He opened the software that he was certain would provide a link into Fleetnet, if a valid connection could be made. He keyed in the code Moertopo had given him back in Hashirajima, when they’d had made their pact by the light of the burning Japanese ships.
The result was unimpressive, but momentous. The pad chimed, making him jump. He had forgotten to mute the sound, but that was all right. He worked with the device every day.
The file disappeared from the out-tray, and security software wiped every trace of it from the lattice memory.
He couldn’t help but glance out of his window, taped to protect against bomb blasts. The sky was completely blocked by low, dark gray clouds. If he had done this correctly, somewhere up there on the edge of space, a surveillance drone was already decoding his microburst package and pulsing it back to the smart-skin arrays of the Trident.
HMS TRIDENT, THE ENGLISH CHANNEL
It wasn’t the first time the ship had played host to royalty. King William and his new wife had toured the stealth destroyer shortly after the ship was commissioned, but that had been an occasion of state, with pomp and circumstance as the order of the day.
The monarch’s younger brother was much less disruptive, although word of his arrival still flew belowdecks with the speed of laser-linked gossip. He arrived with a Special Air Service squad and their Norwegian counterparts. Halabi, who knew the mood of her ship as well as she knew her own feelings, sensed that the excitement had more to do with having a Special Forces component on board again than it did with any celebrity aura that hung around Prince Harry.
The SAS and their commando guides pretty much kept to the Air Div hangars at the stern, where they laid out their equipment, checking and rechecking everything. Major Windsor appeared in Planning once, to request permission to load mission prep software into the Trident’s Combat Intelligence. The CI could render the mock-up of the heavy water plant with much greater detail than the field server they’d brought with them.
He was most amused to discover that the voice of the ship was a synthetic facsimile of Lady Beckham.
“I met them at the investiture,” he told Halabi, smiling broadly at the memory. “She still looked smashing, but I thought poor old David had gone to seed quite badly. He never got over it when supercoach Johnny Warde dropped him from West Brom, did he?”
Halabi was almost unique in twenty-first century Britain, having zero interest in pop music, soccer, or celebrity gossip, so it took her a moment to catch up. “I suppose not,” she conceded, without knowing exactly what he was talking about.
Harry quickly returned to the hangar to boot up the V3D mission sim, sparing her any further embarrassment, although she could tell the junior ratings thought she was a bit of a knob for not wanting to talk Posh and Becks with Harry.
When she’d first taken command of the Trident, she would probably have retreated into stiff dignity, but three years of constant action had loosened her corset strings, and she let a wry smile play over her features instead. “I’m sure His Royal Highness would like nothing more than to spend the whole day with you lot, plonking on about gormless rejects from the Hello! magazine celebrity Deathstar. But he’s busy, and so are you. So get your heads down and your arses up, where I can kick them a little more easily.”
The sailors returned to their workstations with only pro forma grumbles. They were busily plotting a course that would take them to their insertion point in the Skagerrak, when Halabi’s intel boss pinged her on shipnet.
“Better come up to the CIC, Captain. We’ve got all sorts of things going on here. The birds are picking up indications of massive troop movements on the continent, and comms has detected an encrypted burst. Unscheduled, unauthorized. Completely outside parameters for any of the deep-cover skin jobs we’re tracking.”
“Sounds like we’re game-on, then, Mr. Howard. I’ll be there right away. Better set up a laser link connecting us to the Admiralty.”
She acknowledged the message and left her ops coordinator to carry on with the mission plot, although she suspected that circumstances might have just cut short their cruise to the Norwegian Sea.
It was a short walk to the CIC, which sat in the Trident’s central hull. Sailors and officers bustled through the companionway, already alerted to the possibility of action. Footsteps padded along the composite decking at double time. The rude, northern brogue of her boat chief Dave Waddington could be heard all the way over in the portside hull as he rousted a couple of slackers. The ship herself thrummed as the engine room spooled up in readiness. Halabi listened with approval to the whirr of Metal Storm pods and laser packs deploying from their recessed silos.
Unfortunately the increased tempo also served to remind her of how naked the ship felt. Her offensive capabilities were almost played out. She reminded herself again that she had only six ship-killers and four antisub missiles left. Every station was occupied in the cool blue cavern of the CIC when she arrived. The huge battlespace monitors on the wall at the far side of the room told her that the waiting was over, even before her executive officer arrived to confirm it. Dozens of e-tags on the computer map of Europe were in motion now. Data notes affixed to each tag scrolled through unit designations, capabilities, and the presumed role that unit would play in the coming invasion.
“They’re surging,” said the XO. “There’s a lot of activity on the coast, in the ports, but mostly it’s still inland, at least for now, as they’re moving into position for the jump-off.”
“Thank you, Mr. McTeale. Are we feeding this back to Admiralty?”
“Live and in color, without commercial breaks, ma’am.”
“Whom do we have there interpreting for them?”
“Lieutenant Williams, Captain. He just got into London this morning, but he’s had a few sessions up there already. They’ll listen to him.”
“Of course they will,” she said. “He took a blue in beer drinking at Eton. Speaking of which, best ping Major Windsor and get him up here. I suspect his little jaunt is about to go wobbly.”
“Aye, ma’am,” said McTeale. “About that, there’s this business of the data burst. I suggest you have a shufti in your ready room, Captain. It might be hot.”
Halabi knew better than to second-guess her exec. “Okay. I’ll make it quick.
“Mr. Howard,” she called out to her intel chief. “You’re with me. McTeale, I’ll leave you here to keep an eye on all this. Ping me if any more nasty surprises develop. Have Major Windsor join me in the ready room.”
“Aye, ma’am.”
She spun out of the CIC with Lieutenant Howard in tow. They found the SAS officer waiting at her door with Lieutenant Poulsson, the Norwegian commando.
“What is happening, Captain?” asked Poulsson. “Has the invasion begun?”
“Pretty much so, Lieutenant. You’d best join us, too, I suppose. Is that all right, Mr. Howard?”
“Actually, I think Lieutenant Poulsson needs to see this, ma’am. It partly concerns his mission.”
They squeezed into the small space, where a flat screen was already displaying some of the data burst that had arrived without warning. Halabi closed the sliding door behind them.
“So what am I looking at, Marc?”
“A rare bounty or a giant con, Skipper. It’s a file dump. A big one. There are hundreds of subpackets I still haven’t decompressed and decoded. Mostly they’re in German, but there was one attachment in English. Here.”
The intel boss brought up a simple text message:
Attention Trident. Attached you will find information detailing accelerated weapons programs of the Reich Armaments Ministry. Also, some details of Operation Sea Dragon, the early phases of which you will have now detected. Do not contact me. I shall contact you when possible.
“I see,” said Halabi. “What’s your first reaction Marc? Is it for real?”
Lieutenant Howard chewed his lip. “My gut feeling is yes, it’s real. It’s come in via a secure Fleetnet channel the Germans p
robably wouldn’t know about. I haven’t had time to check, but I think it’s one of the subroutines we authorized for the Sutanto.”
“Which the Japanese got.”
“Right. And they stripped her. This guy has access to a pad, too. He’s figured out how to use the secure links, or somebody’s told him. There’s no indication of who he is or why he’d do this, but anything’s possible. Maybe he was a Rommel fan.”
“They’re all dead,” said Harry.
“I am sorry,” Poulsson interjected, “but where do we come in? You said there was something of relevance to our mission.”
“My German isn’t up to much beyond getting into trouble at Oktoberfest,” said Howard, “but one of the highlighted files was this.”
A new window jumped to the front of the screen.
“Holy shit,” said Harry.
They all turned to him.
“My German is fine,” he said, “And that’s a document about the heavy water plant. Do you mind?”
He took a seat in front of the flatscreen and began to read, and then to scroll down.
“Oh, dear,” he said after a minute.
“Major, would you like to share with the other children?” asked Halabi.
Harry turned around on the swivel chair. “If this is good,” he said. “Telemark is a no-show. It’s sitting there to distract us from a fast-fission program they’ve set up with the Japs.”
“What does that mean?” asked Poulsson.
“Nothing good,” said Captain Halabi.
A chime sounded from the monitor, and McTeale appeared in a pop-up window.
“We’ve got incoming, Captain. Jets again. About twelve of them, this time.”
“Sound to general quarters,” she ordered before turning to Harry and Poulsson. “Gentlemen, you should continue with your preparation, but I’m afraid I’m going to have to talk to London. I think everything just turned to shit.”
Alarms began to blare throughout the ship.
23
PACIFIC THEATER OF OPERATIONS
None of them could be trusted. Hidaka was as sure of that as he was of anything.
The helmsman was probably the most reliable. He seemed a brute, and had become fast friends with some of the Nazis on board. The boy, Danton, looked like he would piss himself to death at the first fall of shot in the water. And Le Roux . . .
Hidaka sighed quietly. It was a difficult thing to accept, that the fate of the empire should rest in the greasy hands of such an ill-bred cretin.
As the magnificent warship known as the Dessaix sliced through the long, rolling swell of the Pacific, Hidaka did his best to contain the resentment that was burning in his gut as the slovenly chief petty officer lounged in the commander’s chair and held forth about the glories of France.
Hidaka had come across a phrase in an English language journal that he thought better encapsulated the current position of France. Cheese-eating surrender monkeys.
“Do you find something funny, Commander?”
“I was just thinking of the look that will appear on Kolhammer’s face in about half an hour,” he lied.
“Uh-huh,” grunted Le Roux, before barking something at Sublieutenant Danton in their native tongue. The boy flinched under the lash of harsh words.
Hidaka was long past being shocked by the lack of respect this oaf showed for his superior. Even though Le Roux was older and vastly more experienced than Danton, Hidaka thought him foolish for taunting the boy in such a fashion. The young man was far and away the most proficient officer on board.
Indeed, he had wondered what had motivated Danton to throw in his lot with Le Roux and the Germans, especially after hearing about the other crewmembers who had offered false allegiances, only to attempt to scuttle the ship at the first opportunity. But Le Roux had vouched for the boy, saying that he had a personal motivation of unquestioned validity. Two American marines had raped and murdered his sister.
The ship burst through the crest of a roller that was significantly bigger than the general run of the swell. Hidaka felt the floor tilt forward as they tipped over the summit and raced down the other side. The blue trough between the waves rushed up to fill the bridge’s strip of blast windows. The Dessaix handled beautifully in these heavy conditions, steered by her Combat Intelligence, cryptically referred to as Melanie by the Frenchmen. Hidaka still remembered the embarrassment he had felt the first time he heard the ship “speak.” He had nearly jumped out of his shoes, unleashing great mirth amongst the Europeans, and even some of the Indonesian sailors.
Danton said something, and Le Roux nodded.
“It is time to get below,” he said to Hidaka.
The Sutanto had not been run by a Combat Information Center. It had been piloted by men on a bridge, like the ships Hidaka was familiar with.
But he knew the path of life had taken him somewhere very special the first time he’d set foot in the stealth destroyer’s CIC. It seemed as if you could control the whole world from in here. There were more glowing screens, of greater size, and computers of infinitely greater complexity in this one room than they’d been able to salvage from both of the Indonesian vessels put together. Even after the Germans had stripped the Dessaix to her bare bones for this mission, she remained a wonder.
Again, Hidaka could only mourn the opportunity that had been lost. If this ship had remained undamaged, fully armed, and properly crewed, they would have wielded enough power to lay waste to Hawaii, and then to Los Angeles, and all of Australia and the southern Pacific. Such a great pity.
The Germans and a few Indonesians sat at those workstations that had been left behind. Hidaka had almost no idea of what they were doing, although Le Roux had indicated that their role was ancillary. Melanie, the Combat Intelligence, would launch and control the attack, with Sublieutenant Danton designating the targets. Because they had no satellite cover, or technicians qualified to control a surveillance drone, the CI had been programmed with targeting sequences referenced from her own holomap inventory.
“The Honolulu harbor, she does not move around, no? The airfields of my day, they exist in yours, yes?” Le Roux explained. “So we program the missiles to strike at them as Melanie knows them. It’s not perfect, but it does not matter. The targets will be destroyed.”
Hidaka and a few of the Kriegsmarine officers had watched as Sub-Lieutenant Danton brought up amazing, almost three-dimensional images of a Pearl Harbor and Honolulu that would never exist, the island as it would have been.
The young man’s fingers danced across a keyboard. He used a light pen to move strange icons and data tags around the massive panel display. After twenty minutes, it was done. He spoke to Le Roux, who translated for Hidaka. The Germans all spoke French.
“We have designated the Fleet Base at Pearl as a wide-area target box,” said Le Roux. “The missiles will travel there, then seek out targets using their own sensors. They will be drawn to dense concentrations of metal. Others will home in on the signature of the Americans’ radar installations. Still others will deliver area-denial munitions to the airfields. It will be very messy, I’m afraid. If we had the satellite cover and a few nukes, it would be much easier.”
“How will they know where to go?” asked Hidaka. “The Allies always position their spy drones above their targets.”
Le Roux rolled his eyes. “Over there, Commander, look. That Boche officer is working at the navigation console. We have no GPS fix, but we still know where we are, partly because he is a trained navigator and can tell us, but also because the Americans have placed locator beacons at fixed positions such as Midway, to help them navigate. Those beacons emit their signal, so we can receive them without using an active array to seek the position fix. You understand? Melanie knows where she is in relation to the targets, so she can give them directions? Yes?”
Hidaka was glad that most of the men in the center didn’t speak English. He had never been treated in such a dismissive fashion. Le Roux spoke to him as if he were a sl
ow child, and took a cruel and obvious pleasure in doing so.
A slow, dull, throbbing pain built up behind Hidaka’s eyeballs, as he resisted the urge to cut this brute down. Even so, it was a lucky thing his sword was not close at hand. “Chief Petty Officer Le Roux,” he said, slowly and quietly, “you forget yourself. You can no more captain this ship than I. You are a simple mechanic.”
Hidaka loaded the word with as much contempt as he could muster, and he leaned forward.
“I hope your confidence in your own abilities does not prove to be misplaced. You would not want to disappoint your new masters, I think. They are no more forgiving of failure than I.”
Le Roux couldn’t help flicking a quick glance at the Germans. The tip of his tongue darted out to lick at dry, cracked lips. A nervous laugh slipped the leash, and escaped from within him. “We won’t fuck it up,” he promised. But all of a sudden, he didn’t sound so sure.
Sub-Lieutenant Philippe Danton hoped that nobody would see how much his hands were shaking. But then, even if they did, they would presume that it was because he was a coward. Half a man.
While that pig Le Roux argued with Hidaka, Danton found himself praying that they would come to blows and kill each other. A serious confrontation had been brewing between them from the moment the Japanese had come aboard, in the Southern Ocean.
As they snapped at each other, he told Kruger, one of the Germans, that the CI was asking him to recheck and reenter some of the data.
“Why?”
“She has checked her holomaps and thinks the coordinates should be refined,” he said. “See, the airfields at Hickham and Wheeler are much smaller in nineteen forty-two than they will be in twenty twenty-one. Melanie thinks the missiles are likely to land outside of the new target box.”
Kruger watched a computer illustration that showed six Laval missiles slamming into empty cane fields. “Ah, I see, yes. Best we correct then. Good work, Lieutenant. I shall tell Le Roux.”
Designated Targets — Axis Of Time Book II Page 32
