The kronos gambit cross.., p.1
The Kronos Gambit: Cross-Time Wars #2, page 1
The Kronos Gambit
By Dietmar Arthur Wehr
Amazon edition
Copyright held by Non-Linear Visions Inc., 2025
You can find links to all my ebooks, audiobooks and paperback versions on my website, www.dwehrsfwriter.com.
I wish to gratefully acknowledge the following Patreon supporters, who have made pledges at the Vice-Admiral Level.
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Contents
Chapter One:
Chapter Two:
Chapter Three
Chapter Four:
Chapter Five:
Chapter Six:
Chapter Seven:
Chapter Eight:
Chapter Nine:
Author’s Comments:
Chapter One:
Kaiser Wilhelm III stepped up to the microphone on top of the platform, which was next to the bow of the largest U-boat Imperial Germany had ever built. He stared at the vessel in awe for a few seconds. At over 4,500 metric tonnes displacement, it was ten percent heavier than the only other nuclear-powered U-boat built so far because of the Kronos time travel device installed just forward of the nuclear power plant. Wilhelm had toured the U-boat two days ago and was impressed with its roominess and level of crew comfort. He cleared his throat to make sure the microphone was turned on before speaking.
“This is a great day for Imperial Germany. We were the first nation to build an atomic U-boat, the U-1000, which reached the North Pole under the ice seven months ago. Thereby demonstrating the technical prowess of our great nation. Today, we launch an even more advanced atom-powered vessel.” He paused and turned to accept the large bottle of champagne, which he held by the neck. “I christen this U-boat, the U-1001! May God watch over her crew and guide their voyages!” He raised the bottle and smashed it against the bow of the vessel. The crowd gathered around the podium, and the front of the U-boat cheered and clapped. The U-1001 began sliding down the slipway to the water, where tugboats were waiting to guide it to the dock for final fitting out. The shipyard management had sworn to him that the U-boat would be ready for sea trials in ten days.
When the U-boat was floating on the water, Wilhelm turned and waved to the crowd before heading down the steps where the shipyard President and his senior managers were waiting. They waited until he had reached the ground before bowing as protocol demanded. The company President then stepped forward to shake the Kaiser’s hand.
“On behalf of a grateful nation, I congratulate you on the successful launch of the U-1001, Herr Hoffman,” Wilhelm said.
“Thank you, Your Highness. We look forward to starting work on the U-1002.”
Wilhelm smiled. The decision on the third atomic-powered U-boat had not yet been made. His military advisors were recommending another Kronos-capable vessel. He wanted to wait until the 1001 had been tested. If the Kronos device worked as expected, then one time-travelling U-boat was enough for the time being, and the 1002 would be a ‘normal’ atomic U-boat like the U-1000. Only if the 1001 were somehow lost would he consider building a duplicate vessel.
“All in good time, Herr Hoffman. Let’s see if the, ah… vessel performs as expected, eh?”
Hoffman hesitated before responding. “Oh, yes…of course, Your Highness.” He knew that the 1001 carried a top-secret device, but not what it was for. Not even the shipyard engineers or workers knew what it was supposed to do. The installation had been supervised by a special team from the very secretive Ministry of Extra-Internal Affairs. Wilhelm shook hands with half a dozen other senior officials before making a final wave to the crowd, who clapped in response, and then climbed inside the one-of-a-kind, three-axial Mercedes built especially for him for the ride back to the Palace. On the way back, he pondered the idea of communicating with his other timeline selves if the temporal intervention strategy duplicated the rise of an Imperial Germany in those timelines, too.
Captain Kevan Siebert felt a lump form in his throat as he got a good look at Nautilus inside the drained shipyard dock. They had cut his boat in half, just behind the conning tower! He’d been briefed on why when he brought her back and had been relieved of command. The shipyard was going to add a new section containing some mysterious equipment that no one either knew about or was willing to talk about. He turned to Captain Riordan Carlyle, formerly Skipjack’s CO, who had joined him on this unofficial inspection visit.
“Christ, Riordan, look what they’ve done to my boat.” Carlyle nodded sympathetically.
“I understand how you feel, Kevan. Skipjack’s on the blocks too and even though they haven’t cut her in half, I still feel the pain of watching them cutting away damaged sections. Have they told you if you’ll get her back when they’re finished with her?”
Siebert sighed. “Nothing official yet, just vague hints. They’re happy with what Nautilus accomplished out there, but the country’s in such a mess from the missiles that did get launched, that the Navy’s too busy rebuilding its command structure to make a firm decision about Nautilus’s CO.” Carlyle nodded again. With the Pentagon destroyed in the hit on D.C., the entire upper echelon of the Navy, with a few exceptions, had been wiped out along with almost all of the personnel records. Seniority lists were being reassembled mostly from memory, and some officers’ memories were turning out to be highly biased in favour of certain other officers.
“No chance of giving you Shark?” Siebert tore his gaze away from Nautilus to look at Carlyle. USS Shark was the fourth Skipjack-class boat, which would soon be ready to launch.
“The Skipjacks are fine boats. They’re sleek and fast. This might sound strange, but if the Navy were to give me a choice of Shark or Nautilus, which they won’t by the way, I’d still take Nautilus. If I knew I wasn’t going to command her anymore, I’d feel like I’d have abandoned an old friend, you know?”
“Yeah. Civilians don’t understand how attached a naval officer can get to a ship or sub. They think we’re crazy when we talk about our boats as if they had their own personalities and eccentricities.”
Siebert chuckled. He remembered rolling his eyes in disbelief when he was a brand new Ensign listening to a grizzled Senior Chief describe the personality traits of the ships and subs he’d served on, as if they had been wives or girlfriends. Now, he understood that point of view perfectly, even if he wouldn’t use the same adjectives to describe Nautilus.
“I just hope this new section they’re putting in won’t make her harder to control. That’s the only concern I have for that class of boat. At high speed, these boats have a tendency to change depth suddenly and unintentionally. I guess that’s why the Skipjacks have the larger hydroplanes attached to the tower,” Siebert said.
“They make a huge difference. I had Skipjack at flank speed, and the depth didn’t change one iota. That hull configuration, in combination with those large conning tower hydroplanes, is as steady as a rock.” Carlyle looked at his watch. “I wish I could stay longer and chat, but I have to meet with some people. I hope they give her back to you, Kevan.”
“Thanks, Riordan.”
Siebert stayed a while longer and then headed back home. It would be weeks before Nautilus was ready to go to sea again. His wife loved having him on leave for so long, not that they could do much with his free time. The gasoline rationing and intermittent electricity blackouts resulting from the war made vacation travel almost impossible. It did give him time to read up on World War Two history, with special emphasis on the last 12 months as per the strange order given to him when he went on leave. Why would the Navy want him to bone up on history? It didn’t make sense, but the order was clear and not a joke. As he drove home, he wondered how long his wife would have to wait in line at the grocery store today. Food shortages seemed to be getting worse. As more and more farmland became contaminated with radioactive fallout, rumours circulated that food rationing would soon be instituted.
President Kennedy greeted his Secretary of Defence with a weary smile. “Glad you were able to come to Mount Weather, Bob. I know getting here is a challenge, given the high radiation areas that have to be detoured around. Phone calls just aren’t the same as a face-to-face conversation. By the way, you look like hell, Bob.”
McNamara shook hands and nodded. The plane ride had been uncomfortable due to the turbulence generated by the crazy weather. Atmospheric airflows hadn’t returned to their normal patterns yet. His stomach was only now getting settled. “Thank you, Mister President. If I may be so bold, it’s obvious the strain is getting to you, too, sir.”
Kennedy chuckled. His staff were going out of their way to say how well he was handling the job and the stress. Leave it to Bob McNamara to tell him the truth. “I’m tempted to tell you not to be so bold, Bob, but it’d be too late. The Cabinet meeting will start when you and I enter the room, but first, I wanted to get a personal briefing from you. Have a seat and bring me up to speed on the military side of things.”
McNamara waited until both men were settled in the small office the bunker had set aside for the President’s use. “The Armistice is holding. Work has begun on modifications to the Nautilus. The missile capsule is being built and the Regulus cruise missile is being prepared. All the German scientists are now cooperating. The last few diehard holdouts have seen enough of the devastation caused by the war to understand that helping us change the timeline will benefit Germany, too. They’re making progress building our Kronos device. What’s new is what the historians we’ve contacted have come up with in terms of how we can change the outcome of WW2. According to the crashed disc pilot, this timeline is virtually unique compared to over a hundred other timelines, where Nazi Germany was completely defeated. His knowledge of where those timelines diverged from ours is sketchy but we think the key is reversing the defeat of the Normandy invasion in June of ’44. In the other timelines, the Allied plan to fool the Nazis into thinking that the main invasion would land at Calais, worked and the tank forces stationed near there were held back and not diverted to the Normandy area. We know now that Hitler wanted those tank forces kept at Calais, but General Rommel convinced him to release them in time to overwhelm the Allied forces stuck on the Normandy beaches. The key seems to be a close call that Rommel had before the Normandy landings when he narrowly escaped being straffed by allied planes when he was in transit from one headquarters to another in his car. The plan we are confident will work is for Nautilus to surface off the coast of France, launch its Regulus cruise missile armed with a tactical, low-yield warhead aimed at the area where we know the close call took place and kill Rommel, thereby taking him off the chessboard. Theoretically, that will keep those tank forces at Calais until it’s too late for them to crush the invasion force.” He stopped when he saw Kennedy raise his hand.
“If we use a nuke, even a low-yield one, won’t that alter the timeline compared to the other ones?”
“Possibly, but the area where the close call took place is far enough away from towns or villages that the risk of collateral damage and deaths is very low. The Germans will know that a very powerful explosive was used, but we hope they’ll think it was an attack by a US bomber force out of England. The warhead will burst in the air, so radioactive fallout will be minimal.”
“What about the allied pilot?”
McNamara sighed. “We don’t know exactly when he flew over the area, so it’s possible that he’ll be caught in the blast. We checked his war record. He died in combat a few months later, and nothing he did in between looks like a major contribution to the war effort.”
Kennedy thought for a few seconds before speaking. “So, help me understand why there wouldn’t be a paradox if Nautilus is successful and the timeline changes. If the Nazis are defeated in the 40s, and the nuclear war doesn’t happen, and we don’t capture those scientists and therefore don’t develop our own time device, how can we send Nautilus back to change the timeline?”
“The classic time travel paradox, yes. Here’s what the German scientists think based on tests they conducted. Time flows like a river in one direction. The Kronos device creates a diversion of some of the matter that moves along the river. Actually, a highway is a better analogy. Time travel creates an off-ramp for the atoms that make up whatever is sent back in time. Those atoms take the off-ramp, which loops back the other way into the past before turning around again to merge with the highway. Eventually, all the atoms end up back on the highway after what could be considered a detour. Once the off-ramp is created, it stays forever. So even if the highway, the timeline is changed, those atoms still take the off-ramp. As long as Nautilus stays in the past, it won’t be affected by the changing timeline. It’s only when it returns to the present that the timeline changes around it, and even if we can’t build our own Kronos device in the new timeline, all the atoms in the submarine, the crew, the Kronos device, etc., will still take the detour that the Kronos device created and will reassemble back in the past as the modified Nautilus. That’s what happened when the Germans tested the Kronos device with a metal plate. It appeared in the past, and then for a while, the same atoms were in two places at the same time. The Germans then did not activate the Kronos device to see what would happen, and the original plate still disappeared at the exact moment when it was sent back the first time.”
Kennedy shook his head. “My God, trying to wrap my brain around that concept makes my head hurt. So, if the mission is successful and Nautilus returns, it’ll arrive back in its original configuration without the Kronos device?” McNamara nodded. Kennedy continued before McNamara could speak. “In which case, we won’t have this technology then, right?”
McNamara smiled. “Not unless we take some precautions, Mister President. We had the German scientists under covert surveillance when they weren’t working. They talked about a lot of things, and one of those things was an idea on how to keep the knowledge gained from being lost when the timeline changes. Here’s how we think we can do this. Nautilus will carry a volunteer who will stay behind in the past. He’ll be dropped off on our East Coast before Nautilus crosses the Atlantic to launch its missile. He’ll be carrying binders full of technical data, not just on the Kronos device but also on every technical advance we’ve made over the last twenty years, plus examples of things like transistors. By dropping him off before the missile launch, we guarantee that the US will retain the Kronos technology, plus get a head start on a lot of other things, regardless of what does or does not happen to the timeline.”
Kennedy stared off into infinity as he pondered that option. “That’s an intriguing idea. Why stop with just technical data? Why not send Nautilus further back before the attack on Pearl Harbor and warn us about that? If the Navy had subs and carriers ready to ambush the Japanese fleet before they launched their planes at Pearl Harbor, that would make a huge difference, wouldn’t it?”
“Oh, it definitely would, sir, but maybe not in the way that we would like. The outrage that everyone felt over the Japanese surprise attack flushed away all isolationist sentiment that was prevalent in the country before the attack. If we attack the Japanese before they deliver their delayed declaration of war, then there may not be that outrage, and Roosevelt might have difficulty getting Congress to support the war that he promised not to get the country involved in. There might be other unanticipated negative changes. If the attack on Pearl Harbor is no longer a surprise, then Admiral Kimmel might avoid being relieved of command of the Pacific Fleet, and Nimitz wouldn’t replace him. Would Kimmel succeed in fighting the Pacific war as well as Nimitz did? By 1944, we were pushing Japan back to its home islands, and the Russians had Germany on the defensive. If the Normandy operation had succeeded, it seems likely that Germany would have been defeated. A majority of the historians we spoke to about this idea agreed that predicting the outcome of changes becomes much harder the further back you go to make those changes. I would recommend against going further back than mid-44, Mister President.”
Kennedy sighed. The idea of warning the US military about the mistakes made early in the war appealed to him. If the volunteer brought back information on what happened to Kennedy when his torpedo boat was cut in half by a Japanese destroyer, that incident could have been avoided. That was both good and bad for him. His back was never the same after that ordeal, and the injury was still bothering him. On the other hand, the heroism he showed during that ordeal helped him get elected to the Senate and then the Presidency. Without it, he’d be just another rich boy with an unremarkable military record seeking political office.
“Okay, Bob, we’ll stick with mid-44. But given what you’ve said about unanticipated changes, I’m not sure it would be a good idea to give Roosevelt, Truman and Eisenhower a working time machine to play with. Roosevelt was a devious bastard. Truman wasn’t too bright, and Eisenhower was a legend in his own mind, almost as egotistical as MacArthur. I can easily imagine all three of them coming up with time-travel meddling ideas that could backfire badly. Is there some way for the Kronos technical information to remain undiscovered until I take office?”
McNamara thought for a moment. “Well…I suppose the volunteer could remain covert until you win the election, then come forward. He’d have to have some means of earning a living during those sixteen years, although it might be possible to provide him with enough cash to last that long. The money would have to be currency that was printed before he’s dropped off. Any currency with a future printing date would run the risk of being considered counterfeit and would draw the wrong kind of attention.” McNamara paused for a few seconds before continuing. “If the volunteer approached your father in 1944 with proof that he was from the future, do you think your father would be willing to keep that technical data secret until you become President?”
