"Jones should have it wrapped up pretty soon, which'll be a boost for the Aussies. Truth is, they were shitting themselves."

Kolhammer shrugged. "Fair enough. They had good reason, too, after New Guinea. The whole thing was developing a very unpleasant momentum. So you think we can get the Eighty-second back here soon?"

A lopsided grin spread over Captain Judge's tanned face. "I don't believe General MacArthur will let Colonel Jones or a single one of his marines out of sight before VJ Day. He knows possession is nine tenths of the law."

"Tough shit," said Kolhammer. "I need him here to work up the land warfare programs. The training cadre we put together is good, but it doesn't have the critical mass I need. MacArthur can make do. You'll see-I've also included a package for Jones in the transmission. Make sure it gets out to him before you leave."

"Will do, Admiral."

Kolhammer looked at the handwritten list on his desk. There was one last item he need to discuss. "I really don't like the look of the reports coming out of Europe, Mike," he began. "When did you get your last update from Halabi?"

Judge frowned on-screen. "We received an encrypted burst via relay yesterday. Why, has something else happened? The Soviets haven't moved, have they?"

Kolhammer shook his head. "No. Nobody's sure which way they're going to jump, or when. Only that they will, when they think they can. No. I'm just worried about the pace of the German buildup. I have our sigint and imaging people on them twenty-four-seven, and we all think it looks like the surge is coming very soon."

Judge pursed his lips. "You really think they'll try a crossing in autumn?"

"I doubt they'll wait until next year. First of all, they've killed thousands of their best officers in the purges, post-Transition. The survivors are the sort of yes-men and buttheads who'll tell Hitler what he wants to hear-that the Channel's just a glorified river crossing."

Kolhammer leaned back in his chair and ticked the next points off on his fingers.

"And of course, Hitler-fuckin' nutjob or not-doesn't think he can afford to wait. And he's right. There's already a shitload of 'temp forces training in the U.K., and more men and materiel flooding in by convoy every day. Young Harry's set up his regimental HQ in Scotland, and the Brits are working hard to leapfrog some of their key technologies. Our new weapons system will start coming online early to mid next year, and of course, Groves is going to deliver the bomb a hell of a lot quicker than he would have before we arrived. So Hitler knows he has to go now or never."

Judge nodded and shrugged fatalistically. "That's why the Luftwaffe's been hammering at the RAF and the Trident so hard."

"Yeah," said Kolhammer. "It's really costing the Germans, but the attacks are degrading the air defense net, and eating up Halabi's own antiair stocks. There's going to come a day soon when her Metal Storm pods run dry, and the only thing protecting her then will be the 'temps themselves."

Judge nodded. "You want me to fly some of our Triple-A stocks over ahead of us?" he asked. "Our laser packs are good, and Metal Storm's at forty-eight percent. We can still spare some."

Kolhammer thought it over. He didn't want the most valuable ship in the world left defenseless. Even without her catapults and squadrons, the Clinton was still a prize worth risking a whole fleet for. He'd sleep a lot easier when she was safely back in San Diego and being stripped for her retrofit.

"Hold off on that for now, Mike," he said. "But when you get closer to home and I can cover you with shore-based CAP, we might rush a few pallets of MS reloads across to Halabi. She's going to need them."

A time hack in the corner of Kolhammer's screen began a one-minute countdown, indicating the end of the comm-link. He let himself relax a little. "It'll be good to have you folks back, Captain. Even if the old tub is down at San Diego, I could use a few more friendly faces out here."

Judge took his lead from the senior officer. He dropped out of character, as well. "From what I understand, you've got too many new best friends there. Every longhair and hippie in America is making tracks for the Valley, if you believe the press."

"This is nineteen forty-two, Mike. Hippies and long hair haven't been invented yet. But you're still right, after a fashion. American population's about a hundred fifty million right now, and some days it feels as if about fifty million of them are moving here. They've all got their reasons, I guess. Some personal. Some political. But you know, we could do without it. I even had a delegation of African-American labor unions in here begging me to run for president after Roosevelt-"

Judge grunted. Knowledge of the president's impending demise had sent the country into a tailspin until Roosevelt had promised to submit to an intensive course of therapy, supervised by Kolhammer's senior medical officer, Major Margie Francois.

"I think they see me signing the new millennium into law on my first day in office," Kolhammer grumbled.

Mike Judge smiled at the admiral's obvious discomfort. "You gotta wonder how Ike and Harry S. feel about that," he said. "Or Kennedy, speaking of which, there's an intelligence package came through on the last relay from Brisbane. Young Jack features prominently. Jones wants to forward it to your intel people. I've got mine working it now. We didn't have it long enough to brief you."

"Understood. We're about to lose the link. Take care, Mike."

"Will do, sir."

The picture dropped out instantly.

Of all the artifacts they'd left behind, instant global communications, and the feelings of omnipotence they engendered were perhaps the hardest to let go. He had a lot of technical and human capital devoted to reinventing them, even though it would be many years before they showed any real results.

His usual policy was to invest massively for the short-term gain. This war wasn't going to be won by the side that launched the first orbital rocket. More prosaic advances like a good grenade launcher, a better tank with a more powerful gun, penicillin, and smarter human resource management were the paths to victory. Even so, 4CI-command, control, communications, computers, and intelligence-were still the key to dominating the battlespace of the future, and he was not going to let anyone get a march on the U.S. in these fields.

Kolhammer couldn't shake his frustration at the makeshift data links that forced them to patch together relays and jerry-built networks like the one he'd just used to talk to Mike Judge. It was annoying as hell. Although he still had Fleetnet access on his desktop, it was restricted to material that had been archived in the lattice memory of the Task Force ships when they were ripped out of their own time. Not only did they have to deal with the comm-links, but they had lost access to the almost infinite resources of the Web, as well.

He supposed he shouldn't really complain. He was old enough to remember life before quantum computing. Hell, he could even recall his old man setting up the family's first TRS 80, with a magnificent 4K of RAM and a tape cassette for permanent file storage. But having grown used to what now felt like infinite bandwidth and processing capacity, it was maddening to have to deal with scarcity again.

As he reviewed the discussion with Judge, the admiral felt a nagging sense of having forgotten something. He flicked an eye over his handwritten notes. Nothing there.

He was about to shut down his computer for the night when it came to him. Judge had asked him about the Soviets. They were the great unknown. Would they sit out the whole war, conserving their strength? Would they attack Hitler when he was fully engaged in Western Europe? Or would they turn on their former allies, the liberal democracies, which seemed fated to consign them to the garbage dump of history? Apart from signing a separate cease-fire with Hitler, and impounding the ships of Convoy PQ 17 when they arrived in port at Murmansk, the Kremlin had given no indication of which way it might lean in the future. The intelligence services of the West were devoting enormous resources to the riddle of Soviet intentions, but so far to no avail.