“They’re still strung out,” Cadet Younghusband observed. Normally, the British Army would have refused to send someone who was a cadet – particularly one with as little experience as Younghusband – into combat, but there was a grave shortage of people. Nineteen years old; Younghusband was demonstrating technology to men many years his senior, including some out of history. General Sir Archibald Wavell – commander of the Contemporary Forces and future Viceroy of India – and General Robert Flynn, Commander of the 2015 forces, stood behind him, staring down at the field laptop. The system, developed for the Iraq War, could be turned into a mobile command centre with ease.
“It looks as if they’ve outrun their supply lines,” Wavell said. “I intended to face them at Mersa Matruh; your people insisted that I fall back.”
That wasn’t entirely true, General Flynn knew. Admiral Cunningham had urged Wavell to fall back when the Contemporary Forces hadn’t known exactly what had happened in Britain. If Wavell had stood, without the forces he’d possessed later during Operation Crusader, which had been averted by the Transition, he might have lost.
“That is hardly the point,” General Flynn said, as diplomatically as he could. Wavell’s missing eye, lost during Ypres, seemed to glare at him. “We now have an opportunity to cut them off and crush them utterly.”
“And your forces are going to do it,” Wavell said. “What are my men here for then?”
“Support,” Flynn said. “General, Archie, I understand as well as you do just how… inconvenient this entire situation is. Rest assured that I intend to see your people brought up to spec as fast as possible; they’re already refurbishing older tanks to press into service. We are retooling some of our factories to produce AK-47s for your people; you will not be denied your chance to fight.
“At the same time, your forces have been seriously demoralised,” Flynn continued. He’d insisted on waiting until his forces had arrived before making the announcement about the Transition to the British troops already on station. The sight of the Harriers, the helicopters and the strange, powerful tanks had convinced many where words had not. The Indian soldiers hadn’t been that bothered, but the other soldiers, British, New Zealander and Australian, had been horrified. Already, there had been seven suicides; men who had lost their wives and children forever. Other men were taking refuge in drink; there had been several drunken riots already.
“I know that,” Wavell snapped. His own wife had been lost forever. “My troops are not babies or Italians; they can fight under any circumstances!”
Flynn nodded grimly, understanding. Wavell wanted to lash out at someone, anyone. An intensely disciplined man, Wavell was under terrible strain; he dared not let go for anything.
“General, with all due respect, your troops can only move at walking pace,” he said, not entirely correctly. “You have a force of Matilda tanks” – fortunately they’d been in transition when the 1940s Britain vanished – “and some lorries, but your force as a whole can only move slowly. My force can punch around them here” – pointing to Mersa Matruh – “and destroy their supply lines, here and here.” He tapped the map. “Once that’s done, the forces in Mersa Matruh can surrender or die of thirst.”
“And my troops will accept their surrender,” Wavell said firmly. Flynn nodded. It was a small concession to make and it might start the long process of repairing the moral of the troops.
“As soon as Admiral Turtledove sends the signal, we attack,” Flynn said. He smiled; with the reconnaissance information from the drone, it would be very hard to lose.
Ionian Sea/Taranto Harbour
Mediterranean
24th July 1940
After the attack on Kiel, the Trafalgar had been hunting u-boats, killing five before being summoned back to the Royal Navy’s main base for reloading and dispatching to the Mediterranean. Their success at Kiel might have come with a price, the PJHQ had warned them; the official war stocks of the Royal Navy included five hundred Tomahawk missiles; and they’d burnt through nearly a hundred of them, bombarding German positions.
“Up mast,” Captain Tyson ordered. It was nearly noon; he’d wanted to delay launch until evening, but the plan for a joint offensive – using Contemporary Forces as well as 2015 – required the land attack to be launched in the day. “Radar scan…”
“No sign of anything apart from the Contemporary Forces, twenty kilometres due south,” Lieutenant Patel reported. The Contemporary Forces, Admiral Cunningham’s forces, had been equipped with improved radar, communications and air support, courtesy of Royal Navy Harriers that had been based on Malta. Their task was to interdict the sea-lanes; even through two nuclear submarines could have remained on station for weeks, if necessary. He’d heard that plans to refit the battleships were under development, but he wasn’t certain if the Royal Navy could even begin to handle such a task.
Captain Tyson chucked. The Contemporary Forces had been delighted with their new fire-control radars – even though they’d had basic fire-control radars anyway – and were looking forward to the next German or Italian air raid. No one had had the heart to tell them that the basic algorithms had come from a wargame from a PC game company; Battle of the Giants.
“Admiral Turtledove has just cleared the attack,” Lieutenant-Commander Davidson said. “We are receiving a feed from the orbiting drone.”
“Show me,” Tyson ordered. The screen cleared; the Italian harbour at Taranto loomed ahead of them. Battleships and cruisers floated at anchor, protected by a flight of German aircraft; there were no Italian aircraft orbiting. The display altered as more information was downloaded; identifying each of the battleships by name and linking to the stored information in the fleet’s database.
Lieutenant-Commander Davidson smiled. “Conte di Cavour, Giulio Cesare, Andrea Doria, Caio Duilio, Littorio and Vittorio Veneto,” he said. “The pride of the Italian fleet, hiding in the harbour and cowering from an inferior foe. If they’d bothered to develop their radar system, they would have proved a match for Admiral Cunningham. The Germans should have just taken it over and crewed it themselves; no one ever accused the Germans of lacking in competence.”
“You’ve been reading up on this,” Tyson said wryly. “The other ships?”
“Zara, Fiume, Pola and Gorizia are all heavy cruisers,” Davidson said. “Three of them are due – were due – to be sunk a year in the future at the Battle of Cape Matapan.” He changed the display. “In all, six battleships, seven heavy cruisers, two light cruisers, and eight destroyers.”
Tyson shook his head. “Good God, we don’t even have a terminology for this,” he said. “Mr Exec, designate targets… and fire!”
Vice-Admiral Inigo Campioni, newly confirmed as the commander of the fleet-in-being that waited at Taranto, kicked his cigarette into the water. He’d commanded the fleet in the Battle of Calabria, which had been an Italian victory no matter what the Germans and British said, and the news that a newer and dangerous Britain had appeared – and trashed the German shipyards at Kiel – had alarmed him. More alarming were the two German divisions that had appeared in Italy, officially to train the Italian army to German standards. Unofficially…