Voyage of the Devilfish

“Maneuvering answers all ahead full, sir,” the helmsman called, rubbing his waist where the seatbelt had taken his full weight moments before. “Screw is cavitating.” There was a groaning, scraping noise from aft and a crunching noise from above.

“Sail’s scraping the ice, sir,” the Diving Officer said.

“And we musta hit the OMEGA, Skipper,” Stokes said, rubbing his bruised neck. “That must be the scraping sound aft.”

“Stokes, check for damage, all spaces.”

“Aye, sir,” and Stokes pulled a phone off of the deck to his ear.

Rapier got himself to his feet, stunned after wrenching his shoulder falling onto the Pos Two console. Pacino waited, hoping the ship could get deep again using her speed. It took a long, tense minute for the ship to respond, bumping and scraping on the ice and on the omega’s hull, but finally the noises and vibrations stopped and the boat picked up speed. The deck grew steep but the listing angle came off. The digital-depth gage, frozen at 125 feet since the accident, began clicking, at first slowly, then beating out a rapid staccato burst of clicks.

“Two hundred feet, sir,” the Diving Officer called out.

“Speed fifteen knots. No ordered course.”

“Helm, all ahead flank,” Pacino ordered. “Maneuvering cavitate, left-hard rudder, steady course two seven zero. Diving Officer, pull out at 1500 feet.” It was an emergency order given in a purposefully calm voice. Pacino’s commands seemed to bring the crew to life, glad for orders to bring them out of their shock.

BOOM!

BOOM!

BOOM!

BOOM! The main coolant check valves slamming the piping from the order to go to flank speed. Their descent from the ice had made a hellish cacophony. As the ship descended, the hull popping and cracking from the pressure, Pacino wondered if the OMEGA crew had started tracking them yet. Were they too in shock, wounded, not able to respond? Okay, you bastard, Pacino thought, here I am. Come and get me.

FS KALININGRAD

Novskoyy’s eyes were open but the pattern of the deck tiles swam in and out of focus. Slowly he moved his aching arms to get them underneath himself, pushed himself up, felt a shock of pain from his backside, where he had hit the periscope. His shoulders and head throbbed, but nothing seemed broken. He got to his feet, noticing that the list of the deck was not his senses deceiving him but evidence that something serious had happened to the Kaliningrad. Something… what? What hit them? A problem with the polynya closing in would have been slow, an ice raft drifting toward them. Novskoyy looked at the compartment. Deck Officer Ivanov was lying face down in the periscope well, unconscious or worse. Men were climbing into the compartment from the ladder aft. The medic’s assistant hurried to Ivanov, who was opening his eyes and trying to move his head.

“What happened?” Ivanov asked, grimacing. Novskoyy didn’t answer. He looked around the space at the computer screens, each one blank. The computers must have crashed from the impact. He went to the central breaker panel and switched off the master breaker switch for the combat computers, then reset it. The screens flashed for a moment, then went blank. He hoped the large frame machines were rebooting themselves. Hurry up, Novskoyy thought, looking at the screen on the communications console. Finally it did blink back to life, the words on the screen reading:

SELF-CHECK IN PROGRESS. ONE MOMENT, PLEASE…

Novskoyy grimaced. A polite computer. The message vanished, replaced by a status readout. He went to the panel, where officers were again manning the consoles, Ivanov ordering the ship-control and deck officers.

Novskoyy scanned the status readout, frustrated, staring at one line buried in the status display:

MULTIFREQUENCY ANTENNA: ALL CIRCUITS OPEN NO READBACK

The impact of whatever… whoever… had hit them had either snapped off the multifrequency antenna or rendered it useless. Would he be able to transmit follow-up orders to his fleet? He hunted through the status panel, looking for the indication of the auxiliary antenna. What the computer screen read was:

UHF AUX ANTENNA: CIRCUITS NOMINAL HYDRAULICS TO ANTENNA DISABLED