Second Chance

Chapter Forty-Four: Brighter Than A Thousand Suns

House of Commons

London, United Kingdom

5^th October 1940

The last nuclear warhead had detonated in 2010, at least from the perspective of the 2015 British. Then, the news of the explosion near the Panama Canal – a botched attempt to wreck the canal – had flashed around the world in seconds. In contrast, no one in 1940 knew about the single warhead that had destroyed Ploesti – until Hanover announced it before Parliament.

“In order to cripple the German war economy, we made the decision to destroy Ploesti,” Hanover said calmly. The House, for once, was silent; the MPs were hastily calculating their options. “I wish to confirm that the mission was accomplished with a single trident missile, fired from a ballistic missile submarine, yesterday at ten o’clock, local time. Detonation was precise and at low attitude, and destruction was total.

“This was not an easy decision to make,” he continued. “We now know that the German war economy was dependent upon Ploesti; destroying the oil wells would cripple their ability to… spend their cruise missile aircraft with such enthusiasm. We also know that Germany was working towards sending troops into the Middle East, through Turkey, to join the war there. If that had happened… the war might have been lost.”

He took a breath. “Radiation contamination should be minimal,” he said, “although we have broadcast a warning. The device” – such a harmless word, he thought – “was designed to limit radioactive spread; the mountains contained much of the blast. Civilian casualties should be minimal.”

He sat down and waited. There was a long pause, and then the Chair of the House of Commons Defence Committee stood. “Thank you for informing us,” he said. Howard Barleycorn was a Conservative, like Hanover, but the HCDC was intended to provide oversight of military affairs. “Can you give us any assurance that the Germans are unable to retaliate against us with their own nukes, or other weapons of mass destruction?”

It was a reasonable, if impractical question, Hanover conceded. “The Germans do not at present possess any nuclear bombs,” he said. “We have devoted considerable asserts to ruining any program that they might have tried to force forward. A chemical attack is possible, but we are now confident with the recent modifications to the air defences that we can hold off any chemical attack.”

Barleycorn coughed. “Thank you,” he said. “On a different note, will the Navy be holding a Court of Inquiry into Admiral Turtledove’s tactics in the Battle of the Indian Ocean? Various retired… defence consultants have pointed out that he unnecessarily risked his entire force, merely to close with the enemy force. Why was the Trafalgar low on ammunition; why did the other submarines not intervene?”

A low rumble ran through the House and Hanover cursed. Whatever the truth of the armchair admirals statements, Admiral Turtledove was a hero at the moment. Barleycorn had just damaged his own political career, just to prove that the HCDC was still relevant in a changing world. Inevitably, it would damage the Party.

“The Trafalgar, to answer one question, was ordered to defend Australia before sailing to meet the fleet,” Hanover said finally. “In the process it fired off some of its torpedoes at Japanese ships, many of which proved more able to handle a Spearfish hit than a modern ship. It required several hits to sink a battleship, for example; the hull of a 1940 ship is stronger than one of our ships.

“As for the issue of a Board of Inquiry, the battle will be analysed to death by the Navy and any such decisions will remain in their hands,” he concluded. “Under the circumstances, facing a completely-unexpected foe, I believe that Admiral Turtledove did well – and so do the Australians.”

“Well, I’m glad that’s over,” Hanover said, three hours later. Many MPs supported the nuclear strike, but a handful of backbenchers were furious about it, pressing for criminal charges.

“The Americans are quite impressed,” McLachlan said. They’d been informed as a courtesy. “The President is using it to wave in front of Congress, convincing them to support the war more. Some of them are asking why we don’t just threaten Berlin with them.”

“Hitler would call our bluff,” Hanover said. “And the public?”

“Some minor protests,” McLachlan said. “One demonstration, in Edinburgh, made the mistake of marching past the local shipyards in the Forth; they’re very hot on the war there as it’s bringing in shipping contracts. The ensuring riot saw the demonstrators in full retreat. The BBC is being supportive; some of the other news stations have adopted a cautious support policy.”

“Barton may have to leave us,” Hanover predicted. “There are a lot of MPs out there who want to move against nuclear war.”

“We’ve used one warhead,” McLachlan said. “One warhead, against an isolated target in Romania.”

“The first official nuclear strike since 1945,” Hanover said. “Which is kind of weird, when you think about it.”

McLachlan smiled. “I suppose that now we have the Americans, and we’ve sunk the Japanese Navy, we can start making plans to bring the war to a close.”

“War is peace,” Hanover said. “Don’t forget that.”

Undisclosed Location

Berlin, Germany

5^th October 1940

The images of dead and dying Romanian children made Stewart want to retch. She staggered from the room, followed by Roth, and threw up in the toilet. Himmler felt sink himself; the pictures had been carefully faked from the images of Hiroshima, but they were all-too-real.

He waited while Roth took Stewart back to her room, and then returned to Himmler’s office. The tall SS officer didn’t look flustered; he seemed to understand the power of the weapon he was helping to build. Himmler knew that he hadn’t mentioned that to his girlfriend; even a trusted SS officer would disappear if he did that.

“I trust that she is convinced?” Himmler asked. “It would be a shame to waste all that effort.”

Roth nodded grimly. One particularly clever Einsatzgruppen, under the personal command of Reinhard Heydrich, had faked the scene. An entire village had been slaughtered for the effect; the images were being sent all over the world.

“I believe so,” he said finally. Himmler nodded; Heydrich might well have had traces of Jewish blood, but he was too useful to discard or send to the death camps. “If she sends those images back to Britain, it was have an effect on their public.”

Himmler shrugged. It struck him as stupid; even Churchill would not have been deterred by such effects. If he’d possessed the super-bomb, he would have used it; Berlin and Moscow would have vanished in balls of fire.

“I suppose that there is no doubt that it was a kern bomb,” he said finally. “The professors are convinced?”

“I have refused to allow them to visit the site,” Roth said. “Secrecy is all the more important now; the British will not hesitate to use a second bomb on the nuclear project if they suspect its location. For the moment, teams of Jews and Poles are working on clearing the site, according to the instructions in the Encyclopaedia Britannica.”

Himmler chuckled. Even Professor Horton had been unable to explain why the long-unborn Encyclopaedia Britannica authors had seen fit to include such information, even if the CDs did hold thousands of gigabytes of data. The same amount of data, focused on the war, could have forced German development forward faster than the British would have found comfortable.

“Some of them are suffering,” Roth admitted. “Still, there are plenty more where they came from. For the moment, we’ve blamed the entire blast on a lucky missile hit on a tank full of fuel.”

Himmler shrugged. “I have to make suggestions to the Fuhrer,” he said. “I suspect that we’re going to have to tighten our belts a bit.”

“They must be punished for this attack on our soil,” Hitler thundered, ignoring the fact that Ploesti was on Romanian soil. “We need to make them regret the use of the hell-weapons!”

Speer coughed. “Before it was… destroyed, Ploesti supplied nearly forty percent of our oil supplies,” he said. “For the foreseeable future, we will be dependent upon supplies from Soviet Russia, which leaves us with something of a problem.”

Hitler swore violently. “Gott in Himmel,” he bellowed. “Stalin will be at our throats!”

“That is quite possible,” Speer acknowledged, as soon as Hitler had calmed down. “For the moment, they are engaged in the Middle East, but they are quite capable of fighting both us and the British at the same time.”

Himmler coughed. “Then we need to take the resources from them,” he said calmly.

“At the moment,” General der Infanterie Hoth said, “our armies are not prepared for such a campaign.”

“Then we will play for time,” Hitler said. Adversity, as always, forced his mind to work harder. “How long will it take to prepare the armies?”

“Around six months, if we’re lucky,” Hoth said. “Mein Fuhrer, we will be gambling everything on success.”

“Then we will continue to support the Russians in the Middle East, for the moment,” Hitler said. “Gaining control of the oil wells near Turkey would certainly help our problems… and we certainly don’t want Stalin to get to them first.”

The argument ran long into the night, discussing the war, the future, and the American declaration of war. Finally, Hitler was convinced to agree to a particular war plan, reluctantly. The council agreed to the plan – knowing that they had no choice.

HIMS Yamato

Japan

5^th October 1940

Admiral Yamamoto looked up at the sword, hanging from the wall, and knew that he didn’t dare use it. Minoru Genda and Takeo Kurita had already taken their own lives; the humiliation of knowing that only the British Admiral’s reluctance to slaughter thousands more Japanese had saved some of the fleet had led both of them to their deaths.

Damn you both for dying when I needed you, Yamamoto thought angrily. He wanted to die himself, knowing that if he did end his own life, he would be handing the government over to the militarists. The defeat, and the loss of thousands of lives, had cost the Navy a great deal of its influence, even with the conquest of the Dutch East Indies nearly completed. Talking the Army out of attacking the Philippines, in response to Hitler’s demand that they join the war against America, had been a very near failure; he’d finally refused to transport the army units across the sea.

“The battle was lost, then?” Ambassador Yurina said. Yamamoto glared at her, feeling a complex mixture of hatred and affection. “They destroyed the fleet.”

“The battle was a strategic victory,” Yamamoto lied, and heard her chuckle. It was a deep throaty sound, nothing like the quiet giggles of court girls. “Yes, we took a pounding, as you put it, and…”

“How many carriers were sunk?” Yurina asked. “How many battleships?”

“Four of each,” Yamamoto said grimly. The losses had been appalling; the four most powerful carriers in the world had been smashed like flies. Still, they’d had one piece of good news; it clearly took more than one torpedo hit to sink a battleship. “Ambassador, we have awakened a sleeping giant.”

“As long as the Americans don’t declare war, you might have a chance at winning a draw,” Yurina said. Yamamoto didn’t believe her; she’d preached inevitable defeat before. “Still, you should sue for peace.”

Yamamoto lowered his head, wishing that he could get drunk on sake and forget about the world. “They won’t,” he said. “They look at the victories in the Dutch East Indies and the successes in Burma, and they ignore the defeats, even though both defeats are of greater significance than the victory.”

He closed his eyes and felt hands falling on his shoulder. Yurina dug her hands in, massaging her shoulders. Yamamoto thought once of his wife, way back in the family home, and gave himself up to her caresses.

Yamamoto slept on the stateroom bed, an older man watched over by a younger woman. Yurina sighed; even the Japan of 2015 had often required that ambitious women use their bodies for advantage, and she knew how to do it. Even when she’d passed into heights beyond which her sex no longer mattered, she’d kept up her skills; she’d used all of them in the last hour.

Yamamoto hadn’t been bad, not in the sense of an older man unable to get it up, like some of the men she’d had to sleep with. His guilt over betraying his wife had been charming; she’d almost cried herself. Eventually, like most men who were suddenly exposed to the joys of an unashamed woman, he’d given himself up to her, but he felt guilt.

Why did I never get anyone like that? She asked herself, or perhaps God, as she watched him sleep. Men were so predictable; show them some flesh and give them what they wanted, and they would do anything for you.

She shook her head. She had no choice, but to play the cards she had – for Japan’s future lay in her hands. If she failed, Japan would be burned to the ground, again.

The White House

Washington DC, USA

5^th October 1940

“A pretty impressive video of a weapon,” President Roosevelt said, as the film of the destruction of the German oil wells concluded. “How long until we can develop such weapons for ourselves?”

“At least two years, Mr President,” General Groves said. He was a stout heavyset man, with an air of a bulldog. Ambassador King was impressed; Groves hadn’t reacted at all to his colour. “Although we have the plans of… my counterpart’s original work, building the equipment is going to take time, the more so because we have had to… ah, remove a number of key scientists.”

Roosevelt nodded. “I can’t think why they would not turn the weapons on the Germans directly,” he said. “How many do they have?”

“Mr President, don’t start a nuclear arms race,” King said grimly. “They’re concerned about blasting Germany off the map, literally. I cannot explain how the anti-nuclear feelings got into modern society, but they did. Everyone is convinced that using nukes will cause the end of the world.”

Groves frowned. “It’s a weapon,” he said. “What’s the point of building a weapon that we will not use?”

Roosevelt shook his head. “Our priority is to develop our own, for possible use against the Germans, the Japanese or the Russians. General, I want private updates on progress, whatever happens.”

“Yes, Mr President,” Groves said, and left the room.

“So, Ambassador, we are at war,” Roosevelt said, as soon as they were alone. “Do you think that the Japanese will jump on us?”

King, somewhat regretfully, shook his head. “After the British wasted a chunk of their fleet?” He asked. Roosevelt, who knew something about the sea, scowled. “They still, in theory, have the ability to hit the Philippines, but Macarthur is digging in and the longer they wait, the stronger we get.”

Roosevelt scowled. “Between you and me, we have to enter the war,” he said. “Preferably before Macarthur gets himself shot in the back or something. We can’t keep pouring troops in now we’re going to be committed in Europe, but we can keep some elements of the fleet at Pearl, on constant alert. Perhaps the Japanese will save us the trouble of declaring war on them. If we keep sending supplies to China…”

“A waste of time,” King said softly. “Mr President, both sides in the morass of Chinese politics are hopeless. The Communists will give the nation to Stalin, given half the chance, particularly since Mao snuffed it. Those sudden outbreaks of disease are only helping the Japanese.”

“I wonder if that was Uncle Joe,” Roosevelt said. “Ever since the Russians and the Japanese ended up in bed together, they’ve been sharing information – perhaps even dividing China between them. The Soviets have quite an advanced biological weapons program, according to the future knowledge.”

“They have every interest in doing just that,” King said. “Stalin is systematically eradicating threats to the Soviet Union, from Afghanistan to the Poles. He’s thinking long-term, and we can hardly focus on defeating Germany. The war is a long way from over, Mr President.”

Country Hospital

London, United Kingdom

5^th October 1940

Smith opened his eyes. His mind felt terrible, lying in bed, with some of his family watching TV while watching him. He gasped, coughing, and a nurse was by his side at once, passing him a glass of water and helping him to sip it down.

“Don’t you worry, Prime Minister,” she said. Her voice was warm and bouncy; Smith hated it at first hearing. “You’ll be up and about in no time.”

Smith coughed. “What happened to me?” He asked, through coughs. “I dreamt that we were back in the Second World War and…”

The nurse’s eyes, dark brown in a brown face, gazed down at him. “It wasn’t a dream, sir,” she said. “You had a heart attack after the Germans bombed Dover. We brought you here and kept you under while we tried to perform some repairs.”

Smith felt his chest hurt. “How long?”

“Three months,” the nurse said. His grandson appeared at the side of the bed. “A lot has happened since you left. Charles Hanover became Prime Minister, and he’s done a good job.”

“That’s right,” the grandson said, ignoring all the nurse’s attempts to shut him up. His voice bubbled with enthusiasm. “We’ve sunk a Japanese fleet, we’ve taken North Africa, the Russians have invaded the Middle East – and we nuked Germany!”

Smith felt his chest tighten again. The instruments started to bleep alarmingly. “Get the hell out of here,” the nurse snapped, hitting the emergency button. Smith felt his vision darken; with the last of his strength he tried to gasp out words. It was hard to say anything; he could hardly breathe.

“I can’t hear you, honey,” the nurse said. “Don’t try to speak.”

Smith ignored her. “Tell Hanover,” he said, through mounting pain. His voice was breaking; it hurt to speak. “Tell him… we are both damned.”