. “This way.”
Katya ground her teeth for a second, mastering her rage. “Fine,” she said, walking past Tasya. “Fine. I’ll see Kane, tell him what he can do with his plan, and then we’re leaving. We’ve got a cargo to deliver.”
Tasya let her walk precisely three paces before saying casually, “Yes. Plumbing supplies, isn’t it?”
Katya stopped so abruptly that Sergei, who was looking over his shoulder at Tasya, bumped into her. Katya stepped around him and narrowed her eyes. “How did you know that?”
Tasya smiled pleasantly and shrugged. “Lucky guess.”
Katya glared at her for a long moment during which Tasya’s smile never wavered. Only a small, sensible voice at the back of her mind, telling Katya that Tasya was a highly trained soldier who could likely kill Katya a dozen different ways with one hand tied behind her back, stopped her running at Tasya with her fists flying. Instead, she turned on her heel and strode off, Sergei close behind her.
She led the way directly to the bridge and made an unannounced entry that silenced the place. “What are you, Kane?” she demanded of the somewhat bewildered captain in his command chair. “Stupid? Don’t you understand ‘No’ means ‘No’?”