“No. Just a concerned friend. You’re our…head of family now. And we worry because you’ve suffered a great loss and on top of that captured and tortured. Enough to break many men.”
“I am broken, Susan,” Castillo said sadly.
“I know it’s too early for closure…”
“Closure,” snorted Castillo. “What’s that? A word made up by psychologists. It means get over it and heal from it. Well, I’ll never heal from it. I will carry a scar deep within me forever. But that’s good because to heal means to forget, and I don’t want to forget them. They are little pieces of me and if I were to forget them, a little bit of me would die.” Castillo snatched a tissue from the dispenser on his desk and dabbed at his wet eyes and when he turned to Lambert he saw that her eyes were wet too. He mopped at his nose and then said, “But we move on. It does no good to dwell on the hurt. We say our good byes and we move on. Right?”
Lambert found she couldn’t talk. She could only nod. She took a tissue too and began dabbing at her eyes.
Castillo shifted in his chair, sniffed and cleared his throat, indicating a change of subject. “Now how’re we going to keep everyone together. What if a group wants to be let off on the Spanish coast or somewhere?”
“We can’t really force them to go where they don’t want to.”
Castillo eyed her mischievously. “No?”
“What?”
“I think you could do it! I’ve seen you in action. You could just knock a few heads together,” he smirked. “What’s that SL stand for on your jacket…Super Lady?”
She looked down at the embroidered SL on her jacket, then back at Castillo. “Oh, Ha! Ha!” She punched him playfully.
• • •
When the last crew members were aboard, the maneuvering watch was set and Kansas turned south toward the firth and the Irish Sea. In the bridge well atop the sail were Castillo, the British Captain Simms, Tanaka and Lambert. Taylor had the control room. The rain had almost stopped, but the skies were still very dark. They all wore black rain slickers and hats expecting the rain to start again at any time.
Castillo turned the dial at his station to 1MC, public address system, and began to speak:
Attention all hands! This is Captain Castillo. I would like to welcome all of you aboard our cruise ship as we embark on our world tour.
He glanced at the others and saw a look of surprise.
You will not see many sights from the deck of Kansas, nor will you be able to get much sun on this cruise, but we’ll make up for that by stopping at many exotic destinations. You’ll all have a chance to explore at each stop.
He turned to Lambert who was wearing an amused smile.
Your social director, Miss Susan Lambert, has planned some wonderful activities for you.
Her smile turned to one of dismay. Castillo and Tanaka chuckled.
But first, I thought you all might want to witness a historic event. The defeat of the great Spanish Armada. We’re in time to watch it unfold. I have a personal interest in seeing the Spanish get their asses kicked.
He frowned at his mangled left hand.
“Let’s go for it,” said Tanaka.
“Hear hear!” said Simms.
He heard agreement in his ear from the control room.
By the time Kansas reached the Irish Sea, the rain had started drumming noisily on Kansas’s metal sail surfaces and it was turning dusk. Castillo cleared the bridge, took the boat down to a depth of 100 feet, secured the maneuvering watch, set the underway watch, and they set a course for the English Channel. The following morning they were off Plymouth on the English coast.
Castillo took up station in his command chair in Kansas’s control room. “Pilot, take us to periscope depth. Let’s take a look.”
The control room was packed with people. Castillo almost didn’t recognize the Kincaid brothers. They were wearing standard Navy dungaree work uniforms and the official black Kansas crew ball caps. They looked just like crewmen except Kevin had his arm in a sling and Will had a bandage across his throat. “Where did you get the uniforms?” asked Castillo.
“Miss Susan geeve ’em tae us,” said Will. “‘ese’r the best boots Ay’ve ever ‘ad.” He stuck out his right foot to show Castillo.
“Very nice!” said Castillo. They were black standard issue Navy deck boots.
Taylor turned to him and said, “Lambert opened the lockers of all the missing men we left behind in Glasgow. She asked me if she could reassign some of their things, and I said, ‘go ahead. Those men won’t be needing those clothes anymore.’“
“Okay,” said Castillo. Then he noticed that all the civilians in the room also were wearing Navy work uniforms and Kansas ball caps, even Crystal McConnell. It was a sign of solidarity. They were family!
Lambert rushed in and panted, “Don, what do you intend to do about the current crisis?”
Uh oh, thought Castillo. Another crisis? “What’s wrong, Susan?”
“What’s wrong?” She stared at him incredulously. “We’re out of coffee!”
“Oh that. Yes, Jonesy said we’re out, and there isn’t any coffee available. But there’s lots of tea.”
“Tea!” Her eyes were so wide, he thought her eyelids had disappeared. “Tea is not coffee! It’s not the same thing at all. I went to Norm Bloomberg and he said that coffee at this time in history is only available in Africa, Arabia and Turkey. So…when are we going to Turkey?”
Castillo shifted uncomfortably. “Well, Susan, I appreciate the problem and want to address any discomfort you have, but you have to be reasonable. We can’t just stop what we’re doing and go to Turkey to get you coffee.”
“Why not?”
He searched her face for any sign of impishness, but there was none. He saw only stark sincerity in her blue eyes. She truly expected him to stop what he was doing to make a coffee run for her. He couldn’t believe what he was about to say. “Okay, Susan. We’ll go to Turkey, but first we have some other things to do. Try to make do with tea until then. Okay?”
“Okay.” She looked just like a big-eyed little girl who had been denied her request for a Barbie doll.
“We’re at periscope depth, sir,” said the pilot.
All the viewing screens flickered to life with images. There was a view of the English coast and many views of the empty sea. There was no overcast and the sun struck the waves dramatically causing them to glisten with sparkling diamonds.
“The Armada was engaged here yesterday by the English, July 31st, 1588. I don’t see any signs of a battle,” said Castillo. “Does anyone else?”
There were murmurings of negativity.
“Maybe we have the date wrong,” said Tanaka. “Our history books say July 31st, but we really don’t know what date it is. We only have the word of one Spanish sailor.”
True,” said Castillo, “and he was traumatized.” He considered the next course of action. “When is the next Armada battle?”
“According to our history books,” said Tanaka, reading from a screen. “The next battle was at the Isle of Portland, August 2nd. The Duke Medina Sidonia, the commander of the Armada, engaged Drake and Howard of the English fleet. The wind was East Northeast.”
“Okay, let’s go there,” said Castillo. “We should be able to see them soon.”
“I hope so, sir,” said a young sonar watchstander. “These wooden ships don’t return much of an echo.”
It was obvious to Castillo their sonar was going to be useless in locating these ships. In two hours time they had arrived at the Isle of Portland and all they saw were smaller vessels, fishermen mostly. “Let’s go to station keeping,” said Castillo, “and see what comes down the channel.”
“How long are we going to wait, Don?” asked Taylor.
“I don’t know.” Castillo sighed. “Not long.” In truth he wasn’t sure how long to wait, but he wanted to give it a chance.
Lunch was something that tasted exactly like beef stroganoff with scalloped potatoes and fresh garden gr
eens. They were pretty sure it wasn’t, but nobody asked questions. It was delicious!
Everyone seemed to be taking Castillo’s suggestion seriously to make use of the library and read. Tanaka decided to learn wooden ship building. He was certain this was going to be useful eventually. Anderson was reading and studying metallurgy. Guerrero was studying navigation, but not the modern kind with GPS and nautical gravimetrics, but ancient navigation using sextant and astrolabe. Lambert had begun studying farming and horticulture. Everyone was reading and studying except Castillo. He hadn’t decided what to study yet. He wanted it to be something useful. Something for survival. He was in the control room, scanning subjects in the ebook library on his reader when one of the sonar men spoke up.
“I’ve got something on the wide aperture array, sir.”
“What is it?” asked Castillo.
“Don’t know.”
“Put it on speaker.”
“Yessir!” The crewman flipped a switch and on the overhead speakers they heard a muffled staccato.
Bup bup bupbup bup bupbupbup bup bup bupbup bup bup bupbupbupbup bup
“Turn it up,” said Castillo.
“I’ve got it turned all the way up, sir,” said the crewman.
“Where’s it coming from?”
“Down the channel…” said the crewmen. Two other crewmen walked over and looked over his shoulder, studying the displays. “To the east…maybe 120 miles.”
“Okay,” said Castillo, “let’s go take a look. Navigator, plot us a course for the sound target. Maneuvering, make turns for 25 knots.”
“Aye, sir,” said Guerrero. “Setting course for sound source.”
“Aye, sir,” said the maneuvering watch. “Making turns for 25 knots.”
As soon as Castillo saw the new course line projected on his plot, he said “Pilot, come to new course 093. Make depth 100 feet.”
“Aye, sir,” replied the pilot. “Coming to course 093. Going to 100 feet.”
Chapter 12
As they got closer to the sound source, Castillo began to guess what it was. Cannon fire! As the big shipboard guns fired, they recoiled and their carriages thumped the deck hard. The sound was transmitted through the wooden hulls and heard by Kansas’s sensitive ears.
When they got within 10 miles, they came to periscope depth and they took a look ahead. They saw a cluster of ships in the far distance. Tall sailing ships.
“I think we found our Armada,” said Taylor.
“I think so,” replied Castillo.
They continued to close the distance. When they were within 5 miles, they could clearly see ships firing on each other. They could see the flash of cannons in the thick drifting white smoke like camera flashes in mist. Some ships were on fire and disengaging from the fight, listing badly. As they watched, a mast toppled on one of them.
“There must be 100 ships in that cluster,” observed Castillo. “It looks like chaos. How can we tell who’s winning?”
Tanaka flopped into a chair at one of the workstations, grabbed a joystick and flipped some switches. A red dot appeared on screen. As he talked, he moved the dot about the screen. “See these ships on the left, sir? The tallest mast of each ship is flying the Tudor crest. They are English. The Spanish ships here have a higher stern and larger forecastle or f’ocsle as it’s properly called, and they’re flying red banners with the gold Spanish cross.”
“Who’s winning?” asked Castillo.
“Uh…don’t know, sir,” answered Tanaka, studying the scene. “The Spanish are in their famous impenetrable crescent formation and the English are trying to break the formation using a pincer movement.”
“Why a crescent formation?” asked Taylor.
“It’s like a parabolic dish, sir,” said Tanaka, “which focuses light or RF to its center. The crescent formation of ships focuses firepower toward the center of the crescent. It’s an ingenious tactic. Notice how the English are trying to avoid that lethal center of the crescent.” Tanaka clicked a button and the red dot jumped to the right screen. “Here’s another English formation joining the fight from the south. Wind appears to be out of the west, favoring the Spanish.”
As they watched, another English warship broke off from the fight. Followed by another and another. Two of them were trailing thick gray smoke and listing badly. Tanaka’s dark eyes looked troubled. “This doesn’t look right. The English are taking a pounding. They seem to be losing this contest. And the weather was supposed to be stormy.”
“The history books could be wrong,” said Castillo.
“I suppose,” said Tanaka, but he didn’t really believe it.
Castillo used his control screen to cycle through all the cameras on the mast. When he got to the rear cameras, he stopped, magnified the image and magnified again. “Another formation of ships behind us.”
“Yes, sir. They look Spanish. We must have passed right under them when we came down the channel.”
“We were too fixated on the sound we were chasing. How many ships would you say are in that formation?”
“I don’t know, sir. The Armada by most reports had 160 ships.”
Castillo stared at the oncoming ships. Their white sails were brightly lit by the sun, some of them with red crosses on them. The bows of the heavy ships rose and plunged ponderously with their slow progress down the channel. Castillo pulled the camera view back to get a wider angle. The ships were so numerous it appeared as if a kettle of popcorn had exploded throwing a blanket of kernels across the water.
“Let’s get a count,” said Castillo. “Everybody grab a pad and get ready to count. Pilot, turn us 180 degrees. Let’s head back and find the end of this formation.”
“Aye, sir. Turning the ship through 180.” The watchstanders picked up notepaper and pens.
Kansas traveled back down the channel staying at periscope depth and never coming closer than 300 yards to a Spanish ship. No one in the Spanish formation saw the small mast protruding above the water’s surface. Lookouts and watches on the ships were all watching the horizon. No one looked down. It took a few hours, but when they were done, they had found a total of three crescent formations in the Armada strung out over 25 miles with about 150 ships in each.
“That’s 450 ships!” exclaimed Tanaka, his onyx eyes huge. “That’s way bigger than the historic reports we have.”
“The history books can’t be that wrong, can they?” asked Lambert.
“A good question,” said Castillo.
When Kansas returned to the main force where the fighting was, it was getting dark. The English had limped back to Portsmouth to regroup and the Spanish had gone to anchor along the northern French coast. Castillo ordered the Kansas to station-keeping off the French coast within sight of the Armada’s anchorage.
• • •
That evening after dinner, Castillo and Taylor with great effort helped a wheezing Norm Bloomberg limp to the messdeck where he held court. He setup a laptop and large display screen again and gave a lecture to a full house.
Bloomberg moved a cursor over a map of the English Channel. “The Armada will try to reach Flanders, here, and rendezvous with the Duke of Parma, who has assembled an army of 30,000 men.” Bloomberg paused and pushed his glasses back into place with a finger. “They’ve been ordered to move as a unit up the Thames and capture London and Queen Elizabeth. At least that’s what the history books say which are largely based on first person accounts and ship’s logs.”
“But they were supposed to have been stopped by now,” said Lambert.
“Yes, according to the history books, they were slowed by the English fleet and stormy weather, but we’ve not seen that happen.”
“And the Armada was only 160 ships,” said Tanaka. “What we’re seeing is more like 450!”
There was a long silence.
“Does this mean we’re in an alternate reality where the Armada won?” This came from the British captain, Simms. There were deep furrows of concern between his eyebrows.
>
“Well, not necessarily. Quite often history gets revised in books. This is done for leaders to save face or simply because it makes a better story. Like Columbus proving the world was round. A Greek actually proved the world was round in 240 B.C. But it makes a better story if Columbus did it through bold exploration.”
“But why would they alter the Armada story so drastically?” asked Lambert.
“I’ve no idea. And quite frankly it wouldn’t be easy. There were many personal accounts written by the Spanish and English captains and they differ on details but all tell pretty much the same story.”
“Do you intend to act, commander?” asked Simms.
All faces swung extectantly to Castillo. “I think we should stay spectators in this thing. Who knows what harm we might…”
“But England can not be allowed to fall to Spain,” declared Simms hotly. “That would be unacceptable!”
Castillo understood his concern. He saw similar distressed looks on the faces of others, especially the English. “I think it would be a mistake to get involved in something like this…”
“But this ship has the power to change the outcome,” shouted Simms. “When you control something so powerful and don’t act for the side of good…why…that’s just criminal!”
“Let’s calm down,” said Castillo. “Let’s just wait and see what tomorrow brings. Maybe everything will come out okay. I’m not counting out the English just yet.”
Simms crossed his arms and huffed, clearly displeased.
“We should minimize our footprint on the event timeline. Remember? We’re not supposed to be here… whether it’s our world or not.”
“How do you know we’re not supposed to be here, Don?” asked Lambert.
Castillo said nothing.
• • •
Castillo turned in early and tried to do some reading. He was still reviewing the ebook index from the ship’s library, but he couldn’t concentrate, so he tried to sleep, but sleep didn’t come either. The events of the day plagued him. He finally gave up, dressed in khakis and went to the control room. There were about 10 men standing watch there.
He flopped into his command chair and looked up at the viewing screen. Someone had switched the cameras to night vision. There was a green glow to the seascape. It looked very peaceful, ships at anchor, rocking gently with tall spindly masts spiderwebbed with rigging and rocking like unsynchronized metronomes. The nightvision brought out the ghostly highlights glistening off wave tops, yardarms and deck rails. There were a few lanterns lit on decks and in cabins. Castillo could imagine they were having briefings and laying out plans for tomorrow.
Deadly Apparition Page 16
