Kirov III: Pacific Storm

“Hull number? What, Tasarov? What boat is it?”

“Boat 722, sir. Los Angeles class American attack sub.”

“My God, said Volsky. Los Angeles class? Then this can’t be 1942. We have moved forward again, back into the world this ship once knew, and it has just remembered a long lost friend.”

“Or an old enemy,” said Karpov darkly, his hand still poised near the firing button, hovering over the switch, shaking with the realization of what he was just about to do, what he might yet have to do if this boat was hostile. But his mind was working now, the well honed tactical sense in his head telling him that the sub must have acquired them long ago when their systems were still dark, and it had crept up on them in a silent, stealthy watch that was all too typical of the old cold war days. It could have easily fired and killed them in those long, dark hours, and yet it did not.

Fedorov was at his station with a book, his hands a blur as he flipped pages to look up the reference. His eyes were wide as he looked at the line he had thumbed: Boat 722, Los Angles Class Attack submarine. USS Key West out of Naval Forces Marianas. Home Port: Apra Harbor, Guam.

With a sudden energy he leaned over Tovarich, shoving navigation charts aside to get at something he had stored in a drawer at that station. It was the newspaper the Marines had brought back from those abandoned bungalows on Malus Island. He had it, rushing to the CIC, his face alive and excited.

“Key West!” he said. “Look! That’s the boat mentioned right here in this article. Nikolin, get over here! Translate this again.”

Nikolin, eased away from his radio, still struggling to tune in a distant, undulating signal, and then took the newspaper again, looking to the lines where Fedorov was pointing.

“The attack followed the controversial sinking of the sole Chinese aircraft carrier Liaoning on September 7th—”

“No,” Fedorov pointed. “Farther down… Here!”

“Alright…Analysts believe the attack may have been a reprisal for the sinking of the American attack submarine USS Key West by a Russian cruiser on August 28th in the Pacific, as well as a warning to the Chinese not to press their demands for full integration of Taiwan—”

“USS Key West! The sinking of that boat by a Russian cruiser in the Pacific was the trigger point that set the war off. Look at the chronometer—this is August 28th! And by God, if this isn’t a Russian cruiser, then I’m a donkey.” He smiled broadly, his astonishment giving way to relief.

“You mean to say…” Volsky raised a finger, equally surprised.

“Yes! It has to be. Later in that same article I remembered they said something about a Russian ship lost in the Arctic Sea. We were so busy I forgot about it. Look for that, Nikolin.”

“Here it is, sir.” Nikolin read again. “Tensions between SinoPac and the West have been high since the loss of a Russian ship in the Arctic Sea in July and several incidents involving both Russian and British planes in the waters around Iceland.”

“Why didn’t we see it before? A Russian ship lost in the Arctic Sea… in July of 2021. That was us, sir. That was Kirov! Our live fire exercises were scheduled for July 28. Then boom. We find ourselves back in 1941, eighty years in the past on that very same day. We thought Orel exploded, and that Slava was sunk as well. But don’t you see? From their point of view it was Kirov that vanished—vanished just as we have been pulling that same damn disappearing act every time Dobrynin ran his maintenance routine on the reactors! And we end up here, exactly one month later in our time.”

“And we start the war…” Admiral Volsky’s face was grave and sad, realizing that it had been Kirov all along. His ship, his crew, his weapons of war.

Karpov’s hand slowly eased away from the weapons firing switch, and it was shaking. His face had a look of pain and agony on it now, eyes wide and glazed over with tears, cheeks taut.

“Then I did it….” He struggled to control his breath now. “I was going to do it again, just this very second! I was going to blow that submarine to hell without a second thought. I did it! The war, those burned out cities all over the world, the whole damn thing!”

Volsky’s face reflected the Captain’s pain and distress, and he stepped forward, his big arms taking Karpov’s shoulders, drawing the other man closer. “No, Karpov,” he said quietly, softly, as a father might comfort his own child. “We did it. This ship; this crew. You have no idea who may have given the order. For all you know you could have been sleeping in your bunk and it may have been my fat finger on the trigger, or Fedorov’s order. You can’t take this on yourself. We are all equally responsible.” He released the Captain, and Karpov struggled to compose himself.

Yet even as he did so he knew Volsky was wrong. It was him. He did it—in some other iteration of this same terrible journey they had all been on. Or perhaps he was set to do it, set like a coiled spring given the man he was back then, where a merciless and callous reflex for battle still dominated his mind; set like a clock about to jar the world awake to the terror and destruction of yet another world war. In some other life and time he had fired that nuclear warhead at the Americans without a moment’s hesitation or regret. He had fired it with anger, and yes, with hatred too. When it came to war he had been a man without scruples, whether it was the petty infighting in the chain of command or the grander sweep of battle at sea. He did what they had to do, what they must do, what a man like Sanji Iwabuchi would have done to them all if he had ever been given the chance to really get his cruiser in position to ram the ship.

But something had grown up around that twisted root of violence in his mind, even while he commanded the ship in battle. He fought for another reason now, to protect his ship and crew and no longer with the ruthlessness that had driven him in the past. And that thing, that flower that had bloomed on the vine of death and war in his soul, had been the one saving grace that had enabled him to stay his hand this time—and it saved the world.

He saw the eyes of the bridge crew on him, but there was no reproach in them, no hint of blame or recrimination. All he saw on the faces of the others was relief and understanding, a quiet sympathy and a silent awareness that they had finally come to the end of the terrible mystery and nightmare that had haunted them all these many months. Fedorov, God bless him. Fedorov had always been a guardian angel too, yet not so quick to the flashing sword of battle; restrained, thinking, feeling. Fedorov had been a real man, and now Karpov finally had the hope that he was going to be one as well.

He saw the young officer smiling at him now, and a surge of relief flooded through him. It was as if he had just set down a burden he had carried all his life, so alone, even as he walked through the crowded ranks of the ship, shunned by the men, never spoken to, always at the cold edge of any group that may have gathered and hiding behind his Captain’s stripe. Now he saw the one thing he had always yearned for in the eyes of the men, comfort, understanding, acceptance, and yes, even admiration. They were his brothers now. They were all his brothers.

He knew, deep down, that as he fought these last weeks it had not been to strike a blow for Mother Russia, or to even the score of history, wrong perceived injustice in the wayward course of events. No, he had fought for Kirov, for the ship, for these men around him, and the crew struggling on below decks in surely the most impossible situation any sailors at sea had ever faced. He had fought for his brothers in arms.

“Yes,” Fedorov explained, still excited by his discovery. “We did it, or rather we were going to do it just now. But I think that has all changed. We may have done it once before, and we have seen the result, but perhaps that was in some other life, some other universe, some other time. We may have done it a hundred times for all we know. Yes, we did it. The ship vanished on July 28, 2021, and then appeared here in the Pacific one month later, the Russian cruiser that killed Key West and started the holocaust. But something sent us sailing through time and the fire and madness of war so we could have this one second—this one brief chance to ask a question before we fired our weapon this time. Here we are, battered, lost and right in the curious sights of an American Los Angeles class submarine—boat 722, the Key West. And with reflexes honed sharp by a thousand hours at battle stations these last months, we killed it. Then everything went to hell. But not this time. Not this time!”

He smiled. “Don’t you understand? We’re home! This is the year 2021 again, but the war hasn’t started. It doesn’t have to start now. We can avoid the future we’ve already seen. We’re home!”

Volsky remembered how they had all felt that first time they shifted away from the past and into that bleak