Kirov Saga: Altered States (Kirov Series) Page 2

  “This is a good plan,” said Kamenski. “But will the engineers aboard Kazan know what to do?”

  “I have some well trained men over there. They can initiate the maintenance procedure easily enough, though controlling it is another matter. I think I would need to be here aboard Kirov when we attempt to use one of these new rods.”

  “So that leaves Kazan’s shift to the roll of the dice,” said Fedorov.

  “Perhaps,” said Dobrynin. “Yet this time I have a plan, Mister Fedorov. I thought that I might be able to use the recording of our last successful forward shift and extract that data. It will tell the engineers aboard Kazan what I did by way of adjustments to the reaction to produce a safe shift home. This is by no means a sure thing. They will not hear it as I do, but it would be like a template of a proper shift, telling them when to adjust the power, the speed, and how to respond to flux events. I cannot guarantee anything, but it may work.”

  Volsky sat with that, thinking. “So we give them a kind of road map home in the data and hope they get there. That is very risky, but I do not see any other alternative. Yes, I agree that you will be best placed here to break in these new control rods. Who knows where we will end up? Everything about this entire affair has been one surprise after another. Something tells me that fate may have a few more twists and turns ahead for us. That strange balloon was one thing. What do you make of it, Mister Fedorov?”

  “It could have been a weather balloon, sir, or just a simple observation balloon.”

  “You are hearing radio signals now?”

  “Yes sir, which means we have advanced beyond the era of simple telegraphy, though that is still in use in modern times. The presence of AM and FM signals is very telling.”

  “Well, where are we?”

  “We have picked up Japanese and Chinese stations—a lot of ship to ship traffic, and some signals that could be coded messages on a military channel. Chekov has been on duty for the last two hours to translate as he can speak Japanese. Nikolin is listening for English. We have no firm dates yet, but I believe this is the early1940s.”

  “How can you know this?”

  “We received a transmission with what appeared to be a news feed out of Russia. I thought I heard the announcer speak of June 1940, but we got interference at that point. It came back and spoke of Orenburg and the war on the Volga. Then we lost it until the station signed off as the Soviet States of Siberia.”

  “Very strange,” said Volsky.

  “Then there was another clue, sir—music. We picked up a station in Manila playing the music of an artist known as Tommy Dorsy, a song called ‘I’ll Never Smile Again.’ It was announced as being in the number one spot this week and I checked that ship’s library. It released in June of 1940 and was 12 weeks in the number one spot.” He said that with a very disturbed look on his face, so obvious that it prompted the Admiral to prod him with humor.

  “Don’t look so glum, Mister Fedorov. If this music does not suit your taste, perhaps Nikolin can share his files with you.”

  “It’s not that, sir. Don’t you realize what this means?”

  “Yes, yes, it means we are back in the soup again, and likely to run afoul of the Japanese Navy if we linger here.”

  “That is the least of my concerns at the moment, sir. If this is 1940 as I suspect, then we are all in grave danger here, mortal danger, though it may not be from the Japanese fleet.”

  “I don’t understand. Japan did not enter the war until December of 1941, or August of that year after our meddling. That is fifteen to eighteen months from now. There is no reason to assume they would be hostile. They would probably assume we were a British warship out of Hong Kong.”

  “But sir…It’s not that. This situation is very unusual. Until the journey to 1908 we have always shifted to the 1940s at a point beyond our last visit there. If this is mid 1940, then that has changed and we are now here before the time of our first arrival. A year from now what happens in the North Atlantic? We were supposed to appear there, and that would not be possible if we are already here. So we cannot remain here. It is imperative that we leave before the time we first displaced here in July of 1941. Otherwise…Well I think something will have to happen to us if we remain.”

  “Happen to us…That has a rather ominous tone to it, Mister Fedorov, but I believe I understand what you are saying now. There cannot be two ships, two crews, and heaven forbid two of me! So before the date of our first arrival here we must be elsewhere or suffer the consequences of that paradox.”

  “Correct, sir. Remember that list of names Volkov got his hands on? There were no records on any of those men when we arrived at Vladivostok. It was as if they never existed.”

  “And we could be added to that list if we remain here before the date of our first arrival.”

  Chapter 2

  Kamenski had been listening closely and now he added his thought on the matter. “What you say is very interesting, Mister Fedorov, assuming this is the same meridian of time we were on before.”

  That gave Fedorov pause. “What do you mean, sir?”

  “I mean that much has happened to the world, and most of it our doing. This message you say you received—the Soviet States of Siberia? I have never heard of such a place. If something happened in 1908 to change the history, then the 1940s we find ourselves in now may not be the same as those you visited earlier.”

  Fedorov took a moment to absorb that, but he realized Kamenski was on to something here. This was a time subject to the dictates of all the history that had come before it, and if Karpov did do something in 1908 to change the course of events…

  “But I do not see how that is possible at the moment,” he said. Wouldn’t the history have to remain cohesive enough to give rise to the building of this ship? That would have to occur for us to even be here at this moment. It’s maddening, sir.”

  “Yes it is,” said Kamenski. “Other men have gone mad over it—the Siren’s Song of time—yet we dare to sit here and listen, and it seems we have been bold enough to hum along as well! Remember that we remain loose variables at large in history until all these events reach some definite conclusion. We undertook the dangerous mission to try and reach the ship in 1908 and remove it from that time, and that we have done. But the job is not yet complete. We are still a needle in Mother Time’s finger as she darns her dress, and as long as we are here the possibility of changing everything that follows this moment still exists. That said, we must not be surprised to find that all the days between 1908 and this moment may have already changed, and that the world we sail in now is not the same one we left. I do not know if we can untangle that knot just yet, but at least we have a year before we would ever have to face that paradox you raise, which is plenty of time to shift elsewhere.”

  “Try to verify that news feed you heard,” said Volsky, “and nail down our exact position in time. That would help. You must be able to find out what band BBC was broadcasting on. See if you can listen in on that, Mister Fedorov.”

  “I’ve listened on shortwave 6195 and 9740, sir, but atmospheric conditions are not good at the moment. We are also detecting jamming. The Japanese naval facility at Sasebo is uncomfortably close, and if we were reported as an unidentified warship someone is likely to investigate.” The implications were not lost on anyone present.

  “Here we go again,” said Volsky somewhat dejectedly. “They investigate, we try to remain silent and undetected, they get pushy and then we are forced to defend ourselves. The next thing we know we are at war with Japan. Well, I think we should contact Kazan at once and make arrangements to get those spare control rods over here. I believe we must put Chief Dobrynin’s plan into action as soon as possible.”

  “Right sir, but there’s one more thing.”

  “Yes, Mister Fedorov?”

  “If this works, I very much doubt that we’ll both end up shifting to the same place in time, sir. In fact, I would guess that the odds on that would be very slim. I believe t
he two rods will definitely perform differently as the Chief suggests.”

  “Then we may lose contact with Kazan altogether if we do this?” Volsky was obviously troubled.

  “Yes sir, and Kazan may find itself adrift in time even as Kirov has been. Captain Gromyko is a good man from what I have seen, but Kazan is a powerful weapon, perhaps even more powerful than Kirov now. We have seen what a temptation that has posed.”

  “Yes, he will have to listen to the Siren Song just as we have. Well, I do not think I can put the wax back in his ears, Mister Fedorov. He already knows the truth, even if his crew remains oblivious of our real situation. Everything we propose here now is a grave gamble, and perilous to even contemplate, but we must decide. Either we stay together here, and that will mean we are the most powerful force in the sea if this is the 1940s again. Or else we part ways, and each of us vanishes into the ether again to points unknown.”

  Rodenko returned just as the Admiral was finishing, his face betraying news held in hand. “Whatever you decide, we must be quick about it, sir. Gromyko called to report fast screw noise off to the south and on a bearing to intercept our last reported position. We have no long range radar returns from the south yet, but Kazan’s sonar can actually hear things at a much greater range than the Fregat system.”

  “Then the contacts are still well over the horizon?”

  “Yes sir, but something is heading our way, and in somewhat of a hurry. I believe they may be fast destroyers or patrol boats. Their speed was estimated at just over 30 knots.”

  “How far away are they?”

  “Their sonar man is still listening, but he thinks the range is at least 150 kilometers at the moment. Assuming they are gaining on us at 16 knots, then they could be in visual range in about four hours.”

  “We may not be ready to initiate another shift in that time.”

  Dobrynin spoke up, offering to do what he could to get things moving again. “It will take about three hours to install both rods. I see no reason why we cannot make an attempt shortly after that.”

  “Very well,” said Volsky. “Do what you can, Chief. I will inform Gromyko of the plan.”

  * * *

  Hours later Volsky was weary, though unwilling to take any rest, except for a brief time when he went below to the sick bay to visit with Doctor Zolkin. There the two men had spoken briefly of what they were now attempting to do, and as always, the Admiral sought the council of his close friend and long time confidant.

  “So there you have it, Dmitri, we are about to pull the plug and go down the drain again. We hope to move forward this time, but we could slip into the past again. None of this has ever been certain, and we have never used these new control rods before.”

  “This has been some vacation,” Zolkin joked.

  “The problem is this…If I allow this, the two ships may be separated. One could end up in 2021, the other in 1990, or 1960. We just don’t know. In fact, Fedorov is of the opinion that it is almost certain that the two ships will not shift to the same time period.”

  “He’s a sharp young man. We owe him a great deal.”

  “We owe you a great deal, my friend. I have learned that it was you who gave Fedorov your ear when we were in the Atlantic and Karpov dismissed him from the bridge. You told him to return here for his prescription at 18:00 hours, and it was that happenstance that allowed us to get out of Karpov’s little trap here.”

  “Ah, yes, I had forgotten that.”

  “So you see, if not for your open heart, siding with Fedorov that day, we may have never been able to take back the ship.”

  “Oh I think that the crew would have sided with you in the end, Leonid. Don’t make me out to be a hero or saint. I have too many sins on my soul for either.”

  “Yet it was a matter of seconds in the balance there, and you were the lever on all of that. Then it all comes full circle and Karpov is again on the bridge ready to destroy the entire Japanese Navy in 1908—until you showed up.”

  “Now, now—”

  “Yes, Dmitri, I will call you a hero. You stepped onto the bridge and faced Karpov down, the first good man to stand up and do something.”

  “Yes, and I might have died for it if his aim had been better.”

  “That said, fate saw you at the heart of both these events, and so your part in all this was very significant. Would Samsonov have stood up as he did without your words, or seeing what had happened to you? All I can do is thank you for what you did.”

  “Well I should have acted sooner. Rodenko came to me earlier with his reservations about what the Captain was doing. I told him I would back him up if need be, but I left the matter with him. In all truth, Leonid, I believed we were marooned in 1908 just as we all did. That control rod was not on the ship and I could see no volcanoes about, so there we were, and likely to remain there unless Karpov used another nuclear weapon. Still, I believed Rodenko should make the decision as Starpom. I wanted to give him that choice first.”

  “That was wise, Dmitri. Well…what do I do? Should I go forward with this plan, with the risk that we will be separated from Kazan?”

  “What else is to be done?”

  Volsky hesitated, thinking, his eyes searching, head inclined as if he were listening to something far away. “I know what Karpov was trying to do,” he said at last. “He tried to argue it briefly when I called with the order to stand down here. The man believed he had the power to prevent the rise of the Japanese Empire that eventually led to the war in the Pacific. Fedorov tells me that war killed twenty million people, so this is a hard nut to chew on. I am sitting here with Kirov and Kazan. If we thought we were powerful before, with are twice as strong now. I realize that with these two ships I could do what Karpov was trying to accomplish. We now believe it is June of 1940. That means the Japanese have not yet launched their war plan, but I realized that, if I so desired it, I could stop them right here. I could make sure no Japanese troop ships ever reach their destinations, and there is nothing they could do to oppose me with the power at my command.”

  “So now the devil sits on your shoulder,” said Zolkin. “Yes, I suppose you could do something, but it would mean you would have to sink quite a few ships and kill thousands of more in the process.”

  “To save millions,” said Volsky. “Is that why we are here, I wondered? Is that why Rod-25 delivered us to this time and place?”

  “Leonid…This same bird had been on our plate ever since that first accident with Orel. It has always been a question of whether we should intervene or not to shape the days ahead. Fedorov, god bless him, was trying to put the eggs back in the nest, but I think it is far too late for that now. Save twenty million lives? Yes, it sounds like a noble cause. But we never fought with any of that in mind. I think we just fought to save our own lives, as any man would.”

  Volsky nodded. “I said as much to the men on the bridge. We were here, then one thing led to another. War is war, so I am not surprised that the moment we were discovered the other side started taking shots at us. This will happen again unless—”

  “Unless you go find your island, eh?”

  “I suppose so. Yes, we need some mysterious island where I can hide Kirov and Kazan away from the woes of the world. I thought I had cut a deal with that British Admiral once, then we vanished again. It was Rod-25, of course, but we did not know that at the time.”

  “Well, do not waste your time looking for that, my friend.” Zolkin shook his head now. “No matter where we go, the world will find us. We will stick out like a loose thread in a well hemmed dress. Yes, it will be obvious to anyone who encounters us that time has slipped a stitch. We can jump from one place to another with these control rods, but one day they will fail us, and leave us somewhere, and on that day we decide all this, for good or for ill. Now, however, if you can take us forward to our own time where we belong, then I think you must try.”

  “Of course….But I am not so sure that world will be the same, Dmitri. Fedorov has been he
aring odd things on the radio here. He gathers that the history between 1908 and this time has played out quite differently.”

  “Oh? How so?”

  “The revolution seems to have torn Russia apart. In the last hour he has heard radio transmissions from Russia and they call themselves the Soviet Siberian State. There was something about a war being fought on the Volga.”

  “On the Volga? Then the Germans have already invaded Russia?”

  “We do not know yet. The news has been spotty. I have him trying to find a BBC broadcast now. In any case, I am thinking that if the china is cracked this badly here, what will the plate look like in another eighty-one years?”

  “I see what you mean.”

  “Yes, and suppose we do try to go home, but it has happened that events were changed so radically that this ship was never built! After all, the original Kirov class missile cruisers were a product of the Cold War. That rests on the outcome of this war, World War Two, so if things change here…”

  “I see what you mean. This is very puzzling, Leonid.”

  “Fedorov thinks that our very presence here is proof that Kirov is built, but Mister Kamenski has plopped another fish into the soup. He has intimated that this world, the air we breathe at this moment, may be a completely different meridian of time—an altered reality that is the product of all our meddling. In that case then we have shifted farther away from home than ever before, even if we are closer to 2021 than we were in 1908. If we have slipped through some indefinable barrier and entered a new reality here and the future that progresses from this point may not be the same as that which built this ship.…Well it is frightening to think of this.”

  Zolkin had a grave look on his face. “I think we have been doing this all along,” he said. “Remember when we first reached Vladivostok and Volkov got hold of that list of casualties?”