Both men slowly closed up, arms folded, eyes averted, and clearly unwilling to be led much further down the pathway Karpov was dragging them. Zolkin said nothing, thinking things through and watching the other men react to what Karpov was telling them.
“Yes,” said Karpov. “It sounds impossible, even crazy to even consider. Believe me, I felt the same way when Kirov first disappeared. But you will have the testimony of every man aboard this ship as to the truth of this. Doctor Zolkin here can attest to everything I am saying.”
Yeltsin looked up, thinking before he spoke, his lids heavy, a sheen of light perspiration on his brow and balding head. “Doctor? Please tell me this is all a nice little after dinner joke.” He smiled, but barely, casting a sideward glance at Karpov.
“I wish it were so,” said Zolkin. “But I’m afraid that what the Captain here has told you is the truth—at least insofar as we knew and lived it. It took us days to comprehend what had happened to us. For some aboard this ship it is still a dilemma.”
Karpov waved the orderly over and whispered something. “I have taken the liberty of arranging a little demonstration,” he said.
The orderly soon returned pushing a small cart with a video monitor and player. He also brought a bottle of good vodka and was pouring the officers a glass as Karpov explained what they would soon see.
“I am about to replay a visual log recording from the bridge of Kirov,” he said calmly. “Yes, I know such things might be created in Hollywood studios, but I assure you, we did not set sail with the Red Banner Fleet just now with the intention of filming a movie. You will both recognize the formatting of this footage, as you have undoubtedly reviewed many similar digital logs in your years of service. What you are about to see now was recorded on a warm late summer day…in the year 1942.” It was from the log records they had hidden before Kapustin’s inspection.
He pressed the remote and the screen came alive. The camera was recording off the port side of the ship, and from the bow wave, it was clearly evident that Kirov was running at high rate of speed. Then they heard the whistle of falling ordnance and saw a sudden geyser of seawater exploding up from the sea. The voice of Admiral Volsky, unmistakable, was recognized by both men at once.
“Engage all airborne targets! Weapons free!”
“Sir—I have no radar locks!”
“Nothing?”
“No data, sir.”
“What are we fighting, Fedorov?” Karpov’s voice was heard now.
“Aichi D3A1—Dive bombers! High angle attack. They will come in from a cruising altitude between ten and fifteen thousand meters. Right on top of us!”
They could hear the drone of the diving planes growing louder in the background, and a second bomb splash fell closer, the explosion clearly imaged on camera in an angry geyser of seawater not fifty meters off the port side of the ship.
Karpov’s voice was heard again, loud and strong.
“Helm, ahead full battle speed! Samsonov, Kashtan system! High azimuth arc. Target zone zenith plus and minus ten degrees and fire all systems. Full missile barrage! Use infrared!”
“Aye, sir!”
The resulting action was filmed by the Tin Man cameras, and as the Kashtan close in defense system rotated its arms upwards Karpov noted how the two other officers leaned forward, spellbound as they watched the action unfold. The missiles ignited in a wash of white steamy smoke and danced into the sky above. Then another bomb fell just ahead of the ship and sent a wild spray of seawater over the bow. They saw Kirov roll heavily as she ran over the detonation, her sharp prow cutting through the seething water.
“Samsonov! Gatling system on full automatic! Now!”
They heard the snarl of the Gatling guns join the cacophony of noise as the Kashtans fired thousands of rounds of 30mm shells from their heavy arms, their muzzles spitting out enormous fiery jets of flame.
Yeltsin’s mouth opened in amazement as he watched. This was no live fire exercise, and nothing remotely like it could have been staged. It was riveting, tense and heartless combat, the like of which few other officers in the fleet had ever known…and it was clearly real. They could almost smell the smoke and feel the heat of the battle scene they were watching. Then the camera jiggled wildly and they heard a deafening explosion. Karpov squeezed the remote and paused the video.
“That was live combat footage of an engagement fought with this ship off the coast of Australia shortly after we displaced in time to the year 1942. We were clearly not prepared for action, as the ship’s systems were affected by the time displacement, as your systems were in recent hours. Yes, it was not only the volcanic ash. The shift in time caused a momentary loss of long range sensor systems. That’s how those planes could get right on top of us without our knowing about it. Otherwise we would have cut them to pieces before they ever got near us. Oh yes…Those were Japanese naval dive bombers referred to in that footage. As you saw, I had to take command and repel the attack with the Kashtan system.”
He thumbed the remote, and the segment skipped ahead. The voice of admiral Volsky was heard again.
“Mister Karpov.”
“Sir?”
“Come here, please…Mister Karpov, I gave Samsonov an order to engage those aircraft, weapons free.”
“Yes, sir, but I thought—”
“Just a moment, Captain Lieutenant, if you please…Look here, this man intervened in a critical moment, overriding my spoken orders, and he saved the ship just now. My orders were unclear. I specified no weapon system, yet Captain Karpov immediately assessed the situation and selected the only weapon system that could have possibly engaged the enemy given the angle of this attack, and he saved the ship. I have long believed that Captain Karpov was one of the finest tactical combat officers in the fleet.”
The segment ended, and Karpov folded his arms, watching the other Captains closely. “That explosion you heard at the last segment was a bomb from one of those planes that struck the ship on the aft citadel. The damage there was extensive, and we will take a little tour to show you after dessert.”
Zolkin noted how the Captain had edited the segment to end with the Admiral’s praise for his performance in the engagement, and he could clearly see that Karpov was fighting another battle now, one for the proverbial ‘hearts and minds’ of these two Captains. He would have to win here if he was to do anything more in this insane situation they found themselves in again. The Doctor could see the glimmer of uncertainty in the younger man’s eyes—Ryakhin. The more seasoned Yeltsin seemed deep in thought, but the footage had wiped the uncomfortable smiles of restrained disbelief from both men’s faces. They were clearly impressed by what they had seen and heard.
“Those ship’s logs are top secret,” said Karpov. “I showed them to you to give you something more than my own testimony to convince you of the truth here. It will be somewhat disturbing, I realize, even shocking. You will doubt either your own sanity or mine and that of the Doctor here. But the fact remains that we are where we are. Lieutenant Nikolin, our communications officer, has intercepted radio traffic to confirm the present day and year. It is the 15th of August, 1945.”
“Astounding,” said Yeltsin.
“Indeed, Captain. That footage clearly illustrates one other thing—this is a very dangerous place. The war here has ended, but the combined allied fleet is arriving in Sagami Bay near Tokyo in just a few days for the surrender of Japan. This is the same fleet we just engaged, albeit in another time—our own time. Yet the both of you know as well as I do that we will bump gunwales with the Americans at sea from this time forward, until it comes to what we just saw some hours ago and the missiles fly. They will be at our throats, one way or another.”
Zolkin could see he was angling to make his pitch now, the Captain on maneuvers, ready to fire.
“Now…” Karpov paused, looking the other men over. “Ours is to decide what we do about all this.”
There was an uncomfortable silence, and then Yeltsin spoke, his voice
still tentative. “You say we have…we have moved in time?”
“Captain…did you happen to notice the sudden change of weather? One minute we were sailing on the seas of hell. The Americans were attacking and their Harpoons were coming in at us from two sides. Then that mountain blew up. You saw the ash cloud. It was three inches think on the main deck! Now where is it? Where is that massive eruption to the north? Did you think a gentle breeze could just blow that all away in a few minutes?”
He had obviously hit on something that was very convincing. Ryakhin leaned forward. “Yes, that was very unusual. We could not understand what had happened.”
“The explosive force from that eruption was apparently so severe that it knocked us into the past,” said Karpov quickly. “This is how we figure it. When this happened to Kirov earlier—when Orel blew up—we were also displaced in time.”
“How did you get back?”asked Yeltsin.
Karpov pursed his lips, jaw set. This was the key question. He had to tell these men their bridges were burned now. How would they react?
“Chief Engineer Dobrynin noticed an anomaly taking place in our nuclear reactors. It came and went. Whenever it occurred our position in time was unstable. It so happened that on one occasion we were returned to our own time, and we came home.”
“Will that happen again?”
“We don’t know…”
Zolkin could see Karpov was straying a bit here. He told the men nothing of Rod-25, or the fact that the ship found a way to trigger the time displacement on their own. Karpov glanced at him, as if checking to see if the Doctor would protest, then continued.
“The fact is that this is all still a mystery to us. Yet it happened, and now it has happened again. Captain Ryakhin, your frigate uses a diesel and gas turbine powerplant, so there is no chance your ship could return to our time as Kirov did through some anomaly in the reactor. Captain Yeltsin, your ship is fortunate to have the nuclear power upgrade planned as an option for our new destroyers. We will send you technical data to alert your engineers on what they should look for. Perhaps the anomaly will occur again, but the more likely case is that it will not.”
“Then what becomes of my ship and crew?” asked Ryakhin.
“Don’t worry Captain. We have discovered that it may be possible for your vessel to move with Kirov, if you are in close proximity to our ship when it happens. That said, we cannot count on any of this. All we know for certain is that we are here, impossible as it seems. I will tell you, Captain Ryakhin, that we will not abandon you by choice. I give you my word on that. We will stand by you, come what may…which brings me to my next point.”
Here it comes, thought Zolkin. The deck hatches were opening in Karpov’s mind and the Moskit-IIs were ready to fire.
“It may be that we are all stranded here in this time indefinitely; that we may never find a way to return to the year 2021. In fact, it would be wise for us to assume as much, and act accordingly for our own survival. So I ask the question again—now that we are here, what do we do?”
The two Captains were quite disturbed, but neither man said anything for some time. Then Yeltsin spoke up. “Do about what, Captain?”
There was a glint in Karpov’s eye as he spoke. “The Americans and British have just won this war—or so they believe. They will conveniently overlook the fact that it was Soviet Russia that truly defeated Germany. If our Mister Fedorov were here he would tell you all about it, but we all know the truth from the history books. We carried the real burden of the war in Europe and we beat the Germans. Our only thanks was fifty years of Cold War. Now… We are only three ships, all that is left of the Red Banner Pacific Fleet for all we know. The world we left just a few hours ago may be obliterated—in fact, we have evidence that this will indeed happen. So in some way we can see our present situation as a reprieve—a second chance.”
“And what do you suggest, Karpov,” Zolkin had been quiet up until now, but spoke with a challenge in his voice.
“It’s quite simple, Doctor. We can’t just sail merrily off into the Pacific. Admiral Golovko has diesel fuel for only thirty days. So that means at some point we will have to make port—preferably in Vladivostok. We will not be able to hide these ships or slip into the Golden Horn Harbor for a quick oil change in the night. Our presence here will become known. In due course they will discover just who and what we are—the British may know this already. Therefore, why be coy about it? We are here—most likely for the rest of our lives. But we are not just a wayward fleet lost at sea. This fleet has power.”
He placed his index finger squarely on the table as he said that. “When Kirov returned some weeks ago it was our decision to do whatever we could to prevent the Third World War. I had little hope we could accomplish much in the year 2021. But here, now, in this time and place we have tremendous power.”
He looked at them, a gleam in his eye. “And here is how I suggest we use it…”
Part XII
Master of Fate
“Out of the night that covers me,
Black as the Pit from pole to pole,
I thank whatever gods may be
For my unconquerable soul.
In the fell clutch of circumstance
I have not winced nor cried aloud.
Under the bludgeonings of chance
My head is bloody, but unbowed.
Beyond this place of wrath and tears
Looms but the Horror of the shade,
And yet the menace of the years
Finds, and shall find, me unafraid.
It matters not how strait the gate,
How charged with punishments the scroll,
I am the master of my fate:
I am the captain of my soul.”
~ William Ernest Henley, Invictus
Chapter 34
The Soviet North Pacific Fleet had been very busy in recent days. Molotov had delivered the bad news to the Japanese Ambassador the previous week—the Soviet Union had declared war on Japan and would immediately launch offensive operations against Japanese held territory. One such operation was taking place in the Northern Kurile Islands where a small Soviet flotilla under Captain of the 1st Rank Dmitri Ponomarev had helped gather offensive forces from the Kamchatka Peninsula for transport to the northernmost island in the Kurile chain, Shumshu.
The landings would be risky, even if Japan was at the end of her tether in this war. They had owned and occupied the Kuriles since 1875, and their 91st Division was garrisoning the island and its small naval base commanding the northernmost Kurile Strait. The Japanese knew the ground well, and were prepared to fight, even if they did not expect the invasion that was coming. By contrast, the Soviet force dispatched to secure the island was woefully short in sea assets and particularly in sea based firepower.
The commander of the overall landings, General Gnechko, was gnashing his teeth trying to figure a way to get adequate artillery support to suppress the Japanese coastal guns and machine gun bunkers. He hit on the idea of trying to use the four 130-mm (5.1 inch) guns on the southern tip of the Kamchatka Peninsula, but they would have to fire twelve kilometers across the strait and coordinating them accurately would be difficult. At sea he had a rag-tag collection of trawlers and patrol boats, the largest being the minesweeper Okhotsk, with a single 130mm gun, and a couple patrol ships, Dzerzhinski and Kirov, with three smaller 4 inch guns each.
“How am I supposed to force a landing deep enough and secure enough to get our own artillery and mortars ashore,” Gnetchko complained. “We’ll be lucky if our ships can even keep station against the fast moving currents in this strait. It’s so foggy that they’ll likely collide with one another, or run aground, if they try to move in close enough to offer any fire support. And without them we have nothing. Do you think planes can fly in this? We have no air cover, and virtually no naval assets here to speak of. If the Japanese attack the landing in force they could roll us into the sea in a few hours.”
“We’ll have good naval
infantry in the first wave,” said Colonel Yeremenko. “A thousand men will land within the hour. I’ll lead them in myself. The fog may also work to our advantage, General. I think the Japanese will be completely surprised. You’ll see.”
“Yes, I suppose we will,” said Gnetchko, still somewhat disheartened. “We must get the naval base and establish a bridgehead in three hours. Either that or this will be the last Japanese victory in this damn war, and the first amphibious operation to fail against them. How will that look in the history books, eh? The Americans kick the Japanese ass across two thousand miles of the Pacific. Now we get in it at the eleventh hour and we can’t even take this stinking little island!”
The Russian troops would be going ashore in new Lend-Lease Landing Craft, transferred to the Russians by the US for just this purpose in Operation Hula a few weeks ago. Now the LCIs were loaded with infantry, their stubby bows pointed landward, the low growl of their engines muted in the cold morning fog. Yeremenko tipped his hat to the General and departed to join them.
An hour later he was ashore and leading detachments of Marines to attack the naval base site. The Japanese were taken completely by surprise, as he had hoped, and the facilities were quickly secured. Now the Marines were moving out beyond the base, up a gentle slope to move on the coastal batteries sited on higher ground.
The operation was a few days ahead of schedule, and appeared to be going well until the Japanese decided to fight. News of imminent surrender aside, they had 8500 men on the island and several companies of light tanks. The Japanese commander, Lieutenant General Tsusumi Fusaki, decided to use them. Here were a thousand Russian Marines, with more infantry lugubriously wading ashore behind them, but slow to come. The Russian advantage of surprise was slipping away as the startled Japanese realized what was happening and began to organize their defenses. True to form, Fusaki ordered an immediate counterattack.
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