It’s not going to work, thought Katya, not with numbers like those. We’re not going to do it.
Zagadko clearly thought the same. “Weapons,” he ordered, his voice tight, “dump all the torpedoes. Don’t bother arming anything; just get them out of the tubes.”
“Aye-aye, sir,” replied the weapons officer. A warship has to be in a tight position before it will willingly disarm itself, but nobody could argue that things weren’t desperate. Even the lightest of the weapons weighed several hundred kilos and that might make the difference.
The hiss of torpedo launches sounded again and again as the autoloaders shoved every weapon from the magazines into the tubes. Katya winced at the thought of all that live armament drifting down into the depths. Kane was already pulling the yoke back much harder. The Novgorod was climbing rapidly, but she was losing speed just as quickly.
“Four hundred. Depth six hundred.”
Katya stared. How was that possible? Then she saw the attitude indicator had drifted far past forty-five degrees. They were on course to hit the docking tunnel but at this angle they would blow into its ceiling and the journey would end abruptly and fatally.
Suddenly, Kane shoved the yoke forward. What was he doing? In her mind’s eye, Katya saw the Novgorod start to tip nose down while her depth… what? Of course, a boat as big as this would carry vast amounts of inertia — she couldn’t hope to manoeuvre as tightly as a little sub like the Baby. The boat would get an even keel even as she continued to climb for a brief second or two. And in that time…
“Zero! Depth four-fifty!” The navigator was almost shouting. On the main screen the mine entrance swept towards them and then out towards the edge of the display as it engulfed them. “We’re in!”
But they weren’t out of trouble. The very inertia that Kane had used to perform a vertical skid still existed in their headlong rush. “Full astern!” snapped Zagadko. “Forward cameras! Overlay on the sonar image!”
The main screen flickered and they were seeing through the Novgorod’s eyes as it hurtled through the tunnel. The walls shot past them as if they were falling down a well. Suddenly, they broadened and they were out in the internal lake of the mine’s moon pool. The far wall rose up ahead of them.
It would be an unfair irony, thought Katya, if they’d saved themselves from being smashed on the outside of a mountain only to be smashed on the inside of one. She’d hardly noticed that she’d dug her heels in against the floor plating as if she could bring the submarine to a halt by sheer force of will.
“Beaching ramp to port!” called Kane and wrenched the controls over. Many such pools had beaching ramps where boats could be pulled out of the water for routine maintenance. Usually, the boat rode up on a custom-built wheeled cradle, all prim and pampered.
The Novgorod hit the ramp with her bare belly and ran up screaming every centimetre of the way. A four hundred metre long vessel can build up quite a bow wave, especially with her hydroplanes in the vertical position to act as water brakes. The wave was three metres high when it hit the quayside and broke, running tonnes of water across ground where nobody had stood for five years. It hit the front of the empty traffic control offices and stove in the thick glass sheeting. Katya watched all this on the boat’s cameras. She wondered if somebody was going to have to pay for all this damage.
“Engines, all stop!” commanded Captain Zagadko. “And kill that damn sonar!” With the sonar grids out of the water, they were just making a fierce whittering tone that echoed around the pool’s cavern. On the quay, the backwash of water from the bow wave gushed back into the moon pool.
The engines died. The sonar died.
The silence was beautiful.
“Damage report,” demanded Zagadko as he unstrapped himself, standing up and testing the skewed angle of the deck with his feet.
It wasn’t as bad as it could have been. Structurally, the boat was intact. There were any number of minor pieces of damage, but they were largely unimportant to the operation of the vessel or easily fixed. The greatest problem was the actual physical situation. The Novgorod’s first quarter was out of the water and there was no possible way of getting her back into the pool without heavy equipment. “She’ll swim,” the damage control officer concluded, “but she’ll need help to do it.”
Tokorov was at the environmental controls. “Captain, I’ve taken a sample of the air in the mining base.”
“Is it breathable?”
“It’s not just breathable, it’s at maintained levels. They must have left the environmental systems running when it was abandoned. Perhaps they thought somebody would be going back to finish stripping the place and it never happened.”
Zagadko nodded; there was an excellent chance that was exactly what happened. A typical failure in communications between two work crews hired through different contractors and both under the impression that the other would be the last ones out. With no personnel left there to put a strain on life-support, it could tick over quite happily on its fusion cells for ten or twenty years.
“That’s something, at least. We’re going to have to get a message out somehow. Put together a party, Lieutenant Tokarov, and see if there’s any communications gear still in place. Even the bare terminals of a transmitter array will do — we can provide the rest.” Tokarov saluted smartly and moved off to put together a landing party.
Zagadko pursed his lips and grimaced. “Which leaves me with one last unpleasant duty.” In a single smooth action, he drew his sidearm and clapped the barrel against the back of Kane’s skull as he sat at the controls. “Hands clear of the yoke, Mr Kane. I have no desire to kill you so please don’t make it a necessity.”
Kane slowly raised his hands. He didn’t look at all surprised. Katya, on the other hand, was outraged. “What are you doing, captain? He just saved all our lives!”
Zagadko shot her a sideways glance. “I don’t deny it, Ms Kuriakova. But the fact remains that I have reasonable grounds to believe Mr Kane here is an agent of a foreign power. I’d be failing in my duty if I didn’t take him into custody. Which reminds me — Mr Kane, by the authority vested in me by the Federal Maritime Authority and by the Russalkin legislature, you’re under arrest.”
“So I gather,” replied Kane. He seemed faintly amused by it all. Katya couldn’t see anything funny about having a maser pistol tight against the back of your skull. “May I ask under what charge?”
“Suspicion of insurgent activity, acting against the interests of Russalka, farting in a confined space… does it really matter, Kane? There’s something wrong about you and I intend to find out what it is. Specifically, I intend to hand you over to Secor and they can find out.”
“But…” started Katya.
“I’m fully aware of the service that Mr Kane has afforded this vessel, Ms Kuriakova,” Zagadko interrupted her. She saw he was becoming angry and shut up. “And I’m not unappreciative. I shall make that clear in my report. The fact remains that he’s said enough things that make me think he’s a Terran. That’s enough reason for me to arrest him and more than enough for you to accept it.”
“Don’t argue with the captain, Katya,” said Kane softly. “I’d do exactly the same in his place.”
Katya fumed. Why did they insist on talking down to her like this? “How can you be so calm? Do you know what Secor will do to you?”
Secor was the popular name for the FMA Security Organisation and was the only popular thing about it. Nobody liked to think about what went on in Secor establishments or what its agents did with the carte blanche they’d been given by a desperate government during the war. Now, ten years later, the government seemed too terrified to withdraw those powers.