Three Kings (Kirov Series) (36 page)

“Air contact, 80 kilometers out
at 15,000 feet. Flight of five aircraft, speed 300KPH. They look to be vectored
right in on our heading sir.”

“Air alert one!” MacRae gave his
voice the amplitude the moment required. He had to get the crew’s instincts and
reflexes sharpened for war, and shake them from the dazed stupor that had
seemed to settle over the entire ship when Ms. Fairchild made the announcement
on the P.A. system explaining what had happened. Now she was walking the ship,
talking with the crew, answering the thousand questions that were sure to be
asked by her 300 Spartans.

Haley punched the audible alarm,
and the warning claxon sounded. The deck panels opened and the sleek lines of
the ship were now studded with the emerging close in defense guns, a pair of
Phalanx CIWS systems, two Oerlikon 30mm batteries, augmented by two miniguns
and six more general purpose MGs. But the ship’s real air defense was in her
missiles, a cell of speedy Sea Vipers under the forward deck. They were so
accurate they could hit a cricket ball in flight. They had fired 12 of 48 in
the Black Sea against the Russians, and were now ready to deal with this new threat,
whatever it might be. Crews in battle dress were already preparing the close in
defense systems, removing the protective gun tarps as the batteries emerged
from their hidden underdeck compartments.

The ship may have had a facelift
and makeover to look more civil in her role as a corporate HQ, but it was every
bit as deadly as the military version of the Type 45 Destroyer, a vessel that
had five times the capability of the older British Type 42 which it replaced.

The bridge of the ship was a bit
roomier than that of the British destroyer. It spanned the entire beam of the
ship, where seven large windows took in the expansive view forward, and the
bridge crew sat right along these, serving a line of glowing digital displays
and consoles to manage all the ship’s systems in a series of EMEs, Electrical
Modular Enclosures. Behind these there were two comfortable blue chairs, one
for the Captain and the other for his XO. Other Watchstanders would do exactly
that, and take up standing posts to the left and right on the carpeted deck.

Now MacRae was considering what
to do. “Missile count on the ready Viper system,” he said sharply, all
business.

“Sir,” a crewman responded,
Ensign Temple, Angela Temple, coordinating air defense that day. “I have 36
missiles ready in the VLS module.”

“Reloads?”

Temple tapped her screen for
magazine inventory. “Two cell reloads of 48 missiles each.”

“Very good.” MacRae knew his ship
was like a shark, with a row of sharp outer teeth at the ready, but with plenty
more in reserve. The
Daring
class had been built primarily as a fleet
air defense ship, perhaps the best ever designed, with its Sampson radar able
to track hundreds of targets at any given moment out to 400 kilometers, and the
longer range air surveillance radar, designated S1850M, could track a thousand
more. The missiles were actually Aster 15, an ancient Greek word meaning
“star,” but aboard the
Argos Fire
the crew preferred the overall system
name, “Sea Vipers.”

“Now what might be coming from
that direction,” MacRae said aloud to no one in particular. “I doubt if this is
the Greek air force.”

“My money is on the Germans,”
said Morgan. “A flight of five would make it strike planes or fighters. You
don’t bunch up that many for simple reconnaissance.”

“Aye,” MacRae scratched his chin.
Yet he had the inclination to wait and see what was coming. Might it be a
flight of British planes heading for Crete? They did not have long to wait. The
planes were in visual range in under fifteen minutes, and the ship’s long range
optical cameras had an image that was chilling. The dark fuselage and
characteristic bent gull wings of the German
Stuka
were quite evident,
and easily recognizable—and they were just starting to tip over to begin their
diving attack.

“Miss Temple,” said MacRae
coolly. “Shoot down those planes.”

“Sir?”

“Sea Vipers. Right now.”

“Aye, Aye Captain.” Temple minded
her business as air defense officer that day, and keyed the firing commands.
Seconds later the forward deck of
Argos Fire
seemed to belch angry flame
and smoke, and, one after another, the Aster-15 “Vipers” launched and hurtled
up to find their targets. They watched as the first four missiles swatted the
planes unerringly from the sky. The last had come in close enough that the
system held the final missile in the salvo and elected to utilize the CIWS
Phalanx system. It rotated, the barrels elevating and then blasting out its
lethal shower of 20mm rounds that shattered the
Stuka
in mid flight,
ending the attack with a shuddering roar as the plane exploded.

The incident got the attention of
everyone aboard, and as he expected, the bridge intercom soon carried the voice
of their CEO asking what was going on. MacRae tapped the switch. “No worries,
mum,” he said calmly. “But we’ve just made it official and taken up sides here.
That was a flight of five German
Stuka
dive bombers thinking to say
hello. I saw to the matter.”

“Very well,” came the familiar
voice. “How much longer to the gate?”

She was referring to the
Sikinos
/
Ios
gate, named after the
two islands that flanked the narrow passage. Beyond it lay the caldera island
of Santorini, the volcano also known as
Thera
, that
some believed was the site of the ancient Atlantean civilization before it
exploded in what was called the “Minoan eruption,” a massive event with a V.E.I.
of up to 7 by many estimates, equal to that of the Demon volcano that had been
in the news just before these events occurred in 2021. Yet now the
Argos
Fire
was far from that news cycle, lost in another era, and she had just
fired her first shots in anger.

MacRae checked quickly with his
navigator. “We should be through the gate and off Santorini within the hour,
mum.”

“Good enough. Meet me in the
executive cabin, please. I’m heading there now. And if you can find Mack
Morgan, have him come along.”

“He’s right here on the bridge,
and we’ll be there directly.”

Mack Morgan leaned in, catching
the Captain’s ear. “That was easy enough with those planes,” he said. “We
outclass anything they can throw at us.”

“Aye,” said MacRae in a low
voice. “At the moment.”

Morgan thought about that, then
realized what MacRae might be thinking. Ensign Temple had just reported 36
ready Vipers with two cell reloads of 48 missiles each in the ship’s magazines.
Four had just been fired, and the count ticked down to 32 ready, which MacRae
immediately corrected.

“Miss Temple,” he said calmly.
“Kindly send down an order to have the ship’s Vipers reloaded. I want that VLS
system topped off to a full battery.”

“Aye sir.”

MacRae looked at Morgan now.
“What day have you figured it is, Mack?”

“30th of January, 1941.”

The Captain folded his arms,
saying nothing more in front of the crew. There was a tense silence on the
bridge now. The men and women there were tending to their business, watching system
panels and radar screens, but their thoughts were searching the world around
them now with equal intensity. It was 1941! None of them really understood what
had happened to the ship, or how it could possibly be here. The incident just
concluded had also made them keenly aware that they were in dangerous waters.
The island of Santorini up ahead was a hotbed for European tourist traffic,
with nightclubs and bars generating most of the heat on the island in 2021. Yet
they would never see that time again, or so Miss Fairchild had told them all.
She had not really explained how they came to be here, but did make one thing
very clear—they could not go back, she had said. They were here to stay.

Ensign Temple had caught the low
discourse between Morgan and MacRae as the two men started away. As she keyed
the system maintenance order, she suddenly realized what the Captain meant. Her
system board told the tale well enough. Their Viper inventory had just rotated
from a total of 132 missiles to 128. That count was also stuck on a one way
journey, she realized. If all this was true, if this was really what it looked
to be, and they had landed right in the middle of the Second World War, then
that missile count might tick away over time… And then what? The meaning of the
Captain’s statement to his intelligence master was now quite apparent.

When the two senior officers had
gone, Mister Dean seated himself in the blue Captain’s chair, his face still
troubled by all that had happened. Dean was a young and handsome man, and
Angela Temple had always enjoyed taking her watch while he had the bridge.

“Funny, sir,” she said quietly.

“What’s funny, Miss Temple?” Dean
gave her those dark eyes.

“It’s just that it looks odd now
in color.”

“What are you talking about?”

“This, sir.” She waved her hand
expansively. “World War Two. All I ever knew about it was in black and white.”

Dean sat with that a moment.
“Well,” he said at length. “There’s one color they used with a liberal brush in
this damn war, red—blood red, Miss Temple. It’s not black and white any longer.
This is living color, and that wasn’t an old newsreel we were just watching as
we took down those planes.”

“Aye, sir.”

“My Great Grandfather fought
here. Died here in fact, right in the Mediterranean.”

Temple raised a blonde eyebrow at
that. “Then he’s out there somewhere? Right now?”

“Not quite,” said Dean. “He was
aboard HMS
Regulus
, a British submarine. Damn
thing struck a mine off Taranto and went down with all hands.. December 6,
1940. So he’s gone, I suppose.”

“Lucky he got his business done
with your Grandmother before that,” said Carl Hampton, the Helmsman on that
watch. “He smiled with the remark, then thought twice about it. “Sorry,” he
apologized.

“Never mind it,” said Dean. “I
expect we all have ancestors out there somewhere, right this very moment.”

“I suppose that’s true,” said the
Helmsman.

“Let’s just hope time keeps a
very tight ledger on them. Gramps went down with the
Regulus
,
but what if something slips?”

“What do you mean?” Temple didn’t
follow him.

“Well,” said Dean. “I think we
just made a new entry in the record books with that missile fire. Who knows how
those five fellows out there were supposed to finish out this war? Well, we’ve
seen to that, haven’t we? They were Great Grandfathers to somebody out there,
eh? Let’s hope they got their business done too before our Vipers took them
down.”

No one said anything.

Part XI

Echoes

“I would hurl words into this darkness and wait for an echo,
and if an echo sounded, no matter how faintly, I would send other words to
tell, to march, to fight, to create a sense of the hunger for life that gnaws
in us all.”

―
Richard Wright

Chapter 31

“See
here,” said Popski.
“You can stow that crap about us being prisoners, lad. That is if you want to
keep those two Lieutenant’s stars on your shoulder for very much longer. Sorry
I’ve only got one on my shoulder, but it’s a bloody crown, mate, and you damn
well know what that means in the British army. Now, if you haven’t got any
sense in your head, then where’s your senior officer?”

Reeves eyes could not be seen,
but his jaw tightened. “I can send you to see someone who’s got one of those
crowns on his shoulder if you like. Only he’ll have three stars beneath it!
Will that suit you? Now, I don’t care if you’re Prince Harry in the flesh! I’m
officer on point, and there’s a war on. You’re standing here with this man—a
Russian—and you tell me one of their damn helos is out there. You have crew
aboard that helo? How many are you?”

“Of course we’ve got crew! I’ve
told your Sergeant here what we’re about and why. Search and rescue! There’s a
man out there in this mess, and a particularly important one. He won’t last
long with you wagging your ruddy jaws here, will he?”

Fedorov could not follow all the
English, but he could see the exchange was heating up, and his heart beat
faster as he considered what to do. These men were certainly not British
soldiers from the 1940s. There was a modern IFV sitting in front of him with
its engine on a low growl, and he had managed to catch the Lieutenant’s remark
about Prince Harry. Now he knew he had to discover what had happened. Could we
have moved again, he wondered? How? That thing Orlov had—could it be
responsible? He said he found it along the Tunguska River on that last mission.
That thought knocked down one domino after another in his mind.

He had to determine what had
happened here, and his first thought was to get to the helicopter and radio
Kirov
.
If the ship responded, then they were still in 1941. But he did not think this
Lieutenant would take kindly to him trying to contact a Russian battlecruiser
just now, so he had another idea. Popski had radioed for support from his
comrades at
Siwa
. They were supposed to be bringing
in jeeps tonight, and the plan was to establish a base camp here, and at least
have vehicles available for a ground search in the event this storm persisted
and they could not fly. Time was of the essence, or so Popski stressed. A man
could only survive so long in the desert, and this was not just anyone, but
General O’Connor himself. Yet if they had somehow moved in time again, all that
was irrelevant now. He had to decide what to do; how to find out what had
happened here.