Katya shrugged; she had no idea. She wasn’t the only one.
The first thing Kane had asked Petrov as soon as the communications channel with the Leviathan was closed was, “Lieutenant Petrov, you know Tokarov best here. In your opinion, is he, was he sane?”
Petrov had not hesitated. “He’s a good officer, a rock solid man. I’ve entrusted my life to him on more than one occasion in the past. I would have done so again without any reservations. I cannot explain why he has done this.” For once, even Petrov’s cool demeanour seemed shaken. “I cannot explain it at all.”
All she could offer Suhkalev was, “Maybe we can board the Leviathan again, try and find out what happened.”
“You think it will let you?”
“Maybe. We can barely keep up with it at the moment, though, and the Vodyanoi’s a fast boat. The Baby wouldn’t have a chance. Anyway,” she said, changing the subject, “how are you? Aren’t the Novgorods talking to you still?”
“They’re not so bad, now. I think helping to kill that drone and get it’s IFF unit got me some respect. They’re glad a Fed was involved, even if it was just some punk from base security.”
“You can’t blame them. Secor mainly draws from the bases.” She looked at him, trying to work him out. “Why’d you join base security in the first place? You know everybody hates them.”
“Fast career track. I wouldn’t mind ending up in Secor. You’re bright, you must have thought of it.”
“Hah!” she laughed sarcastically. “For about half a second!” She could see him flushing with humiliation and made an effort to tone down her contempt. “Oh, c’mon. People are scared of Secor. I don’t want to scare people. It doesn’t matter how good the job is; they’ve got reputations out of horror stories. You can’t want that.”
He didn’t answer her or even meet her eyes. Her shoulders sagged with dismay. “That’s a selling point with you, is it? Look,” she got up to leave, “Suhkalev, there are better ways to get respect. What you did in the mine workings, staying cool getting that machine working with the drone bearing down on us, that was brave. That’s got you some respect. Real respect, not that fake stuff that Secor have. That’s just fear by another name. If that’s all you want, be my guest. I think you’re a better man than that.”
She left the officers’ mess and headed back to the small cabin she’d been given wondering whether her words had made any impact at all.
She managed ninety minutes sleep before her cabin’s communicator woke her with a request to go to the bridge. She was too sleepy to be sure, but she thought it sounded like Kane. Why couldn’t everybody just leave her alone? She struggled back into the Novgorod uniform coverall — which wasn’t fitting her any better then when she’d gone to sleep, she was disappointed to note — and headed forward to the bridge while she tried to remember the last time she'd eaten.
On entering the bridge, she was greeted by Kane who’d reclaimed the captain’s chair. She was rather more pleased to see the plate of sandwiches from the galley than she was to see him and helped herself with only the briefest of requests and no waiting for an answer.
Kane let her eat in silence for a couple of minutes before speaking. “I thought you might like to know what we’ve decided to do, Katya Kuriakova. We’re breaking off the pursuit of the Leviathan.” Katya didn’t say anything — her mouth was full of mulched bread and reconstituted turkey analogue — but her expression conveyed a great deal. Kane answered her unspoken criticism. “No, we’re not giving up. We’re going to break off onto a perpendicular so that we can attempt to send a message to the Yagizba Conclaves without the Leviathan intercepting it. My former experiences with that monstrosity count for nothing now; with the synthetic intelligence finally in command, it’s drawing on Tokarov’s own knowledge and instincts. It’s no longer just a machine. Before, if it had intercepted the message, it would have ignored it, possibly only turning to attack us instead if the conditions were right. Now, we have no idea what it might do. Therefore, we can’t allow any chance of interception. We’re already heading away to get some clear water between the pair of us.”
Katya swallowed, took a drink of water and asked, “What will you tell them?”
“The truth. That an artefact of the War of Independence, an automated Terran battleship, is heading their way and they can’t hope to fight it. If they take us seriously, and without FMA codes there’s no reason they should, they may try and disperse the cluster or even evacuate there and then. I don’t know.”
“They’ll wait,” said Katya. “They’ll wait to see if it’s a real threat and, by the time they realise it is, it’ll be too late.”
“Don’t underestimate the Yagizban,” said Tasya. She’d commandeered the navigation position and had given no indication she was listening. Katya noticed, with some irrational irritation, that the Chertovka had reconfigured the display away from Katya’s favoured layout.
Kane caught Katya’s eye, nodded shrewdly in Tasya’s direction and mouthed Yagizban.
Still absorbed by the navigation display, Tasya didn’t notice. “They took the heaviest and most sustained attacks at the opening of the war and still managed to keep this world fighting back. They’ll realise how serious the situation is in plenty of time, believe you me.”
Katya thought she’d believe that when she saw it. The Yagizban might be the technological cutting edge of Russalka, but the Leviathan was an entire magnitude beyond anything that had ever been built in their factories. The only way to believe the Leviathan was to see it, and then it would be too late for anything.
Once she had been made aware of the plan, there seemed little point in staying on the bridge. Tasya told her that it would be four hours before they were in a safe position to transmit so Katya decided to take the opportunity to catch up on a little more sleep. She stole the remaining sandwiches and headed back to her cabin, where she ate in her bunk, filling it with crumbs, before dousing the light and finally getting some uninterrupted sleep.
Her watch’s alarm failed to penetrate the exhaustion that had settled upon her in full force and she slept a further two hours before finally stirring. She dressed quickly and went forward. Neither Kane nor Tasya were on the bridge, only Petrov with a skeleton bridge complement. He looked neat and alert and Katya wondered if he ever needed to sleep or just had his batteries replaced once every week or so.
“Good afternoon, Ms Kuriakova. You slept well?”
“Have we already signalled the Yagizba Conclaves?” she asked.
His eyes flickered up to the chronometer over the main screen. “Just over a hundred minutes ago.”
“And?”
He raised an eyebrow. “And… what?”
He could be so vague sometimes, she thought. “And how did they react to being told a synthetic intelligence displacing about seven million tonnes was coming to pay them a visit?”
“Oh, that. They were surprisingly unconcerned. Perhaps they were just being careful what was discussed over an open channel, but I was expecting a slightly more violent reaction to learning about the Leviathan.”
“So, what do they plan to do? What do we plan to do?”
“They gave us some coordinates and a time to make a rendezvous. I would guess they have a patrol vessel in the area and we’re supposed to be meeting up. Anyway, we’re supposed to get there, surface, and wait.”