Paradox Hour

by John Schettler

  The result was the Kaiser Wilhelm. At 35,400 tons, it was over 10,000 tons heavier than the Panzershiff, and with better armor and guns. Yet the designers had labored to give the ship the best speed possible, with four high-pressure Wagner boilers, which had a distinctive sound when they were fully fired for high speed performance. The engineers had come to call them “Wagner’s Girls” when they were singing, and Chief Engineer, Otto Kremel, was fond of putting on a recording of the famous composer’s Ride of the Valkyries when the ship ran at high speed. Designed to achieve over 33 knots, the ship had demonstrated the ability to run at 36 knots in trials, an amazing feat for a ship with a displacement equal to British battleships of the Revenge Class, which labored to achieve top speeds of 21 to 23 knots.

  Kaiser was all of 840 feet long to achieve that speed, a third longer than Revenge and with a wider beam as well. Yet that gain in speed had come at the expense of both armor and firepower. While the old Revenge Class had eight 15-inch guns, Kaiser had six, and while Revenge had heavy 330mm belt armor, the protection on Kaiser maxed out at only 190mm. This had led some designers to christen the ship Ohne Panzer Quatsch, disparaging its lack of armor.

  As a battlecruiser design, the ship was more comparable to the British Renown Class, where it could match or better that ship in almost every category. Kapitan Werner Heinrich had been given command, and he was well schooled in cruiser operations, having served under August Thiele aboard the heavy cruiser Lutzow before this posh assignment. Now he was set on putting the whispered comments about his ship to rest. As he stood on the bridge that day, he was proud to be the vanguard of the fleet flagship, Hindenburg, and when the order came to close on the enemy contact and engage, his blood was up.

  Now we get our chance, he thought, staring through his field glasses at the smoke ahead. Goeben has been busy this morning. One of those hot Stuka pilots has already got a hit, and now we’ll come in like a shark to the blood. The British don’t have anything here that can match my firepower, and I can outrun any ship in their fleet. But we won’t be running this time, we’ll be hunting! Kaiser Wilhelm is the best ship I’ve ever set foot on, and now I get my chance to earn my keep. We were out of the action earlier in the Med, keeping a good eye on the Goeben. This time the ship will be put to its proper use, as an advance guard and scout ship, a hunter out to find and hurt the enemy. And my 15-inch guns will do exactly that.

  “Ready for action, Schirmer?” he said to his Chief Gunnery officer.

  “Ready sir.”

  “Good, because I intend to fight here, in spite of these orders to disengage if the British attempt to close the range. Let them try. Word is that they have three cruisers, but it is more likely that we’ll see those pesky destroyers turned loose on us.”

  “Let’s see how they like our guns, sir.”

  “All ahead full!” Heinrich wanted to get over the horizon and get a good look at that smoke as soon as possible. It was not long before his watchmen made the sighting, a large ship, possibly a carrier, and burning at the bow. Then the scene clouded over with heavy haze, and Heinrich knew what was happening.

  They’re making smoke with the destroyers, he thought. They’re running, but they don’t have the speed to match me. This ship is a whole new evolution at sea. Those British carriers could always outrun our heavy ships, but no longer. Now we close the range here with each passing minute, and let us see if they send anything our way to challenge us.

  * * *

  That challenge was inevitable. The Royal Navy was not about to allow one of its principle assets to go down here without a fight. Of the five destroyers escorting Glorious that day, three turned after making smoke as ordered, and now they were set to make a brave charge in the hopes of discouraging the oncoming enemy raider. Icarus was out in front, commanded by Lieutenant Commander Colin Douglas Maud, a barrel-chested man with a heavy black beard and his favorite blackthorn walking stick always at hand, which he tapped on the deck whenever they made their torpedo run.

  Maud’s fate had been strangely entwined with the long odyssey that had brought Kirov into this war. His ship had been in Force P under Admiral Wake-Walker, en-route to the North Cape area to attack German airfields at Kirkenes and Petsamo, though they never got there. Later, he would steam with Admiral Tovey in a hunt for another fast German raider, as that story once played out. Yet the raider was not a German ship, but a strange vessel with weapons so advanced that it managed to hold the entire Royal Navy at bay for weeks in the North Atlantic. Maud’s ship had been screening Tovey’s battleships when the rockets came in, weapons unlike anything he had ever seen. Icarus was hit and sank that day, putting Maud and his crew into the water, along with his beloved bulldog Winnie.

  Rescued at sea, Maud was eventually given command of another destroyer, the Intrepid, a ship sailing right off his starboard bow at that moment. As fate would have it, he would meet the ship that killed Icarus and Winnie again in the Mediterranean, and lead Intrepid on a desperate attack to try and even the score. He was lucky enough to survive that encounter this second time, but not lucky enough to get his vengeance. But his story was not finished. A German U-Boat Kapitan would have something more to do with his fate, one Werner Czygan aboard U-118. It was his stealthy web of mines that would catch a fly off the Coast of Spain, a ship named Duero.

  It seemed like a small thing, a lowly tramp steamer hitting a mine laid by a hungry, frustrated U-boat Kapitan, but it was the night that changed the entire course of history—not only of the war, but for every day that followed. For a very special passenger was aboard the ship that night, a drifter, indigent laborer, and a virtual nobody that had been taken on as cheap muscle in the fire room a few weeks earlier. His name was Gennadi Orlov.

  While serving with Force H, Intrepid came to the rescue of that stricken ship, and Maud became very suspicious about a couple Eastern Europeans aboard, and particularly with the man named Orlov.

  But all that had not yet happened. It was action that had began in a frantic naval chase between July 28 and August 8 of 1941, days that had not arrived yet. And it was action that might never occur now, for this world was strangely altered, with whole nations like Russia fragmented into warring states. Even so, details in the picture this history was painting held true, and Maud was aboard Icarus again. Yet the ship that had sent his destroyer to the bottom in one telling of these events to come, was no longer the mortal enemy of the Royal Navy. Instead it sailed as an ally.

  Perhaps Maud would never be fated to meet Orlov like that now, though that encounter was a crucial link in the chain of events that now saw Kirov here in this world. If his keen eye had not spied that Glock Pistol at Orlov’s side, then he would not have sent the man to Gibraltar so British intelligence could have a look at him. There Orlov would meet and be interrogated by a man who was a double agent with the KGB, and as a result of that, he would be sent east through the med on a Turkish cargo ship, transferring to a Soviet trawler in the Black Sea.

  Orlov’s sojourn east, in search of his grandmother, eventually evolved into a hunt for the man who had caused her harm, Commissar Molla. It took the Chief to a place called Kizlyar, where Molla’s men picked him up and sent him to a prison near Baku. Along the way he left clues in the history, particularly a journal note that a very keen eyed navigator used to find him. If Orlov had not gone east like that, then Fedorov would have never made the journey west along the Siberian rail line to try and rescue him and return him to his own time. He would have never found the back stairway of the Inn at Ilanskiy, and never met young Mironov, Sergei Kirov. It was that meeting, and the careless whisper of warning in Mironov’s ear, that saw this world now shattered in pieces, altered states, skewed history that was becoming more and more unrecognizable with each turn of Kirov’s screws in the turbulent waters of this war.

  All that depended on the man now standing on the bridge of the Destroyer Icarus, Colin Douglas Maud. Or was it Werner Czygan aboard U-118, and his decision to alter his tactics and la
y those mines instead of hunting with his torpedoes? It was that choice that sent Icarus and Maud to the Duero in the first place. Who could say where the seed of causality was really hidden in the garden? Time was tormented by these circuitous loops and changes, like unseasonable rain that caused things to grow and bloom that were never meant to be. It remained to be seen what part Maud would now be asked to play in this hour, here in May of 1941, long before he ever lived out those events that so altered the history of the world—events that he might never see now.

  Out there on the grey horizon, another shadow loomed, the tall mainmast and conning tower of Kaiser Wilhelm becoming more prominent with each passing minute. Maud looked at it with narrow eyed respect. He knew his ships were no match for a fast German raider, but here he was, and with the fate of a fleet carrier riding in the balance.

  Glorious had turned south, he knew, and now we have to buy her the time she needs to make good her escape. We’re not likely to hurt that ship out there with our deck guns. They’ll have us in range long before our guns can engage. The only thing we’ve got that matters here are those nice fat 21-inch torpedoes. Between the three of us we’ve all of thirty fish aboard, and that will make one mean spread for that enemy ship to avoid out there. But to launch torpedoes that will have any chance of posing a real threat, we have to get in close. The range of our torpedoes is only 5000 meters, and between here and there, it’s all guts and glory.

  “Well lads,” he said, tapping the deck three times with his stout blackthorn walking stick. “Now we earn our grog. Make ready on the torpedo mounts, and increase to full ahead.”

  * * *

  Kapitan Heinrich smiled when he saw the British destroyers begin their impudent charge. It was just as he expected. Technically the enemy was now attempting to close with him, and his orders stated that he should disengage and steer 300, but he saw no reason to do so at the moment.

  “Schirmer, do you think you can hit one of those with our main batteries?”

  “It would make for good target practice, sir.”

  “Then clear your throat. It’s high time we gave the guns a little work.”

  “Very good sir! With your permission, I will open fire immediately.”

  Seconds later Kaiser’s forward twin turret opened the engagement, the salvo meant to test the range calculated by the directors. Schirmer was watching closely, and when the big guns fired, he waited for the rounds to fall, seeing they were short, but much closer than he expected.

  “Fire Bruno!” he said sharply, knowing that those guns were set on the same range as his spotting salvo. If he was lucky, the simple speed of the two opposing sides would close that range just enough to make this shot interesting.

  And he was lucky that day. He saw the two rounds fall right astride the formation of enemy ships, so close to one destroyer that the tall plumes of seawater drenched the ship’s foredeck, and shell splinters riddled the side of its hull. Now Schirmer knew he had the range, and he quickly gave orders to account for nothing more than the range that would be gobbled up by two ships closing on one another at nearly 36 knots each.

  “Elevation down three! Ready…. Fire!”

  This time both turrets fired at once, sending the same shell weight that Bismarck might throw from her own forward guns. Kaiser Wilhelm was no ship to be trifled with, and when the second salvo fell, the British learned this the hard way.

  “A hit! My god! We got them at just under 30,000 meters!” Schirmer turned to his Kapitan, eyes alight, elated to have scored his first ever hit with this new ship, and what a hit it was.

  Impulsive was the unlucky ship that day, struck aft with such force that the shell nearly broke the ship in two. The only ship ever to bear that name in the Royal Navy, she had sustained a rogue hit that would leave her crippled and wallowing in the sea. They saw the remaining two British destroyers break formation, and begin a wild, zig-zag approach, tacking to port and starboard to make themselves much more difficult targets. Schirmer knew he would probably not be so lucky again with his main guns, but in a matter of minutes he could bring his secondary batteries into play, six twin 15cm, 5.9-inch guns, the very same as those used by Bismarck and Scharnhorst, and he could get four of those in to action at 23,000 meters. After that, the eight dual purpose 4.1-inch guns would have to wait until the range fell inside 17,000 meters. That battery alone matched all the guns on those destroyers, and now the thirty torpedoes Lieutenant Commander Maud had hoped to call on had been reduced to twenty.

  Yet the British persisted in their brave charge. Schirmer shook his head, realizing the maneuver was desperate, though he gave the men on those destroyers his grudging respect.

  The whims of chance, however, had put Mother Time in a most uncomfortable position, for the two ships remaining had both played an important role in the long wake of the story that was still unfolding with this action. Of the two ships, Icarus was perhaps the most vulnerable in her eyes, for that ship had already died according to her ledger, and to find it here was the first sprouting root of the paradox that was slowly growing with each passing second.

  Icarus had died. It was killed by Kirov, but Captain Maud must live, and Intrepid must live with him, or Orlov would never be found that day in 1942 when Duero hit Werner Czygan’s mine.

  Yet all this rested on a thin foundation, the assumption that this altered world was the same one that Kirov was destined to visit that very year, in just a few months time. How could that be possible? The ship was already there, and the world Kirov displaced to looked nothing like this one. For Werner Czygan and Lieutenant Commander Maud to matter at all, Kirov would have to have been chased across the Med by Rodney and Nelson in 1942. But how could that happen now with Kirov an ally of the Royal Navy?

  Time was in a strange position as these events twisted slowly back upon themselves, like a mother hen fretting over eggs that had not yet been laid. On the one hand, Icarus and Intrepid, and the men aboard them, were crucial links in the line of causality that saw Kirov now at sea in these very waters. On the other hand, they seemed entirely immaterial, as those events were not likely to ever occur. Yet their fate would count heavily on one ledger, the reckoning of the account of one Captain Wells, and the ship he now sailed—HMS Glorious.

  Chapter 5

  Glorious was a ship of ghosts, men who had once been doomed, their names written into the ledger of time by the hand of death, and the 11-inch shells of Scharnhorst and Gneisenau. Now, like the ship itself, they were living second lives. Only 38 of the men aboard had been destined to live, all the rest were walking dead, zombies, gifted with life only because of a brief moment’s delay in the telegraph room that had spared one Lieutenant Commander Christopher Hayward Wells, now the spectral Captain of this ship of fated men.

  As he stood on the bridge that day, anxiously watching the damage crews fighting the fire on the bow, Wells had a strange inkling that fate was still scratching at his leg, jealous, hungry, and resentful of every breath he took. He could not know that he had been destined to die, but he could feel it, like a cold draft at the edge of an open door to a cellar. He could feel it.

  Lieutenant Commander Lovell was on the bridge that day, as was his good friend Robert Woodfield, and both men seemed edgy as well. The situation they now found themselves in seemed all too familiar, for this was the second time the ship had encountered fast German raiders at sea, and few ships ever get second chances when they came under enemy guns. Glorious already had more than her fair share.

  The ship had just celebrated its 26th birthday. Originally designed as a battlecruiser, along with her sister ship Courageous, she was laid down on the 1st of May in 1915, built by Harland and Wolff, a company that had recently launched another pair of doomed sister ships, the Titanic and Britannic. One sunk on her maiden voyage, and the other was soon lost in the Aegean in 1916 after striking a mine. And so the shipwrights in the know had whispered that a curse was on the keels of ships laid down in that yard, and no good would come to any ship
built there.

  Commissioned in 1917, Glorious and Courageous both seemed to prove the rumors wrong, leading charmed lives in the beginning. They both fought at the Battle of Heligoland Bight that same year, when it was discovered that the simple act of firing their guns was sufficient to warp and damage the lightly armored deck structure. So the two ships went into fleet reserve, and for a time Glorious served only as a gun turret operations training ship before someone in the Royal Navy decided the two ships might be easily converted to a new role as aircraft carriers.

  Just after her conversion in 1930, Glorious had another brush with fate when she collided with the French liner SS Florida in a heavy fog off Gibraltar. The bow of the carrier plunged right into the liner’s port side, and the two ships seemed locked in the grip of death, though both survived. Her bow was crumpled beyond recognition, but only one man lost his life aboard Glorious in that collision. Florida took the worst of the damage, and lost 32 souls that day.

  The accident started the whispered rumors again. Some said the ship had escaped the curse because her conversion to a carrier had introduced so many changes that she was really not the same ship any longer. Others argued that was foolish, she was still HMS Glorious, and that keel had still come from Harland and Wolff. When HMS Courageous met her sad end on the 17th of November, 1940, at the hands of U-29, they nodded their heads, knowing it was only a matter of time now before Glorious followed her sister ship to the grave.