Free Grand Alliance (Kirov Series) by John Schettler Page A

installed, and her guns were modified to elevate just past 30 degrees,
improving their range to 32,000 yards. Even the bridge structure got a
facelift, and her distinctive tripod mainmast was finally crowned with the
oddments of radar fittings, technology that had not existed when she first went
to sea.
    All this work kept the ship in
the dockyards through most of 1940, and she had been scheduled to visit the powder
room at Rosyth one last time before doddering out to sea for duty. There the
Queen would have received her new Type 279 and Type 284 radars, but it was not
to be. In this altered reality, the pressing need to reinforce Admiral
Cunningham sent her off to Alexandria instead. Old but proud, she remained a
stout hearted warrior, out now on her first real sortie of the war with the
intent to find and hurt the enemy. Behind her two other old warriors sailed in
stately review, Malaya and Warspite , both ships in this same
class, and veterans of Jutland.
    Captain Claud Barrington Barry
was on the bridge that hour, a bit restless, as the fleet had been ordered to
circle in place while the Admirals detached for an unusual rendezvous to the
northeast off Crete aboard HMS Invincible . Cunningham had been aboard
when the fleet left Alexandria, more to tour the ship and hearten up the crew
than anything else. He had set his flag on Warspite , where his staff
still waited, and would return there after the conference.
    So Captain Barry was enjoying the
last moments of calm he might know for some time. The fleet knew what they were
in for, knew the odds were steep. The arrival of HMS Invincible and the
strange Russian super destroyer, as the men called it, had been a welcome
reinforcement, but that aside, the enemy outnumbered them two to one in capital
ships. None of them really knew just what the Russian ship could do at sea,
though they had heard rumors that it had played a vital role in turning back
the Kriegsmarine north of Iceland. The aerial rocketry it displayed on arriving
at Suez had given everyone quite a surprise, most of all the Italians, but you
couldn’t sink a battleship with fireworks like that, or so the men thought.
    The fleet had sailed west along
the coast, all the way to Tobruk where the big guns cleared their throats
lending fire support for the besieged garrison. They lingered there for a day
until Admiral Tovey signaled that he would detach for an urgent meeting at sea,
with no further details. Cunningham left in a hurry, boarding a destroyer and
slipping off into the night, leaving Barry and the other fleet Captains in the
dark as to what was causing the delay.
    That night, on the 30th of
January, they sailed north to a position well screened by British submarines.
Since that time they had been sailing in a wide circle, attended by cruisers
and destroyers just in case an Italian sub might get curious. They had been
overflown by recon planes from Greece on the 31st, even while Fedorov was
having his most unexpected first meeting with Brigadier Kinlan.
    It was hard to keep up morale in
these circumstances. Gibraltar had fallen, Malta was battling for its life, and
the British army had just been chased halfway across Libya into Egypt again,
wiping out all the gains O’Connor had delivered with his remarkable campaign.
Captain Barry had a restless, worried feeling now, and the long slow circles he
was sailing did little to calm his mind. Anything would be better than this, he
thought. The men are as worried as I am, and it’s plain enough on their faces.
We should be charging off to Malta now, guns at the ready, but instead here I
am idling north of Derna, twiddling my thumbs and reading reports from the
Chief of Engineers.
    There had been an odd clicking
sound in one of the turbines when they left Tobruk and started north. The
engineers noted it, and were rousting about to see what it might be, but it did
not seem serious. Probably just needs a little grease, he thought. The ship had
been too long abed,