He called in his first line bridge crew, and then came about, speeding away through the dark, deep waters south of Java. A careful man, he would sprint and drift, taking a little time to let his sonar man Chernov listen to the sea. If there were enemy submarines out there, he wanted to find them first, and at 17:06, Chernov had a contact.
“Undersea contact,” he said, “bearing 228 degrees, southwest. Range 28 miles, approximate. Estimate depth at 164 feet, speed 8 knots.”
“Helm,” said Gromyko. “Come right to 180.”
“Aye sir, coming right to course 180 true south.”
“Steady on at five knots,” said Gromyko. “Keep listening, Chernov. Any profile on it?”
“No sir, contact reads as unknown.”
“Then we will creep south on this intercept vector and see who this is.”
That would take a good long while, but Gromyko was a very patient man. He had turned so his bow sonar would also come into play, and he was also hiding his own screw noise behind the boat with this maneuver. A flash message went out to Karpov saying he had the scent on an unknown undersea contact that appeared to be moving to intercept Kirov. The message he got back was stark and to the point.
“Prosecute and kill contact. You are cleared hot.”
“Comrade Belanov,” he said, handing his Starpom the message to read. Belanov scratched his head.
“This is most unusual, sir. Would the Chinese have submarines down here?”
“Who knows, but something has killed Kursk, and you know how Karpov feels about undersea threats. Let’s put two Fizik-1’s on it as soon as we have the range.”
That would not be the case until a little before 19:00 hours when Chernov reported the contact range estimate was now just a little over seven miles. They fired, and the two torpedoes whooshed out, quickly accelerating to 70 knots. The first torpedo rapidly closed the range, and at 19:04, Chernov heard it explode.
“Did you hear countermeasures being fired?”
“No sir, just our torpedoes and the explosion.”
Gromyko raised an eyebrow. That was too easy, he thought. But the sonic field cleared, and silence settled around them again. “Resume course to Kirov,” he said. “Speed twenty, sprint and drift.”
Something was very strange with all this. He could feel it. He got a report from Kirov saying they had killed two undersea contacts, and now here was a third. Three submarine kills? This was most unusual.
Most unusual indeed.
Both Karpov and Molotov hated to abandon Kursk. While the cruiser had used all her SAM’s, it still had 64 Onyx cruise missiles that would be lost, and valuable ASW munitions, including a helicopter that was trapped in the aft hangar.
“This is a damnable mess!” said Molotov when Fedorov returned from his time below decks. “2039? 2058? You mean to say you don’t even know where we are? When we are?”
“The munitions used in the attack argue for the earlier date,” said Karpov, but this is merely speculation. We could still be right where we were, in 2026, but we have had no radio signals of any kind all through the day. This is looking grim.”
And it would get worse.
They would stand on the bridge, looking at the gaunt wreck of Kursk on the horizon as they pulled away into the darkness towards the setting sun. Then, to their surprise, there came a great explosion, and they looked, wide eyed, to see Kursk had blown up. The cruiser was gone minutes later. Something had crept in behind them, silent, unseen, deadly, and it had killed the ship. Each man had his own dark thoughts, but Karpov spoke his.
“The wolves have come for their kill,” he said. “There was no missile detected. That had to be another submarine. Helm, all ahead full. Get us out of here.”
The shadows of uncertainty ahead would offer them little comfort, for there were things lurking in the night, roving the seas, hidden beneath them, and now they had the scent of the kill.
And they were coming….
The Saga Continues…
Kirov Series: The Next War
Far Horizon
In a strange day of tension and battle, the seas once believed to be safe waters have become a private hell for Karpov and the crew of Kirov. With their sister ship Kursk destroyed, they now set their course for Christmas Island, preparing a shore party to determine why the world around them has gone dark, and where they might be in time. They will not get far before the alarms will sound again, and Kirov and Kazan are soon in a struggle for their lives.
Meanwhile, the war in Iraq continues as the Coalition encircles Baghdad and Sergeant King’s Light Troop soon finds itself on a mission to the heart of the city. In the south the standoff between the Chinese and US forces near the West Qurna oil field threatens to erupt, even while the Chinese Navy consolidates for a daring new campaign.
Reading the Kirov Series
The Kirov Series is a long chain of linked novels by John Schettler in the Military Alternate History / Time Travel Genre. Like the popular movie “The Final Countdown” which saw the US Carrier Nimitz sent back in time to the eve of Pearl Harbor in 1941, in the opening volume, the powerful Russian battlecruiser Kirov is involved in an accident during live fire exercises that sends the ship back to the 1940s in the Norwegian Sea, where it subsequently becomes embroiled in WWII.
Similar to episodes in the never-ending Star Trek series, the saga continues through one volume after another as the ship’s position in time remains unstable. The main 40 volume series is an alternate history of WWII, from 1940 to late 1944, showing the war as it is changed by the intervention of Kirov and crew. It is the most detailed fictional depiction of WWII ever written, covering most every major battle on land and sea.
Getting Started:
There are two key entry points to the series, the most obvious being Book 1, Kirov, where you will meet all the main characters in the series and learn their inner motivations. However, as the series describes a great loop in time, new readers can also enter with the current season 6 of the story, beginning with volume 41, Homecoming. The author is writing these final books to include all the necessary information new readers would need to know. This final season shows what would have happened to the ship and crew if they had not shifted to the past in book 1, and Kirov becomes embroiled in the outbreak of WWIII in the Norwegian Sea. At the conclusion of Season 6, new readers can then move to book 1 in the main series, and see what happens to the ship if it does shift back in time.
Detailed information on the battles covered in each book, including battle maps, is available at www.writingshop.ws. A listing of books in all six “seasons” of this amazing series appears below.