Alexeyev had his chin in his hand, deep in thought. First Officer Lebedev showed up, tapping Pavlovsky on the shoulder, saying something quietly to him. Pavlovsky pointed to the captain. Lebedev took a step closer to the captain.
“Captain, I recommend stationing action stations,” she said.
Alexeyev looked at her with his uncovered eye unfocused. For a moment Lebedev could swear he was trying to remember who she was, until finally he nodded. “Fine,” he said, “but no general announcing circuit orders. Use the phone circuits and messengers.”
Lebedev went off to get action stations manned. Maksimov took her action station at the middle position of the command console as the officers and senior enlisted hurried into the room and donned headsets. Maksimov smiled. It was possible this mission would be over soon. Perhaps even today, she thought. The thought made her suddenly feel hungry. The reduced rations order was only hours old but already had the entire crew depressed.
Alexeyev picked up the phone to nuclear control. “Engineer, be ready to rig the atmospheric controls in machinery two for battle.” The captain turned to Pavlovsky and Lebedev. “Watch Officer, when I give you the word, call back to nuclear control and order them to rig machinery two for battle. That means they will depressurize and nitrogen purge the oxygen generators, shut down the scrubbers and burners and stop the oxygen bleed, then stop the ventilation fans.”
“But Captain, if we do that, we’ll start to suffocate inside twenty minutes.”
Alexeyev nodded. “If it gets bad, we will put on our emergency breathing air masks.”
“Captain,” Lebedev reported to Alexeyev. “Action stations are manned. Do you want to address the room?”
Alexeyev seemed confused for a moment, then blinked. He cleared his throat, and the murmuring in the room died down to pin-drop quiet, only the high-pitched whine of the computers audible in the room.
“Attention in the tactical team,” he said. “We have a loud transient from bearing one-two-two which showed steam flow, then a small steam turbine startup, and then a larger one. I am presuming the sounds are coming from the Panther as she lights off her reactor. We must be prepared for Panther to roar off into the sea at maximum speed. I doubt she will stay at slow speed once her reactor is live.” Alexeyev stopped, and Lebedev stared at him, coming close to him and whispering urgently in his ear. Alexeyev nodded, then continued. “Intentions. Yes. My intentions. Our intentions. I intend to monitor the Panther and first determine what speed he will choose. Once he settles on a speed, we will obtain a parallax range by stealthily driving across the line-of-sight to the Panther. We will obtain a firecontrol data package and feed it to the battlecontrol system. However, we will not be shooting.”
Lebedev stared at the captain. “I’m sorry, Captain, but once we get a data package, shouldn’t we fire immediately?”
Alexeyev seemed briefly confused by the question. Maksimov looked to her right, at the third position console, where Pavlovsky returned her glance, as if it to say, what the hell is wrong with the captain? Maksimov looked over at the battlecontrol console’s middle position, where Weapons Officer Katerina Sobol manned her watchstation, and Sobol seemingly shared that same sentiment.
Alexeyev cleared his throat. “We can’t fire at Panther, no matter how good the firecontrol data package is,” he said, his voice too loud. “We might well sink Panther, as our operational orders dictate, but our orders prioritize sinking the American escort ship, and a torpedo launch against Panther gives away our position to the American submarine. We will wait until we have a detection against the American.”
Lebedev had opened her mouth, about to protest, when suddenly Sonar Officer Kovalev frantically raised his hand in the air. “In central command, new sonar contact, possible submerged warship!” he announced. Lebedev and Alexeyev rushed to the port side, standing behind the sonar-and-sensor console. “I have towed array narrowband detect on frequencies at one hundred twenty kilohertz — from a sixty-cycle generator or generators — and a heterodyned frequency at five kilohertz, probably from the same generators. The bearings are either southwest or due south. Captain, we need to maneuver to resolve the bearing ambiguity.”
Lebedev and Alexeyev traded a look. They’d just detected the American Virginia-class. Alexeyev shouted an order at the ship control console. “Boatswain, left full rudder, steady course zero-two-zero, turns for ten knots!”
The boatswain of the watch acknowledged, and the deck tilted slightly as the Kazan made the turn and increased speed.
“Steady course zero-two-zero, Captain,” the boatswain of the watch reported.
“Boatswain, turns for four knots,” Alexeyev ordered.
Kovalev at the sonar-and-sensor console looked triumphant. “Captain, I have additional tonals, growing stronger now. Bearing ambiguity being resolved, but correlates to a new very faint broadband detection at one-five-one. Sir, we have the American escort submarine, bearing one-five-one.”
“Do we have a target data package from the maneuvers?” Alexeyev asked Weapons Officer Sobol at the battlecontrol console.
“No, Captain,” she said, showing that she knew she was disappointing the captain. “The first detect didn’t form a complete leg. We have one leg of a parallax range. We need another leg.”
“Captain,” Lebedev said, standing close to Alexeyev. “Now that we have a partial data package on the American escort submarine, we could go active, both on him and the Panther, nail down their positions, and fire torpedo salvos and take them out right now.”
“No,” Alexeyev said. “Absolutely not. We have the acoustic advantage over the American. I intend to use that to our advantage. We will let him sail by, ignorant of us. Once he and the Panther are north and west of us, we will fire one torpedo in stealth mode at each and sink them both.”
“Why not a horizontal salvo, Captain? We could put five units on the Panther and another five on the American. No way they would survive that.”
“A salvo makes more noise from the tubes and the launching and triples the emitted noise of the weapons. And it causes sonar confusion if they run and we lose them and need to reacquire them. With just one unit sneaking up on the targets, they might not even detect them until it is much too late for them. This will be a surgical strike, First.”
Lebedev looked disappointed, but she nodded in obedience. “Yes, sir,” she said, leaning over Kovalev’s seat back and staring at his console. She muttered something to him, but Maksimov could pick it up: “Don’t fucking lose them, Kovalev.”
Lieutenant Commander Rachel Romanov stood aft of the command console and stared at the chart, then flipped to the narrowband display. They had the tonals emitted by Panther, but nothing from the anticipated frequency buckets of the Yasen-M-class submarine. She paged her display to the broadband sonar display, but it was useless with all the merchant traffic in the shipping lanes above. But as far as below-the-layer was concerned, the sea was empty but for Panther and Virginia. She shifted to the acoustic daylight signal processor, but it displayed nothing but noise.