Three Kings (Kirov Series) (35 page)

“And how do we do that?”

“I think we’ve already done it.”

The Captain shook his head, like
a boxer shaking off a hard punch, and then he turned and stared at the box on
the desk by the red phone.

“That?” he pointed at the box,
saying nothing more.

“Yes,” said Elena, “That box is
from the future too. At least that is what I now believe. Apparently we
received more than messages from that distant time—sorry Mack, you haven’t
heard any of this, but you may as well know now.”

She told him the same impossible
story that she had revealed to Gordon the previous evening, all about the secret
group that had been established by the Royal Navy, secret even from the British
government itself. She told him how they had begun to receive strange signal
transmissions, video feeds of events that seemed to make no sense—until they
happened four days later. They had seen the horrific attack on the World Trade
Center, in pixel perfect video that replicated the entire event, but four days
before it happened! They had been send a list of the closing price of every
stock on the Dow three days before the big crash, and it was accurate to the
decimal point. That got their attention. Someone was trying to communicate with
them from the future, trying to warn them of a great, impending doom, and it
all had something to do with that Russian ship, the battlecruiser
Kirov
.

Morgan stood there, a stunned
look on his face, and Captain MacRae clasped his shoulder. “You look as though
you’ve seen a ghost,” he said. “Just as I did when I was told this last evening.
At least I had a good stiff gin at hand when I got the news.”

“You mean to say…”

“Yes, it’s all true,” said Elena.
“It sounds impossible but it’s been known for some time, really, since 1942
when British intelligence finally figured out that a strange ship they had been
calling
Geronimo
was actually not from their own time, but the future.
That’s when the Watch was set, a group of highly placed men in the Royal Navy
who set a watch on history itself. You see, that Russian battlecruiser
appeared, raised hell for a time, and then simply vanished. The Watch was
established to wait for its next appearance, a dozen sheep dogs waiting for the
wolf to return. It was started by a very famous British Admiral, the man
commanding Home Fleet at the time, John Tovey. It also had a man inside
Bletchley Park, Mack, someone you’ve long admired, Alan Turing.”

“Turing? He knew about all of
this?”

“He was the one who figured out
the Russian ship had to be from the future.”

“But you’re saying
tha
’ box there is from the future as well?” Gordon pointed
again.

“I believe so. It must contain a
fragment from the Tunguska event—sorry, that’s a part of the story I haven’t
told you about, but we eventually sorted it out. You all know of that event.”

“The big explosion in 1908?” Morgan
had heard of it.

“Exactly. Well it wasn’t just
nuclear detonations that seemed to fragment time, but any massive explosion
could do the same now that the china has been cracked. This is what we’ve
learned.”

“But there have been massive
explosions all through history. Are you telling me they’ve all affected time?”

“No, just the one’s after 1908.
The Tunguska incident was different from any other similar event in the earth’s
history. We don’t know why yet, or even what actually happened that day, but whatever
it was had a profound effect on time, and like the first crack in a piece of
pottery, the whole thing is unstable now. Time has a crack in it, and now any
big explosive event seems to be compounding the damage. Beyond that, the event
left remnants of a strange element that seems to cut time like a diamond. We’ve
found a very few samples, and learned that they can be activated or catalyzed
by any nuclear detonation, or other means. Something about the proximity of
this element to nuclear fission creates some most alarming effects. We aren’t
really sure, but we think the Russians were using it in the control rods of the
nuclear reactors aboard that battlecruiser—
Kirov
. It took a good long
time for us to discover that, but we put the clues together with skills you
would be privy too Mack, good intelligence work.”

“Then there’s a piece of that
thing from Tunguska right here,” said Gordon, “in that bloody box?”

“Correct. It was sent to us… from
the future. Tunguska had more profound effects than anyone realizes. Whatever
it was that exploded over Siberia that day fragmented spacetime itself, created
cracks, fissures, like a stone breaking glass. Stumble upon one of those cracks
and you can move right through time. We’ve found quite a few over the last eighty
years, and taken great pains to conceal and secure them. In fact, those we have
found are behind lock and key.” She reached for her own key now, dangling it to
make the point.

“I thought our little foray to
Delphi was going to be a farewell journey through one of those fissures in
time, but finding that box was the real surprise for me.”

“Well how did you come by that
damn key?” Morgan wondered, somewhat pointedly.

“Because I’m a Keyholder,” said
Elena. “I was a member of that secret organization—the Watch started by Admiral
John Tovey.” She smiled, telling him how she had been recruited seven years
earlier. Then she revealed those final lines in the scroll that had been hidden
within the box.

“See those numbers?” she pointed
them out. “That’s a date line for our intended destination. If our systems
recover as they should, we will soon pick up transmissions indicating we are in
the year 1941.”

“Date line?”

“Tunguska fragments have a
propensity to cut time and fall through to a specific date. In this case that
would be January 30, in the year 1941.”

“1941?” Mack Morgan was shaken by
the news. Then we’ve slipped through one of these cracks as well? The whole
bloody ship? Because of something in that box there?”

“That’s about the size of it,”
said Elena.

“Well, what in God’s name are we
suppose to do here?” Morgan folded his arms. MacRae was also waiting.

“Live, gentlemen,” Elena said
with finality. “Live… Because if we had stayed where we were it would have been
the end for us, as the whole damn world goes to hell in 2021. Our friends from
the future told us that too

“The war?”

“That and more, this radical
change I’ve been talking about. No time to explain it all now, but the simple
fact is this. If we had stayed this ship would probably be destroyed by now,
and we’d all be dead. But we’ve moved—in the nick of time—and we’re here. This
is our watch now, my watch, and this may shock you, but we’re here to stay.”

“What? You mean we can’t get
back?”

“No, I’m afraid we have a one way
ticket this time, Mack.”

“We’re stuck in 1941, just like
that bloody Russian ship? Is that why we’ve been sent? Are we supposed to find
the Russians and deal with them?”

“Possibly. We’re here for good
now. This is our life, but this ship still remains true to its service as a
proud member of the Royal Navy.”

“Royal Navy? I thought
Argos
Fire
sailed for Fairchild Incorporated.”

“So you did, and that was a
convenient thing for other people to think as well. Do you think the British
government would so easily sign off on a
Daring
class destroyer just
because I asked them nicely and had the money to pay for one?”

Now Morgan gave her a wry smile.
“Clever girl,” he said slowly. “You say you are a member of this Watch, started
by Tovey during the war, and the
Argos Fire
has been registered in the
Royal Navy Fleet all this time. Well some intelligence master I am. You’ve kept
that secret well.”

“That we have. Now that we’re
here we’ve got to have our wits about us. This is World War Two. There’s
fighting in Greece and the British are at it in North Africa. So we sail for
Heraklion
as planned, and get to safe waters under British
control. We may have to be discreet in the short run, and we’ll need time to
break this news to the ship’s crew. Their lives are all replanted here as well,
and we owe them the same explanation I have just given you. Once we get the
ship’s systems sorted out, which should be a matter of hours, we’ll try to make
contact with Admiral Tovey as soon as possible.”

“Tovey? What? And just announce
ourselves as fresh off the tube from 2021?”

“Something like that. You see, I
neglected to mention the man who signed off on that farewell note I read you
from the box.” She showed them the paper now, and there was the name in large,
bold letters: ADM JOHN TOVEY.

Elena smiled. “A box from the
future, a voice from the past, and here we are in the present moment, with a
new lease on life, and a new mission, gentlemen. But I certainly hope Admiral
Tovey and Alan Turing have sorted through this
Geronimo
business by now,
because we’re about to deliver a new warship to the service of the Royal Navy,
and it may come as quite a surprise.”

Chapter 30

Everything
Elena told him
was confirmed within the hour. Mack Morgan huddled in his secure comm-link
room, where data feeds from all his intelligence sources would come in,
including the “Black Line,” which was no longer operational. In fact, most of
his feeds, taps on satellite transmissions, were now gone. He had some
intermittent Morse code in the local area, and some other transmissions that
would not resolve through the normal Morse decoder, so he put his decryption
team on them with the considerable resources of the ship’s computers. Beyond
this, there was traffic on normal radio bands, AM, FM, and shortwave, but
nothing in the HF or ultra low frequencies that would be used by modern
military or government sources. All that traffic was as dead as his Black Line.
The world he had once been so connected to was gone.

What he did hear was all typical
AM broadcast news at the outset, and he thought he was listening in on a
documentary. The Germans were in the Balkans, and Greece was under attack. He
checked on some facts and found it easy to isolate the probable year of this
news to early 1941. Nailing down the exact month and day was not as easy, until
he caught a BBC transmission that confirmed everything Ms. Fairchild had told
them.

It was true, impossibly true, and
here they were in January of 1941! There were some odd stories in the stream
that he could not quite get a handle on. From what he could gather there was
fighting in the Caucasus, but a quick fact check told him that should not be
happening until July of 1942. The startling thing was that it seemed to be a
battle between two Russian factions, and he caught news of the Orenburg Federation
and the siege of Novorossiysk that made no sense to him. There was also
fighting on Malta, and he knew enough about the old war to realize there should
not be fighting there at all, except the air duel that made the place one of
the most heavily bombed pieces of real estate in the war.

Confused and frustrated, he took
the information to the Captain first, and the two men were discussing it in the
ready room off the Bridge.

“It doesn’t make any sense.
What’s this Orenburg Federation?”

“Beats me, Mack. And you’re
correct about that report of fighting on Malta. That never happened.”

“Yeah? Well I looked a few things
up. The Germans are in Greece, but that wasn’t supposed to happen until April
of ’41. In North Africa the British were supposed to have taken
Derna
in Libya on their first offensive of the war against
the Italians, but it’s the other way around! They just retreated from the
place, and guess who’s nipping at their heels—Rommel. He wasn’t suppose to set
foot in Libya for another two weeks, arriving with his 5th Light Division and a
Valentine on the 14th of February, but he’s already closing in on Tobruk.
Things are all out of whack, Gordon. If this is 1941 then someone has shuffled
the deck here, and we’re not being dealt a fair hand.”

It was then that there came a
knock on the door, and Executive Officer Dean was there, a look of concern on
his face. “Excuse me, gentlemen,” he said still using the more relaxed
protocols of civility, as the ship had always been a corporate HQ. “It seems we
have an AEW warning light.”

“Air alert?” That got Captain
MacRae’s attention immediately.

“Yes sir, Mister Haley says it
looks to be a flight of five aircraft, relatively slow, and coming from the
vicinity of Athens to our northwest.” They had been cruising for
Heraklion
on Crete, and were now passing the second in a
string of five Greek Islands off their starboard side,
Kythnos
.
Athens was a little over 100 kilometers to the northwest.”

“Well stand to, Mister Dean! The
next time you get such a warning the ship is to come to full alert, with all
battle stations manned. Understood?”

“Aye sir. Sorry sir.”

“Consider this ship to be on a
wartime footing from this moment forward,” MacRae reinforced his order. “Come
on, Mack. Let’s see what we have.”

They were soon out with the
bridge crew, who had the news of what happened but were understandably confused
by it all. They had been facing the difficult prospect of surviving a war in
2021, now they were right in a new kettle, and having difficulty getting their
minds around the news they had been given.

“Listen up!” MacRae thought he
had better get the crew focused again. “Enough chit chat over what’s happened
to us. We’re here, and it’s bloody well 1941. That’s the fact of it, and one
we’re going to be living with for some time. And if any of you still remember
your history books, there’s a war on here as well, and a damn nasty one. So
buck up! This is a war zone, and from this moment forward this is a ship of
war, and in the service of the Royal Navy. We may still be wearing our dress
whites, but the gloves are comin’ off, ladies and gentlemen. Now… What do we
have, Mister Haley?”