Kirov II: Cauldron Of Fire (Kirov Series) (47 page)

Kirov
turned south with
Sheffield
and
Norfolk
in her wake, starting the long sea cruise that would last all of seven more
days. They followed the route as planned, through calm seas and past the exotic
islands off the coast of Africa. And on the seventh day, a day when God himself
was said to have rested, they saw a heavy shroud of fog lying low on the seas
around a distant island peak.

They had agreed to heave to off the southern shores of St.
Helena, anchoring at Sandy Bay off Powell’s Gut at the base of a high ridge of tawny
brown hills that rose 600 meters above the sea. There they would wait beneath
the folded ravines and auburn cliffs known as the Gates of Chaos, or so it had
been agreed. Volsky watched the distant island looming on the near horizon with
rising curiosity. Karpov brooded, unhappy over the agreement but resigned.
Fedorov seemed to be fidgeting nervously, his eyes glancing at the ship’s
chronometer as they approached the low haze laced island, the fog thickening
around them as they went.

Five kilometers to either side of them, the watch officers
on both
Sheffield
and
Norfolk
were relieved that the long sea
journey was finally over, their charge nearly delivered. The strange ship would
soon come under the observation of a special Royal Navy team that had been
flown in ahead of them to Jamestown on St Helena. Soon the cruisers could
finally turn and head north again.

The watchmen peered through their field glasses one last
time, seeing the sleek battlecruiser pass slowly into the thickening fog. The
land based observers were to call them from the top of High Ridge above the
Gates of Chaos to report the ship’s anchorage. In the meantime
Norfolk
and
Sheffield
would sail round either side of the island themselves,
with each captain bound to log and report that the ship had been duly delivered
to its place of internment, and obtain photographic evidence of such.

The Royal Navy was taking no chances that their new ward
and visitor would slip away unseen. There were already three planes up from
Jamestown with watchful eyes on every side of the island. The seaplane tender
Pegasus
would also make the long journey south to anchor at Jamestown with six more search
planes for good measure.

And so it was that twelve days after she had again been
pulled through time to the year 1942,
Kirov
sailed into the low bank of
fog off the Island of St. Helena… and never sailed out. The observers on High
Ridge would wait for her in vain, and would never see her arrive at Sandy Bay.
For other Gates of Chaos had opened for her again that morning, and she was gone,
lost, vanished from that day and year.

Norfolk
and
Sheffield
searched in vain all
that day, as did every plane available on the island, but not a trace or a
whisper of the ship was seen or heard. In desperation the ships put divers in
the water to look for any sign that the
Kirov
might have foundered and
sunk while approaching the island through that heavy morning fog. Nothing was
found…

Days later a car
drove quickly up the lane towards a
stately estate, its buildings clustered one against another in an odd mingling
of architectural styles. Bletchley Park, or ‘Station X’ as it was called, was
one of ten special operations facilities set up by MI6, where ‘Captain Ridley’s
Shooting Party’ was supposed to be enjoying afternoons on the adjoining sixty
acre estate, with shotguns and hounds to hunt down quail. Yet its real purpose
was derived from the feverish activity of the Government Code and Cypher
School, England’s code breakers, a collection of brilliant and dedicated men
and women who would generate the vital intelligence information needed to
prosecute the war.

Here there were walls of colored code wheels, strange
devices like the Enigma machines and odd looking equipment fed by long coiled
paper tape, dimpled with a series of small black dots of varying sizes. The
minds of Bletchley Park were already in the first stages of digitizing the analog
world into forms their nascent computing machines could digest and ruminate
upon. A year later the estate would see the installation of the first
“Colossus” machine, a rudimentary computer housing all of 1500 vacuum tubes to
power its mechanical brain.

The car stopped, its door opening quickly as Admiral Tovey
stepped out, a thick parcel under his right arm. He did not approach the styled
mansions up the main walkway, but veered left towards a green sided
extension—Hut 4, the heart of naval intelligence. A year ago the men who worked
there had been reveling in their first breakthrough, the deciphering of the
German Enigma code. Then came the unaccountable appearance of a strange ship in
the Northern Seas, and it set the whole community back on its heels.

Tovey walked past the row of white trimmed windows and
entered through a plain unsigned door. He was immediately greeted by a Marine
guard, who saluted crisply and led him down the narrow hall to the office of
Professor Alan Turing, who had been reading a volume of Byron’s poetry as he
waited for the Admiral.

“Good day, Professor,” said Tovey as he walked briskly in,
his hand extended. Turing set his poetry down and rose to greet him, his dark
eyes alight with a smile.

“I’ve brought you a little something more for your file
boxes,” said Tovey.

“Ah,” said Turing, “The photography!”

“Indeed. Two reels of film here with photos, and a full
report. I’ve collected the logs of all ships involved, so you’ll have a good
time sorting it all through before it gets filed away with everything else on
this
Geronimo
business.”

“Very good, sir,” said Turing, his curiosity immediately
aroused. “I wonder, Admiral. Might I persuade you to allow me to fly out to St.
Helena one of these days and have a look for myself?”

Tovey raised an eyebrow, his face suddenly serious, and
seated himself, his eye falling on the open volume of Byron’s poetry. He scanned
the lines, reading inwardly:

“On the sea the boldest steer but
where their ports invite;
But there are wanderers o’er Eternity
Whose bark drives on and on,
and anchor’d ne’er shall be.”

With a heavy sigh he looked at Turing, and all the
unanswered questions in his mind took a seat there with him, waiting to have
their say. “I’m afraid I have some rather interesting news for you, Professor,”
he said quietly. “And I think it’s high time that you and I have a very frank
chat.”

Coming
Soon: The Saga Continues…

Kirov
III
 - By John Schettler

Reaching
the island of St Helena, the battlecruiser
Kirov
vanishes without a
trace, gone from that day and year and lost again in a desolate future. They
sail east, round the Cape of Good Hope and into the Indian Ocean, hoping to
find some sign of human life in the southern hemisphere. Reaching the Pacific
they soon discover that the ship has once again moved in time, to the year
1943.

Now
the ship’s First Officer, Anton Fedorov is shocked to finally discover the true
source of the great variation in time that has led to a devastated future they
have come from and the demise of civilization itself. The chronology of the war
at sea in the Pacific has been radically changed, and nothing in his history
books can help them navigate the dangerous waters they now find themselves in,
embroiled in a major Japanese offensive operation.

Discovered
by the Japanese carrier raiding fleet, the ship now faces its most dangerous
and determined challenge ever when they are hunted by the most powerful enemy
task force they have ever faced—led by the battleships
Yamato
and
Musashi
,
and an admiral determined to sink this phantom ship, or die trying.

In
this amazing conclusion to the popular
Kirov
trilogy, the most powerful
ships ever conceived by two different eras clash in a titanic final battle that
will decide the fate of nations and the world itself.

Please
visit www.writingshop.ws for final publication date

~ OTHER BOOKS BY JOHN
SCHETTLER ~

The
Meridian Series

Book
I:
Meridian
– A Novel In Time

ForeWord
Magazine’s “Book of the Year”

2002
Silver Medal Winner for Science Fiction

The
adventure begins on the eve of the greatest experiment ever attempted—Time
travel. As the project team meets for their final mission briefing, the last
member, arriving late, brings startling news. Catastrophe threatens and the
fate of the Western World hangs in the balance. But a visitor from another time
arrives bearing clues that will carry the hope of countless generations yet to
be born.

Book
II:
Nexus Point

The
project team members slowly come to the realization that a “Time War” is being
waged by unseen adversaries in the future. The quest for an ancient fossil
leads to an amazing discovery hidden in the Jordanian desert. A mysterious
group of assassins plot to decide the future course of history, just one battle
in a devious campaign that will span the Meridians of time, both future and
past.

Book
III:
Touchstone

When
Nordhausen follows a hunch and launches a secret time jump mission on his own,
he uncovers an operation being run by unknown adversaries from the future. The
incident has dramatic repercussions for Kelly Ramer, his place in the time line
again threatened by paradox. Kelly’s fate is somehow linked to an ancient
Egyptian artifact, once famous the world over, and now a forgotten slab of
stone. The result is a harrowing mission to Egypt during the time frame of
Napoleon’s 1799 invasion.

Book
IV:
Anvil of Fate

The
cryptic ending of Touchstone dovetails perfectly into
this
next
volume as Paul insists that Kelly has survived, and is determined to bring him
safely home. Only now is the true meaning of the stela unearthed at Rosetta
made apparent—a grand scheme to work a catastrophic transformation of the
Meridians, so dramatic and profound in its effect that the disaster at Palma
was only a precursor.

Book
V:
Golem 7

Nordhausen
is back with new research and his hand on the neck of the new terrorist behind
the Palma Event. Now the project team struggles to discover how and where the
Assassins have intervened to restore the chaos of Palma, and their search leads
them on one of the greatest naval sagas of modern history—the hunt for the
battleship
Bismarck
.

Alternate
Military History (Naval)

Kirov

The
battlecruiser
Kirov
, is the most power surface combatant that ever put
to sea. Built from the bones of all four prior
Kirov
Class
battlecruisers, she is updated with Russia’s most lethal weapons, given back
her old name, and commissioned in the year 2020. A year later, with tensions
rising to the breaking point between Russia and the West,
Kirov
is
completing her final missile trials in the Arctic Sea when a strange accident
transports her to another time. With power no ship in the world can match, much
less comprehend, she must decide the fate of nations in the most titanic
conflict the world has ever seen—WWII.

Historical
Fiction

Taklamakan
~
The Land Of No Return

It
was one of those moments on the cusp of time, when Tando Ghazi Khan, a simple
trader of tea and spice, leads a caravan to the edge of the great desert, and
becomes embroiled in the struggle that will decide the fate of an empire and
shake all under heaven and earth. A novel of the Silk Road. (Print and eBook)
Note: Print version contains the original parts I and II in a single volume.
eBook versions present parts I and II as separate files (each over 300 pages)
and part II,
Khan Tengri
, is extended and revised.

Khan
Tengri
~
Volume II of Taklamakan

Learn
the fate of Tando, Drekk, and the others in this revised version of Part II of
Taklamakan, with a 30,000 word, 7 chapter addition! (eBook Only)

Science
Fiction

Wild
Zone ~
Classic Science Fiction

A
shadow has fallen over earth’s latest and most promising colony prospect in the
Dharma system. When a convulsive solar flux event disables communications with
the Safe Zone, special agent Timothy Scott Ryan is rushed to the system on a
Navy frigate to investigate. He soon becomes embroiled in a mystery that
threatens the course of evolution itself as a virulent new organism has
targeted mankind as a new host.

Mother
Heart
~
Sequel to Wild Zone

Ensign
Lydia Gates is the most important human being alive, for her blood holds the
key to synthesizing a vaccine against the awful mutations spawned by the Colony
Virus. Ryan and Caruso return to the Wild Zone to find her, discovering more
than they bargained for, and the ancient entity at the heart of the mystery of
life on Dharma VI. (eBook Only)

Dream
Reaper ~
A Mythic Mystery/Horror Novel

There
was something under the ice at Steamboat Slough, something lost, buried in the
frozen wreckage where the children feared to play. For Daniel Edwards,
returning to the old mission site near the Yukon where he taught school a
decade past, the wreck of an old steamboat becomes more than a tale told by the
village elders. In a mystery weaving the shifting imagery of a dream with
modern psychology and ancient myth, Daniel struggles to solve the riddle of the
old wreck and free himself from the haunting embrace of a nightmare older than
history itself.