Kirov (32 page)

“Let
them try that damnable Ack-Ack fireworks on my main armor belt,” said Tovey.
“We’ll shrug them off and then deal with this carrier the old fashioned way.”

“Yet
we’ll have to plan for the possibility that they may have modified Stukas
aboard,” said Brind.

“Yes,
strange that there was no counter strike mounted by the Germans against Wake-Walker’s
carriers. He says they’ve picked up obvious airborne contacts near the surface
vessel on radar, but haven’t really laid eyes on a German plane. Perhaps they
only have a very few aircraft aboard for search and target spotting,
insufficient to challenge our own carriers air defense fighter group. I do note
that none of our strike planes spotted any enemy fighters. They seem to be
relying entirely on these new rockets.”

“Right,
sir.”

“Well,
we may not have that wizard’s bag of tricks, but there’s nothing wrong with our
flack guns either.” Tovey was justifiably angry. “And this business with the
Prime Minister,” he said. “Can’t he be persuaded to postpone this meeting?” The
Admiral had only recently learned that the “official visit” involving
Prince
of Wales
was a transport mission leaving Scapa Flow very shortly to ferry Churchill
to Newfoundland for a secret meeting with the American President Roosevelt.
“Nice of them to finally give us notice!” he said, frustrated.

“I’ve
asked the War Cabinet to reconsider. But Winston won’t hear of it. He’s dead
set on this meeting. Wants to make his best pitch for American entry into the
war. God knows we could use the help.”

“Well,
if he can pull that off then I suppose we can get him there and back again in
one piece. I can’t imagine we’ve anything to be too concerned about.
Graf
Zeppelin
may be good at taking pot shots at our antiquated torpedo bombers,
but let them try that with
Prince of Wales
.”

Brind
was quiet for a moment. Then he said, ”They surprised us when
Hood
went
down, sir. Now this…”

Tovey
took his point well enough. He sighed, weary with the day already. “Yes… well given
the present situation, we’ll have to tie our shoes on this one smartly, Brind.
No sense mixing the Prime Minister into the brew here. Let’s make damn sure we
stop this German raider straight away, and keep
Prince of Wales
out of this
business.”

“That
we will, sir,” said Brind.

~
~ ~

Aboard
Kirov
Admiral Volsky had convened another meeting to sort out what had happened. He
was angry on several counts. He had been sleeping fitfully in his cabin, his
mind running over the scant information he had gleaned from Fedorov’s books
concerning this Atlantic Charter. What to do about it? He could sail
Kirov
down and board the KA-226 to fly in and join the meeting if he wished, but what
would he say there?

He
had been ruminating on the matter in his bunk, taking a few brief moments of
rest, though his mind was heavy with thought. The implications of this course
weighed heavily on him now. If he did attempt to join the meeting, it would
soon be clear that the mysterious ship confounding the Allies was a Russian
Navy vessel, yet possessing weapons and capabilities unlike any other ship in
the world. How would Churchill and Roosevelt react? Would they embrace him as a
potential ally, forgive the fog of war that had set them as enemies? If so,
they would most certainly want to know more about his ship and its formidable
new weapons, yes? They would then come to see
Kirov
as a possible foil
against the Germans; a means of bringing the war to a sure and swift end. How
could he explain his presence there? Surely they would press him for
information on the new weapon systems they had observed in action.

If
he passed himself off as a contemporary, he might try and convince them that
Russia possessed this awesome new technology at this very moment. They would
have to believe the evidence of their own eyes, yes? But in this instance he
would present himself as just another man of their era, not a superman from
another world.

What
if he should he tell them the truth—that he had come from a far distant future,
bemused, bewildered and lost. If he did so he could then wield the awesome
power of his foreknowledge as yet another weapon. Would they believe him? Could
they accept the same impossible scenario he had been forced to acknowledge? And
if they did believe him, they would surely realize that his knowledge of the
outcome of the war, and the history that lay ahead, was the most terrible and
potent weapon of all. It would take them years to try and reverse engineer his
missiles or comprehend the intricate nature of the ship’s computer systems. But
the old platitude that ‘knowledge was power’ would surely prevail. How could
they let him blithely lecture them and then calmly board his helicopter to fly
away again with such knowledge in his head?

Once
in their grasp, he might be treated as an honored guest for a time while they
tried to learn all they could from him. He would have power in that event, but
what demands could he make of America and Britain—to behave themselves and
treat his Mother Russia like a true brother in arms after the war? He knew in
his bones that there was no way he could throw in with the Allies against
Germany in this war. They would smile, and dissemble, and ask a question here
and there as they tried to ferret out the secret of
Kirov’s
incredible
technology, and the unseen pathways that lay ahead in time.

What,
would he tell the Americans, that they must not open a second front in Europe
and allow the Soviet Union to race to the Rhine? It suddenly occurred to him
that he could use his position to fool them if he wished. He could simply tell
them that their planned invasion at D-Day would end in absolute disaster, and
that they must wait and pursue a more conservative strategy in the
Mediterranean instead. Would they believe this?

If
he refused to answer their probing questions, would they resort to more
unpleasant methods? He could never allow the information in his head to fall
into the hands of the Americans and British. What else to do then? What demands
could he make of them across a negotiation table, with Mister Nikolin or
Fedorov as his translator? The more he thought about the situation, the more
ludicrous his position became.

He
had put Fedorov’s book aside, his gaze drawn to the portrait of his wife and
son on the night stand beside his bunk. His thoughts reached for them briefly,
with fond recollection that loosened an emotion within him. Then the crushing
insanity of the hour returned as he realized that, in this world, in
this
moment, his wife had not even been born, and his son no longer existed! An odd
thought came to him.

If
this was the year 1941, then his mother and father had not even met yet! They
did not meet and marry until after the war, and it was some years later, in
1957, that he was born. The odd thought then became an impossible premise in
his mind—assuming he lived out the next sixteen years, what would happen on the
day he was to be born? Would another Leonid Volsky emerge from his mother’s
womb? Would there be
two
of him, each holding one end of the long cord
of life and fate that stretched between them?

Yet
Fedorov’s warning haunted him. They were
changing
things. The British
fleet was now maneuvering to intercept a ship they had never encountered in
1941. Men were dying, lives extinguished in one deadly ledger of war, while
other men, slated to perish in the planned raids at Kirkenes and Petsamo, may
be spared that fate now as the British carriers followed him west. It was too
much for him to contemplate, but behind it all the kernel of a worrisome
thought was ever present in his mind. How solid and sure was the line of
causality that stretched forward from this moment to the distant future he had
come from? If these changes rippled forward in time, what might they alter?
Could the waves of variation affect the life lines of men aboard this ship?
What would happen, he thought, if his parents never met? Would he keel over and
die the instant that unseen variation contaminated his own personal line of
fate? Or worse, would he simply vanish?

The
sudden jarring sound of the ship’s alarm broke his stream of thought, and he
stiffened, sitting up in his bunk. Action stations, the sound of surface-to-air
missiles firing. Apparently the British were going to continue to force his
hand by persisting in these attacks, but what else should he expect? They could
only assume he was a hostile German ship, and now that
Kirov
had
demonstrated some of her awesome combat capabilities, the conflict was only
likely to escalate.

Now
he had Karpov, Yazov and Samsonov in the wardroom, and the Captain was
justifying his actions, as the Admiral expected. Yet with every word the man
spoke, all Volsky could think about were the men that died in the action the
ship had just fought, and those ripples of change and variation that now
emanated forward from this moment.

“It
was clearly meant as a surprise attack,” said Karpov. “I did what I determined
necessary to protect the ship and crew.”

“Yes,
but how was it I did not hear a call to battle stations until just before you
fired? Are you telling me you did not detect this strike until it was within 50
kilometers?” The Admiral was looking at the chief radar man on duty, Yazov.

“Sir,
I—”

“It
was my decision.” Karpov interrupted. “When I saw the nature of the threat,
over forty incoming aircraft, I elected to utilize our medium range SAM system.
It’s rate of fire was superior to that of the S-300s, and it also integrated
with our close in defense Gatling guns.”

“That
was a proper weapons selection, but you should have sounded general quarters
the instant you determined this was an attack.”

“I
am sorry, sir, but I wanted to coordinate with Samsonov on the composition of
our missile barrages. As you are well aware, we must be conservative with our
ammunition.”

It
was an easy lie. Karpov would not, of course, say why he had really waited
those first minutes without putting the ship at battle stations. He knew the
alarm would immediately rouse the Admiral, and send him huffing up to the
bridge where he would likely override his decisions. He would lose control of
the engagement, and he was eager to handle the matter himself. After all, he
was
Kirov’s
Captain, even if the Fleet Admiral was aboard.

Volsky
let the matter go, though he gave Karpov a look that clearly expressed his
displeasure. “Forty aircraft? How many missiles did we use to repel this
attack?”

“Thirty-two
SA-N-92s, sir,” said Samsonov. “Four barrages of eight missiles each.”

“And
how many hits?”

“We
believe we destroyed twenty four enemy aircraft with missiles, Admiral. One
tube failed to sync properly and the missiles did not initialize their search
radar sets.”

Volsky
shook his head. “Twenty four planes destroyed… Those are heavy casualties for
the British. As for the missiles, the damn things have been sitting in the
launchers without adequate live fire testing for far too long. Eight missiles
failed to initialize? That is unacceptable. I want those systems fully checked
and maintained.”

“The
Gatling system accounted for six more kills, sir,” said Samsonov.

“Six
more? Yes, I heard it firing, and believe me, it was no comfort to know that
enemy planes had come so close to this ship—that a plane designed nearly a
century
ago was actually able to launch a torpedo that could and should have struck us
a fatal blow.” Volsky let that sink in hard, staring at each man in the room,
his gaze heavy with the full thirty years of his command. Even Karpov, normally
jaunty and argumentative, was cowed.

“It
will never happen again, sir,” said the Captain at last.

“See
that it doesn’t,” said Volsky, though he knew if they held to this course there
would likely be other encounters in the days ahead. He sighed heavily, as if
releasing the moral weight of what they may have to do if confronted by the
British fleet in force.

 “This
is war now, gentlemen,” said the Admiral. “I had hoped to be cautious here, but
the British are forcing us to fight. We are a hard shelled crab with pincers
like no other, yet we have just been dropped into a pot of slowly boiling
water. We may not die quickly, in one glorious fight, but they will sap the life
out of us week after week, and we will die slowly, like that boiling crab. When
the last missile has been fired, what then? They can and will lose a thousand
men, two thousand men, ten thousand men in the effort to destroy us. They made
mistakes, and they have already paid dearly for them, but did you see how they
adapted their tactics in this second strike? They split their force by altitude
and dispersed their strike sections along a broad front. And it very nearly
succeeded! Yet…”

 He
changed his tone, resigned to the matter and needing to strengthen his men as
much as he chastened them. “This attack was repulsed. The weapons selection was
correct. The maintenance problem will be rectified. We are all alive and well
and the ship is unharmed. Yet I hope this has given us all a hard lesson. Our
enemy is determined. Those were brave men out there in those aircraft, and they
could scarcely know what was happening to them. Yet they came on through our missiles
and died trying to target this ship for destruction. Think of them tonight.
Think of the courage it would take to do what you just witnessed. This is our
enemy now, and we must match him with equal courage and resolve—equal skill and
wisdom.”