Final impact

The Skyhawks were the navy’s new glamour weapon, but for the moment they could only fly off the Clinton. It would be another three months before the first Hawaii-class flattops capable of handling them would come into service. In the meantime propeller-driven Corsairs and Skyraiders would do most of the navy’s dogfighting and tactical bombing. Kolhammer wondered when the leapfrogging would end, and technological development would settle down into a steady curve again. When they all caught up with the next century, he supposed.

For once, the flight deck wasn’t frenetically busy with landings and takeoffs. A squadron of the Clinton’s Skyhawks was flying CAP out of Hickam Field for the next few days, working in with Super Harriers from the Kandahar’s VMA-311 group, as the 21C Marine Corps fliers trained up their contemporary colleagues. The Clinton’s battle group hadn’t berthed in Pearl, which was fully occupied by Spruance’s other task force elements. Instead they’d pulled up about six klicks offshore, and Spruance had flown out by chopper to inspect them.

The loose knot of naval officers walked forward for a hundred meters or so, past another six Skyhawks chained down along the starboard rows. Heat shimmered up from the nonslip deck.

“It’s an incredible-looking force, Admiral,” Spruance said. “You can be proud of the work your people have done.”

“I am, sir,” Kolhammer replied. “It’s a hell of an achievement, really. But it’s a job half done. There’s the fighting to come yet.”

He let his gaze traverse the task force, of which the Clinton was but a part. When they sailed, Spruance would lead the entire fleet from the Enterprise, which had been refitted with both AT and some twenty-first technology taken off the Leyte Gulf, 3CI stuff mostly-equipment to improve his communications, control, command, and intelligence capabilities. Almost thirty ships lay around them, including three carriers and the heavy littoral assault ships, the Kandahar and her new sister ships, the Falluja and the Damascus-which looked much like carriers to the casual observer.

Four contemporary heavy cruisers and two Iowa-class battleships with extensive AT retrofits provided the big-bore artillery, although Kolhammer was certain they’d be restricted to shore bombardment once they reached the Marianas. If it got to the point of trading shells with the Yamato, something would be seriously wrong. The Siranui lay about a thousand meters to port, her flags limp in the hot, humid air. Like the Clinton, she’d been retrofitted, after firing off all her missiles during the assault on Hawaii in late ’42. She now carried a very basic harpoon-style antiship missile, designated ASM-1 and called the Barracuda. Kolhammer’s Skyhawks, the remaining Harriers, and the Siranui’s missile bays were the reason he never expected to get within range of the Yamato’s long guns. She’d be sunk long before she ever saw the force that was coming after her and the last of the Imperial Japanese Fleet.

A few hundred meters behind the Siranui, a Halsey-class guided missile destroyer swept past a couple of vintage destroyers, almost appearing to taunt them. She was “Old Navy,” not Auxiliary Forces, but that didn’t stop her lording it over the Fletcher-class rust-buckets as she passed them by. Spruance halted in his walk toward the bow just to take in the sight.

“Amazing,” he said to himself. “Bill would have been proud, although he would have liked to have a carrier named after him. Or at least a cruiser.”

He tore his gaze away from the sleek, dangerous-looking warship and turned back to Kolhammer. “Have you been out to the cemetery yet, Admiral?”

“Not yet, no. I was planning on taking a private trip out there later. I haven’t even made it ashore yet.”

Spruance nodded and began walking back toward the ship’s island superstructure. On the Clinton it had the appearance of a raked-back shark fin. Kolhammer had seen the next generation of American carriers being built back in the States, and they imitated this radar-baffling design, as well, although contemporary materials science wasn’t yet up to synthesizing the advanced RAMskin that coated the Big Hill’s island.

As they walked back past the jet fighters the dull thudding of a helicopter reached him. He saw Jones’s command Huey, an uptime original, coming in from the Kandahar for the O Group conference.

D-DAY + 23. 26 MAY 1944. 0302 HOURS.

KO‘OLAU RANGE.

Fire demons chased him through his dreams, massive slump-shouldered ape creatures, covered all over in flames, except for two small black pools for their eyes.