Men of War (2013)

by John Schettler

  “Very sad,” he said. “Avenge him? We do not yet know how he died, or at who’s hands. Kizlyar…Yes there was an NKVD division operating there once. Strange that you should find it, but I do not understand how that changes anything here, or causes a man like Yolkin to simply disappear.”

  “This is what I told him,” said Karpov. “He suggested we attempt to go find Orlov and bring him home, but there is a little more on our plate to deal with now.”

  “Go and find him? What do you mean, Fedorov?”

  The young Captain explained what he had suggested, and then admitted that Karpov had convinced him that such a mission would not be feasible with the ship given their present circumstances. “But there is one thing I wish to bring up, sir,” he pressed on.

  “It has to do with that letter, and yes, also with these crazy ideas I have in my head now about bringing Orlov home. I was doing some reading on all this—theoretical papers on the idea of movement through time. Believe it or not, there are serious minds who have contemplated this possibility. Well, I found a paper published by an American physicist—a man named Paul Dorland. His ideas were very radical, and he posited a complete theory of time travel and how it might be possible through the creation of a controlled micro black hole. I was trying to discover some reason for the odd effects caused by Rod-25, but it wasn’t the physics in his paper that caught my attention, it was this amazing glossary of terms he had dreamt up to define how time travel would work, and what the consequences would be should it ever occur. He put forward an idea, a term that he called a Nexus Point. The essence of it was that once a willful agent with the power to act determined to do something to alter the past, time seems to be suddenly held in abeyance. The outcomes and possibilities resulting from this person’s decisions and actions seem to have an effect on what actually happens, and the power to physically change events—just like that book changed or like Yolkin vanished, or like Voloshin when he discovered his wife and apartment were missing and killed himself.”

  “I don’t understand,” said Volsky. “Nexus Point?”

  “The way he explained it was that time flowed like a river. So then think of a whirlpool in that stream. This is the Nexus Point, the place where different streams of time merge and flow together and then resolve to some new direction. In that whirlpool anything might happen. Imagine a leaf caught up in it, swirling about. When it finally returns to the river it might have moved to a different place, taken a different course. Kirov was a leaf in the stream of time sir, but I don’t think our journey is over yet. I think we are still caught up in the maelstrom. We still have Rod-25, and the power to use it and, as long as we do, then nothing is decided and we cannot return to the normal flow of the river.”

  “You are saying that our possession of Rod-25 is the problem?”

  “Both the problem and the solution, sir. Rod-25 caused this dilemma, but it is also the only means we have of redressing it. With it we have the power to change the order of events again—to change the flow of time and all the history from 1942 to the present. We can rewrite the headlines we read in that newspaper. We have already edited the story, but now we can make it new.”

  Karpov’s eyes were alight as he listened, for he had heard that same Siren song and been tempted by time and fate long ago. “Yes, we do have that power,” he said in a low voice. “This Rod-25 business. It worked it’s magic at the test bed facility just as it did aboard Kirov.”

  “Exactly,” said Fedorov. “As long as Rod-25 remains viable, it enables time displacement. Rig it up in a low power twelve rod reactor as Dobrynin did at the test center and we get missing magazines, teacups, chairs, and Markov. Put it back on the ship with its twin 24 rod reactors and we get a battlecruiser making visits to the high seas of 1942!”

  Volsky raised his eyebrows with astonishment. “You never cease to amaze me, Fedorov. You bring this insanity into the room and actually make it sound rational. What you are saying is that your discovery of that letter makes it possible for us to do something about Orlov, yes?”

  “Correct, sir. We now know exactly where he is on a given time and place. We have the equivalent of his GPS coordinates in the history, and we have the means of going there ourselves, finding him, and bringing him back. We have the power.”

  “But only if we use the ship….” Volsky frowned. “This is correct what I say, yes? If we use the test bed facility we have a one way street. There is no reactor at the other end with Rod-25 to send us home.”

  “Right, sir. That facility does not seem to have the power to move anything but loose objects within a limited range of the core. Yet as we have seen in a more powerful reactor setting Rod-25 can move an entire ship! We then have options. We have helicopters, men like Sergeant Troyak and his Marines.”

  “Men of war,” said Volsky, remembering Orlov’s last plaintive letter. “So what you are suggesting is that fate is waiting on us? That until this possibility no longer exists, the world will never rest at ease and settle down again?”

  “Something like that, sir.”

  “And if we were to do such a thing as you suggest, undertake a kind of rescue operation, what then?”

  “Then we will have at least packed out our trash,” said Karpov. “Forgive my speaking of Orlov in those terms, but we will have recovered the man and his damn Computer Jacket and cleaned up the last of the mess we created.”

  Fedorov seized on that point. “After all, sir, didn’t you find it strange that we appeared here at the precise moment necessary to either kill or spare the Key West? It’s as if time was forcing us to make that choice so she could get on with her business. Now we have this letter, and yes, more unfinished business. Don’t you feel it? The moment seems breathless. Things are building and building to some climax, but time is waiting—waiting for us to make another choice.”

  Volsky, took a long breath, settling into his chair, thinking. “Then we have two options that I can see. One is to get this Rod-25 back aboard Kirov, and hope that perhaps we might do something one day, presuming this strange displacement ever happens again. And the other choice is to utterly destroy that control rod and close the matter here and now, and then we live with what comes next, and forfeit the power to change it ever again, except by means of blood and steel in the here and now.” He had a distant look in his eyes, as if seeing the days past or perhaps peering into some unknown future and seeing it as a real place and time in his imagination.

  “So what do we do, sir?” said Karpov. “What do we do with the greatest power anyone has ever seen on this earth—the power to change everything, the entire world? There’s a great dragon out there, and it’s about to start a war. We’ve already seen the end of that story. What do we do about it?”

  Volsky smiled, still thinking. “This reminds me of the old Chinese proverb,” he said at last. “If you ignore the dragon, it will eat you. If you try to confront the dragon it will overpower you. But if you ride the dragon, you will take advantage of its might and power. Gentlemen… We can’t ignore this, and I’m not sure we can win this war by confrontation on our own, or prevent it from taking place. But by God, yes, we do have power, Karpov, and we can ride the Dragon’s back.”

  Part XI

  Siren Song

  “This is the one song everyone

  would like to learn: the song

  that is irresistible:

  the song that forces men

  to leap overboard in squadrons

  even though they see beached skulls

  the song nobody knows

  because anyone who had heard it

  is dead, and the others can’t remember.

  Shall I tell you the secret? …”

  — Margaret Atwood: Siren Song

  Chapter 31

  Admiral Volsky’s eyes shone with new light now. He was no longer that old Admiral, sitting at the desk of another old admiral, and looking longingly at the retired hulk of Admiral Lazarev down in Abrek Bay. There the ship sat, the image of Kirov f
rom without, but nothing more than a gutted, empty hulk within, powerless and forgotten. But not so for Kirov, he thought. There was power to take to the seas again, real authority to strive and contend and decide. And they also had Rod-25, a mysterious magic wand with power unlike anything the world had ever seen. They had discovered it unknowingly, blundering into a distant age and time to wage war on war itself. And though they fought there to preserve their own lives and fate, they had also unwittingly decided the lives and fate of many others. What they did before, they could do again.

  The red telephone sounded an insistent tone on his desk. It was Talanov: “Excuse me sir, but I think you had better bring up your news feed.” It was the UN General Assembly this time. The Chinese ambassador was completing a lengthy speech and making a formal demand, and ultimatum, for the passage of a resolution in the Republic of China renouncing independence.

  “They are asking Taiwan to surrender before the shooting has even started there,” said Karpov.

  “Always a good move, but not one likely to produce any results,” said Volsky. “This is mere formality. Moscow informs me that they will move on Taiwan no later than midnight tomorrow. Their submarines are already deploying from the major bases at Sanya and Yulin on Hainan Island to form a picket line in the South China Sea, and their new aircraft carrier is preparing to move into those waters. There is activity all along the coast from Shanghai to Dailan, Guangzhou, Shantou, Beihai and even Hong Kong. Air units are being moved and the entire navy is ramping up for deployment. We must do the same. I am going to call Admiral Shi Lang and see if I can buy us a little more time. He may not have any choice in the matter, but at the very least I will know more of what to expect in the days ahead. We have less than forty-eight hours to decide what we must do with Kirov.”

  “The ship is ready, sir. We can sail within that timeframe.”

  Volsky considered, looking at Fedorov and seeing the concern on his face. They had three weapons now, time, blood and steel. The problem was that there was all too little of the first, even though eternity was within their grasp in Rod-25.

  “Mister Fedorov,” he said at last. “If you have any last thoughts on this matter, then let me hear them. What do you propose?”

  Fedorov looked at Karpov, then set his jaw. He explained that there were two possible ways to get Orlov—one by using the ship, and the other by simply following Markov’s ill fated route. “I understand that using the ship may be impossible at the moment, sir. So I’ll go, with your permission. I’ll go to the test-bed facility and follow Markov’s route. It moved him to September of 1942, right where we need to go to find Orlov. He thinks they were taking him to Bayil Prison in Baku. If so, he’ll be in one place for a good long time. We could try and find him there.”

  “How will you get there?”

  “The Trans-Siberian rail.”

  “That’s a long way, and very dangerous.” Karpov pointed out the obvious. “Getting back out east to the coast here with Orlov would be even more dangerous. I assume that is your plan, yes? We’d still have to run the procedure aboard Kirov again to bring you home, Fedorov. Taking time out to excuse ourselves from World War Three will not be easy. Even if we could do such a thing, how will we know when you are ready for extraction? And suppose we do this and the ship ends up in 1944! You could be left at the coast for a very long time waiting for our helicopters to show up. In fact, you could be left there for a lifetime.”

  “I’m afraid I must agree,” said Volsky. “It would seem complete madness to send Kirov off into the ether under these circumstances. That ship is the heart of the fleet now. We have Admiral Kuznetsov at sea just south of Beringa Island, our only existing aircraft carrier, and it is escorted by three old Krivak Class frigates. We’ll have to do better than that. On the other hand, we have the greatest weapon imaginable at our disposal if we dare to use it again, and if it has the slightest chance of preventing this war, then we must try. Have you thought about this, Fedorov? If it works as with Markov, and you vanish as he did, how will we know what has happened to you? How could we possibly come back for you?”

  “I’ll let you know if I get back to the target date safely, sir.”

  “What? How will you do that, Fedorov? I don’t think there’s a secure telephone line anywhere in old Vladivostok to the year 2021.”

  “No, but there are secure locations here in Vladivostok that go back centuries. I happen to own one that will come in very handy.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “The old Naval Storage Depot, sir. Cellar number five. It still has old storage bins dating back to WWII, some even earlier. My father was a navy man, and so was my grandfather. He had one of the bins there, and it passed to my father and then to me. I just went to check it yesterday. It’s still there, completely untouched for decades. My grandfather’s old uniform is tucked away in a steamer trunk, and I’ll slip a note into the breast pocket.” He held up an old, weathered key, smiling.

  “Nobody has bothered them at all these years,” he said. “Just have a man waiting there with this key, and as soon as we vanish he can open the bin. My letter should be right there waiting for him. I got the idea that we could do this when I found Orlov’s letter.”

  “Astounding,” said Volsky.

  “So you’ll know if I’ve made it back safely. Then I’ll head for Kizlyar via the Trans-Siberian rail.”

  “That’s a huge distance,” said Karpov. “What if you don’t make it back safely? Look what happened to Markov! You said he was shot dead by military police on the quay within minutes of his arrival there.”

  “That won’t happen to me, Captain.”

  “How can you be so sure?”

  “Because Sergeant Troyak will be with me.” He folded his arms.

  “Troyak?” Karpov raised his eyebrows. “You’ve spoken to him about this?”

  “He volunteered this afternoon, and two of his best Marines will round out the team. In fact he showed me comm-link devices you can use to track us on extraction. They use them for special operations.”

  “You told him everything? He and his men know the risks?”

  “And they also know what’s at stake.”

  Volsky smiled. “Well, well, well… Yes, if you take Troyak back we will definitely get your letter, and I think you will get to Kizlyar as well. I have little doubt of that. But make no mistake, Fedorov. This is still going to be dangerous. Troyak and his men are among the best in the fleet, but they are men nonetheless, not robots. A bullet will kill them, and you, easily enough.”

  “I understand, sir. It’s the risk we’ll have to take.”

  “I admire your courage in this, but I must tell you that Kirov may not be able to come back for you.”

  Fedorov knew this was the one weak link in his plan. Kirov might soon find itself in battle, and there was no guarantee that the ship would survive or ever find a way to extricate itself and use Rod-25 to return for them. But he had a plan.

  “There’s another way, sir. Kirov is not the only ship with nuclear reactors. The Anatoly Alexandrov is in the Caspian Sea at this very moment and it operates two KLT-40B naval propulsion reactors—the exact same power rating as Kirov.”

  “Anatoly Alexandrov?” Karpov raised an eyebrow in surprise. “That’s just a floating nuclear power facility. It was delivered via the rail quay at Kaspiysk to Gazprom for use in its Kashagan superfield offshore drilling operation. But I don’t even think it is crewed at the moment.” Karpov knew much about the operation as he had been a former executive in Gazprom before coming to the navy.

  “Precisely, sir. It’s fully functional, but not yet scheduled for operations—and with no crew on site it is just perfect for what I have planned. All we would have to do is send Dobrynin and a few engineers with a security team from the ship. It’s anchored about ten kilometers off Kaspiysk harbor, and that is only about 120 kilometers south of Kizlyar! We can fly Rod-25 to Uytash airfield at Kaspiysk tonight. We have a coast guard base there, hove
rcraft, helos, the entire 77th Guard Naval Marine force at our disposal. If the Admiral orders it, we could easily commandeer the Anatoly Alexandrov, secretly install Rod-25, and it would shift the entire facility back. It displaces only 21,500 tons, which is less than Kirov. Perhaps we could move one of the new assault landing ships at Kaspiysk. I believe the Lt. Rimskiy is stationed there. It can range out to 1000 kilometers, requires only a small six man crew, and can transport 140 tons—a fast hovercraft, a helicopter, or even tanks! If you moved it tight on the Alexandrov, I think those reactors will shift it back as well. That would give our Marines a fast mobile platform for the extraction mission, and a few surprises inside in case we run into trouble. You can signal your arrival by radio and home in on us. We can meet you anywhere on the Caspian coast!”

  “Amazing,” said Volsky. “You have the whole mission planned!” He sat with that for a moment, thinking, and realizing that as wild as the operation seemed, they had to try.

  “Very well…It’s decided. You have your mission, Fedorov, but why not launch it from the Alexandrov? Why risk the long journey east from here?”

  “It will take time to set things up in the Caspian, Admiral”

  “Yes, perhaps several days, even a week.”

  “But I can leave tonight from here. Yes, it makes for a long, hard journey in 1942, but if I don’t act immediately the situation could change here with these recent developments. A week from now who knows what we will be facing? We should act immediately, sir. This way I can verify the day of our arrival with a letter as planned. We know the approximate time we might displace to from the Engineering Center, but not so with the Alexandrov.”

  “Suppose you appear in September of 1942 as with Markov, but the Alexandrov shifts to a different date, perhaps in 1943 or 1944? Or not at all?”