“We are past the end of things now, but I don't want to leave.”
—Richard Ford: The Sportswriter, 1986
“The vision recurs; the eastern sun has a second rise; history repeats her tale unconsciously, and goes off into a mystic rhyme; ages are prototypes of other ages, and the winding course of time brings us round to the same spot again.”
― The Christian Remembrancer, 1845
Kirov Saga:
Doppelganger
By
John Schettler
Part I – Fire & Steel
Part II – The Final Shift
Part III – Gladiators
Part IV – Interlopers
Part V – Nothing Is Written
Part VI – Mirrors
Part VII –War Plans
Part VIII – Doppelganger
Part IX – Backwash
Part X – Loose Ends
Part XI – Chaos Zone
Part XII – The Second Coming
Dorland’s Time Glossary
Author’s Note:
Dear readers, this is the opening volume of the third “season” of the Kirov Saga, Doppelganger, and a proper continuation of the events presented in Paradox Hour. The challenge facing the ship on 28 July, 1941, only just began to manifest in the previous novel, and will reach a full resolution here. In writing this, I thought long and hard about the Paradox facing the ship as it approached that date from both the future and the past. That collision in time promised to be as harrowing as the strange incident with the cruiser Tone at the end of Pacific Storm. Then again, it might be nothing at all.
The mystery inherent in time travel has long been at the heart of this series. You sat with me, patiently watching Fedorov and Volsky slowly peel that onion, discovering what was moving the ship in time in Rod-25. Men of War, introduced yet another major element of that mystery when Fedorov inadvertently discovers the natural time rift aligned with the back stairway at Ilanskiy. The connection of this event to 1908, concurrent with the Tunguska Event, took the mystery of time displacement to another level, particularly when Inspector Kapustin discovers that elements used in the making of Rod-25 were mined near the epicenter of that event. The importance of Tunguska in what is now happening is far from over, and more of this segment of the mystery will be revealed in upcoming books.
You have also watched the slow evolution of Director Kamenski’s character, from a whimsical old man discussing battleships with his grandson, to something quite more. I have used this character to be a mouthpiece for some of this mystery of time travel, a sounding board for Fedorov as he struggled to understand what the ship and crew might be facing soon, and the consequences of his own actions in the past.
Kamenski’s revelations concerning the Russian nuclear test program were another peek behind the curtain and, in Paradox Hour, he spends some time trying to explain the nature of time to Fedorov, and also reveals one other startling fact—like Elena Fairchild, he has been the keeper of a strange artifact from the future.
The “Keyholders Saga” was first introduced as the final scene in my five volume Meridian Time travel series, which was reprised in an edited version in Paradox Hour to help explicate events that are now unfolding in the Kirov Series. Another enigmatic figure, Sir Roger Ames, the Duke of Elvington, also served to slowly plant the seed of the tree that is now growing when he took us on that strange retreat to the castle of Lindisfarne, yet another hidden natural rift in time, secured, and opened, by a key from the future.
The mystery and purpose of these keys soon became an imperative in the naval chase that saw Kirov sail with Admiral Tovey’s HMS Invincible, first in