Free Nemesis by John Schettler

for provisions. A small workers settlement has
been cleared out and converted to crews quarters, and the whole area has been
cordoned off with security. I have a man inside, reporting weekly.”
    “Good,
but we will soon have a close look at this new harbor ourselves. I’ve given
Bogrov instructions to plot our course to Murmansk.”
    “I
see…” Tyrenkov considered that. “Then you mean to take the ship?”
    “Take
it back,” said Karpov quickly. “It was rightfully mine. Volsky was just a
mother hen assigned to this mission, yet all he wanted to do was sit on the
eggs. Well, I had to break a few to make the omelet I had in mind, but there
were simply too many cooks in the kitchen. Now… We must consider how to go
about this. We have a full security company aboard, do we not?”
    “Yes
sir, 120 good men of the Siberian Guard.”
    “That
should be sufficient.”
    Tyrenkov
raised an eyebrow at that. “You intend to board by force? That could get very…
uncomfortable.”
    “Perhaps,
but we must plan this very carefully. First off, we need to ascertain who is in
command there.”
    “I
don’t understand, sir. You believe something may have happened to Admiral
Volsky?”
    “Listen
carefully, Tyrenkov. What I tell you now may sound very… confusing, but
consider it well. This may not be the same ship that was here earlier.”
    “Not
the same ship? What do you mean, Admiral?”
    “We’ve
discussed this before—the first arrival of the ship on July 28th. I was facing
a most unusual circumstance at that time, and a very dangerous one. You see, I
was aboard that ship, as its rightful Captain when it first came here. Yet
there I was in Siberia as well. That’s quite a thorny problem, yes? I was
wondering what might happen to me, and quite frankly, not without a good
measure of dread. Time was going to have to make a choice, or so I came to
believe. Which man would remain here on July 28th—the man I was when the ship
first arrived, or the man before you now. Well, that time has passed, and the
choice has apparently been made. I cannot tell you what happened a few days
earlier, but I wasn’t sleeping comfortably in my stateroom. It was a very
harrowing experience, but I survived.”
    “I am
glad for that, sir,” said Tyrenkov. “Then you believe the other man is dead?
The other Karpov?”
    “Of
course. How could there be two of us alive here at the same time. I have no way
of knowing yet, but something must have happened to him. He may have simply
vanished. After our first little jaunt through time, we returned to our own era
and sailed to Vladivostok. It was there that we discovered men were
missing—crew members gone. Some were men we had lost in combat, yet, when that
bastard Volkov stuck his nose in it, he determined that there was no record any
of those men were ever born—no service records, birth certificates, personal
history—nothing. It was as if they simply vanished. This is what I believe has
happened to my earlier self. I’m a good ripe apple now, why would Time want a green
one in her barrel? She chose me, Tyrenkov, and in doing so she chose very
wisely. That other man was headstrong, untempered steel. He was all potential,
yet I was tried by the fire of battle many times, and always prevailed. I was
in a position to really matter here, while he stood in Volsky’s shadow. So when
you think about it, it is no surprise that I survived. Yes, I mourn the loss of
my younger self, but I remain, and that is all that matters.”
    “So
that leaves Volsky and Fedorov in command there.”
    “Volsky,”
said Karpov. “Fedorov was just a Navigator when we arrived. Oh, he is very
clever. His knowledge of the history we found ourselves in proved very useful,
along with a little library of books he kept, but he knew nothing of real war.
When the fighting started, Volsky had no choice but to come to me.”
    Karpov
was stretching the facts a bit, omitting the story of his failed bid to control
the ship,