Kirov II: Cauldron Of Fire (Kirov Series) Read Online Free Page B

of his discussion with Karpov and the still
heavy sense of guilt he harbored for not seeing things more clearly.
     I should
have seen it coming, he thought. Karpov was too wound up, too argumentative and
combative—and too hungry for advancement. At the time I was preoccupied with trying
to get my mind around the insanity of our situation, but I should have seen
what he was planning, what he would do if given the chance. Too late now, he
concluded. The man may recover himself and prove to be of some use in the days
ahead. But for now he’s better off in the brig where he can come to that
conclusion himself.
    He walked
with little enthusiasm this night. They had scouted down the north Italian
coast and come at last to the fabled city on seven hills—Rome. There he gazed
on Esquiline, the largest of the seven, where the Emperor Nero had built his
'golden house,' at one end, with the other end blighted by the charnel pits
where criminals would be buried or their carcasses left for the birds. It was a
fitting metaphor for the human endeavor, he thought grimly, that the same hill
should be put to these disparate uses. Once the Gardens of Maecenas bloomed there
to hide the remains of the dead, but no longer. He had resisted the urge to put
men ashore, unwilling to hear the reports or view the evidence they would bring
back to him. It was all gone, he knew, the city, the architecture, the
amphitheaters, the cathedrals, paintings, statues, the Vatican and the long
history behind it all, not the mention the lives of so many who lived there.
    With a heavy
heart he had given the order to move on, down past Naples, which was equally
devastated, and then he gave up and simply turned the ship west. Kirov was now cruising roughly two hundred miles southwest of Naples in the
Tyrrhenian Sea as Volsky walked, and that vague sense of disquiet became
something more in the back of his mind. He stopped by the edge of the deck,
holding on to a gunwale, strangely alert, his ears straining to hear something
in the distance. Then he felt it, an odd vibration in the ship beneath his feet
and, without really thinking, he was moving toward a nearby bulkhead to look
for a call phone up to the bridge.
    Volsky
opened the latched door and picked up the handset, thumbing the comm-link
button for the citadel above. “Admiral Volsky to bridge.”
    The voice of
Anton Fedorov, his acting Executive Officer was quick to return. “Aye, sir.
Fedorov here.”
    “Any developments
I should be aware of?”
    “Strange
that you should call, sir. We just got a message from Dobrynin in Engineering.
It seems the reactors are acting up again.”
    “Acting up?”
    “That same
odd vibration, sir.”
    “Yes, I felt
it myself here on the aft deck.”
    “ I’m
holding at twenty knots unless you advise otherwise, sir.”
     “Hold speed
for the moment, unless Dobrynin requests slower rotations on the turbines. You
might call him and ask if that might help the situation. Anything more,
Captain?” He had promoted his young Lieutenant to Captain Lieutenant and Starpom after the Karpov incident, not two weeks past, and the young man was working into
the position with real energy now, gaining experience and competence, and more confident
in his abilities with each day.
    “Well,
sir…” Fedorov hesitated
slightly, then went on. “Signals are showing some interference as well. Both
Rodenko and Tasarov have picked up on low level background noise. They…well
they look worried about it, sir. Perhaps you should come to the bridge,
Admiral.”
    “Very well,”
said Volsky. “Keep monitoring the situation, Captain, I’m on my way.”
    Volsky hung
up the receiver, latched the call box door shut and turned forward, heading for
the nearest stairway up. He walked past the life boats, glad they had no
occasion to use them in spite of the ordeal they had been through these last
weeks. Reaching the center of the ship he now had several levels to climb, and
thought again how nice