Kirov III: Pacific Storm k-3 Page 2

  “Of course. Then how does a ship move that distance in a single day? After I spoke with you at the Admiralty I gave considerable thought to what you were telling me about these wonder weapons used by this ship. Yes, they were at least graspable. We’ve known about rocketry and such for centuries. Yet both you and I know that the rockets we saw used in the North Atlantic and the Med were clearly a cut above anything we have in development now.”

  “Clearly.”

  “Yes…well the rockets I can live with, Professor. But a ship that can move about willy nilly and travel such distances is something else entirely—an impossibility I am not able to grasp in any wise.”

  “I’ll agree with you on that, sir,” said Turing. “No ship could move that distance in space in a single day. No ship could vanish from the North Atlantic and appear in the Med a year later, only to vanish yet again. These things are all impossibilities, but if these photos are indeed Geronimo then it moved there some other way, sir, and there is only one explanation I can now offer you, strange as it may sound.”

  “I’ve become more willing to entertain the impossible since all this business began, professor. Don’t keep me in suspense.”

  “Well sir, the ship would have to move in time. It’s the only thing that might account for this sudden disappearance and reappearance half a world away.” He stared at Tovey, the two men locking eyes for some time until it was clear to them both that they had hold of the same elephant now.

  “You’ve held this view earlier, but said nothing about it.”

  “I had my suspicions, sir,” said Turing, “but it didn’t seem as though I might have any luck conveying an idea like this to Admiral Pound.”

  “You were trying to put me on to it, weren’t you—in that last conversation we had after the meeting at the Admiralty.”

  “I was, sir. Without coming right out with it. You see they pay us to reach for certainty here, not fanciful speculation. They listen to us because they want facts, not imagination. I had very grave doubts about this ship from the moment I first set eyes on it. We’ve gone round and round on it, eliminating it from one navy after another. The conclusion I was coming to was not likely to be well received, and I must say, Admiral Tovey, that I am already shunned in many circles as it is. Somewhat of a dreamer, they say of me. Somewhat of a peculiar odd fool is perhaps what they really mean. Well they can say what they will. When they can crack the Enigma code on their own let them play me for a fool. Our own Sherlock Holmes would give me some comfort when he said that once you have eliminated every other possible option, what you are left with must be the truth, as impossible as it may seem. Things move in two ways, Admiral. They move in space and they move in time. Now, while we’re accustomed to moving there and back again in space, travel in time has been stubbornly in one direction—forward—until this ship appeared in the Norwegian Sea a year ago. Not a German ship, as we now know. Not an Italian or French ship, and now it’s half a world away fighting with the Japanese!”

  “Moving in time? Well I have to say that the notion did cross my mind—one for the likes of Jules Verne or H. G. Wells, eh? Yet how can I believe this, Turing? It’s astounding!”

  “Can you explain it any other way, sir?”

  At this Tovey frowned, clearly perplexed. “They hit us at Darwin,” he said, steering a new compass heading for the moment and hoping to find safer waters.

  “Yes, sir. I did hear that as well.”

  “Then let me share a little more, Professor,” Tovey smiled, hoping to give the young man the comfort of confederacy. “You see, I had the opportunity to have a little chat with the Admiral commanding this phantom ship, and it was most enlightening. First off, your suspicions expressed earlier were correct. The man was Russian. His crew was Russian, and I am led to believe that his ship was Russian built as well.”

  “Another impossibility,” said Turing, “at least at present. The existing Soviet Union could not build anything like that ship.”

  “Quite so, but no more confounding than what you have just suggested, Professor. A ship moving in time? Funny thing is this…The man disavowed any affiliation with Stalin and the Soviet Union. In fact he was quite pointed about it—claimed Stalin would not have the slightest inkling that his ship even existed. Yet he knew of Churchill’s meeting, at that very moment, in the Kremlin. That was most revealing. Very few people knew of that arrangement, even in the highest circles here, yet he spoke about it as if… well as if it were—”

  “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 man
ta 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.

  “It seems there was nothing here to merit a missile.”

  “Thank God for that. With any luck we may even find people alive on this coast. Perhaps not in the major cities or ports, but in scattered enclaves like this.”

  “It was largely uninhabited,” said Fedorov, “even in our time. We might find something more at Port Hedland, about a hundred miles up the coast. Then again, that was a major industrial port, one of the largest tonnage wise in Australia, even though the town there is relatively small. It might have been targeted. Beyond that lies Broome, then Derby on King’s Bay, Wyndham, and then Port Darwin. Yet it is a thousand miles to Darwin from our present location. Australia is a very big place.”

  They would spend six hours there, largely because there was water to be found that tested safe, and they wanted to set up a brigade to haul it to the ship and replenish their stocks. Several men had rigged out makeshift poles for fishing from the gunwales, and the mood of the crew was better than it had been for many long weeks. The place seemed a fisherman’s paradise, and the men hauled in nets with coral trout, red emperor, scarlet sea perch, snapper and other specimens they could not name.