Terminator Salvation: Cold War

Weapons Officer Pavlinko gulped.

“No, sir. Not that I’m aware of, sir. We’ll do better next time!”

“And suppose there had been a real American sub hunting us?” Ivanov retorted, his voice dripping with sarcasm. “Had that been the case, do you think there would have been a next time?”

Pavlinko accepted the tongue-lashing.

“No, sir.”

“Then maybe you need to give those lazy shirkers a solid kick in the butt, before the enemy really comes calling!”

The venom in the starpom’s tone added to Losenko’s woes. There was a bitterness in Ivanov’s heart that had not been there before the Americans had launched their suicidal attack. The young officer had been tough, but fair, and well-liked by the crew. Now he was short-tempered all the time, taking out his fury on the men beneath him.

Anger is eating away at him, Losenko realized, just as sorrow never lifts from my shoulders.

He joined Ivanov upon the periscope pedestal.

“Easy, Alexei,” he cautioned in a low tone. “These men have faced the unimaginable.”

Ivanov stiffened. “There is a war on,” he responded. “We cannot afford the luxury of grief.”

Even for your wife and daughter? Losenko thought. His heart ached for the younger man’s loss. Not for the first time, he was grateful that he had no children of his own. “Perhaps you are right. Or maybe the war is already over—and both sides have lost.”

In that moment he decided that he could not delay any longer. His men deserved to know what had become of the world they had left behind.

“Any contacts on the sonar?” he inquired.

Ivanov glanced in the direction of the sonar shack.

“Nothing. Not even biologics.”

No whales, porpoises, or schools of deep-sea fish, in other words. Had humanity taken the rest of the animal kingdom with it when it had self-destructed?

“I see,” Losenko replied. Despite their earlier concerns, they had encountered no American attack subs since the war broke out. This was both encouraging and worrisome, in that it suggested that the navies of the world no longer possessed the capacity to hunt their enemies. Nevertheless, he intended to take no chances.

“Turn the boat around,” he instructed, to make certain no hidden dangers were skulking in their baffles. Gorshkov’s own propellers created a sonic “blind spot” in the submarine’s wake. A shrewd commander made a habit of checking his rear. “Left fifteen degrees rudder, steady course three-seven- zero.”

K-115 executed an expert turn. The sonar dome at its nose found nothing suspicious in the vicinity. Confident that they were not under observation, Losenko turned toward the diving officer.

“Mr. Orlov, ascend to periscope depth.”

In response to his orders, K-115 tilted toward the bow, while Orlov counted out the depth as the boat climbed toward the surface. The helmsman and planesman pulled back on their steering wheels, working in perfect harmony. Seated to their left, the diving officer and the chief of the watch manned the ballast controls, blowing water from the tanks to increase the sub’s buoyancy. The hull popped noisily as the pressure outside changed dramatically.

“Fifty meters,” Orlov announced. “Thirty meters.”

Losenko visualized the ice above their heads. He unhooked the mike and spoke into it.

“All hands, brace for impact.”

He grabbed hold of the railing.

“Twenty meters.”

Metal shuddered as the sub broke through the icecap. Its twelve meter-tall sail cut through the snow-covered floes like a blade. The jarring impact threw one of the newer crewman off-balance, and he staggered before grabbing onto the handle of an overhead chart cabinet. A loose folder clattered to the deck.

Water flooded the trim tanks as K-115 leveled off. The helmsmen pushed their wheels forward.

“Scope’s breaking,” Ivanov reported. He gripped the handlebars of the number one periscope and peered through the eyepiece. His body tense, he rotated the scope a full 360 degrees. “No close contacts,” he said with what sounded like a trace of disappointment. Losenko saw clearly that Alexei longed for an enemy upon whom to take vengeance. It was a dangerous trait to have in a first officer.

Unlike their XO, the other crewmen let out an audible sigh of relief at hearing that they had not ascended into a war zone. Beeps and chirps came from an electronic surveillance sensor that automatically began sweeping the area for signals from any nearby ships or aircraft. An alarm would sound if it detected any approaching threat.

No alarm came.

Losenko took the periscope from Ivanov. Planting his feet, he squinted into the eyepiece. Twilight in the Arctic Circle looked much as he remembered it, until he realized that—according to the sub’s chronometer—it should have been bright and sunny outside. Instead, clouds of smoke and ash clotted the sky, allowing only a paltry fraction of daylight through. Like the smoke from a funeral pyre, he thought morosely, drifting over the top of the world.

“Chief of the watch,” the captain instructed, “raise the main multifunction mast.”

The mast, which was housed in the sail, boasted an array of sophisticated electronic antennae capable of receiving and transmitting signals along a broad spectrum of frequencies. It could also contact GPS satellites to receive position updates.

Our ears are open, Losenko thought. But is there anybody out there?

Unwilling to wait any longer for an answer, he stepped down from the pedestal and headed for the radio shack, just forward of the control room. Crossing the conn, he poked his head through the port side doorway. Inside the chamber, a pair of radio operators shared the cramped space with a battery of communications and cryptographic equipment. The two men were seated before their consoles, earphones clamped over their heads. Glowing green screens recorded multiple incoming transmissions. Matrix printers began spewing messages as fast as the computers could decode them.

“Downloading now,” the senior radio operator, a man named Pushkin, reported. He was a nerdy scarecrow of a man with mussed black hair and thick glasses. “There’s a lot of chatter out there.”

Losenko suppressed a sigh of relief. They were not alone, then. There were other survivors.

He stepped forward and tapped Pushkin on the shoulder.

“What do you hear?”

The young seaman took off his headphones. A pained expression came over his face.

“Chaos,” he reported. “Sheer chaos.”

Losenko convened the meeting in the officer’s wardroom. He sat at the head of a long rectangular table. Ivanov sat to his right, ahead of the rest of the senior staff. A baker’s dozen of department heads were crammed into the wardroom. Transcripts of radio transmissions lay in a stack in front of the captain. He leafed through them once again, before lifting his eyes from the printouts. Soundproof bulkheads and a locked door ensured their privacy.

“Mr. Cherkov,” Losenko addressed the communications officer, “please brief us on the situation.”

Cherkov was a phlegmatic sort by nature, but the captain could tell that he was shaken by what he was about to report. He swallowed hard.

“In a word, sir, confusion—utter confusion. There is a great deal of chatter, but nobody seems to be in charge. And everybody is fighting, well, everybody. The Israelis are blaming the Arabs, and vice versa. India is retaliating against Pakistan. Georgia and Chechnya even think we bombed them. Al Qaeda has issued a fatwa on the American president. There are widespread accounts of looting and civic unrest.

“Scattered ships and planes are sending out inquiries, but receiving no authorized orders in reply. Our Akula attack subs are being engaged by Chinese and American subs. Many are believed to have been lost. Hard