Weapons of choice

The gusting wind that had been tugging at their clothes died down. It was curious, though-it didn't just drop off. It stopped dead. It almost seemed to Black as if it was "different air." That didn't make sense, he knew, but he couldn't shake the feeling. It smelled and tasted different, too; vaguely familiar in a way, earthier, heavier. Like air in the Tropics, which always seemed laden with the weight of rot and genesis.

The night had been very dark, with low cloud cover, no starlight, and banks of dense fog. Even so, Black had the distinct impression of being wrapped, however briefly, in a denser, closer form of darkness. A rush of unsettling, half-formed, almost preconscious abstractions clawed at him. He had the sensation of being trapped in a tight, closed space, what he imagined it would feel like to be stuck in a downed plane as it sank in thousands of fathoms of black water.

Then they both became aware of a rising clamor of shouts and cries, coming from above. Lookouts in the superstructure, up on Vulture's Row, were screaming and gesturing wildly down to the sea on the starboard side.

"I think somebody's gone overboard," coughed Black, still struggling for breath.

"Come on," Spruance said, with some difficulty.

They hurried forward, around the base of the island and the antiaircraft mounts, only to be confronted by a sight that stopped them cold.

"Holy shit," said Black.

There, less than a hundred yards away, lay a ship of some sort. A foreign vessel for sure, completely alien, its bow was angled away from the Enterprise, opening up a gap as they plowed through the foaming breakers. She was lit well enough that they could make out her strange lines. The decks of the vessel were mostly clear. There was an island of sorts, but it was located squarely in the center of what would have been the runway. It was raked back, like a shark's fin, with no hard edges visible anywhere on its surface. Only one line of windows was visible, within which he could make out strange glowing colors and lights, but no people.

As his mind adjusted to the outrage, he began to take in more detail. The forward decks seemed to be pockmarked with the outlines of elevators, but they were ridiculously small, each no more than a few yards across. There was one small gun emplacement, a ludicrous-looking little cannon, with the same strange, raked contours as the bridge. As the angle of divergence increased and the warship pulled away from them, Spruance pointed to the outline of what had to be an aircraft elevator down toward the stern. But it made no sense. Any plane attempting to take off there would crash into the bizarre-looking island on the vessel's centerline.

"Oh, Lord," muttered Spruance, as the ship peeled away at nearly thirty degrees now, exposing her stern to their gaze. A Japanese ensign flew there. Not a Rising Sun, to be sure, but a red circle on a field of white.

The name printed beneath read SIRANUI, Japanese for "unknown fires," if Black recalled correctly. He was aware of a Kagero-class destroyer just so named, which had been launched in June 1938. This thing, however, which was easily more than half the length of the Enterprise, was no Kagero-class bucket. It looked like something out of Buck Rogers.

"What the hell is that thing?" asked Black, in the tone of voice he might have used if he'd seen a large, two-headed dog.

"I'm not sure what it is," Spruance replied, regaining his composure, "but I know who it is. Better put on your Sunday best, Commander. I think our guests have arrived early."

As the mystery ship quietly slipped into the night, a Klaxon aboard the Enterprise sounded the alarm.

And then, the horizon exploded.

Suddenly they were beset by madness on all sides. To starboard, the eerie Nipponese ghost ship receded into darkness. To port, there was a volcanic eruption about ten miles distant. It was a few seconds before the thunder reached their ears, but they could see clearly enough what was happening as the light of the explosion was trapped between a heaving sea and the thick, scudding clouds that pressed down from above.

Black shook his head, determined to remain calm. But as his eyes darted to and fro across the surface of the ocean, his mind was insulted by the monstrous visions they encountered there.

In the flat, guttering light of the distant inferno Black could see more enemy vessels, none that he recognized, most of them freakish cousins to the thing that had just peeled away from the Enterprise. There was one ship-maybe a thousand yards distant-well, he simply refused to believe his own eyes. As it crested a long rolling line of swell he could have sworn the thing had two, maybe even three hulls. It was difficult to be sure under these conditions, but he simply could not shake the afterimage. It was either a ship with three hulls, or three ships somehow joined and operating in perfect harmony.