John Schettler - Second Front

Karpov had been watching the whole engagement play out on Rodenko’s screen. “Get them,” he said, his teeth clenching. “Get the damn bastards.” He was slowly raising his hand, preparing to order Samsonov to switch to the Klinok system, where he had enough missiles to make those two intruders look like a porcupine when he was done with them. It would not be necessary.

Missiles 18 and 19 ran true, and each would log a kill that day. By the time they did, the sky south of the ship was a broil of contrails and explosive red orange roses as each S-300 detonated, either on an enemy missile, or by committing seppuku for the dishonor and shame of having missed its assigned target. The booming reports were heard far to the south by Kurita where he watched on the weather deck of Haruna . He was much closer to the action, but remained in doubt as to the outcome of the battle. Aboard Takami , however, they knew in with that last explosion that they had risked everything, and failed. They had stalked the tiger, achieved surprise, taken Kirov by the tail, but now they were about to learn something they could learn in no other way.

Takami ’s SSM bays were empty.

Kirov’s were still full.

“ Howmany S-300s remain?” asked Karpov coolly.

“Sir,” said Samsonov, “I have three missiles in cell number eight. They will be the last for this ordnance.”

“What?” Karpov looked over at him, surprised. “Only three?”

“Sir, we have expended a total of 29 S-300s in all actions to date. Three remain, but we still have the S-400 cells completely full, with another 32 missiles.”

“S-400s?” Karpov looked at Fedorov now, lowering his voice. “What is this, Fedorov? The ship sailed with 64 S-300s. We only got the S-400s after we returned to Vladivostok.”

Fedorov had a concerned look on his face. “It seems something has changed,” he said sullenly.

“Changed? How very interesting. A nice little windfall, as the S-400 is a much better missile. In fact, we only took out the old S-300s the first time because the Navy was trying to get rid of that inventory. Our live fire exercises seemed a good way to use them. Well, I’ve certainly put them to better use here.”

He stopped, seeing that look on Fedorov’s face that he had come to know only too well. The two men were off by the Plexiglas situation board, where the positions of all the contacts were displayed in green and red symbols, updated in real time from information fed by the radar sets and processed by Kirov’s SA computer module. Situational Awareness was always the first order of business. You could not fight an enemy unless you first knew where he was, what he was, and by extension, what he was capable of.

The news that he now had 32 of the much more efficient S-400 missiles under deck was encouraging, but Fedorov had that look that spelled trouble. “What is wrong,” said Karpov. “You look like someone just told you your grandma died.”

“Something has changed,” said Fedorov, keeping his voice low. “You are correct sir, the first ship arrived here with 64 S-300s, but apparently not this time—not in the second coming. Neither of us ever stopped to check on something like that. Everything on the ship seems as it was. In fact, You and Samsonov even discussed the missile inventory earlier, the S-300s. You told him you were pleased when he reported inventory on hand after each missile expended.”

“Yes… I recall that now.” Karpov turned. “Mister Samsonov, do you recall our earlier conversation regarding the S-300 Missile inventory?”

“Yes sir.”

“Didn’t you report the inventory at 61 missiles after those first expenditures?”

“Sir? I was reporting on the S-Class missile system as a whole, which can hold many different missile types, the S-300 base model, S-300F, S-300 FM, S-300-PMU-3C—which was redesignated the S-400.”

“Of course,” said Karpov. “As you were. Mister Rodenko, any further threats?”

“None sir. Nothing on my screens, though I’m getting some long range clutter from the southwest now. It looks like formations of aircraft.”

“Range?”

“140 nautical miles.”

“Time for that in a moment,” said Karpov, thinking. He gave Fedorov another glance. “Still worried about something?”

“Well,” said Fedorov. “That should not be the case—those S-400s. Something has clearly changed with this second coming, and that means that we caused it to change.”

“We caused it?”

“Who else? It had to be a consequence of our actions prior to July 28th of 1941, and that is a very disturbing thought.”

“Mister Fedorov, Russia is fragmented into three states, the Germans took Moscow, Gibraltar, Malta, and they are landing on the Canary Islands. You are worried about a variation concerning these 32 missiles?”

“Yes, sir. Those other things are certainly much more significant, but they are here, now, in this timeframe. That is a wave of consequence that is still underway and moving forward very slowly—in real time, if you will. But for a change to have migrated all the way forward to 2021 when this ship departed Vladivostok—that is something I find very alarming.”

“But it is only a few missiles.”

“At the moment.” He gave Karpov those dark, warning eyes. “Drop a stone in a pool of water, and the ripples migrate out. In the beginning the frequency is very tight, but as they progress, the wavelengths increase, and the intensity grows less over time, like a tsunami that sees its energy dissipate over great distances. I suppose I always expected that these changes would have to migrate forward, but I thought that the real consequences could be held here—until these events have run their course.”

“You’re saying that these events are already changing the future—and you did not expect this to happen now?”

“Not yet. Sir… As we approached Paradox Hour—July 28th, last year, things began to happen on the ship—some very strange things, as I have told you. I’ve given that a good deal of thought, and I think those events may be linked to changes that migrated forward in time. Men started to go missing, and now I think it was because something in the long chain of causality was broken—their life line annulled, and time could no longer justify their continued existence. Understand sir? When we change this present, we will also change the future—all the days between this moment and this ship’s point of departure in 2021. Those men may have vanished because they never even existed—just like the names on that list Volkov squeezed out of Zolkin, the men we lost in combat on the first ship. When we returned to Vladivostok, it was as if they never existed.”

“And you are thinking that if something like our missile inventory has changed….”

Fedorov nodded. “Let me put it to you this way… Suppose we change something here that has a catastrophic effect on the line of causality, so much so that time cannot account for our presence here any longer. Don’t you understand sir? The very fact that this ship was even built rests on a big stack of plates—WWII, its outcome, the post war alignments, the cold war. Suppose they never build this ship. Yes, we could do something here that would lead to that, and apparently the consequences of our actions here are already starting to reach 2021, small ripples at first, small changes, but there could be a tsunami out there, moving inexorably forward in time, and every missile we fire increases that energy. Look what we’re doing here at this very moment—dueling with an Aegis class destroyer in 1942!”