Tigers East

Chapter 31

It took Nikolin some time to recover from what he had experienced. In the beginning, he thought he was simply hallucinating, dreaming while awake, but as those minutes passed, the feeling that all these memories flooding into his brain were real lived events began to solidify. It was as if he had been in a state of amnesia for years, or a kind of waking coma, going about his business unaware of all these things. Then, suddenly, that single trigger, the cypher code Fedorov had given him, set off this cascade of memories, and he was awakened from the dullness of unknowing in this sudden rush of awareness.

The same thing had happened to Orlov earlier, though Nikolin did not know that. The Chief at least had the guiding and reassuring presence of Anton Fedorov when his memory was restored, but for Nikolin, it was a shuddering and frightening experience. Everything he recalled was now so real in his mind, and yet he could also trace back the chronology of his life as lived from childhood, through the university, to Naval School, and then his career in the Navy itself, and all the time he had spent since he was first posted to Kirov. Nowhere, in any of those sequenced events, could any of these memories find a place to live. They were interlopers, imposters, and now intruders on the normal calm and sane progression of his days. They were impossible.

Until he found the message….

Sitting there, he saw himself staring at a message he had decoded in one of those phantom images flooding into his mind. Then, as if determined to test the reality of that recollection in defense of his own sanity, he reached for the special drawer where he put all non-official radio traffic signals transcripts. It was just a habit he had developed over the years, like a man who might sort his sales receipts, putting some into a box for safekeeping, others into a file to be officially registered in his expense log. Some might have been personal items, other things bought for work.

He did that with his message transcripts, and now, if the recollection he was holding in his mind were in any way real, then there should be a transcript of it, and right there in his special drawer. He opened it with some trepidation, afraid of what he might find. On the surface, he was moving with the urgency of a detective, trying to find that scrap of evidence to prove his case in an otherwise overlooked pile of documents. On the other hand, he was chiding himself, berating himself as his unsteady finders flipped through the stacked papers. Then the internal argument stopped. He found what he was looking for, and his hand was literally shaking as he pulled it from the drawer, staring at the words, unbelieving: Nikolin, Nikolin, Nikolin… you lose!

He closed his eyes, thinking he might again open them and find the message gone, or simply saying something else, but when he looked again those five stubborn words were still there, taunting him, a transcript of a memory he could simply not fit anywhere in the chronology of his life. And yet, as the awareness increased, he began to see that this phantom message had its own place in another sequence of events, that there were memories before it, and others that came after, and that they all conspired to present an alternate chronology of lived events, one, by one, by one….

Now he looked at the date on the transcript, again seeing there the impossible. It was the message sent by Orlov, tapped out in Morse one night after he broke into a telegraph station while drunk in Cartagena. He had jumped ship on the KA-226, and was at large in Spain, and that errant signal had been a vital moving event, a Pushpoint, a trigger setting events in motion that ended up changing everything, the entire world, every lived event.

Yet the longer he stared at it, the more that other life in his head solidified. Now there were two Nikolins, two versions of himself, a schizophrenic duality in his mind that made him queasy at first. He put the message in his pocket, needing to hold onto it, in spite of the impulse to simply throw it away, run from it, deny it ever existed at all. That would be the easy course to steer, throw it away, destroy it, and with it the reality of all those other recollections. Denial was a reflexive defense mechanism, a guardian at the door of his mind, there to preserve the calm order and inner decorum that he could call his sanity. If he simply threw the message away, then he wouldn’t have to face this dilemma any longer. He could return to his old self, send another riddle to Tasarov, plan how he might wheedle a second cinnamon roll from the ship’s galley, return to the history novel he had been reading in his quarters. He could forget this ever happened.

No, he could not forget. The memories were too strong, their numbers too great, like an army that had surrounded the keep of his mind. It had been out there all along, he realized now, digging trenches in a quiet siege, building its engines to break down the walls. Now the gate of the castle was beaten down, and the horde was storming in.

The message was dated August of 1942, another impossibility, but one he had to pardon. He had come to accept the impossible as everyday reality. The ship was here, in that very year, as astounding as that still seemed to him when he actually thought about it. Life aboard Kirov seemed the same here as it might have if the ship were on a standard deployment out of Severomorsk. He could look out at the ocean, and it looked like the same ocean they had been sailing in in 2021. There was nothing but the sea, in every direction, nothing but the sea and sky.

The date on that message was very recent, and try as he might, he could not remember ever recording it, or ever slipping it into that drawer—at least not in the mind he had been living in before those barbarian memories stormed his castle. It was all so very strange and disconcerting. As soon as his shift ended, he found himself hastening below decks, and his feet unerringly led him to the one place of refuge he had often sought when things went wrong. He knocked on the door of the sick bay, grateful that there was no line outside.

“Come,” came the familiar voice of Doctor Zolkin, and he took a deep breath, entering through the hatch.

“Ah, Mister Nikolin,” said Zolkin. “Come in. What is it today? Another headache?”

It was so much more than that, thought Nikolin, but how could he explain any of this to the Doctor? “No sir… I’m not quite sure. It’s very confusing.”

“What is confusing?”

“My… My mind, sir. I’m all mixed up.”

That got Zolkin’s attention, and he put down some instruments he had been ready to sterilize and turned, his studied eye on the young officer. “Suppose you sit down and tell me about it,” he said, his voice calm and reassuring. Zolkin had that way with the men. He was one part Physician, one part Psychologist, and a kind of grandfather figure to them all in one.”

“Thank you, sir,” said Nikolin. He did not know where to begin. Then he just came out with it. “Doctor, I was at my station just now, when I suddenly remembered something, not just one thing, but a torrent of things, as if I had suddenly remembered a whole other life that I had completely forgotten!”

“A torrent of things? You mean memories?”

“Exactly, sir—memories of things that I just can’t understand… I mean, I remember things, but then I can’t fit them into my life here at all. Its very confusing.”

“What kind of things?”

“Events, sir, just memories that you might have of anything, only some of these memories are fairly intense. The only thing is, I don’t see where or when they could have happened.”

“I see,” said Zolkin, paying more attention now. “Can you give me an example?”

Nikolin reached right into his pocket and pulled out the message, explaining what it was to Zolkin, and how he had stowed it away in that special drawer. “But sir,” he concluded. “This is dated just last month, but I never got such a message. It’s from Chief Orlov, and he was right here on the ship at that time. So how could he be sending me something like this on the radio when he was right here? It makes no sense.”

“That is quite odd,” said Zolkin. “What does it mean, Mister Nikolin? Have you determined that?”

“Yes sir… Well… It was something the Chief said to me once. We were playing cards, not here, not recently, but I still remember it. We were playing cards and he won the final hand, and after that he gave me that big grin of his and said this, shaking his head the way he does, Nikolin, Nikolin, Nikolin… you lose. Well Doctor, I got that message—at least that’s what I remember now. It came over the radio in Morse, and when I decoded it, I realized it had to be from the Chief. I mean—who else could have said that, but… I’m all mixed up sir, I can’t remember receiving such a message recently, but look at the date. I should remember it. I do in one side of my head, but I don’t in the other.”

“I see,” said Zolkin. “You say you remember receiving that, but yet have no recollection of when it happened. It that it?”

“Something like that sir… It’s as if…”

“As if what?”

“As if I had two versions of events in my mind now, two lives. I have memories of two separate lives all jumbled up now, all together in the same head. I tried to explain one of them away—like you would shake off a bad dream that seemed so real that you could swear you actually lived it, a kind of waking dream. I tried to just dismiss it that way, as a bad dream, but it’s too real, too detailed. It isn’t just one memory, but a whole sequence of events, day, to day, to day. And this is from one of them.” He held out the paper, an anguished look on his face.

Now Zolkin was very quiet, thinking, nodding to Nikolin to give him some solace, but thinking, very deeply about something. “You say that came from one of these memories you have, but you cannot account for it.”

“That’s it, sir. But if this is real, then…”

“Then the memory is real.” Zolkin voiced the impossible conclusion that had brought the young officer to him. It would be easy enough to simply summon Chief Orlov, but he wasn’t on the ship. He had gone off with Fedorov on the KA-40, and they had not yet returned. Yet this incident affected him in a very odd way, for he had experienced something very much like this earlier, when he found that bloodied bandage in the special cabinet where he only put things that mattered, keepsakes, mementos, things of importance.

That bloodied bandage…. That was his message in a drawer, and it had picked at the edge of a memory that he could not quite recall, something dark and dangerous with in his mind, lurking, like a burglar that had broken into his home in the night, hidden, stalking, ready to do harm but as yet unseen in the dark.

“Mister Nikolin,” he said. “Something very much like this, happened to me. In fact, it happened to Fedorov as well. He came to me with a story just like this. I suggested it was Déjà vu at first. You know, the feeling that you are living an event you have already experienced. But it was more than that. And just like that message there you pulled from your private drawer, I found something here in my domain that I could not quite account for. So I went searching through my own medical logs, to see if I had made an entry about it, and found a good deal more…. May I ask you something? These memories you say you have in your head now, does one of them have the ship heading south through the Denmark Strait after we first arrived here, and not east to the Pacific?”

“Yes!” Nikolin’s eyes widened, a look of great relief on his face.

Fedorov had explained the anomaly to Zolkin, the list of names he had found, names of men that had all died in combat. It was a list, he told him, that Zolkin himself had compiled and filed away. The Doctor could not remember that, but Fedorov asserted it to be true, and he could recite, chapter and verse, exactly how every man on that list had died, even Lenkov… yes, that ghastly incident written into the record about Lenkov, even though the man was alive and well in the ship’s galley at that very moment. The list, said Fedorov, had been compiled by another version of himself, another Zolkin, from another ship, a phantom ship, yet one so real that it had changed all history.

Now Zolkin remembered that visit from Fedorov again, and the incredible revelations the Starpom had come out with. Fedorov claimed this exact same thing, that the ship had turned south, entering the Denmark Strait, and logged another history that was quite different from the journey they were on now. He could still hear Fedorov’s words… “I am the man who was at sea in the Atlantic, in May of 1941 when we made that final shift. I am not simply Fedorov, remembering things I once lived through. I’m the man who lived out each and every one of those moments, and up on the bridge, Karpov is the same.”

Then Fedorov came out with that word as he explained Karpov—doppelganger, double walker, another version of yourself at large in the world. Was Nikolin remembering things his own doppelganger had lived and experienced? Is that what had happened to Fedorov? He had believed Fedorov when he came to him with that impossible story, and largely because of the strange evidence he had uncovered, that bloodied bandage, that list of dead men’s names buried in his files. Those things were not the assertions or testimony of a man, which could be colored as he wished. They were real and tangible things, almost as if they were remnants from the world Fedorov claimed he lived through.

Now, here was Nikolin, a folded paper in hand, yet another remnant, just like that bloodied bandage. And here he came with a story that sounded exactly like the one Fedorov had told him. He asked another question.

“Mister Nikolin… Do you see that bandage there in the cabinet—the one with the blood stain? I have been trying to determine where that blood came from, as we’ve had no serious incidents, even with all the shooting that’s been going on here. But just when we were turning east, Mister Fedorov told me something about it—said that it was mine, with my blood on it. Might you remember anything about it?”

Nikolin swallowed. “Yes sir,” he began. “This will sound crazy to you, but I remember that you wore a bandage like that on your arm. You were wounded, sir.”

“Wounded?” Zolkin was fishing for more. He wanted Nikolin to come out with the same story Fedorov had shared with him. “How would that have happened?”

“Karpov…” Just one word from Nikolin sent Zolkin’s heart beating faster. “On the bridge, sir. It’s one of the things I remember. There was a battle on, and Rodenko was trying to get Karpov to stop. You were there, sir, and… well… I remember the Captain pulled out a pistol and shot you in the arm. It just grazed you, but your arm was bandaged up for a few weeks after. I know it sounds crazy sir, but I can remember it as clear as I remember shaving this morning. Only I can’t fit it into any of the days we’ve lived out here since we arrived. See what I mean now? Am I going crazy?”

Chapter 32

Zolkin just stared at him, eyes wide, a feeling of profound disquiet falling over him. Nikolin recounted the exact same incident that Fedorov had asserted. “Did Fedorov tell you this?” He asked the most obvious question.

“Sir? No. He has never spoken to me about that.”

“You’re certain?”

“He wouldn’t have to tell me that, sir. I was there when it happened. I saw what the Captain did—everyone saw it, Rodenko, all the other officers on the watch that day.”

“Only none of them have come in to tell me this,” said Zolkin. “None, except you and Fedorov.”

“Fedorov? He knew about it?”

“He told me this exact same thing, and I told him I believed him. But by god, if I was the man shot in the arm, why in God’s name can’t I remember it? I’ve got snatches of all this in my mind, fragments, but they won’t come out and face me.” He was talking to himself now more than Nikolin. Now he looked at the young officer. “How long have you known these things?”

“Since the message came in on the HF encrypted channel, just a few hours ago.” Now he told Zolkin the rest of his story, the message, the code, the torrent of memories that flooded in after.

“Interesting,” said Zolkin. “A kind of satori moment for you.”

“Sir?”

“Zen,” said Zolkin. “A moment of sudden realization that might be triggered by some small event, even a leaf falling. You say you entered that code, knew what it was, and that knowledge open the door to all these other memories.”

“Yes sir, that’s it exactly.”

“Then what was that message about, if I might ask?”

“Sir, it was a secure message protocol, something Fedorov arranged, and it’s a bit of a story. In these memories I have, we were not alone here. There was another ship, a boat, a submarine with us.”

“A submarine?”

“Yes sir—the Kazan—Captain Gromyko’s boat.”

“Ah, yes, I know the man—The Matador.”

“That’s him, sir. Well, his boat was with us, and there was a battle in the Atlantic, but then it vanished—Kazan—it disappeared and we never heard from it again. But Mister Fedorov had set up this protocol, seeing as though ships and subs were moving about in time like this. He thought that Gromyko might appear some time again, in the future, and if he did, he was supposed to send out a signal on this specific channel, and that code was the way it would be authenticated.

“And you remembered it—the code—and then you remembered everything else.”

“Exactly sir. I knew you would understand!”

“I’m not quite sure that I do, only that seems to be what has happened, to both you and Fedorov. Now let me get this right. If you got that message, then it came from Gromyko?”

“Yes sir. In fact, I keyed in the code and the channel opened, and I heard Mister Fedorov speaking directly with Captain Gromyko.”

“Indeed. Well, what did they say? What was this all about?”

“Fedorov is arranging a meeting with Kazan. That’s how I understand it. They’re going to meet in the Barents Sea.”

“Interesting. A very busy man, our Mister Fedorov. Did you report this message traffic?”

Nikolin lowered his eyes. “No sir… All these memories came flooding in, and I was trying to keep my head and all. Then I realized that things were getting dangerous.”

“Dangerous?”

“That last missile we fired—well, Karpov fired it at Fedorov on the KA-40.”

“What?”

“Yes sir, he said he was just trying to get his attention, but I think… well I think he meant to shoot that helo down. I think he was trying to kill him.”

“That passes for dangerous in any book I’ve ever read,” said Zolkin, and he put two and two together. He didn’t know what Fedorov was up to on that mission, but it was certainly something important.

“Why in the world did Karpov try to shoot down that helicopter?”

“He didn’t want Fedorov to proceed with his mission, whatever that was. Nobody tells us things, but Karpov ordered him back to the ship, and when Fedorov asked to speak with him, he responded by firing that missile.”

“The little Admiral wanted his Starpom back very urgently—or he wanted him dead. I see….”

“What’s going on, Doctor?”

“You probably know more than I, Mister Nikolin. These memories you say you have, might they give you the reasons?”

Nikolin shrugged. “Mister Fedorov and Karpov have been adversaries for a good long while,” he said. “I wish Admiral Volsky was still here.”

Zolkin nodded solemnly. “I wish that as well,” he said quietly. “Very well, I do not think you should reveal any of this to the rest of the crew. They would not understand.”

“Not unless they remember it all too,” said Nikolin.

“Perhaps, perhaps. I can tell you that Fedorov himself remembered it all, just as you do. I’ve had flashes, bits and pieces, and when you tell me these things they seem to ring true to me, though I can’t pull out the clear memory of it all like you seem to do. And so, my young man, I can say that you are not crazy—not unless Fedorov is crazy with you, and Karpov as well.”

“Karpov?”

“Yes, Mister Fedorov told me that Karpov knows all of this—knows he pulled that pistol on me and fired, and all the other things you remember. He knows it all, and yet acts as if none of it ever happened. There is more I could tell you—things Fedorov revealed to me, but that would only complicate things at the moment. Needless to say, if Karpov thought you remembered all these things, that would be…. dangerous for you. So I’d keep this all under your hat, Mister Nikolin, even that message you just received from Gromyko. Understand?”

“Alright, sir. I won’t tell anyone.”

“Good. If it gets too difficult, I want you to come right here and see me about it, and the two of us will sort it through. But I don’t think it would be good if Karpov discovered you know these things.”

“Alright sir, but how did this happen to me—and to Fedorov? Why can I remember these things, but no one else on the ship remembers, except perhaps you, if only just a little.”

“There are others,” said Zolkin. “Men have come to me like this with odd feelings, uncomfortable feelings about things that were bothering them, like waking dreams, nightmares. Fedorov told me that one other man woke up to it all, just like you apparently did—the Chief.”

“Orlov?”

“Yes, and perhaps that is why Mister Fedorov wanted the Chief to accompany him on this mission. Orlov can’t keep secrets. He simply talks too much. But you, Mister Nikolin, you must be very cautious now. Not a word. But I want you to come to me if it bothers you. I’m with you. You can always come to me.”

“Thank you,” said Nikolin, glad that he wasn’t crazy after all. The whole world around him was topsy-turvy, but at least the Doctor was telling him his memory of it all wasn’t a nightmare, not a waking dream. It was real, as real as the message he had in hand, as real as that missile Karpov had fired, as real as Gromyko’s voice in his headset, which meant that Kazan was out there somewhere, and Fedorov made it safely away to find that sub.

The story in his head had a good many chapters left to be written, he thought, but now he worried what they might hold. Fedorov had been on that submarine before, with Admiral Volsky, and they had come for Karpov. The things he remembered happening after that were not too pleasant, and he glanced at that bloodied bandage the Doctor had pointed out. Might it come to that again? Would it come down to Samsonov standing up like he did, stalwart, sturdy Samsonov, refusing to do Karpov’s bidding, come hell or high water. The memory of how the crew all stood with Samsonov, of how he stood with him, was clear in his mind now. Would the crew have to mutiny here again to sort this all out?

Then he remembered something else, someone else—Grilikov.

Karpov was not happy. In fact, he was deeply upset. Fedorov… his old nemesis was up to the same tricks again. He was always hatching these crazy missions, always thinking he could fix everything, make it all right again. First it was that wild hunt for Orlov, which built the world they were sailing in now. Then he thought he could just waltz into Ilanskiy, go down those steps and change everything again. Well not so fast.

The Admiral was well settled into his new reality here, and quite comfortable in fact. That suggestion he had shocked Fedorov with, that the time loop would effectively allow him to live forever, seemed strangely inviting to him. Yet for that to happen, the ship would have to slip again, fall backwards in time, to a period before its first coming. That would set up Paradox Hour once more, and Time would have no choice other than to double back on itself for another replay, to see if she could sort things out. Otherwise, argued Fedorov, she could not proceed to draw the future they came from, or even fully certify this world as sound.

We certainly caused a great deal of trouble here, he thought, and most of it is on my shoulders. But what do I care as long as I am in charge? They thought to throw me out of my heaven, so now I reign in hell. So be it. Now that I have Grilikov and my security contingent aboard, there won’t be any little rebellions aboard ship here to frustrate my plans. Even Troyak is gone with a chunk of the Marines. My men should be able to handle the rest. So there won’t be any heroics from the crew this time, like Rodenko and Zolkin tried to pull before. It took a long history to move those men to do what they did. Even faithful Samsonov bucked my authority in the end. I must never forget that.

Yet without the cooperation of the crew, I cannot carry out my plans. So I must be cautious here. Rodenko objected to that missile firing, and for the very first time. And Samsonov hesitated when I gave the order to fire. That was also a first. It tells me that their instinct is none so ruthless as my own. In the end, they are Fedorov’s men, and would weigh in on his side of the equation. There’s one more good reason to continue with Grilikov’s training at the CIC.

That was one hell of a fight we just had with this rogue destroyer. What was it doing there? Who really knows, but it remains a threat to my plans here as well. My research indicated those ships only carried eight anti-ship missiles, so unless they had something below decks in crates, they have an empty gun now, at least insofar as the ship-to-ship missiles go. Yet they probably still have SAMs left, and that could be a problem for me. The can’t harm Kirov with their little Standard Missile 2. I can shoot those down as easily as I took down their SSMs. And now that I know they are here, they certainly won’t be able to ambush me like that again.

No. The damage they can do lies in their ability to influence events in the war. As toothless as they are now, their remaining missiles can be a decisive factor in any air battle that occurs here. I wonder what they are up to now? They were obviously sent up here to deal with me and the ship, and the fact that they were operating with other Japanese fleet units is most revealing. That means Yamamoto has to know about them. How very interesting. They didn’t just appear here, shake hands with Admiral Kurita, and decide to come and kill me. No, that isn’t likely at all. I can imagine they went through everything we did when they first appeared here—trying to decide who’s side they were on. Who knows, maybe that big volcanic eruption off Java had something to do with their appearance, just as Fedorov speculated. If nothing else, it put a little spice into the stew.

Now what are they up to? Yes, Yamamoto must know about them, which means they conspired to get to him and arrange a little pact. The Japanese were down south with this big operation involving Fiji. Why didn’t they send Takami there? Perhaps Yamamoto thought he had the power to handle the Americans himself. It’s my ship that must give him nightmares these days, particularly given what I did to his precious Kido Butai after Pearl Harbor, just a little demonstration of what was to come if Japan continues to defy me.

I ruffled a few more feathers when I took Kamchatka, now my Sakhalin operation has finally got their full attention. That reaction they made off Kamchatka was knee jerk reflex. They thought they would just send a little task force up and settle things. Now they know better. After I made my successful landing on Sakhalin, I must have really rattled the teacups in Tokyo.

He smiled.

So now what is this Takami up to? They’ll have to go back to Yamamoto, tail between their legs, and tell him they failed here, and more, that they have no real power to intervene in my operations again. Oh, I suppose they could form the nucleus of a carrier strike group, and protect those ships from my SSMs as long as their SAMs hold out. But they can’t stop my torpedoes.

He smiled again. He would settle all this later. His most immediate problem now was the same old nemesis that had foiled him so many times—Fedorov. It was an uneasy alliance from the very first. Fedorov had little choice but to knuckle under. He took the position I offered him, and served well, until he got a big head on him again, and started cooking up this sour borscht. Thank god I had the good sense to think it through. We aren’t going to win this war on the back stairway of that railway inn. What fun is that? I’d much rather prefer to slowly grind the Japanese under my boot, until they beg me to stop.

So that is my main concern now—Fedorov, not the damn Japanese. I need not worry what this Takami is up to, but Anton Fedorov is another matter. What is he up to with this insubordination? He tells me he’ll comply with my order to return to the ship, but there’s been no sign of the KA-40 yet, and no word from him at all. Beyond that, my younger self tells me that the Irkutsk has gone silent. They can’t raise them on the radio. Fedorov had Troyak and a few marines with him. I was remiss in not checking to see what Troyak was packing away on that helo from his weapons lockers. He has things in there that can bring an airship down, which is why I warned my brother to keep a sharp eye.

Then again… What good would it do Fedorov to take down the Irkutsk? He’d be stranded there. Oh, they still have the KA-40, and it had fuel enough to get back to the ship from the drop off point at Tokko Lake. That draws a fairly wide circle around that lake, the farthest on for that KA-40, and Fedorov could be anywhere inside that circle. He could easily reach the Trans-Siberian Rail as it swings up north of the big bend in the Amur River. But that would be risky for him, as it is all Japanese occupied territory. He would not come east, towards my operations here, and he would not go south into Japanese held territory. If he continued west from Tokko Lake, he would not even make it to Lake Baikal, and that would do him no good. He’d just have to sit there in the wilderness, twiddling his thumbs.

That leaves north. Yes, he could get up to the populated region along the Lena River, or perhaps even the Aldan River. That’s my territory, but they could go to ground, be discreet, and they would be very difficult to find. There would be food there, the means of survival, particularly around Yakutsk. That would buy him time to figure what to do, but what would that be?

Karpov thought and thought. He’d want to get to Sergei Kirov. Yes… He was all chummy with Kirov, and that would be the only ally he could run to now—unless he had ideas about trying to contact the Americans. I’ve invited US Air Force personnel to evaluate my offer of basing rights on Siberian territory. Could he be running to them? If so, how could they help him? It certainly won’t change anything concerning Ilanskiy. I’ve got that place locked down tighter than a bank vault now. Nobody gets anywhere near that railway inn without my permission. Tyrenkov’s men had a complete cordon around the place.

Another smile, with a dismissive shake of his head. Fedorov, he thought, you are becoming irrelevant now, no matter where you think to go. Run to the Americans, or try running to Sergei Kirov. Yakutsk is a very long way from Leningrad, and besides that, I have much more pull with Sergei Kirov than you may realize. It’s my Shock Armies that saved Russia last winter, and my troops still fight for him even now. How do you think I got this ship back?

So if he runs home to Leningrad, Fedorov might get a rude awakening to find he can no longer pull strings there. But I can. Kirov’s factories are relocating to Siberian territory, and Siberian troops, oil, resources, are all that is still keeping the Soviet Union in this fight. The Americans and British have finally opened their Second Front, for what it’s worth. I sent more troops to Kirov than all the British and American divisions combined.

Yes, I may be worrying too much about Fedorov now. He’s really quite powerless, isn’t he? That said, he needs to be apprehended and brought to my very annoyed justice. If he did have Troyak and his Marines take down the Irkutsk, that’s one more airship I’ll need to build for the fleet. He’ll pay for that. Yes, he’ll pay for everything the next time we meet. No more parley talk with Fedorov. He’s my enemy now. I should have realized that long ago.

Chapter 33

Fedorov felt right at home again as he settled into a chair in the navigation room, charts spread out before him. They had been just north of the tip of Lake Baikal, and were heading west towards Ilanskiy and Kansk by a little used route when the course change was put in. He double checked the distance to the rendezvous point, seeing it was just under 3500 kilometers. If the weather held clear, they might make 80KPH enroute, but the weather was very fickle in Siberia this time of year. He figured the earliest they might arrive would be 48 hours, possibly longer if they were delayed by any unforeseen circumstances. That was to be an understatement, and by a massive margin.

They had gone to high altitude for the initial leg of their journey, to avoid being observed over more populated areas near the Lena River. It was chilling cold up there, and now they had descended into warmer air, the crew very glad for that. Life on a Zeppelin was a hard existence. The rigging and gas bag crews would have to wear heavy parkas, head gear and gloves at altitude, just to keep from being frozen. Gunners assigned to the top mounted platforms got the worst of it, and they were grateful that they did not have to go to action stations and actually man their weapons, fully exposed to the frigid air. In such circumstances, and with the natural wind chill caused by the forward motion of the airship, gun crews could only remain exposed for ten minutes, and they would rotate that often with other men who were huddled on a small warmed deck space just below the platform.

But it wasn’t the cold that seemed to bother them most as they turned north. There was an unaccountable feeling of discomfort settling on the crew, from Symenko, who was naturally surly, and right on down to the cable linemen, sail makers who mended the canvass tarps, and the bag boys. The gunners, bombers, and sub-cloud car men were thankfully not at their posts, and the naval infantry contingent was standing down at Symenko’s order, but everyone seemed tense. It was a slowly rising sense of anxiety, and not just because most of the crew could not understand why they were navigating this territory instead of the familiar routes they would take on their many patrols. It was something more, an impalpable sense of doom, just below the skin. It was that feeling of rising adrenaline prompting a man to fight or flight, but the crew could do neither. There was no apparent danger in the skies around them, save the ever present threat of a sudden storm, and the ubiquitous cold. There were no enemy ships to worry about out here, and in fact, the crew didn’t really know much about what was going on. But they were edgy, and Symenko could feel it too.

Now Fedorov sat staring at his chart, seeing the plotted line of their course as they passed over the winding flow of the Lena River, doubling back on itself in a series of twists and turns near the small settlement of Makarovo. Beyond that, the wilderness grew more intense, allowing them to get lower. It was very green here, the terrain beneath them relatively flat, yet covered by endless stretches of dense forest. Most of the trees on earth must be gathered here, he thought, his mind wondering what was going on down in that silent world. There were places there, where even in modern times, no human footprint had ever touched the ground. He thought about that, realizing the world there was quietly present, trees, soil, water, wildlife. Most of it did not even know it was there, he thought. It’s just a mindless existence, ancient, unknowing, yet marvelous nonetheless.

A little over three hours after the course change, they passed over the thin stream of the Gulmok River. After that they would cross the Nepa. These small rivers appearing at intervals in the otherwise undifferentiated terrain were their guideposts, yet his eye kept roving on ahead, following the thinly traced course line, and seeing that it was, indeed, taking them over what he now regarded as a most dangerous area.

The fuel situation was their main problem. He was getting regular reports on usage to factor into his thinking, and he now calculated that they would just have enough to make the rendezvous. As much as he felt compelled to avoid the area ahead of them, he knew they would simply have to stay on this plotted course, and it was going to take them right over the dead ground that had been haunted by so many legends and stories of strange events and evil doings.

In modern times he knew there had been many hidden installations out here, secret mines, military depot sites, testing grounds for weapons, and even hidden silos where cold missiles waited in their stony silence. None of that was here now in 1942. The terrain was unblighted by modernity, and its many evils. Yet the course line was taking them right over the terror of the taiga, the place where something came out of space in 1908, heralded by a strange magnetic flux that was picked up by many scientists and observers across the globe before it struck. They were going to fly directly over the site where it fell, the Tunguska Event, the epicenter of all his worst fears about what was happening to the world around him now.

He got some much needed sleep, awakening again six hours out, near the 450 kilometer mark as they overflew the Chupakan River. Next came the Selkii, then they Ayava, and with each passing, the sense of anxiety seemed to grow. Night fell around them quickly when the sun set just before 18:00 hours, the darkness thickening quickly, the cold increasing. The fat gibbous moon would not rise for another hour and a half, so it was just their bad luck that they would pass over the epicenter of Tunguska in this interval of relative darkness, about an hour after that sun had set. In one sense, that was good, for they would skirt very near the inhabited settlement of Vanavara just 15 kilometers to their west. No one would see the slate grey beast in the skies above, passing like a shadow, nothing more than a smudge that moved over the stars.

A silence had fallen over the ship, a sullen dampening of spirits that now weighed heavily on the crew. Some were trying to get fitful sleep, and the bridge crew on the main gondola sat bleary eyed at their posts, the Wheelman, Elevatorman, Engineer, Trim and Ballast Man, Compass Man. Symenko stood nearby, grumbling about the dark and casting dour glances at Fedorov, Troyak and Orlov. The Chief was particularly edgy.

“Sookin Sym, Fedorov. Where have you taken us? It feels like hell on earth, only no fire, just endless black, and this numbing cold. I haven’t felt this bad since we went down with Troyak and I found that thing on the taiga. Remember that Troyak? I nearly shit my pants!”

The burly Sergeant looked at him, blinking. “Remember what?” he grumbled.

“Never mind that, Orlov,” said Fedorov quickly, and he gave the Chief a warning glance. Orlov had a way of blurting things out like that, which was one reason Fedorov wanted him on this mission, and not back on the ship. This Troyak had never been with them on that mission, nor had any of these Marines. That had happened with the old, original crew of Kirov, but this version of the stalwart Sergeant knew nothing about it. This Troyak had never accompanied Fedorov along the Trans-Siberian Rail, never set foot at Ilanskiy, and he never fought in Syria and Iraq when the war took them there, nor did he have a place on that fateful mission with Popski to look for General O’Connor’s downed aircraft.

Fedorov could feel the anxiety himself as he waited for the moon. Without any good ground reference, they could easily drift off their intended course, and the moonlight would be needed so they could mark out terrain features. Just to be safe in times like this, they would reduce speed to ahead one third. It would minimize the possibility of course drift until they had more light for ground observation. There they were, in this aluminum framed leviathan, defying gravity in the careful balance of lift and ballast, a beast of the wind and sky.

Another hour and they should be through the worst of it. The moon would rise, they could spy out the ground to find a telltale terrain feature, mark their position on the charts, and then make any necessary correction for inadvertent drift. Vanavara was right on the bend of the Stony Tunguska River, and the twisting course of the Vanavarka tributary entered it from the northeast. If they drifted, they would most likely move west with the prevailing wind, and so Fedorov was keeping a close eye that direction. If he saw the tortuous flow of the River Chamba, he would know they had gone slightly off course, but as the time passed, his anxiety became more than a welling inner feeling. Something was wrong.

“Captain,” he said, his eyes narrowed as he scanned the horizon. Symenko had been dozing in his chair, and he grumbled as he woke, rubbing the sleep from his eyes. His dreams had been black, and now he remembered why. He was none too happy to be where he was, off the charts as he knew them, levered out of his position in Karpov’s fleet, a renegade now, and with an uncertain future ahead of him at the end of this journey, and surely, a bounty on his head when his lordship learned what had happened.

“Captain Symenko?”

“What is it? Can’t a man sleep?”

“We have a problem.”

“What kind of problem? Is it weather? The ship feels sound; winds even. What’s the matter?”

“The moon,” said Fedorov, a disheartened and almost foreboding tone in his voice.

“What about it?” Symenko growled.

“It’s wrong.”

Symenko gave him a dismissive look. “Well give it time, Captain. It will sort itself out.”

“You don’t understand,” said Fedorov. “It hasn’t a mind on these things. In any given position on this earth, I can calculate the exact moment the moon will rise, and to the second, give or take a few due to terrain on the horizon. It’s never late, nor is it ever early, but this one is simply not there at all. Unless every man’s watch, and your own ship’s chronometer are all wacky, I make it 19:30. That’s already two minutes after moonrise for this location—the light I’ve been waiting on to give us a good look at the ground should have been apparent even before that, but it’s still dark out there. Well, have a look for yourself.”

He pointed off the starboard side. “The moon should be up right there, and right now. This is completely wrong. Something has happened.”

Symenko shook himself awake, took a good long look, and now the impact of what Fedorov was saying dawned on him. “No moon, eh? I say give it time. Maybe the ship’s chronometer is off—my damn compass clearly is.” He had fished his compass out of his pocket, and now he handed it to Fedorov, who saw the needle spinning wildly about.

Fedorov’s worst fears descended on him now, and he knew, after all the many shifts he had been through, that they were slipping, moving in time. Something was wrong, and the position on the map was ample testimony as to what might have happened. They were over it now, the very impact site of the Tunguska Event. There could be no other explanation.

“There’s your goddamned moon,” said Symenko, pointing.

Fedorov turned to a place in the sky where he had not expected to see anything, off the port side of the ship, and there was a thin evening crescent, barely there. His every instinct, and long years of experience told him that was wrong as well. That moon was setting. It was to their west!

Before he could say another word, there came a shudder, very pronounced. The equipment was shaking all over the bridge, the big guns rattling in the pods below them off the main gondola. Then the skies about them seemed to lighten, slowly at first, as if someone had the sun on a dimmer light, dialing it up. To his shock and surprise, that thin crescent faded away completely and then vanished. In its place, off the starboard side, and high up, what first looked like a full moon was now hanging in the sky, veiled by clouds and smoke. The smell of burning woodland was very evident. Then, to their amazement, the ground itself started to glow red. Fedorov stared at it, eyes wide, and with each passing second the image became clearer—fire! The ground beneath them was engulfed with flames.

He looked around him, stunned, seeing many of the bridge crew doubled over, as though stricken by some stomach ailment. One man vomited. Only Troyak and his own people seemed unaffected, and he, himself, passed only a momentary sense of nausea, a queasy feeling that was quickly chased away by the utter shock of what he was now seeing. He rushed to the side port, looking down at the burning ground, and now he saw that it stretched away from a dark center, circular in shape, covering a vast segment of the ground below.

By God almighty, he said to himself inwardly. It’s pulled us right on through to the source. I was a fool to steer this course and overfly this ground. I should have known better than to take a risk like this.

“What in hell is going on?” Symenko looked at him, unbelieving. “Look at it, hell itself down there. Those fires must stretch for a hundred kilometers!”

Now they were over the edge, and into that dark central area where there was no fire. Looking at the ground, Fedorov could clearly see the forest had been completely flattened, the trees pointing away from a central point that he could just make out, where it looked like blackened trees unaccountably remained standing in a small cluster.

There it is, he thought, the epicenter of doom itself. My reckoning was dead accurate, and if we keep on, we’ll fly right over it, but I’ll not risk that. God only knows what might be going on there. Time could be all knotted up, and again it might be swirling and twisting away into some black hole.

“Helmsman, come left thirty, and engines ahead two thirds,” he said. But the helmsman was down on the deck, in no shape to answer that order.

“Captain,” he pointed. “I don’t want to overfly that. We need to turn.” He could see a strange aura emanating from that stand of blighted trees, and what looked like greenish lightning striking it from above. A Time Storm, he thought, worse than any gale a ship at sea could ever encounter. It’s already pulled us here to 1908, for that’s where we have to be, hours or days after the Tunguska Event.

Symenko took the wheel, and now he shouted through a voice tube for his Chief Medical officer. “Durgin! Get to the bridge, we have men down here. On the double!”

He wrestled with the wheel, and Troyak helped out. Orlov was holding on to a handrail for dear life, gaping at the scene around them. The airship’s rudder responded, the Irkutsk now beginning a wide turn to port. It would take them back over the edge of that darkened central zone, and over those raging fires. The sea of green forest Fedorov had been gazing at earlier was completely engulfed for miles. That dark center had come to be called the ‘Fire Eagle’s Nest’ by the local tribesmen down there, many which stood as witnesses to this event.

Now Fedorov realized that he had been a witness to this event as well. He realized, with a sudden awareness, that they must have been pulled to a point in time very close to the impact. It was not a matter of hours, he thought quickly, but perhaps a day after impact, perhaps two days at most. The raging fires might have burned for many days or weeks before they eventually died out, but those flames look hot and young. This had only recently started.

The impact of what had just happened to them hit him now. They were in 1908, and with an airship that could take them to the one place that was now uppermost in his mind! In bringing the ship around to port, he had already started to nose in that direction. He took a quick look at his charts, moved a ruler, then asked for another fifteen degrees. The compass was all awry, so a precise turn was impossible, but his long years of experience served him well.

“Give me a little more to port. Alright. Steady as she goes now. Hold this course and let’s see if we can pick up the Stony Tunguska soon.”

The hatch above the ladder opened, and Zykov stuck his head through. “What’s happening?” he shouted, then stared at the scene around them.

“What could have caused this madness?” said Symenko.

“Tunguska Event,” said Fedorov, but he realized Symenko would not know much about it in 1942. “This ground you called the Devil’s Country was devastated by the impact of a large object from space, a meteor or possibly an asteroid or comet. This is what such a strike might look like after impact. That black area behind us is closer to the center. Everything there was mostly blown to hell. These fires would be caused by the extreme heat generated by the detonation.”

“For god’s sake man,” said Symenko. “What are you talking about?”

“That!” Fedorov simply pointed to the darkness behind them. “This was no storm, Captain, not lightning, and there’s no volcano about, is there? Nothing man made could have caused that, not if every bomber in the world dropped its load all in one place. No. It was caused by something much bigger; something that struck the earth itself. That dark hole back there is over 2000 square kilometers.”

Even as he spoke a heavy rain began, and soon a crewman who had been tending to a rigging line on one of the upper decks appeared, his face and clothing streaked with black soot. Lightning scored the sky, and there was a continuous rumble of thunder.

The shock of what they were seeing still gripped them, and though Fedorov had moved to analyzing what had happened in his mind. They had been to hell and back again so many times that he was able to accept what had happened, and was already thinking about what this all meant. Yet the others were still dumbstruck.

The whole damn ship was pulled back, he thought, a crew a thirty men for me to worry about now, and here we are in 1908! From my reckoning we are now on course for the very place I was hoping to get to when I boarded that KA-40 on Kirov. My god, I hijack this airship, and then events conspire to bring me right where I wanted to go—to the year 1908, and to the place just off the nose of this airship now, no more than another 600 kilometers, just eight hours flying time away—Ilanskiy.