Kirov III-Pacific Storm (Kirov Series) (3 page)

“As if it were history,” Turing cut
in, a gleam in his eye.

“Exactly!” Tovey had hold of the teacup
now, and there was nothing more to do with it but drink. “In fact he spoke of
the war, our ‘world war’ as he called it, as if it were history as well. When I
pressed him with the fact that Russia was our ally and asked him to throw in
with us, he said something very odd—that Russia was our ally for the
moment
.
He told me things change, hinting that arrangement might not be stable. At
first I took that as a warning that Stalin may be ready to switch sides and
join Hitler. Perhaps this man and his ship were the vanguard of that decision.
But Churchill has come to some very different conclusions after his meeting in
Moscow.”

“I think we can safely keep Russia on
our side of the fence for the time being,” said Turing. “But who knows how this
war ends, sir? Who knows what the world will look like ten years from now,
twenty years, fifty?”

“This man seemed to think he knew,”
said Tovey. “I pressed him on his port of origin, yet he would say nothing,
even suggesting the question was dangerous to ask. At one point he gestured to
the fortifications above us on the cliff and asked me how I might explain my
battle fleet to the Moors that built them. Then he said he could no more
explain his presence here in a way I could comprehend, and that he was just
trying to get his ship home again, wherever that was. Believe me, all I could
think of at that point was this Captain Nemo.”

Turing smiled. “There was more to that
than you might think, sir. Nemo may be a good image for this man, though it
doesn’t sound as though he was vengeful.”

“Quite the contrary,” said Tovey,
scratching the back of his head. “He seemed most accommodating, very sincere. I
wanted to believe everything he told me. Well, that bit about the Moors… I
thought about it for some time. It was as if the man was suggesting he had come
from some far future.”

Turing sighed, greatly relieved. “That
is, in point of fact, what I am now suggesting,” he said with confidence.
“Consider it, Admiral. His ship is a marvel of engineering, highly advanced, so
powerful that it held the whole Royal Navy at bay in the Atlantic, not to
mention the American fleet as well. It sees us before we know it is even there,
and it flings weapons at us we won’t be able to manufacture or deploy for
decades—yes,
decades
. It used a working atomic weapon of enormous power,
something we all know is in development, but not nearly ready for deployment.
Yes, that’s very hush, hush, but things do get around in the circles I
frequent. The real point is this: something like that would take the resources
of a major power to design and build, and yet if any nation tried it, we would
surely know about it. I was very pointed in telling you that earlier, hoping to
jog your thinking along these very lines. You see… none of this made sense when
we assumed this ship came from our world, from the here and now reality of this
war. Yet it paints an entirely different picture when we make a different
assumption—that this ship was built in the
future
—yes, built by the
Russians I suppose, but not by any Russian engineer alive in 1942, that I can
assure you.”

“But why, Turing? What are they here
for? Was this ship sent here deliberately? How could it possibly happen? Time
travel is a thing for fanciful writers to bandy about.”

“We may probably never know the how or
why of it all. But we do know the facts we have witnessed, Admiral. The ship
was here, then it vanished and appeared in the Med a year later. That’s why we
never saw it waving at us in the Straits of Gibraltar or Suez. It was somewhere
else, moving in
time
, Admiral. Then it vanishes at St. Helena and
re-appears 7,800 miles away overnight! Again, it could only do so by moving in
time
,
or possibly through some higher dimension. We may never know this either.”

“Have they come here for a purpose?
This is a warship. Were they sent here with some mission? After all, the
history of this period is fairly critical, and as I think on it now, this ship
was making a beeline right for the conference between Churchill and Roosevelt
at Argentia Bay, and it bloody well blasted anything that tried to stop it, the
American Task Force 16 getting the worst of it.”

“What you say makes a great deal of
sense, Admiral,” said Turing. “Can you imagine that atomic weapon falling at
Argentia Bay and killing both the Prime Minister and the American President in
one fell swoop?”

“Believe me, I’ve had nightmares about
it, Turing. The Government has had nightmares about it ever since, though now I
think we can safely say that the Germans don’t have these weapons after all—not
the naval rockets or the warhead that was so terrible to behold. You should
have seen it, Professor. It was rather chilling.”

“And again, now this question of why
we have seen no other deployment of these rockets by the Germans in a long year
makes perfect sense. They never had them! Oh they’re working on designs of
their own now, but not like the rockets that have been pounding the fleet, eh?”

Tovey sighed, his eyes searching,
concerned. “I had a perfect opportunity to see just how many rockets this ship
had left, Turing, and I let this devil go. Had it by the tail and let it slip
away.”

“That may have been the wisest course,
sir,” said Turing earnestly. “If you had fought your battle, and lived through
it, then we might not have come to this conclusion here today.”

“It’s just that the man claimed to
want nothing more to do with our war, as he put it—this Captain Nemo. He said
he was only trying to get his ship and crew home. I wonder if this whole affair
is some kind of macabre accident?”

“That may, in fact, be the simple
truth of the matter,” Turing suggested. “Perhaps they are as bewildered about
all this as we are. Perhaps the ship does find itself here by accident, and has
not been sent here for some darker purpose. But one thing now looms as a most
grave and dire threat either way. The
presence
of this ship has surely
changed the course of events, sir. That engagement in the North Atlantic, the
use of precision rocketry, atomic weapons…I’m afraid this ship has opened
Pandora’s Box, Admiral Tovey. I am aware, as you may now be, that His Majesty’s
government has undertaken to disperse its leadership assets all across the
Kingdom, and has intensified several projects involving high level physics…
It’s as if they were preparing for something they fear might come—something to
do with these weapons this ship has so ably demonstrated.”

“I can’t say I find that prospect
comforting,” said Tovey.

“Yes, and consider this…Surely these
engagements would have never been fought in the Atlantic or the Med were it not
for the strange presence of this ship. Why, we’ve canceled the planned air raid
on Kirkenes and Petsamo, pulled Force Z off Operation Pedestal early, canceled
Operation Jubilee, delayed the Torch landings. Those decisions must have had
some impact on the course of the war. Beyond that, the Americans declared war
because of the actions of this single ship and, were it not here, how long
might it have been before that country really got involved in this conflict?
Now the Japanese are in for it! This ship is a rock in the stew they have
planned for the Americans.”

“Indeed,” said Tovey. “There’s a big
operation underway in the Pacific. The Japanese  are definitely coming
south. FRUMEL HQ is all up in arms about it in Melbourne. This Darwin business
is perhaps only the tip of the  sword.”

“Think about it from another
perspective, sir. We’ve fought with this ship. Men are dead now who might have
lived out this war, and others may be alive that might have been killed. Surely
you realize that could change everything from this day forward.”

“I see…” said Tovey, considering this
for the first time.

“Well I can’t imagine the Americans
would have come to the fight as soon as they did, in spite of Churchill’s hopes
to the contrary. This ship made that certain when it attacked Task Force 16 and
sunk the
Wasp
. It might have done that intentionally, as you proposed,
though I can’t imagine why. Surely they must have realized that such an act
would have dramatic consequences.”

“Perhaps, Turing, though this Captain
Nemo did hint that there was some disagreement aboard
Geronimo
as to how
they should act, and that he was indisposed when that action was fought. I came
to the conclusion that there may have been a wolf in their fold, a hard liner
in command at that time. This Admiral seems to be a good measure more
sensible.”

“It’s chilling to think about in any
wise, Admiral. Consider it…if this ship is from the future, then they have
tremendous knowledge. They know everything that happens from our day to
theirs!”

“And where to stick a crowbar in the
corners of history, if they ever had a mind to.”

“Precisely, sir.”

 Tovey rubbed his forehead, still
bewildered by it all, and half way shaking his head at the notions they had
discussed here. “Well, Professor Turing, those photos were taken three days
ago. I’ve had my ear to the ground on these events ever since I received them.
We’ve already sent word to FRUMEL to keep an eye out for this ship, and I
suppose we’ll have to tell the Americans about this as well. Whether they’ll believe
what we’ve just discussed here is another matter entirely, but we’ll have to
tell them. I’ve got a man in mind for the job, but I’m afraid a great deal has
happened in the Pacific since these photographs were taken. You may have heard
about it through these dark channels you mentioned earlier, but it’s quite a
story indeed.”

“I’m all ears, sir,” Turing smiled.
“And I have all afternoon if you’d care to join me for lunch.”

Chapter
2

23
August, Year Unknown

Minutes
after they arrived at the distant island
outpost of St. Helena, Rodenko knew something was wrong. He had been tracking
three aircraft, and the two British cruisers,
Norfolk
and
Sheffield
.
The planes were orbiting at intervals to cover the seas around the island,
while the two cruisers had maneuvered to skirt each side, one sailing down past
the small harbor at Jamestown and the other bearing along the northeastern
shore. They were to meet at Sandy Bay to watch
Kirov
drop anchor, but
minutes after the big battlecruiser slipped into the thick gray fog north of
the island, Rodenko glanced at his screen and saw that all his contacts had
vanished. All the drama and struggle of the world they had been sailing in
vanished with them, and in time it became clear to them all that they were
again lost on an empty sea, in a forsaken world.

Admiral Volsky circled round to the
north cape and when they saw the complete destruction of Jamestown harbor, they
knew they had slipped into that nightmare world again, perhaps of their own
making, where every shore was blackened with the fire of a war they could
scarcely imagine.

They were days at sea before they saw
land again. St. Helena was as isolated as any island in the world, a thousand
miles east of Angola, Africa in the South Atlantic. The route south was even
more barren, if the sea could be described as such, empty of life or any sign
of human activity whatsoever. They sailed around Cape Town, finding it, too,
had been the recipient of a multi-megaton payload of death. What the continent
looked like inland they could not say, but no man wanted to go ashore to find
out.

They soon found themselves in the
Indian Ocean, sailing well south of Madagascar and heading east. There would be
nothing to see for days on end, but in time they reached the distant shores of
Australia, angling along the northwest coast of that continent, past Barrow
Island and into a dappled archipelagos stretching west of Dampier off the coast
of the Northern Territories. The seas were calm and cobalt blue, beneath a
cloudless azure sky, and the temperatures were warm and balmy, much to the
delight of the crew. When they caught a glimpse of Malus Island, saw the
pristine white sand beaches and unspoiled reefs, they all took heart. Crewmen
spotted manta rays and schools of fish in the clear waters, and the stony
cliffs were circled by terns, ospreys and sea eagles. Farther out in the Indian
Ocean to the north they spotted squadrons of blue nose dolphins leaping in the
ocean spray. The place was actually a series of small islets, connected by sandy
tails that were more prominent at low tide so that one could walk along them
from one to another. Compared to the charred shores they had visited earlier,
it seemed a paradise.

Admiral Volsky decided to drop anchor
briefly here, at a location Fedorov named Whaler’s Bay, and they put men ashore
to check on the general condition of the island and take water and soil
samples. The main island to the northeast was empty, but they were elated to
find eight intact dwellings along the southern shore of the western islet,
dubbed Rosemary Island. There were also the remains of old whaling and pearling
stations that operated on Malus Island in the late 1800s. No sign of recent
human habitation was seen, though the homes were all in good condition, summer
dwellings and vacation spots that had survived the war.

“This gives me some hope, at least,”
the Admiral said to his young first officer, and Fedorov nodded.