Lukyan obviously thought the same thing.
“Kane, is this place connected to the rest of the boat?”
“Anything’s possible,” replied Kane vaguely. He crossed his arms and said “Open internal access.” Nothing happened. He cleared his throat and tried again. Still nothing happened.
“Great. Now what do we do?” asked Katya.
Kane looked uncomfortable. “It’s been years since it’s heard my voice. Maybe it’s changed more than I thought.” He tried again. “Open internal access.” Nothing. As an afterthought, he tried adding “Please.”
One side of the circular chamber started to draw back, the flat white plates sliding to expose a broad armoured door five metres across by three high. “Manners maketh the man,” Katya heard Kane say to himself. Tokarov made a step towards the door but Kane stopped him. “Me first, lieutenant. It might be nervous around strangers.”
“It’s nervous?” said Tokarov.
“It’s alive in a way,” said Kane. “It has its foibles, a little like a small child.”
“Oh? It might throw a tantrum?”
“Yes, it might. And its tantrums come with a body count. Follow me.”
The layout of the Leviathan was nothing like any vessel Katya had ever seen or been taught about at school. There was no sense of space being at a premium, of every cubic centimetre of ship being functional. Instead, it felt like being inside an iceberg. Everything was white and there was no feeling that, beyond the bland walls and ceilings, there was anything she could have looked at and recognised as part of a boat. Even the word “boat” — traditionally applied to even the largest submarines — failed to express the alien nature of the Leviathan.
“How big is this thing?” she asked.
Kane looked back at her and she was relieved that he no longer seemed as angry and distant as he had been back at the mining site. “Big enough. Just short of seven million cubic metres, I believe.”
Lukyan stopped so abruptly that Tokarov walked into him. “Seven million?” he echoed in disbelief.
“Not quite. I was rounding up.” Kane said, not even slowing his walk.
“Strangest boat I’ve ever been on,” said Tokarov. “Strangest one I’ve even heard of. Where are the stations? The berths?”
Kane stopped by a hatch set into the wall. “This is the only berth aboard. It used to be mine. You have to get it into your head, lieutenant, it isn’t a ship or a boat or any kind of vessel of any type that you’re familiar with. It’s a weapon. A really big, intelligent weapon that happens to have a small living space aboard for a pet human.”
“A pet?” said Lukyan. “That’s not a good comparison, is it? It wouldn’t have let a pet go.”
“Maybe it had no use for me,” said Kane.
“I thought the whole point of it having you along was…”
But Kane was walking away and the question was never asked.
The corridor ended abruptly with another hatch much like the one that had led to Kane’s old quarters. He stopped and stood before it as if steeling his nerve. His nervousness communicated itself to Katya.
“Is that the bridge?” she asked.
“No,” he answered in a strange, distracted voice. “There’s no bridge.” He reached out and touched the door very gently, barely brushing it with his fingertips. Immediately, they heard the hiss of seals being released, the door swung smoothly inwards and to one side. Kane took a deep breath and stepped through the opened portal. After a moment, they followed him.
The chamber they had entered was similar in form and proportions to the bay where they’d left the Baby. If anything, however, it was almost more spartan. Here there was no iris valve taking up much of the floor and metal dome on the ceiling housing cable tentacles. There was only one thing of note here, but a thing so extraordinary, it drew their gaze irresistibly.
Mounted exactly in the middle of the room was a chair. No, chair is too small a word. Mounted exactly in the middle of the room was a throne. An ugly, brutal thing made from dark metals and dark imaginations. It sat… it crouched in front of them, grey metal spires rising from its back and its feet merging into a circle of the same materials that seemed almost like a plug thrust into the floor.
Katya allowed a gaping expression of utter disbelief onto her face. The chair was as out of place as it was possible to imagine. “What,” she said, “is that?”
“It’s a chair,” said Kane, accurately but unhelpfully. Lukyan made a step towards it but Kane grabbed his arm. “No!” he said, both fretful and fearful. “Don’t go near that. It’s the single most dangerous thing the Leviathan possesses.”
Lukyan looked at him as if he were mad; they were aboard a synthetically intelligent killing machine armed with attack drones that were so far ahead of anything Russalka had that they were bordering on magical. It seemed absurd to suggest that these were somehow less dangerous than furniture.
“It’s the interface. It’s where the Leviathan and a human…” he looked for a term they might understand, something that explain the horror he felt inside towards the throne. He could think of nothing. “…interface,” he finished, weakly.
“And what’s that?” asked Katya, pointing upwards.
In the centre of the gently vaulted ceiling, a circular aperture had appeared so silently and so neatly that none of them had even noticed it open. From the deep darkness within the aperture, a sphere was slowly descending. A metre in diameter, utterly black, the sphere came down upon a thin supporting rod as elegantly as a drop of oil rolling down a metal surface. When it had descended perhaps three metres, it stopped abruptly and without a tremor.
“What is it?” demanded Tokarov, but he demanded quietly. The sphere was so perfect and so utterly inscrutable, it was easy to imagine terrifying levels of violence lurking within.
“It’s a Medusa sphere,” said Kane. “Nobody make any sudden moves.”
“A Medusa sphere?”
“You asked whether the Leviathan had any internal security measures,” replied Kane, “I can now assure you that it has. The sphere will…” He stopped as a ghostly violet dot appeared on his chest. Slowly it moved upwards until it was lying between his eyes.
Katya looked back to Lukyan to point it out but found him rooted to the spot by an identical dot. Tokarov was the same. Katya’s hackles raised and her stomach tightened. “Uncle,” she asked, sounding far more in control of her emotions than she felt, “Have I got a purple dot of light on my forehead?” Lukyan looked at her sideways without turning his face from the sphere and nodded slightly.
“I don’t want to be overly dramatic at this point,” said Kane, “but we have all been targeted by the sphere with lasers. If the Leviathan decides it doesn’t like us being here, these beams will intensify inside perhaps a thousandth of a second and the results will be painless, but terminal. Therefore, please don’t do anything to antagonise the Leviathan.”
Katya knew very little about the legends of Earth, but she knew what a Medusa was, and the sphere’s name was well chosen. In the stories, the Medusa was a woman so hideous that to look upon her face turned the hapless observer to stone. Here, the four of them stood there terrified to move, to do anything that the Leviathan might consider aggressive. They might not have been literally turned to stone, but they were still petrified.
“What are you going to do, Kane?” said Tokarov, trying not to move his lips.
“I have no idea,” Kane replied in a tone of resignation.