Threat vector

by Michael Dimercurio

  Your ship will protect the operation to the South Atlantic. We won't be able to do this without you. If you go on the mission with the Vepr, you'll come back to medals and brass bands and Martinique. If you go to jail, there will be nothing but disgrace. Have I not taught you anything over the last twenty years?"

  Grachev stared at the floor. "I'm sorry, sir. This is a hard thing, as you said."

  "Don't apologize to me, you fool. Apologize to those consultants out there, and dammit, you make damn sure you make Novskoyy feel welcome aboard Vepr."

  "That's what I want to talk to you about. Why am I taking a consultant? I can fight that ship better than any other man alive."

  "Which is why you're in command of her, Pavel. Novskoyy goes because he will give you your final mission orders at sea, and he will have responsibility for the overall mission."

  "What 'overall mission'?"

  "It is not for you to worry about, not now. All you should worry about now is getting Vepr to sea. These are your orders, and they come directly from Dolovietz himself. They are waiting for you in your computer in writing. If you value your career, you'll do as I say. Now when the consultants come back in, you kiss their asses as you've never kissed asses before."

  Grachev straightened his tie. "Sir, it's what I do best."

  Kolov suppressed a laugh and opened the door.

  knew more about the Project 885 submarine than her designers, having been at the Sevmash State Center for Atomic Submarine Construction, Shipyard 402, in Severodvinsk in northern Russia from the day the first plates of low-magnetic carbon steel had rolled into the railyard until the Vepr's maiden voyage and initial dive to maximum operating depth. When he first arrived at the shipyard, the submarine Vepr was being built for the Russian Northern Fleet, and her name had been Admiral Chebanenko. Much had happened in the six years since Svyatoslov reported as a lieutenant in the Russian Republic Navy. The Admiral Chebanenko had been sold to the Navy of the Ukraine a year into her construction, the name immediately changed to Vepr at the insistence of then Lieutenant Svyatoslov, who thought the "boar" name suited her from the epithets of the shipyard workers, who had been calling her an "export pig" ever since the rumor surfaced that she would be sold.

  But more than a receptacle of knowledge, Svyatoslov was a fountain of energy, working through most of every night at sea preparing for the next day's drills and tactics. He was plugged into the pulse of the ship like no first officer Grachev had ever known, himself included. Perhaps the only problem with Svyatoslov's competence was that he had become so valuable as a first officer that he would likely be delayed getting a command himself.

  "Good morning, Mr. First. Did Fleet Security wake you out of a sound sleep or pull you out of a waterfront bar?" Grachev was often sarcastic to the rotund first officer, and the first officer would

  usually respond in kind, which was not the typical military relationship between commander and second-in-command, but it seemed to suit them.

  "Bar, of course, Captain. I was doing shots with a few visiting officers from the Royal Navy. I was only halfway through drinking them under the table."

  Grachev thought about Rafael's briefing, and how easy it would be to get information about the sailing date of the submarine from people like Svy-atoslov. He might be an excellent navy officer, but he was a definite security risk. But then, as Rafael had demonstrated, so was Grachev himself.

  "Did they tell you why you were to be brought in?"

  "Nothing, sir. I am hoping they don't give you a report on me. My behavior was somewhat lacking."

  "Did you strike a guard?"

  "No. I might have pushed one or two a little."

  Grachev suppressed a smile. His first officer was not a shrinking violet, and who would want a submarine officer who was?

  The two men fell silent, both holding on to the aluminum handrails inside the clamminess of the cavernous submarine pens carved out of a seaside mountain a few miles to the north of Sevastopol on the Crimean Peninsula. The above-water portion of the cavern was about fifty meters from the water-line to the reinforced concrete of the overhead, although it did not seem roomy inside, crowded as it was from platforms and handrails, electrical cable gantries, cranes, manlift equipment, twelve-meter-tall welding machines, and a nest of large-bore

  hoses carrying cooling water, reactor fresh water, potable water, distilled water, lubrication oil, amines, liquid nitrogen, liquid oxygen, and liquid helium for the superconductor coils of the high-efficiency motors. The submarine pen structure was a feat of civil engineering, constructed by workers with secret clearances, taking five years from groundbreaking to commissioning.

  The platform where Svyatoslov and Grachev stood overlooked the single bay of the cavern where the view was relatively clear, at an elevation of forty meters over the deck far below. The floor level was obscured by gloom from the stark shadows made by the sodium and halogen floodlights. Far to the left, a large steel door rumbled in a loud boom that resounded through the cavern, the two panels separating and coming open very slowly, only darkness in between.

  "Status of the crew, Mr. First?" Grachev asked, not looking at Svyatoslov.

  "When Fleet Security so amiably pulled me in, they told me they'd let the men sleep for a few hours, than haul them in too. Probably about the time the ship is at water-level depth they'll be assembled in the crew briefing room. Waiting for you to tell them what's going on."

  "It's not often that the entire crew of a submarine gets pulled out of hearth and home at five in the morning on Sunday."

  "More like never, Captain. Are we going to the South Atlantic early?" He pulled out a silver cigarette box, produced a cigarette and a matching silver lighter, and lit the smoke, his hands trembling.

  Grachev considered warning him about the prohibition on smoking, but knew Svyatoslov would ignore him.

  Instead he let Svyatoslov's question hang in the air for a moment, finally deciding that there would be no crew briefing until Vepr was submerged. Kolov would be going to extreme trouble to cover the tracks of the ship's sortie, and it wouldn't make much sense to allow a base worker to overhear a rumor about their mission.

  k Tll tell you later."

  The two doors continued to open on the adjacent bay, and it took another ten minutes for them to open fully. Grachev stood and watched, content to exchange telegraphic sentences with Svyatoslov until he could see the nose of the giant vessel protrude from the opening. Slowly the submarine Vepr came into view.

  Grachev looked down on her, his face taking on the lines of a man in love. She was long, 111 meters, and 12 meters in beam. She drew 8,200 tons fully submerged. Her bow was a perfect elliptical bullet nose, the transition to full cylinder marking the forward edge of the fin. The tapered forward-leaning conning tower was without a single sharp edge or straight plane. The aft end of it gently faired back into the hull, and the emergency diesel exhaust plenum led from far aft to the fin, making the trailing edge of the fin seem to extend another third ship length aft. The hull was smoothly cylindrical far aft to the tail of the turbine compartment, and the aft portion tapered to a sharp cone at the propulsor, where the rudder came into view. The

  surface of the upper rudder plane was high over the hull; the lower one beneath the hull was smaller but shaped similarly. Elevator planes protruded out the port and starboard sides of the hull. At the top of the rudder was an elongated teardrop shape, fully two meters in diameter and four meters long. It was the Antay Optronics pod, for use when the ship was hovering deep and the captain needed to see the surface. The ship was a flat black color, the color of the sonar absorbent tiles. As the tail of the ship came through the opening, the steel doors began to close. The ship halted there in front of him, the hull resting on huge steel saddles on a massive metal table, which Grachev knew would soon descend, lowering the ship into the en-tranceway of the egress tunnel.

  The hull was fabricated of five-centimeter-thick low-magnetic steel. The ship had been designed around the KP
M-II pressurized water reactor producing over four hundred megawatts thermal. The steam plant put out 65,000 horsepower at the single-shafted propulsor, a series of water turbine blades enclosed by a hydrodynamic shroud. Vepr had four torpedo tubes 650 millimeters in diameter and two 533 millimeters. They were able to launch Berkut wake-homing torpedoes against surface targets, Bora acoustic antisubmarine torpedoes, Bora II antisubmarine plasma-tipped torpedoes, and the plasma-tipped Barrakuda mobile mines. The ship was capable of carrying thirty large-bore weapons and an additional eight small-bore units. In the forward ballast tank the vessel had eight vertical-launch tubes for cruise missiles, the current plasma-tipped

  SS-NX-28 and the conventional SS-N-26. The tubes could also carry the Azov unmanned aerial vehicle for surveillance, able to let the ship spy on the entire over-the-horizon picture without the help of an overhead spy satellite.

  The ship was a miraculous modern weapon system. She could fight a war at sea that could change the shape of a map—which was her current mission. She could sail into foreign ports and eavesdrop on eel phones and UHF circuits. She was a submerged battle cruiser, the most advanced war machine ever built.

  The ship had begun to settle lower into the bay. Tremendous threaded columns turned at the four corners of the platform, driven by twenty-thousand-horsepower oil-enclosed motors. As the hull moved slowly downward, the steel platform below the saddles disappeared into black brackish water. Within a minute the lower curve of the cylindrical hull submerged.

  Svyatoslov returned, Grachev so lost in thought he'd not noticed his absence. He pressed a cup of steaming coffee into Grachev's hands.

  "Thanks. Any word on the men?"

  "Yessir. They were brought in a few minutes ago. Crew lounge."

  Grachev looked over. Svyatoslov was rubbing his eyes. "Maybe you should take a pill for that headache," Grachev said, his own hangover almost gone.

  "I did, Captain. I don't suppose you know how long we'll be gone?"

  "Why, Mykhailo? Anything wrong?"

  "Nothing major, sir. Just, I was thinking perhaps it's time to settle down and get serious with Irina. She wants me to be home more, stop drinking with the boys, maybe have a baby. What worries me is, I think I'm ready to do that."

  Grachev turned and stared. "You? You, of all people?"

  Svyatoslov flushed, staring at his shoes. "I see you and Martinique. You're so happy. She seems to have made you . . . complete."

  Grachev clapped his first officer on the shoulder. "I'll give you some useful advice on that once we clear restricted waters. Come on. Vepr is almost down to her submerged draft mark. Let's get the men aboard."

  Grachev and Svyatoslov walked around the platforms and catwalks to the opposite side from the observation gallery. A gantryway extended horizontally from the steel structure to the top of the hull. It was anchored to a motorized mechanism that kept it horizontal while the vessel sank slowly into the water of the slip. Grachev made his way across the spongy hull tiles to the forward hatch, a meter-diameter circle of steel. Its cool and slightly oily surface was so polished that it was silvery. Grachev descended into the relative gloom of the forward airlock. The lower hatch led to the polished stainless-steel handrails of a ladder that hit bottom in a passageway sheathed in light gray plastic laminate resembling the interior of a cross-continental train compartment. The three doors around the ladder led to the offices of the department heads,

  and the passageway went aft to the steep stairs to the control compartment.

  "Mr. First, I'm going to do a ship inspection. But now that you're aboard, there's something you need to know, and that is we have some bad news for Tenukha and Zakharov," Grachev said, naming the navigator and chief mechanical officer. "They'll be giving up their stateroom and sleeping in the two empty bunks of the warrant officers' quarters so we can give their room to the rider we're taking with us."

  "Who is he?"

  "Consultant. From the wonderful people who built this egress tunnel and some of the added-on feature systems of this ship."

  "Fine, sir. I'll be the greeting party if he shows early, and if Tenukha comes aboard before the rider, he can show our guest around."

  "I'll take a turn through control first. While I do that, clear out the rider's stateroom."

  "If I might ask, Captain, what is the rider here for?"

  "Boils down to a joyride. More on that later, Mr. First."

  Grachev looked up the ladderway to the control compartment above him. The compartment was an ovoid of titanium supported on steel foundations and tied into the upper level of the first compartment by a short stairway through another hatch. The compartment protruded up into the envelope of the fin. Its egg shape had been designed to allow it to take full operating-depth submergence pressure. Its connections to the main hull—the electri-

  cal umbilicals, control wiring, fiber-optic cables, ventilation ducts, electronics cooling water and cooling helium—could all be disconnected in the event of an emergency. The structural steel foundations and the fin itself were filled with explosive bolts and rocket propellant charges so that the entire control compartment could become an escape pod. Grachev did not approve, since the design cramped the interior of the control room. Plus the escape pod design seemed almost a lack of commitment to the mission, a sort of ejection seat for the captain. Many times he had been tempted not to sign the work orders pertaining to the maintenance of the control compartment's connections, the explosive bolts and explosive charges, but had always decided to be faithful to the ship's designer's intent, whether or not he would have designed the ship that way himself.

  Grachev stepped up the ladder two rungs at a time, emerging through the hatchway. The control compartment's lights were dim, the room silent, not even the air vents blowing. The ship was completely shut down, because its reactor would not be started up until it was far beneath the waves. Ko-lov's orders had specifically stated that no orbiting infrared detectors could be allowed to see the heat of the reactor vessel.

  The compartment was a network of subcompart-ments, several booths lining the port and starboard sides. The four on the starboard side were display cubicles for the officers manning the three-dimensional attack computers. The four on the port side were devoted to weapons-control computer inter-

  faces. A sunken well in the room's center was the periscope station. The one on the port side was the conventional optical unit, connected to the periscope unit in the fin with fiber optics. The starboard unit was tied into either the Antay buoy sensor or the Optronics periscope, a nonvisual light-spectrum sensor.

  The forward bulkhead held the ship-control station and the computer station for control of the ballast and diving systems, as well as the navigation interface and the communication computer station. Aft of the periscope well was a single compart-mented area, the sensor cubicle, where the sonar system, the Antay sensor outputs, and the Shchuka systems were analyzed and displayed. At the forward end of the periscope well was a console station with a deep leather chair, which the deck officer would man during normal steaming or the captain during battlestations. The console's displays repeated the other key displays from the room's areas—target analysis, ship control, sensor display, weapons control, navigation, and communication. A small cubbyhole in the aft port corner was Grachev's sea cabin, a small booth barely larger than the narrow cot inside, for use when he did not want to leave the control compartment for his stateroom.

  Satisfied that all was in place, Grachev returned to the first compartment and descended the steep stairway to the middle level, where the computer systems were housed in a separate, environmentally enclosed subcompartment. Entry was allowed only through the forward airlock, and only then by one of the computer officers or warrant officers wearing

  a clean-room environmental suit. Adjacent to it was another locked subcompartment, the battery enclosure. The huge, heavy cells provided ten times the power density of the first-generation lead-acid storage cells initially installed in the ship before s
he had a drydock overhaul to get the new computer control system. Aft of both subcompartments was the torpedo room, where all thirty-six large-bore and small-bore weapons were housed in racks. The computer controlled their insertion into the six torpedo tubes canted far outward. There was barely enough room to pass through a central catwalk to a stairway to the lower level, where the hotel facilities were set up, his stateroom at the bulkhead to the second compartment on the starboard side, Svyatoslov's on the port side. Forward of their staterooms were the staterooms of the department heads, the staterooms of the junior officers, the warrant officers' stateroom, and the noncommissioned quarters. Between the warrant and noncom quarters, the common head was located, a row of showers, toilet stalls, and sinks packed into a narrow room. Forward of the noncom quarters, extending across the beam of the ship, was the messroom and galley, which served also as the movie screening room, chess room, officers' conference room, and a lounge where the officers could relax.

  Grachev stepped through the hatchway to the second compartment, a short space between the first and third, where the electronics for the reactor and steam systems were housed, as well as several tanks and a small machinery room. A single hatch-

  way on the middle level led through a hatch to the shielded tunnel through the third compartment— the reactor compartment, which was never occupied because of its high radioactivity. The fourth compartment was the turbine room, housing the emergency diesel generator on the middle deck at the exit of the shielded tunnel, with its sulfurous stink of diesel oil, lube oil and diesel exhaust. A ladder led up to the upper level, to the cleanest engine room Grachev had ever been in. Lagged large-diameter steam pipes threaded through the compartment to the turbine generators that powered the electrical grid for ship's service and farther aft to the DC propulsion turbine generators, massive three-deck-tall turbine casings taking every kilowatt of thermal energy out of the high-pressure saturated steam and driving two high-horsepower liquid-helium-supercooled direct-current generators tied electrically into the direct-current oil-enclosed propulsion motor located outside the pressure hull just forward of the rudder and elevator planes in the aft ballast tanks. At the aft end of the room Grachev took a ladder to the middle level, home of the freshwater heat exchangers and the nuclear control room and motor control center, to another ladder down to the condenser and pump level. The hydraulic systems and environmental control systems were housed here, including the oxygen generator, carbon dioxide scrubber, and hydrocarbon burner. The liquid helium plant was forward beneath the diesel room. Grachev made a quick inspection of the helium system and went up a ladder