Her comm boss appeared at her side. "Flash traffic from London, ma'am. A movement order, for you, from Downing Street."
"It can wait," she replied curtly. "I'm about to lose a bet with Chief Waddington. Comm, send a message to Fighter Command. Warn them about the Two-sixty-twos. Tell them they can counter for the jets' increased speed by using their superior maneuverability. I don't think it's going to be an issue today. But you never know."
"Aye, ma'am."
The distant thunder of old-fashioned ack-ack reached them through the composite ram-skin and monobonded-carbon armor of the Trident's hull. The air screen had opened up. She watched a top-down view of the ships as flame and smoke poured from Bofors and small-bore cannons and.50-caliber machine-gun mounts. Two armored motorboats appeared from the northwest quarter to lend their efforts, as well, although they weren't plugged into the air-defense grid that controlled the fire of the other ships and the shore emplacements.
"Splash one!"
A German jet erupted into a bright yellow ball of flame and oily smoke. A small cheer went up, but quickly subsided as the two remaining jets pressed on.
"Captain, Nemesis telemetry data indicates that a five-inch shell from HMS Obdurate took out the hostile."
"My compliments to Commander Amis," she said.
"Splash two!"
A second jet fighter disappeared inside a boiling cloud of burning debris.
There was no applause this time. The third plane continued on its course, ripping past the destroyers in a matter of seconds. On screen, the sparkling lines of white fire danced along the opposite sides of the defending ships.
"HMS Obedient got number two, Skipper."
"Thank you, Mr. Evans. My compliments to Commander Welsh."
Halabi took her seat in the center of the CIC and slowly rubbed her lips with one finger as she watched the last plane cross into her fire-zone.
"Intel, ma'am. Analysis indicates air-launched missile capability. Possibly prototype R-Four-M rockets, with a PB-Two warhead."
"Thank you, Ms. Burchill. Estimated time to release of hostile weapons package?"
"One minute, plus or minus ten seconds, ma'am."
"Service the target if it's still viable in twenty seconds."
They watched and waited as their defensive screen continued to hammer away at the bogy. Fixed antiair defenses on the Isle of Wight commenced firing, as well.
"Brave man," McTeale said as the 262 bored in at high speed on a long, straight line of attack.
"He's a dead man, now," Halabi replied. The blue-lit space momentarily shook due to the short bark of a Metal Storm pod that was unleashing a minimal burst. Forty-three rounds of hypervelocity ceramic slugs intercepted the fragile airframe at a combined speed of Mach 6, tearing it into metal confetti.
"Stand down the Daleks."
"Threat boards are green."
"Screen deploying to original intercept path."
Halabi continued to stare at the flat panel, where she had just watched a man die. "Was it worth it, Mr. McTeale? Three men and their planes to make us fire off another few dozen rounds?"
The Trident's XO pondered the question by examining his highly polished shoes. "I suppose, ma'am, that come the day we have nothing left in the cupboard, then yes, it will have been worth it. But not today."
"Captain, the initial attack appears to be breaking up and returning to base. RAF is pursuing."
"Thank you, Ms. Burchill. Let's keep an eye on them for now."
She remembered at last that her comm officer had given her a message from Downing Street. The piece of paper was crumpled in her hand. She unfurled the printout and read it while the tempo around her wound down a few notches.
"Mr. McTeale," she said somewhat irritably. "Have the air division warm up a chopper. Apparently I'm needed at high tea."
15
He hadn't been back East since lighting out of Grantville in the worst part of the Depression. The little mining town had done it hard-harder than most-and when he'd won a union scholarship to State, his old man had virtually run him out of the house, saying he ate too much to have around anyway.
Dan Black had never seen either of his parents again.
His dad died in a coal gas explosion in August of '34, and his ma had passed away a week later. Died of a broken heart, they said, although Julia insisted that it was more likely to have been a stress-related myocardial infarction. Dan preferred the romantic explanation.
He'd been on the Roosevelt program in California by then, and hadn't been able to get back in time for his dad's funeral, or his mother's broken heart. No matter how sensible and level-headed Julia was about it, he still felt that if he'd just been able to afford a train ticket, he might have saved her from dying of her grief.
Those memories hadn't afflicted him in two or three years, but they came rushing back as the big Lockheed Constellation banked over the San Fernando Valley and turned its nose toward home.
Well, not home, exactly. Grantville didn't boast an airport of any kind, and he wouldn't be visiting his old stomping grounds. But to Commander Dan Black, heading East still meant heading home even if he'd be spending all his time in Washington and New York.
He had two days of briefings ahead of him in the capital, and three days' leave in the Big Apple. He'd made a play of refusing the leave when Kolhammer had first suggested it. But the admiral had been all the more insistent when he found out that Julia would be back from Down Under and working out of the Times office while Dan was there. He hadn't kicked too hard, though. He really needed to see her.
On his lap he had yesterday's edition of the paper, folded over to obscure her last piece off the Brisbane Line, a pen portrait of some jarhead who was lined up for a medal after routing a Japanese ambush. He wouldn't read it until they'd leveled off. Julia's stories were always a waking nightmare for Dan. She wrote very differently from Ernie Pyle or any of those guys. Her pieces were like war novels. He often wondered how they got past the censors. They were always vivid and incredibly violent, and she was always right there in the middle of the action.
Her voice was always there, too, though, and that's why he never missed one, no matter how much they gave him the heebie-jeebies. He could always hear her speaking as he read.
The Connie's four shining Wright R3350 engines strained for maximum power as they sought altitude, the brand-new computer-designed propellers biting into the hot dry air of the L.A. Basin with an extra 20 percent efficiency. He'd led a group of Army Air Force generals through the factory two days earlier, and had told them all about the redesign. Below him, in the western reaches of the San Fernando Valley, he could see the huge complex of half-finished buildings and bare excavation sites that formed Andersonville and Area 51, the dormitory and production centers for the Special Administrative Zone. He was sitting on the wrong side of the plane to catch sight of the military camps that had sprung up to house the expanding Auxiliary Forces, but he spent most of his workday shuttling among them, and knew they were almost as big.
From this height, however, he was surprised by how much ground the new developments covered, and he wondered how long it would be before the entire valley floor was carpeted with asphalt, tract homes, and factories. About twelve months, he guessed, if they kept expanding at this rate.