Post by E-Stalin [Orthrus] on Sept 27, 2011 20:50:50 GMT -5
Loosely based on actual events. The dialogue is translated as much as possible. This is reposted from another forum I originally put it up on. As this is historical reality, it is equally painful and unforgiving, and you therefore know what to expect.
October 3rd, 1986
Bermuda
Soviet Navaga (NATO: Yankee) Class Submarine K-219, Compartment 4
Weapons Officer Petratchkov tore another square piece of toilet paper from the roll and wiped his long since raw nose, sniffling as he balled the tissue up and placed it in his pocket, to be thrown away later. He swallowed another gulp of hot tea, set the now empty mug down, and it was exactly when he turned to reread the same article in Pravda for the half dozenth time that the boomer suddenly shuddered and pitched sideways. Startled, he dropped the newspaper to grab a bulkhead for balance as a metal groaning sounded through the hull, and then stopped. The sub stopped twisting and was level again. The first thought in his mind was that they'd hit something.
"Shto za chyo-" and then the alarm went off.
It was a high pitched, slow interval buzzing shriek. The water level alert. For the first few seconds Petratchkov had no idea what was going on, his brain fully in surprise, and then all thought vanished as instinct born of countless hours of training. He instantly jerked upright from his chair and looked at the gauge below the glowing yellow alarm light, silo six. The needle was pinned all the way to the right. Forty liters of seawater. The missile tube was flooded.
Voroblev's reaction was faster.
"Pump silo six!"
He leaned over the railing and shouted down at the missile crewmen below, "Pump it immediately!"
The crew's reaction was equally fast, they reacted so quickly that it was almost as if they weren't even surprised, rapidly aligning the pumps to the relief valves for the missile silo tube as Voroblev vaulted over the railing and hit the activation button on the pump line. With a clattering hum the motors began to rapidly drain the flooded silo, and he stood back up, breathing rapidly in the aftershock of the adrenaline wallop. The alarm had startled him, but it wasn't serious. He took a calming breath, his brain having switched to automatic mode, and turned to shut off the alarm. Before he could do so a new alarm suddenly shrieked, much faster and of higher pitch. His eyes found the chemical detector gauge, and now the fear kicked in. His skin suddenly itched, his stomach went hollow, and he had a severe urge to urinate. The gauge was at maximum reading. A leak. There was a leak. The ballistic missile must have been ruptured. UDMH rocket fuel was leaking into the flooded missile silo, reacting with the saltwater, and oxidizing nitric acid as a byproduct. The silo was now partially filled with nitrogen tetroxide, and from countless prior safety drills he knew that it was already eating straight through the metal of the RM-25 'tooth' ballistic nuclear missile. It could breach the outer shell from anywhere between hours to a few minutes, and if it began to corrode the Hex explosives surrounding the missile's plutonium payload...
"Gas! Gas in silo six!"
Petratchkov was already ahead of him, punching down the control compartment button on the intercom as he grabbed the microphone, "Control! This Petratchkov in fourth! There's a marine water leak in silo six! There's a fuel leak and fumes! I'm venting the tube, blow us to fifty meters!"
He dropped the intercom and frantically scrabbled at the metal cover on the tube control panel, flipping it open in a panicked rush and practically snapped off the plastic cover for '6' and turned the exterior hatch release handle. There was a loud hiss of gas as pressurized air unlocked the silo hatch in preparation to blow the leaking missile out to open sea, but the rumble of air that should have taken place as the tube vented never occurred. The chemical alarm was still shrieking loud in his ears, and he had to shout over it to be heard, "Masks! All of you, put your masks on now!"
The process of opening the silo doors was mechanical, and now that he'd initiated the reaction it could not be stopped. All over the compartment, watertight doors automatically slammed shut and sealed. Petratchkov knew that the process would take exactly 300 seconds to complete. Five minutes. Five minutes with an unstable rocket that could go up any second now. It was too long, far too long. He suddenly wanted a cigarette, and pulled his rubber gas mask from the carrying bag hanging off the wall.
---
"Make your depth fifty meters!" Captain Britanov shouted. "Sound the general alarm!"
Moments later K-219 steeply angled upward, ascending at an incredible rate. A series of popping sounds ran down the length of the hull as pressures lessened and metal expanded. In Compartment 3, mess hall, Zampolit Sergiyenko was holding on for dear life. The grade of ascent was more than enough to send him tumbling down the length of the compartment. Cups of tea and plates with sliced potato were sliding down the tables, stopped only by a hand from their respective diners. Moments later the sub evened out a little bit, allowing gravity enough of a slope for people to stand on, the floor oddly felt as if it were flattening beneath his feet, and the forward hatch slammed open, the banging metal loud enough to give his ears a quick ring, and Petrachkov burst in with Liuetenant Markov (Sergiyenko's mind instantly thought of carrots).
"Gas! Chemical buildup in the silos! Everybody get away from here now!"
And he vanished back into compartment 4. For the next several seconds there was silence. Then the men bolted, charging away from the missle compartment, heading to the stern. They bumped into and nearly ran the Zampolit down, who was frozen in place by the hatch. He knew that he should take control of the situation, issue a command. He was ultimately a representative of the proletariat, even over the captain, but his body would not respond. He'd gone into a panick, and remained there in the vacated compartment.The Captains voice, more intense than any seaman could remember it, crackled over the intercom. "War stations! War stations! War stations! Chemical fumes in silo six! This is not a drill!"
The boat was still ascending, propellers cavitating the backflow as they strained beyond normal limits, and in Compartment 4 Weapons Officer Petratchkov was still doing everything he could to vent the damaged nuclear missile from his submarine. Which effectively meant doing nothing but waiting for it and praying to heaven and Christ. Seconds seemed to stretch as he stared at his watch, the hand slowly teleporting from one position to another without visible movement. It had been at least four minutes now, at least four. Surely the tube should have been blown out already. Then, finally, the yellow light over silo six's exterior hatch turned red, marking the evacuation of the silo. Petratchkov sighed with such relief that he cried out slightly without even realizing it. The missile was being punched out, they were sa-
The explosion rocked through the entire submarine, tearing open the silo and allowing the sea into the tube uncontested. By some miracle of god, the plutonium core did not detonate with its explosive womb detonated. In reality of course, this was because the explosions were not synched, only one block had been exposed to the acid, and this was the first to go. The warhead was torn apart, vapor shards misting out into the ocean while larger fragments slammed into the interior hatch of the silo, embedding themselves in the hull. The recoiling shockwave rolled back to the interior hatch of the silo and rebounded, ejecting the destroyed missile from the submarine and out into open sea where it sank without a trace. The interior section of the missile silo was lacerated as if made of tinfoil, and a flood of seawater, missile fuel, and plutonium roared into the compartment through the crack.
In Compartment 3, Sergiyenko had a stunned moment of fear overtake him, which rapidly faded as the boat evened out beneath his feet and he realized that they had surfaced, and then the fear kicked back in as he realized how mistaken he was. The boat had stopped ascending, arced over, and now began to sink straight down. Sergiyenko could clearly hear the sound of water rushing into the wounded submarine somewhere up ahead.
Britanov fell against the bulkhead, caught himself, his military brain processing and reacting faster than his personality could keep up, "Planes full up!"
"Planes are already full up Comrade Captain! There's no response!"
The planesman had the control handles back to his chest, and the submarine was tilted nosedown and descending like a shot eagle plummeting from the sky.
"Depth one hundred meters."
"Both engines all ahead full!"
"Two hundred meters Captain!"
"Prepare to blow all tanks, set for-"
"Two hundred fifty meters!"
God almighty, how deep were they going to drop before they could pull-"Three hundred!"
Fuck your mother.
---
In Compartment 4 all the lights had flashed out, to be replaced by emergency battle lamps which almost immediatelly began to dim. Two of the crewmen immediatelly dropped down the ladder to get away from the explosion site, but the water level was already rising past their shins. They splashed down to the deck and made a move for the hatch, and only now did they notice the dark brown vapor roiling over the surface of the water. The moment he took a breath he coughed, a scratching burn scorching his throat as if he was taking his life's first drag on a cigarette. The second breath spiked down into his chest and the two missilemen retched dry heaves punctuated by coughs, finally ripping out their masks and pulling them over their heads. The masks had no filters, and were meant to completely seal off the breather's face from the outside atmosphere. They had to be plugged into a breathing source. The two crewmen ignored the rubber bladders on their hips and instead plugged their corrugated breathing hoses into the ships central O2 manifold, hooking them up to the shipwide oxygen supply. But it was much too late. The pain in his chest was getting worse, turning from sharp stabs into a strong burn. The few gasps of tainted air they'd inhaled had seared their lungs like a red hot iron skillet pressed to bare skin. It was getting difficult to breath, something was clogging his throat and he coughed and green foam splattered the inside of his mask, streaked with red. He tried to inhale but could not, had to cough again as he choked on the foam bubbling from his lungs. Over and over again he strained to inhale but could only cough up blood-smeared mucus, the lining of his own lungs and throat sloughed off. His vision was growing blurry. He took one step toward the compartment hatch, tried to shout, and fell over facedown into the water. His crewmate was trying to tear off his own mask, green foam clogging up the intake hose, but his hands were not responding from oxygen deprivation. It wouldn't have made a difference anyway, his lungs were already as ragged and torn open as a kitchen sponge. He collapsed a moment later, green bubbles of mucus blotting out the eyepieces of his mask.
--
"Both engines full speed!" Alarms were blaring, lights were blinking on and off. The command post was struggling to establish control through chaos. Britanov remained calm, though he did not sound it.
"Both engines are full Captain! We can't push over fifteen knots!"
"Depth three hundred fifty meters!"
Only fifteen knots? What the hell was going on? The diving planes were already full up, they needed speed to force the submarine out of his dive. They needed at least twenty knots to do this. A diving submarine can no more pull out of it without speed than an airplane can take off without it. Something was slowing them down. Had a propeller been damaged? Had they caught on debris that was creating drag? There were too many variants, none of which he could determine or fix now.
"Blow the bow tanks!"
"Blow bow tanks."
He had originally been about to blow all the tanks, popping the submarine to the surface like a cork, but now he could only hope to by giving the bow bouyancy and leaving their stern heavy the boat could even out enough for the dive planes to hit a workable angle. They heard the rumbling hiss of high pressure gas venting the seawater from the forward ballast tanks. Their angle of descent did not change. The submarine was starting to shudder as the single nuclear reactor tried to force both propeller screws beyond its power limit.
"No response Captain!"
Britanov turned aft and shouted down to the engineer, "Gennady, activate the portside reactor. Initiate all systems."
The starboard reactor did not have enough power to run both propellers. They needed the second reactor online, and fast.
From the control panels came the response, "I've already started Captain!"
That infallible Kapitulsky, taking the intiative himself. Britanov would see him commended, if they ever made it out of this.
The engineer was in emergency mode. All formal protocal and military training had gone out the window, and he was instead left with cool, calm action, doing what was necessary to save them without waiting for a command. He spun around in his swivel chair, turning away from the control panel to briefly glance at the starboard reactor guages. It was feeding maximum pressure to both turbines. They'd reached their limit, and if that wasn't enough to pull the sub out of the dive then there was nothing more he could have done to help them. So he'd naturally concluded, without bothering to wait for the command, that their only hope was to bring the portside reactor online and feed it into the turbines, doubling their power output. He spun back to the control panel and continued the command sequence. More specifically, he was bypassing virtually every single operating procedure and safety protocal known to man. To bring a nuclear reactor online, safely, normally takes several hours. This included carefully looking over the data readouts and double checking them to avoid making a mistake, especially with Russian reactor designs, which often pushed nuclear technology past the limits that would have made any western engineer's heart stop, and the twin VM-4 reactors aboard K-219 were no exception. Kapitulsky was activating the reactor in a matter of minutes. His hands were a blur over the control panel, pushing buttons and turning keys before he even thought of doing it. Combat hyperclarity, hours of training controlling his actions instead of his brain. Primary coolant loop heater online. Secondary coolant loop heater online. Now wait for the coolant to warm up before activati- he completely ignored his own thoughts and activated the coolant pumps, starting the circulation before the coolant had sufficient time to warm up to operating temperatures. Immediatelly an alarm went off. He shut it down, only to have it replaced by another one. He was about to continue silencing the alarms when he caught himeslf and continued the activation sequence, not wasting time on the flashing lamps. "Yes, I know, I know, shut up fuck your mother!"
The coolant was far too cold. The reactor would, in moments, be far too hot. More than one reactor had fractured in the past from such a combination. When you operate a machine at temperatures exceeding hundreds of degrees, you cannot hope for it to withstand such rapid changes in temperature without straining the metal beyond acceptable limits. But Kapitulsky did not care. If he didn't get that reactor online they would smash themselves into the sea floor long before a ruptured reactor could kill them.
Britanov however, did not know Kapitulsky's thought processes, nor did he understand what the man was doing. He just knew that alarms were going off, and for the first time during this incident he felt a genuine cold stab of fear cut into him somewhere below his navel. A reactor alarm. K-19, TMI, Chernobyl, it was a sound that would send educated men running, anywhere and everywhere but here.
"Gennady, what's wrong?"
"Ignore it."
"Gennady, the-"
"Ignore it!"
He bypassed activating the Emergency Core Cooling System, sounding yet another alarm as the console shrieked at him that he was committing suicide, and went straight to igniting the core with no backup safety systems operational. The first set of control rods began to extract from the reactor core. Then the second group.
Deep inside the heart of the submarine, down inside the pressurized nuclear reactor cores, there was a tiny, barely perceptible spark; a microscopic flash of light and heat as the retracting control rods exposed the Uranium core to the reflective tungsten plates surrounding it. Another flash, and another, rapidly accelerating in a ghostly blue glow of light and heat as the nuclear fire began to burn.
-----
Alarms were going off all around Kapitulsky's head, shrieking and whining, some slow and some rapid, all frightening. Still more alarms were going off in the command post itself. The reactor was freaking out, there was a chemical leak, sea water leak, rate of descent beyond acceptable limits, and still new ones were activating faster than they could shut them down. A flashing, clicking white sign with a red radiation symbol activated and began to clatter. Compartment 4 missile room contaminated. Britanov didn't panic; it could only be the plutonium from the fractured warhead. Normally an emergency situation, Britanov wasn't worried about at all. If they couldn't resolve this crisis now, they'd all be dead long before the plutonium could even begin to harm them.
"Depth four hundred meters!"
The depth guages were getting dangerously close to redlining. "She's still going down!"
Britanov's initially firm resolve was starting to weaken. His thought processes were slowing down now that he did not know what to do. There was nothing he could do. The blaring alarms were frightening him, his submarine and crew were sinking at a terrifyingly rapid rate. His stomach was floating in much the same sensation one has in an elevator, he could hear water flooding into his boat, and the crisis was snowballing far faster than he could deal with it. There was no protocal for this situation. He'd blown the bowside tanks, ordered the port reactor online, and here his training scenarios had ended. Now what?
The men were looking at him, awaiting the next order, one that was not forthcoming. He saw their faces, tense and nervous but still awaiting his command, panicked but still confident that he could save them. How could he tell them that it was over? He could not, would, not yet. Not fucking yet.
"Blow the tanks."
"The bow tanks are blown Captain. Which tanks do you-"
"All of them God damn it! Everything! Emergency surface the boat!"
This was his only remaining option, a last resort. He did not know the extent of the damage to his boat nor the extent of the flooding. If the ballast tanks were ruptured, or if the high pressure air lines had been exposed to the chemical leak, then he would be blowing their precious and only air out into the open ocean, leaving them with no way to even out if the turbines finally managed to speed up enough for them to even out. But he had to do something, be it a risk or not, without an informed analysis. But he would not stand there like an idiot and wait for the submarine to ram into the sea floor, not while his men were depending on him.
--
Weapons Officer Petratchkov covered his head as he pushed his way through the torrent of water flooding on top of him. He had to get to the central intercom panel and report the damage to command. The water was past knee height already, his body soaked and he was starting to shiver, and then he finally noticed it; there was that smell that he knew, a smell of bitter almonds that he associated with walnuts. He knew what that was, even though the first thing his thoughts flashed to was cyanide, he understood perfectly well what he had just smelled, just inhaled. And then, as if fate was poking fun at him, he involuntarily coughed, just to bring the point home. Brown vapor was swirling above the surface of the water that he was trying to run through, floating out in twisting tendrils up over the crewmens heads. He was literally running in liquid poison, flammable liquid on top of that, and the gas was nitric acid. Powerful enough to eat through the missile casing, God knew what it would do to his lungs.
He stopped breathing and closed his stinging eyes as he bent over to pull out his rubber mask and push it over his head. He opened his eyes again and grabbed the air hose, trying to screw it into the boat's oxygen manifold, but the brown mist was obscuring his vision. He impulsively tried to wave it away with his hand so he could see the valve, but it had no effect whatsoever. He had to breath, couldn't hold it any longer. He exhaled completely and then took a tiny short gasp of air back in, tried to hold it, and coughed, losing the precious little air he had left. The hose wasn't going into the manifold, he couldn't see it. The coughing was getting worse. Starting to panic, he yanked back the hose and and turned instead to the portable OBA canister on his waist, its rubber bladder filled with oxygen, but his fingers were shaking and the brown mist was still in the way. He couldn't stop coughing, involuntarily inhaling a tiny bit with each hacking cough, taking in more of the vapor against all his willpower. Finally he could wait no longer and gasped, then retched, gasped again, and started retching continually with dry heaves.
He had been in a gas chamber before in military training, where he had inhaled MKV (CS) gas. There had been the sharpest stabbing pain in his lungs back then that he had ever imagined. It felt as if every breath was not really air, and every time he had inhaled there had been another bolt of pain. He had thought then that he wasn't breathing, and that he would pass out soon. But he hadn't passed out, had continued to breath through the pain in his chest and stayed perfectly fine. Now here he was retching, his stinging eyes teary and blurring his vision even more, now trying to hook his hose into the canister by touch alone, and his heaves were suddenly wet, and then that same terrible agony stabbed into his chest, clutching his lungs in a vice. He stumbled once, staggered against the bulkhead, and coughed out an incredibly quantity of red-green foam. It burned his throat and his mouth as he spat it out, but more came, and he didn't feel the impact in his knees as he fell and his vision went dark, the still unconnected breathing hose slipping from his fingers and onto the deck, green foam leaking from the end of it.
----
"Captain! Depth is three hundred fifty meters!"
It was impossible to describe the sheer excitement and joy in the helmsman's voice. A sudden cheer sounded in the command post, they were going up! Blowing the ballast tanks had finally given them enough bouyancy to counteract the dive. The most incredible feeling of relief flooded Britanov's chest and he couldn't resist a smile. But he knew that it was not over yet, the boat was flooding, and nobody knew the extent of the damage yet. There was the nuclear contamination and chemical fumes to deal with, and for all he knew his hull was peeled open like a can of sardines.
"Get Voroblev, I need a damage report now."
"He's in Compartment 4 Captain."
Britanov clenched his jaw. Compartment 4. Was anybody in there still alive? Was Petratchkov still in there? He picked up the microphone and contacted the entire boat, "All compartments report in sequence."
He released the transmit button and waited, the brief moment of relief gone and replaced by tension again. The few seconds of silence felt much longer than they should have. Then, "Compartment One manned and ready. No damage, no casualties."
"Compartment Two ready and very busy! The reactor's online and operational, you'll get extra power in just a minute, if we dont' blow up first."
Silence. He waited for the next report, but it did not come. "Compartment four, report."
Nothing. "Compartment four, report!"
Without waiting for a response this time he threw the microphone down and grit his teeth. They had to have evacuated it. Please let them have evacuated, because the alternative was too painful to think about. There was almost two dozen men in compartment four. How many of them could have made it out? The explosion, chemical fumes, radiation, flooding. Oh God.
"One hundred meters Captain!"
The battle lamps were dimming, starting to flicker, winked on then off, the power board threatening to fail and leave them in utter darkness. Across from Kapitulsky was Chief engineer Krasilnikov, who swearing constantly as he worked the power distrubitution panel with all the skill of a master pianist, struggling desperately to keep the power from dying.
Britanov chewed his lip, Not now, please oh please don't die on me now.
"Got it!"
Krasilnikov rerouted the mainline and flipped the switch. Every single light in the boat went off for a millisecond, too short of a time for anyone to even be scared, and the main lamps brightened again with a strong glow.
"Excellent work, keep them up.
"Depth fifty meters Captain."
The boat breeched the surface of the water with all the force of a killer whale, blowing out of the ocean in a wave of white. Inside the boat anything that had not yet fallen over or been overturned did so, and several men fell over again. They were up.
"Engines all stop!"
"Engines all stop."
"I need a damage report. Compartment four isn't answering. Somebody go aft and find out what the hell is going on, and for god's sake turn off those alarms!"
The alarms stopped. Silence. There was a ringing in Britanov's ears, accomponied by an odd hum. Somehow, with the alarms off, there was a much stronger feeling of anxiety in his chest now. The silence was eerie and heavy. It had been a little under two minutes since the explosion.
Suddenly it was broken by a crackle of static, a brief piece of a broken word, and then silence again. A moment later the connection came back, a voice that was wheezing and panting, muffled by a gas mask sounded, "This is four...there's gas in here. Very much of it, and we're ...flooding. Bad...very bad."
Britanov grabbed the microphone, "Who is this? Where's Petrachkov?
A gasp and a cough. Then, "There's fumes...Petrachkov is unconcscious...so much gas..."
The line went silent, and compartment five sounded, "Compartment five manned and ready. This is Dr. Kochergin, requesting permission to go into compartment four. We have no communication with it."
Line four came back on suddenly, "Something's burning here! It's hot...there's gas and smoke everywhere...can't see an....requesting permission to evacuate!"Chemical leak. Radiological leak. Fire, water, gas, smoke. So this was a missile accident for real. The drills had not prepared him for this. Britanov picked up the microphone again and contacted all compartments, "All compartments go on life support now. We're venting compartment four into atmosphere. Doctor, is Voroblev in there with you?"
"No comrade."
"I need you to take his place. When I tell you to, and only when, you have to go into compartment four and get to the intercom there. I need you to get a damage report. Make sure that everyone is on their tank air, understood?"
The reply back was firm, calm, and curt. No arguments, no questions. "Yes, Captain."
Back to four, "Can you see Voroblev? Is he in there with you."
The hoarse voice came back on, "I...I don't know captain. I lost sight of him but...he was in the water...he didn't have his mask on, I think...I think he's dead captain."
--------
In compartment five Dr. Kochergin pulled his rubber mask over his head and tied the drawcord around his neck to aid the gasket seal under his jaw. He covered the hose and inhaled strongly, the mask collapsed around his face. A good seal. He checked the rubber air bladder under the OBA canister, making sure that it was fully inflated, and screwed his breathing hose into the connection port. Security officer Pshenichny was already waiting for him at the hatch to four, his mask on. Kochergin could not see the man's eyes through the reflected glare off of the lenses. He looked up at the pressure guages mounted over the hatch, showing the difference between four and five. It was substantial; several tons of pressurized air were currently venting the compartment, forcing out the fumes so that they could evacuate the casualties. There was too much of a difference in pressure between the two hatches. They could not open the hatch into four unless the pressures dropped to roughly equal levels, so they had to wait. He reported to command and slammed a fist into the wall. It wasn't that he wasn't scared, but he had to do something. Standing here while people were dying went against his entire belief as a medical officer, and the couple minutes it would take for the compartment to vent were so tedious it was maddening. He picked up the microphone and contacted the two compartments forward of him, "This is Kochergin in five, is anyone hurt forward of us?"
The reply came back swiftly, "We're all fine in here. But there's bad readings in four."
"What readings?"
"Radiation. It's clicking up pretty fast. Get a suit on before you go in there."
Kochergin and Pshenichny stared at eachother. There weren't any lead suits in compartment five. "I don't know what to do, we need Voroblev!"
The security officer raised a finger, "Calm down. We were trained for this, remember? There's a procedure, we just have to follow it."
With compartment four ravaged, the security officer was currently in command of the entire forward compartments. While he may have been an officer of the state sent by the KGB, maybe even a GRU man, Pshenichny was one of few security officers that had actually gone through complete submarine training like the rest of the crewmen. He was well liked and respected by the crew as a fellow seaman, and he had the honor of being called their colleague, unlike the boat-wide spite for their Zampolit. The fact that he so openly hated Sergiyenko only made him better liked by the rest of the crew. Well trained and calm in this situation, Kochergin had naturally deferred to him, though nonetheless argued. "But there's radiation!""
Pshenichny nodded, "We'll follow procedure nonetheless."
He paused, then conceded, "But we'll follow them very fast."
The deep, baritone voice of Britanov came back on over the com, "Compartment four pressure is zero. Go when you're ready."
Kochergin looked at Pshenichny and noticed that the man was rubbing the silver key hanging around his neck much in the same way men held crucifixes. The key was one of three aboard the boat, held by him, the captain, and the Zampolit. All three were needed to launch the submarine's nuclear missiles. For some reason Pshenichny had an incredibly strong urge to take the key off of his neck and throw it away. He could not fathom why, but the impulse remained. He turned his eyes back up to the doctor, "Ready?"
They pulled the locking bar down and swung open the hatch, and Damage Specialist Sergei Voroblev crashed through the hatch, falling over into compartment five with the weight of another man's body on his shoulders. Voroblev was coughing uncontrollably, but he was wearing his gas mask. He had dove under the water's surface to pull Markov out, where Vitaly had seen him and thought that Voroblev had colapsed and reported him as dead to the captain.
Kochergin and Pshenichny quickly pulled the weight of Markov's body off Voroblev's shoulders, who rolled over on his side and tried to catch his breath. Markov's was not wearing any chemical gear whatsoever. His front was flecked with green foam, and streams of it leaked from his lips and nose, streaked with a very bright red. Moments later five more men staggered through the open hatch, all of them wearing masks. Kochergin shouted, "Take Markov to medical, fast!"
Through the open hatch was lay a very eerie sight. The lights in compartment four were dim and flickering slightly. The air was filled with brown mist, and the sound of dripping water echoed loudly off the walls. Kochergin turned to Pshenichny, "You go up top, I'll take the mid-deck and look for Petrachkov."
The security officer nodded, and they carefully stepped into the compartment together, turning on their reinforced shatterproof flashlights, 'explosion proof', to prevent the white-hot wire in the bulb from igniting flammable fumes. Less than five steps into the compartment Kochergin stepped on a body. He looked down, and saw that the man was amazingly, incredibly still alive. His mask was only halfway on, his hands clutching and scratching at his throat as if trying to claw it open. Green foam ran down the sides of his face, his eyes were rolled up and white as he gasped feebly for air.
"It's Karchenko! Get him out of here!"
A warrant officer who had just left compartment four had stepped back in to help, and the two of them lifted Karchenko up, but when the man's body was lifted upright he suddenly retched and a buckets worth of bloody foam up from his lungs. He thrashed once, and then he was not breathing anymore. They dragged the man's body out of the compartment and back into five. While the warrant and security officers went back into four, Kochergin attempted everything he could to save the injured seaman's life. Rapid chest compressions and finally a dose of epinephrine straight between the seventh and eights intercostal space, but there was no effect. Kochergin already knew that it was hopeless. It didn't matter how much he could into the man's ragged lungs, for his throat was filled with fluid. No oxygen could get in, any the air that Kochergin breathed into the man would only forced the foam down into Karchenko's stomach, to be replaced by still more bubbling up from his lungs.
The doctor looked back into compartment four. Brown mist was seeping in through the open hatch, slowly flooding down to run along the deck as if it were semi-fluid. He left the dead man and went back into four.
The compartment looked like a mortar shell had gone off in it. Smoke roiled within the brown vapor, and he could hear a sizzling sound as if something was burning. It was very hot inside the compartment, enough to make his breath catch in his throat, and bodies were everywhere. A fast trip through the compartment counted them just over a dozen bodies. Some face down, some on their sides. His breath was obscured by the gases and fumes, and he couldn't tell at all who was alive and who was dead. They proceeded to simply grab everyone they saw without triage, dragging them out of the compartment one by one and laying them out in a neat row inside five to be treated by Kochergin. Petrachkov, the weapons officer that Britanov needed, was not there. It was getting difficult to breath, and Kochergin suddenly remembered to check his OBA mask canister. The rubber bladder was almost deflated, the sides starting to stick together. The canister was only enough for ten minutes of air, but that had been in calm circumstances. Kochergin's pulse and respiration rate was far above normal. How long could his oxygen last under these conditions? But he couldn't leave now, there were still men inside, and it was imperative that they found the missile specialist.
He found two more men on the mid-level and pulled one of them over his shoulders in a firemans carry, then called back for help with the other one. Across deck, Security Officer Pschenichny shouted, "I found Petrachkov!"
Kochergin's eyes widened, they'd found him! Pshenichny was out of sight of the rest of the men, having walked around the torn open torpedo tube on top deck. By sheer chance he had looked over the railing and found the weapon officer's body slumped against a wall. All rational thought vanished from his mind. Pshenichny was KGB. He was not an officer or a formal leader, nor was he a doctor. He was a soldier, and he reacted like a soldier. Instantly he grabbed the railing with both hands and vaulted over it, swinging his body around to face the railing as his boots slammed onto the edge of the deck. He crouched down, straining to breath through the resistance of the mask, and grabbed the edge with his fingers, hanging off of it before dropping down onto the mid-deck. He tumbled forward off the rail and fell down next to Petrachkov, rolling the man's body upright. It didn't look good, and he didn't waste time examining him. He didn't have much air left. Pshenichny grabbed the heavy man's body by the arm and pulled him uprght over his shoulders, turned around drunkenly, and staggered down the deck. It was getting incredibly difficult to breath. Every breath he took was loud and ragged, sounding like sandpaper, and there was a tightness in his chest. Without stopping, he blearily looked down at the rubber bladder by his side. It was almost empty. He looked back up-the space in front of him was completely filled with brown mist, and he still had to get down the ladder. Step by step, Petrachkov's body limp on his shoulders, the security officer staggered his way across the mid-deck, each breath more difficult to take in than the last. By the time he got to the ladder it felt like he was breathing through a straw. He looked down the ladder, his vision growing blurred. The hatch to compartment four was right still across the bottom deck from the ladder, too far away. He needed air, badly. He needed to just drop Petrachkov and get out of here, but no. No, no, no, no goddamnit! He couldn't do that, absolutely would not. Push! Keep moving just keep...
He fell over the edge of the deck hole and smashed into the railing, just barely managing to grab it. His legs almost gave out at the weight they suddenly bore as he stepped down a rung. His breaths were ragged gasps, and gray spots were starting to snake into his vision. He held onto the rung with both hands with all his strength every time he stepped down, but the burning in his legs and arms would not go away. His body was no longer operating on oxygen, he had only several seconds left while his cells continued to function anaerobically, and then he knew that he would colapse. One rung. The next. He wanted to stop and just hang off the ladder, had to rest, could not. Another rung, and then two thirds of the way down his arm finally gave out and he fell. Petrachkov's body fell on the ground first and Pshenichny slammed his head into the deck. White light flashed before his eyes, faded, leaving his vision of the compartment very dim, dimmer than it had been before. He realized that the compartment had not dimmed, it was his own eyes failing him. He rolled to his feet, grabbed Petrachkov's body by the fabric of clothing over the mans chest and tried to pick him up again. He couldn't do it, his arms no longer strong enough to lift the mans weight past his waist. He screamed, lifted, and dropped him again. Pshenichny's head suddenly felt incredibly light, and he almost fell over, stood there for a moment, took one last strained breath, and grabbed Petrachkov's body by the shirt. Silently screaming with the effort, struggling not to faint, Pschenichny threw his entire body weight back, falling over onto his ass but managing to dragg Petrachkov a few feet. He stood up, grabbed him, fell over. Stood up again, and meter by meter was dragging the man away from the back of the compartment, but now there was no more air in his OBA. No longer was it like breathing through a straw, but like breathing through a straw with the end sealed. There was nothing he could inhale, the sides of the rubber air bladder had stuck together. He struggled to his feet and dragged Petrachkov back another several yards, finding one last burst of strength in his legs to backpedal with, and then he colapsed again, trying to pant and finding that he could not. His vision was swimming, there was the strong urge to urinate, and a thudding painful pound of a pulse was throbbing in his temples. He pushed up off the deck and suddenly realized that he could no longer feel anything around him, could not feel the deck beneath his feet. He tried to shout for help but had nothing left in his lungs to do it with. Body shaking with exertion, he bent over and grabbed Petrachkov again. This time he didn't even manage to drag the body a centimeter but just fell over. Then mercifully, finally, a warrant officer found him. Pshenichny faintly felt a hand on his shoulder, and was abandoned as the warrant officer grabbbed Petrachkov and hauled him away. Somehow, against all possiblity, Pschenichny found the strength to get to his feet one last time.
As Kochergin walked down he passed a warrant officer carrying out Petrachkov, his body covered in foam, and then behind him he saw Pshenichny staggering forward. The man took his final step, all reserves gone, and colappsed, weakly clawing at his mask. No, not him. It couldn't possibly be him. Not Pschenichny. Kochergin rushed forward and tore his own mask off of his face, not even remembering to take one last breath to hold. He pulled off the security officers mask and before the fainting man could breath in the nitric acid, Kochergin pressed his own mask against the mans face.
"Breath."
Pschenichny's eyes were dim and unfocused, his head lolled.
"Breath!"
He hauled Pschenichny up, got up under his arm, and stood. "On your feet damn it, get up!"
Pschenichny struggled to get his legs under him, the gas mask that Kochergin held to his face was also so close to empty that he could only get tiny slivers of air from it, but that was enough. Pschenichny gasped as he stepped forward with his weight on Kochergin, and it was the most painful sound Kochergin could remember hearing. The two of them stumbled down the deck toward the open hatch, and now Kochergin's lungs were burning, his eyes stinging. They were still five meters from the hatch, only five meters, but he could hold his breath no longer. With the next step Kochergin, swimming in brown vapor, opened his mouth and inhaled pure acid.
----------------------
"Portside reactor online and operational. All systems nominal," Said Kapitulsky.
Britanov picked up the microphone, "Compartment four, I need that damage report."
One of the warrant officers answered, giving a rapid description of the compartment. Silo six was torn open and chemical gas was rising up from beneath the deck grating. Two dead, unknown number of injured.
"What about Petrachkov.""
"We just pulled him out. He doesn't look good. Kochergin's been moving them back to five."
"Where's Kochergin?"
There was a moments pause, "I don't see him."
"Find him. Push everybody out of the compartment and purge silo six. Do you know how to do that?"
"I...I don't know. I've never done it before Captain. I'm not assigned to the missile silo controls."
"You are now."
The missile crewmen, the men that knew how to flush the spilled UDMH out of the silo that was poisoning the boat were all dead or dying. There was no one else. From his seat by Kapitulsky, Chief Engineer Krasinkov turned around, "I'll go down there myself Captain."
"No, I need you at your post. Here, take this."
He handed the microphone to Krasinkov and spoke into it, "The Chief Engineer is going to instruct you in the procedure for flushing the silo. Listen to him, understood?"
"I have it."
The Captain turned to his navigations officer, "Markov was in compartment four. I need a radio operator more than I need a navigations officer."
Aznabaev, the navigator, nodded. "I can do it."
"Good. Send an emergency transmission to Moscow and to Fleet Command. The preset codes don't cover what's happened. You have to send it out in the open."
If they sent an unencrypted message than it would undoubtedly be intercepted by the Americans. It was entirely against regulations to do so, but when the option was compared to sinking...there wasn't much to consider.
-----------------
U.S Fishing Trawler Sparrow
Captain Hernandez was two thirds of a way through a bottle of whiskey when the radio crackled.
"Pan pan pan. Pan pan pan. Pan pan pan. All hands all hands all hands. This is U.S Coastguard. Report Soviet Submarine in distress, unknown damage. Location at 3.312.3...."
What the bloody fuck?
"...12 east. All hands render assistance if possible. Out."
He looked at the scotch, then at the radio. Put the scotch down.
October 3rd, 1986
Bermuda
Soviet Navaga (NATO: Yankee) Class Submarine K-219, Compartment 4
Weapons Officer Petratchkov tore another square piece of toilet paper from the roll and wiped his long since raw nose, sniffling as he balled the tissue up and placed it in his pocket, to be thrown away later. He swallowed another gulp of hot tea, set the now empty mug down, and it was exactly when he turned to reread the same article in Pravda for the half dozenth time that the boomer suddenly shuddered and pitched sideways. Startled, he dropped the newspaper to grab a bulkhead for balance as a metal groaning sounded through the hull, and then stopped. The sub stopped twisting and was level again. The first thought in his mind was that they'd hit something.
"Shto za chyo-" and then the alarm went off.
It was a high pitched, slow interval buzzing shriek. The water level alert. For the first few seconds Petratchkov had no idea what was going on, his brain fully in surprise, and then all thought vanished as instinct born of countless hours of training. He instantly jerked upright from his chair and looked at the gauge below the glowing yellow alarm light, silo six. The needle was pinned all the way to the right. Forty liters of seawater. The missile tube was flooded.
Voroblev's reaction was faster.
"Pump silo six!"
He leaned over the railing and shouted down at the missile crewmen below, "Pump it immediately!"
The crew's reaction was equally fast, they reacted so quickly that it was almost as if they weren't even surprised, rapidly aligning the pumps to the relief valves for the missile silo tube as Voroblev vaulted over the railing and hit the activation button on the pump line. With a clattering hum the motors began to rapidly drain the flooded silo, and he stood back up, breathing rapidly in the aftershock of the adrenaline wallop. The alarm had startled him, but it wasn't serious. He took a calming breath, his brain having switched to automatic mode, and turned to shut off the alarm. Before he could do so a new alarm suddenly shrieked, much faster and of higher pitch. His eyes found the chemical detector gauge, and now the fear kicked in. His skin suddenly itched, his stomach went hollow, and he had a severe urge to urinate. The gauge was at maximum reading. A leak. There was a leak. The ballistic missile must have been ruptured. UDMH rocket fuel was leaking into the flooded missile silo, reacting with the saltwater, and oxidizing nitric acid as a byproduct. The silo was now partially filled with nitrogen tetroxide, and from countless prior safety drills he knew that it was already eating straight through the metal of the RM-25 'tooth' ballistic nuclear missile. It could breach the outer shell from anywhere between hours to a few minutes, and if it began to corrode the Hex explosives surrounding the missile's plutonium payload...
"Gas! Gas in silo six!"
Petratchkov was already ahead of him, punching down the control compartment button on the intercom as he grabbed the microphone, "Control! This Petratchkov in fourth! There's a marine water leak in silo six! There's a fuel leak and fumes! I'm venting the tube, blow us to fifty meters!"
He dropped the intercom and frantically scrabbled at the metal cover on the tube control panel, flipping it open in a panicked rush and practically snapped off the plastic cover for '6' and turned the exterior hatch release handle. There was a loud hiss of gas as pressurized air unlocked the silo hatch in preparation to blow the leaking missile out to open sea, but the rumble of air that should have taken place as the tube vented never occurred. The chemical alarm was still shrieking loud in his ears, and he had to shout over it to be heard, "Masks! All of you, put your masks on now!"
The process of opening the silo doors was mechanical, and now that he'd initiated the reaction it could not be stopped. All over the compartment, watertight doors automatically slammed shut and sealed. Petratchkov knew that the process would take exactly 300 seconds to complete. Five minutes. Five minutes with an unstable rocket that could go up any second now. It was too long, far too long. He suddenly wanted a cigarette, and pulled his rubber gas mask from the carrying bag hanging off the wall.
---
"Make your depth fifty meters!" Captain Britanov shouted. "Sound the general alarm!"
Moments later K-219 steeply angled upward, ascending at an incredible rate. A series of popping sounds ran down the length of the hull as pressures lessened and metal expanded. In Compartment 3, mess hall, Zampolit Sergiyenko was holding on for dear life. The grade of ascent was more than enough to send him tumbling down the length of the compartment. Cups of tea and plates with sliced potato were sliding down the tables, stopped only by a hand from their respective diners. Moments later the sub evened out a little bit, allowing gravity enough of a slope for people to stand on, the floor oddly felt as if it were flattening beneath his feet, and the forward hatch slammed open, the banging metal loud enough to give his ears a quick ring, and Petrachkov burst in with Liuetenant Markov (Sergiyenko's mind instantly thought of carrots).
"Gas! Chemical buildup in the silos! Everybody get away from here now!"
And he vanished back into compartment 4. For the next several seconds there was silence. Then the men bolted, charging away from the missle compartment, heading to the stern. They bumped into and nearly ran the Zampolit down, who was frozen in place by the hatch. He knew that he should take control of the situation, issue a command. He was ultimately a representative of the proletariat, even over the captain, but his body would not respond. He'd gone into a panick, and remained there in the vacated compartment.The Captains voice, more intense than any seaman could remember it, crackled over the intercom. "War stations! War stations! War stations! Chemical fumes in silo six! This is not a drill!"
The boat was still ascending, propellers cavitating the backflow as they strained beyond normal limits, and in Compartment 4 Weapons Officer Petratchkov was still doing everything he could to vent the damaged nuclear missile from his submarine. Which effectively meant doing nothing but waiting for it and praying to heaven and Christ. Seconds seemed to stretch as he stared at his watch, the hand slowly teleporting from one position to another without visible movement. It had been at least four minutes now, at least four. Surely the tube should have been blown out already. Then, finally, the yellow light over silo six's exterior hatch turned red, marking the evacuation of the silo. Petratchkov sighed with such relief that he cried out slightly without even realizing it. The missile was being punched out, they were sa-
The explosion rocked through the entire submarine, tearing open the silo and allowing the sea into the tube uncontested. By some miracle of god, the plutonium core did not detonate with its explosive womb detonated. In reality of course, this was because the explosions were not synched, only one block had been exposed to the acid, and this was the first to go. The warhead was torn apart, vapor shards misting out into the ocean while larger fragments slammed into the interior hatch of the silo, embedding themselves in the hull. The recoiling shockwave rolled back to the interior hatch of the silo and rebounded, ejecting the destroyed missile from the submarine and out into open sea where it sank without a trace. The interior section of the missile silo was lacerated as if made of tinfoil, and a flood of seawater, missile fuel, and plutonium roared into the compartment through the crack.
In Compartment 3, Sergiyenko had a stunned moment of fear overtake him, which rapidly faded as the boat evened out beneath his feet and he realized that they had surfaced, and then the fear kicked back in as he realized how mistaken he was. The boat had stopped ascending, arced over, and now began to sink straight down. Sergiyenko could clearly hear the sound of water rushing into the wounded submarine somewhere up ahead.
Britanov fell against the bulkhead, caught himself, his military brain processing and reacting faster than his personality could keep up, "Planes full up!"
"Planes are already full up Comrade Captain! There's no response!"
The planesman had the control handles back to his chest, and the submarine was tilted nosedown and descending like a shot eagle plummeting from the sky.
"Depth one hundred meters."
"Both engines all ahead full!"
"Two hundred meters Captain!"
"Prepare to blow all tanks, set for-"
"Two hundred fifty meters!"
God almighty, how deep were they going to drop before they could pull-"Three hundred!"
Fuck your mother.
---
In Compartment 4 all the lights had flashed out, to be replaced by emergency battle lamps which almost immediatelly began to dim. Two of the crewmen immediatelly dropped down the ladder to get away from the explosion site, but the water level was already rising past their shins. They splashed down to the deck and made a move for the hatch, and only now did they notice the dark brown vapor roiling over the surface of the water. The moment he took a breath he coughed, a scratching burn scorching his throat as if he was taking his life's first drag on a cigarette. The second breath spiked down into his chest and the two missilemen retched dry heaves punctuated by coughs, finally ripping out their masks and pulling them over their heads. The masks had no filters, and were meant to completely seal off the breather's face from the outside atmosphere. They had to be plugged into a breathing source. The two crewmen ignored the rubber bladders on their hips and instead plugged their corrugated breathing hoses into the ships central O2 manifold, hooking them up to the shipwide oxygen supply. But it was much too late. The pain in his chest was getting worse, turning from sharp stabs into a strong burn. The few gasps of tainted air they'd inhaled had seared their lungs like a red hot iron skillet pressed to bare skin. It was getting difficult to breath, something was clogging his throat and he coughed and green foam splattered the inside of his mask, streaked with red. He tried to inhale but could not, had to cough again as he choked on the foam bubbling from his lungs. Over and over again he strained to inhale but could only cough up blood-smeared mucus, the lining of his own lungs and throat sloughed off. His vision was growing blurry. He took one step toward the compartment hatch, tried to shout, and fell over facedown into the water. His crewmate was trying to tear off his own mask, green foam clogging up the intake hose, but his hands were not responding from oxygen deprivation. It wouldn't have made a difference anyway, his lungs were already as ragged and torn open as a kitchen sponge. He collapsed a moment later, green bubbles of mucus blotting out the eyepieces of his mask.
--
"Both engines full speed!" Alarms were blaring, lights were blinking on and off. The command post was struggling to establish control through chaos. Britanov remained calm, though he did not sound it.
"Both engines are full Captain! We can't push over fifteen knots!"
"Depth three hundred fifty meters!"
Only fifteen knots? What the hell was going on? The diving planes were already full up, they needed speed to force the submarine out of his dive. They needed at least twenty knots to do this. A diving submarine can no more pull out of it without speed than an airplane can take off without it. Something was slowing them down. Had a propeller been damaged? Had they caught on debris that was creating drag? There were too many variants, none of which he could determine or fix now.
"Blow the bow tanks!"
"Blow bow tanks."
He had originally been about to blow all the tanks, popping the submarine to the surface like a cork, but now he could only hope to by giving the bow bouyancy and leaving their stern heavy the boat could even out enough for the dive planes to hit a workable angle. They heard the rumbling hiss of high pressure gas venting the seawater from the forward ballast tanks. Their angle of descent did not change. The submarine was starting to shudder as the single nuclear reactor tried to force both propeller screws beyond its power limit.
"No response Captain!"
Britanov turned aft and shouted down to the engineer, "Gennady, activate the portside reactor. Initiate all systems."
The starboard reactor did not have enough power to run both propellers. They needed the second reactor online, and fast.
From the control panels came the response, "I've already started Captain!"
That infallible Kapitulsky, taking the intiative himself. Britanov would see him commended, if they ever made it out of this.
The engineer was in emergency mode. All formal protocal and military training had gone out the window, and he was instead left with cool, calm action, doing what was necessary to save them without waiting for a command. He spun around in his swivel chair, turning away from the control panel to briefly glance at the starboard reactor guages. It was feeding maximum pressure to both turbines. They'd reached their limit, and if that wasn't enough to pull the sub out of the dive then there was nothing more he could have done to help them. So he'd naturally concluded, without bothering to wait for the command, that their only hope was to bring the portside reactor online and feed it into the turbines, doubling their power output. He spun back to the control panel and continued the command sequence. More specifically, he was bypassing virtually every single operating procedure and safety protocal known to man. To bring a nuclear reactor online, safely, normally takes several hours. This included carefully looking over the data readouts and double checking them to avoid making a mistake, especially with Russian reactor designs, which often pushed nuclear technology past the limits that would have made any western engineer's heart stop, and the twin VM-4 reactors aboard K-219 were no exception. Kapitulsky was activating the reactor in a matter of minutes. His hands were a blur over the control panel, pushing buttons and turning keys before he even thought of doing it. Combat hyperclarity, hours of training controlling his actions instead of his brain. Primary coolant loop heater online. Secondary coolant loop heater online. Now wait for the coolant to warm up before activati- he completely ignored his own thoughts and activated the coolant pumps, starting the circulation before the coolant had sufficient time to warm up to operating temperatures. Immediatelly an alarm went off. He shut it down, only to have it replaced by another one. He was about to continue silencing the alarms when he caught himeslf and continued the activation sequence, not wasting time on the flashing lamps. "Yes, I know, I know, shut up fuck your mother!"
The coolant was far too cold. The reactor would, in moments, be far too hot. More than one reactor had fractured in the past from such a combination. When you operate a machine at temperatures exceeding hundreds of degrees, you cannot hope for it to withstand such rapid changes in temperature without straining the metal beyond acceptable limits. But Kapitulsky did not care. If he didn't get that reactor online they would smash themselves into the sea floor long before a ruptured reactor could kill them.
Britanov however, did not know Kapitulsky's thought processes, nor did he understand what the man was doing. He just knew that alarms were going off, and for the first time during this incident he felt a genuine cold stab of fear cut into him somewhere below his navel. A reactor alarm. K-19, TMI, Chernobyl, it was a sound that would send educated men running, anywhere and everywhere but here.
"Gennady, what's wrong?"
"Ignore it."
"Gennady, the-"
"Ignore it!"
He bypassed activating the Emergency Core Cooling System, sounding yet another alarm as the console shrieked at him that he was committing suicide, and went straight to igniting the core with no backup safety systems operational. The first set of control rods began to extract from the reactor core. Then the second group.
Deep inside the heart of the submarine, down inside the pressurized nuclear reactor cores, there was a tiny, barely perceptible spark; a microscopic flash of light and heat as the retracting control rods exposed the Uranium core to the reflective tungsten plates surrounding it. Another flash, and another, rapidly accelerating in a ghostly blue glow of light and heat as the nuclear fire began to burn.
-----
Alarms were going off all around Kapitulsky's head, shrieking and whining, some slow and some rapid, all frightening. Still more alarms were going off in the command post itself. The reactor was freaking out, there was a chemical leak, sea water leak, rate of descent beyond acceptable limits, and still new ones were activating faster than they could shut them down. A flashing, clicking white sign with a red radiation symbol activated and began to clatter. Compartment 4 missile room contaminated. Britanov didn't panic; it could only be the plutonium from the fractured warhead. Normally an emergency situation, Britanov wasn't worried about at all. If they couldn't resolve this crisis now, they'd all be dead long before the plutonium could even begin to harm them.
"Depth four hundred meters!"
The depth guages were getting dangerously close to redlining. "She's still going down!"
Britanov's initially firm resolve was starting to weaken. His thought processes were slowing down now that he did not know what to do. There was nothing he could do. The blaring alarms were frightening him, his submarine and crew were sinking at a terrifyingly rapid rate. His stomach was floating in much the same sensation one has in an elevator, he could hear water flooding into his boat, and the crisis was snowballing far faster than he could deal with it. There was no protocal for this situation. He'd blown the bowside tanks, ordered the port reactor online, and here his training scenarios had ended. Now what?
The men were looking at him, awaiting the next order, one that was not forthcoming. He saw their faces, tense and nervous but still awaiting his command, panicked but still confident that he could save them. How could he tell them that it was over? He could not, would, not yet. Not fucking yet.
"Blow the tanks."
"The bow tanks are blown Captain. Which tanks do you-"
"All of them God damn it! Everything! Emergency surface the boat!"
This was his only remaining option, a last resort. He did not know the extent of the damage to his boat nor the extent of the flooding. If the ballast tanks were ruptured, or if the high pressure air lines had been exposed to the chemical leak, then he would be blowing their precious and only air out into the open ocean, leaving them with no way to even out if the turbines finally managed to speed up enough for them to even out. But he had to do something, be it a risk or not, without an informed analysis. But he would not stand there like an idiot and wait for the submarine to ram into the sea floor, not while his men were depending on him.
--
Weapons Officer Petratchkov covered his head as he pushed his way through the torrent of water flooding on top of him. He had to get to the central intercom panel and report the damage to command. The water was past knee height already, his body soaked and he was starting to shiver, and then he finally noticed it; there was that smell that he knew, a smell of bitter almonds that he associated with walnuts. He knew what that was, even though the first thing his thoughts flashed to was cyanide, he understood perfectly well what he had just smelled, just inhaled. And then, as if fate was poking fun at him, he involuntarily coughed, just to bring the point home. Brown vapor was swirling above the surface of the water that he was trying to run through, floating out in twisting tendrils up over the crewmens heads. He was literally running in liquid poison, flammable liquid on top of that, and the gas was nitric acid. Powerful enough to eat through the missile casing, God knew what it would do to his lungs.
He stopped breathing and closed his stinging eyes as he bent over to pull out his rubber mask and push it over his head. He opened his eyes again and grabbed the air hose, trying to screw it into the boat's oxygen manifold, but the brown mist was obscuring his vision. He impulsively tried to wave it away with his hand so he could see the valve, but it had no effect whatsoever. He had to breath, couldn't hold it any longer. He exhaled completely and then took a tiny short gasp of air back in, tried to hold it, and coughed, losing the precious little air he had left. The hose wasn't going into the manifold, he couldn't see it. The coughing was getting worse. Starting to panic, he yanked back the hose and and turned instead to the portable OBA canister on his waist, its rubber bladder filled with oxygen, but his fingers were shaking and the brown mist was still in the way. He couldn't stop coughing, involuntarily inhaling a tiny bit with each hacking cough, taking in more of the vapor against all his willpower. Finally he could wait no longer and gasped, then retched, gasped again, and started retching continually with dry heaves.
He had been in a gas chamber before in military training, where he had inhaled MKV (CS) gas. There had been the sharpest stabbing pain in his lungs back then that he had ever imagined. It felt as if every breath was not really air, and every time he had inhaled there had been another bolt of pain. He had thought then that he wasn't breathing, and that he would pass out soon. But he hadn't passed out, had continued to breath through the pain in his chest and stayed perfectly fine. Now here he was retching, his stinging eyes teary and blurring his vision even more, now trying to hook his hose into the canister by touch alone, and his heaves were suddenly wet, and then that same terrible agony stabbed into his chest, clutching his lungs in a vice. He stumbled once, staggered against the bulkhead, and coughed out an incredibly quantity of red-green foam. It burned his throat and his mouth as he spat it out, but more came, and he didn't feel the impact in his knees as he fell and his vision went dark, the still unconnected breathing hose slipping from his fingers and onto the deck, green foam leaking from the end of it.
----
"Captain! Depth is three hundred fifty meters!"
It was impossible to describe the sheer excitement and joy in the helmsman's voice. A sudden cheer sounded in the command post, they were going up! Blowing the ballast tanks had finally given them enough bouyancy to counteract the dive. The most incredible feeling of relief flooded Britanov's chest and he couldn't resist a smile. But he knew that it was not over yet, the boat was flooding, and nobody knew the extent of the damage yet. There was the nuclear contamination and chemical fumes to deal with, and for all he knew his hull was peeled open like a can of sardines.
"Get Voroblev, I need a damage report now."
"He's in Compartment 4 Captain."
Britanov clenched his jaw. Compartment 4. Was anybody in there still alive? Was Petratchkov still in there? He picked up the microphone and contacted the entire boat, "All compartments report in sequence."
He released the transmit button and waited, the brief moment of relief gone and replaced by tension again. The few seconds of silence felt much longer than they should have. Then, "Compartment One manned and ready. No damage, no casualties."
"Compartment Two ready and very busy! The reactor's online and operational, you'll get extra power in just a minute, if we dont' blow up first."
Silence. He waited for the next report, but it did not come. "Compartment four, report."
Nothing. "Compartment four, report!"
Without waiting for a response this time he threw the microphone down and grit his teeth. They had to have evacuated it. Please let them have evacuated, because the alternative was too painful to think about. There was almost two dozen men in compartment four. How many of them could have made it out? The explosion, chemical fumes, radiation, flooding. Oh God.
"One hundred meters Captain!"
The battle lamps were dimming, starting to flicker, winked on then off, the power board threatening to fail and leave them in utter darkness. Across from Kapitulsky was Chief engineer Krasilnikov, who swearing constantly as he worked the power distrubitution panel with all the skill of a master pianist, struggling desperately to keep the power from dying.
Britanov chewed his lip, Not now, please oh please don't die on me now.
"Got it!"
Krasilnikov rerouted the mainline and flipped the switch. Every single light in the boat went off for a millisecond, too short of a time for anyone to even be scared, and the main lamps brightened again with a strong glow.
"Excellent work, keep them up.
"Depth fifty meters Captain."
The boat breeched the surface of the water with all the force of a killer whale, blowing out of the ocean in a wave of white. Inside the boat anything that had not yet fallen over or been overturned did so, and several men fell over again. They were up.
"Engines all stop!"
"Engines all stop."
"I need a damage report. Compartment four isn't answering. Somebody go aft and find out what the hell is going on, and for god's sake turn off those alarms!"
The alarms stopped. Silence. There was a ringing in Britanov's ears, accomponied by an odd hum. Somehow, with the alarms off, there was a much stronger feeling of anxiety in his chest now. The silence was eerie and heavy. It had been a little under two minutes since the explosion.
Suddenly it was broken by a crackle of static, a brief piece of a broken word, and then silence again. A moment later the connection came back, a voice that was wheezing and panting, muffled by a gas mask sounded, "This is four...there's gas in here. Very much of it, and we're ...flooding. Bad...very bad."
Britanov grabbed the microphone, "Who is this? Where's Petrachkov?
A gasp and a cough. Then, "There's fumes...Petrachkov is unconcscious...so much gas..."
The line went silent, and compartment five sounded, "Compartment five manned and ready. This is Dr. Kochergin, requesting permission to go into compartment four. We have no communication with it."
Line four came back on suddenly, "Something's burning here! It's hot...there's gas and smoke everywhere...can't see an....requesting permission to evacuate!"Chemical leak. Radiological leak. Fire, water, gas, smoke. So this was a missile accident for real. The drills had not prepared him for this. Britanov picked up the microphone again and contacted all compartments, "All compartments go on life support now. We're venting compartment four into atmosphere. Doctor, is Voroblev in there with you?"
"No comrade."
"I need you to take his place. When I tell you to, and only when, you have to go into compartment four and get to the intercom there. I need you to get a damage report. Make sure that everyone is on their tank air, understood?"
The reply back was firm, calm, and curt. No arguments, no questions. "Yes, Captain."
Back to four, "Can you see Voroblev? Is he in there with you."
The hoarse voice came back on, "I...I don't know captain. I lost sight of him but...he was in the water...he didn't have his mask on, I think...I think he's dead captain."
--------
In compartment five Dr. Kochergin pulled his rubber mask over his head and tied the drawcord around his neck to aid the gasket seal under his jaw. He covered the hose and inhaled strongly, the mask collapsed around his face. A good seal. He checked the rubber air bladder under the OBA canister, making sure that it was fully inflated, and screwed his breathing hose into the connection port. Security officer Pshenichny was already waiting for him at the hatch to four, his mask on. Kochergin could not see the man's eyes through the reflected glare off of the lenses. He looked up at the pressure guages mounted over the hatch, showing the difference between four and five. It was substantial; several tons of pressurized air were currently venting the compartment, forcing out the fumes so that they could evacuate the casualties. There was too much of a difference in pressure between the two hatches. They could not open the hatch into four unless the pressures dropped to roughly equal levels, so they had to wait. He reported to command and slammed a fist into the wall. It wasn't that he wasn't scared, but he had to do something. Standing here while people were dying went against his entire belief as a medical officer, and the couple minutes it would take for the compartment to vent were so tedious it was maddening. He picked up the microphone and contacted the two compartments forward of him, "This is Kochergin in five, is anyone hurt forward of us?"
The reply came back swiftly, "We're all fine in here. But there's bad readings in four."
"What readings?"
"Radiation. It's clicking up pretty fast. Get a suit on before you go in there."
Kochergin and Pshenichny stared at eachother. There weren't any lead suits in compartment five. "I don't know what to do, we need Voroblev!"
The security officer raised a finger, "Calm down. We were trained for this, remember? There's a procedure, we just have to follow it."
With compartment four ravaged, the security officer was currently in command of the entire forward compartments. While he may have been an officer of the state sent by the KGB, maybe even a GRU man, Pshenichny was one of few security officers that had actually gone through complete submarine training like the rest of the crewmen. He was well liked and respected by the crew as a fellow seaman, and he had the honor of being called their colleague, unlike the boat-wide spite for their Zampolit. The fact that he so openly hated Sergiyenko only made him better liked by the rest of the crew. Well trained and calm in this situation, Kochergin had naturally deferred to him, though nonetheless argued. "But there's radiation!""
Pshenichny nodded, "We'll follow procedure nonetheless."
He paused, then conceded, "But we'll follow them very fast."
The deep, baritone voice of Britanov came back on over the com, "Compartment four pressure is zero. Go when you're ready."
Kochergin looked at Pshenichny and noticed that the man was rubbing the silver key hanging around his neck much in the same way men held crucifixes. The key was one of three aboard the boat, held by him, the captain, and the Zampolit. All three were needed to launch the submarine's nuclear missiles. For some reason Pshenichny had an incredibly strong urge to take the key off of his neck and throw it away. He could not fathom why, but the impulse remained. He turned his eyes back up to the doctor, "Ready?"
They pulled the locking bar down and swung open the hatch, and Damage Specialist Sergei Voroblev crashed through the hatch, falling over into compartment five with the weight of another man's body on his shoulders. Voroblev was coughing uncontrollably, but he was wearing his gas mask. He had dove under the water's surface to pull Markov out, where Vitaly had seen him and thought that Voroblev had colapsed and reported him as dead to the captain.
Kochergin and Pshenichny quickly pulled the weight of Markov's body off Voroblev's shoulders, who rolled over on his side and tried to catch his breath. Markov's was not wearing any chemical gear whatsoever. His front was flecked with green foam, and streams of it leaked from his lips and nose, streaked with a very bright red. Moments later five more men staggered through the open hatch, all of them wearing masks. Kochergin shouted, "Take Markov to medical, fast!"
Through the open hatch was lay a very eerie sight. The lights in compartment four were dim and flickering slightly. The air was filled with brown mist, and the sound of dripping water echoed loudly off the walls. Kochergin turned to Pshenichny, "You go up top, I'll take the mid-deck and look for Petrachkov."
The security officer nodded, and they carefully stepped into the compartment together, turning on their reinforced shatterproof flashlights, 'explosion proof', to prevent the white-hot wire in the bulb from igniting flammable fumes. Less than five steps into the compartment Kochergin stepped on a body. He looked down, and saw that the man was amazingly, incredibly still alive. His mask was only halfway on, his hands clutching and scratching at his throat as if trying to claw it open. Green foam ran down the sides of his face, his eyes were rolled up and white as he gasped feebly for air.
"It's Karchenko! Get him out of here!"
A warrant officer who had just left compartment four had stepped back in to help, and the two of them lifted Karchenko up, but when the man's body was lifted upright he suddenly retched and a buckets worth of bloody foam up from his lungs. He thrashed once, and then he was not breathing anymore. They dragged the man's body out of the compartment and back into five. While the warrant and security officers went back into four, Kochergin attempted everything he could to save the injured seaman's life. Rapid chest compressions and finally a dose of epinephrine straight between the seventh and eights intercostal space, but there was no effect. Kochergin already knew that it was hopeless. It didn't matter how much he could into the man's ragged lungs, for his throat was filled with fluid. No oxygen could get in, any the air that Kochergin breathed into the man would only forced the foam down into Karchenko's stomach, to be replaced by still more bubbling up from his lungs.
The doctor looked back into compartment four. Brown mist was seeping in through the open hatch, slowly flooding down to run along the deck as if it were semi-fluid. He left the dead man and went back into four.
The compartment looked like a mortar shell had gone off in it. Smoke roiled within the brown vapor, and he could hear a sizzling sound as if something was burning. It was very hot inside the compartment, enough to make his breath catch in his throat, and bodies were everywhere. A fast trip through the compartment counted them just over a dozen bodies. Some face down, some on their sides. His breath was obscured by the gases and fumes, and he couldn't tell at all who was alive and who was dead. They proceeded to simply grab everyone they saw without triage, dragging them out of the compartment one by one and laying them out in a neat row inside five to be treated by Kochergin. Petrachkov, the weapons officer that Britanov needed, was not there. It was getting difficult to breath, and Kochergin suddenly remembered to check his OBA mask canister. The rubber bladder was almost deflated, the sides starting to stick together. The canister was only enough for ten minutes of air, but that had been in calm circumstances. Kochergin's pulse and respiration rate was far above normal. How long could his oxygen last under these conditions? But he couldn't leave now, there were still men inside, and it was imperative that they found the missile specialist.
He found two more men on the mid-level and pulled one of them over his shoulders in a firemans carry, then called back for help with the other one. Across deck, Security Officer Pschenichny shouted, "I found Petrachkov!"
Kochergin's eyes widened, they'd found him! Pshenichny was out of sight of the rest of the men, having walked around the torn open torpedo tube on top deck. By sheer chance he had looked over the railing and found the weapon officer's body slumped against a wall. All rational thought vanished from his mind. Pshenichny was KGB. He was not an officer or a formal leader, nor was he a doctor. He was a soldier, and he reacted like a soldier. Instantly he grabbed the railing with both hands and vaulted over it, swinging his body around to face the railing as his boots slammed onto the edge of the deck. He crouched down, straining to breath through the resistance of the mask, and grabbed the edge with his fingers, hanging off of it before dropping down onto the mid-deck. He tumbled forward off the rail and fell down next to Petrachkov, rolling the man's body upright. It didn't look good, and he didn't waste time examining him. He didn't have much air left. Pshenichny grabbed the heavy man's body by the arm and pulled him uprght over his shoulders, turned around drunkenly, and staggered down the deck. It was getting incredibly difficult to breath. Every breath he took was loud and ragged, sounding like sandpaper, and there was a tightness in his chest. Without stopping, he blearily looked down at the rubber bladder by his side. It was almost empty. He looked back up-the space in front of him was completely filled with brown mist, and he still had to get down the ladder. Step by step, Petrachkov's body limp on his shoulders, the security officer staggered his way across the mid-deck, each breath more difficult to take in than the last. By the time he got to the ladder it felt like he was breathing through a straw. He looked down the ladder, his vision growing blurred. The hatch to compartment four was right still across the bottom deck from the ladder, too far away. He needed air, badly. He needed to just drop Petrachkov and get out of here, but no. No, no, no, no goddamnit! He couldn't do that, absolutely would not. Push! Keep moving just keep...
He fell over the edge of the deck hole and smashed into the railing, just barely managing to grab it. His legs almost gave out at the weight they suddenly bore as he stepped down a rung. His breaths were ragged gasps, and gray spots were starting to snake into his vision. He held onto the rung with both hands with all his strength every time he stepped down, but the burning in his legs and arms would not go away. His body was no longer operating on oxygen, he had only several seconds left while his cells continued to function anaerobically, and then he knew that he would colapse. One rung. The next. He wanted to stop and just hang off the ladder, had to rest, could not. Another rung, and then two thirds of the way down his arm finally gave out and he fell. Petrachkov's body fell on the ground first and Pshenichny slammed his head into the deck. White light flashed before his eyes, faded, leaving his vision of the compartment very dim, dimmer than it had been before. He realized that the compartment had not dimmed, it was his own eyes failing him. He rolled to his feet, grabbed Petrachkov's body by the fabric of clothing over the mans chest and tried to pick him up again. He couldn't do it, his arms no longer strong enough to lift the mans weight past his waist. He screamed, lifted, and dropped him again. Pshenichny's head suddenly felt incredibly light, and he almost fell over, stood there for a moment, took one last strained breath, and grabbed Petrachkov's body by the shirt. Silently screaming with the effort, struggling not to faint, Pschenichny threw his entire body weight back, falling over onto his ass but managing to dragg Petrachkov a few feet. He stood up, grabbed him, fell over. Stood up again, and meter by meter was dragging the man away from the back of the compartment, but now there was no more air in his OBA. No longer was it like breathing through a straw, but like breathing through a straw with the end sealed. There was nothing he could inhale, the sides of the rubber air bladder had stuck together. He struggled to his feet and dragged Petrachkov back another several yards, finding one last burst of strength in his legs to backpedal with, and then he colapsed again, trying to pant and finding that he could not. His vision was swimming, there was the strong urge to urinate, and a thudding painful pound of a pulse was throbbing in his temples. He pushed up off the deck and suddenly realized that he could no longer feel anything around him, could not feel the deck beneath his feet. He tried to shout for help but had nothing left in his lungs to do it with. Body shaking with exertion, he bent over and grabbed Petrachkov again. This time he didn't even manage to drag the body a centimeter but just fell over. Then mercifully, finally, a warrant officer found him. Pshenichny faintly felt a hand on his shoulder, and was abandoned as the warrant officer grabbbed Petrachkov and hauled him away. Somehow, against all possiblity, Pschenichny found the strength to get to his feet one last time.
As Kochergin walked down he passed a warrant officer carrying out Petrachkov, his body covered in foam, and then behind him he saw Pshenichny staggering forward. The man took his final step, all reserves gone, and colappsed, weakly clawing at his mask. No, not him. It couldn't possibly be him. Not Pschenichny. Kochergin rushed forward and tore his own mask off of his face, not even remembering to take one last breath to hold. He pulled off the security officers mask and before the fainting man could breath in the nitric acid, Kochergin pressed his own mask against the mans face.
"Breath."
Pschenichny's eyes were dim and unfocused, his head lolled.
"Breath!"
He hauled Pschenichny up, got up under his arm, and stood. "On your feet damn it, get up!"
Pschenichny struggled to get his legs under him, the gas mask that Kochergin held to his face was also so close to empty that he could only get tiny slivers of air from it, but that was enough. Pschenichny gasped as he stepped forward with his weight on Kochergin, and it was the most painful sound Kochergin could remember hearing. The two of them stumbled down the deck toward the open hatch, and now Kochergin's lungs were burning, his eyes stinging. They were still five meters from the hatch, only five meters, but he could hold his breath no longer. With the next step Kochergin, swimming in brown vapor, opened his mouth and inhaled pure acid.
----------------------
"Portside reactor online and operational. All systems nominal," Said Kapitulsky.
Britanov picked up the microphone, "Compartment four, I need that damage report."
One of the warrant officers answered, giving a rapid description of the compartment. Silo six was torn open and chemical gas was rising up from beneath the deck grating. Two dead, unknown number of injured.
"What about Petrachkov.""
"We just pulled him out. He doesn't look good. Kochergin's been moving them back to five."
"Where's Kochergin?"
There was a moments pause, "I don't see him."
"Find him. Push everybody out of the compartment and purge silo six. Do you know how to do that?"
"I...I don't know. I've never done it before Captain. I'm not assigned to the missile silo controls."
"You are now."
The missile crewmen, the men that knew how to flush the spilled UDMH out of the silo that was poisoning the boat were all dead or dying. There was no one else. From his seat by Kapitulsky, Chief Engineer Krasinkov turned around, "I'll go down there myself Captain."
"No, I need you at your post. Here, take this."
He handed the microphone to Krasinkov and spoke into it, "The Chief Engineer is going to instruct you in the procedure for flushing the silo. Listen to him, understood?"
"I have it."
The Captain turned to his navigations officer, "Markov was in compartment four. I need a radio operator more than I need a navigations officer."
Aznabaev, the navigator, nodded. "I can do it."
"Good. Send an emergency transmission to Moscow and to Fleet Command. The preset codes don't cover what's happened. You have to send it out in the open."
If they sent an unencrypted message than it would undoubtedly be intercepted by the Americans. It was entirely against regulations to do so, but when the option was compared to sinking...there wasn't much to consider.
-----------------
U.S Fishing Trawler Sparrow
Captain Hernandez was two thirds of a way through a bottle of whiskey when the radio crackled.
"Pan pan pan. Pan pan pan. Pan pan pan. All hands all hands all hands. This is U.S Coastguard. Report Soviet Submarine in distress, unknown damage. Location at 3.312.3...."
What the bloody fuck?
"...12 east. All hands render assistance if possible. Out."
He looked at the scotch, then at the radio. Put the scotch down.