Three Kings

“See those numbers?” she pointed them out. “That’s a date line for our intended destination. If our systems recover as they should, we will soon pick up transmissions indicating we are in the year 1941.”

“Date line?”

“Tunguska fragments have a propensity to cut time and fall through to a specific date. In this case that would be January 30, in the year 1941.”

“1941?” Mack Morgan was shaken by the news. Then we’ve slipped through one of these cracks as well? The whole bloody ship? Because of something in that box there?”

“That’s about the size of it,” said Elena.

“Well, what in God’s name are we suppose to do here?” Morgan folded his arms. MacRae was also waiting.

“Live, gentlemen,” Elena said with finality. “Live… Because if we had stayed where we were it would have been the end for us, as the whole damn world goes to hell in 2021. Our friends from the future told us that too

“The war?”

“That and more, this radical change I’ve been talking about. No time to explain it all now, but the simple fact is this. If we had stayed this ship would probably be destroyed by now, and we’d all be dead. But we’ve moved-in the nick of time-and we’re here. This is our watch now, my watch, and this may shock you, but we’re here to stay.”

“What? You mean we can’t get back?”

“No, I’m afraid we have a one way ticket this time, Mack.”

“We’re stuck in 1941, just like that bloody Russian ship? Is that why we’ve been sent? Are we supposed to find the Russians and deal with them?”

“Possibly. We’re here for good now. This is our life, but this ship still remains true to its service as a proud member of the Royal Navy.”

“Royal Navy? I thought Argos Fire sailed for Fairchild Incorporated.”

“So you did, and that was a convenient thing for other people to think as well. Do you think the British government would so easily sign off on a Daring class destroyer just because I asked them nicely and had the money to pay for one?”

Now Morgan gave her a wry smile. “Clever girl,” he said slowly. “You say you are a member of this Watch, started by Tovey during the war, and the Argos Fire has been registered in the Royal Navy Fleet all this time. Well some intelligence master I am. You’ve kept that secret well.”

“That we have. Now that we’re here we’ve got to have our wits about us. This is World War Two. There’s fighting in Greece and the British are at it in North Africa. So we sail forHeraklion as planned, and get to safe waters under British control. We may have to be discreet in the short run, and we’ll need time to break this news to the ship’s crew. Their lives are all replanted here as well, and we owe them the same explanation I have just given you. Once we get the ship’s systems sorted out, which should be a matter of hours, we’ll try to make contact with Admiral Tovey as soon as possible.”

“Tovey? What? And just announce ourselves as fresh off the tube from 2021?”

“Something like that. You see, I neglected to mention the man who signed off on that farewell note I read you from the box.” She showed them the paper now, and there was the name in

large, bold letters: ADM JOHN TOVEY.

Elena smiled. “A box from the future, a voice from the past, and here we are in the present moment, with a new lease on life, and a new mission, gentlemen. But I certainly hope Admiral Tovey and Alan Turing have sorted through this Geronimo business by now, because we’re about to deliver a new warship to the service of the Royal Navy, and it may come as quite a surprise.”

Chapter 30

Everything Elena told him was confirmed within the hour. Mack Morgan huddled in his secure comm-link room, where data feeds from all his intelligence sources would come in, including the “Black Line,” which was no longer operational. In fact, most of his feeds, taps on satellite transmissions, were now gone. He had some intermittent Morse code in the local area, and some other transmissions that would not resolve through the normal Morse decoder, so he put his decryption team on them with the considerable resources of the ship’s computers. Beyond this, there was traffic on normal radio bands, AM, FM, and shortwave, but nothing in the HF or ultra low frequencies that would be used by modern military or government sources. All that traffic was as dead as his Black Line. The world he had once been so connected to was gone.

What he did hear was all typical AM broadcast news at the outset, and he thought he was listening in on a documentary. The Germans were in the Balkans, and Greece was under attack. He checked on some facts and found it easy to isolate the probable year of this news to early 1941. Nailing down the exact month and day was not as easy, until he caught a BBC transmission that confirmed everything Ms. Fairchild had told them.