She had the promenade to herself—everyone sensible had their feet up by the fire, tucking into slabs of plum duff and slugging strong tea. So Lily faced the whitecaps and let out a shriek—a really good, ear-ripping howl that scraped the inside of her throat like a garden rake. Because she didn’t know how much more of this she could take; she really didn’t. She could quip and joke all she liked, but in truth, she was terrified.
Because whatever they were doing here, and at Station X, wasn’t enough. You didn’t have to be a genius to tally up the number of ships reported sunk in the newspapers and know it was too many. That it was more than three years into this blasted war, and victory wasn’t anywhere nearer, no matter how many triumphant V signs the PM flashed at the cameras. Three years into this war, and everything was just colder, grayer, bleaker. Three years into this war, and it seemed to Lily that all they were was three years closer to seeing German tanks roll through Hyde Park. Probably over the bodies of Willy, Terry, John, Phil, Arthur, Kit, Andrew, Eddie, Dickie, Alan, and Fred.
But that was defeatist guff, as her father would have said, so Lily Baines swiped the tears off her cheeks before they could freeze and trudged back toward the hotel. Because Fist-Face Fiddian got out the thumbscrews if you were even thirty seconds late, and because she had a job to do.
Lily ended up working a double shift, and it was half an hour to midnight before another voice slid out of the static through her headphones. Pulling her message pad over and preparing to record, she blinked as she realized it was actual sentences coming into her ears rather than encoded gibberish—and that it was English, not German.
“This is November Kilo acting as Afloat Comms Control, broadcasting in the clear.” A man’s voice, baritone, the words tense and crisp but finished off with a rounded drawl. That wasn’t just English; it was American English. Lily fiddled the dial, finding her way through some static. “All ships comms check. Let’s run ’em by the numbers, people. Over.”
She frowned as a series of replies came through more bursts of static. Was this the kind of radio discipline the Yanks kept? Surely they should be keeping silent if they were out on the North Atlantic. Unless this was a ship in the yards somewhere, safe and having a little fun on the night shift.
“Comms control, good to hear your voice and fuck you very much too. Over,” came the retort. Lily wrinkled her nose—language!
The baritone with the drawl answered. “Maintain radio discipline, and watch your fucking language, November Xray. Over.”
Lily called over to Fiddian. “I’m picking up an American ship. Non-ciphered traffic.”
“Don’t bother recording,” Fiddian said, and Lily obediently kept searching for German transmissions . . . but she found herself checking in on the drawling baritone every time she passed through his frequency on the band. That voice was always there; when she passed through it a third time, he was saying something about how the berthing racks here were a lot shorter than the beds at the Grand Hotel in York. She found herself smiling.
Over on the next desk, one of the other Wrens had picked up a German voice on a different frequency; yet another transmission had popped up for a Wren on the other side of the room. “Baines, you keep scrolling,” Fiddian ordered, efficiently whipping back and forth between the other two desks, and Lily nodded, keeping at it. The next time she passed through the frequency with the Yank, he was telling a riddle on the air: “‘I am unbreakable. Even when you break me, I remain unbroken. What am I?’ Over.”
Lily tilted her chair back, waiting for the answer, but there was a burst of static, and then the voice was back, suddenly deadly serious, snapped taut as a steel wire: “This is November Kilo acting as Afloat Comms Control, now setting General Quarters. I repeat, this is November Kilo now setting General Quarters. All hands manning battle stations, all equipment set to battle short. Reason for General Quarters is potential hostile contact. All ships acknowledge. Over.”
Battle stations? The flesh on Lily’s arms prickled. Through the headphones, she heard a distant bong bong bong of a ship’s bells, the tense drone of a voice over speakers. More bursts of static, other ships replying . . . Lily sank her teeth into her lip, looking around for Fiddian, but her superior had her hands full with the two German transmissions already being monitored. Routine German surface traffic by the sound of it, but Lily still couldn’t pull her off it. Picking up her pen, she began scrawling down everything that poured into her ears. The Americans were running tense checkins every ten minutes; there were references to a ship called the Invincible that had apparently disappeared some days earlier. Wait, when had that happened? Lily circled the date unbelievingly on her message pad as she heard it transmitted. Thirty minutes passed . . . forty-five . . . an hour—