Three Kings (Kirov Series) (14 page)

“That
radiation count says everything, sir. It’s certainly not all coming from that
volcano.”

“Shall
we head for Vladivostok?”

“That
would be the logical play.”

“And if
we find it blown to hell?”

Belanov
had to think about that. It was something he had not considered, a reality that
now loomed as a certain threat in his mind. What would they do if that were the
case? They were a warship of the Russian Navy, pledged to the defense of their
homeland.

“Then
we could see about getting some payback, Captain,” he said at last.

Gromyko
gave him a grim smile. “What good would that do? A little like poking the
embers after the house has burned down.”

“Then
what else?” Belanov had not gone beyond this point in his mind. They were to
try to get home, and that was what he had his thoughts set on. Now they were
here, however, home was nowhere to be found.

“You
saw the radiation readings,” said Gromyko. “We can’t even get within 50 meters
of the surface in that.”

“What
do you figure happened, sir?”

“God
only knows. Maybe the Chinese wouldn’t back off. Maybe they lobbed one of those
ballistic missiles of theirs into the old Fukushima plant. That would be all it
would take to finish off Japan. As for the Americans, I think it was coming to
blows with them in any case. If Vladivostok is gone, then that was their doing.

And it
was gone.

They
spent the next hours making a stealthy approach to the place, creeping up on
Naval headquarters at Fokino first and risking a close approach to the narrow
bay there. No sign of life could be seen, and no signal came in answer to their
coded calls. So they headed east, working their way around the islands at the
base of the long peninsula. Gromyko would not risk navigating the narrower
waters of the Golden Horn, so they maneuvered to approach the city from the
west in Amur Bay.

But the
city was not there. Where it once sat glittering on the shore, there was only
that darkness and silence now, and the eerie stillness that spoke of death. It
was as if the sun had set on the life and world they knew, and would never rise
again. Gromyko knew they could spend their days navigating the seas in search
of any sign of life.

“Yet
we’re just as likely to run into another American boat doing the same thing,”
he said to Belanov.

“So
what do we do, sir?”

Gromyko
gave him a long look, finally telling him what Admiral Volsky had said. “Who knows
if they made it back,” he reasoned. “They told me that new control rod was
untested. It may not have worked. They could still be right there in 1945 and
wondering where the hell we are. Their Chief Engineer was certain that we could
at least return there if we ran that procedure again with the reactors.”

“Return?
To the 1940s?”

“That
seems to be the ticket we’re holding, Belanov.”

“But
sir… the men… our wives and families…”

“You
think they’re here, alive out there in that radiation?”

Belanov
said nothing.

“At
least if we do go back, we’ll have clean air and water, and half a chance at
life.” Gromyko reasoned it out again, but he knew it was more than that, more
than their own fate and the lives of the men aboard
Kazan
. So he said
it, the last part of what Admiral Volsky had whispered to him. “And we would
have one more chance to prevent what we just saw,” he said with finality. “One
more chance to change things.”

“But
sir… We’d end up right in the middle of the Japanese Empire here.”

Gromyko
smiled. “The Japanese? I can handle them. But we have no missile or torpedo
that will do anything against the emptiness out there now. At least if we do go
back, we can make a difference… somehow.”

* * *

And so
they put it to the crew, explained it all, and sat for a long day and night
beneath the sea while Chernov listened and the engineers poured over those
digital recordings, huddling in the reactor room to determine what they might
soon be asked to do. One of them was Junior Lieutenant
Ilya
Garin, a reactor Engineer that had worked with Chief Dobrynin, the devil’s
apprentice. He had seen how the Chief controlled the use of Rod-25, and had
been involved in the mission that sent Fedorov back from the Primorskiy
Engineering Center test reactor, and then again when the Chief tool them all
back to find him on the
Anatoly Alexandrov.
Now he was here, reassigned
to
Kazan
, and working in the reactor room to see if he could duplicate
the Chief’s magic.

He did
not have to worry. When the decision was finally made, the crew vote tallied,
Rod-25 would do all the work for him. All he had to do was lower it slowly into
the reaction, time it, pretend to listen to it like Dobrynin might do. Yet it
was mere theater, and he sensed that on some level. Rod-25 was, indeed, a
stubborn thing. It would take them back to the 1940s as sure as rain follows
the flash of lightning at the edge of a storm. But it was getting old, even as
Dobrynin warned. It might have taken them to 1945, to the place they had only
just escaped from, but it slipped a bit. The boat kept falling through the hole
in time it created, just a little farther into the void.

To the
year 1941.

They
did not know that at first. They arrived in the green wash of eerie light, the
frosty cold and strange static electricity that raised the hackles on the back
of Gromyko’s neck. But they made it through. All seemed well, until Lieutenant
Garin came up to the bridge.

“Captain,”
he said plaintively. “I think we have a problem.”

“You
think
we have a problem?” Gromyko was not accustomed to anything less than precise
certainty when it came to the workings of his submarine. “What is it Mister
Garin?”

“The
control rod sir, Rod-25. Our systems are indicating damage to the rod
structure. Radiation level is high. I’ve retracted it into the
Rad
-Safe containment and we’ll see what we can find after
we take some pictures with the inspection camera.”

“Is the
procedure over? Did it run its course?”

“Yes,
sir. This happened right after final retraction, but I don’t think we can risk
using that control rod again until we get a good look at it, and take some
further readings.”

“Very
well. Carry on, and well done Mister Garin. Now all we have to do is find out
where we are.”

They
went through it all one more time, the quiet wait while the boat’s systems
seemed to slowly recover their sensibilities, the cautious approach to the
surface. Radiation readings were normal, which gave them all some great relief,
but what would they find when they raised the sensor mast and periscope again?
Just to be on the safe side, Gromyko had returned to the relative safety of the
Sea of Okhotsk, cruising off the Kuriles well north of the Demon Volcano. If
they did appear in the 1940s again, he wanted to make sure they had some room
to maneuver.

Belanov’s
remark about
landing right in the middle of the Japanese Empire was good warning. While he
didn’t think he had anything to really fear from the Japanese navy of the
1940s, there was always that first woozy hour after they shifted, when he might
not have the advantage of his sensory suite or even the functional use of his
weapons. And Gromyko was a very cautious man.

So they
waited. Chernov listened.
Gorband
had a look around
on radar, and Karenin raised the communications antenna and sent off that coded
signal.

Silence
followed, a place where every fear might grow if it lingered for very long.
Gromyko became uneasy himself, pacing on the bridge, waiting. Soon Karenin
began to hear voices in that silence, then pulses on the airwaves and the
dot-dash chatter of coded messages from a telegraph system, a faint scratching
of the airwaves that were otherwise clean and silent. Only one man on the boat
spoke Japanese, a sailor named
Genzo
Gavrilov
, his name a hybrid of Japanese and Russian, as he
was born from the marriage of his Russian father to a Japanese woman. The crew
called him GG for short, and he was pulled from his duty in the torpedo room
and called up to the bridge, a bit intimidated to be in the presence of all the
senior officers there.

“Just
listen in to any radio traffic,” the Captain told him. “Find out what’s going
on up there.”

GG
listened, hearing what sounded like routine radio calls, ship to shore,
merchantmen at sea. Then news came from Tokyo of the Japanese offensive in
China. It was not long before he fished out the day and time from the stream of
grandiose propaganda. It was 1941. January of 1941, the 11th day, to be exact.

Gromyko
was surprised to hear that. “Are you sure? 1941?”

“It was
right in the clear, sir,” said GG.
Genzo
Gavrilov
was certain he had it correct.

“Anything
within range on radar or sonar?”

“No
traffic within fifty nautical miles in any direction, sir, and our systems seem
to be recovering nicely now.” Belanov gave the report, waiting, an expectant
look on his face.

“Very
well…” Gromyko rubbed the back of his neck. “I need some fresh air. Take us
up,” he said quietly to Belanov, who nodded as he seconded the order.

“The
boat will surface. Watch Officers stand ready.”

“Surface
the boat, aye sir, and ready on main mast watch. Mister Levin, take your men up
to the sail hatch.”

“Aye,
sir.”

Chapter 12

The
air was sweet, so clean and clear, untainted by the anger
of that volcano that had been the only living thing in the world they had just fled
from. Home was behind them, a cinder grey world of ash and smoke, humming with
radiation in the fallout. Everything they ever knew and loved in that world was
gone, forever gone, and they all carried that awful sense of loss.

But
there was life here, thought Gromyko as he took a deep breath of that cool
fresh air. Yes, there was life, and time, and a chance to do something here.
But what? That was his dilemma now. What should he do? It was January 11, 1941.
Japan was at war on the Chinese mainland, but not out here in the sea. If this
history was anything like the story of the Great Patriotic War that he knew,
then it would be long months before Japan launched her offensive at sea. Pearl
Harbor would not happen for nearly a year. So what should he do with all that
time, and where was
Kirov?

Rod-25
had dragged both
Kirov
and
Kazan
from 1908 and into the middle of
1940 before they made their attempt to each return home on their own. Did the
ship actually get back to 2021 as they had? Was it devoured in the holocaust
they had found there, or had that new control rod failed to deliver? In that
case the ship might still be foundering…
Kirov
might still be here!

Karenin
sent his coded message on the special channel they had arranged, using
shortwave signals that could propagate over very long ranges, half way around
the earth. Then he sat sullenly beneath his headset, still brooding over the
loss of his girlfriend, knowing she was gone forever now. Yet here they were in
the 1940s, and there seemed to be plenty of fish in this new sea. There might
be a life here for them after all, and he did not have long to wait for his
answer.

“Captain!”
he said, his eyes wide, but Gromyko was up on the weather bridge on the exposed
sail, so he toggled his comm system for that station. Watch officers were
standing by with headsets for any message he might send, and the news he
delivered reeled in Gromyko in short order. The Captain was down from the sail,
and onto the main bridge, his boots still wet and glistening with seawater from
a new century.

“Karenin?”

“I have them, sir! I have
Kirov
on shortwave. I just received my green confirmation signal. They got our
message and acknowledged. Now I’m negotiating a voice channel.”

Gromyko breathed easy for the
first time in hours, exhaling some of that good fresh air he had taken in
topside. Karenin worked his system, tuning, filtering, decoding. Then he heard
a voice come in over his headset.

“I have Lieutenant Nikolin, sir!”

“Put it on the bridge speakers.”

“Aye sir.”

“Kazan, Kazan, come in.
Nikolin here on the battlecruiser Kirov. Where in God’s name have you been?”

Gromyko took up a handset and
spoke into the microphone. “Ahoy,
Kirov
. Greetings Mister Nikolin. We
were just asking ourselves the same question.”

Then came another voice, that of
the ship’s young Captain Fedorov.
“Good to finally hear from you,”
said
Fedorov, and he explained that their effort to move forward to 2021 had failed.
“We’ve been here since mid June of 1940, listening for you the last six
months!”

There was a brief exchange, where
Gromyko briefed them on everything they had experienced. The report concerning
Vladivostok was somewhat grim, but not unexpected.