If I voyage back to the fatherland I love, my pride, my glory dies . . .’ Words spoken by Achilles, he thought, and so I share his dilemma. Yet Fedorov may be on to something in his fear of tomorrow’s unfolding, and I must heed his warning.
When the engagement had settled down, his enemy turned south, Karpov gave orders to come about. Even the enemy planes turned to withdraw, and they only had to use those two Klinok missiles to discourage them.
That was not very Japanese of them, he thought, but someone must have ordered them to break off. Perhaps I will meet this ship again another day, but for now, I must speak with my Starpom.
“Mister Fedorov, a most satisfactory engagement. Yes?”
“Any engagement where the ship comes through without harm is a good one,” said Fedorov. “That said, we’re light a baker’s dozen under the forward deck.”
“Perhaps so, but they are far worse off, and largely irrelevant now.”
“Don’t discount them,” Fedorov cautioned. “That SPY-1D radar set is enough of a weapon to make a real difference here. Were they worth another dozen SSMs? I think not, but they remain a factor here, and a dangerous one.”
“I’m more concerned with this worry you have for the future. What is it, another threat from Paradox?”
“One was enough,” said Fedorov with a shrug.
“Yes… I faced it in a very harrowing hour aboard Tunguska, but as you can see, I prevailed, not Mother Time. That may sound like hubris, but here I stand, and she is still trying to figure out what to do about me—yes, I have no doubt. Then you see no paradox on our present course?”
“No, it isn’t that. The period we are in now is a kind of safe zone for the ship. We were never here before on the first ship. Remember? It was late August of 1941 when you did resort to a tactical nuke—”
“And I blew the ship into oblivion.”
“Correct.”
“Where in hell were we? I was in the brig, and did not see all that much. Believe me, it’s the last time that will ever happen.”
“The warhead, sir?”
“The damn brig! That aside, Volsky said the world went to hell.”
“Hell is a good way to describe it. I think it was a future that arose from our actions here, and it was very grim. Be glad you didn’t get a better look at it, but you remember what we saw in the Med before we shifted, Rome burned and blackened, Naples gone. Yes, it was hell.”
“But this period is safe? Explain.”
“We vanished in August of 1941, sailed through that broken future to the Med, and then reappeared a full year later, in August of 1942, right in the middle of Operation Pedestal. With Malta gone, that history isn’t likely to repeat, let alone the fact that we are still here in the Pacific. We never vanished last August like the first ship.”
“Should we fear that date, August of 1942? Might there be another paradox there?”
“No… I don’t think so. We stayed put this time, and never shifted, though I was more than a little concerned when you suggested we might use a special warhead earlier. You are well aware of the unexpected after effects of a nuclear detonation by now.”
“No argument there,” said Karpov. “Then you feared we might shift again if I had used such a weapon here.”
“Quite possibly. I would not want to be anywhere near a detonation like that. If I were you, I would reserve those warheads for the longest range missile we have, so the ship would be as far from the impact site as possible.”
Karpov nodded. “So then, if there’s no paradox to worry about come this August, what has you so spooked?”
“Just what I discussed with you earlier. We could do something, cause a change here that would knock out a key supporting beam holding up the future that built this ship. I’ve been thinking about that, and trying to discover what it could be, where the key event is that we must not disturb, and I think I may be on to something.”
“Tell me.”
“Think about it yourself, Admiral. I was the man who whispered in Sergei Kirov’s ear. Yes? My careless advice, and I suppose his inherent curiosity, led him to try that stairway again at Ilanskiy, and he ended up assassinating Josef Stalin. Hence we have the world we are sailing in.”
“It wasn’t all your doing,” said Karpov. “I was largely responsible for the fact that we are now trying to throw the Japanese off Sakhalin Island. I’ll say again that, had it not been for your interference—”
“Yes, yes, we’ve been over that,” Fedorov interrupted.
“All I am saying is that there is plenty of blame to go around. I know what I did, and here I am, trying to set things right, take back the territories Russia lost as a result of that fiasco in 1908.”
“Fine, but that still won’t lift the burden from my shoulders. We still end up with the Orenburg Federation because of me.”
“Ah, now I know why you are so glum. But was it really you, Fedorov? What were you doing there at Ilanskiy? You certainly had no idea that stairway had this amazing property. It was pure happenstance. In fact—why were you there?”
“I was looking for Orlov. You know what we planned.”
“Of course I do. I was right there when you persuaded Volsky to let us take Rod-25 to the Primorskiy Engineering Center so you could shift back that way.”
“You see? It was all my doing.”
“I don’t think so.” Karpov was watching his reaction closely now. “No Fedorov, I don’t think it was you at all. You have to look further back on that chain of causality you speak of. Pull on it a while, and just a few links down the line you come to someone else who had a good deal to do with all of this—Orlov.”
Fedorov shook his head. “Kamenski said the same thing, but It wasn’t Orlov at Ilanskiy, it was my fault there.”
“Yes, but you were only there because Orlov jumped ship. Ever consider that? Our surly Chief of Operations didn’t like his lot after our failed coup attempt—alright, after my failed mutiny the first time out. I’ll admit the plan was mine, and I duped him into supporting me. So there he was, busted in rank, stuck with Troyak and the Marines, and so he just flat out deserted. Remember? You tried to stop him in the very first minutes you realized what he was doing. We put five S-300s in the air after him, but his life seems charmed. It was Orlov. Yes. He’s the one that led you on that wild goose chase to fetch him back, and that was how you came to Ilanskiy. When did he do that—jump ship like that?”
Fedorov thought hard…. “It was August of this year, 1942. We were still in the Med, running for Gibraltar, and we wanted a helo up to scout ahead.”
“Right, and Orlov wormed his way onto that helo, with the deliberate intention of abandoning ship. And here it is, 1942 again, and with August just a few months off. I think we might want to keep an eye on this version of Orlov as well, though he seems completely clueless as to anything that happened before.”
Fedorov’s eyes widened slightly, for he knew that was not the case. Orlov had just awakened. The bad dreams that had been plaguing his sleep had become real memories. Karpov didn’t know any of that yet, and something warned him not to speak of it here. And with that thought, he also ran the words of Director Kamenski through his recollection again:
“Nothing you did would have ever occurred if not for Karpov’s little rebellion, or Orlov’s strange letter. He is more than a little fish, I think, but Karpov is a free radical, a wildcard, an unaccountable force in all of this history we’ve been writing and re-writing. Everything that has happened, except perhaps that first explosion on the Orel, can be laid at Karpov’s feet…”