“Something more occurred,” said Gromyko. “It’s difficult to describe, but perhaps the best way is to let you hear from him. Standby, Kirov.”
Gromyko looked over at Volsky, who was sitting at his side now with another headset. He toggled a switch, but as he did so, he noticed that the Admiral’s eyes were watered over, as if he were overcome with emotion.
“Mister Fedorov,” he said softly. “I cannot tell you how good it is to hear your voice again.”
At the other end of that transmission Fedorov sat there in complete shock. How often do the dead call home to the living? Yet the voice he heard now was unmistakable. It was Volsky.
“Admiral?” his voice quavered a bit.
“One and the same,” Volsky came back.
“But… Sir….”
“Yes, I know you must have received some very hard news of my fate. How I come to be here now is a bit of a mystery, even to me, and particularly since I’m really not sure who I am these days. I was sitting quietly in my office at Fleet Headquarters, when in walked a most remarkable man.”
He told him of the visit from Kamenski, and of the Director’s plan. “So you see, there is still a world out there that is safe and sound from all the changes you worry so much about. I was living in it. Yet now, after this little journey here, that man sits quietly beneath two others in my mind. It is all very strange. I have memories of those last days on the ship, the first ship. Do you know you went missing there, Fedorov? I mourned that a good long while, before fate came calling for me. Then again, I have memories of leaving Murmansk on that British sub after Karpov took the ship. Until the darkness fell on me in the Atlantic when we fought with the Hindenburg.”
“Yes sir… I went through this myself when Kirov returned—memories on top of memories, two lives mingled together in one head. There I was on the bridge, knowing men like Orlov and Karpov should not be there, but unable to realize why I could remember all that had happened before, when no one else could.”
“We’ve been remade,” said Volsky. “The both of us, or so it seems, and I am a most fortunate man. I suppose only one other man has ever made the claim that he has risen from the dead, and I do not presume to be his equal. Yet here I am. Time has put me here, and for a very grave reason. If the Director were here, he could explain it all to you, but I think you have heard some of it before—the dire dilemma we face because of the presence of Kirov in these waters. You recall how we discussed it before?”
“I do sir…” Fedorov was finally getting himself under control, thrilled to have Volsky back, a man that had been like a father to him, his stalwart ally through the travail of all these trials and adventures.
“Well, we have work to do here, Mister Fedorov. Kamenski is convinced that the ship cannot remain here. We must all get home. We tried this before, with Kazan attempting to do the heavy lifting, but it could not carry itself far enough forward with Kirov on its back. Yet we have a new control rod now—a new Rod-25 if you will. It’s a long story, but all Kamenski’s doing, and hear now what he has placed upon our shoulders.”
The Admiral spoke quietly, telling him that the same urgent mission was at hand again. They had to get the ship home, remove its contagion from the time line here, assure that no further paradox might occur, and allow this history to move forward on its own. Yet even as he explained that, they both knew that there was one great stumbling block before them—Vladimir Karpov.
“He won’t want to hear this,” said Fedorov. “He’s an Admiral now—self-appointed, and so much more. He’s taken a liking to his position here, and the power he has gathered to himself. And he’s also quite fond of the little war he’s fighting with the Japanese. We just attacked their naval base at Truk! Now he wants to look for bigger fish at Rabaul.”
“I see…” Volsky considered. “How do you think he would take the news of my return?”
“It would certainly be shocking,” said Fedorov. “Yet remember, he sees himself as evolved beyond any obligation to the authority you represent. In fact, he has flatly stated that he has no intention whatsoever of trying to return to our own time. Better to rule in hell than to serve in heaven.”
“That sounds very much like Karpov,” said Volsky. “Yet if he cannot be convinced of the gravity of our situation, that will present us with a very difficult choice here—the same choice we had before in the Sea of Japan.”
“I understand, sir.”
“Do you think he can be reasoned with? Do you think if we press the seriousness of this matter on him, the two of us could get through to him?”
“We could try,” said Fedorov. “If he holds the line and refuses to cooperate, then I hate to think of the alternative.”
“Yes, that will be very difficult. It would certainly place you in great danger there. Would not Karpov see you as an enemy?”
“I have been at odds with him for some time, as you well know. But Admiral, things have happened since we learned you were killed. I… I thought all of this was my fault, the danger to this world and all those that follow this time. I thought I could make one last attempt at undoing my many mistakes. You remember what I discovered at Ilanskiy?”
“Yes of course, that stairway.”
“Correct. Well, I wanted to use that to go back and… reclaim that errant whisper. I wanted to try and prevent Sergei Kirov from doing what he did. Karpov and I discussed it at great length. We had a plan, but in the end, he decided against it, even while my mission was already underway. It’s a long story, but I did get to Ilanskiy—to the year 1908—though not the way I thought I would. And I found Mironov—Sergei Kirov. I had steeled myself to do the only sure thing that might absolutely prevent him from killing Josef Stalin. But in the end, I wasn’t man enough to pull that trigger…”
Volsky took a moment to digest that. “No Fedorov, you were man enough not to pull that trigger. I would not have expected anything different from you. The world turned on the mercy you showed that man. It was a world born of that single act of compassion, and it will be what it will be—but not with us here. We must leave—all of us—Kirov, Kazan, the Argos Fire, all those men you met in the desert, the little fleet of transports, everything must go. Those that will not leave of their own accord must be compelled by other means…. or be destroyed. I would speak with Karpov on this, and I am willing to do so if he will hear me. Whether he would heed any order I might give at this point is doubtful. We had every reason to believe that he would not heed my warning, and being faced with this decision, we have steeled ourselves to take a more difficult path if necessary. Yet I could not raise my hand against my old ship and crew without having this conversation first, and I clung to the hope that we might reach an accommodation. It may be our last hope, Mister Fedorov, the last hope of tomorrow. So I must ask you to take this to Karpov. If he will hear us out, perhaps we can avert the doom Kamenski fears.”
Fedorov considered all this, and was inwardly torn. He had thought his mission to Ilanskiy, returning to the source of the first major contamination at that point, would be the last hope, but that slipped from his grasp when he could not bring himself to kill Sergei Kirov. Now here was the Admiral, the man once dead living again, returning from a future that was still there, still intact, his head filled with the recollection of all his other doppelgangers from tangled time meridians.
There was grave danger ahead. The Admiral’s proposal, and his determination that no stone must be left unturned here, was fraught with peril. Fedorov had come to the same place Karpov had, albeit with great reluctance. He had thought that there was now nothing they could do to change the world they were living in. They could only do one thing—win this war. He had set down the impossible burden of thinking he could re-write all the history that had been so badly shattered by their actions, and come instead to do the one thing that remained doable in his mind—they could use the power they had, in the ship beneath his feet, to win the war and at least nudge the world closer to the course that it had taken in the post war history he knew so well.