New England 11 - Rising Sun by James Philip

Author:James Philip
Language: eng
Format: azw3
Tags: Alternate History
Published: 2022-11-27T05:00:00+00:00

Commander Alexander Fielding’s one-year-old son viewed him with wide, curious eyes. Leonora kept a tight grip on him, knowing Alex junior’s first impulse would be to try to use his still gravely ill father as an impromptu climbing frame.

“God, you are beautiful,” the man in the hospital cot murmured to his wife.

Leonora tried not to start crying again.

Her husband was a compulsive flirt, a born charmer, and if anybody had needed further evidence for the prosecution, a hopelessly heroic…nincompoop!

Whom she would not have changed for the world.

Stories of his latest deeds of derring-do were now all over the island; of how he had led sortie after sortie against the Japanese aerial armadas that had struck at Task Force 61.2 and shot down God alone knew how many enemy aircraft in the process before eventually, being shot down himself in a fight with up to a dozen Japanese Falcon scouts…

He was one of those people whose spirit was unquenchable, even in his hospital bed he seemed to breathe a quietly indomitable unspoken pugnaciousness; she was half-afraid that, physically implausible or not, if he found out that something big was in the wind – the Royal Navy had cancelled all leave and recalled all personnel to their duty stations at midnight last night – Alex would attempt to rise from his sick bed!

Nurses had gently propped him up, taken one of the intravenous lines out and that morning there had been markedly less sensor lines and monitors beeping.

Alex was on the mend very, very slowly.

As to what was going on outside the hospital, neither Leonora or any of the other wives had the least idea what was afoot; everybody had assumed that with half the Pacific Fleet sunk or too badly damaged to fight, that there would surely be a hiatus in the war. Surely, Admiral Blackwood would wait for reinforcements before sending the fleet to sea again?

Apparently not, it seemed.

“You look dreadful,” Leonora retaliated.

“No change there then, beauty and the beast, what!”

She giggled.

“Papa,” Alex junior blurted.

Leonora bounced her son on her lap and he gurgled with pleasure as she bent her head to plant a kiss on his head.

“Before you ask, I have no idea what is going on,” she said, admitting defeat. “How did you know something was going on?” She asked as an afterthought.

“Don’s gone missing and only the womenfolk are visiting,” her husband grinned.

Don Nash had told Leonora that he had been summoned back to New England.

‘Test pilot stuff,’ he had grimaced, apologetically tight-lipped and she had not pressed him farther. Leonora had, however, threatened that the next time she wrote to Kate Fielding – who would pass the news on to Melody, Don’s brother’s wife post-haste – she was going to communicate what little she knew of his truly heroic role in OPERATION PRESTIGE, whether he liked it or not!

Don had laughed and with a shake of the head, a brief hug and pecking kisses, he had been on his way. Leonora got the impression that he

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