John Schettler - Golem 7

Maeve angled her head to one side, lips pursed with a look of admonishment that soon gave way to a smile.

“For that matter, we could even run a Spook Job,” Paul suggested. “A quick in and out.”

“You want to toss the First Sea Lord an apple or two?” said Maeve.

“Well, we’ve seen the technique work once already to save all Christendom and the Western world,” Paul smiled.

“With a little help from yours truly, and a good Arabian stallion,” Maeve returned.

“Right,” said Paul. “And look how we received that invitation to send Robert back. You see what I mean? A message can travel much easier than a person—and with very little risk.”

“Assuming it gets to the right hands,” said Maeve. “The Admiralty doesn’t have a working Arch, do they?”

“No but they’ve got working telephones. The key thing here is that it’s the information that’s decisive. In this campaign a little foreknowledge goes a long way. Our adversaries knew exactly where to aim their kick. They took out Sheffield in this instance, with a very simple intervention using that fishing trawler—I’m sure that’s what they planned. They may not have known what the actual outcome would be in the beginning, but my guess is that they thought it would weaken Force H in some way, or simply strengthen the German hand by sparing Gneisenau . They probably had no idea it would even work—“

“Until it did work,” said Maeve.

“Right you are,” Paul continued. “They got the result they were hoping for and we got Palma. Now… there are loads of other vital points in this battle that we could impact with crucial information delivered at a key moment. We can operate just as they do. We get information to key players in the scheme of things, the Primes, and then we sample Resonance from here to see if it has the desired effect. When we get an outcome that ends up sinking the Bismarck , we can go have a good pizza and hopefully get some rest before the next alert goes off.”

Maeve shrugged. She realized what this meant—direct intervention, providing information that the Prime Movers in the scenario would not have been privy to. It had real risks, but the more she thought about it the more she came to conclude that the impact would probably be limited. It might affect the outcome of this battle, and then stop there, at least she hoped as much. And how was this any different from making sure a bishop and his family get cut down by Dodo and his armed thugs while you stand there watching, fully responsible? Kelly was correct when he said this was wartime now. The gloves were off. Bismarck was fated to die, and all they would be doing is making sure she meets her appointment with a couple of British battleships.

She looked at Paul and decided. “Work up a scenario,” she said. “I’ll go get Kelly his peanut butter and jelly sandwich and check on the professor.

Paul exhaled with relief. This just might work, he thought. He had a sudden thrill that he was about to assume that omniscient-like role that he often took when playing one of his war game simulations. Every time he played he realized that he was acting with full knowledge of the history involved, the mistakes and successes of both sides, and the outcome. As a game designer he was always trying to create rules and systems aimed at frustrating or neutralizing the human player’s inherent advantage of historical hindsight. He had played many games where the computer AI was programmed and given special bonus skills to try and offset this advantage, but no computer had been able to beat him yet. His knowledge of the history, combined with good strategy and tactical sense, made him a master of the board. Computers could beat human chess players because the outcome of each new game was completely unknown at the beginning. But Paul knew how this game needed to end, and he was determined to win it, one way or another.

“Let’s get busy, Kelly. Those damn Assassins just messed with the wrong guy.” Paul pulled up a chair, ready for battle. “Now the British knew Bismarck was out. She made stops at Grimstad Fiord and at the Norwegian port of Bergen, where they photographed her earlier. Naturally they kept flying recon missions over those locations to see if she was still there, but the weather was bad, and by the time they got a break Bismarck had already left. They overflew both targets and saw no sign of the Germans, but this was a full thirty hours after Bismarck steamed.”

“So they were late getting orders out to the fleet?”

“Correct. It was no small matter to send thousands of tons of military shipping out, packed to the gills with fuel, ammunition, not to mention thousands of sailors. They would only act on reliable information, and this is our first opportunity to get it to them.”

“Lay it on me,” said Kelly. “What do you suggest?”

“This may be a stretch,” said Paul, “but what if we rigged up a short wave to broadcast, perhaps using Morse code, and also using code words we know were viable at that time given our hindsight on the data. Now we just shift that baby in on a Spook Job—just long enough to broadcast its message—and then we yank it back here.”

“I’ve got some cool radio equipment down in the computer lab,” said Kelly. “One has an audio dock and I can load MP3s into it, and time them for playback.”

“Maeve is going to be a problem on this one,” said Paul. “We’re talking about a solid state component here, with transistors, not tubes, right?”

“And on-board microchips, a gig of RAM, a USB port with MP3 dock, and an account with iTunes,” Kelly smiled. “That’s going to be a real problem with Maeve, believe me.”

“Well it would only be for a very few seconds—in and out. We can select an isolated area as well to prevent any chance of it being seen during those few seconds. Hell, the damn Assassins don’t have these qualms. The Order thinks they have some kind of mobile equipment they can deploy and interface with natural power sources like the Oklo reaction I stumbled upon in Wadi Rumm.”

“Yeah, but we don’t know if they’re taking it back in Time. That was in our era. Remember, Maeve will have to sign off on this, and we’re talking about a woman who fed your apple to her horse and then ate the damn message you sent to make sure nothing would be left behind.”

Paul raised his brows, a pensive expression on his face. “I see what you mean,” he said. “She gave me a pass when I smuggled that .22 rifle in on the Grimwald mission, but she’ll go ballistic if we try to shift in modern equipment like that.”

“Well…” Kelly thought for a minute. “Rantgar made a point of saying it was easy to transmit information through Time. Suppose I set the thing up and we place it just behind the event horizon line in the Arch Bay. Then I open the continuum and we broadcast a coded message—we just send the information through! Hell, if it doesn’t work then we can always fall back on my plan to shift in and send a cable.”

“I’ll bet you’d love to get your hand on a pint or two in a pub,” Paul smiled. “Alright, my friend, can you set this thing up to transmit Morse code?”

“I can transmit it myself, right here from the console. I know the code. All I have to do is plug a Wifi adapter into the USB port on the radio, and we can link it to our system here easily enough.”

“Cool! Let’s do it,” said Paul.

“Then what’s the message?”

“I’ll need to do some research first,” said Paul. “Let’s see if we can call up some records of wartime signals traffic and codes.”

Nordhausenhad been pouring over history files, comparing RAM Bank data to new Golem reports on the altered Meridian they found themselves marooned on now. He was looking at all the Pushpoints in the campaign as Paul had described it, frustrated to find it still so difficult to piece together a coherent picture of events, even these very significant actions from recent modern history.