First off, a link to the excellent Soviet Spies webcomic by the brilliant RomanImp. While this fic makes slight adjustments to the setting, full credit does go to Roman, this is merely my best attempt to put such amazing art into word format.

post/150616433414/lapidot-soviet-spies-au-masterpost

1940

The noise on the beach, the screaming of men and women, the boom of artillery, the roar of planes in the sky and the constant crashing of the sea, all fell to the background behind the immutable ringing.

Corporal Perry surprised herself when she started taking breaths again. She felt that her body was shaking, in a way that she couldn't find a way to stop, which helped to break her attempts to breathe in a slow, regular timing. A corner of her mind posed the suggestion that the Germans had made it to the beach, and were mowing down the exhausted remnants of the army trapped in the pocket around Dunkirk. With that suggestion noted, Perry did her best to avoid moving, keeping her gaze up at the cloudy sky. She managed to spot the silhouette of a fight plane, one that she thought, or hoped, had the curves of a Spitfire, reassuring her to at least turn her head.

To her right was what seemed to be an armada of every ship and boat docked in the South of England, rushing to pack as many troops, many not even having their rifles or helmets, onto their decks as they could. Her breathing slowed down again, it seemed like she was still going to make it out of France.

Pure shock seemed to be subsiding, and Perry began to feel something in her left leg, a kind of hypersensitivity. Aching to face to her left, towards the land, she had not be ready to accept what she saw.

The sand before her, already churned by the feet of thousands of British troops, had been scarred by a blackened crater. Surrounding it were bodies, covered in khaki and soaked in crimson red, lifeless remains of part of her battalion. And right at the each of her vision, looking down, she found the source of the steadily increasing pain in her leg. It too was mangled and soaked red, a pool of blood beginning to seep into the sand. Instinctively, she tried to twitch it, but while her right dutiflly kicked into the air, her left didn't budge.

"Hold on! We have an alive one!"

The ringing slowly gave way to the noise of the surrounding chaos, as if reality, chasing her, was beginning to catch up. She heard the footsteps of soldiers, medics it seemed, beginning to crowd around her, she heard them talking and working through putting her on a litter, and she heard the growl of the diesel engine of the tiny fishing boat she was put into.

But most of all, she heard her own screaming.

After a few attempts to distract herself with a pulp sci-fi magazine, she was almost relieved at the knowledge she was going to receive a visitor. It couldn't have been anybody she knew, her family was on the other side of the Atlantic and all of her University friends were still officially on duty.

Either that, or they were captured or dead in France.

"Here is Corporal Perry for you, Sir.", said the nurse, entering with an older gentleman in a blue suit. A brown mustache on a wrinkled oval face made up for a short of hair on the top of his head.

"Thank you, I wish to speak with her in private." replied the man, making sure the nurse closed the door to the room behind her. He slowly walked towards and took the seat beside the bed, seeming to make an effort to not look at the bandaged stump of a leg hanging in front of him.

"Good day to you, Corporal, I am Doctor Henry Blackett, I come from...well, I come from a very new and rather important institution that wishes to make use of your service."

Olivia Perry took off her glasses to pinch her small, sharp nose in frustration. "Whatever you want, I'm useless to you." she said, in an accent that surprised Blackett.

"I suppose you are a Canadian, then?", he asked.

"Toronto. I was studying in Liverpool when the draft was issued."

Blackett seemed pleased at the explanation, "That's what I'm here for. You had been doing a dissertation on the separation of isotopes, correct?"

Despite herself, she slightly blushed at the mention of her work. "Yes. I've worked in the lab with James Chadwick himself." A slight feeling of suspense began to fill in as she took in Blackett's words, "Wait, how it you get hold of my dissertation?"

Quietly laughing to himself, Blackett tried to calm her "No need to worry about that. So, I imagine you fancy yourself as possessing an in-depth knowledge of the latest of physics, then?"

Rubbing her head full of messy blonde hair, Perry started feeling butterflies in her stomach, "Well, I've yet to finish my degree, but I've received quite the praise from those I've assisted in the lab." Almost since the declaration of war, this had been the first time for Perry to open up and discuss her expertise. "I would think I'd graduate around…" an awful feeling sunk in, "a few months ago, if the war hadn't happened."

Blackett seemed to have some sympathy for Perry, rubbing his mustache with a look of consideration. "Well, I'm hear to offer you a chance to do your bit, in a way that plays to your strengths. I know, you have already gave so much to your country, but we need everyone to fulfill their duty, now more than ever."

Perry scoffed, "I'm sorry, but how could I help anyone with anything? What practical use is there to my fie-", cutting her own speech, digging deep into her mind for a wild flght of fancy, before backstepping,"no, no, it's impossible…"

"What is?"

Perry stammered attempting to form an explanation, "It's been theorised you could take what Einstein discovered with his mass-energy equivalence formula and apply it to provide a new source of heat, many millions of times more efficient for a given weight of fuel than coal. But it would take decades of work…"

"You would be surprised at what can be mobilised in wartime, Ms. Perry."

Perry seemed to start questioning the sanity of the man before her, "But there is still a war going on! A war we are losing right now!"

Blackett took a deep breath, apparently reminded at the tense reality facing them both. "True. We are facing a vile enemy, with no unoccupied allies, in a total war which may very well kill more citizens of our empire than the last war did. It may even last another ten years. It might end with our defeat, and Europes enslavement. But that doesn't have to happen. Not if we had something that the Germans didn't."

Perry felt tempted to ask him what he meant, but she already had a good idea, and she didn't think he would tell her unless she said yes. He probably wasn't even allowed to.

"Alright, Doctor, I'll accept your offer. It's not like I could be of any use on the battlefield."

Finally looking at her leg, stopping just below her knee, Blackett gave a smile, "Be grateful that you chose something academic like Physics to be your passion in life" her reassured her, lifting his right trouser leg to reveal a metal tube sticking out from his shoe and socks. "1916. It didn't stop me."