John Schettler - Crescendo of Doom

“You went that far back? I wonder why? All your other displacements only brought you to the 1940s, or so you’ve explained.”

“Very true, and that was somewhat of a mystery at first, but I have come to some understanding about it, which I will share with you if you care to hear it. It gets at the heart of why all of this is happening, and might possibly help us untie this Gordian knot we’ve got on our hands now.”

“I see,” said Elena. “Do go on, Captain. I’m all ears.”

“1908,”Fedorov began. “That year, something very significant happened in Russia, in late June, at a place called Tunguska. No doubt you have heard of this?”

“Of course,” said Elena.

“I can’t say as it rings much of a bell for me,” said Tovey.

Good, thought Nikolin as he translated. Now I finally get to hear what this has all been about! He waited, eager to be Fedorov’s mouthpiece, and thanking his lucky stars that he was so accomplished as a speaker of English. I’ve been taking tea and lunch with Admirals and Generals, and privy to decisions and discussions that no other man aboard knows anything about, he thought. And all my life I’ve read those stories about Tunguska, and imagined what may have happened there. Now perhaps I will find out!

“Admiral,” he translated for Fedorov, “In June of 1908, something came out of deep space and impacted the earth, exploding in the atmosphere over the taiga of Siberia with such power that it leveled trees over an area exceeding 2000 square kilometers. No one but the locals knew of it, though this impact was seen by many, and detected as far away as your London on seismographs and other equipment. Its effects were also observed for days after, a strange lightening and discoloration of the evening sky. The region was so remote, that it was not investigated until nineteen years later, and it has been explored by curious minds ever since, with many explanations as to what may have happened there. I do not presume to know the answer to that, even though I am one of perhaps a very few people now alive who actually saw that event transpire.”

“Excuse me?” Elena Fairchild had been following closely, but that brought her to a stumble. “You saw the event? On this mission you described earlier to stop your renegade Captain?”

“No, not on that mission, but on another. If you recall, I told you we had removed that control rod from our ship’s reactors, but I did not explain why.”

Now Fedorov gave a brief account of the trouble caused by the other conspirator in that first fateful mutiny aboard Kirov , Gennadi Orlov. Elena listened intently, taking all this in and mating it with information she had been privy to in her position as a member of the Watch, information gained over long years of meticulous intelligence work, slowly tugging at the cords of that Gordian knot.

“Amazing,” she said. “You used it in your test reactor to go back yourself after this Orlov. That explains a few things.”

Fedorov did not quite know what to make of that statement. What did this woman know about all of this? She seemed to be very interested here, almost as if she were inwardly testing what he was telling her now, assessing it all in light of something she knew herself. He resolved to find out what that might be.

“Yes,” he said. “It was a very risky thing to do, but back then I was very worried Orlov would eventually do something, and cause irreparable harm to the history. Seeing what has happened to the world here, I suppose my fears were well justified, though I cannot lay all this on Orlov’s shoulders. Much of it was my fault.”

“Your fault? I don’t understand.”

“Yes, My fault. Why I appeared on that day, in 1908, I have never truly understood.”

“Your engineering reactor sent you there?” asked Elena. “This Rod-25 was responsible for that displacement?”

“No. Rod-25 was not the cause. It delivered me to the 1940s, just as I hoped it would and, after a very difficult mission, I found our missing officer. But that was not the only thing I found during that mission, and this discovery has perhaps had more influence on events here than anything else. I left Vladivostok, traveling east along the Trans-Siberian Rail line to a location where I hoped I might find Orlov. Along the way I stopped at a small railway station.”

Now he briefly related that story, and the strange event that occurred on the stairs of Ilanskiy. This time both Admiral Tovey and Elena sat in utter stillness, hanging on every word that Nikolin was translating. As the story unfolded, Elena could feel her pulse rising.

Another rift, she thought! A location we knew nothing about! At least one that I never learned of. I’ll be the first to admit that I may not have been told everything. Yes, I’m Watchstander G1 now, so appointed by this man sitting right across from me here—Admiral John Tovey in the flesh—our founding father, though I never dreamed I would ever meet him like this. I’m Watchstander G1, by God and his degree, and I more than that. I’m a goddamned Keyholder, a Riftkeeper as well. But we haven’t found every location then, have we? This Russian Captain is telling me about one that we never discovered. And it took him right back to the source of this entire affair—Tunguska! My god, he saw it with his own eyes!

And what she learned next was equally dumbfounding. There he met a young man in the dining hall having breakfast, Mironov, Sergei Mironovich Kostrikov, and that was the very same man who later took the name of Sergei Kirov. Fedorov went on and on, telling her of that awful moment of weakness when he had whispered that dire warning in Mironov’s ear, the words that shook the world’s foundation, and reset the meridians of the history from that day forward.

“So now you know why I have told you that I am responsible,” said Fedorov with a deep shrug. “I killed Josef Stalin, just as surely as Sergei Kirov might make that claim. It was all my doing, in an effort to spare the life of a single man that I had always admired in the history. And here I am now, Captain of that ship out there, and consorting with other men who have glowed only in the light of my imagination as I studied these events. Yes, I have studied them all my life, a strange love affair with it all, and now, as we can all so plainly see, I have destroyed the thing I so loved. Now I foolishly sail about in this monstrosity of a battlecruiser, thinking I can put all the pieces back together again—thinking I can somehow redeem myself for the great sin I committed, and the misfortune I caused here in this world.”

Nikolin finished his translation, but Elena’s eyes were always on Fedorov as he spoke. So he has been standing a watch of his own in all of this, she suddenly thought, feeling in him a kindred spirit at long last. She had tried to explain it all to Gordon and Mack Morgan, but only ended up confusing them, and raising one question after another in their minds. Her heart opened as she looked at Fedorov, seeing the torment in his eyes, and hearing it in the tone of his voice. She said the one thing that she could, in all honesty, seeing this young man with new eyes now.