1943 (Kirov Series Book 27)

by John Schettler

  “I know all about it. That brigade got blown right into 1942, and so did those ships.”

  “Yes,” said Maeve. “We’ve been able to piece that together in the research, but only in the Beta Thread. There’s no sign of that brigade fighting in North Africa in the Alpha or Gamma threads.”

  “Interesting,” said Paul. “Then I was on the Beta thread, and it certainly turned up there. This is serious. If the situation continues to deteriorate here, these nuclear detonations could continue to rupture time as well as space. Actually, naming them separately is a bit deceptive. It’s spacetime, if Einstein was correct, and there’s only one of it. That meridian I was just on is very skewed. Did you find any evidence of a G3 Class battlecruiser there?”

  “You’d have to ask Nordhausen.”

  “Ask Nordhausen,” came a voice, and in walked the professor, his eyeglasses shifted up high above his eyebrows, a smile lighting his eyes beneath his balding head.

  “G3 Class battlecruiser in the Royal Navy,” said Paul. “Ever turn up anything like that?”

  “HMS Invincible,” said Nordhausen.

  “That’s the one.”

  “The Brits have that ship, but it was never supposed to have been built, at least not on Alpha thread, and then a good many others turned up. Both sides seem to have built ships that never existed. The British have new heavy cruisers, the Germans have carriers, the Americans and Japanese are fusing the two together and building battle-carriers. You’ll have a field day with it all when I show you the research.”

  “Those ships are the least of our worries,” said Paul. “the Paradox created a Doppelganger—and that’s just for starters. It also started a causality loop.”

  “That’s what gave us the Beta thread,” said Maeve. “Here we thought we were just dealing with an alteration to the Alpha thread, but then we get this incredible branching off to create the Beta thread. Now we’ve got a third.”

  “Yes, yes,” said Paul. “This is just what I was afraid of. The damage that Russian ship has done is so profound that the Prime Meridian fragmented. That was predicted to be a forerunner occurrence for a Grand Finality.”

  “Grand Finality?” Nordhausen could quote chapter and verse on the history, but he left the time travel physics to Dorland.

  “I just got through explaining this to Admiral Tovey and Miss Fairchild. It’s like this… a kind of Gordian knot in time,” said Paul. “These variations and Paradox events get time so doubled back on itself, that an insoluble looping begins to occur.”

  “You mean with the ship?”

  “Correct. It just arrived there the second time, but I’ve been back in August of 1941. Did it persist on any of these threads?”

  “Oh yes,” said Nordhausen. “The whole thing seems to be in flux. I mean I get new Golem alerts all the time now, but I was just looking over some data that has the ship at war in the Pacific. There was an attack at a place called Truk—January of 1943.”

  “Truk?” Paul rolled his eyes. “That was Combined Fleet Naval headquarters for Japan, but the Americans didn’t attack it until February of 1944. Who hit it?”

  “That goddamned ship, what else.”

  “Good Lord.” Paul rubbed his forehead. “So the ship stays there until at least 1943? Well, the longer it’s there, the greater the danger that it will slip again. That’s what happened the first time. It slipped to a point on the continuum before its first arrival. If the damn thing slips again, then we get another Paradox looming on the Meridian where that happens. Time cannot find a way to resolve this, and so it all gets spun into an endless replay. That’s what the finality is. If this happens the future simply ceases to exist, because time cannot progress beyond the point of the finality, or at least that is what the theory predicts.”

  “But we’re that future, are we not?” said Nordhausen. “Doesn’t it have to exist for us to know this here?”

  “In one sense, yes. Some future may be realized, but to a point.”

  “All three splintered Meridians account for all the years between 1943 and this year.” The professor folded his arms.

  “Yet we already know that the future beyond this point goes silent,” said Paul, “and with these nukes being lobbed about, I can possibly see why. Since the future cannot be created in the line of causality, it must be destroyed, and that creates a deep shadow that ripples backwards on the continuum like a backwash from Paradox. This may be the reason the voices from our own distant future have all gone mute, for there, the impact of all these changes will be most severe—annihilation—and that is a silence that will eventually roll back upon us all… My god, I just spoke those words to Tovey and Fairchild.”

  Maeve cast a furtive glance at the others. “Well, Maestro, you must have been on the Beta thread for that little meeting. We haven’t told you everything. Welcome to the Gamma thread. Wait until you hear what’s been going on with that ship!”

  * * *

  Karpov sat in his stateroom, close by the private cabinet that he always kept under lock and key. It was open now, his eyes searching over the device within, a headset framing his brow as he listened. It was another radio set, of the same kind that they had given to Admiral Tovey. He had it rigged to transfer any signal received on Nikolin’s HF comm-link module, particularly coded transmissions, which would be decrypted if authenticated by Nikolin.

  He had been reading at his desk that morning, and looking over maps of the area around Rabaul, considering his plans. Then he saw the special light he had rigged winking off and on above the cabinet, and reached slowly into his pocket for the cabinet key.

  He heard everything that was said, profoundly shocked when he first heard the voice of Admiral Volsky. Could the report of his death have been a deception? That was the first thing that came to mind. Yet there he was, apparently out on another mission aboard Kazan, just as before, and its aim was the same as it had always been.

  The Admiral’s seemed to be obsessed with this great doom that was looming in the far horizons of these events. Who can say what it might be. Yet the one thing that stuck in Karpov’s mind was that single phrase from Volsky: We must leave—all of us—Kirov, Kazan, the Argos Fire, all those men you met in the desert, the little fleet of transports, everything must go. Those that will not leave of their own accord must be compelled by other means…. or be destroyed.

  Or be destroyed….

  So there was Admiral Volsky, he thought, alive again, risen from the dead, just as I seemed to return from what seemed like my certain demise. They must have been very surprised when they learned I was still alive. Yet I settled things, didn’t I. Fedorov has been all about doom and gloom from the very beginning of this adventure. First he was manic about his history, then his head was filled with all this paradox business. That is what this must still be all about—the Second Coming.

  I must admit that it certainly had some very real effects. I felt them myself during that terrible night aboard Tunguska. Yet I survived them easily enough. Time has been lusting to find a way to redress that. There are two of us now, my brother and I. She cannot abide that, and looks for any way to balance her books.

  So here comes Volsky again, just when I thought that man was dead and buried for good. And here comes Kazan…. What should I do about this? Fedorov cozied up to me real good when he returned from that mission. He realized, as I did, the consequences of his tampering at that foundational level of these events. This world rests on the shoulders of Sergei Kirov. He built it, and now he’s fighting to save it, just as I am. I thought I had finally convinced Fedorov of that, but now here comes old Papa Volsky, and he’ll muddle the waters with this business stuffed into his head by Kamenski.

  What to do here?

  Fedorov will bring this to me, and if I refuse to hear Volsky out, then what? Is he going to turn to his henchman Gromyko? Does he think he can kill this ship that easily? If I do agree to a meeting, how should I arrange it? I suppose it was at least decent of Volsky to make this call. Yet h
e did not sound like that bumbling old fool I met in Murmansk. No. He spoke of things that man could have never known, and this thing Fedorov said about two lives being mingled together in one head is most interesting.

  Perhaps that was supposed to happen to me.

  That thought suddenly shook him. Perhaps Time was going to merge the recollections and experiences I lived through into the body and head of my brother self when the Second Coming happened. Yes… That was what was supposed to happen, but Time could not accomplish it. I was in some kind of protective Faraday Cage aboard Tunguska, and she couldn’t touch me. I was elsewhere. There might have been only one version of myself, just like Fedorov, but one who remembered all that had happened on that first loop. Very interesting… If this happened to Fedorov and Volsky, then might it also happen to other members of the crew?

  Now he reached a decision.

  I must meet with those two rascals, he thought. They have been my enemies in the past, but Fedorov gave me his word that he would stand with me here. Volsky wants to have his little talk, so I will hear him out, but they will hear me out as well. How to best arrange this?

  First things first… Fedorov.

  Chapter 33

  As predicted, Fedorov went to Karpov, his heart heavy and mind very troubled when he knocked on the stateroom door. He could not see how he might persuade Karpov, or how their present situation would be any different than the sortie they made to 1908 if he failed, but he had to try.

  “Come.”

  He opened the door, removing his cap as he eased in and closed it securely behind him. Karpov was sitting at his desk, his eyes scanning paperwork under an LED lamp. “What is it, Mister Fedorov?”

  “Sir, we’ve received a secure message on the EAM comm-link system, and we need to discuss it.”

  Karpov looked up, rubbed his eye as if to chase away an annoying tick, and gave Fedorov a look that seemed to indicate he had come to some inner decision. “I don’t feel like theater this morning,” he said. “Yes, Mister Fedorov, we certainly need to discuss this one, don’t we. You see, I have a secure comm-link unit right here, and I have it rigged to alert me to any pass-code level communications. So you might as well know that I was listening in on your entire conversation with Volsky. Amazing, eh? That old man simply refuses to die. I must say, I was as shocked as you must have been when I heard his voice.”

  Fedorov raised a brow, surprised again, not so much that Karpov had been listening, but more that he had not anticipated that from a man like the Siberian. “Very well,” he said. “No theatrics. I agree. I told you I would be straight up with you and as you can see, I came to you with this immediately.”

  “Who was that man?” asked Karpov? “How did he get here—aboard Kazan?”

  “Kazan was in the Atlantic when it last vanished—shifted. Apparently, it went forward again, as far as 2021.”

  “So that is where they met Kamenski. My… How would he know about any of this?”

  “Good question,” said Fedorov. “He’s a very mysterious man, but very insightful. When I was driven half-crazy trying to sort through this time travel business, it was Kamenski who helped me make sense of things.”

  “But I don’t see how,” said Karpov. “Yes, he was Deputy Director of the KGB for many years, but now he seems privy to events that no man on earth should be able to fathom. How it is he can claim to know what the long-term consequences of our presence here will be?”

  “Perhaps he’s already seen it,” said Fedorov. “Frankly, I’m beginning to think he may not be from our own time line—not native to 2021, in spite of the fact that he had a long, distinguished life line in our time.”

  “What? Then where in god’s name did the man come from—mars?”

  “You don’t have to ask me that,” said Fedorov. “I think he may have come from a future time—beyond 2021. How else could he possess the insight he has? He knew about the effects of massive detonations on the time continuum, and he was deeply involved in the black operations that were masked by our nuclear test program. I think he may even have known about Tunguska. It’s clear that he’s been operating on many levels here, for on more than one occasion he’s told me that he holds the recollection of lives lived from more than one meridian of time.”

  “Just like we do,” said Karpov. “You’ve got a few versions of yourself locked away up there, don’t you? As for me, the two lives I seem to have lived in this little adventure remain incarnate—one in my head, and one in my brother’s. I have no idea what my brother was doing three days before he went to see with Kirov. Oh, I can take a good guess, but I have no clear memory of that.” Karpov pointed to his head. “Not up here…. And my brother knows nothing of what we did the first encounter—at least he did not have this awareness the last time we spoke, and that was only yesterday. So while you and Volsky may be a salad bowl of different selves, my head is uncontaminated by these layers from other lives. Better that way. I think more clearly. Yet your theory holds some merit. Kamenski knows entirely too much—if the man is to be believed.”

  “Why would he lie?”

  “Lie? What exactly has he said, Fedorov? Just what is this great doom he warns about?”

  “It obviously has to do with the ship—this ship. I suppose it did originate with the warning the Watch received from the future.”

  “You’re speaking of this Fairchild woman now—the one on the converted British destroyer?”

  “Correct. I can’t recall whether we’ve discussed it, but here’s the gist of things. When we first appeared, we ended up tangling with the Royal Navy—never a good idea, but you seemed to think you would prevail.”

  “I would have beaten them easily enough.”

  “Yes, with special warheads. Let’s not get into that now. What we do know is that Admiral Tovey’s experience in those encounters caused him to establish a secret group within the Royal Navy—the Watch. They were to look out for any further reappearance of our ship. Some of the original members were Tovey, Alan Turing, who was instrumental in concluding we were not from their own time, and other key Admirals like Cunningham and Fraser. I’m not aware of others. In any case. That group persisted into modern times—even in our own day. Fairchild was a member in our own time.”

  “Indeed? How very strange. You realize what this means? If that is the case, then the British must have known…. Why, they must have known that Kirov would go missing in the Norwegian Sea—but how?”

  “Now we get to the interesting part,” said Fedorov. “Fairchild claims they received messages while at sea. They were cryptic at first, and they came in over a series of time—intended to establish credibility on the part of the sender. One predicted the events of 9/11 for example. Another was data from the stock market received well before the given day, and the numbers tumbled into position when that day arrived—exactly.”

  “Interesting. I suppose that’s just a bit like our telling these people here what they were about to do next.”

  “Yes,” said Fedorov. “At least in the beginning. Now this war is so skewed that I can’t easily predict anything that might happen next.”

  “Alright, Fairchild is a member of the Watch, and she gets messages from the future.”

  “Correct—about us. In fact, they were warnings—beware a ship, beware Kirov. Then those future voices go silent.”

  “Very dramatic,” said Karpov. “So now you think Kamenski may have been sent back somehow to reinforce that point. That’s the essence of his beef—beware Kirov.” He waved his hands in a mocking way. “And what I think this comes down to in the end is quite something else—beware Karpov. Isn’t that what Kamenski is really saying? After all, the ship is just a hunk of steel and other exotic materials. Without me, or someone else at the helm, it just sits there.”

  “I suppose you have a point with that.”

  “Of course I do. If you or Volsky were in command here, would Kamenski be all in a tither about it? No.”

  “I would not be so sure a
bout that,” said Fedorov. “After all, Volsky was in command all through the operations in the Med, and I was Captain as well. You were not in charge the first time we hit the Pacific. It wasn’t until you displaced after the Demon volcano that things got really warped.”

  “Yes, and you and Volsky had to come chasing after me and spoil things. Did Kamenski put you up to that?”

  “It was my doing—I’ll admit it. I convinced the Admiral that we had to intervene. But I did consult Kamenski, and he came with us on Kazan the first time.”

  “Riding shotgun,” said Karpov. “Alright, what is this great doom Kamenski is worried about? Are we going to hatch another plan here to try and save the world? You saw how that worked out at Ilanskiy.”

  “You heard the Admiral. Kamenski is convinced our contamination of the timeline here will be fatal if we remain. He wants all of us to return to our own time—you, me, the ship, Volsky on Kazan, Fairchild on Argos Fire, that Japanese destroyer, and all the rest. We must remove any contaminate from this meridian, or face the consequences.”

  “What consequences? What did Kamenski say would happen?”

  “I’m not certain. Volsky said he could feel it, almost like a man who senses the impending edge of an event that has not yet come to pass. But we should already know the danger we pose here. We both faced it once already—Paradox.”

  “Yes,” said Karpov. “That was somewhat harrowing, but as you can see, the world did not end. Here we sit, Fedorov.”

  “True, this world did not end, but it has been horribly twisted—Stalin dead, our homeland fragmented into three warring states, Ivan Volkov and Orenburg allied with Germany, Moscow burned. God only knows what else will happen before this war ends.”