Designated Targets

The Germans and a few Indonesians sat at those workstations that had been left behind. Hidaka had almost no idea of what they were doing, although Le Roux had indicated that their role was ancillary. Melanie, the Combat Intelligence, would launch and control the attack, with Sublieutenant Danton designating the targets. Because they had no satellite cover, or technicians qualified to control a surveillance drone, the CI had been programmed with targeting sequences referenced from her own holomap inventory.

“The Honolulu harbor, she does not move around, no? The airfields of my day, they exist in yours, yes?” Le Roux explained. “So we program the missiles to strike at them as Melanie knows them. It’s not perfect, but it does not matter. The targets will be destroyed.”

Hidaka and a few of the Kriegsmarine officers had watched as Sub-Lieutenant Danton brought up amazing, almost three-dimensional images of a Pearl Harbor and Honolulu that would never exist, the island as it would have been.

The young man’s fingers danced across a keyboard. He used a light pen to move strange icons and data tags around the massive panel display. After twenty minutes, it was done. He spoke to Le Roux, who translated for Hidaka. The Germans all spoke French.

“We have designated the Fleet Base at Pearl as a wide-area target box,” said Le Roux. “The missiles will travel there, then seek out targets using their own sensors. They will be drawn to dense concentrations of metal. Others will home in on the signature of the Americans’ radar installations. Still others will deliver area-denial munitions to the airfields. It will be very messy, I’m afraid. If we had the satellite cover and a few nukes, it would be much easier.”

“How will they know where to go?” asked Hidaka. “The Allies always position their spy drones above their targets.”

Le Roux rolled his eyes. “Over there, Commander, look. That Boche officer is working at the navigation console. We have no GPS fix, but we still know where we are, partly because he is a trained navigator and can tell us, but also because the Americans have placed locator beacons at fixed positions such as Midway, to help them navigate. Those beacons emit their signal, so we can receive them without using an active array to seek the position fix. You understand? Melanie knows where she is in relation to the targets, so she can give them directions? Yes?”

Hidaka was glad that most of the men in the center didn’t speak English. He had never been treated in such a dismissive fashion. Le Roux spoke to him as if he were a slow child, and took a cruel and obvious pleasure in doing so.

A slow, dull, throbbing pain built up behind Hidaka’s eyeballs, as he resisted the urge to cut this brute down. Even so, it was a lucky thing his sword was not close at hand. “Chief Petty Officer Le Roux,” he said, slowly and quietly, “you forget yourself. You can no more captain this ship than I. You are a simple mechanic.”

Hidaka loaded the word with as much contempt as he could muster, and he leaned forward.

“I hope your confidence in your own abilities does not prove to be misplaced. You would not want to disappoint your new masters, I think. They are no more forgiving of failure than I.”

Le Roux couldn’t help flicking a quick glance at the Germans. The tip of his tongue darted out to lick at dry, cracked lips. A nervous laugh slipped the leash, and escaped from within him. “We won’t fuck it up,” he promised. But all of a sudden, he didn’t sound so sure.

Sub-Lieutenant Philippe Danton hoped that nobody would see how much his hands were shaking. But then, even if they did, they would presume that it was because he was a coward. Half a man.

While that pig Le Roux argued with Hidaka, Danton found himself praying that they would come to blows and kill each other. A serious confrontation had been brewing between them from the moment the Japanese had come aboard, in the Southern Ocean.

As they snapped at each other, he told Kruger, one of the Germans, that the CI was asking him to recheck and reenter some of the data.

“Why?”

“She has checked her holomaps and thinks the coordinates should be refined,” he said. “See, the airfields at Hickham and Wheeler are much smaller in nineteen forty-two than they will be in twenty twenty-one. Melanie thinks the missiles are likely to land outside of the new target box.”

Kruger watched a computer illustration that showed six Laval missiles slamming into empty cane fields. “Ah, I see, yes. Best we correct then. Good work, Lieutenant. I shall tell Le Roux.”

Danton snorted in amusement. “Good luck. He doesn’t like to be told he is wrong.”

Kruger took in the scene of the Japanese commander and the French premier maître, arguing over by the weather station.

“No, he doesn’t,” Kruger agreed. “You had best see to it, then.”

“Yes, sir,” Danton replied, calling up a window he’d opened earlier, and immediately shuffled to the back of the desktop.