Signal Moon(7)

Matt’s empty glass tipped over as he swiped frantically for CNN.com.

US Navy Ship Missing in North Atlantic.

No Contact for over 12 Hours amid Massive Radio and Radar Disruption.





1943


Withernsea


Lily was supposed to be on shift at noon, but she bunked. “Terrible stomachache,” she called to her billet mate through the loo door, making retching noises. “Spewing everywhere. Tell Fiddian I’m at death’s door.” Moan, retch, flush loo, repeat. As soon as the coast was clear, she tiptoed back into their shared room, shot the bolt, and set up the wireless. Come on, Petty Officer Jackson, she thought, watching the clock tick agonizingly toward noon.

Just a matter of days since she’d heard his original transmission from the Colin Powell. Putting things in place, scrambling, praying she’d thought of everything. Wondering if she’d actually gone mad, cracked up under the strain of too many midnight shifts.

And yesterday that baritone drawl had come through the static, amused and wary and very much alive. Very, very, real. A voice from the future.

Come on, you Yank bastard, Lily thought now, staring at the transmitter. Tune in. And at two minutes to noon, she heard it. “This is Matthew Jackson, transmitting in the clear, repeat, this is Matthew Jackson, come in any station this net.” Pause. “Lady Rose, you there? Over.”

She snatched up the transmitter, eyes watering with relief. “Petty Officer Lily Baines here. I don’t know where you got this Lady Rose business.”

“It’s on a TV show, it’s—never mind.” His voice was flat, taut, very different from the voice with the audible smile in it that she’d heard yesterday. She heard him key back on before she could ask what in blazes a TV was. “Look, I really need to know this, and for the love of God, please tell me the truth. How did you know about the Invincible?”

“Heard it on watch through the headphones.” Lily picked her words carefully. None of this was fit for open transmission; it made her skin crawl, thinking about how many protocols she was breaking. “It’s—it’s 1943 here.”

She waited for him to scoff—he’d had a lot less time to absorb this than she had—but there was only a crackle of static. “Look,” he said at last. “Rationally, I can’t believe any of what you’re telling me. But I get to a hotel I decided to stay at just two hours before I arrived there, and find a dude waiting for me with an eighty-year-old radio and the woman on the other end knows my name, and then the ship disappeared last night just like you said it would. So . . .”

“How many did you lose?” Lily couldn’t help but ask. The latest convoy losses in the newspaper today had been dreadful. The thought of sailors drowning in a welter of dark sea and enemy fire made her flesh crawl regardless of whether it happened in her own century or his.

“No casualties known yet. Right now, we’ve just lost contact, and everything’s spinning up. My leave’s been canceled, and I’m flying out to join the Colin Powell tonight instead of in three days.” His voice flattened even further. “So you knew about it. In advance. Which means either you really are in 1943, seeing the future—or you’re on the side of whoever is behind this, and you’re running some epically complicated shit on me.”

Lily tried to speak, but he was still transmitting.

“Look, I left the pub last night after hearing the news, and I went deep all night finding you. I managed to dig up a cell number and wake up somebody at Baines & Morrissey, and they said the delivery was legit—set up and paid for in 1943. They all thought it was some kind of elaborate joke, and I’m not sure they’re wrong, but they gave me the name Lily Margaret Baines as the one who paid for it, and if you’re me, you can do a lot with a name. Lily Margaret Baines: eldest daughter of the fifth Viscount Baines, debutante in 1938, joined the Wrens in 1940. After that, I’ve got a marriage certificate, a death certificate, photos, so I know a Lily Baines existed—”

He knows when I’m going to die, Lily thought with a shudder that ran the full length of her body. On the other hand, she knew the same about him.

“On the other hand, you could have looked up a real historic person to make this con sound better. So, start talking, Lady Rose. Who told you about the Invincible?”

Finally, she was able to transmit. Lily pressed the button, sitting on the edge of her bed. “You,” she said. “Midnight watch a few nights ago, I tune in to hear you say that you’re tracking for the area the Invincible disappeared on the ninth of March, 2023.” A breath. “And an hour later, I heard you die.”





2023


York


Her words fell into Matt’s ears like drops of ice. Dimly he realized he was sitting down on the edge of the bed, rubbing a hand through his hair, listening to a girl in another century tell him how he would die.

“The Colin Powell started taking fire,” she said, her voice tinny. He knew that tone; it was the sound of a navy petty officer brutally flattening all the emotion out of their voice to get a job done. He knew it because he’d done it himself. “You were in the area with some kind of fleet, everyone on high alert because of the Invincible’s disappearance. I didn’t understand it all, what I was hearing, but I heard it all—through you. You were cool as a cucumber, right to the end.”