Designated Targets — Axis Of Time Book II

by John Birmingham

  “Let’s get you home, Hillary,” Judge said to himself. The much-reduced bridge crew didn’t hear him. Maybe a quarter of the number of men and women who normally staffed this station were posted at the remaining consoles today. So many screens and panels had been removed from the bridge that it felt like a half-completed house.

  A mile away, the diminutive form of a couple of contemporary cruisers rode proudly at anchor by the Siranui, a dozen tenders fussing around them as they prepared to escort the Clinton back to the U.S. mainland.

  And hadn’t he taken some bullshit over that—not all of it good-natured, either. Here she was, the most powerful warship in the world, trailing along on the apron strings of a couple of old tin cans. There’d been more than one barroom brawl over it down in Honolulu, although nothing as bad as the riot that had burned down half of Hotel Street just after they’d first arrived at Pearl.

  An ASW Seahawk was fueling down on the flight deck, one of the few aircraft they’d be ferrying home. Even with her teeth pulled, the Clinton remained the highest priority target for Axis forces in the Pacific theater. She still represented the single greatest collection of twenty-first-century technology, and there would inevitably be Japanese submarines willing to risk it all just for a shot at her. British Intelligence was even warning that the Germans had uncrated a prototype long-range U-boat specifically to go hunting for her. It was said to be heading their way via the south Atlantic and southern circumpolar latitudes. Not that Judge was likely to lose much sleep over it.

  Now, if they’d grabbed a 21C Chinese Warbow submarine through Manning Pope’s wormhole, then sure, that’d be worth staying up late for. But if the Nazis had just dusted off the old Walther blueprints, then there were going to be a bunch of German submariners dying a long way from home sometime soon.

  A female lieutenant appeared on a screen to his left. “Captain Judge. We’ll have the vidlink to Admiral Kolhammer established in five minutes, if you’re ready, sir?”

  “Thank you, Brooks. I’ll take it in my ready room.”

  He stood up and prepared to hand the ship over to his Exec, Commander Takeshi Morgan, as a flight of Hellcats buzzed overhead. They’d be just out of the plant in L.A. As he left the bridge, he tried to imagine the Clinton with F-86 Sabres, or even a squadron of supercharged Corsairs spotted on her decks after the upcoming refit, but it was just too weird. Even four months after the Transition.

  SPECIAL ADMINISTRATIVE ZONE, CALIFORNIA

  Kolhammer was always glad to see Mike Judge. They were able to vidlink only once every couple of weeks, when a relay became possible via a series of AWACS planes or Multinational vessels or both.

  Jeez, what I wouldn’t give for just one lousy fucking satellite.

  Sometimes he thought it was like waiting for the stars to align, a concept that would have amused his wife, an enthusiastic consumer of astrological forecasts and a self-proclaimed skeptic. He never understood how she managed to be both. It’s a chick thing, he supposed.

  “Happy trails, Admiral? I don’t believe I’ve seen you smile since we got here.” The stars had, indeed, aligned, and Mike Judge was on-screen, speaking from the ready room next to the Clinton’s flag bridge, where Kolhammer himself had once worked.

  The admiral sent another, slightly sadder look down the encrypted link to Hawaii. More a gesture of resignation than a smile. “You caught me out, Mike. I was thinking about Marie.”

  “You meet her folks like you were planning to, sir?”

  Kolhammer admitted that he had. “It was good, too, Mike. They were wonderful people. Marie used to speak so fondly of her grandpa and her nana, I figured it was because her own parents were away so much with work, and she spent so much more time with them. But they were good people, Mike. The best, like she always said.”

  He let go a long breath that he hadn’t even realized he was holding in.

  A dialog box opened up in the corner of the screen: LINKS VERIFIED SECURE. The sysops at each point in the communications chain had just confirmed that no Elint sensors were attempting to crack open the link between the two men.

  It was time for business.

  “We’ll be ready to leave in four hours, Admiral,” Judge reported. “I’ve already got antisub patrols out. All the approaches are clear. You have any word on that phantom Nazi boat?”

  “Hysteria and bullshit, as best anyone can make out,” Kolhammer replied. “Having said that, though, I want you to proceed on the basis of a worst-case scenario. After the Nuku and Sutanto landed in Japanese hands, we can’t assume anything. We don’t know for sure that the Dessaix or the Vanguard didn’t make it through as well. One of them might have materialized in Hitler’s bathtub, we just can’t tell.”

  “We’ve been running active scans here, sir. Haven’t had a ghost of a return yet.”

  “I know. They’re probably back home right now. But they were both stealth ships. And even though I can’t imagine the crews cooperating if they were captured, we have to plan for it anyway. What is it that Lonesome is always saying? Prepare for the worst, and dare the good Lord to disappoint you.”

  “Well the worst would be the nukes falling into the wrong hands,” Judge pointed out. “We haven’t heard from our subs since the Transition, either.”

  “Yeah, but we would have,” said Kolhammer. “If Yamamoto or the Nazis had got their paws on a boomer, half the world would already be glow-in-the-dark. I’m less worried about them, Mike. But I really want you to sneak back as though you do have a rogue Nemesis cruiser on your case.”

  “I promise we’ll sneak out of here like a preacher slipping away from a Reno whorehouse, sir.”

  Kolhammer allowed himself another small grin. He did miss Mike Judge’s Texan charm. “Okay. Just don’t fuck around with half-measures, Mike. If you get even a hint that you’re being stalked, I want the Siranui to go wild. How’s Colin Steele doing, by the way. He happy with the way the ship’s running now?”

  Kolhammer had promoted the Leyte Gulf’s executive officer to command the Siranui as soon as Steele had gotten out of hospital after Midway. He’d been shot early in the brief battle belowdecks between the crews of the Gulf and the Astoria, the contemporary cruiser in which the late Captain Anderson’s ship had partly materialized. The images still gave Kolhammer the creeps.

  “Yeah, he’s pretty much got the cobwebs shook out,” said Judge. “All the software’s been converted. There’s a few differences between the Japanese Nemesis boats and ours, but Steele has had most of those systems taken offline, so his guys don’t have to worry about them. It’ll be cool. Anderson and Miyazaki did most of the hard work before, you know . . .” He trailed off.

  Kolhammer didn’t reply, beyond a brief grunt. The investigation into the killing of his two officers on Honolulu had gone exactly nowhere in the past four months. To his own shame, he’d let the matter slip off his radar, too. There was just so much to do. He made a note to e-mail Admiral Nimitz about the case in the morning. He hadn’t been close to Anderson, but she’d been a fine officer, and he’d been very impressed by Miyazaki, the Siranui’s surviving senior officer, in the short time he’d had to deal with him. From all reports, the two of them had worked well together, quickly getting an American crew settled onto the Japanese Self-Defense Force vessel. They deserved better.

  Kolhammer returned to his discussion list. “Halabi’s been bouncing her sigint take across to me every twelve hours. Things are grimmer than hell in the U.K., but she doesn’t think the Kriegsmarine would try a sortie while she’s still packing. She’s down to six antiship missiles now, though, with four antisub, and her air defense stocks are at fifteen percent. Pretty soon she’ll be like you, Mike. A floating Radio Shack. But Raeder can’t be sure of that. So he’s bottled up for now.”

  “How are the natives treating her, sir? If you don’t mind me asking.”

  Kolhammer frowned. “That guy the Brits had as liaison in Pearl, Sir Leslie, he’s been supportive. And Churchill has backed her. I
think Prince Harry has been twisting arms at the Palace on her behalf as well. But I suspect she’s doing it tough, Mike.”

  “She is tough, Admiral.”

  Kolhammer thought he detected something more than professional respect in Judge’s voice, but he let it pass. The new captain of the USS Hillary Clinton wasn’t married. He hadn’t even been seriously hooked up before they arrived here.

  “She is, indeed, Commander. Now, see that you get yourself back in one piece,” he continued, changing tack. “I know it’s breaking your heart, but we need to clean out the Big Hill. She’s a lot more valuable to us stripped down to bare bones. The retrofit’s going to take a good eight or nine months, and even then she’s not going to need more than a fraction of the systems she’s still carrying. Meantime, I got Leslie fucking Groves turning up here every second day with empty deuce-and-a-halves, telling me to fill ’em up with everything from Nemesis processors to espresso machines.”

  “Well, he is building a better A-bomb, sir,” Judge teased.

  “Yeah, I know,” said Kolhammer, rolling his eyes. “And he gets only about a tenth of what he wants, but it plays hell with the project management for everyone else. Even with all our processing muscle, and some of our people holding his hand, that bomb isn’t going to be ready until late ’43, early ’44 at best. It’s not like we brought any centrifuges or fast breeders through with us. Meantime, I’ve got immediate need for processing time on about a hundred and forty different design and production lines, damn few of which I would have chosen as priorities, but what are you gonna do?

  “We’re trapped by the politics, Mike. Roosevelt got the Zone bill through Congress by the skin of his teeth and the grace of that goddamn sunset clause. You’ve never seen anything like it, the scaremongering and bullshitting that went down. You’d think we were setting up the fucking Fourth Reich here in the Valley.”

  “Or the USSA, if you listen to Hoover,” Judge added, causing Kolhammer to throw up his hands.

  “Oh, jeez, let’s not get into that. We just don’t have time. Listen, Mike, I’m sending data in this transmission. It’s the specs for the project I want you to take over when you get here. I want to ramp up production of the F-86 by the end of winter, but I also want to be ready to jump through another generation, up to a prototype F-5 by the end of next year. You’re going to get that ready for me. Study up on the package while you’re en route, and choose your division heads from the guys you’ve got with you. You can prep them along the way. I want you to tie up and come running down that gangway, raring to go.”

  Kolhammer wasn’t really expecting Judge to object, even though he was effectively taking the Clinton away from him. He’d been out to Hawaii a month earlier, and the ship had a lost feeling about her, like an unfinished story that would now never be written. Everyone he spoke to wanted to move on to their next assignment. It was a sorry way for the old girl to end up, but he told himself—they all told themselves—that she’d be back one day, kicking butt and taking names, just like her namesake.

  The two men had a few more minutes before they lost the link.

  “What’s the latest with Jones?” asked Kolhammer. “I haven’t had an update today.”

  “I’ve sent along his last four data bursts, Admiral. The latest came an hour ago. They pretty much blocked Homma’s advance before it really got going. Lonesome wants to pull his armor and close air support out of the line, link up with 2 Cav, and hit the Japanese flanks. They can’t get reinforcements past Willet and Spruance. They’ve tried air supply out of Moresby, but it’s just not their gig. They’re well and truly fucked.

  “Jones should have it wrapped up pretty soon, which’ll be a boost for the Aussies. Truth is, they were shitting themselves.”

  Kolhammer shrugged. “Fair enough. They had good reason, too, after New Guinea. The whole thing was developing a very unpleasant momentum. So you think we can get the Eighty-second back here soon?”

  A lopsided grin spread over Captain Judge’s tanned face. “I don’t believe General MacArthur will let Colonel Jones or a single one of his marines out of sight before VJ Day. He knows possession is nine tenths of the law.”

  “Tough shit,” said Kolhammer. “I need him here to work up the land warfare programs. The training cadre we put together is good, but it doesn’t have the critical mass I need. MacArthur can make do. You’ll see—I’ve also included a package for Jones in the transmission. Make sure it gets out to him before you leave.”

  “Will do, Admiral.”

  Kolhammer looked at the handwritten list on his desk. There was one last item he need to discuss. “I really don’t like the look of the reports coming out of Europe, Mike,” he began. “When did you get your last update from Halabi?”

  Judge frowned on-screen. “We received an encrypted burst via relay yesterday. Why, has something else happened? The Soviets haven’t moved, have they?”

  Kolhammer shook his head. “No. Nobody’s sure which way they’re going to jump, or when. Only that they will, when they think they can. No. I’m just worried about the pace of the German buildup. I have our sigint and imaging people on them twenty-four–seven, and we all think it looks like the surge is coming very soon.”

  Judge pursed his lips. “You really think they’ll try a crossing in autumn?”

  “I doubt they’ll wait until next year. First of all, they’ve killed thousands of their best officers in the purges, post-Transition. The survivors are the sort of yes-men and buttheads who’ll tell Hitler what he wants to hear—that the Channel’s just a glorified river crossing.”

  Kolhammer leaned back in his chair and ticked the next points off on his fingers.

  “And of course, Hitler—fuckin’ nutjob or not—doesn’t think he can afford to wait. And he’s right. There’s already a shitload of ’temp forces training in the U.K., and more men and matériel flooding in by convoy every day. Young Harry’s set up his regimental HQ in Scotland, and the Brits are working hard to leapfrog some of their key technologies. Our new weapons system will start coming online early to mid next year, and of course, Groves is going to deliver the bomb a hell of a lot quicker than he would have before we arrived. So Hitler knows he has to go now or never.”

  Judge nodded and shrugged fatalistically. “That’s why the Luftwaffe’s been hammering at the RAF and the Trident so hard.”

  “Yeah,” said Kolhammer. “It’s really costing the Germans, but the attacks are degrading the air defense net, and eating up Halabi’s own antiair stocks. There’s going to come a day soon when her Metal Storm pods run dry, and the only thing protecting her then will be the ’temps themselves.”

  Judge nodded. “You want me to fly some of our Triple-A stocks over ahead of us?” he asked. “Our laser packs are good, and Metal Storm’s at forty-eight percent. We can still spare some.”

  Kolhammer thought it over. He didn’t want the most valuable ship in the world left defenseless. Even without her catapults and squadrons, the Clinton was still a prize worth risking a whole fleet for. He’d sleep a lot easier when she was safely back in San Diego and being stripped for her retrofit.

  “Hold off on that for now, Mike,” he said. “But when you get closer to home and I can cover you with shore-based CAP, we might rush a few pallets of MS reloads across to Halabi. She’s going to need them.”

  A time hack in the corner of Kolhammer’s screen began a one-minute countdown, indicating the end of the comm-link. He let himself relax a little. “It’ll be good to have you folks back, Captain. Even if the old tub is down at San Diego, I could use a few more friendly faces out here.”

  Judge took his lead from the senior officer. He dropped out of character, as well. “From what I understand, you’ve got too many new best friends there. Every longhair and hippie in America is making tracks for the Valley, if you believe the press.”

  “This is nineteen forty-two, Mike. Hippies and long hair haven’t been invented yet. But you’re still right, after a fashion. American populat
ion’s about a hundred fifty million right now, and some days it feels as if about fifty million of them are moving here. They’ve all got their reasons, I guess. Some personal. Some political. But you know, we could do without it. I even had a delegation of African-American labor unions in here begging me to run for president after Roosevelt—”

  Judge grunted. Knowledge of the president’s impending demise had sent the country into a tailspin until Roosevelt had promised to submit to an intensive course of therapy, supervised by Kolhammer’s senior medical officer, Major Margie Francois.

  “I think they see me signing the new millennium into law on my first day in office,” Kolhammer grumbled.

  Mike Judge smiled at the admiral’s obvious discomfort. “You gotta wonder how Ike and Harry S. feel about that,” he said. “Or Kennedy, speaking of which, there’s an intelligence package came through on the last relay from Brisbane. Young Jack features prominently. Jones wants to forward it to your intel people. I’ve got mine working it now. We didn’t have it long enough to brief you.”

  “Understood. We’re about to lose the link. Take care, Mike.”

  “Will do, sir.”

  The picture dropped out instantly.

  Of all the artifacts they’d left behind, instant global communications, and the feelings of omnipotence they engendered were perhaps the hardest to let go. He had a lot of technical and human capital devoted to reinventing them, even though it would be many years before they showed any real results.

  His usual policy was to invest massively for the short-term gain. This war wasn’t going to be won by the side that launched the first orbital rocket. More prosaic advances like a good grenade launcher, a better tank with a more powerful gun, penicillin, and smarter human resource management were the paths to victory. Even so, 4CI—command, control, communications, computers, and intelligence—were still the key to dominating the battlespace of the future, and he was not going to let anyone get a march on the U.S. in these fields.