Paradox Hour

by John Schettler

  “Very well, Doctor. Carry on.”

  Volsky folded his arms, clearly not happy to have these officers disabled and unfit for duty in the midst of combat. He realized again what a temperamental thing a ship could be at sea. At the moment, everything seemed in order, at least mechanically, and they had no reports of flux in the reactors, but these events, particularly Lenkov, had caused a great deal of alarm. He could feel it in himself, a rising sense of dread, as if some great danger was upon them, though he could not see what it was.

  “Fedorov? Any thoughts?

  “We can proceed with the torpedo launch as soon as Velichko arrives.”

  “Not that—this sound. What is going on?”

  Fedorov pinched the bridge of his nose. “I do not know sir, but it may be as I have explained it earlier—we simply do not belong here, and these effects may be related to the strange phasing events we’ve seen. I can speak of that with firsthand experience.” He smiled, looking at his right hand to be certain it was still there, then became serious again.

  “Admiral,” he continued. “Up until now we have assumed that these effects were directed at us, coming to us like bad weather. Yet now I suggest another alternative—that we are the source. The ship itself may be causing these effects.”

  “How so?”

  “I can give you no technical explanation,” said Fedorov, “but we do have those two control rods aboard, and we know they contain material mined near Tunguska. They were also stored very near that thing Orlov found, and so one may have affected the other. This is all speculation, but if I am correct, then we could be having an effect on the space-time continuum. We are an entity capable of displacing in time, a slippery fish, as Director Kamenski might describe it. Everything else around us is native to this time, but we are not, and we are capable of moving… elsewhere.”

  “That doesn’t sound very comforting,” said Volsky. “They may not make good Vodka elsewhere.”

  Again the edge of a smile tugged at Fedorov’s lips, but the situation was too grave to take any solace from humor.

  “Yet we are not the only slippery fish here,” said Volsky. “What about Gromyko on Kazan? What about the Argos Fire? We should contact them to see if they also report any odd effects.”

  “Yes,” said Fedorov. “Why didn’t I think of that earlier? I’m sorry sir… This situation with Lenkov…”

  “We’ll have Nikolin put in the call,” said the Admiral. “But what does this mean, Fedorov? We are affecting space and time? Could this be why men in the future gave warning of our ship?”

  “I have considered that, sir. We thought all this was accidental in the beginning, until we discovered what Rod-25 was doing. Then our own experience confirmed that we could initiate a time shift at will. Rod-25 was very consistent in selecting out this era when we moved. It did so even when we used it in the test reactor at Vladivostok, and aboard the floating reactor we used to find Orlov.”

  “And with Kazan,” said Volsky. “Yet Dobrynin’s skill was required to manage that. Those ears of his were needed to control everything. With our Chief Engineer disabled, and now Tasarov, this situation is becoming serious. I have considered what you fear may happen come July. Could these be foreshocks to that event?”

  “Possibly,” said Fedorov. “Time knows we cannot remain here if that other ship must arrive. Yet I suppose that all depends on what is really happening, on what time really is.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “Neither do I, Admiral. Kamenski said time may not be what we think it is, and that got me wondering in light of all these odd occurrences.”

  “Well, did the man explain himself? If he knows something more, then we should hear it. And this business concerning these keys is very shady. You say he has such a key, and we also have those two other control rods aboard. So we have not taken out all the trash, Fedorov. These things may be responsible for what we have been experiencing.”

  “Or the ship itself may be responsible,” said Fedorov. “Kirov has been unstable in any time we sailed.”

  “Yet we stayed put for nearly a year here.”

  “Correct, sir. But I am thinking along these lines. Certain metals can take on magnetic properties. When exposed to magnetic fields, even something as simple as a paperclip can become magnetic. What if that applies to our movement through time. I was thinking we may take on some kind of quantum temporal energy, and if that is so, then the ship might be affecting space-time as it moves, perhaps like an ice skater leaving a mark on the ice as they go along. We could be doing that—creating marks and scratches in space-time. We could be causing damage here by our very presence.”

  “That much is certain,” said Volsky. “The men on Graf Zeppelin know it well enough. Here we were plotting how to sink these German battleships, and now this time business again! Then if I follow your logic, you are suggesting that we are making this sound, because of some strange energy the ship acquired while displacing in time?”

  “Yes sir. Think of it like the ship’s hull acquiring a magnetic field as we sail. We have degaussed the hull before to mitigate that. Suppose we are picking up some other kind of energy, on a quantum level. It may have built up over our many shifts in time.”

  “Well, all this is speculation, Fedorov. Degaussing of the ship’s hull is something I can order the next time we make port. Degaussing for this other energy you speak of is something else! We may never grasp what is really happening to us. In the meantime, let us not forget that we have a battle to fight here.”

  Kalinichev interrupted with a sudden report.

  “System malfunction,” he said, and Rodenko was soon at his side at the radar station.

  “What is the problem?”

  “I get no returns on the Fregat system, sir. All contact tracks are void. I can’t even read Invincible on our wake, yet I have no red light. My system still reads green.”

  “Switch to phased array and reboot the Fregat system.”

  “Aye sir. Initializing phased array now.”

  There was no difference. Both systems now reported no contacts around them at all, which immediately drew Volsky and Fedorov to the radar station to see what was happening.

  “Is this a local ship’s problem?” said Volsky. “Is it confined to the electronics?”

  “Mister Nikolin,” said Fedorov. “Activate the aft Tin Man and feed the camera optics to the main viewing screen.”

  “Aye sir. Tin Man active.”

  They all looked up at the screen, expecting to see the tall mainmast and superstructure of Invincible in their wake, half a kilometer behind them. The weather was good, and there was nothing that should have been able to fool the optics of that hi-res camera system.

  But the sea was clear and calm. They had been calmly planning the destruction of the entire German fleet, a feat they might have easily accomplished, until Maxim 17 exerted its unseen hand.

  Fedorov looked at Volsky, and then moved immediately to the weather bridge hatch, intending to have a look with his own eyes. He knew it was a foolish thing to do, as the Tin Man signal was clearly showing the empty sea, but something in him just wanted the confirmation of his own senses, with no digital interface.

  HMS Invincible was gone, and all around the ship, a thick grey haze began to fall like a shroud.

  Part X

  The Uninvited Guest

  “If history starts as a guest list, it has a tendency to end like the memory of a drunken party: misheard, blurred, fragmentary.”

  ― Sarah Churchwell

  Chapter 28

  Admiral Tovey was on the bridge, watching the recent missile fires off Kirov with the same sense of awe and amazement that he had felt when he saw it before. He had seen the ship defend the Suez Canal from incoming bombers on its arrival in the Med, and seen how it fought later against Iachino’s fleet. He still remembered those first moments when he stepped aboard that vessel, like a man setting foot on a phantom ship, a ghost ship, something that should not exis
t, yet something that was clearly there, as hard and substantial as the cold steel under his feet now.

  The missiles had fired, streaking off in the pre-dawn, and soon after the last, he could see a disquieting orange glow on the far horizon. He knew those rockets had found their targets, found ships out there somewhere with their cold precision violence. That’s what the waging of war will become, he thought. It will be no less violent than this war, only more precise, and by extension, more deadly. Here was a single ship, capable of just sitting here in the shadows and destroying each and every German ship that might oppose them.

  In some ways, he felt as though his own fleet flagship was an afterthought in this small task force. Kirov was the king of the sea here, unmatched by anything this era could ever build and commission. Admiral Volsky had told him they had weapons of even greater power, of unimaginable power, and when he said that, one of those haunting memories had emerged in his mind again, a feeling he had seen what the Admiral was describing, something vast, towering over the cold sea like a massive thunderstorm, with lightning on its flanks, red-orange fire above, and a massive veil of steam that seemed a shroud of doom.

  Somewhere out there, his enemy had been found and gored by those rockets. Ships were burning, men were dying, adrift on the sea in the oily blood that was shed by stricken warships in battle. Other Admirals and Captains were staring in shock at the damage inflicted, yet helpless to do anything whatsoever about it. It was a new evolution in naval combat—over the horizon warfare, where a battleship like Kirov fought instead like an aircraft carrier. It had the same striking range of ships like Ark Royal and Illustrious, yet when launched, the missiles never came back. That was the trade off for the precise certainty that every rocket would find its enemy after being fired.

  Kirov killed with deadly sureness. There was no wondering how many salvos it might take to straddle or hit the enemy in the distance. Yet with every round the Russian ship fired, its amazing powers diminished, burning like a candle against the surrounding darkness of this war. It was an amazing windfall to have this ship in the vanguard now—to have Brigadier Kinlan fighting side by side with Wavell and O’Connor in the desert. Yet for how long? This war goes on for years, or so I have learned. How long will we have these doughty knights at our disposal, fighting for King and country, just as I am.

  His inner question was immediately answered, when it seemed a shadow fell over the ship steaming ahead of him, and a strange mist enfolded the ship.

  Tovey perked up, squinting ahead, and reached for the field glasses hanging from the thin leather strap around his neck. He looked, adjusting the lenses, and looked again.

  “Mister Boffin.”

  “Sir.” Boffin was standing the watch on the far side of the weather bridge.

  “Can you spot the Russian ship off our starboard side?”

  “No sir, I thought she had come round to port.”

  “Kindly call up to the mainmast and see if the lookouts have a fix.” Tovey was heading for the hatch to the bridge, even as Fedorov was stepping out a similar hatch on the bridge of Kirov, like two men lost in a painting by M.C. Escher. They were in the same place as before, but something in the ground of the reality around them had shifted in perspective.

  Tovey asked his own radar station if they had any signal on the Russian ship, and was dismayed to learn the screen was clear. What had happened? The watch reported all clear ahead, and there had been no sign of anything amiss—no explosions, nor any sign of distress. The Admiral went immediately to the W/T room to see if they had received anything on the new radio equipment the Russians had given them.

  “Any word from Admiral Volsky?” he said, stepping through the door. The men saluted stiffly, and then Lieutenant Medford shook his head. “No signals of late, sir. The last we had was this notification that they were about to begin hostilities. Still felt bloody strange, sir. I mean, seeing as though there isn’t another ship on any horizon.”

  On any horizon…. Tovey found himself looking about him for a moment, as if some sign or evidence of Kirov would be neatly stacked there in the message trays, a simple explanation for why the ship might be missing. He had learned that something about their propulsion system allowed them to initiate a displacement in time at will. That was, in fact, how they arrived here last June, though the young Captain Fedorov had explained that they were leery of attempting the procedure again.

  Tovey did not understand it, but his common sense was telling him that the Russians must have initiated this procedure—that this was deliberate. Yet if that were so, why wouldn’t they signal their intentions?

  “You are certain there was no message traffic on the Russian radio set?”

  “Quiet as a mouse, sir. No signals since 04:00.”

  “Very well.”

  He started back for the main bridge, clearly disturbed. If there had been no signal, might they have had some emergency involving their mysterious propulsion system? His watchmen reported nothing unusual, and there was no residual sign of smoke from any explosion. Clearly nothing catastrophic had happened ahead of them. They had been no more than half a mile behind the Russian ship, and would have seen or heard any explosion capable of seriously harming the battlecruiser.

  Yet they were gone—gone as though they had never even been there in the first place. That realization fell heavily on him, like a shroud it seemed, and he had a feeling of profound isolation. Invincible was alone on the wide Atlantic now. Both Argos Fire and the unseen Russian submarine had gone off to see to Rodney.

  That thought stopped him short, three crewmen in the passage ahead stiff at attention with arms raised in salute. But Tovey simply turned about and headed for that radio set again—the one the Russians had given them to link all the ships of their task force together. He realized he needed to report this event to Miss Fairchild, and the Russian Captain Gromyko.

  Perhaps they can shed some light on this magic trick, he thought. Yet even as he did so, he was beset with a deep sense of dread.

  No. This was not intentional. It was not something they planned. They would not have deliberately initiated another time displacement without notifying me. This was an accident, perhaps just like that first accident that sent the ship through time. Fedorov had been worried about that, and now something has slipped. Everything had been going off smoothly, right according to plan. They had slipped through the Pillars of Hercules, and into the Atlantic easily enough, and though the Germans still had a big lead on them, they had suddenly turned about to head east again.

  We couldn’t have planned it better, he thought, realizing that was very unusual when it came to battle at sea. Always expect the unexpected. Things were never certain—except one fact was plainly obvious. At least for this moment, in this here and now, the Russian ship was gone.

  * * *

  The message came in at a little after 05:00, and Captain MacRae took it in hand, opening it slowly as he continued to study the large ship they were now approaching.

  “Signal from Rodney?” he asked Mister Dean.

  “No sir. It’s from Admiral Tovey on Invincible.”

  “Very well.” He opened the message and looked at it for some time, his expression deepening to a troubled frown as he did so.

  “Any word from that Russian ship earlier?” he said to his intelligence master, Mack Morgan.

  “Which one, the submarine or the battlecruiser?”

  MacRae folded his arms. “A submarine is a boat, Mister Morgan. A battlecruiser is a ship. So I ask again—any word from the Russians earlier this morning?”

  “Now that you mention it, there was one message—half an hour ago. They wanted to know if we were picking up any odd signals on radar or sonar.”

  “Odd signals? I’ve had no reports, and this ship’s eyes and ears are the best in the world. Oh, Templeton is on sonar this morning, and a bit grumpy as always. But other than that, it’s been quiet all night—until that fireworks started. He thumbed at the missile trails in the sky
, the early light of dawn slowly illuminating the contrails as the wind dispersed them like ocher mist.

  “Then they signaled no planned course change?” MacRae was still looking at the message.

  Morgan was drifting to his side, seeing something was amiss. Things gone awry were never welcome, as they stood as evidence that he had missed something he should have been aware of. What good was an intelligence chief if he didn’t already know what was on that signals message in the Captain’s hand?

  “A problem with Kirov?” He gave MacRae a serious look.

  “Have a look at this. Tovey reports he’s lost contact with the Russian ship.”

  “In this weather? It’s clear and calm, with visibility for miles with that sun coming up. Beautiful morning—until those damn German battleships get here. You sure that Russian sub is going to handle things?”

  “That’s what I was told in the briefing.”

  “So what’s up with the battlecruiser?”

  “Read it yourself, Mack. 04:40 – Kirov missing off our port bow. Initiating search.”

  “Missing? Ship’s boys and brandy go missing, but not bloody battlecruisers! Then who’s out there firing off those missiles? What does Tovey mean by this?”

  “Maybe they put on speed and had to maneuver to make that missile attack,” said MacRae. “The moon was good all morning, but it set at 03:16, and we had no sun until just a few minutes ago.”

  “Why would they need an interval of darkness for this attack?” Morgan didn’t buy that. “The bloody Germans don’t even know they’re here.”

  “Oh, they do now,” said MacRae. “Something took a hard hit out there. Look at that smoke.”

  “Maybe the Russians had a misfire and blew their damn ship to pieces,” Morgan suggested glibly. “In any case, that smoke has to be well over the horizon, fifty or sixty nautical miles away. My boys tell me the Russkies are giving that northern German group a hard whack of the Shillelagh. You’re suggesting they slipped off on their own for this missile strike?”