“Yes, Captain,” Maksimov said, sweeping a lock of raven black hair out of her face. “You can see we entered the seven-mile rectangle here, transited to the southern part of the ice pressure ridge, then ran north until we ran into this corner at the northeast. About fifty meters south of the corner is where we established the ice target. We surfaced at open water, got permission to shoot a Gigantskiy at the ice target, then submerged and ran west until we hit this ice wall. Here, near the west wall, is where we fired the nuclear torpedo, and you can see at this point, I’ve marked the place where the first compartment fire started and we jettisoned weapons. We’ll need that position to be exact, because we’ll need to salvage them to avoid the Americans pulling them off the sea floor and examining our technology.”
Alexeyev waved his hand in dismissal. “The only thing truly secret about those weapons is their AI software, and that’s been compromised by seawater and the liquid nitrogen deluge. Nothing there worth salvaging.”
Lebedev parted her lips. “Fleet command may disagree, Captain, or they may want to play it safe.”
“Safe? Salvaging torpedoes under ice like this? Captain Kovalov, could you salvage these torpedoes?”
Kovalov nodded. “Sure. I’d need something to put them in after plucking each one off the bottom. A big sled or sunken barge with a bladder or ballast system to get them towed out under ice. We can carry two torpedoes in the external cradles. But an operation like that? I’d need a lot more fuel.”
“Fuel? You’re nuclear powered, Sergei,” Alexeyev said.
“I am, but
“That’s cutting it close for our original mission,” Alexeyev observed.
“Not really. Deploying the Status-6 units is fairly quick work. We’d only be critical for a few hours for each deployment.”
“Navigator, can you show us where the American submarine’s track is, and make it correspond to our own? Start at the moment of the Gigantskiy launch.”
“I’ll erase all track data for a moment, sir,” Maksimov said. “We were traveling slowly eastward with our position close to the western wall of the rectangle when we fired, and the American was behind us. We’re fairly certain he was on the bottom. At this point, we lost contact on the American, but then we were busy with the fire in the first compartment and the weapon jettison operation. At the point that the fire was out and the weapon jettison was complete, we were here, about halfway across the rectangle on the way to the original ice target. We picked up the American with a bad shaft rub or mechanical noise with his every shaft revolution. His noise got progressively worse, but he followed us to the ice target and the open water. While we were surfaced at open water, we think he was hovering under us or back on the bottom. I expect we will hear him again as soon as we resume motion.”
“That’s going to be a tactical problem,” Weapons Officer Sobol said in her squeaky voice. Alexeyev consciously kept his face neutral, forcing himself not to look at Kovalov for fear of laughing. “If the American follows us as he has up to now, shaft noise or not, we can’t execute these orders.”
“Let’s talk about the orders,” Alexeyev said. “Item one, we’re ordered to launch the Status-6 torpedoes now rather than deploy them with
“Right. That’s impossible, Captain,” Lebedev said, frowning.
“The Status-6 can only navigate on a great circle route,” Sobol said. “It can’t maneuver through a maze of ice pressure ridges like we’ve done to get here using under-ice sonar. And active sonar.”
“So they aren’t smart enough to be launched now,” Alexeyev said. “So we’re unable to follow that order. We’d need to emerge from the icepack into open water and then launch them, am I correct?”
“That’s right, sir,” Sobol said.
“That brings up the question of whether we retransmit a new message to Northern Fleet that the orders they gave us are impossible to execute?” Alexeyev frowned in frustration.
“Captain, if I may?” Kovalov said. All eyes on the room turned to the
“By all means,” Alexeyev said.
