John Schettler - Grand Alliance

Tyrenkov’s security men stepped out of the woods, brandishing submachine guns, and he made the sign of the cross, thinking the only thing that made any sense to his startled mind at that moment. It was the bloody Germans! That thing on the downs looked like one of their massive airships, and the invasion everyone had been worried about was finally on-but not the invasion that had been expected in 1940 or 1941. No. The date on the newspaper found in his delivery basket would say something quite different.

Soon Karpov would have another real mystery to sort out, and very little evidence to come to any real conclusion, except for the absence of one prominent thing in the sky. The date on that newspaper was very odd, and the fat gibbous moon that had grinned at them as they taunted the storm over the North Sea was gone. In its place, rising that very moment, was a thin morning crescent, almost entirely dark!

Karpov looked at it, the conjunction of too many ominous signs now stacking up in his mind in one sudden moment. The strange rippling fire in the ship… luminescent, green and violet light… the sudden disappearance of the rain and the warmer temperatures that they would not expect in February at this latitude. Then the radio calls that went without an answer became more significant, the scratch of Morse code in their place. The missing airfield… and now this…

He stared down at the newspaper Tyrenkov had handed him and read the headline: “Scareships over East Anglia for a second night — Constables on the Watch!” It was Dated May 18, 1909…

How could this have happened, thought Karpov. How was it possible? There was no detonation, no explosive volcano, and no Rod-25, but there had been that massive storm they challenged, and the strange energy that had flowed through the skeleton of the ship was most unnerving. Beyond all that, he could feel that something was badly off its kilter. He had shifted in time too often now, and he knew the feeling, the odd discomfiture and disorientation, and the sudden inner sense that his life and being had been profoundly moved. He was somewhere else, not in space, but in time. How it had happened did not really matter. If it proved to be the case, then…

His mind now whirled with a thousand thoughts mushrooming up just as that storm had hours ago. They shook the outer canvass of his soul and rippled along the cold duralumin beams of his brain. We’ve moved! By god in his heaven, the whole ship has moved!

Now he had a sudden realization, and a heady feeling that was almost exhilarating. It was the same feeling he had when he realized that Demon of a volcano had blasted Kirov into another century, to the year 1908. He had managed to stay there only a few brief days, but in that time he had hatched a plan to reset the entire power structure of the Pacific. He could do this because he had a ship unlike any other in the world, with power unlike any other man alive.

Now he looked over his shoulder at the looming hulk of Tunguska — an airship unlike any other in 1909. There it sat, bristling with recoilless rifles, racks of incendiary and high explosive bombs, makeshift rockets in the nose and the makings of his thermobaric bomb aboard as well. Britain’s first powered heavier than air flight had only been achieved a few months ago, by Samuel Franklin Cody on 16 October 1908. There were a few airships in the world, but they could barely navigate a distance of 700 kilometers or reach altitudes above 4000 feet. In fact, the British had only one or two, and the Germans only three. If the date on that newspaper is accurate, he was a demigod again, not merely a man desperately trying to earn the respect and attention of others greater than himself. He was invincible.

I’m here, he thought, and for a reason too. Time keeps sending me back. Then he suddenly realized that Ivan Volkov was here as well, but that he was just a very young man in the Russian Naval Intelligence, somewhere in Siberia… perhaps still somewhere near Ilanskiy…

And that place was there as well, wasn’t it? That little railway inn was just sitting there, and so was that damn back stairway! He suddenly realized what he could do, his eyes widening with astonishment and a heady sense of thrilling energy. He felt as big as the airship, as big as Tunguska, bigger than all of Siberia, better than them all.

“Captain Bogrov!” Karpov shouted to his men. “Can the ship make way?”

“Sir? We’ve nearly finished repairs on that aft engine. It was not as serious as I thought, and the engineers had replaced a few loose and broken rivets and stabilized the airframe.”

“Excellent! Get the men aboard. Tyrenkov, let that idiot go and gather up your security team. We return to Ilanskiy at once.”

“Now sir?”

“You heard the order, Bogrov. Now let’s get moving!”

Yes, let’s get moving, because I have miles to go before I sleep, and a lot of people owe me out there-owe me a great deal.

So now they are all going to pay.