“They’re inactive. I’ve put this chamber on maintenance cycle so the Leviathan can’t access anything in here. Now if I can find the maintenance consoles… oh, wait.” Another click and three sections of floor started to rise. “One of these will have launch controls. Check that one over there, would you?” Without waiting for confirmation, he moved to one of the control consoles still deploying itself and locking into place.
Keep myself busy, thought Katya. Plenty of time later for grief. Stay focussed. She went to the rising section Kane had indicated. It wasn’t a console at all, she discovered when she reached it, but just a cover for a viewing porthole in the Leviathan’s skin. She wondered briefly why it had such a thing, but then she looked out and all such questions flew from her mind. “Kane! Kane! Come here quickly!”
Kane ran to her side and looked down through the port. Beneath them was not the submarine darkness of the Russalka ocean. Instead, they could see waves crashing far, far below them. A moment later, clouds came between them and the water.
The Leviathan was flying.
CHAPTER 19
Falling Down
“I hate flying,” said Katya Kuriakova as she watched Russalka fall rapidly away from them. Fine, thought Katya. Perfect. “This isn’t a submarine, is it?”
Kane raised his index finger in admonishment. “Now, I never actually said the Leviathan was a submarine. Not just a submarine”
Katya was only half listening. “This explains so much. Using lasers underwater is so incredibly inefficient. Tasya said it was a crazy way of arming the drones. Not if they were always meant to operate in the air.” She looked up at Kane. He looked faintly embarrassed. “Or space. This thing is space capable, isn’t it? It’s a starship?”
“How did you work that out?”
“Every time you talked about how you came to Russalka, you said you were inside this thing. That doesn’t really make sense unless there was no transporter starship carrying it. I actually wondered how big a ship would be needed to carry the Leviathan here and what happened to it after it finished its job. There’s no mention of such a large Terran ship in the war records I’ve read. So there never was such a vessel. The Leviathan came here under its own power.” She frowned. “Why did you never tell anybody? Why did you let everybody carry on thinking this was just a submarine?”
Kane sat down on one of the Baby’s outrider rigs and sighed. “I’ve been having doubts about the Yagizba Conclaves for a while. I was in no hurry to tell them that a starfaring battleship was about to hand itself over to them. Actually, that’s not quite true. The Leviathan’s stardrive is slag; they only work once. Still, it can reach space. The important thing was that it would have given the Yagizban control of the planet from orbit. I wasn’t sure if they deserved that advantage.” He scratched his nose. “I wasn’t sure if anybody on this benighted planet deserves that.”
Katya chose to ignore that last comment and looked out of the porthole again. “Why has it only chosen to fly now?”
“Because it’s hurt. Its stealth systems work well underwater, not so well in the air or space, but I think its stealth must have been damaged by the explosion. Probably its hull integrity too. It uses a forcefield to lend its hull strength.” He noticed Katya looking blankly at him. “A forcefield. It’s… well, it’s complicated. A projected energy field that exhibits some of the qualities of matter.” From her expression, that was not a good explanation. He gave up. “All you need to know is that the Leviathan’s skin is protected by a very powerful forcefield. It deflects attacks that actually reach it and, just as importantly, holds the hull together when it’s under stress. It allowed the Leviathan to rest far deeper than a conventional boat’s hull could bear. Between losing its stealth and its hull not being able to bear the same pressures, it feels vulnerable. It’s running for high ground where it knows it can’t be reached.”
“Taking us with it.”
“It has to prioritise its problems. We’re probably pretty low in the list. It will use its damage control systems to fix itself up and then, when it’s got a minute, it will kill us.”
“I know. We have to get out of here.” She looked down through the porthole. Russalka looked a long way away. “Any ideas?”
Kane walked over to join her and they watched the clouds become distant. “In a word, no.” He cocked his head and admitted, “Well, one, but it isn’t to get us out of here. Let me show you something.” They walked to the console Kane had been studying. “The Leviathan uses two power sources. When it can get water, it uses simple electrolysis to break it down into oxygen and hydrogen and stores the hydrogen.”
“To use as fuel for a fusion power plant. Any boat much bigger than the Baby does that.”
“True, but fusion doesn’t give the large amounts of quick I need it now power something as big as this needs in, say, combat. Which brings us to the second power source.” He tapped the display where a figure read 5.56Kg.
“So educate me. What masses 5.56 kilograms?”
Kane looked seriously at her. “Antimatter. It certainly didn’t have that much when I left it. It must have been sitting at the bottom of the sea for ten years using fusion energy to make the stuff. Something else it’s not supposed to do. If it had lost power to the antimatter containment field and it had come in contact with the side of its container… Katya, do you have the faintest idea what antimatter is?”
She shook her head. “I was hoping you’d tell me that.”
Kane sighed. “Simply put, it’s matter’s evil twin. When matter and antimatter come in contact, they obliterate each other, right down to the subatomic level. BANG!” Katya jumped. “Total conversion into energy! The amount of the stuff the Leviathan is carrying would produce a staggeringly huge explosion. It would have been suicide to destroy the Leviathan while it was still in the ocean; it would have caused a shockwave that would have travelled around the world wreaking untold damage. At least we can prevent that.”
Katya looked curiously at the console readings. “How?”
“By making it explode up here where it won’t do any harm. I can access the antimatter containment field from here, turn it off. A few minutes later it will decay to the point where the antimatter comes in contact with the matter wall of its container, and that will be that. The jig will be over for the Leviathan.”
“And us.”
“And us. Yes. What can I say? This always had the air of a suicide mission. All we can do is to try and protect Russalka.”
Katya thought about it. Was it really such a loss, to give her life up like this? She had no family left. She had never really had any friends. It was a shame that the people down there would never know the sacrifice she made for them, but that was little enough compared to the lives that would be saved. “Why should you care, anyway? You’re not even Russalkin.”
“We’re all human,” said Kane simply. He gestured at the controls. “What do you say? Shall we?”
Katya nodded quickly, not trusting herself to speak. Kane reached for the controls, his hands hesitated above them momentarily, his fingers twitched once, then he tapped out some instructions. It took him less than five seconds to sign their death warrants. When he was finished, he stepped back.