Alternate Generals by Roland Green, Harry Turtledove, Martin H. Greenberg Read Free Book Online Page B

he said. "The Germans have turned, just as you thought. They were trying to jam the signal, but Gloucester kept sending. I took the liberty of informing Admiral Milne, but have received no reply yet."

    Milne, Cradock thought, would be sure it was a trick. Luckily Milne would still be at dinner, and unlikely to give a return signal until he had finished. Cradock didn't want to talk to Milne about what he planned, and be told not to do it. "What's her speed?" he asked.

    "Nineteen knots," Wray said.

    "Odd," Cradock said. "I expected a spurt. Souchon must want to evade Gloucester ; that would have been the ideal time to do so."

    "She just turned."

    "Mm. Ask Gloucester to inform us instantly of any change in her course or speed. And set the squadron's course to take us south to Sapienza behind Cephalonia and Zante." If the German ships kept that speed, his ships could easily arrive at Sapienza well before them, and choose their best place to engage.

    Within minutes, he felt the cruiser thrust into the gentle swell with more urgency. Far below, sweating stokers would be shoveling coal into the furnaces . . . coal he would have to replenish. His mind ranged ahead, to the location of colliers.

    It was near midnight when Captain Wray tapped at his door. Cradock woke instantly, the quick response of the seaman.

    "Another report from Gloucester , sir. The German ships have separated; Captain Kelly's following the Goeben , and she is on the same course, at 17 knots. Dublin 's trying to find them; she has two destroyers with her, Bulldog and Beagle ."

    "Seventeen knots." Cradock ran a hand through his hair. Why was such an admiral, with such a ship, crawling across the Mediterranean at a mere 17 knots when he could have outpaced the Gloucester and been free of her surveillance? "He has some problem," Cradock said. "He didn't get coal—no, we know he got some coal. He didn't get enough to go where he wants to go—he's moving at his most economical speed to conserve it until he meets a collier somewhere. Or . . . he has boiler trouble."

    "You can't know that, sir."

    He didn't know it. He knew only that no man with a ship fast enough to shake a shadower would fail to do so unless something had gone wrong. And Goeben had been snugged away at the Austrian naval base of Pola for weeks before the war started. She could have been undergoing repairs . . . and those repairs could have been interrupted by the outbreak of war, just as his own ships' repairs had been.

    "And our position?"

    "About eight miles off Santa Maura, sir, here . . ." Wray pointed out their position on the chart. "We'll be entering the channel between Santa Maura and Cephalonia in the next hour. Oh—and Admiral Milne wants to know your dispositions."

    "I'm sure he does," Cradock said, stretching. "So do the Germans. Signal Admiral Milne that we are patrolling. I'm going up on deck for a while." Wray looked as he himself might have looked, had his admiral ever told him to send a false signal. But they were, he thought, following the orders Milne would have given—that the Admiralty wanted him to give—if Milne had but the wits to give them. They don't pay me to think , Milne had said once . . . but they might pay a high price because Milne didn't.

    The moon swung high overhead. To either side, the other cruisers knifed through the water, pewter ships on a pewter sea, blackening the starry sky with smoke. Behind them, sea-fire flared and coiled from their passage. Ahead, he could see the signal cones of the destroyers, and the white churn of their wakes, the phosphorescence spreading to either side. To port, Santa Maura, Leucas to most Greeks, rose from the sea in a tumble of jet and silver, the moon picking out white stone like a searchlight. Southward, the complicated shapes of Cephalonia and Ithaca, with the narrow straight passage between them.

    "Have the squadron fall into line astern," he told Wray. The signal passed from ship to ship; the