* * *
Marco Ritter was out on the flight deck of Goeben, raging at a deck crewman to clear some equipment so he could take off. He had heard the news that shook the fleet. Graf Zeppelin had been badly hit, the damage severe, and it looked as though the ship would not survive. Word soon came that their brother carrier had managed to get six Stukas into the sky before the ship endured that last fatal hit from the British rocket attack.
Damn those rockets! There goes the bulk of our air defense here, and most of our Stukas. Only six made it off, and there are three fighters still up on top cover. That makes nine planes off Graf Zeppelin now in the air, and that’s all the eggs we can put in this basket. I need to get up there, and with a full tank to loiter as long as possible.
“Rudel!” he had shouted. “Get your Stukas up. I’m making you the new Squadron leader—your planes and six more off the Graf Zeppelin. Let’s get moving!
The chocks were pulled away, and Ritter gunned the powerful engine on his Me-109T, rolling down the short flight deck and into the amber sky. He was on the radio coordinating with the pilots off Graf Zeppelin at once, and they were now circling about the Goeben, a swarm of angry bees gathering for the attack.
“The target is Rodney,” he shouted. “All other fighters remain here on fleet defense. The crows follow me!” He put his plane in to a shallow bank, peeled off and led the way, off to the northeast where the action had just been joined by Topp and Hoffmann. They were coming with the six Stukas off Graf Zeppelin, and Hans Rudel had only just arrived with the three strike planes off the Goeben. They all had a bone to pick now, and they put all thoughts of how they might land on the crowded little escort carrier aside.
That would not matter, for the sky was soon to be alight with the hot contrails of Aster 15 rockets. There would be plenty of room on the flight deck of the Goeben in due course…
* * *
Now the wild scene in the red-orange dawn would suddenly take yet another unexpected turn. Captains on every ship involved were set on battle, their eyes behind field glasses, faces grim, the boom of the guns loud on the morning air. Thick black smoke erupted from the German battleships, the rolling char of cordite so thick that the men could taste it with each mighty salvo fired. The Germans were finally finding the range on the hapless Rodney. There had already been two near misses, when the Anton turret of Scharnhorst straddled the British ship, sending shrapnel into the stacked crates of boiler tubes on her decks.
Rodney thundered in reply, her third salvo very nearly scoring a hit on the Tirpitz. Now on the bridge, Lieutenant Commander Wellings was in a quandary. He had been unable to retrieve the precious key from Rodney’s hold, and in spite of every effort to steer the ship away from harm, the tall splash of seawater riddled with shrapnel was now the hard reality at the end of all his plans.
Rodney shuddered with the firing of her own guns, four barrel salvoes that shook loose the deck planks and rattled every loose object on the ship. It was the second time Wellings had heard those monstrous guns fire, and the last time he had found himself flung overboard into a wild sea, witness to one of the greatest naval duels ever fought. This time it was not Bismarck out there, but her brother ship, the Tirpitz, and this time the odds were different too. That was a Scharnhorst class ship out in front!
The history here was still twisted and bent back upon itself, and he could see no way this intervention had any chance of succeeding. The only thing now was to get to his designated retrieval point, a position amidships where the project team would be looking to pull him out.
No sooner had he turned to look for the aft hatch and ladder down, when the first telling blow struck Rodney, just forward of her tall coning tower, and right on the number three gun turret there. It was an 11-inch shell flung at them by Kurt Hoffmann, and though the heavy armor at nearly 16 inches was enough to protect the turret from penetration, the shock and concussion was severe. Several packing crates that had been set atop the turret were blown to pieces, and black smoke billowed up, obscuring the bridge with choking cinder.
Wellings heard the drone of aircraft overhead, the scream of the Jericho trumpets, the wild hiss of rockets in the sky. When the smoke cleared he could see the twisting contrails of agile missiles snaking through the thin clouds overhead, seeking out the squadron of German Stukas. Then something happened that no one expected, except Gromyko.
He had fired his Type 65 torpedo, back along the axis of the undersea enemy attack. His two supercavitating Shkvals had helped clear the way, lancing out in their bubble jet spheres and blistering in to find one of the two Spearfish that were slowly closing the range on Kazan. The Russian sub had been running at its best speed of nearly 36 knots, heedless of the sound they were making now. Soon, thought Gromyko, the sea will erupt with Neptune’s wrath.
It sounded like a great kettle being struck when it happened. Nearly a hundred meters deep, the 20 kiloton warhead went off with a resonant boom, the immense sphere of expanding gas and vaporized seawater creating a tremendous shock wave in all directions. The second Spearfish careened wildly off course, its sensitive sonar pummeled with the wrenching sound, dumbstruck.
Gromyko knew his torpedo would take too long to reach the enemy sub, but he only needed to get close. The shock of the warhead would expand out several kilometers, and all he needed was to get some of that awful explosive force close to his enemy to hurt this sub.
And he did.
The Ambush shuddered with the blow, emergency signals going off all over the boat, an outer stabilizing fin wrenched by the shock, and the tremendous pressure forcing a hull leak in the sail that sent torrents of seawater down into the compartments below, as men scrambled to seal off the hatches. No one could see what was really happening, the searing green fire at the outer edge of the nuclear bubble in the sea. There came a rending sound, so deep and terrible that every man on the boat covered their ears, their faces taut with pain. It was a sound from another place, the moaning agony of eternity, long and distended, the meridians of infinity being wrenched and twisted until they broke.
The fissure opened, and Ambush plowed right into the expanding wave of shimmering phosphorescent plasma. It was as if the edge of that fire was the maw of some great wrathful sea demon, opening to consume the submarine. Ambush’s rounded nose vanished at the glimmering edge, soon followed by the long, bulbous body of the vessel, which plunged right on through a deep rupture in time, rent open by the violence of the explosion. It was the first instance of atomic fire scorching the lines of fate that shaped these altered states, pre-empting the angry blow that Vladimir Karpov might have flung at his enemies in August of that very year… but it would not be the last.
* * *
The chaos of war swirling above the embattled British battleship was suddenly upstaged by the massive upwelling of seawater on the horizon. All eyes were riveted on the scene, and watchmen on every ship, pilots in their headlong dives, and crewmen at the gunwales of perdition gripped the hard steel there and held on for dear life.
A cold wind swept over the battle, just as Anton turret on the Tirpitz sent not one, but two more 15-inch rounds plunging down on Rodney. One struck the conning tower, the second smashing into the hull very near the damaged compartment where the battleship hid its secret cargo. The magazine for the forward torpedoes was there and, one by one, the long sleek weapons blew up in a series of shuddering explosions.
Bulkheads burst open and the outer hull itself was wrenched with a great tearing gash. A dark stain of oily blood clouded the sea, and through it, came the glimmering of tiny bars of gold bullion, falling, falling into the depths of the sea. And with them went the great stolen treasures of the Parthenon, a Metope of a Centaur, rearing up and locked in fitful combat with a Lapith warrior, the wild charge of horsemen carved into a marble Frise, and one more thing, the Selene Horse, exhausted by its recent sortie through the heavens, veins bulging, eyes wide, mouth gaping open and gasping for air.
Down they fell, a flutter
of debris on the endless swelling currents of the sea. Down and down they went, into the deep depths where only one pair of human eyes could ever hope to see or find them again, the eyes of Lenkov, dark in death, where his body drifted near the silted bottom of Peake’s Deep.
No man aboard Rodney knew what they had lost, the King’s business, made flotsam in the deep green sea, and never to be seen again. No one on Argos Fire would learn what really happened, nor any soul on another ship, lost in the grey fog of infinity that now seemed to swirl and eddy about its tall mainmast, where the swirling watch of radar eyes twisted with their ceaseless watch.
Yet in all this chaos, there moved the secret stealthy hand of order, some unseen force, whisper soft, yet bent on its work with mindless logic. All of these various players, like pieces in a great game of chess, were now unknowingly conspiring with one another to reach some unfathomable zero sum in the infinite calculus of time. So while Rodney burned, the Stukas plunged down through the gauntlet of missile fire, and over it all there rose the massive blight of steam and vapor rising up like a terrible storm, its shadow deep and impending, where the sea itself, sucked up in the torrid gyre of that nuclear fire, stood there like a tower of chaos, slowly collapsing in a roaring wave of destruction.
Part XII
Empty Chairs
“I've crossed some kind of invisible line. I feel as if I've come to a place I never thought I'd have to come to. And I don't know how I got here. It's a strange place. It's a place where a little harmless dreaming and then some sleepy, early-morning talk has led me into considerations of death and annihilation.”
― Raymond Carver: Where I’m Calling From
Chapter 34
Fedorov had a very odd feeling. It was more than that oddly spinning compass in his pocket. It was more than his boots, a brush with a fate that could have seen him end up like Lenkov. It was more than the unaccountable damage to the ship itself. When he walked the ship, he felt like a man who had left for work that morning and forgotten his lunch box or wallet. Something was off, twisted, rearranged. Something was missing.
He had the distinct feeling that he had misplaced something, but he could not think what it was. As he made his way to the bridge, he found himself peering through one hatch or another, noting the crew at work, the equipment, almost like a mother hen checking her nest to see that all the eggs were still there.
Yes, he thought. That was it. A missing egg… Had something hatched here in this strange displacement the ship was experiencing? Was this the moment he had feared all along, that day of reckoning for all the crimes they had committed in their long, incredible journey through time? What was happening here?
He remembered the many things he had discussed with … How very odd… with who? The arguments were there in his mind, fresh and clear, but he could not recall the face on the other side of the discussion he had about them. Things had been topsy turvey these last days. He was tired, needing sleep, and it was a miracle he could even still function here. He felt very confused, and he had the distinct feeling that there were others on the ship that felt the very same way, like Mister Gagarin, staring at his work detail clipboard with a bemused and puzzled expression on his face.
These time shifts are beginning to have an effect on me, he thought. This situation is most unusual. Clearly we’ve shifted somewhere. This is not simply the pulsing instability that we experienced before. The ship seems suspended in time, somewhere, but we are clearly afloat and underway on the high seas. But where? This damn fog is impenetrable.
Volsky and Rodenko were discussing the situation near the Captain’s chair where the Admiral sat, tapping his hand on the padded arm rest impatiently. Nikolin, Samsonov and Velichko were at their stations, as always… but there it was again—that feeling that something was off kilter, something wrong, something missing…
“Mister Fedorov,” said Volsky. “How is the ship’s hull?”
Fedorov put his inner agitation aside and made his report. “Byko put men over the side, sir, and while there is a minor depression on the starboard side, the hull seems intact and sound.”
“Very well,” said Volsky. “So when does this end? Are we still involved with this pulsing business?”
“The ship seems to have reached some stable state,” said Fedorov, “but I have not yet been able to determine just where we are—in space or time.”
Volsky nodded. “There’s been nothing on our sensors, and I have had Nikolin listening for any radio or short wave transmissions. Nothing. We have tried contacting Invincible, Kazan, and Argos Fire, but get no reply. The equipment does not even handshake, as Nikolin explains it. He sends his signals out, but there seems to be no one listening out there. This is most alarming, Fedorov, and I think he’s a bit frustrated.”
“Agreed sir,” said Fedorov. “Though this situation was not entirely unexpected. I knew we were in for trouble of some kind, and it seems we have found it. This is frustrating for us all, Admiral.”
“Then this is that paradox you have warned about? It is only May, and you said that would not occur until late July.”
“Frankly sir, we don’t know what our position is in time any more than I can determine our position in space. We can’t see the stars, so I can get no navigational fix. Radar has no land forms within range. We have nothing on sonar… this fog has us completely socked in. I suggest we send up the KA-40. Maybe it can get up above this sea fog and find the stars. Then we can used the old fashioned methods to at least determine our position. As for where we are in time, we will need some touchstone to ascertain that. Remember, it often took several hours.”
“Very well, make it so. In the meantime, we must consider our options. We cannot just sit here in this fog.”
“What do you suggest, Admiral?”
“We are capable of making a deliberate time shift,” said Volsky, “are we not? We still have those two control rods aboard.”
“Yes sir, but I would not recommend using the Alpha rod. We clearly discovered that it can also move us in space. If that were to happen again, we might end up marooned on dry land… or worse.”
Volsky shrugged. “You can think of something worse?”
“We could re-materialize inside a landform, just as Lenkov was melded into the deck. And don’t forget my boots!”
“Wonderful!” Volsky shook his head, his hand still tapping the arm of the Captain’s chair. “Then what about the second control rod, the Beta rod, good old Plan B.”
“That remains another unanswered question,” said Fedorov. “At the moment we are clearly somewhere in spacetime, and in the physical world, even though it feels like some never-never land with this heavy fog. I suggest we first try an ascertain our position by using the KA-40, and then, if this situation persists, we always have Plan B.”
“Assuming Chief Dobrynin is well enough to manage things.”
“I checked with Doctor Zolkin earlier,” said Fedorov. “The Chief is recovering, and already asking to be returned to duty.”
“Well at least we have a little good news,” said Volsky. “Strange that he was the only one to hear this odd sound.”
That remark struck Fedorov as odd again, strangely provocative of some inner objection on his part, yet he could not see why. The stress of these last hours seemed to weigh on him now, and he thought he had better gets some food and rest himself.
“Sir, if all is well here for the moment, I would like to take a meal break.”
“Excellent,” said Volsky. “Eat hardy, Fedorov. Let me know what the cook is serving, and I’ll add a few more pounds to this belly of mine when you get back.”
Fedorov saluted, and was on his way to the officer’s dining hall, the hunger feeling like an empty hole in his soul now. He could still not shake that strange feeling of discombobulation. Thankfully, the engineers had worked on the main hatch, and it was now in operation again, so he would not have to take that foggy ladder down.
As he sat at the dining table, he could not
shake the feeling that he was overlooking something of great importance. He felt again like a man at a train station or airport, but at the wrong boarding gate, just minutes left before his departure. The food did him some good, but he soon found his mind dwelling on what may be happening to the ship now—to all of them—in this grey fog of uncertainty. The only note of reason in all of this had come to him in his discussions with…
Something was there, something right at the edge of his awareness, yet he could not grasp it… a slippery fish… Something suddenly snapped in his mind with that thought. Yes! A slippery fish! Director Kamenski! He took one last sip of wine to chase down the stew he had been eating, stuffed a dinner roll into his jacket pocket, and was up on his feet, suddenly animated with newfound energy.
He made his way to the officer’s quarters, to the spare visitor’s cabin at the end of the hall opposite the Admiral’s room. Stepping up to the door, he quietly knocked, waiting, somewhat breathless with anticipation more than anything else. Perhaps he was sleeping, he thought, but decided the situation was too grave, and he knocked again.
There was no answer.
“Director? Captain Fedorov here. Are you awake sir?”
Silence.
He decided to try the door, finding it locked, and now he became concerned. Reaching into his pocket for the master quarters key that was always on the Captain’s keychain, he unlocked the door, knocking again as he inched it open. The room was swathed in deep shadow, and he flicked on the light switch, suddenly afraid he might find Kamenski in a state like Lenkov. The man was always reclusive, keeping mostly to himself aboard the ship, happy and content to stay in his cabin reading and smoking his pipe. He even took his meals there quite often, lost in his deliberations, yet always amiable and willing to receive visitors.
Paradox Hour Page 29
