Nemesis (16 page)

“The
Germans…” Here they were again. He had listened to Fedorov tell him he was
living in the past, though he had not really embraced that impossible notion.
He allowed his Navigator to shed light on the contacts they had encountered,
both on and beneath the sea, though all the while, he held Doctor Zolkin’s
comments to himself. Fedorov was seeing the Germans in his war books everywhere
about them, which was troubling to Volsky when he thought about what Zolkin had
said. Yet now, here was this man telling him the German Army was out there advancing
on Murmansk!

“Troops
of Dietl’s Mountain Korps,” said Fedorov. “Don’t worry, they’ll be stopped.
That regiment is from the 14th Rifle Division. The 52nd will come up in
support.”

“The
52nd…” Volsky had a strange look on his face, like a man coming home and
finding someone else had moved into his house. “May I see your logs,
Sub-Lieutenant?”

“Certainly
sir.”

“You
will find everything in order,” said the Commissar. “I’ve seen to that.”

“No
doubt,” said Volsky, taking the logbook in hand when it was brought to him and
flipping through the pages briefly. He was simply interested in the dates, and
when his eye fell on the entry for this day, he felt a sudden surge of
adrenalin. It read: ‘August 2, 1941 – On patrol West of Kildin Island. No
Contacts to report by Mid-Day.’

“I see
you will be tempted to amend your log, but do not report our meeting here,
Lieutenant.” Something whispered to Volsky now, behind that pulse of adrenalin,
a warning.

“I
understand sir,” said Shestakov, looking quickly at the Commissar. “You are
here to cover the evacuation operation? That is good! I was told to look out
for German destroyers, and they have been nipping at us with U-boats up here as
well. We lost the survey ship
Meridian
in the Polar Sea off Teriberka
last month, and one of their damn
Stukas
got the destroyer
Stremitleny
,
right in Kola Bay! Those bastards will learn we have more fight in us than they
believe. If I ever do run into them, we’ll let them know!” He nodded his head,
a determined look on his face.

The Admiral’s
head was spinning now. German destroyers and U-boats, some that he had seen right
on the ship’s HD video, ships that were dead and long gone for decades. And
here was this man talking about Rifle Divisions and Germans attacking, just as
he knew had happened in the Great Patriotic War, and his log books set the same
date that Fedorov asserted, the same date being broadcast on every radio signal
they could pick up.

What
had happened? Was Fedorov’s entire story true? Was this man standing before him
the same Shestakov he would salute so often, this ship the same brave
Tuman
rolling in the mist about them now? My God, my God, he thought. It’s World War
Two! It is really happening, just as Fedorov claimed! Yet even as he thought
this, one last objection forced itself upon his mind—the message from Moscow,
with the correct authentication code. It now remained the only thing he could
grasp, a last dangling rope of sanity in the enveloping mist of chaos.

“Thank
you, Lieutenant,” he said, amazed at his outer calm, a long practiced mask he
could wear in the face of adversity and confusion. “We will be leaving now, and
yes, you must keep our presence here secret. No log entry.”

“Aye
sir, I understand. Tonight is the night. Good luck, Admiral, and long live
Sergei Kirov!” Shestakov saluted, along with his dark eyed Commissar, and he
was not talking about the ship, Fedorov knew, but the man. He had not yet told
Admiral Volsky any of that, how the world he once knew was now fractured in a
hundred pieces, and how their homeland might never be the same, no matter what
any of them decided or did after this.

You can
never go home, thought Fedorov, and now he truly knew the meaning of that
phrase. Five minutes later they were into the Admiral’s launch and returning to
the ship, the mist over the waters folding over them as they went. He passed a
moment of sadness, realizing that the man he had just spoken with might be
killed in just a few days, for those German destroyers were out there, and time
might be jealous enough to force the appointment with death that waited for the
Tuman
on the 9th of August, 1941. But we are here now, he thought, and
that might never happen.

The
realization that
Tuman
might be spared, and that no ship in the fleet
would ever pay tribute as it passed Kildin Island in all the years ahead,
suddenly brought a strange, nostalgic feeling. Yet he thought that would be a
small price to pay for the life of Sub-Lieutenant Shestakov and his Commissar,
and all the men soon fated to die with them.

Part
VI

Impossible

“And the vagueness of his
alarm added to its terrors; when once you have taken the Impossible into your
calculations, its possibilities become practically limitless.”

―
Saki,
The
Chronicles of Clovis

The
Admiral was quiet as they reached the ship, and when they
boarded, his hand on the ladder rail seemed as if it were grasping at reality,
trying to hold on to something that assured him things were as they once were,
the ship itself. How could any of this have happened? How could this possibly
be true? The Bosun’s pipe seemed hollow as he came aboard, his feet on the
decks of 2021 again, though now he felt as though he were on an island, lost in
a sea of time. He waited until Troyak saluted and led the Marines aft to the
helo bay, and then turned to Fedorov.

“Walk
with me, Mister Fedorov. I think you and I must talk for a while.” They started
along the outer deck, heading forward, past the tall central superstructure,
rising up like a metal castle. Volsky looked up, seeing the Fregat radar making
its never ending circuit, scanning the world about them with electronic eyes.
Yet it had not been able to see the truth of what had happened to them. Only
this one man beside him had the courage to speak that aloud, and seem a fool in
doing so.

“Fedorov,
if I had not seen that Lieutenant and his Commissar with my own eyes…”

“I
know, sir. I felt the same way when I first set eyes on the video feed we took
of Wake-Walker’s task force, and saw that Fairy Fulmar overfly the ship. I knew
it was impossible, as my eyes were showing me things that could simply not be
here. In the end, seeing was believing. I hesitated to speak, thinking I might
wait until your eyes showed you the impossible first, but I knew the situation
here at the beginning would be particularly dangerous. The Captain was going to
interpret things very differently. In fact, it may still be difficult to
convince him this has really happened to us, but I am very relieved to know
that you might finally believe me now.”

“Zolkin
was beginning to think you had a more serious problem than we first realized.”

“That
is understandable. My story must have sounded completely insane, but I thank
you for listening to me as you did. I counted on you, Admiral, as it was your
wisdom and restraint that was able to hold Karpov in check.”

Volsky
nodded. “Yet one thing still bothers me,” he said. “That recall order. It was
properly formatted, and how could anyone here know that, or the authentication
code? That is still the one thing that gives me pause.”

“I’m
not certain, sir, but I have a theory. I was trying to explain earlier, then
the missile warning distracted us.”

“You
were suggesting Karpov was behind this somehow?”

“It was
the only thing I could think of. Only you or the Captain could have known that
authentication code.”

“Yes, I
was aware of it,” said Volsky, “but I do not think the Captain knew what it was
until we received that message and opened the safe to obtain the envelope.”

“Not
this Captain,” said Fedorov darkly, prompting Volsky to stop for a moment and
turn to him.

“What
exactly do you mean?”

“Sir…
this will be hard to explain, but just days ago, the ship was well south of
here in the North Atlantic. It was May then, of 1941, though that seems like
yesterday to me now. But don’t you understand sir? The ship was there, along
with the entire crew, or most of them. We lost men through all the trials we
experienced, but you were there, Admiral. You were still in command. We
shifted, deliberately as I tried to explain.”

“By
using that reactor maintenance procedure?”

“Yes
sir… And then I was here. But there was another Admiral Volsky at my side
earlier, and you knew all of this, everything I know. Why I remember it now,
while you and everyone else seem oblivious, I do not know.”

“I see…
but how does this explain that message?”

“Well
sir, there was one man who was not aboard when we made that final shift—the
Captain. I never got the chance to explain what happened to him.”

“Tell
me now.”

Fedorov
steeled himself, but these things had to be said. “In the course of events, we
eventually reached our own time again. There we found that the situation in
2021 had deteriorated, and war was imminent. You gave Karpov command of the
ship, and
Kirov
sortied from Vladivostok. That was where we were headed
after those live fire exercises, and we eventually got there, though that is
another tale. Karpov took the ship out himself.”

“You
were aboard?”

“No
sir. I had another mission, which I’ll explain later. Yet on that sortie,
something happened to the ship again, and it was displaced to the past, only this
time it went even farther back, all the way to 1908.”

Now he
told the Admiral the long, tortuous winding tale that led them all to that dire
moment off Iki Island. He told him of Orlov, and how they conceived a mission
to retrieve him by using the control rod at the Primorskiy Engineering Center,
though he said nothing of what had happened to him at Ilanskiy. Then he told
him of the
Anatoly Alexandrov
, and how he had been able to locate the
ship’s position in 1908. The story of the mission with Gromyko and
Kazan
that was launched to try and bring
Kirov
home was a long one, and Volsky
just kept shaking his head, as though he simply could not hold everything that
was being told to him.

“My
God… All of that happened? You experienced it first hand?”

“I did
sir, and I wish you could remember it all with me.”

“So
this is what you were trying to tell me about Karpov… Trying to take the ship
was unbelievable in itself, but this?”

“I know
sir. It was all very difficult to live through. After that mission we attempted
to try and get home again, to 2021. But Rod-25 seemed to be losing its potency,
or perhaps there was simply too much mass to get us all the way home. We ended
up here again, only it was June of 1940, a little over a year ago, and here we
stayed, this time allied with the Royal Navy, until last May.”

“Allied
with the British,” said Volsky. “Imagine that.”

“You
made that choice, sir, and I think it was a wise one.”

“Then
this is how you came to know that British Admiral Tovey? He was the historical
Tovey, not a namesake from our time?”

“Correct
sir. That message I urged you to send was one I knew he might immediately
understand.
Geronimo
was a code word he devised to indicate we had
appeared again.”

“And
this explains why a British Admiral might wish to speak with a Lieutenant in
the Russian Navy.” Volsky smiled.

“Actually…
I was a Captain by then. You promoted me sir. In fact, I was still wearing my
jacket with those stripes when I arrived here… appeared here, however it
happened.”

“Yes…
That was odd. We thought you had simply grabbed the wrong coat the other day
when all this started and you fell ill. But yesterday the head man in the
ship’s laundry wanted to know who’s jacket that was. He said he had already
laundered Karpov’s. Too much was happening, and I gave it no mind, telling him
to just store it away. I assumed it was Karpov’s, a spare, or perhaps Orlov’s.
He’s a Captain of the third rank, even though we always call him Chief.”

Volsky
was silent for a moment, everything Fedorov was saying weighing heavily on him
now. “I still cannot believe Karpov and Orlov would do these things. They
certainly complicated matters.”

“I’m
afraid so, sir, and more than you realize.”

“Here I
am thinking to make port at Severomorsk in a another hour or two. Yet the
thought that Josef Stalin might get his hands on this ship gives me second
thoughts now.”

“In
that regard,” said Fedorov, taking a long breath, “things may have changed
here. In the course of all these events, all these engagements we fought,
things changed… It wasn’t just Karpov or Orlov’s doing, it was all of us, and I
am as much to blame as anyone else. Every shot we fired into the history we
were sailing through altered this reality, and the world is different now—at least
it was last May. I was wondering if those changes still held with this second
coming of
Kirov
to the past. You see sir, this ship came here directly
from 2021, but we were already here, the ship, and so I wondered if this event,
our first arrival here on July 28th, might ever occur. It seems it has.”

“Then
what happened to the ship you were on last May?”

“I
don’t know… That is the scary part of all of this. It may be out there,
somewhere, then again it may be lost in that grey fog of infinity. Who can say.
One thing I do know, is that another man was out there when this happened,
Vladimir Karpov. He was separated from the ship off Iki Island, and we believed
he was dead. We even conducted a memorial service before we attempted to get home
again. Well, when the ship did move forward, it apparently dragged Karpov along
too. I can only assume he went overboard during that engagement, and he was
pulled forward along with us. I eventually discovered he was in Siberia.”

“Siberia?
How in the world did he get there?”

“I
don’t know, but he did, and he was able to use his knowledge of future events
to get himself into a position of considerable power. We feared what might
happen to the ship as we approached July 28th, the time the ship vanished due
to that accident with
Orel
. I have seen what happened to us, but Karpov
was exposed to that fate as well. It may be that he did not survive, but that
recall order with the correct authentication code gave me pause. He might have
obtained that code at any time he was on the ship, and he would be the only
other person here in this time that might know that code.”

“Astounding,”
said Volsky. “Yet the Captain is right up there on the bridge, Fedorov!”

“Yes,
he is, and I have been trying to understand just what happened here. It all
depends on what really happened to the ship in May of this year. I’m here, and
with my memory of all these events intact. The fact that neither you, nor
anyone else aboard, can remember what happened to us is most disturbing. We
experienced many odd effects as we approached what I came to call Paradox Hour.
Some of those effects involved memory lapses. After we disappeared in May,
members of the crew also began to go missing—Tasarov, Orlov, and a man named
Kamenski that had come aboard in the course of our operations. At one point I
had completely forgotten Tasarov even existed! But strangely, Nikolin
remembered him, and that eventually jogged my memory, which soon recovered. Your
memory was also affected, until it slowly recovered. I was hoping that was the
case here, and that you were still the man I left back in May, but that remains
to be seen. Does any of this trigger any recollection?”

“No,
I’m afraid not,” said Volsky. “It is incredulous—the most amazing story I have
ever heard—yet I cannot recall any of the things you are describing. But Mister
Fedorov… If I follow you here, are you suggesting that that recall order may
have been sent by Karpov—the man who was in Siberia?”

“That
is a possibility. He could have formatted that message before July 28th.”

“Yet
how can he be there and here on this very ship?”

“I do
not think that is possible, Admiral. Frankly, I think he must have suffered a
fate similar to what we endured on the ship. Why I was spared, I cannot say,
but I think it was not without great cost.”

“In
what way?”

“Well
sir, here I am, and with the recollection of all these events intact. In fact,
I firmly believe I am the Fedorov from the ship I left in May, and not the
young officer I was when you set out from Severomorsk for those live fire
exercises.”

“Then
what happened to that man?” asked Volsky, clearly confused by all of this.

“I
don’t know, sir, but I believed it would be impossible for two versions of the
ship and crew to co-exist—or for there to be two versions of me or any other man.
That was the danger I thought we were facing. I believed that, unless we found
a way to get out of this time before July 28th, we could face a grim fate, and
perhaps we have. Finding myself here, I realize now that I may also be responsible
for my own death—the death of that other man, who was completely innocent. And I
have grieved the loss of everyone I knew aboard that other ship, brothers all,
as if they had all died, just as I have grieved the death of my own self, the
man I was before any of this happened.”

Volsky
nodded, a grave expression on his face. “Mister Fedorov,” he said quietly, “you
are a most remarkable young man. For you to appear here, remembering these
things, must have been very trying. I can see now what you have been attempting
to do, the way you have slowly tried to control how these events played out.
Thank you for coming to me, and trying to get me to understand what has
happened to us. It is all more than I think I can hold at one time, and I hope
I don’t have another dizzy spell that sends me to Doctor Zolkin.”

“That
makes two of us, sir. Your understanding and leadership now is essential. It is
not just our fate at stake here. Karpov has said this was a very serious
situation, and he was correct, though things are far more serious than he could
imagine. It is August 2, 1941. Tonight the Northern Fleet will attempt the evacuation
of the 325th Rifle Regiment by sea, and the German assault on Murmansk will be
pressed forward to the boiling point over the next days and weeks.”