Here he is, unknowing, still thinking he is sailing in his own time, unaware of what has happened to him and his ship. The danger here is measureless. This man could undo all the careful planning and cooperation I’ve worked to achieve with the Russians. He could become the deadly foil that ship was when we first encountered it, events I stand at the edge of this very moment, yet things I can literally read my own hand on, as I documented the whole affair once before!
What to do here? The key thing now is to diffuse any potential conflict in the immediate local area of this ship. I must get a message off to Wake-Walker, and tell him to hold the Dervish convoy at Iceland. He’ll need to pull in his cruiser screens, and I’ll also have to get hold of Vian and rein him in as well. He’s up there with Force K off the Norwegian coast. Yet how to speak with this man, here and now. He’s standing by, and every moment of delay attenuates the thin rope we may now be dangling from.
Think Tovey, he chided himself. What would they be doing now on that ship? I’m told there was some sort of accident. That was what sent them here in the first instance. So they will be somewhat disoriented, perhaps investigating what may have happened, and each and every bit of evidence they uncover will seem an impossibility. It’s likely that this is what created the tension and conflict on that ship, and led to this attempted mutiny. So I must do everything possible to tamp things down here…
Tovey narrowed his eyes, and then made his call.
“HMS Invincible to BCG Kirov, this is Admiral Tovey. Come back.”
“BCG Kirov reading you loud and clear. We Copy, HMS Invincible. Over.”
“Invincible here. This message is for the Captain. It appears we have a situation on our hands here, and I am presently giving orders that all Royal Navy ships in your vicinity should immediately withdraw. Should you require any assistance, we will, of course, be happy to lend a hand. Otherwise, in the interest of peace, orders will be transmitted immediately to any British ship in the Norwegian Sea to withdraw to friendly ports. We wish no hostilities. Over.”
There was a good long wait before a message came back. “We copy your message, HMS Invincible. All Royal Navy ships will withdraw to friendly ports. No assistance required, and no interference with the investigation we are presently conducting will be tolerated. Do you copy? Over.”
“Message received. No interference contemplated. We will stand by on this channel should you wish any further communication. HMS Invincible, over and out.”
The Admiral turned to the others, a concerned look on his face. “Well, he said. It appears we’ve just struck our first bargain with the devil. He may be exactly that, this Captain Karpov, or he may be something more, a guardian angel, as this ship was for us in our hour of greatest need. I suppose only time will tell which it will be. If they keep to their maintenance schedule, then the ship may only be here ten more days. Yet, in that time, it managed to sink and damage many ships, kill thousands of men, and loosed a terrible weapon on the world that ended up doing only one good thing—it brought the Americans into this mess, once and for all. That was in my reports as well, though I realize we have no way of knowing if that will ever occur. I suppose it all rests with what is happening on that ship. This time it isn’t armies and fleets that will decide things, but the delicate tension strung out between the senior officers on that ship.”
“What I wouldn’t give to be a fly on that wall,” said Professor Dorland. “Someone on that ship has survived this shift with their memory intact. Either that, or they are experiencing intense déjà vu, but the result is the same. They knew your secret communications channel, and that means they retained memories of their experiences, at least insofar as that meeting in Alexandria you mentioned. Admiral Tovey, do you have any idea who that person could be?”
“The list is very short,” said Tovey. “Only three men attended that meeting. The ship’s commanding officer, Admiral Volsky, then Captain Fedorov, and the young Lieutenant they were using as a translator. Oh yes… there was one other man, a civilian. I believe his name was Kamenski. Yes, Director Kamenski. He told us quite a tale when we were easing Admiral Cunningham over the line in all this business.”
“Admiral Cunningham?” said Paul.
“Well, he had to be informed,” said Tovey. “He was commander of the Mediterranean Fleet, and that Russian battlecruiser sailed right up through the Suez Canal and onto his watch, so there had to be some explanation.”
Paul looked a bit distressed. “Then he knows that Kirov was from… the future?”
“As amazing as that still sounds, yes. But he’s a most capable and reliable man. In fact, as I’m apparently fated to establish this group called the Watch, I’ll make him one of my first recruits.”
“Who else has been told what was really happening?”
“A few more good men. Wavell is in the know, as is General O’Connor. This Mister Fedorov from the Russian ship found it necessary to bring both men over the line when Brigadier Kinlan’s troops suddenly appeared in the desert.”
Paul rubbed his forehead, remembering Maeve’s anguish that the situation was so badly fractured now that it might never be put back together in any way that might resemble the history they knew. An entire modern armored brigade, complete with all that technology and weaponry… It was unimaginable. The implications were staggering.
“I can see by the look on your face that all this is somewhat disturbing,” said Tovey. “Believe me, Professor Dorland, you stand there worried over how all of this affects your future, while I stand here worried how it will all play out in the here and now. Thankfully, these interventions have proved benign, as far as the British Empire is concerned, though things went quite a bit differently in those reports I supposedly wrote, and now that this ship has arrived here again, they could easily spin out of our careful control.”
“Does anyone else know what has happened here?” asked Paul.
“One man who was perhaps fated to know all this, our Winston Churchill. There was a meeting at Siwa, with Wavell, The senior Russian officers, and Churchill. It was necessary to get the Prime Minister on our side of the fence. Otherwise he has a tendency to insist on things, in a manner of speaking.”
“I understand,” said Paul, “but you realize the implications of this. If you could point to one single man as perhaps the most significant Prime Mover in the history of this era, it would be Winston Churchill. Now I’m standing here wondering just how far this knowledge will spread, who will know, and what effect it may have.”
“Impossible to say,” said Tovey. “I don’t mean to offend in saying this, but none of you belong here at all. You are all uninvited guests here, and every man woman and child alive today will have to live with the things that happen because of your presence. Some of those things may be good. I’m the first to admit that the support of the Russians, and their ship of miracles, has been a saving grace for us. Yet I’m told by Mister Fedorov that many things have already happened here that were never meant to be, this ship we’re standing on being one of them. I can’t imagine the Royal Navy without good old HMS Invincible, but he tells me it was never supposed to have been built. That said, and understanding your obvious concerns, the genie is out of the bottle, Professor. I for one cannot see any way to correct that situation, and so we had better learn to live with what is happening here, as I don’t think it will be easy to change things.”
Paul pinched the bridge of his nose, realizing the terrible truth in everything Tovey was saying. The Dragon had awakened. It was inevitable that they would encounter a situation like this once time travel was proved to be possible. Here it was… The Dragon had roused from its long slumber, and the thought that he, and Maeve, with Robert and Kelly, could put all this back as it was, now seemed a farcical impossibility. What could they do? Could they slay this beast now that it was loose on the world? Perhaps not, but they could learn how to ride its back.
He looked at Tovey, a man caught up in the whirlwind of World War Two. There he was, co
mmanding his ships, seeing to one small matter after another, until the guns roared with their anger, and the killing began. He felt a sudden kinship with the man, for he could not know the enormity of all that now lay ahead in this war, through the long years of 1942 and 1943, then on into 1944, and beyond.
They would fight to clear the Vichy French from North Africa, and then to defeat Rommel in the desert and drive the Afrika Korps back to the continent. Then would come the invasion of Sicily and Italy, and the long planning for Operation Overlord, the D-Day invasion. After that there would be the grueling battle in France, the headlong breakout and the miraculous German recovery in Belgium and Holland. Operation Market Garden would attempt to break through, but it would lead the British Army into the meat grinder of the battles for the Rhineland, and the Germans would again strike with their Ardennes offensive. And this was just the Western theatre. Would any of that ever happen now? How would this history play out given the variations they had already seen here in 1941?
He’s standing there just like I am, thought Paul, wondering how in the world he can salvage this situation, preserve his nation and way of life, and possibly prevail against the might of the German war machine now. So I’m no different, just another general fighting the war here, and we’ll just have to take it one battle at a time.
“I’m under no illusions,” he said. “I know what lies ahead for us is extremely dangerous, perhaps fatally so. And yet, if you can believe it, I once faced the prospect of reversing an intervention that would have altered the entire course of Western history, to the point where all of Christendom might have been eliminated in Medieval Europe, and the United States itself might not have been discovered as it was, being colonized by another power. In that, my very own existence was at stake, as it may be here for all of us as we now proceed. That situation came down to a very few key points on the time meridian, where levers existed that allowed us to move events back on track. It took one good woman on a horse, a message in an apple, and the death of two men to reverse that catastrophe, so you see, little things that change at just the right time can have dramatic effects. I call them Push Points, and I must believe they also exist as levers we can use in this crisis.”
“Can we find them here?” asked Elena. “Can your research team ferret out something we can work with?”
“Possibly,” said Paul, “though the situation we’re now facing is extremely grave. We have had a near catastrophic intervention in time by this Russian battlecruiser. Beyond that, our situation in 2021 is now very precarious. We were nearly put out of business when the Chinese lit off that EMP attack over the Western US. Thankfully, our facility has emergency power generators, as long as we can provide the petrol to keep them running, and our equipment was wel shielded. At this stage, I came here to discover who was involved in all of this, and what was really going on. It looked impossible, this history skewed as it is, and with so many Primes now having knowledge of what has happened—not to mention Kinlan’s Brigade in North Africa, and now a small flotilla of merchant Marine ships out there as well.”
“These concerns were raised at the conference in Siwa,” said Tovey, “and at the meeting in Alexandria. Six men now know the truth, and I think that they shall form the first six recruits in that little group I’ll call the Watch. We have resolved to limit general knowledge of these events to as few key players as possible. As for the rank and file on the ships, and the troops Kinlan now commands, we have some control, which is why that brigade has been kept where it was, in a very isolated place, and why we have these new ships segregated here in the Azores.”
“Laudable, and quite important,” said Paul. “Yes, you must do everything possible to limit knowledge of what has happened. For at this moment, time itself is on the verge of rupturing and tangling in a way that could be absolutely fatal. This ship has ravaged the continuum once already, and the man that drove that energy has now returned for a second loop—a Doppelganger, something that I thought might never occur. We now face the very real possibility that the original Karpov still exists in Russia, and it is likely that he may soon gain knowledge that his own duplicate exists as well. This could lead to a real calamity, events introducing so much variation into the continuum that it simply cannot recover. It is not something that may happen, ladies and gentlemen, I strongly believe that an event I call a Radical Transformation is already underway, and it will lead us to only one certain outcome if we do not find a solution—that Grand Finality you spoke of Miss Fairchild.”
“What is it?” said Elena, the fear obvious on her face.
“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. Time cannot find a way to resolve it, and so it gets stuck in an endless replay. If this happens the future simply ceases to exist, because time cannot progress beyond the point of the finality…”
“Ceases to exist?”
“As terrible as that sounds, that is what the theory predicts. Since the future cannot be created in the line of causality, it must be destroyed, and that shadow ripples backwards on the continuum like a backwash from Paradox. That 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…”
A small measure of that silence fell on the room at that moment, stilling every voice there. Only the quiet hum of the radio set thrummed in the background, a cold and lifeless pulse on the airwaves of time, a mechanical Doppelganger, something there that should not exist, an insult to the very fiber of the universe itself. Then Admiral Tovey spoke, the words coming from that same poem by William Butler Yates he had running in his mind moments ago. It seemed, in that moment, to hold all the fear and uncertainty, and the intimation of utter doom that each of them felt.
“Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned…”
The Saga Continues…
Kirov Saga: Nemesis
The second volume in the third season of this long running tale carries the story into the turbulent waters of the north. With Admiral Volsky fallen ill, Fedorov struggles to prevent Karpov from repeating the awful events that ended in nuclear fire, and the explosion that again sent the ship reeling through time. With his memory intact, knowledge of Rod-25 and everything Karpov would do, he sets his mind on gaining control of the ship, yet must face the dangerous wrath of Karpov if he is to succeed.
Meanwhile, the Siberian, as the second Karpov is now called, has struck his bargain with Sergei Kirov, but one that could bring about another fatal collision in time. Learning that Kirov has reappeared, he sets his mind on trying to find that ship, and in so doing gain control over the most powerful weapons in the world. Unaware that his duplicate self even exists, he soon finds he has a shadowy accomplice.
The war continues on the Russian front as the Germans slowly begin to introduce new prototype tank designs, born of the shock and fire delivered by Kinlan’s heavy brigade. The story takes us into this action on the Soviet front, as the Germans launch their final assault aimed at winning the war in 1941, Operation Typhoon. Meanwhile, the German Navy licks its wounds in French ports, but still remains a dangerous threat on Admiral Tovey’s watch.
With the thorny problems of time travel finally resolved, the action takes us boldly into the war in 1942, even as Professor Dorland and the Meridian project team struggle to find the strange key that was lost on Rodney, and unravel the mystery of the Keyholders.
DORLAND’s TIME GLOSSARY - Terminology
ABSOLUTE CERTIANTY - A condition brought about by willful determination that serves to limit variation in the contin
uum, creating a kind of tunnel in the time Meridian that restricts outcomes to an absolute resolution.
ALTERED STATE – A new prime meridian that has been recreated or radically altered to incorporate consequences and changes due to variations in the original meridian. See also: Prime Meridian
ATTENUATION - A property of an incomplete Time shift, where the traveler manifests across a range of several milliseconds, slightly out of synch or phase with his correct manifestation point.
BACKWASH – The reflection of Heisenberg Waves that propagate backward in time after encountering Paradox. Backwash can create Backward Causality, and literally alter past events.
BACKWARD CAUSALITY – A quantum event where entangled particles in the present or future serve to alter the quantum state of particles in the past, leading to the alteration of events in the past because of something that happens in the present and future, usually a Paradox event. See Also: Quantum Entanglement
CHAOS ZONE – A kind of time moiré when dual Heisenberg Wave sets overlap on the other side of Paradox Time. Chaos Zones can be very unstable and create unexpected or odd effects. See also: Dual Heisenberg Wave.
CLARITY – Clear or good understanding of a temporal locus, pattern, event, Outcome or Consequence.
CO-LOCATION - The presence of an object or person transported back through time to any point or Meridian on the continuum where that object existed. This is expressly forbidden by Time, and therefore generally thought to be impossible. In like manner, no person can ever shift in Time to a point where they co-locate with themselves, which will create a Paradox if attempted. EXCEPTION: See Dual Heisenberg Wave and Doppelganger
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