Paradox Hour (35 page)

But all the curio shops, boutiques and eateries were closed that day, and well shuttered. No children played at Silly Milly’s Fun House aboard
Ulysses
, and the seats in the Volta Picture Theatre were empty, the screen dark, as the sky erupted above the flotilla with the explosion of a 15 megaton warhead.

And so, just as the men and machines of Kinlan’s had met a similar fate at Sultan Apache, the sailors and ships that had been intended to retrieve them would also be caught between the wild energy of two poles, a nuclear blast above, the strangely shimmering madness of the Devil’s Teardrop below—eighty years and long fathoms below, yet right there, in that very same spot where Lenkov drifted in his last, lonesome watch. The object did exactly what it had done before, serving as a beacon that pulled the mass blown through the shattered borders of time that separate one moment from another, one age from another, one arrangement of everything that ever was from some other arrangement. Some strange quantum entanglement had joined these two incidents together in a bizarre twist of fate.

The missile that sought to destroy all these ships had exploded too high, another glitch in a computer that saw the warhead detonate earlier than planned. The resulting shock had been enough to breach the increasingly fragile fabric of space-time in the region, and the Devil’s Teardrop had pulled everything within a three mile radius through the hole that opened in time. The entire convoy had been swallowed whole, including
Ambush
, which was cruising beneath them, very shallow. As fate would have it, they had appeared many hours sailing time after Fedorov first threw that object over the side, even as Lenkov and the Devil’s Teardrop had both finally settled to their final resting place in Peake’s Deep.

Now Captain Vann stood on the bridge of his hunter-killer sub, a perplexed look on his face, his blonde hair and mustache lending him the nickname “Sandy” among his fellow officers.

“You don’t look happy, Mister Harland,” he said to his Sonarman where he sat before the Thales 2076 system monitors, perhaps the best sonar equipment ever designed. It was said a boat like Sandy’s could hover in the English Channel, yet still hear the maritime traffic in and out of New York harbor, and identify specific ships by the acoustic signatures they sent across the wide Atlantic, ripples in the proverbial pond.

The Captain’s statement was spot on, for Mister Harland had just seen an odd ripple of another sort pass over his screens, and heard a strange crackle of static in his headphones. He sat there, like a poker player who had been placing bets on a sure hand, suddenly shocked to look down and see all his cards had changed, and he was now holding a whole new hand!

The low suits were still there, the seven convoy ships all in place in their proper steaming order. The clatter of the RFA repair ship
Diligence
was rattling in his ear and scratching the sonic signature lines on his screen with its 10,800 tons. The four
Point
-Class sealift ships were there, all in a row at 23,000 tons each.
Ulysses
and the replenishment oiler
Fort Victoria
brought up the rear, but the Type 45 destroyer
Duncan
assigned for air defense was suddenly missing. It had been well off the starboard side of the flotilla, standing it’s vigilant watch.

“I’ve lost
Duncan
, sir.”

“Lost her? Whatever do you mean?”

“Just that, Captain. I have all the convoy ships, clear as a bell, but
Duncan
is gone! I’ve no reading on the destroyer at all now, and my equipment just experienced an odd glitch.”

“System malfunction? Well get it sorted out.” Captain Vann turned to his communications officer now. “Send code to
Duncan
. Ask them to report their status and see if they have anything on their Sampson radar that we should know about.”

The Com officer had a legendary name, Lieutenant Samuel Morse, named after the man who had helped develop the dot-dash code that once clattered through the airwaves from ship to shore, and was still in use in 2021. Morse got the signal off, but sat at his station, lips pursed, waiting unsatisfied for a reply.

“No signal confirmation, sir,” he said.

Vann did not like the sound of that. The system should have immediately returned confirmation, even if no reply was sent by
Duncan
. The electronics on both sides of the transmission would have shaken hands, but nothing came back.

“Send to
Diligence
. They should have
Duncan
on radar. Perhaps something went bonkers up there and the destroyer’s communications are down.”

Diligence
was accustomed to working with the older British
Trafalgar
Class subs as a support ship, mostly east of Suez, but this time she was out in the Atlantic Support Group, assigned to this special run down to the Med. She was the primary at-sea battle damage repair ship of the modern Royal Navy, her holds crowded with material for that job, and equipment like lathes, drills, grinders and welding tools crowding her workshops. She was also a supply and munitions replenishment ship, with a magazine of munitions intended for the 7th Brigade when they reached Mersa Matruh.

If
they reached Mersa Matruh… That destination was now a very chancy affair, for the ship now unknowingly led its flotilla thru the uncertain waters of 1941, yet was still bound to make its appointed rounds for the 7th Brigade. It was some time before Lieutenant Morse had his reply.

“The com-channel is very cloudy, sir, but I finally got through.
Diligence
reports odd static on a lot of its equipment. They also report strange effects in the sky and discoloration in the sea.”

“Discoloration?”

“That’s what they say’s sir. In fact, they asked if all was well down here. They say it looks like the Aurora Borealis, but it’s on every horizon.”

That didn’t sound good to Captain Vann, and his mind began to piece the puzzle together, strange as it seemed. “Anything from Whale Island?” he asked, referring to the Maritime Warfare Center HQ there at Portsmouth. He was thinking there may have been a war order, or warning message somewhere in the system.

“Nothing sir.”

Now Vann looked at his Executive Officer, Commander Avrey Bell, a thin man with just the wisp of an allowable mustache beneath his nose, and round, brown eyes. “Shall we sneak up to have a look about?” asked the Captain, and Bell nodded, there being no other threats apparent.

“Were running shallow. Make it so.”

Vann wanted to send up his photonic mast, replete with sensors, cameras and communications antennae, to get a better picture of what was happening topside. All his ducks were still in a row, except
Duncan
, which remained mysteriously silent. The thought that the strange sky effects reported might have been an attack on the convoy was first to his mind, yet they had no messages from any other ship, and the signals from
Diligence
seemed more perplexing than alarming.

Yet his day was going to get progressively worse from that point forward. Sonarman Harland soon turned his head again, a warning look in his eyes. “Contacts—numerous surface contacts—processing now.”

Vann waited, and the news he soon got was most unsettling. His man had some difficulty with the reading, switching from one profile bank to another in an effort to find a signal match, but finding nothing—save one.

“Are you certain?” The Captain gave Mister Harland a hard look. “That ship was reported missing months ago. Why, this very boat was on station when it happened.”

“Well, I think we’ve found it sir. My reading is 90 percent confident, though there’s and odd ripple to the signature now.”

“Could this be another ship in that class?”

“Possibly sir, but my tonals and resonance factors are all coming up roses for the flagship. It’s
Kirov
. I’m almost certain of that now.”

“Bloody hell,” said Vann, again looking to Bell for his reaction. The XO drifted over, and the three men now huddled over the Sonar station.

“Where have you been, you little bandit,” said Bell. “Skulking about, were you?” Submarines like
Ambush
could move about the seas, unseen, unreported for months at a time, but not the big surface ships. He looked at the Captain, waiting to see what he would do.

“It’s not alone, sir,” said Harland. “There’s another big signal here, but I have no profile on it whatsoever.”

“A big signal? Another warship?”

“It has to be well over 30,000 tons to be making this much noise, sir. Very strange. Noisy bugger, this one. And now I’m getting data from much farther out. There looks to be something off our port side, perhaps a hundred miles out, also very strong for something at that range. Then here, sir. There are two more groups—one to our west, and one a little southwest. Yet I can’t profile a single ship… wait a second… hold on sir…”

“Come on, Harley,” said Vann using his Sonarman’s nickname. “Get hold of this.”

“I’ve a reading for a Type 45—maybe
Duncan
, sir. But it’s over 60 nautical miles out now.”

“The damn ship was ten miles off our starboard bow not ten minutes ago,” said the Captain. “There’s no way on earth that could be
Duncan
.”

“It’s a Type-45, sir. With the photonics mast up I can pick up a Sampson radar set carrier wave.”

Vann put his hands on his hips, like a man about to dress down a group of misbehaving school boys. “What in god’s name is going on?”

His mind was racing now. Something swept over their equipment, a subtle glitch, then
Duncan
comes up missing and the Captains up topside report strange effects in the sky and sea. Apparently it took some minutes for his submarine’s own electronics to settle down, because Mister Harland reported those additional contacts ten minutes later. Was this an attack? Did it have something to do with the sudden appearance of that Russian battlecruiser? If the damn thing was really out there—
Kirov
—the ship that had started this whole situation unraveling when it went missing in the Norwegian Sea last July, then why didn’t old Harley have a leash on the ship sooner? It was only sixty miles off, and all these other odd contacts he was processing now were all within 120 nautical miles. The sea around him was full of ships that simply weren’t there fifteen minutes ago, and he found that to be a situation that skirted the impossible. Could this system glitch they experienced have quietly happened some time ago, so subtle that they missed it?

The class had been plagued with problems since the launch of the first boat, HMS
Astute
in late August of the year 2010. The business end of the ship, up front with the missiles and six torpedo tubes for the 21-inch heavyweight
Spearfish
, were all in good working order, but the back of the boat, from the reactor core aft, had many problems. As big as it was, the boat still felt stifling and cramped. They had interior temperature problems, a humid heat that could not be easily dissipated, and even now, five boats into the planned seven,
Ambush
felt like a muggy summer afternoon in North Carolina, where the Captain had relatives living in the states.

They had trouble with the computers, consoles malfunctioned, the reactors were skittish at times, which led him to believe this glitch they experienced might have originated in the reactor room. He made a mental note to give the Chief of Engineers a call, and see what Gibby reported. Lieutenant Daniel Gibbs had managed to hold the boat together in good working order, in spite of the teething troubles she was experiencing, so fresh from the dockyards.

That said, every boat in the class was still using an older reactor plant, one designed for the bigger Vanguard Class SGBN subs. It was supposed to give the
Ambush
speeds up to 35 knots when needed, but seldom achieved anything near that. He was lucky to get 28 knots, even submerged, which made the boat slow on its feet when compared to speedier Russian undersea adversaries. The old Russian K-222 could make over 44 knots submerged, and the
Alphas
were almost as fast at 42 knots. The
Sierras
cruised at a more sedate 32 knot maximum, and the capabilities of the latest Russian models were believed to be in that range.

But teething troubles could not account for the misery that was plaguing him now. These were not things Gibby could fix with a spanner, or some other engineering magic. Where did all these ships come from?

No, he thought, if those other contacts were there, we would have heard them long ago. Mister Harland should have them chapter and verse, no ifs, ands, or buts about it. Bloody ships just don’t fall from heaven into the sea, but there they are. Were they friendly? This contact Harland reported with
Kirov
was obviously suspicious. Unless the Russian ship had intercepted another big neutral merchantman, I must presume that contact pair are hostiles. We had no notice that any other merchant traffic would be where these ships are, so their sudden appearance here is also suspicious. And what about that reading we had for a Type-45? One destroyer vanishes, another suddenly appears sixty miles off. This doesn’t make any sense. As to the reading on
Kirov
, it soon vanished, just like
Duncan
. His Sonarman was now completely flummoxed.

 Sometime later,  with the advantage offered by his photonic mast, he took a 360 degree HD optical and thermal imaging of the whole area. There were his seven ducks in a row, safe and sound, but
Duncan
was nowhere to be seen. Any problem sufficiently grave to sink that ship would have been easily heard by his Sonarman. It was as if someone had just reached down and plucked the ship away, posting it sixty miles off in a heartbeat, like a chess player moving a doughty knight.

“Mister Morse,” he said. “Put that finger of yours to work and signal that Type-45. Helm, come about and steer 340 degrees north. Let’s find out who’s out there?”