Kirov III-Pacific Storm (Kirov Series) (5 page)

They moved northeast, bypassing Derby
as it was deep within King Sound, and soon they were entering the calm waters
of the Timor Sea, skirting the sculpted red rock and terraced hills of the
Kimberly Coast, near the famous Montgomery Reef off Doubtful Bay, which just
seemed to emerge from the sea at low tide, revealing opalescent strands of
pearly white and aquamarine tide pools fringing the green islands. Night fell,
and it was just near dawn again on August 25 after they navigated the Bonaparte
Archipelago, and rounded the capes at Bougainville and Londonderry north of
Wyndham. As the sun rose, Rodenko began to see some odd signal returns to the
northwest, about a hundred and fifty kilometers off the coast of Timor Island.

“It comes and goes, sir,” Rodenko
explained. “I think I’m seeing something at about 250 to 300 kilometers out
near maximum range on the Fregat-MAE-7 system, then I lose it, and I can get no
clear signal processing on the POYMA data unit.”

“A signal return at that range would
have to be an aircraft, yes?” Admiral Volsky was back on the bridge and
and
sitting squarely in his chair watching the distant
Australian coast shrouded by haze, his island reverie interrupted by Rodenko’s
report.

“Yes, sir. I can only see surface
contacts out to about 120 kilometers.”

Volsky thought for a moment,
wondering, and thinking discretion would be advised, no matter what their
present circumstances might indicate—that they were still adrift on an empty
sea in an equally empty world. “Perhaps we should investigate this further with
the KA-40. What does my
Starpom
think?”

“I don’t like it, sir—the signal
fading in and out like that. It leads me to suggest we keep everyone, and
everything, aboard and simply await further developments.”

“I see...” Volsky gave his First
Officer a long look, then nodded his approval. “Very well, we will keep all our
eggs in one basket for the moment. But I was climbing a ladder a few weeks ago
and got a very rude awakening. Let us bring the ship to condition three alert,
and I think we should make an announcement. The crew has had a good long rest
on the voyage from St. Helena. You may do the honors, Mister Fedorov.”

“Aye, sir. If you wish.”

Fedorov made a short statement over
the ship’s PA system, announcing that they were receiving some unusual traffic
on the radar and a precautionary drill to battle stations was in order. They
could almost hear the collective groan from the crew, and initial response was
sluggish, but in time midshipman and warrant officers were reporting to the
bridge as one station after another was cleared for action, and the crew stood
its level three watch on all systems. Fedorov saw Samsonov activating panels in
the Combat Information Center.

“What are you doing, Samsonov? We have
no hostile contacts for the moment.”

“Correct, sir, but a level three alert
requires me to key and initiate all systems and report general readiness for
action.” The big man continued working even as he spoke, his arms moving as if
in unison with the ship’s systems, human servomechanisms opening toggle guards
and flipping switches to feed life to his CIC panels. A few seconds later he
finished, finally swiveling his chair to face Fedorov and make his report.

“Sir, I report all systems nominal,
and our current missile inventory now reads as follows: Moskit II, nine
missiles; MOS-III, nine missiles; P-900 cruise missile system, eight missiles;
S-300 SAM system, thirty-five missiles; Klinok SAM system, thirty-seven
missiles;
Kashtan
system has not been used and is at full load-out;
Shkval
torpedo System, six available; Vodopad tubes with UGST Torpedo System, fifteen
available; 152mm deck guns, eighty-six percent; 100mm deck gun, ninety-eight
percent; close in defense systems, ninety-four percent.”

“Thank you, Mister Samsonov.”

Admiral Volsky looked at his First
Officer, frowning. “Running a bit thin on SSMs.”

“We’re lucky to have even those
available, sir. But it’s the SAM systems I am more concerned about for the
moment. Seventy-two missiles is a fairly weak air defense umbrella.”

“We still have good munitions for
close in defense,” said Volsky. Both the Gatling guns and the
Kashtan-2
system seem to be well provisioned.”

The Admiral looked out the forward
view panes, taking in the glorious seascape and the distant silhouette of the
Australian coast, broken by green archipelagos of sandstone islands circled by
reefs in the clear blue waters of the Timor Sea. “I must tell you that I was
very tempted to drop anchor permanently when I got a look at that Montgomery
Island, Fedorov. Aside from the missing native girls, it was as close to
paradise as any man is likely to get on this ship. And now here we are
squinting at the radar screens, flipping switches and rattling off missile
inventories.” As he spoke he quietly gestured to Fedorov to come closer, and
when the young officer was at his side he leaned heavily on one elbow,
inclining his head and speaking in a lowered voice. “Alright Fedorov…What are
you worried about. Out with it, but quietly please.”

Fedorov blinked, then clasped his arms
behind his back and spoke just above a whisper. “The interval, sir. We are well
into our thirteenth day now, and all seems well…but it does not
feel
well, if that makes any sense. I don’t like that signal fading in and out like
that. And I would not be surprised to find that the ship is not yet stable, or
confident that we still remain in a time beyond the year listed in that
newspaper, 2021.”

“Explain this interval business to me
again.”

“Well, sir, the initial accident that
shifted our position in time occurred on 28 July and just as we rolled into 9
August, the detonation of the warhead Karpov fired shifted us forward in time
again, or so we believe. Twelve days later we were in the Med, and shifted
backwards, only a year later. Twelve days after that we disappeared just as we reached
St. Helena.”

“And with no nuclear detonation to
help us on our way,” said Volsky.

“That is what bothers me, sir. The
shift was not accompanied by those strange effects as before. It was almost
imperceptible, and the only way we realized it was when Rodenko’s radar began
to malfunction. That same interval was reached again as we left Malus Island,
and we have been cruising for some time with no signs of any further shift.
Everything seems the same—the sea is naturally this color, and not altered by the
strange effects we experienced before, but it does not
feel
the same. I
can’t explain it, Admiral. I’m just worried about it.”

“We’ve seen nothing on radar—until
this report Rodenko made a moment ago.”

“True sir, but these waters would not
be much traveled, even in nineteen—” he caught himself, but Volsky realized
what he was thinking.

“You believe the ship is trying to
settle into some proper time, but it is a time in the past?”

“I do, sir. I explained it once like a
rock skipping over water. We were thrown back to 1941, then skipped forward,
arcing up through that bleak future time, and landed again, only this time in
1942. In the meantime we are able to move freely in space, and so we sailed
from the Atlantic to the Med and found ourselves in quite a dilemma when we
landed back in the middle of the war.”

“I understand…Yet these waters were
fairly quiet, even in 1942, or even 1943 supposing your theory holds true and
we skip another year forward.”

“That is one consolation,” said
Fedorov, “if the history holds true, that is.”

“What do you mean?”

“In that last episode there were
instances where ships were committed to battle early, and found to be in places
the chronology of the real history says they should
not
be, Admiral.
Things are changing, sir. Our presence in the past has obviously had some
effect on the course of events. And then…well what about Orlov?”

“Yes, yes, what about Orlov,” Volsky
repeated. “God only knows what he might be up to if he did survive as we now
suspect.”

“It’s a real problem, sir. Before we
had the chronology, and certain knowledge of every enemy we faced, right down
to the exact ships and numbers of planes in each task force. Now I’m not so
sure, and as serene as these waters may now seem, this theater of the war was a
titanic naval struggle.”

“Yes, but these variations you
reported from our operations in the Med—they were minor, were they not?”

“Seemingly so, sir, though they
brought us within range of 15 inch guns…” He let that sink in for a moment, and
Volsky nodded his understanding.

“Suppose we do return to the 1940s.
Suppose we are even marooned there indefinitely. After all, this stone skips
only so far on the water, Fedorov. It must land somewhere.”

“Right, sir. If the interval holds,
then we might skip slightly forward again, perhaps to 1943 or even 1944. Action
in this region was mostly over by May of 1942 with the conclusion of the Battle
of the Coral Sea. That was the Japanese attempt to take Port Moresby on New
Guinea, and it resulted in the first carrier to carrier battle of the Pacific
war. The Americans lost the
Lexington
, a high price to pay, though they
sunk a light Japanese carrier and hurt the
Shokaku
, one of their bigger
fleet carriers as well—and they stopped the invasion. That said, sir, I can’t
even be certain that battle was even fought now.”

“What do you mean? Not fought?”

“America enters the war three months
early, sir. At least I assume as much. It was our destruction of their Task
Force 16 in the Atlantic, and the sinking of the
Wasp
that most likely
prompted a declaration of war against Germany. If Japan sided with the Axis
powers, then they had no reason to launch the Pearl Harbor attack if war began
here in the Pacific at that same time.”

“Yes, I recall our earlier discussion
on this.”

“Well don’t you see how significant
that is, Admiral? If there was no attack on Pearl Harbor, then the whole
chronology of the war at sea in the Pacific might have been severely altered.
Major battles like Coral Sea and Midway might not have occurred. These are much
more significant events than the early deployment of a few Italian cruisers in
the Med, or even the movement of those two battleships to La Spezia. If there
was no Pearl Harbor attack, or no operation against Midway, it would change everything.
It could even be the real source of the variation in the history that has led
to the war we read about in those newspapers.”

Suppose this interval holds true and
we land here in 1943. What lies ahead?”

“We will have some real trouble on our
hands if we stay on this course, Admiral. The Americans and Japanese were still
locked in a bitter struggle for the Solomons, at least in the history I know.”

“You are speaking of Guadalcanal?”

“Well by February of 1943 that island
had been secured, but the action shifted northeast to New Georgia and by August
there was fighting for
Vella
Lavella
,
and also action in New Guinea as MacArthur drove on the vital airfield at Lae,
and then against the Bismarck Barrier.”

“Ah yes,” said Volsky. “MacArthur,
Halsey, Nimitz and Yamamoto. All circling one another like a pack of great sumo
wrestlers.”

“Yamamoto would have been killed in
April of 1943, sir. But I can’t be sure of this any longer. The history may no
longer be reliable. If any one of these major battles was not fought, then
there is no telling what might be happening in this theater, and that being the
case, it won’t be as easy to pinpoint our location in time.”

“I see why you have been brooding so
long over this, Fedorov. Your history has been all fouled up, and you’ve lost
your way—we all have lost our way. Now I’m afraid we will have to yield that
god-like advantage we had of knowing the enemy’s every move. It evens things
out somewhat, yes? Something tells me that both the Japanese and Americans will
prove determined and dangerous foes in this theater, and we would be wise to
avoid them and look for our island somewhere else. Perhaps we should reverse
our course now and seek out safer waters.”

“That might be wise, Admiral. Ahead
lies the Torres Strait, the Coral Sea and the Solomons. Those were all violent
war theaters in 1942 and 1943.”

“Maybe we should have sailed south of
the Australian continent.”

“Indeed, sir. But who can say? We are
still not sure where we are—in time that is.”

“Yes, but you have that inner misgiving
gnawing at you, Fedorov. It is just like my tooth when we get up north in the
Arctic Sea. I’ve learned to pay attention to it, and so I take your warning
here to heart. We will reverse course.”

It was a sound and wise decision, they
both knew, but one that would never come to pass. Rodenko was suddenly alert,
his eyes fixed on his primary long range radar screen, and very intent.

“Signal returns again,” he said
quickly.

Both Volsky and Fedorov came to his
side, their eyes searching the screen. “Where?” asked Volsky, squinting at the
milky green readout of the radar.