Panic Switch полностью

“It was to the west,” Kovalov said, training the periscope to look behind them. “I’ve got nothing visually. No surprise,” he said, training the scope forward again.

Trusov turned her display to the navigation plot, which had been overlaid with ice thicknesses, showing where they’d been and the ice pressure ridges forming walls of this box-shaped area. The position of the Belgorod was plotted as a blood-red dot. The explosion had to have come from Belgorod, four miles aft of them. Perhaps one of the Status-6 units cooking off, but at a partial yield. If it had blown up at full strength of ten megatons, Losharik would have been blown to bits at this distance.

“Pilot, Engineer,” the intercom clicked. “Four percent battery life. I’ve got leakage in the sixth and seventh compartments from whatever that explosion was. I’m not starting the drain pumps since they would draw the battery all the way down.”

“Engineer, Pilot, concur,” Trusov snapped into her boom microphone. “We’re taking on water, Captain,” she said to Kovalov. “I hope you’ve got something on the scope.”

“Nothing yet,” Kovalov said.

“Pilot, Engineer, three percent battery and the boat’s taking on an up-angle from the leakage.”

“More like flooding,” Trusov muttered. “Understood,” she said into the intercom. “Maintain propulsion on the battery.”

It occurred to Trusov then that this was the day. This was the day. The last in her life. She, the Losharik crew and the rescued personnel from Belgorod would all die down here. She couldn’t think of a more desolate place to die than a cold, dark, drifting nuclear submarine trapped under polar ice. Whenever she considered the idea of her own mortality, she figured she would eventually die in some kind of battle, a conflict, perhaps, with the Americans. But never of old age. She’d always felt like a young soul, she thought. If she’d had previous lives, she imagined that she had died young in all of them. And now she would die young in this one.

“Two percent battery,” Engineer Chernobrovin announced on the intercom.

“Captain, it’s now or never,” Trusov said.

“Bring us five degrees to the left,” Kovalov ordered.

“You have something?” Trusov asked, as she pushed the joystick control of the rudder over, changing course by five degrees.

“Pilot, Engineer, one percent battery.”

“Captain, please tell us you have good news,” Trusov said, her voice too loud in the cramped cockpit.

“Pilot, Engineer, circuits are shutting down. Battery power is gone.”

“Blow all ballast!” Kovalov yelled.

Trusov hit the twin toggle switches to open the large-bore valves admitting high-pressure air from the main air banks to the forward and aft ballast tanks.

Two seconds later, the lights went out, the panel displays went out and the Losharik became a derelict, drifting collection of titanium, steel, cables, and electronics.

But in the room, Trusov could hear the sound of high-pressure air blowing into the ballast tanks. She took off her headset and leaned back in her pilot’s seat, pulling her hair out of her eyes. She shut her eyes. When she opened them, the dim light of battle lanterns lit the space in an eerie, shadowy semidarkness.

Maybe today wasn’t the day after all, she thought with relief, and as she did, she realized it seemed almost like a prayer giving thanks.

Captain Second Rank Irina Trusov grabbed her arctic parka and climbed out of the main egress hatch. She reached down and helped up Belgorod Captain Georgy Alexeyev, who looked around at the icescape around them.

Losharik had surfaced through a large polynya. If Trusov’s nav plot had been correct, this was on the path that the second Gigantskiy had taken on the way to the Americans, but it had blown up way too early. Off in the distance, she could see the rise of the pressure ridge that had been the target of the Gigantskiy. It had to be at least five nautical miles out.

She stepped to the aft part of the hull that was closest to thick ice and stepped off. The crew and the Belgorod rescued personnel were offloading whatever supplies they could grab. Battlelanterns, blankets, rations. But the boat’s up-angle had gotten worse and the upper rudder was no longer visible as the hull settled into the sea. There were only minutes left before the boat sank to the point that the water came in the egress hatch.

“Captain,” Trusov said to Kovalov, “should we shut the egress hatch and seal the boat? With the inter-compartment hatches shut, perhaps only the sixth and seventh compartments will be fully flooded. The boat could be salvaged.”

“Possibly,” Kovalov said, “but perhaps not by us. Leave the egress hatch open. We’ll let her flood. The water is too shallow here to crush her hull, but seawater will degrade any systems the Americans could use.”

The survivors of Belgorod and the Losharik crew stood among the offloaded gear and watched as the deep-diver submarine began taking on water through the open egress hatch.