John Schettler - Crescendo of Doom

“Yourself? But I thought you said you could not go up to that world any longer, sir. I don’t understand. That was the only reason you are sending me in your place.”

“Yes, you don’t understand, do you. Well understand this: Volkov isn’t going to get away with his little plan!” He held up the slim book that Tyrenkov had fetched from that other world. “Nor is this man Rudkin going to feast on my bones for his little fiction here. No! This is personal now. Get down to the bridge. Tell Bogrov to collect the ground crews and make the ship ready for operations. It looks grey out there, and I want the latest weather report on my ready room desk in ten minutes.”

Tyrenkov had a head full of questions, but an inner instinct, and his own devious intelligence, told him this was not the time to ask any of them. This was the time to simply salute, stride away, and carry out Karpov’s order, which is exactly what he did. It was time to recede, get back in the shadows, observe, wait, think. He saluted and was off to the bridge leaving the Admiral alone.

Karpov watched him go, satisfied. That was the quickstep I want to see in Tyrenkov, the unhesitating gait of compliance. I pull the trigger, he fires. I’ve used him to be the bullet of my intentions many times before, but this time things will be different. This time it was personal.

And so, my old nemesis here is going to soon get a nice little surprise. My plan may not work. I may be doomed to fail, and remain lost in time here, as this Rudkin has it. But by god, I’ll raise hell before that happens.

He sat down by the fire with his book, opening it again to begin reading it more carefully. Half way through the prologue he realized that the author wasn’t going to give him any more than a passing mention… Vladimir Karpov, was dead and gone from this world, and the fleet he had built was doomed without him … That was all he would get, a single line in the entire book! All the rest was Volkov’s. That ass would bask in the limelight of his treacherous little victory here, the “Battle of Ilanskiy,” as Rudkin came to call it.

Well I have news for Rudkin, and news for Volkov, and news for the entire world. Damn them all, I’m going back! I’m going to take Tunguska up into the darkening skies and head for the biggest goddamned thunder storm I can find. I’m going to sail head first into bedlam and chaos, but one way or another I’m going back, if Time will have me, and I’m going to settle the matter myself. Vengeance, after all, was a very personal thing.

That was something Karpov knew very well.

Karpovthought, and as he did so he had the satisfaction of knowing his instincts had been correct. The heat of his emotions had led him to this sudden change, but now his mind began to find reasons and justifications, walling off his choice to protect it from any threats. It all seemed so easy. Just send Tyrenkov and his men up those stairs and put an end to Volkov once and for all. But the more he thought, the more he came to see that his own personal time line, his own fate, might be irrevocably entwined with that of Volkov now.

After all, he thought, why am I even here? I was on my way to London, my second stop in a little diplomatic tour that began when I paid that visit to Sergei Kirov. And why was I there? To forge an alliance that would strengthen my position against Volkov. So the very fact that I find myself here depends on Volkov and his treachery. Otherwise, I might be doing something else entirely.

So if I eliminate Volkov in 2021, how would Time account for my presence here? Am I safe, invulnerable to the sweeping changes Volkov’s death would cause? Perhaps here, in these years, I would be immune, but what would happen to me if I did manage to return to the 1940s? I came to Siberia and slowly rose to the top of the power structure there in that distant breakaway republic. There would never even be a Free Siberian State this time! So who would I be there? Would anyone recognize me, or acknowledge my authority? The position I built for myself there all depends on Volkov. Would it mean I could not enter that era again? Would I be forced to live out my life here, live through the Revolution, the First World War, the long civil war of Red on White?

While a part of him thought he had found himself in the perfect place to eliminate his last potential rivals, and seize the history of his nation, that outcome was not certain.

It would be long years of murder and struggle here before I reached the time I have just come from. By then I would be much older, and I might not even live to see the conclusion of the Second World War, or know what happens to Russia when it all ends. After all, isn’t that what I must set my mind on? I must assure Russia is not marginalized, ostracized, entrenched behind an iron curtain and guarded by the prison warden that came to be called NATO. To settle those years favorably, I must live to see the end of WWII. If I stay here, that will be a long 34 years to wait, and I would not have much time to live in the post-war era. If I get back to the 1940s, I’ll still be young, vital, with long decades ahead of me to settle the affairs of the world.

Yes, I must return.

“Weather report, Admiral. Cloud Master is calling for increasing overcast, and a storm front building to the northeast.”

“Very well, send to Bogrov that we are to make ready for operations. Prepare to cast off lines and make our ascent within fifteen minutes.”

A storm brewing.

Karpov did not get the details in that report, but the storm was emanating from a massive low to the northeast, over the Stony Tunguska River. A hard wind was blowing, the skies mushrooming up in tall thunderheads, their flanks rippled by lightning. It was as if some power was at work, stirring the airs to fitful wrath, even as Karpov’s own thoughts rose on the winds of his anger and determination. Soon the ship would rise to meet that storm, driven as much by that anger as it would be by the wind. Karpov and Tunguska would surge forward, sailing into the outermost squalls of doom itself.

He steeled himself, knowing he could be off on a wild bear hunt, with no hope of ever achieving his objective now, but he had to try. It was a storm that sent me here, and so now I’ll look for another, he thought. A voice within him chided that it might take many days, weeks or even months to find a storm with the power he needed to move Tunguska again. And what if he did? Where would he go? At least on the stairs of Ilanskiy there seemed to be a method to the madness of Time. The dots of distant eras were connected by the line of those stairs, but this was a casting of his fate to the wind in the most literal way imaginable.

Yet another voice, the place in his head that did the planning and scheming and reckoning, rose with his anger to still the inner warning. I have been a most unwelcome guest in the homes I’ve broken into all through this saga, he thought to himself grimly. I tortured Mother Time with my doings, and here I was about to cause her grief and torment yet again. She doesn’t want me here. I can feel it. Eliminating Volkov from here causes so many changes to the history that she’ll be long years, decades sorting out the trouble I cause. So my guess is that she will do everything possible to send me on my way.

He stepped out of his heated stateroom, his eyes looking down the long central corridor of the airship, looking up at the lattice of her duralumin skeleton, seeing the cold steel ladders rising into small voids between the massive gas bags. Men moved there, like shadowy spiders in a metal web, spinning out wires and rigging cables.

He turned for the bridge, the hard clump of his boots on the metal grating of the decking. Aboard Kirov he had always climbed up to reach the place of command, but here the inverse was true. He looked for the ladder down, descending through the mass of the ship to reach the lower gondola. Even as he went, he could hear the movement of other men echoing through the massive structure of the ship. That always gave him a quiet little thrill—the sound of other men rushing off to do his bidding. He was down the last ladder and onto the bridge, announced by the boatswain as he arrived.