Devil's Garden

Chapter 9

Captain Rupert Archibald stood on the bridge of the Empress of China holding the long eyepiece of his telescope to a grey browed eye and peering at the distant silhouette of an approaching ship with a vague disquiet. His ship was one of three built for the Canadian Pacific Steamship Company, in an agreement that was part of the Canadian Pacific Railway development that now spanned the north American continent. Once the rail lines ended in Vancouver, a means of getting things across the Pacific, particularly mail and passengers, resulted in three beautifully elegant ships, the three Empresses of India, China and Japan.

Their exotic names seemed to fire the imagination and put the thirst for adventure that would compel a long sea voyage in the minds of potential passengers. Empress of China could also bear the prefix RMS for “Royal Mail Ship” with an agreement to carry mail to the far east outpost of Hong Kong for the Royal Post. As such, it was no surprise that the officers and men who commanded these ships were often born of the Royal Navy itself, sturdy and experienced reserve officers from the nation that had conquered the known world with its superb navy.

The Empresses proved to be fast, reliable ships as well, with the Empress of Japan currently holding the Blue Ribbon for speed in the Pacific, which she won in 1897 and held for 20 years. Rated at a steady 16 knots, the ships could easily spin up to 18 knots or better. The Captain had seen the world in his day, serving aboard Empress of India as her Chief Officer before becoming Captain of Empress of China in 1905. Something about the look of this ship now bearing down on him was most unsettling. It had a tall superstructure, rising in tiers like the battlements of a great fortress, its aspect profoundly threatening even at this distance. It was certainly a military ship in his estimation.

“Have a look at this, Mister Robinson,” he handed off the telescope to his Chief Officer of the boat, Commander Samuel Robinson, simply called the “Chief” in reference to his post as first officer.

Robinson took a long look, his brow furrowing with obvious concern. He had worked his way up through the ranks of Junior Officers on Empress of Japan to reach his present post, and was destined to have a long and storied career at sea.

“My goodness…Look at that bow wave! This ship must be very fast. They look like they might be making all of twenty knots.”

“And note its size, Chief. It has the look of a battleship, does it not?”

“It does, sir, but out here? Who would it be? The Great White Fleet sailed from San Francisco several days ago, but they aren’t scheduled to arrive in Hawaii for another week.”

“Let’s get off a message on the Marconi wireless. Send our call sign and request identification.”

“Right away, sir.” Robinson saw to the matter, and soon returned no more the wiser. “They say they have a dodgy chronometer, sir and request our date and time readings for navigation.”

“No identification?”

“We received the call sign KIRV, but there’s nothing in the code book for it. In fact, I checked schedules for outbound traffic. Monteagle is the only other ship that should be approaching us from the southwest, but she just left Shanghai on the eleventh, and there’s no way she could be this far out. Slow as molasses.”

“Indeed, Robinson. Well, this ship seems intent on making our acquaintance, but I can’t imagine why. A doggy chronometer is one thing, but what would a warship be doing out here alone like this?” Battleships of the day moved in grand formations, whole fleets deployed, and it was most uncommon to see a solitary vessel out like this.

“Can you make out her colors, sir?”

“Not at this range. In fact, I can’t seem to spy any markings or standards at all. But my eyes aren’t what they used to be. Perhaps this is a Japanese ship. There isn’t anything left of the Russian Pacific Fleet these days after that disaster at Tsushima Strait in 1905.”

“And another point, sir. She’s not making smoke. How can a ship work up that kind of speed without darkening the skies in her wake. She should be smoking like a wild locomotive, yet look, not a wisp.”

“Yes…” the tone of Archibald’s voice left something hanging in the air between them, something odd, indefinable and caddywumpus to the world they knew. The sudden appearance of this ship was most confounding, and neither man could imagine what it might be. Yet as time passed the ship loomed ever closer, their disquiet increasing with the growing size of the vessel.

“My God, Chief. Just look at her… Look at the damn thing. It’s massive! Why… it looks to be twice our size.” At a little over 455 feet in length, the sleek Empress of China was longer than most battleships of her day. She was sixty feet longer than the Kearsarge, Illinois and Maine class battleships of the US Great White Fleet, and the equal of the newer American battleships in the Virginia and Connecticut classes.

Yet the ship they were looking at now seemed much bigger. Kirov was all of 830 feet long, easily twice the size of any ship of that day, and at 32,000 tons full load there would be no ship to match or exceed her displacement for another two decades when HMS Rodney and Nelson were commissioned between the great wars. The US Navy would not have anything that big until the North Carolina Class battleships and, though not as heavy, Kirov was still a hundred feet longer than those ships. Only the Iowa class battleships recently faced in battle would exceed the Russian battlecruiser in length, or the massive RMS Titanic soon to be laid down in March of 1909 in the UK, and that by only fifty feet.

“That has to be the largest vessel I have ever laid eyes on!”

Now they could clearly see a white flag with blue St. Andrew’s cross in a bold “X” of the Russian Navy flying from atop the main mast.

“Either my eyes have failed me as well, sir, or that’s a Russian naval ensign there.”

“Russian? I know a few ships escaped from the Japanese and have been interred in places like Manila and others, but something this big? It’s unheard of! Anything that big at large in the Pacific would be well known by now. This is astounding!”

They watched as the approaching vessel drew ever nearer. “Mister Robinson. I think we’d best contact Dutch Harbor. Send that we’ve encounter a large warship, massive; apparently Russian. Send these coordinates. They should still be able to receive us. That ship looks to have business with us, and I’m feeling just a wee bit wary of that at the moment.”

“It doesn’t look like we can outrun her, Captain. And we certainly can’t outgun her. Why presume she would be hostile?”

A minute later they saw the ship winking at them by lamp.

“I’m getting a lamp signal. There, sir. Right amidships. They appear to be coming around in a wide turn now. I think they mean to come alongside us.”

“Mister Robinson. Send for Mister Cooper, and tell him he’s to bring his sidearm to the bridge, and three stout crewmen.”

It seemed a feeble precaution given the size and vastly threatening look of this ship, but the Chief nodded and went to see to the matter. Never a dull day at sea, he thought. But what in God’s name is this thing come up from Neptune’s locker? It’s a dragon, a real beast of a ship, and in ten minutes the damn thing will be right off our port quarter!

* * *

“Well Mister Rodenko? Seeing is believing.” Karpov folded his arms, smiling for the first time in a good long while. “The HD video feed was one thing, but there’s nothing like the evidence of your own eyes.”

“I’ve come to believe the impossible many times over on this odyssey, sir. But are we wise to make such a close approach to this ship?”

“It clearly poses no threat, Rodenko.”

“Of course, sir. But what will they think of us?”

Karpov looked at him, considering that. “They will think they are seeing the largest ship in the world, Rodenko, and I intend to give them a good long look. Come about and reduce to match their speed at 16 knots. Maneuver to come along side that ship at 200 meters.”

“Very well, sir.” Rodenko seconded those orders, though he had real misgivings. “You realize that they’ll report our presence here.”

“Of course they’ll report it. We’re likely to be the most memorable event of their voyage.”

“Well do we want word to get out, sir?”

“Why not, Rodenko? We’re here, are we not? We were obviously displaced to this year by that last detonation. It appears that nuclear weapons play havoc with the tick of Mother Time’s clock. I’ve read some theoretical papers about it, though Fedorov would probably give us an earful if he were still here.”

“I wonder how he fared in his hunt for Orlov?”

“That was ridiculous. What difference would Orlov make in the world? It was just a waste of time and resources. That control rod should have been left here aboard Kirov where we could have put it to much better use.”

“It seems as though we got our chance anyway, sir.”

“We did, Rodenko, but I was remiss in thinking this single ship could confront the entire combined Allied fleet in 1945. Yes, I’ll be the first to admit that. But perhaps my own bull headed determination to make that engagement was the real deciding factor in all of this.”

“I’m not sure I follow you, sir.”

“Don’t you see, Rodenko? I had the right idea to oppose the Americans-but not the right time or place. Had we shifted just a few years further back in time as before, I could have used this ship to determine the outcome of the Pacific War. Fedorov believes our action in the North Atlantic prevented the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor and brought the Americans into the war early. Even so, the Japanese seemed to be making a pretty good go of things at the outset. Then we showed up and Volsky sailed us right into the middle of a major Japanese offensive! We unhinged the whole scope of their operations and, in doing so, we inadvertently restored the balance of power in the Pacific. The Americans were able to establish themselves in the Solomons on Guadalcanal and defend that outpost. Then the rest of the history played out as before. Our arrival again in 1945 may seem like happenstance, but what if it was not? What if it was meant to happen this way?”

Karpov had a distant, searching look in his eyes now, as if he were coming to this conclusion for the first time, and suddenly seeing the possibilities inherent in the moment-endless open possibilities, for now he found himself in a most interesting position in time.

“It’s 1908, Rodenko! Nicholas II holds power in Russia now. The events of the early revolution, Bloody Sunday in St. Petersburg and the October Manifesto have only just transpired a few years ago. The First World War won’t begin for another six years! The Bolsheviks don’t throw out the Tsar until 1917. At this point in time we could make decisive changes that would affect the history of the entire 20th Century! Think of it.”

Rodenko did think on it, but the memory of that awful atomic blast and mushroom cloud still haunted him. “I mean no disrespect, sir,” he began, “but haven’t we done enough harm to the history of the 20th Century? I mean, what will happen there in 1945 now that we’re gone? What happened to Orlan? We destroyed that American battleship, but will they just leave it at that if they sink our comrades?”

“That undoubtedly happened,” said Karpov. “Orlan could not survive what we were facing. It would have taken virtually every weapon we possessed to overcome the American navy there. I’ll have to live with that, and with what we saw happen to the Admiral Golovko. That we avenged in kind, but this situation presents all new possibilities.”

“But we have no idea how that intervention changed the history after we disappeared in 1945, sir. What if the Americans retaliated? They also had atomic weapons. Something tells me that all we did is make things very much worse than they might have been. They knew we were Russian, sir. We barely scratched their fleet in those engagements, but our actions left behind deep distrust, if not outright enmity between the US and Russia.”

“We left nothing behind that was not destined to be born in any case, Rodenko. You remember the history of the cold war. The Americans will oppose us until it comes to the final war in 2021. And that, I’m afraid, we will lose. Once the US establishes itself as a world power it will not be defeated by an external power.”

“Unless it goes down with the rest of the world, sir. Isn’t that what we saw when we shifted forward in time? Isn’t that why we sortied in the first place-to try and prevent the destruction we saw?”

“Correct, but once again, we had the wrong time and place. The Fleet was no more capable of effectively opposing the Americans in 2021 that we were in 1945. Yes, we hurt them in both engagements, but they can replace their losses and carry on. That is not the case for Russia. The losses we sustained were decisive. Volsky has nothing left to fight with now, unless Admiral Kuznetsov survived. So that war comes down to bombers and missiles. And I’m willing to bet that you are also correct that we caused more harm than anything else by our actions in 1945. The Americans will take a hard line with Stalin from the very beginning. It was the wrong place, but now we are here, Rodenko. 1908!”

“I’m sorry that I don’t know the history of these years well, sir.”

“We just took a licking in the Pacific that stopped Russian expansion into Manchuria. It wasn’t the Americans this time, but the Japanese. They kicked our ass in the Russo-Japanese war of 1904. You remember your studies at the Naval Academy, yes? The battle of Tsushima Strait was fought three years ago. It was bad enough that the Japanese were able to destroy our 1st Pacific Squadron and take Port Arthur. My God, they even shelled Vladivostok! Then the Tsar dispatched our Baltic Fleet and it sailed 18,000 miles to even the score-but was utterly defeated in the Tsushima Strait. That broke the back of Russian power in the Pacific, and it became the dawn of the Rising Sun. Japan emerged on the world stage as a major power. It was truly shocking that a small country like Japan could best us in battle like that. We had one of the strongest navies in the world before that war. Yet when it was over we were reduced to the status of a third rate power at sea.”

“I remember now, sir. Yes, the only naval force Russia has now is bottled up in the Black Sea.”

“Not so, Rodenko. See that ensign flying up there?” Karpov pointed to the Russian Naval Jack flying proudly from the mainmast of the ship. “That steamer over there has undoubtedly had a good long look at our flag by now, and the world will soon come to know and respect it once again. Russia may have lost her old Pacific Fleet, but now she has a new one!”

Rodenko gave the Captain a wide eyed look. “But sir… You mean to intervene here…after what we just went through?”

“Where else? We’re here, are we not? There is no Rod-25 aboard, and unless we run afoul of another volcanic island ready to blow its top, here is where we will stay. I suppose I could play a little Russian Roulette and fire off another tactical warhead to see if that moves us again, but who knows, Rodenko? For all we know we could just be blown deeper into the past.”

Rodenko scratched his head, realizing that the Captain made a good point. They were trapped in 1945 until the nuclear scalpel sliced open the time continuum again and…and now they were here.

“What do you propose we do?” Karpov continued. “We could take Admiral Volsky’s approach and go find an island. Yes, we could choose any little Pacific paradise we desire, take it, hold it, and live out our lives while the history rolls forward to whatever doom awaits it in the future. Or…we could use the power we have now to decisively change the course of those events. The US has not yet established itself as a great Pacific power. The Japanese have only just made their appearance on the scene. This world has nothing to oppose us but old pre-dreadnought battleships half our size! There aren’t even any aircraft to worry about. The Wright Brothers have just developed their first flying machines. The skies are completely empty here! Understand? We can outrun any ship that tries to approach us, and destroy any vessel we encounter with a single missile or torpedo if we so choose. We aren’t facing a desperate battle in 2021, or 1945, where we must fight for our very survival. It’s 1908, and here-here this ship is invincible!”