Signal Moon(3)

“This is November Kilo acting as Afloat Comms Control, broadcasting in the clear.” A man’s voice, baritone, the words tense and crisp but finished off with a rounded drawl. That wasn’t just English; it was American English. Lily fiddled the dial, finding her way through some static. “All ships comms check. Let’s run ’em by the numbers, people. Over.”

She frowned as a series of replies came through more bursts of static. Was this the kind of radio discipline the Yanks kept? Surely they should be keeping silent if they were out on the North Atlantic. Unless this was a ship in the yards somewhere, safe and having a little fun on the night shift.

“Comms control, good to hear your voice and fuck you very much too. Over,” came the retort. Lily wrinkled her nose—language!

The baritone with the drawl answered. “Maintain radio discipline, and watch your fucking language, November Xray. Over.”

Lily called over to Fiddian. “I’m picking up an American ship. Non-ciphered traffic.”

“Don’t bother recording,” Fiddian said, and Lily obediently kept searching for German transmissions . . . but she found herself checking in on the drawling baritone every time she passed through his frequency on the band. That voice was always there; when she passed through it a third time, he was saying something about how the berthing racks here were a lot shorter than the beds at the Grand Hotel in York. She found herself smiling.

Over on the next desk, one of the other Wrens had picked up a German voice on a different frequency; yet another transmission had popped up for a Wren on the other side of the room. “Baines, you keep scrolling,” Fiddian ordered, efficiently whipping back and forth between the other two desks, and Lily nodded, keeping at it. The next time she passed through the frequency with the Yank, he was telling a riddle on the air: “‘I am unbreakable. Even when you break me, I remain unbroken. What am I?’ Over.”

Lily tilted her chair back, waiting for the answer, but there was a burst of static, and then the voice was back, suddenly deadly serious, snapped taut as a steel wire: “This is November Kilo acting as Afloat Comms Control, now setting General Quarters. I repeat, this is November Kilo now setting General Quarters. All hands manning battle stations, all equipment set to battle short. Reason for General Quarters is potential hostile contact. All ships acknowledge. Over.”

Battle stations? The flesh on Lily’s arms prickled. Through the headphones, she heard a distant bong bong bong of a ship’s bells, the tense drone of a voice over speakers. More bursts of static, other ships replying . . . Lily sank her teeth into her lip, looking around for Fiddian, but her superior had her hands full with the two German transmissions already being monitored. Routine German surface traffic by the sound of it, but Lily still couldn’t pull her off it. Picking up her pen, she began scrawling down everything that poured into her ears. The Americans were running tense checkins every ten minutes; there were references to a ship called the Invincible that had apparently disappeared some days earlier. Wait, when had that happened? Lily circled the date unbelievingly on her message pad as she heard it transmitted. Thirty minutes passed . . . forty-five . . . an hour—

Then the familiar baritone drawl pierced everything on a sudden rising pitch: “Vampire, vampire, vampire, multiple vampires inbound. November Kilo portside, all ships prepare countermeas—” The explosion rocked her ears. For a moment, Lily thought a Luftwaffe shell had hit the hotel; she nearly fell out of her seat before she realized it had come through the headphones, shrieking into her eardrums with a shattering bang. Bringing her chair down with a thud, she dimly heard the baritone voice through her own ringing ears, shouting now:

“USS Colin Powell is hit, repeat, USS Colin Powell is hit portside amidships, multiple vampire strikes with extensive flooding and loss of multiple primary systems. This is ST1 Jackson reporting on USS Colin Powell—”

Lily’s lips parted to answer him, but she had no transmitter. All she could do was listen.

More explosions.

Then the screams.

Then the dying.

Beginning to end, it took forty-two minutes.

“Baines, it was a silly hoax. Some lads messing about with an illicit broadcast.”

“I don’t think so, ma’am.” Lily’s teeth were still chattering. “The other end of this transmission—I heard the shrieks as water began filling the compartment. I heard the men clawing to get out. I heard the moment they realized they were trapped and were going to die. I don’t think that’s the kind of thing you can fake.”

“Actors die dramatically every night of the week at the Old Vic in London,” Fiddian said, clearly cross now. “I’ll submit a complaint, make no mistake. All transmitters were supposed to be turned in at the start of—”

“Ma’am, please look at my transcription. If you see here, ST1 Jackson was saying—”

“I have looked. ST1 is not a real rank, even among the Americans.”

Lily couldn’t argue with that, but she knew the man named Jackson was a navy petty officer, and so was she, and that meant she owed him a measure of belief. “But as he was saying—”

“Baines, it doesn’t matter what he was saying. You said you heard them give this date in the transmission?” Jabbing a finger at the date Lily had scrawled. “This alone proves it’s all bunk.”