Pacific Storm

Chapter 31

Down in the heart of the ship, Admiral Volsky sat with Dobrynin, watching the digital readouts for neutron flux levels in the core. The Chief Engineer fingered his monitor, pointing out a violet line. “You see that variation is ten points high, yet it is not sustained. Look how it pulses up and down, almost like a heartbeat.”

“And this only happens after you run this maintenance routine? Have you checked the earlier records—data from our sea trials before this mission?”

“I have, sir, but I had no such readings in the past until… Well until we installed that new maintenance control rod. It’s the number twenty-five rod, sir, and we installed a new one at Severomorsk just before we set sail for the live fire exercises. I ran maintenance on the number thirteen rod, and dipped number twenty-five for the first time about six hours before that incident with the Orel.”

“I see,” said Volsky. “It looks like thirteen was our lucky number, or unlucky, depending on how you look at it I suppose. Then every time you have used it since we have experienced these odd time displacements.”

The rumble and roar of the missiles firing above was a pointed distraction, their eyes looking up to the ceiling, as if seeing the battle begin through the many decks above them.

“What could be so special about this rod twenty-five?”

“I don’t know, sir. All I can say is that these variations occurred after it was installed.”

“Well, knowing this much is a good deal more than we knew before. Thank you, Chief. It was your keen ear for the equipment that put us on this trail. Now Fedorov thinks we can choose where and when we move the ship, in time as well as space, and from the sound of things I think he is getting eager to hurry on from this year and say goodbye to the 1940s for good. Listen, Dobrynin. Fedorov gave me this list earlier. He wrote down the times he believes we have moved and he wanted to compare it to the time log on your maintenance procedure. I think he is counting hours now, yes? He wants to know the average time between the completion of the procedure and our time displacements. Can you calculate it?”

“Certainly sir. Just give me a minute, I’ll have Mister Garin take care of it.”

Minutes later they heard the firing of yet another missile, and Volsky knew the sound of the weapons as well as Dobrynin knew the song of his reactor.

“That was a P-300 SAM,” said the Admiral, “the last one we had.” They heard a distant explosion, then the droning wail of aircraft engines growling louder, the chatter of machine gun fire followed by the sharp whirring rattle of Kirov’s close in defense systems.”

All Volsky could think of was that a seaplane had attempted to make an attack on the ship. Then Dobrynin’s eyes were pulled to a yellow warning light on his reactor panel.

“What’s this,” he breathed. “We’re losing ventilation pressure on the turbines.” He began fiddling with some controls, but it was not long before Byko reported that the main shafts at the rear of the tall central con area had been perforated by a strafing attack. It wasn’t serious, he said, but it was going to cause some variation in the pressure for a while.

“One of the rounds must have penetrated a little deeper,” he said over the intercom. “I’m putting some men on it now.”

“That will cost us some speed,” said Dobrynin. “You’ll lose two or three knots. I’ll see what I can do.”

They soon heard something Admiral Volsky had hoped he would never have to listen to again, the sound of a heavy caliber main gun shell screaming through the night, aiming for his ship. The distant swoosh and explosion of the heavy rounds in the sea was also audible, and it gave him no comfort to think that shells the size and weight of his car back home were now being hurled at his ship.

But Kirov had nothing to fear from those huge rounds for the moment. It was a much smaller shell that would cause the problem, just a twenty millimeter round that had pierced the ventilation shaft down low, near the base of the main con mast, and traveled inward deep enough to nick a small metal hose that was carrying the outflow from the reactor’s secondary cooling water cycle. The water was used to generate the steam that would drive her turbines. It seemed a small wound compared to the damage the ship had suffered earlier, just a pin prick in fact. But it was to have far graver consequences. Pressure dropped. The heat in the steam reaction changed with the reduced water flow. For a time the steam would actually increase with the added temperature, but the heat was rising too rapidly there and the water flowing through the U tubes that would eventually return to the reactor core was getting too hot.

Temperature and pressure are part of the delicate balance in any reactor core, and Dobrynin was soon to have more on his hands than a strange neutron flux.

The big rounds fell wide and very long, as Fedorov expected the first salvo would. There was virtually no chance the opening salvos would find their target under these conditions, and he was surprised the ship had even fired with the range at 28,000 meters. The British battleship Warspite had managed a stunning hit on the Italian dreadnought Giulio Cesare at 26,000 yards, and the German battlecruiser Scharnhorst had achieved the same with a long range hit on the carrier Glorious, but these were rare events for the record books, and seldom achieved in most combat at sea.

He knew that spotter planes would be calling out the shell falls even now, and watching Kirov’s wake closely to note any curvature that would indicate a new heading change. It would take some time for the enemy to slowly adjust her fire and find the correct range and bearing, and in that time Kirov had to punish the ship so badly that it could no longer pose a threat.

Thankfully they still had the means to do so. They could already see the fires flaring up amidships on the HD video screen, and knew they had hurt their enemy, putting more missiles on this target with four hits than any other ship they had fought, yet its speed was undiminished, and there was obviously nothing wrong with her guns. Yamato was still a dangerous threat.

Karpov noted the fires himself, reaching up to adjust the fit of his cap briefly. “Missiles remaining?” he asked calmly.

“Six Moskit-IIs still ready sir. Four P-900 cruise missiles; five MOS-III.” They were down to fifteen missiles.

“I read three small contacts closing to 24,000 meters” said Rodenko. “Those must be destroyers.”

“Very well. Activate forward deck guns, both the 152mm and 100mm guns please. Engage those targets at once.”

The Captain wanted to pepper the destroyers well beyond the range of their small deck guns, but he was forgetting the enemy torpedoes, and minutes after the deck guns had begun their work he saw Tasarov stiffen, eyes alight, and his own heart leapt with the thought that they now also had a submarine to contend with.

“Torpedoes in the water!” said Tasarov, “multiple contacts. Three, now five… now eight contacts from a bearing of 225 degrees.”

“Submarine?”

“No, sir. Those must be off those destroyers.”

“I’ll handle this,” said Fedorov. “Helm, left rudder twenty. Come to 45 degrees northeast.”

“Helm answering and coming around on 45 degrees, sir, aye.”

Fedorov was turning his backside to the torpedoes, presenting the slimmest possible target. Though the Long Lance torpedoes could easily close the distance, he had little fear they would find his ship. They could not home on his wake, and all he had to do was watch carefully for their approach and steer an evasive course if necessary. He knew the Japanese destroyers had fired in anger more than anything else, as their own ships were straddled with Kirov’s accurate gun fire.

“Two more Moskit-IIs on the battleship,” said Karpov firmly. “Same program, above and below. We’ll give them another one-two punch.”

“Aye sir,” said Samsonov, “missiles firing.”

Yamato was going to suffer again, but even as the sleek missiles leapt up and declined to their aiming points, the men on the bridge saw the night horizon ripped open yet again as the enemy guns sought them in the darkness. The bright backwash of the missile firing lit the ship up, and the sharp eyes aboard the crow’s nests tuned their superb night optics another few points to the good.

Yamato’s second salvo would also miss; Kirov’s would not. The Sunburns struck the ship aft again, one slamming directly into the massive rear turret this time, and the second plunging down on the broad fantail where it hit one of the huge cranes and exploded before its armor piercing warhead could strike the 200mm deck armor. The deck was still buckled downward with the explosion, and the missile fuel now ignited another fire aft, right in the midst of the seaplane tending operations. No more spotting planes would rise to search for the enemy, and two that had been spotted on the catapults were immolated.

As for the aft turret, it had been turned to face the distant unseen foe, and the missile struck just beneath the leftmost gun barrel, flush against its hardened faceplate of 26 inch steel. The gun barrel was jerked upwards by the explosion so violently that the gears used to elevate and depress it were broken and made inoperable. The crew inside the turret took a fearful pounding, and new fires were raging outside their massive armored shell, but the armor held. Seven men had been knocked senseless, yet others were crawling up from the depths of the huge magazines below, to take their place. Two of the three guns could still be fired. The turret was still in the fight.

Damage control chiefs shouted reports to the bridge. The first fire amidships had been quelled, only to be restarted again when the Sunburns rekindled it. Thick black smoke still poured up from the heart of the ship, adding darkness to the night as the angry fires burned. Now desperate crews were rushing to fight the fires aft, where one of the two seaplane catapults, which would have been the height of a five story building if stood on its end, now jutted at a near 90 degree angle from the ship, bent and twisted.

Aboard Kirov, Fedorov skillfully maneuvered the ship as a fan of eight torpedoes approached, and when the danger had passed he returned to a heading of 67 degrees. The three Japanese destroyers would not get a chance to fire their second torpedo salvo. Now all three of Kirov’s accurate 152mm guns were pounding them. Hamikaze was dead in the water. Maikaze was burning amidships, her captain dead. Nowaki fared a little better, making smoke in a futile attempt to screen the other ships. Her decks were already crowded with survivors from the cruiser Jintsu, and her Captain Kora thought the better of pressing his attack under these circumstances.

“Those destroyers have been stopped at 20,000 meters,” said Rodenko. One is dead in the water, the others are withdrawing.”

“Well enough, secure deck guns,” said Karpov. “Any speed change on the primary contact?”

“No, sir. They are still making just under 27 knots.”

“As are we,” said Karpov. “Helm, I thought we were at full battle speed.”

“Sir, my indicator is ahead full.”

“But the reading is 27 knots,” the Captain turned to Fedorov, raising an eyebrow. “You are correct about this ship,” he said. We’ve put six harpoons in this whale and still it comes undaunted. But our speed is off, and that is a matter of some concern.”

“I’ll see about it,” said Fedorov.

“We’ll hit them again. Another round, Samsonov. Same as before. One above, one below.”

“Just a moment, Captain,” Fedorov interjected. “Hold up, Mr. Samsonov.” His mind had been on evading the Long Lance torpedoes the enemy sent his way, then it suddenly occurred to him that they had Long Lances of their own!

“We’ve been attacking this ship’s superstructure since the hull is so heavily armored. But there’s another way to pierce the hull—what about torpedoes? We have torpedoes, don’t we?”

“Why… Yes,” said the Captain. “Yes we do! The Vodopad system has UGST-2 torpedoes.” The weapon was a highly adaptable modular system, allowing for different propulsion and warhead options, hence the “U” for its universal capabilities. The ship carried tubes on either side, the ports opening on the hull itself.

“What’s their range?” asked Fedorov.

“Over 35,000 meters,” said Karpov with a smile.

The ‘Vodopad’ or ‘Waterfall’ system was an apt description for the way the torpedoes would eject from the side of the ship, a waterfall of steam and gas in their wake, rolling down off the side of the hull. The torpedoes were capable of using nuclear warheads, though Kirov had none of these in inventory on this mission. After ejecting it would dip into the sea, propelled several hundred feet out before the tail fins and control elements would flip out and the pumpjet propulsor engine would activate. It was one of the first torpedoes to use an onboard digital computer and had wire guided control options, as well as a dual channel homing and detonation for either acoustic or electromagnetic operation. It also had integrated sonar that could detect ship wakes and follow them to the target. In effect, it was the Long Lance on steroids, and with all these redundant control systems, it was not going to miss a ship the size of Yamato, no matter what their captain did to try and avoid it.

Perhaps it was his distaste for submarines and torpedoes that had prevented Karpov from selecting the weapon earlier, his mind on the missiles, and pleased with the results he had been getting with them. Yet Yamato was as hardened a target as the ship would ever fire upon, and even now they saw her fourth salvo blast at them in the distance, as if to shout back that they were hit, but not hurt, and their guns were still seeking them in the night. These rounds would fall much closer, the Type 92 Shagekiban fire control ‘computer’ slowly walking the big shells to a point where they were now of some concern. The range had fallen to just under 22,000 meters.

“Ready on Vodopad system, Samsonov. Starboard side tubes.”

“Aye, sir.”

“Two torpedoes please, and you may fire when ready.”

Karpov was being stingy. His impulse was to fire the entire battery in a spread of five torpedoes and end this battle there and then. But the empty SAM silos and the rapidly diminishing missile SSM inventory was moderating his choices. He wanted to hold on to as much combat capability as he could. The torpedoes swished into the water and went streaking away, their wakeless propulsion system making them stealthy on top of the already lethal nature of the weapon.

“That may not be enough,” said Fedorov. “Yamato took seven American torpedoes before she sank, and that took an hour and a half.”

“Very well,” said Karpov. “One more for Mister Fedorov.” He looked at Samsonov with a smile, convinced they now had the battle well in hand. There would be no way the enemy ship could evade those torpedoes. They were carrying a 425kg warhead, and they were going to hurt anything they struck, and badly.

Then something happened that no one had counted on, except perhaps Lieutenant Commander Hayashi when he bravely dove his crippled Val dive bomber into Kirov’s aft battle bridge. That strike had occurred right above the Vodopad system, and only the second barrier of the citadel floor there, 200mm thick, had prevented it from going deeper to ignite the torpedo magazines. But there had been a fire, a very serious one, and not all the damage had been discovered and repaired in the brief time since the plane had flamed into the ship. Control cabling for the number three UGST torpedo had been burned, its wiring exposed, and when the fire order was given the tube itself also had a slight warp from concussion when the ship had been shaken with Hayashi’s hit.

The intrepid Japanese pilot who had first put a 250kg bomb on the aft quarter of the ship before riding his plane to death with a second hit was now reaching out from the grave to strike at his enemy once more.

Chapter 32

The number three torpedo failed to eject, jutting like a broken finger from the side of the ship, jammed in its own firing tube, yet its firing cycle was still active. The preliminary propulsion jet was trying to engage, and yet the system fed a fault signal to the unit’s computer brain, and internal backup systems were ordered to kick in after a five second delay.

“Misfire on the number three torpedo!” Samsonov shouted, his voice loud and deep.

“Abort!” Karpov’s order was obvious, but Samsonov had already thumbed the abort switch. The torpedo’s propulsion system shut down and its engine was stilled, yet now there was no way they were going to use the remaining tubes on that side of the ship until crews could get in and clear the misfire and check for further damage. That was not going to happen in this engagement, but at least Kirov had two torpedoes out and running true, two long sleek Moray eels in the water driving on at 40 knots, a little over twenty meters per second. Even at that speed their time on target was over seventeen minutes away. In that time Yamato was likely to get in many more of her main gun salvos, and now the range was falling to 21,000 meters. Ninety seconds later the big battleship fired again, the rounds falling no more than 800 meters off Kirov’s stern, leading her now.

“What I wouldn’t give for a few more SAMs” said Karpov. “Those seaplanes are feeding back shell fall corrections to that ship. Nikolin, can we jam all normal radio frequencies they might be using?”

“I’m sure we can, sir.”

“Then do it! Wide area jam. Ready on Moskit-II system again, Samsonov. Two more missiles please, the same as before. We can’t wait for those torpedoes.” Karpov looked at his watch, then gave the order to fire. Two more Sunburns ejected and roared away at five second intervals, one sea skimmer and the last of those reprogrammed for plunging descent. Kirov’s missile count now slipped to eleven.

Yamamoto had felt his proud ship taking one blow after another, yet she fought on. The bridge crew was intense at their stations, the gunnery officer shouting out encouragement through the voice tubes to the men below. The ship’s commander stood tall by the binnacle, bracing himself each time the bugle call gave the five second warning before firing. The spotters were eagerly watching through binoculars and longer range optics, looking for the huge white water splashes glistening up in the moonlight.

When the two brave night fighters out of Rabaul had come streaking in, the men on the bridge cheered, then saw them blown to pieces by the demon ship they were stalking. Now the Admiral stood by Kuroshima, in awe as he watched the dark horizon light up again, first hoping his guns had struck home, then realizing that more rockets had been fired at his ship. What was this enemy? If the British could build such weapons then he knew, beyond any shadow of a doubt, that the war was lost for certain. There was no defense against them, no answer but to doggedly close the range and endure one punishing blow after another, his ship on fire, men dying, thick smoke choking the open topped gun stations amidships.

Here they came again, one rocket blazing in just above the surface of the water while a second climbed high up into the sky to fall like thunder and lightning on his intrepid ship and crew—and they never missed. Surely they must be piloted as Kuroshima suggested, but now his hands were as white as his gloves on the nearest hand rail, body stiff as he braced himself for yet another series of hits. How much more could the ship take? Kuroshima’s words haunted him as the missiles came in. This ship was more than it seemed. It was Japan’s very best, the pinnacle of their naval engineering. Every man in the navy coveted a posting to Yamato, and not simply because of the relatively plush living conditions and better food. It was the flagship of the Imperial Japanese Navy. If he were to lose it here… All this passed through his mind in the barest instant, and then the thunder came.

The first missile struck just above the weather deck, slamming right into the heavy barbette of the forward main gun turret with a brilliant explosion that shattered two windows on the bridge and sent one junior officer careening against a bulkhead. The barbette withstood the blow, but the damage was sufficient to impede its easy rotation until crews could fight the fire and clear debris. In the meantime, the gun could not properly train on the target, and relief crews rushed inside to replace wounded men and re-man their positions. Five seconds later the second missile plunged down on the ship about 300 feet forward of that position, on the broad and relatively empty deck of the bow. There it smashed through the armor and burned into the ship’s interior, plunging through two more decks and igniting yet another major fire.

The ship now had fires from bow to stern, yet her speed was unimpeded and she turned slightly to allow the two functioning guns of her aft turret to join the battle. The next salvo came only from the number two forward turret, an angry reprisal that managed to drop shells short, but within 500 meters of the enemy ship. Spotters on the high main mast eagerly shouted out the news to their officers, who then relayed the information to the fire control station, and the crews hastily fed in corrections to make their next best guess at where Kirov would be in a hundred and twenty seconds.

Anton Fedorov did not want to make that rendezvous with an 18.1 inch shell. He gave the order ahead two thirds and starboard twenty, slowing and turning in towards the enemy ship. Yamato was now clearly visible in the distance, her massive silhouette illuminated by her own fires. He knew the enemy would correct their shortfall by firing longer, presuming he would maintain his old speed. By slowing and turning he hoped the next salvo would be long and well ahead of the ship. He was correct.

Three more rounds fell in a tight pattern, this time about 700 meters off his forward port side. Elated with his success, he turned to the helmsman and gave his next order. “Port twenty and ahead full!” He was chasing salvos, but now he saw what looked like three explosions near the aft quarter of the enemy ship. Both of Karpov’s torpedoes hit home with a vengeance. The third explosion was Yamato’s aft turret firing, and the officer in charge had not corrected based on the last salvo from the forward guns. He was using stale data, but it proved to be remarkably fresh when the spotters saw the results. To compound matters, when Fedorov called for renewed speed, it was not there. The damage worked by that small twenty millimeter round had forced Dobrynin to feed in much more cooling to the reactors, and they were slowly losing power.

Two rounds came withering in towards the ship, the sound of their approach magnified greatly. God, no, thought Fedorov. God help us, no!

The first round came hurtling towards the main mast, just a little high, but so close that it sheared away the Top Mast antennae as it screamed by and plunged into the sea off the ship’s port side with a massive geyser. The second round fell just shy of the ship’s starboard side sending a huge column of water up beyond the height of the main mast, which cascaded down onto the weather deck in a great fall of seawater. The ship rocked from the wave action generated by the titanic rounds, careening through the falling spray and pressing on.

Fedorov finally released his breath. A straddle! The enemy had finally found the range and the ship had just come within a hair’s breadth of annihilation. Twenty or thirty feet in either direction and those rounds would have broken her back.

Karpov was leaning over the radar screen with Rodenko when his monitor quavered and then went entirely black on the Top Mast system. Kirov had just taken a head butt and a hard thumb to the eyes. The Fregat system was still off line, and now they had lost their other long range weather and general surveillance radar. She was blind.

“I’ve lost Top Mast,” Rodenko reported. “The entire system is down. Attempting to Cross circuit to the MR-212B system….No luck, sir. I’ve got yellow fault lights all through the navigation radar sets as well. The Active Phased Array is presently offline, and in reset diagnostic mode. I can give you short range returns with individual system fire control radars, but we have no effective long range coverage at the moment.”

That was not all. Byko called up to the bridge and indicated the emergency hull patch had been jarred by the near miss and was again leaking. They were taking seawater amidships. Dobrynin seconded the matter by confirming he could only give the ship twenty knots while he worked to control his reactors. Events were stacking up like good cards in the enemy hand, and Fedorov could only think that Yamato was now about to play an Ace at any moment.

“Helm, port twenty and all the speed you can give me!” The young captain wanted an immediate course change, this time in the same direction he had turned earlier instead of a ziz-zag back to starboard. He wanted to get the ship off the range line that now must surely be plotted by the enemy.

“There was a second contact bearing on our position from the southwest,” said Karpov. “We were looking at it just before we lost the radar scan.”

“Sir….” Tasarov spoke up now. “I can hear it on sonar.” He had been listening closely to the battle, both his equipment and inner ear sorting out the chaos in the sound field. When the big rounds came in so close he thanked God that his system was capable of detecting and muting sound spikes to protect his ears. It was state of the art, and among the best surface sonar systems in his world of 2021. Kirov’s own screws were a loud wash over everything, but Tasarov had that signature well profiled and he was filtering it well. He also had a good read on the deep thrum of Yamato’s screws, but there was a third contact, faint but growing louder, higher in pitch, more distant, with a unique signal pattern, and he had been listening to it for some time now.

“That will be the heavy cruiser Tone,” said Fedorov.

“I last marked it at about a hundred kilometers and closing fast at the angle we’ve been running on.” Tasarov confirmed the estimated range, then noticed something more.

“The screw pattern for the Yamato contact has changed significantly, sir. I think they’re slowing down too.”

Tasarov had very good ears.

The torpedoes found their target easily enough after their long seventeen minute run. One activated its wake homing mode, easily profiled the big ship’s frothing footprints, and rode them right into the rightmost screw, demolishing it with its powerful explosion. The second followed, slipped a few hundred feet wide and then detonated to damage the ship’s hull very near the end of her underwater torpedo bulwark protection. There was an immediate hull breach and Yamato started shipping water across three compartments. The ship also reeled to starboard, her rudder batted violently by the explosion of the first torpedo, and also damaged.

The sudden movement threw off all the carefully plotted calculations that had enabled the guns to straddle their enemy moments ago, and now officers and crews were struggling to re-plot, as one new sighting variable after another was shouted down to the fire control operators, new roll, new speed, new bearing, new declination. They were essentially starting from scratch, with only a decent handle on the probable range to the target. The bugle sounded and the aft turret fired its two good barrels again, but the shots were now well off the mark.

“We are losing speed, sir,” the helmsman reported. “Twenty knots…eighteen knots… I’m having difficulty getting back on our heading, sir.”

The flooding had surged into two boiler rooms, and was now entering a third. Yamato quickly lost 25% of her steam and the engines slowed, the grinding of the damaged screws now clearly evident as a rumbling vibration.

Yamamoto realized that the ship had been hit by torpedoes. So this demon has yet another sting, he thought. Their torpedoes are as good as our own! Now he had lost the speed he needed to stay in the chase and close the range. His guns were already at an ideal range now, but the ship’s new heading had taken the forward turrets out of the action.

“Sir,” said Rear Admiral Takayanagi, the ship’s assigned commander. “I believe we have jammed our rudder with that explosion aft. We are circling. The gunners will have fits trying to plot solutions now. We will need to put divers in the water to clear the damage, and that flooding will cause us to list to starboard in time if it is not corrected.”

Yamamoto looked at Kuroshima, the gravity of the moment apparent to them both. The ship could no longer continue the engagement. The fires fore and aft were one thing, now they also had flooding, loss of speed, and a damaged rudder. He could no longer maneuver adequately, and was, for all intents and purposes, at the mercy of his enemy now if they continued to fire those terrible rockets. When would the next torpedoes come?

“Begin counter-flooding. We will continue firing to harass the enemy as best we can,” he said resolutely, knowing the situation was a lost cause. “There is no other course we can take for the moment. Do what you must to manage the ship Takayanagi, but this battle is over. Our concern now is saving the ship and any man left alive aboard her.”

“Aye, sir.”

She had taken hits from two P-900s, six Moskit-II missiles, but the two torpedo hits had been the telling blows. Yamato would not sink that night, but she could no longer fight effectively, and it was only the similar gravity of the damage control situation aboard Kirov that would end this battle in a draw, though Karpov would count the victory on Kirov’s side nonetheless. It was clear to him which ship had administered the greatest punishment, and which had endured. Yet Kirov had come within a hair’s breadth of having her back broken by an 18 inch shell, and the memory of that would not soon be forgotten.

The Russian battlecruiser was also taking water, her earlier wound opening to the sea again. A torpedo was jammed in her port Vodopad number three tube, her Top Mast radars blasted away, her ventilation conduits riddled with 20mm rounds and a slowly rising heat situation in her reactor was beginning to cause Dobrynin more concern. He asked the Admiral, still at his side, if the ship could keep speed moderate, and Volsky was soon hastening to the bridge.

Both fighters seemed exhausted for the moment, and a brief interval of relative calm settled over the scene, punctuated only by the distant thunder of Yamato’s aft turret, firing in protest, yet widely off the mark. Fedorov steered a course to open the range, wanting nothing more to do with the wounded behemoth that was still growling at them on the restless seas. He hoped the battle was finally over and that they could slip away into the night to lick their wounds, but these hopes would soon be dashed.

Off to the south a man stood stiffly at the forward view ports on the bridge of the cruiser Tone, his eyes pressed tightly on his field glasses as he noted the distant amber glow on the horizon. He heard a faint rumble, like thunder, and knew that a great battle was underway ahead of him, and that ships were burning, men fighting and dying on the heartless sea. His scout planes had been unable to contact him for some time now, the airwaves garbled with a strange wash of static, but he knew he was close. Battle stations had been sounded, the crews tensely alert, and all of Tone’s four twin 8 inch gun turrets forward of the bridge were ready for the fight. Behind him came two more heavy cruisers, Nachi and Myoko.

He was Captain Sanji Iwabuchi, and he was marching boldly forward to the sound of the guns.

Chapter 33

It is hard to say what keeps a man in a fight when he knows he has already been beaten. Heavyweights had been beaten senseless by their opponents and yet still fought on, answering the bell with bloodied faces, swollen eyes, and broken ribs. In war it was much the same. Men fought on in one desperate lost battle after another, all through human history. They strove and grunted and charged their enemy under impossible circumstances, willing to die first before they would ever admit defeat.

Half way around the world the Russians and Germans would begin their grueling five month battle for Stalingrad this very week, and in a few months time, on that cruel December after the 6th Army had been encircled, the surrounding Russian troops would see something that amazed them on Christmas Eve. Every section and platoon in the surrounded German Army fired tracer rounds up into the sky, lighting up the massive perimeter in celebration, spending badly needed ammunition to also say, ‘here we are. We are still here.’

The Japanese character was easily set to this mind, and though their navy had taken a severe beating in the last twenty-four hours, it fought on. No captain or admiral at sea in that era had ever faced steeper odds or a more powerful foe in a surface engagement. Had Kirov been in her prime, unblooded by weeks of combat at sea and still with full magazines, she would have fought the battle quite differently. Yamato would have never seen her, and never once been in a position to fire those massive guns. A salvo of ten or more missiles would have found her in the night, one single, lethal barrage that would have ravaged her superstructure and caused uncontrollable fires.

This is how Karpov might have preferred to fight his battle, with the struggle for the all important first salvo uncontested, the sole prerogative of the powerful ship beneath his feet. All the long discussions in the naval forums would mean nothing when those missiles hit home. End of story. Discussion over. Yet, given their strange circumstances, and the fact that he could not know what he might be facing in days ahead, he had to throw his punches in a slow and measured way, beating down his enemy by degrees, and hoping he could use as few missiles or torpedoes as possible in the process.

That said, the skill and determination of the Japanese Navy had seen them harry and hound the battlecruiser across a thousand miles of ocean, and to within a hair’s breadth of destruction. And there would be no discussion about that either, no meeting of the minds between Yamamoto and Volsky to find another way.

Yamato had taken every punch, every hit, and yet still fought on. Karpov watched it now, his head shaking in near disbelief as the ship continued to fire in frustrated anger, though its guns could not find their target as Kirov slowly slipped away. My God, he thought. There’s something to be said for armor after all. That ship took eight missiles and two torpedoes, beaten, but not broken. I could put more torpedoes into it from my port side Vodopad tubes, but we desperately need every weapon we have now. There’s no point in continuing this madness any further.

He turned to Fedorov. “I think we can safely move out of range now. Then we’ll need to see to our own damage and determine what to do next. That cruiser will be up on us soon enough, and Rodenko saw ships behind it earlier, before we lost the Top Mast radar.”

“Very well, Captain,” Fedorov had a distant, empty look in his eyes. “We’ll steer 45 northeast until we put some sea room between us and the enemy.”

And so it ended.

Karpov turned slowly to the mishman at the log and spoke quietly, an almost solemn expression on his face.

“Let the log read that at 21:40 hours battlecruiser Kirov disengaged from her action against battleship Yamato, after achieving ten hits on the enemy and leaving a badly damaged ship in her wake. Report damage sustained by this vessel by referencing Chief Byko’s log entry for this date. Anton Fedorov Commanding; tactical executive officer, Vladimir Karpov.”

“Sir, the log entry has been recorded.”

“As you were, mishman.”

The Captain looked over at Fedorov, and saw his eyes had glassed over, a hidden pain there as he stared at the HD panel above them, watching Yamato burn on infrared. Karpov stepped to the young Captain’s side and spoke in a lowered voice .

“It will get easier,” he said quietly.

“I’m not sure I want it to,” said Fedorov, and Karpov knew what he meant, nodding.

“Admiral on the bridge!”

Volsky huffed in through the main hatch, closing it behind him as he struggled to catch his breath. He wasted no time, his eyes quickly finding Karpov and Fedorov where they stood by the navigation station.

“We’ll have to slow the ship again. Byko reports damage to the hull patch and renewed flooding near the reactors.”

Fedorov nodded, “Ahead two thirds,” he said “and steady on 45 degrees.” He seemed a bit listless and sullen now.

“So the ship is in one piece after all. My God, is that what we did to the enemy?” He pointed out the forward view ports, seeing the dark silhouette of Yamato crowned by the wild dance of flame and fire. “Well done,” he said. “Both of you. But I have more news. It’s started. Dobrynin is seeing the same odd spikes in the core flux readings. He can hear it. There was also a vibration just now as I came up the stairs. Did you feel it? I think we may be shifting… moving somewhere else.”

“That would be most welcome at the moment,” said Karpov. Then they all felt yet another odd vibration, and a palpable smell of ozone in the air. Karpov instinctively looked about him, thinking a panel may have shorted out and they might have an electrical fire, but the crew sat attentively at their stations, and no one else seemed alarmed. For a brief moment he saw the glowering hulk of Yamato seem to dim and fade on the horizon, and assumed she had been masked in the billowing black smoke of her own fires.

“We’re pulsing again,” said Fedorov. “Thank God. I wish it had happened hours ago, and then we might have avoided that.” He pointed, also noticing the fading glow on the horizon. “Let us hope we don’t regress this time and end up back in the same borscht. I don’t think we need another round with the Imperial Japanese Navy—let alone the Americans.”

The ship was moving farther and faster than they realized, moving in and out of time itself, even as she slowed below twenty knots so Byko could reduce the stress on the dislodged hull patch. But something else was now going to happen that no man among them could have possibly anticipated, or even believed.

Kirov moved, the very fabric of her being becoming gossamer thin, a wisp of shadow on the sea, a vaporous menacing mist. It seemed only seconds to the crew, and no man could really say they noticed it, but the ship was indeed “pulsing” as Fedorov had come to describe it, fading in and out of the time period she had been trapped in, slipping into infinity and the limbo of uttermost nowhere. She loitered there but a few brief moments before falling back into the turbulent waters of the Coral Sea and her private war on war itself.

What seemed like a few insubstantial seconds away in this otherworldly place and time, were actually long minutes in the realm she had come from, the wee hours of August 27, 1942. She had been sailing at twenty knots, still moving in space, yet ten minutes passed in 1942 for every second she was away, and that happened again and again as the ship pulsed in time. The enemy ship that had been chasing her now had ample time to close the range.

Tasarov heard it before anyone saw anything. The sound that had once been a faint, high whine in his headphones was now grossly magnified, and when he looked at the signal profile he was shocked to see the pattern matched that of the enemy cruiser that had been hastening to join the battle.

“Sir,” he began, “that cruiser contact… I’m reading a range of only 50,000 meters now.”

Karpov spun around. “What? That’s impossible. That ship was nearly a hundred kilometers behind us just a minute ago.”

“It was, sir… At least I thought as much, but it seems to have cut that range in half!”

Fedorov took keen notice of this. “From their perspective we moved nearly 8000 miles in a single day when we vanished on August 23rd and reappeared off the Australian coast just a day later. I guess Time loses the beat when she plays a new song for us. It could be that time slows down for us when we shift, and then re-synchs when we appear again—like an old cassette tape fast forwarded to a new point in the music. That ship is gaining on us every time we pulse.”

There came a third vibration, and Kirov shuddered, slipping away again into the nameless void, a shadow on a sea of shadows now. Karpov walked slowly to the forward viewports, seeing the enemy battleship quaver and fade in the distance—and then the ship vanished. Kirov hovered like a single breath of God in time without end, then reappeared, gaining form and substance again in the real world of rock and sea and sky, and men in steel ships on the Coral Sea of 1942. Karpov suddenly saw what looked like a vast darkness looming off the starboard beam, a brooding, menacing thunderstorm, and then it seemed to sharpen to hard angles, as if a shadow had been frozen solid, resolving to the shape and form of a ship of war!

The moonlight gleamed on her long, forward deck, the white bow wave rising high as she came at the ship, hurtling toward them on a collision course.

“My God!” He pointed, a look of utter surprise and amazement on his face. “My God! It’s coming right at us! Hard to starboard, ahead full! Brace for impact!”

He had desperately tried to maneuver the ship to prevent a direct collision, and Kirov shuddered, not only with the straining effort of her turbines, the sea still clawing at the open gash in her side, her rudders vibrating as they fought to turn the ship, but also she quavered again with the cold hand of Mother Time on her neck.

The captain and crew of the heavy cruiser Tone were equally astounded by what they saw, a formless shadow on the sea that must have been unseen behind an impenetrable cloud of smoke. It suddenly became the long threatening presence of a great warship! Then a strange light came over it, as if it had been struck by lightning, a Saint Elmo’s fire of doom crowning her tall battlements and gilded decks—and she began to fade away, just as the sharp forward prow of the Tone slammed into her hull in a massive unavoidable collision.

There came the sound of metal on metal, a grinding scream of agony, and then it faded away as quickly as it came, and to Captain Iwabuchi on the bridge, it seemed that his ship was slowly being swallowed by the enemy vessel, as if Mizuchi had opened its maw to devour the smaller cruiser.

Aboard Kirov they saw the ship plunge right into the starboard side of Kirov’s broad armored hull, and then there was absolute chaos. Tone was there, and yet not there, careening forward through the ship, her form and structure a luminescent, translucent green, a ghostly phosphorous phantom ship that cut right through the heart of the Russian battlecruiser. And they could see right through the ship, through her bulkheads and into the labyrinthine metal innards where they glimpsed ghostly figures of men standing their spectral watches.

They heard screams of men frightened beyond their capacity to understand and endure. Karpov covered his ears, his eyes bulging at what he saw—the contorted faces of the enemy crew as the tall bridge pagoda on Tone passed completely through the armored citadel. And there, in the midst of a host of leering wraiths from hell, came the stalwart and brooding face and form of Sanji Iwabuchi, his arms clutching the binnacle on the bridge of Tone, officer’s hat pulled low on his forehead above murderous eyes. And it seemed that the soul of that man passed right through Karpov himself, and he suddenly felt his mind flooded with the awareness of another being, the dour Japanese Captain in all his wrath and ire, and all his carefully controlled madness.

The vision passed, as the ship plunged on through, and Karpov was doubled over with nausea, dropping to one knee, bewildered and beset with a fear unlike any other he had known in his life. The wail of frightened and panicked men followed in the wake of the ghostly ship, and it slowly faded, a long distended screed that diminished until it was devoured by the dark.

The sound of men screaming below decks still echoed through the ship, resounding through the corridors and passages, fading to a whimper of silence. Then a thick, cottony darkness enfolded them. Karpov turned to see Fedorov literally shaking with fear and shock. The Admiral was unconscious on the deck. Rodenko had his head buried in his arms, slumped over his lifeless radar station. Tasarov was just staring, his eyes unfocused, jaw slack. He heard the sound of a junior officer weeping at his station. Only Samsonov still sat on guard, his muscled arm poised over his CIC panels, an expression of shock giving way to the light of fire and anger in his eyes.

Somehow, Karpov forced his own limbs to move, fighting off the cold shiver of infinity. They had sailed through hell—or rather it had just sailed through them! They were somewhere else now. He looked out the viewport thinking to see the Japanese cruiser, but the sea was empty and calm. There was no sign of the angry glow of fire on the horizon. Yamato was gone as well. They had moved in time!

“Fedorov!” he had hold of the younger man’s shoulders now. “Fedorov! We’ve moved! We’ve shifted somewhere else. That ship…it passed right through us. God, what a nightmare! It went right through us. But we’re safe now… I think we are safe….” He was looking fearfully over his shoulder, as if the flaming hulk of Yamato might come boring in on them next, but all was calm. There was only the long wavering shimmer of the cold moonlight on the sea.

It was over.