Free Kirov by John Schettler

keep his nose in his work or he would get worse. This
was Orlov, a big, brooding, intolerant presence on the ship, quick to lord it
over any man junior in the ranks, yet oddly quiet and deferring around senior
officers.
    Karpov
had seen an able confederate in the man, and often foisted off the unpleasant
matters of the ship’s discipline on Orlov. So it was no surprise when he handed
the Chief Nikolin’s iPod with a disapproving look on his face. “Mister Nikolin
can’t hear anything on his radio. Perhaps he is deaf listening to his rock and
roll.”
    Orlov
responded with a sneering smile, and slipped the iPod into his pocket, giving
the Communications Officer a hard-faced look.
    The
Admiral noticed the incident, but overlooked it for the moment, his thoughts
elsewhere where he sat in the command chair. The gray ice fog seemed to close
in around the ship, isolating it, smothering it, choking off air and life. Leonid
Volsky struggled to clear his mind and come to grips with the situation, and soon
the claustrophobic feeling he had, drifting slowly forward through the frozen
mist, his ship almost blind and deaf, prompted him to act.
    “If
you gentlemen can keep your heads about you,” he said to his two senior
officers, “I’m going to see the doctor. My head is killing me!” He slid off his
command chair, and shuffled past Orlov, tapping his pocket. “I’ll take that,”
he said quietly, and the chief handed him Nikolin’s iPod. “Let the matter go,
Chief,” said Volsky. “The men are a little bewildered at the moment.” He would
make it a point to return the device to Nikolin later.
    “Very
well, sir,” said Orlov, and the Admiral was piped off the bridge as he went
below.
    Karpov
gave Orlov a knowing glance. “Gone to see the wizard,” he said. He was
referring to the ship’s chief medical officer, Dmitri Zolkin,a big,
warm hearted and amiable man, well suited to his role as physician and
psychiatrist aboard Kirov . He was a healer in every respect, and one who
knew a man’s psychological health had everything to do with the condition of
his body. His remedies were many and varied, and sometimes would include along
quiet talk over a cold beer, which might do more to set a man straight than
anything he could inject with a needle or force down his throat with a pill.
    Zolkin
could take a man’s soul right inside him through the portals of those open
brown eyes, and give it back to him in the warmest smile anyone had ever seen
beneath his ruddy red cheeks. The ship’s crew loved him, and the officers
thought of him as a big brother in whom they could confide their deepest
troubles. Like a great father confessor priest, he held them all in the palm of
his hand, keeping every confidence and dispensing as much wisdom as he did
medication from the ship’s infirmary where he held forth with the official
ship’s mascot, the gentle green tabby, Gretchko the cat.
    When
the Admiral arrived at the sick bay two crew members were just leaving the
doctor's office, their heads lightly bandaged where they had apparently
sustained minor injuries from the blast wave that had recently shaken the ship.
They stiffened to attention, saluting the Admiral as he went through the door,
then rushed back to their posts, casting a wary glance over their shoulders and
wondering what was happening. They had experienced the concussion of the
explosion, seen the odd effects in the ocean and sky around them, and although
they still stood at action stations, no order to continue the exercises had
been forthcoming.
    “Leonid,”
said the doctor. He had been on a first name basis with the Admiral for years
now, ever since they met and became good friends at the naval college, over
twenty years ago. Zolkin smiled, his eyes alight, drying his hands on a towel
near his first aid station as the Admiral came through the door. “Don't worry
about the crew,” he said. “Just a few bumps and bruises here and there; nothing
to be concerned