Voyage of the Devilfish

Vlasenko walked out of the First Officer’s stateroom, now that Novskoyy had appropriated his own suite, and moved along a narrow passageway lined by bleached panelling toward the starboard side of the vessel that terminated at the main shaft, the fore-and-aft running upper-level passageway. At the intersection was the ladder to the main escape pod, an enormous 7-meter-diameter titanium ellipsoid. The Kaliningrad, so automated that a relatively few enlisted ratings were required aboard, was manned by 18 officers, 13 warrant officers and 16 enlisted men. In an emergency the main escape pod, accessed from the second compartment upper level, would be able to evacuate about 30 of the ship’s 47 men. The rest would use the controlcompartment escape pod, which was designed for 18 men. But many of the Kaliningrad’s missions were under ice, where an escape pod was useless. Vlasenko continued forward through the main shaft, past the galley and messroom on the port side to the officers’ lounge, a large parlor with video equipment, books and easychairs. Vlasenko remembered how cramped the Leningrad had been by comparison. Well, these officers were a different generation, raised on peacetime, however uneasy the peace. He felt more than years separated him from them. He had seen more combat than he’d ever wanted. Witnessing the sinking of the American submarine… the Stingray… under the icecap by the Leningrad had been a shock. He had been the Weapons Officer under this same Admiral Novskoyy. Hr himself had actually pressed the firing key that sent the torpedoes out to the American vessel that day far in the past but never forgotten. He had tried to rationalize it… Novskoyy had ordered it, backed up with the threat of his service pistol… It never quite worked. He still had nightmares. And now, decades later, Novskoyy once again was a presence looming over him. As he was about to leave the lounge he was outraged to note that the door to the captain’s stateroom suite that opened into the lounge had been stitch-welded shut. A brand new submarine and this man comes onboard and welds a door shut. Why?

Vlasenko reentered the main shaft, turned left to go forward, passing the other door to Novskoyy’s stateroom. He couldn’t help trying the knob. Locked. What the hell was Novskoyy hiding? He moved to the forward bulkhead of the second compartment, a watertight boundary between the compartments. One compartment could flood and still allow the ship to survive; if two compartments flooded it was more serious but the ship might still survive. The second compartment was designed to be the most survivable — no weapons that could explode, no seawater pipes that could rupture, no oil lines or tanks that could catch fire, no heavy equipment that could jump out of their foundations. And so it was chosen to contain the huge main escape pod. Vlasenko ducked to pass through the automatically closing watertight hatch to the first compartment — the weapons spaces. He inhaled, relishing the smell of the ozone from the electrical cabinets in the first compartment’s upper level that housed cabinets of electrical and computer gear for the communications and navigation equipment. It was the highvoltage cabinets that spewed ozone, with a smell particular to a submarine since the ventilation system could not quickly disperse it.

Vlasenko now doubled back to the hatch to the second compartment, where a narrow, steep stairway led to the middle deck. He climbed down, and the whole environment changed. This was the middle level torpedo-tube space, the home of the three 100 centimeter tubes and the Magnum nuclear-tipped torpedoes. The immense size of the weapons was a shock. The torpedoes were the size of the minisubmarines used in World War II by the Japanese, and they were the fastest underwater weapons in the world, able to go nearly 110 kilometers per hour. With their huge girth, they also had tremendous endurance; they could go on at attack-velocity for over an hour, covering over 100 kilometers. No submerged adversary on earth could outrun a Magnum. The Magnum torpedoes were painted glossy black, gleaming and deadly in the bright lights of the compartment. Over the red-taped barricade warning of the nuclear torpedoes’ radioactivity, Vlasenko reached out and put his hand on the smooth cool surface of the topmost weapon. Immediately a cold pistol barrel nudged his neck.

“Turn around very slowly and put your hands behind your head.” Vlasenko did, and stared into the face of Warrant Officer Dmitri Danalov, chief of security aboard, his heavy mustache nearly obscuring his upper lip.

“Captain!” he said, lowering his pistol and holstering it in his wide shiny black leather belt. “No offense, sir, but no one touches one of the nuclear weapons without me knowing about it.” Vlasenko waved off Danalov’s apology. “No, no, what you did was proper. I commend you for it.”

“The admiral wouldn’t agree, sir…” ‘The admiral? Novskoyy was here?”