Second Chance

Chapter Three: Britain in the Sea of Time

Downing Street

London, UK

6^th July 1940

When he thought about it, which, to give him credit, wasn’t that often, Prime Minister Howard Smith knew that he would never be cut out to be a great Prime Minister. Great Prime Ministers had character, and force of personality, and a party behind them. As Margaret Thatcher had proven, force of personality could only get one so far, and as Tony Blair had proven, a party could only push one so far. Smith, very much aware of his position as a compromise candidate in the elections of 2014, knew that he would never archive the degree of fame and notoriety that those two had earned.

They would have made use of the opportunity that seemed to have been presented to him; he was simply terrified. He’d grown up in a world where all evil seemed to have been defeated, even the War on Terror had been growing to an end with the death of many of the evil masterminds. To know that he was very close to Hitler, or Stalin, or even Roosevelt; great men who’d shaped the world around them, chilled him.

Behind him, the men and women of the Cabinet took their places; a handful of military men at the rear of the room. The CJO, General Cunningham, had a place at the table, along with his civilian supervisor, the Secretary of State for Defence. Smith didn’t turn; staring out of the window at the empty sky. So far, the Press hadn’t been willing to run the risk of being laughed at by being the first to break the news, but he knew that the Internet had some very accurate speculation.

Someone must be leaking, he thought, and then the door was closed with more force than strictly necessary; the squad of armed guards taking their positions outside the room. The Home Secretary, the man he liked and hated in equal measure – and one of the people forced upon him by the Great Compromise after the 2014 elections – had insisted on securing the building, and preparing for war.

There was a cough behind him. He knew that it had come from Sir Charles Hanover’s throat; the Home Secretary had made no secret of his contempt for the Prime Minister. A little less displayed radicalism, a little more acceptability to the backbenchers, and he might well have become Prime Minister. Sighing, Prime Minister Howard Smith turned around and took his seat at the end of the table, chairing the meeting.

“Good morning,” he said, knowing how pitifully inadequate it sounded. “If the reports are correct” – he noticed that a young army officer seemed… annoyed by the comment – “we face a crisis of unparalleled proportions. It is safe to say, I think, that whatever we decide here and now will have very far-reaching consequences.”

“The reports are correct,” General Cunningham said. “I can buy an aircraft crewed by men who have somehow slipped though the immunisation programs, but not the changes in the stars, France and Germany.”

He sounded like a man who needed a stiff drink. Howard understood the feeling; he shared it. “So… when are we?”

Cunningham looked up at the young army officer, who saluted smartly. “The details – interception of German radio, the stars and the passbooks that the dead flyers carried – suggest very strongly that we have travelled back exactly seventy-five years; 2015 to 1940. I have taken the liberty of asking Professor Sir Torrance to compile a short briefing note on events on that day and the coming few days.”

Howard nodded. The officer unfurled a small sheet of paper. “July 6^th 1940,” he read. “The carrier Ark Royal, attached to Force H, under Vice-Admiral Somerville, will be attacking the damaged French battlecruiser Dunkerque at Oran. Tomorrow, the Italians will attack the bases in Malta and Egypt; in three days there will be a short battle between Force H and an Italian battle fleet.” He took a breath. “In ten days, Hitler will outline the plan to invade England; Operation Sealion.”

There was dead silence. “Well, dash it all,” John McLachlan, the Foreign Secretary, said. “We know that he never came over the channel, don’t we?”

“Unfortunately, we cannot rely on that,” Hanover said smoothly. His perfectly-modulated tones drifted over the table. “With all due respect, Prime Minister, we must prepare at once for a possible invasion.” There was a flurry of comment; Hanover held up a hand and it died down. Smith felt a flicker of pure envy. “We are not the Britain of 1940; compared to them we are very unprepared for an invasion. Tell me, General Chapman, do we have the ability to sustain a long war with the Nazis?”

The RAF Chief of the Air Staff coughed nervously. “We can detect and respond to any incoming attack almost as soon as it is launched,” he said. “One on one, a Eurofighter, a Tornado or a Hawk is more than a match for any German aircraft of this era. The problem, however, is a very different quantitative difference; quite frankly, with the tempo of full-scale war, we will run through our stocks of modern missiles and precision weapons quite quickly, which will leave us with cannons alone – and cut our advantages in half.”

“On the ground, the situation is not much better,” Cunningham said. “At your command, I’ve already issued orders for troops to move towards the most likely invasion sites, should there be an invasion in this timeline.”

“There will be,” Hanover said confidently. “Gentlemen, this nation represents an awesome amount of power to someone like Hitler. If the Germans have any idea what’s happened, then they will come for us before we can build an army and take the war to them. Individually, our troops will be far better equipped and trained than even the Waffen-SS, but once we run out of modern equipment…”

Cunningham scowled. “Some of the units were in Iraq,” he said. “Fortunately, we did a draw-down in 2011 and we have most of the army in Britain, but we will require time to prepare to repel an invasion, let alone continue the war.”

“Why should we continue the war?” Margaret Darter, Minister without Portfolio, asked. “We are not at war with Hitler?”

“There have already been clashes between our fighters and German… Messa-whatever,” Chapman said. “They will have seen SAR helicopters; they will have seen the Eurofighters. They know we’re here.”

Smith felt an icy hand clutch at his heart. “Do you think that they might have gotten some of our technology as well?”

“It’s not impossible,” Hanover said. “You… army officer, can you offer us a guarantee?”

Smith felt a flicker of admiration at the still look on the officer’s face. “I’m afraid not, Prime Minister,” he said, addressing Smith directly. “As far as we can tell, the entire event, whatever it was, swept up everything from around five miles from the coast, and some other things. The oil rigs seem to have arrived with us, as did most of the navy, but the American carrier group that was due here in four days doesn’t seem to have come with us. Some aircraft seem to have appeared at the edge of the… event, but this wasn’t understood until after they had all gone.”

“So they will consider us a resource,” Hanover said, addressing Darter. “Quite apart from that, do we not have treaties with France and the other European counties?”

Smith smiled; Hanover was one of the more vocal Eurosceptics. “You would propose a second war to liberate them?”

“Prime Minister, if we do not fight them now, then they will come for us,” Hanover said. “These are the bogeymen of Europe; we have a moral duty to fight them.” He scowled. “However, there are other problems.

“We have to start building a stronger army,” he said grimly. “We also have to begin rationing fuel; all the fuel we have will be needed for the army, then…”

“We have to ration food,” Smith said. “How much do we get from other countries?”

“My department is working on a study,” Hanover said. “However, it is vital to get the Defence of the Realm powers into action. We have to prevent panic, and we have to ensure that everyone has enough food to eat, or there will be riots.”

“There already have been riots,” Smith said. He felt bone-weary. “What do we tell the people?”

“The truth,” Darter said. “Let them decide on what to do.”

Flower child, Smith thought, wryly aware that this was one place that Hanover and himself would be in perfect agreement. Darter’s ‘peace and love’ credentials were perfect; her position an attempt to dilute Hanover’s.

“Sir, we could use our nukes to end the war in an afternoon,” Cunningham said. “Sir…”

Smith rounded on him. “I will not use nukes for anything,” he snapped, feeling a deep revulsion spreading through his body. “Is there any other business?”

His tone would suffer no opposition. Even Hanover remained quiet; a minor miracle. The army officer coughed once. “Sir, we should be trying to make contact with the British forces in this time; Force H, the force in Egypt, Gibraltar, and India.”

Smith blinked. “We don’t have bases in India,” he said.

“We do here, sir,” Cunningham said, recovering his poise. Smith felt a certain guilty pleasure. “Sir, we’re going to need their support – and they could use ours.”

“Have that young man of yours do the research,” Smith ordered. “Then we’ll see about putting ourselves in communication with our… ancestors.”

“Captain Stirling, sir,” Cunningham said. “Prime Minister, we have to fight a world war, without the forces that won the war before.”

“We’ll see,” Smith said. “Meeting adjourned. We will reconvene in five hours.”

He left the meeting room, exchanging comments with some of the staff, and headed to his office. It wasn’t until he reached his office that he began to shake; I can’t handle this! The scale of the disaster was vaster than anything else he’d ever had to face; than Britain had had to face. It was a situation that demanded a great man – and Smith knew that he was nothing of the sort.

Grimly, he looked up at the drinks cabinet, shook his head, and picked up the telephone. The secured link wasn’t working well – the loss of the satellites that had carried the first signals had removed the untappable laser link – but there were still the landlines. He dialled a number from memory, waiting for it to answer. There was hardly any delay.

“Madam Speaker?” He asked, just to confirm that it was indeed the Speaker of the House of Commons. “Please would you see to it that Parliament is reconvened for an urgent debate tomorrow,” he said. He listened. “No, we’ve not had a nuclear war, or an alien invasion; it’s something else.”

For some reason, Sir Charles Hanover and John McLachlan were the last people to remain in the meeting room. Silently, they stared at each other like cats, waiting for one of them to speak aloud. Tension rose and fell on the air – and they waited.

Hanover weakened first. “This is an opportunity,” he said calmly, and waited for McLachlan’s response. “Possibly the most… exciting opportunity in the history of Britain.”

McLachlan smiled behind steepled fingers. “You seem to know a lot about this,” he said. “I don’t suppose that you know how it happened?”

“I wish,” Hanover said. “With power like that, who knows what we could do? However, we have to take advantage of this; we know all of the mistakes of the next fifty years, and we can change them.”

McLachlan nodded to himself. His eyes were very bright. “We have an advantage then,” he said. “You propose to handle it… how?”

“Between us, we posses enough political power to force our policy forward,” Hanover said. “We have the problems; beating off a possible German invasion, defeating the Axis powers and establishing a new empire with our technology.”

“I seem to remember how that song ended last time,” McLachlan said. “It became a funeral dirge.”

“Maybe your son would have something to say about some extra imperialism,” Hanover said, and watched McLachlan flinch. “We can do that, here and now, and use the resources for ourselves.”

“Putting aside my son’s religious… fantasies,” McLachlan said, “we do not have the resources or the will to re-conquer India.”

Hanover shook his head. “Not India,” he said. “We can bring the dominions into a pact; Australia, South Africa, Canada… perhaps even Ireland.” He hesitated. “That might be a problem; de Valera is their Prime Minister at the moment. I don’t know how he’ll react to a super-advanced Britain when he was scared of us infringing their neutrality.” He hesitated. “Coming to think of it, we could just move the 1940 forces out of Northern Ireland and let him have the blasted place; no point in repeating that mistake if we can avoid it.

“But we have two problems,” he continued. “We have to intern all foreign troops and citizens within the country, and that includes the American troops. By now, they must have realised what’s happened – and we don’t want them going home until we have relations with the new-old America. We really don’t want any German or French ambassadors going home; they could tell the Germans far too much about us.”

“I’ll put it forward at the meeting this evening,” McLachlan said. “Between you and me, we can get Howard to put it into effect.”

“We also ought to consider conscription of the unemployed,” Hanover said. “We need an army, and the DORA acts do cover it.”

“The economy is going to crash,” McLachlan said suddenly. “We’ll have to have some intervention at once, you know.”

“I know,” Hanover said. “I know.”

“This is Kristy Stewart, reporting to you from Whitehall, where the gates of Number Ten Downing Street remain firmly closed,” the BBC reporter said. Stewart focused on looking just above the camera, reading her lines from memory. She was one of the most popular reporters for the BBC and it showed.

“There has been no word from the government on the sudden loss of all contact with any other nation on the Earth,” she continued. “Churches, synagogues and mosques have all been packed with worshippers, praying for deliverance from… something. Despite rumours of aerial battles above the Channel, the government has remained tight-lipped on the subject, but sources within the military have hinted at a major preparation for war. Reservists have been called to the colours; tank deports have been opened and military bases have been sealed.”

She waited as the camera panned across the governmental district. “Cars have been arriving from all over Britain; military men, churchmen and even several ambassadors. What’s happening? The Government won’t tell us.” She paused as a message came in through her earphones. “The Prime Minister has just announced that a special session of the Houses of Parliament – a joint session – will be held tomorrow, where a full explanation will be presented. Until then… back to you Bob.”

The red light on the camera blinked off and she sighed in relief. It was quite warm, even for London, and the air was clear. She glanced around as her assistant passed her a cup of coffee; there were reporters from all the major papers, and most of the BBC programs. There were even a handful of American reporters from the American channels, all nervously talking together. Without contact with CNN or Fox, they had nothing to report; all flights outside the UK had been cancelled until further notice.

“Dear God,” she said aloud. “What the hell has happened here?”

Atlantic Ocean

Approx 50km from UK

6^th July 1940

Captain Townley stood on his bridge and worried. His ship, the monstrous Queen Elizabeth II, was faster than any ship or u-boat belonging to the Germans or their Italian allies, and the Admiralty had decreed that she could sail without a convoy, transporting units of the Canadian Army from Canada to England. He shivered; so close to England seemed safe, but he knew that it hadn’t been long since the Royal Oak had been sunk by a German submarine at Scarpa Flow.

His crew wasn’t all he wanted it to be either. Many men who held commissions in the Royal Navy had been conscripted; others had been drawn from the Queen Mary. He knew how dangerous an attack from the air could be; had the ship not been targeted by the Germans while it was on the Clyde, even if they hadn’t had the chance to put their threats into action? All it would take was one lucky German skipper – and the Queen Elizabeth II would go down like a stone.

“Captain,” the first mate called. “Aircraft!”

The Captain’s blood ran cold. He'd heard that France had fallen while the ship had been in America, the powerful French army simply brushed aside, and he knew that the Germans would have bases in France now. They might have been escorting British aircraft, but he knew how unlikely that was. He stepped out of the bridge and looked up at the sky; two aircraft flashed by overhead.

“What are they?” He breathed. They were huge; they seemed to move like lightning, and he couldn’t see any propellers at all. They screamed through the air, swooping down to flash past the Queen Elizabeth II; completely disdainful of the two tiny anti-aircraft guns the ship possessed.

Flying Officer Mick Eccleston hadn’t believed the tales from two of his fellow pilots, let alone the rumours, until the CO had called the pilots in for a briefing. Some of them had still refused to believed, suspecting that they were being subjected to a psychological test of some kind, until the Prime Minister had called them himself. Even then, some of them had doubted; Eccleston, whose father had fought the Nazis before escaping at Dunkirk and serving in North Africa, had believed.

And when the clashes began with the SAR aircraft, then we knew, he thought, as the Eurofighter flashed over the clear Atlantic. It looked as welcoming as ever – not very, in his view. Eccleston had had to parachute into the water for his RAF training and he’d hated the experience. He’d since decided he would almost prefer to risk an explosive crash-landing than go swimming again; and the Germans broke the rules. Clashes between their primitive aircraft and Eurofighters were becoming common where the SAR teams searched for missing ships; the Germans ignored the laws of war relating to SAR teams.

“Ground Control, this is Baker-One,” he said. “Am approaching contact, stand by.”

He took the Eurofighter down, sensing more than checking that his wingman had taken his aircraft up high to avoid German weapons. The Eurofighter slipped down across the waves, approaching the massive ocean liner; one check revealed the British flag flapping from its stern. It wasn’t native to his time; seeing it made it all real in a way that reports could never manage.

“Ground control, this is Baker-One,” he said. “Command, it’s a native liner; I think it’s the Queen Elizabeth II.” He swung the aircraft around the liner, grimly aware of the crewmen running over the decks of the ship, until he saw the name painted on the rear of the ship. “Confirmed; it’s the Queen Elizabeth II.”

“Understood, Baker-One,” the controller on the AWACS said. “Resume patrol; HMS Lancaster has been dispatched to intercept.”

“Understood, Control,” Eccleston said. With a final look at the strange antiquated ship, he turned his aircraft towards the sun and resumed his long patrol.

“Ship Ho,” the watcher cried, and Captain Townley lifted his binoculars to his eyes. Far in the distance, a ship could be seen; a small unfamiliar white ship that bore a British flag. It seemed remarkably small for its power; it moved through the water with the greatest of ease.

Captain Townley scowled. He’d served in the navy himself and he’d never seen a ship like that. It reminded him of one of the corvettes, except the corvettes were dangerous to their crew in a way that this one seemed to laugh at. It moved through the water, heading directly for the Queen Elizabeth II, and Captain Townley stared at it as it matched the course of the liner with ease.

“Heave to,” a man shouted from the ship. Captain Townley gave the orders absently, trusting in his crew as he watched the new ship. They’d spoken English, which suggested that they were not Germans, and yet… he could make out the name of the ship; HMS Lancaster.

But HMS Lancaster was an armoured cruiser of 1902 and it was paid off in 1919, he thought, as the strange ship launched a boat. There is no HMS Lancaster.

And then the crew of the strange ship came onboard and Captain Townley’s world changed forever.