Winter Storm

by John Schettler

  “… a flutter in reactor two. Yet all systems are still up.”

  “Then there is no danger?”

  “No sir. The ship is safe.”

  A quiet knock on the door brought other news. It was Rodenko, stepping off the bridge where he was Senior Watch Officer in Karpov’s absence.

  “Captain sir…” he began. “You had better come to the bridge. That airship…”

  “You mean Tunguska? What of it?”

  “It’s gone, sir. Damn thing just disappeared. All our bridge systems quavered at that same moment, but the airship… Well we can’t even see it on radar now sir. It just vanished!”

  Chapter 8

  Karpov was justifiably alarmed at the news, up on his feet immediately and off to the bridge. “Come along, Mister Fedorov,” he said quickly, all business now.

  The Captain knew more than anyone else in this situation. He knew that Tunguska was, in and of itself, capable of doing exactly what Rodenko had described. Karpov had vanished over the English Channel in that storm, and found himself amazingly in the early 1900s again. And he had safely used Tunguska to navigate the stormy waters of Paradox Hour, the very ship that had saved his own life. His brother self was there now, along with all the weapons that had been recently loaded onto the sub-cloud cars for transfer to the Captain on the airship. This thought was most troubling as he took stock of the situation on the bridge.

  “Rodenko, was there any sign of an explosion?” He wondered if a weapon had been mishandled, or worse, if someone got too curious and foolishly set one off aboard Tunguska.

  “No sir. I’ve had no reports of that, and there is certainly no flotsam on the sea. But that airship is gone. It was as if a grey fog just swallowed the damn thing. Then we got that flutter in all the bridge systems, and the next thing I know the airship had vanished.”

  “What about the other airships? What about Riga and Narva?”

  “They diverted some time ago, and were not on our Fregat tracks for the last hour.”

  “Mister Nikolin,” said Karpov quickly. “Hail Captain Korenko on the Narva at once. Use the channel I discussed with you earlier. Hail Commandant Bogrov on Tunguska while you are at it.”

  “Sir,” said Fedorov cautiously. “There’s another possibility. We may have vanished. The airships might still be there, but if we moved again…” Fedorov had to be cautious here. He could not reveal any knowledge of Rod-25, at least not yet. “The ship, sir. Our position in time may not be stable yet. If we moved again we would see the airship vanish, but for them, the inverse would be true.”

  “Anything Nikolin?”

  “Nothing sir, but I’m getting some odd static on those comm-link channels.”

  “Shift to your regular station monitor. Try to ascertain date and time.” Karpov’s mind was working very quickly now, trying to run down every possibility. “Mister Fedorov,” he said. You are very good at analyzing sun and moon data. Get busy. Try to find out what the moon is telling you this time. Fedorov was at the navigation station keying in numbers to his computer at once. He soon determined the basic information he needed.

  “Sun up all day at our present position. Moon rising at 23:00 —a waning gibbous, sir. But Captain… The position of the sun is not correct for our last recorded time. It’s a few minutes after 08:00, but look how high the sun is already. That’s a late afternoon sun, but I can still taste my eggs and sausage from breakfast. Sir, on this evidence alone, I would suggest we have moved again—in time.”

  Karpov’s eyes narrowed. “I am going to speak with Chief Dobrynin. In the meantime, use that head of yours to analyze where we might be, given the conditions you can observe. Rodenko, you have the bridge. Notify me if Nikolin hears anything significant.

  Fedorov knew exactly why Karpov felt so compelled to get to engineering now—Rod-25. He wanted to answer the same question Fedorov had in his own mind, and he was almost certain the Chief had run his maintenance procedure. Dobrynin pulled a control rod, and in its place he dipped in Rod-25…. But Karpov’s order was the question now. Where in God’s name were they?

  *

  The Captain was still scanning the sea, his eyes almost desperate, but the ship was nowhere to be seen. He received the very same startling news that his elder self had been given, only this time Fedorov’s premise was well proved. Tunguska had been hovering about 3000 meters off the starboard bow of Kirov, and then, the watchman ran in and said he could no longer make out the ship. Karpov went to look himself, finding the best pair of field glasses he could get his hands on. There was a low mist on the sea, but visibility was fairly good from their present altitude. He considered setting up one of the Oko panels they had just received from Kirov, but knew it would be days before he could properly rig the power generation to make a good match with the new equipment. They would have to rig all new wiring to get adequate power to the unit. It was not simply a matter of plugging the system in and turning it on.

  That said, the Topaz radar on the airship should have been enough to produce a return on the battlecruiser, but it saw nothing on the sea at all, out to its maximum range of fifteen kilometers. He gave orders to descend for a closer inspection of the water, but nothing was found, no wreckage, no ship. Kirov was gone.

  He had only just come to terms with the possibility that the ship had actually moved in time, and had no inkling that Tunguska also possessed that capability. So in this instance, the younger Karpov correctly assumed that it was the ship that had vanished. But how? He knew nothing of Rod-25, and there had been no accident this time, no explosion.

  “What could have happened?” he said aloud.

  Tyrenkov was at his side, equally perplexed. “Bogrov says we are still at our old coordinates, and conditions indicate all is as it was before.”

  “Yes? Well my ship is not where it was, and a battlecruiser does not simply vanish like that! This doesn’t make any sense!”

  Oh, but it does, he thought as soon as he had said that. I was on the ship when Kirov did exactly that, bringing me here to this impossible time and place. And now it’s gone again, vanished, leaving me marooned here. He could hear the words of his other self when the Siberian had tried to explain it to him.

  “The ship must have slipped through some hole in time, and then here it was, in the middle of WWII. It did this and it did that, and then it slipped again. I’ll make a very long story short. Eventually that ship out there found its way to the year 1940, a little over a year ago, and it has been here ever since, until it slipped again, vanishing last May.”

  So it has slipped yet again, thought Karpov, reaching the only conclusion that could explain what had happened. But where did it go? Has it slipped back to our own time in 2021? Has it slipped further into the past? As far as he could determine, with reports from Tyrenkov and Bogrov, they were still drifting over the Kara Sea in August of 1941. But the ship was no longer with them…

  He passed a dark moment, wondering whether his elder brother had planned this? Did he know how the ship eventually came to move in time? Could he even initiate such a shift at will? Is that why he was so adamant that he should be the one to command Kirov in these early days. Did he plan this, plan to shift away and return home to 2021, leaving me here? Has that bastard stolen my life as well as my ship? It felt strange to call his own self that, but at that moment, with Kirov and the Siberian both missing, he felt very estranged.

  All these thoughts passed through his mind on a pulse of fear, and he could feel his anxiety rising, his heart beating faster. Tyrenkov was watching his reaction to all of this very closely now. Studying him, but saying nothing.

  “Don’t just stand there. What do you know about all of this?”

  “Only what our eyes have already shown us. The ship was there, and now it is gone. Yet we are where we belong. That can only tell me that the ship has moved, but how or where I cannot say.”

  Karpov walked over to the man, leaning in and lowering his voice so Bogrov would not hear. “Tell me thi
s was not planned, Tyrenkov. Did my brother say anything to you? Tell me, by God, or I’ll order your own damn security men to pluck out your eyes!”

  “Sir! I knew nothing whatsoever of this. No. There was no plan that I was aware of.”

  “Then you are telling me this was another accident? We saw no evidence of that—no man reported an explosion.”

  “No accident, no explosion,” said Tyrenkov. “But things happen—this I have learned well enough.”

  Karpov gave him a frustrated look. Then he took a long breath, his mind already spelling out the inevitable truth for him. Kirov was gone, it had moved again, and he was standing here on this god forsaken Zeppelin, like a passenger at a train station with the wrong ticket and at the wrong time. If the ship went home again, he wasn’t going there with it. If it fled into the past, then it had to have moved to a time before he first arrived here, or so he reasoned.

  So here I am, the new Siberian Karpov, so wet behind the ears here that I’ll have icicles hanging from them when the cold sets in. Here I am, commander of the Free Siberian Air Corps, and more, the visible head of state of all Siberia now. I was left in the lurch, but at least the perks are well appointed. Yet what in God’s name do I do here?

  He considered the possibilities, but had no immediate answers. All he could do was stare out the observation windows at that empty sea beneath them, and think of everything he had just lost.

  *

  Aboard Kirov, the Siberian was thinking of the very same thing. Every time the ship moved he was taking his whole life and pushing it out onto the roulette table, rolling the dice. It was all there, like a stack of red and white chips, his career, his carefully husbanded fleet, the power he had fought and scraped for these long years, all the friends, allies and enemies along the way. He knew what Dobrynin was going to say the moment he got there.

  “Chief, what is our status?”

  “Reactors are stable, Captain. We’re in no danger. It was just a minor flux.”

  “Did you run a control rod maintenance routine recently?”

  That struck Dobrynin as an odd question. “Now that you mention it, I did, sir. Did Mister Fedorov tell you about it?”

  “Fedorov? He’s not an engineer, Chief. What would he know about it?”

  “Well he was in here asking me a lot of questions about the matter a few days ago. Said he wanted to watch and asked if I would message him before the next rod inspection. It’s a fairly simple procedure, sir. One rod goes in while the other comes out. I used to run it every two weeks, but I always shave two days off that cycle when we’re at sea.”

  Rod-25… The culprit had now been confirmed. Dobrynin had mindlessly gone about his business, and Karpov kicked himself mentally for not paying closer attention to the presence of that control rod on the ship, especially since he knew what it was capable of. Rod-25 had moved them yet again, and with no help from me this time, he thought. It was like a whisper of fog, just the same way we shifted away from Saint Helena, and then found ourselves in 1942 in the Timor Sea. Sometimes we go with a bang, and other times with a whimper… but where have we gone?

  “Chief Dobrynin,” he said, realizing he had important business here now. “Can the reactors function properly if you don’t run these maintenance checks?”

  “Well, yes I suppose so. It’s just standard procedure to run these inspections, but I haven’t found anything that raised my concerns for some time.”

  “Good. Discontinue the inspections. You used Rod-25 just now, correct?”

  Again, Dobrynin was surprised to hear this. “So Fedorov told you about that too?”

  “Fedorov? Yes, tell me more about that now Chief.”

  “Not much to say sir. He just seemed interested in the reactor maintenance, and wanted to see me run the procedure, but I was so busy this last week that I forgot to message him.”

  “ I see… You have more than one spare control rod aboard?”

  “Yes sir, we’ve got number 26 and 27 stored.”

  “And it was number 25 that you used today?”

  “Yes sir, we took delivery on that before we left Severomorsk.”

  “Remove it from the cycle and mount one of the other rods. Can you do that safely while we’re at sea?”

  “I can, but I’ll need some time, and a good crew of engineers.”

  “Do it, and also cancel all rod inspection maintenance until I discuss this matter with you again. If that’s a problem, come to me, But otherwise, replace and store Rod-25 and take no further action.”

  “Aye sir, I’ll see to it immediately.”

  *

  Later that day, Nikolin had some answers that surprised everyone on the Bridge. He had been listening closely to stations to the south, fighting that odd flux that seemed to plague the airways. “It is still 1941,” he said, “but I’m getting a lot of stuff on the airwaves about the fighting. The Germans are much closer to Moscow. I heard the latest from the Kremlin a moment ago. It’s mid-September now!”

  “Mid-September?”

  “Yes sir. That’s what I’m hearing from Radio Moscow. Something about an Operation Typhoon. I’ll try to pick up BBC and verify.”

  Karpov looked at Fedorov now. “Then you were correct, Mister Fedorov. We’ve done the moving. Does your sun and moon data bear this conclusion out?”

  “The moon won’t be up for several hours,” said Fedorov, “and that will be the real data I need.”

  “Very well, walk with me please.” He gestured to the weather deck, and it was clear that he wanted to step outside for a private chat with Fedorov. “Let’s take one last look at the sea.”

  Once out on the deck, Fedorov noted how the Captain made a point to close the hatch, effectively sealing the two of them off. He had his field glasses, raising them in the manner he so often did, scanning the sea and sky around them while Fedorov waited.

  “Dobrynin says the reactors are stable,” he said quietly. “He also says you were down there a few days ago asking him a lot of questions…”

  “Sir? You mean in engineering? Yes, I was there a few days ago. Just curious as I was passing through that deck.”

  “Just curious,” said Karpov. “Yes, you wanted to know the next time the Chief planned to dip his wick in the rod inspection cycle. You were down there to check on our little friend, weren’t you. You were down to check on Rod-25.”

  Fedorov had the sinking feeling that Karpov’s guard was up again, and something warned him of danger here. Then the Captain slowly lowered his field glasses, turning to him with a smile.

  “Yes, Fedorov, Rod-25 was your business that day, wasn’t it. You know, that was a nice little trick you pulled with that code list. It was very clever, and had I not found this in your quarters, buried in a drawer, I might have just believed you.”

  Karpov reached into his jacket pocket and handed Fedorov something. His eyes widened when he saw what it was—the newspaper they had recovered from the Australian coast while cruising in the Timor Sea….

  Chapter 9

  “Going to play dumb again?” said Karpov. “Really, Fedorov, you should be more careful where you leave things. Going to pretend you know nothing of this, or of Rod-25?”

  The newspaper was in English, a language where Fedorov had only a limited comprehension. But he recognized it immediately, and Karpov could not fail to see that on his face when he handed it to him. His shock at the discovery was real and unmistakable, for he had no idea that object existed, and could not think of how it would still be in his desk drawer where he knew he had tucked it away long ago—on the old Kirov, the first ship. It was another strange remnant from their previous journey, a part of the same mystery that possessed Doctor Zolkin when he found that bloodied bandage.

  We found that newspaper in that cottage off the Australian coast, he thought, and it told us how the war started—how Key West died in the nexus of all that tension in the Pacific, and set all the dominoes falling. Nine days falling… the beginning of that terrible war Karp
ov and the ship had been spared by the wrath of the Demon Volcano.

  Karpov fixed him with a steady stare now. “You know what this is, Fedorov. No sense in wearing the mask any longer. You know who I am as well, surely not the Captain you left when you went ashore at Severomorsk. And by God, you know everything else along with that, don’t you. You’ve known it all along. Was Volsky in on the act as well? What a masterful little performance you two put on!”

  Fedorov realized that it was futile to pretend ignorance any longer. He had been justifiably wary of this man, for Karpov had darkened and aged in the gyre of terror over these long years. He was more sinister now than he had ever seemed, and the obvious danger in that was enough to make any man cautious. And yet, Fedorov was not the same man he once was either. Orlov knew that, and now Karpov must know it as well.

  “Alright Captain, you are correct. There isn’t any point in the two of us jousting any further. Yes, I know everything—all of it, everything we both lived through. You’ll ask me how, because by god, no other man on this ship knows a whisper of it—no, not even Volsky. I was convincing enough with my sun and moon data to persuade him we had actually moved in time, and he was finally believing me. Then you came along…”

  “Most inconvenient for the two of you,” said Karpov with a thin smile. “Yes, I came along, to reclaim what was rightfully mine. Then you knew something was amiss the moment you set eyes on me, didn’t you. Tyrenkov couldn’t discern any subterfuge, and your act was so good that you were starting to fool even me. But little threads kept dangling, little breadcrumb trails that led me to increase my suspicion. You were trying too hard in the beginning, and I learned what you said and did from my brother. You know about him too. Yes? Of course you do. When I learned you had used the word Geronimo, I was quite suspicious, but I bought your little story. When I was told Tovey wanted to speak with you directly, well, I just assumed he wanted the man he once knew. By the way, Fedorov, where is that nice young navigator? Did he survive, just like my brother and I survived?”