“Then our only other choice is to do it on the sly,” said Gromyko. “Stealth is what this submarine is all about. I’m willing to bet I can get this boat into missile range before Tasarov hears us.”
“Which then presents us with the uncomfortable decision as to whether or not we fire.” Volsky was obviously bothered by that idea. “That is a good ship out there; a good crew. All of those men are like sons to me, which is why I suppose they came to call me Papa Volsky. The thought of killing them all is hard for me to even contemplate. But yet, Kamenski is convinced that we must do so as a last resort. I do not say I even understand the threat he sees so darkly, but I have been troubled by this for a good long while. When messages come from a future that we cannot even know, and they warn of our ship, it is more than troubling. It is deeply disturbing.”
“Messages?” Gromyko gave him a blank look.
“Signals that were aimed at this shadowy group founded by my good friend, Admiral Tovey. He called it the Watch, and I suppose we are the reason for that.”
“What did they say?”
“Beware of a ship… beware Kirov.”
There was a moment of silence, before the Admiral spoke again. “So it has something to do with everything Kamenski told you, and he went over it all again with me before I stepped aboard again. Well Captain, if it came down to it, how would you fight Kirov?”
“With everything I have,” said Gromyko. “It’s likely we’ll get into missile range, and they gave me a new set of some very sharp teeth.”
“Yes, the new Zircon MOS-III. How many?”
“Two full silos of eight missiles each. The remainder are the older Kalibr Class cruise missiles. I have another eight of the long-range 3M-14-K Series. That gives me striking power out to 2500 kilometers, and with a 450 kilogram warhead. But that is the land attack variant. The remaining sixteen missiles are the 3M-54-K, a shorter range variant out to 660 kilometers, but with the smaller 200-kilogram warhead. That was the dedicated anti-ship variant, though I suppose I could use the land attack missile against a water borne target as well.”
“It may interest you to know that Kirov also has the Zircon—ten missiles. They also carried older P-900s and there were 40 of the Moskit-IIs. I have no idea how many Karpov may have expended since he took over the ship. Fedorov would certainly know, assuming Karpov did not throw him into the brig.”
“The missiles don’t matter to me,” said Gromyko. “I won’t be firing from the surface. That’s where I have the real advantage. Their entire missile inventory is useless in this fight. All I have to worry about is their torpedoes.”
“Remember, they have three helicopters.”
“That is the real threat,” said Gromyko. “They expand their ASW search radius, and if they get a good idea where we are, they can drop sonobuoys to refine that contact and then we get trouble. It’s a pity that no one ever managed to put decent SAMs on a submarine. I’ve got the mast mounted 9k34 Strela 3, but its range is just a whisker over four kilometers. That might get a helo that was hovering right on top of us, but little more. Give me the S-400. That would really be a game changer. A few silos of those, and I would be virtually unbeatable against those helos or ASW planes. Then again, to see them I’d have to have my head above water, and for an old sub driver like me, that is the last place I want to be in a fight.”
“Yes, you would have to expose your sensor mast to target the helicopters,” said Volsky. “That would make your position known, particularly after you fire your SAM. All the helo has to do is fire their torpedo in response. You might shoot down that helo, but then you would have to deal with that torpedo in the water, and perhaps more than one. It would also tell the enemy mother ship exactly where you are, and Kirov has three helicopters.”
“So both sides have good face cards in their hand,” said Gromyko. “As it stands, they are vulnerable to my stealth and missile attacks, but we are vulnerable to those helos. The key is who finds the other first.”
Volsky shrugged. “It’s a pity that we even have this conversation,” he said. “Here we are, discussing our Assassin’s Creed. It is most unseemly.”
“So there is no way Karpov might be reasoned with?”
“I find that most unlikely.”
“Then if I had to kill that ship, I would start with a full salvo of those 3M-54-E Series missiles, but I would want a firing position that would mask their approach for as long as possible.”
“Explain,” said Volsky.
“If I could find the ship close to one of these islands—a nice big fat one—then I would fire from the opposite side of that island. If it had sufficient elevation, it would create a radar blind spot. I would fire right down that dark zone, and then they might not pick up the missiles until they start their final attack maneuvers. They would climb to avoid the land mass, and then immediately dive for the high-speed terminal run at sea level.”
“Do you think they would get through? Kirov’s missile defense shield is very good.”
“All we need is one good hit. I hesitate to bring this up, but if this was real war—the kind I trained to fight in 2021, then the last missile in that salvo would have a special warhead. If I see the first fifteen shot down, then we detonate the last one before they get it. The blast wave, shock and EMP will all have strong effects.”
“Yet there may be other exotic effects as well,” said Volsky. “Remember what happened to you in the Atlantic.”
“Only too well.”
“You know,” said Volsky. “This may sound odd, but there are three layers of memory in my mind. One is the life I led when we first left Severomorsk to go out for those live fire exercises. The ship was carrying a lot of older munitions then, just to get rid of them. We were going to double down on the Zircon after we reached Vladivostok. The second layer of memory is from the second coming of Kirov, and we had much the same in terms of overall weaponry, but better SAMs. Yet I also remember the life I was living in when Kamenski herded me into his little scheme here. In that world, the one that just serviced your ship, there was no Kirov, at least not any ship by that name. It was renamed Admiral Ushakov, just as the Frunze was renamed Admiral Lazarev. Both those ships had troubled reactors, and are scheduled to be scrapped. So only two of the Four Boys, as we called them, were still at sea.”
“And the other two brothers?”
“Oh, those were renamed as well and eventually put into deep modernization programs, the Admiral Nakhimov was finished in 2018, and Pytor Veliky in 2021. They got new teeth, ten 3S-14 vertical launch system modules that could each hold eight missiles. That dramatically increased firepower and endurance, from the 20 old P-700s we were carrying, to eighty SSMs. Pyotr Velikiy, for example, got all Zircon class missiles.”
“Formidable,” said Gromyko.
“You see, we never cannibalized those ships to build the new version of Kirov. They are still from the original class, yet vastly upgraded. Strange how in these other two life lines the ship seems to be different from the models we created in the world I come from.”