Paradox Hour (31 page)

With over twice the warhead weight of the missiles they had received from
Kazan
, this was the ship’s premier ship killer. It was normally programmed to be a fast supersonic sea-skimmer, but they had found that the heavy side armor of the battleships of this era had been able to survive hits at the water line. So it was decided to reprogram missiles to pop up and hit the superstructure, or simply strike from high above, where the thinner deck armor could easily be penetrated by the big 450kg warhead moving at the blistering speed of Mach three.

“Very well,” said Fedorov. “Mark your target and fire.”

* * *

Two
of three fighters on deck had been damaged by shrapnel hits from the missile strike that struck
Graf Zeppelin
near the bow. This had prompted Kapitan Böhmer to urge his flight engineers to get as many
Stukas
up on the deck as possible. He was determined to launch, even if it meant his planes would have to storm right through the smoke forward, blinded by the dark smoke now rolling right down the flight deck when he turned into the wind, and licked by flames as they took off over the bow. The British had done the very same thing with those fluttering moths of theirs. So he urged his crews and pilots on.

While Fedorov and Volsky had discussed how to proceed, sorting through the contradiction in German orders, the Germans got up a flight of six
Stukas
and had them all airborne.

And then it came…

It was the same as before when Böhmer saw it, a bright light ascending from the purple edge of the coming dawn, climbing, climbing. Then it arced over and began to fall, a fiery comet that seemed to grow larger and brighter with each passing second. Down it came, swift and silent, as it was moving three times faster than the roar of its own engines. The eerie silence of its coming was deceptive, and then it thundered down on his ship, plunging right through the armored deck amidships with a shattering explosion.

Graf Zeppelin
rocked with the blow, the orange fire erupting from the guts of the ship in a broiling mass. It was as if the carrier had been struck by a swift kamikaze, but one weighing over 4500 kilograms, and with a 450kg warhead. The rest was the great fuel laden mass of the rocket itself, which penetrated the deck, exploded with torrential fire and shock below, and plunged right through the maintenance deck where another twenty
Stukas
were still being armed. The explosion erupted from the machinery spaces below, and set off 500 pound bombs, one after another, in a terrible sequence of death and destruction. Planes and flight crews were immolated, bulkheads blown apart, fuel set fire in a raging inferno. The damage extended all the way down to one of the two propulsion shafts, severing it, and then the shock of the attack blew completely through the hull.

Graf Zeppelin
keeled over to one side as the hull was breached below the water line. But it was the raging inferno within that would consume the ship, the fires reaching one plane after another, the ordnance and aviation fuel feeding the conflagration. The ship was doomed. Germany’s first aircraft carrier, famous even though it never steamed on the high seas or saw combat in the war Fedorov knew, would not survive the hour.

High above, the six lucky
Stuka
pilots who bravely took off through the deck smoke, now saw the volcanic eruption below, and gasped at the fireball that now consumed the ship. The destroyer
Thor
, steaming off the port side, had to make an emergency turn away from the carrier to avoid the holocaust. Even so, the sides and superstructure of the smaller ship were lacerated with shrapnel.
Prinz Eugen
had fallen off to take up a position to the starboard side of the carrier when it turned after the initial missile strike. Now the men aboard the heavy cruiser gaped in awe at the scene unfolding.

The carrier was soon in a heavy list, still burning fiercely when it began to keel over, the hot fires hissing into the sea. All the remaining fighters and
Stukas
, and the elite pilots that had trained to fly them off the carrier, would die in those desperate, violent minutes, along with nearly 1,700 officers and crew of every rank.

There would be twenty two survivors.

Chapter 27

Numbers
…. Facts that Fedorov could call up from the library of his mind, or look up if he ever forgot them. Carrier
Graf Zeppelin
, 33,550 tons displacement, 262 meters in length, four geared turbines producing 200,000 shaft horsepower. Aircraft carried: 42. Ship’s Compliment: 1,720.

It had taken just one missile, angled at the right attack, and falling into what amounted to a readymade explosive mass of 500 pound bombs and volatile aviation fuel. The damage was violent, catastrophic and final, and this was a ship they would never have to face or fight again, thought Fedorov. The legend was gone—killed by me. All those lives… I’m responsible…

Admiral Volsky was watching him closely again, understanding what he was feeling. He knew that he could never reason away the emotion, and the heavy burden of having to kill. It was not even as if the ship itself were in any danger. They struck down their enemy before they even knew they were in harm’s way.

“It had to be done, Mister Fedorov,” said the Admiral.

“I understand, sir.”

“Yes,” said Volsky. “I know it was a hard blow to those men out there. Yet we must be prepared to do more here. This was a ship that was never even supposed to be at sea in this war.”

“Another interloper,” said Fedorov, “as we are, sir.”

“Very well,” Volsky nodded. “Now we must consider the battleships. There will be time enough later to think about what we have done here. At the moment, the enemy is approaching our horizon. One missile—one ship.” Volsky shook his head with as much amazement as he had regret.

“I’m afraid that the battleships may not die so easily,” said Fedorov. “When Tovey caught the
Bismarck
in our history with three British battleships,
Rodney
included, they put 2,878 rounds of all calibers into that ship, and
Bismarck
was still afloat. It took three more torpedoes, and some say deliberate scuttling, before the great ship went down.”

“Nothing is unsinkable,” said Volsky.

 “Yes sir, that we know all too well. Oh, we’ll hurt what we fire at, but it will take a good deal to sink these ships.”

“Then our intention will be to disable them, mission kill them, and leave the rest to the Royal Navy.”

“In that case, we may wish to program more of these high angle attack profiles. And I would also suggest we use the Vodopads”

“Torpedoes?” said Volsky. “I see. That was how we bested that big Japanese battleship.”

“Yes sir. Our missiles hurt the enemy, but have not really killed any battleship we engaged. Yet a torpedo hit, particularly one designed to break a ship’s back, or follow its wake to the rudder, is a very dangerous weapon, for any ship.”

“Agreed. We are in range of this same task group now. The Vodopads rocket assisted approach can take it out 120 kilometers. How many rounds do we have remaining on that system?” Admiral Volsky looked to Tasarov, who seemed lost beneath his headset, his eyes closed, listening very intently to something.

“Mister Tasarov?”

“I’m sorry sir…”

“An undersea contact?” Volsky moved to the young Lieutenant’s station now.

“No sir… I do not think so…”

Volsky took one look at Tasarov, and he could see that something was very wrong. The man looked like he had not slept in days, with dark circles under his eyes, and a haggard expression on his face.

“Mister Tasarov, when was the last time you took leave?”

“I was off during the night shift, sir. But I could not sleep.”

“Oh? Have you seen the Doctor?”

“No sir…. I’m not sick. It is just that I cannot shake off that sound.”

“Sound?”

Now Rodenko looked at Fedorov, and the two men shared a knowing glance. “He’s been trying to process a sound, Admiral,” he explained. “Tasarov reported it some time ago.”

“The same sound Dobrynin reported,” said Fedorov. “They both still hear something, but cannot seem to localize it, even though I disposed of that object Orlov found some hours ago.”

“You still hear this sound, Tasarov? You can hear it now?”

“Yes sir, very deep sound. I hear it with or without my system acoustics. I hear it even in my sleep.”

“I see…” Volsky could see the man needed some help. “Go and see the Doctor, whether you are sick or not. Tell him what you have told us here, and see if he can give you something to help you rest. Then after that, go to the officer’s mess and eat well. This is an order. Tell the Chef this comes directly from me, and he is to prepare any meal you request. Understood?”

“Yes sir… Thank you sir…” Tasarov saluted, and started to stand up, but his legs would simply not hold him. He collapsed.

Rodenko and Fedorov were quick to his side, and Fedorov told Nikolin to send for a stretcher team. “And get Velichko up here to take the sonar station.”

“Now I find myself hoping his ears are not as good as Tasarov’s,” said Volsky. “Yet that would do us very little good on sonar.”

“Velichko is competent, sir. We’ll be alright.”

“This is getting serious, Fedorov,” said Volsky. “It would be my guess that many others are in the same shape as Tasarov, or they may be soon if we do not solve this riddle. So this sound, whatever it may be, was not being caused by that thing Orlov had?”

“Apparently not. We are hours and miles away from the Peake Deep now. There is no way Tasarov could be hearing that sound if the object caused it.”

“Get Dobrynin on the intercom. See if he can still hear this noise.”

Nikolin put in the call, but soon reported that the Engineering Chief had also reported to sick bay that morning, and so they got Doctor Zolkin on the line.

“He’s sleeping now,”
said Zolkin.
“I had to give him a sedative. The same problem many others have reported. Some kind of sound that nobody seems to be able to describe. I cannot hear it, but they certainly perceive something.”

“Very well, Doctor. Carry on.”

Volsky folded his arms, clearly not happy to have these officers disabled and unfit for duty in the midst of combat. He realized again what a temperamental thing a ship could be at sea. At the moment, everything seemed in order, at least mechanically, and they had no reports of flux in the reactors, but these events, particularly Lenkov, had caused a great deal of alarm. He could feel it in himself, a rising sense of dread, as if some great danger was upon them, though he could not see what it was.

“Fedorov? Any thoughts?

“We can proceed with the torpedo launch as soon as Velichko arrives.”

“Not that—this sound. What is going on?”

Fedorov pinched the bridge of his nose. “I do not know sir, but it may be as I have explained it earlier—we simply do not belong here, and these effects may be related to the strange phasing events we’ve seen. I can speak of that with firsthand experience.” He smiled, looking at his right hand to be certain it was still there, then became serious again.

“Admiral,” he continued. “Up until now we have assumed that these effects were directed at us, coming to us like bad weather. Yet now I suggest another alternative—that
we
are the source. The ship itself may be causing these effects.”

“How so?”

“I can give you no technical explanation,” said Fedorov, “but we do have those two control rods aboard, and we know they contain material mined near Tunguska. They were also stored very near that thing Orlov found, and so one may have affected the other. This is all speculation, but if I am correct, then we could be having an effect on the space-time continuum. We are an entity capable of displacing in time, a slippery fish, as Director Kamenski might describe it. Everything else around us is native to this time, but we are not, and we are capable of moving… elsewhere.”

“That doesn’t sound very comforting,” said Volsky. “They may not make good Vodka elsewhere.”

Again the edge of a smile tugged at Fedorov’s lips, but the situation was too grave to take any solace from humor.

“Yet we are not the only slippery fish here,” said Volsky. “What about Gromyko on
Kazan
? What about the
Argos Fire
? We should contact them to see if they also report any odd effects.”

“Yes,” said Fedorov. “Why didn’t I think of that earlier? I’m sorry sir… This situation with  Lenkov…”

“We’ll have Nikolin put in the call,” said the Admiral. “But what does this mean, Fedorov? We are affecting space and time? Could this be why men in the future gave warning of our ship?”

“I have considered that, sir. We thought all this was accidental in the beginning, until we discovered what Rod-25 was doing. Then our own experience confirmed that we could initiate a time shift at will. Rod-25 was very consistent in selecting out this era when we moved. It did so even when we used it in the test reactor at Vladivostok, and aboard the floating reactor we used to find Orlov.”

“And with
Kazan
,” said Volsky. “Yet Dobrynin’s skill was required to manage that. Those ears of his were needed to control everything. With our Chief Engineer disabled, and now Tasarov, this situation is becoming serious. I have considered what you fear may happen come July. Could these be foreshocks to that event?”

“Possibly,” said Fedorov. “Time knows we cannot remain here if that other ship must arrive. Yet I suppose that all depends on what is really happening, on what time really is.”

“I don’t understand.”

“Neither do I, Admiral. Kamenski said time may not be what we think it is, and that got me wondering in light of all these odd occurrences.”

“Well, did the man explain himself? If he knows something more, then we should hear it. And this business concerning these keys is very shady. You say he has such a key, and we also have those two other control rods aboard. So we have not taken out all the trash, Fedorov. These things may be responsible for what we have been experiencing.”