“You know who Tasya is, don’t you?” murmured Kane, interrupting her train of thought. “ She’s the Chertovka. You know that name, surely?”
The Chertovka. The She-Devil.
“She’s a war criminal,” said Katya, an awful sense of dread welling in her. A war criminal, and worse. “You sail with a… a… a monster like her?”
“She’s no angel,” admitted Kane, “but you should be a lot more suspicious about what the Feds put on criminal records. Don’t underestimate her, though. She doesn’t do threats, just warnings.”
“I’m getting bored,” called Tasya. “Maybe you don’t think I’ll do it.” She jammed the gun against the back of Suhkalev’s head. “He’s expendable. Here’s your demonstration, girl.” Katya could hear Suhkalev’s whimpers turn to panicked hyperventilating, a sob of fear on every outward breath.
She’s going to kill him, thought Katya, she really is. She thought of her experiences with the arrogant young Federal officer and how all this was his fault. If he’d just bothered somebody else with his stupid little problems, Lukyan, Sergei and she could have done the round trip and been home celebrating by now. Stupid, stupid Fed.
Just for a second, one tiny fleeting second, she thought, Go ahead. Kill him and she was ashamed.
She dropped the gun and stepped away from Kane. “You win. Leave him alone.” The Chertovka — Katya couldn’t think of her in any other way now — stood over the sobbing man for a moment longer, apparently disappointed. She stepped back and sent Suhkalev sprawling on his face with a kick in his back.
Kane picked up Katya’s gun. He looked at her grimly, but made no move to point it at her. “Very wise, Ms Kuriakova. I’m glad that’s over. Now, if you’ve finished waving guns around and otherwise demonstrating what you’re not very good at, we can concentrate on the real problem.”
“Real problem? I… I don’t understand?”
Kane sighed. “Nothing like a bit of a firefight to distract people from the big picture, is there?” He shook his head and walked towards the Novgorod’s prow and the dockside, not even making Katya go first or ensuring she was following. She stood for a moment, wondering what he meant. Realisation was cold and fearful.
The Leviathan.
CHAPTER 7
Scuttling Code
Katya was having trouble breathing.
Uncle Lukyan was showing no sign of releasing her from the bearhug he’d flung around her the first chance he had. “I thought you were dead, Katinka,” he kept saying, more than a suspicion of a sob in his voice, “I thought you were dead.” He rarely used the familiar form of her name, preferring Katya. It took a lot to make him use Katinka.
When he finally let her go, she said, “I thought the same of you, uncle.” She could feel the tears running down her cheeks and was aware of some of the pirates watching their reunion and not being subtle about it. She really didn’t care. “Yet here you are. Here we are. Here we are.” She couldn’t speak anymore and hugged him close, her eyes clenched shut.
“I tried to save you, Katinka. But the damned LoxPak wouldn’t go on and, by the time I had it secure, you’d vanished. I saw that the top hatch had been blown and hoped… prayed for you to have got clear. The next thing I know, that filthy pirate scow had swallowed the Baby whole. As soon as they’d drained the salvage maw, they were waving guns in our faces and demanding to know where Kane was. That Federal cur, Suhkalev, he’d have sold them his own grandmother he was so scared.”
Katya let Lukyan go, and wiped her eyes on her sleeve. She looked over where Suhkalev sat on the rock floor of the dock, separate from the Novgorod’s crew. They’d treated him with contempt ever since the pirates had concentrated all their prisoners into one group under the unnerving gaze of the deck-sweeper guns aboard the pirate boat. The Fed had his knees drawn up, his chin resting on them, a look of abject misery on his face. He knew he’d disgraced himself and his uniform. Katya thought he looked like he wanted to die. She hoped he wouldn’t do anything stupid.
“We really didn’t know what had happened, though. The acting captain, Tasya something — the one they call the Chertovka — she’s a clever one. She put the boat on silent running and we just hung at neutral buoyancy for what seemed like hours while they listened for whatever had attacked us. They heard something in the distance, but couldn’t get a decent lock until it hit the surface. She went up on one third ahead to investigate but there was nothing there. The Baby’s distress beacon cut out at the same time and she guessed it had been picked up.”
“It had. Kane and I were hanging onto it when the Novgorod picked it up,” said Katya.
Lukyan nodded. “So they brought us here while they figured out what to do next. Next thing we know the pirates are running around because they thought the mining site was under attack by the Feds.” He sighed. “She played the FMA people for fools and they fell for it. What happened to bring you here in such a great hurry, Katya?” Katya noticed he’d dropped the familiar form of her name. He must be calming down.
Slowly, putting in as much detail as she could remember, she told Lukyan about how they’d been attacked again by the same thing that had attacked the Baby, the thing Kane called Leviathan. He listened quietly, asking only a few questions to clarify her story and iron out ambiguities.
“Leviathan,” he said when she’d finished. “That’s an old Earth name for a sea monster. Is…?”
“He’s from Earth,” she confirmed. “He didn’t even try to deny it when I confronted him with it. He seems proud of it.”
“He would be. He should be. A man who has no pride for his birthplace is a hollow man. I don’t begrudge him that much. Still…” his expression darkened, “…Earth.”
It was no secret that there were still Grubbers on Russalka even ten years after they’d lost the war. Stranded away from their units, trapped when the Terran ships ignited their drives and ran back to Earth with their tails between their legs. Abominated and loathed by the Russalkin, it was hardly surprising that most ended up in the world of crime. She’d seen lots in action dramas; pirates, terrorists and insane killers. They’d always seemed so ineffectual, though. Perhaps, she thought, it was time to stop watching everything that came out of the drama studios of the Department of Public Enlightenment quite so uncritically.
“What about the Chertovka?” she asked. “She seems Russalkin.”
“She is,” growled Lukyan, “to our shame. She was a collaborator during the war. She worked for the Grubbers against her own kind. If the FMA ever capture her, there’s nothing waiting for her but a maser bolt through the brain in a quiet cell.”
“And Secor?”
He looked at her suspiciously. “What about Secor?”
“The captain of the Novgorod, Captain Zagadko, he was going to hand Kane over to Secor.”
Lukyan frowned. “Well, I don’t suppose it’s any less than he deserves,” he muttered, but Katya doubted he really meant it. He looked past her and his frown deepened. “Speak of the devil…”
Kane and Tasya were approaching with a couple of pirates acting as bodyguards. Tasya looked like she could look after herself pretty well and wouldn’t need guards, but Kane looked tired and ill.
“Captain Pushkin, Ms Kuriakova,” said Tasya, nodding politely at each.
“Hello again, Katya,” said Kane. His voice sounded strained, the pleasantries forced. “We meet again, Captain Pushkin. I’m very happy you made it.”