Tide Of Fortune (Kirov Series Book 20)

by John Schettler

  Guess wrong, and your marvelous ship flings a 2 ton shell out into the empty sea, a problem for things swimming there, but little else. Guess right… Chaos. All the hard riveted lines of the opposing ship would be struck by a force intended to obliterate every semblance of order. Chaos. The shell was meant to pierce, penetrate, shatter, explode, immolate anything it struck. It was meant to kill, and almost always did whenever one hit its intended target. There, in that half second when the warhead ignited, anything could happen. And then again, nothing might happen at all, and ships would sometimes come home with a leaden tooth of their enemy harbored in their metal guts, unexploded. But when it did explode…. Chaos reigned supreme.

  Tovey was thinking hard about what he now must do to fling that chaos upon his enemy. I’m well positioned now, he realized. I’ve got my ships on a good angle relative to the rising sun. They will be silhouetted, and we will be harder to spot. That will only last a few minutes, but it should allow us to test that range call effectively before they can do the same. And the wind is from the northwest. We’re running right into it, but the enemy is north, so our turrets will turn to starboard to train on him, and the sea spray won’t foul the optics. So there will be no mad rush at them this go round. This time we’ll hold the battle line steady and let the guns do the work, and God be with us.

  That last invocation was the final element, a call to providence to weigh in on the side of the Royal Navy, though it would go unheeded, for if there was an overweening deity out there that morning, it would not choose sides.

  The bright flash from the shadows in the distance told him the enemy was firing now, and it was only a matter of seconds before the first rounds would find the sea. No one ever expected they would find a ship. They were half salvoes, meant to see if the initial judgment pronounced by the Range Finders were sound. They were opening expressions of bad intent, steel gauntlets thrown down on the sea, as much bravado as anything else. Tovey’s order to fire had shouted, in no uncertain terms, that he was coming to do battle, and bringing chaos in his guns. The enemy reprisal was a chest thumping assurance that violence would be met with equal violence here. It said, in effect, ‘bring it on!’

  “Long 800!” came the report. “Adjust by twos and ladder down.”

  Again the big guns fired, reaching steel fingers that spewed those unguided missiles into the morning sky. The muzzle flash had barely cleared before the first tall white pillars of seawater fell near the ship, and remarkably close. It was not a straddle, but it was much closer to that then a miss. The German stereoscopic range finder was very good at fixing opening range, but not so good at following and tracking that range as the battle progressed, which required a highly trained operator. The Germans had also gone to great lengths to improve the efficiency of their range finder, with a special blue coating on lenses and mirrors to improve contrast and brightness, temperature controls, and fans and blowers to keep lenses dry.

  Down below, in the turrets, the lifts and grabs were clamping onto those massive shells, moving them to conveyors and traversing trays, and the hydraulic rammers were pushing them from the shell storage room, to the shell handling room where shell bogies would receive them. Scuttles would get them onto the hoists, and up to the gunhouse they would go. The gun was locked at the proper loading angle, the breech would open, the shell tray tilted to line up with the chamber, and then the shell would be rammed home, with the cordite charges following.

  Tons of metal and explosive cordite were being moved by all this precision milled machinery in a matter of seconds, order bringing chaos, which would soon begin inside that long gun barrel when the cordite would explode, creating massive pressure that had only one place it could go—down that long machined steel pipe and out into the grey morning with fire, the bellowing roar of a dragon, and the roll of hot white smoke. All this was accomplished by 25 men in the magazine, 16 men in the cordite handling room, 25 men in the shell storage room, 12 more in the shell handling room, and 10 men in the gunhouse. Admiral Tovey spoke that single word, and these 88 men would see that the order was carried out, and chaos took flight in that 16-inch shell, looking for Bismarck that morning, with bad intent.

  The massive shell would move half a mile in a single second, and a little over twenty seconds later its journey would be complete as it reached the target zone, some 18,400 yards, or 10.4 miles away. It was as if somebody on the high tower of Big Ben in London had looked due south and spied a distant train rumbling through Croydon, aiming a gun beneath the tower and intending to hit the locomotive spot on, and all by looking, measuring, gauging and guessing where that shell might fall.

  The Germans had put their opening salvos very near to HMS Invincible, the British shot was well over, and now they would ladder down that range in 200 yard increments, and fire three pairs of two rounds each to see if they could correct that error. The shadow at the heart of that half second, between the desire and the spasm, had become 800 yards wide at the other end of that business, and now it had to be squeezed closer to certainty by an intelligent and highly engineered process of sheer trial and error.

  This would go on, over and over, the sweat and sinew of the men, the roar of the guns, the smell of the cordite, the officers standing on the bridge in navy blue, their braided stripes marking their rank and sometimes their skill level as well, their aptitude for using well honed order to produce chaos at sea.

  And that is what happened next…

  The battle was five minutes old, a straddle for Invincible on the Bismarck, a near miss on the King George V by Hindenburg, and then it happened. Chaos struck the high conning tower where Tovey stood, chaos flung at him by Admiral Raeder and a man named Axel Faust, with all their cohorts. The Hindenburg had come out of the mist, joined the hot action, and on her third reaching salvo, the long chain of seeing, measuring, shouting, aiming and firing had come full circle to absolute bedlam.

  Yet that chain of causality had begun much earlier than that, with the stealthy approach of a Zombie named Fields, in a British submarine named Seawolf. He had put a torpedo into Hindenburg, partially flooding the magazine to Anton turret the previous night. The long effort to pump the water out, seal the breach, dispose of the soiled cordite bags, had been considerable, and it was enough to prompt the Gunhouse Captain in Anton turret to take one further precaution. Hindenburg had a small upper chamber in the turret that could hold four additional shells for ready ammo. Under normal circumstances, it would not be used, as the danger from an explosion in a hit was greatly magnified.

  Yet because of that threat to his main magazine, Axel Faust had decided to park four shells there, so Hindenburg was extremely quick with her opening salvos, finding the range with the two that were already loaded in the guns, getting just a little closer with the first two shells from that upper ready ammo, and then scoring that lucky hit with shell number five from that lot, a shell that would not have been at hand to fire so quickly if Fields and Seawolf had not come on the scene the previous night. Fate had a clever way of masking her intent, for instead of a liability, that torpedo hit had been the key to Hindenburg’s greatest success.

  203mm of face hardened British Cemented Steel, eight inches, now stood in the way of death’s hand, in the shape of that 1998 pound shell, 16 inches in diameter. It achieved complete penetration, blasting all the way through to send a hail of incandescent hot sparks and shrapnel splinters into the battle bridge, and delivering tremendous shock. All the glass windows shattered, adding to the wild scintillating display as shards flew everywhere.

  Tovey had been well to the rear of that armored compartment, and he had just turned and was halfway to the plotting room and flag bridge, where he had meant to check the latest radar signals plot. It was as if someone merely tapped him on his shoulder. Then he was flung forward, knocked right off his feet and down onto the hard metal decking. Groaning with a sudden pain from his left shoulder, he rolled over to see those incandescent hot sparks in the steamy white smoke that now enveloped
the bridge, and into his stunned brain a voice was speaking….

  The eyes are not here,

  There are no eyes here,

  In this valley of dying stars,

  In this hollow valley,

  This broken jaw of our lost kingdoms,

  death's twilight kingdom,

  The hope only

  Of empty men….

  Between the essence

  And the descent,

  Falls the Shadow.

  For Thine is the Kingdom.

  For Thine is…

  Life is…

  For Thine is the….

  Darkness closed in on him, the darkness of the chaos flung at him by his enemies, and his hearing began to fail so that the rollicking noise on the bridge became the hushed murmur of a quiet, voiceless panic.

  This is the way the world ends,

  This is the way the world ends,

  This is the way the world ends,

  Not with a bang but a whimper….

  Chapter 36

  Not with a bang… That was the one thing that had saved that station from complete destruction, for the shell had penetrated, but not exploded. Invincible had been struck a hard blow on the chin by a vicious agent of disorder, and in that single blow, her jaw was broken, and her eyes blighted with darkness.

  The eyes are not here, There are no eyes here, In this valley of dying stars, In this hollow valley…

  Nelson’s flag still flew proudly on the mainmast, though it bore one more tear from the shrapnel of that hit. As uplifting as the sight of that banner might have been, Nelson was not there on the bridge that day, and now, neither was Admiral Tovey. Everyone on the bridge was knocked senseless, and most were dead. Captain Bennett, sitting in his high chair, now lay slumped to one side, his face and neck red with blood, and one arm missing. The Helmsman was gone, the Executive Officer, and Senior Watch Officer, all dead. There, that broken jaw had become Death’s Twilight Kingdom, ruled only by listless shadows, the three men who survived, one crawling on his hands and knees, the other two struggling about on unsteady legs.

  It was never supposed to happen this way. It was not what any man hoped. There should have been a raging duel, the hot fire from the turrets roaring in anger, the tall frothing sea breaking on the bow as the ship turned. The mark and fall of shot and shell should have been counted, the hits called out in jubilant voices, the eyes, the hands, the precision milled machinery of death slowly dialing, pivoting, swinging about for vengeance. Through it all, Admiral Tovey was supposed to have matched his wits with those of Raeder, the two old salts head to head at sea, and in the very best ships their nations could float. Tovey was standing beneath Nelson’s battle ensign, and Raeder carrying on the legacy of Reinhart Scheer and Franz Hipper.

  It should have been shell versus side armor, glory and guts, the sort of thing that had prompted all the men on the ship to call Tovey “Old Splashguts” with his aggressive tactics in battle. It should have been so, but it was not. The bridge was broken, a shattered dream, ‘The hope only Of empty men….’

  But there had been two Admirals aboard HMS Invincible that day, and through the haze of battle came another man, his stout figure looming through the smoke, the cap of an officer pulled low on his forehead, his jacket cuffs braided with broad gold stripes. His voice was low and deep when he shouted, and at his side, was Ensign Peter Yelchin, once called Pyotr by his father, a Russian born in Saint Petersburg, who had named his son after that great city. The Ensign had been serving as the voice and ears of the other man, through all those many long conversations with Admiral Tovey.

  Admiral Volsky had been another thick bulkhead away, in the plotting room where the signals received from Argos Fire were being plotted on the broad position table. The thunderous roar of the hit rattled the table, sending the little wooden ships flying in all directions. He nearly lost his footing, but steadied himself, one hand on the table, eyes squinting with the smoke that was now billowing in through the open hatch.

  He fought his way forward, a hand on the shoulder of Ensign Yelchin, and the two men stepped through the hatch and onto the bridge to be the first to bear witness to the carnage there. The stiff sea breeze was gracious enough to slowly clear the smoke, but Volsky could see the hot tongues of fire leaping up across the room. Then he saw the motionless shape of Tovey, and blood there on the deck beside him. He shouted to the Ensign to get hold of the man’s legs, and together they slowly dragged the Admiral back through that hatch into the relative safety of the plotting room.

  Volsky had Yelchin summon a medical team, and then he turned to him and gave a stiff order. “You are to go now to the signals room, and send this message on every channel. It is but one word—Geronimo, understand?”

  The man nodded, his face charred by the smoke, sweat on his brow, his hands shaking. “Get to the radio,” Volsky said again. “Send that signal, and repeat it until you hear it copied back to you. Now go!”

  The Ensign was up and running, and Volsky passed one sad moment looking down at Tovey, whispering a silent prayer that he was still alive. Then, his eyes alight with a sudden realization, he reached into the other man’s jacket pocket, finding and taking hold of something there. Then he was up on those thick sea legs, steady on the deck in spite of the wallowing roll that told him the ship was underway without proper steering.

  He was through the hatch and onto the shattered bridge, looking for the helmsman station. There he saw the man dead, yet the wheel still there, still intact, for the shell had struck the conning tower on the opposite side of the bridge—and there it sat, unexploded, a vast, menacing shape half way embedded in the buckled deck. Not ten feet away there was a fire, and he knew that the ship was still in grave danger. That shell could still explode, finishing the job it had started here with the tremendous, penetrating shock of that hit. It lay there, wreathed in smoke, a dull deadly gleam on the hot metal. Its cap had been shattered, and the nose was now buried and out of sight… but if it was still intact… if that warhead charge was still potent…

  He saw the metal wheel of the helm moving listlessly back and forth, and took hold of it with his strong firm grip. The three other living shadows of men had staggered away, too dazed to comprehend anything other than the basic instinct to escape. The safe thing to do would have been for him to follow them, and get as far from that deadly unexploded shell as possible, but he could not do that now. Volsky had commanded ships for two decades, always with the power of his voice issuing the orders to set other minds and hands in motion. Yet now, everyone around him was dead, and he was the last solitary impulse of life there in Death’s Twilight Kingdom. So he would stand his watch alone, even if it was to be his last, and he would do all in his power to steer HMS Invincible to safer water.

  In one quick glance through the shattered forward windows, Volsky could see the battle still raging on the sea. He looked to see that King George V had come abreast off his starboard side, as if reacting to try and shield the fleet flagship from any further harm. But Volsky did not want to stay there in the shadow of another ship, so he pulled on the wheel, wrenching it to the left, exhilarated to feel the mighty ship beneath him respond to his command. It was as if he were riding a dragon’s back, 54,000 tons of snorting steel, belching fire, bleeding smoke from a head wound, but yet still alive with terrible wrath.

  He took Invincible 15 points to port, seeing from the bow wash that her speed was still good, and after finding sea room there, he came back again, with another turn to starboard. He knew enough English to shout his next order into the voice tube down. “Ahead full! Fire at will!”

  The thrum of the ship’s engines came in response, and he stood there on that embattled bridge, the wind on his face now, his cheeks soon red with life in the face of all that death, a defiant old warrior standing to in time of greatest need. The minutes that passed seemed like an eternity, and he literally marked the fall of enemy shells ahead of the ship, and steered to try and be elsewhere if they should come
again. His instincts told him what he had to do, steer an evasive forward course at the ship’s best speed, yet keep a steady enough hand on the tiller so that the guns could train and fire.

  Now he stared to see the line of German ships, looming ever closer, all of them running with high creamy bow waves in the mad race of steel on the sea. One ship was faster, out in front now, its long, sleek lines seeming a beautiful thing to Volsky as he watched it. Invincible had been slowly edging away from the other German ships, her two knot advantage in speed allowing her to pull ahead. Give me some sea room, thought Volsky, and I will turn and let the gunners have their way with you. But this other ship that had come from behind the high silhouette of the Hindenburg was faster, nosing ahead, and preventing him from turning as he might plan.

  All the while the guns on either side were blasting away in their deadly calculus of war, and then, when he saw them come, Volsky was almost surprised.

  * * *

  “Message from HMS Invincible sir!”

  “Well, you might read it,” said MacRae to his radio man.

  “It’s just one word, sir—Geronimo. Nothing more.”

  MacRae’s eyes narrowed, his arms folded over his broad chest, lips pursed. Geronimo, he thought. The word her Ladyship had learned to fear, the name the British had given to that Russian battlecruiser, and God only knew what had happened to it now. It was half a world away, so this wasn’t a salutation from the other ship. No. It was a pre-arranged code word, and one that beckoned him to take immediate action in the heat of an emergency. He had been there in the meeting aboard Invincible, there with Tovey, Volsky and Miss Fairchild when they decided the matter. Pick a word, said Tovey, looking about at the others. The Russian Admiral had smiled, and out it came.