Джон Шеттлер: Nexus Deep

Dear Readers,

The process winds its way to the conclusion of yet another volume. It’s no mean task to produce a new series book in just 60 days. Keeping to my discipline of completing at least one eight-page chapter per writing day, I need 36 days of writing to get my first draft. There is also research and simulation design involved for the battles, which can be quite time consuming. After that, it is all about texturing, sandpapering, proofing to eliminate my inevitable typos. Like Karpov with his missiles, I get most everything, but sometimes, as he would say it, “something gets through—something always gets through.” That said, it’s usually not anything big enough to sink the ship.

I listen to the whole manuscript using Ivona Voice Brian (UK), and I find it to be the highest quality voice reader I’ve ever heard. He helps me to spot my ‘though vs thought’ typing issues, and also lets me listen to the dialogue between characters to assess how it all flows. In many ways, I punctuate to please Brian more than to pay homage to established rules, though I mostly keep to them in any case. In effect, I have punctuated the manuscript so that Brian sounds more natural when reading it aloud, and I have even created a custom pronunciation dictionary to coach him on proper names, German, Japanese and Russian.

This volume now takes us into Mid-1943, with big events unfolding on both the east and west fronts. As there was no disaster at Stalingrad in this alternate history, the real “Turning Point” in the war happens here in these crucial months. Both the Soviets and the Western Allies have now realized that they have gained parity on the battlefield against the formerly unbeatable German Army. One might argue that it was only lack of German military commitment that allowed the US and British to drive inexorably from Casablanca in Operation Torch, to the final battle at Tunis, but logistics truly ruled the day on that account. There were only so many divisions that ports like Tunis, Tripoli, Bizerte and Benghazi could support, and to use them, the Axis navies had to at least have parity with their foes.

After the big battle off Fuerteventura during Operation Condor, it seemed that the Axis fleets never again mounted a strong challenge to Tovey in the West, and if they could, there was always Kirov to weigh in heavily on the Allied side.

Yet it was not mere naval dominance that sealed the fate of the Axis position in North Africa, but also a dramatic shift in the balance of power in the air. By July of 1943, the Allies had not only local air superiority, but actual air supremacy in the theater as a whole. That really put the screws to the German supply effort into Tunisia, and this volume will present the conclusion of the war in North Africa. (Meaning I can now finally produce the next battle book to mate with Foxbane and present the entire uninterrupted history of the North African Campaign over those two volumes.)

In the east, Manstein has had his hands full of late, fighting battles with Hitler, and on the ground against an increasingly powerful Soviet Army. In this volume, he will perceive a palpable change on the field, that Turning Point that he takes to be a harbinger of bad things to come. Even Hitler will be forced to see Germany’s situation differently, and he will have to make some very sweeping changes in this book to try and stem the Red tide.

In the meantime, the main character based “missions” are all on track, with things happening in 1804, 1908, and also 1943. Those story lines will come into more focus in the Season Four Finale and through the Premier of Season 5. As I’m writing the series at the pace the war was actually fought, it may be this time a year from now before we see the landings in France, but that will all depend on what the Generals decide. As you will see in this volume, they make choices their historical counterparts did not, and who knows where the war will lead things. Now, deep in 1943, we have some great action ahead as the Allies look to clear North Africa and knock Italy out of the war, and, at the rate things are going, Sergei Kirov and Zhukov will set their sights on the Dnieper soon.

Enjoy!

Onthe morning of May 1st, 1943, the battleship HMS Nelson eased away from her anchorage at Alexandria and turned her long, heavy bow out to sea. Right in her wake the formidable presence of the old battleship Warspite moved slowly into formation. Things were heating up in the Med, and Admiral Cunningham had received some alarming intelligence that the Germans were about to make a very significant move. Their Black Sea Fleet, a formidable group consisting of Frederick de Gross, Bismarck , the fast battlecruiser Kaiser Wilhelm , carriers Prinz Heinrich and the Goben , escorted by three Italian light cruisers and six German Destroyers, was finally on the move.

The enemy had been masters of the Black Sea, destroying the last remnants of the Soviet fleet there, and harassing the far coastline of Georgia as the Germans pushed into the Caucasus. It moved from Novorossiysk to Sevastopol, and on occasion to Constanta, but this time it was heading for Istanbul. From there it would be an easy move through the Bosphorus and Dardanelles into the Aegean Sea, and that meant trouble. The dark steel shadow that had once held the Allied fleets at bay in the Central Med was returning.

Cunningham set his flag aboard Nelson , proud to have it there, and at his side was a new Captain for the ship, the Honorable Guy Herbrand Edward Russell, taking over for Captain Jacomb, who was going into retirement after long service that began as a Midshipman in 1909. Russell was a good man, coming over from the Heavy Cruiser Cumberland , and a veteran of all the action in the Canary Islands Campaign, where he had been Mentioned in Dispatches for conspicuous gallantry in the face of enemy fire. He was fated to meet and sink the German battlecruiser Scharnhorst in the Battle of North Cape, but in this history that rendezvous would have to wait. Bigger things were alive on the sea that morning, and Russell, with Nelson , was going out to meet them.

“Fine day for a brawl,” he said to Cunningham. “Do you think they mean to try us, sir?”

“We have to assume that,” said Cunningham. “The Turks are skittish about allowing warships through the Bosphorus. A pity we didn’t get this news earlier. We might have tried to get bombers in there to stop them.”

“The Aegean has been the Luftwaffe’s playground for months,” said Russell, “particularly after we lost Crete. Now bombers out of Benghazi and other fields in Libya have to go right over all those lovely airfields on Crete and dance with Jerry’s fighters.”

“That’s not the real problem,” said Cunningham. “With Rommel sticking his nose into Damascus, and O’Connor a thousand miles away in Tunisia, our own air forces have been split in two. We’ve barely enough to cover both fronts, but it looks like we’ve finally stopped Rommel.”

“Could this move by Admiral Raeder have anything to do with the campaign in Palestine?”

“I doubt it. What would they do, shell the Germans on the coast near Tartus? It wouldn’t be worth the effort, or the risk.”