Cauldron of Fire

Chapter 1

Admiral Leonid Volsky slowly climbed last stairway leading to the main deck, emerging on the aft quarter of the ship on a clear, starry night. The warm breeze of the Mediterranean was welcome compared to the harsh winds he was used to in the north, and he breathed deeply, taking in the sweetness of the night air, and the all embracing calm of the quiet sea.

They had been sailing east now for all of ten days, crossing the Atlantic for European waters, intent on learning more about the strange circumstances of their voyage. As his mind wandered through the memories of these last few weeks he could scarcely believe the images that came to him—of the accident that sent the ship into the icy fog of infinity and the amazing and confounding dilemma that followed. A chance encounter with an old fighter plane had led them into the cauldron of the Second World War, as astounding as it still seemed. Within days his ship and crew were locked in a life and death struggle against the rapidly mustered strength of the Royal Navy and then her American allies as well. His illness, the stubborn headache and that odd spell of vertigo that had sent him into the infirmary with Dr. Zolkin, had allowed his truculent subordinate, Captain Karpov, to embroil the ship in heated combat. By the time he had awakened from his fit, Kirov was at war and, sadly, thousands would die when her arsenal of lethal modern weaponry was set loose in the fray.

Karpov….

The Admiral still shook his head to think on the man, hoping that he had finally managed to reach him when he visited him, just days ago, a thousand questions in his mind and heart. He remembered it now as he walked the deck, ambling slowly toward the aft helo bay.

“Why, Karpov?” he had said right out, his eyes lined with pain and the awful sense of betrayal he felt.

The brooding Captain remained silent, eyes averted, arms folded over his service jacket, an expression of restrained anger still apparent on his face.

Volsky leaned forward, waiting, like a wounded father scolding a wayward son. “None of the others were involved in this,” he said evenly. “Tasarov, Samsonov, Rodenko—they were all blameless. Orlov I can understand,” he said slowly. “Orlov is a dullard when it comes right down to it. How he rose to Chief of the Boat still befuddles me. I certainly had nothing to do with his promotions, but here he was, ready to follow any man’s lead that seemed sensible to him in the heat of action, and given more to muscle than mind when any obstacle presented itself. Yes, he’s a hard man, Orlov, but not one with guile. He would never have dreamed or dared what you did. No, Karpov. It was all your doing, yes? Orlov was nothing more than an witless collaborator, and I am willing to bet that you had to pressure him to complicity in this mutiny.” He ended with a hard fat finger on the table between them.

They were in the Captain’s personal day-cabin where Volsky had summoned his wayward officer from the brig, marched under guard here for this meeting as Kirov sailed east, away from the black horror of Halifax.

Karpov gave the Admiral a sharp glance, averting his eyes again, still sullen and unresponsive, folded in on himself and beset with a mix of emotions—anger, frustration, outrage and beneath them all the bile of shame that seemed to choke him now, stilling his voice and darkening his mind as never before.

“That’s what I must call it—mutiny,” said Volsky, “for there is no other word for it. And for a flag officer of the fleet with such a bright future before you, it is almost beyond belief.”

“Future?” Karpov’s voice was low and barely restrained. “What future are you talking about, old man?”

Volsky brought his fist down hard on the thin wood of the table, and the sullen Captain started with the unexpected blow. “Address me by name and rank, Captain! You are talking to the Admiral of the Northern Fleet!”

“Admiral of the fleet? What fleet is this you presume to command now, comrade? We are one ship, lost at sea, and lost in eternity. God only knows where we are now, but I can assure you, the fleet is long gone, and there is no one back home in Severomorsk waiting for us to return either. It’s all gone, Volsky. Gone! Understand that and you have your fat fist around the heart of it. If you want to understand what I did you need only open your hand and look at it. All we had left was this ship, Admiral, and no one else seemed to have backbone enough to defend her. If I had not taken command it is very likely that we would all be at the bottom of the sea now—have you considered that? So do what you will. Choke me. Shoot me! Lock me away in the brig!”

He gestured painfully at the door where a guard stood stiffly at attention, pretending to see and hear nothing, a steel mannequin that nonetheless represented the business end of the Admiral’s authority here—for that is what it had all come down to in the end, a contest of authority between these two men, the aging Fleet Admiral longing for the peace and quiet of retirement, and the hungry and assertive scheming of his Captain, pushing always to reach that next rung on the ladder of advancement.

Karpov had wrestled for control of the ship, and he had nearly succeed. Had it not been for the timely arrival of Fedorov, coming as he did to the sick bay to find it secured by padlock from the outside, the Captain’s plan may well have caused even more havoc. In the brief interval while the Admiral had struggled to regain his freedom and restore his authority on the ship, the Captain had unleashed hell on the Allied navies that were closing in on them from every side. And now they were living in some distant quarter of that hell, a region of silence and eerie calm, where every shore they had come upon seemed blackened with the cinders of war.

The Admiral looked away, still pained, his eyes unsatisfied. He stood up and stepped over to the guard, speaking to him softly.

“Right away, sir,” the man said smartly, and then quickly let himself out of the door to leave the two officers alone.

Volsky looked at Karpov where he sulked, head lowered, his elbows leaning heavily on the table. Slowly, deliberately he pulled the chair back and stat down again. He regarded his Captain with that same pained expression, waiting, but Karpov seemed apathetic and indifferent to the whole situation now, resigned within himself to any fate that awaited him. He had mustered all the courage at his disposal in that heady moment when he first slipped the padlock on the outer hatch of the infirmary, locking both Zolkin and the Admiral inside. Now he was spent, empty, and there was nothing more than a dull ache in his head and an awful sense of emptiness in his gut. A much younger man, the ordeal seemed to have aged him, and his eyes were dark and deeply lined, so tired and listless now as he stared at the empty table.

“I don’t mince words here,” said Volsky, “nor do I come here to shame you any more than you have already shamed yourself. But mutiny is the word for it, and you must stand accountable—as any man must—for what you have done. No… I will not choke you, Captain, nor will I shoot you. Yet a good long visit to the brig is in order, yes? It is clear that I cannot simply set you loose on the ship again after this. What would the men think? I could confine you to quarters, but first, the brig. Yes, the brig. You will sit there and contemplate, no doubt for some time before you catch a glimpse of the fact that you are a man, Karpov, and then perhaps you can begin to regain some sense of self-respect again, and remorse over what you have done.”

“For what?” said Karpov dully. “So that I can look forward to swabbing the deck, and then join the ranks as a common seaman with the hope of someday making rank again? Don’t you see how stupidly pointless that all is to me now? I had my hand on the throat of time itself and I let it slip from my grasp.” He made a fist as he spoke now, his eyes hard and cold. “Don’t you understand what we could have done with this ship?”

“I am still trying to understand what we did do,” Volsky said quickly. “You were locked up in the brig when we made port at Halifax, and I had little mind to deal with you then. The men needed me on the bridge—and thank God for Fedorov. I had at least one other head I could count on in the midst of all this insanity. Fedorov and Zolkin—yes, thank God for them both.”

“You forget Troyak,” said Karpov, an edge of sarcasm in his voice. “Without him I might still be sitting in your chair up there, Admiral.” He tersely thumbed to the unseen citadel of the bridge, somewhere above them on the upper decks.

“That is what it came to,” said Volsky. “You with your key and a finger on the trigger, me with mine, and Troyak in the middle of it all. At least he knows what the word duty means, yes? At least he had the good sense to discern a madman when he saw one—for that’s what you were, Karpov—a madman. Do you have any idea how many men you killed in these engagements you were so keen to fight? That is the least of it…” The Admiral breathed heavily, and turned when he heard a quiet knock on the door.

“Come.” He waited while the guard stepped into the room again, a bottle of Vodka and two small shot glasses in hand. Volsky gestured to the table and the man placed them there and then stood quietly by.

“That will be all. You may wait outside.”

“Sir!” The man saluted, and stepped crisply out through the hatch, closing it with a thud.

Volsky eyed the bottle and glasses, his gaze shifting to Karpov. Then he slowly reached for the vodka, twisting off the cap and pouring them both a shot glass of the clear liquor. He pushed the small glass across the table to Karpov, who gave it a sidelong look as he did so.

“Go ahead,” he said. “It will do us both some good.”

He raised the shot glass to his lips and drank, exhaling with the sting of the liquor on his throat, and with a certain satisfaction that only a Russian could really understand. Karpov watched him drink, then sighed deeply and reached for the shot glass himself. He downed it quickly, saying nothing. Volsky was silent as well, and poured them both a second shot.

Something in that simple act of sharing a drink together changed the whole atmosphere of the room. The two men sat in that small interval of silence, each lost in their own inner muse for the moment, lost in their own toska, as the Russians might say it, that sad inward-looking reflection tinged with melancholia and the quiet ache of yearning.

At length Volsky spoke again, his voice softer, flatter, with no edge of recrimination. “I understand what you did, Karpov. Though I cannot condone it, or even explain it away, I at least understand. But that changes little here today. We have sailed across the whole of the Atlantic because I thought to get the ship away from those unfriendly waters as soon as possible, and perhaps away from the shadow of guilt we all must shoulder equally after what we saw at Halifax. What was it we did, I wonder? Fedorov thinks they thought we were Germans, and that the war started too early for the Americans. He believes our use of atomic weapons put such hot fear into the Allies that they moved heaven and earth to get the bomb for themselves. Perhaps they succeeded and the war ended differently. We do not know. Yet one thing we do know: this ship fired no weapon at Halifax Harbor.”

He paused, filling his shot glass and that of the Captain one more time. “We stopped at the Azores on the way over… Madalena Harbor was destroyed as well, and I think by a very low yield weapon. I put men ashore on Pico Island for fresh water, but we found little else. Some of the buildings were still sitting there untouched by any sign of war. But there were no people—just bones where they should have been. Just bones…”

He drank.

“So I thought we would have a look at the Med. Yes, I know there are too many targets there to think anything survived if they were willing to spend a missile on a distant island outpost like Madalena Harbor, but one gets curious, yes? You were below decks, and did not see much of this, but as we approached the Straits of Gibraltar I thought, or perhaps I hoped we might see the lights of Tangier glittering on the coastline, yet it was black as coal. Once we got closer we encountered a heavy fog, thick as good borscht, and it was deathly quiet through the strait. Gibraltar was burned and smashed—almost beyond recognition. We sailed on all night, but the fog was still on the sea when dawn came, dull and gray. We skirted the North African coast for a while. Oran and Algiers were devastated—who knows why?” He held up a hand, inexplicably.

“I turned north and sailed up into the Balearic Sea. I don’t know what I thought to see there after what we had already encountered. Perhaps it was only to confirm my worst misgivings….Then again, I have always been fond of the south coast of France. I thought, one day, that I might buy a cottage there and grow grapes for wine. But no more. Nothing is growing there now…” His voice trailed off, and he tightened his lips on the edge of the shot glass. The Captain drank with him, slower now, to savor the lingering taste of the vodka and chase the bile from his throat.

“Did we do all this?” Volsky waved his arm at unseen shores as he spoke. “No. We did not. We only made it possible for them to do it—all the other generals and admirals and prime ministers and presidents. We showed them what power was, and they wanted it for themselves as badly as you wanted it, Karpov. So now we see the result. In truth, I cannot blame you any more than I blame myself, and all we have before us now is simply a matter of survival.”

Karpov nodded, and the two men sat in the quiet for a time. Then he looked up at the Admiral, and blinked. Something in his face spoke more than he was capable of at that moment, and Volsky was wise enough to see it—the sorrow, the anguish, and the shame.

“I want to have a look at Rome before we turn and head back out into the Atlantic,” said Volsky. “I thought we might transit the Aegean and head for Sevastopol, but I see no point in that now. If there is still anything living on this earth it will likely be in the southern latitudes. We’ll skirt the Italian coast, then head west again through the Tyrrhenian Sea. After that, who knows.”

“That island, Admiral?” Karpov managed a wan smile.

“That island.”

Volsky stood and went to the door, looking over his shoulder as he went with one last word. “I’ll have the guard escort you back to the brig now. It’s best that the men see the consequences of what you have done, and it’s also best if you bear it like a man. In due course I’ll have you transferred to your quarters, and from there I suppose the rest is up to you.”

Before he left he poured his Captain one last shot of Vodka. Then he tipped his hat lightly and reached for the door.

“Admiral….”

Volsky looked over his shoulder again.

“I was wrong… I… I made a stupid mistake.”

Volsky nodded gravely. It was probably as close as Karpov could come at the moment to a genuine realization of his wrongdoing, and an apology, but the Admiral said nothing more.

Chapter 2

Now the Admiral was on the aft quarter, walking with memories of his discussion with Karpov and the still heavy sense of guilt he harbored for not seeing things more clearly.

I should have seen it coming, he thought. Karpov was too wound up, too argumentative and combative—and too hungry for advancement. At the time I was preoccupied with trying to get my mind around the insanity of our situation, but I should have seen what he was planning, what he would do if given the chance. Too late now, he concluded. The man may recover himself and prove to be of some use in the days ahead. But for now he’s better off in the brig where he can come to that conclusion himself.

He walked with little enthusiasm this night. They had scouted down the north Italian coast and come at last to the fabled city on seven hills—Rome. There he gazed on Esquiline, the largest of the seven, where the Emperor Nero had built his 'golden house,' at one end, with the other end blighted by the charnel pits where criminals would be buried or their carcasses left for the birds. It was a fitting metaphor for the human endeavor, he thought grimly, that the same hill should be put to these disparate uses. Once the Gardens of Maecenas bloomed there to hide the remains of the dead, but no longer. He had resisted the urge to put men ashore, unwilling to hear the reports or view the evidence they would bring back to him. It was all gone, he knew, the city, the architecture, the amphitheaters, the cathedrals, paintings, statues, the Vatican and the long history behind it all, not the mention the lives of so many who lived there.

With a heavy heart he had given the order to move on, down past Naples, which was equally devastated, and then he gave up and simply turned the ship west. Kirov was now cruising roughly two hundred miles southwest of Naples in the Tyrrhenian Sea as Volsky walked, and that vague sense of disquiet became something more in the back of his mind. He stopped by the edge of the deck, holding on to a gunwale, strangely alert, his ears straining to hear something in the distance. Then he felt it, an odd vibration in the ship beneath his feet and, without really thinking, he was moving toward a nearby bulkhead to look for a call phone up to the bridge.

Volsky opened the latched door and picked up the handset, thumbing the comm-link button for the citadel above. “Admiral Volsky to bridge.”

The voice of Anton Fedorov, his acting Executive Officer was quick to return. “Aye, sir. Fedorov here.”

“Any developments I should be aware of?”

“Strange that you should call, sir. We just got a message from Dobrynin in Engineering. It seems the reactors are acting up again.”

“Acting up?”

“That same odd vibration, sir.”

“Yes, I felt it myself here on the aft deck.”

“I’m holding at twenty knots unless you advise otherwise, sir.”

“Hold speed for the moment, unless Dobrynin requests slower rotations on the turbines. You might call him and ask if that might help the situation. Anything more, Captain?” He had promoted his young Lieutenant to Captain Lieutenant and Starpom after the Karpov incident, not two weeks past, and the young man was working into the position with real energy now, gaining experience and competence, and more confident in his abilities with each day.

“Well, sir…” Fedorov hesitated slightly, then went on. “Signals are showing some interference as well. Both Rodenko and Tasarov have picked up on low level background noise. They… well they look worried about it, sir. Perhaps you should come to the bridge, Admiral.”

“Very well,” said Volsky. “Keep monitoring the situation, Captain, I’m on my way.”

Volsky hung up the receiver, latched the call box door shut and turned forward, heading for the nearest stairway up. He walked past the life boats, glad they had no occasion to use them in spite of the ordeal they had been through these last weeks. Reaching the center of the ship he now had several levels to climb, and thought again how nice it would be to have elevators put in to relieve his thick but tired old legs of the burden of carrying his considerable weight. He was up his second flight on the upper aft deck near the outer hatch when he perceived what looked like an odd discoloration on the sea around them. He stopped, sensing something very wrong, and feeling again the same thrumming vibration that seemed to emanate from the bowels of the ship.

His mind raced over the last reports he had taken in before he left the bridge. Weather outlook was good, with no fronts or impending squalls, and calm seas. Yet the night seemed to thin out around him and he perceived a light glow all around the ship that seemed oddly out of place. It should be pitch black at this hour.

As he gazed at the sea, the peculiar discoloration grew more intense, an odd milky green, and he was stricken with the fear that something was again terribly wrong. Rather than navigating his way through the labyrinthine inner passages of the ship, he decided to climb the long vertical ladder on the main tower, and enter through the first maintenance entrance, coming to the citadel through the upper side hatch on the command deck. As he started to climb, another odd sound came to him, breaking the long silence of calm sea and sky they had been sailing in. He stopped, as if frozen in place, his senses keenly alert as he listened, eyes instinctively searching the rapidly lightening skies beneath his heavy brows. What was happening? The sound filled him with both excitement and dread, for he immediately knew what he was listening to—the drone of a low flying aircraft!

Who was out there? By God, something survived this hell of a war after all! But who? And what was bearing down on them now in the grey skies above. Grey skies? Where has the night gone? He looked out to the horizon, astounded to see it brightening with each passing second. It was just past one in the morning when he rose from his bunk to clear his mind and take this walk on the aft deck. Could he have idled here for four hours? It seemed like minutes to him. Then all these questions suddenly coalesced into a dark shape in the sky, bearing down on the ship from the aft quarter. He reached for the next rung on the ladder, breath coming fast now, and his heart racing more with anxiety than anything else. Every instinct in his body screamed danger, and the adrenaline rushed through his system, giving him renewed strength to climb.

What now, he thought, his mind racing ahead of him to the bridge. Did Fedorov see it? Would he know what to do? Thankfully, the sound of a warning claxon signaling battle stations was a relief.

The drone of the engines was very loud now, so much so that Volsky stopped and craned his next to look behind and above where the ominous winged shadow loomed in the glowering sky. Then it suddenly seemed to come alive with white fire, and he could clearly see the hot streak of tracer rounds coming towards the ship, followed at once by the harsh rattle of what sounded like heavy caliber machine guns. They were under attack!

Flight Officer George-Melville-Jackson was up in his twin engine Bristol Beaufighter VIC for a reconnaissance run. Assigned to the newly arrived 248 Squadron, he had landed on Malta the previous day from Gibraltar where the squadron had been flying missions for Coastal Command. Now the flight of six Beaufighters was to support the crucial effort at hand as Britain struggled to push yet another convoy through the dangerous waters of the Mediterranean to send much needed supplies of food, munitions and most importantly, oil to the beleaguered island outpost.

He had flown northwest over the dangerous waters of the Sicilian Narrows, and then turned north towards the Tyrrhenian Sea until he reached a position about 300 nautical miles out where he made a graceful turn as he began to scour the sea for signs of enemy shipping. With the convoy due in just a few days time, it was imperative that the fighters and bombers on Malta keep the seas clear of heavy enemy units, and Melville-Jackson did not have to wait long before he made his first contact. Squinting through his forward windshield, his eye was pulled to a strange glow on the sea below. He nudged the stick and eased his plane down a few degrees for a better look .

“What’s this, Lizzy?” he said aloud, invoking the name of his sweetheart and wife back home. “What have we got here?”

He spoke into his face mask, somewhat annoyed that he had not been advised of the contact sooner. “Sleeping are you, Tommy? What’s that down there at three o-clock? Not much good having these new radars in the nose if you’re not going to use them, eh?” He squinted at the strange glow below them, as if the water was upwelling from bottom and churning the surface of a quarter mile swath of the sea. There he could now vaguely discern a dark shadow in the center of the disturbance. Was it a submarine coming up from below? Impossible. This was much too big for a U-Boat.

Designed as a night fighter, his Beaufighter was also equipped with Britain’s latest airborne intercept radar set in its nose, the Mark VIII unit with one of the newest concentric screens, and he wanted to know if it had the contact as well on this initial dry run. All the other Beaus had the older AI Mark IV radars, and the Germans had found its bandwidth and were doing a good job of jamming it in recent weeks. It was hoped his new set would solve the problem.

“Not a whisper of anything on my screen the whole way out,” said Thomason on radar, “but right you are now… reading something at five miles—very odd though.”

“It looks big! I suppose we had best get down and have a look.”

Melville-Jackson put the plane into a fast descent, racing down through the pre-dawn sky with his two powerful supercharged radial engines roaring as he went. His navigator and radar man snapped alert now in the rear cupola when the plane went into action.

As he dove on the contact Jackson tightened his jaw, lips pursed beneath his sandy mustache, expecting the skies to light up with flak at any moment, but none came. A moment later the shadow on the sea took on the ominous shape of a warship, its superstructure and battlements now quite evident as he closed the distance.

“What, have we caught the Macaronis flat footed this time?” He smiled, sure he had come upon a big Italian cruiser positioning itself to lay in wait for the convoy. “Let’s announce ourselves, Tommy,” he shouted through the headset.

The Beaufighter was one of the most powerful long range fighters in the RAF inventory. It’s bomb bays on the lower fuselage had been removed to mount four 20mm cannon there, and this was augmented by six Browning .303 machineguns in the wings, more firepower than any smaller fighter, and even more than many heavier bombers might muster.

As the plane descended he could see no markings or service flags, but he was certain from flight briefings that there would be no friendly ships in these waters if he encountered anything. On another day he might have made one high altitude flyby for an IFF run before he made a strafing attack, but not today, not with hostilities impending and the noose tightening on the island fortress as never before. Rommel had pushed damn near all the way to the Nile and Jerry was keen on smashing what was left of resistance on Malta so they could get him the supplies he needed for one last big push. If this new General Montgomery was to have any chance of stopping him short of Alexandria, they would have to make sure the sea lanes remained a hostile environment for Axis supply ships. Malta was the key to that effort—Malta and men like Melville-Jackson in his Bristol Beau. He tightened his finger on the gun triggers as he aimed the plane at the ship below, amazed to see a pulsing light surround the shadow on the sea.

“Get a message off,” he called back to his navigator. “Sighted one hell of a big cruiser, these coordinates. Saying hello before we return home.” He was in no hurry to get back to Takali airfield on Malta, but switched on his gun cameras as he dove, mindful that intelligence would want more than his word on the sighting. Pity we didn’t have a torpedo at hand for a moment like this, he thought. Perhaps another time.

Then he fired, and the powerful 20mm cannons snarled in anger, joined by the fitful chatter of his Browning .303s. The guns sent a hail of iron at the center of the ship, raking the sea in a wild rain of fire and water and smashing into the superstructure in a storm of fire and smoke.

Volsky heard the guns firing, then the terrible howl of the plane’s engines as it flashed by overhead. The sea was awash with spray where the leading rounds fell short, but they raked across the center of the ship, shuddering into her superstructure and sending a scatter of flayed aluminum shrapnel and hot white sparks flying in all directions as the heavy rounds slammed into Kirov with deadly effect. Admiral Volsky felt a searing hot pain as something struck his side and leg, and he was flung from his perch on the ladder, falling all of eight feet with a hard thud as his head struck a hand rail below. He was lucky he had not climbed higher, as the fall itself could have killed him. As it was, he lay unconscious and bleeding from shrapnel wounds on the deck below, and did not hear the shrill panic that wailed through the ship as heavy booted men were running in all directions, shouting and donning life preservers and helmets as they manned their battle stations.

On the bridge, acting Starpom, Anton Fedorov heard the awful drone of the plane as it dove to attack, hastening to the port viewport in a state of surprise and shock. Rodenko had been complaining of a strange interference on his sensor screens—Tasarov as well, but they had seen and heard nothing until the distant sound of an aircraft emerged from the thick cottony silence of the night, strangely attenuated, now loud and threatening, and then hollow and forlorn. The air seemed suddenly charged with heavy static, and a throbbing pulsation seemed to quaver all around them. Fedorov took in the scene outside the ship with wild surmise. The sea was aglow with undulating light, and the skies were brightening with an impossible luminescence. He glanced quickly at his chronometer and read the time. It was 1:37 in the morning, and the night had been clear and dark just a few moments ago, the new moon not yet risen. What was happening?

Then the sound of the aircraft seemed an angry roar, and Fedorov’s better instincts for survival prompted him to wheel about. “Sound alarm,” he shouted. “Battle Stations!”

A split second later the night sky seemed to erupt with light and fire, something came flashing down from above in terrible rage, and white hot shafts of light seemed to pass in through the view panes and bulkheads, like lasers, vanishing into the guts of the ship. The sound that followed was clear and unmistakable, a rattling grind of metal on metal. It was as if the light had suddenly found shape and form, and become a liquid fire, then hard iron as it finally bit into the ship.

They felt heavy rounds shudder against the armored citadel and sheer through the lattice of more delicate antenna domes above them. Then the deep growl of the plane’s engines diminished, fading off the starboard side of the ship. Fedorov turned and saw everyone on the bridge staring at him, some with expressions of shock and others with fear and amazement. His mind was racing as he struggled to make sense of what he had just experienced.

“Did you see that?” Tasarov was pointing to the spot where the searing light had lanced through the bridge and vanished into the deck plates, but there was no sign of damage there at all.

Fedorov could not answer him. He knew he had to do something, take military action to secure the safety of the ship, but what should he do? He was trained as a navigator. He had never gone to combat schools, though his instincts were good and his judgment usually sound, he had no real reflex for battle at sea. He removed his cap for a moment, running the sleeve of his jacket over his brow where a cold sweat had settled. They were all waiting, watching him now, and he struggled to remember how Admiral Volsky would act in a similar situation, and how Karpov would maneuver the ship in the heat of an engagement.

“Rodenko,” he said haltingly. “Look to your screen. Are we tracking that aircraft?”

“There was nothing on my readout earlier, sir, but yes, I can see him now, just barely. The signal is very weak and I still have a lot of clutter, but he’s moving off to the south—fading in and out. I don’t think he’s coming around again.”

“Tasarov—anything?” Fedorov wanted to know what was happening beneath them as well. The first rule, he remembered, was to assess their immediate situation and get as clear a picture as possible of the battle space around them. He had seen Karpov do this on exercise many times, and so he did the same, checking the ship’s eyes and ears, and letting the unanswerable questions go for the moment.

Tasarov fitted his headset more snuggly, closing his eyes. Then he blinked and checked his sensor screens as well. “Nothing sir,” he said. “The sea is calm. I have no transients—but I have no range either. Something is wrong, sir.”

“Helm, come around. Fifteen degrees to port.”

“Port fifteen, sir and coming about on a heading of 210.”

Change your heading, he thought. Good. He had seen Karpov do this as well to throw any stalking enemy off the scent, the most rudimentary of evasive maneuvers. As the ship came around on the new heading the tension subsided somewhat, and then Fedorov looked to his radio man. “Mr. Nikolin,” he said calmly. “Please activate the Tin Man display and do a full pan of our forward and rear arcs.” If the sensors had not seen the plane, he thought, what else might they have missed?

“Aye, sir.” Nikolin toggled his display to activate HD video camera systems for optical data feed to a hi-res flat panel monitor on the bridge. These systems stood on the forward and aft towers to give the bridge a real time 360 degree video view of the surrounding area. The feed came in, with mild breakup due to the residual static that still seemed to be affecting all the equipment on the bridge, but Fedorov could see that the image showed a clear, calm sea, with no sign of any visual contact on any heading. Yet it was broad daylight now! The scene seemed to astound the junior bridge crew members, who watched the screen with large round eyes, looking at the images and then at Fedorov to note his reaction. Light streamed in through their forward view panes, chasing the soft glow of their night lighting away. Fedorov blinked, amazed, but composed himself to try and set an example for the men.

“You’ve had an easy life these last ten days or so, Mr. Nikolin,” said Fedorov. “Now would you kindly do a full search of the entire radio band. Scan everything, AM, FM, wireless and short wave bands as well, and please notify me of anything you receive.”

“Aye, sir.” The young mishman was soon busy at his radio set, and then Fedorov turned to his last senior midshipman on the watch, Victor Samsonov, his strong right arm at the Combat Information Center.

“Mr. Samsonov,” he said coolly. “Your report, please.”

Samsonov swallowed hard, his thick features uncertain for a moment, then launched himself into a standard status check report, his voice deep and clear. “Sir,” he began, “I have nothing on my board by way of an active contact, and no systems are engaged at this time. The aircraft which made that strafing run has vanished, as least that is what my systems indicate. My board notes two fire control radar systems reporting red with full malfunction—both on the forward MR-90 systems, and I have one yellow light on the S-300 system as well.”

There was apparently damage to the ship’s medium range air defense guidance radar sets for the “Klinok” (Blade) surface to air missile package, the ship’s primary AA defense for threats at medium ranges between thirty and 90 kilometers. NATO planners once referred to it as the “Gauntlet” system due to its lethal efficiency, and the system aboard Kirov had seen many improvements since that time. The yellow light on the S-300s referred to the longer range vertically mounted SAMs on the far forward deck, a separate system, but equally lethal. They had used it weeks ago to devastate the carrier air flights off Victorious and Furious, and the thought that it might be compromised in any way filled Fedorov with misgivings.

“Anything more?”

“All three main SSM systems report green sir. We have full fire control and I have spun up one silo to full battle readiness for each system.” The ship’s real teeth, the lethal ship to ship missile batteries beneath their hatches on the long foredeck, were as sharp as ever.

“Very well,” Fedorov nodded, remembering that the Admiral would often use that same expression after receiving a report. And for that matter he assumed as well the familiar stance that Volsky would adopt while he took stock of a tactical situation on the bridge, arms clasped behind him, chin high and a observant eye to the seas around them—mid-day seas, with the sun glistening of the low wave caps and high in the sky. He had watched the old man with much admiration many times from his former post at the navigation station, and he took heart to know that the Admiral was on his way at this very moment, collecting his thoughts for the report he would soon be asked to give himself. But minutes passed and Volsky did not appear. Time stretched on and he stood there, not knowing what to do next.

A low tone sounded and Fedorov walked quickly to the comm-receiver near the Admiral’s chair to answer. “Executive Officer Fedorov here,” he said, eager to hear the voice of Admiral Volsky again in return, but instead it was Dr. Zolkin in the infirmary.

“I’m afraid we have casualties, Mr. Fedorov,” the voice said in a low and serious tone. “If the situation allows, could you please come to sick bay?”

Fedorov hesitated briefly, wondering. Then he marshaled his courage and spoke up, trying to keep his voice clear and level. “Very well, Doctor. I need to run down damage reports, but I’ll see what I can do.”

As he slipped the receiver back into its holder he had a sinking feeling that he knew why the Admiral had not yet reached the bridge.

Chapter 3

Lingering near the Admiral’s chair Fedorov realized that he might soon be sitting there in a way he had never fully imagined, or even desired. Yet the urgency of the moment pulled at him. He could still hear claxons sounding and knew there was a fire below decks. The damage control parties were scrambling to douse the flames, and when he looked out the forward view pane he could see a column of thick black smoke rising past Kirov’s tall central tower, up past the main mast where it darkened the rotating radar antennae with soot.

Chief Byko called up to the bridge to report the full extent of the damage, which seemed remarkably light given the sound and fury of the attack they had just endured. One of the lifeboats on the port side had been riddled with machinegun fire and set ablaze. Heavier rounds had piled into the main superstructure, some penetrating to the outermost compartments in the interior of the ship, where three seamen lost their lives and seven more were wounded by shrapnel. An examination of the damage showed that the worst of the attack had been aimed at the command citadel, though remarkably little harm was done there. The 200mm armor plating surrounding the critical systems and personnel in this area had deflected most of the heavier rounds, but some of the more sensitive radar and electronics components above suffered serious damage. The port side radar control for the Klinok (SA-N-92) Missile system was shot completely through and virtually shattered. Byko had engineers up on the roof of the citadel removing the unit and gauging their chances of replacing it with reserve components from the engineering bay.

Rodenko finally seemed to get his primary search radars clear of interference and was getting a good picture of the area around the ship, though his range seemed limited. “All clear for the moment,” he said to the Executive Officer. “I suppose we can count ourselves lucky that they didn’t hit the main search radars. Our Voskhod MR-900 system is green and the 3D Fregat MR-910 on the aft mast is fully operational. Not sure why our signal range is so attenuated at the moment, but it was not from any damage sustained in that attack.”

“We had the same situation with signal range the last time,” said Fedorov. My Navigation Radars were at 50% of capacity for several hours.”

“The last time?” Rodenko looked at him. “You mean to say—”

“That was no modern aircraft that just hit us,” said Fedorov. “In the heat of the moment I could not get a clear look at the plane, but I did see enough to know it was a twin engine fighter—probably a Beaufort or perhaps even a BF-110.”

Samsonov frowned. He had never heard of either aircraft, and realized things were skewing off in an impossible direction again. “Then we are still back to the Second World War? This is crazy! What is going on?”

Fedorov looked at him, thinking, but said nothing for a moment. Remembering the attack, he recalled the piercing lights that lanced through the bridge compartment. Rodenko had seen them as well, and he questioned him about it.

“Those lights, Rodenko. Do you remember what happened?”

“I thought it was a laser,” said Rodenko. “Came right through the main bulkhead of the citadel and hit the decks. But, as you can see, there is no damage at all.” He scratched his head, clearly flummoxed by the attack.

“It was probably rounds from the main cannon on that aircraft,” said Fedorov.

“Impossible,” Samsonov complained. “Right through our armor? Then where are the holes?”

“I don’t think they really hit us,” Fedorov began, still feeling his way through the explanation himself, trying to get his mind around it even as he spoke. “This trouble with the ship’s reactor Dobrynin reported… and strange light on the sea just before the attack, the odd pulsation in the air—it was all just as we experienced it before. I think we may have slipped again, moved in time again.”

“But how?” Rodenko and Tasarov both turned in their chairs now, keenly attentive to what Fedorov was saying. The other crew members were listening, though Rodenko waved a hand at one, a look of annoyance on his face that set the man back to his watch on the radar.

Fedorov stepped closer and the four men seemed to form a circle, the senior officers on the bridge now, Fedorov as the acting Starpom, or First Officer, and his senior Lieutenants, Rodenko, Tasarov and Samsonov. He went on, still trying to sort through the situation in his mind as he spoke.

“Suppose we moved again,” he began. “God only knows where now, but it was clearly not forward in time. We’ve slipped back again—or we were pulled back again. Who knows why? But it was as if we were not quite all here when that plane came in on us. Some of those rounds seemed to pass right through the bridge, just as you say Rodenko, like a laser. Then, as we solidified in this moment, the shells began to bite against the citadel’s armor. We got off rather easy with this attack. Those cannons could have done a lot more harm if they had hit more critical systems, but I think most of the rounds passed right through us…because we weren’t really here yet—we were still manifesting in this new time.”

He realized how crazy his words must sound, but by now the crew had come to accept the impossible circumstances of their situation. “Look at the time,” Fedorov pointed to the chronometer. “It is two in the morning, and we should be in the thick of night. Please correct me if I am wrong, but it is broad daylight now. Where has the night gone? Unless the earth’s rotation has suddenly changed, we have obviously moved in time.”

“But there was no nuclear detonation,” said Rodenko. “How did it happen this time? How could we move again like this?”

“I don’t know…” Fedorov was quick to admit his own ignorance. “We may never know. It could be that we have never really settled in time again after that first accident that sent us reeling into the past. Ever skip a rock on a pond? Perhaps we are skipping along in time like a stone skips on the water. We landed in 1941, and then skipped off the water into that nightmare world of the future, only to fall back into the drink again. We just sailed across the Atlantic, so we have deliberately moved in space.”

“That I understand,” Rodenko argued. “But I see no controls at the helm for time displacement! How is it possible?”

“I said I don’t know,” said Fedorov. “Look—we won’t be able to sort through all of this any time soon. It took us days to realize what had happened the first time, but we may not have the luxury of time like that again. We need to be alert and ready, and must assume we are still not where we belong. If we have moved again, we need to find out where we are, because if we’ve landed back in the 1940s as before, then this could be a very dangerous place.” He pointed to the forward view pane. “Don’t be lulled by those nice calm seas and clear blue skies. The Mediterranean was a cauldron of fire during the Second World War, and we’ve sailed right into the middle of it. If I could only figure out the date and time…” He remembered his radio man and turned to that station, his eyes alight.

“Anything to report, Mr. Nikolin?”

“Nothing yet, sir. The band is all clouded over. I think I’m starting to get a signal, then I lose it. It comes and goes like that, but I get nothing clear enough to record.”

“Well, keep at it.” He surveyed the bridge, thinking what to do next. The situation had calmed for the moment, and he wanted to get below and see the damage first hand, but even more to get to the infirmary and see what the Doctor was calling about.

“We’ll sort out what has happened soon enough,” he concluded. “In the meantime I need to find the Admiral and give my report. Stay on that scope, Rodenko—all of you—be keenly alert now. And Mister Samsonov,” he warned, “we cannot afford to be caught by surprise again. I assess no blame here. None of us saw that plane until it was right on top of us. But don’t let another aircraft get within striking range of this ship, eh? If Rodenko finds anything and feeds you a contact, you have my permission to fire at will and shoot it down. I’m afraid the circumstances compel us to shoot first and ask questions later until we know what has happened and where we are.” He straightened his cap, resolved.

“And now, gentlemen, I must go below. Mister Rodenko—you have the bridge.”

“Aye, sir.”

He made his way out the hatch and down the stairway to the decks below. Men saluted as he passed, to his uniform and rank if nothing else. They knew him as Fedorov, the young dreamer at navigation, lost always in his books when he wasn’t on duty, and always ruminating on the dusty pages of history past. Yet, with the rumors that had been circulating about the Admiral, they were glad, at least, to see a ranking officer in their midst. Karpov and Orlov were still locked up in the brig, and most of the other senior officers were on the bridge. Though many of the junior officers still thought of Fedorov as one of their own, the fact remained that he was now wearing three stripes and two pips of a Captain Lieutenant, and was designated Starpom, the First Officer of the Boat in authority beneath Admiral Volsky.

Down in the lower decks, the chief warrant officers, or mishmanyy, held sway, commanding the ranks of starshini below them, Chiefs and Petty Officers of various classes, down through Senior Seamen, though the bulk of the 750 man crew were still at the lowest navy rank, the matpoc who carried out all the daily tasks required to keep the ship running in good order. The men still had on their bright orange and yellow life vests and helmets, already hosing down and swabbing the decks where residual fire damage had occurred.

Fedorov saw where the worst of the attack had riddled an outer hatch with sharp punctures, the metal spraying inward as shrapnel to kill and wound several men in this compartment. Some of the overhead insulated piping and wire conduits that ran in cluttered runs along the roof had also been sheered to ribbons, and technicians were already at work there, cutting and replacing wire and nosing about in an electrical panel fuse box that was blackened with recent fire.

“How bad was it?” he asked a seaman where he worked.

The young man looked up at him, saluting when he saw Fedorov’s cap and shoulder insignia. Then he recognized the face, and half smiled in recognition. His eyes clouded over soon after. “There was a lot of shrapnel. We lost three men here,” he said: “Gorokhov, Kalinin and Pushkin. The rest weren’t too bad off. The starshina sent them to the sick bay twenty minutes ago.”

Fedorov knew one of the men well enough to take the news with a bit of a sting. He nodded, his features taut but controlled. “I’m off to see about them then,” he said.

“What was it, sir?” the seaman asked, his eyes wide.

“An aircraft of some sort. We haven’t sorted it out yet, but stand easy. Rodenko is on the watch and we are in no further jeopardy at the moment.”

“But what about the Admiral, sir? Is it true he was killed in the attack as they say?”

“Killed?” Fedorov tried to sound as if he knew what he was about, but the news shook him, and the look on his face could not conceal the emotion. “We have not heard that, seaman,” he said in a low voice, “but I will keep the ship informed. For now we can only carry on. As you were.”

Fedorov edged past the man into a long corridor and made his way quickly through the ranks toward sick bay. Along the way many men pressed him with questions, but he bid them to attend to their duties and hurried on, which did little to quell the anxiety that seemed to jangle the nerves of the whole ship’s crew now.

Killed? The thought of Volsky dead was leaden on him now. If that were so then it would all fall on his shoulders, the responsibility for commanding the entire ship and crew. In truth, he never wanted a command position, being content with his status as the ship’s navigator. Admiral Volsky had been a mentor, and almost a father to him. He listened to him, guided him, and was slowly easing him into his new role as Starpom these last days. He can’t be gone, thought Fedorov. He can’t! But if it were so he knew he would have to set an example for the others now. Volsky was the one great link that seemed to bind this crew together. They loved the man and would do anything for him, which is why Karpov’s betrayal and mutiny was doomed to fail from the moment he first planned it. But now…if the Admiral was gone…

What would the men think? They had been through a great deal these last days. Even the long, uneventful cruise across the Atlantic had filled them all with a sense of foreboding ever since they first made landfall on the Azores. Rumors quickly circulated that everyone was dead and there was nothing but burned out wreckage and fire scored bones left on the islands. When they finally entered the Mediterranean Sea and scouted north to Toulon and then down the coast of Italy, the men could finally see for themselves that the rumors were true. They had gathered in groups on the outer decks, clustering near the gunwales and railings to gawk at the destruction of Rome and Naples. It did little to improve morale. Were they the last survivors of a terrible war, they wondered? And what would become of them now?

At length Fedorov reached the sick bay, seeing two first class seamen leaving with a salute just as he arrived. One had a bandaged head and the other had his arm in a sling, but neither man looked seriously injured. He slipped through the hatch, catching a glimpse of three bodies shrouded in white sheets on the tables at the far end of the room. His heart leapt when he thought he might see the Admiral lying there but then Zolkin appeared from the next room with a wan smile. The bearded, bespectacled senior medical officer was a Captain of the second rank after his long career in the Russian Navy. He was, in fact, two ranks above Fedorov, though the medical branch was not in the operational arm of the service.

“Ah, Mister Fedorov. I was hoping to see you soon. They tell me that a plane strafed the ship? Is this so? I hope there was not any serious damage. As you can see we have already lost enough.” He gestured grimly to the three bodies.

“All is well—for the moment,” said Fedorov. “But what about the Admiral, doctor? The men tell me—”

“Don’t bother with what the men are saying,” said Zolkin. “Here I was just lecturing these last two to keep their composure and stop with all these preposterous rumors. One man says this, another one says that, and the next thing you know the Titanic is sinking off our starboard bow.” He was drying his hands with a clean white towel as he spoke, and Fedorov could not help but notice the blood stains on his medical apron.

First blood, he thought. The enemy, whoever they were this time, had finally put claws into the ship, and hurt us with an attack.

“Then the Admiral is alive?”

“Of course he’s alive—at least he was five minutes ago—but he’ll have one hell of a headache when he wakes up. He was struck by shrapnel when that plane came in on us. What in the world is going on, Fedorov? I thought we were clear of danger, floating around in some new nightmare of our own making. Now this! What has happened?”

“Admiral Volsky will recover?”

“Yes, he’s just in the next room. Leg wound and a superficial side wound, but he was apparently trying to climb the long maintenance ladder on the main tower and fell when we were fired on. What was that old man thinking by trying to climb that ladder at his age? The Admiral has been in fairly good health, but he is no spring chicken. Now he has a nasty weal on the side of his head, and probably a nice concussion for his trouble as well. But I’ve patched him up and he’ll be well enough in a few days.”

“We lost three men?”

“I’m afraid so. There was nothing I could do for them. They were dead before the rescue crews got them to me. Lucky for Volsky that a fire crew fetched a stretcher and got him in here safely. But what about my question. What’s going on out there?”

“We don’t know just yet.”

Fedorov was going to say he was as much in the dark as anyone else, but an inner voice reminded him that he needed to show more resolve now, and muster all the strength at his disposal. At that moment, the comm unit buzzed and Zolkin glanced at it over the rim of his round silver spectacles.

“Be my guest,” he gestured as he finished drying his hands. “It’s probably for you in any case, yes? I’ll get rid of this apron and tidy up.”

Fedorov reached for the handset and answered. It was Issak Nikolin, his radio man reporting on a signal. “It came in on the wireless bands, fairly weak but audible. Sounded like ship to ship traffic, sir. I recorded it, but it is in English. Something about an eagle.”

“An eagle?”

“Yes sir, but I think it’s something about a ship—they say it’s the fifth of the war now, at least I was able to hear that much. Then the signal cut loose and I lost it again.”

Fedorov thought hard for a moment. An eagle…a ship…the fifth of the war… Then his mind suddenly joined the three odd clues and he knew like a thunderclap what it was about, and where they were!

“Keep listening, Mister Nikolin. I’ll be on the bridge again shortly.”

Fedorov’s mind reeled with the sudden realization that had come to him. How could he be sure? How could he get confirmation?

“More bad news?” asked Zolkin as he tossed his soiled medical apron into a hamper. “You look like you’ve just seen a ghost. Here, why don’t you sit down for a moment, Fedorov.”

“No time, Doctor. I’ve got too much on my back just now.”

Zolkin gave him an understanding look, and clasped him by the shoulder. “Yes, I can feel it,” he said with a wry smile. “Take your time, young Captain Lieutenant. Catch your breath and give yourself a moment. You’ve been under the spotlight all these last days in your new post, and that’s enough to unsettle most any man.”

“Thank you, Doctor,” Fedorov nodded, and then lowered his voice. “I think something has slipped again. That was Nikolin with a fragment of radio traffic. I think I may know what has happened—where we are—and it gives me no cause for comfort. How soon before the Admiral might recover?”

“Hard to say. He’ll need at least a day before I allow you to pile your load on to his belly again. I’m afraid you’ll have to carry things for a while longer. Go and see to your business on the bridge, and if you can manage to get some sleep, that would be good as well. I see we have an unaccountable day, and my night’s sleep is gone as well, but I take it to have something to do with all the other scenes in this nightmare we’ve been living these last weeks. Come back when you know more and we’ll all have a chance to sort it through—you, me and the Admiral.”

“Probably best,” said Fedorov. “I’ll get up to the bridge then—oh yes—do you remember that book I brought with me and gave to the Admiral? The Chronology of the War at Sea?”

“Need to do some more reading? What are you fishing out now, Fedorov?”

“I need to check some dates and times.”

Zolkin folded his arms, rubbing his thick beard as he thought. “Well I think the Admiral had that book in his quarters. After this Karpov business was finished it kept him up reading a good many nights.”

“Thank you, Doctor. I’ll be off now.” He looked at the three men lying under those sheets. “What should we do about them? I suppose a burial at sea would be appropriate.”

“I’ll handle that,” said Zolkin. “You’ve enough to worry about as things stand now. Go and find your book.”

Fedorov tipped his hat with grim nod as he left, and Zolkin shook his head after him.

Yes, there was a great deal on his shoulders now, thought Fedorov. More than he had ever tried to carry in his life. He wondered if it would break his back, or if his legs would give out from under him in a crucial moment that would cost them all much more than the lives of those three men.

As he walked on down the long corridor to the ship’s officer’s quarters a fragment of a poem came to him when he thought about the men he had seen there in sick bay.