Three Kings

“As the General says, as the General says. Damn it Reeves! I’ll grant you this man looks the part, but you know very well he can’t be who he claims to be.” He looked at O’Connor, frustration battling with his senses and reinforcing the one word that could be applied to this whole charade. Impossible!

“See here,” said O’Connor. “You would do well to mind your manners, Mister Kinlan, and mind the rank and insignia you find on this uniform. I’m not one to lord it over another officer, but you’re obviously new here, as is this entire unit. What’s that parked over there?” He pointed with his riding crop. “That’s the biggest damn tank in the world! Did Wavell send you out here looking for me? How many of those monsters do you have?”

“Wavell?”

“Well I’m nobody special, just the commander of the British XIII Corps in the Western Desert, but you’ve certainly heard of Wavell. Yes?”

Kinlan folded his arms and shrugged. He should just throw this whole lot into a secure vehicle and get on with his move north. The column was nearly all past his position by now, the sound of the Warrior IFVs from the last battalion in the line of march still rumbling in the background.

By the time they brought O’Connor in, the storm had abated, but darkness and low blowing sand was still obscuring much of the landscape near the ground. Thus far O’Connor had seen only the eight wheeled Dragon IFV of Reeves’ troop, the FV432 command vehicles, and the shadowy form of one Challenger 2 parked as part of the HQ guard unit. He had seen nothing of the real mass and material of the brigade Kinlan commanded, but he could hear it, and knew the sound of tracked vehicles on the desert ground well enough.

“From the sound of things the whole division must be out here,” said O’Connor. “But I can’t imagine why, or even how you managed to get a force of this size out here. Suppose you tell me exactly what this unit is and what your orders are, General Kinlan.”

Now Fedorov spoke up. “General Richard O’Connor?”

“One and the same,” said O’Connor, noticing Fedorov. “Who is this man?”

“I am Captain Anton Fedorov, off the Russian battlecruiser Kirov. We came to search for you.”

“Russians?” O’Connor had not heard anything of the ship, as he had his hands full managing the retreat east, with Rommel’s tanks and armored cars in hot pursuit.

“I was in Alexandria, with General Wavell when we heard your plane was lost.”

“With Wavell? I see. Very good, Captain Fedorov. Now then, Mister Kinlan?”

The Brigadier shook his head, smiling. “Barmy nonsense, this whole bit. The two of you are going to play this out, are you? In for a shilling, in for a pound, is it? Well if you think you canblag your way on like this, I’ve run out of patience with the whole lot. I’ve a mind to run you and all your men before a firing squad!” He was interrupted by his Staff Officer. “Yes, Mister Simpson? What now?”

“That report on comm-link status, sir.”

“Anything from Command?”

“IT Systems Operator has nothing on the combat network, sir. All the TALON system digital satellite links are down with the GPS.”

“Everything?”

“Sorry, sir, but it’s all dark. No TSC 503, No PSC 506. And nothing through REACHER orSkynet 5.”

“What about Ptarmigan?” He was referring to a modular battlefield WAN system which operated like a secure VHF mobile radio telephone.

“Nothing there either.”

“Damn. That detonation had more of an effect than we thought.”

Even as he said the word detonation, Fedorov caught his eye. Detonation… strange effects from a nuclear blast… movement in time. Rubbish! That was the load the Russian Captain had shoveled his way. All of this was supposed to be an accident. Then there was this fellow Popski, who looked for all the world like the historical figure by that same name, and O’Connor here was the spitting image of the real thing. He was supposed to be a bloody time traveler now, with the whole brigade lost in 1941. Rubbish!

“One more thing, sir, for what it’s worth.” Simpson had a wan look on his face. “This bloody sand storm is clearing, and Staffer Jacobs managed to have a look at the sky to get a fix on our position for desert navigation.”

“Good for him. We’ll get these men into another truck, wrap this up and move out.”

“Well sir… about the stars. They’re all wrong, sir.”

“Wrong? What do you mean?”

“Jacobs says Orion is rising, and Sirius right behind it. Those are winter constellations, sir. We should be looking at Sagittarius and Scorpio rising now in the late summer. And he says the moon is wrong too. It shouldn’t be up.” He pointed to the thin crescent moon, barely visible. “He says it was supposed to set at 11:14 this morning, sir-doesn’t rise again until nigh on to midnight, and it should be a waning gibbous moon. That’s an evening crescent!”

Fedorov caught this, struggling to understand it all, but suddenly realized what the Staff Officer was saying when he pointed at the moon.