sharks - 190

I suggest not everyone out there has a technical education of any sort, so let me digress a bit. A watt is a unit of power. A megawatt is one million watts. Our submarine had two pressurized water reactors 190 megawatts of thermal power each. They transmitted 50000 hp each to the propeller’s drive shafts (also two of them). Besides the propellers the drive shafts also moved the electric generators which provided electricity for the whole sub: light, ventilation, instruments, air, sauna, galley ovens down to the air compressor in the fish tank.
 As to how much this stuff costs and what its energy prime cost is, I don’t know, but for now I’m going to compare it to kerosene.
 In summary, if you take your usual cellphone, its power is roughly equal to 1 watt. Meaning the total power of the two reactors roughly equals to 380 million cellphones. Imagined that? I’ll try not to give too much technical terms but trus me: a reactor is a very complicated device. Also please pardon me for the swear words: the story would lose all the meaning without them. I’ve filtered out 90% of it already and that’s the limit. Also: MPP is the Main Power Plant.
It’s summer right now; the sea is sunny and mirror-like. Since all the seagulls are hanging around the city waste scrapyards, it’s also quiet. Friday afternoon, seven in the evening.  It’s still one hour till the watch start, so me and Tolik the officer on MPP duty (and also propulsion crew chief in charge of the reactors, turbines and everything related) sitting up there in the cabin, clad only in the undies and getting some tan. It’s so how we don’t even bother talking. Instead we just sigh: Tolik thinks about kissing his summer vacation in Crimea goodbye while I dream about the new VCR I’ll be able to afford soon.
“Hey Edik,” Tolik interrupts my dreams about Akai 120 EDG, “Isn’t it our cap coming up?”
Indeed, in the flesh. The gait is gloomy and condemned, like one of a praying mantis before mating. That’s bad. We pour coffee into the sea and scatter: Tolik goes to his station while I walk to the gangplank. The captain listens to my report in silence, frowning all the time. We both go down: he’s snorting, I’m worried. In the Central the smiling Tolik awaits along with the hold midshipman keeping the ship logbook. The cap sits down into his chair, sighs; we prepare.
“Eduard, who’s the officer on MPP duty?” He asks staring into the table below.
“Me, sir,” Tolik’s smiling for nothing: the captain didn’t even notice him.
“That’s a good thing, yeah,” he sighs again. “Initiate the MPP startup.” (that is, turn both the reactors on.)
“What, live?” To say that Tolik is surprised right now is like saying Chekhov was just a writer.
The captain finally pries his eyes off the table and looks at Tolik:
“Ec-fucking-xactly, Tolik!” His face reddens. “How else you can start the MPP up, dummily? Do you really think my love life is so lacking I would end up on the sub on Friday evening just to fuck with you?”
Wow. That’s a whole lot of swearing. Our captain is usually reserved. It’s the first officer who was master of obscenities, the captain only did it while distressed.
“Roger that, ‘San ‘Seich.”  Tolik reports and prepares to go away.
Wait, where’s he going? He’s not planning to initiate the MPP startup all by himself, does he? And the main question is: what is this all for?!  Had this been war alert we’d hear the sirens and see everyone running around preparing for the nuclear strikes.
“Eduard.”
Ah, my turn now. ‘Well, I’m with the survivability crew’, I tell myself, “I just need to calculate the balancing and confirm the ballast loads. Piece of cake.”
“Where’s the crew emergency summon log?” It all starts going in a weird direction.
“Here it is, sir,” I reply, “same as always.”
Crew emergency log is a notebook containing home addresses and phone numbers of all the crew members.
“Wear something, grab the log and get to the division HQ. Two KAMAZes await there. Go into town and gather everyone in whatever condition, then bring them on board. The hell you still standing here?”
“Cap’n, sir, ” I say, “I’m an officer on duty, I’m not allowed to abandon ship. Who’s gonna be the officer on duty?”
“Me!!!!” The captain jumps from his chair. “Fucking me! Gonna be the ship duty officer! Can I replace you, Eduard Antonovich?”
“You can,” I say, “Just register the weapon handoff.”
“What kind of people are you?!” The captain wails even though he knows I’m right. So he takes the armament handoff logbook and writes:
“Allowing the handoff of the PM handgun inventory ID 1342 along with 16 rounds to captain 1st rank… signed.”
“Captain 1st rank… signed.”
“Gimme the damn gun and get the hell outta here, desk rat.”
“What on Earth happened, captain, sir?” It’s Tolik returning to Central with MPP logbooks. No uranium nuclei can start dividing without captain’s orders.
The captain glances at us both (hold midshipman is already hiding in Compartment 19) and realizes we’re not exactly at fault here. He softens some. He sits in his chair again. He says:
“It’s just this bloody Kozyrev the foreign minister arrives to Severomorsk tomorrow. And some shithead told him there’s a base for the world’s largest nuclear subs not too far away out here. So he expressed the desire to look at them. But! The whole. Fucking. Red flag carrying Northern Fleet can’t scrape enough fucking kerosene for a single fucking helicopter to fly hundred fucking kilometers!!! And the car is out of the fucking question too, it’s the whole bloody 74 kilometers to drive among the mountains, oh gosh! And so we initiate the M-fucking-PP startup, activating two nuclear reactors 190 megawatts each, heat up two steam turbines driving 50k horsepower each and shuffle to Kozyrev on our fucking own, as if it’s us  dull faggots who are so eager to see him, not the other way around!!! Take Eduard for example. Eduard, do you really want to look at Kozyrev?”
“Nope, ‘San ‘Seich” I answer, “not in the very least. If it was, say, Kylie Minogue instead (back in the day I thought she was beautiful and sexy), I’d instantly dragged a pair of oars and rowed to Severomorsk in a flash. But what is that I didn’t see in Kozyrev? No tits, no talent, no fun.”
“Yeah, but that’s not all,” The captain pauses for a second. “Our fleet commander told me our sub is too gray to present it to the foreign minister, because it’s not black and shiny as he thinks it’s supposed to be...”
“So we’re not going anywhere,” Tolik suggest illogically.
“Well fuck you Tolik up your whole little ass no, we’re issued with four trucks worth of black paint and we, the only crew on active duty in the whole goddamn division, will get our submarine WHAT, Eduard?”
“Painted?” I suggest clearly meaning ‘no fucking way’.
“Spot-on, Eduard,” Captain cheerfully confirmed my quick thinking,”We’re also going to get her painted, so don’t stand here all useless like an erect dick on a wedding, go dash into HQ and gather the crew. In whatever condition.”
Well I got that part already. The only part I didn’t get is how we’re gonna paint the submarine 180 meters long, 24 meters wide and 15 meters tall (above the water). Well, there’s clearly gotta be some way we’re gonna do that.
All filled with the sense of responsibility to brows I run to the HQ. Here are the KAMAZes, with no drivers in sight. Technically I could get one KAMAZ and go to into town and probably even not get someone run over, but two? Even being the naval officer I didn’t really deem it possible. I quickly find the HQ duty officer for clarifications.
“Oh heeeey there poor soul,” he greets me. “The whole HQ’s gonna gather to push you all the way outta docks with poles so you would just leave already.”
“That’s nice to hear and all,” I reply, “but, uhh, where’re the drivers? Because despite our high professionalism our crew of 15 won’t be able to row all the way to Severomorsk.”
“What do you mean where? Told them to get the motors running and wait for you  behind the wheels.”
“None of them are there.”
“Bloody bonkheads!”
The duty officer doesn’t think for long and orders the patrol guards to get those shitty drivers here, dead or alive, just with the limbs intact. Patrol guards are all eager to get some action, so they quickly find the drivers in the hills nearby marvelling at the sea. After getting some sense kicked into them the drivers are ready, and we move to Zaozersk full speed ahead.
Let me digress for a second and take a look at the town of Zaozersk. The town of Zaozersk carries a proud title of the Northern Fleet capital. Time after time the title is contended by Gadjievo to no avail. From there it’s 80 kilometers to civilization (Murmansk) and forty five to a better life(Norway). Population is 9 to 11 thousand people. The only recreation locations are Officers’ club where we get some local talents annually, and a hotel for non-locals. Now guess what the submarine crews do when they’re out there on their well-earned weekends? If you think they drink vodka you’re totally wrong: they visit each other’s homes and drink vodka there, and that’s a whole world of difference.
While one the way to the town I’ve already made a plan as to how to gather the crew most effectively using the assets I have(that is, me). The first item in the list was my own apartment building, because my friend and mentor Borisych the ship hold crew chief lived in the next porch’s.

Upon arriving I climb on some small grocery shop and shout:
“Boooriiisyyych!”
The window opens and his wife Larisa looks out:
“Hey, Edik, come up and don’t shout! We have visitors!”
“And who’s visiting?”
“It’s Valya(starboard deck crew chief), Dima(chemical crew chief), Oleg (starboard turbine tech) with wives. It’s fun up here!”
I’m lucky.
“Call’em all!”
So the fellows look out, merry and anticipating the fun. They see me on the shop’s roof along with the KAMAZes. Borisycjh decides to clarify just in case:
“It’s you the ship duty officer today, right?”
“Yeeeahp!” I gladly confirm.
“Coming...”
The come down. Their pockets hold bottles of vodka, with some chicken on the tray.
“Tolik has already started up the MPP, so lay off the vodka.”
“For real??” (I wish they sang the marching songs in unison that well) “The hell happened?”
“Coming to Severomorsk. Someone big’s arriving. I don’t remember, either Sabrina or Samantha Fox.”
“Gonna dive?” the chemical clarifies.
“Into Samantha Fox?”
“Into the sea!”
“Definitely not today.”
“We’re good then,” Chemical decides, and he and Borisych crack the bottle open. Valya and Oleg eat their chicken as is, all sad.
Long story short, we’ve been gathering people for two whole hours: someone in the hills on a picnic, someone visiting the friends. Some of them couldn’t even walk anymore.

[https://legal-alien.ru/images/konstantin-sokolov/13.jpg]
We scraped maybe    eighty people. Almost all the mechanics, two navigators, radio officer and various missile techs and such. Everyone was dressed as is, so when we got unloaded on the pier we looked just like some POW Romainans.
The captain’s already on the pier.
“Aline,” he commands. Then he looks at us and adds:”I mean, gather up a bit.”

[https://legal-alien.ru/images/konstantin-sokolov/12.jpg]
So we did.
After telling the abridged story you know already the captain summed it up:
“Mechanics assist on MPP startup and sail preparation. Drunks go down the wards for a shuteye, I give you four hours for that. Everyone else grab the rags and gather on the missile deck. Gonna get the brushes and be all Aivazovskies.”
All the HQ honchos are on board already,     making records in preparation logs that the ship is ready for sail. Just what did they check ready? Aren’t these jerks scared to sign the documents? Desperate people.
“Two trucks of paint arrived!” Watch seaman reports.
“Just two?” Captain wonders. “Should be four.”
“Maybe they got double load?” Division commander hopes in vain. So cap and DivCom (a rear admiral and a captain 1st rank) run to count the barrels. They’re clearly angry upon returning. They get on the phones and call everyone faggots and other offensive words. No use - no more paint for us. They think some. They go into the navigator’s cabin and think some more.
“Sasha,” DivCom finally says. “Here’s what we do. Right now I call the Severomorsk base duty officer and get the info on what pier we get to moore to and which side. Then you paint that side. Plus the missile deck and the cabin, of course.”
“You mean seriously?”
“Hell yeah, I mean seriously. Or maybe you wanna get some blacking from the shore base and cover the sub with it?”
“Nah,” Captain ain’t gonna tolerate such a blasphemy. “Call then.”
DivCom makes a call. They say pier 17 starboard side. They sure? Can’t be more sure, they’ve reserved the pier for you exclusively.
Can you imagine painting a sub on the move? Now imagine painting a sub like this:
[http://s018.radikal.ru/i521/1509/1e/2946521ad4d0.jpg]
Anyway, we made some poles from the smaller trees, attached the rollers and started painting. We honestly tried to be careful at first: dropped the barrel then evened it with the rollers. Then we got bored and started the <s>ice</s> paint dances(until the first officer noticed anyway).
Long story short we finished the painting in Motovsky bay already, still on the move. At dawn we finally arrived to Severomorsk. Requesting the route. THe route is: pier 17, port side. Captain blinks his sleepy eyes several times and requests a confirmation. The confirmation is “port side”. Captain looks at the first officer, the first officer looks at the captain.
“You know it, ‘San ‘Seich,” first officer says, “Couldn’t have been any other way.”
Both start laughing. Their laugh is loud and contagious, we all haven’t slept for 24 hours already, some still have hangover, everyone’s tired and smells of paint. So the whole Central now laughs their asses off.
Finally the captain wipes the tears off and orders the communications officers to patch him to the Fleet HQ.
“Number so-and-so reporting,” Captain says. “Requesting the starboard side mooring.”
“Negative,” the duty officer replies.” Moor port side, the starboard side is already occupied by the number so-and-so (communications officers look up their tables and pinpoint her as the “Otchayanny” destroyer).”
“Impossible to moor port side, requesting return to base.”
Judging by his voice he jumped on his seat:
“Negative on return to base! State the reason for moor port side inability”.
Ah, those official naval phraseology and its mannerisms.
“I’ve only got starboard side painted!”
Duty officer goes silent for a second. Well obviously he understands it all.
“Roger that. Mooring pier 17 starboard side.”
Captain tells the comms officers:
“Listen what’s gonna happen now, tell me later.”
In five minutes the comm officer arriver and retells the whole thing (D for duty officer, C for squadron commander or something like that, I don’t remember):
D: “Number so-and-so, re-mooring pier 17 port side.”
C:“You shitting us? We just got tied down.”
D:“Repeating: remoor pier 17 port side.”
C: “Got no fuel anymore, how the hell am I gonna leave the pier afterwards?”
D:“Row on oars then. Submarine mooring starboard side.”
(Just in case: a destroyer and a sub are eternal enemies)
C: “Fuckwaaaat? I’m gonna maneuver the whole damn destroyer because of that sausage?”
D: ”Fleet commander orders.” The duty officer is lying, but he’s clearly tired of it all.
By that time we already approach pier 17. The destroyer is almost done remooring, with her whole crew crowding up the stern and stares at us muths agape. A destroyer is generally a very beautiful ship: lean, mean and looks fast even when tied to the pier.
 [http://s61.radikal.ru/i174/1509/3b/53afe3068165.jpg]
It just so happened she turned out to be smaller than us. Lower too. And all those sailors proud of their mission forgot about their hard and unforgiving profession of the submarine hunters and just stand here, pointing fingers at our black and grey boar.
[https://legal-alien.ru/images/191.jpg]
(all drawings by Constantin Sokolov)
Squadron commander runs at the pier edge and shouts:
“Who’s the captain?”
Our captain raises his hand.
“Sorry, mate, I regret saying things. Really sorry!”
“Eh, we’re used to it already,” Captain shouts back,”everyone goes apeshit when they see us for the first time. Mind helping mooring?”
“Not a problem!” MOoring crew from the destroyer is already lined up on the pier. One thing I like in those overwater navy fellows is how they’re so friggin’ handsome from afar: with their peakless caps, pea coats, orange vests all neatly aline, awaiting orders and looking at us. While us are all dirty, with blisters on the pants’s knees, in green or black overcoats, orange vests being also black, all roaming around the missile deck and looking down on their less lucky brethren.
After tying down we were first greeted by the squadron commander.
“You guys came for Kozyrev, right?”
“Exactly. Why are you here then?”
“Those fucking bonkheads told me, like, ‘stay around, Kozyrev would come and we’d be like ‘hey look, we’ve got a destroyer too’’. We’ve cleaned the ship all night just in case. But judging by your paint scheme you had it worse.”
Sneering at us, jerk.
“Eh, big deal,” the captain replies.
“Can we come visit your sub later?”
“Only later, don’t stomp on the paint, it’s still drying.”
Everyone stays alert. It’s almost lunch soon and we didn’t even have a proper dinner yesterday. Naturally there’s no food on board, no one allows to go ashore for some noodles, so all we have to do is starve.
The captain’s sleeping right here in the Central in his chair. Eventually some captain 2nd rank comes down, his face practically screaming “political officer”.
“Hey there!” He smiles to our gloomy napes. “Where’s your commander?”
I point behind my back.  According to the battle stations regulations, my place is to the right of the captain and I control ship’s general systems from my “Molybdenum” control board.
“Hello, captain, sir.” (the captain right now is in his coat so the officer can’t see the shoulder straps.)
He mutters something in his sleep.
“I’m the NOrthern Fleet head political officer’s deputy, captain second rank Ivanov!” Political officer introduces himself proudly.
The cap opens one eye:
“Well. I’m. The captain of the strategic ballistic missile-carrying nuclear submarine captain 1st rank so-and-so!”
“Captain 1st rank, sir! Me and others in the HQ thought (at this point cap opens both eyes) that these working rags of yours (that’s Radiation Security coveralls you illiterate idiot) aren’t very pretty, so you need to dress up to meet the minister!
Cap opened his mouth. Closed it. Then opened again. Exhaled.
“We’re not allowed to.”
“Not allowed to what?” Political officer wonders.
“To be onboard the nuclear submarine wearing normal naval uniform. Strictly forbidden.”
“By whom?”
“Submarine Radiation Security bulletin.”
“But those are orders from the Northern fleet head political officer!”
“Well SRSB was signed by the fleet admiral personally.”
“Where’s your political officer?”
“Fuck if I know. Watch, please lead this gentleman to the political officer.”
We sit on, hungry, angry, sleepy. Finally we got the message “coming ETA 5 min”.
Well here he is. Guinding him to Central.
“Why’s your submarine… sticky?” He asks.
And looks suspiciously at the soles of his expensive shoues.
“That’s the special coating, to dampen the hydroacoustic interference.” First officer BSes on the fly. The minister is nonetheless impressed.
“Wait, you walk around the submarine in slipper?”
What else are we supposed to wear on the sub, valenki?
“Can I wear my shoes here?”
Fuck no, put’em off and walk in socks. Asshole.
“Of course, it’s absolutely okay,” someone of the HQ officers replies.
“What would you like to see?” Captain asks. “Maybe reactor compartment of a missile system?”
“You know, guys in the Navy HQ in Moscow (Guys. In Russian Navy HQ in Moscow. Do you also have Helene there?) told me you have a sauna and a pool. Is that true?”
“It is,” The captain’s face hardens.”We have both. And also gym, solarium and a recreation section.”
“Can I look at it? And what compartment is this, by the way?”
“Compartment eighteen,” Captain says. “Now please proceed to the bulkhead.”
“Into the nineteen?” Foreign minister decides to show off his Math skills.
“Yes, exactly.”
They move on to the compartment eight.
“Is this twentieth?”
“No, that’s eighth.”
“Is the nineteenth last on this ship?”
“No, its number sixteen.”
“And seventeen on the other end?” Minister still tries to apply logic.
“No, it’s fifteen. And number seventeen is in thenose, between number one and two.”
“How do you remember all that?” Minister wanders.
Yeah, we also have reactors, turbines, evaporators, diesel generators, compressors, high, medium and low pressure air system (three sets of controls for each), hydraulics (two sets of controls), diving and floating system (three sets of controls), various fire extinguishing systems,  missile launch system, radio and electronics equipment, torpedo bay and a whole bunch of other stuff. We also have a special water pump that pumps the warm water from the galley to warm up the balancing float so that this float won’t freeze and we won’t subsequently sink while intaking the air underwater. And a crosshead. We also have a crosshead. All six of them. Sure, totally hard to remember the compartments order.
In short he spent like 30 minutes on board. Left totally satisfied. Didn’t even bother looking at the destroyer.
We returned to base on Sunday. With shutting down the MPP and all the other stuff we decided to stay on board: it’s several hours before the new service day anyway. Yeah, you won’t believe it but we’ve drunk vodka and ethanol right on the sub (we allowed ourselves to do that ashore sometimes).
I feel sympathy for the prostitudes ever since: now I know what they feel.
[http://s015.radikal.ru/i333/1509/76/f10609558772.jpg]