John Schettler - Kirov

“We don’t have to get too close,” Karpov whispered. “What is the range of our cruise missiles? Well over 300 kilometers.” He answered his own question. “We’ve got the weapons, and I intend to use them to best effect.”

“Every weapon, Captain?” Orlov had a serious look on his face, realizing what Karpov was saying now.

“When necessary,” said Karpov. “But for now, let us settle the matter at hand and deal with the Royal Navy. If we stay on this course we’ll need to discourage further pursuit. Remember, this is the course the Admiral has set for the ship. It’s his responsibility. All I am doing is making sure we get there in one piece. Are you with me?”

Orlov hesitated, ever so slightly. He noticed how Karpov talked about great men out of one side of his mouth, and then how he foisted off responsibility for his actions on the Admiral out of the other side. It was not that he didn’t agree with Karpov. If it were up to him he’d stick a fat fist in anyone’s face he disagreed with. Yet there were limits, he thought. How far was the Captain willing to go?

“Very well,” he said at last. “But just remember, Captain. You must eat the porridge you cook. And not just you. There are over seven hundred men on this ship.”

Karpov stood on the bridge, stiffly alert, yet with a taut, almost strained manner, like a watch spring that had been wound too tight. He had thought about the situation long enough. If he was ever to get to the place he saw himself going in his mind, the first step was necessary, compulsory. It was not a question of morals for him-it never was. Nor did he bother with useless speculation as Fedorov might, wondering where each round of his air defense Gatling guns was going, and which man’s heart it might rend open, spilling his life’s blood out as if it were no more than sludge in a gutter.

These considerations did not figure in the intricate workings of his mind at that moment. He was Captain of a ship of war now, and he looked at the situation from the perspective of simple tactics and strategy. He knew where the enemy was, and what his forces were composed of. Yet the enemy knew nothing of him. He could see the stumbling advance of his foe on Rodenko’s radar screens, illuminated by the clock-like sweep of the scan, round and round, pulsing out the position, course and speed of the British ships. He watched their steady approach on one side, where the British Home Fleet hastened to block his exit from the Denmark Strait, and on the other side where the chastened but dogged carrier group still followed him into that icy passage, intent on marking his shadow and blocking any possible return by the route he came. It was as if two men met in a crowded street, and one had to give way to the other to allow either to pass. Who would give way first?

The enemy was executing a well practiced drill as they smoothly vectored in the assets of the Royal Navy to find and destroy his ship. They had cut their teeth early on in 1940 when they hunted down the Graff Spee, and then learned from the mistakes made in chasing the Admiral Sheer. They had limited the effectiveness of Scharnhorst and Gneisenau, eventually bottling them up in a French port to suffer the ignominy of nightly bombing raids. Then, by the time the Germans sent out their most formidable gladiator, the Bismarck, the Royal Navy had honed its skills to a fine art, like the well oiled mechanisms of a machine.

Kirov, however, was something altogether different. Yes, his ship was a mechanical wonder as well; a metal shark, sleek, fast and dangerous. The enemy had not even taken the measure of his ship, but they would soon learn more than they might ever hope to know. And just as the British set their ships out in hot pursuit, war machines that would not hesitate for one moment to fling their bombs, shells and torpedoes at him, so he, too, would be equally heartless. It was not merely a simple ship of war he commanded now, but time and fate itself, and Karpov was at the helm of both as he contemplated the action that was about to ensue at his command.

There was an odd reciprocity about war, he thought. One side goes tick, and the other goes tock. One drumbeat followed the next, in an inevitable cascade of escalation that ended in violence of the highest order, controlled rage, unrestrained anger made kinetic in the application of finely honed weapons of war. What was it Doctor Zolkin had said about it? The missiles were mindless, and gave not the slightest thought or feeling as they did their job. They were simple mechanisms, action and reaction, cause and effect. But war was the greater mechanism they all served, and man was the watchmaker of that clock. Why else were they all here aboard Kirov; why else were the British out there in their cold gray ships, their bows chopping into the sea as they surged forward in the chase?

Kirov had appeared, and within hours she was an object of military interest, perceived immediately as nothing more than a threat. The ship had spoken first with its voice, in Mister Nikolin’s plaintive calls for the other side to identify themselves, but the enemy had different ideas. So one thing led to another, tick-tock, tit for tat, action-reaction, cause and effect. This was the synapse and rhythm of war, and it seldom came to anything different.

The first blows of the enemy had been successfully parried, but the battle had only just begun. Now they were marshalling the forces they deemed necessary to find his ship and kill it, like ruthless whalers out to harpoon some ghostly leviathan. They were cutting off his escape routes, closing in with each passing sweep of the radar scope; with each passing tick of the clock. And in Karpov’s mind, the situation was entirely unacceptable, particularly since he had, at that very moment, the means of correcting it.

And he did.

Andy Doolan was the Leading Rate in the crow's nest on Repulse that morning, or at least he hoped to be. He was up for promotion this very week, hoping to make that first step up from Able Seamen to one of the higher ratings before the ship was transferred to the Pacific. Today's assignment was just the luck of the draw. His Chief Petty Officer had thumbed his duty roster and landed on his name that morning, and so Doolan was up high in the crow's nest, the wind in his face as he settled in for the morning watch.

As the gray dawn gave way, the skies lightened with pink and mauve dappled clouds, and the first rays of real sunshine that they had seen in days pierced through. It wasn't a bad lot, he thought. He could sit up there and chew on a biscuit or two, though he wished he had the presence of mind to fetch a flask of hot water or tea. Bundled up in his heavy greatcoat, gloves, and thick lined hat with ear muffs, he'd be warm enough until noon when someone else would climb up the metal mast ladder to relieve him. Yet this morning he was to have a front row seat to one of the most amazing spectacles he had ever seen.

Repulse was cruising along at high revolutions, her bow splitting the waves easily as the ship surged forward, her wake clear and white behind her. The air was cool and crisp, the biscuits just salty enough to have a little flavor, and no one would bother him for the next four hours. What could be better?

Sometime after second bell, a little after 09:00 hours, he was peering at the distant horizon when his eye caught the gleam of sunlight on metal in the sky. Surprised to think he would find a plane this far out in the Atlantic, he looked up and saw a remarkable sight. High up in the sky, something was streaking by, leaving a long thin white contrail that sliced through the clouds and vanished behind him, then fell swiftly towards the ocean. It was as if the Gods had hurled a great burning stone into the sea. It's speed was amazing. It was there and then gone before he had half a moment to think what it might be. Two other streaks in the sky sped off to the north. There was no planes on earth that could move at a speed like that, and without making the slightest sound as they lanced through the sky above.