“Mister Dean!” said MacRae, with a hardness to his voice that the bridge crew only heard when he went into a fight. “Stand up the Gealbaums, all remaining missiles.”
They still had six GB-7s under their forward deck. One had visited the Kaiser Wilhelm earlier, and these were the last six. After they were gone, there would only be the ten reserve Harpoons. He might have asked for those, but the GB-7 had a better punch, with a warhead that was 60 kilograms heavier. Kirov had missiles with twice the punch, but Kirov was not here. It was Argos Fire on the watch that day, sheepdog to those three British aircraft carriers, some 60 kilometers to the south.
“Do we still have a fix on the Invincible?”
“Yes sir,” said Dean, “the track is solid.”
“And SAMPSON can see the fellows they’re tangling with?”
“Plain as day, sir.”
“Very well. Salvo of six. Ripple fire. Three second interval.”
Dean turned and relayed the orders to the CIC, and the claxon sounded. At that moment, MacRae looked to see Elena Fairchild come in through the aft hatch to the bridge, curious as to what was happening.
“Signal from Tovey,” he said flatly. “You’ll excuse me, Mum, but I’m throwing the kitchen sink at them this time. It’s Geronimo.”
He gave the order, and Fairchild drifted over to his side as the first missile fired. Three seconds later the second was up, and the whole scene was enveloped by the hot white smoke from their tails as the others fired, one after another.
“What has happened?” she said to her Captain, eyes wide with uncertainty.
“That!” MacRae pointed. “Off and away you go, me boyos, and on to your dirty business.” The last missile fired, roaring away from the ship, and they looked to see the six white contrails pierce the low grey deck of clouds and vanish from sight.
On this ship, the shadow between MacRae’s order and the execution of that fire mission was barely there, just the slim half second that lived in the synapse of the CIC Officer’s brain. He heard the order, his hand moved, he punched his ready missile buttons and they were up and on their way.
It was the same half second interval that might have plagued the British battleships, but it did not matter at all. There would be no guessing game here. SAMPSON had painted the targets with its unseen electromagnetic radiation, and their exact position was known to a certainty. And the missiles that fired were not mindless brutes flung out like stones from a catapult. They each had lightning quick computer brains of their own, and a sensor suite that could see, track, and home in on the targets they had been aimed at. They would accelerate to Mach 3, crossing the 60 kilometer gulf between the Argos Fire at a speed of about one kilometer per second. It would take them one minute to come on the scene, and what they aimed at, they would unfailingly hit. The shadow was gone, the margin of error banished by the surety of these solid state digital electronics. Death was now a sure and certain thing, chaos carefully harnessed, and speeding on its way. It was now just a matter of flight time to target.
MacRae looked at his watch. Forty seconds more to go…
“It’s about to become a very bad morning for someone out there, he said.
“It’s already a bad morning,” said Elena.
MacRae nodded. “Aye,” he said. “That it is.”
* * *
On the bridge of the Hindenburg. Admiral Raeder had clenched his fist when the hit was reported high up on the conning tower of the lead enemy battleship. First blood, he thought, not knowing how literal that thought was, that it was the blood of Admiral Tovey, and so many others, that he had now spilled on the cold grey steel.
“That will box their ears,” he said to Kapitan Adler with a grin. He saw the lead ship waver off course, and came to believe that blow had been more severe than he thought, but the worst was yet to come. Braving the danger of the hour, he stepped out onto the weather deck to raise his field glasses and peer at the enemy ship. He could see that it wallowed for a time, then turned with a more certain intent, and maneuvered again in a purposeful evasive course. Then he saw something in the sky through a wide clearing in the clouds, and his heart thumped when he realized what he was looking at.
Naval rockets… So they are not being fired from the fleet flagship after all, he thought. His eye was suddenly pulled to the mainmast of his enemy again, where he saw another bright flash and explosion.
“Adler! Was that another hit?”
“No sir,” the Kapitan called from the bridge. “We haven’t fired again, the guns should be ready soon.”
“Bismarck?”
“They are still maneuvering after that opening salvo. I think it may have been a secondary explosion sir. Perhaps it was our last hit, and the shell has finally gone off.”
Raeder nodded, his face grim, features set. If that is so, then that ship is no more than a headless horseman now… But those damn rockets will be on us in seconds.
He rushed for the armored protection of the main bridge, ordering the men there to brace for incoming fire. Nobody could have lived through the explosion he had just seen on the enemy conning tower, and now it was down to fate as to whether his ships would survive the fire coming at them from the sky.
He passed one brief moment, thinking of the other men on the ship his guns had just struck, the sturdy helm of his enemy riven through by his sword. A hard day, he thought. A hard day for us all.
* * *
Admiral Volsky had been there at his post when it happened, bravely steering the ship alone, struggling to do his best to keep Invincible in the fight. In his pocket he had back again the one thing that had brought him to this place, the key that Fedorov begged him to carry safely to Admiral Tovey. He did not know what it was for, but when Tovey fell, he considered that it might be safer back in his pocket again in the chaos of that moment.
Once he had dragged Tovey to the Plot Room, and sealed off the hatch for added safety, he took that wheel, alone in Death’s Twilight Kingdom, Admiral of the Fleet. He had lost his own ship, but now stood proudly on another, and he was the only man that could save her, in spite of the danger in the wavering light of that fire as it gleamed off the dull metal of that unexploded shell.
Fate had conspired to put it there, just ten or twelve feet away from the Admiral. A man had lived, when he should have died, a Zombie, and now another would take his place. Fate was hungry, jealous, a wayward mistress, and with so many grievances to lay at this man’s feet. So she had laid that 16-inch shell there in reprisal, and the heat from the nearby fire was finishing off her sinister work.
There, in that last, tense and wild moment, Volsky felt something in his pocket, an odd warming, and then he was surprised to see a strange green light there. It was the key, silently turning in its own unaccountable way, working its strange magic on the scene, clicking some unseen tumbler in the lock on Time’s door. Then Admiral Volsky heard what sounded like a high pressurized whistle emanating from that massive shell, and he looked, his eyes soft, knowing, waiting for the inevitable decree of fate.
In that last fleeing moment, he whispered inside the love he had held so long for his dear wife, for his old ship, and the crew that had so loyally served him. Well, Mister Fedorov, he thought. Now it will all be up to you.
And that was the way his world ended that day, without the slightest quaver of a whimper, but with a bang that would rage through all time and history. Another English poet named Alfred Lord Tennyson had once written a line that would sum up that terrible swift moment, that brief half second when chaos ended Volsky’s life… ‘Let the great world spin for ever down the ringing grooves of change….’
The Saga Continues…
Kirov Series: Season 3, Book 5
Knight’s Move
The Germans would call it Rosselsprung, the leaping move of a Knight in a heated game of chess. In the aftermath of the naval duel off the Canary Islands, Admiral Raeder turns loose his surface units to adopt a strategy of commerce raiding as part of his effor
t to choke British supplies and material bound for Egypt. Surviving the battle largely unscathed, Kaiser Wilhelm joins the light escort battle carrier Goeben in a daring sortie into the South Atlantic. Still reeling from losses sustained in “Donnerschlag,” the massive battle fought off those islands, the Royal Navy struggles to give chase and engage the German raiders in a harrowing naval saga.
Meanwhile, Vladimir Karpov has taken Kirov north to support the opening moves of his own chess game against Japan. He musters his resources to stage an unexpected attack on lower Kamchatka and Sakhalin Islands, his first bid to win back territories lost to Japan long ago in the aftermath of his fateful sortie to 1908. Now the Japanese must finally realize and deal with the substantial threat Karpov poses from the north, dispatching knights of their own to challenge the Siberian in a major alternate history battle.
Elsewhere in the Pacific, the Japanese campaigns in the Philippines and Malaya continue, and Operation R is launched against British colonies in New Britain. Halsey realizes he must stand up the U.S. Fleet to defend the Solomons and attempt to isolate the dangerous enemy outpost in the center of his own board, the Ikichi regiment at Noumea.
In Russia, Sergei Kirov struggles to regain control and stop the German onslaught with the long planned Soviet Winter counteroffensive. Action on three fronts as the Kirov Saga moves boldly into the pivotal year of 1942.
Discover other titles by John Schettler:
Award Winning Science Fiction:
Meridian - Meridian Series - Volume I
Nexus Point - Meridian Series - Volume II
Touchstone - Meridian Series - Volume III
Anvil of Fate - Meridian Series - Volume IV
Golem 7 - Meridian Series - Volume V
The Meridian series merges with the Kirov Series,
beginning with Book 16, Paradox Hour
Classic Science Fiction:
Wild Zone - Dharman Series - Volume I
Mother Heart - Dharman Series - Volume II
Historical Fiction:
Taklamakan - Silk Road Series - Volume I
Khan Tengri - Silk Road Series - Volume II
Dream Reaper – Mythic Horror Mystery
Table of Contents
Part I – Moscow Is Burning
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Part II – Day of Infamy
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Part III – Ultimatum
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Part IV – The Lost Convoy
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Part V – Rooks’ Gambit
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Part VI – Wolf in the Fold
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Part VII – Aftermath
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Part VIII – Rain of Fire
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Part IX – Audacity
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Part X – Operation Condor
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Part XI –The Dragon
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Part XII – Invincible
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Tide Of Fortune (Kirov Series Book 20) Page 32