Katya kept her arms very folded.
Sergei leaned forward. “What the hell is that?” he murmured.
Behind them, a new trace had appeared. If they had been under way the contact would have been lost in their own baffles. Only that they were running silent permitted the sonar receptors to pick up the new contact. Katya quickly brought the hydrophones to bear. Any faint hope that it might be a Federal patrol boat was quickly shattered.
“Ninety per cent likelihood contact Beta is a Jarilo Mark 4 class heavy carrier submarine of the Federal Maritime Authority,” the computer told them. “It is therefore designated an ally.” The contact’s symbol flicked from yellow to blue.
“A transporter,” whispered Sergei. “It’s bound to have an escort!”
On the screen, the Alpha contact slowed and faded. The Yags were coming about for an attack pass. “They’ll fire and run,” he said. “Those poor bastards…”
Katya’s eye fell on the database readout currently displayed on one of her secondary screens. The Jarilo was listed as having a standard crew of twenty. Twenty men and women who would probably die in a few minutes. Then its unseen escort or escorts would engage the Vodyanoi/2 and soon there would be more blood in the water.
“No,” she murmured. “I can’t let that happen.”
CHAPTER THREE
False Flag
Sergei’s eyes were unattractively wide. Fear did that to them.
“Katya, we can’t get involved! We’re in a minisub, a tiny bug! Even a close detonation will break us open!”
“Then we’re just going to have to make sure nothing goes off near us then, aren’t we?” Katya was already pulling up the operations screens. “Arm a noisemaker and stand by to dive.”
Sergei did neither. “What? No! You’ll kill us!”
“Not part of the plan, Sergei. Just do it.”
“What plan? We’re nothing more than krill compared to the hunter-killers out there! Just stay still and silent and we should weather this out!”
“I am not standing by and letting this happen, Sergei. Noisemaker! Arm one!” But Sergei just looked at her as if she was insane. “I am the captain here, Sergei Illyin! You will obey my orders!”
On the screen the Alpha contact faded away entirely. The Beta contact in contrast grew steadily stronger. It would only be a matter of moments before the Yagizban boat launched torpedoes.
“You can’t order me to commit suicide,” said Sergei. “Captain.”
Katya glared at him, then turned her attention to the controls. In a few quick moves she had frozen Sergei’s work station out and taken full control of the Lukyan.
“Noisemaker 1 armed,” reported the computer. Katya checked the settings she’d given it, and then flipped the cover on a “Commit” button. As a security and safety measure, some functions could not be activated through the touch screens — it was far too easy for accidents to happen that way. These functions, many of which were associated with weapons, had to be confirmed with the actual push of a physical button. Technically, noisemakers were considered weapons in terms of their interface functionality and the fact that they were expendable and expensive supplies. Nobody wanted to launch one accidentally. Katya’s fingertip hesitated for half a heartbeat, and then pushed the button with a sense of finality.
A slight click sounded through the hull as the noisemaker’s mounting clamp released it. “Noisemaker 1 away,” said the computer.
Katya made a point of not looking at Sergei; she knew full well what expression he would be wearing at that moment and it wouldn’t be one that bolstered her confidence.
Without pause, she opened the tactical options sheet on a secondary screen and ordered a slow descent below the next thermocline. The computer gauged that they would reach it in about ten seconds, which was encouraging as that was the timing she’d based the noisemaker’s programming upon. Now she could only hope that the Yagizban would not open fire in those ten seconds, that her plan — such as it was — would work, and that they didn’t get killed in the next few minutes.
Dying would be bad enough, but having Sergei spending their last moments saying “I told you so” would be more than she could bear.
The passive sonar did not report torpedoes in the water, which didn’t surprise her at all. She’d seen enough of the military to know that they didn’t like jumping in when there was still uncertainty about the situation. In this case, the Yags had almost certainly picked up the sound of air venting from the Lukyan’s ballast tanks and were wondering what was out there that they hadn’t yet detected. That was enough to take the finger off the firing button.
A moment later the Lukyan sank through the thermocline and immediately adjusted its tanks to neutral buoyancy in the shadowed space there, where sonar waves tended to behave unreliably. As they breached the thermal layer where the water temperature changed abruptly, a hundred metres above them, where it had been lazily rising from its release point, the noisemaker burst into life. Essentially a small torpedo with a motor that mimicked the sound of a larger boat, the Noisemaker 1 set off on its maiden and final journey, straight towards the presumed location of the Yagizban Vodyanoi/2 warboat.
Noisemakers were clever devices, but the fact remained that their impersonation could only be reasonably convincing and no more. Inside a minute the Yag boat would have identified inconsistencies in the hydrophone data and the noisemaker would be subsequently ignored. A minute is a long time in a battle, however, and now things started to happen rapidly.
The Jarilo, more than aware that stealth was not its strong suit, anticipated that it was probably already on an enemy’s scopes and decided to respond aggressively. A focused cone of sound energy sped out from its bow as it emitted a directional sonar “ping.” Suddenly the Yagizban’s stealthy manoeuvring was all for nothing as it lit up brilliantly on the sonar screens of the Jarilo, the Lukyan, and doubtless the one or more Federal warboats shadowing the transport.
Instantly the situation changed from a stalking game to a straight fight. The Vodyanoi/2 launched one torpedo and changed course dramatically, diving for the thermocline itself. “Oops,” said Katya more mildly than this development really deserved; in a moment the Yagizban warboat would be on the same side of the temperature differential as them, and it would be able to see them easily.
Discretion would definitely be the better part of valour, she decided, and opened the throttle to one third ahead. It had turned into a game of judging the angles; she needed the Lukyan to get into the Yag’s baffles while at the same time not exciting the curiosity of the Jarilo’s escort — who, a bleep on the display informed her, had just launched a torpedo themselves — because in the confusion of a submarine battle, the Feds would be sure to fire first and run a sonic profile analysis later. They would probably be very sorrowful about sinking a Federally registered minisub, but then shrug, say “That’s war” and ask what’s for dinner.
She made an educated guess where the rapidly fading trace of the Yagizban boat was heading and what its bearing was; drew a line that should be, more or less, its blind spot, and piloted the Lukyan into it. Beside her she could hear Sergei breathing heavily, possibly with fear, possibly with anger, most likely both. If she got them out of this alive, there was going to be a monstrous argument afterwards, of that she was sure. For the time being, however, she was entirely focused on the “getting out of this alive” aspect of their immediate situation.