Kirov Saga: Hinge Of Fate: Altered States Volume III (Kirov Series) (43 page)

The Germans
sent a motorized battalion of the elite Grossdeutschland Regiment down through
the Devil’s Gap, led by their reconnaissance battalion. There they eyed the
ridges and slopes leading up to a place called the Breakneck Stairs and Mount
Misery. The entrance to St. Michael’s Cave was also in this area, where most of
the remaining service troops, porters, artisan engineers, and other
non-combatants were now huddled. Even the big 9.2-inch batteries on Windmill
Hill and Europa Point had been abandoned, the guns disabled as the crews
retreated to the cavernous passages of Saint Michael’s.

There
Lieutenant Dawes had fallen to his fate, a hero in the end, dying to save the
men that could carry on the fight. Sergeant Hobson saw them carry in the body,
what was left of him, and took a long breath. He was tired, weary beyond
measure, and the loss of the Lieutenant he had taken under his wing affected
him deeply. He sat, head down, dreary and mournful, and losing hope, as were
many others around him. Then he heard the quiet chattering of a Barbary Ape,
and turned to see a solitary Macaque skittering into the cave. A Corporal threw
it an orange peel, and Hobson smiled.

It was
just what he had told Dawes about—the Barbary Ape he could follow to the
promised land. Yet now he thought to catch it and hold it fast, so that Britain
might still hold the Rock. But this one seemed unhappy with the meager fare it
had received from the Corporal, and Sergeant Hobson watched it scrabble away
over a few rocks and into a passage he knew led nowhere.

“See
here,” he called after the Macaque. “Where are you off to? That’s a bloody dead
end! You’ll not get out that way—in fact you’ll not get loose at all once I get
my fat fist on the scruff of your neck!”

He got
up, following the ape, feeling his way in the dark and expecting to catch it
just round the next bend. This tunnel led south, down the last of the rocky
spine of Gibraltar until it ended somewhere beneath Windmill Hill. It went on
for just another few hundred yards, and he could hear the chatter of the Macaque
up ahead, but it was very dark. Then he came up short, surprised to reach an
impasse in a great boulder that blocked his way.

 He
knew this rock, as it marked the end of the passage but his Macaque was nowhere
to be seen. Hobson fumbled about his shirt pocket for a lighter, holding it up
to cast a wan, flickering light on the eerie carved rocks of the cave walls. He
remembered the old legend that said there was a hidden tunnel that went all the
way under the straits to Spanish Morocco, though he knew that was folly. Then
he keened up his senses, looking about when he heard the echo of his quarry
resounding, hollow and very distant.

“Now
where have you gotten to?” he said, hearing only the echo of his own voice. There
was no sign of the beast.

The
Barbary Ape was gone.

The Saga Continues…

Altered States:
Volume IV ~ Three Kings

As
Admiral Tovey struggles to stop heavy German units breaking out into the
Atlantic, the embattled garrison of Gibraltar is holed up beneath the Rock. Now
England launches operations against Atlantic island outposts in a race to
occupy those vital squares before the German 22nd Air Landing Division can
claim them for Germany.

Meanwhile,
General Wavell launches
Operation Compass
against the Italians, while
Admiral Cunningham prepares a daring attack at Taranto, but it is soon learned
that someone is leaking word of these operations directly to the Germans and
Italians. The Axis counter is a sudden new blitzkrieg into the Balkans and the
Italian invasion of Greece. Soon only Turkey will stand between Germany and the
vital oil supplies of the Caucasus controlled by the Orenburg Federation.

As
British fortunes reach a desperate state, Volsky and Fedorov soon learn of two
powerful newcomers on the vast field of battle, and a triumvirate of powerful
ships rises to the challenge, three Kings of the sea to stand as mighty
champions in crucial theaters of the war.

The
war effort on every side is soon focused on the Middle East. Now representing
the Soviet Government, Admiral Volsky accompanies John Tovey to a fateful
conference in Palestine to meet with General Wavell and an enterprising new British
General named Montgomery. Like three Kings of the West meeting on the field of
battle, they plan the future course of the war and struggle to find some way to
stop the relentless Axis juggernaut before its shadow darkens the world. Yet to
do so they must also reckon with the three Kings of the East, Sergei Kirov,
Ivan Volkov and Vladimir Karpov.

Action,
mystery and intrigue pulse through this compelling continuation of the amazing
Kirov Saga!

THE
KIROV SERIES ~ BY JOHN SCHETTLER

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.

Kirov II
–
Cauldron of Fire

Kirov
crosses the Atlantic to the Mediterranean Sea when she suddenly
slips in time again and re-appears a year later, in August of 1942. Beset with
enemies on every side and embroiled in one of the largest sea battles of the
war, the ship races for Gibraltar and the relatively safe waters of the
Atlantic. Meanwhile, the brilliant Alan Turing has begun to unravel the mystery
of what this ship could be, but can he convince the Admiralty? Naval action
abounds in this fast paced second volume of the
Kirov
series trilogy.

Kirov III
-
Pacific Storm

Admiral Tovey’s visit to Bletchley Park soon reaches an astounding
conclusion when the battlecruiser
Kirov
vanishes once again to a
desolate future. Reaching the Pacific the ship’s officers and crew soon learn
that
Kirov
has once again moved in time. Now First Officer Anton Fedorov
is shocked to learn the true source of the great variation in time that has led
to the devastated future they have come from and the demise of civilization
itself. They are soon discovered by a Japanese fleet and the ship now faces its
most dangerous and determined challenge ever when they are stalked by the
Japanese 5th Carrier Division and eventually confronted by a powerful enemy
task force led by the battleship Yamato, and an admiral determined to sink this
phantom ship, or die trying. In this amazing continuation to the popular
Kirov
series, the most powerful ships ever conceived by two different eras clash in a
titanic final battle that could decide the fate of nations and the world
itself.

Kirov Saga:
Men Of War
~
Book IV

Kirov
returns home to a changed world in the year 2021, and as the
Russian Naval Inspectorate probes the mystery of the ship’s disappearance,
Anton Fedorov begins to unravel yet another dilemma—the secret of Rod 25. The
world is again steering a dangerous course toward the great war that blackened
the shores of a distant future glimpsed by the officers and crew. Fedorov has
come to believe that time is waiting on the resolution of one crucial
unresolved element from their journey to the past—the fate of Gennadi Orlov.

Join Admiral Leonid Volsky, Captain Vladimir Karpov, and Anton
Fedorov as they sleuth the mystery of Orlov’s fate and launch a mission to the
past to find him before the world explodes in the terror and fury of a great
air and naval conflict in the Pacific. It is a war that will span the globe
from the Gulf of Mexico to the Middle East and through the oil rich heart of
Central Asia to the wide Pacific, but somehow one man’s life holds the key to
its prevention. Yet other men are aware of Orlov’s identity as a crewman from
the dread raider they came to call
Geronimo
, and they too set their
minds on finding him first…in 1942! Men of war from the future and past now
join in the hunt while the military forces of Russia, China, and the West
maneuver to the great chessboard of impending conflict.

Kirov Saga:
Nine Days Falling, Book V

As
Fedorov launches his daring mission to the past to rescue Orlov,
Volsky does not know where or how to find the team, or even if they have safely
made the dangerous transition to the 1940s….But other men know, from the dark
corners of Whitehall to the KGB. And other men also continue to stalk Orlov in
that distant era, led by Captain John Haselden and the men of 30 Commando. The
long journey west is fraught with danger for Fedorov’s team when they encounter
something bewildering and truly astounding, an incident that leads them deeper
into the mystery of Rod-25.

Meanwhile,
Kirov
has put to sea and now forms the heart of
a powerful battlegroup commanded by Captain Vladimir Karpov. He is soon
confronted by the swift deployment of the American Carrier Strike Group Five
out of Yokosuka Japan in a tense standoff at sea that threatens to explode into
violence at any moment. The fuse of conflict is lit across the globe, for the
dread war has finally begun when the Chinese make good on their threat to
secure their long wayward son—Taiwan. From the pulsing bitstream of the
Internet, the deep void of outer space, the oil soaked waters of the Persian
Gulf and Black Sea, to the riveting naval combat in the Pacific, the world
descends in nine grueling days, swept up in the maelstrom and chaos of war.

This is the story of that deadly war to end all wars, and the
desperate missions from the future and past to find the one man who can prevent
it from ever happening, Gennadi Orlov. Can the mystery of Rod-25 and Orlov be
solved before the ICBMs are finally launched?

Kirov Saga:
Fallen Angels ~ Book VI

The war continues on both land and sea as China invades Taiwan and
North Korea joins to launch a devastating attack. Yet
Kirov
and the
heart of the Red Banner Pacific Fleet has vanished, blown into the past by the
massive wrath of the Demon Volcano. There Captain Karpov finds himself at the
dying edge of the last great war, yet his own inner demons now wage war with
his conscience as he contemplates another decisive intervention.

After secretly assisting the Soviet invasion of the Kuriles and
engaging a small US scouting force in the region, Karpov has drawn the attention
of Admiral Halsey’s powerful 3rd Fleet. Now Halsey sends one of the toughest
fighting Admirals of the war north to investigate, the hero of the Battle off
Samar, Ziggy Sprague, and fast and furious sea battles are the order of the
day.

Meanwhile tensions rise in the Black Sea as the Russian mission to
rescue Fedorov and Orlov has now been expanded to include a way to try and
deliver new control rods to
Kirov
from the same batch and lot as the
mysterious Rod-25. Will they work? Yet Admiral Volsky learns that the Russian
Black Sea Fleet has engaged well escorted units of a British oil conveyor,
Fairchild Inc., and the fires of war soon endanger his mission.

All efforts are now focused on a narrow stretch of coastline on
the Caspian Sea, where men of war from the future and past are locked in a
desperate struggle to decide the outcome of history itself. Naval combat, both
future and past, combine with action and intrigue as Volsky’s mission is
launched and the mystery of Rod-25 and Fedorov’s strange experience on the
Trans-Siberian Rail is finally revealed. Can they stop the nuclear holocaust of
the Third World War in 2021 or will it begin off the coast of Japan in 1945?

Kirov Saga:
Devil’s Garden
~
Book VII

The stunning continuation to the
Kirov
saga extends the
action, both past and present, as the prelude to the Great War moves into its
final days. The last remnant of the Red Banner Pacific Fleet has fought its
duel with Halsey in the Pacific, resorting to nuclear weapons in the last
extreme—but what has happened to
Kirov
and
Orlan?

Now the many story threads involving Fairchild Inc. and the
desperate missions to find Orlov launched by both Haselden and Fedorov all
converge in the vortex of time and fate on the shores of the Caspian Sea.
Fedorov and Troyak lead an amphibious assault at Makhachkala, right into the
teeth of the German advance. Meanwhile, Admiral Volsky and Kamenski read the
chronology of events to peek at the outcome and discover the verdict of
history. Can it still be changed?

Turn the page with Admiral Volsky and learn the fate of Orlov,
Fedorov, Karpov and the world itself. Follow the strange and enigmatic figure
of Sir Roger Ames, Duke of Elvington as he reveals a plot, and a plan, older
than history itself on the windswept shores of Lindisfarne Castle.