He heard the young lieutenant gulp involuntarily as the shock wave passed over them, leaving them shaken but unscathed. “Is that it?” Khan asked mockingly. He grinned wolfishly at the captain. A loose lock of hair fell across his eyes, and he brushed it away from his face; he had eschewed a turban in deference to the submarine’s low ceilings. “Our foes will have to do better than that if they hope to halt our advance.”
He had no doubt that Hunyadi’s forces had strewn the strait with mines, in a vain attempt to eliminate their vulnerability to sea attacks. But they had woefully underestimated both Khan’s resolves and his resources. Afatal mistake, he prophesied.
“Again! the exuberant weapons officer called out. Khan glanced at the screen in time to glimpse a second white blip fade away, like a meteor burning out of existence. “We got another one!”
This time Khan did not grab on to the cabinet handle for support. Instead, anticipating the shock wave, he spread his legs apart, bracing himself against the jolt, which caused the floor of the sub to roll beneath his feet as though the submarine were being tossed about atop a stormy sea and not cruising unseen over two hundred meters below the waves. Dangling cords and cables swung wildly back and forth. The deep-sea turbulence reminded him of the life-shattering tremors that had shaken Maharashtra over four months ago, adding fuel to the righteous fury smoldering in his chest. His fists clenched at his sides, he rocked in sync with the tempest-tossed sub, determined never to be thrown off-balance again by Hunyadi’s treacherous machinations.
As before, the disturbance generated by the mine’s explosive death throes subsided in a matter of seconds, having failed to put an end to the Kaur’s journey of vengeance. Khan felt justifiably proud of his ship’s stellar performance. “I believe, Captain, that the lasers have passed the test with flying colors.”
“So it seems, sir,” Hapka admitted. A worried expression belied his grudging endorsement of the laser defense system. His gaze darted upward, as if anticipating an attack from above. A low ceiling, equipped with white fluorescent lights, blocked his view of the thick steel hull above the control room, all that protected them from the pressure of two hundred meters of icy seawater. “Those mines were noisy buggers, though.”
Khan understood the captain’s concern. Destroying the mines, however necessary to their mission, had inevitably compromised the Kaur’s stealthy passage through the strait. Who knew what hostile ears might have registered the twin detonations, and thus inferred the presence of an intruder in their waters? A sub’s greatest asset was its silence, and the Kaur had just been forced to ring an underwater doorbell—twice. So much for the element of surprise, Khan thought ruefully. He could only pray that word would not reach Hunyadi before the Kaur came within firing range of Dubrovnik.
To his credit, Captain Hapka did not suggest turning back and aborting the mission. Just as well; Khan would have sacked him instantly had he done so. “We should be on guard against an enemy vessel,” Khan commented.
“Always, sir.” Hapka turned and issued fresh instructions to the OOD. “Change course heading by two-oh-five degrees, and take us down another fifty meters.” Khan understood that the captain was taking evasive action to throw off any hostile parties that might have detected the clamor of the exploding mines. “Return to our original course and bearing once we’ve put a kilometer or two between us and those firecrackers back there.”
Cassel repeated the captain’s orders to the diving officer, who instructed the sailors actually manning the helm controls. Khan felt the floor tilt beneath his feet as the sub descended at roughly a ten-degree angle. If fortune was with them, the maneuver would allow the Kaur to continue its voyage unchallenged, even if the zigzag cost them a little extra time. Khan resolved to remain patient. He had waited four months to strike back at Hunyadi. Another hour or so would make little difference.
Or so he hoped. A sudden, loud ringing noise, like the sonorous peal of an enormous bell, echoed within the control room, dashing all such expectations. Khan did not need the captain’s help to know what the ringing meant: the Kaur had been located by another vessel’s sonar.
An intercom crackled to life, bearing urgent messages from the sonar room. “We have contact! Underwater, bearing straight toward us, speed thirty knots . . .” There was a momentary pause as the Kaur’s computers attempted to identify the approaching vessel from its sonar profile. On the TV screen monitoring the sonar shack, a headphone-wearing crewman listened to the approaching signal with a look of acute concentration, identifying its source just as quickly as the computers. “An Akula-class attack sub, closing fast!”
“Battle stations!” Hapka reacted. He bounded back up onto the periscope pedestal, snatched a handheld speaker from its cradle, and repeated the order into the intercom. Khan hurried after him, taking the steps two or three at a time. “Recharge lasers!”
Khan cursed beneath his breath. Obviously, they had not left the site of their minesweeping activities fast enough; the twin detonations must have attracted the Akula, which Hunyadi had surely acquired from his allies within the Russian navy. It seems we must battle our way to Bosnia after all, he realized. He assumed a commanding posture, his hands clasped behind his back, his jaw set defiantly. So be it.
Rotund chimes reverberated through the control room, loudly testifying that the hostile sub was still “pinging” the Kaur with its sonar. Tinted red emergency lights began flashing inside protective metal cages. Despite the Kaur’s considerable firepower, Khan felt uncomfortably exposed and vulnerable.
“Sonar to Conn, enemy is flooding torpedo tubes.” Preparing to attack, in other words. “Opening torpedo doors!”
Hapka spit out orders faster than water gushing through a perforated bulkhead. “Begin targeting, snapshot mode. Lasers for defense. Torpedoes for attack.” Grave concern deepened the creases of the captain’s weathered features. He glared along the bearing of the attacking sub. “Flood the tubes—and get me those solutions, pronto!”
Khan instantly grasped the captain’s strategy, to use the lasers against any oncoming torpedoes while targeting the Akula itself with Kaur’s own torpedoes. Shrewd tactics, he judged approvingly, especially since the Kaur had at least one very special torpedo in its arsenal.
“Two torpedoes launched and running!” the sonar room warned, then began a continuing report on the projectiles’ speed, bearing, and range. At the same time, Khan knew, a linked computer system transmitted all the sonar data on the approaching torpedoes to the targeting circuits of the laser defense system. “Torpedoes have acquired!” the intercom blared, meaning that the enemy torpedoes had successfully locked onto the Kaur. “Repeat: torps have acquired!”
“Lasers?” Hapka asked fiercely, glancing at the weapons control station to his right. Khan drew comfort from the knowledge that, even underwater, a beam of light traveled faster than a jet-propelled torpedo.
“Taking a snapshot!” Bataeo called out. Targeting was a tricky business, especially with three swiftly moving objects involved. Ideally, there would be time to check and recheck all the relevant computations before firing; while under attack, however, the best the computers could do was take a quick “snapshot” of the situation and hope for the best. “Torpedoes acquired, sir!”
“Lasers, fire!” Hapka ordered, and Khan visualized twin sapphire beams coursing outward to intersect with the deadly torpedoes. He caught himself holding his breath, then willed himself to relax as much as was superhumanly possible. Would his glorious career end here, beneath the unforgiving sea? If so, Khan vowed to meet his fate bravely, regretting only that Hunyadi and his minions did not perish before him.
Another underwater shock wave buffeted the Kaur, the explosion feeling much closer than before. The submarine yawed sharply starboard, throwing Khan against the massive steel column of the electronic, high-tech search periscope. His red silk tunic caught on a metal bolt, tearing the fabric and scratching the skin underneath. Khan ignored the pain, worrying instead about any inju
ry to the sub itself. Had one of the torpedoes struck the ship, or merely exploded dangerously nearby?
“Torpedo One—destroyed!” Bataeo reported with a grin. Perspiration gleamed on her bright, attractive features. Her jubilant tone evaporated a heartbeat later as she stared at her screen with a look of dismay. “Target Two—still closing!”
No! Khan thought. The lasers had stopped one torpedo, but missed the other. “Brace for impact!” Captain Hapka shouted, only seconds before the guided warhead smashed into the Kaur.
The platform pitched sharply and Khan wrapped his arms around the lowered periscope, holding on for dear life. Undersea thunder roared in his ears, along with the clanging of battered metal. The overhead lights sputtered, so that, for a few unnerving moments, the control room was lit solely by the glowing, multicolored displays and control panels embedded in the walls, like exotic, bioluminescent fish shining in the waters of a darkened aquarium. Khan glanced over at Hapka; to his shock and chagrin, he saw the captain’s body lying sprawled upon the matte-blue floor of the pedestal. His bloody brow matched a crimson smear on the casing of the adjacent periscope. Khan guessed that Hapka had cracked his head against the attack periscope during the impact.
With no time to ascertain the extent of the captain’s injuries, Khan immediately took command. “Call a medic for Captain Hapka,” he instructed the deck officer brusquely; Cassel was doubtless a competent sailor, but, at this critical juncture, Khan preferred to trust his destiny to no one save himself. “I am taking charge of this vessel.”
The OOD gulped visibly, but, wisely, did not challenge Khan’s decision. “As you command, Your Excellency.” Drawn features and an anxious tone betrayed the Frenchman’s uneasiness.
Khan was worried, too, even though the Kaur could conceivably survive a single torpedo strike. Its dense double hull, modeled on that of a Russian Typhoon-class supersub, had also been reinforced with a unique, impact-absorbing alloy found only in one remote and isolated African kingdom. Khan had gone to great lengths to obtain this alloy for his flagship, which might have been the reason he and the rest of the Kaur’s human inhabitants were still alive.
But for how much longer? Khan couldn’t even begin to guess what sort of damage had been done to the submarine’s vital systems and functions. I fear the worst, he thought.
“Lasers down!” Bataeo exclaimed, and Khan realized they had lost their first and best defense. “That second torp totaled the whole array!”
Emergency power kicked in, bringing maybe eighty percent of the control room’s lights back on. Khan spotted signs of damage amongst both the crew and the equipment. Warning lights flashed on nearly every console, while bruises, cuts, and minor burns scarred the faces of the anxious-looking sailors. Steam jetted from a ruptured pipe, hissing like an incensed cobra, until one of the crewman, stretching his arm to reach the ceiling, closed a valve manually. Sparks erupted from short-circuited control panels, until quenched by the hasty application of a fire extinguisher. A smoky haze contaminated the enclosed atmosphere of the control room, which smelled of cold sweat and apprehension. Khan heard men and women coughing at their stations.
Khan watched grimly, his face as immobile as a plaster death mask, as two sailors helped a fallen comrade back up onto his seat among the navigation consoles. The man’s leg appeared to have been injured in his tumble; Khan could not tell right away whether the limb was broken or merely sprained. In any event, the man did not request to be relieved from his duty, but instead returned to his post, grimacing in pain as he tried to bring the ship’s computerized global positioning system back online. A trickle of blood leaked from beneath the man’s pants leg onto the scuffed metal floor of the control room.
Brave souls, Khan thought, pride swelling within his chest. He could ask no better of his soldiers, and prayed only that he had not led them all to a watery death. “Now would I give a thousand furlongs of sea,” he murmured after the Bard, “for an acre of barren ground.”
Their foe gave them little time to nurse their wounds or assess their status. “Torpedo in the water!” the intercom announced from the sonar room. Bursts of static broke into the warning, rendering key data inaudible. “Bearing zzzt!-zero-zzzt! Speed forty knots. Range zzzt! thousand and closing—”
Khan hoped the targeting computers were getting the full story. “Helm! Hard to port!” he ordered forcefully. With the lasers disabled, evading the torpedo was their only hope. He stepped over the captain’s prone and bleeding form to shout directly at the weapons control team. “Deploy countermeasures!”
“Yes, sir!” an alert Norwegian seaman acknowledged, as the Kaur jettisoned a pair of decoys via the ship’s ejector tubes. Khan heard them wailing loudly outside the Kaur. With luck, the noisemakers would confuse the torpedo, luring it away from the sub.
Cassel spared a moment to address Khan. “Your Excellency, you should go!” he urged. Khan could hear echoes of Joaquin’s worried voice in the Frenchman’s plea, and understood the man’s concern; it was unlikely that the Kaur could weather another direct hit, but there might still be time for Khan to escape the beleaguered sub, if he moved swiftly enough. “It is not safe for you here. The danger is too great!”
“No!” Khan roared. His very soul rebelled at the idea of fleeing from a battle before a single shot had been fired back at their foe. We must destroy the Akula utterly, he realized, before they can attack us again. “Do we have a targeting solution plotted?” he asked Bataeo intently. “For our torpedoes?”
Seated at her console, the young weapons officer nodded. “Yes, sire. A good snapshot, at least.” Her fingers stabbed emphatically at her control panel. “Feeding the data to the torpedoes now.”
Then we still have a chance, Khan thought. “Fire at will,” he commanded, then paused for an instant as he debated playing his trump card. Better now than never, he decided. “Tube Four.”
He exchanged a glance with Cassel, who clearly understood the significance of Khan’s choice. “The Shkval?”
“Exactly,” Khan confirmed. “Nothing else is faster.”
An ordinary torpedo could travel at best 130 kilometers per hour, but the Shkval, an experimental torpedo developed by the Russians in the late seventies, and improved upon since, could reach a top speed of 100 meters per second; it operated on the principle of supercavitation, which reduced hydrodynamic drag by enclosing the torpedo within a self-generated bubble of water vapor and gas. Khan had paid a pretty penny to obtain a single Shkval for his sub. Hunyadi is not the only superman with connections in the former Soviet Union, he reflected somberly.
“Torpedo launched!” Bataeo reported. The boom of the Shkval’s ferocious exit from the tube resounded through the control room, momentarily drowning out the constant pinging of the Akula’s sonar.
Khan nodded in satisfaction. Only the Shkval, he reasoned, could turn the tide of the battle, by striking out at the Akula before the Russian sub could even begin to defend itself or retaliate. No submersible craft yet devised could move fast enough to evade the rocket-powered, supercavitating, ultrahigh-speed torpedo—assuming the Shkval performed as advertised.
He held his breath, knowing the answer would not be long in coming. Either we succeed now, or almost certainly perish.
“Hostile torpedo veering away from us,” the sonar room reported, reminding Khan that a third enemy torpedo was still in the water. “It’s going after the decoys!”
Khan smiled. Perhaps fortune was on his side, after all. A sudden shock wave, mild compared to the impact of the second torpedo against the Kaur’s outer hull, suggested that the oncoming torpedo had destroyed one or more of the noisy decoys rather than his submarine. Amiss! Khan thought triumphantly. Now it was up to the Shkval to ensure that the Akula did not have another chance to fire at the Kaur.
“Closing, closing,” Bataeo reported on the Skhval’s progress, struggling to keep up with the torpedo’s murderous velocity. She sounded like an auctioneer calling out bids at a rapid-fire pace. “G
ot her!”
The pinging of the enemy’s sonar halted abruptly, leaving only fading echoes behind. Khan heard instead, muffled but unmistakable, the sound of forged steel being torn asunder. “She’s breaking up!” the sonar room announced excitedly. Khan could hear the unseen sailor’s relief, even over the intercom. “Target is destroyed. Repeat: target is destroyed!”
So falls another foe! Khan savored the intoxicating nectar of victory. Come not between the dragon and his wrath! He basked in the adulation of the crew, who gazed up at him with gratitude and admiration upon their sweaty, smoke-smudged faces. He marched confidently to the forward edge of the periscope platform and gave the apprehensive OOD a hearty slap on the back. “Helm, continue course to Dubrovnik.” He spoke loudly and clearly, so that the entire control room could hear him. “Let us send the butcher Hunyadi our compliments.”
Cheers and laughter greeted his jest. Trusting that the crew’s morale had been restored, and that the crisis had been averted, he felt at ease enough to see to Captain Hapka. The ship’s medic, a Dr. Hoyt, had already responded to Khan’s summons, and was even now kneeling beside the injured captain, who remained unconscious on the floor of the pedestal. Hoyt shone a light into Hapka’s eyes, checking the dilation of his pupils.
“Well, Doctor,” Khan addressed the physician. “How fares the captain?”
“A severe concussion,” Hoyt reported, “possibly a hairline fracture to the left parietal bone.” Khan noted that the doctor himself had not escaped the battle unscathed; his right hand was swathed in bandages and he seemed to be missing a tooth or two. “I do not think his injury is life-threatening, but I should get him to the infirmary.”
“Of course,” Khan agreed. He was reluctant to lose any of the control room personnel while the Kaur remained in hostile waters, so he instructed the OOD to summon a pair of sailors to assist Hoyt in transporting Hapka. “What other casualties do we have, Doctor?”
Hoyt bandaged the captain’s bleeding skull as he replied to Khan’s query. “Three enlisted men were killed by an exploding bulkhead in the turbine room, and another sailor was badly burned by a fire in the galley.” The doctor’s uniform smelled of grease and smoke. “Thankfully, there’s no trace of any radiation leakage from the reactor.” He shook his head dolefully at the very thought. “It could have been much worse, Your Excellency.”