He thought about that a good long while, until he realized he did not have to suffer that fate. He could leave here any time he wished. He could go anywhere with Tunguska, even though he had no real control over where he would end up. He was not marooned here.
As this certainty settled on him, he began thinking of how he should exploit this time, and what he might do. First things first, he thought. I must learn exactly where we have ended up. It’s clear now what happened. We must have flown right through some temporal instability over the site of the Tunguska Event. Why we were thrown into the past, I may never know, but if we are here, I must not let this opportunity go to waste. There is so much mischief I can work, but first I must know where we have ended up. Kansk will tell the tale. When I get there, I will learn what the date and time is now, and all these questions will be answered. Then I can begin.
Kansk was only six hours away, the great mass of Tunguska soaring above the white clouds over the taiga and tundra. In modern times, it was a city of 92,000 people on the Kan River, and the site of a naval arsenal. As they approached, beginning their slow descent, Volkov remembered how his men fought here during the war, falling on the city, and nearby Ilanskiy, with a fleet of airships and his 22nd Air Mobile Brigade.
I was a much older man then, he remembered, pulling the memory from another head. I had lived out all those long hard days from the madness of 1908 when I first stumbled down those stairs at Ilanskiy, to the heat and fire of WWII. Yes, I was aging, but still strong, still as determined as ever. I took three of my airmobile battalions in, and then brought in reserves with those German transports I wrangled from Hitler, my Air Landing Brigade. It was a glorious attack, the airship fleets dueling in the skies, the men parachuting into battle. Or leaping from our airships when they went to a low ground hover.[10]
Three times we fought to control that railway inn, but the Siberians fought hard, and I could never succeed in taking it. Now it is right there for the taking, before any of those battles will ever be fought—assuming I am correct about our movement to the past. So we will go to ground quietly, north of Kansk, and then take a shore party on the ground into the city. No use frightening the locals when they see this massive airship in the sky. No, that must be avoided.
Then again… is the inn still there?
Memories flooded in, of that fateful moment when they set that railway inn on fire…. They watched it burn for a good long while, the dark grey smoke thickening to black, the bright red and yellow flames raging ever higher. The wood would hiss and pop as it burned, and little by little, the key load bearing beams and columns were consumed, until they gave way in a chaotic snap, sending a plume of wild red cinders and glowing embers up into the deepening gloom. It was as if long decades were burning, the death of the railway inn being a key supporting beam that had allowed them to ever exist, the floorboards of the years warped and bent, then broken in the collapse, and devoured by the flames….
Well, we certainly created on massive problem for Mother Time, when we kindled that fire, he thought. If that railway inn was burned in 1908, then how did Tyrenkov get there to even light the fire? How did I get there, and Orlov too? None of us could have been standing there watching that railway inn burn. It was impossible, a Paradox of the highest order, and it simply could not be happening. Unless….
Yes, unless Tyrenkov rebuilt that inn. He gave the innkeeper a pouch of Rubles and Kopecks in compensation, and he asked the innkeeper for the name of architect who built the place. So that has to be the answer. Tyrenkov rebuilt it, sometime between the hour we first burned it, and the day Fedorov first stopped there in WWII. That can be the only answer to that dilemma.
So it may be that I find myself unable to take possession yet again. Ironic, isn’t it? Here I come in the airship that Karpov used to lord over these grey skies. But I must know where we are… when we are.
“Captain—that clearing ahead looks suitable. Take us down, and notify the Guard to get a team together.”
“Will you be accompanying them, sir?”
“Of course not. Just get four or five men on motorbikes and get them into Kansk. They are to bring me back documentary evidence of the current date. Nothing more.”
“Very good, sir.”
That ended up being a very easy thing to do. They hovered, lowered four men and four motorbikes down in a cargo lift, and they sputtered off to the south in their black uniforms, submachineguns strapped over their shoulders. They would return a few hours later with newspapers in hand, the easiest way they could have possibly learned the date and time.
“You are certain these are current, Colonel Dobkin?”
“Yes sir, I asked a local if the date on that paper was accurate. He said it had just come out that morning. Someone brought a bundle in on the train from Krasnoyarsk.”
“Excellent work, Colonel. Dismissed.”
The dark coated man saluted, and was up the ladder from the bridge gondola and gone. Volkov held the freshly printed newspaper out to have a look, smiling.
“My, my,” he said with an evil grin. “It’s September of 1910, gentlemen. Interesting…. Captain, take us up. We are going to the Caucasus, to Baku, in fact. How far is it, Mister Delov?”
“One moment, sir…. I make it about 3,700 kilometers.”
“No small journey,” said the Captain.
“Indeed. Do we have the fuel?”
“Yes sir, and that we use can be replaced in Baku easily enough.”
“Perfect,” said Volkov. “Then, weather permitting, we could be there in 36 hours or so. See to it, Captain. I’ll be in my stateroom.”
Captain Gorlev knew enough by now to never ask why Volkov was giving an order. His job was merely to find a way to make it so, and this one seemed easy enough. Yet he could not help but wonder, nonetheless, just why this sudden move to the Caucasus would be in order. He would not learn that until they arrived….
Colonel Martynov was not happy. This wretch of a man that he and so many others in the Okhrana had been watching for months was trying to wriggle off the hook yet again. He was a man of a hundred faces, a hundred names, though the Colonel would never forget him now that he had a good long look. Yes, this is the same man they called Kuba when we had him here before, in 1908—the same man they called Soso, a cagey little rabble-rouser of the incipient revolution. Tracking him became almost impossible. He shifts identities as often as another man might change his clothes!
He was Gayoz Nizheradz when we first got our hands on him in March of 1908, but that name didn’t fool us for very long. Eventually we simply exiled the man, and two years later he is back again, up to his same old tricks. So we arrest him a second time, only this time he calls himself Zakhar Melikyantz. One day he is Kuba, or Beso, or Ivanov. The next day he is Kato, Solin, the Caucasian, the Priest, and today he is called the Milkman, perhaps because of his fondness for milk, because our spies found him frequenting a milk bar.
He is as shady a character as I have ever seen, and so once again, I recommend no less than five years exile in Siberia. This time, we will send him to Yakutsk! Yet today I learn he is appealing to the Caucasian Viceroy, asking for leniency. On what grounds, I might ask? All the man has done since we got our hands on him is work his bile through the prison inmates, accusing them of being spies, organizing gangs, attacking and killing his enemies in his ruthless self-styled purge.
10
For a depiction of all these battles for Ilanskiy, the airship duels and fighting on the ground, you can get the entire tale of Volkov’s war with Karpov in the special battle book volume entitled