Kirov II: Cauldron of Fire

The captain saw his hesitation, and spoke one last time. “Fedorov, if we negotiate then they will decide our fate, but don’t you understand? If we act now then the choice is ours—we become the very thing we hope to win from them with reasons and arguments—we become fate itself, Fedorov, and the future is ours to decide.” He had given his last argument. Now he stood up straight, took a deep breath and looked Fedorov in the eye, as an equal this time, waiting.

Fedorov thought he knew what they had to do, what they should do. Karpov’s words were a challenge, a gauntlet thrown down that could change everything from this moment forward. He had been so certain in his mind before, but now it was coming down to something else entirely. What must they do to save themselves, and save the future intact to have a world to live in again? Could he find a way to achieve both?

He decided.

Chapter 23

Orlov sulked in his quarters, still burning with the humiliation forced upon him by Troyak, and thinking how he might even the score one day. No one put their hands on him like that. No one! He was Gennadi Orlov, Chief of the Boat! At least he once was, after years and years of slogging up through the ranks. Now he was busted back to a stinking lieutenant, along with all the other stinking lieutenants, and his recent demotion still weighed heavily upon him. More than that, he hated the fact that Karpov still held forth in a command role on the bridge while he had been discarded to the aft maintenance bay, and put under Troyak with his Marine detachment. He wasn’t used to taking orders from anyone junior to himself, either, and the thought that dog eared Fedorov was actually acting Captain of the ship galled him as well.

His only satisfaction since his release from the brig had been the brief measure of face he had won back by leading the effort to jettison the burning KA-40, though it had been short lived. His old habits of bullying and deriding the men in the ranks soon grew even worse now, almost as if he needed to have someone there in the pecking order below him to make him feel stronger, better, more privileged, even if he knew his career and life had gone to shit. The brief respect he had won from the other men that day had quickly been overshadowed by his innate bad temper and disagreeable disposition, and the others seemed to shun him now, seeing that everywhere Orlov went some kind of trouble eventually followed.

He still blamed Karpov for his misfortunes, and had some small gratification when he had eventually cornered the devious captain outside the mess hall and put a fist in his belly, but he doubted he would get away with anything like that again. He should have killed him, then and there, he thought.

Yes, I could have choked the living breath out of that weasel of a man, and left him dead right there outside the mess hall, he thought. No…That would have been another mistake, eh? Too many men saw what you did when you spilled that drink on his jacket. It would have come back to you too quickly, and you would be rotting in the brig again.

He was sitting at his small desk, thankful at least that they had not yet taken away his officer’s quarters. On the desk before him he stared at a well oiled pistol he had been cleaning between swigs from a small flask of vodka that he had hidden away in his locker. His life was going to be one miserable step and fetch it after another now, with Troyak hovering over him like a shadow every minute of the day. He was not a trained soldier. He had never gone through combat drills. Why did Volsky stick him here with the Marines? He knew why, and it only soured his mood further as he ruminated. It only made him feel more useless when he was assigned to the engineering section, and issued a tool box instead of a rifle and helmet. Now he was supposed to become a dutiful grease monkey and rig out all the helicopters, and that was bullshit too.

What would he ever find again on this damn ship but the drudgery of daily work and menial servitude to skunks like Karpov and choir boys like Fedorov? And now any time he said anything there would be Troyak, that bastard Siberian, rock like, immovable, fearsome. He was going to have to do something about it, but he did not yet know what it was.

As he stared at the pistol in his hand he realized how stupid Volsky and the others had been. They never even bothered to search his cabin! What, did they think he was just going to fall in line with the Mishmanny and Starshini down here and eat shit for the rest of his life? Oh, no, he was going to do something, that much was certain, and as he slipped one bullet after another into the ammo clip, an idea came to him at last. It was as if his own wretched condition had brought him to the edge of a cliff in his mind, and his sorry, decrepit soul had finally thrown down a gauntlet, daring him to jump…. daring him to jump… Yes! That was it!

Yes! To hell with Troyak, and Karpov and Fedorov and fat Volsky too. To hell with them all. To hell with this damn ship and everyone on it! He pushed home the ammo clip with a hard snap, holding the pistol in one hand, and the vodka in the other. The loose ends of a dark and exciting idea were milling about in his head, like the ragged strips of the bandages on his hands, and he finally knew what to do.

~ ~ ~

Admiral Syfret looked out on the remnants of Force Z, still harried by reports coming in from the action he was leaving behind. It galled him to cut and run like this. Still, he held fast to the thought of those brave men fighting their way around Cape Bon, and down past Pantelleria with those infernal E-Boats nipping at them every step of the way and those vulture-like Stukas overhead, screeching in on them as they dove for the kill.

He looked at the time, weary already, and it was only noon. His haggard ships were already past Algiers, and dangerously close to the coast in his mind, but he had received further cables advising him to take the most direct route possible to Gibraltar, and make all haste. Thus far they had been snooped out by a few high flying reconnaissance planes, and no doubt they’ve had a look at my three aircraft carriers to give the buggers second thoughts about launching an air strike on his ships.

What in the world was going on back at the Rock, he still wondered? Did Fraser over on Rodney know anything about it? He had half a mind to get him on the wireless and have a talk, but as Fraser was the Deputy Commander of Home Fleet itself, and traveling incognito, he discarded that idea.

Nelson and Rodney, were the heart of his task force, making all the speed they could given Rodney’s dodgy boilers and steering gear. He reckoned it at eighteen knots, which would put Force Z off Oran at 18:00 hours that evening. Thereafter the danger from enemy air strikes should diminish as he came within the patrol range of friendly aircraft from Gibraltar to augment the fighters he still had with his carriers. The Fleet Air Arm had lost twelve fighters in combat, and another sixteen went into the sea when HMS Eagle went down. Six more were on the Argus, which was already back in Gibraltar.

That left him with 36 Sea Harrier and Martlet fighters, and another 42 Albacore strike aircraft spread out among his three remaining carriers. Victorious had also been lucky today. The Italians slipped in a pair of fighters that were mistaken for British Sea Harriers and not fired upon as they approached the carrier. When they suddenly peeled off and dove to make bomb runs, one fighter scored a near miss, while the other planted a bomb square of the ship’s forward armored flight deck. It took a good bounce, but did not go off, and so he was lucky to have these ships intact and ready for further operations.

He stared out the view screen, down the long ponderous foredeck of Nelson, her three big main batteries all mounted forward of the bridge. This was the only battleship class in the fleet where that was the case—all guns forward, no guns aft. You would think the designers thought to make this a pursuit ship, he mused, though they neglected to give her anything near the speed required for that.

He squinted at the hapless destroyer Ithuriel off his starboard quarter. Her captain had been a bit too rash when they encountered an Italian sub surfaced near the task force, and he went charging in to ram the damn thing, disabling the sub but also mangling his bow in the process. Syfret took a dim view of that. What? Don’t these men realize that we’ve put deck guns on their destroyers? There had been two ramming incidents on this operation, and he was quite unhappy with both. He would have words with this Captain Crichton when they got back to Gibraltar.