Armageddon

Chapter 33

On that ship stood another man, leaning on a hand rail with one hand, the other holding a pair of field glasses. Lieutenant John Tovey had closed the range. His ships had taken a fearful pounding, but they had closed, and now he meant to make his turn at 9,000 yards and give return on every shot and shell the enemy had flung upon them.

“Port thirty, and signal all ships to follow!”

“Port Thirty, aye sir!”

“Come round to two-seven-zero and set your range!”

“Sir, coming to two-seven-zero,” the helmsman echoed back.

“Range 9,000 yards, aye sir, and all guns ready.”

“Steady…Steady… Commence firing! All ships to fire in turn!”

The guns roared in anger, retribution, vengeance; the justice of Lyddite and shrapnel. Tovey watched to see the first shells from the Mark VII 6-inch guns falling near the enemy ship. They had the range, and he hoped some would find their way to the heart of that monstrous shadow.

His own ship trembled again with the impact of yet another enemy shell, this time at the base of the armored conning tower where it rattled the heavy armor there. He had a fire amidships, one funnel sheared off and bleeding smoke, one of his stacked casement guns on the starboard side was blasted away, the weather deck was gone and the Captain with it, but the ship was fighting back now, and behind it came Kent, and Bedford, Monmouth, and then the light cruisers Astraea and Flora. They were turning smartly, following the arc of his frothing wake, and one by one their guns opened fire, adding their thunder to the raging skies above.

Well off his port quarter he saw the last brave cruisers of Kataoka’s battle line still firing as they, too, came into good range for their well trained gunners. The main body of the Japanese fleet was coming up behind them, and farther off his starboard side he could see yet another long line of tall battleships laboring forward, the ships of the American Great White Fleet. They would surely join the action in half an hour, with more ships under Japanese flags due east of his position.

The crash of the guns was reassuring, now, his two big turrets joining in with their loud booming 9.2-inch guns. He looked to see the first shell hit home, high up on the dark battlements of the distant ship where a 6-incher flashed in explosive anger.

“Pound them, gentlemen,” he said coolly. “Give them the shot and shell.”

It was the grandest battle he had ever seen at sea, with all of forty ships or more dashing forward in a wild surge of steel and violence. It was Armageddon and he was right in the middle of it all, thrust into battle with a nemesis that would haunt him the remainder of his long life. One day he would see this ship again, and the strange, unsettling feeling would settle in his gut as he reached for the faded memory of this hour. He would wait, through long decades, unknowing and unaware that this demon before him would return again and again, a dire threat that he would guard against to his dying day.

When Togo finally saw the enemy ship at a closer range his face hardened, taking on a stony quality, as if the weight of that inner warning that had possessed his mind had now frozen him to a rock like thing. There was something otherworldly about the ship, the way it moved, shark-like, its guns turning, barrels jerking to elevate on a target in sharp precise movements, then recoiling in three crisp salvos that were so rapid it seemed beyond the realm of possibility that human hands could have achieved that rate of fire and reloading.

It was a monster from the deepest sea, twice the size of any ship he had ever seen, intent on devouring all that came before it. By comparison his own fleet seemed a hapless school of tuna, lumbering forward in formation only to see one ship after another struck by the lethal fire and accuracy of those guns. He could see only three of them, turrets mounting what looked like two medium caliber guns each. Yet their rate of fire and accuracy was awesome!

And what happened to Chinyen, he thought? He arrived on the scene to see the burning flotsam of wreckage where it once led in Kataoka’s Fifth Division. What was that blur of fire that had struck it? Where was the Vice Admiral now? Was he suffering the fate of those men flailing about the sea, or did he manage to escape and safely transfer his flag to another ship?

He looked over his shoulder, seeing the battle line behind him, his proud warriors, the victors of Tsushima. The battleship Shikishima followed his own, and then came Fuji and Asahi followed by the armored cruisers and then the destroyers. The ragged line of Kataoka’s division was still well ahead of him, and half those cruisers were now on fire. He spied the brave 2nd Destroyer Division of Captain Yajima sweeping up in a wide turn, their wakes white behind them as they began to charge the enemy ship. The aft turret of the Russian ship rotated and fired, its shells immediately finding the formation-two, four, six-white fire and smoke as the lead destroyer was hit. He knew none of those ships would ever get close enough to fire their torpedoes under the murderous fire of those guns.

A desperate feeling came over him, as if he could sense the fate of the Empire hanging by the barest thread here, the line of ships remaining behind him. If I lose this fleet today, then Japan has nothing, he thought darkly. It will be years before we can build more ships, and there to the east is the smoke of the American Great White Fleet, a force I know we must one day face as an enemy. All history will turn on this battle, yet if I do not prevail, if I turn now and leave these waters to the enemy, the dishonor would surely break our nation as well, even as it crushes me with shame. That was something he could not bear.

So we will charge next, he thought grimly. I still have ten ships behind me, but if Russia has ships like this demon before me now, how will Japan ever survive?

Kirov was still firing its guns, a mindless thing in the sea, a steel Leviathan, flagship of the Red Banner Fleet. The ship had written a legacy of death and destruction on the decades from this moment to the distant future of 2021. It had fought, and prevailed over every foe, but now it was a headless horseman, wallowing at the edge of a minefield in a merciless sea, moving only by its own ponderous momentum, and a reflex guided by the cold logic of its computers. It was hemmed in on every side by lines of enemy ships, and now their guns began to fire, led by the brave charge of a young Lieutenant aboard the armored cruiser King Alfred.

The sea around it was awash with the white vengeful geysers of seawater where the hostile rounds fell. Most were short or wide, yet others struck home. The tall parapets of her superstructure endured the impact of the first shells, like a gladiator shrugging off the sharp edge of cold iron when an enemy’s sword drew blood. Crewmen bled and died where those shells hit home, lives to be extinguished in the cracked mirror of the history yet to come. Like the men found missing, faceless, unborn on the list Inspector Kapustin and Captain Volkov ferreted out during their inspection tour, they would never exist in the years ahead, so they died here and now as Time mercilessly balanced her books.

Yet ships bleed only smoke and fire when they die, and now the mighty Kirov began to burn with two fires amidships. There men still fated to live rushed to fight the flames in their orange life preservers and yellow helmets. And high above them, at the edge of the weather deck stood their Captain, watching the scene in utter shock and disbelief. A 9.2-inch shell from King Alfred straddled the ship with a great eruption of seawater. Karpov looked aft to see smoke rolling from the fires amidships like black blood, thick and impenetrable.

The Captain had a haggard, haunted look on his face, gaunt with fatigue, his cheeks sallow and drawn, eyes shadowed with pain and remorse, and now the barest glimmer of fear. There he stood, Vladimir Karpov, Captain of the battlecruiser Kirov, acting commander of the Red Banner Pacific Fleet, Viceroy of the Far East, yet with no one and nothing to command but his own forsaken soul. In his hand he held a pistol, and now in one last act of frustrated defiance he raised it at the far-off silhouette of HMS King Alfred and fired three shots…And the last he saved for himself…

Hidden beneath the turbulent sea Dobrynin sat huddled in the belly of another behemoth, and he was listening…listening… The rumble of battle sounded faint and far away, a muted background to the song that was playing in his head. Sing, choirs of angels, he thought, sing in exultation…

Rod-25 was home now, in the year it had reached for all along. Yet it was tasked again to rend the fabric of time and open the yawning, endless night of infinity. Dobrynin heard the rising chorus and knew it was happening. How far they would go, to what distant year, he could not say. Would time find a place for them, for Kirov and Kazan where they sailed at the edge of the maelstrom of Armageddon? Would time have a life waiting there for them, the Admiral, Fedorov, Orlov and all the rest?

He did not know any of this, but he could feel them moving now, slipping over the event horizon of the maelstrom and being sucked away into the void. Kazan was close enough to the turmoil and strife above, close enough to Kirov, and when the submarine fell into the empty hole in time it reached out and dragged the embattled ship along with it.

To those that saw it, rising on the heavy seas as they aimed and fired their guns, or puckered their eyes behind field glasses, telescopes and range finders, it seemed that a vast mist enfolded the ship, a shadow deepening at its center. Iridescent light played in the mist, like the strange glowing ripple of luminescent sea fire. Others thought they saw the discharge of St. Elmo’s Fire from the tall spinning mast atop the ship, coronal jets of plasma that crowned the shadowy sea fortress in a halo of gossamer green light. It had always been regarded as an omen of bad luck when it afflicted a ship at sea, or the ominous portent of stormy weather to come.

The ship glimmered in the wreath of mist and shadow, there and gone again, seen and unseen. It quavered at the edge of eternity…

And then it was gone.

The smoke and fire was gone with it, and it was over.