Altered States k-9

by John A. Schettler

  “It might heal, sir. History has proved to be very resilient. There could be ethnic and national forces at work that will eventually see Russia re-united, and the war now underway in the West will also affect the outcome and shape of the post-war world.”

  “So Stalin will be busy getting his house in order for a good long while. I wonder how this will affect the war?”

  “Who can say, sir, though another odd thing is that there has been no mention of Stalin, at least not in the news we heard. We did here something else, a broadcast out of Volgograd.”

  “Volgograd? The city was not called that during the war, yes?”

  “No sir. Before the war it was Tsaritsyn, and then it was renamed Stalingrad in 1925 and was called that until 1961 when it changed to Volgograd.”

  “What do you think about this, Mister Fedorov?”

  “I cannot be certain without a good deal more information, sir, but it could mean Stalin failed to consolidate power in the Bolshevik faction.”

  “That would be welcome news.” Volsky looked for a chair to get off his feet, sitting down next to Nikolin at his station. “The two of you have done well. Yet now we must decide on this shift. I have spoken to Doctor Zolkin and Rodenko, and they both feel we should try another shift. Chief Dobrynin says he has both control rods installed. What about those contacts Rodenko reported on? Are they still closing?”

  “No sir, they broke off and turned back to Japanese territorial waters once we were well into the Sea of Japan.”

  “Good. Then we will have time to move north and sort ourselves out without being bothered, and we do not have to rush into this procedure yet.” He looked at his watch, thinking how he never felt the same about it now. It was always a touchstone and reference point in the day, but now the time was never certain.

  “Mister Fedorov, do you have any ideas concerning the deployment of Kazan relative to Kirov when we attempt this?”

  “Well sir, given that the two vessels may not move together, perhaps they should stage at a very safe distance from one another. We know Rod-25 has a radius that can affect things several kilometers away.”

  “Then you suggest Kazan be well outside that range. I suppose this is a good precaution. If we are poking holes in Mother Time’s dress again, we might tear it apart if we shift too close to one another. Yet I have also wondered that if we do attempt a close coordinated shift, might it not increase the chances that we shift together? What do you think?”

  “It is difficult to know, sir. My feeling is that these effects from the rods could interfere with one another. It may be very risky and we could open a much greater breach in time. Who knows what could happen then?”

  “This is as I feared,” said Volsky with a shrug. “Very well, we go our separate ways, but I am very nervous about this. We could be sending Kazan off to an uncertain future. It could appear anywhere and then Gromyko is trapped in the same nightmare we have been living in. I have briefed him on this, but what will he do? He is only now revealing the true nature of this mission to his crew.”

  “I have thought about that sir. Nikolin and I have set up a secure encrypted channel to Kazan on a special frequency. What we will do is immediately broadcast on that channel after the shift to determine the location of Kazan relative to Kirov, and they will do the same.”

  “Yet we would only be able to communicate if both ships arrive in the same time, which you yourself argue is most unlikely.”

  “That may be so, sir, but it must occur that one or another ship arrives first. The signal will then go out automatically. It might be heard even if the other ship arrives days or even months later.”

  “And if it arrives ten years later?”

  Fedorov raised his eyebrows, knowing that they were again facing a great unknown. Volsky could see his frustration, and raised a hand. “We may never be able to sort this out, Fedorov. But this is a good idea. Yes. Set up your automatic signal beacon, and let us hope for the best. We have some time yet. I want to get well north before we shift, and find a safe place to see to our bloody nose in the bow. Any suggestions?”

  “The Sea of Japan is likely to be busy if we linger here, sir. If we could time it for a night transit we might slip through the Soya Strait north of Hokkaido and get into the Sea of Okhotsk, but it would take us two days to get there at 16 knots.”

  “Plot that course. We have the time. But I have asked Gromyko for a little favor before we make the final decision.”

  “What is that, if I may ask, sir?”

  “I consulted with Samsonov on the state of our remaining weapons inventory. It seems we have eighteen missiles, nine each of the Moskit II and MOS III. Considering that we have an uncanny knack of finding ourselves in hot soup when we shift, I have asked Gromyko to transfer over nine of his P-900s. That will still leave him six of those and sixteen Onyx missiles, and all his torpedoes, so his boat remains very strong. But I would feel just a little more comfortable with a few more missiles-not that I have any desire to use them. Rodenko also tells me Karpov had re-configured several SAMs for special use. I want those restored to normal operating status.”

  “I understand, sir.”

  “I also want to arrange a ceremony for Captain Karpov, and brief the crew on what is happening. Then we will give Byko and his divers a day for repairs before we shift.”

  * * *

  Orlov watched the last of the missiles being carefully loaded into the silos. The Admiral had come to him and asked him to oversee the operation, and he made sure it was done quickly and efficiently. Kazan’s teeth were a little smaller, by just a few centimeters, than the normal P-900s Kirov would carry. They also had a much smaller warhead at just 200 kilograms, though they had twice the range, out to 660 kilometers. Martinov checked them into inventory and set crews to see to their safe loading in the vertical silos. There was a modification kit that had to be installed for use on a surface ship, but otherwise they were soon lined up on the forward deck silos, and the hatches were slowly closing.

  The Chief saw the lights wink farewell from the weather bridge on the sail of Kazan, and he raised his arm in return, hand making a fist. Then he watched as the men there scrambled below and the submarine slowly submerged. Gromyko, the Matador, was on his way to an unknown fate. Who knew if they would ever see the sub again?

  With the missile silo hatches sealed and the forward deck cleared, he punched up a nearby intercom and reported the reload operation as completed. “Weapons secured in silos,” he finished.

  “Very good, Chief,” came Rodenko’s voice in return, and Orlov smiled. They are still calling me the Chief, he thought. This is a forgiving ship and crew. If they knew what really happened back in the Med, I suppose they might think otherwise, but we will let those sleeping dogs lie.

  He reached into his pocket, able to light up a cigarette at last. So now what, he wondered? Where are we off to this time? I get my little slice of redemption here, just as Karpov had his. But a leopard does not change his spots easily. Karpov was back to his same old self the instant he thought he was beyond the reach of higher authority. And what about me? What have I become in all this? Molla got what was coming to him. I’ve settled that…unless the bastard is still alive now. They say it is 1940, two years before I paid a visit to Molla. One day I would like to go home to Georgia, but that day may never come.

  He looked at his watch, seeing it was nearly 18:00 hours and time to assemble on the fantail for the ceremony for Karpov. An empty casket was being laid to rest there, beneath a Russian flag. Hollow…That was how he felt about it, as hollow and empty as that casket. Karpov had tried to manipulate him to support his play for the ship, and positioned him to take the fall if things fell apart. Well, he felt my fist in his belly for that, so I will call things even and join the crew. I wasn’t here when Karpov was given command of the ship, but the men spoke highly of him. I suppose we owe him a decent burial, though his body is probably rotting in the sea by now.

  He went forward where most
of the senior officers and a good number of the crew had gathered on the fantail near the helo bay. Orlov slipped into the group, staying on the fringe of the crowd as he watched. The Admiral was there, standing by the flag draped casket, and now he spoke.

  “Fighting crew of the battlecruiser Kirov,” he began, placing his hand on the casket. “Here we would lay your fighting Captain to rest. Yet he is not with us. His body was never found. So here we stand to pay our respects, and lay what we knew of this man to rest. He was a mystery to many of you, and yes, a man you may have feared. Yet when this ship was faced with certain danger, he fought, and saved us all on more than one occasion. I gave him command of the Red Banner Fleet because I knew he would do his best for us. It was only when he thought himself to be forever lost in time that his heart hardened again, and for that we can forgive him. Yes, we must forgive.”

  Now he turned and faced the casket, saluting slowly. “Vladimir Karpov, Captain of the First Rank, acting Commander of the Red Banner Pacific Fleet, may you rest in peace.”

  The boson raised his pipe and three long notes trilled out, cutting the silence. Then the Admiral nodded to Troyak where he stood with a squad of Marines in full dress uniforms. He unsheathed his ceremonial sword, raised it to his chin, and then turned his head, his voice sharp and clear as he ordered the squad to action. The Marines moved in well drilled unison, shouldering their rifles and firing once, twice, again. Then the boson’s call sounded a second time and a solitary trumpet followed it playing the national anthem of the Russian Federation. The high notes echoed in the helo bay, and not a man there was unmoved to hear them. Even Orlov swallowed hard, tightening his jaw as the anthem concluded.

  Then, with a final salute, the Admiral reached for the lever and pulled it solemnly. The casket slid down a chute and into the sea where Karpov had fought and presumably died. And it was over.

  Over for you, thought Orlov, but not for the rest of us. He knew the ship was going to try to shift again, all the preparations were made, only this time the Admiral had ordered that the crew would come to full alert. They had no idea where they would turn up, and for Orlov it was somewhat unnerving.

  I was all set to live out my life in the 1940s, he thought. I wrote that stupid journal to the ship and crew, asking them to be heroes, valiant men of war and defenders of the Rodina. Yet there is no unified Motherland now, or so the rumors have told it. I wonder if Karpov had something to do with that? I wonder if we go now to the world made by his black heart? Perhaps I choked the breath out of the wrong man after all. Well, rest in peace, Captain. You can do no more harm in your watery grave, and now it is for the living to sort out the mess you have made of the world. He turned and looked for a ladder down, wanting nothing more now than a little time alone and another cigarette.

  An hour later Admiral Volsky ordered the engineers aboard Kazan to initiate the maintenance procedure with Rod-25. He determined to wait until they got definitive confirmation that the submarine had shifted, and it was not long before Tasarov, listening on passive sonar from the ship’s horse tail hydrophones, was able to confirm that the signal was lost.

  “I can no longer hear them, sir,” he said. “Kazan is very quiet, and our sonar system is damaged at the bow, but I think he is gone.”

  Go with God, thought Volsky. “Very well, Mister Rodenko, please inform Chief Dobrynin that he may begin.”

  “Aye, sir.”

  They could all feel it again, that emptiness that weighed like a thousand kilos. They were alone.

  Part II

  The Spin

  “Let the great world spin for ever down the ringing grooves of change.”

  — Alfred Lord Tennyson: Locksley Hall

  Chapter 4

  It was madness, it was mayhem. It was a mystery that none of them could even begin to sort out or understand. But the evidence of their senses soon told them something was amiss. The air around them was suddenly charged with static electricity and Tasarov’s bushy hair began to flare out at odd angles beneath his headset. Volsky felt an strange tingling on his fingertips, and was surprised to see what looked like tiny sparks there. A peculiar light seemed to emanate from the very heart of the ship itself, deep below decks where the reactors labored behind their shield of 300mm armor. A dense mist surrounded the whole region, thick and impenetrable, and scored by streaks of glimmering green lightning. There was a tang of ozone in the air about them and a sudden chill, the cold draft of infinity as the hole in time began to open.

  Then they heard it, that deep sound that quavered in the air, yet it seemed held in a restless suspension, neither climbing the scales or descending as it often did in the past. It was just a long, distended note, a breathless suspense, an interminable chord that hung in the air and would not abate or diminish. Finally the strange drone gradually faded to the barest whisper and then all was quiet. The light still glimmered around them, and they could see that they were on a sallow grey sea, the skies pale and wan all about the ship.

  “We’ve moved again, sir.” Fedorov stated the obvious, and Volsky nodded, feeling a bit dizzy as he sometimes did after the strange time displacement effects.

  “Well, it appears our new control rod works. Signal Chief Dobrynin and ask him what he thinks.”

  Fedorov was still with Nikolin, but before they could send down the message there was a sighting alert from watchmen posted above the bridge on the radar mast. With ship’s systems groggy after a shift, this was a precaution Rodenko had ordered as part of normal battle stations.

  “Ship sighted, Admiral, bearing 150, but we have no radar yet. The system is rebooting now.”

  “Ship sighted?” Volsky swiveled his chair to have a look at the bearing. “My god,” he breathed. “More than one ship, Mister Rodenko. Have a look, please.”

  Rodenko had been leaning over his old radar station watching the Fregat reboot, but now he stood, eyes searching the grey horizon through the viewports. Fedorov was also up, immediately looking for sun and moon position, though both were no more than diffused light behind the low sky.

  “We’re not where we should be,” he said in a low voice, more to himself than anyone else. He was quickly to his navigation station, slipping into a chair and winking at Tovarich there. He was the ship’s new navigator when Fedorov had been promoted up the chain of command.

  “Tovarich, how is your system?”

  “Rebooting is nearly complete, sir. I should have computer assistance momentarily.”

  “Then key in sun and moon data for our last reported position and find out what we should expect to see in 2021. I’ll plot present sun and moon positions and we’ll do a reverse calculation.” In effect, he wanted to key the approximate positions of the sun and moon and ask the computer what date the two celestial bodies would be in those positions.

  “I wish we could see the moon through this cloud.”

  “I have the data up now, sir. We should not be seeing much of any moon at all for 2021. It was a new moon on June 10th.”

  Fedorov looked over his shoulder to the place in the sky where the cold while light of a moon shone behind the clouds. That was clearly not a new moon, he knew. It was a least half full to make that much light, and the sun was still up as well, also lost behind the clouds, and low on the horizon.

  “In 2021 that moon would have to be rising and virtually invisible,” said Tovarich. “And given its position in the sky the sun would not still be up. It sets at 17:06 hours if the day remains the same.”

  “No…It can’t be June 10th or 11th in 2021. We would still be at Severomorsk before we ever went to sea for those live fire exercises, and so we could not appear here as well. It would have to be later in the year, at another time to avoid any paradox. We’ll have to reverse the calculation and find the date from this current sun and moon position,” he concluded, but after keying the command he was not getting any good prospects. It was soon evident to him that the particular configuration of these relative sun and moon positions was not going to
yield a convenient date close to their shift time in the year 2021. In fact, he was having difficulty getting any close match at all in that year, which led him to the conclusion that something was very wrong here.

  “Admiral,” said Nikolin, “I’m hearing Morse code-international call signs asking for identification.”

  “At least they are polite,” said Volsky. “Look there, gentlemen.” He pointed out the viewport and they could now see bright lights winking at them on the near horizon.”

  “Admiral,” said Rodenko, an edge of trouble in his voice. “Radar is back up, very short range but enough to reveal a very large formation of surface contacts out there. Fifty discrete contacts, sir, and that close one in the van signaling with lights is quite substantial.”

  “Give me a Tin Man display. Let’s see what we have here, and as a precaution, Mister Samsonov, please ready the forward deck guns.”

  “Aye, sir, guns reporting ready with manual backup and optical laser sighting. The ship’s fire control radars are not yet operational.”

  “Very well, laser-optical will have to do.”

  What in the world could be up here in the Sea of Okhotsk? Fifty ships? It would be nothing from our old Red Banner Fleet, Volsky knew. If they had managed to shift to 2021, all that was left was the Admiral Kuznetsov battlegroup, just a handful of surface vessels. Something told him they were about to have a very unexpected encounter here, and the look of that distant ship on the Tin Man was soon enough to confirm his worst suspicions.

  * * *

  Convoy HX-49 was a fairly large assemblage of merchantmen, oilers and cargo vessels out of Halifax on the 9th of June, 1940. It was the largest convoy to make the crossing to Liverpool that month, with several tankers carrying oil and lubricants, an ammunition ship carrying aircraft munitions, ships with steel and scrap iron, and a mix of grain, paper, wheat, wool, lumber, cotton and other odd resources. Considering its value it was lightly escorted, as U-boats were mostly congregating in the Atlantic south of Ireland at this time and little trouble was expected in the first week of the long journey east.