As Kovalov and Trusov went over the checklist, the ship began to tremble with the vibrations from
“If it does, Captain,” Trusov said, “we should be prepared to emergency undock.”
“I’m sure it will be fine,” Kovalov said, but he had deep doubts.
Captain Third Rank Svetlana Anna, the commander of the test wives, peeked out from the doorway of her VIP stateroom suite down the passageway toward the captain’s stateroom. When the last senior officer entered the room, she walked aft to the ladder to the zero two deck, continuing down to the zero three deck, where the weapon control electronics were kept. She arrived at the forward bulkhead, where the door to the electronics room was shut, a primitive push-button lock on the door. With the expertise gained from her recent practice, she withdrew a package from her pocket the size of pack of cigarettes, placed it on the lock’s keypad, and pushed an authorization button, then an activation button.
The keypad sparked and briefly burst into flames. Anna waved her hand at the flames, which died out, leaving it smoking slightly. She operated the door handle and the door opened. She looked around, saw no one, and shut the door behind her. She walked down the rows of weapon control electronics, each a modular part of the larger “second captain” AI system that was woven into the fabric of the entire ship, from ship control to reactor control to battlecontrol to sensors. She found the cabinets that she had been seeking, one that controlled the large-bore tubes for the Gigantskiys, the other two for the 53-centimeter torpedo tube banks. She needed to open all three cabinets, even though one would prove useless since the torpedoes were gone but for the VA-111 Shkval supercavitating torpedo loaded in one of the tubes. But Anna had not been able to find out which torpedo bank the Shkval was in, so she would have to make her modifications to both port and starboard bank small-bore tube controllers.
She opened all three cabinet doors and withdrew her wire-cutting and crimping tool from her other coverall pocket. She knew which circuit she was looking for, but her knowledge came from memorized schematics, not physical drawings. She had to identify the major electronics cards first, then the wires connecting them. She found the first module and its signal wire, cut it, removed the insulation, then prepared it to be terminated on the device she withdrew from her left sock.
The device was a white phosphorus grenade, slightly smaller than the size of a can of sardines. She turned the wire around the first termination lug of the grenade, tightened the termination lug, then wound the other end of the wire at the second lug. She tucked the grenade into a void between racks of computer card modules, then performed the same operation on the other two panels. If this had been correctly implemented, a command to launch a weapon would put a small current through the wire that now included the grenade in the circuit, and when it did, the casing of the grenade would rupture and expose the tetraphosphorus to the air of the ship. The white phosphorus was highly flammable and pyrophoric — that is, self-igniting — upon exposure to air. When the casing was cracked, it would explode into toxic flames and ruin the entire cabinet. There would be no weapons leaving the ship after that.
Or, at least, so Anna hoped. She inserted the next two grenades, then closed the cabinet doors, stepped back to make sure it looked like they hadn’t been tampered with, then cracked the electronics room door. The space was empty. Anna slipped back through the door, wiped soot off the door keypad with her sleeve, then quickly withdrew the way she had come. She shut the door of her stateroom behind her and breathed in a sigh of relief.
“Pilot, vertical surface the ship,” Pacino ordered Dankleff at the ship control station.
“Vertical surface, Pilot, aye.” Dankleff hit the diving alarm, since the rig for ultraquiet had been secured after the thrust bearing failed. The shrill and loud OOOOOO-GAAAAAH roared from the speakers. “Surface, surface, surface!” Dankleff announced on the 1MC. “Three hundred feet. Two-fifty. Two hundred. One-fifty. Easing positive rate to five feet per second. One hundred feet. Eighty. Seventy feet. Sixty, and sail’s broached. Fifty, forty-five, forty, thirty-nine feet. Ship is surfaced, sir. Recommend starting a low-pressure blow on all main ballast tanks.”
“Prepare to low pressure blow all main ballast tanks,” Pacino said.
“Officer of the Deck, I have trouble here,” Dankleff said. Pacino hurried to Dankleff’s seat to look over his shoulder at his flatpanels.
“What’s up, Pilot?”
“Main induction failure. Head valve is stuck shut.”
“Is it possible it’s just an indication problem? A failed instrument?”
