"Get-out-there-and-do something!"

The CIC crew maintained their stations. Nobody as much as turned in their direction. But the buzz of discussion dropped away, and Halabi could feel it as everybody in the room shifted their attention onto her.

"Mr. McTeale," she said, fighting to keep a quaver away from her voice. "Call Chief Waddington, and have him come up here with a security detachment. If the Air Vice Marshal Caterson opens his mouth again, have him removed."

"Very good, ma'am."

Before Caterson could do anything to get himself thrown out, her chief defensive sysop called out. "Captain! One of the Lavals has splashed. And another has just corkscrewed off course over the North Sea."

Halabi, McTeale, and all the 'temps searched the main viewscreens. Indeed, one of the red triangles had disappeared, and the other was moving erratically. The Trident's captain remained outwardly unmoved, but inside her a little cartoon Halabi was leaping up and down, punching a fist in the air. Kolhammer had reported that many of the missiles fired on Hawaii had malfunctioned, probably through sabotage. She'd been praying to a God she'd never really believed in, hoping beyond hope that whichever of the Dessaix's crew had been responsible for that sabotage may have been able to get to these missiles, too.

But there was still one French hammerhead streaking in toward London.

"What's happened, Captain?" asked an army brigadier named Beaumont. She didn't mind him as much as Caterson. An old India hand, he'd once or twice shown himself to be more accepting of her command, and of those members of her crew whose bloodlines didn't necessarily go all the way back to pre-Norman England.

"At first blush, sir," she said, pointedly paying respect to his rank, "it would seem as if somebody on the Dessaix doubled-crossed the Germans. Two of the missiles appear to have been sabotaged."

"Splash two, Captain."

"There," she said, pointing at the flashing red triangle before it blinked out. "The second Laval has gone down."

"But not the third?"

"No, sir. I'm afraid not. And if it hasn't shown any signs by now, it probably won't."

The ship's defensive sysop spoke up. "Posh has determined that Biggin Hill is the most likely target."

"Captain, we have significant movement out of Calais, Dieppe, Cherbourg, and Rotterdam."

"Captain?" asked Beaumont.

Halabi took a few seconds to digest everything on the big screen: the developing airborne assault out of Norway, the strategic campaign against the islands' air defense net, the naval forces now surging out of the continent. It was cack-handed and primitive and barely coordinated, by the standards of her day, but she recognized the underlying principle.

"It's called a horizontal and vertical envelopment, Brigadier. Swarming, to use the vernacular. Although I believe the old-fashioned term invasion probably covers it all.

"Gentlemen," she said, raising her voice slightly to grab the attention of all the 'temps. "We're game-on. My intelligence division will monitor the assault as it develops, and keep you updated with the attack profile. We're already streaming data to London via laser relay. If you'll examine the big screen, you'll see the German capital ships swinging into the Channel from the north. I need to move out in order to engage this group with my remaining ship-killers.

"We will be offloading Major Windsor's men by helicopter. I suggest you take the opportunity to get back on shore, as well. You will be needed there."

Beaumont saluted, as did a couple of his fellow officers. Most however, did not.

"Mr. McTeale, please escort our guests to the hangars."

"Yes, ma'am."

"Comms, inform the destroyer screen that we'll deploy in forty minutes."

"Aye, Captain."

Halabi watched the dozen or so staff officers troop out after her exec. She walled off her personal feelings at the affront handed to both her and the crew by Caterson and his colleagues. It was lucky, she thought, that she knew what sort of enemy they were really fighting today. Otherwise she might have wondered whether their lives were worth it.

The Cabinet War Rooms lay deep under the streets of London, beyond the reach of Goring's bombers. Churchill remembered the many late nights they'd spent here during the blitz and the Battle of Britain. He recalled the way the shock waves from an especially close hit traveled up through the wooden frame of the chair he now sat in, in front of the old-fashioned world map, at the head of the Cabinet table. Almost everything was as it had been. Sweating brick walls the color of spoiled cream. The massive red steel girders running across the ceiling. The ashen gray faces of his advisers. The stale air. Only the rumble and deep, tectonic shudder of Nazi bombing was absent.

The Luftwaffe had been concentrating on the RAF's airfields, radar stations, and, of course, on the Trident for three months now. The city had been spared, but for what, he wondered. Was it now to be destroyed in a cataclysmic battle, street by street, a thousand years of history and culture reduced to rubble and ash?

Not if he could help it.

"Well, gentleman," the prime minister said after everyone had taken their seats. "The darkest of days is upon us, but if we are marked to die, we are enough to do our country loss; and if to live, the fewer men the greater share of honor."

Shakespeare's words fell though four hundreds years into the taut silence of the room.

Churchill waited on somebody to speak. But his generals and admirals were silent. Before the moment could become uncomfortable, the PM continued. "Well, then, let's us stiffen the sinews and summon up the blood. Lieutenant Williams, if you will?"

The young officer, one of Captain Halabi's people, came to his feet. "Thank you, Prime Minister."

He pointed a control stick at the wide screen that had been affixed to the brick wall less than a week earlier. Everyone turned toward it as the display winked into life and a map of the British Isles and Western Europe appeared. It was always a marvel to see these things, but Churchill was frustrated by the size of the screen. He privately felt that he could get a much better appreciation of developments on the old plotting table.

"Real-time drone surveillance and signals intercepts indicate that German forces are moving rapidly into final position for an assault on the British Isles. Army Group Central is on the move out of Tours, Orleans, and Lemours. Army Group North is consolidating rapidly in Caen, Dieppe, and Calais."

As Lieutenant Williams spoke, icons depicting the various units began to move north toward the Channel.

"The Luftwaffe has ninety percent of its five operational air fleets either up or in preflight. Some formations are already moving into position for raids on all air-defense-sector assets. Allied air units are being vectored on to the incoming hostiles by Fighter Command via Trident's battlespace management system."

Churchill saw Air Chief Marshal Portal nod vigorously.

"Kriegsmarine capital ships are moving out of Norwegian waters at full steam. At least sixty U-boats are converging on the Channel from the North Sea ahead of them, taking up a position between the Tirpitz battle group and the Royal Navy's Home Fleet."

The lieutenant flicked his controller at the screen again. As Churchill watched, a mosaic of smaller windows filled the screen. They seemed to show movies of airfields with transport planes banked up.

"The first German forces we can expect to directly engage will be airborne units. The Fallschirmjager which dropped onto Crete. They have regrouped and will most likely be joined by specialist Waffen-SS airborne units which have been hastily put together in the last few months. At this stage, we cannot provide a projected drop zone with any certainty. But there are a limited number of options. It appears the assault will go ahead without the Luftwaffe establishing air superiority…"