For a long moment, he considered simply surrendering; he knew the west and he didn’t expect that his men would be slaughtered as soon as they were disarmed, but he dismissed the thought. It would be dishonourable to surrender, not when they could fight to the finish. It wasn’t as if the fight was hopeless… wasn’t it?
HMS Astute
Coral Sea
23rd May 1941
HMS Astute was one of four submarines of her class, the most advanced submarines in the world after the Transition. The Japanese had literally nothing that could touch her; the only danger was mechanical failure. Despite the torrent of propaganda coming out of Tokyo, the Royal Navy was fairly certain that it had been mechanical failure that had caused the loss of a submarine in the Dutch East Indies.
Along with eleven other submarines, deployed to the west and east of Australia, HMS Astute had been waiting for the signal to engage. The only excitement had been a Japanese destroyer stumbling into the kill-zone, which had been duly blown out of the water with a single torpedo. While HMS Astute’s commanding officer, Captain Patricia Orison, had heard about the Japanese anti-torpedo measures, she’d never actually seen one of them work, and personally blamed it on human error.
“Captain, we’re receiving a burst transmission, FLASH-level encryption, from fleet command in Canberra,” Lieutenant Vanderlinden reported. “It’s decrypting now.”
Orison nodded. She wasn’t convinced that there was any need to encrypt signals – the Japanese couldn’t hope to intercept them – but she agreed with the Oversight Committee that it would be a bad idea to develop bad habits. Sooner or later, someone, most likely the Americans, would develop quantum computers and equal decryption abilities.
“They’ve sent the attack order,” Lieutenant Vanderlinden said. The atmosphere in the submarine’s control room suddenly became a great deal tenser. “They want us to attack.”
“About bloody time,” Orison muttered. “Helm, ahead full. Let’s see what we can find.”
The more complex orders had been simple. There were no allied vessels – apart from the submarines – in the region between Australia and the Dutch East Indies. Everything in that region was a target; they were to sink all the Japanese ships. Orison waited patiently as HMS Astute deployed its radar tower and performed a quick radar scan. There were three Japanese transports heading from Papua New Guinea, directly for Cape York.
“Load torpedo tubes,” Orison ordered. She waited for the acknowledgement. “Fire!”
HMS Astute shuddered briefly as it launched three torpedoes in quick succession. The Japanese had no idea that they were under attack; the three ships exploded with more force than Orison had expected.
“They must have been carrying ammunition,” Lieutenant Vanderlinden commented. “Even fighting men don’t explode like that.”
Orison nodded dispassionately. “That should slow down their conquest,” she said. “Time to tighten your belts, boys; we know how to strangle shipping in ways you can’t even dream of.” She studied the results of the radar scan thoughtfully. “On to the next target,” she said. “The Japanese won’t sink their own supply lines for us.”
Chapter Twenty-Five: The Stage is Set
Future Embassy
Washington DC, USA
23rd May 1941
Ambassador King peered at the tiny magnifying box. Straining his eyes, he could make out a tiny silver splinter at the bottom of the box. No matter how he peered, he couldn’t make out any more details; it was just a silver glint.
“All right,” he said finally. “I give up; what is it?”
“It’s a bug,” Marine Lieutenant Bosco said. King blinked; he didn’t know the uncommunicative Marine very well. “More to the point, its 2015 technology.”
King put the box down on the desk. “Who put it there?” He asked. One suspect came to mind at once. “Is it a British design?”
“Yes and no,” Bosco said. He picked up the box and glared at it. “That’s what I thought at first, but I checked it against the database, the one prepared for embassy security, and… well, if it is a British plant, then it’s a very odd one.”
He paced around the room. “This design was formalised in 2010 and superseded in 2011, by the NSA. MI5 and MI6 were allowed access to the technology as a quid pro quo for something else, but by 2012 the designs were public anyway and you could get them on the black market. Furthermore, NSA’s willingness to allow this to develop was pushed forward by the development of ELINT sensors – like the ones we were equipped with – that could find the bugs.”
He scowled. “So why would the British use a bug they would know that we could detect?”
“Which suggests that whatever’s happening isn’t entirely official,” King said. “Someone else is using British technology.”
“Hoover,” Palter said. “Who else would have means, motive and opportunity?” King lifted an eyebrow. “Means; there are thousands of Britons here who would be delighted at a chance to earn some money through smuggling. Motive; he hates you and blames you for the black rebellions and his own personal disgrace. Opportunity; there are thousands of people who come here every day and 1941 doesn’t have anything like the kind of databases that we enjoyed back home.”
“And won’t if some congressmen have their way,” King observed. “Despite my ancestor, I am in favour of people holding guns, but some of their security limitations are just…”
“Treasonous?” Palter asked wryly. “These people don’t have to plan for terrorists or sneak attacks.”
“They’re refusing to allow black people into certain places in the south,” King snapped. “I think they’ve got the idea, its just misapplied.”
He scowled. The series of incidents following incidents was expanding across the south. A National Guard platoon had been wiped out after attempting to disarm a crowd of black people; someone had blown up a white school. All of the poison was coming out onto the surface – and it was hurting.
Palter nodded. “What are we going to do about Hoover?”
“I’ll talk to the President about it,” King said. He scowled. “Coming to think of it, what’s to stop Hoover from having the White House bugged?”
Palter blanched. “He’s already supposed to have thousands of blackmail files,” he said. “If he’s bugging the White House…”
“We don’t know yet,” King said. I’ll request a meeting with the President at once. Your team can survey the White House and look for unwanted insects.”
“Yes, sir,” Palter said. “We’ll get on to it at once.”
There were times when Ambassador King questioned the wisdom of the path he had chosen, a month after being dumped back in time. The process of social engineering wasn’t open to him; he simply lacked the resources, even with the investments and patents, to engage in such efforts. Knowledge of the future was open to all; the history books had been spread across the United States.
He picked up the mobile phone and scowled. Like a handful of similar phones, it seemed normal, but it was designed to read his bioelectric patterns in particular. Unimaginable to 1941 technology, for anyone, but him it would only produce a standard phone system. For him, it accessed a quantum encryption microcomputer, which encoded his transmissions beyond any hope of decryption. The number wasn’t a long one; there were only ten numbers in the secure store.