Pacino blinked and saw that the hands on his skull belonged to Chief Grim Thornburg, the hospital corpsman assigned to the submarine
Dieter U-Boat Dankleff stood behind him, shining the battle lantern on Pacino’s head. Pacino felt a sharp stab and he flinched involuntarily.
“Easy, Lieutenant,” Thornburg said. “You need twenty stitches at least. A scalp wound bleeds profusely. And the cut went an inch below your hairline toward your right eye. You took a pretty hard hit to your skull.”
“Does he have a concussion, Doc?” Styxx asked.
Thornburg shined a penlight into Pacino’s right eye, then his left. “He seems to be okay, but keep an eye on him, and don’t let him sleep. Mr. Patch, you’ll need to consult a plastic surgeon to see about that scar.”
“What happened?” Pacino croaked. “I can’t be the only one hurt.”
“What’s the count, Doc?” Dankleff asked, setting down the battle lantern.
“Three crewmen with broken bones,” Thornburg said seriously. “Lacerations and contusions affecting another thirty. Mr. Pacino is the only one who lost consciousness, though.”
“That’s because he’s a lazy slacker,” Dankleff grinned.
“Fuck you, U-Boat,” Pacino managed to say. “How’s the boat? Are we damaged? How bad is it?”
“You might tell by the lack of lights, the reactor scrammed,” Dankleff said. “Shock opened every electrical breaker aboard.”
From aft in the space, the voice of the compartment phone talker spoke. “From Maneuvering, the reactor is critical!”
Dankleff half shook his head once. “We should be self-sustaining and in the power range in sixty seconds and back in a normal full-power lineup in two minutes.”
“What’s going on with the BUFF?”
“No idea. Until we get sonar back and come off the bottom, we’re in the dark.”
After another minute of being stitched and bandaged by Thornburg, the phone talker aft called out again. “The electric plant is in a normal full-power lineup. Secure rig for reduced electrical.”
The overhead lamps of the space, all of them red for the rig-for-ultraquiet, clicked on.
Pacino waved away Thornburg and Styxx. “Let me up. I need to get to control.”
“Reactor trip! Both reactors tripped,” the phone circuit rasped with the voice of the chief engineer, Captain Third Rank Virve “Cobalt” Ausra, whose excited voice was an octave higher than her normal mezzo soprano.
Captain First Rank Georgy Alexeyev blinked, momentarily stunned by the jarring impact of the nuclear shock wave. His shoulders and hips ached where the safety belt had kept him tight in his command seat. He tried to shake his head, a stabbing headache making his vision blur. It was completely dark in the space. The usual sound of ventilation ducts was quiet, and the other customary sound in the room, whining hum of the electronic consoles was also gone, which meant the electrical grid in the entire submarine was a casualty of the blast.
“Engineer,” Alexeyev said into his boom microphone on the tactical circuit, “report status of reactor and electric plant recovery!”
There was a pause, which would be bad news, he thought. But the chief engineer’s voice finally answered.
“Central, Nuclear Control, we are closing the battery breakers. Expect reactor fast recovery in five minutes. Stand by.”
The lights in the overhead flashed for a moment, then went out, then flashed again, the third time holding. The ventilation ducts started blowing again, but at a third speed. The ship control consoles came back to life first, then the command consoles, the sonar and sensor lineup and finally the battlecontrol consoles.
“Watch Officer,” Alexeyev said to a stunned Captain Lieutenant Vilen Shvets, “get to ship control and attempt to hover, and keep us level.”
The engineer’s voice returned. “Reactor number one is critical.”
The smell of smoke in the room made Alexeyev cough. He looked at First Officer Lebedev. “Do you smell that?”
She sniffed the air. “It’s not electrical, Captain. That’s not burning insulation. It’s something else.”
“All spaces, report status,” Alexeyev said into the announcing microphone.
“Reactor number one is in the power range,” Ausra’s voice rasped. “Reactor number two is critical. Recovering the electric plant, but we have steam coming out of the port propulsion turbine casing—“ Ausra’s announcement was interrupted.
“Fire in the first compartment! Fire in the torpedo room!” the safety announcing circuit blared in Alexeyev’s headset.
Alexeyev found the general announcing circuit microphone and toggled the circuit breaker to make it operational again. It had been disengaged for sound quieting, but this was a ship-threatening emergency.
