Kirov II: Cauldron of Fire

fog was still on the sea when dawn came, dull and gray. We skirted the North African coast for a while. Oran and Algiers were devastated—who knows why?” He held up a hand, inexplicably.

“I turned north and sailed up into the Balearic Sea. I don’t know what I thought to see there after what we had already encountered. Perhaps it was only to confirm my worst misgivings….Then again, I have always been fond of the south coast of France. I thought, one day, that I might buy a cottage there and grow grapes for wine. But no more. Nothing is growing there now…” His voice trailed off, and he tightened his lips on the edge of the shot glass. The Captain drank with him, slower now, to savor the lingering taste of the vodka and chase the bile from his throat.

“Did we do all this?” Volsky waved his arm at unseen shores as he spoke. “No. We did not. We only made it possible for them to do it—all the other generals and admirals and prime ministers and presidents. We showed them what power was, and they wanted it for themselves as badly as you wanted it, Karpov. So now we see the result. In truth, I cannot blame you any more than I blame myself, and all we have before us now is simply a matter of survival.”

Karpov nodded, and the two men sat in the quiet for a time. Then he looked up at the Admiral, and blinked. Something in his face spoke more than he was capable of at that moment, and Volsky was wise enough to see it— the sorrow, the anguish, and the shame.

“I want to have a look at Rome before we turn and head back out into the Atlantic,” said Volsky. “I thought we might transit the Aegean and head for Sevastopol, but I see no point in that now. If there is still anything living on this earth it will likely be in the southern latitudes. We’ll skirt the Italian coast, then head west again through the Tyrrhenian Sea. After that, who knows.”

“That island, Admiral?” Karpov managed a wan smile.

“That island.”

Volsky stood and went to the door, looking over his shoulder as he went with one last word. “I’ll have the guard escort you back to the brig now. It’s best that the men see the consequences of what you have done, and it’s also best if you bear it like a man. In due course I’ll have you transferred to your quarters, and from there I suppose the rest is up to you.”

Before he left he poured his Captain one last shot of Vodka. Then he tipped his hat lightly and reached for the door.

“Admiral….”

Volsky looked over his shoulder again.

“I was wrong… I… I made a stupid mistake.”

Volsky nodded gravely. It was probably as close as Karpov could come at the moment to a genuine realization of his wrongdoing, and an apology, but the Admiral said nothing more.

Chapter 2

Now the Admiral was on the aft quarter, walking with memories of his discussion with Karpov and the still heavy sense of guilt he harbored for not seeing things more clearly.

I should have seen it coming, he thought. Karpov was too wound up, too argumentative and combative—and too hungry for advancement. At the time I was preoccupied with trying to get my mind around the insanity of our situation, but I should have seen what he was planning, what he would do if given the chance. Too late now, he concluded. The man may recover himself and prove to be of some use in the days ahead. But for now he’s better off in the brig where he can come to that conclusion himself.

He walked with little enthusiasm this night. They had scouted down the north Italian coast and come at last to the fabled city on seven hills—Rome. There he gazed on Esquiline, the largest of the seven, where the Emperor Nero had built his 'golden house,' at one end, with the other end blighted by the charnel pits where criminals would be buried or their carcasses left for the birds. It was a fitting metaphor for the human endeavor, he thought grimly, that the same hill should be put to these disparate uses. Once the Gardens of Maecenas bloomed there to hide the remains of the dead, but no longer. He had resisted the urge to put men ashore, unwilling to hear the reports or view the evidence they would bring back to him. It was all gone, he knew, the city, the architecture, the amphitheaters, the cathedrals, paintings, statues, the Vatican and the long history behind it all, not the mention the lives of so many who lived there.

With a heavy heart he had given the order to move on, down past Naples, which was equally devastated, and then he gave up and simply turned the ship west. Kirov was now cruising roughly two hundred miles southwest of Naples in the Tyrrhenian Sea as Volsky walked, and that vague sense of disquiet became something more in the back of his mind. He stopped by the edge of the deck, holding on to a gunwale, strangely alert, his ears straining to hear something in the distance. Then he felt it, an odd vibration in the ship beneath his feet and, without really thinking, he was moving toward a nearby bulkhead to look for a call phone up to the bridge.

Volsky opened the latched door and picked up the handset, thumbing the comm-link button for the citadel above. “Admiral Volsky to bridge.”

The voice of Anton Fedorov, his acting Executive Officer was quick to return. “Aye, sir. Fedorov here.”

“Any developments I should be aware of?”

“Strange that you should call, sir. We just got a message from Dobrynin in Engineering. It seems the reactors are acting up again.”

“Acting up?”

“That same odd vibration, sir.”

“Yes, I felt it myself here on the aft deck.”

“I’m holding at twenty knots unless you advise otherwise, sir.”

“Hold speed for the moment, unless Dobrynin requests slower rotations on the turbines. You might call him and ask if that might help the situation. Anything more, Captain?” He had promoted his young Lieutenant to Captain Lieutenant and Starpom after the Karpov incident, not two weeks past, and the young man was working into the position with real energy now, gaining experience and competence, and more confident in his abilities with each day.

“Well, sir…” Fedorov hesitated slightly, then went on. “Signals are showing some interference as well. Both Rodenko and Tasarov have picked up on low level background noise. They… well they look worried about it, sir. Perhaps you should come to the bridge, Admiral.”

“Very well,” said Volsky. “Keep monitoring the situation, Captain, I’m on my way.”

Volsky hung up the receiver, latched the call box door shut and turned forward, heading for the nearest stairway up. He walked past the life boats, glad they had no occasion to use them in spite of the ordeal they had been through these last weeks. Reaching the center of the ship he now had several levels to climb, and thought again how nice it would be to have elevators put in to relieve his thick but tired old legs of the burden of carrying his considerable weight. He was up his second flight on the upper aft deck near the outer hatch when he perceived what looked like an odd discoloration on the sea around them. He stopped, sensing something very wrong, and feeling again the same thrumming vibration that seemed to emanate from the bowels of the ship.

His mind raced over the last reports he had taken in before he left the bridge. Weather outlook was good, with no fronts or impending squalls, and calm seas. Yet the night seemed to thin out around him and he perceived a light glow all around the ship that seemed oddly out of place. It should be pitch black at this hour.

As he gazed at the sea, the peculiar discoloration grew more intense, an odd milky green, and he was stricken with the fear that something was again terribly wrong. Rather than navigating his way through the labyrinthine inner passages of the ship, he decided to climb the long vertical ladder on the main tower, and enter through the first maintenance entrance, coming to the citadel through the upper side hatch on the command deck. As he started to climb, another odd sound came to him, breaking the long silence of calm sea and sky they had been sailing in. He stopped, as if frozen in place, his senses keenly alert as he listened, eyes instinctively searching the rapidly lightening skies beneath his heavy brows. What was happening? The sound filled him with both excitement and dread, for he immediately knew what he was listening to—the drone of a low flying aircraft!