HIGH RADIATION LEVEL ALARM
Great, Trusov thought. All the wicked casualties happening to the submarine, now it had to have a radiation casualty?
The tunnel led aft to the fourth compartment where the turbines, generators and motors were housed, with the nuclear control room placed just aft of the bulkhead to the third compartment. Farther aft of the door to nuclear control, Trusov could see a steam leak — no, several steam leaks. The compartment was hot and humid, and she felt herself sweat through her coveralls, the choking steam filling the air in the crowded machinery space. Now she was beginning to think the ship couldn’t be saved.
“Status of the reactor?” Orlov said through the doorway to nuclear control.
Inside, Captain Third Rank Kiril Chernobrovin stood behind the reactor control panel and steam plant control panel, his coveralls soaked in sweat, a cut to his scalp having bled down his face, the streak of blood making Trusov’s suppressed fear somehow bloom stronger.
“The rod we dropped when we entered the Arabian Sea, Captain? We’ve dropped it again. I’ve maintained the reactor critical, but the neighboring fuel modules have had to pick up the load from the rod drop and they are overpowered, and their fuel elements are melting, and the third compartment is now a high radiation area. Add to that, we now have a primary-to-secondary leak, and the fourth compartment’s radiation levels are skyrocketing. The occupancy time — the safe occupancy time — for this room is shrinking down to less than an hour, Captain. Beyond that, we’re all getting far more than our allowable lifetime doses. If we have to sail all the way back to base, we’ll have enough radiation dosage that, well, sir, we’d be lucky to live for another year, and that will be one miserable year.”
Orlov cursed. “Dammit, Engineer, you keep this beast critical and maintain propulsion, I don’t care if the damned thing fucking explodes. Now come with us for this inspection.”
Trusov caught a glance from the engineer and there was no mistaking his thoughts. We have to abandon ship. But Yuri Orlov would die before he’d abandon a mission, much less his beloved submarine.
They walked quickly forward to the shielded tunnel.
“You ran the blower, right, Weapons Officer? It wasn’t my imagination?”
“You were still pretty out of it, Captain,” Trusov said. “But yes.”
Orlov hurried to the lower level, where the emergency diesel lived.
“The diesel could go either way, I suppose,” Orlov said, touching the side of the massive diesel engine. “I hope to hell it’s okay. It may need to get us home.” Orlov glanced quickly at Chernobrovin, then led them back up the stairway to the middle level, then forward through the crew’s messroom. Dobryvnik paused near the large door to refrigerated storage, noticing the breaker providing power to the room had tripped. Without thinking about it, Dobryvnik reached for the red handle to the breaker, which was indeed in the tripped position, took it to the “open” position, then pulled it up to the “shut” position. It immediately exploded in a breadbox-sized ball of flames, Dobryvnik falling to the deck, grasping his hand.
“You okay?” Trusov said, bending over him and pulling him up by his good hand. He looked at the burn, wincing.
“Navigator, get up to the wardroom and get the first aid kit out and see to that burn,” Orlov said, his jaw clenching.
“Yessir,” Dobryvnik said, cradling his burned hand as he made his way forward.
“So much for our food supply,” Orlov said.
“This mission just keeps getting better,” Chernobrovin muttered.
The three of them left the crew’s messroom and hurried past the crew recreation room, farther forward past crew berthing, to the radio room. “Weapons Officer? Do you know the combination?”
“Hull number twice, Captain,” Trusov said. “Unless the navigator changed it since the last time I used it.”
Orlov punched in the code, “5-7-3-5-7-3” and tried the knob, but it was frozen. “You try,” he said to Trusov, who entered the code on the button pad, but nothing helped.
“Engineer, go fetch a goddamned pry bar from machinery one.”
“Right away, Captain,” Chernobrovin said, glad to have an errand to take his mind off their situation. While they waited, Orlov pounded on the radio room door, but the radiomen weren’t answering. Trusov realized she was breathing heavily, perhaps the effect of the exertion in the contaminated atmosphere. She should have checked the atmospheric readings in machinery one, she thought. They needed to know when they’d have to come up to periscope depth and ventilate.
Chernobrovin appeared, winded, with a crowbar. He took it to the radio room door, and he and Orlov pushed until the lock broke and the radio room door burst open. The scene was one from Hell itself, complete devastation. Scorched and burned equipment. Smoke pouring out of the room into the passageway. The horrible stench of burned human flesh. The smoke cleared, revealing the black wreckage of the radio equipment and the two radiomen who had been unfortunate enough to be in the space when the fire broke out. Orlov’s eyes narrowed and he cursed under his breath.
“There goes any chance of communicating to Pac Fleet or the Admiralty,” he said.
“What about a radio buoy launched from the countermeasure ejection tube, sir?” Chernobrovin asked.
“They were all stored in here,” Orlov said. “Along with the computer to load a message into them.”
“No other emergency transmitters?”
Orlov shook his head. “The escape chamber has an emergency beacon, but it’s just a dumb attention-getter.”
Trusov traded another glance with Chernobrovin. This was getting untenable. “I guess it no longer matters if the MFHG antenna is functional,” she said.
“Captain,” Chernobrovin said to Orlov, “I should get back to nuclear control. Make sure we’re staying critical and in the power range. Maybe minimize the fuel melting.”
“Go,” Orlov said, waving the engineer aft. “Trusov, let’s get to the torpedo room,” Orlov said, walking rapidly forward to the large hatch to the first compartment.
Torpedo Officer Vasiliy Naumov looked up as Captain Orlov and Weapons Officer Trusov came into the first compartment and stood looking at the wreckage of what had once been an orderly torpedo room.
“What’s your status, Naumov?” Orlov asked.
Senior Lieutenant Naumov wiped his forehead. Trusov stared at him, realizing he was barely more than a child, lanky and pimply, his hair a mess, his coveralls torn, his hand trembling.
“Three weapons came off their racks, Captain. I called it up to central, to Mr. First. I can’t get them back on their racks alone, sir, the rigging gear is trapped under one of the loose weapons.”
Orlov took a deep breath. “What is that smell, Naumov?”
“I can’t smell anything, Captain. I guess I’ve been in the compartment too long—”
“Dammit, that’s self-oxidizing weapon fuel,” Orlov said harshly. “One of your torpedoes is leaking.”
“If we can find which one is leaking, we can put an emergency patch on it,” Naumov offered.
“Trusov, help your torpedo officer get this space squared away,” Orlov ordered, his expression turning even more dark than before.
Trusov, though, had wandered a few meters farther forward to the torpedo tube doors, her gaze fixed on tube 5, which had been loaded with a Shkval supercavitating torpedo. She sniffed the air close to the door and put her fingers under a pet-cock, a few drops emerging. She rubbed her fingers together under her nose as she turned back to the captain. The hydrogen peroxide fuel had an ingredient added to it to make a distinctive odor, allowing leaks to be more easily detected.