John Schettler - Golem 7

“Hopefully,” said Maeve.

They heard a buzzer and saw the red warning lights flashing near the heavy titanium security door. It edged open on its great silvered hinges and Kelly came rushing through, half winded, back from the Arch Bay.

“We’re ready to set sail, Admiral,” he said with a smile. “The whole thing is set up, and I even put a pre-amp in the mix to give us some additional power. I have no idea how the magnetic aura of a breaching operation will effect everything, however, but its well behind the event horizon line, so no danger of losing it.”

“Let’s get to the bridge!” Paul was eager to get their little campaign underway. Moments later they had established themselves in the main lab, Kelly at the shift monitor with Paul, and Maeve standing by at the Golem module. Her job was to monitor anything she could find in the Resonance stream that might indicate the British reacted favorably. To that end Paul had links established to the service records of several major ships involved. The exact times they pulled up anchor and set sail were clearly documented. Hood was to have set sail at exactly 2356 hours, a whisker before midnight on 22 May. Her task force departed Scapa Flow enroute for Hvalsfjord.

“Keep an eye on these records,” said Paul. You may have to refresh the pages after we transmit.”

“I’ve got some custom Golem searches pre-programmed for you as well,” said Kelly, pointing at her screen. “There’s a menu in your upper right corner.”

“Aye, aye, sir,” said Maeve.

Paul looked at Kelly. “Well, in honor of another famous Captain who went on to make Admiral… Engage!” He lowered his voice, doing his imitation of Star Trek’s Captain Picard.

Kelly began toggling switches, bringing the Arch up to speed. “Quantum fuel is stable,” he said. ”Taking her to 80%. That should be all we need for a simple breach. I should be able to hold open a window to the designated coordinates for several minutes. There won’t be any pattern recognition sweep either, so we’ll conserve power that way too.”

The Arch thrummed to life, peeling back the layers of causality as the singularity formed and spun out. “I did not have to be too specific on spatial location, he said, and I networked the Golems into a computation cloud for fifteen minutes to nail down the temporal coordinates. This was a fairly easy algorithm sequence. The equation is re-usable as well, so we can try several times on these coordinates. Shifting the temporal variable is easy.”

“Where are you opening the continuum?” Maeve’s inner sense of caution prickled up the moment she felt the vibration coming from the Arch.

“Right over London,” said Kelly. “Well up in the atmosphere. I’m just going to establish a breach and transmit. On my mark… three… two… one.” He gave the go signal and the peculiar vibration of the Arch changed ever so slightly. There was a slowly rising tone in the humming below them, and Kelly began to tap out a message using the space bar of his keyboard. This went directly to the radio equipment below, and was hopefully broadcast through the decades, to a gray evening over London, May, 1941.

He tapped away, his face set with concentration. The seconds seemed like hours, but the breach was really only open for a minute or two and he completed his message in the peculiar series of codes words Paul had given him. When Bismarck had first been sighted off the coast of Malmo, Sweden the coast watcher there had simply sent a telegram: Pit Props and Battens Rising. The message Kelly sent was equally obtuse, though in layman’s English it told a fairly plan story after decoding, ending with a precise time and the call sign Paul had chosen:

“To all stations. Bergen. Today. Bismarck and Prince Eugen have put to sea. Time: 1712. Lonesome Dove.”

Lieutenant Simmswas still on the “Huff Duff” receiving station that evening, a bit bleary eyed from the long day’s work. “Huff Duff” was the handle for HF/DF, the High Frequency Direction Finding equipment that would work in coordination with established “Y stations” and ships at sea to detect and track incoming wireless signals. His net had been full of the usual fish that evening, weather bulletins, convoy traffic, an occasional suspected U-Boat sighting, but at 21:40 hours he picked up an unusual signal.

“Hello,” he said to himself as the coded message came in, loud and clear. “What’s this about?” The signal used proper form and template, though the signalmen indicated “Origin Not Fixed” in the upper check box on this report, time number 17:12. That, in itself, was an oddity, as most traffic crossing Simms’ desk would be well fixed for point of origin. He did note the signal was designated “Sky Wave” and not “Ground Wave” traffic, which could mean a few things. Either it was sent from an aircraft, the most obvious conclusion, or it was a fluke of the weather given its bearing. Sky Wave signals that reflected from ionospheric layers were usually of lower strength and made bearing and range determination unreliable. But Simms noted that, while the signal strength was very high on this intercept, the bearing line was still left blank, filled only with a single question mark.

He nonetheless set about completing the decoding, looking up the closing call sign in his code book to verify it as legitimate. It was one of sixteen independent variable codes allowable that month, ‘Dove.’ The handle would tend to indicate the signal originated from a clandestine operator, yet in this case Sky Wave traffic would be unusual. He picked up his telephone, ringing up the Signalman for more information.

“Just calling on signal bearing for message 1712,” he said. “The field was left blank.”

“Not sure on that one, sir,” came the reply. “We make it somewhere between South 20 East and South 40 East, sir, but it was very brief and we couldn’t get a fix, as there was no triangulation.”

“Very well, Signalman. Be sure to note the field properly on all incoming messages, whether you have a permanent fix of not. Carry on.”

Simms took a brief look at that bearing, noting the heading would be at 220 degrees and take the line right over London. He extended the line in his mind, noting it would cross the channel and strike the French coast near Abbeville, and concluded it might be traffic from a Free French underground operator. Yet he could not be sure, as they would need a second intercept point to triangulate.

He decided to make another call to the Y station desk. “See hear, he said. I’ve a message, number 1712, without proper triangulation and bearing. See if you have anything on it, will you? I’ll hold.”

A minute later the voice at the other end of the line had more data for him. “We get a bearing of 180 true out of Hull, and another at South 40 West out of Norwich. No other stations reporting.”

“Well, well, well,” he said, looking at his chart again. The lines were all intersecting over London! Why would someone be sending from there? He crossed out his presumption note on the first bearing and underlined ‘Source Unknown.’

“I’d best get this to the Admiralty, in any case.”

Minutes laterthe decoded message was clattering down the tubes in the receiving desk at the Admiralty Citadel. It was opened and passed to a staff officer, who read it with some interest.