Submarine on the Edge of Eternity
By Storm
Follows several years
after the story Bugs on the Wall. Fourth in the series.
Captain Second Rank Igor
Britanov looked at his orders with a sinking feeling in the pit of his stomach,
though his face revealed no trace of his consternation. He’d just been transferred
from command of his Victor II attack boat into command of a boomer. Normally
that was a step up. But the boat he was being transferred into this cold
November day was an aging NAVAGA class boat, what the West called a Yankee-1.
It was hardly a promotion.
The boat in question was the
K-219. He remembered with a shiver the first time he’d really noticed him.
It had been five years ago,
in 1980, when he had just been promoted to XO of K-244, a relatively new Delta
class boomer. Something had happened on the way to the docks that first day,
something that had changed his life. He’d found himself standing in the middle
of the street, unable to recall what had just happened, but left with the
feeling that it was momentous. As he’d wandered, almost distracted on down to
the docks, his eyes had fallen on K-219 coming into the base. He’d gotten a
cold shiver of premonition, strong enough that the next time he’d gone to sea,
he’d surreptitiously made an offering to the powers of the sea to keep him
safe.
Now here he was again - and
he was supposed to be his captain! He felt like swearing, but with the Northern
Fleet Base commander standing in front of him that was not an option. All he
could do was salute and mouth something about being proud to serve. And then leave
to go take formal command of his new boat.
All the way to the docks his
mind was in a daze. He’d known for years now that he was a pawn in someone else’s
game, but this! They had maneuvered him into command of a creaky, unsafe
ballistic missile submarine that was probably more dangerous to his own crew
than he was to his nation’s enemies. What was he supposed to do now? Write out
his will and kiss his wife and children goodbye? He couldn’t help but shake his
head in dismay.
He approached the docks with
trepidation. K-219 lay moored with his starboard side to the pier. Pausing, he
studied him. At four hundred and twenty six feet long, he had a beam of just
over thirty nine feet. Powered by two reactors, new he’d have been capable of
twenty seven knots. He knew he couldn’t do that now on his best day. His black
hull held sixteen missile silos - but he only carried fifteen missiles. His
eyes strayed to the number sixteen muzzle hatch. Welded shut. It was no secret
that K-219 had suffered an explosion in that silo just a few years after he was
launched. A leak in the seal had allowed sea water to flow in, mixing with a
pool of nitrogen tetroxide, forming nitric acid. That in turn had eaten into a
pressurized hydrazine line, allowing the two components that made up the
missile’s fuel to mix. What had followed was an instant explosion in the silo
that had resulted in the death of one sailor and enough damage to flood the
missile bay. It was a wonder that he hadn’t been sunk.
Britanov couldn’t help but
sigh as he wondered what sort of rejects he was going to have to whip into
shape to try and sail this beast. Favored officers got the new boats.
Obviously, he was now on somebody’s shit list. Well, there was nothing left to
do except put the best face he could on it. Squaring his shoulders, he marched
himself smartly down to the gangplank and requested permission to board.
The head that popped out of
the main sail hatch was the first piece of good news he’d had all day.
“Igor Kurdin,” he laughed, “who
did you piss off to wind up here?”
“Probably the same asshole
you did if you’re our new captain,” came the cheery response. “I have the
dubious honor of being your starpom on this beast.”
Britanov shook his head. At
least he had one competent officer. “So who’s Chief Engineer? ”
“Krasilnikov.”
“Are you serious?” asked
Britanov in surprise. What Igor Krasilnikov didn’t know about NAVAGA boats wasn’t
worth knowing. “So who’s Main Propulsion
Assistant?”
“Gennady Kapitulsky.”
Britanov couldn’t believe his
ears. Kapitulsky was one of the best propulsion engineers in the Northern
Fleet. To have two such qualified men on K-219 was a gift from the gods that
communists weren‘t supposed to believe in. “What is he doing here?”
“He said he likes a challenge,”
came the dry reply.
K-219 would certainly be
that, thought Britanov to himself. “I’m
certainly happy to have both of them. So who have we got as Security Officer?”
“Valery Pshenichny - and he’s
a qualified watch officer.”
KGB - and a
submariner? It was almost unheard of. He felt a thin trickle of unease at his
sudden reversal of fortune. He had a boat that should have been scrapped years
ago - yet his senior officers were some of the best in the fleet. Just what
sort of madness was going on here? He shivered with a sudden sense of
premonition that the game that had been moving around him for the past five
years had now begun a countdown of some sort.
Still, he had a submarine to
command and he’d best get to it.
*****************
Lee Crane eyed the pile of
paper on his desk and sighed. No wonder Nelson had wanted so desperately for
someone else to take over much of the day to day running of the Institute. When
Crane’s promotion to one star admiral had come through two years ago, much to
his own surprise, the job had fallen to him. He sighed again. Now that Voyager
was in service, they had twice the paperwork as before. Chip helped as much as
he could, but as Voyager’s skipper, he really didn’t have the time.
Neither did Crane. He was
still serving as Seaview’s captain as well as de facto Director of the
Nelson Institute. He had more time than Chip did though - Harriman Nelson was
out of favor with the current administration in Washington, so not nearly so
many jobs came Seaview’s way as had in times past. That helped. He’d
also hired a full time administrative assistant of his own to support Angie.
That also helped. But the hard fact was there just weren’t enough hours in the
day to do both jobs.
He threw his pen down on the
desk in exasperation. The new XO he’d hired for Seaview less than a
month ago wasn’t really helping matters either. When Chip had first begun to
work full time on the Voyager project three years earlier, Bobby O’Brien
had taken on the task of Seaview’s XO and he‘d fit right in. But then
this past summer Bobby’s youngest child had proved to be autistic and he’d
asked for a shore position. The request had been granted. Unfortunately,
replacing him was proving to be … challenging.
Crane got up to pace. At
least his new COB was working out. He had to grin to himself there. When
Sharkey had retired six months ago his one parting piece of advice to his
captain had been that he should promote Kowalski to replace him. It had
been very good advice, he’d found, for Ski was working out very well as senior
Chief on the boat.
A knock on the door
interrupted his thoughts.
“Enter,” he growled, not
entirely happy about being disturbed.
A blond head poked around the
doorway, blue eyes apprehensive.
“Lieutenant Riley.” Crane sat
back down at his desk, a somewhat bemused expression replacing his scowl. “Come
on in, Stu. My bark is worse than my bite. It’s been one of those days.”
“Yes, sir, Admiral.” The
young officer entered and grinned back at his former captain; these days he was
an engineer on Voyager, much to the astonishment of many who’d once
dismissed the young surfer who’d joined the crew in Lee’s second year of
command as an airhead. Stu’s only major fault then had been that he was young;
now with the maturity that comes only with experience, he’d settled into Chip’s
crew like an old pro.
“So what brings you into the
lion’s den today?” he asked.
“Captain Morton sent me over
with a message, sir. He said to tell you that you and Admiral Nelson can expect
an old friend to put in an appearance around lunchtime.”
Crane arched his eyebrows. “That’s
it?”
Riley looked uncomfortable. “Yes,
sir. That’s all he said.”
Crane rubbed his right
temple. Such enigmatic messages usually meant only one thing; Seldar would be
dropping by with an update.
“Okay, tell Captain Morton
that we’ll meet in the usual place. It’s his turn to buy the pizza and beer.”
Riley blinked in surprise. He
wasn’t privy to the events that had transpired five years ago - only Nelson,
Crane, Morton and Doctor Jamieson knew of the second meeting with the
Federation agent named Seldar. Crane could tell he’d been wondering if this was
ONI business, but the reference to pizza and beer had confused him.
“If you say so, sir.” Riley
rose to leave.
“That’s it?” Crane asked.
“Yessir.”
“Dismissed, then, Mr. Riley.”
Crane waited until the door
had closed to pick up the phone and call down to the lab. One of Nelson’s assistants
answered. It took a few moments for Nelson to come grumbling to the phone
himself. He didn’t wait for the admiral to ask, he simply said, “Our red haired
friend passed a message. He’ll be here for lunch. I told Chip it’s his turn to
spring for pizza and beer.”
A snort of amusement echoed
down the phone line. Seldar had proved to have a fondness for pizza that
exceeded even Chip Morton’s - and his capacity for beer, given his small
stature, was nothing less than astonishing. It had to be his metabolism. No
human his size could have possibly consumed as much beer as he could without
drinking themselves into a stupor. Seldar seemed to never get more than a
slight buzz, no mater how much he drank.
“I’ll be there as soon as I
give instructions to Dr. James on what I’m looking for in our next series of
experiments,” Nelson told him.
Crane grunted; since it was
just now only a little after 9:00 AM, that meant he’d show up shortly before
noon and Seldar’s arrival. In the meantime, arrangements needed to be made.
****************
Seldar was sitting glumly in
the rocking chair on the porch when the three officers arrived at the small
beach house they’d set up as a contact point. The men looked at each other in
dismay; Seldar in a funk meant something was going very badly.
“Is there something we can do
immediately about the disaster?” Crane asked him as he stepped out of the car.
The alien stopped rocking and
looked at him with all four eyes for a long moment, before sighing heavily and
answering, “No. The deed is done.”
“In that case, let’s eat
while the pizza is hot and discuss our options.” This came from Morton as he
pulled the cooler with the beer out of the back seat of the car. “Lee, get
those boxes will you. Cheese only is on top, Supreme on the bottom.”
Seldar’s dejected posture
straightened at the mention of cheese pizza. “Beer?” he asked hopefully.
“Four cases,” Morton told
him.
“Good. Try to get drunk
today, I think I will.”
Crane and Nelson eyed each
other in consternation. Over the past few years Seldar’s English had improved
considerably. When he dropped back into the sort of backwards English he’d
spoken when they first met him it meant things were really, really bad.
“What’s happened, Seldar?”
asked Nelson softly.
“Final play of game, in
motion is. No more help can Elders give. Up to Britanov, now is.”
“How bad is it?” asked Crane.
“Change of command he has. No
more Victor II. Is Yankee-1. Old boat - damaged boat. Leaky, dangerous
boat.” Seldar hitched both pairs of shoulders to show his distress. “Already
one explosion boat has had. Sailor died. Fire in missile bay. Bad, very bad.”
“An old boomer?!” exclaimed
Morton, stopping in his tracks, dread written in his posture.
Suddenly the true extent of
the looming disaster became clear to Crane. Things could have been dicey enough
when the Chaos Lords were playing with a nuclear powered attack boat. But a
boomer! And one that was in less than optimal condition at that. “My God,” he
muttered to Nelson and Morton, “they’re trying for a nuclear accident. Maybe
even a nuclear war.”
Seldar nodded unhappily. “Only
good part is, Elders got him good engineers.”
“So now the game is to see if
he can keep the boat in one piece?” Crane thought about it for a moment, then
shook his head. “That’s too simple. There has to be another player, someone we’ve
missed.”
“Someone to set up an
accident or a confrontation?” asked
Morton. “But that would mean…”
Nelson finished the sentence
for him. “The other player is most likely an American. Probably the captain of
an attack boat. Somebody who’s too eager, too ready to push the envelope, too
willing to be reckless.”
“Is there anything the
Elders can do at this point?” asked Crane.
Seldar shook his head. “Not
and maintain peace. To interfere now would invite a war between the two
factions. Even worse that would be.”
The three officers looked at
each other glumly. Over the years Seldar had filled them in on the uneasy
balance of power between the Elders of Light and the Chaos Lords. Like the Cold
War between the US and Soviet Union, where both sides were too evenly matched
to slug it out toe to toe in a conventional war - and a nuclear war would
insure destruction of the entire planet - the two factions of Elders were also
caught up in a similar scenario. So like the US and USSR, the war was by proxy,
with the Lords of Light interfering as much as they could to interrupt the
Chaos Lord’s deadly games - but only to a point. Beyond that point the players
were on their own.
They’d reached that point in
the current game. Now it was up to Britanov to pull the rabbit out of the
proverbial hat. They hoped he was up to it, because now it was just a matter of
time before the fate of the entire world hinged on his actions.
********************
Igor Britanov listened to his
Weapons Officer swearing like a madman over the intercom and sighed. The past
two months on K-219 had been both frustrating and illuminating. Now here they
were, on the surface of the Barents Sea in the middle of January, trying to do
a live-fire launch into the test range near Novaya Zemlya - and the boat was
doing his very best to not cooperate. Petrachkov had been working for
hours now, trying to get the recalcitrant missile to launch with little result
to show for his frantic efforts.
A sudden exultant “Aha!”
caught his attention. He lifted the kashtan microphone - one of dozens
that hung from the overhead - to his lips. “Petrachkov?”
“I think I’ve got it,
Captain. Let’s see if this bastard will launch now.”
Finally! Britanov motioned to his other officers in the
crowded and incredibly noisy Central Command Post - what the Americans called
the Control Room. As he surreptitiously crossed his fingers, they once more
began a countdown.
This time the missile roared
away, accompanied by cheers and sighs of relief. Britanov could only sigh.
There’d be more than the usual nit picking when they got back to the Soviet
Northern Fleet base at Gadzhievo. But at least they had finally gotten the
missile to fire. It would have been far worse if they’d had to go back totally
unsuccessful.
The Missile Bay intercom
buzzed. He again lifted the mike to his lips. “Yes, Petrachkov?”
“Captain….,” there was a
heavy sigh, “Captain, I can’t get the damned missile hatch to close.”
Britanov closed his eyes and
mentally cursed. If the hatch wouldn’t close, they couldn’t submerge - and they
had already gotten warnings about worsening weather conditions. That meant they’d
have to battle their way home on the surface right into the teeth of a winter
gale. He rubbed both temples, feeling a headache coming on. K-219 handled like
a log on the surface in good weather; he shuddered to think how he’d handle
under the conditions they’d be facing if Petrachkov couldn’t get the hatch
closed. There’d probably more than one sailor puking his guts up before they
got back to Gadzhievo.
“Do what you can,” he told
the Weapons Officer. Turning to the helmsmen, he ordered a change of course
that would head them back to base. Calling the Chief Engineer, Krasilnikov, he
relayed the bad news. “I want to head back now, on the surface, at the best
speed we can make,” he told him. His answer was a sigh. Britanov knew why - the
old boat’s reactors were touchy and unpredictable. Push them too hard and the
results might be catastrophic. Or merely embarrassing. K-219 had a penchant for
keeping them guessing.
As time passed it became
obvious that no matter what Petrachkov did, the missile hatch wasn’t going to
close. The temperature was dropping, the wind was rising, and with it, the
height of the waves. The boat was starting to heave madly; the crew was hanging
on to anything they could. He called the watch on the bridge down and climbed
up himself; he needed to see the waves to be able to instruct the helmsmen on
the course to best meet them, otherwise there was a good possibility K-219
might get heeled over on his side. With the open missile hatch that could be a
disaster.
He closed the sail hatch
behind him and looked out at the churning sea. Their last meteorological report
had the wind at almost forty knots, gusting to fifty. The waves were running
almost five meters - twenty feet - high. These were conditions that would be
bad for any small craft and uncomfortable on many large ones. For a nuclear
submarine they were madness.
He soon realized the sea
spray was starting to freeze on contact to anything it touched; the hull of the
boat, skin, clothing. Within moments he was coated with a rime of ice.
Fortunately he was well bundled up under his oilskins, or he would have frozen
to death in a matter of minutes. Bracing himself against the heaving motion of
the boat, he began his vigil.
For the next five hours K-219
battled his way on the surface of the sea, while Britanov stood alone on the
open bridge, with both the sail and himself accumulating a thickening coat of
ice. Finally the gale began to abate and as the wind and waves lessened, so did
the corkscrewing motion of the boat. When it reached the point where Britanov
felt it might be safe for him to go below and post the regular watch back on
the bridge, he found he couldn’t move at all.
Fortunately he’d left the
intercom open. “Igor,” he grunted painfully, “come up here and help me.”
In less than a minute his starpom
poked his head out of the sail hatch and gaped in astonishment at the sight of
his captain frozen immobile in a position uncannily like that of a religious
icon.
“Isn’t that carrying your
little sign a bit too far, Captain?” Kurdin asked dryly after calling for
buckets of hot water to try and free Britanov from his icy prison.
Britanov snorted, or rather,
tried to. His moustache had frozen along with his oilskins. He knew the sign
Kurdin was referring to - he’d skirmished with the worm of a political officer
Sergiyenko over it from the first day he’d hung it in the CCP. It said
SUBMARINE LIFE IS NOT A SERVICE, BUT A RELIGION. Sergiyenko had disapproved;
Britanov had told him to mind his own business. Since the KGB Security Officer
had declined to object, the plaque stayed.
The first buckets of hot
water began arriving. As his starpom and men worked to free him,
Britanov found himself wondering if this was a glimpse of things to come. If
so, life on K-219 would be many things, but dull would never be among them.
***************
Lee Crane put down the report
that Seldar had given him and tried to control the expression on his face. He
looked over at Morton; his expression was vacillating between disbelief,
astonishment and outright laughter.
Laughter won. “That,” said
Morton, shaking a finger at him, “is just the sort of damn fool stunt you would
pull!”
As much as Crane wanted to
object, he knew he couldn’t, because what his friend had just said was
completely true. In Britanov’s place, he would have done exactly the same
thing. He could only shrug wryly as Nelson smiled and shook his head, himself
on the verge of laughter. Not because the situation was in itself funny, but
because in so many ways Lee Crane and Igor Britanov were so much alike.
Although Crane did have to admit, the pictures they had of K-219’s captain
frozen in place - and his XO’s comment - were funny, now that the crisis was
past. But like Britanov, they had to wonder what the future would bring.
********************
Igor Britanov stood on K-219’s
bridge as he once more made his way down the channel on his way out to sea,
escorted by a pair of tugs. In another two months he would have had command for
a full year, but this three month voyage was being made without his experienced
starpom Kurdin. He sighed. Only time would tell if his new officer in
the position, Sergei Vladmirov, would prove as reliable.
Making the last turn in the
twisty fjord that led to Gadzhievo, the rolling waves of the open sea began to
lift the submarine in their swell. One of the tugboat captains leaned out of
his wheelhouse, hand raised in question. Britanov waved back and saluted,
effectively dismissing the pair of tugs. They both turned and headed back down
the sheltered channel, leaving K-219 on his own. As snow closed in around them,
even the land disappeared, leaving the submarine isolated in a world of grey.
Once they’d passed the first sea buoy, the boat would dive; it would be ninety
days - the first week of December - before they’d breath fresh air or see the
sun again. Giving one last look around before going below, he thought again on
his orders. Mad they were, but he supposed necessary. K-219 was to patrol off
the coast of the northeastern United States.
It would take all of his
skills to keep the noisy old boomer from being tailed by the Americans. The
first task would be to run the gauntlet of specially equipped American INTEL
submarines that would be lurking on the bottom off the coast, listening for any
vessel exiting or entering Soviet ports. That they would hear K-219 leave was a
given. There was nothing he could do about it - ports were rather fixed in
their positions. Then he’d have to get across the SOSUS line in the
Greenland-Iceland-UK gap. But later, once he’d reached the open waters of the
Atlantic - well, the ocean was a big place in which to hide, even for a boat as
noisy as K-219. Britanov might have a trick or two up his sleeve that would
surprise even the Americans.
Britanov checked to make sure
the hatch was sealed, then descended into the CCP. The first dive of the voyage
was always nerve-wracking. K-219 whooshed as air was expelled from the ballast
tanks to be replaced by water. As pressure increased, the hull creaked and
groaned. The tension in the CCP was palpable, especially among the newest crew
members. An especially loud pop made the new starpom jump and turn his
head to find Chief Engineer Krasilnikov with a broken pencil, laughing. At
thirty-nine, the Chief Engineer was the oldest man on the boat, and known as
Grandfather by the crew. It helped to reduce the tension when Vladmirov grinned
back sheepishly.
Britanov took the course from
the Navigator and had the helm set, then ordered Damage Control to have all
compartments report. All reported promptly, except compartment four. The
missile bay. Damage Control called again.
************
The Weapons Officer,
Petrachkov, was on the horns of a dilemma. Silo six had shown a leak when they’d
first submerged, but it had now slowed to a near stop. If he reported it, they’d
have to turn around and go back and be delayed who knew how long. No, he’d say
nothing, just keep an eye on the silo.
“Compartment four, manned and
ready,” he reported.
***************
Two weeks into the patrol,
K-219 arrived at a point two days sail from his patrol zone. Britanov ordered a
thin wire unreeled from its fairing at the stern of the sub. Know as the “rectal
probe”, it was in fact a sophisticated thermometer to measure the temperature
of the sea, something of no small concern to a submarine. Different water
temperatures in the ocean tend to indicate layers of differing salinity - and
differences in salinity change the acoustical properties of the layers of
water, so a sub in one layer is much more difficult to detect from another
layer. Deep cold water is very transparent to sound, so what K-219’s captain
was searching for were the warm waters of the Gulf Stream. In the right
conditions, even a noisy old beast like K-219 could hide from his enemies.
They found the outer edge of
the warm water and began edging in. Once it had reached a thickness of ninety
meters, Britanov ordered a dive; they would just skim along the bottom until
the current was one hundred meters thick, then go through, cut the engines and
drift, listening. Then he would turn south and with the engines producing just
enough power to match the speed of the current, hover in place. He suspected
there was an American attack boat in the vicinity.
He didn’t know how right he
was.
The closing phase of the Game
was now in motion.
As K-219 rode the Gulf
Stream, he picked up the acoustic signature of the Los Angeles class submarine
that had been tracking him. As Britanov had planned, the other boat had lost
them in the thermocline. Expecting the boomer to continue moving, the American
captain had taken up a position where he expected her to come out of the
current.
He didn’t. As the American
sub searched on him passive systems, Britanov ordered a single ping of the
sonar, just to let the cocky American know that the tables could be turned. The
bright green spike on K-219’s sonar vanished; the American sub had retreated.
Britanov grinned at his exuberant crew - sneaking up on a Los Angeles class sub
was something that didn’t happen every day.
Had he known that the captain
of the sub he’d just flushed signed his dispatches as Caesar Augustus, he might
have realized that the other captain’s ego wouldn’t allow the slight to go
unchallenged. Britanov had just issued the equivalent of a slap in the face to
his opponent.
It would come back to haunt
him.
****************
Admiral Lee Crane was
awakened by someone pounding on his door. He lifted his head, senses suddenly
alert. Was something wrong with Seaview? He couldn’t detect anything
amiss - Seaview was still riding
on the surface just as she had been when he‘d turned in. Turning on the light
by his bunk, he grabbed his robe, and stepped to the door. Opening it he found
Chief Kowalski standing there with a message in his hand. It was from Nelson -
and marked Urgent.
A cold chill went down his
spine.
Kowalski handed him the
message, face grave. “Admiral Nelson just sent this, sir. He told us to
immediately inform you and have you call him back.”
“Thanks, Chief,” Crane told
him, taking the message. Retreating to the sanctuary of his cabin, he closed
the door and laid the message on his desk. It was encrypted, but the first line
was a code he knew by heart. The information was from Seldar; for it to be
delivered like this meant the final act of the Game was in progress.
He went to his wall safe and
opened it, taking from within a small machine of Admiral Nelson’s own
invention. Setting it on his desk, he plugged it into the outlet and as it
powered up, lights went from red to green. Once all the indicators were green,
he fed the message directly into the machine. It gently hummed as it scanned
the paper; within seconds it began a soft staccato tapping as it printed out
the decoded message. He was reading even as the print cleared the slot.
“Damn.” It was as he had
feared. Things were happening in the North Atlantic. Grabbing a uniform, he
hastily dressed. Heading to the radio room, he had the Communications Officer
contact the Institute.
Nelson was waiting on his
call. “How fast can you get to the North Atlantic, Lee?”
Crane looked over at the
science mission specialists. They’d been sent up here to investigate unusually
early thick ice in the Bering Strait that was blocking passage of all traffic
through the area. Their current location was just south of Nome, Alaska.
Turning back to the vid
screen he said with an unhappy grimace, “Admiral,
the Strait is completely blocked. There’s no way Seaview can get through.
We’d have to go south, around Cape Horn. That’s something like fourteen
thousand nautical miles. It’d take us at least two weeks, if not more.”
At his words an angry hum
suddenly echoed in his ears. Crane stood for a moment nonplused, then realized
that it was Seaview herself that was angry, though not necessarily at
him. Ah. He suspected that if he didn’t give the orders to try and get to
Britanov, she’d do it on her own. He refocused to find Nelson looking at him
with a perplexed expression. “I think if we don’t go, our Lady might just go
without me,” he said with a wry smile.
Nelson closed his eyes and
sighed. Crane knew the admiral was reluctant to accept Seldar’s theory that the
boat was becoming self aware, but time had given credence to it, at least to
him. She would now occasionally vocalize in a very limited fashion to him when
no one else was around, though she seemed reluctant to show any of her
abilities to Nelson, let alone speak. Chip Morton was the only other person she
would respond openly to.
He thought she might let
Britanov into her inner circle if they ever got him on board.
“Since it’s going to take us
a while to get there, I’m going to ferry the science team ashore with the
Flying Sub and let them continue their research from Nome.”
“Do what you think is best,
Lee.” He could tell from Nelson’s troubled expression that he was remembering
that they’d been told they would have to save Britanov. But from what was the
big question.
“Do you have any more details
on what’s happening, Admiral?”
“Umm.” Nelson reached for a
sheet of paper. “The sub in question is the Augusta, commanded by…”
“Von Suskil,” said Crane
tightly. It would be that lunatic.
Nelson looked up at the hard
tone of Crane’s voice. “I take it you know him?”
“Unfortunately. Ever hear of
Caesar Augustus?”
Nelson looked puzzled for a
moment, then his eyes widened in comprehension. Immediately his expression
darkened. “He does fit the profile, doesn’t he?”
“All too well. And from what
you sent me in the message, Britanov suckered him good. He’ll definitely be
back for a rematch and spoiling for a fight.”
“And if the fool sinks K-219,
at the very least the summit talks will be cancelled. At worst…”
“World War III,” finished
Crane grimly.
“I’ll see if I can shake some
sense into anybody from this end. Do whatever you can to keep it from blowing
up into a war, Lee.”
Returning to the control
room, Crane issued rapid orders that
brought all personnel topside scurrying below. Once all hands were
accounted for and the hatches sealed, Crane ordered the great sub turned on a
southerly heading. As she slid below the surface and picked up speed, Crane
thought back to the day Seaview had first met Igor Britanov.
Seaview had been in the
North Atlantic off the Norwegian coast when sonar had picked up a Soviet attack
boat skulking around. Crane had already known who it was; it was his orders
that had put them here, since Seldar had informed him of Britanov’s patrol
sector and location days before. It was not out of his own curiosity, but
Seaview‘s; she had displayed an unusual amount of interest in the Russian
officer and had made it clear in her way hat that she be wanted to get a good
look at him. Crane was curious to see what she thought of him, for Seaview had
turned out to have an uncanny knack for identifying individuals that
represented a threat to her or the members of her crew. So he’d given orders
that would take them into Britanov’s patch of ocean.
The Victor II shouldn’t
have had any idea they were there, but Britanov had turned with them, vexing
Seaview’s duty crew. Seaview had, however, softly giggled in her own peculiar
fashion, shocking him speechless. She only did that around people she really
liked. Apparently Igor Britanov was one of those ‘special’ people.
After finding out that
Britanov had been assigned to a new command, Seaview had insisted on going and
checking out his new boat. At her reaction to K-219, Crane had briefly wondered
if Seaview was going to grab the old boomer and forcibly remove her captain. He
finally managed to talk her out of it, but his Lady had been upset for weeks
about it - he’d come to realize that she considered it an insult to her
Russian.
Her Russian. It had
eventually become apparent that was how she thought of him and it had pretty
well floored him when he’d finally realized it. It had flabbergasted Nelson
when Crane had told him about it; the Admiral was still having trouble
accepting the fact.
She’d encountered Von Suskil
too. The year before, they’d gone into New London to pick up some equipment for
a project they were doing for the Navy. Augusta had been in port and Von
Suskil had come down to the pier where Seaview was berthed. She’d
promptly bristled like a cat facing a pit bull and hissed. Literally. Von
Suskil had remained blissfully unaware of the boat’s antipathy towards him, but
the topside watch had all heard the sound. So did Crane. He’d hastened to the
bridge from the control room to see what had upset his Lady. Upon seeing who
was there, he’d felt like hissing himself. Von Suskil had been miffed when he
didn’t get invited aboard, but with the boat showing such a strong dislike of
the man, Crane hadn’t dared let him set foot on the deck for fear she’d do the
idiot bodily damage.
Now he rather wished he’d let
Seaview take her best shot - like dropping one of her sail planes on the
fool’s head. He’d have explained it away somehow.
***************
Almost two weeks had passed
since the encounter with the American attack boat. Britanov decided the time
had come to shake things up a bit. If he was lucky, he might catch the
Americans napping again; after all, they‘d had enough time to find K-219 for a
second time. He turned to the crew in the CCP.
“Prepare for a Crazy Ivan.”
As the starpom reached for the kashtan microphone, he added, “No, this
is a warship. They should be ready for anything.”
The other officers eyed each
other. Britanov must know what he was doing - after all, he’d caught the
American sub earlier.
“Very well. Let us begin.”
Orders passed through the
CCP; K-219 abruptly rolled into a steep powered dive as his screws thrashed
furiously. He tilted like a jet, banking hard into a tight spiral turn.
It was a turn that would take
him into disaster. As he dove abruptly deeper, he passed right under the Augusta
- Britanov had been entirely correct that they’d been relocated - and the
suction vortex between the two boats lifted the malfunctioning hatch cover on
silo six, causing the seal to give way. A flood of water gushed in, drenching
the missile. Alarms began to shriek. Gas. Petrachkov grabbed the mike and
shouted to the CCP the news of the disaster. All thoughts of the American sub fled
from Britanov’s mind. Only one thought dominated - K-219 had to get to the
surface - now. He turned to the helmsman. “General Alarm! Make depth for fifty
meters.” And then, “Battle Stations! Toxic gas in silo six! This is not a
drill!” The sub was still driving for the surface when a massive boom resonated
through the hull. Everything went black and the deck tilted down as the boat
began to dive. Although Britanov didn’t know it, the missile hatch cover had
been blown partially open. The boat was now taking on tons of water that was
mixing with the missile fuel to form even more nitric acid.
“Planes full up!” ordered
Britanov, but the boat refused to respond. “All ahead full!”
“Two hundred meters and still
diving,” reported the planesman.
“Get ready to blow all tanks!
Blow forward tanks!”
Still K-219 kept his bow
stubbornly pointed down.
“Gennady, get the second
reactor on line!” K-219 had been running on one unit to dampen his acoustical
signature. But quick starting a cold reactor carried with it grave risks.
Still, that was their only hope - they had to have more speed to overcome the
additional weight the boat was taking on.
Time was running out. “All
right, blow the tanks - all of them. Emergency blow.” He didn’t know if it
would be enough, but it was all he had left to try.
At three hundred fifty meters
the helm began to respond and as suddenly as he’d been going down, he was now
going up- and suddenly there was another sound, metal on metal. The boat
shuddered briefly and paused, but what ever had struck them hadn’t hit them
solidly. K-219 resumed his meteoric rise to the surface, broaching like a
wounded whale. Everything tumbled inside as he smashed heavily back down into
the water and came to a dead stop under the moonlit night sky.
“All stop,” ordered Britanov.
“I need damage reports. Someone go aft and find out what’s going on.”
************
Seaview keened softly, jerking Crane up out of his sleep. He
sat up and turned the light by his bunk on. From the boat’s distress, something
had finally happened aboard K-219. It wasn’t something he had any doubt about;
during the last week, much to his surprise, he’d discovered that she could
reach out and see what was happening to Britanov and K-219. It had been the
only thing that kept her from worrying herself into a frantic state over the
Russian captain’s safety.
“What’s happened?” he asked
his Lady.
The boat made crackling
noises that sounded eerily like a fire and followed with a whoosh like water
flooding in.
“Fire? Flooding?” That was
potentially disastrous. She answered with the short chirp he’d come to
understand as her shorthand for yes.
“Is Britanov okay?” He
thought the Russian captain probably was, otherwise Seaview would be
even more upset than she was.
Another chirp, followed by
keening. Britanov may not have been injured, but it was clear from Seaview’s
agitation that he and K-219 were both in serious peril. He considered. Britanov
was in peril, but not dire danger. K-219 must have made it to the surface.
“Are they on the surface?”
A much more relived chirp.
“Is Augusta still
around?”
Seaview actually growled softly.
That was a definite
affirmative. Damn. They were running at full speed now and were still nearly a
day’s sail away. The Chaos Lords had certainly timed this one to their
advantage.
Seaview revved her
screws. It was an unmistakable offer to go to Flank Speed
Crane knew that she could -
for a short while - but she would risk burning out the drive shaft bearings. He
shook his head. “Even if you did, we’re still too far away. It’s up to Igor
now. We’ll just have to hope he survives and then rescue him. That’s what the
Elder said, remember.”
He could tell the boat wasn’t
happy with his answer, but in many ways Seaview was a pragmatist. She
had a sense of self preservation that a mere mechanical artifact would never
have - and it wasn’t something that had ever been programmed into her
computers. No, as far as her skipper was concerned, she was as much alive as he
was.
The boat gave a deep sigh.
He felt the thrum of the
engines take on a new urgency, despite what he‘d just said. While she hadn’t
increased her speed to Flank, she had ratcheted up a couple of knots. He sighed
himself, knowing that very shortly someone from engineering would be hesitantly
knocking on his door with a report about the boat’s odd behavior. That had been
happening a lot the last two weeks.
*************
The sonar operator on USS Augusta
listened with increasing bafflement. Something had gone very wrong on the
boomer they were following after she‘d passed perilously close under them with
her Crazy Ivan maneuver. He turned to his captain.
“Sir, I just got an
explosion, followed by the sound of a silo flooding.”
“Silo or torpedo tube?”
“Definitely a silo.” He
watched as his display split into two objects, one smaller than the other. “Jesus.
The boomer’s diving, but I have a separation!”
Von Suskil snapped around. “Ready
tubes three and four…”
“Wait!” cried the sonar man. “No
ignition! It’s just hanging there.”
“What?” Suskil wasn’t pleased
at being interrupted.
“She’s blowing ballast. Sir,
I have hull-flooding noises and she’s still diving. The missile just dropped
out of sight. She may be breaking up.”
“Serves the bastards right,”
muttered Von Suskil under his breath. He wasn’t aware that sharp ears in the
control room had heard him - or the shock his attitude generated. “Sonar, put
it over up here. I want to listen to this.”
The next sound was the high
pressure whoosh of ballast tanks being blown - all of them. You didn’t do that
unless it was your last option, because if it failed, you had nothing left.
Suskil wondered if there’d be anything of interest in a Yankee-1’s bones to
pick over. Provided this wasn’t a reactor casualty. Then there was a
possibility much of the US east coast would be irradiated.
Suddenly the noise changed
pitch - the damned Russian was coming up almost underneath them! A resounding
clang echoed through the Augusta and she shuddered, heeling away from
the point of contact. Von Suskil swore. The bastard had actually clipped them.
He ordered Damage Control to report.
By the time all of the
reports had come back negative, Augusta had followed the Russian almost
to the surface.
“What’s the target’s heading?”
he demanded of the sonar operator.
“No bearing change. He’s dead
in the water,” responded the man.
Von Suskil stalked over to
the periscope. “Let’s see what’s going on.” He rose with the periscope,
spinning it to face the Russian boomer. Through the lens he spotted the other
boat, a dark shape on the moonlit sea. He flipped to the light enhancement
setting. A cloud of smoke was boiling up from aft of the sail. His first
thought was that she was launching - but he quickly realized the smoke was too
thin and the wrong color for a launch.
“She’s on fire,” he told his
XO, looking away from the scope for a second. Putting his eye back he said, “Bearing
… and mark.”
His XO looked at him like he’d
lost his mind. “Sir?”
“Bearing and mark,”
Von Suskil growled at him. Looks were exchanged around the control room. The
Russian boat was on fire and disabled and their captain was setting up firing
solutions? What the hell was he thinking?
***************
Repeated calls to compartment
four and the missile bay had gone unanswered. Fearing the worst, Britanov was
preparing to go back himself when someone finally spoke over the kashtan.
“Compartment four …. Heavy
fumes in here!”
“Who is this,” demanded
Britanov. “Where is Petrachkov?”
“He’s… unconscious.” A pause.
“It’s hot in here! There’s … smoke and fumes everywhere. Water. Request
permission to evacuate!”
A boomer captain’s worst
nightmare. An accident in the missile bay, probably with a fire. He put the kashtan
mike to his lips. “This is Britanov. All compartments don life support masks.”
He chewed on his moustache. The Damage Control officer hadn’t reported in
either. Could he had been in the missile bay with Petrachkov?
The doctor checked in from
compartment five, ready to go into four to check for casualties.
“Is Voroblev with you, Doctor
Kochergin?”
“No, Captain. Pshenichny is
the only one I’ve seen.”
That seemed to confirm his
worst fears. He just hoped the missing officer
- and the rest of the men in compartment four - were still with the
living.
It seemed an eternity had
passed when Kapitulsky reported that the second reactor was now on line.
Britanov called compartment four again for a report. What he heard wasn’t good.
The silo had ruptured and poisonous fumes were rising from the bilges. The
temperature had risen to one hundred twenty degrees Fahrenheit. His Weapons
Officer was unconscious; all the rest of the missile crew was dead or injured.
His radio officer Markov had also been in the compartment, his fate unknown.
Britanov turned to the boat’s
navigator. “Markov is back there and right now I need a radio officer more than
a navigator.” The man nodded acknowledgment. “Send a message to fleet
headquarters and request emergency assistance.”
“Breaking radio silence is
against regs,” broke in his starpom Vladmirov.
“So is sinking,” Britanov
reminded him gently. “Send it.” He lifted the kashtan again. “Get everyone
out of four and we’ll try to vent again.”
“There’s a fire in there,”
growled his Chief Engineer. “Probably in the wiring.”
“What about the other
missiles?” asked Britanov. That was a real danger; in the heat some of them
could explode - or even try to launch themselves. The one thing he absolutely
did not want was to be responsible for starting a nuclear war by accident. A
small shiver ran down his spine. Was this what his watchers had been waiting
for all those years? He made a decision. No matter what it took, such a thing
would not happen as long as he drew breath.
“Who knows,” responded
Krasilnikov gruffly. “We’ve lost all our remote readings from them.”
The kashtan buzzed
again. It was his security officer Pshenichny. “Captain, We’ve evacuated to
compartment five, but the hatch didn’t seal. The acid is eating the seals and
we’ve got fumes in compartment five.”
Damn. The boat’s cut in
two. No way to get them forward or get help aft. “Pshenichny, move everyone aft into compartment
eight, then report in. Is Voroblev there?”
“I’m in six,” came the
answer, “but I was in four when it went.”
“Damage estimate.”
“The muzzle hatch cracked
open for some reason, then the explosion ripped the silo apart. We’ve got
flooding, fire and gas.”
“What was that sound
afterwards, like we hit something?”
“I don’t know, Captain. But
the entire missile is gone from the silo and as near as I can tell, the hatch
cover itself may be gone.”
“Did the missile knock it
off?” asked Britanov.
There was a moment of
silence. “I don’t think it could,” responded his damage control officer. “I
think we hit something on the way up.”
Britanov snorted. So the Los
Angeles boat they’d surprised earlier was probably back. He couldn’t help the
brief wolfish grin. The bastard had gotten more than he’d bargained for again
this time too. With any luck, their missing hatch cover was stuck in the idiot’s
keel. He reached for his oilskins hanging on their peg and looked over at his
chief engineer. “I’m going to take a look to see for myself. Want to join me?”
Krasilnikov rose immediately
to his feet and followed his captain up the ladder to the bridge. Once there,
they turned on their portable lamps and shined them aft.
Water sloshed over the
missile deck, but the passing of each wave revealed a gaping hole where the
hatch should have been - and smoke rising from an empty silo. But the most
telling evidence was the bright streak of exposed metal where the rubber
coating on the missile deck had been sheared away.
The chief engineer looked
grim. “I’ve seen damage like this before, but only after a collision.”
Britanov turned his lamp to
sweep the dark sea around them. Nothing. The American sub was only thing they
could have hit that could have done this. Well, he’d already suspected that was
the case; this merely confirmed it.
“Captain,” came a voice from
below, “Message from Fleet.”
Britanov grimaced. “Let’s go
below. When it gets light we’ll have Pshenichny take pictures of this.”
Once back in the CCP he read
the decoded message - three merchant ships were being diverted to assist them.
He had to shake his head at how quickly their fortunes had reversed.
The kashtan buzzed.
Britanov answered to find his damage control officer on the other end. “Captain,
I’ve tested all the compartments from four aft to ten and I have traces of gas
as far as seven.”
“Seven! Are you sure?”
“Yes. And that’s not all. We’ve
got wiring problems in four - we lost some of the bundles.”
A chill spread down Britanov’s
spine. “Which bundles?”
“I can’t tell - it’s too hot
to check for sure - but the reactor control cables run through the worst area.”
Great. He was about to issue
orders to have the boat pressurized to try and force the gas out through four
when the planesman shouted and pointed at the overhead ventilator grill. A thin
wisp of brown mist was curling out. Britanov looked at it and bit back a curse.
“Increase the interior air
pressure! Now!”
The misty brown death
reluctantly slowed, then finally stopped. But for how long?
***********
Crane felt Seaview
tremble, not from a mechanical problem, but from frustration. He reached out a
hand to the closest bulkhead and muttered, “We’ll get there. Have faith.”
The boat sighed and grumbled,
but steadied. Crane shook his head and turned to head back to the control room
- and found himself standing face to face with Chief Kowalski.
Oops.
Kowalski gave him an enigmatic
look and cocking his head to one side said, “Is there something going on I
should know about, Skipper?”
It crossed Crane’s mind to
deny it, but realized that Kowalski would know better - and it was trust in
their officers - especially the senior command staff - that made Seaview’s
crew so exceptional. He couldn’t break that trust now. He sighed, knowing that
he was going to have to level with the COB, but not entirely sure how he‘d
react.
“I suppose there is, Ski. Why
don’t we find someplace where we won’t be disturbed and I’ll fill you in.” He
saw the COB relax slightly and realized that the odd events of the last two
weeks had gotten on the crewman’s nerves. He steered the Chief into one of the
currently empty labs and shut the door so they wouldn’t be disturbed. Taking a
pair of stools, he indicated that Kowalski should sit.
“Do you remember when Chip,
Admiral Nelson and I wound up on Venus?” Kowalski nodded that he did, but was
clearly puzzled as to what that had to do with the current situation. “You know
that we met some aliens - not just the ones that snatched us, but the ones that
got us back again? Especially the one named Seldar?” Again a nod of
affirmation. Crane sighed. “We met him again two years later. The Admiral and I
got snatched again - but so did Seldar.”
“I don’t remember you being
missing,” protested Ski.
“That’s because the being
that took us was able to suspend time. We came back to the same moment we’d
left.”
“But why?”
“Seems there’s a Cold War of
sorts going on out there too. There’s a race of advanced beings that likes to
play Games with other species. Or I should say certain members of that race,
known as the Chaos Lords. The others - the Lords of Light - believe meddling
like that is wrong. We found out that the Chaos Lords have been meddling on
earth in a big way…”
“And we’ve been at the center
of a lot of it.” Kowalski wasn’t COB for nothing. He was intelligent enough to
see where the evidence was going. “But what’s that got to do with the way the Seaview’s
been acting?”
“According to Seldar, both
sides in this conflict are energy entities. And if they spend enough time in a
place, their energy can infuse into inanimate objects and then … well, they can
take on a life of their own. And apparently the more complex the artifact, the
more lifelike they become.”
“So Seaview has…”
“Acquired a mind and will of
her own,” stated Crane.
Kowalski seemed to ruminate
on the idea for a few moments. “Does Admiral Nelson know?” he finally asked.
The answer was a snort, but
it wasn’t from Crane. Kowalski’s eyes widened.
“Yeah, he knows, Chief,” said
Crane dryly. “He doesn’t much like it, would prefer to ignore it, but there’s
nothing he can do about it.”
“Seaview? Is that
really you?” asked Kowalski, wonder in his voice.
An almost musical note echoed
softly through the lab.
Kowalski grinned. “I always
thought you were more than an ordinary submarine - and the Skipper here always
did call you his Lady. Guess he was right.” He turned serious. “So what’s the
rush now? All we’ve heard is there’s some kind of problem in the North Atlantic
and we need to get there as fast as possible.”
“I guess you deserve to know,
Ski,” said Crane. “One of those Games I mentioned is in progress. The Chaos
Lords are trying to engineer a nuclear disaster - if not a nuclear war -
involving a Russian boomer. We’re trying to stop it. Admiral Nelson is in
Washington trying to knock sense into certain people’s heads, but if he can’t,
then it’s up to us.”
The Chief whistled. “Damn.
Serious stuff. Are we gonna make it?”
“Seaview’s doing her
best. She’s grown rather fond of Igor.”
“Igor?” asked Kowalski,
suddenly looking confused.
“Captain Second rank Igor
Britanov, commander of a Yankee-1 called K-219,” Crane told him. “That’s the
boomer involved in this mess.”
“A Yankee-1? Jeeze, Sir, that’s
scraping the bottom of the barrel!”
Seaview made a small noise of agreement, causing Kowalski
to look a question at Crane that needed
no interpretation. Seaview was obviously unusually concerned about the
welfare of a man who was supposed to be their enemy.
“Remember the Victor II that
turned with us that time? That was Britanov.”
“I remember that,” mused the
Chief. “How the hell did he know where we were?”
“Apparently all that energy
focused on him has made him sensitive to other objects and beings that also
possess it. He wasn’t consciously aware that we were there, he just knew something
was.” He sighed. “Seaview decided she liked him.” Kowalski’s eyebrows
shot up. “As far as she’s concerned...”
“Mine.” The word was
just barely on the threshold of being audible; one could almost convince
themselves they‘d merely imagined it. The hairs on the back of Crane’s neck
stood up. They always did when Seaview actually spoke. Even Kowalski
seemed taken aback.
“It gets better,” Crane told
him dryly, after he‘d gotten over his surprise. “There’s an American sub
involved. Remember last year in New London and Commander Von Suskil of Augusta?”
Comprehension lit Kowalski’s
face. “So that’s what the hissing was all about. You really didn’t like him did
you, Lady?”
The boat rumbled, a deep low
note. There was no question of her feelings of antipathy towards Von Suskil.
“So we’re going to the
rescue,” finished Crane wryly.
Kowalski shook his head. “Who
else knows Seaview is alive?”
“Chip Morton and Seldar are
the only other ones besides the Admiral,” said Crane, “Though I don’t think she’s
ever actually spoken to any of them like she did just now. Though I expect,” he
added “after this voyage is over, a lot more people may suspect something odd
is going on. But for now though, Ski, let’s keep this just between us.”
“Like anybody’d believe me
anyway, Skipper. But I understand your reasoning. Mum’s the word, sir.”
An eerie sound that could
have almost been a chuckle echoed through the boat. It would send the
engineering staff scurrying for the entire next shift trying in vain to find
the source of the noise.
The two men looked at each
other and shook their heads in unison.
******************
Dawn broke over the grey sea,
four hours after the explosion. By now they’d had to evacuate compartment six
and three deaths had been confirmed with another dozen or more unconscious. One
of those was unfortunately the boat’s doctor. Britanov climbed back up to the
bridge to reassess the situation.
Purple brown smoke blew in
puffs from the damaged silo as he watched. Puffs? He looked more closely and
realized that each time the waves washed over the deck, the smoke stopped.
Could he use that to his advantage somehow? He contemplated the problem. The
fire was raging unchallenged on the lowest level of the missile bay. The
temperature in the fourteen remaining missiles was probably approaching
critical levels - at some point very shortly they would start cooking off - and
each missile carried two six hundred kiloton warheads. What the result might be
he didn’t care to imagine.
Taking on more water by
flooding the missile bay to try and drown the fire could sink them. On the
other hand, doing nothing meant that eventually the fire would either consume
the control cables to the reactors or blow the missiles. If they started losing
the controls he’d have to shut the reactors down or risk meltdown. Either one
would kill them all just as surely as drowning - and possibly contaminate much
of the US east coast as well. He thought back to his watchers and his earlier
vow. One way or another he would beat them.
He climbed back down to the CCP,
a grim look on his face. “Igor,” he addressed his chief engineer by his first
name, “I want to try something. It’s risky, but it may be the only way to save
the boat.”
Krasilnikov eyed him
uncertainly, knowing that whatever Britanov had come up with was likely to be
unorthodox at best. “And?”
“I want to open a couple more
of the missile hatches and dive. Not deep or for very long. But enough to try
and put the fire out.”
Krasilnikov gaped at him for
a moment, but once he got over his initial shock, he had to admit that at this
point they didn’t have much else left to try. “Are you going to ask Moscow?”
“No. If this doesn‘t work, I‘d
rather they didn‘t know we dived on purpose.”
“What about the American? If
we open the missile hatches won‘t he panic?”
“If he’s that much of a fool,
then whatever happens is his fault, not ours.”
**************
Von Suskil prowled restlessly
around Augusta’s control room. Every so often he would raise the
periscope for a quick peak at the Russian boomer lying dead in the water. He
wanted the boomer dead, period. Anything for an excuse to take a shot and blow
the bastard to kingdom come.
He turned once more to the
periscope - and realized that two of her missile hatches were now open. “Bearing
and mark!” he shouted, sending his crew into a confused frenzy. “He’s
launching!”
“What?!” exclaimed the XO. “Let
me see.”
The XO grabbed the periscope.
“There’s no smoke,” he said. “He’s not launching.” He saw the sudden jet of air
from the ballast tank vents and added, “For God’s sake, he’s diving.”
The whoosh of expelled air
came clearly over the sonar, confirming the XO’s words. The crew paused,
uncertain, as Von Suskil grabbed the periscope back just in time to see the
Yankee-1 slip below the waves.
“What the hell? Who dives
with the hatches open?”
“A man who’s desperate,” said
the XO quietly.
As they waited breathlessly,
they heard the boomer blow her ballast tanks and struggle again towards the
surface. She was just feet from her goal when alarms suddenly began blaring
loud enough to be heard across the interval between the two subs. The sonar man
looked puzzled for a moment, but then his face turned ashen. Turning to his two
senior officers he told them, “I think that’s their reactor warning alarms.” He
turned back to his equipment for a moment as the other sub once more sluggishly
broached. “She’s on the surface again.”
The captain and XO looked at
each other for a tense moment. Von Suskil finally spoke. “Mark the position.
Helm, move us away.” The Russian boat was doomed and everyone in Augusta’s
control room knew it.
*******************
Britanov cursed as the alarms
wailed through the CCP. As K-219 broached for a second time and settled again
on the surface, he grabbed the kashtan and called his propulsion
engineer, Gennady Kapitulsky.
“Gennady, what’s going on?”
“I’ve lost all the remote
readings to the reactors - I don’t know what is happening, but if the alarms
are for real and not just a malfunction, we have to shut them down.” There was
the beginning of panic in the engineer’s voice.
“Gennady, listen to me,” said
Britanov. “Belikov is back there. Have him revert the reactors to manual
control. If the readings are real, he can scram them if he has to.”
Belikov quickly responded
from the reactor compartment. “The readings are going crazy back here and it’s
getting hot.”
“Read me the temperatures,”
Kapitulsky told him. He did and the engineer couldn’t help the small groan that
escaped. The numbers were far too high - and still climbing. He clicked back to
talk to Britanov.
“Captain, if we shut down we
won’t have any power except the diesels. It could just be an electrical
malfunction.”
“And if it isn‘t, we meltdown
like Chernobyl. Shut the reactors down, Gennady. Start with the hottest one. Do
it now.”
“Okay. Belikov, unlock the
gravity release for quench baffles one through four. That should do it.”
They waited for what seemed
like a short eternity, but the reactor alarms kept screeching.
“Sir!” They could hear
Belikov‘s voice quiver. “I can’t get the gravity release to work. The baffles
won’t drop - the metal’s binding!”
“Captain… Captain, the scram
was unsuccessful. The only thing we can do now,” Kapitulsky paused and
swallowed, “is go inside and hand crank the baffles down.”
At Britanov’s side, the chief
engineer stirred. “I’ll go back and do it.”
“No, I still need you here,
Igor.”
“I’ll do it,” said Belikov
over the kashtan, “but I need a new OBA canister. I’m almost out of air.”
“Go back to eight and get one
from Pshenichny.”
As he spoke the alarms
finally fell silent - the chief engineer had pulled the breakers, silencing
them. It let Britanov collect his thoughts, though now all he could do was
wait. K-219’s fate - and that of much of the eastern US - was in the hands of
the young lieutenant. Time seemed to crawl.
“Captain,” spoke the
navigator, breaking the silence, “the Fyodor Bredkin is fifty kilometers
from us. Do you want to speak to her?”
Britanov felt a surge of
conflicting emotions at the news. Part of him was relieved that help was there
if they needed it, but a part of him was ashamed that it was some rusty old
freighter that would be his crew’s savior. He’d almost rather it was another
American submarine. Not the idiot that had been the source of his troubles of
course, the Los Angeles class boat that was undoubtedly still lurking out there
somewhere, but a boat like Seaview… He paused, wondering where that
thought had come from. He shook his head as if to clear those disturbing
thoughts.
“I’d rather see him.
Ask what speed he can make.”
The navigator consulted with
the freighter captain. “Captain, he says his ETA is just under three hours. He
wants to know our condition.”
“He’s not the only one,”
muttered Britanov just as a cry came from the radar operator.
“Captain, aerial contact
inbound illuminating us with search radar. It looks like an American patrol
plane.”
Irritated, Britanov clicked
the kashtan. “Pshenichny! What’s happening back there?”
“They’re going back in now.”
The security officer added with a hopeful note in his voice, “The alarm is off.”
“We killed the power to it,”
Britanov told him, killing any hope that the alarms had been false.
The waiting continued as
Britanov hung on the kashtan, listening to the conversations between the
two men who were risking their lives to shut down the reactors. When Belikov
collapsed from the heat and fumes, Britanov stirred; he’d go back himself and
crank in the last baffle himself. But then Engineer-Seaman Sergei Preminin
calmly told them he would do it.
Britanov wanted to weep, but
he told the young man over the kashtan, “I know you can do it, Sergei.”
“Yes, sir, I will.”
They waited. Britanov sent Kapitulsky forward
to start the emergency diesel generator. In a moment the rumble of the diesel
echoed though the CCP.
“Switching main power bus to
backup,” Krasilnikov told them. The lights blinked off, then back on.
“What is keeping him?”
worried the chief engineer. “It shouldn’t have taken this long.”
After what seemed an eternity
a weak voice came over the kashtan. “Captain?”
Britanov grabbed the
microphone. “Sergei? Where are you?”
“Captain…” The voice faded.
“Sergei!”
“Captain, the reactors are
secured.”
A cheer went up in the
CCP.
“Then get the hell out of
there!” Britanov told him. To his navigator he said, “Radio Moscow and tell
them our reactors are shut down.” He heaved a private sigh of relief. Meltdown
had been averted and flooding the missile bay seemed to have at least slowed
down the fire - and hopefully cooled off the missiles. He’d bought them some
more time, but that was all.
***************
Crane heard Seaview
sigh and looked up from his desk. “Seaview? Did they get the fire out?”
There was a warbling, very
unhappy chirp.
Uh, oh. That meant yes, but with severe reservations shading
towards maybe. Damn. Something besides the fire and flooding must have
gone wrong.
A small chiming in his desk
drawer interrupted him. Seldar. Maybe now he could find out exactly what was
happening. It was frustrating at times trying to communicate with the boat.
Seldar had told him dryly that now she had definitely become self aware, that
once she did find her voice, he might wish she’d stayed mute. Maybe so, but
having accurate information could make the difference between life and death,
especially where the Chaos Lords were concerned.
He fished the small voice
only communicator out of the drawer and hit the receive button.
“Admiral Crane.” The voice on
the other end wasn’t Seldar, but his second in command, Liam.
“I was wondering what was
going on, Liam - Seaview indicated there was fire and flooding on K-219,
but that now they’re on the surface.”
“That is part of what has
happened, Admiral.” Unlike Seldar, Liam used a translator, so his English was
very good. “They had an explosion in one of the silos - it looks like Augusta
may have clipped them and knocked a hatch cover loose, then hit them again when
they did an emergency blow and finished ripping the hatch off. They have a fire
on board - it was in the missile bay, but Britanov opened two of the missile
hatches and dived enough to let the sea flood the lower level.” There was
admiration and wonder in the alien’s voice. “The fire isn’t completely out, but
what’s left is in the wiring bundles behind the bulkheads. The water will keep
the temperature down below the critical point in the missile silos.
Unfortunately the fire severed their reactor controls and they had to scram
both reactors. They’re dead in the water, with just an auxiliary diesel for
limited electrical power. The Soviet government has diverted several merchant
ships to aid them.”
Crane frowned to himself.
From what he knew about Russian missile fuel, flooding the missile bay might
help with the fire, but it would give Britanov other problems. “Britanov’s
going to have a lot more gas to deal with though. I think he’s going to have to
abandon ship when those freighters get there. How long will it be until the
first one arrives?”
“Just under four of your
hours.”
“And we’re still about
eighteen hours away. It should be pretty much over by the time we get there.”
Seaview went silent for a long moment in an attitude of
listening. The hair on the back of Crane’s neck twitched and he sat up
straighter. “Liam, is there something else going on?”
“Let me check.” He must have
turned away from the communicator, for Crane could just barely hear him
speaking to one of the communication techs. He then came back on and said, “Augusta
just got new orders. I’m not sure what they are yet, but there’s a Navy tugboat
that’s been diverted and is now heading that way.”
Crane was aghast. “They
wouldn’t!” The only reason to send a tug would be to try and take K-219 in tow
- which would be a clear violation of Soviet sovereignty - and very likely
scuttle the summit talks in Iceland.
“Admiral, remember who we’re
dealing with here,” remarked Liam dryly as Seaview made a rude noise in
the background.
“Okay, so Von Suskil is that
stupid. But he doesn’t have the authority…” Crane slapped his forehead. “Weinberger.
That fool!”
“You need to get there as
soon as you can, Admiral. This isn’t over yet.” Liam sounded both worried and
thoughtful.
“You’re right, I’m afraid,”
Crane admitted unhappily. “Let me know if anything else happens.”
“You can be sure of it,” Liam
told him before the device went silent. Crane sighed and put the communicator
in his shirt pocket. He might not have time to come back to his cabin the next
time he needed to speak to Liam or Seldar.
The deck took on a bit more vibration. He bit
back a warning; Seaview knew what her limits were better than any man,
including himself. Running at flank speed would shave several hours off their
ETA - hours that might make all the difference in the world.
A knock at the door brought a
grimace to his face. He’d probably have to find a whole new engineering crew
when this was all over. The Chief Engineer had been demanding for the last two
weeks to know what kind of experiment they’d done to the boat that he hadn’t
been informed about. He thought briefly about telling Lt. Commander Morgan what
was really going on.
That would to make for an
interesting conversation, but he didn’t think Morgan would believe a word of
it. No, Crane would simply stick to his story - which happened to be the truth
- that they hadn’t done anything to Seaview that Morgan hadn’t been
informed about.
***********
Since the Russians had
apparently successfully scrammed their reactors and meltdown was no longer
imminent, the powers that be had directed Augusta move back into the
vicinity of the Russian sub - but now they had new orders and Commander Von
Suskil was practically salivating over them.
He had been directed to
quote, “MAKE ALL REASONABLE EFFORTS TO PREVENT SUCCESSFUL TOW OR SLAVAGE,” of
the crippled Russian sub. Anything short of hostile action was authorized. This
would pay the bastard back for surprising him. He glowered as he remembered
that single ping. One way or another, he’d make sure the Russian boat
never made it home. She’d either be on the end of a towrope attached to the
American tug or on the bottom. Hopefully her captain would be with her.
************
Britanov was still mulling
over his options when the kashtan clicked.
“Central, this Preminin. I
can’t get the hatch open into eight.”
K-219’s captain straightened,
concern on his face. “Sergei, are you sure the dogs are all free?”
A moment of silence, then, “Yes.”
“Don’t worry, we’ll get you
out. Pshenichny, get that hatch open now!”
“We’re trying, Captain. We
put a jack on it and it bent the bulkhead we were bracing against. Something’s
jamming it,”
“Pressure,” said Chief
Engineer Krasilnikov, “it’s got to be a pressure problem. Seven’s pressurized
and eight isn’t. They’ll never get it open unless we either vent seven or
pressurize eight.”
“Seven has gas,” Pshenichny
reminded them over the kashtan.
“We’ll pressurize eight. Get
ready.”
The lights dimmed in the CCP
as the pumps started.
“Stop!” shouted Pshenichny. “There’s
gas coming in!”
Krasilnikov killed the pumps
and looked over at Britanov.
“Sergei.” Britanov waited for
the young seaman to answer, to tell him he’d have to manually operate the vent
system in seven to reduce the pressure, but there was no answer. “Sergei? Answer!”
There was no response, not
even so much as a click. Britanov bowed his head in silent grief, knowing that
it was now too late to save the young seaman who’d saved the rest of them from
the runaway reactors.
“Captain?” The voice was
Pshenichny’s. “We’ve still got gas coming in through the vents.”
The captain and chief
engineer looked at each other. Everything was off. Unless the lines had been
damaged - quite likely under the circumstances - there shouldn’t have been any
flow at all. They were out of OBA canisters. There was only one option left.
“Pshenichny, get everyone aft
to ten and prepare to evacuate. Leave no one. Get them out on the weather deck.”
Britanov hung up the kashtan and wondered to himself, How do you
loose your command? Gracefully? Heroically? The freighter was now only an
hour away. He hoped K-219 would float long enough to get what was left of his
crew evacuated.
*********
Seaview was slashing through the ocean at a rate that left
Lee Crane amazed - and a bit worried that she was overextending herself. She
was now pushing over fifty knots, beyond even emergency flank speed. It was not
something she had been designed for. He knew her screws were howling; anybody
listening was going to hear her coming. He could just imagine the shock waves
that had rippled through SOSUS Control when they first started picking
her up, because Seaview going somewhere in a big hurry usually meant big
trouble. They’d had to be wondering what the hell was going on for her to be
running this hard.
He had the added problem that
his conversation with the chief engineer hadn’t gone well; in fact, as of this
moment Seaview no longer had a chief engineer. When Crane had
stuck to his story that there was no experiment of Nelson’s - or anyone else,
for that matter - going on, the man had basically called him a liar, then taken
off his collar pins and handed in his resignation, effective immediately. Crane
had confined the man to his quarters for his own safety and posted a guard to
make sure he didn’t do anything stupid.
Crane sighed - and noted to
himself that he’d been doing that a lot lately. The XO was on the way to his
cabin. When he’d found out the chief engineer was confined to quarters, he’d
demanded to know why. He found himself wondering if Seaview would still
have an XO by the time they got back to port - any port. Maybe he ought to ask
Britanov if he would take the position. Seaview would certainly approve.
He laughed quietly to himself
at the thought. He’d bet K-219’s chief engineer would be out of a job too when
this was all over, so maybe the Institute could hire both of them as
replacements. Wouldn’t Washington love that.
***********
When Security Officer
Pshenichny had gathered what was left of the crew aft of the missile bay and
counted heads, he found he had sixty men. They’d left four dead behind,
including the weapons officer, Petrachkov. He didn’t feel right about leaving
them, but there’d been no way to bring the bodies with them; Preminin they
couldn’t even reach.
He took the kashtan. “Captain,
we’re at the escape hatch.”
“Everyone?” asked Britanov.
“Everyone still alive.”
Another voice, the navigator,
came over the kashtan. “Captain, the Fyodor Bredkin has us in
sight. The captain wants to know what we need.”
Pshenichny heard Britanov
tell the navigator, “Tell them to send over a launch and any OBA canisters.
Tell them to stand by to accept casualties.” Then to Pshenichny, “Get the men
up on the weather deck. We’ll send the injured over first.”
The escape hatch was narrow,
allowing only one man at a time to pass through. The injured had to be handed
up; there was no way to carry them through the narrow passage. Pshenichny was
waiting at the end of the line; as senior officer present, he would be the last
to leave. As the last man before him started up, he took a last look around and
caught an odd, different scent in the foul air. Something prompted him to go
look. He took a few quick steps to the nearest bulkhead and peered down a side
passageway that led to ladder to the bilges.
Thick brown smoke was curling
up the ladder, rung by rung. The fire was coming back.
Pshenichny went back aft and
climbed into the light, shutting the hatch behind him.
***************
Forward, Gennady Kapitulsky
had climbed up to the bridge with an armful of blankets for the injured and a
fresh OBA canister for his mask, since the wind was blowing the poisonous smoke
that still drifted out of the ruptured silo forward over the sail. At least
that meant the men out on the exposed weather deck wouldn’t have to breathe it.
The sun was hot and tropical, but the sea was still cold enough that exposure
could be fatal to men already weakened. The XO, Sergei Vladmirov, was already
there, sweeping the horizon with a pair of binoculars. He lowered them and
handed them to Kapitulsky and pointed. When he focused in on what the XO was
pointing at, he saw a mottled grey tube cutting the water less than half a
kilometer away.
It could only be a periscope.
“I think that’s the that
bastard hit us,” said Vladmirov, pointing back to the gaping hole that used to
be the number six silo.
“Maybe so,” said Kapitulsky, “You’d
better tell the captain about the periscope - I’m going aft to see what I can
find out.” He could also see the freighter was starting to slow down so he wouldn’t
run over the sub he was supposed to help. Good. Maybe that meant his master
wasn’t a total idiot.
He climbed down the ladder
from the bridge onto the missile deck just as the US patrol plane made another
pass. Pausing, he gave the plane a one finger salute. He hoped the bastard on
the sub saw it too. Holding his breath as he skirted around the edge of the raw
wound in K-219’s hull, he made his way over the rest of the still intact
hatches to seek out Pshenichny.
The weapons officer was on
his knees over the still figure of the ship’s doctor, shaking, tears running
down his face as he tried to wipe away the green foam that bubbled out of the
doctor’s mouth. Kapitulsky took him by the shoulders and forced him to sit.
“He gave me his mask,” said
Pshenichny between sobs. “He gave me his OBA when mine ran out.”
“And you took charge and
saved the others,” Kapitulsky told him.
“Not all of them. Four are
still down there.”
Kapitulsky gave him one of
the blankets to spread over the doctor and handed the rest around. “Just how
bad is it down there?”
“Eight and nine are hopeless.
The fire is coming back down there and gas has come all the way aft into ten.
It’s hell down there - the missiles could blow any minute.”
“Leave the missiles to me,”
Kapitulsky told him, just as the whaleboat from the freighter approached to
within hailing distance.
“Is it safe?” called out the
coxswain in the boat. Kapitulsky could have cheerfully strangled the man and
quickly made his displeasure known. The launch eased up against the side of the
sub.
“The twelve on stretchers go
first. Pshenichny, you go with them and make sure the men are taken care of.”
He helped the Security Officer into the launch and was about to shove it off
when another figure suddenly leaped from the sub into the small boat. He
realized that it was Sergiyenko, the Political Officer. The coward! Pshenichny
was looking at the man like he’d turned into a two headed snake. Kapitulsky
would have liked to drag the man out of the boat by the scruff of his worthless
neck, but the launch was already pulling away.
He spat. Well, he still had
to go below and see just how bad things were. One of the warrant officers stood
up and volunteered to go with him.
They climbed back down the
escape hatch. The air was dim and the deck beneath his feet hot enough that he
could feel it through the soles of his boots. If it was this bad in ten, what
was it like in the missile bay where the fire had actually started? They
started forward, but stopped in nine. It was already beyond bearable.
The two retraced their steps
aft to ten. At the last intercom station, Kapitulsky stopped to pick up the kashtan.
“Captain? This is Gennady in ten.”
Britanov immediately
answered. “What have you found?” he asked.
“The temperature is way too
high - we’ve got to have a fire below decks, because the decks are hot. Gas has
spread from eight into nine and ten.” He paused. “Captain, the missiles could
go any minute. With the remote instruments out, we’d have no warning…”
“I understand. Get out and
seal the hatch behind you.”
Kapitulsky wanted to say that
he was sorry there was nothing he could do, but what would be the point?
*************
Britanov faced a decision. He
had to find out what was happening in four. Since the missile bay couldn’t be
reached from aft, that meant they’d have to try from this end. In the meantime…
in the meantime he wanted everybody off except for a small damage control
party. If K-219 decided to take an abrupt plunge, he wanted to maximize the
probability that those aboard could make it off - and minimize the loss of
lives if they couldn’t. He didn’t much care what Moscow thought about it
either.
He already knew that the
chief engineer would insist on being one of those who stayed. He turned to the
others. “I need nine volunteers to stay behind with me and find out what’s
really happening in four. If it looks safe, I’m going to hook us up to the
largest of the freighters coming and make them tow us home.”
As he had expected,
Krasilnikov was the first to volunteer.
“I knew I could count on you,”
Britanov said. “Pick your repair party. Everyone else get ready to go. And
start collecting the code materials. I don’t want anything left behind.”
The CCP staff fell to,
collecting charts, communications records, codebooks - anything that might be
of value to the Americans. Britanov even took the launch key from around his
neck and put it in the last of the ten bags they’d filled.
He picked up the kashtan
and called his XO on the bridge. “Vladmirov? Have a surface detail to help man
the towlines. Which freighter looks the biggest?”
“Krasnogvardyesk.” He
hesitated, then added, “There’s a foreign ship in sight now too. American.”
“What kind?”
The vessel Vladmirov
described could only be a tug. They wouldn’t dare! was Britanov’s first
indignant thought. But then again…. There was again that stubborn
feeling that this game was bigger than it looked from the inside - and that the
rules were ruthless.
“Get on the ship to ship and
tell the master of the Krasnogvardyesk he’s going to do his patriotic
duty and pull us home.” He turned to the chief engineer. “Let’s get set up for
a tow.”
The chief engineer nodded and
headed topside.
*************
He wasn’t gone long. After
coming back down, he clambered into his old asbestos suit and broke out his
private stash of OBA canisters. Two michman engineers followed him as he
then dropped down the ladder from the CCP to the next lower deck. There was an
airlock there that led back directly into compartment four. They held their
portable instruments ready to read the levels of both radiation and gas in the
air.
When Krasilnikov opened the
hatch into the missile bay a dense white cloud of mist flowed into the airlock.
Nitric acid. Walking into the compartment was like walking into an eerie
poisoned forest at night. All of the silos were smoking, their insulation
damaged by acid. Wires lay bare, sparking and smoldering. “Check the
temperature on each silo,” he told them. “Anything over fifty C, tell me.” They’d
blow at seventy C, but there wasn’t any point in scaring the two men any more
than they already were.
**********
Britanov climbed to the open
bridge to see how the preparation for towing the submarine was going. The steel
cable had now been attached to K-219’s bow, but because of the difference in
the height between the stern of the freighter and the bow of the sub, the cable
dropped down below the surface of the water and then looped up. He looked the
setup over and realized with a sinking heart that it probably wouldn’t work.
The sub had no steering; the first time a wave hit them broadside they’d go
veering off. He said as much to his XO.
“If he takes it easy,” argued
Vladmirov.
Britanov shrugged. “Tell him
dead ahead slow, or else it will break.”
The freighter’s stack belched
black smoke and the single screw began to turn. As the slack came out of the
cable, K-219’s bow began to turn. A small bow wave began to form.
“It’s working,” muttered
Britanov, almost to himself. He picked up his binoculars to watch the cable -
and became aware of something else.
A periscope was cutting the
sea at high speed, heading right for the gap between K-219 and the Krasnogvardyesk.
It vanished, but Britanov
knew the sub wasn’t gone. There was still the subtle boil of the ocean’s
surface to mark the passage of the nuclear sub. It passed directly in front of
them, followed by a jerk and a loud TWANG! The cable off K-219’s bow suddenly
slackened.
“He cut it!” shouted the XO
angrily, “The bastard cut our towline!”
************
Lee Crane had never heard
such a sound from Seaview before. A series of high, sharp, almost knife
edged pings from her sonar blasted through the ocean around them as the boat
quivered from stem to stern in what Crane recognized as rage. They duty crew in
the control room with him cringed, eyes wide, some with amazement, others with
fear. It was common knowledge that the chief engineer was confined to his
quarters and the XO was threatening to resign over it, so it was natural that
the sudden speculation humming around the control room held that the ex chief
engineer had done something to the boat.
Crane knew better, but didn’t
think telling the crew what was going on was an option, because for one thing,
he didn’t really know what had just made the boat so angry. He put a hand on
the bulkhead and asked, “What just happened?”
The crew thought he was
asking them.
“I don’t know, sir,” babbled
the senior sonar man. “The instruments just went crazy.”
“Let me have a look.” The
calm voice belonged to Chief Kowalski. He met Crane’s eye and with a slight
tilt of his head indicated that the Admiral should go see what had happened
that had set the boat off while he covered in the control room.
Crane nodded back and picked
up the mike. “Engineering,” he barked, “what’s going on back there?”
“Sir, we don’t know,” came
the frantic answer.
“I’m on my way,” he told them
just as the XO came bolting through the hatch, panic on his face. Crane looked
over at Kowalski. “Chief, take the sonar apart and see what caused that spike.
Mr. Jackson, you have the conn. Do NOT change course or speed until I get back.
Understood?” The XO nodded, though his
expression was one of incomprehension. Crane and Kowalski shared another look -
they both knew the COB would find nothing, but Kowalski’s expression told Crane
that he understood that he was to find something to use as an excuse for
the boat’s behavior.
Crane headed aft. Once out of
sight he ducked into an empty compartment and pulled the communicator of his
shirt pocket.
“Liam, what the hell just
happened?”
“Britanov got a tow line from
K-219 to a freighter. Then that …that bastard Von Suskil ran between
them and snapped it!” He could hear the outrage and shock in Liam’s voice.
Crane’s mouth went to a thin
hard line. “That sorry sonofabittch. I‘ll let Admiral Nelson know. We’ll get
the SOB put on the beach - or turn in our own resignations.” He could tell his
words to Liam were also beginning to bring Seaview’s ire back down to a
lower boil. To the boat he added, “You have my word on it, Lady.”
Now he had to get to
engineering and find an excuse there for the boat‘s behavior. He shook his head
- he’d be glad when this mess had been settled and Britanov was safely out of
harm’s way so Seaview would settle down.
*************
The sun was lowering towards
the western horizon as Britanov and his chief engineer stood on the bridge and
discussed their options. Krasilnikov had just told him that although the
missiles were hot, they weren’t anywhere near critical. His little dip in the
ocean had worked - but now he was starting to wonder if saving the boat had
been a good thing. He looked out over the sea at the flotilla of ships that
surrounded K-219; three Russian freighters and the American tug. Though he hadn’t
shown himself again, Britanov knew in his bones the American submarine was
still there as well. There was no doubt in his mind now that the Americans were
trying to steal his command right out from under him while Moscow argued over
what to do.
He came to a decision.
“Igor,” he said to the chief
engineer, “it’s time to get everybody over to the freighter, while we still
have light.”
“But we’re not sinking,”
Krasilnikov protested.
And that, old friend, is
turning out to be a problem. Britanov
didn’t say so out loud. Instead he said, “I’ll be staying.”
Krasilnikov looked dubious. “What
if something happens? The fires aren’t all out.”
“I’ll stay in touch by radio.”
He gave his chief engineer a fleeting enigmatic smile. “We’re a long way from
the Party, Igor, and sailors on the sea. It’s a big place - big enough to hold
things no one understands - and maybe even a miracle or two.”
“It’s the Americans, isn’t
it,“ insisted the Engineer, “you’re afraid…”
“Igor, do I have to throw
rocks? I want the crew and those bags moved while there’s still enough light to
see.”
Krasilnikov sighed. “I
understand. But Captain, don’t stay too long.”
It didn’t take long to round
up the last nine men and get the bags loaded into the launch. Britanov waved as
they headed towards the freighter.
They were halfway there when
Britanov saw the periscope again. As before, it was slicing through the sea at
high speed - but this time it was headed straight for the launch. He grabbed
the flare gun and fired it. The men in the boat saw it and as the coxswain
started to argue, Britanov saw Krasilnikov grab the tiller away from him and
start to turn back towards K-219.
Fortunately his chief
engineer then spotted the periscope himself. Britanov saw the launch heel over
and put on a burst of speed. The periscope missed them, but the spray from it
splashed into the launch. The coxswain took the rudder back and made a beeline
for his ship.
****************
Augusta was not a happy boat.
“Awfully close to that
whaleboat,” commented the XO.
“Had to if we were going to
film the code bags. We get that run on tape?”
“Aye,” answered a petty
officer; disgust colored his voice but Von Suskil ignored it.
Walking away from the scope,
he ordered, “Let me know if anything starts to happen. I‘ll be in my cabin.”
The sonar operator looked
after him. Von Suskil had just come close to violating one of the sacred tenets
of the sea - you do not run survivors down. Ever. There was another thought. If
push came to shove, Von Suskil might just blame him to cover his own ass.
Copies of his acoustic tapes might just be a good thing, even if it was against
regs. He wasn’t going to take the fall for this ass-hole if everything came
apart.
******************
“He did what?!” Crane’s roar of outrage could be heard in the
corridors half the length of the boat. Most of the men who heard his shout
thought he was referring to the now ex-chief engineer; no one else aboard had
any idea of the near miss with the launch. It took all of Crane’s formidable
will to not throw something breakable at the nearest bulkhead. He did use
language that he normally was never in the habit of using. Some of it Liam’s
translator couldn’t even render into Alyesk, but the alien understood anyway.
Like seafarers, the sacred law of those who plied the void between the stars
was ‘You never run down survivors - Ever.’ Von Suskil had just put himself on a
shit list he didn’t even know existed.
Seaview wasn’t a happy boat either - her soft angry hissing
was echoing through the ventilation system, barely audible unless you put an
ear right up to the grill and listened, but it made more than one sailor turn a
nervous eye to the little streamers that showed air was flowing through the
system. They fluttered furiously, showing the air was moving fast, very fast.
And it was cold. It didn’t take long for the temperature to drop enough that
the men were sent scrounging for their arctic parkas. They reassured themselves
that it was just a bug in the environmental system. The Admiral and COB would
soon get everything put right - after all, Chief Kowalski had been with the
boat since her keel had been laid and what Crane didn’t know about Seaview’s
systems wasn’t worth knowing. Besides, it was common knowledge he knew more
about the way the boat worked than any of the chief engineers they’d ever had
on board. Morgan couldn’t have done anything to Seaview that the Skipper
couldn’t fix.
In her rage Seaview
had managed to squeeze out two more knots, but even at her current speed she
was still two and a half hours from K-219’s location. One hundred and thirty
nautical miles.
It might as well have been
across the universe.
*************
Igor Britanov stood alone on
K-219’s bridge and began to think about ways to kill his boat. He already knew
that come morning Moscow would order the crew back aboard. It would be the K-8
all over again; admirals sending good men to die just so they could say to the
politicians they’d done everything they could.
Not on his watch, not this
time.
He pulled on his OBA mask and
climbed down the ladder into the enclosed bridge where he pulled a yellow life
raft out of a storage. Lugging the awkward bundle back up, he laid it out
across the deck of the open bridge, uncoiling the line that attached to it.
Returning to the ladder, he descended to the CCP. The most obvious choice of
destroying the boat was denied him. K-219’s self destruct charges required
electricity to be armed and detonated. He suppressed a bitter laugh. It had
obviously never occurred to the boat’s designers that a situation could happen
where the vessel would be left totally powerless. All of the missiles had self
destructs as well, but like the ones for the boat, required power. That left
him with two options. Only one was really feasible, but it was also the most
dangerous.
He came to a stop in front of
his plaque and read the inscription again with a new and deeper understanding.
SUBMARINE LIFE IS NOT A SERVICE BUT A RELIGION. Most religions didn’t really
require sacrifices of their followers - but submarine service required the
time, expertise and courage of its adherents. On rare occasions it even
demanded their lives.
He would have to sink K-219
with nothing but his own two hands. It could be done - but he might not make it
out. The alternative was to bend to Moscow’s orders - and then he would still
die, but his men would die with him. No. Neither Moscow nor his mysterious
watchers would get the satisfaction. Kill him they might, but his crew would
live. He took the plaque off the wall and tucked it inside his jacket.
Making his way forward, he
finally found himself in the torpedo room. Now had come the moment of truth.
His task was to open the outer torpedo tube door with the inner breech open -
then run as a solid stream of water as thick as a tree came smashing in. He’d
have to get all the way back to the CCP, pursued by a tidal wave of black
water, in the dark, then get up the ladder to the life raft.
Taking a deep breath, he spun
the handles that opened the breech - and then ran for his life.
The noise was deafening as
the water roared in behind him. He made it to the bridge to find that the sub
was already tilting to begin his plunge to the bottom. Looking aft, he saw the
stern rising from the sea, a solid wall of water rolling down the missile deck
and breaking around the sail. He started for the raft, but then clambered
hastily up the short mast to cut away K-219’s flag. He stuffed it into his
jacket, then grabbed the line to the raft, tied it around his waist and gave it
a jerk.
To his consternation the raft
only partially inflated. Still, that was better than nothing. He tossed the
raft from the bridge; by now the boat had settled enough that it was only a
short step down. He fell into the raft, only to find himself tossed out by a
wave. Had it not been for the line, he’d have lost the raft at that point, but
he was able to haul himself hand over hand until he could grab hold of the
side. The stern of K-219 was still rising, becoming a black cliff; the rumble
of cascading water was thunderous. It poured into the raft, nearly drowning
him.
The hull of the sub was close
enough to touch. Britanov knew he had to get clear or he’d pull him under when
he down. He fought to get back into the raft, but every time he thought he’d
made it he found himself tossed out again by the turbulent water.
The sail vanished; a huge burst
of air and foam rose above it. He rode the wave away from the sinking sub, but
then a whirlpool formed and sucked him right back. The raft swirled around like
a rubber duck in a bathtub drain then vanished into the vortex. He got one last
lungful of air before he went under.
Britanov looked up as K-219
pulled him down into the sea. He could see the play of light on the surface of
the water above, see it darkening as he went deeper, feel the increasing
pressure in his ears.
And then he remembered.
Remembered Seldar and Captain
Crane and Admiral Nelson. Remembered the alien Elder. Remembered she’d said he
save their country - and then they’d save him.
A sense of betrayal filled
him. Where are you? he cried in his mind as the world started going
black. He knew death wasn’t far away now.
The blackness suddenly
lightened; everything stood in etched sharp relief. He became aware that he
wasn’t alone. A glowing spectral sphere of blue-green light was streaking
through the water towards him. Was this an angel - or one of the alien Elders -
come for him?
He suddenly became aware of a
second sphere of sullen darker green light; no, not a sphere, but a ribbon that
had one end wrapped around his ankle and the other - he swallowed hard - the
other end stretched down towards K-219. The blue-green sphere paused for a
second in front of his face and he found himself with a lungful of fresh air. How?
he wanted to ask, but the spectral ball of blue-green light had streaked
downwards, toward the sinking submarine.
He peered down curiously, his
mind observing in an almost detached fashion. Were the lights arguing with each
other? It seemed he could almost hear words, soft sibilant sounds that murmured
and hissed, but their meaning eluded him. Whatever had passed between them, it
seemed the blue-green sphere had won the argument, for he felt the grip on his
ankle lessen.
Then to his shock the words
from below became clear.
“Avenge me, Igor Britanov,” whispered his sinking boat as he let go and
disappeared into the blackness of the abyss.
Suddenly Britanov found
himself rising back towards the surface. As his head broke though and he sucked
in clean sweet air, the raft suddenly popped back up as well. To his amazement,
he was now in the raft. He rested his cheek for a moment on the side as
he tried to get his wind back. Had what just happened been real? Or a
hallucination brought on by hypoxia?
He heard his name being
called, not by a spectral voice from under the sea, but by his chief propulsion
assistant. He weakly lifted his head just in time to see Gennady Kapitulsky
leap from the launch into the water filled raft. “Gennady” he said, “I knew you’d
come.”
Kapitulsky gathered him up
and carried him back to the launch, which immediately spun and headed back to
it’s mother freighter. Britanov shook uncontrollably in his propulsion
assistant’s arms, face contorted, shifting between tears and wild laughter.
*****************
“Conn. Sonar! Something’s
happening!”
Von Suskil and the rest of Augusta’s
control room crew lifted their heads.
“Jesus, sir! She’s going
down!” The sonar operator didn’t need to put the input onto the loudspeaker;
they were close enough to hear the thunder of water rushing through the doomed
submarine. As she picked up speed and depth, the thunder became a pandemonium
of groans, shrieks and rumbles that sounded eerily alive.
“Mark the spot,” said Von
Suskil.
“Five hundred feet and forty
knots,” reported Sonar.
Take her five minutes to
hit, thought Von Suskil to himself.
The bottom was three and a half miles down.
“Fifty knots, one thousand
feet.”
More like four minutes. “Sonar, I want your best estimate when she crushes.”
“Gone vertical. Two thousand
feet.”
There was a low heavy thud.
“Though three thousand.
Something just blew.”
The sounds began to fade as
the dying boat dropped into the Hatteras Abyss.
“Through four thousand. Sir,
she didn’t crush.”
“What?! She had to.” Von
Suskil couldn’t believe it.
“Sir! New contact coming from
the south.” He paused. “Jesus, sir! Twin screws making turns for over fifty
knots!”
Von Suskil spun. Nobody had a
sub that could go that fast. Not even the Russian Alphas - and they had only a
single screw.
The sonar operator ran the
acoustical signature through his computer and frowned, then repeated it before
turning to his captain. “Sir, the computer says that’s Seaview coming.”
Seaview. Von Suskil began to get a bad feeling. He knew that
Admiral Crane didn’t much care for him. And like the rest of the world’s
submarine fraternity, he knew that Seaview going somewhere in a big
hurry meant big trouble for somebody. And here she was screaming through the
ocean faster than anybody had ever realized she could run - and coming his
way. Suddenly he wasn’t so sure his orders would protect him from Crane and
Nelson if what he’d done here had somehow displeased either of them.
Another thud shook the Augusta.
“Conn, Sonar. That was impact. Eighteen thousand feet.” The operator added with
awe, “She made it down intact.”
Von Suskil made a decision. “The
show’s over here. Let’s head back north.”
Looks were exchanged around
the control room behind his back.
**************
Seaview sighed softly and began to reduce her speed. Crane
knew from her reaction that whatever had just happened that Britanov must have
survived - but he feared that K-219 was lost, for there was a deep sorrow in
the boat’s sigh. He put a hand on Seaview’s bulkhead, sharing her sense
of loss.
It suddenly occurred to him
to wonder if, like Seaview, the presence of the energies of the Elders
had caused a similar change in K-219. Had she too become self aware? Had
Britanov known?
“Seaview? Was K-219
like you?”
The soft sibilant sigh
confirmed his fear.
“Damn,” he said softly. “I’m
sorry. I wish we could have saved her too.”
The chirp of the communicator
in his pocket interrupted. He pulled it out.
“Lee?” This time it was
Seldar himself
“Yeah, Seldar.”
“The Russian boat is down,
but Britanov was rescued.”
“I know.” The sadness in his
voice caused Seldar to pause.
“Lee? Is there a problem?”
“Did you know K-219 was
becoming like Seaview?”
There was a startled intake
of breath. “Are you certain?”
“Seaview is.”
“I see.” Crane could hear the
distress in Seldar’s voice. Since the transformation of inanimate objects
occurred so seldom, it had simply never occurred to anyone that it might have
happened to the other sub. Seldar sighed. “I was calling to tell you that there
has been no leakage of radiation from the reactors or missiles. There is some
chemical contamination from the missile fuel, but it should dissipate over a
period of months. She went down relatively intact.”
“What happened, Seldar? K-219
went down awfully fast.”
There was a long pause. “Britanov
sank her by opening both doors on one of the torpedo tubes. Moscow was going to
order him to put the crew back aboard in the morning, but he was afraid that
your government would board her in the dark and try to take her from him. He
wasn‘t willing to allow either event to happen.”
Crane shivered, imagining
Britanov’s mad dash through K-219’s corridors to reach a hatch and escape. “He’s
lucky.” Actually, he figured it was more than just luck. He’d felt Seaview
stretching away from herself during the time when the other sub was sinking. He
was pretty sure she’d gone to make sure Britanov escaped.
“You do realize, don’t you,
Lee, that Britanov is now in danger from his own government? That he still hasn’t
been rescued as the Elder required because the Soviet government will want a
scapegoat for K-219‘s loss?”
He was right, Crane realized.
The Game itself might have ended, but the repercussions had yet to fully
manifest themselves.
**************
Igor Britanov stood on the
stern of the Fyodor Bredkin and looked out over the moonlit sea. The
freighter was headed for Cuba. From there he and his crew would be flown back
to the Soviet Union. His crew would be safe, but he and Krasilnikov would be
lucky if they didn’t wind up with bullets in their heads. He shivered,
wondering if he’d been saved from a watery grave just to meet one on land. If
that was the case, he’d rather have gone down with K-219. He wondered again
about his memories of his meeting with Nelson and Crane - and the words K-219
has whispered to him when he’d given him back his life.
Had any of it been real? Or had he finally simply gone
mad?
Author’s Note: Much of this
story is true. In early October of 1986, just a week before the Iceland Summit
between Gorbachev and President Reagan, the Soviet ballistic missile sub K-219
under the command of Igor Britanov did sink off the US east coast. The American
attack sub USS Augusta was involved. The Soviets claimed the US sub
struck their boat; the US denies to this day it happened. The American captain
did, unfortunately, behave just as I’ve portrayed here. Details of the events
can be found in the non-fiction book Hostile Waters by Peter
Huchthausen, Igor Kurdin and R. Alan White. HBO made a heavily fictionalized
movie based on the book. I’ve combined elements of both. Rutger Hauer played
Britanov in the movie - his portrayal is the basis for my Captain Britanov.
Some dialog from the book is included in my story - the line of Britanov asking
his chief engineer if he had to throw rocks to get him to leave the boat was
just too good to change.
On a further note. The
real Britanov faced prison or worse on his return to Russia, but in one of
those twists of fate that
prove truth is indeed stranger than fiction, was spared when a kid named
Matthius Rust took off from Helsinki, Finland and headed east in a rented
Cessna. He flew until he ran out of gas - and then landed in Red Square. The
Old Guard Minister of Defense who’d been about to put Britanov in prison for
twenty years was suddenly out, to be replaced by one of Gorbachev’s people.
While Britanov was expelled from the Communist party, effectively ending his
career, he did keep a position in the naval reserves and his pension, not to
mention what freedom was then available in the Soviet Union.
He deserved better for his
humanity and courage.
As for Von Suskil - his
crew was less than happy with him, especially when later in the same patrol, Augusta
collided with a second Russian boomer, this time damaging herself enough
that she spent the next year in dry-dock for repairs. The crew ratted Von
Suskil out, first to his superiors, and then when the Navy showed no signs of
caring about what he’d done, the media. At that point an investigation was
forced on them and Von Suskil ultimately wound up on the beach himself.
Personally, I think he should have been kicked out of the Navy with a
dishonorable discharge, not just relieved of his command. JMHO.
Storm