Prologue: Only Time Will Tell
“The premier is gone!” Cherdenko roared in anger directed at the coward of a leader, Romanov who had led their glorious Motherland into the inevitable hands of death by the Allies as the room was busy being packed up towards the trucks outside in order for them to escape.
“Yes, the coward has already fled,” Krukov replied sturdily, fully knowing that their war would end with their miserable defeat once again as he laid both of his frozen palms onto the brown refined leather of the former premier’s chair. “The U.S.S.R is at death’s door, comrade.”
This war was known to the world as the Third World War, amongst many other names given to the conflict. It all started with one man’s ambition to spread the glory of communism all over the world, as far as the Pacific. That man was Stalin, and his enemies the Allies whom conquered the Union through the use of well thought-out attacks that led them sailing into defeat. To humiliate the broken Union after the end of Stalin’s war and his death, they stripped the U.S.S.R of their prime weapons and appointed a puppet dictator over the position of Stalin, a man named Romanov.
But this man was not what he appeared at various conferences with the Allies, as he resented them with deep hatred for what they had done to his home and secretly built up an army of immense size, rivaling that of the Allies during the period. Then he openly declared war on the surprised Allies, and for a year they had been fighting a losing battle.
Now that Romanov had fled from Stalingrad, Krukov was the only man left to command his forces to stop the Allied juggernaut in his view.
But Cherdenko was too an ambitious man not to be judged from his appearance, and he had a backup plan. “Which is why we must hurry,” he responded as he grasped the iron made head emplaced on a marble base and pushed it ahead, revealing a small curious red button which he pressed on shortly before putting back the head to its rightful place. One of the two cabinets filled with enigmatic books ranging for ‘The Communist Manifesto’ to ‘The Art of War’ slowly grinded open, causing the momentarily surprised General Krukov to look at the source, which revealing to be a shaft and an iron elevator.
Cherdenko impatiently walked into the elevator, not wanting to waste anymore time then what he had now. Krukov followed slowly as he scrutinized the newly revealed passageway, thinking it was the Marshal’s escape route.
“Sir, I beg you. Please!” Cherdenko pleaded his cause to the General, causing Krukov to comply as he walked into the elevator. The doors ground to a close, and the elevator began descending towards the bottom of the building where Cherdenko expected for something big to happen. As the result, the cabinet that acted as a door also grinded to a close, leaving nothing but a handful of sheets flying out of them.
The General and the Marshal watched the flowing grey concrete walls anxiously, waiting for the moment the Allies would lay siege to the last stronghold of the glorious Soviet Union. At this moment, Krukov decided to ask a question to where this elevator was taking them. “What is this? Some sort of an escape route?”
“No sir,” Cherdenko grunted over the occasional flashes of fluorescent lights of the levels as they went deeper into the depths of the building. “Twelve months ago, I was put in charge of a top secret project.”
Krukov remained unhopeful whether this project of the blithering Marshal would save them all. “Whatever it is, it is too late.”
At that moment, Cherdenko gave a puzzling grin towards the hardened Soviet General before speaking out once more to end his hopelessness of victory. “With respect, General…”
“You are wrong,” He replied in triumph as he shifted his body to face the front of the elevator that had reached the designated level. “Please,”
Krukov stepped out first, in both awe and slight terror as he gazed upon a marvelous work of Soviet engineering. Cherdenko followed suit and smiled at his little project.
“For you see sir, time is on our side.”
Far from the prying eyes of anyone not permitted for entry, what stood there was a massive and lifeless machine, guarded by four towering tesla coils. In front of it was a flight of stairs, and two scientists who were discussing about the testing of the machine, not even close to complete. The two Soviet officers strode forward as the lead scientist looked back with his black rubber gloves. He looked concerned and terrified to Krukov as he approached Cherdenko.
“No, no, no, no, no!” The scientists echoed in sheer terror when he laid eyes on Cherdenko. “It hasn’t been tested! We don’t even know if it works!” He stuttered low on breath, to Krukov’s newfound attention span.
“If what works?”
“My… time machine,” the man responded, twitching as he spoke of his work, which had been built similarly to an Allied Chronosphere. Krukov then turned his head to face the time machine and mused to himself about this device, clearly the man had to be as intellectual as the man who had led the Allies to their march to victory, Einstein.
So this is Cherdenko’s little pet project…
An impatient Cherdenko snapped Krukov out of his awe induced trance as he handed over a piece of paper with numbers scribbled onto it. “Prepare these coordinates.”
“No, please, please…” The scientist begged to Cherdenko’s growing frustration. The scientist’s further sniveling now made him lose his temper.
“NOW!” He roared in anger as he walked forward into the deck that the time machine was placed on. Krukov obediently followed, leaving behind the exasperated scientist and his co-worker in disbelief.
“Sir… no! No!” He begged as he followed the two officers onto the deck with his worried co-worker, both of them knowing well that Cherdenko is hell bent on achieving whatever horrors he plans to do with their scientific progeny. “No, please. No…”
This continued on as the scientist’s co-worker rushed to open the heavy duty steel doors of the dormant machine for the advancing Marshal. He stopped himself to give Cherdenko one last chance to stop his madness before he ended up regretting it. “No… please…”
“Get in!” Cherdenko barked violently.
“All right…” the scientist replied begrudgingly as he stepped into the quarters of the machine, with his co-worker watching nervously from the outside. Cherdenko then stopped and turned to face his surprised superior, with a wide grin of his grimy face.
Krukov now spoke to Cherdenko. “You can not be serious?”
Cherdenko just followed along. “Come, Comrade General. A new world order awaits…!” He then proceeded to step into the bowels of the time machine, with Krukov following behind after much inner disagreement and from his knowledge, possible death by science.
The two men were unhappily greeted by the scientist who was busy inserting the co-ordinates on the script from Cherdenko, waving his hand in the air to get them to sit on the refurbished leather chairs next to them. The female co-worker shut the door and spun it shut as they took their seats. Krukov sat in silence, patting himself down as he prepared for the inevitable.
The scientist, with his metal goggles strapped on, looked at Cherdenko who promptly gave the go for the jump. He let his fingers push down a button and the whole place lighted up, tesla coils flaring and the machine reverberating to life. A few seconds later, the three men felt electricity pulse through their bodies and in an instant, they had been transported back to the past.
The machine sent out a speeding blur above into the ceiling before it slowly crackled into inactivity, and then there was silence forevermore throughout the facility.
---
Higgins had just finished his work and was wrapping up behind the curtains of the stage, grabbing a mop in the process to attend to whatever matters he had to attend to during these conventions where something would have to happen.
Then after he left, the space in that very room crackled to life and in a flash, three stunned men were standing still, their reactions mixed.
Krukov and the scientist were still making sure they were intact while Cherdenko boldly stood towards the front. Krukov then spun his head to face his surroundings, finding themselves in a backstage for a theater of some sort. Reaching out his hand to check whether it was real, the scientist angrily slapped his hand away to his dismay.
“No! No! Do not touch anything… We mustn’t do anything to disrupt the space time continuum…” Krukov looked on with disbelief at the usage of such powerful words. A simple touch like that could disrupt the flow of time and space? Impossible, but the knowledge of such facts was there inside the scientist’s clocking brain.
“Where are we?” Krukov asked Cherdenko, who was standing still staring at the beyond.
“Brussels, 1927,” he replied to Krukov’s amazement. Brussels? That was deep into enemy territory, very deep and well fortified even to Soviet standards. With the year that Cherdenko mentioned, his head was too busy processing the intake of the fact they were in the past.
“1927…?” Krukov asked again, still in shock.
“The Solvay International Physics Conference,” Cherdenko explained to his superior as the scientist flinched, having been present at that very conference with the Allies technology genius, the man he was an apprentice to.
Albert Einstein, and here he was back in Brussels before the outbreak of war. They spun and looked towards the gleaming glow of a spotlight just above an elderly man finishing off his speech. Withdrawing his goggles, the scientist looked on with fright, trying to comprehend with the fact that it was Einstein indeed who stood there.
“Is that Einstein?” The scientist remarked as he put on his frail pair of glasses.
“Yes, doctor. The man most responsible for our enemy’s technological superiority,” Cherdenko responded as if his fellow scientist was a fool to not recognize the man in front of them, but he assumed wrong as the scientist grunted at the Marshal in disgust. “The man who made them… invincible.”
“What do you plan do to?” The scientist snarled in dismay, not knowing the true intention of Cherdenko. Just then, Einstein had finished his scientific lecture to the crowd’s wonderment and promptly strode back into the regions of the theater where he was greeted with three strange men.
“Gentlemen…?” Being a kind and fair man, he offered the one who stepped forward a courteous handshake, as Cherdenko anticipated. But it would be Einstein's last as Cherdenko slyly pulled out a silenced pistol with his free hand to assassinate the man, his compadres not knowing of his plan. In an instant, Cherdenko whipped out the pistol and shot the German scientist in the head, eliminating him for good and the Russian scientist to cry out in perpetual agony at what he had done.“NO!”
It couldn't, it just couldn't be. Cherdenko had slain Einstein in cold blood, and the scientist knew that this meant the end of atomic technology. Sure, it could be invented within a course of 50 years, but what were the other consequences of this terrible accident? This sent him plunging into the depths of insanity, where he would remain after the events that will unfold much later.
Cherdenko just gave a smug grin, having promised a new age. With Einstein erased from the lineage of history, they were instantly brought back to the present, or so they thought. Finding themselves back in the darkness of the facility, they were not sure of the temporal changes that Cherdenko had done by killing the German.
30 minutes later, they were on their way up on a newly ornamented elevator, presumably as a side effect of the shift, as the scientist grumbled vulgar words towards his mad superior for having shot Einstein just like that. They eventually reached the office, and the refurbished cabinet opened once more just like the last time without any signs of wear. The three men stepped out into the office, now shiny and tidy unlike the dusty state of the last which Krukov was mild surprised at, but was unable to say anything.
Krukov put his hands to rest of a new marble statue of a horse, observing the room with intense curiosity. “I do not understand." Was this still the doomed reality of the U.S.S.R? Or something for the better or for the worst?
“We have altered the past and changed the present…!” The scientist wailed as he brought himself to bear on Cherdenko and Krukov. Suddenly, a black LED screen, having not been there since their last visit, flickered to life revealing a stunning female Soviet intelligences officer sitting at a desk placidly, causing the three men to spin at this sight.
“Ah, good to see you sir. I have the reports from the front that you requested,” the women said to Krukov’s delight, it was obviously for him and not Cherdenko.
“Thank you, what do you have for me?” The woman’s response made Krukov’s face turn into a deep frown, and the scientist’s reaction was as expected from the continuum shift.
“I’m sorry, Comrade General. I meant Premier Cherdenko.” The newly sounded Premier gave an awkward but warm smile towards the two of them as he walked forward, now above Krukov in rank alone. “Sir, the Allies are on the run. Soon, Western Europe will be ours!”
Cherdenko was more than delighted to shove that little fact up into Krukov’s grimacing expression. “Do you hear that, General? Our enemies have been defeated!” But the woman interrupted Cherdenko’s moment of triumph as she delivered some disturbing news.
“Hold on, sir. I’m receiving an emergency transmission from out Northern base,” she stated as she opened another channel up, revealing a grizzled Soviet commander dressed in a trench coat, the sounds of battle echoing throughout it.
“THEY’RE ATTACKING! THERE ARE TOO MANY! WE HAVE TO EVACUATE-The Soviet commander spun behind him and the transmission cut out as the intelligences officer’s face strengthened.
“Who is attacking-She was cut off by another signal that was hacking itself into the transmission. She instantly pixelated out of view and replacing her was an old man robed in traditional clothing with two strange insignias.
“The Imperial war machine has been unleashed,” this strange elderly man spoke in an opposing voice that made all three of the Russians terribly worried, especially Cherdenko. “Do not struggle against what is inevitable.”
Who was this man, and why does he dare speak like this to the new Premier of the Soviet Union? “All who stand in the way of our divine destiny will be swept away by the march of history.” Cherdenko grimaced, Krukov followed on before this man left one more stringent warning after his intentions to wipe the Kremlin off the face of Russia.
“You will bow before us or you will cease to exist.” The transmission then cut back towards the woman who was frantically trying to gain control of the situation, looking towards a computer screen next to her.
“Sir, it appears that the Empire has mounted a full scale assault!” Krukov shook his head in disbelief, who were these mysterious assailants and how are they going to even stand up to the might of the Soviets’ own war machines?
“What Empire?”
“The Empire of the Rising Sun, of course!” The scientist was the next to respond in sheer terror, as she implied that this ‘Empire of the Rising Sun’ had been around for an undetermined amount of time, even before their shifting of the time-space continuum.
“We now have two mortal enemies?!”
Krukov now assumed that this era of Soviets also had access to nuclear weaponry, and blurted out what he would say when pressured in dire combat situations, should they be present at all. “We must unleash our nuclear weapons! Annihilate them all!”
But this caused the woman’s face to change, as if she had never heard of the word ‘nuclear’ before. “Excuse me, General?” Cherdenko, who was slowly beginning to lose hope, never thought about the bad consequences of the shifting and thus, he could’ve never predicted a new and terrifying enemy.
“…Our nuclear weapons? Our atomic bombs!?” The scientist was already losing his cool and spat out his explanation for the un-existent nuclear ordinances.
“Oh, don’t you understand?! Without Einstein, there are no nuclear weapons because we have altered the space time continuum!” Krukov spun his head to face the raging scientist, also seething with pure unadulterated anger.
The scientist sighed after his rant and begrudgingly submitted to the one terrible result of the alteration. “Oh, who knows what nightmares we have created…”
---
Seven months later...
The arid and grassy knolls laid still, the midday sun still up in the sky scorching all those unprepared for it. The shadows of mountains high and low pocketed the landscape, and with the mountains came the silhouettes of towering buildings constructed out of refined concrete and handcrafted wood. These buildings are part of a sprawling kingdom, a kingdom in the ending stages of their own industrial revolution and suffering immense population swelling. This kingdom is the home of the Griffins, in the land of Equestria. Extremely aggressive and hawk-like, they are troubling to any other kingdoms they chose to invade. Over the course of a decade, they had won almost fifty battles outnumbered and now they were equipped with more deadlier weapons and equipment.
But alas, with new technology rolling in, there is a price to pay for that. Under the jurisdiction of the Coalition of Equestria, led by Princess Celestia of Canterlot, they were not granted any new land no matter how much their king asks to, for the fear that giving them land will encourage them to enact a new war that will inevitably cause dozens to die miserably. With this in order, the Griffins couldn’t expand and the kingdom now is overpopulated and malnourished for over two years, leaving their king no choice but to reclaim nearby land soon, either with propaganda or with brutal force.
Over the roiling savannahs, two four-footed figures were gliding amongst the wavering reeds of a large lake, surrounded by fearsome crocodilian creatures. As they swept through the tall grassy plains, they kept their flintlock rifles at bear for any hostile native creatures that dare attack them. They are the Griffin Kingdom’s first Recon group, and the first to receive extended training with the new flintlock pistols and rifles.
The Griffins, having four claws, are naturally skilled in welding firearms that are now widespread across the land, rather than the ponies who relegated themselves to close quarters and crossbows.
As they approached a forested area, one of them turned to face his comrade. “Are we there?”
“Almost, I can smell the smoke from here,” the second griffin replied as he released a claw from his rifle and pointed up to the sky, signaling heavy clouds of smoke being emitted from the forest. Just this morning, Griffin aerial scouts had sighted an immense wreckage that had landed in the very forest these two Griffins were approaching.
Their objective was very simple; scout out the area, set up a defensive post and await further instructions. Easy to follow, and easy to accomplish as per every authorized mission from their supreme army commander, Steelclaw Talon. They continued on towards the forest, not knowing well what would be revealed in the shroud of the forest’s embrace.
In a minute, they had entered the forest and was now nearer to the wreckage, the smoke getting more intense as they went deeper. The Griffin who was in charge of carrying their minimized equipment had spotted a pack of fleeing Timberwolves heading towards them, and he knew that this could only mean expenditure of their limited ammo.
“Sir, there is a pack of hostile Timberwolves, should we engage?”
“No go, Dodge. If we take them out it will only mean more,” the lead Griffin replied as he also saw their shadows in the smoke, and rolled towards his left. “Stick to the bushes, no engagements.”
“Got it, sir,” Dodge replied as he rolled into the bush on his right. Soon the two Griffins were out of sight, and the Timberwolf pack had ran past them barking gutturally to flee from the crash site. After double checking whether they had gone further on towards the edge of the forest, the lead Griffin signaled for Dodge to move forwards. The wreckage was now barely a few meters away, and Dodge could now see his cover ending and the eradicated lines of thick trees, broken like twigs.
“Check out the damage on these trees,” Dodge said as he dragged a claw along a fallen log, creating a deep and long scratch mark. “Wonder what the scouts found here?”
“Don’t know, all I know is that Steelclaw wants us to take a closer look at it, set up and camp and wait for further orders,” The lead griffin replied, as he edged the end of the bushes. Rolling out of cover, he waved for Dodge to follow and the two were well on their way to foresee the wreckage.
What they saw was immense, and the party most responsible for the destruction of almost all of the forest. There, laying at the foot of a hill was a huge metal ship, similar to the Griffin’s steamships. It was dull green, striped with red and on it was three curious and large holders containing some sort of red tipped projectiles. Dodge whistled at this, slowly leveling his rifle down.
“Holy moly, it’s pretty big,” Dodge commented before observing its destroyed right, catching view of steel propellers and the strange insignia of a hammer and sickle. “And it’s a ship, how’d a ship end up in the middle of a forest?”
“I said, I don’t know, I think we should take a closer look, just in case it comes back alive,” the other griffin responded as he shuffled closer towards the stranded, ruined and smoking remains of the colossal ship, clearly having been punctured by a large projectile of some sort. He then laid a claw on the hull of the ship and instantly pulled it back, the metal a little hotter than expected. But then again, it is on fire.
Taking a deep breath, he extended the same claw to test how tough was this metal is and tried to bury his metal talons into it to no avail. “This stuff is heavier than what we use, even metal claws can’t go through this thing.”
“Sir, I think you have to scratch it,” Dodge replied and his superior responded by letting loose a ferocious slash against the hull, now only scratching it. “You know what, you’re right.”’
“Damn right I am,” he responded as he strode over to the gaping and jagged hole in the ship’s bottom before sticking his head into the structure, revealing blackness and the loose wires that were crackling with electricity.“Whoa, mama. This bugger’s void of life, I suggest we set up camp-
“On it, sir,” Dodge replied, taking out the tents for the both of them and walking a fair distance away from the ruined ship, the top part of it still on fire. “After the camp’s done, I’m gonna send a letter to the King and Steelclaw.”
“Good, you’re thinking ahead,” the lead griffin replied, commending the initiative Dodge. “Looks like our waiting has paid off.”
“Maybe, if this thing can be used by our engineers, we'll finally get some land.”
