Weapons of choice

Without the Manhattanized skyline that had begun to eat up the heavens in the sixties, you could still see the town hall clock from most streets. Indeed, it completely dominated the skyline. Captain Willet tried not to stare at the faces of the passersby, but she found herself unable to drag her gaze away from the children, often dressed in what looked like hand-me-downs from the Great Depression: ill-fitting sweaters, poorly cut short pants, odd socks, shapeless dresses, and cloth caps. She couldn't help but wonder if any of them were her relatives.

For Judge and Prince Harry, who weren't natives of the city, fascination lay in the dowdy fashions, the grand vintage cars, and even the doughy, Old World faces, unaffected by intermarriage with generations of postwar migrants from the Mediterranean and Southeast Asia. But for Jane Willet, who'd grown up in Brisbane, it was as though… well… there was no appropriate metaphor. She simply came to a halt outside the Tattersalls Club-a VR porn club in her day-stared at her companions, and croaked, "We're fucked."

A passing woman, dressed in a heavy, black fur coat that was entirely inappropriate for the increasingly hot day, almost tripped over as she threw on the brakes.

"No! I'll not have it," she protested, spinning on her heel and pointing at them with her parasol. "What bad language and poor manners! How dare you! And we'll beat those heathen monkeys yet, I say. But not if young people like you give in to despair. You should be ashamed. My Charlie would turn in his grave!"

And with that she spun again and waddled off up the street. They watched her go, too surprised to say anything. After a moment, Willet apologized.

"Nothing to be sorry for," Harry assured her. "I'm sure if it was London or-was it Dallas, did you say, Commander? — we'd be just as buggered. I could run into my grandmother for God's sake… except she'd be younger than me."

They walked on the few hundred yards to the sand-stone chambers that housed the headquarters of all Allied forces in the South West Pacific Area. Judge was actually familiar with the building. In his time it had been converted into luxury apartments and an entertainment center with one of the best sports bars on the Pacific Rim. He'd visited it more than once while on shore leave. In comparison, it seemed somewhat crude here in its original form.

They'd seen increasing numbers of military personnel as they approached. The town's civilian population tended not to notice them in the throng of uniforms, but they'd drawn some stares from the contemporary soldiers. The cut and style of their uniforms set them apart.

A surprising number of African American soldiers were on the streets. An engineering battalion, they'd learned. Judge found them to be deferential to a fault. He didn't dwell on it. There were some older branches of his family tree that had laid claim to the sort of good old boys who'd thought regular lynchings and cross burnings were a pretty good idea. He wasn't proud of it.

A double beep on the flexipad in his briefcase warned of an incoming transmission. Normally, live video from the far side of the world could have been instantly relayed via satellite, but of course the sky was empty, so he had to wait a few minutes while the single, highly compressed data burst bounced off the troposphere and down onto a "footprint" that covered more than a hundred square kilometers. His pad was currently located in the center of that area. It was considerably bulkier than a standard flexipad, packed tight with boosted comm circuitry and quantum processors, developed when military planners correctly surmised that their satellites might be among the first targets in any high-level military conflict. Even so, it was grossly inadequate and seemed to be nonfunctional most of the time. Judge really missed instant and reliable comms.

"News from fleet," he told the others.

They hurried up the stairs of the headquarters building, flashing newly printed passes at the guards. Once off the street Judge hauled the pad out of the old leather bag.

He brought up the short, encrypted message. The pad decoded the burst and displayed the text.

"It's from Flag Ops," he told the others. "Operational concepts for the Pacific theater."

"That should please MacArthur," said Willet.

"Am I to be usurped?" roared General Douglas MacArthur.

Commander Judge had racked up a lot of practice being roared at by the late captain of the USS Hilary Clinton. Guy Chandler had spoken in a dull roar even during normal conversations. When something really ticked him off, you could hear him over the din of an F-22 spooling up on the flight deck. Still, being roared at by Douglas MacArthur was a unique and even a worthwhile experience-if you could stand back and appreciate the historical incongruity of getting hammered down by the volcanic temper of the supreme commander of the South West Pacific Area.