Weapons of Choice

by John Birmingham

  Fuck it.

  Evans had been spared by his legendary clumsiness, tripping and painfully turning his ankle as he leapt from his bunk when the attack began. The delay in reaching the bridge had saved his life. Everyone in there had died, shredded from the waist up by a firestorm from some kind of hellish machine gun that occasionally popped out of the enemy vessel like an evil jack-in-the-box. Evans had tripped a second time when he charged into the ruined bridge and slipped on the bloody mess. A random stray round had shattered his forearm as he struggled to his feet, gagging in disgust.

  As if watching himself from outside, he balled up a fist and drove a short, sharp punch into his wounded arm. Again. And again. By the third blow he had battered through the anesthesia of shock, replacing it with a terrible shooting pain, which had the utility, if nothing else, of jolting him out of numbness and inaction.

  His first response was combative. He raised fire control for the rear gun turrets and had the barrels depressed as far as possible. Then he gave the order that would unload three shells at point-blank range into the stern of the ship that had attacked his own.

  He watched from a lookout platform, which was freckled with thousands of thumb-sized holes. The barrels swung about with excruciating slowness, and he couldn’t even be sure they would come to bear, given the angle at which the two ships were locked together. When the turret would turn no farther, Evans limped back inside as quickly as he could, snatched up the interphone, and snapped out the order to fire.

  The roar of the great cannon filled the whole world, the bark of Satan’s own hellhound. Gouts of flame leapt out into the churning V-shaped gap between the ships. A shock wave flattened the waters there. In a microsecond the three high-explosive shells covered the distance between the mouth of the guns and their target. A geyser of green flame vented out of a huge fissure in the stern of the enemy ship.

  But as Lieutenant Commander Evans yelled into the interphone, demanding a full broadside by everything that could be brought to bear—the eight-inch turrets, a battery of five-inch mounts, and all of the portside machine guns and AA stations—a curious thing happened. His voice trailed off as he saw two German storm troopers emerge through a hatch on the small finlike bridge of the enemy ship.

  He shook his head to clear it. After all, they weren’t the weirdest thing he’d seen tonight.

  “Fire!” he ordered.

  USS LEYTE GULF, 2305 HOURS, JUNE 2, 1942

  Lieutenant Reilly, the Leyte Gulf’s met boss, was a good officer because he understood his own limits. He was a weatherman, a really excellent weatherman, if you wanted to know. Captain Anderson had learned that his forecasts often ran two or three days ahead of the bulletins coming out of Fleet, back in Pearl. On occasion, he was seemingly so prescient it was spooky. His small staff on the Leyte Gulf used to joke that he could make a butterfly flap its wings, and start a hurricane on the other side of the world.

  But Lieutenant Reilly was lost when it came to small-unit counterboarding operations. It just wasn’t his gig, and he was quietly very relieved when Seamen Sessions and Nix checked in on his flexipad to report that they were going topside for a quick look, after which they would report to him to commence clearing A deck forward of the chopper bays.

  Reilly planned to give them very general orders when they arrived, basically reiterating anything the captain had said. After that, the two specialists would have a free hand to deploy the available forces as they saw fit. Reilly had no intention of micromanaging close-quarter combat.

  Until Sessions and Nix turned up, however, there was plenty to be done. He’d collected nearly two dozen sailors on his way to the hangar, sorted them into four teams according to specialty. They were gathered in front of the Gulf’s pair of Sea Comanche helicopters, spectral figures looming in the faint wine-darkness of emergency lighting. Reilly had ordered the men to switch off their flexipads, lest the glowing screens make them better targets outside the safety of the hangar. Only his still shone, and he had dulled the screen to minimum brightness. Even so, he moved about within a small pearl of dim radiance as he inspected his men and women.

  They were all fitted out from the air division arsenal. Most had basic body armor, and each team could boast at least one cross-trained medic. Reilly didn’t bother trying to whip them into a blood frenzy. It wasn’t his style and everyone knew it. Instead he passed quietly from one sailor to the next, checking weapons loads, tightening straps, providing a little encouragement where it seemed needed. It was hard for them, sealed up in the rear of the ship, with no idea what was happening. They could all tell from the Gulf’s strange motion that something more than just a firefight was under way.

  “We going to be getting busy soon, won’t we, sir?” a young woman asked him as he handed her another magazine of 5.56mm from the canvas pouch he had slung around his neck.

  “Busy enough for government work,” said Reilly. An instant later the world wrenched itself inside out with a cataclysmic eruption of white light and thunder.

  The hull of the Leyte Gulf was composed of a relatively thin, radar-absorbent, foamed-composite skin. Her designers hadn’t engineered her to withstand point-blank volleys of large-bore, high-explosive gunfire. Such things just didn’t happen in their world. Unfortunately for the sailors in the hangar of the Leyte Gulf, they had left that world behind.

  One of the shells fired from the Astoria skimmed just over the plasteel safety rail at the very rear of the Gulf’s largely flat, featureless deck. Another shell clipped that rail and exploded, most of its destructive force washing harmlessly across armored carbon plate. But the third struck the trailing edge of the stern itself, detonating squarely against the foamsteel sheeting.

  The blast tore through the Leyte Gulf’s thin sheath of armor and into the hangar. The helicopter sitting nearest to the impact exploded, setting off fuel and ammunition all over the bay. At least half of Reilly’s small command died at that moment. A few, including the meteorologist himself, were saved by the chaotic swirls of the blast wave as it traveled through the complex geometry of the crowded space. But the second volley killed them all.

  A savage din deafened the two counterboarding specialists before they had even made the open deck of the Leyte Gulf. The roar of the big guns, the detonation on the ship’s stern, the eruption of fuel and munitions in the chopper bay all followed so quickly as to form one enormous avalanche of sound. It blocked out, for just a moment, the constant wail and shriek of alarms and sirens, the intermittent crash of small-arms fire, and the confused shouts and screams from the forward decks.

  Sessions and Nix braced themselves against the bulkhead on either side of the hatchway that led to the deck. As they were about to push out, a stream of fifty-caliber tracers struck the carbon-composite armor outside, sounding like a jackhammer. The men exchanged a glance, waited for a second, shrugged and dived through the exit.

  Another burst of tracer fire slammed into Sessions’s chest, throwing him back through the hatch as if he had been punched by a giant fist. Had he not been wearing body armor he would have died instantly. But the three rounds struck ballistic plate, stopping them dead—and beneath that pliable ceramic shield a thick, reactive matrix of nanotubes and buckyball gel pulsed and shed most of the kinetic energy. Enough remained, however, to throw the seaman through the air, and he thumped into the metal bulkhead inside the hatch before sliding to the ground, unconscious but alive.

  Nix crouched instinctively, barely glancing back at his shipmate as the machine-gun fire trailed away over his head. He took in the scene through powered combat goggles, shifting from the cool green of low-light amplification to infrared as he quickly scanned his own ship for damage. Intense heat, streaming in livid waves from the stern of the cruiser, marked the shellfire impact of just a few seconds ago. The mammoth bulk of the enemy ship filled his visual field. The barrels of the big gun turret glowed a dim, satanic red. The battery was tracking for another shot.

  Nix quickly stripped out the ce
ramic rounds he had been issued, substituting a prohibited load of depleted uranium penetrators from a pouch in his black body armor. The sea surface heaved, throwing him to the deck as a twin fifty-cal on the other ship ripped another line of tracers through the space where he had just been standing. Ricochets and small chips of carbon-composite sheeting struck his body armor as he slammed painfully down on his butt. Lines of data from biochip inserts in his neck and torso filled a pop-up window in his combat goggles.

  Nix switched off the feed with a tap to a button on the side of the goggles.

  As he hefted the G4 to his shoulder and squeezed the grip, another set of schematics and numbers scrolled over his visual field: targeting data. He didn’t need it though. He fixed his sights on the rear turret of the enemy warship and fired off the entire strip of penetrators. The gun’s electronic systems dispatched all eighteen rounds before Nix even felt the recoil. He didn’t hear them strike the steel plating a hundred meters away. But bright flares of impact heat and a shower of sparks from the disintegrating propellant casings marked the point of entry. The depleted uranium spikes carved through the angled plating to tear up the innards of the eight-inch mount.

  The big gun froze dead for half a second, then his rounds set off the shells that had been ready to fire. The entire stern of the cruiser shuddered and flames erupted from an entry hatch on the side of the turret. Nix rolled back through the hatchway, grabbing his partner and hauling the deadweight away to relative safety. His goggles recorded the whole event, and now he had to get to Captain Anderson. She wasn’t going to believe what he had just seen.

  Peter Evans cursed and ducked back inside the Astoria’s bridge, slipping and falling into an unspeakable pile of offal, bone splinters, and torn cloth. Shuddering and dry heaving with a deep revulsion, he attempted to regain his feet only to slip and fall again and again. He might have given in to despair and just lain there had he not been grabbed from behind and hauled out of the slaughterhouse.

  When he finally could stand under his own power, he disentangled himself from the grip of a chief petty officer, a slab-sided former meat worker from New Jersey named Eddie Mohr.

  “Thanks, Chief,” he babbled, “I . . . I . . . I . . .”

  Mohr patted him on the shoulder. He’d been wading through entrails all his adult life, but even he looked a little green around the gills, having caught a glimpse of the bridge.

  “That’s all right, sir. You done good, Commander, real good, sir. The thing is though. I can’t let you sink that ship, sir. You see, we’re stuck to it. Christ only knows how, but we are, and if it goes down, so do we. If you understand what I mean.”

  Mohr continued in his slow, thick, reassuring “New Joisey” inflection, leading the ship’s surviving senior officer away from the bridge.

  “. . . You think you can get down these stairs, Commander? They’re pretty steep and all. Would you like a drink, sir? I know it ain’t regular, but I always find myself that it’s good for what ails you.”

  Mohr wiped away a small gobbet of meat and a smear of blood from around the officer’s mouth before tilting a cool metal flask to his lips. The contraband liquor, which was quite good, went down smoothly, burning only when it reached Evans’s stomach.

  “Thanks, Chief,” he gasped. “You’re right. It helps.”

  “Aye, sir, it does. My first day on the killing floor, my old man he took me out that night, filled me so fulla beer I figured to burst. Sick as a fuckin’ dog I was, sir, if you’ll pardon my fuckin’ French. But it did the trick.”

  A fit of coughing and gagging took Evans and bent him double, until he feared he might lose all the bourbon he’d just drunk. But he held on, pulling great shuddering lungfuls of air in through a sucking mess of snot and blood. Finally he regained what he could of his composure.

  “Damage control, Chief,” he gurgled. “I need to know—”

  “Well, the thing is, that’s a hell of a question, Commander. Some I can tell you, like the rear mount’s shot to hell. And some I just gotta show you.”

  As Evans limped up the starboard corridor, still supported by CPO Mohr, he became aware of gunfire—small arms, rifles, and machine guns hammering away, the noise muted but reverberating through the confined spaces that lay belowdecks. The passageways became crowded, too, almost clogging with dozens, maybe hundreds of sailors, many of them carrying sidearms.

  “What’s going on, Chief?” Evans asked.

  “Frankly, sir, I’m fucked if I know. It’s like we been rammed, but not, if you know.”

  Evans nodded. He knew exactly what Mohr meant.

  “But I can tell you we got a way in, sir. We got guys over there, we boarded them bastards and we’re giving ’em hell, too. That’s also why we can’t be firing the big gun on ’em. We’ll be killing our own if we don’t look out.”

  Evans nodded without saying anything. Men were beginning to notice his presence, turning and gawking at the admittedly hellish spectacle he presented. Some looked impressed, others horrified or just scared shitless.

  “Make way! Make way!” yelled Eddie Mohr. “Commander Evans coming through. Move aside, ladies. Some Japs gonna get their asses kicked now!”

  Evans tried to live up to the chief’s performance. With his good right hand he took a .45 pistol from a sailor who seemed only too glad to give it up. He did his best to ignore the ankle that threatened to collapse under him again. He felt hands slapping him on the shoulder and back. Heard men call out his name. Some even clapped and cheered. He had no idea why. It was mostly a daze. But a gut-level instinct told him his presence was needed.

  So he painfully shouldered his way through the increasingly dense mass of crewmen, not really sure of where he was headed, carried along by some current in the seething tide of close-pressed humanity. He caught a confused glimpse of something ahead, an impossible wall blocking the corridor. Then the flux of rank-smelling bodies pushed him left and into a large bunkroom.

  It was crowded. And dark. The electrical system must have failed. A few handheld lamps, hung from the top tier of hammocks, provided the only light. They swayed back and forth, sending macabre pools of shadow spilling over and through the heaving crowd of men in time to the swinging torches. This added to the atmosphere created by the tear in reality that stood across the room.

  That’s how Evans thought of it, a tear in the fabric of the real world. There was a gray steel wall running through the center of the bunkroom, in a place where it simply couldn’t be. He could see that it was composed of the same material he’d seen so briefly out in the corridor. Perhaps it was even part of the same structure. It divided the room at an odd angle, and the more carefully he inspected the scene, the more unthinkable it became.

  Off to one side, three hammocks emerged from the wall like solid ghosts. There was nothing holding them to the blank metal face. It was as if they had been extruded, somehow. Nearby, a circle of men was gathered around, pointing at something down at floor level. Evans and Mohr wrestled their way over to discover a boot and most of a leg below the knee, which looked as if it were disappearing into the barrier, like a man who had been frozen while stepping through a stage curtain.

  “It was Hogan, sir,” said one of the sailors, poking at the oddity with a screwdriver. “He was going to the john.”

  “Probably to beat off,” somebody added unnecessarily.

  Evans heard another burst of gunfire over the clamor of the crowded bunkroom.

  “You said we’ve found a way through, Chief. Where is it?” Evans asked, deciding for the moment to ignore the bizarre tableau.

  “Just over here. If you wanna follow me, Commander.”

  They left the ghoulish circle of onlookers to ponder the riddle of Hogan’s boot. A little farther on, just past a hammock containing the lower half of a naked torso, projecting from the same steel wall, the smooth regularity of the obstacle failed and gave way to a section of buckled and torn armor plating. A fissure some three to four feet wide had been opened by
the titanic stresses generated when two objects of such great mass had fused together and tried to plow on, regardless of their new and decidedly inefficient design.

  The steel groaned and screamed in protest. Evans fancied he saw it moving, like the edges of flesh around a sucking chest wound. It was even darker in there, the blackness relieved only by a faint red shift that called forth childlike fears of the Beyond. As Lieutenant Commander Evans stepped toward the rift between two worlds, he shivered like a small boy stepping into the forbidden forest.

  6

  USS ENTERPRISE, 2255 HOURS, 2 JUNE 1942

  Lieutenant Commander Black ran from the flag radio room back past flag plot and hammered up the stairwell onto the bridge. Captain Murray, the Enterprise CO, had joined Spruance and was directing air operations—which is to say, he was sending a lot of good men to their deaths.

  Bombing six, under Lieutenant Dick Best, consisted of nineteen Dauntless dive-bombers, none of whom had ever launched from a carrier at night. Nine of the old barges had already gone into the drink at takeoff. Six more were destroyed in flight by misdirected friendly fire. And four were awaiting clearance to take off.

  Lieutenant Commander Black, two years out of flight ops, could only watch mutely, wondering what those remaining pilots felt as they sat in their cockpits, waiting to open the throttles and accelerate down the darkened flight deck. If, by some miracle, they got away to make a run on the enemy, none of them could realistically expect to survive a return trip and landing under these conditions.

  The bridge was preternaturally quiet, in contrast with the scene on the waters around them.

  Black moved up beside Spruance. The tension in the small, hard space demanded that he, too, speak in a taut whisper.

  “Commander Jolley on the New Orleans is trying to establish gunnery control across the task force, sir. I tried to reach Admiral Smith on the Astoria, but they’re out of action.”