The Allies were on the Rhine, and there would be no “Battle of the Bulge” that December. The Soviets had entered Estonia, Latvia, East Prussia and Hungary, and were reorganizing on the borders of Poland. Roosevelt sent a personal message to Stalin asking him to stop the war. He refused, but settled for Poland before he halted hostilities on the eastern front. The cry “on to Berlin” abated when the Russians realized Berlin was no longer there. The war in Europe ended in late January of 1945.
Yet that early ending changed little else in the long, simmering standoff between the West and the Soviet Union that followed. Soon the Russians had the bomb as well, and both sides stood a long guarded watch on the years ahead, as relations continued to slowly erode between them. This time, however, they did not make it through the minefield of near run military standoffs and nuclear brinksmanship. This time something different happened.
Admiral Volsky, peered at Rodenko’s radar scope, his eyes pursed with concern. All of the contacts they had been tracking were gone on both radar and sonar.
“It could be a system failure, just as before,” Rodenko persisted. “It took us some time to recover full sensor integrity after that first incident.”
“I suggest we get a helicopter up,” said Fedorov, his new position loosening his tongue a bit and prompting him to voice his opinions without reserve. “They can get down to the last plotted positions on these contacts easily enough.”
The Admiral gave the order, and minutes later the KA-226 was heading south. As it did so the communications and telemetry contact weakened with distance, just as before, but they were able to maintain a hold on the craft. The Admiral soon heard what he expected, that there was no sign of the British or American task forces they had been tracking.
“Perhaps they made a rapid withdrawal south,” said Fedorov. “We could come about and steam to Newfoundland. If they are still active in the region we will likely encounter them. In light of the sea effects we encountered again, we must at least determine if our position is stable…In time that is.”
“I want no more fireworks,” said Volsky. “My instincts tell me to turn east into the Atlantic and head for that tropical paradise, but I will indulge you, Mister Fedorov. Bring the ship around and head south again. If the KA-226 has no contacts, have it precede us in the vanguard and overfly this Argentia Bay where Roosevelt and Churchill are supposed to be meeting. Yet at the first sign of a potentially hostile contact, I want that helo to withdraw to the ship at full speed.”
“Aye, sir.”
Nikolin radioed the orders and the helo pushed on ahead. It was not long before they lost radio contact with it, a tense period where Volsky worried that those planes they had seen were still up and about. The minutes stretched on and on, interminable. Then, at just after 17:00 hours, Rodenko picked up the helicopter again on his radar. Soon after it reported in on the radio. Argentia Bay was vacant and empty. The pilot’s voice seemed strained and worried on the radio.
“We overflew St. John’s en route to Argentia,” he said. “There’s signs of severe blast damage, and the whole town had been obliterated-not a single building still standing. We saw nothing moving on the isthmus, and Argentia Bay is completely empty. There are no ships anchored there of any type. We took HD video and can replay the file if you wish, Admiral.”
“ Just tell them to return to the ship. We’ll view the files later.” Volsky looked at Fedorov. “Number One?” The question in his voice was obvious.
Fedorov shook his head. “There is no way the Americans could have sailed off that quickly,” he said. “I believe we have experienced another anomaly, sir. We may have moved in time again.” The words still sounded preposterous as he spoke them, but their experience the last week had opened their minds to the possibility, and it was easier to think and speak of now, yet no less disturbing.
“But we still haven’t answered our last two questions,” said Volsky. “Have we gone further back in time, moved forward? How far? And why is this happening now? There have been many detonations of nuclear devices at sea, and never once have these effects been reported.”
He thought for a moment, remembering what Engineering Chief Dobrynin had told him again. Each time this had happened the ship’s reactors had experienced a strange neutron flux. Could the detonations be triggering this effect? Was it being enhanced or enabled by the ship’s own reactor systems?
A moment of alarm came when Rodenko reported the sudden appearance of surface and air contacts on his screen-yet they vanished seconds later, leading them to believe it was nothing more than a glitch in the equipment.
“Well, sir,” said Fedorov with a shrug. “I suggest we cruise to the American coast, or perhaps Halifax in Nova Scotia. It’s just a day’s cruise away and it is a substantial city. I don’t like what the pilot said about the destruction of St. John. Let us get to a more populous region and do a reconnaissance. And Mister Nikolin should be monitoring all normal radio bands.”
“I have been, sir,” said Nikolin. “I can’t pull in anything-not even on shortwave. I should be able to hear most European stations, and anything broadcasting in the Americas, but I get nothing at all.”
“The signals improved after some time before,” said Fedorov. “Keep listening.”
They sailed south round the cape of Newfoundland, alert for any sign of activity in the sea and sky around them, but saw and heard nothing-no sign of human activity of any kind. The men were tired and hungry, and Volsky began rotating relief shifts at every station, and went so far as to order the ship’s galley to send up food and several pots of good hot coffee. They passed the Gulf of St. Lawrence and headed for the coast of Nova Scotia, making for Halifax. The closer they came, the more edgy the crew seemed to be, though the hot food and coffee helped a great deal.
Volsky slept in his chair, unwilling to leave the bridge, and refusing to have anything to do with Karpov and Orlov for the time being. He would talk with them later. Fedorov went below for a while, catching a few hours sleep before returning to stand another watch when Rodenko again reported clear airborne contacts close enough to be within sighting distance of the ship! This time Tasarov had similar readings on his sonar equipment indicating the presence of ships nearby yet, just as the ship’s new executive officer was ready to sound the alert, the contacts mysteriously vanished again, and the watch settled back into the long quiet hours at sea. It was a 300 mile journey, and even at 30 knots it would take them ten hours to reach Halifax.
Along the way the Admiral had Fedorov bring the ship in close to the shore on occasion, and they scanned the coast with field glasses and long range HD video cameras, yet saw no sign of activity there. The coast was a maze of small inlets, bays and islets, sprinkled with tiny fishing towns here and there, though they could not make out any buildings. They passed Mitchel Bay, Sheet Harbor, Sober Island and Taylor’s Head without seeing anything of note. There were no fishing trawlers out to sea, and no sign of life on the coast that they could discern, but they were still too far from shore to make out much, and Volsky did not want to expend any more aviation fuel to recon that area.
“Let’s wait and get down to Halifax,” he said. “Nuclear fuel seems to be getting us about fairly cheaply. Aviation fuel is another matter. We must conserve as much as possible.”
Some hours later they were again surprised by Tasarov’s report of screw sounds on his sonar. A few seconds later Rodenko confirmed the report on radar, very close, and Fedorov’s eyes widened when he thought he spotted the silhouette of a small cutter take shape on the foggy horizon. The contact vanished again, like a cloud changing shape and dissolving into the mist, but this time they dispatched the KA-226 scout helicopter to conduct a thorough search of the area, yet nothing was found.
“Are we imagining all these contacts?” Fedorov asked. For that matter, he wondered if the whole scenario was nothing more than a bizarre nightmare of their own making. When Dobrynin called up to the bridge to report more unusual flux activity in the react
ors, the Admiral seemed very troubled.
“It comes and goes, sir,” he said over the intercom. “Three times now…But things have settled down again. I note no unusual readings.”
Fedorov was troubled as well. He slipped quietly over to his old navigation station to retrieve the copy of The Chronology Of The War At Sea, and opened to August of 1941. His eye was drawn to the odd segment where the allied naval forces had come to full alert after three separate sightings of a “ Hipper class cruiser” in the seas near Newfoundland. The ship was reported that way each and every time, yet it seemed to vanish, and no sign of it was ever found. His eyes betrayed the depth of his muse, and the confusion as he struggled to form a clear thought on what he read…was it possible? They had picked up the ghostly image of ships around them three times now-ships that vanished just as that Hipper class cruiser had vanished in August of 1941-three times… He set the book down and returned to his station, his eyes scanning the seas ahead with a look of grave concern on his face.
They caught sight of Devil’s Island and headed for the Inlet that would lead them up past McNabs Island to Dartmouth and Halifax Harbor. It was 04:00 hours before they were in the main shipping channel, expecting to see the lights of the city glittering in the hazy distance, yet a thick bank of fog was on the headlands, masking all. Halifax was one of the world’s largest and deepest harbors, and Volsky fully expected to find the answer to at least one of their questions here. He decided to sail boldly up the channel, fog or no fog. There was nothing but the coastline return on Rodenko’s screens, and Tasarov heard nothing on sonar. As a precaution, he stood the crew to action stations, and was fully prepared to use his formidable 152mm deck guns if they ran into anything hostile. He was taking the ship in.
Fedorov knew the place well. “McNabs Island is largely empty,” he said, “But it was heavily wooded, and I see nothing there at all now. Very strange, sir. We should be seeing something more at the harbor in a few minutes. This is a very busy port, particularly in 1941, as it was a major embarkation point for all the outbound convoys. The absence of shipping in this channel is ominous, to say the least. There should be steamer traffic, tankers, civilian craft all about us by now. I don’t have a good feeling about this, sir.”
“Helmsman, ahead one third,” said Volsky.
“Ahead one third, sir. Aye.”
“That damnable fog,” said Volsky. “We rely so much on our technology. Radar sees nothing, Tasarov hears nothing, yet I want the evidence of my own eyes before I can assure myself we are no longer entangled with the British and American navies. I don’t even trust those Tin Men with their video cameras any longer.” He waved dismissively at the HD video displays.
They passed McNabs Cove on their right and headed into the outer harbor. “We should see something there,” Fedorov pointed. “Just past Point Pleasant on the left, sir.”
The ship had slowed to a sedate ten knots, and drifted through the veils of fog, yet they saw no lights, and the morning was heavy and quiet, a stillness that conjured up an unaccountable fear in every man as the ship cruised closer to the harbor entrance. Then the fog lifted briefly and Fedorov caught a glimpse of the shoreline.
“Good god,” he breathed. It was a blackened wreck. No buildings were standing. The long commercial piers were completely gone, and the coast seemed a charred rubble pile. It was clear that something had been there, a harbor, a city, yet the whole scene was a mass of debris and wreckage. As the ship edged in closer they could see none of the high rise buildings that should have graced the harbor’s edge. In their place were masses of burned out rubble and twisted steel.
“Mister Rodenko,” Volsky said in a quiet voice. “Scan for residual radiation.”
“Aye, Sir…I’m getting a low background reading, elevated above normal, but nothing to be overly concerned about.”
Volsky nodded his head. “It looks like the entire city had been obliterated.”
George’s Island loomed ahead, a blackened, treeless cone, and Fedorov had the helmsman move the ship to the right of the burned out islet. “That should be the Imperial Petroleum tank farm and refinery sector,” Fedorov pointed, yet all they could see were piles of wreckage, stained char-black by fire and smoke damage. As they reached the inner harbor he could see that MacDonald’s bridge was completely gone, and the cities of Halifax and Dartmouth were both completely destroyed. A smoky fog and haze hung over the broken landscape, and shrouded their minds and hearts as Volsky ordered the ship to slow to five knots.
“We could sail on in to Bedford Basin, sir,” said Fedorov, but I don’t think we’ll find anything there either. What could have done this?”
“How many warheads did that maniac Karpov unleash?” asked Volsky, looking at Samsonov.
“Sir, we fired the number ten missile in the MOS-III bank. All the rest were Moskit-IIs with conventional warheads.”
“It is clear that we did not do this with our weapons then,” said Volsky. “Though we may yet be responsible for what we are seeing here.”
“Sir,” said Fedorov. “We need to ascertain our position in time. I think it is fairly safe to say this is not Halifax of 1941. I suggest we put a shore party in for a closer look. We might find something that could tell us the date, or at least give us some better idea of what happened here.”
“Correct, Mister Fedorov. I think this is a job for Sergeant Troyak. Let us answer this question of when concerning our position, here and now.”
“If I may, sir, I’d like to accompany the landing party.”
The Admiral sent down the order, and Troyak took five marines ashore with Fedorov in an inflatable boat. They would search for anything they could secure that would shed light on their situation, but there was not much to find. Clearly the entire region had undergone a severe trauma. The damage from blast, shock and fire was evident. Most anything that would burn was incinerated, and apparently some time ago. There was no residual heat coming from the rubble piles, largely heaps of metal and concrete that had survived whatever had happened here. In places Troyak even found stone that had apparently been broiled to a hard glassy state. They returned, disheartened and chastened by the experience.
Fedorov had a haunted, defeated look on his face. “There was nothing, sir,” he said. “Nothing intact. No sign of life-no bones in the rubble either, not even a bird or a fly. Whatever happened here was severe and utterly lethal. It was not a natural event either. No tsunami or earthquake could have accounted for what we saw there. Metal was melted-rocks heated to form glass! And I think it happened some time ago, sir. The radiation levels were very low, though they decay to near normal within a hundred days of a detonation. But this could have happened much earlier, perhaps even years.”
“Only a nuclear weapon could have caused destruction on this scale,” said Volsky. “So in that we have one clue. We have not slipped further into the past, correct? Halifax was an important harbor and naval center. If it came to war-who knows when it happened-then this was a likely target, and we would be right at ground zero here if a missile was targeted to take out this harbor infrastructure.”
“There did seem to be a crater, sir.”
“Not surprising,” said Volsky. “It would have been a low air burst, and I would guess that this target would have received no less than a 150 kiloton warhead-perhaps two. That could have been fired by an ICBM, or even one of our submarines.”
“One of our submarines, sir?”
“Who else? I don’t think the British or French would have any interest in destroying this harbor, nor even the Chinese if it came to war. But it has long been on the target list for our ballistic missile submarines. I have seen the information first hand.” He shook his head sullenly. “ Borei class…We name the damn subs after the north wind, Boreas, but it is a hard wind that blew here to bring such destruction.”
“Then you are suggesting another war has broken out, Admiral? That we are back in our own time again?”
“Well that hard north win
d has blown us clear of the Second World War, and now it seems we have landed in the Third! One day we will grow tired of counting them I suppose. But this is damage from a nuclear warhead, that much is clear to me.”
Fedorov had a distant, empty look on his face as he thought. The history had changed! Nothing was certain now. Nothing could be relied on from this moment forward. He glanced sheepishly at the small library of books on the shelf at his old navigation station. Much of the history in them was so much fiction now. Everything had changed, and it had come to war this time around. War was a ticking clock, he knew, remembering a poem by Kudryavitsky. Tick, tick, tick-then the Alarm clock bomb goes off taking you by surprise with its morning shock. “It's better that you hear it…” His voice trailed off, disconsolate and forlorn in tone.
“Mister Fedorov?” The Admiral looked at him, brows raised.
“A Russian poet, sir,” said Fedorov, quoting the line in full: “ Sometimes the alarm-clock looms up first, quietly ticking in the doorway. It's better that you hear it…”
Volsky nodded. “Some men never listen,” he said quietly, musing. “If war came, and this city was destroyed, then I fear it was a general exchange between Russia and the West. It is my guess that we will find much the same level of destruction if we continue on this course and visit the American coastline. All those cities would have received multiple missiles in a general exchange.”
“But why sir?” Samsonov had a blank look on his face.
“Why?” Volsky gave him a long look. “You have to look no farther than this ship to answer that, Mister Samsonov. We build them, these war machines, these ticking clocks, and they do their job with lethal efficiency. Look how we savaged the British and American navies-this single ship-and we could have done worse damage if Karpov had his way. Yet we vanished from the scene of the crime, a thief in the night as it were. No doubt they looked for us for a very long time, but all for naught. We were here, in some black future we only now begin to surmise, here with the consequences of what we have done when we so blithely put to sea with our holds crammed full of missiles and warheads. Is that not what you were trained for?” His eyes softened a bit as he went on. “No-I do not put any blame on you, Samsonov. It is what we all were trained for. The uniforms, the salutes, the niceties of rank and protocol-all these are just ways we console ourselves as we drill in the making of war. In the final analysis, this is the end of it all, yes? These are the consequences. Who knows how much of the world is left out there for us now?”
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