Ghost Ship.

by Diane Carey.

Chapter One.

The SERGEI G. GORSHKOV moved through the water as though the sea had been made solely to carry such ships. As every sailor knew in his deepest soul, there had been no ocean before there were ships, and the ocean had only gotten so large because ships of such bulk came to chase its farthest sh.o.r.elines, to push its hem forever back, to conquer its lengths and breadths with their intrepid spirit. The ships, ever bigger, ever more powerful, ever more majestic, were the badge of spirit for mankind.

At least ... sailors think so.

For bakers, it's the bread that rises in their ovens that mankind should pay attention to.

Point of view.

Arkady Reykov unb.u.t.toned the dark blue overcoat of the Soviet navy and shook the heavy outerwear from his shoulders. His petty officer was there to catch the coat and store it away. Reykov did not acknowledge the service, but simply strode onto the bridge, coatless, authority intact. Today the eyes of the Politburo were on him and this vessel.

His executive officer met him immediately, with a dogged reliability that Reykov found slightly annoying but somehow always welcome. The two men nodded at each other, then turned at the same moment and the same angle to look out over the stunning landing deck of the Soviet Union's second full-deck carrier. The shipbuilding facility at Nikolayev was far behind them. Before them lay the open expanse of the Black Sea. Around them in a several-mile radius, the carrier support group plunged through the sea, barely out of sight. There were four heavy cruisers and six destroyers in the carrier group. The tanker force would catch up tomorrow.

Reykov was a large man, straight-shouldered and inclined to staidness, the type of Soviet man that appears in comedy-dramas when typecasting is necessary to the story, except that he didn't have the obligatory mustache. Executive Officer Timofei Va.s.ska was thinner, fairer, and younger, but both were handsome men-which, truth be told, didn't come in very handy in their particular vocation. But at least it was easier to get up in the morning.

One wanted to look good when one piloted a ship like this, this nuclear mountain upon the sea. It had taken a long time to store up the expertise to build a carrier. No one could become a naval architect just like that, and even if he could, where would he get the economic structure to support his knowledge? It takes a vast technology, ideas, factories, machining, measuring, weighing, thinking, knowing, production, and counterproduction even to make a ballpoint pen. And a carrier is a little more expensive.

Reykov was proud of this Lenin-cla.s.s Gorshkov. She was big, and the Soviets liked big. And she carried a weapon that was the first and only of its kind. Their pride and joy. Something even the Amerikanskis didn't have.

Reykov inflated his chest with a deep breath. His ship. Well, he could pretend it was his.

He felt the pulses of the five thousand men in his crew, throbbing with metronome steadiness beneath him as he stood on the bridge in the carrier's tower.

"Approaching maneuver area, Comrade Captain," Va.s.ska said, his voice carrying more lilt than those words required.

Reykov acknowledged him with a quick look. "Signal the flight officer to begin launching the MiGs for tracking practice."

He felt a little shiver of thrill as he gave that order, for it was the first time the new MiGs would be launched from an aircraft carrier during an actual demonstration for dignitaries. Until now, only military eyes had seen this. The Soviet Union had finally learned how to work t.i.tanium instead of steel, and now there was a new cla.s.s of MiGs light enough to be used on carriers. For years the motherland had sold its t.i.tanium to the U.S. while Soviet planes were still made of steel. Too heavy, too much fuel. It was with great pleasure that Arkady Reykov watched as the MiGs sheared off the end of the flight deck and took to the sky, one after another-seven of them.

"Have the fighters go out fifty miles and come in on various unannounced attack runs at the ship. Prepare for demonstration of laser tracking and radar to show we could knock out each of the fighters as it appears. And advise the political commissar to get the dignitaries out of their beds. They'll want to be red instead of green today for a change."

Va.s.ska put up a valiant fight as he dictated these orders to the appropriate stations, but despite himself his cheeks turned rosy and his shoulders shook. "They have been green, haven't they, Comrade Captain?" he muttered toward Reykov, keeping his voice low and his eye on the other bridge officers.

The captain smiled. "And tell them to be sure to get dressed before they come out on deck. Those American satellites can count your leg hairs."

"Haven't you heard the latest intelligence?" Va.s.ska tossed back. "Bureaucrats have no leg hair."

Reykov leaned toward him in a manner so natural it had almost become unnoticeable after their years together. "They should put the bureaucrats in a gulag. Then things might get done."

Va.s.ska smirked at him and gave him a delicate glance. "You used to be one of those."

"Yes," the captain said, "and they should've gagged me. Perhaps by now you'd be captain and I'd be on the Politburo."

"I don't want to be captain. When all the shooting starts, I like somebody to hide behind."

Reykov turned up one corner of his mouth. "That's all right. It's my secret desire never to sit on the Politburo. Are the drone targets operational for the tests? Have they been checked?"

"Several of them. We sent out two this morning, and one malfunctioned. Let's hope we have better odds for the demonstrations."

"In the old days," Reykov commented with his usual dryness, "there would've been self-destructs on the targets. Just in case we missed."

The two men shared a chuckle.

"The Teardrop missiles have been checked and rechecked. This batch is probably going to fire as it's supposed to, I hope. All this target practice and nothing to shoot at," Va.s.ska said as he watched the sea crash past Gorshkov's vast prow.

"Mmmm," Reykov agreed, his lips pressed flat. "You know, Timofei, I've served almost thirty years and I've never been fired at even once."

Va.s.ska straightened, his boyish face tight with a restrained grin. "Then how do you know you won't break under attack?"

"You've met my wife."

Va.s.ska clasped his hands behind his back and lowered his voice again. "What's the situation with Borka?"

"I talked to him ... I got him alone."

"Did you make progress?"

Reykov bobbed his brows and shrugged. "He can't be watched every minute. It's those times he's out of sight that make me worry."

"What have you tried?"

"Reasoning ... threats ... rewards ... nothing works. I'm afraid the time is coming for severe action."

Va.s.ska nodded sympathetically. "Be firm, Kady. I wish I could be there. This is what comes from too much permissiveness. Rebellion. Time will take care of it, though. Borka will eventually make his own decision, and then you can proudly say your grandson isn't wearing diapers anymore."

Even as he said it, Va.s.ska fixed his eyes on his captain's thick dark hair with its tinge of silver just over his left brow, and had difficulty imagining Arkady Reykov as a grandfather. The captain's face was almost unlined, his eyes every bit as clear and vital as the day Va.s.ska first saw him eight-or was it nine?- years ago, while Va.s.ska was still a pilot and Reykov was flight officer on the small carrier Moscow. It hadn't been a bad eight years, at least not after the first two, when they finally believed they could speak candidly to each other. That is a day which in many relationships never comes at all.

"Be sure there are no other aircraft in the area, Comrade Va.s.ska. Launch the target aircraft and let's proceed with this performance before we all get hungry and can't do our jobs."

"Shall we wait until the political commissar notifies us that the dignitaries are watching?"

A reed-thin smile stretched across Reykov's face as he measured and tasted each alternative several times before finally narrowing his eyes on his privilege as captain. He leaned toward Va.s.ska for another of those private exchanges. "Let's not."

Va.s.ska's cheeks tightened as he imagined the dignitaries. .h.i.tting the ceilings of their staterooms when the gunnery practice began. He made his back straight and firmly announced to the duty officer, "Signal tracking maneuvers, Comrade Myakishev."

The performance with live fighters went shiningly well, primarily because it was all "on paper." There was no firing of weapons until the unmanned drones were launched to circle out wide across the expanse of the Black Sea and come back to hara.s.s the Gorshkov as had been carefully arranged and rearranged. The dummy missiles were bombarded with a hail of depleted-uranium slugs whose weight alone would be enough to press off an attacking missile if it hit at sufficient distance. There were dignitaries on board, and nothing was being left to chance. There were a few misfires, a few misses, and a few false starts, but while not a perfect performance, it was a performance that could be interpreted as perfect, if the right language were used. Reykov was certain the language would be selected as carefully as a mother clips her infant's fingernails.

That immutable fact about Soviet coverage was little comfort, however, as Reykov turned to Timofei Va.s.ska and quietly spoke words that chained them to their seats. "Prepare demonstration of the E.M.P."

With the last hour's weapons' displays still booming in his ears, Va.s.ska's skin shrank from the order, though he let none of his apprehension show. Such a device. The first of its kind to be mounted on a moving unit. Even the stationary ones prior to this one had been nothing more than a few isolated test guns. This one was real, mounted permanently at the center of Gorshkov's gunnery shroud. E.M.P.... controlled electromagnetic pulse.

"Signal the Vladivostok to begin firing dummy Teardrops. And Va.s.ska," Reykov added quickly, raising a finger, "be sure they only fire one at a time and give us forty seconds to reenergize the pulse."

Va.s.ska shook his head and said, "Won't it be wonderful if our enemies are so cooperative as to never fire more than one missile at a time?"

Reykov shrugged his big shoulders and said, "We're working on it. It'll be good enough if we can scramble the guidance systems one by one. Let's not ask for trouble. Just don't make fools of the designers."

Va.s.ska nodded to Myakishev, who relayed the order out into the distance.

"Inbound," came the dry announcement a few moments later. "One Teardrop missile, heading four-zero true."

"Visual range?"

"In six seconds, sir."

"When it becomes visible, we'll fire the E.M.P. on my order."

"Yes, Comrade Captain. Visibility in three ... two ... one ... mark."

They squinted into the crisp blue atmosphere and saw the incoming dummy missile. Hardly more than a silver glint against the sky, even the dud caused a hard ball in the pit of every stomach. Reykov imagined the dignitaries' skin crawling right about now.

"Fire the E.M.P."

Myakishev touched his control panel, and below them on the tower a twelve-foot-wide antenna swiveled toward the inbound. They all flinched when the pulse fired- There was a near-simultaneous snap and a white flash. At first it seemed the snap came first, but now that it was over they weren't sure.

In the distant sky, the Teardrop skittered on its trajectory, corkscrewed to one side, and plunged into the sea far off its mark, victim of a fizzled guidance system.

The bridge broke into cheers.

Reykov pumped a sigh of relief from his lungs. "Reenergize the pulse, Comrade Va.s.ska."

"Recharging now, Comrade Captain."

"Good boy, good boy ... " Reykov inhaled deeply and tried to make the sensation of trouble go away. He wasn't really nervous, but for some reason his hands were cold.

"Comrade Captain ... " Myakishev bent over the officer's shoulders at the radar screen.

"Comrade?" Reykov prodded, his hands dropping to his sides.

Va.s.ska, having heard something in Myakishev's tone, was also bending over the radar station.

"We have an inbound ... and it's not one of ours."

Va.s.ska dove for the TBS phone and had it to his ear as Reykov barked, "Contact the Vladivostok."

"Sir, Captain Feklenko reports they did not fire. They did not fire on us."

"Then what is it?"

"I don't know."

"What is it? Is it American?"

"Doesn't appear to be."

"Then what? Is it French? Is it British? Albanian? Do the Africans have missiles? Whose is it?"

"Sir, there's no log of this ... I'm not even certain it's a missile," Va.s.ska said, snapping his fingers to other manned positions in silent orders.

Reykov pressed up against Myakishev's shoulder. "Billions of rubles for you geniuses and you can't tell me what it is. I want to know whose it is. What is coming in?"

"It's headed directly toward us!"

Reykov straightened, his eyes narrowing on the distant sky. For the first time in his life, he made the kind of decision he hoped never to have to make.

"Turn the E.M.P. on it. Fire when ready."

The wide rectangular antenna swiveled like the head of some unlikely insect, and once again the terrible snap-flash came as the electromagnetic pulse pumped through the atmosphere with scientific coldness.

It should have worked. It should have scrambled the guidance controls on any kind of missile or aircraft, any kind at all.

Any kind at all.

"It's homing in on the beam-accelerating now!" Myakishev's voice clattered against his throat.

Va.s.ska whispered, "Even the Americans don't have anything like that ... "

Reykov twisted around and plowed through the bridge crew to the chilly windowsill. He stared out over the Black Sea.

There was something there. It wasn't a missile.

On the horizon, making child's play of the distance between itself and Gorshkov, was a wall.

An electrical wall. It sizzled and crackled, made colors against the sky, shapeless and ugly-the phenomenon looked, more than anything, like an infrared false-color image. Colors inside colors. But there was no basic shape. It was crawling across the water, the size of a skysc.r.a.per.

Behind him, Myakishev choked, "Radar is out. Communications out now-we're getting feedback-"

Reykov gasped twice before he could speak. "Full about! General quarters! General-"

His voice went away. Around him, every piece of instrumentation went dead. As though mola.s.ses had been poured over the bridge, all mechanisms failed. There wasn't even the rea.s.suring sound of malfunction. In fact, there was no sound at all.

Then a sound did come-an electrical scream cutting across the water and swallowing the whole ship as the false-color bogey roared up to the carrier's starboard bow and sucked the ship into itself. It was three times the size of the ship itself. Three times.

Reykov's last move as a human being was to turn toward the radar station. He looked at Timofei Va.s.ska, who straightened up to stare at his captain, both hands clasped over his ears, and the two men were locked in a gaze, frozen, held. It felt as though all their blood were clotting at once.

Reykov's last perception was of Va.s.ska's eyebrows drawing slightly together as the two men shared the wholeness of that final moment before obliteration.

Then Va.s.ska's face was covered with the false-color image, and Reykov's mind, mercifully, stopped operating.