England Expects (Empires Lost)

by Jackson, Charles S.

  “Of – of course,” Ritter began, stammering slightly. Dealing through Schiller rather than directly with Reuters was unexpected and somewhat difficult. “If the Reichsmarschall will remember, I spoke to him yesterday of the incident at the farmhouse near the St. Omer airstrip. I informed him that a boy living at the house was still missing at that time.”

  “I’ve been acquainted with the situation,” Schiller nodded slowly, feigning neutral disinterest.

  “Well, sir – the boy’s been found. I have both he and his infant brother in nursing care at present, and I must ask a favour of the Reichsmarschall in providing identification papers and citizenship for them both. It’s my intention to send the boy to Köln to live in the custody of my wife until such time that a suitable family can be found for him.”

  “You’ve called me here to help you adopt the children of a French Resistance agent?” Reuters demanded angrily, suddenly involving himself directly and completely in the discussion. He came forward to draw level with Schiller, spitting the words out with such speed and vehemence that Ritter was almost forced to take a step backward in surprise. “You demand the attention of the Oberbefehlshaber der Wehrmacht in order to help two orphaned boys?”

  “The – the boys have no other family, close or otherwise,” Ritter shot back, becoming instantly defensive and a little angry. “His father – now his mother, too – have been killed by ‘the Nazis’, as he called them: killed because of the Führer’s war…because of your war...” he paused for a moment, fury rising in his eyes as he stared down the highest-ranking officer in the Wehrmacht “...killed because of our war…!” Reuters was forced to glance away at that remark, the fire in his own eyes diminishing as the pilot’s words hit home. “You told me there was a place for honour in Germany! If there’s honour anywhere, then help me do this! How should you feel if this boy were your son? What would your feelings be then? Were it my own son, I’d ask for no less!”

  Upon hearing these words, Reuters turned sharply away with a gasp, as if struck. He sagged back, taking a few steadying paces while regaining his composure.

  “A moment of privacy if you’ll indulge us, Herr Ritter,” Schiller said softly, placing a hand on the pilot’s shoulder.

  “Of course,” Ritter nodded curtly, turning and stepping back a few paces. Schiller also turned, moving to his commanding officer’s side.

  “You’re all right, Kurt?” He placed an arm about the man’s shoulders as he spoke. “That was an unfortunate remark, to say the least.”

  Reuters shook his head slowly. “How could he know?” He reasoned softly, his voice thick with emotion. “That pain is many years away in a future that’ll never exist. Many things may not happen now in the future we’re creating for our country. Neither of us may be born in this new world.”

  “Perhaps a good thing,” Schiller chuckled under his breath. “Do you think even the Wehrmacht could cope with two of me?” As he gained a strained laugh from his commander, he added: “I think it’s better if you do this thing for him. It’s unorthodox to say the least, but he’s right in the end. We’re not Nazis, Kurt, despite what those shits from the UN Security Council labelled us with. I saw how much releasing that SS bastard, Stahl upset you! At least let Ritter do this for the children. Where would you have been if old Heini hadn’t taken you out of that boys’ home after your mother died?”

  “All right – all right…!” Reuters growled, straightening. “You’ve made your point. Müller warned me how fucking crazy this place was going to become once we started screwing about that saying the Americans used to have? I think they called it ‘SNAFU’…” Schiller mused rhetorically, thinking for a moment and switching to English f to gain full effect. “‘Situation Normal – All Fucked Up!’!”

  “Amen to that!” Reuters agreed in German, turning back toward the waiting pilot and calling him closer with a gesture of his hand. “Herr Oberstleutnant...”

  At mention of his name, Ritter whirled and faced the Reichsmarschall, decidedly less angry and again more concerned over how the OdW would react to his insubordination. He took four long strides and returned to his original position before the men.

  “I’ve considered your request, Herr Ritter and have decided to grant it. You’ll keep the children with suitable nursing staff on base for the moment. I’ll have the details taken care of, and make the requisite paperwork available within a day or so. Included in this will be travel permits and papers for your wife to come to Paris and collect the boy. How long is it since you’ve seen your wife?”

  “It – it’s been some time, sir,” Ritter answered hesitantly, a little shell-shocked by the Reichsmarschall’s complete turnaround, “…almost a year, now.”

  “It’ll be good for you to see each other also, then. I’ll arrange a week’s leave for you to enjoy the sights of Paris – I don’t expect there’ll be any great need for your unit during the next month.” Even as Ritter struggled to assimilate this incredible information, Reuters added: “I must also apologise for my earlier reaction, Herr Oberstleutnant: the outburst was uncalled for and unbecoming an officer of the Wehrmacht. If you’ve nothing further to add, I must now take my leave of you – I now have a great deal more to do this morning than I’d originally planned.”

  “No, sir – there’s nothing else I require…I cannot thank the Reichsmarschall enough for what you’ve done already.”

  “In that you’re probably correct,” Schiller observed with quick certainty as Reuters began to walk back toward the transport, deciding to at that point make an important statement regarding the pilot’s currently precarious position. “You realise that you could quite easily be court-martialled for what’s occurred here today?”

  “Yes, sir – I’m aware of that.”

  “Very well, then: I suggest you keep that in mind. The Reichsmarschall is a generous man at heart and it’s my job, as his aide, to ensure that’s not taken advantage of. I’d like it understood that in my opinion, your ‘quota’ of favours with the Reichsmarschall is, for the moment, run quite dry. Is that clear?”

  “Yes, sir – quite clear…”

  “Excellent! Let’s leave it at that for now. Oh yes,” he remembered suddenly, “the boys’ names?”

  “Of course: Antoine and Curtis St. Clair…five years of age and approximately eight months respectively.”

  “Very well, then. Good day, Oberstleutnant Ritter...” Schiller saluted formally, bringing the pilot to attention before him. He turned and left the flier where he stood as he returned the salute, the four grenadiers moving to follow immediately.

  That left Ritter standing by himself in the middle of the concrete runway, arms hanging loosely by his sides as he attempted unsuccessfully to make head or tail of the Reichsmarschall’s strange behaviour. Of the man’s military genius there was no doubt – the current spate of victories across Western Europe and in Poland were witness to that – and Ritter could only assume that with that kind of genius there also came a certain ‘eccentricity’. For a moment he thought about the children that currently lay sleeping in his quarters, and as he began to walk slowly back toward the main dormitories and mess buildings off to the north he could have no idea of what enormous events that would occur as a result of the path in history he’d unsuspectingly begun to carve for himself.

  As the Gigant thundered skyward once more a few moments later, Reuters sat in silence in his specially-fitted office at the front of its spacious cargo bay. His comfortable, well-padded chair carried a seat belt and was fixed to the floor of the plane, but it also doubled as an executive chair for the large, wooden desk bolted down in front of it. Schiller sat in one of the equally-comfortable flight chairs on the other side of the desk, regarding his commander and friend with a concerned eye.

  “It appears that we’re not in Kansas any longer, little Toto…” he observed, using a little more depth of understanding than he usually felt necessary as his mind drew on the same metaphoric saying Thorne had alluded to a few nights be
fore. It was a few seconds before Reuters, lost in another world within his own mind, realised someone was speaking. His eyes refocussed on the man before him.

  “Hmm…?” He asked finally, shaking his head a little to clear his wandering thoughts. The office area was well soundproofed, and they were able to speak at a comfortable level. “Yes…” he added thoughtfully. “We are, it also seems, about to experience our first taste of real opposition.”

  The reconnaissance pod Hawk-3 had brought back to Wuppertal had indeed taken some excellent pictures – pictures that had provided Reuters, Schiller, Müller and others with rude and unwelcome confirmation of exactly what they’d feared. From those photographs and what little information had been gleaned from the last data-transmission of the Sentry, they’d been forced to reassess the nature of the threat that Hindsight posed.

  “Pre-programming the TDUs and providing the pilots with no prior knowledge of the destination time obviously gave us a little breathing room, otherwise we’d have come across them before now,” Schiller observed thoughtfully. “Fortunate indeed those things were designed to automatically clear their data after a jump.”

  “We’ve been sloppy all the same,” Reuters snapped, more than a little angry as he considered the loss of four irreplaceable jet aircraft. “We’ve had seven years of getting things our own way, and that’s suddenly and quite unpleasantly changed in an instant. We – I – didn’t take that into consideration and I should have. Because of my failure, we’ve lost vital resources we can ill afford to lose, and I’ll guarantee you it’ll seriously weaken our position with The Führer.”

  “With all we’ve already done for him?” Yet Schiller’s voice carried no conviction; he knew as well as Reuters of Adolf Hitler’s fickle accordance of trust in those who failed him, even slightly.

  “And what about the Flanker crew that ejected over Dorset?”

  “We’ve a good system of agents throughout the British Isles, and have done for some time. The pilots know that and they’ll head for the nearest pick up zone as their briefings instructed in the ‘unlikely’ event of them being shot down,” Schiller shrugged, deciding there was no point in worrying about events that couldn’t be altered. “Our operatives will either extract them, or dispose of them if extraction isn’t a viable alternative…” His voice trailed off momentarily as he caught his friend’s attention waning, Reuters’ eyes losing focus once more. “But that’s not the issue right now, is it, Kurt…?”

  “No…” Reuters answered after a long pause, unwilling to admit the truth. “I suppose it isn’t…”

  “We discussed this aspect of the mission before displacement, Kurt…many times. We always knew these kinds of anomalies were possible…even probable.”

  “I always thought extraterrestrial life was possible, Albert, but that doesn’t mean I’m prepared to meet a bug-eyed monster this very afternoon!” The Reichsmarschall countered with a slight, ironic smile. “What the hell’s going to happen now? General Wever died in an air crash in ‘Thirty-Five in Realtime, and the Luftwaffe’s strategic bomber program was basically terminated as a result. We made sure he didn’t get on that bloody plane, and he dies in a car crash anyway, almost to the hour. We’ve replaced Fritz Todt, hoping Speer can perhaps get things moving more efficiently and a lot earlier, but will Todt also still die next year in the same way he did in Realtime?” There was a pause as he took a breath. “What the hell will happen in four years time when men like…” he halted, unable to speak the word that was his first choice “…men like Ritter… or Von Stauffenberg… originally found it necessary to take such drastic action? Will these men of the ‘Forty-Four bomb plot still be desperate enough to try and assassinate The Führer if Germany is winning…if we’re still winning by then?”

  “Of course we’ll be winning, Kurt. Stop being such a bloody pessimist and get a grip on yourself!” Schiller gave a chuckle at the negative streak his friend almost always fell prey to in moments of indecision. “This’ll all be over in Europe by the end of the year, mark my words! Give us a few years beyond that to stabilise and reinforce, and we can seriously take a crack at the Bolsheviks on their own as Hitler really wants, with the help of the Japanese from the east. Russia’s already a pariah in the West because of their treaty with us – no one’s going to come to their aid when the time comes…” he grimaced, adding: “…assuming of course that we can stop the Japs from fucking things up by starting a war in the Pacific…”

  Albert Schiller released his seat belt and stood, moving to the desk and placing both hands upon it as he leaned in toward Reuters. It aided the exorcising of his own personal demons while helping his friend and commander banish his.

  “What happened ‘Before’ no longer exists, Kurt! Think of it! The Cold War, The Wall, Glasnost, Perestroika and all that shit’s gone, now! No more Khruschev, Kennedy, Reagan or fucking Gorbachev! They don’t exist…we don’t exist anymore! Consider for a moment how liberating that is!” Schiller grinned with his characteristically irreverent humour, squashing the fears and pain that tried to rise in his heart and forcing himself to believe what he was saying. “The moment we landed here all those years ago, everything changed. Nothing of what we knew from the future exists anymore. All these things and people may look and sound like the ones we knew or read about in school, but they’re all different somehow because of us.” He threw an outstretched and accusatory finger in the general direction of Carl Ritter and the airfield they’d left behind as his next words struck right at Reuters’ core. “That man back there is never going to try to kill the German Chancellor…and he’s no longer your father, nor will he ever be…!”

  HMS Proserpine, Home Fleet Naval Anchorage

  Scapa Flow, Orkney Islands

  Morning broke in relative quiet over the Home Fleet anchorage and the inland Hindsight airbase complex to the south-west. No air raids disrupted the ongoing preparations being carried out, and in spite of their own wishes, Davies and Thorne were allowed to sleep in. In light of how much all had eventually drunk the night before, it was something for which they were ultimately grateful, and it was past ten by the time Thorne was shaken awake by Trumbull.

  “Trouble…?” He asked groggily, sitting up and struggling to open his eyes.

  “That depends on your point of view,” the squadron leader countered with a smile, shaking his head. “We had another arrival a few minutes ago carrying a message from Whitehall.”

  “They took their time about it,” Thorne observed grumpily, finally awake and ruffling his hair. “Nick’s been expecting an official response since we bloody-well landed. Have you seen the message?”

  “I – I suppose I have, yes…” Trumbull admitted, but his uncertain tone misled Thorne as to the reason behind the feigned concern: exactly what Trumbull was mischievously after.

  “Well, what did they have to say?”

  “I don’t know exactly,” Trumbull mused as the barest hint of a smile began to creep across his features. “Perhaps it might be better if you asked them yourself!”

  “What…?” Thorne felt the nasty tingle of apprehension rise at the back of his neck. “What’re you talking about?”

  “Take a look, Max…” Trumbull explained, gesturing to the window by Thorne’s cot, and the Australian quickly leaped across to it, his breath instantly catching in his throat in surprise.

  Attached to the eastern side of the mess, the officers’ quarters were built to house close to thirty men, although they barely held a dozen at the present time. The windows Thorne were staring through looked out across the runway from the inside of the ‘reversed-L’ shape of the building. A hundred metres away, he could see a De Havilland Dragon Rapide short-range airliner parked at the near end of the runway, dwarfed by the giant aircraft in the distance. It sported the standard RAF Temperate Land Scheme of large dark green and dark earth camouflage patches, and in the foreground beside it, no more than thirty metres away, eleven people in various uniforms stood clustered together. Four of t
he group were Alpert, Green, Kowalski and Eileen Donelson, however it was the other seven present that caused Thorne to draw a sharp breath, and he recognised each and every one of them.

  “My God,” Thorne whispered softly as he realised the desperate importance of the next few hours. He’d be meeting some of the greatest figures in history itself and would be expected, to all intents and purposes, to deal with them as something of an equal.

  “Brigadier Alpert and Commander Donelson are escorting them to the Officer’s Mess, so I expect you’ll have enough time to put something on over your underwear,” Trumbull observed with amusement as Thorne continued to stare out through the window. Only as Thorne glanced down in reaction to the pilot’s words did he realise that he was wearing just the silk boxer shorts he’d slept in. He also realised how cold the morning still was in spite of the pot-bellied stove crackling softly at the far end of the bed-lined room.

  “Uh, yeah...” he agreed sheepishly, blushing slightly. “Yeah, good call!” He turned to reach for a robe hanging by his bed as Trumbull frowned at the terminology he’d used. “Guess I can’t meet the most notable English political and military figures of the twentieth century without my gear on, eh?”

  “Yes,” Trumbull mused thoughtfully, rubbing his chin. “I expect that should be an extremely...bad call?” He met Thorne’s glance at the use of the unfamiliar paraphrase with a single raised eyebrow and they both grinned.

  Thorne knew he was holding things up as he finished dressing himself twenty minutes later. He was as nervous as he’d ever been in his entire life, knowing that the decisions made that day were in all likelihood going to effect the lives of every one of the personnel who’d arrived in that era with the Hindsight Unit, not to mention the entire population of the United Kingdom and to the rest of the world in a long term sense. As he stood in front of the mirror in the tiny bathroom attached to his quarters, Thorne almost gave a grimace at the uniform he wore. It was quite old – something he’d not worn in fifteen years – but it was immaculate and in fine condition nevertheless, and he was quite inwardly proud that in his mid-forties he could still comfortably fit into it. As a final touch, he snugged the officer’s cap down over his old RAAF Squadron Leader’s dress uniform and nodded approvingly to himself.