Kirov III-Pacific Storm (Kirov Series) (21 page)

He spent some time with Byko there,
asking about any possible secondary damage until he was satisfied that the ship
could still function without any major system failures.

“I’m sorry to have to put you and your
men to work this early,” said Volsky. “And I’m afraid it may be a long day,
Byko.”

“Just my job, sir,” said Byko. “But
you will have to excuse the condition of the ship aft of this point. I still
have hose lays from here to the helo bays, and men with acetylene torches are
still cutting metal.”

Surgery on the men, thought Volsky,
and surgery on the ship. Thankfully neither the crew nor the ship had been
dealt a fatal blow.

“What about those turbines, Chief? We
may need more speed soon.”

“That minor leak I reported earlier is
well repaired, sir. We’ve taken a few hard blows, what with those near misses
and the helo explosion, not to mention the missile misfire. We’ll need some
metal work aft if we can ever make a friendly port again, and a good paint
job.”

Volsky smiled. “Come to the officer’s
dining room tonight. I’ve a good cigar to share with you, Byko. You’ve earned
it.”

The Admiral clasped him on the
shoulder, and then turned to head forward again, looking for the nearest ladder
down. He wanted to check with Dobrynin next, and see how the reactor was
faring, and he soon found him leaning over his monitors, squinting at the dials
and gauges there.

“I trust all is well here, Dobrynin?”

“Sir,” the Chief Engineer saluted. “No
problems to speak of. Considering the work we’ve given them on this outing, the
reactors have been fairly stable.”

“What about those odd sounds you
reported earlier?”

“Those were quite strange, sir,” said
Dobrynin, scratching his head. “It seemed there was a neutron flux in the core.
I could almost hear it, if that makes any sense. You get to know every sound
these systems can possibly make in time, and I could hear a distinctive
difference.”

Volsky nodded. “Any idea what may have
caused it?”

“Nothing comes to mind, sir. At first
I thought the core could have been affected by radiation from those other
nuclear detonations, but it’s too well shielded, sir. No. Whatever caused it
was an event inside the reactor itself.”

“When was the last time you heard
anything odd?”

“Well, sir…” Dobrynin seemed to be
fishing for his thought. “I believed I heard something two days ago, but it was
very subtle, not at all like those earlier events, and the flux readings in the
core were barely disturbed. I would have reported it, but it settled down, then
came and went for a while. I thought I was hearing something, then when I would
listen it was gone.”

Volsky raised an eyebrow at that,
thinking of how Rodenko’s radar systems had obtained contacts, then lost them
before the signal finally firmed up and they knew they had shifted in time
again. The
reactors
, he thought. Maybe it wasn’t the accident, or even
the detonation of that warhead in the Atlantic. Perhaps this odd time
displacement is being created by something going on in our own reactors!

“I understand you have been concerned
about cooling problems?”

“Just a minor malfunction on some feed
water valves. I had it corrected in a few hours, sir.”

“Have you kept regular log entries on
these variations?”

“Of course, sir. And we have a digital
record of the entire system performance readouts being logged in real time and
stored to memory.”

“I see…” Volsky rubbed his chin,
thinking. “Dobrynin…Could you have a look at that data for me? Take particular
notice of anything odd, anything that might have accounted for this vibration
or sound you report—this flux business. See if you can chart it out for me.”

“Very good, sir. I’ll have the men run
a full readout report and we’ll go over it with a fine toothed comb.”

“Good man,” said Volsky. “And if we
have to make speed soon, any potential problems you can foresee?”

“None, sir. You can go to full battle
speed, that is if Byko says the turbines have no problems. I can give you all
the power you need.”

“Very well, Dobrynin. Carry on.”

The Admiral would make one last call
before returning to the bridge, to Martinov in the weapons bay, hoping to see
if there were any old missiles still stored away in the corners of his main
magazine. But what he found out in that conversation set him immediately on a
heading to the bridge, a quiet anger simmering in his chest.

 *
* *

They
watched the steady approach of the pursuing enemies
using the long range weather radar to plot their position. In the first hour
the hunters made up all of eight nautical miles on them, closing the range to
thirty-five kilometers. Over the next hour they could clearly see the enemy
ships darkening the distant horizon behind them, though the increase in speed
to 25 knots only allowed them to gain three nautical miles.

Rodenko estimated the range at just
under thirty kilometers, 30,000 meters, still a long shot, even for a
battleship. It seemed like the enemy may not be gaining on them for a while,
but thirty minutes later a lookout spotted a bright flash from the center of
the pursuing silhouettes behind them, and seconds later they heard a distant
rumble of thunder.
Kirishima
had fired her challenge, though the rounds
came in very short. Karpov reached for his field glasses and peered back at the
enemy ships.

“I can put them on HD video for you,”
said Fedorov. “The aft Tin Man was very near that explosion, but it sustained
only minor damage. A shrapnel fragment just grazed the lens cap, but it held.”

He tuned in the display, and they
looked to see the clear silhouettes of three ships, one much wider abeam and
with a tall pagoda main mast; two smaller, the cruisers that had tried to close
with them earlier.

“I’ll say one thing for the men of
this era,” said Karpov, “they are damn persistent.”

They waited some time but no further
rounds were fired. Iwabuchi had merely announced his presence, as if to taunt
them with the fact that they had run all night at their best speed and failed
to shake him off. Karpov watched the ships, a look of disdain on his face,
shaking his head.

“If I thought this might be our final
battle I would sink those ships in five minutes,” he said to Fedorov.

“That’s the catch,” said Fedorov. “We
have only twenty-five anti-ship missiles, and who knows how many more
situations we will have ahead of us. Each time we have displaced to the past we
have been marooned there for at least twelve days. This is only day three this
time. I think we began shifting in and out of this timeframe three days ago,
though it took a while for us to manifest here this time around.”

“So you think we may disappear again
in another nine days?”

“It’s a possibility. Who can say? The
Admiral made a good point in our discussion about this earlier. A rock skips
only so far on the water. It must settle somewhere. Did you notice how subtle
these last two shifts were? We vanished at St. Helena like a whisper in fog,
then appeared here before we really perceived it. There were no odd effects
like the earlier displacements, and none of that strange static or color in the
sea.”

“What does this mean, Fedorov?”

“I cannot say. Only it seems to me
that the energy of our movement in time is dissipating, weakening.”

“And what if there isn’t enough left
to take us somewhere else in nine days. What then?”

Fedorov just looked at him. “Well,
Captain, then we’ll stay right where we are, won’t we. And in that case I can
assure you that this will definitely not be the last time we have to call the
crew to battle stations.”

They saw another bright flash in the
image on the HD display, and heard the rumble of thunder again, as if a bad
storm were riding their wake. This time the rounds fell a little closer, a
spread of two closely spaced water plumes falling about 2000 meters behind
them.

“I may have to do something about this
soon,” said Karpov.

“That was only one turret firing,”
said Fedorov. “I think they are just clearing their throats, Captain. But it
may be wise to prevent them from getting any closer.” He turned to the
helmsman.

“Ahead thirty and five points to
starboard.”

“Aye, sir. Starboard five and speed
thirty.”

He looked at his navigation map on the
Plexiglas. “We should reach the Torres Strait in three hours or so. That’s
about 600 kilometers west of Port Moresby. They’ll have planes there, but I
would not expect a strike until we are through the strait and well into the
Coral Sea. We’ll have to sail well east of
Daru
,
here,” he pointed to the belly of New Guinea, just above the tip of the Cape
York Peninsula where it jutted at that great island. “Then we turn south into
the Coral Sea. At that point we’ll be in range of anything they have operating
out of Port Moresby.”

Nikolin seemed to perk up, fiddling
with his radio set and adjusting the gain and reception. Fedorov caught his
sudden energy out of the corner of his eye and turned his head.

“Something on the radio, Mister
Nikolin?”

“A lot of traffic all the sudden, sir.
I’m getting ship to ship, air to ground, and a lot of Morse code in the middle
of it all. It sounds like something big is going on.”

Fedorov frowned, looking at Karpov.
“Most likely the other half of the operation we’ve stumbled upon here,” he said
glumly.

“This one isn’t in any of your history
books?”

“I’m afraid not, Captain. But I can
make some fairly good guesses about what is going on. This operation against
Darwin is nothing more than a side show. The main event is further east, and if
the Japanese are trying to isolate Australia, as I think they are, then they
are aiming for one or two places of strategic importance: the lower Solomons,
Espiritu Santo on Vanuatu, or New Caledonia. To attack any of those locations
they will need a lot of aircraft carriers in the Coral Sea, probably two
divisions, at least four fleet carriers if they have them, and I’m inclined to
believe that they do if they were able to assign two fleet carriers and a light
escort carrier to the Darwin operation. They know we are here, but it’s a very
big ocean out there. It would be my guess that Yamamoto is leading the main
attack, and that his
Kido
Butai
is already in
the Eastern Coral Sea, perhaps about here.” He fingered a location on the map
roughly equidistant from the northern tip of New Caledonia and
Vanatu
Island.

“Frankly, I would take Espiritu Santo
first, and build an airstrip that can work in tandem with the field on
Guadalcanal. From there the Japanese could strike at either Noumea on New
Caledonia or Fiji by using land based aircraft.”

“And the Americans?”

“That’s the real unknown for the
moment. We don’t really know whether they got hit at Pearl Harbor, and we don’t
know how things have gone since. It’s obvious they lost the Battle of the Coral
Sea, as the Japanese have Port Moresby. You killed
Wasp
in the Atlantic,
so that will leave them
Enterprise, Lexington, Yorktown, Saratoga,
and
Hornet.
They may have lost one or more of these by this point in the war,
but we do not know. Their intelligence was fairly good. They had broken the
Japanese naval code before Midway was supposed to have been fought in May of
this year. It could be that they are well aware of the Japanese plan and
preparing to make a counter thrust of their own.”

“So what may lie east if we keep sailing
this direction?”

“Perhaps one of the largest air/sea
battles in history,” said Fedorov, his eyes alight. “There will be at least
four fleet carriers on the Japanese side, and three or four on the American
side, each with over seventy planes, and we would be presumed hostile by either
side if we get mixed up in it. If the Midway battle wasn’t fought earlier, then
it will be fought here, now, in the Coral Sea, and the outcome will decide the
war in the Pacific theater for years to come.”

“I see,” said Karpov, a gleam in his
eye as well. “Our missile inventory is wearing thin, but I must remind you that
we still have weapons aboard this ship that can also prove decisive. We have
the power to decide the outcome of this campaign as well, Fedorov. Don’t forget
that.”

Fedorov said nothing more.

Chapter
15

“Admiral on the bridge!”

The first watch called out the return
of Admiral Volsky, and the men saw him make a perfunctory salute as he strode
quietly towards the aft briefing room. “Mister Karpov,” he said curtly.

Karpov turned and saw it was clear
that Volsky wanted to speak with him in private. His heart leapt, and he
immediately knew what this must be about, but he steeled himself, and followed
the Admiral to the briefing room. Volsky shut the hatch, folding his arms.