Weapons of Choice

by John Birmingham

  “That’s a fucking German storm trooper!” Mohr hissed in his ear. “Look at the helmet, Commander. And dressed in black like that. He’s gotta be a Kraut.”

  “Seaman Nix hails from Fort Worth, Texas,” said the black woman. “I’m not sure of his politics.”

  “Unreconstructed southern Democrat, ma’am,” Nix said in a broad, recognizably Texan drawl.

  “Well, we won’t hold that against him. But I can assure you he is not an SS officer.”

  “Well, what the hell is he then?” snapped Evans, suddenly finding himself thoroughly exasperated by the conversational tone she maintained in the face of this relentless insanity.

  Despite his outburst, the “captain”—what had she called herself?—replied calmly, “Nix is one of my boarding/counterboarding specialists, Commander Evans. I’ll have him fall back if you’d prefer. Regardless, you and I need to talk. And fast. I don’t know how long the structural integrity of our ships can hold out. But at the very least I’d suggest we stop trying to shoot each other and dial back our speed. We’re tearing each other apart.”

  “What did you say your name was?” asked Evans.

  “Anderson. Captain Daytona Anderson of the USS Leyte Gulf.”

  “And I’m supposed to believe that, am I? You must think I came down in that last shower, lady.”

  “Look, Commander. I don’t expect you to believe anything I say. I don’t know how much of what I’ve seen the last few minutes I can believe, but I’m playing the cards I’ve been dealt. You said your ship is the Astoria? Would you by any chance be sailing on Midway, to confront a Japanese invasion fleet?”

  Evans almost laughed.

  “You gotta be kidding me. Do you really think I’m going to tell you anything?”

  “No,” she sighed, “not if you’re any good at your job. Okay. Let me try this. If you are heading for Midway, you’re part of Task Group Seventeen-Two with the cruiser Portland, under the command of Rear Admiral William Smith, which in turn is part of Task Force Seventeen under Frank Fletcher on the Yorktown. Task Force Sixteen, built around the carriers Enterprise and Hornet, is steaming with you, and was supposed to be under Bull Halsey, but he’s got a case of the hives and is stuck back in Pearl. So Ray Spruance, a cruiser driver like you, has taken over. You think the Japs would know that? The Japanese think Yorktown was sunk in the Coral Sea. They have no idea she was repaired in three days at Pearl. They wouldn’t believe it possible.

  “And do you think, even if they knew any of this, they’d be dumb enough to send me, a black woman, to claim to be a U.S. Navy captain, and to negotiate with you? You think they’d have the ability to screw around with your ship like this?”

  Evans felt as though his stomach was going to do a full forward roll. He and Mohr stared at each other, exhausted, incredulous. His mind seemed to have locked up completely, refusing to process any more information.

  “Commander Evans?” she prompted.

  Moose Molloy interrupted before he could reply.

  “Commander. This is pretty wacky, sir. I think you’d better see this.”

  At that a light, even stronger than the green rod in Anderson’s hand, pushed back the gloom. Molloy was struggling around the door wedged into the desktop, and he was carrying another glowing object. It was the size of a small book, but it threw out a powerful light, reminding him of the moment in a movie theater when the dark screen suddenly lit up.

  “What the hell is that?” asked Eddie Mohr.

  “It’s a flexipad,” the Anderson woman answered from the far side of the gap.

  A single shot rang out, somewhere in the distance. Before Evans could shout Mohr had cut him off, yelling at a full roar, “Knock it off, you blockheads! Cease fire! I’ll personally clobber the first man who does that again.”

  “Thank you, Chief,” said Captain Anderson.

  Mohr said nothing in return, just glared. Moose finally popped out of the constricted space and tumbled to the deck. He carried the “flexipad” over to Evans like it was a live shell. His CO took the object, smearing sticky half-dried blood over the screen.

  The rubberized casing felt odd, like nothing he’d ever touched before. The thing seemed light, but solid and kind of dense, too. He and Mohr stared at the screen, which showed something that looked like a weather map. But it was in motion, like a short movie, repeating again and again. As strange as it was, Evans could tell that it covered a thousand square miles of the Wetar Strait off Timor.

  It was every bit as baffling as anything else they’d seen so far.

  He couldn’t shake the idea that he was staring through a small window hundreds of miles high, directly down onto the earth’s surface. Overlaying the picture was a mass of thin red lines. The image shifted rapidly, like a movie spooling too quickly through a projector, allowing Evans to watch clouds moving through the strait.

  Anderson’s voice broke the spell.

  “You need medical attention, Commander Evans. I can see that from here. We have a sixteen-bed hospital on the Leyte Gulf. It hasn’t been compromised. The sort of injuries some of your men are carrying, it’d go a hell of a lot better for them to get treatment from us.”

  “You inflicted those injuries, Captain.”

  It was the first time Evans had addressed her properly.

  “Yes, we did, Commander Evans. We’ve probably killed more than thirty of your men by direct fire belowdecks. I don’t know how many have died elsewhere. Our defensive systems went offline, but Nix tells me some of them functioned independently anyway. Your casualties will be heavy, I’m afraid.”

  “You killed everybody on the bridge,” he said, unwilling to mask his bitterness. “Shot the hell out of them. They were friends of mine.”

  Anderson let it pass. She ripped open a flap holding her vest in place and lay down her shotgun before stepping right up to the thin sliver of clear space through which they were forced to communicate.

  “I’m sorry Commander. But you’ve killed an unknown number of my people, as well.”

  “Just fucking niggers and . . . ,” Seaman Molloy muttered, before a backhanded slap from Chief Mohr silenced him. Captain Anderson let that one slide, too.

  “Who are you people?” Evans asked, his voice nearly cracking.

  “I told you. We’re Americans,” Anderson replied. “Just like you.”

  8

  USS HILLARY CLINTON, 2312 HOURS, 2 JUNE 1942

  “This is Spruance! Who the hell are you? What’s the idea of breaking in on my transmission. By God, you’d better have a good explanation, or you’ll hang for this.”

  The voice filled the flag bridge of the USS Hillary Clinton, of a man long dead when Phillip Kolhammer had finished the last brush stroke on his model dive-bomber. Kolhammer listened in dread and wonder. In a way, that voice was more awful than the firestorm raging down on the flight deck.

  He took a long breath before speaking.

  “This is Admiral Phillip Kolhammer, United States Navy. Acting commander of the USS Hillary Clinton and task force commander of UNPROFLEET, operating under the mandate of United Nations Security Council Resolution Three Three One Two. I request that you cease fire, Admiral Spruance. There’s been a terrible mistake. You are engaged with friendly forces. I say again, cease fire. We are American and Allied ships.”

  A stream of invective poured out of the bridge speakers. Kolhammer waited until it abated and repeated himself as calmly as he could. The forward laser pods destroyed another five-inch shell as he spoke, emphasizing his lack of success in getting through to Spruance. He watched a medic pull someone from the sea of flames that covered almost a third of the flight deck behind the ops tower. A dark, oily smear marked the passage of the body.

  “Admiral Spruance,” he repeated, “you are firing on an American-led force. We have ceased offensive fire. I request you do the same.”

  USS ENTERPRISE, 2314 HOURS, 2 JUNE 1942

  In the cramped, fetid flag radio room of the Enterprise, Ray Spruance cl
amped his hand over the mike and spoke to the operator.

  “Have you had any luck raising Pearl yet, sailor?”

  “Sorry, sir. This Kolhammer guy is all over us. He’s blocked out every frequency. We can’t even talk ship-to-ship. All anyone is getting is this transmission.”

  “How is that possible?” Spruance asked angrily. “No, forget it. That’s not important. The fact is, he’s doing it.

  “Who is he?” he continued, scanning the room. “Does anyone here know of an Admiral Kolhammer? And that ship, what the hell is he talking about? Hillary Clinton my ass!”

  The four staff officers who had crammed into the shack with Spruance exchanged blank looks and shook their heads.

  “Admiral,” said Lieutenant Commander Black. “These sons-a-bitches have destroyed the Yorktown and the Hornet. They’ve sunk our cruisers and most of the destroyer screen. Even making the worst kind of mistake, no American force would do that. It’s gotta be a load of horseshit.”

  Spruance went quiet for a few seconds, a pause that seemed interminable. Finally, he brought the mike back to his lips.

  “This is Spruance. There is no ship or admiral by the names you have given us, anywhere in the U.S. Navy. Identify yourself truthfully and cease firing on us. I’ve only got to walk a few paces and stick my head out a hatch to know you’re lying about that. I can see your goddamn fire all over the sky.”

  Kolhammer’s voice crackled out of the speakers. “That fire is not directed at you. I know it sounds ludicrous . . . but it’s directed at the shells you’ve been firing on us.”

  Curtis allowed himself a satisfied, if fleeting glance at Beanland, whose furious glare wiped any trace of satisfaction from the ensign’s face. Spruance and Black exchanged a look that revealed their doubts about this Kolhammer’s sanity, but before either could speak, he continued. As the words spilled out, Spruance’s expression turned from shock to dark, impacted rage.

  “Admiral,” said Kolhammer, “we know you’re heading for Midway to intercept a Japanese fleet under the control of Admiral Yamamoto. We also know that you are ignoring as a diversion a Japanese thrust toward the Aleutians by the Second Carrier Striking Force under Rear Admiral Kakuta. We know that your Pacific Fleet Combat Intelligence Unit, under Commanders Rochefort and Safford, have broken the Japanese naval code JN-two-five, and so you have advance warning of the plan to seize Midway, including the entire Japanese order of battle. I know you won’t be happy that I’m announcing all of this over the air, but I can assure you it is irrelevant now.

  “I am instructing all the ships under my command to switch on their running lights, and any abovedeck illumination, in thirty seconds.”

  Kolhammer signaled to Judge, who set the order in motion throughout the Multinational Force.

  “I know you’ll have trouble trusting me,” he continued, “but I can only ask for that trust. We will not fire on you again. We will reveal our positions. I would request permission to come aboard the Enterprise to explain what has happened. I can guarantee both your safety and that of Midway.”

  As Kolhammer spoke, trying for the sort of reassuring tone he recalled from interminable post-trauma briefings he’d been forced to undergo as an active fighter pilot, Mike Judge passed him a handwritten note. The exec had taken the initiative and asked the acting commander of the Siranui to lower his ensign and park himself behind the Kandahar, out of the line of sight for the Enterprise. Kolhammer gave him a silent thumbs-up as he continued.

  “I understand you’ve taken heavy casualties, but so have we. It was a terrible mistake. We will do everything we can to make good your losses, and we will stand down any threat to American or Allied interests in this theater, but I implore you to cease fire immediately, so we can sort out this mess.”

  Lights came on all across Kolhammer’s fleet. Blazing like carnival rides, their sleek, radical lines occasioned almost as much surprise among the men of Task Forces Sixteen and Seventeen as had their initial arrival. A sailor thrust his head into the radio shack.

  “Admiral Spruance, sir? I think you’d better come and see this.”

  Spruance handed the heavy microphone back to the radio operator without bothering to sign off. He and his staff threaded through to flag plot and out onto a walkway. The sea around them was alight with dying ships, their own, but also with visions of craft from another world. Somebody handed Spruance a large pair of binoculars, which he raised to his eyes with a slight tremor of the hands. The carrier’s plunging progress made it difficult to get a steady look, but the first ship that came into view stole his breath. The triple-hulled warship was flying her largest ensign from a telescoping staff atop the bridge. The flag was British. No other structure ruined the smooth surface of her deck.

  Spruance dropped the glasses, fixed another alien vessel in his sight, and raised the binoculars again. It boasted an equally exotic appearance, but this was a monohulled ship. The Stars and Stripes fluttered from a telescopic mast at the top of the raked-back fin that spoiled her otherwise empty decks.

  The admiral shifted his focus again and again, taking in a slab-sided carrier that at least resembled the Enterprise in form and size, and then Kolhammer’s own ship, the Clinton, still burning from the bomb strike. Even at a distance Spruance could tell she was a monster, certainly dwarfing the Lexington. The ships were all heading away from him, seemingly toward the burning giant on the horizon. The volume of fire had dropped away, and no more of those garish rocket flares were rising from the decks of any foreign vessel.

  It was almost peaceful.

  Spruance sighed and turned to Dan Black. He was calmer, but his hands still trembled.

  “I think we’d better talk to this Kolhammer again.”

  PART TWO

  * * * * *

  DÉTENTE

  9

  USS ENTERPRISE, 2322 HOURS, 2 JUNE 1942

  “What the hell is that?” muttered Lieutenant Commander Black.

  “Search me,” someone replied from behind him.

  “You know,” said the chaplain, “it reminds me of something I saw in Rome, before the war. I was on sabbatical and was lucky enough to be given a tour of the da Vinci archives. I believe he once drew a machine a bit like that, with a propeller on top. He invented the parachute, too, you know.”

  “It’s a Hiller-Copter,” said Ensign Curtis. Curtis was known as a bit of an aircraft nut. Less-than-perfect eyesight had barred him from flight school, crimping off a lifelong dream and shunting him into the entirely unglamorous position of assistant bookkeeper in the ship’s pay office. His enormous, black-rimmed glasses might have been standard issue, so well did they suit him in his job. Most often, however, he had them buried in a copy of Janes Fighting Aircraft, or Aviator Monthly.

  As Curtis spoke, the strange craft drew closer, riding atop radiant shafts of light.

  “A what?” shouted Black, over the growing roar.

  The ferocious downblast of the rotors forced the spectators to turn away, toward Curtis, who had screwed up his eyes, determined not to miss a moment.

  “It’s a Hiller-Copter, or something like it,” he shouted, his normally anxious nature gone for now. He sounded completely sure of himself, an unheard-of phenomenon. They were all clustered outside the pilothouse for a view of the approaching aircraft. Rumors were already flying around the big ship: that these were experimental planes, or maybe motorized blimps, pulled out of the lab and rushed forward to Midway for the showdown with the Japs. Some said it was Yamamoto himself, come to negotiate a surrender. There was even wild talk, coming from the Astoria’s radio operators, of space coons and women from Mars.

  Ensign Wally Curtis wasn’t having any of it. That was a Hiller-Copter, or maybe even a Higgins. As it loomed out of the night and flared for setdown, he decided it looked more like the painting he’d seen of a Higgins, in Aviator Monthly. The painting was a mock-up, of course, an artist’s semi-informed hunch of what the finished aircraft might look like.

  But they weren
’t far off the mark, were they? He marveled at the contraption.

  It looked to have a single rotor, instead of the Hiller’s two counter-rotating blades. And there at the rear was a vertical torque rotor, which the Hx-44 didn’t have.

  Gritting his teeth, and squinting against the stinging lash of the rotor wash, he was uncertain whether the pounding in his chest was a response to the controlled violence of the aircraft’s descent or simple excitement at its appearance. He decided it was the latter when his heart skipped even faster at the sight of the second whirlybird. Where the first one had looked sort of fat and heavy, the machine behind it was rapierlike. Unlike its mate, it seemed to have less storage area in the fuselage—for carrying men or cargo, he supposed. Its brutish, hunched, insectile form reminded him of a giant wasp or a hornet.

  Wally knew without being told that the stubby little wings weren’t designed to provide lift. No, they were made to carry weapons. He could only shake his head in wonder at thought of what sort of havoc a thing like that could unleash. The long protruding barrel at its nose was obviously some sort of advanced cannon. Perhaps even a machine-gun cannon.

  He reeled off all these thoughts as they occurred to him, not really caring whether or not anybody was paying attention. But they were. The hard-bitten copper miner, the well-traveled padre, the professional warriors and draftee sailors who had gathered on the walkway turned to his boyish certainty as a salve for their own fears and doubts. Where they suffered future shock, Ensign Curtis experienced only rapture.

  “Where’d they come from, Wally?” shouted Lieutenant Commander Black.

  “Well, Higgins is based in New Orleans, sir,” he cried back. “And Hiller Industries work out of Berkeley in California. But I don’t know, looking at those aircraft, they’re just way too advanced. I can’t really tell you where they came from, Commander. Maybe off a Hughes program out in the desert. Maybe a Landgraf or a Piasecki PV plant. I couldn’t say, sir.”

  The choppers doused their spotlights and set down just aft of the island, atop the main elevator. No landing officer waved them in because nobody knew how. Hundreds of men had crammed onto different vantage points to watch the arrival, either high up along Vulture’s Row or scattered throughout the small superstructure, crowding around the AA mounts, crouched down low on the flight deck itself, despite being warned to keep that area clear. Some noted the USN markings and Royal Navy roundel on the strange machines. Others just gaped at their sheer freakishness.