He dropped the pad back on the table, as if it were of no concern at all to him.
Then Hidaka spoke up again. “Thank you, Lieutenant. As you can imagine, we are most interested in anything that might help us avert this catastrophe. I am sure that you, too, would be only too happy to see the European powers driven from their colonies, your homeland.”
Ali Moertopo nearly laughed out loud, but that would have been fatal. Instead he restricted himself to a small, disingenuous smile. He knew only too well that, were these animals to take dominion over his homeland, they would construct a slave state rivaling the Caliphate’s ugliest tyranny. Now was not the time, however, to deliver a critique of fascist Japan’s risibly named “co-prosperity sphere.”
Now was the time for lying through his teeth. The long run would have to take care of itself.
“Do not imagine,” Moertopo said, “that just because my government found it convenient to enter into an alliance with the United States, we did so happily. The policies of the Americans reduced my country to ashes and bone, picked over by madmen and ignorant savages. Clearly any patriot would leap at any opportunity to avoid that outcome.”
Moertopo was surprised at how easily this rubbish spilled from his lips. Still, he had to convince Kakuta and Hidaka that they had found a powerful and trustworthy ally. One who wouldn’t need to be kept under close and constant guard.
Curiously, he had the impression that Hidaka was the one to convince. The older man seemed so overwhelmed by events that he was ready to dance with any devil. Behind his smile, however, Lieutenant Commander Hidaka regarded Moertopo with all the benevolence of a hungry shark.
“If I understand you then, Lieutenant, you would propose an alliance?” Hidaka inquired.
Ali arranged his features as credibly as possible. I would offer you my firstborn on a plate, he thought, if that’s what it took to get your boot off my throat. Whether I deliver is another matter.
When he spoke, however, it was to say, “I can offer nothing until I have consulted with Captain Djuanda. But I cannot imagine he would forgo such a unique opportunity to set history right.” He grinned wolfishly. Or what he hoped was wolfishly.
The admiral seemed satisfied. Hidaka, too, was appeased, but seemed to retain a certain reserve.
Working the archipelago under an old pirate like Djuanda, Moertopo had developed a smuggler’s sense for risk and opportunity. Both lay in front of him, but the risk seemed much greater. Best to give an impression of avarice, colored by a longing for vengeance and not a little stupidity. Nobody feared an idiot, after all.
The midshipman reappeared with a box of one-use Promatil syringes. Moertopo jabbed himself, then ordered the middie to distribute them among the members of his crew.
Kakuta spoke again, holding the flexipad as if it were a Ming vase.
“Your library, Lieutenant? You implied you have information in here”—the idea of a library in a box evidently bewildered him—“that would help us avert a disaster. Time is of the essence. We need to know what to do.”
“I cannot tell you what to do,” Moertopo replied through Hidaka. “That is not my place. I can only tell you what we know of the battle, through our archival files. Any decisions are yours to make.”
He didn’t feel up to the task of explaining a distributed information system like the Web to a couple of rubes whose idea of a computer had stalled at the abacus. And he certainly didn’t want to give them the keys to the kingdom. His knowledge of history was patchy. What details he knew of the battle at Midway came mostly from the Tom Cruise miniseries he’d watched on a pirated media stick. But he did understand the enormous power of the United States, even in this era. And he flattered himself that he understood their culture, too. Better than these two, at any rate.
America could lose Midway, and even Pearl Harbor, and it would prolong the war, but not change the outcome. As a people the Americans were a strange mix of sophistication and barbarism. They wouldn’t feel avenged until Japan had been burned to the ground. Within a few years they would detonate atomic bombs over Hiroshima and Nagasaki. It was inevitable that the Japanese would learn about that from the ship’s files, or more likely from one of the crew.
They might react by suing for peace. More likely they would engage in a race for the weapon themselves. And they would lose. Everybody lost when they fought the Americans, didn’t they?
He sighed and reached for the flexipad. But before he could bring up the data his hand was stayed by the sounds of a struggle and a scream just outside the wardroom.
Besides Moertopo, only two men capable of working the Combat Information Center were conscious. One of them was a systems engineer named Damiri. Ten minutes after coming to, he opened a file containing stored radio intercepts, picked up by the Sutanto’s passive arrays while he’d been unconscious. The CIC was immediately flooded with a graphic audio tableau of the hostilities near Midway.
He lunged for the control panel. A Japanese marine took the sudden movement as a threat, shouting, and pulling Damiri back by the hair. The guard threw one arm around the Indonesian sailor’s neck, attempting to drag him away from the console while still holding his rifle in the other hand.
Damiri, with some basic training in the Indonesian martial art of Silat, reacted instantly, clamping one hand over the wrist and jerking it down, away from his windpipe. At the same time he gouged at a nerve bundle in the man’s forearm. The guard grunted in pain and a little surprise, then slammed his rifle into the side of the engineer’s head. White flares exploded behind Damiri’s eyes, compounding the low-grade misery he’d suffered since awakening. He slumped, and the guard heaved him away from the console.
A couple more rifle-toting Japanese guards quickly appeared and butt-swiped the Indonesian with their rifles. His screams brought Moertopo and the others running.
Now, heavily bandaged, Damiri was back at the workstation, finessing the ship’s antennae for maximum gain without alerting the Americans to his presence.
Moertopo wasn’t happy with the way things were shaping up. He briefly considered telling the young engineer to secretly ping the Multinational Force with an ID pulse and “duress” signal, but decided to hold. For one thing, Hidaka had made it clear to the Indonesians that any extended conversation in their native tongue of Bahasa would not be tolerated.
When Damiri had located a block of intercepts indicating that the Clinton had exploded, Moertopo had suppressed a horrified grimace. He could have wrung Kolhammer’s neck at that point. How could he allow himself to be knocked over by these pygmies? If these stupid Americans all killed each other down there, where on earth was he supposed to run to when he had the chance?
For the first time since awakening with Hidaka’s gun jammed in his face, he actually contemplated throwing his lot in with the Japanese. Trying to plot a course through the contrary waters of fate was turning out to be more difficult than he had imagined. Hidaka certainly gave no indication that he was ready to play out the leash even a fraction. Furtively scoping out the armed Japanese guards ringing his CIC, watching his every move, Moertopo began to doubt they would ever wriggle out of the yoke which now restrained them.
“It’s a Jap ship, a nip bastard for sure,” cried an American flier over his radio. “I’m going in. I’m going to . . .”
The speakers crackled for a second with the recorded sound of a dive-bomber disintegrating under the impact of a barrage.
“What was that?” Hidaka demanded to know.
“At a guess, Commander,” Moertopo replied, “a defensive close-in weapons system known as Metal Storm. I doubt a bolt of lightning could sneak through. That pilot had no chance.”
“Fascinating,” snapped Hidaka, “but that’s not what I meant. He said he saw a Japanese ship. But you told us that Nagumo’s force would be nowhere near the Americans yet.”
The speakers continued to crackle with snatches of dialogue, some of it still referring to a Japanese ship. Admiral Kakuta gave him a frozen
look that made clear the consequences of betrayal. Moertopo held his up hands, palms out, begging for a chance to explain.
“We had a ship with us, a Japanese stealth cruiser, the Siranui. That’s what they’re talking about. It probably shot down that plane.”
“A Japanese ship attached to an American fleet?” scoffed Hidaka.
Moertopo shrugged. “You lost the war, Commander. I have already told you that. You were annihilated. The defeated do not get to dictate terms. In my time Japan is a baseball-playing democracy and a staunch American ally.”
He was taking a risk, speaking so bluntly, with the Japanese officer already incensed. But Moertopo judged that the truth was his best defense. Kakuta murmured softly and quickly to Hidaka, the older man’s hand restraining the younger one’s temper. When he spoke again, it was clear that Hidaka nearly choked on the words.
“I apologize for my outburst, Lieutenant Moertopo. An understandable reaction, I’m sure you would agree.”
“Yes. Of course.”
“The admiral asks you to explain the nature of this ship. The Siranui, I believe you called it.”
Ali Moertopo patted his systems engineer on the shoulder and motioned for him to turn down the volume of the recordings. Desperate voices still filled the CIC, but in the background now.
“We can review the intercepts later,” said Moertopo. “You will need to know what sort of damage the Americans have inflicted on each other . . .” He carefully neglected to add that he himself would need to know exactly what had happened, as well. And whether the Nuku was down there with them.
“The Siranui,” he continued, “is a Japanese adaptation of a standard U.S. Nemesis cruiser. Its arrays are perhaps even a little better than the originals, but it doesn’t have as much firepower. In this context, however, it has more than enough. That one ship could sink your entire force, Admiral.”
While Hidaka relayed his comments, Moertopo instructed another sysop to bring up some images and cutaways of a Nemesis cruiser on one of the center’s flatscreens. Hidaka finished speaking with the admiral and turned back to Moertopo.
“The admiral wants to know about the captain of this Japanese ship. What sort of a man is he? Will he recognize his duty to the emperor?”
“Will he join you, you mean? I have no idea. I’ve never met him. Captain Djuanda has had occasion to deal with him, but he is still unconscious.”
“What is your feeling, though, Lieutenant?” Hidaka asked, his eyes on the big screen, greedily drinking in the stored vision of the Nemesis cruiser.
“I may be wrong, but my feeling is that he would be unlikely to see the benefit of aligning himself with you.”
Hidaka rolled the words around in his mouth like a handful of poison pebbles. Admiral Kakuta accepted the answer without any visible reaction. He said only one word in reply.
“Why?”
“You are asking me to explain the mind of a man I have never met,” said Moertopo. “I am really just guessing, but I imagine that he—not me, but he—would hold your government responsible for taking Japan into a war it could not win. I don’t know what he might do under such circumstances, but he is not of your time. His view of the world is different.”
“But his duty as a warrior is eternal,” Hidaka protested. “His duty is to the emperor. Not to the emperor’s enemies.”
“He may see his duty as belonging to Japan.”
“But we are Japan!”
“Not his idea of it.”
“Ideas! Damn your ideas! The emperor is descended from gods! It is our destiny to serve him.”
Moertopo could feel the ground shifting dangerously. Hidaka was becoming overheated. Kakuta, who could not follow the discussion fully, was growing similarly agitated. And Moertopo was playing devil’s advocate on behalf of a man he had never met, and probably never would. If he pressed this case too far, they might leap to the assumption that he agreed with the unknown captain’s treasonous behavior.
Time to pour oil on troubled waters.
“Admiral Kakuta,” he said as soothingly as possible, “I am not responsible for the world I came from, nor for the men who came with me. I will assist you because I understand that it will assist my own countrymen in this time and in the future. If the officers aboard the Siranui prove traitorous and unreliable, there may be other ways of dealing with them—luring them into a trap, for instance, where they might be directly confronted by their treachery. They may then see reason, and choose the correct path. Or not. But the Siranui itself, which is undeniably the property of Japan, might then be turned over to her rightful owners.”
He knew he was talking a lot of crap, but his situation was precarious, and it was crucial to convince these two to trust him before they went off on some hysterical banzai charge of indignation, lopping off heads and arms with gay abandon to salve their wounded pride.
Kakuta, he was relieved to see, calmed visibly and nodded as Hidaka translated for him. Moertopo put the few seconds grace to good use, and asked for an update from signals engineer Damiri. In fact, there had been a development, but Moertopo was unsure how it might play with the Japanese.
They noticed the perplexed look on his face.
“You have something to tell us?” Hidaka demanded.
“Yes. Our discussion appears to have been premature. Sub-Lieutenant Damiri informs me that the Siranui has been hit. A shell strike on the bridge, which has killed the captain and a number of officers.”
Hidaka informed his superior, who had by this time regained his equilibrium. He digested the information without any visible sign of distress.
“The admiral asks if the ship itself was badly damaged?”
“I don’t know, but probably not,” said Moertopo. “The bridge of a modern warship is more for sightseeing than for fighting. There will be peripheral damage, and we know of casualties, but her combat capability should be relatively unaffected.”
Kakuta smiled when this was relayed to him. He searched for a suitable reply, and when he spoke at last, it was in English.
“Good,” he said.
His contented grin didn’t leave Moertopo feeling cheery at all.
13
SAR 02, 0024 HOURS, 3 JUNE 1942
Flight Lieutenant Chris Harford took the Seahawk out fast and low. Conditions were midlevel challenging. Search and rescue control had vectored them onto a point some six thousand meters to the southwest of the Clinton, where drone-cams had located men in the water. The sea state remained choppy, the weather difficult. Daylight was still hours away, but their night vision systems were coping. Fourteen other SAR missions were in flight, and two choppers had taken fire from nervous AA crews on one of Spruance’s surviving destroyers.
At least the Promatil dump had cleared his seasickness, or whatever the hell it was. Harford was something of a connoisseur when it came to seasickness, never having found his sea legs. It was kind of strange, considering he’d never once suffered from airsickness. But without fail he spent the first half hour of any foray beyond sheltered waters rolled into a ball of misery in his bunk, waiting for a dermal patch to kick in. It was a source of unending frustration to Harford that most people just assumed sailors and marines were immune to seasickness. His misery was, of course, a source of unending mirth to his shipmates.
There wasn’t much chatter as they ate up the distance. Everybody seemed caught in a weird headspace, not so much frightened as unbalanced by the morning’s events.
“Nintendo piece of shit!” cursed his SO, Flight Lieutenant Hayes, as she gave the dead GPS unit another swat. Chris sometimes suspected that, despite five years in service as a systems operator, Amanda still thought that any piece of equipment could be fixed with a solid whack upside the head, like an old TV set.
He brought the big gray helicopter to a hover above the rough center of the debris field. Amanda peered down into the flotsam that was dispersing under the fantastic downblast from the Seahawk. Scraps of cloth floated everywhere. Body parts. Broke
n, smashed-up pieces of wood floating on an oil slick that was burning, here and there, degrading their infrared NVS. Amanda thumbed her ear bud to open a channel to the crewman in back of the chopper. “Tobes, you see anything worth bagging?”
Airman Toby La Salle came back at her, all growling South Bronx, but quantum smooth, as though he were right there in her ear. “Not much, Lieutenant. Burning oil’s messing with my vision. Somebody knew what they doing really opened a big can of whupp-ass down there . . . wait, hang on, think I see a coupla dudes. Two o’clock, two hundred out. Swimming away from us, so they’re in one piece . . . prob’ly.”
Harford tilted the stick a fraction and sent them roaring toward the survivors.
“Dudes’re swimming faster!” La Salle cried out. “Like they’re trying to get away from us.”
“Maybe they think we’re gonna be mad at ’em,” said Hayes. “Think we flew all the way over here to finish the job.”
Harford cut in over the top of them. “Drop the line.” He held the Seahawk directly over the men, who were desperately thrashing away in the rotor wash. La Salle winched down a padded rescue collar, which flapped around madly, but the men only whirled their arms faster.
“Time for a swim, Tobes,” said Hayes. She heard La Salle’s “Gotcha” in her ear bud. Harford eased the chopper away from their reluctant targets while La Salle, who was wearing a thin spring wet suit, wrestled into a pair of flippers and goggles. A few seconds later, he jumped.
La Salle covered the short distance to the first sailor in less than a minute, carving through a mat of wreckage as he went. The sailor, a much smaller man and a comparatively poor swimmer, had no chance of escaping. But he tried. As La Salle pulled level with him the man turned about, hooking burned fingers into claws and swiping at the rescue jumper’s face while letting go a series of terrified, guttural cries.
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