Able Fire: The Next War - 2025 and Beyond

Chapter 1

Tell me everything that happened.

That was a tall order, thought Fedorov. It had been the most harrowing time of his life, through all the many dangers and travails of Kirov these many years. He remembered how alone he felt, in command of the ship, lost in that sickening, impenetrable sea fog for seemingly endless days. How to begin? How could he explain that time to Karpov, and get him to understand.

“After what happened to Lenkov,” he started, you can imagine how the rest of the crew must have felt.”

“Certainly,” said Karpov.

“Well, I did my best to calm things, and then Dobrynin came to me again.”

“Trouble with the reactors?”

“Not exactly. He thought that at first, but it was something else—a sound, a deep abiding thrum that he really couldn’t explain. I remember he told me that it wasn’t something mechanical. He said he walked the ship to try and localize it, but could not attribute it as coming from any particular place. Then he said it seemed to be coming from all directions—everywhere. He asked me if he could take a boat out and get away from Kirov to see if he could still hear it, but there was no time for that.”

“Spooky,” said Karpov. “Dobrynin’s ears are very sharp, or so I’ve been told. He’s as good as Tasarov.”

“Yes, and Tasarov heard this sound as well. Then I remembered that Troyak had heard something like this, and Orlov—on that mission to Siberia. So I sought out the Sergeant, and that was when we found Lenkov’s legs.”

“Eerie,” said Karpov. “Was Troyak hearing it right then?”

“No… but he tried to describe what he heard when we were in Siberia. He called it glubokiy zvuk—deep sound—bone deep. It’s something you feel more than hear, unless you have ears like Tasarov and Dobrynin. He heard this when Orlov found the Devil’s Teardrop, so I began to suspect that was the source of the problem. Well, I went to Volsky, and we decided that the only thing to do was throw the damn thing overboard.”

“Yes, you told me about that—Peake’s Deep.”

“Correct… But something happened to me when I did that—to my hand. It was cold, and I rubbed my hands together a moment, and then I saw… well I saw one of my hands emit that strange green glow, and then it vanished!”

“Good lord,” said Karpov, friendly with the man upstairs when he needed to be.

“It was just a moment, but it phased, just a part of me like that, which was most unsettling. After that, I was alright, but that isn’t something you forget.”

“Of course. Did it ever happen again?”

“Thankfully not, but to be honest, I began to feel like a marked man. We got into a battle shortly after that, with the Germans, and I… well, I sunk the Graf Zeppelin.”

“The German aircraft carrier… Well, it seems I’m not alone as a man who hunts those beasts.”

“It didn’t feel quite so good to me,” said Fedorov. “I don’t get the rush you do with a victory at sea. All I remember doing was looking up the specs on that ship and learning I had just put 1700 men into the sea. It wasn’t a good feeling, Karpov. As much as I have changed, I’m just not the warrior soul you are. With all that distraction, I thought we had put the other stuff behind us, but I was wrong. That was when Tasarov collapsed. He looked worn out, haggard, saying he could just not shake off that sound. You know how he gets when he hears something at his station. He’s intense, unrelenting. Well, this was a sound he took with him to his cabin the previous night. He could hear it, just like Dobrynin. It was just the first of many more problems to come, and remember, this was while we were sailing in the impending shadow of Paradox Hour.”

“Ah, yes,” said Karpov. “The Second Coming, as we came to call it. That was what brought my brother-self to that time in the past, and I was spared annihilation because I was safe aboard Tunguska. That’s what permitted us both to survive in the same milieu, the first man in human history to have a real Doppelganger. Fedorov… We still have Rod-25 aboard. What if the rad-safe container isn’t enough? Perhaps we should throw the damn thing overboard too.”

“Perhaps,” said Fedorov. “I had a talk with Volsky about our situation, and I remember telling him I suspected the ship itself may have acquired some kind of strange property from all our time shifts. You know—the same way metals can take on magnetic properties. You know how we have to degauss the ship’s hull every so often. We were right in the middle of that discussion when it happened.”

“When what happened?”

“We vanished….” He remembered that moment as clear as yesterday.

Kalinichev interrupted with a sudden report.

“System malfunction,” he said, and Rodenko was soon at his side at the radar station.

“What is the problem?”

“I get no returns on the Fregat system, sir. All contact tracks are void. I can’t even read Invincible in our wake, yet I have no red light. My system still reads green.”

“Switch to phased array and reboot the Fregat system.”

“Aye sir. Initializing phased array now.”

There was no difference. Both systems now reported no contacts around them at all, which immediately drew Volsky and Fedorov to the radar station to see what was happening.

“Is this a local ship’s problem?” said Volsky. “Is it confined to the electronics?”

“Mister Nikolin,” said Fedorov. “Activate the aft Tin Man and feed the camera optics to the main viewing screen.”

“Aye sir. Tin Man active.”

They all looked up at the screen, expecting to see the tall mainmast and superstructure of Invincible in their wake, half a kilometer behind them. The weather was good, and there was nothing that should have been able to fool the optics of that hi-res camera system.

But the sea was clear and calm. They had been quietly planning the destruction of the entire German fleet, a feat they might have easily accomplished, until this….

Fedorov looked at Volsky, and then moved immediately to the weather bridge hatch, intending to have a look with his own eyes. He knew it was a foolish thing to do, as the Tin Man signal was clearly showing the empty sea, but something in him just wanted the confirmation of his own senses, with no digital interface.

HMS Invincible was gone, and all around the ship, a thick grey haze began to fall like a shroud.

“The ship vanished,” said Karpov. “It might have been that thing Orlov found, Fedorov. You saw what it did to your hand.”

“That may be so, but I came to feel that it was inevitable. We had foolishly allowed ourselves to remain in a time before our first regression to the past, and each tick of the clock was bringing us closer and closer to an insoluble problem for time—Paradox. There could only be one ship and crew in that time. They simply could not co-exist like you managed with your brother-self. We were all gone, removed from the time Meridian to make way for the Second Coming, which was really just our first regression to the past. That simply had to happen. Otherwise, how could we be there, sinking Graf Zeppelin and doing all the other things we did in that damn war?”

“Where did you go? You must have told me this, but so much has happened since.”

“We appeared on the sea,” said Fedorov. “I could feel the waves and swell of the ocean, but we were in that heavy fog I spoke of. We had clearly phased, and shifted again, because my boots were stuck in the deck.”

“Yes, you told me about all that.”

“There were other problems—hatches that would not seat or shut properly, warped ladders, an odd outward bulge in the hull. All I could think of was that we might have systems down all over the ship. Think of all the electronics aboard! If they were affected, the micro circuitry altered in any way, we could have failures in vital ship’s systems, but everything checked out fine. I reasoned that something about the energy, or perhaps the magnetic field surrounding the equipment, served to shield it from the odd effects being reported elsewhere. There was no other way to explain it.”

“Sounds reasonable,” said Karpov.

“So now I had both Tasarov and Dobrynin down, and a line of queasy men at Zolkin’s door.”

“Dobrynin too?”

“Yes, and Volsky was reporting dizziness, though he waved it off as normal. I made ship’s rounds to check on things, and that’s when Sub Lieutenant Gagarin informed me he thought he had a man missing—Kornalev’s shift mate, but it was odd, Karpov. He couldn’t remember who the other man was.”

“The man who went missing?”

“Exactly. Things settled down, but I had no idea where we were. We clearly shifted, but where? We still had those reserve control rods aboard, and Volsky and I considered using one to try and initiate another shift, but then decided to leave the poor ship in peace for a while. So I went to Kamenski—he was aboard when this all happened—but when I got there….”

“Ah,” said Karpov, “I know this part. Kamenski was gone, vanished, but not his key.”

Fedorov nodded. “We searched the whole ship, but the ship’s Purser, Belov, didn’t even remember that Kamenski was ever aboard! Of course he would have logged Kamenski aboard, but he had no record of that either. I went to the officer’s dining room, and that was where Nikolin came to me, looking very upset.

“What Nikolin? You look upset.”

“I am, sir, but it feels like my roof has caved in—Choknutyj.” That was an untranslatable Russian word for crazy, and Fedorov could understand how anyone on the ship might feel that way just now. “When Karpov was here—during that last incident on the bridge,” said Nikolin, “I caught part of the radio transmission on a recording when the Admiral was ordering the Captain to stand down. I didn’t know what to do, but I had been sending riddles to someone on the text messaging system, and I used it to give warning of what was happening. I ran across the very message I sent in my system check, by chance I suppose. It was very upsetting. The station number was listed, and the crew member’s code comes right after that for message routing. I had been playing the game, sending riddles to that same code earlier that day, so I looked it up.” He gave Fedorov a puzzled look. “There’s no one assigned to that code sir. It was void—designated unused.”

“Perhaps you got the number wrong,” Fedorov suggested.

“No sir. The code was on numerous text messages I sent that day, always the same number, and these are permanent assignments, like a person’s email address. Yet when I queried the database the code was unassigned.”

“You are certain of this number?”

“001-C-12.” Nikolin rattled off the number from memory. “I know it as easily as my old street address. 001 is for main bridge stations. Sub-codes C-10 through C-12 are for personnel serving at the sonar station.”

“Velichko?

“No sir, his number is C-11. I double checked that.”

“I see… So you say you have messages in the archive sent to C-12, but no one has that number? Then you found a glitch in the system, Nikolin. Good for you! This could be a clue. We will have to give the electronics a deeper look. If this data was not stored properly, or perhaps written wrong by the system, then other things could be amiss as well. I discovered a problem with the Purser’s data just a little while ago.”

“I suppose so, sir, but you don’t understand…” Nikolin had a tormented look on his face now. “When I saw that number, it was as though something broke inside me, and I remembered. 001-C-12. The number kept after me. I knew it meant something—someone, but I could not remember who it was. Then this feeling came over me that is hard to describe. I felt so sad, as though I had lost a brother—my best friend. That’s when it hit me, Captain. My best friend! Yes, I knew who had that number now—I could see his face, hear his voice, remember. It all came back, and I remembered he had been taken ill—just a little while ago, sir. So I went looking for him. I went down to sick bay and asked the Doctor about him, but he had no idea who I was talking about!”

“Well who are you talking about?”

“Alexi, sir. Alexi Tasarov! I can’t find him! I’ve looked all over the ship!” There was a pleading look on his face now, very troubled and bothered.

“You can’t find him?” Now Fedorov realized he had been sitting there waiting for Director Kamenski for the last 45 minutes. Something about Nikolin’s travail suddenly struck him like a hammer.

“You can’t find him? Have you gone to his quarters?” His mind offered up the next logical step in solving that simple puzzle, but even as he did so, he had the feeling that the missing piece meant something much, much more than it seemed on the surface. Nikolin was sitting there, telling him he’d lost his best friend—telling him he could not find this man Tasarov…

Fedorov knew every man that served in a main bridge station, with no exceptions, but he had no recollection of this name—Tasarov…

Until that very moment.

Karpov was silent, thinking deeply of what Fedorov had said. Men were vanishing, just like the ship, just like Fedorov’s hand, and no one even remembered they were ever there. They say that a person’s soul never dies, until every other soul that ever knew them also died, and there was no one left alive who remembered them.

“I took this to Volsky, but he did not remember Tasarov either, or Dobrynin. Thank God Nikolin remembered, and he jogged the memory in me. I eventually nudged something loose in Volsky, and he finally remembered Kamenski, Dobrynin, and Tasarov. If you could get to someone who knew these men soon enough—after they vanished—then you could shake loose those memories again. I eventually came to the notion that when we first arrived in the past, it was like a stone falling on a still pool of water. Ripples went out in all directions, forward in time, and also into the past. They were stronger close to the point when we appeared, gradually weakening as they progressed outward—a metaphor, but I think it’s true—Heisenberg Waves.”

“We talked about this once, long ago it seems.”

“Yes… Heisenberg Waves. There we were at a point in time, very close to the ship’s first regression. At that point, those waves would be very strong.”

“Strong enough to bend bulkheads and hatches out of shape, or create a bulge in the hull of the ship.” said Karpov. “Strong enough to simply sweep men away, as if they were never there.”

The light glittered in Fedorov’s eyes. “Exactly so! We shifted again—and for the last time on that ship. Volsky addressed the crew, and then it happened—the fog, that deep terrifying sound, the weird lights around us all. And the next thing I remember, I was still there on the bridge, but not on the same ship, no, not the one we sailed through the Denmark Strait. I was on the ship that was destined to arrive that very first time, and so were you, at the time of the Second Coming.”

Chapter 2

“Soul migration,” said Fedorov. “That’s the only way I can explain it. Nothing in my head had changed, but it was all in the head of young Navigator Anton Fedorov now. I was there, everything I ever knew, and with the memories of all the things we experienced after first regression. Finding you there was quite a shock, and that is what led me to conclude that I was not on my old ship any longer. I have no idea what happened to it, but who knows, it may have been annihilated by Paradox.”

“Why did you survive? Why not Rodenko, Zolkin, or any of the others? Ah, because you were a Prime Mover, just like I survived that hour aboard Tunguska.”

“No, I don’t think so. I survived because I was wearing this key, the thing Kamenski left for me before he vanished. And you survived only because you were protected from Paradox by the fairy dust in the bones of Tunguska. It had nothing to do with this Prime Mover business. No, it was something physical that protected us, an arcane property that we’ll probably never understand, but it resides in physical objects. That much is clear.”

“But you say my brother-self knew nothing of this, of all the things we did after we first vanished.”

“Of course not. He was your Doppelganger. Frankly, I don’t think Time wanted the two of you to survive.”

“I’ll have to agree,” said Karpov. “She didn’t harm the man you saw there on Kirov, but I damn well thought she was after me when I was on Tunguska. It wasn’t a pleasant experience. Well, now she’s corrected the matter. My brother-self is gone. He lived a full life, Fedorov, an old man when that missile found him. I was still young, and I also had full recollection of everything we did after first regression. So I guess I was spared this time, though I still feel that a part of me died with the Siberian.”

“The question now is this,” said Fedorov. “It’s starting again. We’re starting to see men go missing, Volushin, Markov, and if the pattern holds, it will be Lenkov next. I’ve asked his mates to keep an eye on him, but I’m not sure that will be of any help.”

“A man’s fate is a man’s fate,” said Karpov, “and life means very little.”

“Spoken like a true Samurai,” said Fedorov. “Karpov, what should we do? You suggested we get rid of Rod-25, and that we could do easily enough, but what about this key I’m wearing? What about the box we used to even get here to this future? We thought it was only fitting that Kirov should get to the future we helped create, and here we are. That said, the ship is unstable. The aberration Dobrynin reported, and Markov’s fate, were clear warnings. Now Volushin is gone, and the list is long.”

“Look, at least we know the road ahead. It’s right in there!” Karpov pointed a finger to Fedorov’s head. “We know Lenkov is next, then Kornalev’s shift mate, Tasarov, Dobrynin…. But there’s no Kamenski aboard to vanish.”

“He was a keyholder,” said Fedorov. “And guess what—this is the key he held, right here around my neck, so it didn’t protect him.”

“You’re suggesting you will vanish like he did?”

“I don’t know what to think, but like I said earlier, I’m on the list, we all are. Everyone vanished in the end.”

“Not all of us,” said Karpov. “Remember, I wasn’t aboard, and since Time already got a pound of my flesh when my brother died, I could be immune. You could be immune too, Fedorov. That key saved you once already. It might work again.”

“Small comfort,” said Fedorov, clearly distressed. “My God, look what we’ve done—the two of us. We came forward from WWII in the effort to try and prevent first regression, but it’s clear that we didn’t appear on this Meridian. It was another time line. Well, we succeeded in keeping the ship where it was, but then saw that whole world careen into a nuclear war. So we make good our escape, back here, to the future we really came from in the first place, only now we find it radically altered by the things we did in WWII. And we’ve dragged this ship and crew with us. Now look what’s happening to them. They don’t deserve this fate.”

“We’re not powerless, Fedorov. We can act to stave off that fate. First, we must try to stabilize the ship, and make sure Dobrynin doesn’t start hearing that sound again.”

“Alright, let’s dump Rod-25. These waters are very deep, particularly in the Celebes Sea. We don’t need it, and we already know it can destabilize our position in time.”

“But we still keep the keys,” said Karpov. “Something tells me they will be more stable. Rod-25 was never planned. It was happenstance that saw it laden with those exotic particles in the mines near Vanavara, but this box—these keys—they’re something quite different. These things were engineered in the future, Fedorov, and that’s where they’ve been taking us—always forward. In the last extreme, we could use that box to move the ship again.”

“Move it? To another time? For God’s sake, where?”

“Who knows, but it would be better than suffering the fate you just described to me. There may be other Meridians out there.”

Fedorov thought about that. It had to be true, for they had seen more than one themselves. Yet how many were there? Was time an infinite weave of multiple universes, or was it more frugal? In his many discourses with Kamenski, and even that American Physicist, Paul Dorland, he knew that other time lines existed. The one they were on when those live fire exercises began was not this meridian… or was it?

Dorland talked about the Prime Meridian, as if Time had a preference for keeping things wrapped up on one time line. Then we go and screw the whole thing up, he thought. Yes, we shift back to 1941, Karpov ends up shifting even further to 1908, as do I, and then the entire history of that Meridian is altered. I was so adamant in my quest to go after him and bring Kirov forward, but we didn’t make it. We fell out of the shift at a point before our first regression to the past. That’s what caused the loop, and I was right there in the middle of that. When Kirov and crew vanished, my consciousness was migrated to the Anton Fedorov on the ship we called the Second Coming. But that was still the original ship, wasn’t it? That was who we were before all of this started happening. The first ship was gone, as if it had never existed, just like those men on Zolkin’s list.

“Karpov,” he said haltingly. “I think we’re back on the Prime Meridian.”

“Having a brain storm, Fedorov? What do you mean?”

“We thought there was an earlier recurrence—that we were not the first cause of all this, but now I think differently.”

“Differently? Well, where the hell did we get this ship? It wasn’t from this Meridian.”

“Correct, but I think that time line was like a shadow of this one. Yes, we stopped this ship from regressing, but then look what happened to that Meridian? We got caught up in WWIII, and it all went to hell. That little jump we made in the icy north showed us a dead world. The Northern Shamrock was abandoned, and there was a crater there that could have only been made by a nuke. That world died, and now that I think of it, we saw that dead world before. Remember?”

“When we went to Halifax… yes, and when we sailed into the Med. Then we ended up in WWII again.”

“Yes, but back on the same Meridian we came from. The Meridian that now had the altered history of WWII, and we’re in the future of that same time line right now. So you see, we never really did stop the first regression of Kirov on this Meridian, not on the Prime. No, we stopped it on the Shadow….”

“What are you saying, that we took the wrong train? We have to go back to July 28, 2021 on this time line? But Fedorov, Kirov wasn’t there.”

“Yes, because it shifted back to WWII.”

“That ship had two fates. I’ve just described one of them for you, all the vanishing men, the fog, the final shift to God knows where. The other fate was played out in the hands of your brother-self, the Siberian. That ship made it to the 1980s, before the reactor died, and then the Siberian scuttled it. I’m willing to bet that happened just before another Paradox Hour, the day the first steel would have been cut on the original ship. Then again, I don’t think this ship was ever built here on this altered time line. We changed the Prime Meridian so drastically, that the ship was never built.”

“You’ve said that before, it was always one of your favorite worries.”

“And justifiably so,” said Fedorov. “You see… Kirov did shift back, we know that. And it had two fates which I just identified. But now we’ve made it so that the Soviets of this era never built the ship at all! Let’s look….”

Fedorov knew he was correct, but they could easily verify that with a little Internet search. It took him just a moment to call up the status of the current Soviet Navy. It was much smaller, as there had been no Cold War to justify its buildup as a foil against the West. And yes, the Kirov class battlecruisers were not in the fleet. They were never built.

“Strange that we never thought to look this up,” said Karpov.

“Indeed. Well now, that explains a lot. We ended up doing exactly what I feared—we changed so much of the history that Kirov was never built. That makes us, and this ship, a complete anomaly here. And look what we’re doing—we’re at it again! We’re involving ourselves in the history of these events, changing things.”

“I thought we agreed this was our future, worth fighting for.”

“Yes, that may be so, but there shouldn’t be a ship called Kirov in this fight, and that goes for a Lider Class destroyer called Kursk, and a Yasen class sub called Kazan. This Soviet union never built those ships either, otherwise neither one could have shifted here.”

“A fine little group we are,” said Karpov. “The Three Blind Mice.”

“A British nursery rhyme,” said Fedorov. “Yes, I know that one. They all ran after the Farmer’s wife.”

“Who cut off their tails with a carving knife,” Karpov finished.

“Guess who the Farmer’s Wife is,” said Fedorov.

Karpov nodded heavily. “Mother Time….”

They sat with that for a moment, metaphorical as it was. It nonetheless seemed a perfect way to describe their plight. There they were, in a place they did not belong, and up to the same old mischief again.

“We’ve already drastically altered the course of this war,” said Fedorov. “Hell, you’ve sunk two of the six Chinese aircraft carriers, and now here we are, gunning for another one. Taifeng is out there south of Davao, and I know damn well that you have it in your sights.”

“What are you saying, Fedorov, that we should not have come here? Well, this is where Time sent us, all three warships. That was no mere coincidence. The Meridian we left in 2021 died, we know that now. The fact that we’re here means something. Time had to know that. Scorpions sting, Fedorov, and that is what this ship is, a scorpion.

“This was the only place we could go,” Fedorov asserted. “Maybe there wasn’t any other place to put us. In that scenario, Time had no other choice.”

“Well, we saw our appearance here as only right and just—to clean up the mess we created.”

“But we’re muddling the waters again,” said Fedorov. “We’re changing the outcome of WWIII, a completely anomalous force that doesn’t belong here. There is now no historical continuum beneath us to justify our presence here, and look what is happening to us now. You saw that eerie light in the reactor section, and it was accompanied by the same deep sound that Dobrynin and Tasarov both heard on the original ship, when we were lost in that fog. Low and behold, we have two men missing now. Don’t you see? Time got rid of that first ship, and everyone aboard. Why my soul was spared, I’ll never know, but all the rest are gone. Now Time is getting rid of us!”

“Spooky to think that,” said Karpov, but you may be right. That aberration we saw in the reactor room happened as we were approaching the Sunda Strait—Krakatoa, and we know that region was profoundly shattered when that monster erupted.”

“Correct. We’re not really stable in any time, or so it seems. We shifted here when we were in the Kuriles, and I’ll bet if we had kept to that course and entered the Sunda Strait, the temporal instability there would have sent us somewhere else.”

“Where, Fedorov?”

“You said that other Meridian, the Shadow Meridian, was dead. Where else could we go?”

“Oh, we could still end up there, I suppose, in that blighted world. It would be a fitting punishment for all we’ve done. One thing is clear. Time may have sent us here, for lack of any better choice. Yet now we’re on her list. Yes, we started meddling again, changing the outcome of this war, and reshaping this history. So now we’ve become dangerous free radicals. The Farmer’s Wife is gunning for us with her carving knife, Karpov, and she’s already taken down two of our crew….”

That was a very sobering thought. All Karpov’s bravado about his importance as a Prime Mover now seemed a wet, ragged mantle. The crown on his head was made of tin. They weren’t the irreplaceable masters of time, out to right the wrongs and settle things. The Carrier Killer was just that, a meddler, a killer, someone who had no business being here, and someone who now had to be dealt with.

“My God,” he breathed. “If the Chinese don’t get us first, then Mother Time will be after us with her carving knife. But Fedorov…” There was a twinkle of light and hope in his eyes now. “That rhyme wasn’t the end of that story. The complete version ends quite differently. Look it up!”[1]

“The mice took a trip, got hungry, begged food from the farmer, and got fed. Then the Farmer’s wife showed up, and she was pissed. In fact, she set the cat after them.”

“Fedorov was looking up the tale, shaking his head. “A cat named Paradox, no doubt,” he said. “Here it is… The Farmer’s Wife said, ‘What are you at, and why were you capering round like that? Just wait a minute: I’ll fetch the Cat.’ Oh dear! Poor Mice…. It keeps the same meter and rhyme as the verse most people know. The mice ran and hid in a bramble hedge, which is how they got blinded by the thorns.”

“Yes,” said Karpov, “and see how it ends. They got their tails clipped, but it didn’t end that way. They went to an alchemist and he gave them a tonic.”

“Here it is,” Fedorov read. “They could not see, and they had no end; They sought out a Chemist and found a Friend. He gave them some ‘Never too late to mend,’ These Three Sick Mice.”

“A tonic,” said Karpov. “It regrew their tails and restored their sight. Then they settled down somewhere, and all was well. The story had a happy ending, Fedorov, and ours might have one too.”

“It’s hard to see that now,” said Fedorov. “Particularly after Markov and Volushin.”

“Oh, we might get our tails clipped before the end, but we’ve got a tonic, Fedorov. We’ve got those keys, that box. They were engineered in the future, and for a reason. It was all about sealing off those time fissures, healing what was broken. Don’t you see? I’m betting that box will be our salvation in all of this. It’s never too late to mend… In the meantime, removing other destabilizing elements on the ship might be wise. Why don’t you get down to the reactor section and have Dobrynin put together a disposal team for Rod-25. If need be, we can use a torpedo. I can get one in the water off the ship and we could strap the container to the damn thing, then send it deep.”

“Good idea. I’ll see if Dobrynin can still hear anything wrong—that sound—and let you know. What will you do?”

“What else can we do? At the moment, we’re in the middle of a battle here. Don’t forget we’re still at war.”

“Right, but should we be in this fight, Karpov? Isn’t that why we’re so dangerous? We’ve already changed things. You want to continue our meddling? What if the Chinese were supposed to succeed in their push for Iwo Jima?”

Chapter 3

“I don’t think that would have been a likely outcome,” said Karpov. “The Americans had too much carrier power there. Besides, that theater looked like the main event when things started, but it was just the early rounds of this war. The real fighting is in the Indian Ocean, and the land war in the Middle East. We had nothing to do with any of those outcomes.”

“But we’re altering things here,” said Fedorov. “The Chinese kicked the British out of Singapore, and then we teamed up with the New Jersey Battlegroup to stop them. We pushed them back into the South China Sea, and so now they’ve changed their plans. They’re striking east. These new operations are aimed at taking down the American Pacific island bases, and so we’re trying to help prevent that. What if Palau, or Yap, or even Guam was supposed to fall? What if the Chinese were supposed to dominate the Malacca Strait? Sinking Shandong was a heavy blow. It set them back on their heels in that encounter.”

Karpov didn’t like the thought that he shouldn’t be in this fight. His warrior’s soul wanted to mix it up, lay down the law, and show the enemy who was in charge out here. Yet Fedorov was quite correct. There would have been no Siberian Navy in this conflict, and they had already determined that Kirov was never even built at this end of the history they altered in WWII. That alone was reason enough for time to paint a target on them. But why were they sent here? Perhaps Fedorov was correct. Maybe there was no other future they could go to, but that did not change the fact that they were an anomaly here, something Time had to correct. That fat black cat was out there—Paradox—and its teeth and claws were very sharp. It was already collecting lost souls like mice, and that was a very scary thought.

But they had a tonic…

Yes, they had something in their pocket to give them the hope that they could avoid that same descending slippery slope that took one man after another. They would relinquish the one magic wand they had used in the past, Rod-25, but these keys were something else.

“Fedorov, perhaps I should wear the other key, like you do. It’s in the ship’s safe now, but maybe it would be better if I had it with me 24-7, in case something were to happen… Like with Lenkov.”

“I suppose that might be wise,” said Fedorov. “Then again, Kamenski had this key with him, and he still vanished. Be careful what you wish for, Karpov. You might be hanging yourself with that key.”

“I’ll take my chances. Before you go down to the reactor section, let’s open the safe. Something tells me these keys are a tonic, something to regrow our tails if Time cleaves them away. Something to restore our sight. I’ll admit that we haven’t exactly been clear headed in a lot of what we did. You always had one eye on trying to fix things, the force of order I suppose. Sorry to say, I was all chaos. I just had every confidence in my ability to wield the sword I had in hand—Kirov, and frankly, I still do.”

“Yet here we are, changing the outcome of this war, just as we did in WWII.”

“Understood,” said Karpov, “but who’s to say the changes we make aren’t for the better? Suppose China wins this war? Look what they did in the Middle East. The world could see them building out that Blue Water Navy for years before they decided to try and really use it. Maybe that’s an outcome that would be best avoided. Then again, think of it this way. We’re Siberia’s Navy.”

“But there’s been an armistice signed on that front,” said Fedorov.

“Perhaps, but that situation is far from over. You read the history, it’s been a flashpoint since 1990. This was just the second major outbreak of war there, and frankly, I think a third will be inevitable. Siberia sits there with a tiny population commanding vast resources, trees, fresh water, oil and gas, minerals, strategic metals. China wants and needs those things, and 1.5 billion people have a way of getting what they want if they put their minds to it. That’s why I think this naval war is just the first. In my opinion, China came in too early. In another five or even ten years, they would have nearly a 600 ship navy. They jumped the gun in 2021, but that was only because of the alliance they had with us, with Russia. Here they may have jumped the gun as well, but they’ll be back, win, lose, or draw.”

“You’re saying that has to be prevented? Russia was a communist state. It wasn’t all that bad.”

“Well it wasn’t all that good, Fedorov. You don’t see long lines and empty store shelves in the US, except in that strange pandemic of 2020, but we always had them in Russia. Face it, Capitalism succeeded because it understands that people want things, and chief among them is a better life. It gave them that, but China is something else. China swallowed the Capitalist Pill when they absorbed Hong Kong. They were going about buying up the world left and right. Their economy had real muscle. I think they made a grave misjudgment with this war, and perhaps it may be better to help make that clear to them. Yes, I sunk carriers—put men in the sea, but it will buy time, Fedorov. Each one I put under is one more they will have to build.”

“So what’s the plan?” asked Fedorov.

“We keep the keys, and get rid of Rod-25. You make sure you keep an eye on men you know are vulnerable, particularly Tasarov and Dobrynin. You say they’ll hear the train coming long before it hits them, right? That will be our warning period. We’ll be able to take action before that happens. If something happens to Lenkov, that will put us on guard too.”

“But what will we do? You want to use the keys again?”

“That would appear to be our only recourse.”

“Yet we’ll have no way to know where we will end up.”

“Well, there were two arrows on that box, the red one and the green one. We already know the green arrow takes us forward in time, so it’s no great leap to guess where the red arrow takes us. We could use the box to reach some other future, but who knows how far it might take us. I don’t think we want to go to the past again.”

“Agreed,” said Fedorov. “The future… Kind of scary to take a leap forward beyond this point. What if we end up in another situation—the war you say will come when China regroups. The war you say is inevitable.”

“Fedorov… Do you remember when we talked about this Grand Finality thing?”

“Yes, what about it?”

“Well correct me if I’m wrong, but isn’t that some great gloom and doom in the future? Wasn’t there something about a shadow washing backwards from that calamity?”

“That’s what Dorland told me, the American Physicist. He said that when we created this loop with Kirov, it had to be resolved, or the future could not be born. If that happens, the future dies. Normally, if you go back in time and make some major change that transforms things like we did, the Heisenberg Wave moves forward from that point, and here we are in the future made new by that energy. But if that far distant future did die, then there would be a similar wave of annihilation moving backwards in time. Somewhere, the two waves meet, and it isn’t pretty.”

“The Grand Finality.”

“I guess so. See why I’m just a little nervous about using that box again? We don’t know how far out that backwash is. What if we jump forward, right into its path?”

“Well, in that case, we just face things a little sooner than we might,” said Karpov. “Like I said, a man’s fate is a man’s fate.”

“And life means very little….”

Karpov returned to the bridge as Fedorov went below, both men thinking heavily on all they had discussed. The thought that the very source of his strength and power, Kirov, was now unstable, left Karpov very edgy. He was standing on a deck that could melt away beneath his boot soles at any moment. He had been an almost symbiotic part of the ship from the very beginning, and now he wondered what their fate really was in the months ahead.

I must stand by the crew, he thought. They have been steadfast, loyal to a man. We took them from friends, family, wives and loved ones, and into impossible circumstances, and yet they have remained a cohesive force, reliable, dedicated, unconquered. I must protect them; serve them. A voice came, jarring him from his reverie as Rodenko gave him a status update.

“Sir, the Americans report they have cleared the undersea threat in the Makassar Strait. Enterprise reports they are proceeding into the Celebes Sea at 25 knots, and we are presently on course to follow them, speed 30 knots.”

“Very well. Tovarich, how far are we from clearing the strait?”

“Sir about 130 miles, a little over four hours at this speed.”

“Rodenko, what is the present range to the main Chinese fleet?”

“Just under 600 nautical miles, sir. That data is from the last satellite pass, which is now 24 minutes old. No heading or speed information. The Americans have another submarine up there, the Chancellorsville, so we may get an update from that boat in time.”

“Very well… How long since that last Chinese bomber strike?”

“About 15 hours, sir.”

“Then that means they could be nearing a ready state for another strike. I doubt if anything will be headed our way, as their primary mission seems to be focused on the American Pacific island bases at the moment.”

“Any report from Kazan?”

“No sir. They are still on station ahead. Tasarov has them about eight miles ahead of us, and Kursk is still about a mile off our starboard aft quarter.”

Karpov turned, regarding Tasarov, and went over to tap his shoulder. He sat up, sliding his ear phones aside.

“Yes sir?”

“How are you, Comrade Tasarov? Are you well rested?”

“Yes sir. Fine sir. Thank you for asking.”

“Good. Have you heard anything unusual of late—any sounds that may have puzzled you in any way?”

“No sir. Just screw noise from the Americans, and normal background sonics. I heard that submarine duel, but all is quiet now.”

“Good. Well, if you should hear anything that seems unusual, anything at all, I want you to let me know immediately. Yes?”

“Of course, sir.”

“As you were.”

Now Karpov turned to approach Nikolin. “Ready a message transmission to both Kursk and Kazan, Comrade Nikolin. Ask Captains Molotov and Gromyko to make a general status report. I want to know if they have any problems, how the crew is doing, or if there are any other concerns.”

“Yes sir. I’ll format it right away and submit for your approval prior to transmission.”

“Good. But Nikolin, before you do that, riddle me this… What goes on four legs at morning, two legs at noon and three legs in the evening.”

Nikolin blushed, thinking Karpov was after him for his secret game of riddles, which he often played via the internal text messaging system. Then he gave his answer, ready to accept his fate if he was to be disciplined.

“A human, sir. We crawl on hands and legs after birth… in the morning. We walk on two legs in our prime, but in old age, we take a cane, that third leg. Sorry sir. I won’t be riddling while on duty.”

“Good answer, Nikolin. My, you are good at this. And don’t worry about it. As long as it does not interfere with your duties, or those of anyone else, feel free to play your game. It’s fine.”

He patted Nikolin on the should and the Communications Officer smiled. “Thank you, sir.”

Tasarov looked over, and gave him a wink.

“Sir,” said Rodenko. “I have heading information on the Chinese fleet from Chancellorsville now. They are bearing 080, at 23 knots.”

“Where does that take them, Comrade Tovarich?”

“Sir, that’s a direct heading to the American base at Palau.”

“How far out are they from that base, Rodenko?”

“About 440 nautical miles, sir.”

“Ah,” said Karpov “They’re getting into missile range. Gentlemen, I think they will go offensive very shortly. Nikolin, give the Enterprise my assessment.”

“Yes sir. I also have that status request message ready now, sir.”

All this was typical activity on the bridge, particularly when a new officer assumed command, as Karpov did by default whenever he was present. He was getting information on the general situation, noting where all his assets were, and what the enemy was up to. The Admiral looked at his watch, checking to see if it was in sync with the ship’s chronometer.

“I think the Chinese bombers will be taking off from the Philippines about now. Losing Clark AFB was a real slip for the Americans. I’m amazed they let that happen. The Chinese bombers will be up before noon. Any Chinese satellites scheduled, Rodenko?”

“Yes sir. In fact, Yaogan-20A just overflew the Celebes Sea, and Yaogan-15 passed over Borneo at the same time.”

“Then they will see the Enterprise in the Makassar Strait, but they will be too far away to strike it, even if those satellites get a good position fix. So with Enterprise nearly 600 miles off, here’s how this is going to play out. The Chinese bombers are going to launch their long range cruise missiles at one or more American bases in the next hour. Those missiles should be on target somewhere around 15:00. But this is getting interesting. The Enterprise move into the Celebes Sea will certainly weigh on the Chinese Commander’s mind. That move threatens his LOC, but then again, this fleet may be relying on Davao now as its primary support base. I think the Chinese will also use ship launched cruise missiles to hit Palau, and after that, we’ll see if they make a heading change. The Americans still have a Surface Action Group screening Palau, so that will be a factor in this upcoming strike.”

“Are we planning to engage, sir?” asked Rodenko.

“Not just yet,” said Karpov. “Enterprise will move to close the range a bit, and my guess is they will have a strike ready in the late afternoon or early evening. That’s when I’ll have work for you, Comrade Samsonov. So you can take a hearty lunch break, and get three hours sleep.”

He smiled.