The ship surged on, the wind of its own haste finally clearing the smoke, and he saw that he was sailing through a forest of white seawater, vast pillars spouting up from the wave tops, two straddling the bow and four more dead ahead. A rain of water washed over the bow from the two near misses. He pulled the wheel around ten points to starboard, desperately trying to take some evasive maneuver.
Now fresh hands were on the bridge, hastening up from below. Medics were at Holland’s side, lifting him onto a stretcher. His head lolled on the pillow, snow white hair stained with blood. Hollow voices called from the standing voice pipe to the forward gun director’s position like whispers of ghosts in the chaos on the bridge.
“Hoist Blue 3!” Warrand shouted to the Flag Bridge as the ship turned, hoping someone would answer. Yeoman Wright stirred to life, back on his feet again, his face bleeding where the glass had cut him, but otherwise alive. He relayed the order. They needed to signal Repulse by flag, but Warrand knew it was likely the ship would try to match his maneuver in any case. He felt the ship shudder again, but this time it was the two aft turrets firing together. Hood was dazed, bludgeoned, but still alive.
Then he looked out the shattered forward screens and saw yet another ship darken the horizon, looming ever larger second by second as it came. A flash of orange erupted from it, another gladiator coming to the arena. Who was there? Scharnhorst? Gneisenau? God Help us…
* * *
Lieutenant Commander Wells ran into the plotting room, breathless with the climb and saluted as he handed off the message to Flag Lieutenant Villers. He was not supposed to run, he knew, but could not help himself. The fight was underway.
Villers glanced at the message, reading what looked to be a unintelligible code. ‘Y -2 - ADM, C-in-C. H.F., V.B. Cone, IIBS ICH 320-17-67-39°N, 27-79°W, 315-24.’ But to a knowing eye it was completely transparent, and he quietly read the message aloud to Admiral Tovey.
“Emergency to Admiralty and C-in-C, Home Fleet. From BC1 -two battleships and one heavy cruiser, bearing 320, distance 17 miles. My position 67-39 north, 27-79 west. My course 315. Speed 24 knots.”
Tovey looked up, his eyes squinting at his Flag Lieutenant. Villers read the message again as he walked slowly to the Admiral’s side, handing him the signal.
“It appears Holland has a battle on his hands. No further details.”
Tovey took a deep breath, but before he could say another word there was a warning gong from above. A signalman hastened in from the bridge. “Alarm Red 20 sir. Two ships sighted.”
Tovey nodded and looked at his plotting board. He slowly turned the marker for HMS Invincible to the right, pointing it at the damaged Hood. Then he reached for the enemy marker that represented Scharnhorst and Gneisenau.
“So we have company,” he said. “Salmon and Gluckstein have come to dinner. Anything coming from that quarter would have to be the Twins.”
“Shall we engage, sir? We’ll blow them half way to hell in short order.”
“No, Mister Villers, we shall not. The ship will come to battle stations, steer steady on and ahead full emergency. Our business is with Hood. Let them follow us at their peril.” He looked up, lips pursed, eyes alight. The ship’s clock wound on, the chime striking out the hour, twelve slow bells to signal midnight, the witching hour.
“Mister Wells,” he said, “now you may run.”
The Saga Continues…
Altered States ~ Volume II
The first rounds have fallen, heavy shells smashing against the armored conning tower of HMS Hood, stunning the ship and its stolid Admiral Holland. Yet Hood fights on, her guns raging in reprisal as the pride of two navies meet in the largest naval engagement since Jutland. Even as Admiral Tovey reaches the action, the shadow of Hoffmann’s battlegroup looms over his shoulder and the odds stack ever higher against the embattled ships of Home Fleet. Off to the north the Stukas rush to re-arm aboard carrier Graf Zeppelin, while far to the south another ship hastens north to the scene, from a time and place incomprehensible to the men now locked in a desperate struggle raging on a blood red sea that may decide the fate of England in 1940. Can they engage without shattering the fragile mirror of history yet again?
Learn the outcome and follow Kirov north as it heads to home waters, determined to meet the man that may have changed the course of all history, Sergie Kirov. Meanwhile the action moves to the Med where the young Christopher Wells is dispatched to Force H. British must first prevent the powerful French Fleet from falling into enemy hands and stand against a much more aggressive Regia Marina. With threats on every quarter Britain is faced with the prospect of imminent invasion in Operation Selöwe, when the Admiralty learns of yet another operation that could decisively alter the balance of the war—an attack on the British naval bastion at Gibraltar. The fighting has only just begun as Altered States continues the retelling of the naval war at sea in the world of their own making in an exciting second volume.
THE KIROV SERIES ~ BY JOHN SCHETTLER
Kirov
The battlecruiser Kirov is the most power surface combatant that ever put to sea. Built from the bones of all four prior Kirov Class battlecruisers, she is updated with Russia’s most lethal weapons, given back her old name, and commissioned in the year 2020. A year later, with tensions rising to the breaking point between Russia and the West, Kirov is completing her final missile trials in the Arctic Sea when a strange accident transports her to another time. With power no ship in the world can match, much less comprehend, she must decide the fate of nations in the most titanic conflict the world has ever seen—WWII.
Kirov II – Cauldron of Fire
Kirov crosses the Atlantic to the Mediterranean Sea when she suddenly slips in time again and re-appears a year later, in August of 1942. Beset with enemies on every side and embroiled in one of the largest sea battles of the war, the ship races for Gibraltar and the relatively safe waters of the Atlantic. Meanwhile, the brilliant Alan Turing has begun to unravel the mystery of what this ship could be, but can he convince the Admiralty? Naval action abounds in this fast paced second volume of the Kirov series trilogy.
Kirov III - Pacific Storm
Admiral Tovey’s visit to Bletchley Park soon reaches an astounding conclusion when the battlecruiser Kirov vanishes once again to a desolate future. Reaching the Pacific the ship’s officers and crew soon learn that Kirov has once again moved in time. Now First Officer Anton Fedorov is shocked to learn the true source of the great variation in time that has led to the devastated future they have come from and the demise of civilization itself. They are soon discovered by a Japanese fleet and the ship now faces its most dangerous and determined challenge ever when they are stalked by the Japanese 5th Carrier Division and eventually confronted by a powerful enemy task force led by the battleship Yamato, and an admiral determined to sink this phantom ship, or die trying. In this amazing continuation to the popular Kirov series, the most powerful ships ever conceived by two different eras clash in a titanic final battle that could decide the fate of nations and the world itself.
Kirov Saga: Men Of War ~ Book IV
Kirov returns home to a changed world in the year 2021, and as the Russian Naval Inspectorate probes the mystery of the ship’s disappearance, Anton Fedorov begins to unravel yet another dilemma—the secret of Rod 25. The world is again steering a dangerous course toward the great war that blackened the shores of a distant future glimpsed by the officers and crew. Fedorov has come to believe that time is waiting on the resolution of one crucial unresolved element from their journey to the past—the fate of Gennadi Orlov.
Join Admiral Leonid Volsky, Captain Vladimir Karpov, and Anton Fedorov as they sleuth the mystery of Orlov’s fate and launch a mission to the past to find him before the world explodes in the terror and fury of a great air and naval conflict in the Pacific. It is a war that will span the globe from the Gulf of Mexico to the Middle East and through the oil rich heart of Central Asia to the wide Pacific, but somehow one man’s lif
e holds the key to its prevention. Yet other men are aware of Orlov’s identity as a crewman from the dread raider they came to call Geronimo, and they too set their minds on finding him first…in 1942! Men of war from the future and past now join in the hunt while the military forces of Russia, China, and the West maneuver to the great chessboard of impending conflict.
Kirov Saga: Nine Days Falling, Book V
As Fedorov launches his daring mission to the past to rescue Orlov, Volsky does not know where or how to find the team, or even if they have safely made the dangerous transition to the 1940s….But other men know, from the dark corners of Whitehall to the KGB. And other men also continue to stalk Orlov in that distant era, led by Captain John Haselden and the men of 30 Commando. The long journey west is fraught with danger for Fedorov’s team when they encounter something bewildering and truly astounding, an incident that leads them deeper into the mystery of Rod-25.
Meanwhile, Kirov has put to sea and now forms the heart of a powerful battlegroup commanded by Captain Vladimir Karpov. He is soon confronted by the swift deployment of the American Carrier Strike Group Five out of Yokosuka Japan in a tense standoff at sea that threatens to explode into violence at any moment. The fuse of conflict is lit across the globe, for the dread war has finally begun when the Chinese make good on their threat to secure their long wayward son—Taiwan. From the pulsing bitstream of the Internet, the deep void of outer space, the oil soaked waters of the Persian Gulf and Black Sea, to the riveting naval combat in the Pacific, the world descends in nine grueling days, swept up in the maelstrom and chaos of war.
This is the story of that deadly war to end all wars, and the desperate missions from the future and past to find the one man who can prevent it from ever happening, Gennadi Orlov. Can the mystery of Rod-25 and Orlov be solved before the ICBMs are finally launched?
Kirov Saga: Fallen Angels ~ Book VI
The war continues on both land and sea as China invades Taiwan and North Korea joins to launch a devastating attack. Yet Kirov and the heart of the Red Banner Pacific Fleet has vanished, blown into the past by the massive wrath of the Demon Volcano. There Captain Karpov finds himself at the dying edge of the last great war, yet his own inner demons now wage war with his conscience as he contemplates another decisive intervention.
After secretly assisting the Soviet invasion of the Kuriles and engaging a small US scouting force in the region, Karpov has drawn the attention of Admiral Halsey’s powerful 3rd Fleet. Now Halsey sends one of the toughest fighting Admirals of the war north to investigate, the hero of the Battle off Samar, Ziggy Sprague, and fast and furious sea battles are the order of the day.
Meanwhile tensions rise in the Black Sea as the Russian mission to rescue Fedorov and Orlov has now been expanded to include a way to try and deliver new control rods to Kirov from the same batch and lot as the mysterious Rod-25. Will they work? Yet Admiral Volsky learns that the Russian Black Sea Fleet has engaged well escorted units of a British oil conveyor, Fairchild Inc., and the fires of war soon endanger his mission.
All efforts are now focused on a narrow stretch of coastline on the Caspian Sea, where men of war from the future and past are locked in a desperate struggle to decide the outcome of history itself. Naval combat, both future and past, combine with action and intrigue as Volsky’s mission is launched and the mystery of Rod-25 and Fedorov’s strange experience on the Trans-Siberian Rail is finally revealed. Can they stop the nuclear holocaust of the Third World War in 2021 or will it begin off the coast of Japan in 1945?
Kirov Saga: Devil’s Garden ~ Book VII
The stunning continuation to the Kirov saga extends the action, both past and present, as the prelude to the Great War moves into its final days. The last remnant of the Red Banner Pacific Fleet has fought its duel with Halsey in the Pacific, resorting to nuclear weapons in the last extreme—but what has happened to Kirov and Orlan?
Now the many story threads involving Fairchild Inc. and the desperate missions to find Orlov launched by both Haselden and Fedorov all converge in the vortex of time and fate on the shores of the Caspian Sea. Fedorov and Troyak lead an amphibious assault at Makhachkala, right into the teeth of the German advance. Meanwhile, Admiral Volsky and Kamenski read the chronology of events to peek at the outcome and discover the verdict of history. Can it still be changed?
Turn the page with Admiral Volsky and learn the fate of Orlov, Fedorov, Karpov and the world itself. Follow the strange and enigmatic figure of Sir Roger Ames, Duke of Elvington as he reveals a plot, and a plan, older than history itself on the windswept shores of Lindisfarne Castle.
Kirov Saga: Armageddon ~ Book VIII
The lines of fate have brought the most powerful ship in the world to a decisive place in history. Driven by his own inner demons, Captain Karpov now believes that with Kirov in 1908 he is truly invincible, and his aim is to impose his will on that unsuspecting world and reverse the cold fate of Russian history from 1908 to the 21st century. But it is not just the fate of a single nation at stake now, but that of all the world.
Shocked by Karpov’s betrayal, Anton Fedorov plans a mission to stop the Captain before he can do irreversible damage to the cracked mirror of time. Now Admiral Volsky must do everything possible to launch this final mission aboard the nuclear attack submarine Kazan. The journey to the Sea of Japan becomes a perilous one when the Americans and Japanese begin to hunt Kazan in the dangerous waters of 2021.
Join Anton Fedorov, Admiral Volsky, Chief Dobrynin, and Gennadi Orlov aboard Kazan as they launch this last desperate mission to confront the man, and the ship, that now threatens to change all history and unravel the fabric of fate and time itself.
The Meridian Series (Time Travel / Alternate History)
Book I: Meridian – A Novel In Time
ForeWord Magazine’s “Book of the Year”
2002 Silver Medal Winner for Science Fiction
The adventure begins on the eve of the greatest experiment ever attempted—Time travel. As the project team meets for their final mission briefing, the last member, arriving late, brings startling news. Catastrophe threatens and the fate of the Western World hangs in the balance. But a visitor from another time arrives bearing clues that will carry the hope of countless generations yet to be born, and a desperate plea for help. The team is led to the Jordanian desert during WWI and the exploits of the fabled Lawrence of Arabia.
Book II: Nexus Point
The project team members slowly come to the realization that a “Time War” is being waged by unseen adversaries in the future. The quest for an ancient fossil leads to an amazing discovery hidden in the Jordanian desert. A mysterious group of assassins plot to decide the future course of history, just one battle in a devious campaign that will span the Meridians of time, both future and past. Exciting Time travel adventure in the realm of the Crusades!
Book III: Touchstone
When Nordhausen follows a hunch and launches a secret time jump mission on his own, he uncovers an operation being run by unknown adversaries from the future. The incident has dramatic repercussions for Kelly Ramer, his place in the time line again threatened by paradox. Kelly’s fate is somehow linked to an ancient Egyptian artifact, once famous the world over, and now a forgotten slab of stone. The result is a harrowing mission to Egypt during the time frame of Napoleon’s 1799 invasion.
Book IV: Anvil of Fate
The cryptic ending of Touchstone dovetails perfectly into this next volume as Paul insists that Kelly has survived, and is determined to bring him safely home. Only now is the true meaning of the stela unearthed at Rosetta made apparent—a grand scheme to work a catastrophic transformation of the Meridians, so dramatic and profound in its effect that the disaster at Palma was only a precursor. The history leads them to the famous Battle of Tours where Charles Martel strove to stem the tide of the Moorish invaders and save the west from annihilation. Yet more was at stake on the Anvil of Fate than the project team first realized, and they now pursue the mystery
of two strange murders that will decide the fate of Western Civilization itself!
Book V: Golem 7
Nordhausen is back with new research and his hand on the neck of the new terrorist behind the much feared “Palma Event.” Now the project team struggles to discover how and where the Assassins have intervened to restore the chaos of Palma, and their search leads them on one of the greatest naval sagas of modern history—the hunt for the battleship Bismarck. For some unaccountable reason the fearsome German battleship was not sunk on its maiden voyage, and now the project team struggles to put the ship back in its watery grave. Meet Admiral John Tovey and Chief of Staff “Daddy” Brind as the Royal Navy begins to receive mysterious intelligence from an agent known only as “Lonesome Dove.” Exciting naval action and top notch research characterize this fast paced alternate history of the sinking of the Bismarck.
Historical Fiction
Taklamakan ~ The Land Of No Return
It was one of those moments on the cusp of time, when Tando Ghazi Khan, a simple trader of tea and spice, leads a caravan to the edge of the great desert, and becomes embroiled in the struggle that will decide the fate of an empire and shake all under heaven and earth. A novel of the Silk Road, the empire of Tibet clashes with T’ang China on the desolate roads that fringe the Taklamakan desert, and one man holds the key to victory in a curious map that guards an ancient secret hidden for centuries.
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