John Schettler - Altered States

“They appear to be moving off.”

“Yes, sir, that they are. Shall we pursue?”

“What, at fifteen knots? No, mister Bates, I think we’ll leave well enough alone for the moment. We’ve sent our sighting report, now I think it best if we make our turn east. If that is a German ship it may be passing the convoy heading and speed along as well. Signal the Commodore-twenty points to starboard and we’ll come round to zero-six-zero. And tell them to be especially vigilant for the next several hours in case we get more unexpected visitors.”

“Very good, sir. Right away.”

If anything happens, thought Captain Norman, it will happen after sunset in the dark. That’s when we’ll have to keep a sharp eye. It’s going to be a long and sleepless night.

* * *

Either there was nothing left of that world they were trying to reach in their own time, or else time had sullenly refused to let them leave without seeing the consequences of their misdeeds, but the ship had not moved but a few minutes in time. They were still marooned in the past, trapped in the web of the war where they had sailed and fought so many times. Yet the odd thing in Fedorov’s mind was the ominous fact that they had come here at a time before that of their first arrival in the Norwegian sea so long ago. Then it had been late July of 1941, and now they were here a full year earlier in mid June of 1940. The realization that they had also obviously moved in space was most unsettling. In a meeting of the senior officers with Dobrynin they discussed the situation to determine what they might do.

“I do not know what happened, Admiral,” said the Chief, “but this shift sounded nothing like any of the others. Clearly the rod does something, but the sound was all wrong. No matter what I did to try and control the shift, it held steady.”

“It did move us in time,” said Fedorov, “yet only for a brief moment. Then it returned us, and in that moment the earth had rotated 200 degrees. So it is that we find ourselves in the Atlantic, still a year before the time when we first moved here.”

“Very odd,” said Kamenski. “These control rods were even more enriched with the substances that we suspect as being responsible for these time displacements, yet the result is obviously quite different.”

“And quite dangerous,” said Volsky. “Fedorov says we might have landed on dry land! It appears only by chance that we were dropped into the sea again. What about Kazan?” They had been so busy with that initial contact that they completely forgot about the submarine.

“Our automated signal activated as planned, Admiral,” said Nikolin. “We have not yet received a response.”

“ Kazan was using Rod-25,” said Fedorov. “Old faithful.”

“So where might it be? Could Tasarov hear them if they were close by?”

“Possibly, sir, but they would certainly hear us…Unless they are in the Sea of Okhotsk, which is where I fear they remain now. Rod-25 has never exhibited this behavior. It always shifted in time, but there was never a spatial variance.”

“So I do not think we can expect to see Gromyko and Kazan any time soon,” Volsky shrugged.

“No sir,” Fedorov put it bluntly. “They could be half a world and decades away by now. Only a long range short wave transmission could possibly reach them now, just as we called the ship all the way from the Caspian before.”

“I could try this, Admiral,” Nikolin volunteered.

“Try, but I don’t hold much hope for any result,” said Volsky. “The question now is what do we do here? Should we try this procedure a third time?”

“Third time is a charm,” said Kamenski.

“Indeed, we might just charm ourselves right into the middle of Siberia and come careening down on some mountain like Noah’s ark after the flood. No, I think we must learn more about how this happened before we attempt to run the procedure again. See what you can determine from the data recording, Chief Dobrynin. In the meantime, gentlemen, we are here in June of 1940. What should we expect to find, Mister Fedorov, aside from another of these convoys?”

“It is likely that they reported a ship sighted, and we do look rather intimidating. That said, it was wise to simply break off as we did and signal them farewell. Perhaps they will conclude we were another Royal Navy or Canadian ship.”

“The last time we were assumed to be a German raider. Their Admiralty will soon receive this sighting report, yes? What if they run down their list of ships and realize they had nothing out here?”

“Then they may get curious as before, sir. When we showed up last time we introduced our first variation in the history by diverting Wake-Walker’s carrier force from the planned raid on Petsamo.”

“Well we have just diverted that convoy,” said Rodenko. “They made a twenty point turn to the east just as we broke off.”

“That doesn’t surprise me,” said Fedorov. “The Germans had auxiliaries at sea that would often make sighting reports and vector in other raiders, be they surface ships or wolfpacks.”

“What is the danger of encountering submarines here? Our Horse Jaw sonar is down and is not likely to be repairable, at least according to Byko. Tasarov says he can use the side hull sensors and the Horse Tail, but submarines are much less detectable now.”

“We still have one KA-40, sir.”

“Indeed. Well what is happening in your history books at this time, Fedorov?”

“As before, sir. It is a fairly momentous period. The Germans have already broken through to the coast and the British have evacuated at Dunkirk. That will continue at Le Havre, Cherbourg and other French ports for some days. The Royal Navy has also just concluded the evacuation of Norway, and they are about to lose one of their principle aircraft carriers in that withdrawal-HMS Glorious . She was found and sunk by the Twins, sir.”

“The Twins?”

“The battlecruisers Scharnhorst and Gneisenau . That’s what the British called them. They also called them Salmon and Gluckstein after a tobacconist firm in the UK, but those two battlecruisers were operating to interdict the British operation, and got very lucky.”

“A hard time for Admiral Tovey,” said Volsky.

“Oh, he should still be in the Med, sir. But yes, the Anglo French resistance on the continent was fairly well beaten. Italy has just entered the war. Marshall Petain sues for terms of Armistice in a week on the 17th and France formally capitulates on the 22nd, at least in the history I have on file-but that could have changed.”

“It was remarkably consistent up until now,” said Kamenski. “The Admiral tells me you were able to identify that convoy and its escort in a just a few minutes.”

“It comes round to my cracked mirror theory,” Fedorov explained. “Throw a stone at a mirror and it will not crack everywhere. There will be large segments that remain just as they were before, then a web of fissures and cracks where the damage occurred. This part of the history may not have cracked.”

“But the damage may be elsewhere,” said Kamenski. “Russia, for example, was fairly well fractured.”

“I suppose that the closer you get to the source of the real damage the more broken things will seem. Something big obviously happened in Russia to produce all these separate states.” Even as he said that Fedorov experienced a roll of misgiving and quiet inner guilt. Something big? Perhaps not. Maybe it was only that little errant whisper that cracked the mirror this time….Me and my big mouth.

“I suggest that you get those ears of yours to your station now, Mister Nikolin,” said Volsky. “See what you can hear of the history. Try all the BBC channels and record anything of interest.”