Nemesis (11 page)

The
silence was distended, a long interval where each man seemed to be waiting for
another to speak. Then Fedorov said it, knowing he was opening himself to an
attack upon his sanity by a Captain who now seemed very eager to skewer him as
a traitorous agent, surreptitiously working for the enemy.

Yet the
truth will out, he thought, and I must speak it. “Sir, if the moon is wrong,
then the time is wrong with it. I can only conclude that this is not the time
and day we believe it is. This is not the second morning of August, 2021.”

As much
as he was accustomed to the date and time changing with every plunge of Rod-25
into the ship’s reactors, Fedorov knew it was still a heady thing to say to
these men now. Karpov just blinked, obviously unhappy to hear Fedorov spin out
the same yarn as he had before, only this time things were different. This time
Volsky was sitting there presenting the evidence, a bemused expression on his
face.

“Yes,”
said the Admiral. “And Mister Fedorov tells me that he can back check the
physical observation data to obtain the date corresponding to these conditions.
Correct?”

“Yes
sir. If I am correct, we can verify my calculation at a little after 18:30 this
evening. The moon will rise some time after that, depending on our position at
that time, even though it should be there now, and up all day. And at that
time, I predict we will see a waxing gibbous moon, just as it was yesterday.”

“And if
our calendar is wrong, then what day do you calculate for these sun and moon
conditions?”

“The
second day of August, in the year 1941.”

Another
moment of silence, and then the inevitable scorn from Karpov. “Preposterous,”
he said, spitting out the word. “A clever way to dodge what is really going on
here, Fedorov—your complicity in some kind of elaborate deception being staged
by our enemies. 1941? This is the same slop you dumped on my plate earlier, and
I have no appetite for it.”

Yet the
silence from both Volsky and Zolkin was very telling. It was abundantly clear,
and slowly dawned on Karpov, that both men were seeing this sun and moon
business as weighing very heavily.

“1941,”
said Volsky. “Just like all the radio broadcasts Nikolin has been monitoring.
Yes, they all claim that is today’s date.”

“That
can be staged easily enough,” said Karpov.

“Every
station? Iceland, London, he’s even pulled in broadcasts from the United
States, and they are all in agreement with Fedorov’s conclusion. Yes, it is an
impossible conclusion, I know this very well. You have every right to be
dismissive of such a claim, Captain. Yet, as I concluded here with Doctor
Zolkin, the sun and moon do not lie, even if you believe Fedorov is duplicitous
here. I, for one, cannot conclude that he is some kind of agent or spy working
with our enemies to undermine us. He has done nothing more than to use his
eyes, his training, and common sense to come to this conclusion, as astounding
as it may seem. That said, I have a quiet suspicion of my own, Mister Fedorov.
Something tells me that you may know more about what is happening here than you
have already said. Whatever it is, for your sake, and the sake of this ship and
crew, I want to hear it. Right now.”

Into
the fire, thought Fedorov, and he took a deep breath.

At
that moment, another alarm sounded for Air Alert One. The
contact Rodenko had been tracking had obviously persisted in its approach, and
Karpov’s eyes flashed as he looked up, almost as if he was trying to peer
through the ceiling to the bridge above.

“That
will be that air contact approaching 50 kilometers. I ordered Rodenko to sound
the alert in that event.”

Volsky
took a heavy breath. “Very well, then I suggest you get to the bridge, Captain.
I authorize you to take any action you deem necessary to protect the ship, but
consider well. We are already headed for what may be a very stern rebuke and
investigation at Severomorsk. If this is a civilian aircraft….” He did not have
to elaborate on that, and Karpov nodded.

“Sir, I
believe we may still have time to get the KA-226 up for a look. It’s fast
enough to get out there, but I would need it to launch immediately. May I use
the intercom?”

“Do so.
Identify that contact by any means possible.”

The
Captain reached quickly for the handset, and Fedorov passed a brief moment,
recalling how he had seen the exterior cable running to that unit cut above the
outer hatch when Karpov had tried to seal the Admiral in and take the ship. It
was a most unnerving feeling to know this man before him had that darkness
within him, yet, at the moment, the Captain did not yet believe the assertion
that the ship was not in its proper time. He was much more dangerous after he accepted
that fact, and now the urgency of the moment had him fully focused on this
threat to the ship. He knew what was coming next. What would inevitably happen
when Karpov reached the bridge?

“Helo
deck, helo deck. This is an emergency launch order! Get the KA-226 up at once,
and proceed to identify incoming airborne contact. This is the Captain.”

“Helo
deck. Aye sir, acknowledged. KA-226 is on ready alert and launching now.”

Back
on the fantail, the man at the other end of that intercom was rotating a finger
in the air, and the props of the sleep KA-226 began to turn, the engine revving
up quickly for a fast launch and climb.

“Let me
know the moment you learn anything,” said Volsky

Karpov
set the handset back in its cradle, adjusting the fit of his officer’s cap with
a firm hand. “Very good sir. If you’ll excuse me. I’m needed on the bridge.”
With a nod from the Admiral he was out the hatch and gone, his footsteps fast
and hard, echoing in the corridor as he went.

The
Admiral glanced at Doctor Zolkin, but then regarded Fedorov with a steady,
considering look. “Alright… Let me hear it. What more have you to say, Mister
Fedorov?”

Into
the fire… The ship was most likely minutes from making its first intervention
in this new time loop. Yet how to explain this to the Admiral without sounding
like a complete lunatic, or worse. The eyes of Zolkin were on him, watching,
waiting, yet he saw no judgment there, at least not yet.

“Sir,”
he began heavily. “As you correctly concluded, the sun and moon do not lie, nor
can I as it comes to this moment. Yet what I am about to say now will sound…
somewhat fantastic, certainly unbelievable, as this whole situation may seem to
you now—but it does not seem that way to me, because I have lived it all
through once before.”

“I
don’t understand,” said Volsky. “Lived it all through?”

Zolkin
inclined his head and spoke now. “Do you mean to say that you are experiencing
these events as though they had happened once before? Do you have a sensation
of
déjà vu?”

“I
would like to say that was the whole of it,” said Fedorov. “A simple mental
state of disorientation or memory disturbance would be a most welcome diagnosis
for me, Doctor, but I cannot agree that is what is happening. What I am saying
to you now is that these events have already happened once—the live fire
exercises, the accident with
Orel
, the strange effects in the sea and
sky, and
Slava
missing afterwards. I have lived through them all, though
now, with that odd recall order we received, things are playing out
differently.”

“You
mean to say you actually believe this?” said Volsky.

“I do,
sir, as crazy as that makes me sound. But I assure you—this is not a mental
condition, not an incidence of
déjà vu
, and it has nothing whatsoever to
do with that fall I took.”

“That
has yet to be determined, Mister Fedorov,” said Zolkin. “You could have more of
an injury than we believed. Effects of concussion can be very subtle, and not
immediately apparent. Have you experienced any headache?”

“No
sir, I am fine.”

“Yes?
Well, memory dysfunction, amnesia, and situational confusion can all result
from a good knock on the head. Have you experienced any other symptoms—trouble
sleeping, problems with speech, ringing in the ears, any further dizziness?”

“No
sir. This is not about my physical or mental condition, as much as you might
wish to believe that. It is about the incontrovertible fact that our sun and
moon data is simply not correct, and the inevitable conclusion we must draw if
that is so. I know this to be true, because it did, indeed, happen once before,
and all of this is a recurrence of those events. The story is a long one, but
if you will hear me out, I will try to explain.”

Zolkin
did not seem entirely open to this now, preferring to believe there was some
underlying medical condition behind what Fedorov was saying, but Volsky decided
the matter, raising a hand quietly. “Go on, Mister Fedorov. Explain yourself.”

“Sir…
This ship has displaced in time. The radio transmissions Nikolin has been
receiving are not a psychological deception staged by NATO, as Karpov would
wish to believe, they are, in actual fact, the current news broadcasts for this
day and time—August 2, 1941. There was an accident aboard
Orel
, and we
believed that one of her special warheads was mounted incorrectly during a
drill, and detonated. At least this is what we decided must have happened. That
detonation had an effect on space and time, and we were displaced to the past.”

“You
are telling us the entire ship just went through a time warp?” Zolkin’s heavy
brows raised to underscore his disbelief. “Blown 80 years into the past? Have
you been reading science fiction along with your history? How could something
like this have happened?”

“The
detonation, that was part of it,” said Fedorov. “Our propulsion system,
particularly a certain control rod used by Chief Dobrynin in a routine
maintenance procedure, was also involved. It has… unusual properties. We did
not determine this for some time, and not until we had caused a good deal of
damage to things here. The Captain has just gone off to the bridge. Well, when
we were here last, that encounter we had the other day with those British
cruisers did not play out so well. We were investigating the MET station at Jan
Mayen, and had contacts to our south. As it turned out, the contact was a
British naval task force under Admiral Wake-Walker. They launched a plane to
investigate us, and you allowed it to overfly the ship, sir. Now we have a
similar incident here, but I do not think Captain Karpov will be so gracious.
That airborne contact is most likely a German reconnaissance plane out of
Tromso, and if it is 50 kilometers out, it should reach us in about 15
minutes.”

“A
German plane…” Volsky nodded. “You mean to say this is an aircraft from the
Second World War? Still in service?”

“Yes
sir. That is where we are now, in 1941. It might be a Henschel-126, but it is
most likely a Dornier-18, or possibly a bigger Focke-Wulf 200
Condor
.
The former is a seaplane, sir, a flying boat, and I think this more likely.
They would use their
Condors
for much longer range sorties, and the
Dornier would patrol in close like this.”

“I see…
Anything more?”

That
sounded as though the verdict was near in Volsky’s mind, and Fedorov knew he
had not convinced these men of anything other than the fact that he might be
deluded by his own love of history. How could he get through to them with the
truth?

“Sir…
There will be no investigation at Severomorsk, because the base has only just
been established there. The MET station is missing on Jan Mayen, because it has
not yet been built. I know this because it happened once before, and I lived
through it. We all did. Why I’m the only man aboard who seems to remember
anything, I cannot say, but I
do
remember. The encounter with the
British became more serious when we ran into one of their destroyers off Jan
Mayen. An engagement was unavoidable, and that started a lengthy pursuit by the
British task force. We elected to transit the Denmark strait, and they
naturally assumed we were a German raider and acted accordingly.”

“There
was no recall order to Severomorsk?”

“No
sir. Once we completed the investigation of Jan Mayen, enough evidence had
accumulated to convince us of what had happened. The plane that overflew us was
a Fairy Fulmar, and I was able to identify it when it did so. Yet only one such
plane still existed in our day, and in a British museum. In like manner, the
encounter with that British destroyer was most convincing, along with the HD
video feeds we collected of Wake-Walker’s task force. I could clearly identify
the aircraft carriers
Furious
and
Victorious
, just as I was able
to identify those two
County
class cruisers here.”

“Fedorov…”
said Zolkin with a sigh. “Why is it that no one else has any memories of these
events? The Admiral here certainly has no recollection of anything you are
saying, nor do I. Have you thought about that?”

“I
don’t know… But I do remember, Doctor. I remember everything we did when this
first happened to us.”

“Then
this is why you were in engineering?” asked Volsky. “You wanted to see if
Dobrynin was using this control rod you spoke of?”

“Yes
sir. He runs a rod inspection procedure every 12 days, and he had completed
this just before the accident on
Orel
. The spare control rod inserted at
that time, Rod-25, was somehow catalyzed by the detonation, and together they
caused this ship to move in time. We did not know this at first. Chief Dobrynin
detected some odd flux in his reactors, but that was all. Then, twelve days
after we appeared here, he ran the maintenance procedure again, and we moved.”

“Moved?”

“In
time, sir. We shifted again, but unfortunately, the damage was done by then.
This incident where you suffered vertigo occurred somewhat later in that go
round, and the Captain had full control of the ship. When he realized what had
happened to us, he saw this as an opportunity to attempt to alter our future
history, and he intervened, taking a very hard line against the British.”

“In
what way?”

“He
attacked them, sir. The Royal Navy is very efficient, and believing we were a
German raider, they began to muster their considerable resources to intercept
us. Karpov would have none of that. He engaged any ship that presented a
possible threat, but he had a deeper motive.”

“What
do you mean?”

“Sir…
As this was the first time these events occurred, the history we found ourselves
in was completely intact. Churchill was at sea, bound for the meeting with
Roosevelt at Argentia Bay. The Atlantic Charter resulted from that meeting, and
Karpov believed that was the founding document that NATO was eventually built
upon. He seemed determined to intervene, for Russia’s sake, as he argued it,
and when threatened by increasingly substantial forces deployed by both the
Americans and British, he resorted to extreme measures—a special warhead.”

“You
say he used a nuclear weapon?”

“Yes
sir—against the Americans this time. They were relieving the British garrison
on Iceland, transferring men and aircraft there on one of their carriers, which
Karpov attacked and sunk, over my objection. He would not listen to me, sir,
and had me relieved. The Americans reacted predictably, mustering a strong task
force to come after us, and this he destroyed with a special warhead. That
detonation occurred on the twelfth day, the same day Chief Dobrynin ran his
scheduled maintenance procedure. Just as it happened with
Orel
, the ship
was again displaced in time.”

“Where
to this time Fedorov?” asked Zolkin. “World War One? Let me guess, you’ve been
doing a little reading on that war too.” The Doctor was having a very hard time
swallowing any of this, and Fedorov could see that he was beginning to sound
like a blathering idiot here, a man so caught up with his love of history that
he was projecting it on the cold reality of these events.

“I know
what this sounds like, Doctor, but it is exactly what happened. It is a very
long story, but we eventually found ourselves in June of 1940, where we
remained until mid year, 1941. It was May, and then something happened to the
ship again, and we shifted. We could not determine where we were, and the ship and
crew were in danger, so we decided to try and use the control rod procedure one
last time to see if we could avoid complications. The next thing I know, I was
on the bridge, here on the ship as always, only I was startled to find
something had changed.”