Kirov II: Cauldron Of Fire (Kirov Series) Read online

  Change your heading, he thought. Good. He had seen Karpov do this as well to throw any stalking enemy off the scent, the most rudimentary of evasive maneuvers. As the ship came around on the new heading the tension subsided somewhat, and then Fedorov looked to his radio man. “Mr. Nikolin,” he said calmly. “Please activate the Tin Man display and do a full pan of our forward and rear arcs.” If the sensors had not seen the plane, he thought, what else might they have missed?

  “Aye, sir.” Nikolin toggled his display to activate HD video camera systems for optical data feed to a hi-res flat panel monitor on the bridge. These systems stood on the forward and aft towers to give the bridge a real time 360 degree video view of the surrounding area. The feed came in, with mild breakup due to the residual static that still seemed to be affecting all the equipment on the bridge, but Fedorov could see that the image showed a clear, calm sea, with no sign of any visual contact on any heading. Yet it was broad daylight now! The scene seemed to astound the junior bridge crew members, who watched the screen with large round eyes, looking at the images and then at Fedorov to note his reaction. Light streamed in through their forward view panes, chasing the soft glow of their night lighting away. Fedorov blinked, amazed, but composed himself to try and set an example for the men.

  “You’ve had an easy life these last ten days or so, Mr. Nikolin,” said Fedorov. “Now would you kindly do a full search of the entire radio band. Scan everything, AM, FM, wireless and short wave bands as well, and please notify me of anything you receive.”

  “Aye, sir.” The young mishman was soon busy at his radio set, and then Fedorov turned to his last senior midshipman on the watch, Victor Samsonov, his strong right arm at the Combat Information Center.

  “Mr. Samsonov,” he said coolly. “Your report, please.”

  Samsonov swallowed hard, his thick features uncertain for a moment, then launched himself into a standard status check report, his voice deep and clear. “Sir,” he began, “I have nothing on my board by way of an active contact, and no systems are engaged at this time. The aircraft which made that strafing run has vanished, as least that is what my systems indicate. My board notes two fire control radar systems reporting red with full malfunction—both on the forward MR-90 systems, and I have one yellow light on the S-300 system as well.”

  There was apparently damage to the ship’s medium range air defense guidance radar sets for the “Klinok” (Blade) surface to air missile package, the ship’s primary AA defense for threats at medium ranges between thirty and 90 kilometers. NATO planners once referred to it as the “Gauntlet” system due to its lethal efficiency, and the system aboard Kirov had seen many improvements since that time. The yellow light on the S-300s referred to the longer range vertically mounted SAMs on the far forward deck, a separate system, but equally lethal. They had used it weeks ago to devastate the carrier air flights off Victorious and Furious, and the thought that it might be compromised in any way filled Fedorov with misgivings.

  “Anything more?”

  “All three main SSM systems report green sir. We have full fire control and I have spun up one silo to full battle readiness for each system.” The ship’s real teeth, the lethal ship to ship missile batteries beneath their hatches on the long foredeck, were as sharp as ever.

  “Very well,” Fedorov nodded, remembering that the Admiral would often use that same expression after receiving a report. And for that matter he assumed as well the familiar stance that Volsky would adopt while he took stock of a tactical situation on the bridge, arms clasped behind him, chin high and a observant eye to the seas around them—mid-day seas, with the sun glistening of the low wave caps and high in the sky. He had watched the old man with much admiration many times from his former post at the navigation station, and he took heart to know that the Admiral was on his way at this very moment, collecting his thoughts for the report he would soon be asked to give himself. But minutes passed and Volsky did not appear. Time stretched on and he stood there, not knowing what to do next.

  A low tone sounded and Fedorov walked quickly to the comm-receiver near the Admiral’s chair to answer. “Executive Officer Fedorov here,” he said, eager to hear the voice of Admiral Volsky again in return, but instead it was Dr. Zolkin in the infirmary.

  “I’m afraid we have casualties, Mr. Fedorov,” the voice said in a low and serious tone. “If the situation allows, could you please come to sick bay?”

  Fedorov hesitated briefly, wondering. Then he marshaled his courage and spoke up, trying to keep his voice clear and level. “Very well, Doctor. I need to run down damage reports, but I’ll see what I can do.”

  As he slipped the receiver back into its holder he had a sinking feeling that he knew why the Admiral had not yet reached the bridge.

  Chapter 3

  Lingering near the Admiral’s chair Fedorov realized that he might soon be sitting there in a way he had never fully imagined, or even desired. Yet the urgency of the moment pulled at him. He could still hear claxons sounding and knew there was a fire below decks. The damage control parties were scrambling to douse the flames, and when he looked out the forward view pane he could see a column of thick black smoke rising past Kirov’s tall central tower, up past the main mast where it darkened the rotating radar antennae with soot.

  Chief Byko called up to the bridge to report the full extent of the damage, which seemed remarkably light given the sound and fury of the attack they had just endured. One of the lifeboats on the port side had been riddled with machinegun fire and set ablaze. Heavier rounds had piled into the main superstructure, some penetrating to the outermost compartments in the interior of the ship, where three seamen lost their lives and seven more were wounded by shrapnel. An examination of the damage showed that the worst of the attack had been aimed at the command citadel, though remarkably little harm was done there. The 200mm armor plating surrounding the critical systems and personnel in this area had deflected most of the heavier rounds, but some of the more sensitive radar and electronics components above suffered serious damage. The port side radar control for the Klinok (SA-N-92) Missile system was shot completely through and virtually shattered. Byko had engineers up on the roof of the citadel removing the unit and gauging their chances of replacing it with reserve components from the engineering bay.

  Rodenko finally seemed to get his primary search radars clear of interference and was getting a good picture of the area around the ship, though his range seemed limited. “All clear for the moment,” he said to the Executive Officer. “I suppose we can count ourselves lucky that they didn’t hit the main search radars. Our Voskhod MR-900 system is green and the 3D Fregat MR-910 on the aft mast is fully operational. Not sure why our signal range is so attenuated at the moment, but it was not from any damage sustained in that attack.”

  “We had the same situation with signal range the last time,” said Fedorov. My Navigation Radars were at 50% of capacity for several hours.”

  “The last time?” Rodenko looked at him. “You mean to say—”

  “That was no modern aircraft that just hit us,” said Fedorov. “In the heat of the moment I could not get a clear look at the plane, but I did see enough to know it was a twin engine fighter—probably a Beaufort or perhaps even a BF -110.”

  Samsonov frowned. He had never heard of either aircraft, and realized things were skewing off in an impossible direction again. “Then we are still back to the Second World War? This is crazy! What is going on?”

  Fedorov looked at him, thinking, but said nothing for a moment. Remembering the attack, he recalled the piercing lights that lanced through the bridge compartment. Rodenko had seen them as well, and he questioned him about it.

  “Those lights, Rodenko. Do you remember what happened?”

  “I thought it was a laser,” said Rodenko. “Came right through the main bulkhead of the citadel and hit the decks. But, as you can see, there is no damage at all.” He scratched his head, clearly flummoxed by the attack.

  “
It was probably rounds from the main cannon on that aircraft,” said Fedorov.

  “Impossible,” Samsonov complained. “Right through our armor? Then where are the holes?”

  “I don’t think they really hit us,” Fedorov began, still feeling his way through the explanation himself, trying to get his mind around it even as he spoke. “This trouble with the ship’s reactor Dobrynin reported… and strange light on the sea just before the attack, the odd pulsation in the air—it was all just as we experienced it before. I think we may have slipped again, moved in time again.”

  “But how?” Rodenko and Tasarov both turned in their chairs now, keenly attentive to what Fedorov was saying. The other crew members were listening, though Rodenko waved a hand at one, a look of annoyance on his face that set the man back to his watch on the radar.

  Fedorov stepped closer and the four men seemed to form a circle, the senior officers on the bridge now, Fedorov as the acting Starpom, or First Officer, and his senior Lieutenants, Rodenko, Tasarov and Samsonov. He went on, still trying to sort through the situation in his mind as he spoke.

  “Suppose we moved again,” he began. “God only knows where now, but it was clearly not forward in time. We’ve slipped back again—or we were pulled back again. Who knows why? But it was as if we were not quite all here when that plane came in on us. Some of those rounds seemed to pass right through the bridge, just as you say Rodenko, like a laser. Then, as we solidified in this moment, the shells began to bite against the citadel’s armor. We got off rather easy with this attack. Those cannons could have done a lot more harm if they had hit more critical systems, but I think most of the rounds passed right through us…because we weren’t really here yet—we were still manifesting in this new time.”

  He realized how crazy his words must sound, but by now the crew had come to accept the impossible circumstances of their situation. “Look at the time,” Fedorov pointed to the chronometer. “It is two in the morning, and we should be in the thick of night. Please correct me if I am wrong, but it is broad daylight now. Where has the night gone? Unless the earth’s rotation has suddenly changed, we have obviously moved in time.”

  “But there was no nuclear detonation,” said Rodenko. “How did it happen this time? How could we move again like this?”

  “I don’t know…” Fedorov was quick to admit his own ignorance. “We may never know. It could be that we have never really settled in time again after that first accident that sent us reeling into the past. Ever skip a rock on a pond? Perhaps we are skipping along in time like a stone skips on the water. We landed in 1941, and then skipped off the water into that nightmare world of the future, only to fall back into the drink again. We just sailed across the Atlantic, so we have deliberately moved in space.”

  “That I understand,” Rodenko argued. “But I see no controls at the helm for time displacement! How is it possible?”

  “I said I don’t know,” said Fedorov. “Look—we won’t be able to sort through all of this any time soon. It took us days to realize what had happened the first time, but we may not have the luxury of time like that again. We need to be alert and ready, and must assume we are still not where we belong. If we have moved again, we need to find out where we are, because if we’ve landed back in the 1940s as before, then this could be a very dangerous place.” He pointed to the forward view pane. “Don’t be lulled by those nice calm seas and clear blue skies. The Mediterranean was a cauldron of fire during the Second World War, and we’ve sailed right into the middle of it. If I could only figure out the date and time…” He remembered his radio man and turned to that station, his eyes alight.

  “Anything to report, Mr. Nikolin?”

  “Nothing yet, sir. The band is all clouded over. I think I’m starting to get a signal, then I lose it. It comes and goes like that, but I get nothing clear enough to record.”

  “Well, keep at it.” He surveyed the bridge, thinking what to do next. The situation had calmed for the moment, and he wanted to get below and see the damage first hand, but even more to get to the infirmary and see what the Doctor was calling about.

  “We’ll sort out what has happened soon enough,” he concluded. “In the meantime I need to find the Admiral and give my report. Stay on that scope, Rodenko—all of you—be keenly alert now. And Mister Samsonov,” he warned, “we cannot afford to be caught by surprise again. I assess no blame here. None of us saw that plane until it was right on top of us. But don’t let another aircraft get within striking range of this ship, eh? If Rodenko finds anything and feeds you a contact, you have my permission to fire at will and shoot it down. I’m afraid the circumstances compel us to shoot first and ask questions later until we know what has happened and where we are.” He straightened his cap, resolved.

  “And now, gentlemen, I must go below. Mister Rodenko—you have the bridge.”

  “Aye, sir.”

  He made his way out the hatch and down the stairway to the decks below. Men saluted as he passed, to his uniform and rank if nothing else. They knew him as Fedorov, the young dreamer at navigation, lost always in his books when he wasn’t on duty, and always ruminating on the dusty pages of history past. Yet, with the rumors that had been circulating about the Admiral, they were glad, at least, to see a ranking officer in their midst. Karpov and Orlov were still locked up in the brig, and most of the other senior officers were on the bridge. Though many of the junior officers still thought of Fedorov as one of their own, the fact remained that he was now wearing three stripes and two pips of a Captain Lieutenant, and was designated Starpom, the First Officer of the Boat in authority beneath Admiral Volsky.

  Down in the lower decks, the chief warrant officers, or mishmanyy, held sway, commanding the ranks of starshini below them, Chiefs and Petty Officers of various classes, down through Senior Seamen, though the bulk of the 750 man crew were still at the lowest navy rank, the matpoc who carried out all the daily tasks required to keep the ship running in good order. The men still had on their bright orange and yellow life vests and helmets, already hosing down and swabbing the decks where residual fire damage had occurred.

  Fedorov saw where the worst of the attack had riddled an outer hatch with sharp punctures, the metal spraying inward as shrapnel to kill and wound several men in this compartment. Some of the overhead insulated piping and wire conduits that ran in cluttered runs along the roof had also been sheered to ribbons, and technicians were already at work there, cutting and replacing wire and nosing about in an electrical panel fuse box that was blackened with recent fire.

  “How bad was it?” he asked a seaman where he worked.

  The young man looked up at him, saluting when he saw Fedorov’s cap and shoulder insignia. Then he recognized the face, and half smiled in recognition. His eyes clouded over soon after. “There was a lot of shrapnel. We lost three men here,” he said: “Gorokhov, Kalinin and Pushkin. The rest weren’t too bad off. The starshina sent them to the sick bay twenty minutes ago.”

  Fedorov knew one of the men well enough to take the news with a bit of a sting. He nodded, his features taut but controlled. “I’m off to see about them then,” he said.

  “What was it, sir?” the seaman asked, his eyes wide.

  “An aircraft of some sort. We haven’t sorted it out yet, but stand easy. Rodenko is on the watch and we are in no further jeopardy at the moment.”

  “But what about the Admiral, sir? Is it true he was killed in the attack as they say?”

  “Killed?” Fedorov tried to sound as if he knew what he was about, but the news shook him, and the look on his face could not conceal the emotion. “We have not heard that, seaman,” he said in a low voice, “but I will keep the ship informed. For now we can only carry on. As you were.”

  Fedorov edged past the man into a long corridor and made his way quickly through the ranks toward sick bay. Along the way many men pressed him with questions, but he bid them to attend to their duties and hurried on, which did little to quell the anxiety that seeme
d to jangle the nerves of the whole ship’s crew now.

  Killed? The thought of Volsky dead was leaden on him now. If that were so then it would all fall on his shoulders, the responsibility for commanding the entire ship and crew. In truth, he never wanted a command position, being content with his status as the ship’s navigator. Admiral Volsky had been a mentor, and almost a father to him. He listened to him, guided him, and was slowly easing him into his new role as Starpom these last days. He can’t be gone, thought Fedorov. He can’t! But if it were so he knew he would have to set an example for the others now. Volsky was the one great link that seemed to bind this crew together. They loved the man and would do anything for him, which is why Karpov’s betrayal and mutiny was doomed to fail from the moment he first planned it. But now…if the Admiral was gone…

  What would the men think? They had been through a great deal these last days. Even the long, uneventful cruise across the Atlantic had filled them all with a sense of foreboding ever since they first made landfall on the Azores. Rumors quickly circulated that everyone was dead and there was nothing but burned out wreckage and fire scored bones left on the islands. When they finally entered the Mediterranean Sea and scouted north to Toulon and then down the coast of Italy, the men could finally see for themselves that the rumors were true. They had gathered in groups on the outer decks, clustering near the gunwales and railings to gawk at the destruction of Rome and Naples. It did little to improve morale. Were they the last survivors of a terrible war, they wondered? And what would become of them now?

  At length Fedorov reached the sick bay, seeing two first class seamen leaving with a salute just as he arrived. One had a bandaged head and the other had his arm in a sling, but neither man looked seriously injured. He slipped through the hatch, catching a glimpse of three bodies shrouded in white sheets on the tables at the far end of the room. His heart leapt when he thought he might see the Admiral lying there but then Zolkin appeared from the next room with a wan smile. The bearded, bespectacled senior medical officer was a Captain of the second rank after his long career in the Russian Navy. He was, in fact, two ranks above Fedorov, though the medical branch was not in the operational arm of the service.