Kirov II: Cauldron of Fire

happen when men speak first with the weapons they command, and not their wits instead.” Nikolin’s voice echoed Volsky’s, the Able Seaman listening, and satisfied that all was translated correctly.

“My apologies, Admiral,” said Tovey. “It’s just that your ship has made its way into a war zone, and has been taken as hostile from the moment it was first encountered. The attacks made on numerous Royal Navy ships did little to dissuade us from that conclusion.”

“That is understandable,” said Volsky. “But wrong. I must tell you that it was never my intention to involve my ship or my crew in battle with your navy. Yet one thing leads to another, does it not? Particularly at sea, when faced with uncertainty and driven by the need to defend your ship, and your country, from all harm.”

“Then I’m to understand that you now wish to claim that everything that has transpired these last days had been an exercise of self defense?”

“That is so,” said Volsky, his eyes trying to convey his sincerity.

“In defense of what country, may I ask?”

“You may not. The answer would not mean anything, and it would not help us resolve the issue before us now.”

That confused more than it helped, but Tovey pressed on, edging out on a limb he had been climbing for so very many long months, ever since those first rockets branded his ship, and he saw that awful mushroom cloud of sea water towering over the cold North Atlantic.

“May I ask the Admiral if it is true that our ships and planes have met once before in this war, a year ago to be more precise, in the waters southwest of Iceland?”

Volsky shrugged. “Yes, you may ask it, and you may know it as well without the question. But I think it best we confine our chat to what lies ahead now, Admiral, and not what we have left behind us. Nothing that has happened can be undone—or at least that is something I once believed. I am not so sure any longer. But I will tell you that what we decide here today may have a grave impact on days that lie ahead, and more than either you or I can fathom at this moment.”

Was the man being deliberately evasive, Tovey wondered? Yet he seems sincere. I can see it in his eyes, and hear it in his tone of voice. Yet who is he? Where has he come from? What is this dreadful Nautilus of a ship he commands with weapons the like of which this world has never seen?

“Then it was your ship that engaged the Royal Navy a year ago? Well now it is I who must ask your forbearance sir, but this is incomprehensible to us. How is it possible that we now find you here, in these waters, and yet have not had the ghost of a whisper of you, your ship, or these terrible weapons you possess, not in all the world for a whole long year? Your ship is not a submarine like the German U-Boats which use the swift currents in these straits to drift silently into the inland sea, unseen. You could not have passed Gibraltar without our knowing about it, and for that matter unchallenged. Nor could you have entered via the Suez Canal. Your presence here is therefore a matter of grave concern, and utterly confounding.”

“Believe me when I say this, Admiral, but I am as much bewildered by these questions as you are. Yet I must be frank with you, sir. I do not wish to speak of who and what we are, or where we have come from, or how we came to be here. Yes, I know these questions beg answers, but the less that is said about them, the better. You may come to your own conclusions, I suppose. First off, you have found a young Able Seaman here who speaks our mother tongue.” He let his eye rest on Tovey’s, noting the man’s reaction as he continued. “And from this you may surmise that we are a Russian ship and crew, but I must tell you that Joseph Stalin back in Moscow will have no inkling of us either—no knowledge whatsoever of our presence here, and he would have these very same questions for us if this were Murmansk and we were standing at the edge of the Kara Sea. We do not now sail in his name or serve the interests of the Soviet state he commands.”

He paused, letting Nikolin catch up in his translation, but could see Tovey’s frustration, and the confusion that must surely be plaguing him. Yet he noted how the man composed himself, inclining his head and asking another question.

“Was your ship built by the Soviet Union? And are you telling me you are at sea without orders, and against the wishes of the Soviet government? You are a renegade ship out of the Black Sea?”

“Admiral…You know very well that Soviet Russia could not build a ship that can do what you have witnessed my vessel do in battle, at least not today. We have just fought a long night engagement with two of your battleships. What were they called Fedorov?”

“Nelson and Rodney, sir.”

Volsky nodded, repeating the names as best he could. “Nelson and Rodney. More a admirals. It was an unfortunate engagement, and one I hope we do not have to repeat. It was our intention to outrun these ships and avoid combat. At least that is what my young Captain here, who commanded that action, tells me. But your ships fought well. I will express my regret to you now for any loss of life, but to secure the safety of my own ship, this engagement became an unfortunate necessity. Suppose I were to tell you that my ship was built in Russia. Could you believe that? I do not think so. What ship in Stalin’s navy could stand with your Nelson and Rodney and come away from that battle unscathed? No. The Soviet government does not know that we even exist.”

“I see…” Tovey was silent for a moment, thinking. “These weapons you deploy…They are certainly beyond our own means for the moment, unlike anything we have ever seen. Oh, I must tell you that rocketry is as old as gunpowder, but yet you seem to have perfected the art in a manner that is… rather frightening, at least to the men who have faced your weapons, and died…”

“For that I am truly sorry. I will tell you that I, too, have put men into the sea that I would rather see standing at their posts this evening. What more can be said of that? I will weep for them in my own time.”

“Then do you serve a nation, Admiral? You are not German as we first thought; not Italian, not French as you wished us to believe. You clearly are Russian, but claim you bear no allegiance to the Soviet Union, our ally in this war at the moment, as I hope you must know.”

“At the moment,” said Volsky, thinking he had said just a little too much with that. “Admiral Tovey,” he settled his voice, intent on forcing some new line in the discussion. “None of this matters, and there is no point in discussing these details. We are here, you are there. This thin boundary separates us, this line between the ocean and the sea at our feet, and yet it is a gulf that may seem impossible for either of us to ever cross. Still we must try to do so as best we can.”

Tovey considered that, his eyes narrowed under his thin brows, lips taut. “I must tell you, Admiral, that I have brought my fleet here to make an end of your ship, and to put it at the bottom of the sea if I can do so. The oceans wide may appear to be the province of God, and God alone, but at this moment, as I stand here now before you, they are in point of fact the domain of the Royal Navy, and the British Empire that built it.”

“And there is a difference between us now,” said Volsky. “For I will not lay claim to God’s great seas, nor did I bring my ship here to quarrel with you or your nation. I will admit that there are officers aboard my vessel who wished you no good once our battle was joined. Yet I do not sail here to throw down a gauntlet before your British Empire, or to contest these waters for any hope of gain. Your ships gave challenge. We defended ourselves. Men have died on both sides, and I am seeking a way to end this nightmare and go home. Yes, if you must know the truth, Admiral, I am simply trying to find my way home again.”

“And yet you cannot even say where that is? Where in blazes did you come from?”

Nikolin had a little difficulty translating that last line, but knew enough to indicate that Admiral Tovey was expressing some anger. “He wants to know where we have come from, and I believe he getting a little angry about it, sir.”

“You might say: where the hell you’ve come from?” The Able Seaman at Tovey’s side put in.

Volsky nodded his understanding. “For the third time, I cannot answer that,” he said. “For both our sakes. You will not know what I mean just yet, but perhaps you will in time.” Then he spied the high promontory of the fortress wall on the hillside above them, and noted the gun casements that had been built for shore batteries at the foot of the walls. “Look there,” he pointed. “My young officer Fedorov here tells me those walls were built by the Moors in the twelfth century. And below them there are casements and gun positions to be manned by men guarding these waters today. Years ago the Caliph of Morocco was master of these straits. Today it is your ships and guns who guard the way. And what if you were to sail here in your flagship one day, Admiral, and find those gun casements missing, seeing only the walls of that castle in their place? What if you were to meet the Moorish