Chapter Twenty-two: We Have an Oscar!
Aboard the submarine K-311
Somewhere in the Kara Sea
November 2, 2008 1805 Rivymiyitevko time (1605 Krakozhian time)
"Hey, Lieutenant, have you heard?" asked Seaman Nikolai Alekseyevich Brtlanka. "The K-312 and the K-331 have captured one of the Oscars that Rivymiyitevko bought from the Russians."
"Is that true, Nikolai?" replied Goran Marenko. "Where did you come upon that bit of news? Maybe it's just from one of those trashy tabloids that you young people are so fond of."
"No, sir, this one's real." Brtlanka took the seat beside Marenko. "Remember when we were moored alongside the Rokossovsky a few hours ago? Well, I heard two of the Rokossovsky's crew talking about how the K-312 and K-331 gave the Anadyr—I think that's the name of the Oscar—a beating that would put her in the shipyards for six months or more while they try to fix her launch tubes! It's amazing, isn't it?"
"That may be true, Nikolai, but did you know that I've been waiting for you for the past thirty minutes? And when you finally decided to come here, it was because of some story about our fleet's exploits, and not because you finally remembered that you're the deputy sonarman for today's watch. Put on your headphones, young comrade, and we're on sonar picket today."
Nikolai sighed, put on his headphones, and listened to the sounds of the sea. The flow of water outside the submarine's pressure hull was mesmerizing to him, and the hidden dangers in it only made him more curious to it.
He noticed an odd, rhythmic rumbling sound through the water. Turning to Goran, he said, "Sir, I have some whirring sounds from my sector. I think it's the blades of a surface vessel."
"Don't worry, Nikolai," he replied. "It's just the Alanich, I believe. It's on radar picket today."
Aboard the frigate Alanich
That same time
The Alanich was not the largest ship in the Kara Sea—that honor went to the Project 1010 battleships—but in terms of firepower, she was very deadly to those crazy enough to try to attack her. A Burevestnik-class frigate—Krivak to the West—she was armed with four SS-N-14 Silex missiles in separate launchers and four seventy-six-millimeter guns, which could blow any of the Rivymiyitevko Navy's World War Two-era gunships into the next millennium, two SA-N-4 Gecko surface-to-air missile launchers for those rebel jets, and two RBU-6000 anti-submarine rocket launchers and eight 533-millimeter torpedo tubes for the occasional submarine that crosses her path. She was commanded by Captain First Rank Foma Adamov, one of the Krakozhian Navy's premier skippers. With a combat history reaching back to the pre-Revolution sea skirmishes between Bulgaria and Romania during the early Eighties, Captain Adamov had fought in all theaters of war, and the Kara Sea theater was one of his favorites.
To fight in this "favorite theater," he had the Alanich's Combat Information Center to help him. From here, he could fire any of his weapons at any surface, submarine, or airborne target. Large liquid crystal display screens showed maps of the Kara Sea in detail, and every contact within the vicinity of the Alanich was tracked onscreen, with green symbols representing friendly forces and red for unknown or enemy contacts. The shape of the contact was also determined by how much of a threat it was to the frigate. Right now, Captain Adamov was focused on a red square southwest of the Alanich. It meant an unidentified/hostile submarine contact that was currently out of range from the frigate's weapons.
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Liberators
AksiA story of a nation's struggle to reunite itself. The island of Rivymiyitevko doesn't have the ability to become truly independent, but its power-mad dictator won't believe it. The only solution left is an armed invasion, expected to be as bloody as...
