Weapons of choice

He leaned up against the edge of a desk and swept his eyes over the room. There were no assigned places, but almost everybody had grouped together by nationality. Americans, making up three-quarters of the group, all sat along one side of the room and around the curve of the desks. Next to the last of them was Lieutenant Commander Mitsuka. On the other side of him sat the Australian commanders, Willet, Sheehan, Captain Tranter off the Ipswich and an army officer, Brigadier Barnes. Captain Halabi and her XO, Commander McTeale, were ensconced with Price Harry, the senior SAS officer.

Halabi raised an eyebrow at Kolhammer. He nodded at her and resumed his seat next to Mike Judge.

"Captain."

"Thank you, sir."

The Royal Navy officer pulled an envelope out of her jacket and dropped it onto the table.

"I have an order from the first sea lord in London, via Rear Admiral Murray here in Hawaii, directing me to detach the Trident from this force and return with all dispatch to Portsmouth. My crew and I will be 'evaluated' and reassigned to training duties pending the outcome of those evaluations. Sir Leslie phoned me this morning to make sure I'd received the orders. He helpfully pointed out that disobeying them could be construed as mutiny, a capital offense."

A few people snorted and laughed. Some swore. Prince Harry rolled his eyes.

"I see," said Kolhammer. "What about you, Captain Willet? Have you had anything similar?"

The Australian submariner shook her head.

"No, but Commander Judge tells me that Canberra is very keen to see us back in home waters. They're not putting pressure on yet, but you can bet they will if there's any concerted Japanese push south. At this time, mid-nineteen-forty-two, they very likely think of themselves as facing a full-scale invasion."

Commander Judge spoke up from beside Kolhammer.

"That's about right, Admiral. They'll take their lead from Washington for now. But MacArthur is down there banging the drums, desperately trying to get his hands on the whole force. If he thinks he can get in Prime Minister Curtin's ear to recall the Australian national contingent, I'm certain that's exactly what he'll do. He wants Brigadier Barnes's battalion and the SAS under his wing as soon as possible. If he can get the Eighty-second as well, he'll be in seventh heaven."

"He only thinks so," said Colonel Jones.

Kolhammer nodded as he digested the information.

"This isn't an immediate issue-at least not yet," he said. "For now, unless anyone has any drastic objection, I don't intend to split our forces. Captain Halabi, you leave London to me."

He looked at the foreign commanders. None of them said a word. So Kolhammer stood up again and walked around in front of the wallscreen.

"We agree we're stuck here, for the moment," he said. "Effectively forever. Even winning this war and accelerating the rate of technological development in this time line, the best guess says we won't be able to build anything like the Nagoya for thirty or forty years. I'm not just quoting from our own amateurs in the Physics Group we put together. I spoke to Professor Einstein and a whole bunch of other eggheads back in LA, and they agree. They're champing at the bit to pore over the information we brought with us. But even leapfrogging their theoretical understanding forward by three or four generations, we have to wait for the industrial base to catch up."

He began to pace back and forward as he built his argument.

"Bottom line, we've got to make this work, and we've already got problems. Some people will never forgive us for Midway. Then there's Anderson and Miyazaki, that's a bad business. Maybe it was an opportunistic homicide, maybe it wasn't. The riot in Honolulu, that chief petty officer getting shot, none of it bodes well. We don't fit in here. I don't know that we ever will with any great ease. But I think we have to try. We've got to bring something more than disruption and chaos with us. That's why I'm thinking of hitting those Japanese prison camps. We can save more lives than we took when we came here. I think we need to do it. Not just politically, but morally. We owe them."

Silence and a sense of expectancy greeted his statement. Nobody rushed to contradict him, but neither did they rush to endorse the idea. Halabi chewed her pencil, obviously deep in thought. Willet seemed to nod once. Colonel Jones leaned forward and clasped his hands together.

"It's a hell of a task, Admiral. Even for us."

Kolhammer smiled. "I believe you were the first to raise the idea, Colonel."

"I was, but my people will be the ones getting shot at, too. Are you talking about hitting both Singapore and Luzon? Because you have to split your forces to do that. And what about the Japanese carriers that survived Midway? They don't impress us much, but they scare the shit out of the locals."