Kirov Saga: Armageddon (Kirov Series) (9 page)

There. He gave it to him plain and to the point, just like his
example concerning EMP effects, but it took a while for the information to
register on Captain Gromyko’s sonar.

“Excuse me, Director…Time continuum?”

“Yes, Captain, the fourth dimension. Time. You know the first
three well enough as you move about them in this vast ocean here—length, breadth
and height, or depth in the case of your submarine. Well you must also know
that you move in the fourth dimension as well—in time. Until Tsar Bomba went
off, everything moved in only one direction through time, from this moment to
the next in that second by second journey we all take from the cradle to the
grave. But Tsar Bomba showed us that journey could also be affected by very
powerful detonations—and time itself could be breached. Physical objects could
be blown through through that breach, and they would end up in the same spatial
location, but in another time.”

Gromyko looked at his
Starpom
, raising an eyebrow to see
how Belanov was following this, but he sat there with the same serious look on
his face all the other men had.

It doesn’t sound all that crazy after all, thought Volsky as he
listened to Kamenski explain it. Things move in space, and they move in time.
In space they go forward and back again, why not in time? As the Director went
on, the light of confusion and amazement slowly kindled in Gromyko’s eyes.

“And so you see, Captain, we have been experimenting with these
effects ever since, and our great problem was how to control them and determine
where an object might be displaced in time. We could not solve it, but
accidents happen, and they sometimes contain hidden gems of discovery. The
incident in the Norwegian Sea last July was enough of an explosion to rupture
time, and
Kirov
sailed right through the breach.”

“Kirov?
The entire
ship
moved in…in time?”

“It did.” Kamenski let that sit there, knowing what the next
question was likely to be as the Captain looked from him to Volsky and back
again.

“Where? Where did the ship move?”

“It was displaced approximately eighty years into the past.”

“Eighty years? To 1941? And you discovered this to be true,
Admiral?”

“I was aboard, as was every other man here except your
Starpom,
and Mister Kamenski here. Yes, it took us some doing but we soon discovered
what had happened, and we connected it to that detonation in our minds, but
with one more problem. How to get back? I do not believe we have the time to go
into all of that just now. But we
did
make it back, as you can plainly
see. One strange effect of all this is that the ship itself became far less
stable in any given time than it might otherwise have been. Between our Chief Engineer
Dobrynin here and young Mister Fedorov, we were able to discover that a
replacement control rod we were using in the ship’s reactor maintenance seemed
to catalyze these effects on every occasion when it was used.”

“Kirov
is quite the slippery fish now,” said Kamenski, “and suffice it
to say that the detonation of that volcano, and possibly combat actions in the
recent naval engagement with the Americans, have caused the ship to displace in
time again.”

“Again? Where is it now?”

“Much farther back—to the year 1908.” Admiral Volsky folded his
hands, realizing how difficult this revelation must be for a no nonsense naval
officer like Gromyko.

“But… I don’t understand. How you can know this?”

“We know it by chance again, another gift of a random moment where
something unplanned happens and you fall through to a great discovery. We were
going to try and use these control rods in a test reactor to see if we could
replicate the effects.” Volsky decided to simplify the long twisted tale and
try and bring it to some graspable form. He would say nothing of how a missing
reactor technician led them to launch Fedorov’s mission from the Primorskiy
Engineering Center, or why they had first gone in the first place. He would
mention nothing of Orlov, quietly shielding the man from any possible recrimination,
a tact that the Chief did not fail to notice. The thing to do was to keep
everything focused on
Kirov
.

“We wanted to mount a rescue operation, just as we would if your
submarine were to get into trouble down here. Yet to do so we did not have to send
men in one of those clever deep sea diving submersibles like the one that
brought us to you here. No…we had to send men back in
time
. For reasons
that remain unclear to us, they ended up in the same year where
Kirov
is
now still marooned, and managed to make contact.”

“Amazing!” Now Gromyko had transitioned from confusion to awe.
Here was a Fleet Admiral telling him a tale the like of which he had never
heard in his life. How could he doubt it?

“Yes, very amazing indeed,” said Volsky. “Now comes an uncomfortable
part of what we must discuss. As you may know, I gave command of the Red Banner
Pacific Fleet to Captain Vladimir Karpov.”

Gromyko nodded. He had heard of Karpov, though he had never met
the man. The things he heard were less than complimentary—that Karpov was
aggressive, a climber, somewhat manipulative and not one to trust in any
situation where the struggle for power was involved. So it was that he was not
entirely surprised to hear what the Admiral told him next.

“We were trying to arrange delivery of one of these control rods
to
Kirov
, to see if we might use it to catalyze this time displacement
effect again and bring the ship back home. We did this successfully before when
we returned from the first displacement. Now we hoped it would work once again,
but I’m afraid our Captain Karpov has had second thoughts about it, and other
ideas about what he should do.”

“Other ideas? What do you mean, Admiral?”

“I mean he has refused to coordinate a rendezvous with that rescue
team and now seems intent on remaining exactly where he is.”

“What? In 1908? Why would he do such a thing?”

Kamenski leaned in again now. “Power. He is sitting there in the
most powerful ship in the world—a very slippery fish indeed—and he has
determined that he would prefer to use that power right where he is, in 1908.”

Fedorov spoke now. “To put it plainly, Captain, he believes he can
cause some very strange effects of his own now—on all the history between that
year and this one. His initial objective is to redress the Russian defeat in
1905 at the hands of the Japanese Navy.”

“This is unbelievable!” Gromyko looked to Belanov now, but what
else could he say or do here? “And yet, you tell me all this with a completely
straight face. This is either the best goddamned
Vranyo
I have ever
heard or it is an absolutely shocking situation.”

“We all went through this same shock and surprise,” said Volsky. “Now
we are a confederacy of a very few men who know these facts, and you two are
the latest new recruits. I must caution you that this cannot be generally
revealed to the remainder of the crew on
Kazan,
at least not yet. You
must consider it a state secret and a highly sensitive matter, Captain.”

“I understand, Admiral.”

“I also realize that I may be asking a great deal of you here. The
days and mission ahead will be very perilous.”

“You may rely on my ship and crew, sir. We won’t let you down.”

“Thank you, Captain. So…what are we doing here on your submarine
with those odd containers? They are, as you may have guessed by now, the very
same control rods that we have used to catalyze these time displacement effects
aboard
Kirov
, and we intend to use them again—here, on this boat.”

“Use them again? You mean…”

“Correct, Captain,” said Kamenski. “We are going to mount yet
another rescue mission, and your boat has been selected as one that might have
just a little more authority in the situation we may soon find ourselves in.
You see, our first attempt was able to put men on the scene, but we could only
communicate by shortwave radio. This is why we have devised this new plan—to
put your boat on the scene and then see what we can do.”

“So you wish to try to move
Kazan
in time as well—to 1908?”

“Correct. You must leave off how we can accomplish this for the
moment. Our Chief Engineer Dobrynin here has some skill in this business, and
he will be placed in charge of your reactor room. But the simple end to this is
to understand that we are going to try to get there, with this boat, and then
order Karpov to comply with the wishes of this Admiral.”

“I see…” The entire insane story suddenly had a dark shadow over
it. He had known of several other “incidents” in the past involving Russian
Captains that had disobeyed orders and gone off on renegade missions of their
own, both in surface ships and submarines. In each instance the Navy had to
hunt these men down and enforce the will of the state.

“So,” he said in a low voice now. “This will be something more
than a rescue mission then, if I am not mistaken here. This Karpov may not wish
to comply even if we do this impossible thing and appear in the sea beneath his
ship. And what then Admiral Volsky? What then?”

The Admiral tightened his jaw now, obviously troubled. “It is our
hope that when I arrive on the scene, with the full authority of the Navy, that
this man will listen to reason and comply. If however he does not…Well, I said
we selected this ship because it, too, has authority of another kind. I am sure
you know of what I speak now.”

Gromyko was silent for some time, glancing at Belanov to gauge his
reaction to all of this as well. “You are saying we may have to threaten a
military solution to force this man’s hand?”

“That would be the first escalation, the threat, but we will also
have to be prepared to carry out any such threat. We will have to be prepared
to engage the most powerful surface action ship in the world with the most
powerful undersea boat at our disposal, and we must prevail against a very wily
and aggressive sea Captain with a particular hatred of all submarines. This
means that our supposed rescue mission may be vigorously opposed, and soon
become a red on red engagement. Nothing would be more unsettling to me,
considering that these two ships represent the best of the fleet our nation was
hoping to rely on in this day and time. Even if we succeed it will be a great
sadness, because it will mean that I must engage and destroy the ship and crew
I led to sea, and through many ordeals, and I must end the lives of men there
that I have come to love. Yet failure is even more difficult to contemplate,
because much more than the lives and fate of that single ship and crew are at
stake now.”

“May I, sir?” Fedorov looked at the Admiral with wide eyes, and
Volsky nodded, yielding him the floor.

“Captain Gromyko… the instant we do put this mission in play, and
should we actually achieve our goal and displace to the time and place we
target, then all the years between 1908 and the present lie on the butcher’s
block, and our private little war with Captain Karpov and
Kirov
becomes
the single most important event in modern human history. The outcome of that
battle will decide what happens from that moment on. Should we fail, and allow
Captain Karpov to do what he is now planning, then everything could change—
everything
.
It could all change so radically that it might occur that your grandfathers
were never born! That puts it personally, but there is much more at stake. The
world itself, all that we know in this here and now, might never come to be.
Should we fail, and survive to return to this year, we could find it all gone,
all
of it, everything that exists suddenly reordered so completely that the world
is no longer recognizable. Indeed, we did this before, I think. That slippery
fish Mister Kamenski spoke of did move forward again once, and when we leapt
out of the dark seas of time all we found was the ash of an entire generation,
on every shore and at every city and harbor where we hoped to lie at ease.”

Part III

Ultimatum

“In my
experience, ultimatums are about control, even when they’re presented as a
choice. Ultimatums are often couched in anger and/or shame, both of which are
very powerful tools for controlling other people. They also have a tendency to
be framed as an absolute and a person leveling one isn’t likely to be open to
hearing explanations, reasons, or other alternatives. And ultimatums are
usually given in an either/or, as if those are the only two possibilities in
the universe.”

―
Charles Glickman, PhD.

Chapter 7

“Gentlemen,
we have before us a most unusual circumstance.” Admiral Togo
pulled slowly on his white dress naval gloves, one finger at a time, a slow
deliberate motion that seemed single minded and thoughtful as he completed the
process and carefully laid the gloves on the briefing table. The senior
officers of the fleet were all gathered there aboard Togo’s flagship, the
battleship
Mikasa
, their faces eager for news and the orders that would
most certainly follow.