"Captain, we have significant movement out of Calais, Dieppe, Cherbourg, and Rotterdam."
"Captain?" asked Beaumont.
Halabi took a few seconds to digest everything on the big screen: the developing airborne assault out of Norway, the strategic campaign against the islands' air defense net, the naval forces now surging out of the continent. It was cack-handed and primitive and barely coordinated, by the standards of her day, but she recognized the underlying principle.
"It's called a horizontal and vertical envelopment, Brigadier. Swarming, to use the vernacular. Although I believe the old-fashioned term invasion probably covers it all.
"Gentlemen," she said, raising her voice slightly to grab the attention of all the 'temps. "We're game-on. My intelligence division will monitor the assault as it develops, and keep you updated with the attack profile. We're already streaming data to London via laser relay. If you'll examine the big screen, you'll see the German capital ships swinging into the Channel from the north. I need to move out in order to engage this group with my remaining ship-killers.
"We will be offloading Major Windsor's men by helicopter. I suggest you take the opportunity to get back on shore, as well. You will be needed there."
Beaumont saluted, as did a couple of his fellow officers. Most however, did not.
"Mr. McTeale, please escort our guests to the hangars."
"Yes, ma'am."
"Comms, inform the destroyer screen that we'll deploy in forty minutes."
"Aye, Captain."
Halabi watched the dozen or so staff officers troop out after her exec. She walled off her personal feelings at the affront handed to both her and the crew by Caterson and his colleagues. It was lucky, she thought, that she knew what sort of enemy they were really fighting today. Otherwise she might have wondered whether their lives were worth it.
The Cabinet War Rooms lay deep under the streets of London, beyond the reach of Goring's bombers. Churchill remembered the many late nights they'd spent here during the blitz and the Battle of Britain. He recalled the way the shock waves from an especially close hit traveled up through the wooden frame of the chair he now sat in, in front of the old-fashioned world map, at the head of the Cabinet table. Almost everything was as it had been. Sweating brick walls the color of spoiled cream. The massive red steel girders running across the ceiling. The ashen gray faces of his advisers. The stale air. Only the rumble and deep, tectonic shudder of Nazi bombing was absent.
The Luftwaffe had been concentrating on the RAF's airfields, radar stations, and, of course, on the Trident for three months now. The city had been spared, but for what, he wondered. Was it now to be destroyed in a cataclysmic battle, street by street, a thousand years of history and culture reduced to rubble and ash?
Not if he could help it.
"Well, gentleman," the prime minister said after everyone had taken their seats. "The darkest of days is upon us, but if we are marked to die, we are enough to do our country loss; and if to live, the fewer men the greater share of honor."
Shakespeare's words fell though four hundreds years into the taut silence of the room.
Churchill waited on somebody to speak. But his generals and admirals were silent. Before the moment could become uncomfortable, the PM continued. "Well, then, let's us stiffen the sinews and summon up the blood. Lieutenant Williams, if you will?"
The young officer, one of Captain Halabi's people, came to his feet. "Thank you, Prime Minister."
He pointed a control stick at the wide screen that had been affixed to the brick wall less than a week earlier. Everyone turned toward it as the display winked into life and a map of the British Isles and Western Europe appeared. It was always a marvel to see these things, but Churchill was frustrated by the size of the screen. He privately felt that he could get a much better appreciation of developments on the old plotting table.
"Real-time drone surveillance and signals intercepts indicate that German forces are moving rapidly into final position for an assault on the British Isles. Army Group Central is on the move out of Tours, Orleans, and Lemours. Army Group North is consolidating rapidly in Caen, Dieppe, and Calais."
As Lieutenant Williams spoke, icons depicting the various units began to move north toward the Channel.
"The Luftwaffe has ninety percent of its five operational air fleets either up or in preflight. Some formations are already moving into position for raids on all air-defense-sector assets. Allied air units are being vectored on to the incoming hostiles by Fighter Command via Trident's battlespace management system."
Churchill saw Air Chief Marshal Portal nod vigorously.
"Kriegsmarine capital ships are moving out of Norwegian waters at full steam. At least sixty U-boats are converging on the Channel from the North Sea ahead of them, taking up a position between the Tirpitz battle group and the Royal Navy's Home Fleet."
The lieutenant flicked his controller at the screen again. As Churchill watched, a mosaic of smaller windows filled the screen. They seemed to show movies of airfields with transport planes banked up.
"The first German forces we can expect to directly engage will be airborne units. The Fallschirmjager which dropped onto Crete. They have regrouped and will most likely be joined by specialist Waffen-SS airborne units which have been hastily put together in the last few months. At this stage, we cannot provide a projected drop zone with any certainty. But there are a limited number of options. It appears the assault will go ahead without the Luftwaffe establishing air superiority…"
A chorus of mumbled astonishment greeted that statement of the obvious. It was a measure of Hitler's desperation that he would persist in the face of such odds. A measure of his criminal insanity, too, thought Churchill.
"Taken in concert with the capture of multinational elements and technology by the Axis powers, it does raise the prospect that the Germans have rushed the development of some weapons systems with which they hope to tip the balance in their favor. As of this moment, however, none of our sigint or Elint scans have returned data which would help clarify that issue."
"Thank you, Lieutenant," said Churchill, who did not wish the meeting to descend into an undergraduate bull session about the specter of Nazi superweapons. "And so to our reply, General?"
General Wavell, recently returned from North Africa with General Montgomery to coordinate the defense of the British Isles, got to his feet.
He turned to an old-fashioned map at the opposite end of the room to the PM.
"We expect a seaborne assault across the narrowest section of the Channel, landing at Dover, probably near Ramsgate and Margate. Army Group Central is expected to make their attempt between Weymouth and Sidmouth, placing immediate pressure on the defensive position to the south of Birmingham and Wolverhampton. These are the logical avenues of German advance and we have prepared our response accordingly…"
Wavell frowned and seemed to lose himself in the map for a moment.
"Of course," he resumed, "it is entirely possible that the attack will not follow a logical course. Many of the Wehrmacht's better commanders have been lost to the purges since the Transition. We shall not have to face Rommel on our own turf, but Field Marshal Kesselring will probably do just as well. And while the Germans do not have our advantage in drone technology, they have had enough old-fashioned planes flying overhead to make a reasonable guess about our preparations. With this in mind, and given that they can probably only get four divisions ashore in the first wave-"