Paradox Hour (6 page)

“Well lads,” he said, tapping the deck three times with his stout blackthorn walking stick. “Now we earn our grog. Make ready on the torpedo mounts, and increase to full ahead.”

* * *

Kapitan
Heinrich smiled when he saw the British destroyers begin their impudent charge. It was just as he expected. Technically the enemy was now attempting to close with him, and his orders stated that he should disengage and steer 300, but he saw no reason to do so at the moment.

“Schirmer, do you think you can hit one of those with our main batteries?”

“It would make for good target practice, sir.”

“Then clear your throat. It’s high time we gave the guns a little work.”

“Very good sir! With your permission, I will open fire immediately.”

Seconds later
Kaiser’s
forward twin turret opened the engagement, the salvo meant to test the range calculated by the directors. Schirmer was watching closely, and when the big guns fired, he waited for the rounds to fall, seeing they were short, but much closer than he expected.

“Fire Bruno!” he said sharply, knowing that those guns were set on the same range as his spotting salvo. If he was lucky, the simple speed of the two opposing sides would close that range just enough to make this shot interesting.

And he was lucky that day. He saw the two rounds fall right astride the formation of enemy ships, so close to one destroyer that the tall plumes of seawater drenched the ship’s foredeck, and shell splinters riddled the side of its hull. Now Schirmer knew he had the range, and he quickly gave orders to account for nothing more than the range that would be gobbled up by two ships closing on one another at nearly 36 knots each.

“Elevation down three! Ready…. Fire!”

This time both turrets fired at once, sending the same shell weight that
Bismarck
might throw from her own forward guns.
Kaiser Wilhelm
was no ship to be trifled with, and when the second salvo fell, the British learned this the hard way.

“A hit! My god! We got them at just under 30,000 meters!” Schirmer turned to his Kapitan, eyes alight, elated to have scored his first ever hit with this new ship, and what a hit it was.

Impulsive
was the unlucky ship that day, struck aft with such force that the shell nearly broke the ship in two. The only ship ever to bear that name in the Royal Navy, she had sustained a rogue hit that would leave her crippled and wallowing in the sea. They saw the remaining two British destroyers break formation, and begin a wild, zig-zag approach, tacking to port and starboard to make themselves much more difficult targets. Schirmer knew he would probably not be so lucky again with his main guns, but in a matter of minutes he could bring his secondary batteries into play, six twin 15cm, 5.9-inch guns, the very same as those used by
Bismarck
and
Scharnhorst,
and he could get four of those in to action at 23,000 meters. After that, the eight dual purpose 4.1-inch guns would have to wait until the range fell inside 17,000 meters. That battery alone matched all the guns on those destroyers, and now the thirty torpedoes Lieutenant Commander Maud had hoped to call on had been reduced to twenty.

Yet the British persisted in their brave charge. Schirmer shook his head, realizing the maneuver was desperate, though he gave the men on those destroyers his grudging respect.

The whims of chance, however, had put Mother Time in a most uncomfortable position, for the two ships remaining had both played an important role in the long wake of the story that was still unfolding with this action. Of the two ships,
Icarus
was perhaps the most vulnerable in her eyes, for that ship had already died according to her ledger, and to find it here was the first sprouting root of the paradox that was slowly growing with each passing second.

Icarus
had died. It was killed by
Kirov
, but Captain Maud must live, and
Intrepid
must live with him, or Orlov would never be found that day in 1942 when
Duero
hit Werner Czygan’s mine.

Yet all this rested on a thin foundation, the assumption that this altered world was the same one that
Kirov
was destined to visit that very year, in just a few months time. How could that be possible? The ship was already there, and the world
Kirov
displaced to looked nothing like this one. For Werner Czygan and Lieutenant Commander Maud to matter at all,
Kirov
would have to have been chased across the Med by
Rodney
and
Nelson
in 1942. But how could that happen now with
Kirov
an ally of the Royal Navy?

Time was in a strange position as these events twisted slowly back upon themselves, like a mother hen fretting over eggs that had not yet been laid. On the one hand,
Icarus
and
Intrepid
, and the men aboard them, were crucial links in the line of causality that saw
Kirov
now at sea in these very waters. On the other hand, they seemed entirely immaterial, as those events were not likely to ever occur. Yet their fate would count heavily on one ledger, the reckoning of the account of one Captain Wells, and the ship he now sailed—HMS
Glorious
.

Chapter 5

Glorious
was a ship of ghosts, men who had once been doomed, their names written into the ledger of time by the hand of death, and the 11-inch shells of
Scharnhorst
and
Gneisenau
. Now, like the ship itself, they were living second lives. Only 38 of the men aboard had been destined to live, all the rest were walking dead, zombies, gifted with life only because of a brief moment’s delay in the telegraph room that had spared one Lieutenant Commander Christopher Hayward Wells, now the spectral Captain of this ship of fated men.

As he stood on the bridge that day, anxiously watching the damage crews fighting the fire on the bow, Wells had a strange inkling that fate was still scratching at his leg, jealous, hungry, and resentful of every breath he took. He could not know that he had been destined to die, but he could feel it, like a cold draft at the edge of an open door to a cellar. He could feel it.

Lieutenant Commander Lovell was on the bridge that day, as was his good friend Robert Woodfield, and both men seemed edgy as well. The situation they now found themselves in seemed all too familiar, for this was the second time the ship had encountered fast German raiders at sea, and few ships ever get second chances when they came under enemy guns.
Glorious
already had more than her fair share.

The ship had just celebrated its 26th birthday. Originally designed as a battlecruiser, along with her sister ship
Courageous
, she was laid down on the 1st of May in 1915, built by Harland and Wolff, a company that had recently launched another pair of doomed sister ships, the
Titanic
and
Britannic
. One sunk on her maiden voyage, and the other was soon lost in the Aegean in 1916 after striking a mine. And so the shipwrights in the know had whispered that a curse was on the keels of ships laid down in that yard, and no good would come to any ship built there.

Commissioned in 1917,
Glorious
and
Courageous
both seemed to prove the rumors wrong, leading charmed lives in the beginning. They both fought at the Battle of Heligoland Bight that same year, when it was discovered that the simple act of firing their guns was sufficient to warp and damage the lightly armored deck structure. So the two ships went into fleet reserve, and for a time
Glorious
served only as a gun turret operations training ship before someone in the Royal Navy decided the two ships might be easily converted to a new role as aircraft carriers.

Just after her conversion in 1930,
Glorious
had another brush with fate when she collided with the French liner SS
Florida
in a heavy fog off Gibraltar. The bow of the carrier plunged right into the liner’s port side, and the two ships seemed locked in the grip of death, though both survived. Her bow was crumpled beyond recognition, but only one man lost his life aboard
Glorious
in that collision.
Florida
took the worst of the damage, and lost 32 souls that day.

The accident started the whispered rumors again. Some said the ship had escaped the curse because her conversion to a carrier had introduced so many changes that she was really not the same ship any longer. Others argued that was foolish, she was still HMS
Glorious
, and that keel had still come from Harland and Wolff. When HMS
Courageous
met her sad end on the 17th of November, 1940, at the hands of U-29, they nodded their heads, knowing it was only a matter of time now before
Glorious
followed her sister ship to the grave.

“Uproarious and Outrageous are doomed ships,” they said disparaging the vessels in their strange reincarnation as carriers. Yet fingers wagged on the other side when
Glorious
escaped from her dangerous encounter with
Scharnhorst
and
Gneisenau
in the North Sea. Yet, as Captain Wells watched that fire burn forward, he had a sickly feeling inside. The ship’s penchant for bad luck had seen her hit in that
Stuka
attack, and now the situation he was in seemed perilous in ways he could not entirely fathom.

There had once been a 15-inch gun battery where that fire now burned. It was now stowed away in a warehouse in England, also destined to live again when Britain launched her last and greatest battleship, HMS
Vanguard
. Now Wells found himself wishing he had that gun battery back. His contingent of aircraft might have been a useful weapon in this situation, but that fire was preventing him from launching, and to do so he would have to turn into the wind in any case, right towards the shadow that now darkened his horizon.

“A bit of a pickle,” said Woodfield at his side, looking from the fire to Wells, and then out to sea where the destroyers were making their bold charge in the hopes of fending off this threat. “At least we have a little more company this time.” He nodded to the cruiser squadron steaming in close escort,
Coventry
off the port quarter, and
Sheffield
to starboard, with
Gloucester
following in the carrier’s wake. Two more destroyers,
Fury
and
Fearless,
were also in attendance, but they gave Wells no real comfort. The cruisers had nothing bigger than 6-inch guns, twelve each on
Gloucester
and
Sheffield
, and five on the
Coventry
. The distant boom and rolling thunder on the horizon told him the Germans were coming with something considerably bigger.

Wells had done everything right this time, remembering the mistakes made by Captain D’Oyly-Hughes in that first harrowing encounter with enemy warships. Hughes had the destroyers in too close, but Wells had posted three on picket, and they were now making a desperate charge at the enemy. Hughes had no air cover up, and no planes ready below decks for a quick spot. Wells had four fighters on overwatch, but they had been brushed aside by hot German pilots off the
Goeben
, and could serve no vital role now. He also had
Swordfish
ready and armed below decks, but that damnable fire forward was preventing their launch, and the German fighters were still up there somewhere, though thankfully the
Stukas
were gone.

“If it comes to a fight, the cruisers will do their best,” he said quietly to Woodfield. “But that ship out there looks like it will have a big walking stick. Listen to those guns!”

It was then that a runner came in with the news that
Impulsive
had been lost, which did nothing to raise anyone’s hopes or morale at that moment. Wells looked at his watch, noting their speed was just under 30 knots now. He figured the enemy was perhaps 30,000 meters off. His horizon was 22,000 meters, but he was seeing the high conning tower of the enemy well before that. If the Germans had a five or six not speed advantage, this might be a long chase for them if they wanted to close the range. But they were already in range of those heavy guns, or would be very soon.

“Sir,
Icarus
reports damage forward as well. They make their range 10,000 meters, but the Germans are still coming.”

Woodfield looked at Wells, his jaw set. “Those destroyers will all go down,” he said flatly. “They’ll have to get to 5,000 meters to launch torpedoes.”

“Signal Lieutenant Commander Maud,” said Wells. “Tell him the Germans seem to be calling our bluff. He is to make smoke and break off at once. We’ve lost one destroyer. No use losing two more. It will just have to be a foot race now, and at least we have our speed.”

“For the moment,” said Woodfield.

“What’s on your mind, Woody?”

“Well sir, that German carrier is still out there. Those
Stukas
may be back. I think we should try to get more
Fulmars
up instead of the
Swordfish
.”

“We’ll need both aloft soon,” said Wells. “Fire or no fire, I want planes spotted for takeoff at once. Alright, Woody, get me six fighters up first. Then we go with the torpedo bombers.”

“Very good sir.” Woodfield was off to the voice tube to call down the orders.

Wells looked at the fire again, gritting his teeth. We’re running fast, he thought, and that will be all the headwind I can give them. And they’re going to have to go right through that business forward. I’m launching whether that fire is out or not. We’ll try, by god, and if necessary we’ll do just what Lt. Commander Stevens did the last time—turn the damn planes around and launch off the aft quarter!

It was then that he saw what he feared, big, heavy rounds coming in wide off his starboard side, but with a good fix on his range. “Come five points to port, and all ships to follow,” he said, the order echoed by the helmsmen and relayed to the flag bridge. No sense giving them an easy target. It was time to squirm a bit, and he would put the ship in a zig-zag until he had his planes on deck and ready to go. He looked for his executive officer, Lovell.