“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.”
CHAPTER 4
Leviathan
The bridge was busy when they arrived. Deliav was just saluting the Captain. “I’ve recovered the data card from the distress buoy, captain.”
“Hold onto it for the moment, Deliav. We have more pressing business at present.”
“Permission to enter the bridge, captain,” said Katya crisply. She knew enough about the military not to go barging around on their boats like they were on a pleasure trip.
Zagadko shot them a look. “I’m afraid not, Ms Kuriakova. We’re in a state of battle readiness. There’s no place for you here. Go to the ready room, please.”
Kane cleared his throat. “With respect, captain, Katya was at the controls when her boat was attacked. If you may be engaging the same foe..?”
Zagadko was not the sort of man to dither. “Point taken. If you could stand just over there, Ms Kuriakova, and endeavour to stay out of the way.” They made a move towards the bulkhead the captain had pointed at, but he stopped them. “Not you, Mr Kane.”
Kane blinked with surprise. “But, captain…”
“You weren’t at the controls, were you? Unless there’s something you’re not telling me?”
The two men looked at each other for a moment. It was Kane who broke eye contact first. “I’ll be in the ready room if you need me,” he said and walked out with what dignity he could.
Zagadko watched him go. When the hatch had closed behind Kane, he said to Katya, “You and I are going to have a conversation when Mr Kane isn’t present. Count on it.” He turned away from her, leaving her feeling guilty and worried.
“Range to the wreck?”
“Three thousand metres.”
Katya started. They’d been hunting the wreck of the Baby? The captain noticed her surprise when he turned back. “I wasn’t about to leave her lying there for pirates to pick over, Ms Kuriakova.”
“Captain!” Zagadko turned to one of the sensor technicians. “I have something on hydrophones. Low, really low.”
Katya remembered the ghostly sound she’d picked up herself over the Baby’s hydrophones. She watched as the operator dropped the frequency translation range, just as she had done. This was a military vessel; she wondered how much better the Novgorod’s sensors were in comparison.
“Sonar?” demanded Zagadko.
The sonar operator sat hunched over his screen, looking carefully over every square millimetre of it. “Nothing, sir. Nothing on passive.”
Zagadko humphed. “Pulse.”
“Sir?” It was the first officer, a thin, dark man with heavy-lidded eyes. “We’ll give away our position.”
Katya thought that was a redundant thing to say. Zagadko was a veteran; of course he knew sending an active sonar pulse would be like lighting a match in a dark room. They would be able to see better, but everything else would be able to see them all the more easily.
“They already know full well where we are, Petrov. Active pulse, sensors.”
The sonar pulse rang through the hull as it emanated out from the Novgorod. The Baby’s sonar had made a chirpy little “ping!” It had sounded somehow friendly to Katya. The Novgorod’s pulse, however, was a dull, mournful beat of sound that seemed to buzz inside her bones long after her ears had ceased to hear it.
The sonar officer checked his screen again. “I don’t understand it, sir. We’re picking up some sound; we should be able to get a passive lock on it.” He waited for the sonar echoes to return. He seemed to wait a long time. “No bounce from the pulse, sir. I’m trying for an IC resolution — it’s giving me a range of a thousand metres but won’t give me a full solution. It’s like hunting a ghost.”
Katya remembered her own encounter. She realised that she was sweating. The Novgorod was a hundred times bigger than the Pushkin’s Baby but she still had a horrible feeling, squirming in her gut, that history was about to repeat itself.
The hydrophones operator looked up. “I’m getting something… Cavitation noise, captain!”
Katya blanched. “Oh no,” she said in a desperate little voice. Captain Zagadko looked around at the sound and was surprised to see her almost hugging herself in fear. “Cavitation,” she said in a whisper. “Then it attacks.”
Captain Zagadko was becoming quite sick of this mysterious foe. He didn’t like the way it was avoiding detection, he didn’t like the way it had moved into an attack with none of the usual preamble of submarine combat, and — very especially — he didn’t like the way it kept being referred to as “it” all the time.
He was sure it was a submarine, and a submarine is a “she,” just like any ocean-going vessel. There was an atmosphere on the bridge as if they were facing some mythical sea monster and he wasn’t having it.