Designated Targets

“Splash one already, Captain. Attack reformatting.”

One of the missiles had been destroyed when it flew into a cloud of shrapnel thrown out by the massive main guns of the Tirpitz, which was firing time-fused shells. With the missiles moving at hypersonic speed, there was nothing she could do. Everything happened so quickly that only the Combat Intelligence had time to respond, as another two precious missiles died in midair.

The CI flashed out instructions to the surviving weapons, reassigning one each to the German capital ships. The maces dipped down to wave height and separated. Before Halabi could say another word, could draw breath, or even feel her next heartbeat, three silent white blooms of light consumed the ironclads. The missiles were carrying subfusion plasma-yield warheads that detonated like miniature supernovae deep inside their targets.

Admiral Scheer and Lutzow exploded and broke up an instant later. Halabi’s stomach did a slow backflip as she watched the Tirpitz emerge from the plasma effect. The mace had done a huge amount of damage amidships, but the great warship continued on as though shrugging off a peashooter.

“Damn,” she cursed, just as the bow of the Tirpitz suddenly bent back on itself and began to dig into the North Sea like a plow.

A few of the CIC crew swore at the amazing sight, and then it was gone. A rapid series of secondary explosions ripped her apart, destroying a couple of escorts that had raced in to help.

“Message to the Admiralty, Ms. Davis. All targets serviced. No survivors anticipated.”

“Aye, Captain. Allied armored units are moving to encircle the main German airborne assault at Wickham Market, ma’am, and Lieutenant Hay reports that Major Windsor’s troops have secured the airfield at Alresford.”

“Thank you, Comms.”

Halabi could see that another two squadrons of Allied planes were now swarming the German aircraft that had been attempting to kill her. Americans this time, some of them flying prototype Mustangs that hadn’t even been painted yet. She didn’t presume to retake the helm from Posh, however. Hundreds of vessels still fought in the narrows of the English Channel, and it was beyond her abilities to safely navigate a passage home, particularly at their current speed.

A Metal Storm pod erupted briefly, to emphasize the point that she wasn’t yet out of trouble.

HMS JAVELIN, THE ENGLISH CHANNEL

Sub-Lieutenant Philip Mountbatten did not have a chance to meet his famous grandson. After fighting her back from Alexandria, HMS Javelin, his latest berth, had gone straight into the Trident’s air defense screen. With a pair of the ship’s two-pounder poms-poms to run, Mountbatten had barely had time to sleep or eat. Socializing wasn’t an issue.

“Stukas, sir! Three of them at ten o’clock,” cried Seaman Bob Nicklin.

“Good work, Nicklin,” Mountbatten yelled over the roar of battle. “On my mark, wait for it— Fire!”

The guns began their furious drumbeat, throwing up to 140 high-explosive rounds a minute at the screaming dive-bombers. Dirty, roiling balls of smoke and flame boxed in the lead aircraft. Mountbatten fancied that he could see the single bomb beneath the undercarriage. Two small, stuttering starbursts of light erupted on the inverted gull wings as the German lashed at them with his machine guns.

The sea all around them was a vast enraged cauldron on which thousands of men fought and died. Beyond the deafening sound of every gun on board the Javelin firing at once, there lay a deeper, infinitely more savage uproar as hundreds of ships and possibly thousands of planes raked at each other in mortal combat.

“Look out!” yelled Nicklin as the bomb detached itself from the underside of the Stuka like a fat black pearl, an instant before two distinct explosions punched the aircraft into three pieces. The wings twirled away like falling leaves caught on a gusting wind, while the nose of the aircraft, trailing a long tail of flame and smoke, described a fatal arc, which carried it over their heads to explode in the Channel somewhere on the far side of the ship.

Mountbatten watched, in thrall to his own fate as the bomb seemed not so much to drop toward them as to simply get bigger and bigger. The gun was still hammering away at the other bombers, just like every other mount on the destroyer. But Mountbatten’s men knew that unlike the other men, they had no chance of surviving beyond the next few seconds.

So completely had the young officer given himself over to the end that he didn’t notice the radical tilt of the deck as the helm laid hard a-port and the engine room poured every ounce of power into the ship’s geared turbines, pushing her out to her top speed of thirty-six knots and slewing the stern around so violently that tons of cold brine piled up against the armor plating and then spilled over the rear deck, threatening to wash away half a dozen sailors.

The ear-piercing whistle of the Stuka’s single 500 kg bomb, the last sound he’d thought he would ever hear, abruptly vanished inside a rolling thunderclap as an enormous geyser of gray-green seawater erupted from the churning waves and climbed high above them. Mountbatten and his men were drenched as the fountain spent its energy and collapsed on top of them.

He heard cheering, and thought it was his own men, celebrating their survival but it came from farther astern, where the Javelin’s other Bofors mount had accounted for another plane. The third pulled away, having missed, and was raked by streams of tracer fire not just from his ship’s machine guns but by the AA fire of at least two other destroyers in the Trident’s screen.

The Trident!

With his life and his ship in no immediate danger again, Mountbatten cast around for her. He’d heard a rumor that the prince was on board and could only wonder what that might mean.

It was phenomenally queer for a chap to have a grandson who was already nearly twice his own age, but that wasn’t the weirdest thing to have come out of the last few months. There was his own future, of course, or possible future. It had been judged too indiscreet to allow him to meet his wife-to-be just yet. After all she was still only—what?—sixteen years old? And who was to say she would still be his? And that he would still become the consort of Elizabeth II. It was all too horribly vexing.

Shooting down the bloody Hun was much simpler.

“There she is, sir. Over there. Cor! Look at ’er fuckin’ go!”

Mountbatten followed the man’s pointed finger.

Sure enough, three giant fantails of sea spray marked the passage of the supership.

“She must be going a hundred!” yelled Nicklin over the din.

“A hundred and thirty knots at top speed, I hear,” said Mountbatten, and that settled the question for everyone.

The three fans of water at the stern of the magnificent arrow-shaped vessel pivoted as she came hard a-port to avoid some unseen obstacle. Her destroyer screen, the Javelin included, had kept up for less than a minute. She was already drawing away from their protective umbrella—although it was astonishing to think that such a powerful craft needed looking after. Even as he watched, five German planes disintegrated as they pressed in on her. It was as if they had passed through some threshold that marked the point at which the Trident could no longer tolerate their existence. And so they had ceased to exist.

Mountbatten could not pick out which of the hundreds of fighters dueling above her were specifically assigned to her air screen, but he’d heard that three full squadrons attended her every move. At least they would be able to keep up, wherever she was going.

Probably to engage the Tirpitz, he thought, and instantly wished he could’ve seen that battle. Although again, from all he’d heard, she would probably strike the German capital ships from hundreds of miles away.

A hand smacked down on his shoulder, and he turned to find Lieutenant Jeffers, who yelled in his ear. “Check your loads, Phil! We’re moving into the Channel. Hunting e-boats and troop barges. You’re going to get busy.”

“Thanks, Bruce,” he called back.

As Jeffers moved on, Sub-Lieutenant Mountbatten patted each of his men on the back. “Well done, lads. Well done. No time for a lie-down yet, though. We’re getting out of this backwater and into the real fighting.”