Free Stories 2018

by Baen Books

  You’ve been calling your daddy’s U-boat again. Zoller was frowning; but whether it was concentration or sheer perplexity Lachs couldn’t tell. The Smoking Salmon himself. How long has it been? WVREF George.

  Zoller’s face was clearing of tension, his forehead smoothing out, his eyes untroubled as he turned his head to give Lachs a satisfied nod even as he wrote something down on his log. Transcribing something from his direction finder. A bearing. Was Zoller really listening to the conversation, any longer? Was it that Zoller’s English was not as good as “Charlie’s” German? It didn’t matter.

  Well, I make it sixty years. Give or take. Somebody’s about three weeks late for April Fools, ain’t they? Anyway. On for net? I’ll hop onto the freq. This is Charlie, LACHS, clear.

  Lachs waited; but there was nothing more. “Good work,” he said to Zoller. “Well done. Keep looking. Especially if you can pick up the same operator, by chance, we know his call sign.”

  There was a heading, there, on Zoller’s log. There was at least a hint to a claimed location. Lake Superior. In North America, as Goond had claimed, shared between the United States and Canada, if Lachs remembered his geography. Equally confounding claims about when, as well as where, they were; and from a man who claimed that “Verricht Lachs” had been his father.

  They had not come from sixty years ago. They had come from less than three days ago, and it had been February, and not April or May. U-818 down with all hands? Were they a ghost, then? They weren’t ghosts. They would be able to tell. Wouldn’t they? He’d eaten. He’d had some coffee. He’d used the head. He wasn’t a ghost.

  But he had seen the Flying Dutchman, in October. Of 1942. And he’d studied all available—if fragmentary—information about other sightings, since then. There was consistent confirmation of Lachs’ own observation: that if that had been a ship crewed by the damned, the admittedly few crewmen he had seen working its rigging hadn’t seemed to feel themselves to be particularly diabolic.

  Had it not been for the archaic presentation of the ship, for Heimsat’s horrified identification of its flag, the novelty of its appearance in an age as much of smoke and steel as sail, there would have been nothing remarkable about the ship at all. Until, of course, the ship’s sails had billowed out without a breath of wind, and the ship had turned away and disappeared.

  He would call a council of war over dinner. Breakfast, lunch. Whichever meal it was. He saw three possibilities he wished to lay before his officers for consideration before proceeding.

  One, he’d gone mad, and only was imagining this all; in which case no one would resist him, because they were all imaginary, and he could do as he pleased with his imaginary boat. Two, some wonder weapon had wrought such changes in the natural order that they seemed to have surfaced in fresh water sixty years and sixty days from the time they’d gone down under attack in the Arctic.

  Or, three, they’d been displaced in space and time by a curse fallen on them because they’d seen the Flying Dutchman.

  He would take the heading Zoller had derived and point U-818 toward the signal intercept. When he got there if it was an Allied trap he would fight. If it was anything else—if U-818 had been destroyed sixty years ago, if they were unmoored from their reality—

  They would run on the surface until they found some harmless inanimate target to shoot at. And they’d find out whether ghost rounds could still blow up material objects. Perhaps they were ghosts; perhaps they were displaced in space and time, but they could still defend themselves. Because they had torpedoes. And they knew how to use them.

  ###

  Ten hours of daylight, a balmy eleven degrees—practically tropical—and clear weather: another sign, if further proof was needed, that they weren’t in the Arctic any more. The preliminary bearing Zoller had taken on the radio signal intercepted yesterday called for a southwesterly course.

  They’d been running on the surface for hours, seeing nothing, hearing nothing; but gradually a shoreline was coming up on the far horizon, and when they’d spotted the ship rocking ever-so-gently along like a boat whose anchorage wouldn’t be available for another few days they’d gone to periscope depth to try to figure it out.

  It looked familiar.

  U-818 Lachs been there for the “second happy time,” just after the declaration of war between the United States and Germany, before the U.S. Navy had begun to develop its increasingly effective U-boat hunting forces, before coastal shipping had come to realize that there was in fact a war on and that perhaps some blackout discipline was in order.

  They’d been called away early for the coast of Africa, which had been fortunate as it turned out—they’d avoided the troubles—unless one factored in the fateful encounter with the Dutchman; and they’d only scored one tanker, but it had been a T2 model like the one in the periscope sights even now.

  “It seems quiet enough,” Goond said dubiously, and stood away from the navigation periscope to give Ellie Vilsohn a chance. “Perhaps carrying diesel, do you think, Herr Kahloin?”

  Lachs was leaning up against the chart-chest with his arms folded against his chest, one hand at beard-height with his index finger curled against his lower lip. He dropped his hand and sat down. “I’m more interested in charts,” he said. “If there’s fuel, well, all to the good. But we need more information on where we may be going.”

  It was possible to navigate in foreign waters. They’d done it off the coast of Africa; there’d been very little available by way of soundings off the coast of Madagascar. At this point even a child’s map of Lake Superior would be more information than they had access to. There was the old joke about finding a coast to land at—go straight until you hit the beach, then back up five hundred meters or so—but it would be no joke to run aground in this completely unknown environment.

  Goond shrugged. “It will be dark soon.” He remembered the other tanker, the one they’d found adrift off the Carolinas. There’d been damage aforeships, and the ship had been abandoned—no trace of a soul, so the lifeboats had gotten away. Unless they’d all foundered. Goond had been with the boarding party; there’d been plenty of fresh fruit and baked goods in the ship’s stores.

  They’d sunk it just to be tidy, of course, because in those days they’d still had a deck gun; but that wasn’t the point so much as that he’d been on board of a T2 tanker that had certainly looked like the one they had in their sights now. “We could go have a closer look before the light goes.”

  Lachs nodded. “Take us around, Rathke,” he said. “Nice and slow. Unless someone starts shouting.” Or shooting. Under other circumstances they wouldn’t risk their periscope being spotted on the surface by the light of day, but nothing they’d heard from the radio gave the slightest indication that there was a war on and that people were keeping a look-out for enemy U-boats.

  All of the advertisements were for automobiles, politicians, movies—that was a comforting point of familiarity. There were still movies. And scandals. And political arguments. But no wars. Not anywhere near Lake Superior, though the Middle East was apparently a problem—still. Ever. Always.

  If there was still a war in Europe, if there was a shipping war in the North Atlantic, then perhaps an old—seemingly dilapidated—T2 freighter idling on the surface of the waters without an escort or any apparent sense of urgency was a trap. Yes. But otherwise tankers didn’t fire torpedoes. Nor depth charges.

  It was second watch, and Goond was the first watch officer. So he yielded the control center to ZweiVo Sclarvie and went forward to the wardroom, where he could snuggle up close to the bulkhead and keep an ear out for anything happening in the radio room. Lachs had told him all about the hail for “U-818 Lachs” and Goond had been sorry he’d missed it, but they hadn’t caught the same hail again since then, though the radio operators had been looking.

  There was plenty of radio traffic, but of limited usefulness, someone’s casserole, someone’s new antenna or equipment, whether or not sporadic “e” was open fo
r skywave propagation. It was exhausting, trying to make sense of it all.

  He closed his eyes. Then he heard Lachs give the order to surface, and opened them again, sitting up with interest. The watch was called topside. They did not come tumbling down again immediately; so after a moment he went up to join Lachs on the bridge.

  “There’s a small boat tethered to port,” Lachs told him. “With no lights. And very little evidence of any movement otherwise. I thought we might send a small boarding party, introduce ourselves. There’s a pumproom forward that will do the trick for us, do I remember that right?”

  And the galley had been immediately below officer’s quarters which had been in turn below the bridge deck, with the store-rooms below that. Oh, the store-rooms. They’d been like Christmas morning, after weeks on a U-boat. “Just as you say, Herr Kahloin. A few men to secure the tethered boat in case there is an alarm, and seven or eight up the other side, I wonder?”

  Lachs nodded, smiling, though his grin was but dimly glimpsed in the dark, half-masked as it was already by a week’s growth of beard. “I will await your gleanings, if there are any. Your action, EinsVo.”

  No more needed to be said.

  Within the hour their largest inflatable had been secured to the starboard side of the freighter where the anchor-point was in easy reach of the ladder going up, and Goond’s kommando were going up it. He’d brought a pistol; for the rest, they would rely on surprise and sheer body heft, because Goond had drawn some crew from the torpedo room and those men were accustomed to managing the heavy and ungainly “eels” in all manner of conditions. Men weighed much less, and required less careful handling; it was much less important if men were damaged.

  There were some external lights along the wall of the bridge deck, but no sound; all doors, disappointingly, secured, except for the last one they checked—small, and possibly forgotten by people not particularly concerned to guard against intruders, and it was the last door they’d checked simply because of course once they’d found it they stopped checking and went in.

  There was a narrow ladder-stair leading upwards, a feeble light in a metal cage, and all signs pointed to a disused passageway which was just as Goond liked it. He went up, and his kommando followed: so far, all reassuringly familiar. There was the galley, dark, silent, cold; that was odd, but since they hadn’t seen any crew thus far—the ship apparently running along with a skeleton crew—perhaps only cold meals were being taken?

  Three of his men were in charge of taking stock of ship’s stores. Goond took five with him up the next flights to the bridge, because surely there was at least a night-watchman on the bridge as well as one making rounds, and he was hoping for the cooperation of reasonably-minded men to hurry the refueling mission along. If the ship had any diesel. Had it not, Goond supposed they could draw from ship’s own tanks, but that problem would wait its turn.

  On the third level up it was warm and comparatively bright when they opened the door, so Goond knew at once that they were on the bridge deck. Through the narrow corridor, forward, and there was a door propped open at the end of the second stretch; Goond stepped to one side of the light spilling out of the bridge to take a cautious survey.

  It was larger than he’d expected. He could recognize enough of the equipment consoles to confirm that this was the nerve center of the ship, but there was much that he didn’t recognize at all, and a great deal of information was apparently displayed on small screens no larger than the open-paged extent of a large atlas, like a tiny movie: but with no projectors that Goond could detect, at first sight. And quiet.

  There was only one man there, and he was most comfortably disposed with his hands clasped behind his neck and his feet up on the desk or table in front of him. Goond cleared his voice, and the man nearly fell out of his chair in astonishment, stumbling to his feet to turn and face Goond.

  “Good evening,” Goond said politely. His English was not so good as Lachs’, or that of several others on board, if it came to that. But he had done his advanced courses, and his training cruise as well: he was confident of his ability to get his message across. “We would like a drink from your diesel, please. If you’ve got any. Are you the watch officer?”

  Goond himself had not changed for the occasion, so what rank he wore on his old jacket was not perhaps in such impressive condition if a person didn’t know how to interpret it. And they were sixty years into the future. And the war was over. There was no reason to assume that the tanker’s watch officer knew what Goond’s rank markers meant. Goond was relying on his unannounced appearance with a party of men to communicate a degree of gravitas in its own right.

  “Uh,” the man said. He was as young as Feufel, who claimed to be nineteen but who was probably younger than that; and clean-shaven, but one could do that, on a tanker. There would be showers. Perhaps even a laundry, and almost certainly bake-ovens for fresh bread, but Goond focused his attention with a stern effort. Showers and laundry were not for them. “I, ah, yeah. Watch officer. Jonesie. I wasn’t expecting you until tomorrow, change of plan? Where’s Kalf?”

  Goond noted the young man’s quick glance toward a console once removed where an unholstered pistol lay on the angled desk before one of the movie-screens. So there was a Kalf, and possibly armed. That was a data point. Also there was a party of men expected: and Jonesie didn’t know them on sight. There was a chance of getting U-818’s business done and getting clear before their imposture was recognized, then, if they could act convincingly.

  “We didn’t see him. So we came up on our own.” True things made the best deceptions. “Is there someone to help my men with the pumps?” Jonesie hadn’t said no to diesel. So there was diesel. “Or if you would just point them in the right direction, assuming we need no keys.”

  U-818 was standing by. Ellie was on the bridge, waiting to supervise refueling. It was going to make adjusting the trim of the boat a little more complicated. They were heavy enough as it was, with the thinness of fresh water taken into account.

  Now with a mixture of confusion and proud competence Jonesie turned toward one of the consoles. There was a keyboard. It ran the movie. “Ah, no alarms, no keys,” Jonesie said. Goond suddenly recognized the movie: it was the forward pumproom of a T2 tanker, with lights coming up as he watched.

  It wasn’t a movie. It was live-broadcast television, “TV,” and the technology was clearly advanced further than he had extrapolated from the radio announcements he’d been hearing if a tanker as old as this could afford to broadcast to the bridge from multiple locations all over the ship. “Need any help?”

  There was a clear note of “I hope not” in Jonesie’s voice that made Goond smile, inside. “We’ve done this before,” he said. “We’ll be fine.” From here he could drop back into German, for a moment at least.

  “Obermachinist Oldorp. Report when action is complete. And there is one other aboard.” It needn’t take long, not with the seas quiet and the tanker a stable platform. They just needed a top-off, after all. “And update the others.” He glanced quickly at the pistol, in case Oldorp hadn’t seen it. Oldorp would know to put the word out.

  He didn’t want to give Jonesie time to wonder what he was saying. “I would welcome a chance to consult your expertise, watch officer,” he said, switching back into English. If Jonesie was one of the ship’s officers Goond was a trapeze artist, but civilian ships in inland waters might reasonably run on relaxed rules, especially in peacetime. “I’m afraid our charts have been badly damaged. Have you any to share?”

  Which he would simply take. The tanker would have communications. It could call for replacements. He had a strong suspicion that ships in this modern age didn’t even need printed charts: there were things called “apps” that one used on one’s “cell,” or one’s “eyepod.” Goond had no moral qualms about robbing this freighter blind, because it wouldn’t be staying that way for any significant period of time.

  Again with the confused expression as Jonesie looked around
him. So he didn’t know. Goond was beginning to seriously question whether Jonesie had any business on board ship at all. There came a sudden clearing, a wave of relief, on Jonesie’s face, however; it was as Jonesie’s eye fell on a long low steel chest-with-drawers that stood well back along the wall to Jonesie’s left. It looked like a chart-chest. So it was. There was that taken care of, then.

  “It’s been years since I’ve been on a T2,” Goond said, and come forward now to put his hand to Jonesie’s shoulder, turning Jonesie around to cover Oldorp’s exit. “I’m sure the technology has changed, but I don’t know how much. I’d love a tour.” Again, all true.

  He wanted a closer look at each of those television monitors right away to see if he could gather any information that might help him figure out what was going on and whether any Kalf, or any crew expected to arrive within hours, was going to pose a problem for U-818.

  ###

  Jonesie Banks had his suspicions about this whole thing. The gang leader, Harris, had assured him that there was no risk involved in taking over the tanker, and it was for less than a day—just enough time to bring up the transfer vessel to off-load the contraband for delivery to the drop point on the Ontario side of the lake, and then out. Nobody was going to get hurt. He was just here to keep an eye on things, him and Kalf. So who were these people? Not the police. Not the Coast Guard. Who?

  “A tour? Of course,” he said. When unsure of the situation the best thing to do was punt off of whatever the other guy had said last. They wanted diesel? They weren’t after the drugs over the forward tanks, then, and he could get rid of them before the rest of his brothers-in-street got back. For all Jonesie knew this sort of drop-in traffic was normal socializing for old tankers like this one, a little off-the-record income to line the crew’s pockets, maybe. “Happy to oblige. What’s your name?”