Nemesis

by John Schettler

  “Then we must keep it open.”

  “The Germans in Guderian’s group are well east of Kirov Now. They are approaching Sukhininsk, and the last rail line open to Kirov runs through that town.”

  “Then we must hold there as well,” Kirov folded his arms. “What about the rest of the Siberian forces Karpov promised?”

  “Still forming,” said Berzin. “2nd Shock Army won’t be ready for some time, and again, that was slated for the winter counterattack.”

  “Assuming we survive that long,” said Kirov, and for the first time both men began to realize that the situation could easily spiral out of control, just has it had when the Smolensk Group had tried to withdraw.

  There was a long silence before Kirov spoke again. “I think we also need to plan for the possible evacuation of Moscow. Should it be necessary, a little planning now could save much trouble and grief later. But keep this very quiet. The last thing we need now is a rumor mill and subsequent panic.”

  “I understand, sir,” said Berzin. “I’ll put my best staffers on it.”

  Kirov ran his hand through his hair, more to chase the nagging headache he was fighting off than anything else. “Now what about the south?” he asked.

  “Another disaster,” said Berzin. “The Germans assembled a strong battlegroup at Pokrovka, and it broke through north of Belgorod. On the other side, south of that city, the SS have pushed all the way to Valuki. We have only one rifle division left to block the way north to Stary Oskol. That and a couple armored trains operating on that rail line.”

  “They won’t come north,” said Kirov. “They are heading east. They are heading for the Don. So now we know why Volkov was so bold with this push over the Volga towards Serafimovich.”

  “This is what Zhukov warned us about, sir,” said Berzin. “The SS are only 100 kilometers west of Rossosh now, and after that the Don...”

  “There is no good crossing point in that area,” said Kirov, “except perhaps at Boguchar.”

  “Zhukov does not even think they will plan such a crossing. He thinks they will drive along the southern bank of the Don and use it to defend their flank as they come further east to reach Volkov’s area of operations. It’s a long way to go, but we have little left to stop them.”

  “This wasn’t supposed to happen yet!” Kirov’s frustration was hard to contain. “They weren’t supposed to drive on the Volga until 1942! Well, I don’t think they’ll get there this year. They are running out of time. We may not have rifle divisions to throw at them, but we will soon have the rain. There are very few good roads in that region.”

  “So it’s come to that?” said Berzin. “We rely on the rain? What about all those troop still in the Kuban? We have all of 25 divisions between Armavir and Maykop.”

  “I’m not ready to concede that to Volkov yet. He’d like nothing more than to see us pull out there after six months hard fighting for that damn oil.”

  “The fields were dynamited,” Berzin reminded him. “The rigs were destroyed, and wells were set on fire before we pushed them out. It will take us months before we’ll ever get a drop of oil from Maykop. You must realize that sir, because Volkov certainly knows as much, and we don’t have that time.”

  “Damn it Starik!” Kirov used Berzin’s old Party name, ‘Starik,’ the ‘Old Man,’ a handle from his days in Lenin’s handpicked guard. He never used that name with him, always preferring to call him Grishin from his time in the Spanish Civil War. Berzin could not help but notice that, and he knew that the General Secretary was under a great deal of stress now.

  “We have 15 divisions at Maykop,” he said cautiously. “Five could hold there if need be, and that would free up ten for other purposes.”

  Kirov hesitated. “If we give them back Maykop, then what about Krasnodar? What about Tuapse and Novorossiysk? The Germans are already hammering at Sevastopol. If we lose those ports we lose the entire Black Sea Fleet! What about the Southern Front reserves near Morozovsk?” Kirov began pacing now.

  “Two rifle divisions and five independent brigades,” said Berzin. “Everything else went to Valuki to try and stop the SS, and that was like throwing wood on a fire.”

  “Then we’ll stop them at Boguchar,” said Kirov.

  It was a wish more than an order, and both men knew it at that moment. Kirov walked away from the planning table in the Red Archive room, noting the books he had so carefully collected in his sorties up the stairway at Ilanskiy scattered about on the desks. They had dog eared the pages, looking for anything that could help them determine what best to do, but now this new history playing out on the battlefields was pushing their resources to the limits.

  He went to the window, seeing the city dimly lit outside, the Kremlin dark as a precaution against German bombing. A light rain was falling, stippling the eaves of the overhanging roof with it slight pattering. Yes, he thought, give me rain. Give me rain and mud, and snow enough to bury the whole world. Give me winter before they get here, by God. That is now our only hope.

  He turned to Berzin again, his jaw set. “Cancel the attack on Armavir and begin a phased withdrawal from Maykop,” he said, conceding to the inevitable. “Fall back through Belorchensk and Kropotkin, but establish a good defensive front on the Kuban River, and by all means, protect those ports. The river line should be easy to hold, and it will allow us to strip off five to seven divisions to form a new provisional army. Get those troops to the rail lines and move sufficient rolling stock south so we can pull them out. And by all means, save the artillery. Who’s commanding there?”

  “Konstantin Golubev is near Armavir, and Kostenko is at Kerch. You can take your pick.”

  “Have Golubev organize the Kuban defense line. Let Kostenko put that new provisional army together.”

  “The Germans are breaking through on his front,” said Berzin, one more bit of bad news that he had saved for last. “They already have Fedosiya. He’s asked for permission to cross the straits and hold at Taman. There’s already four divisions digging in there on the peninsula.”

  “Leave them there. Tell Kostenko he can join them with anything he can get safely out of Kerch. He can set up his new headquarters at Krasnodar and sort out the troops withdrawing from Maykop.”

  “Very good, sir.” Berzin was glad that the General Secretary was still open to reason, for he knew that Zhukov’s warning about the troops in the Kuban was well taken. It would only be a matter of time before they would have to concede that this adventure into the Caucasus was a dismal failure. It was once all territory held by the Orenburg Federation, prized real estate with every road leading south to the oil fields of Baku. They had come for that oil, and achieved a kind of pyrrhic victory at Maykop, but they both knew the offensive to the south could no longer be sustained.

  Berzin knew how hard the loss would be for Kirov to take, but his was the voice of cold hard reality, the intelligence master of the Army, and the only other man privileged to meet with him there in the Red Archives. Someone had to tell the truth, and so he never sugar coated anything with Kirov, giving it to him as plainly as possible, in spite of the General Secretary’s growing frustration and anxiety.

  “Who would have thought the Germans would drive on the Volga this early?” said Kirov again, with a shake of his head.

  “Clearly the material has its limitations as a guide to these events,” said Berzin. “After all… I am still alive, am I not?” He smiled, for he had read the date of his own death there in the material, July 29, 1938, executed by Stalin on charges of anti Soviet activity during the early purges. In effect, he owed his life to the man standing there in the room with him now, and so he would give him that life, an able lieutenant at Kirov’s side throughout the war.

  Kirov nodded, understanding. “So let us drink to that,” he said, listening…

  The rain… The rain falling hard enough now that Kirov could hear it on the roof, a good steady downfall to wet the streets of Moscow, and sodden the fields for miles in every directi
on.

  “Is that everything?” he asked.

  “For the moment,” said Berzin.

  Part XII

  All Our Tomorrows

  “Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow,

  Creeps in this petty pace from day to day,

  To the last syllable of recorded time;

  And all our yesterdays have lighted fools

  The way to dusty death.”

  — Macbeth (Act 5, Scene 5)

  Chapter 34

  “We’ve had no word from the ship since that last communication,” said Tovey. “Strange that Admiral Volsky would not respond.”

  “He may not be the man you knew here,” said Wellings, the man they now knew to be Professor Dorland. He had darkened the meeting with his predictions of imminent doom, confirming all the fears Elena Fairchild had carried, and worse.

  “A time loop?” said Tovey. “Can you explain that again?”

  “The ship has arrived a second time,” said Dorland, “but instead of tangling with the Royal Navy and becoming your headache, it seems to have taken another course.”

  “To Murmansk,” said Tovey. “We’ve a pair of submarines up there, and our Commander Bone has reported in, saying the word round the place is that a large warship put into Kola Bay, but left soon after. It certainly isn’t ours, and the Russians don’t have anything up there that would fit that description. So I can only assume this is Admiral Volsky’s ship. Yet not the one we sailed with you say? How very odd.”

  “Quite so,” said Dorland. “In fact this was only a theory, now confirmed if this is what occurred. It will be the first instance of a time loop ever taking place, at least that I know of, and so we are all on shaky ground here. The outcome depends on how stable the ship’s position is in time.”

  “Explain that,” said Elena, very curious about all of this.

  “Well,” said Dorland, “the trouble started when the ship slipped to a position in time prior to its first arrival. That is very dangerous, for anyone or anything moving in time. It creates the possibility of Paradox, as I’ve explained. Mother Time is a very meticulous host, and she doesn’t take lightly to anyone barging into her living room who is already there. Usually she looks after things by simply forbidding anything to move to a point on the continuum where it already exists. Yet not even time is infallible. If, for any reason, this ship slips again, to a time prior to its first appearance, then the entire loop could replay a third time. Think of it like an old phonograph record that meets a scratch and keeps repeating one segment of the song. Time has literally skipped a beat in these events. If this occurs again, and continues to loop in the same way, then time becomes stuck here, and the future cannot be defined. You see, all our tomorrows depend on the outcome of today, just as this moment rests atop a stack of those old records, and one that stretches back all through history. Go to the past, and you land on one of those records. Do something there to scratch it, break it, and you do so at your own peril.”

  “For the whole bloody stack could come tumbling down,” said Tovey. “I think I understand what you are saying, Professor.”

  “Well what in the world do we do about this?” said Elena.

  “I’m afraid this situation is very complex now,” said Dorland. “We’ve faced thorny interventions before, but never anything like this. In all our previous missions, we were able to get to a point in time where it only took a little nudge to correct the aberration. Once that was something as simple as an errant stumble in the desert, then it took something more to correct variations. If you will indulge me, Admiral, I can tell you that in May of 1941, your sole aim at sea was to find and sink one German ship, the battleship Bismarck, at least in the history I knew.”

  “That was just one weed in the garden,” said Tovey. “We had quite a bit more to deal with last May. The whole bloody German fleet was out to sea, and it was only the intervention of Admiral Volsky, and your able services, Miss Fairchild, that allowed us to pull through. I was holding my own against the Hindenburg and Bismarck when we fought, but we were very lucky. Admiral Volsky got to that German aircraft carrier, and that made a great deal of difference in the outcome of that engagement.”

  “I suppose it did,” said Dorland, “yet none of it was ever supposed to happen. I mentioned the Bismarck because we discovered it had survived its maiden voyage, which has some very unforeseen effects in our day. So we endeavored to reverse that, successfully, which is how I devised this persona of Lieutenant Commander Wellings. I hope the real man will forgive me. In any case, we set things right, but this situation is something quite more. The Hindenburg should not even exist, nor this ship we’re standing on now. How I put those genies back in the bottle escapes me. This entire meridian is so skewed from the history I once knew, that I cannot see how it could possibly be made whole again. There are only two possibilities in my mind. The first is somehow finding a way to resolve this intervention by Kirov.

  “Resolve it?” Tovey raised an eyebrow. “How so?”

  “We would have to get back to a time before the Heisenberg Wave was generated in 1908. That is what has re-written all this history, and produced an altered state here. That is what created this ship, Admiral, HMS Invincible.”

  “I see… And could we do such a thing?”

  “I suppose it could be attempted. We might work out something with the Meridian team—an intervention of sorts, but I would need a lot more information about what actually happened to find the Push Points.”

  “Push Points?”

  “Events that serve as triggers to set other events in motion.”

  “Ah, like the Germans having a go at Poland, which was the straw that broke the camel’s back and got us all off to war.”

  “That’s one kind, a major Push Point that sets other dominoes falling. But they are not always that transparent and obvious. A Push Point can be something quite innocuous, a minor, humdrum happening that ends up having consequences no one could foresee. This sort can be very difficult to identify, and unless we do so, no intervention can really succeed. We have to know what the real Push Points were.”

  “And what about these keys?” asked Tovey. “Do they have something to do with all this?”

  “It would seem so,” said Elena. “One brought me and my ship here at a most opportune time.”

  “Yes,” said Dorland, “the keys. That is another part of the puzzle that we must figure out. What do these keys have to do with all of this?”

  “I’ve a man who is quite good with puzzles,” said Tovey. “Our Mister Alan Turing.”

  Dorland smiled. “Yes, the father of the computers we used to send me here! Well, I’d welcome any help we can get, Admiral. Yet it would seem that our first move would be to try and round all these keys up. It’s clear they correspond to rifts in time, perhaps naturally occurring rifts, though we do not know this yet. Who knows how they occurred? In any case, if these keys were manufactured in the future, then they must bear on all of this somehow, which is why I was so set on retrieving the key aboard Rodney. We’ll just have to look for it somewhere else now. I’ve told you where I think the rift it is associated with exists, Saint Michael’s Cave, Gibraltar.”

  “Yes,” said Tovey, and the Germans have the Rock now. Damn inconvenient. Well, how do you propose we proceed?”

  “Look for the key somewhere else, of course,” said Dorland. “It would have to be retrieved before it met its fate on the Rodney. We know it was embedded in the Selene Horse, and the whereabouts of that artifact is very easy to chart. I’ll put my team on this, and we’ll see what we can work out.”

  “I believe that key is essential to this whole business,” said Elena. “In fact, I think the key I was given was merely meant to enable my appearance here, with Argos Fire, for the sole purpose of retrieving that key.”

  “Perhaps so,” said the Professor, “though I would certainly like to know who set that mission up.”

  Now Elena pointed, right at Admiral Tovey. “He did, or s
o I’m led to believe by the note I found in the box I retrieved from Delphi.”

  Paul nodded, thinking. “I can see by the look on your face, Admiral, that you remain oblivious of any involvement. But I must tell you that this could have been accomplished by some other version of yourself, on some other Meridian. In fact, I believe it was the John Tovey from the Meridian I came from. Who knows what he eventually learned about all of this, or how he learned it. But apparently you came to know a good deal more than you know now.”

  “Apparently,” said Tovey with a shrug. “Well it would be nice if that other fellow—my doppelganger—well it would be nice if he would be so kind as to drop me a line and fill me in.” He folded his arms.

  Dorland smiled. “I once tried the very same thing…” He stopped, his eyes registering the surprise of some sudden realization. “Yes… Information. But I’m not sure if it would even be possible at this point….” He seemed to be talking to himself.

  “What do you mean?” asked Elena.

  Paul took a deep breath. “The second option, assuming we cannot resolve Kirov’s intervention here, would be to try and to prevent its first coming altogether. That ship would have to be prevented from ever arriving here in the past. The only way that could be done, would be in our time, the year 2021. That time still exists, because at the moment, the Heisenberg Wave is stuck here. The ship is the Prime Mover, and the men aboard it. As long as these Primes remain at large in the past, Time cannot resolve how the decades following their interventions play out. And so, when I leave you shortly, as I must, I will be returning to the year 2021, the Meridian that Kirov originally came from. In fact, that is the only future anyone here can reliably reach now—the time when we look over our shoulder and there was no Hindenburg in the history of WWII, and no HMS Invincible. There is no way anyone could reach a future arising from these events, because Kirov is still here, and nothing has been resolved. That future cannot be written until this does resolve, and if it fails to do so, that future may never be written at all. This is the danger.”