“Then we should be careful because, believe me, that drone carries a big laser.”
Katya shook her head. “But that’s not the point. Why is it carrying a laser at all? We went through all this in tech classes. High energy lasers are expensive to build, and they’d make pathetic weapons underwater anyway. Even with an X-ray laser, water refracts the beams. That’s apart from the water boiling and then turning into plasma in front of the beam, giving you even worse scattering. The effective range of a laser with a range of hundreds of kilometres in air will be a few metres at most underwater.”
“That’s all they needed. I’ve looked at your uncle’s minisub. One of those drones sunk it with a laser bolt; same with the hole in the Novgorod’s salvage maw. They can get close enough, that’s a given.”
“But why? Why go to all the trouble when a normal torpedo with a simple explosive warhead could do the same with none of the cost and trouble? It makes no sense. The Leviathan’s drones have only shown what they’re really capable of when one has got out of the water.”
“And that’s your conclusion?”
Katya hadn’t been deliberately working towards a conclusion, but suddenly realised that this answered the questions that had been bothering her all along. “It was never designed for submarine combat. Its drones can do the job, but its real function is to fight in the dry.” She imagined what would happen if it reached Lemuria, standing off while its drones patrolled the corridors, cutting down all resistance with their terrible laser cannon, not caring if they brought the ocean crashing through ruptured walls. “We can’t let it reach Lemuria,” she breathed, shaken by the terrible vision.
“Very much what Havilland said,” replied Tasya, “but he was short on details as to how to manage it too. One drone killed five or six of the Vodyanois before they had a chance to draw their guns. Even when we returned fire, we did nothing to it. Maser bolts barely register and bullets bounce off. If you’ve got any bright ideas on how we can stop it, I’d be fascinated to hear them.” Katya was silent. “Thought as much. In that case, we’ll just carry on running.”
Two hundred metres further down the corridor, Tasya abruptly pulled Katya to one side, putting her hand over her mouth, and Katya thought she’d finally lost her patience and was going to kill her. Instead, she signalled Katya to be silent and left her crouching in the shadows while she moved ahead in utter silence, her gun drawn. She braced against the edge of an alcove where some equipment must once have stood before the base was stripped, focussed, and spun around the edge as she brought the maser pistol to bear. Katya thought she heard a gasp of surprise and terror. The Chertovka growled with exasperation and reached into the alcove with her free hand.
“Get out of there, you worm,” she hissed, and dragged Suhkalev out into the open. He was whimpering so pathetically that Katya couldn’t help but feel at least a little sorry for him.
“You’re a poor excuse for a Federal agent, aren’t you?” Tasya said as he sprawled on the plastic decking plates. “If they were all like you, life would be a lot easier for the likes of me. Stop that blubbering before I stop it for you.”
“Leave him alone,” Katya found herself saying. “He’s been through a lot.”
Tasya looked at her with surprise. “No more than you, Katya Kuriakova, and you’re bearing up well.”
Katya knew it was true but wasn’t going to agree. She didn’t know why she hadn’t come apart at the seams yet; she found it hard to believe it had anything to do with bravery. She didn’t feel brave and surely you felt it when you were brave? She felt scared most of the time. The only thing that seemed to keep her going was the pragmatic streak that had used to drive her friends mad whenever they wanted to just be crazy and have some fun once in a while. “I’m scared,” she said to Suhkalev, “I’m scared too. But we have to keep moving.”
“We’re all scared,” growled Tasya, exasperated. She was looking back down the corridor as if she expected the Leviathan’s drone to appear at any moment.
She probably did. It possibly might.
“Show me a man without fear and I’ll show you someone with a death wish. They make poor brothers in arms, believe me.”
“I didn’t…” Suhkalev spoke in a careful voice, terror threatening to flood over every syllable, “I didn’t want this… I don’t like it. I don’t like it.” He sounded like a frightened child.
Please don’t say his mind has broken, thought Katya. If he can’t function, how can we save him as well as ourselves?
Tasya, apparently a disciple of applied practical psychiatry, simple backhanded Suhkalev hard. He was sent sprawling on the floor. In a second he was back on his feet and charging at her in a fury. Getting the muzzle of her maser pistol, a big ugly gun that made Zagadko’s look quite civilised, placed neatly between his eyes slowed him to a stony halt.
“Better,” said Tasya. “You do have some fight in you after all.” She reached around to the small of her back, drew a gun and lobbed it at him. He caught it and stood there uncomprehendingly. “It won’t do you much good against what’s after us, but it may come in handy.”
It certainly did. He snapped it up to a firing pose and barked, “You’re under arrest! Drop your weapon!”
“Yes, yes. Plenty of time for that later. Come along.” She carried on up the corridor. Suhkalev followed a few paces behind, assuring her that, really, she was under arrest. He meant it. He did. Katya sighed and followed him.
He continued to inform Tasya she was under arrest for the next fifteen minutes and Tasya ignored him for every second of it. Katya tried telling him he was wasting his time, but he just looked at her with an expression of faint embarrassment and carried on. Eventually, Katya started to wonder if the whole pantomime to appear competent and capable was being put on for her behalf.
Tasya put up with being arrested three to four times a minute very well for quite a while until even her patience finally gave out as they were entering a T–junction. “Look. I’m pleased you’re not blubbing like a baby anymore. I’m pleased we have somebody else along who’s had arms training. I’m pleased you’re so motivated now. On the other hand, if you offer to put me in FMA custody once more, I’m going to forget all about how pleased I am and burn your head into a smoking stump just to make you shut up. Do you get a faint feeling for how irritated you’re making me? Hmm?”
For his answer, he pushed her to one side and opened fire down the corridor. Tasya braced herself and looked, brought her gun up and fired a couple of shots before shouting, “It’s useless! Run!”
Before they hared back down the corridor they’d just walked up, Katya risked a quick peek around the corner at what was pursuing them.
When Tasya had spoken of a “robotic drone,” Katya had formed a mental picture of something like a mining drone; a fat little body, tracks, stubby arms with tools or, in this case, weapons at the ends. The reality was entirely different. The drone looked like nothing so much as a torpedo three metres in length and half a metre in diameter. It hung effortlessly a metre from the floor and glided soundlessly but with infinite menace towards her. The end towards her was fronted with a reflective port like the lensed casing of a searchlight. That seemed likely to contain its sensors, she thought. Belatedly, it also struck her that this would be the focussing element for the drone’s devastating laser. She threw herself sideways barely in time. The corridor bloomed with brilliant light and the corridor junction was suddenly full of smoke and flying droplets of molten rock. One pattered to the floor right in front of her face where she lay prone. The drone could reduce cold stone to lava in less than a blink of an eye. This is what had sunk the Baby and crippled the Novgorod. How could they possibly beat it? Katya got her feet back underneath her and ran madly in pursuit of Tasya and Suhkalev.