Katya's War (Russalka Chronicles) Read Online Free PDF Page A

along the way would have provided route correction, but they had all been closed down now. Anything that might help the enemy was to be denied to them, even if it inconvenienced your own people.
    “Arrival at Atlantis docking bays in nineteen hours, forty eight minutes,” said the Lukyan ’s computer voice in the same calm tones that it announced everything from waypoint arrivals to incoming torpedoes.
    Katya lifted her hands from the control yoke and watched it move by itself under the autopilot’s direction. “I sometimes wonder why boats even have crews anymore.”
    Sergei was already climbing out of the left hand seat, and was glad to do so. “They used to use drones. Then we got pirates after the war. Drones aren’t so great when it comes to out-thinking people who are after your cargo.” He sat in the forward port passenger seat and pulled the table down from the ceiling on its central strut that swung down to the vertical and then telescoped out. He pulled up the screen on his side and gestured impatiently at the opposite seat. “Well?”
    Katya left the co-pilot’s position and climbed into the indicated seat. “What are we playing?” she asked. “Chess?”
    Sergei curled a lip and tapped some keys. Katya raised the screen on her side to find a virtual card table already waiting for her.
    “Poker,” he said. “A proper game, with risk and chance. Just like life.”
     
    They played a few hands until Sergei said he was feeling tired again and was going to take a nap. Katya noted that his energy seemed to have a direct correlation to how well he was doing in the game. After a disastrous losing streak that would have cost him his wages for a year had they been playing for real money, he was entirely exhausted and was horizontal across two passenger seats and snoring a minute later.
    “Your choice, my friend,” said Katya under her breath, logged when he fell asleep and set that as the beginning of his down shift. He would argue about it when he woke up in thirty or forty minutes’ time, but it had been one of Lukyan’s hard and fast rules. If Sergei had ever thought Katya was going to be a soft touch, he was well on his way to re-education now.
    As it was, he actually woke twenty-three minutes later when Katya threw an empty beaker at his head. He struggled upright, swearing copiously until she told him in a harsh whisper to shut up and quiet down. The realisation that the drives were off and they were drifting in the current was enough to calm him instantly. He was up front, headset on, and seat restraints locked inside ten seconds.
    “What is it?” he whispered. “Yags?”
    “Don’t know yet,” she replied. “Just caught a glimpse of something on the passive sonar. One-oh-five relative. Might be nothing. Better safe than sorry.”
    Sergei nodded. “Better safe than dead.” He noted the concentration on her face and knew she was listening through the hydrophones, the submarine’s “ears,” for the sound of engines. Without needing to be told, he pulled up the passive sonar interface on his own multi-function display and started a slow, careful scan, quadrant by quadrant.
    Five minutes passed. Ten. At fifteen Katya was about to call it off as a false alert when something showed on the passive sonar at fifty degrees high relative to their heading. She immediately brought the hydrophone array to bear and listened intently.
    “A shoal?” asked Sergei with unusual optimism.
    Katya shook her head slightly. “I hear a drive. Lock it up at my bearing and give me an analysis.”
    Sergei told the passive sonar to lock onto the hydrophone bearing and ran the sound through the database. “It’s military.”
    “Yeah. She’s no civilian.” Military boats carried engines with much higher performance than those of civil transports and carriers. Their turbines ran at greater speed and generated a very distinctive tone that every sensor operator knew. There was still a chance it was a Federal boat