Tigers East (Kirov Series Book 25)

by John Schettler

  He looked around him, stunned, seeing many of the bridge crew doubled over, as though stricken by some stomach ailment. One man vomited. Only Troyak and his own people seemed unaffected, and he, himself, passed only a momentary sense of nausea, a queasy feeling that was quickly chased away by the utter shock of what he was now seeing. He rushed to the side port, looking down at the burning ground, and now he saw that it stretched away from a dark center, circular in shape, covering a vast segment of the ground below.

  By God almighty, he said to himself inwardly. It’s pulled us right on through to the source. I was a fool to steer this course and overfly this ground. I should have known better than to take a risk like this.

  “What in hell is going on?” Symenko looked at him, unbelieving. “Look at it, hell itself down there. Those fires must stretch for a hundred kilometers!”

  Now they were over the edge, and into that dark central area where there was no fire. Looking at the ground, Fedorov could clearly see the forest had been completely flattened, the trees pointing away from a central point that he could just make out, where it looked like blackened trees unaccountably remained standing in a small cluster.

  There it is, he thought, the epicenter of doom itself. My reckoning was dead accurate, and if we keep on, we’ll fly right over it, but I’ll not risk that. God only knows what might be going on there. Time could be all knotted up, and again it might be swirling and twisting away into some black hole.

  “Helmsman, come left thirty, and engines ahead two thirds,” he said. But the helmsman was down on the deck, in no shape to answer that order.

  “Captain,” he pointed. “I don’t want to overfly that. We need to turn.” He could see a strange aura emanating from that stand of blighted trees, and what looked like greenish lightning striking it from above. A Time Storm, he thought, worse than any gale a ship at sea could ever encounter. It’s already pulled us here to 1908, for that’s where we have to be, hours or days after the Tunguska Event.

  Symenko took the wheel, and now he shouted through a voice tube for his Chief Medical officer. “Durgin! Get to the bridge, we have men down here. On the double!”

  He wrestled with the wheel, and Troyak helped out. Orlov was holding on to a handrail for dear life, gaping at the scene around them. The airship’s rudder responded, the Irkutsk now beginning a wide turn to port. It would take them back over the edge of that darkened central zone, and over those raging fires. The sea of green forest Fedorov had been gazing at earlier was completely engulfed for miles. That dark center had come to be called the ‘Fire Eagle’s Nest’ by the local tribesmen down there, many which stood as witnesses to this event.

  Now Fedorov realized that he had been a witness to this event as well. He realized, with a sudden awareness, that they must have been pulled to a point in time very close to the impact. It was not a matter of hours, he thought quickly, but perhaps a day after impact, perhaps two days at most. The raging fires might have burned for many days or weeks before they eventually died out, but those flames look hot and young. This had only recently started.

  The impact of what had just happened to them hit him now. They were in 1908, and with an airship that could take them to the one place that was now uppermost in his mind! In bringing the ship around to port, he had already started to nose in that direction. He took a quick look at his charts, moved a ruler, then asked for another fifteen degrees. The compass was all awry, so a precise turn was impossible, but his long years of experience served him well.

  “Give me a little more to port. Alright. Steady as she goes now. Hold this course and let’s see if we can pick up the Stony Tunguska soon.”

  The hatch above the ladder opened, and Zykov stuck his head through. “What’s happening?” he shouted, then stared at the scene around them.

  “What could have caused this madness?” said Symenko.

  “Tunguska Event,” said Fedorov, but he realized Symenko would not know much about it in 1942. “This ground you called the Devil’s Country was devastated by the impact of a large object from space, a meteor or possibly an asteroid or comet. This is what such a strike might look like after impact. That black area behind us is closer to the center. Everything there was mostly blown to hell. These fires would be caused by the extreme heat generated by the detonation.”

  “For god’s sake man,” said Symenko. “What are you talking about?”

  “That!” Fedorov simply pointed to the darkness behind them. “This was no storm, Captain, not lightning, and there’s no volcano about, is there? Nothing man made could have caused that, not if every bomber in the world dropped its load all in one place. No. It was caused by something much bigger; something that struck the earth itself. That dark hole back there is over 2000 square kilometers.”

  Even as he spoke a heavy rain began, and soon a crewman who had been tending to a rigging line on one of the upper decks appeared, his face and clothing streaked with black soot. Lightning scored the sky, and there was a continuous rumble of thunder.

  The shock of what they were seeing still gripped them, and though Fedorov had moved to analyzing what had happened in his mind. They had been to hell and back again so many times that he was able to accept what had happened, and was already thinking about what this all meant. Yet the others were still dumbstruck.

  The whole damn ship was pulled back, he thought, a crew a thirty men for me to worry about now, and here we are in 1908! From my reckoning we are now on course for the very place I was hoping to get to when I boarded that KA-40 on Kirov. My god, I hijack this airship, and then events conspire to bring me right where I wanted to go—to the year 1908, and to the place just off the nose of this airship now, no more than another 600 kilometers, just eight hours flying time away—Ilanskiy.

  Part XII

  Downfall

  “Life is a full circle, widening until it joins the circle motions

  of the infinite.”

  — Anais Nin

  Chapter 34

  How do you explain what just happened to a man like Symenko? You don’t. The scourge of fire, the blackness in the scorched earth behind it, were enough reason to make that turn and flee. At some point in the next hour, when they had put the devastated zone behind them, and the crew had time to recover, words were needed. Something had to be said, but Fedorov had decided it would be foolish to try and lay it all out and feed Symenko the whole truth.

  “Then you mean to stay on this course?” asked Symenko. “We’ll never make it to the Dolphin’s Head this way.”

  “I’m aware of that.”

  “You think Karpov’s ships will all just bow and curtsey when they see us darken the sky at Ilanskiy?”

  “They won’t be there.”

  “How can you be so sure?”

  “Look behind you, Captain. See that glow on the horizon? Look at the sky. That will be seen for thousands of kilometers. Whatever this was, it was a massive event, and it fell right here in Karpov’s Siberia. If he’s here, he’ll damn well be curious about it. Don’t worry, this airship is the least of his problems now.”

  Fedorov knew Karpov wasn’t out there anywhere, not yet. He might be soon, for he had first arrived in 1908 on the10th day of July, on the old ship, the vessel he took out from Vladivostok. Was that the history he now found himself in again? It just might be. That had been the Prime Meridian before we started changing everything. When I first went down the stairs in Ilanskiy in 1942, I reached this very time and place—probably yesterday, the day of the event itself. I was there that morning when it happened, but did not stay long. I know that Mironov was there as well, so he just might be waiting for me off the bow of this ship. It’s only a matter of time now before I know the answers to these things. But there’s no way I can explain all this to Symenko.

  “Captain,” he said. “You might want to make up for lost sleep. In another six or seven hours you’ll have your answers, at least in part.”

  “Sleep? After that?” he thumbed the red glow on the ho
rizon behind them. “No, I’d better walk the ship and see to the men. If we might have a fight ahead of us, then they’ll need to be ready. And they’ll have questions too—like how we go from the dark of night into that mess back there, and all in the blink of an eye. What do I tell them? And another thing—you were right about that moon. How do we go from no moon, to that sliver of a moon we spotted, and in the wrong place, all in the blink of an eye? Then it ups and disappears altogether. Its broad daylight. That’s the sun up there in all that smoke and haze, not another moon. This is insane.”

  “Captain… Things are going to be … somewhat strange for a time. I could tell you what I think has happened, but you won’t believe a word I said.”

  “Try me.” Symenko wanted something, any explanation that could help him make sense of what he was experiencing now.

  “Alright, let me put it to you this way. The sun and moon don’t lie, they mark the time each day, and when they change like that, it can mean only one thing—the time has changed right along with it. Look at the sun. See how high up it is? It wouldn’t be up like that in September, not in this latitude, and not at this hour. But there it is. That’s a summer sun, and you know it as well as I do. So if the moon was wrong, and that sun out there is up like that, we aren’t where we were when that gibbous moon last set. We’re somewhere else—not another place, but another time. That’s my explanation. If you have a better one, let me know.”

  “Another time?” Symenko shook his head, starting for the ladder up. “God almighty, what a load of crap that is. Karpov will straighten you and your lot out soon enough. Just you wait.”

  “Zykov,” said Fedorov. “Go with him and make sure all is well with the other men.”

  Fedorov knew Symenko had a volatile temper, and he didn’t want the Captain stirring up anything with the rest of his crew. When they had gone up, and the hatch was closed, he looked at Troyak and Orlov. The other four Marines were stationed in pairs, two in the engineer’s compartment aft, two more watching the local contingent of Naval Marines that Symenko had with him.

  When they had gone, Orlov came over, wanting more from Fedorov. “Was that a load of bull you just fed the Captain, or are you on the level?”

  “I was quite serious, Chief.” He looked at Troyak as well, bringing him in on what he had to say. “We’ve moved. We aren’t in the same time as before. That event out there is the Tunguska Event. That’s what we were overflying, only in 1942. Well… It isn’t 1942 any longer. I can tell the two of you that, because at least you’ve been through it once before, and you, Orlov, remember going through it a good many other times. They say lightning never strikes the same place twice. Well, I very much doubt that another asteroid fell right there again, right where the thing fell at Tunguska. I already know that events like this bend and break time. So if I’m right, then this is 1908, and just a day or so after that thing fell back there on the 30th of June.”

  “1908?” Orlov gave him a blank look.

  “So you see why I didn’t want to get into it with Symenko,” said Fedorov. “As for you two, you need to know the truth. It’s 1908, and probably the first of July, the day after Tunguska. I’ve changed our heading and we’re going to Ilanskiy, just east of Kansk. There’s someone there I have to…. Speak with.”

  He couldn’t quite say the words that were lurking behind that conversation. There was someone there that he had to kill, an innocent young man that he had come here to murder. He just brought Orlov along to get him off the ship, and to keep an eye on him. Troyak and the Marines were just muscle, and they had already brought him this far—along with these incredible twists of fate. Yet even as he thought that, he was beginning to feel that Time herself had gotten him this far. Once he set his mind on what he had to do, she became a willing co-conspirator. Anything might have happened to them when they overflew the epicenter of that event. The anxiety, the feelings of doom and fear were all just harbingers. This had been the last thing he expected.

  “You have to speak with someone?” said Orlov. “But you heard Symenko earlier—Karpov has the place locked down tight. We can’t get through.”

  “Yes we can.”

  “But what about those airships Symenko warned us about?”

  “They were there in 1942, Orlov. I just told you that this is 1908!”

  It took a while for things to get through Orlov’s thick skull. “Oh,” he said dumbly. “Yes, I suppose you’re right. There wouldn’t be any airships, and none of Karpov’s men either.”

  “Exactly.”

  “Who’s the man you need to see there?”

  “Mironov. Alright, I’d better tell you both this, and it will be a lot to swallow. It all started with you, Chief, and you remember it very well—when you decided to jump ship. Well I came after you to get you home again, and you, Sergeant, came right along with me.”

  So he told them, the whole knotted tale of what had happened when he and Troyak got to Ilanskiy. Orlov grinned at times, nodding his head when a part of the story included him. He had all that inside his head now, clear memories of everything. He could still see those bulging eyes and purple lips as he choked the breath out of Commissar Molla.

  “This young man,” Fedorov finished. “He was going by the name Mironov back then—right now, in 1908. Later he would change that name and take another—Kirov.” He folded his arms watching them both closely. He had told Troyak this once before, and when he said it again, something registered in the Sergeant’s eyes, a faded memory suddenly jogged to life. It was just as Fedorov was telling it, he knew, though he could not trace the memories with any clarity, as Orlov could.

  “Sergei Kirov?” said Orlov. “The man we named our ship after?”

  “That’s correct.”

  “You came all this way to speak with him? He was right ahead of us on our old course. All we had to do was divert to Leningrad.”

  “Yes, I could have gone to visit him in 1942 once we got our hands on this airship. But it’s here that matters. Now is the crucial time—1908. That’s why I was trying to get to Ilanskiy in the first place—to go down those stairs like I did before, and find him again.”

  “Well what in God’s name do you want to speak with him about?”

  “It was going to be more than that,” said Fedorov darkly, the feeling of guilt and shame already heavy on him again. “This was something that Karpov and I worked through for a very long time. This whole situation—back in 1942—well it’s my fault. You see, I told Mironov something, opened my big mouth, and I let something slip. That changed everything. It set up that whole crazy world, the war we were fighting, the Orenburg Federation, all of it.”

  “Mironov set that up? I thought Volkov did all that.”

  “Yes, he did, but he might not have ever succeeded if I had kept my mouth shut. When we’re this far back in time, any little slip can have major consequences to the events that follow. One little slip could end up becoming something very big. Well, I made a mistake, and now I have to correct it—at least I’m going to try.”

  Orlov nodded. “But didn’t you already make that mistake?” Orlov could work things out if given time. He had been following what Fedorov was telling him very closely. “You said you appeared here on the morning of the event—that shit back there we flew right over a while back. That’s when you met this Mironov—Sergei Kirov. So you’ve already made your mistake—yesterday if this is July first like you think it is.”

  “No,” said Fedorov, “I didn’t make the mistake here, not in 1908 when I first met Mironov. Shocked as I was to see what was happening there, I had the presence of mind to reverse my path and go back up those stairs. The problem was, Mironov got curious, and he followed me.”

  “Ah,” said Orlov.

  “He came upstairs!” said Troyak, remembering that now, and not guessing about it. His eyes narrowed, for the rest had slipped away like a dream does when you awake in the morning.

  Fedorov gave him a sudden look. “Yes, he came up the stair
way after me, and I sent him back. But before I did that, I told him something, and that changed everything.”

  “What was it?” Orlov was really curious now.

  “I told him how he would die—not exactly—but I gave him a warning about Leningrad, about the day he would be assassinated.”

  “Sookin Sym!” Orlov gave him a wide grin. “Good job, Fedorov. It looks like he took your advice, because he lived, and he’s a damn sight better than Stalin.”

  Now Fedorov lowered his head, the shame heavy on him again. “Yes,” he said quietly, “I suppose he is.”

  “So you want to make sure he gets the message,” Orlov guessed. “You want to speak with him again and leave nothing to chance. I Understand now. But Fedorov, how do we get back after this? Have you worked that out yet?”

  Fedorov gave him an anguished look. Orlov thought he just wanted to make sure his hero lived. It would never once enter his mind that I had come here to achieve just the opposite—to kill Sergei Kirov with the pistol on my hip. He would never think that of me….

  “Get back?” said Fedorov slowly. “Well, the stairway will be right there, won’t it? The last time I went up, it delivered me right back to the time I left—1942—the very same day, only a few hours later. The good Sergeant here said he had been looking for me for some time, though for me, it was only a matter of minutes that passed. I think that stairway works like that. You get right back to where you started, as if you were walking a circle. It always takes you back to where you began.”

  “Only this time we didn’t come by the stairs. We got here on this damn airship,” said Orlov. “Will it still work?”