The missile’s winglets popped out into the airflow and directed the missile to dive downward straight toward the ice below. As the missile flew downward in a glide, its speed rising as it fell, the air coming in through the scoop spun the turbomachinery, the compressor on the forward end and the turbine on the aft end beginning to spool up to operating speed, and as the compressor blades rotated, they compressed the incoming cold air and the pressure in the combustion chamber rose, as well as the temperature, until the combustion chamber was super-pressurized and red hot. The missile’s computer opened the valve to the pressurized fuel tank and jet fuel flowed into the combustion chamber and the spark plugs lit the atomized fuel and air mixture, the chemical reaction causing temperature and pressure to soar far over what they’d been to start. The hot combustion gases sought the relief of a lower pressure and first blasted through the turbine blades, some of their energy going to spinning the turbine harder and faster, which kept the compressor spinning up forward. The remainder of the hot, high-energy gases flowed aft through the missile’s exhaust nozzle, the thrust of them propelling the missile, but by then, the missile was approaching the solid ice below.
At an altitude of seven meters above the ice, the winglets pulled the missile out of the dive and it flew west-northwest toward the aim point, hugging the terrain of the ice, following the rises and valleys, until it was a mere thousand feet from the aim point.
Behind the missile, the second-launched unit was climbing to the height of its rocket-driven flight, jettisoning the rocket motor stage and diving for the ice canopy. The first-launched unit rotated its winglets and climbed vertically in its pop-up maneuver, until at a thousand feet over the ice, it again arced over and down until the nosecone was pointed straight down at the aim point. The time for powered flight was ended, and explosive bolts blew the payload module away from the missile body, which pulled away, flew on to the north and then self-destructed.
The payload, the hydrogen bomb mounted in a depth charge, armed itself and prepared for detonation. When the altimeter indicated it was at sea level, it would detonate the nuclear warhead.
The aim point got closer and closer as the warhead fell. A drogue parachute blew out one end, stabilizing the depth charge long enough for the main chute to deploy, which slowed the depth charge down to walking speed as it fell lower to the ice.
The ice approached from below and the depth charge impacted against a steep cliff and bounced off it, then came to an abrupt stop in an ice valley. The altimeter read twenty-four feet above sea level. The warhead’s protocol for detonation was unsatisfied. It was programmed to detonate at between twenty and zero feet, not twenty-four. The depth charge rolled to a halt, its computer system kept alive by a small battery, but battery endurance would be measured only in minutes.
As the depth charge’s battery died, the second-fired missile streaked overhead, five nautical miles to the north, its winglets rotating to bring it to the vertical flight path of its pop-up maneuver. It arced downward and the missile body blew off and the second depth charge descended, its descent masked by the ice ridge that the first depth charge had hit.
Thirty seconds after the death of the first-fired depth charge, the second one detonated, the 250-kiloton hydrogen bomb’s explosion sixteen times as powerful as the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima. The explosion pounded downward into the ice and blew two pressure ridges aside. The ice under the depth charge vaporized, the water below with it.
Five miles to the south, the shock wave of the second-fired depth charge hit the
Captain Second Rank Iron Irina Trusov removed her headset and hung it on a hook on the starboard side of her pilot-in-command console in the cockpit of the
“All sonar systems deactivated, Captain,” she said in a dead voice. “We’re bottomed out at four hundred seventy meters, thrusted snug against the west ice wall of the north-south passage. All water-tight doors are shut and ship is prepared for shock impact.”
Kovalov nodded. “Not much we can do now except wait for the Gigantskiy detonation,” he said.
Trusov pursed her lips in annoyance. A combat operation was happening just outside the ship and she was trapped in a research vessel when she should be the one shooting torpedoes in anger. She’d been preparing for undersea combat her entire life.
