“Two hours to go, precisely,” announced Lieutenant Gologre, his navigator-bombardier.

Gadalov acknowledged the update.

If he had any regrets about what he was about to do, they were simply that these bombs would not be dropped on the Nazis. As much as the Japs needed punishing for what they’d done to the Pacific fleet, he reserved a dark little corner of his heart for the so-called master race. He could only hope that he would soon be back over the skies of Germany with another bomb bay full of nuclear fire.

The grounds of the Imperial Palace were always beautiful, but Emperor Hirohito particularly enjoyed them at this time of year. It was not as picturesque as during the cherry blossom festival in April, of course. But there was something exquisite in the warm stillness of the morning in summer. It was as if time itself were suspended while the day hovered on the edge of creation. Hirohito thought anything might be possible. His people might be saved. His throne delivered from the threat of the godless Communists and arrogant Yankees. Why, Prime Minister Tojo had sent word this very morning of another stunning victory over the Bolsheviks somewhere in their northeastern territories. An attack by the navy on some secret atomic facility. As long as the empire could still reach out to strike and cripple the enemy like that, there was hope. Even with Admiral Yamamoto dead and the Combined Fleet gone, there must be hope. He had personally approved of Yamamoto’s approach to the Emergence barbarian Kolhammer. The admiral had thought him the most likely of their enemies to see reason, and that had not changed.

But had Kolhammer responded to the message?

If he had not had time, might he still do so, before it was too late to stop the Communists?

The emperor paused on a small wooden bridge to listen to the trickle of water and the trilling of a night heron, up well past its bedtime.

He died listening to birdsong as a small, brilliant sun bloomed overhead.

“Target lock, skipper.”

“Thank you, weapons. On my mark-”

“Begging your pardon, Captain, but you may need to see this.”

Captain Jane Willet felt a brief flicker of irritation, but suppressed it immediately. Her crew were well trained, and would not interrupt her without good reason. She stepped away from the offensive systems bay and raised an eyebrow at her duty comm officer.

“Yes, Mr. McKinney?”

“Flash traffic on Fleetnet, ma’am. Immediate cessation of hostilities in the Pacific. All units to hold position, further orders to follow in an hour.”

Before she could say anything, more text scrolled across the screen in front of her young officer. She saw his eyes go wide, just for a moment. The Combat Center of the submarine was already hushed and taut as they prepared to put a torpedo into the Nagano, but she was aware that the tension suddenly seemed to ratchet up a few notches for everyone on duty.

“Tokyo has been confirmed destroyed by an atomic strike of Soviet origin. Japanese national command has shifted to Hashirajima Naval Base, with Admiral Moshiro Hosogaya acting as chief of the Imperial general headquarters. He has formally contacted Admiral Spruance to offer an unconditional surrender.”

“Bugger me,” said Roy Flemming, her boat chief. “They nuked Tokyo for Kamchatka, eh? Mad bastards.”

Willet eyed the defenseless carrier steaming southward on the huge flatscreen to her left. There were no planes spotted on its flight deck. It had carried nothing but jet-powered Ohkas, and every one of them had been launched at the Soviet nuclear site. Farther up the body of the submarine a smaller screen played video of the three Soviet destroyers she’d been forced to sink to allow the Nagano to carry out its mission. Before they reached port her IT boss would scrub away every quantum flicker of evidence linking the Australian submarine to their demise; the contemporary government would never be informed.

There was one loose end left, however. The Nagano itself. While her crew remained unaware of the guardian angel that had shepherded them north, the ship could still not be allowed to return home. After-action analysis of her mission would reveal a very large question mark over how she’d have survived the hazardous, high-speed run to deliver her suicide planes.

“I suppose if I were Lord Nelson, I would just put a telescope to my blind eye and pretend I hadn’t seen anything,” said Willet.

“But you’re not, are you, ma’am?” said Flemming.

“Nope. Weapons, still got a target lock?”

“On six tubes, ma’am. Programmed for simultaneous impact.”

“Very good. Fire them all. Now.”

The weapons sysop swept his fingers across a touch screen, lighting up six icons, before thumbing a final command. The sub vibrated slightly as all the warshots left their tubes at the same time.

“Why do you think they lit Tokyo?” asked Flemming as they waited for the kill.

She shrugged. “Temporary madness. Show of strength. Vengeance for Okhotsk. Who knows with the Sovs? They’re a bunch of fucking Klingons, those guys.”

The ADCAP torpedoes closed the gap to their prey quickly. A drone at sixty-five hundred meters followed the Nagano in LLAMPS vision, and the ship’s Combat Intelligence provided a simulated display of the attack on another screen. Less than a minute after launch all six warheads simultaneously struck the refitted kamikaze transporter deep below the waterline, detonating with such force that the vessel completely disintegrated.

“Good shooting, everyone,” said Willet. “Now what do we have on the threat boards?”

“Nothing immediate,” her executive officer reported.

Willet sighed, feeling tired and hollow.

“Okay, that’s good. We’ll need to linger a little while and ensure there are no survivors.”

The picture of his wife was real, not a quantum image on a thin-screen. Protected by a small sheet of glass, housed in a simple dark wooden frame, Marie Kolhammer smiled out at her husband from across the gulf of time. She was sitting at a garden table on the back deck of their house in Santa Monica, a light lunch of bread, cheese, and fruit laid out in front of her. A half-filled glass of white wine in her hand. He had taken the snap the last time he’d been home, just before leaving for the Timor deployment.

Admiral Phillip Kolhammer wondered where his wife was now. The idea of another world, of his world, remained strong with him. Shortly after he’d arrived here he’d spoken with Albert Einstein, who’d assured him that in a way his wife was closer to him than the shirt on his back. The idea kept him from going mad with grief.

Many of his colleagues had adapted to their new lives in the past. Some, like Mike Judge and Karen Halabi, had found companions from among the thousands of men and women who’d come through Manning Pope’s wormhole. Others had partnered up with locals, and as with all relationships some had worked and some hadn’t. That was just the way of things. He would be nothing like that, however. Kolhammer kissed the image of his wife before rubbing the impression of his lips off the glass with a shirt cuff and replacing the old-fashioned photograph on his desk. He and Marie had often discussed what would happen if one of them was lost to the other, and in all of their discussions it had been implicit that she would be the one left behind. They had joked about it gently. Him saying that he was too wrinkled and salty and goddamn rough-headed to attract another woman foolish enough to marry him. While Marie had always insisted there could not be a more “difficult” woman than her in any of the continental states. They had known that whatever happened, there could be no others for them.