“Who’s that little snot in my chair?”
“Hi, Sergei,” said Katya. She pressed the memory button on the chair. Instead of remembering her settings, it reset them back to Sergei’s. She swore mildly.
“Cursing already,” said Sergei, stepping forward. “One minute at the con and she’s Captain Ahab. Here,” he pressed the memory button and another unmarked one lurking nearby. The chair finally acknowledged the new settings. “It’s not very intuitive. Just one of those little things you don’t learn from simulators.” He plumped himself in one of the two empty passenger seats, the two opposite him being folded up and the space taken with plastic wrapped boxes, their cargo for Lemuria Station. “Experience. It’s a grand thing. Learning by getting your hands dirty. Loads more fun than the classroom.”
Katya prickled slightly. Was he getting at her? She’d always been good in school. She slid a look at Lukyan but he was checking his wristwatch against the Baby’s chronometer.
“Ten minutes before MTC will let us out. Might as well use the time.” Lukyan waved his big slab of a hand at the three screens ranged in front of her beneath the forward viewport. “How similar is this to your simulator?”
For her answer, Katya reached forward and tapped the screens one after another. They immediately glowed into life. She looked briefly at each and said over her shoulder, “Is this your set-up, Sergei?”
“Yes. Why? Are you going to tell me I’ve been doing it wrong all these years?”
“No,” she said lightly, “I was just going to congratulate you for doing it exactly as per the textbooks.” She heard him grumble under his breath and smiled; he’d probably reprogram it the first chance he got now rather than do it the way the schools did. He was almost pathetically proud of being self-taught.
She pointed out the screens to her uncle. “Navigational, waypoints. Sonar returns. Navigational, plot. Shall I write up a plot or pull one from memory?” She quickly added, “Sir.” It was tricky to remember that, for the time being, her big friendly bear of an uncle was her captain and was to be treated with respect.
“You’ll learn nothing by using an old plot. Draw up a fresh one. Apprentice.”
Katya barely had time to shift the data from the right-hand multi-function display onto the more convenient and larger middle one when they were hailed by Maritime Traffic Control.
“Petrograd MTC to RRS 15743 Kilo Pushkin’s Baby.” Uncle Lukyan responded and Control continued, “Please hold until advised.”
“What?” Lukyan bridled. “What’s the problem, Control? Don’t tell me we’ve been bumped?”
“No problem, Lukyan. Please hold.” Traffic Control broke the link before Lukyan could ask for clarification.
“No problem,” he said, seething. “No problem. That means there’s a fat problem.” He looked apologetically at her. “I’m sorry this isn’t going to plan, Katya. Today of all days.”
“These things usually don’t,” said Sergei from the back. “All part of the learning experience. Lesson one: expect to get screwed over for the convenience of others on a regular basis.”
Uncle Lukyan looked back at him and then at Katya. He shrugged. “He’s right, unfortunately, miserable bilger that he is. Well, we might as well make the best of a bad lot. You know your MFDs. How are you on the rest of the instruments?”
Katya looked at the banks of instruments. They had never looked quite this threatening when reduced to computer graphics on a simulator panel. Her wan smile told Lukyan everything he needed to know. He pointed at a box mounted up and to the right. “Judas box. That’s got all your warning lights on there and a couple of telemetry monitors. Should always be a healthy green like it is now. If it starts getting spotty, you’re in trouble. The closer to the top of the display the light is, the more vital the system.”
“But isn’t this stuff on the MFDs?”
“It is,” said Sergei, “if you can be bothered to page through to find it. The point is that the Judas box is always in the same place. You want to know your system status, you look right there. Fast and easy.”
“Same goes for these other instruments,” agreed Lukyan. “You need to be able to find this information quickly.” He tapped another display. “Depth gauge. If the figures are green…”
“Then you’re safe,” finished Katya. “If they’re yellow…”
“Amber,” muttered Sergei.
“…it means you’re below your test depth and if they’re red, then you’re beneath your crush depth.”
“I’ve only seen them amber a couple of times,” said Lukyan. “That was during the war. I’ve never seen them go red outside an instrument test. I hope to God I never see them do so otherwise.”
Katya looked at him with interest. He rarely spoke about his experiences in the war. Like many, he regarded it as a penance the world had suffered to remain free. “Why did you dive so deep, uncle? Sir?”
“Dodging a torpedo. We were already beneath the thermocline so there were no thermal layers beneath us to dive for. Our last hope was to lose the fish in the geography of the sea bed. Find a canyon to hide in or a spire to duck behind. You could hear the torpedo’s active sonar pinging off the hull. It sounds nothing like a boat’s sonar. High and fast. If we could drop a noisemaker and move into cover at about the same time, we might be able to fool the torpedo into attacking the wrong thing. A few metres above the gully we found, the depth gauge went amber. By the time we were safely in cover, the hull was groaning. Not much, but the torpedo had already put a powerful fear of death in us. Hearing the boat’s ribs creak just about put the jam on it.” He shook himself slightly, bringing himself back to the here and now. “Anybody who says war is glorious is a damned fool, Katya.”
“But you managed to dodge the torpedo, didn’t you?”
“No,” butted in Sergei. “It hit them and they all died horribly. That’s why he’s here to tell the story.”
“Thermal layer detector,” said Lukyan, ignoring him. He pointed out a vertical display. “There’s not many torpedoes to dodge these days but a thermal layer will still mess up your sonar so you need to know where they are. They can make life very difficult when you’re prospecting with high intensity sonar pulses or surveying charges.” He waved at the instruments. “Even with all this, travelling through the seas of Russalka is like running through clouds of teargas. Everything makes navigation difficult. The thermocline is..?”
It took a moment before she realised he was questioning her. “Uh. The thermocline is the layer of water heated by solar energy. Not much of that gets through the storm clouds on Russalka, so it’s not as deep as on some other worlds. As you get deeper, it gets colder, the water gets denser…”
“…and it screws up your sonar,” commented Sergei.
“Then there’s the halocline. As you get deeper, more mineral salts are dissolved into the sea water, making it denser…”
“…and it screws up your sonar,” repeated Sergei.
“There’s the pycnocline, which is a combination of the effects of the minerals and the temperature. Oh, and there’s the rusocline, which is unique to our world. That’s a sort of halocline but caused by the mineral spouts in the sea bed.”
“And guess what it does to your sonar?” said Sergei.
The communicator bleeped into life again. “Petrograd MTC to RRS 15743 Kilo Pushkin’s Baby.” They actually heard the controller sigh. “I’m really sorry about this, Lukyan. You’ve got visitors.”