Clark watched, spellbound, as the ship emerged from the mouth of the straits, like some evil sea beast being spewed from the belly of a whale. He looked over his shoulder again at the heart of Home Fleet, glad the stalwart battleships were there, spread out behind him in an arc of steel. They were cruising at wide intervals, their huge guns gleaming in the morning sun.
The strange interloper loomed ever nearer, then he saw the phantom ship turn fifteen points to port on a heading to take it quickly past the sharp rocky headlands of Cape Spartel west of Tangier. Its mass and size were even more evident now at this angle, and he found himself admiring the hard, yet elegant beauty of the ship, an amazing synthesis of artistry, power and speed. Yet, peering through his field glasses, the gun turrets he could make out at this range seemed no bigger than his own. He had heard about the rocketry, all the rumors, and had even seen some of the damage himself, but it was still hard to believe.
After a hard and costly journey through the cauldron of fire of the Mediterranean Sea, Kirov was finally back in the Atlantic. Admiral Tovey had sent word three hours ago that if this ship would accept an escort of two British cruisers and sail to the Island of St. Helena in the South Atlantic, then he would accept the offer of armistice in exchange for neutrality for the duration of the war. Admiral Volsky was grateful that he did not have to order the ship to fight again that morning, and that no one else would have to die. And he would have his island in the bargain as well! So he had agreed to sail on a course that would have him skirt Funchal Island, then to Palma in the Canaries and finally Ribeira Grande in the Cape Verde Islands where coast watchers could also mark their progress south. From there it would be southeast to St. Helena, the island where England buried its monsters and the place where Napoleon Bonaparte had lived out his final days in captivity.
Fedorov had impressed the significance of this upon Admiral Volsky, urging him to accept Tovey’s offer, but the Admiral needed no convincing. He got what he had asked for, a grudging peace, but peace nonetheless, and an island where he and his crew could rest, far from prying, curious eyes to have some time to decide their fate. Volsky had agreed to sail at no more than twenty knots speed at all times, and not to jam the British radar, as long as the two British ships would come no closer to his own vessel than 5 kilometers. He knew that range was nearly point blank for a well sighted naval gun, but trusted to the integrity of the men who had made their pledge in this negotiation. He wanted Kirov’s war on the world to be over, but like the wishes of so many others that have gone unfulfilled, the world would not yet give that to him.
It was the fifth day since the ship had first arrived in the Tyrrhenian Sea of 1942, and Kirov sailed on through the Straits of Gibraltar on the 15th of August, cruising boldly past the long baleful line of Tovey’s Home Fleet, the squat metal shapes of four identical battleships watching in silence. High overhead they saw fitful flights of British aircraft off the carrier Avenger, circling with watchful eyes.
Kirov turned south with Sheffield and Norfolk in her wake, starting the long sea cruise that would last all of seven more days. They followed the route as planned, through calm seas and past the exotic islands off the coast of Africa. And on the seventh day, a day when God himself was said to have rested, they saw a heavy shroud of fog lying low on the seas around a distant island peak.
They had agreed to heave to off the southern shores of St. Helena, anchoring at Sandy Bay off Powell’s Gut at the base of a high ridge of tawny brown hills that rose 600 meters above the sea. There they would wait beneath the folded ravines and auburn cliffs known as the Gates of Chaos, or so it had been agreed. Volsky watched the distant island looming on the near horizon with rising curiosity. Karpov brooded, unhappy over the agreement but resigned. Fedorov seemed to be fidgeting nervously, his eyes glancing at the ship’s chronometer as they approached the low haze laced island, the fog thickening around them as they went.
Five kilometers to either side of them, the watch officers on both Sheffield and Norfolk were relieved that the long sea journey was finally over, their charge nearly delivered. The strange ship would soon come under the observation of a special Royal Navy team that had been flown in ahead of them to Jamestown on St Helena. Soon the cruisers could finally turn and head north again.
The watchmen peered through their field glasses one last time, seeing the sleek battlecruiser pass slowly into the thickening fog. The land based observers were to call them from the top of High Ridge above the Gates of Chaos to report the ship’s anchorage. In the meantime Norfolk and Sheffield would sail round either side of the island themselves, with each captain bound to log and report that the ship had been duly delivered to its place of internment, and obtain photographic evidence of such.
The Royal Navy was taking no chances that their new ward and visitor would slip away unseen. There were already three planes up from Jamestown with watchful eyes on every side of the island. The seaplane tender Pegasus would also make the long journey south to anchor at Jamestown with six more search planes for good measure.
And so it was that twelve days after she had again been pulled through time to the year 1942, Kirov sailed into the low bank of fog off the Island of St. Helena… and never sailed out. The observers on High Ridge would wait for her in vain, and would never see her arrive at Sandy Bay. For other Gates of Chaos had opened for her again that morning, and she was gone, lost, vanished from that day and year.
Norfolk and Sheffield searched in vain all that day, as did every plane available on the island, but not a trace or a whisper of the ship was seen or heard. In desperation the ships put divers in the water to look for any sign that the Kirov might have foundered and sunk while approaching the island through that heavy morning fog. Nothing was found…
Days later a car drove quickly up the lane towards a stately estate, its buildings clustered one against another in an odd mingling of architectural styles. Bletchley Park, or ‘Station X’ as it was called, was one of ten special operations facilities set up by MI6, where ‘Captain Ridley’s Shooting Party’ was supposed to be enjoying afternoons on the adjoining sixty acre estate, with shotguns and hounds to hunt down quail. Yet its real purpose was derived from the feverish activity of the Government Code and Cypher School, England’s code breakers, a collection of brilliant and dedicated men and women who would generate the vital intelligence information needed to prosecute the war.
Here there were walls of colored code wheels, strange devices like the Enigma machines and odd looking equipment fed by long coiled paper tape, dimpled with a series of small black dots of varying sizes. The minds of Bletchley Park were already in the first stages of digitizing the analog world into forms their nascent computing machines could digest and ruminate upon. A year later the estate would see the installation of the first “Colossus” machine, a rudimentary computer housing all of 1500 vacuum tubes to power its mechanical brain.
The car stopped, its door opening quickly as Admiral Tovey stepped out, a thick parcel under his right arm. He did not approach the styled mansions up the main walkway, but veered left towards a green sided extension—Hut 4, the heart of naval intelligence. A year ago the men who worked there had been reveling in their first breakthrough, the deciphering of the German Enigma code. Then came the unaccountable appearance of a strange ship in the Northern Seas, and it set the whole community back on its heels.
Tovey walked past the row of white trimmed windows and entered through a plain unsigned door. He was immediately greeted by a Marine guard, who saluted crisply and led him down the narrow hall to the office of Professor Alan Turing, who had been reading a volume of Byron’s poetry as he waited for the Admiral.
“Good day, Professor,” said Tovey as he walked briskly in, his hand extended. Turing set his poetry down and rose to greet him, his dark eyes alight with a smile.
“I’ve brought you a little something more for your file boxes,” said Tovey.
“Ah,” said Turing, “The photography!”
“Indeed. Two reels of film here with photos, and a full report. I’ve collected the logs of all ships involved, so you’ll have a good time sorting it all through before it gets filed away with everything else on this Geronimo business.”
“Very good, sir,” said Turing, his curiosity immediately aroused. “I wonder, Admiral. Might I persuade you to allow me to fly out to St. Helena one of these days and have a look for myself?”
Tovey raised an eyebrow, his face suddenly serious, and seated himself, his eye falling on the open volume of Byron’s poetry. He scanned the lines, reading inwardly:
“On the sea the boldest steer but where their ports invite;
But there are wanderers o’er Eternity
Whose bark drives on and on,
and anchor’d ne’er shall be.”
With a heavy sigh he looked at Turing, and all the unanswered questions in his mind took a seat there with him, waiting to have their say. “I’m afraid I have some rather interesting news for you, Professor,” he said quietly. “And I think it’s high time that you and I have a very frank chat.”
Coming Soon: The Saga Continues…
Kirov III - By John Schettler
Reaching the island of St Helena, the battlecruiser Kirov vanishes without a trace, gone from that day and year and lost again in a desolate future. They sail east, round the Cape of Good Hope and into the Indian Ocean, hoping to find some sign of human life in the southern hemisphere. Reaching the Pacific they soon discover that the ship has once again moved in time, to the year 1943.
Now the ship’s First Officer, Anton Fedorov is shocked to finally discover the true source of the great variation in time that has led to a devastated future they have come from and the demise of civilization itself. The chronology of the war at sea in the Pacific has been radically changed, and nothing in his history books can help them navigate the dangerous waters they now find themselves in, embroiled in a major Japanese offensive operation.
Discovered by the Japanese carrier raiding fleet, the ship now faces its most dangerous and determined challenge ever when they are hunted by the most powerful enemy task force they have ever faced—led by the battleships Yamato and Musashi, and an admiral determined to sink this phantom ship, or die trying.
In this amazing conclusion to the popular Kirov trilogy, the most powerful ships ever conceived by two different eras clash in a titanic final battle that will decide the fate of nations and the world itself.
Please visit www.writingshop.ws for final publication date
~ OTHER BOOKS BY JOHN SCHETTLER ~
The Meridian Series
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.
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.
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.
Book V: Golem 7
Nordhausen is back with new research and his hand on the neck of the new terrorist behind the 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.
Alternate Military History (Naval)
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.
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. (Print and eBook) Note: Print version contains the original parts I and II in a single volume. eBook versions present parts I and II as separate files (each over 300 pages) and part II, Khan Tengri, is extended and revised.
Khan Tengri ~ Volume II of Taklamakan
Learn the fate of Tando, Drekk, and the others in this revised version of Part II of Taklamakan, with a 30,000 word, 7 chapter addition! (eBook Only)
Science Fiction
Wild Zone ~ Classic Science Fiction
A shadow has fallen over earth’s latest and most promising colony prospect in the Dharma system. When a convulsive solar flux event disables communications with the Safe Zone, special agent Timothy Scott Ryan is rushed to the system on a Navy frigate to investigate. He soon becomes embroiled in a mystery that threatens the course of evolution itself as a virulent new organism has targeted mankind as a new host.
Mother Heart ~ Sequel to Wild Zone
Ensign Lydia Gates is the most important human being alive, for her blood holds the key to synthesizing a vaccine against the awful mutations spawned by the Colony Virus. Ryan and Caruso return to the Wild Zone to find her, discovering more than they bargained for, and the ancient entity at the heart of the mystery of life on Dharma VI. (eBook Only)
Dream Reaper ~ A Mythic Mystery/Horror Novel
There was something under the ice at Steamboat Slough, something lost, buried in the frozen wreckage where the children feared to play. For Daniel Edwards, returning to the old mission site near the Yukon where he taught school a decade past, the wreck of an old steamboat becomes more than a tale told by the village elders. In a mystery weaving the shifting imagery of a dream with modern psychology and ancient myth, Daniel struggles to solve the riddle of the old wreck and free himself from the haunting embrace of a nightmare older than history itself.
For more information visit:
http://www.writingshop.ws
http://www.dharma6.com
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“The only sensible ends of literature are, first, the pleasurable toil of writing; second, the gratification of one's family and friends; and lastly, the solid cash.”
—Nathanial Hawthorne
The pleasure has been mine in writing this, my friends have all been gratified, now it’s your turn! Spread the good word, and thank you so much for reading!
John Schettler
Kirov II: Cauldron Of Fire (Kirov Series) Page 34