Yamamoto was quite clear about the need to protect those carriers. He does not want them exposed to enemy attack. If this Mizuchi is real, and dares to challenge us, how should I proceed. I am told this secret new fleet defense ship scouting ahead of the task force will give the signal for attack, and determine where the enemy is. Can it really do what Yamamoto believes? How is it I heard nothing of the development of these powerful new naval rockets over all these years? Secrecy is one thing. We took considerable measures to conceal the construction of the Yamato class battleships from prying eyes, but I always knew about them. This Takami, however, is a fish that has slipped out of the net.
Strange that Yamamoto insisted I communicate with that ship only by means of the special radio equipment we are carrying now. This new officer is very stoic, a Lieutenant Kobayashi. He certainly seems one to discharge his duties in a diligent manner, but there is something… different about him. I cannot put my finger on it, but he has an awareness about him, clear minded, intelligent and respectful when he reports, but also strangely forgetful of the most common things aboard ship. He never uses the voice tubes, seems to hunt for switches and dials, unless he is sitting in front of that new radio, a most unusual piece of equipment.
It does not transmit normal coded signals, and all traffic is conducted in the clear via voice communications. I am told that the signal is scrambled and encrypted, but does that not allow the enemy to triangulate on the position of that ship, Takami, and my flagship as well? The Lieutenant has explained that the equipment transmits very short bursts at a high rate of speed on many rotated channels and frequencies to prevent this. He calls it frequency hopping, and says the antenna being used is designed to focus the communication in only one direction. I asked him how his own ship could possibly know which frequencies to listen for this message, and he tells me the very first information sent establishes all that. Both radios agree where to have tea—how very interesting. Yet who can say what the enemy might be capable of?
Who knew?
Lieutenant Kobayashi would not be expecting anyone in the Allied navies of 1942 to be able to intercept and decrypt the messages he was transmitting back to Takami, but he was forgetting that there were men from the 21st Century sailing these waters, and on the enemy side. Some of them had very good ears, and a nose for all the typical methods and procedures used to mask protected signals traffic at sea.
One such man was Lieutenant Isaak Nikolin, the man who loved to play at riddles on his own internal encrypted network, direct to his good friend Tasarov at the Sonar station without anyone on the ship knowing. This time the riddle Nikolin was trying to solve was external, out there on the dark unseen airwaves his systems were routinely sifting through at his communications station aboard Kirov. He hadn’t expected to get a SIG-Alert here. If the ship had been on its planned appointed rounds in the year 2021, then yes, this traffic would be normal, but not here.
He didn’t get any clean message intercept, but the system simply reported that it had detected high speed traffic, on a multi-band transmission with a wide range of frequency variation. That should not have been happening there in 1942, and it was enough to make him put down his crossword puzzle, and take a closer look. He wanted to make sure he wasn’t just seeing a minor systems glitch, but the more he looked into it, the more concerned he was, and perplexed as well. It appeared as if someone was sending encrypted radio traffic, and using some very modern technology to mask the point of origin and signal bearing.
He decided to get curious, and set up a dedicated COMINT module with filters to look for exactly the kind of traffic he was suspicious of, anything on the bands he had detected earlier, anything that was frequency hopping at high speed, anything that simply should not be happening here in 1942. In time he found something, and the seemingly innocuous alert that had set him on this search soon bore fruit. He waited two days just to be certain he really had something here, and then, convinced of what he was receiving, he decided to kick the matter up the chain of command.
“Lieutenant Rodenko, sir, I have an Electronic Surveillance Measure request.”
Rodenko looked over at him, somewhat surprised. “What for, Nikolin? Tired of regular rotations? Need something more to drill on? You getting bored under that headset?”
“No sir, I believe I have suspicious signals traffic and I would like to try and confirm it with some measurement and signals intelligence work.”
That got Rodenko’s attention. “Suspicious traffic? What is it?”
“Sir, I’ve been monitoring an intermittent signal burst—that’s what first got my attention. It’s a signal in burst mode, using high speed data transmission, and it’s frequency hopping all over the band. I set up a COMINT profile module to listen for it, and I have three separate interceptions—very low power to restrict range, but I got it on my primary antenna, and then used the top mast system to enhance reception.”
“It’s frequency hopping? How fast?”
“Too fast, sir. It has to be a computer modulated signal. I can’t read it, but if I had to bet on it, I would say someone is encrypting radio voice traffic for close in point-to-point transmissions. Should we run ELINT protocols to look for pulse rate transmissions that might be associated?”
Rodenko sat very quiet for a moment, a series of dominoes all falling one to another in his mind. This should not be happening, but this wasn’t any ordinary communications officer reporting to him now. This was Nikolin. He turned, slowly began toggling switches, and summoning the considerable power at his command to listen and detect errant electronic and radio signals.
“Feed me your data,” he said quietly.
Part XII
Reap the Whirlwind
“He who sews the wind shall reap the whirlwind.”
Chapter 34
The Japanese had been quite busy on Sakhalin Island since they occupied it in 1908. They had settled most of the habitable land there, which was mainly restricted to coastal sectors and some inland valleys that separated the rugged, tree sewn mountains. It was largely considered to be a military zone, though a good number of Japanese civilians from Hokkaido had also migrated there, part of the work force necessary to build out the infrastructure. Over the years, they had improved existing roads and built new ones, established numerous airfields and expanded ports. One significant addition was the building of railroads to improve overland communications from north to south.
Cultural influence and civilian occupation was heavier in the south at Ezu Province, the nearest to Hokkaido. That portion of the island extended like a great crab claw, which opened to embrace Chitose Bay, the approach to the first of two major ports on the island at Otomari. The Siberians had once called that place Korsakov, but now it was thoroughly Japanese, a thriving commercial port augmented by the fishing port of Aniva 20 kilometers to the east on that same bay.