we can explain away easily enough as a kick from Orel when she exploded. I’m not as comfortable about the damage to the aft battle bridge, or even the file damage with our missing logs.”
They had decided to try and kill a couple of birds in one throw by saying a KA-40 had been aloft, hovering just above the ship when Orel blew up. The story was that the helo had plunged down onto the aft citadel, her weapons load igniting to cause the extensive damage there. To make it seem convincing, Byko had placed some of the old damaged KA-40 parts there, though they would largely claim that they had taken the long cruise to clean away the remainder of the wreckage. He kept these few mangled parts collected from the real accident on the aft deck as trophies, and hoped they would help explain away the total loss of the ship’s secondary command citadel.
As for the missing logs and data, they could not claim EMP damage as Fedorov first thought. Dobrynin told him that effect only could occur in the atmosphere, so instead they decided on a massive power surge that had damaged the ship’s systems and files. It was thin, but they hoped it would cover their tracks long enough to pass the inspection that was surely coming.
“How does it feel to be Captain of the First Rank again, Karpov?”
They had also thought it best to restore Karpov’s old rank and authority. Admiral Volsky said he had earned it many times over, and was quick to promote him once again. No mention was to be made of the ‘unfortunate incident,’ in the North Atlantic, a grace the Captain did not think he deserved, but one he was grateful for. The missing nuclear warhead would be a little more difficult to explain away, but Admiral Volsky told the men to say nothing of it, and said he would handle the matter personally.
As for Fedorov, he would stand as Captain of the Second Rank now, and the official Starpom under Karpov. He had no objection, saying he preferred it that way, as the two men had come to a very good understanding of one another, and cooperated well.
“I was not ready to take the ship when Volsky gave it to me,” said Fedorov. “I did my best, but thank God for you, Karpov. I don’t think I could have fought those battles as you did. The Admiral was correct when he said you were one of the very best.”
Karpov nodded, grateful for the praise, and hearing it now as sincere for the first time, not the fawning flattery he had been used to from other officers who wanted to get on his good side in the past. He was a new man now, though he knew it would probably be some time before others who knew him in the navy would see or realize that.
“What about Dobrynin?” asked Karpov. “What about this business with the reactors? They will have to perform that maintenance procedure again one day soon. What then, Fedorov? Will the ship vanish again?”
“Admiral Volsky and I had a long discussion with the engineers about it. When we reach harbor he is going to have Rod-25 removed for replacement, and he says he can run some tests and then arrange to have it stored in a very safe place.”
“You still believe that control rod had something to do with it?”
“Who knows? But it was the only common denominator in all the displacement events. Each time it happened, Rod-25 was the wild card in the deck. Dobrynin is going to go over it with a microscope to see if he can make any sense of it. In the meantime, we can only hope Kirov stays put.”
“Agreed,” said Karpov with a solemn nod. “Do you think they learned anything about us?”
“About the ship? Our time in the past? Well the British certainly learned enough, and the Japanese got some hard lessons too.”
“They’ve had almost eighty years to try and figure out what happened, Fedorov. That’s a very long time. That little chat the Admiral had with the British may have revealed more than we think, and I will tell you another little secret—what the British learned in 1942 the GRU and KGB learned soon after.”
That thought darkened the moment, for Fedorov had worried about it for some time. “So far I haven’t found any clean references on the Internet now that we have satellite traffic again. A lot of