“Visitors? Who?”
There was a banging on the hatch Sergei had sealed after himself. Uncle Lukyan’s face grew dark with anger. “Sergei…”
“Yeah, yeah.” Sergei had already unstrapped himself and was moving aft. “Tell them we don’t want any.” They looked back as he opened the hatch and stepped out. They heard voices for a minute and then Sergei stuck his head inside. “You’d best step out, captain. It’s the Feds.”
Lukyan’s temper cooled slightly. It never helped to antagonise the Federal Maritime Authority. He quickly unstrapped himself and left the Baby, Katya following close behind.
On the lockside, Sergei was standing talking to a man in a Federal Security uniform. Actually, thought Katya, “man” was probably putting it a bit strongly. He only looked two or three years older than her. He was neatly turned out in the utilitarian black jumpsuit, short peaked cap and combat boots of the Authority, but his crop of acne damaged the overall effect. What presence he had was mainly the result of the large handgun in his belt holster; a standard issue maser. It took her a moment to notice there was another man standing a couple of metres back from the officer. She realised with a shock that he was handcuffed.
“What’s this about?” Uncle Lukyan demanded of the officer. He jerked his thumb at the man in the handcuffs. “Who’s he?”
The officer held a piece of paper in Lukyan’s face. “FMA business. I’m commandeering your boat.”
Lukyans’s eyes bulged. “You’re what?”
“You are to transport me and my prisoner to the FMA penal facility at the Deeps with all dispatch.”
“The Deeps? That’s nowhere near our…”
“Failure to comply with the terms of a Federal warrant is a criminal offence. Do you comply?”
Katya had never seen her uncle so angry. His clothes almost seemed too small for him as his muscles bunched with fury.
“Listen, you officious little snot, I didn’t fight a war just so the likes of you…”
“Do you comply?” shouted the officer in his face. Katya would almost have been impressed with his bravery except for the gun. She had noticed the officer’s free hand move down to rest on the pistol grip and it looked like Lukyan had seen it too.
“Give that here,” snapped Lukyan and snatched the paper from the officer’s hand. He made a great show of examining it, but everybody there knew that he had already lost and the Fed had won. If Lukyan wanted to keep his master’s license, his boat and his liberty, he really had no choice but to obey. Finally, he folded up the paper and gave it back. “Academic, anyway. We don’t have sufficient space for two passengers.”
That took the officer aback, the first time his careful façade of authority had wavered. Katya reckoned he probably spent hours in front of the mirror, practising being cool and official.
“Your boat’s rated for two crew and four passengers.”
Lukyan smiled. “Half the passenger space has been given over to cargo and we’re carrying three crew today. It’s all in our itinerary and manifest. Nice and legal.”
“You don’t need three crew for a bucket like that.”
Lukyan’s smile faded quickly. The officer didn’t notice, he was pointing at Katya. “What does she do?”
Without being asked, Katya snapped out her card and held it out to him, open. “I’m the navigator.”
“You?” The Fed didn’t even try to conceal his disgust. “You’re just a kid.”
“Not in the eyes of the law.” They all turned to look at the prisoner in surprise. He was somewhere in his late thirties, thin rather than lean, with dishevelled light brown hair worn at collar length. He was wearing loose clothing, a baggy shirt, a long jacket of some light material. Katya had never seen anybody dressed like that, couldn’t even remember ever seeing clothes like that. They were soiled and dirty; he had plainly been in a fight recently. One lapel and shoulder of the coat were speckled with blood from an untended cut on his forehead. He spoke again, quiet and controlled. “She’s rated as an apprentice navigator, which is about equivalent to a junior commissioned rank in the FMA. That should be good enough for you, officer. After all, you’ve got a Federal ID, which qualifies you as some sort of crime-busting hero rather than the chimp in a uniform that you first appear.”
Katya had no idea what a “chimp” was, but it didn’t sound like a compliment to her. It apparently didn’t sound like one to the officer either. He drew his baton in one smooth move and slammed it across his prisoner’s thigh so hard that she wouldn’t have been surprised to hear the bone snap. The prisoner grunted and fell to the floor. The Fed stepped up to kick him where he lay when Sergei cleared his throat.
“Ahem,” he coughed theatrically. The Fed stopped and looked at him. “Officer, educate me. Aren’t there regulations about the handling of prisoners?”
The Fed’s face was pale with anger, which only served to make his acne stand out. “He… he was… Allowances are made for subduing prisoners.”
Sergei nodded sagely and cocked his head on one side to look at where the prisoner lay on the floor clutching his thigh. “Subduing. Right. Seems fair enough. He looks pretty subdued now, wouldn’t you say?”
The Fed scowled, grabbed the prisoner by the arm and pulled him back to his feet. “You,” he said to Sergei, “are you the usual navigator?” Sergei nodded. “Then she stays behind. We don’t need two navigators.”
Uncle Lukyan still didn’t look happy, but she knew that he had no choice. She was already braced for the bad news when he turned to her. “Katya. I’m so sorry…”
“Miss your first voyage in a crew position?” butted in Sergei. “I don’t think so. It’s not a long trip to the Deeps. You can head straight to Lemuria from there and be back here halfway through third shift easy. I’ll sit it out.”
Katya could almost have kissed him. Almost, but not quite. Instead she made do with a grateful smile.
Leaving Sergei on the dry side of the lock, they trooped back into the Baby. Katya and Lukyan strapped themselves back into their seats as the Fed secured his prisoner in the passenger position behind Katya. Then he moved forward, blithely stepping over the yellow line to lean on the crew seats. Lukyan glared at him, but the Fed was utterly unaware of the faux pas. He watched as Katya laid in a new course that would take them to the FMA facility. After a few seconds he snapped, “What are you doing?”
Katya bit back the sarcastic comment she was dying to make and tried to be helpful and friendly. “I’m plotting a course to the Deeps, as you wished.”
“You’re deliberately wasting time. Why isn’t the course direct? Why this detour? Explain yourself!”
Katya couldn’t believe it. Were there people who really believed that the quickest route from A to B was always a straight line? “If we go there directly,” she said slowly, as if talking to an idiot, “we will have to go through this volume. See? This bright yellow place on the map? That’s amber for caution. That’s the Weft, a volume of random currents, Russalka has lots of places like that.”
“Is that area dangerous?”
Katya realised that the Fed truly knew nothing about submarine operations. He was thinking in two dimensional areas, not three dimensional volumes. She fought down the urge to lecture him on the subject; the Weft was clearly going to be hard enough to explain.
“No, but the Baby doesn’t have the big drives of a military boat. If we get caught in a tow, it could put hours on the journey while we break free. Believe me, it makes more sense…”
“Use a direct course. That’s an order.”