John Schettler - Altered States – Volume II. Darkest Hour

Smoke shrouded the scene, but Kurt Werner was back with a signal from Prince Eugen. “Another ship sighted,” he said, “coming in on the same bearing those planes hit us from-two-two-zero.”

Lindemann peered through his field glasses, unable to see anything in the dim light, with smoke from his own guns rolling out of the side of the ship as Bismarck fired again. We should have launched a seaplane, he thought. I am relying too much on Bohmer and his planes aboard Graf Zeppelin.

“And what about Tirpitz?”

“They report minor damage on the starboard side torpedo bulge. Nothing serious. The second torpedo failed to detonate.”

“Then they got lucky. Good, we can always use a good throw of the dice, because now it comes down to armor and guns, Werner.”

“ Tirpitz is coming around again to match our heading, but we are between their ship and the enemy now. Shall we have them fall back into line with us?”

“No. Leave them where they are. It will force the British to split their fire at two different ranges, while all our gunfire can focus on one point.”

He raised his field glasses again, and some thirty seconds later he saw another bright flash and explosion down his line of fire. The plot was thickening with the arrival of another British ship, but Hood had been hit again.

He looked at his watch. It would probably be another half hour before he could expect more air support from Graf Zeppelin. How many more planes were out there on those British carriers? Where were the rest of the German fighters? Don’t worry about the planes, he chided himself. You’re a gunnery officer, the best in all Germany. You’ve taught most every lead Artilleryman of any note. See to the guns, that’s what will do the job here. See to the guns.

The Nordic poetry he so often read was running through his mind now. It was Ragnarok, the clash of the gods in a mighty battle to decide their fate. Here we decide the fate of nations at sea, he thought. If we can defeat the Royal Navy here, then anything is possible in this war. The echo of the guns pounded out the tempo of the battle, and the words of the Poetic Edda ran through his mind like the hot pulse of blood at his temples.

“Axe-time, sword-time, shields are sundered,

Wind-time, wolf-time, ere the world falls;

Nor ever shall men each other spare.”

Out on the weather deck Admiral Volsky stood watching the ochre light on the sea, deceptively calm, and the silver tint of the fat moon over it all. It was a day when no night would come, no place to fold oneself into the darkness and shadow, into the silence. The light gleamed on ragged shards of floating ice, like the cold white teeth of a great shark emerging from the sea. The ship was thrumming beneath his heavy soled boots, the metal hull pushing through the ice floes. A cold wind was crisp on his face, and above him he caught the ceaseless sweeping turn of the big Voskhod-2 “Dawn” Navigation and weather radar, the highest mast of the ship, and saw the silhouette of the watch posted there.

They had lost their original set in the Pacific, and this was a new model, hastily fitted before the ship left Vladivostok, though the umbilical cables and wire tentacles that would integrate it into the ship’s systems had just been connected in recent days. Engineer Byko managed to get it back on line to improve their radar coverage, but the Admiral knew it would only be the bringer of more bad news. They were sailing at the edge of a great battle at sea now, and steel gladiators hastened to converge in the watery arena where only death and destruction could possibly result.

Behind him he could see the glow of the red combat lighting in the citadel of the main bridge where his officers sat dutifully at their posts, their eyes fixed on their computer screens and system panels. Fedorov was standing like a shadow by the Plexiglas navigation panel, marking off the positions of the ships that had been fingered by the radar. Brave Fedorov. He had lost his tether to the history, and now joined the stream of ongoing events like anyone else, an unknowing participant, swept inexorably forward into the moment with each revolution of the ship’s powerful turbines.

Then he heard a distant rumble in the deep crimson of the midnight hour, the growl and thunder of a distant battle. Guns were firing, the big steel barrels of the battleships of this era blasting out their red anger. Admiral Tovey was now facing a trial by fire. Hood was engaged with two powerful enemies, the heart of the German battle fleet, Bismarck and Tirpitz. Tovey was racing to the scene aboard the battlecruiser Invincible arriving like the cavalry at the 11th hour to join the action. Off to the south Kirov’s radars had also spotted flights of aircraft, fluttering low and slow over the sea like moths drawn to the flame of battle. These were the Swordfish torpedo bombers off the British carriers, or so Fedorov had told it.

Yet the Germans had more reinforcements at hand as well. The dark shadows of another battle line were only now emerging at the edge of the horizon to the north. Volsky had come out to the weather bridge to have a closer look at them himself with his field glasses. He could have stayed in the heated battle bridge, watching the scene on the overhead HD video feed from the Tin Man, but somehow seeing the foe with his own eyes, feeling the cold air on his face, smelling the sea and hearing the distant guns was what he wanted now.

The Admiral knew that he could turn away here any time he wished, and avoid becoming embroiled in the conflict, withdrawing into the gloaming of this hybrid dusk and dawn. Yet somehow the grinning smirk of the near full moon seemed to taunt him with recrimination.

Yes, we do not belong here, he knew. We are uninvited guests, interlopers, trespassing on the sacred ground of years lived long ago, but he could say that very same thing to both the British and Germans now. None of this should be happening, as Fedorov would attest. The HMS Invincible that now carried the flag of the Royal Navy into battle was never supposed to have been built! Bismarck and Tirpitz should not be at sea either, not in 1940. The fact that this was happening at all sat heavy on his shoulders, a burden he knew that he and his crew would now carry for some time, perhaps for all their remaining days.

We did this, he said to himself. This is the face of the war that we shaped with our own meddling, the war we sculpted with missile fire and the hard chisel of a nuclear warhead. It is ours now, a world of our own making, and no, we cannot shirk from battle here and slink away into the shadows. We have chosen, I have chosen, and now we must own that choice and do what we must here. It could be no other way.

The dark shapes on the sea ahead were the very same ships Kirov had engaged earlier, Scharnhorst and Gneisenau, with the heavy cruiser Admiral Hipper. They were hastening to the sound of the guns, even as Kirov was, latecomers to the battle, but ships that might weigh heavily in the balance and decide how fate would rule in this crucial engagement. Rodenko’s radar report told the tale. The British would be out gunned if these ships arrived on the scene. Invincible had scored a stunning long range hit, causing the Germans to veer off, but they had just skirted north to slip over the horizon and continued on.

Volsky knew this brief moment of calm, a breathless anticipation, would soon slip from him like his frosty breath. He could not wait here, watch here, a simple bystander letting the history they had created play out as it might. They had made a choice.

The time for battle was again at hand, but what should they do? They had no more than 26 SSMs remaining, and perhaps five long years of war ahead if they could not find a way to move forward to their own time again. Each missile was worth its weight in gold. Even if they could move forward, what would they find? The world might be fractured beyond all recognition. Is that what Gromyko found when he shifted on Kazan? What would he do? What if he shifts again? These and a hundred other questions ran through his mind now as he turned and opened the outer hatch to the citadel bridge. The red light of battle stations fell on him as he entered, like a baptism of blood and fire.