gave me, right here in front of the entire bridge crew... I’ll have my revenge for that one day, by god. For now it’s off to Moscow we go, and another little secret meeting with Kirov.
Assuming we get there… He eyed the storm front again, gauging the height of the clouds ahead. That thunderhead there looks to be 25 kilometers wide, and we can get cells that rise up over 18,000 meters here, with strong convention even above that. So it’s no good thinking to ride over top of that little monster. I’ll give it a wide berth.
* * *
Karpov sat in his stateroom aboard the ship, looking out the port side windows. He could see the storm building, and it only seemed to feed the inner sense that something was terribly wrong. He had been feeling very harried of late, and very wary. It was as if someone was watching him, which made him take to the airship and forsake his ground quarters at Ilanskiy.
The back stairway is nearly ready, he thought. The engineers are putting the last of the structure in place today, just as I ordered. I told Tyrenkov to put the inn under a double guard, 24 hours per day, and to keep a good eye on Kymchek. In fact, I sent our new General to Kansk, just to be certain he poses no problems.
Time is running thin now, he thought. It’s just a matter of days before I have to decide what to do. Should I postpone this meeting in Moscow? Should I head for this storm and see where it might take me? This could be my last chance. Then again, the stairway at Ilanskiy is largely complete. Should I just get down there and try my luck? What if it no longer works as before? What if it comes down to a matter of a centimeter or two and the carpenters made an error? Or should I just do what I decided earlier—nothing—stare time down and dare it to try and lay a hand on me. We’ll see who prevails. I don’t go down that easily, though perhaps it might be a good idea to design one of those nice little escape pods into Tunguska, just like Volkov had on the Orenburg.
His eyes strayed furtively to the mirror on the wall, and there he thought he suddenly saw a shadow behind him, some dark formless shape that sent a chill up his spine. He turned quickly, his eyes wide with alarm and fright, but there was nothing there. Looking back at the mirror it seemed as though he had a dizzy spell. His vision blurred momentarily, and he thought he saw himself twice there, another Karpov resolving from the darkness that had been behind his image, a blurry double that told him he must be experiencing the effects of the sudden altitude change.
He shook his head, trying to clear his vision, and reached for the emergency oxygen flask, covering his mouth and nose with the cup and turning the knob with a shaky hand. A moment later he was breathing clean oxygen, and his mind cleared after a few breaths. Yes, he thought. It’s just the altitude, the pressure gradient of the storm we’re approaching.
Yet it was more than he knew or could even realize at that moment. For far away, in that strange oppressive fog on the seas of oblivion, Kirov had plunged that control rod into the glowing heart of its reactor core and rolled the dice on time’s roulette wheel for the last time, in a desperate attempt to escape the choking uncertainty that had fallen upon them.
Karpov never heard the last P.A. announcement that Admiral Volsky had made to the crew, nor did he share in that final, quiet moment on the bridge, listening to the men cheer below, and the sound of their joyful song echoing through the ship. He had slipped away from his former comrades like a fallen angel, descending into the hell of his own making, and deciding it was better to rule there than to serve anywhere else.
His every effort after that fall had been to rebuild himself by outwardly restoring his power and authority, his sense of control, and the notion that he was somehow consigned to this fate for a grand purpose. He did not really know whether it was his actions in the past, in 1908, that had caused Russia to fragment as it did, but discovering that Ivan Volkov had