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

a
message off,” he called back to his navigator. “Sighted one hell of a big
cruiser, these coordinates. Saying hello before we return home.” He was in no
hurry to get back to Takali airfield on Malta, but switched on his gun cameras
as he dove, mindful that intelligence would want more than his word on the
sighting. Pity we didn’t have a torpedo at hand for a moment like this, he
thought. Perhaps another time.
    Then he
fired, and the powerful 20mm cannons snarled in anger, joined by the fitful
chatter of his Browning .303s. The guns sent a hail of iron at the center of
the ship, raking the sea in a wild rain of fire and water and smashing into the
superstructure in a storm of fire and smoke.
     
    Volsky heard the guns firing, then the
terrible howl of the plane’s engines as it flashed by overhead. The sea was
awash with spray where the leading rounds fell short, but they raked across the
center of the ship, shuddering into her superstructure and sending a scatter of
flayed aluminum shrapnel and hot white sparks flying in all directions as the
heavy rounds slammed into Kirov with deadly effect. Admiral Volsky felt
a searing hot pain as something struck his side and leg, and he was flung from
his perch on the ladder, falling all of eight feet with a hard thud as his head
struck a hand rail below. He was lucky he had not climbed higher, as the fall
itself could have killed him. As it was, he lay unconscious and bleeding from
shrapnel wounds on the deck below, and did not hear the shrill panic that
wailed through the ship as heavy booted men were running in all directions, shouting
and donning life preservers and helmets as they manned their battle stations.
    On the
bridge, acting Starpom , Anton Fedorov heard the awful drone of the plane
as it dove to attack, hastening to the port viewport in a state of surprise and
shock. Rodenko had been complaining of a strange interference on his sensor
screens—Tasarov as well, but they had seen and heard nothing until the distant
sound of an aircraft emerged from the thick cottony silence of the night,
strangely attenuated, now loud and threatening, and then hollow and forlorn.
The air seemed suddenly charged with heavy static, and a throbbing pulsation
seemed to quaver all around them. Fedorov took in the scene outside the ship
with wild surmise. The sea was aglow with undulating light, and the skies were brightening
with an impossible luminescence. He glanced quickly at his chronometer and read
the time. It was 1:37 in the morning, and the night had been clear and dark
just a few moments ago, the new moon not yet risen. What was happening?
    Then the
sound of the aircraft seemed an angry roar, and Fedorov’s better instincts for
survival prompted him to wheel about. “Sound alarm,” he shouted. “Battle Stations!”
    A split
second later the night sky seemed to erupt with light and fire, something came
flashing down from above in terrible rage, and white hot shafts of light seemed
to pass in through the view panes and bulkheads, like lasers, vanishing into
the guts of the ship. The sound that followed was clear and unmistakable, a
rattling grind of metal on metal. It was as if the light had suddenly found
shape and form, and become a liquid fire, then hard iron as it finally bit into
the ship.
    They felt
heavy rounds shudder against the armored citadel and sheer through the lattice
of more delicate antenna domes above them. Then the deep growl of the plane’s
engines diminished, fading off the starboard side of the ship. Fedorov turned
and saw everyone on the bridge staring at him, some with expressions of shock
and others with fear and amazement. His mind was racing as he struggled to make
sense of what he had just experienced.
    “Did you see
that?” Tasarov was pointing to the spot where the searing light had lanced through
the bridge and vanished into the deck plates, but there was no sign of damage
there at all.
    Fedorov could
not answer him. He knew he had to do