Katya's World (31 page)

“
Really? Oh.
”
Kane seemed to be looking for something optimistic to add.
“
Oh.
”

Petrov remained calm.
“
Take your time, Suhkalev. They can’t penetrate the hull. Take your time and get it right.
”
He did not voice his concerns that they might bring up weapons that
could
p
enetrate the hull soon;
he didn’t want Suhkalev to panic and crash the lot of them into the hangar wall at close to the speed of sound.

“
I can do this,
”
Suhkalev kept muttering to himself as he examined the controls,
“
I can do this.
”
The sweat beading his lip did not lend confidence.
“
The lift controls are normal contragravity but, these,
”
he waved at a display of inscrutably complex figures and status levels,
“
I don’t know what they are. They should be the thrusters, but I’ve never seen anything like them.
”

Petrov thought back to the blue fire streaming from the engines of the transporter that had collected the
Vodyanoi
from the ocean.
“
They’re Goddard units. Space manoeuvre drive, almost reactionless. Rediscovering how to build them is something else they didn’t bother telling the FMA.
”

“
You know how they work?
”
asked Suhkalev with pathetic hope.

“
Of course I don’t. The principle was lost during the original colonisation. Try and use the lift units to get us into the open air before engaging the thrusters. At least we won’t have walls in front of us when you light them up.
”

Suhkalev visibly steeled himself and put his hand on the lift controls. As they wound up to power, the transporter jolted slightly on its landing-pylons. Slowly, the hydraulic shock absorbers extended as the aircraft lifted uncertainly from the deck. Almost immediately, one corner sagged lower than the others and the whole vehicle started to slowly drift to one side as it spun gently, if not actually out of control, certainly not entirely within it.

“
What are you doing, Suhkalev?
”

Suhkalev was barely listening. He was chanting
“
I can do this, I can do this, I can do this,
”
under his breath as he manually rebalanced the lifters, slowing the spin and angling the drift to take them under the open hatches.

Looking out of the cockpit window Petrov saw something to worry him. He walked back, keeping his balance by gripping the rails that ran along the ceiling for exactly that purpose until he was back in the crew disembarkation room aft of the flight deck. The remaining crew of the
Novgorod
looked up at him from where they sat cross-legged on the floor. All of them had weapons lying across their laps taken from the transporter’s arms locker. They looked about as confident as Petrov felt.
“
They’ve brought up some sort of support weapon. I don’t know what it is, but it’s about two metres long and looks like it’s shoulder-fired. Best shots to the door so they don’t have an easy time using it.
”

Three Novgorods moved to the main external hatch, pleased to have something to do rather than sitting and waiting for Suhkalev to fly them into a steel wall.

The hatch slid open and the storm blew in. Suhkalev had managed to manoeuvre the transporter beneath the open hatch in the FP-1’s topmost landing area and was now gingerly making it ascend. The rate of climb was slow and it would be almost a minute before they were hidden from the Yagizban troopers scattered around the deck below, plenty of time for them to score several hits. The
Novgorod
’s best surviving shots braced themselves against the door frame and took aim.

The Yagizban weapon
s
team had been drilled in using the rocket launcher, they had been trained in maintaining it and its ammunition, they had even been trained in how to carry it in victory parades. Nobody, however, had ev
er shown them what to do in the event of
the target
shooting back. As the first maser bolts, fired more in hope than expectation of hitting anything, came raining down from the escaping aircraft, the weapon
s
team dumped the launcher and scattered for cover.

Interesting,
thought Petrov.
Once again they have
t
he technology but they don’t have the training, or perhaps the will to fight. They want their toys to take all the risks for them. That’s a weakness.

It was not a weakness shared by all the Yagizban, though. The Chertovka was living up to her name, throwing terrified troopers out of her path as she made a bee-line for the discarded rocket launcher.

“
A standard FMA reward bonus to whoever kills that woman,
”
said Petrov.

Bonuses were handed out by the FMA with miserly tight-fistedness. Instantly, all three rifle barrels twitched onto the new target and started firing careful bursts. Petrov knew that the chances of hitting her at this range from a moving platform with what felt like half
of
Russalka
’s
ocean
s
pouring down on it were vanishingly small, but they only had to slow down her advance for the few seconds it would take the transporter to clear the lip of the hatch and get into the open sky.

Tasya was built of much ste
rner stuff than the rocket team,
that much was clear. She zig-zagged from cover to cover, reaching the dropped weapon far too quickly for Petrov’s comfort. She was down on one knee with the launcher tube over her shoulder and her eye to the targeting scope inside five seconds. A second after that, fire flared from the rear of the tube and a rocket zipped from the front. Petrov heaved his snipers back inside and slammed the door shut.
“
Brace for impact!
”
he barked at his crew. The command was usually applied to a submarine crew when a torpedo was about to hit or the boat was about to ram or be rammed. Petrov had never used it except in exercises and hoped they would understand what he meant by it in this situation. They seemed to, as they scurried for places where they could hang on if the transporter was thrown about. He didn’t have time to make sure they were all safe, he was already throwing himself into the cockpit. He landed at full stretch, grabbed the supports at the back of the co-pilot’s seat and shouted at Suhkalev,
“
Thrusters! Now!
”

Suhkalev had been listening to the situation in the disembarkation area over his headset and didn’t need telling twice. They were still an agonising five metres short of the hatch, but he cut the aft lifters and the transport suddenly swung nose upwards. The forward lifters whined alarmingly as they tried to take the full weight of the transporter by themselves and their status displays flashed red. Suhkalev was aware of Petrov’s grunt of surprise as he suddenly found himself dangling from the co-pilot’s chair by his arms but didn’t have time to pay him any more heed than that. Suhkalev reckoned he’d figured out the thruster controls. Now was the moment to discover whether he was right. Already the transporter was falling backwards, the forward lifters unable to take the whole weight.

I can do this
, he thought, and opened the
main
thruster throttles.

From the control room Katya, Lukyan and Kane watched the transporter suddenly stand on blue columns of iridescent fire.
“
Down!
”
shouted Lukyan putting one great hand on the scruffs of Katya and Kane’s necks and pulling them to the ground. As they hit the floor, the observation window exploded inwards. The room filled with the furious blue light and a million glitte
ring shards of reinforced glass
. Then, as abruptly as it had appeared, it vanished. Kane crawled rapidly to the console and activated a traffic control camera. The blue light of
the transporter’s thrusters were
already fading into the stormy sky.

“
They made it!
”
gasped Katya, her face filling up with a grin.

“
Maybe,
”
said Lukyan doubtfully.
“
Look. They’re trailing smoke.
”

“
And there should be two thruster flares visible,
”
said Kane.
“
Tasya must have hit them with that rocket.
”

Katya’s joy evaporated.
“
Can they fly on one engine?
”

“
I’ve no idea. Given it’s Suhkalev in the pilot’s seat, I’m astonished they can fly with two.
”
He saw Katya’s face.
“
I’m sorry, that was flippant. I don’t know if they can fly on one engine.
”

Lukyan had gone to the shattered window and was cautiously looking down at the hanger deck.
“
Firing their engines in here has caused a lot of damage. Casualties too. There’ll be medics up here soon. Hmm, your friend the Chertovka has survived yet again, I’m sorry to say.
”

“
My
friend?
”
Kane and Katya chorused. They looked at one another.

“
You shared a command with her, didn’t you?
”
said Lukyan turning to Kane.

“
Not really my choice. She was a condition of getting operational support for the
Vodyanoi
from the Conclaves. Oh,
”
he nodded.
“
I see. You’re trying to needle me. Sorry for not picking up on that immediately.
”

“
Can we save the cat fight for later?
”
said Katya.
“
The area’s full of troopers and they’re bound to check on this room before long. Shouldn’t we be leaving?
”

“
Too late,
”
said Lukyan, looking out of the jagged frame of the observation window,
“
there are a couple of them coming this way now.
”

The troopers entered the control room to find a couple of administrators, one a huge man, the other a young woman. The woman lay amidst a dune of fragments from the destroyed observation window, the other administrator kneeling over her checking her pulse. One of the Terran
mercenaries, the one who sailed with Colonel Morevna, was standing over them with an expression of great concern. When he saw the troopers, he implored them,
“
Please! She was caught in the blast when those Federals fired the engines! She needs a stretcher team immediately!
”

The troopers gave the room a quick look over to make sure that none of the Federals had been left behind and left, assuring the mercenary they’d send one of the many medical teams that were now entering the hangar to deal with the injured from the gun battle and the obviously coldly calculated use of the transport’s drives as weapons.

One of the teams was currently treating Colonel Tasya
“
The Chertovka
”
Morevna
,
who was submitting to their ministrations with very poor grace.
“
Damn them! Damn their eyes! Where did those cold fish learn to fly like that? Their pilots were supposed to be dead! Careful, you idiot!
”
The medic putting her broken arm in a temporary field cast muttered something nervous and respectful. Tasya turned her white hot attention to Major Moltsyn.
“
What’s the situation with the
Leviathan
?
”

“
The torpedoes all detonated prematurely. They were intercepted somehow.
”

“
It launched combat drones. That’s obvious. Is it responding to hails?
”

“
No, colonel. We’ve lost it from sonar too.
”

Tasya’s lips thinned.
“
It’s activated its stealth systems.
”
She shook her head.
“
Put all non-essential personnel on transports out of here, enact full evacuation protocols. That thing’s going to attack and I don’t know if we can beat it.
”
She looked up at Moltsyn narrowly, daring him to ruin her day further.
“
Any good news, major?
”

“
A little, I think. Air radar followed the stolen transport for about twenty kilometres. Its path was erratic. Then it lost altitude, tried to climb and ending up pitching into the sea. It looks like you shot it down after all, colonel.
”

“
Search units have been dispatched?
”

“
Of course. The ocean’s very angry today, but their air search radar did not detect anything and one reported seeing something in the water that looked like a downed aircraft. It sank before they had a chance to relay pictures.
”

“
I’d have preferred more solid evidence. Like Petrov’s head on a spike.
”
She unconsciously touched the closely grouped pock marks on her armour left by Petrov’s maser bolts.
“
It will have to do for the moment. We have a larger and more immediate problem.
”

Across the hangar warning sirens suddenly wailed and red strobe lights flared into life. Moltsyn snapped his head to look.
“
What’s that?
”

Tasya followed his glance, curiosity hardening into suspicion.
“
An emergency launch from one of the… That’s the
Vodyanoi
’s bay! Moltsyn! Who authorised that launch?
”

“
Colonel!
”
A trooper ran up, very conscious that he was the bearer of bad news.
“
The control room! We… there was an injured woman in there. We sent a medical team and…
”

Tasya reared up onto her feet and turned on the trooper.
“
Spit it out, man! What’s happened?
”

The trooper looked at her as if he was expecting her to shoot him at any moment.
“
We went back to check on them and… They were tied up.
”

Tasya frowned.
“
The injured woman was tied up? What are you blathering about?
”

“
No, colonel! The medical team were tied with suture tape from their own supplies! The woman, the other administrator and one of the Terrans, they had gone. They had stolen the stretcher!
”

Tasya’s fury suddenly cooled, which only served to make her more threatening.
“
What
Terran?
”
But she already knew. With all the medical teams around, two men carrying an
“
injured
”
woman on a stretcher would go unremarked, even if they were heading towards the boat bays rather than the exits.
“
Out of my sight,
”
she said quietly and the trooper obeyed as quickly as he humanly could. She turned to Moltsyn.
“
Kane’s turned. The
Vodyanoi
is no longer to be considered a friendly vessel. It is to be destroyed on detection.
”

“
Shall we launch pursuit boats, colonel?
”

“
Launch all available warboats, but they’re not going after Kane. He’s tomorrow’s problem. We have to live through whatever the
Leviathan
has for us first.
”