Second Front (Kirov Series Book 24)

by John Schettler

  “I’m more concerned with this worry you have for the future. What is it, another threat from Paradox?”

  “One was enough,” said Fedorov with a shrug.

  “Yes… I faced it in a very harrowing hour aboard Tunguska, but as you can see, I prevailed, not Mother Time. That may sound like hubris, but here I stand, and she is still trying to figure out what to do about me—yes, I have no doubt. Then you see no paradox on our present course?”

  “No, it isn’t that. The period we are in now is a kind of safe zone for the ship. We were never here before on the first ship. Remember? It was late August of 1941 when you did resort to a tactical nuke—”

  “And I blew the ship into oblivion.”

  “Correct.”

  “Where in hell were we? I was in the brig, and did not see all that much. Believe me, it’s the last time that will ever happen.”

  “The warhead, sir?”

  “The damn brig! That aside, Volsky said the world went to hell.”

  “Hell is a good way to describe it. I think it was a future that arose from our actions here, and it was very grim. Be glad you didn’t get a better look at it, but you remember what we saw in the Med before we shifted, Rome burned and blackened, Naples gone. Yes, it was hell.”

  “But this period is safe? Explain.”

  “We vanished in August of 1941, sailed through that broken future to the Med, and then reappeared a full year later, in August of 1942, right in the middle of Operation Pedestal. With Malta gone, that history isn’t likely to repeat, let alone the fact that we are still here in the Pacific. We never vanished last August like the first ship.”

  “Should we fear that date, August of 1942? Might there be another paradox there?”

  “No… I don’t think so. We stayed put this time, and never shifted, though I was more than a little concerned when you suggested we might use a special warhead earlier. You are well aware of the unexpected after effects of a nuclear detonation by now.”

  “No argument there,” said Karpov. “Then you feared we might shift again if I had used such a weapon here.”

  “Quite possibly. I would not want to be anywhere near a detonation like that. If I were you, I would reserve those warheads for the longest range missile we have, so the ship would be as far from the impact site as possible.”

  Karpov nodded. “So then, if there’s no paradox to worry about come this August, what has you so spooked?”

  “Just what I discussed with you earlier. We could do something, cause a change here that would knock out a key supporting beam holding up the future that built this ship. I’ve been thinking about that, and trying to discover what it could be, where the key event is that we must not disturb, and I think I may be on to something.”

  “Tell me.”

  “Think about it yourself, Admiral. I was the man who whispered in Sergei Kirov’s ear. Yes? My careless advice, and I suppose his inherent curiosity, led him to try that stairway again at Ilanskiy, and he ended up assassinating Josef Stalin. Hence we have the world we are sailing in.”

  “It wasn’t all your doing,” said Karpov. “I was largely responsible for the fact that we are now trying to throw the Japanese off Sakhalin Island. I’ll say again that, had it not been for your interference—”

  “Yes, yes, we’ve been over that,” Fedorov interrupted.

  “All I am saying is that there is plenty of blame to go around. I know what I did, and here I am, trying to set things right, take back the territories Russia lost as a result of that fiasco in 1908.”

  “Fine, but that still won’t lift the burden from my shoulders. We still end up with the Orenburg Federation because of me.”

  “Ah, now I know why you are so glum. But was it really you, Fedorov? What were you doing there at Ilanskiy? You certainly had no idea that stairway had this amazing property. It was pure happenstance. In fact—why were you there?”

  “I was looking for Orlov. You know what we planned.”

  “Of course I do. I was right there when you persuaded Volsky to let us take Rod-25 to the Primorskiy Engineering Center so you could shift back that way.”

  “You see? It was all my doing.”

  “I don’t think so.” Karpov was watching his reaction closely now. “No Fedorov, I don’t think it was you at all. You have to look further back on that chain of causality you speak of. Pull on it a while, and just a few links down the line you come to someone else who had a good deal to do with all of this—Orlov.”

  Fedorov shook his head. “Kamenski said the same thing, but It wasn’t Orlov at Ilanskiy, it was my fault there.”

  “Yes, but you were only there because Orlov jumped ship. Ever consider that? Our surly Chief of Operations didn’t like his lot after our failed coup attempt—alright, after my failed mutiny the first time out. I’ll admit the plan was mine, and I duped him into supporting me. So there he was, busted in rank, stuck with Troyak and the Marines, and so he just flat our deserted. Remember? You tried to stop him in the very first minutes you realized what he was doing. We put five S-300s in the air after him, but his life seems charmed. It was Orlov. Yes. He’s the one that led you on that wild goose chase to fetch him back, and that was how you came to Ilanskiy. When did he do that—jump ship like that?”

  Fedorov thought hard…. “It was August of this year, 1942. We were still in the Med, running for Gibraltar, and we wanted a helo up to scout ahead.”

  “Right, and Orlov wormed his way onto that helo, with the deliberate intention of abandoning ship. And here it is, 1942 again, and with August just a few months off. I think we might want to keep an eye on this version of Orlov as well, though he seems completely clueless as to anything that happened before.”

  Fedorov’s eyes widened slightly, for he knew that was not the case. Orlov had just awakened. The bad dreams that had been plaguing his sleep had become real memories. Karpov didn’t know any of that yet, and something warned him not to speak of it here. And with that thought, he also ran the words of Director Kamenski through his recollection again:

  “Nothing you did would have ever occurred if not for Karpov’s little rebellion, or Orlov’s strange letter. He is more than a little fish, I think, but Karpov is a free radical, a wildcard, an unaccountable force in all of this history we’ve been writing and re-writing. Everything that has happened, except perhaps that first explosion on the Orel, can be laid at Karpov’s feet…”

  Interesting that Karpov failed to take his line of reasoning that one step further, thought Fedorov. Yes, everything can be laid at his feet, the first detonation that sent us to 1942 and Operation Pedestal was his doing. He led the ship through the hole in time caused by the Demon Volcano, and from there, it was again his doing that sent it to 1908. What he did there is still apparent here in this world. As for Orlov… He brought us Kinlan, and when I threw that thing he found overboard, who knows what else it may have done?

  Part III

  Fafnir

  “It does not do to leave a live dragon out of your calculations, if you live near him.”

  ― J.R.R. Tolkien: The Hobbit

  Chapter 7

  Orlov had taken to lurking about below decks, but it was inevitable that he would soon encounter Karpov. Fedorov had urged him to lay low, and to be very cautious about revealing anything he had remembered. The Chief was still simmering about it, lying in his bunk during off hours and running it all through in his mind, as if he was afraid the memories would slip away again, eluding his grasp, and plunging him into the dull unknowing self he had been before that fateful conversation with Fedorov.

  He didn’t understand it all—this strange business about the second coming, nor could he understand why he could remember these events, but no one else. Yet that was not entirely true. Doctor Zolkin had been feeling very strange since he had a similar conversation with Fedorov. At that time, just after the ship arrived in this impossible past, he had been bothered by oddities in his computer files, the names of missing men, and then tha
t strange find in his cabinet, the place he kept mementos and other precious things.

  It was that bloodied bandage that first brought on the odd inner feelings that he somehow knew what it was, and why it was there. Then Fedorov had come right out and explained it to him. Ever since that time, he had struggled to remember, and at night, he would sometimes have dreams like Orlov, seeing things that he knew he had not lived through when he awoke, but nonetheless feeling that they were, indeed, real lived events. He saw his old friend Leonid Volsky, sitting in a cot bed and lecturing Karpov, and then in another dream, he thought he and the Admiral had been trapped there in the sick bay, until Fedorov came, finally getting engineers to pry open the hatch. He thought it was probably just grief for his old friend. Zolkin had taken the news of Volsky’s passing very hard.

  The ears of Chief Dobrynin would also carry whispers from another world to him at times. He would be leaning back in his chair, listening to his reactor plant, hearing it as a kind of music, when suddenly there came an errant sound in the low woodwinds. He would incline his head, listening, hearing and feeling the sound at the same time, and just as a sudden smell could be a powerful memory trigger for others, these sounds worked the same way for him. They meant something—very important—and by listening to them, he came to feel that he had heard such sounds once before, carefully controlling them himself, like a conductor directing his orchestra. Then they vanished, taking that powerful sense of recollection with them… until they came again.

  Another man would also begin waking up, Isaak Nikolin. For him it was just something that would come to him while he was grinning over a message he received on his private little network from Tasarov. He had been laughing to himself over a joke the Sonarman had sent him, then, unaccountably, he had a strange feeling of sadness, terrible loss, and it had something to do with his friend. He could not shake it for some time, but it would gradually pass. The next morning at officer’s mess he would look for Tasarov, asking him if he slept well and whether he felt alright.

  “Of course,” said Tasarov. “I’m fine. Just hungry for a little more than the same old breakfast once in a while.”

  Why the sadness, this sense of Toska, Nikolin wondered? There was Tasarov, fit and fine, and he had nothing to worry about on his account.

  So it on would go, this odd simmering of another life slowly bubbling up in the crew, memories, dreams, feelings that they had done all this once, that déjà vu as Fedorov called it when he explained it to Orlov—the feeling that had enveloped him like the plume of bad French Cologne.

  “Mister Orlov,” said Karpov as he stepped off the ladder. There he found the Chief, who had been ready to take the ladder up when he saw someone coming down from above.

  “Captain… I mean Admiral.” Those were the only words the Chief could get out, for within, he was wrestling with the powerful memories of what Karpov had done, how he had goaded him, duped him into supporting his mutiny, and then how he seemed to gloat when the Chief was busted and sent down to the Marines, while Karpov wormed his way to the bridge again, just like he always did.

  All these things were in his mind, and especially that one moment of satisfaction he took when he found Karpov in the officer’s dining room, and then deliberately spilled coffee on him in front of some of the other men. He had then waited outside the door, until Karpov emerged. That was when he really got a little payback, and put his big fist into Karpov’s belly, knocking him breathless to the deck. Damn if he didn’t have that same urge now, but the presence of Karpov here was eerie, different, like a darkness that had become animated, cold and calculating night.

  “Something wrong, Chief?”

  “Nothing,” said Orlov, edging past Karpov in the narrow passage. “Just work on B deck again. I’ll see to it.”

  Karpov nodded, but looked over his shoulder as the Chief started up the ladder, his eyes following him up. The man had an odd look on his face, he thought, white as a sheet. Maybe I’d better give him some leave. After all, rattling lockers and rousting men out of their bunks is thankless work. Orlov never comes up to the bridge these days, at least not on my rotations. Perhaps I best keep an eye on him. He turned, and strode off down the corridor.

  At the top of the ladder, Orlov felt he could finally breathe. “Yes,” he said softly to himself. “I’ll see to it… I’ll see to you as well.”

  His highness has written me off, hasn’t he. Now he’s got Grilikov up there, all chummy with Samsonov. What was I supposed to be, Some kind of Brigadier in his little mob here? Well, I have news for him, and maybe very soon. That scrawny little neck of his will feel very good in my nice big hands when I choke the life out of that man, just like I did the same to Commissar Molla. Those two are eggs from the same basket. There’s only one way to break them, and when I break you, Admiral, you won’t like it one bit…. no… not one bit….

  * * *

  Admiral Tovey stared at the strange box that held so many mysteries for them. If he believed Miss Fairchild, that box, and the key she used with it, brought her ship here to the 1940s. It was a very timely arrival, and the services of the Argos Fire had been invaluable to him. Now he had repaid Miss Fairchild in kind. The key that Fedorov had sent to him, the one he recovered from Admiral Volsky’s remains, was a gift to her. Now, amazingly, she discovered this other odd thing about that box of hers. It had a hidden compartment, where impressions were made to receive these keys—seven in all. That thought was very alarming.

  “Have a look for yourself,” said Elena, a gleam in her eye.

  “My,” said Tovey. “One for each key…” He was looking at a series of small imprints in the material making up the base of that drawer. There were seven, each depression in the shape of a key.

  “My key fits very nicely here,” Elena pointed to the second recessed area. “I thought it might be in the number one position, but it only fits here, in the number two spot. I suspect all the others have a place here as well.”

  “Why not see where our newest arrival fits in,” Tovey suggested.

  Elena smiled. “Yes, why not?”

  She took the key, hovering it over the impressions until she thought she saw one that seemed very close, the number four spot, but the fit was not good. One by one, she tried them all, until the last—the number one position.

  “It looks like we’ve found our culprit,” said Tovey, watching as Elena slowly laid the key in the number one spot. It was a perfect fit.

  “Interesting,” she said. “Here I thought I had the master key, but this one has trumped me. I wish I knew how Fedorov came by it, but it’s enough that we have it at all, thanks to Admiral Volsky.”

  “And that was a very high price to pay for it,” said Tovey. “Now then… You tell me this ship arrived here after you used your key in that aperture in the box?”

  “That’s how I understand it.”

  “Then I wonder what might happen if we were to use this new key in that fashion?”

  Elena flashed him a dark glance. “That would be very dangerous.”

  “I suppose it would,” said Tovey. “Yet logic leads me to think that if one key moved this ship here, another might take it somewhere else.”

  “Agreed, but I’m not sure I want to find out just now. I’ve a raid to look after.”

  “Quite so. Yes, I think it best that we put that little experiment off for a time, perhaps until we’ve recovered more of the other missing keys. It could be that they are each just one number in a coded lock, if you follow me, each key moving a tumbler that’s part of a combination. What it might unlock is beyond my imagining., but I might put the question to our Mister Turing. He’s very good with puzzles and codes.”

  Elena smiled. “We may never find the key we lost on Rodney.”

  “Oh, I’m not so sure about that. Professor Dorland seemed a very determined man, and I daresay he’s got quite a nice little machine somewhere if he can come and go as he pleases.”

  “Yes, that was another unexpected surprise
in all of this.”

  “Well, if he got himself here for that mission aboard Rodney, and then again for that conference in the Azores, could he go further back to find this key?”

  “Possibly. That was discussed, but it’s beyond our control.”

  “Well,” Tovey shrugged. “Our nest is filling out a bit, but it seems we still have quite a few missing eggs. The key on Rodney was embedded in the Selene Horse, and we’re told it is associated with St. Michael’s Cave under the Rock. You say one was in the Lindisfarne Gospels, and another in the Rosetta Stone, but you’ve no idea what they may be associated with. I’m tempted to go have a look at those artifacts—quietly. We might find further clues.”

  “We might….” Elena said nothing more. “As to this raid, Admiral. When will you need Argos Fire?”

  “On the night of the 14th of May. We wanted to go earlier, but now it’s the 14th.”

  “Well, don’t worry Admiral. With my ship and crew on the watch, your raid on that dry-dock will come off without a hitch.”

  “Until we meet again then,” Tovey extended a hand. “I will be in London soon, and see about the Rosetta Stone. In the meantime, if you could see to the Normandie dock gates at Saint Nazaire, we would be very grateful.”

  * * *

  That raid, the Great Raid, as it came to be called in Fedorov’s history, did go off without a hitch. Argos Fire had to use two RGM-84s obtained from the Funnies, and plenty of support from that accurate deck gun, but they took out the key shore batteries and smashed the searchlights. The helicopters suppressed the AA defense, slipped in with the Argonauts leading a team of British Commandos, and they fought their way into the facility to take out secondary targets. The Campbeltown made her appointment with those heavy locks, her nose laden with explosives. They got in, got out, and with very few casualties, no one captured by the enemy as had been the case in the old history.