“Troyak,” said Orlov gruffly. “That’s who we need. Troyak and that clown Zykov and all the Marines.”
“I thought that at first too, but listen. Karpov brought on all those security men—his personal guard from Siberia. I knew the last thing I wanted was a nice little civil war here on the ship. Can you imagine it? It would eventually come to gun play, and a lot of blood spilled. I couldn’t allow that, Chief. These men are all my brothers. I couldn’t set one side against another like that.”
“Well shit, we could at least figure a way to get Grilikov and those black coated bastards off the ship.”
“Yes, but that may take some doing, and I don’t think violence is our answer. We’ve got to play this very carefully, Chief. If Karpov finds out what you know, you need to let me handle that with him. Understand? I know you carry a pretty heavy grudge with that man, but you’ve got to step up now, and get beyond that. I need you to find another man in you now. You are still Chief of the Boat. You need to become that man, and not the surly disciplinarian who delighted in knocking heads together below decks. All those men are our brothers. They fought with us, endured everything we went through, lost everything we lost when all this happened. We’ve got to take care of them. Who knows, one day they may remember things that happened before, just like you did here. But for now, don’t say anything to anyone about this. Keep it entirely between you and I. If Karpov finds out, let me handle it. Then we’ll take things from there.”
Orlov nodded. “Alright Fedorov. I’m with you on this one. Now I’m your spy!” He grinned.
“Good for you. But don’t get careless. Go about your regular routine, make your reports as always, fart out loud like you do in the mess hall. Just be your old self. Remember, we’re still here in the middle of WWII. In some ways, Karpov is not the monster you think he is. Yes, he’s ruthless, determined, but he’s working a plan to undo the damage he caused when he took the ship back to 1908. We just took Kamchatka, and now he’s trying to get back Sakhalin Island, Primorskiy Province, and even Vladivostok.”
“Right, this is some real strange doings here now, eh Fedorov? How’d the Japanese get their hands on Vladivostok?”
“That’s a real long story, but Karpov had a lot to do with it, and now he’s trying to set things right. That was one other reason I decided to handle things the way I did.”
“Still trying to fix everything?”
“You might say so. It may be futile in the end, but I can still try. The way I see it now is that I at least have some input on what happens—some pull. But god knows I wish we still had Admiral Volsky here with us.”
“Right,” said Orlov. “I suppose he’s the only one who does know what’s going on in this crazy world.”
“Volsky?”
“God…”
Fedorov nodded silently.
Chapter 12
Chief Dobrynin was listening to the reactors, as he often did. The hum and vibration all held meaning, carried a message, told him much of the inner workings of the system. It had been months now since he ran his regular rod maintenance rotation. He didn’t quite know why, but orders had come down that the procedure should be discontinued, and that the spare control rod, Number 25, should be removed from the reactor assembly and stored in a radiation safe container.
That procedure was largely automated by 2021. All he had to do was retract the rod upwards into a long metal tube that opened on one side to admit the container. The rod would slide up, a servo mechanism would close the lower container hatch, and then it would be safe for maintenance crews to remove the container, store the rod, or mount another in its place.
He thought about that order, wondering why it had been given, and feeling just a little odd about it. All the equipment under his watch was like a family for him. He counted his monitors, gauges and tools like an old man might count his grand children. It was as if he had some long affiliation with Number 25, which had fit quietly into the matrix of his complex life in the engineering plant until that fateful day—yes, the day he ran the routine just before those live fire exercises. That was when they had the trouble with K-266, the Orel. The submarine had been scheduled to test fire a small missile barrage, but something went terribly wrong.
After that, the chaos of everything that had happened to them was still difficult to believe. Yet he dealt with it, like all the other men on the ship, and being a senior officer, he saw it as his duty to set an example for those under him. So he simply returned to the work he had been trained for, the job he did so very well there as Chief Engineer. He kept to his routine, kept the men working as always, and still quietly listened to his equipment.
Everything seemed normal, as it always did, for he ran a very tight watch—until he heard something one day, an odd sub-harmony in one of the reactors. He had been listening, eyes closed, his mind taking the errant vibrations and whirring thrums and weaving them into some kind of inner symphony. There he sat, just like a conductor, a man who knew exactly what he was supposed to be hearing in the score being played. He knew, with each sound, what should come next, be it the deep murmur of a water flow pump, or the lilting whine of a steam rotor. Each sound should be followed by another, just like the notes in the score, but here was a note, a line of music, that he had never heard before.
Dobrynin inclined his head, suddenly more alert, listening… listening… Something in the sound seemed to pull at him, triggering some deep inner sense, a sixth sense that was a strange collaboration of touch, smell, and sound. Together they combined to produce a new sensory suite in him, and it was there, in that intersection of the three senses, that he sensed something different playing in the orchestra that he did not expect, yet something he was inwardly certain he had heard before. It was a sound, a feeling, a vague yet palpable presence in the system, and now he opened his eyes, seeing out the nearest monitor to add sight to the mix of senses he was using.
“Mister Markov,” he said quietly. “Kindly bring up the flow channel report on monitor number two please.”
“Aye, Chief. Number two.”
Dobrynin shifted his weight in his chair, leaning to one side, closing his eyes again briefly and listening. As if aware that it had been discovered, the errant sound had fled. He waited, thinking it would return again in the very next phrase, the next bar in the score, but nothing was heard. Yet the recollection of that sound was clear in his mind, and it touched a very deep chord somewhere within him. He had heard this before, many times, and it never promised good things when it came.
Yes, he had heard that sound before, and it stood now in his mind like a harbinger of something more profound that was yet to come, a quiet precursor, a little foreshock, a warning.
“Mister Markov. I want to print a reading on the entire system for the last ten minutes.”
“A reading? You mean a diagnostic report?”
“That is correct.”
“The entire system, sir?”
“Full diagnostic. Get started please. Call in Mister Garin as well if you need some help. I want it done as soon as possible.”
“Very good, sir.”
Dobrynin smiled, seeing Markov swivel in his seat, looking for a clipboard, lists of things he would need to get printed reports on for the diagnostic. He was a good man, a competent technician, yet as Dobrynin looked at him, a strange feeling came over him. Markov… missing… Gone….
He shook his head, not knowing why he thought that. It was just another of those strange inner hunches that he was prone to, but the Chief had learned to pay attention to such things, quiet little upwellings of his unconscious mind. Pay attention, he told himself. Keep a good eye and ear on things. Something isn’t quite right here, and you know it. It may be nothing serious, like a loose shoestring in the system as a whole, but then again….