Christopher Nuttall - Axis of Evil

“You exaggerate,” Rommel said placidly. “He was passed, I might note, by one of the foremost interrogators in the British Army, who used truth drugs unmercifully.” He coughed meaningfully. “Now, at the risk of sounding impatient, have our backers worked out what they are going to do with us?”

There was a brief exchange of glances. Few of the 1940-born wanted to admit that they were dependent upon the British; few of the 2015-born wanted to risk the army before it was ready.

“The British want you in Palestine,” Schulze said finally. “All the evidence suggests that the Germans – the Nazis – are going to attempt to head west and cut the Suez Canal, before heading south and plunging a dagger into the Republic of Arabia. Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to prevent them from do so.”

He watched as Rommel studied the map. It made sense, he’d been assured; the British needed the Free German Army in action as soon as possible, even though his mind rebelled at the thought of becoming involved in Palestine. The Germans, ironically, were the smaller threat in the region; it was the Soviets who were the real problem.

Rommel finished studying the map. “How does this benefit us?” He asked. “I don’t think that the Nazis will get anywhere near the canal; the RAF can shoot up their supply lines with ease.”

“We have to do something to relieve the suffering in Palestine,” Schulze said reluctantly. He suspected that politics would not impress Rommel. “We could give Germany a better name in regions that produce a lot of oil…”

“Stuff and nonsense,” the businessman said. The other businessman nodded agreement. “With hydrogen-powered cars…”

“Which will take years to start, even with the technology well understood,” Schulze said, with some irritation. “We need the oil, and we need commercial interests of our own.”

“All of which is secondary to having Hitler defeated,” Rommel said, ending the discussion. “Our priority is to end the war as soon as possible, not to worry about the future. I’ll issue the orders to prepare for the move.”

Churchill Space Centre

French Guiana, South America

1 stApril 1941

The Trident missile, a multi-million pound dealer of megadeath under normal circumstances, was mounted neatly on its pad in the centre of what would have been the European launch site in the future. For the moment, the twenty square miles of jungle had been sealed off after the French colonial troops had been evicted back to POW camps in the desert. Wooden shacks and stone blockhouses housed the two thousand Royal Marines charged with defending the launch centre, as well as its famous staff.

Major John Dashwood, supervisor and Base Commander, looked across his domain from the watchtower and smiled to himself. He would have preferred somewhere not so… French, or with such a grim history, but there weren’t many excellent launch locations on Earth, particularly ones in reasonably safe areas. The plans to use Kenya had been brushed aside when the native revolt had broken out, and Britain itself was out of the question.

He chuckled aloud. The Churchill Space Centre, such a grand name for it at the moment, would become Britain’s gateway to the stars. He’d been one of the cabal within the MOD demanding that Britain put forward its own space program, after the ESA had collapsed and the Russians had outdone NASA with their commercial program, but until the Transition no one was interested. Britain simply couldn’t match American investment, but in 1940 there was no one in space… unless aliens had been responsible for the Transition. Britain had nearly a twenty years lead… and Dashwood had no intention of seeing it wasted.

“Bloody stupid nonsense,” he said, as he finished examining the intelligence reports. The RAF had been confident that the Germans had managed to build a spaceplane, but Dashwood was certain that it was a bluff; the Germans would never have been able to make everything required to launch a manned spaceplane. It was either a high-attitude bomber or reconnaissance plane, or a bluff. He supposed that they could, just, place a payload into orbit, but what could they do with it?

“I beg your pardon?” Commander Tempest said. The officer on loan from the Royal Navy knew everything about Tridents; it had astonished Dashwood to learn that even 1960s-era rockets needed considerable work before they could be reproduced. Whole generations of knowledge and experience had been lost; the people who knew how to build an Apollo rocket had died between 1970 and the Transition, and those who lived had been in America. The Royal Navy, he’d heard, would need years to build a battleship from scratch, even though they had all of the plans.

“The German spaceplane,” Dashwood said absently, and returned to the military digest. The Navy wanted to build more Type-45 destroyers, but armed with better anti-aircraft systems, and develop several new carriers from oil tankers.

“They don’t have a chance,” Tempest assured him. Dashwood glowered at him; Navy man or not, his experience with matters space was no more or less than Dashwood’s own. The flight simulations had confirmed that the satellite could be launched; now all they had to do was see if theory matched reality.

“Let’s hope so,” Dashwood said. The Germans were working hard on their rockets; the AWACS aircraft had tracked a V2 being launched from isolated woodland, although they hadn’t started to throw them at Britain yet. PJHQ thought that the Germans were trying to get their targeting down precisely, although it was hard to track German progress.

“Ah, Doctor Goddard,” Tempest said. Dashwood turned and nodded politely to the older man, the famous American rocket scientist. Recruiting him had been depressingly easy, once the Americans had jailed the Abwehr source recruited by Nikolaus Ritter. Goddard had been invited to work in Nazi Germany; Dashwood had made him a better offer. The Americans hadn’t been interested.

“A fine day for a launch,” Goddard said. Physically, he was short, bald and had a moustache, but his eyes gleamed with brilliant curiosity. He was brilliant, Dashwood acknowledged; for the moment he might be working on recreating old/new knowledge, but Dashwood expected him to make many more fundamental breakthroughs in the future. “These computers are remarkable.”

Dashwood had to grin. The computer, one of Britain’s finest, wasn’t that brilliant by 2015 standards. Both NASA and the Russians had developed more complex computers for the race to Mars, but Britain hadn’t taken an interest. Still, the Trident was a well-understood piece of technology, and if it had once been done with abacuses, it could be done with the system he’d brought.

After all, the program had been funded for a game, with all the attendant detail to realism, not a government project done on the cheap.

“Yes, sir,” Dashwood said. As always, he felt a mixture of awe and annoyance when dealing with Goddard’s bubbly personality. His gratitude for the treatment for throat cancer, which would have killed him back in the original timeline, had altered his personality. He’d once been a loaner; now he was more outgoing than Dashwood himself.

“And we’ll be launching bigger and bigger rockets soon,” Goddard continued. “Imagine, one large enough to put an entire space station into orbit. We can continue to farm out the components and put them together here, once we get a proper factory set up.”

He waved a hand around the site. Thousands of men and women, and a great deal of equipment, had been flooded into the compound, working to set up a proper compound. It would take at least three years, they’d estimated, but it could be done soon.