Weapons of choice

She clicked the controller again, filling the entire screen with the prison camp in the Philippines.

"This camp is a former army base," she explained. "It's surrounded by flat open ground and lies eight kilometers from the village of Cabanatuan, which we can assume contains a heavy concentration of Japanese army units. It sits astride a major transport axis from Manila, and the camp itself is often used as transit base for Japanese army units.

"You can expect a strong garrison in the town, between three and five thousand strong with armor and artillery support. The Ranger unit that originally liberated the camp in nineteen forty-four moved from American-held territory on Luzon through the Japanese lines and deep into their rear areas. They had extensive help from local guerrilla forces, which we cannot assume even exist yet. And I guess I don't need to point out that there is no American-held territory in Luzon at the moment."

HMAS HAVOC, 1435 HOURS, 13 JUNE 1942

Nimitz and an aide climbed down the well of the submarine Havoc, to accept a somewhat casual salute from the Australian captain. Unlike some of the Multinational Force commanders, she hadn't bothered to change out of her gray combat coveralls.

"Welcome aboard, Admiral," she said. "And Lieutenant Fraser, right?"

The aide was unable to stop his eyes from drifting south to the captain's breasts. He made an effort to tear his gaze away, but it was all too obvious. Nimitz had no trouble hiding his thoughts behind a mask of restrained civility.

The admiral stepped forward to shake her hand. Were she of his own time, etiquette would have demanded that he kiss it. But Jane Willet didn't give off an inviting demeanor. Her grip was cool and firm.

Nimitz was taken aback by the size of the vessel. There was so much more room than he'd expected. And it was clean, too. The rank smell of confined humanity, a feature of every submarine in their own fleet, was noticeable mostly because of its absence. It added to the spacious effect. Even with the banks of instruments curving up the walls, there seemed to be enough room to dance a waltz in here.

"We'll do a quick tour of the Havoc, gentlemen," Willet said, "and then my divisional heads will join us in the wardroom, where they can answer any questions. You're standing in the belly of the beast now. This is my combat, communications, and nav center."

She guided them toward a freestanding block with a glowing glass top. They had expected to find maps and charts there. The positional hologram was a shock. A scaled-down representation of Pearl Harbor floated within the block. The rest of the task force and every contemporary naval vessel were also represented in there. As spectral miniatures, they floated on a blue sea surface a few inches above the Havoc.

"It's a wonder," breathed Fraser. "Like a movie I suppose, Commander, but in three dimensions."

"Effectively," she agreed. "The nav blocks have stored holomaps of every important ocean and littoral environment in the world. Our sensors simply place us into context on those maps. Of course, some of the most interesting holomaps are useless now because the harbors and ports in our records haven't been built yet-a pity really, since we may be visiting a few of them. We've already edited Pearl's map to correspond to local conditions."

The Havoc's captain brought up a cutaway hologram of the submarine itself. "This class of submarines replaced the old Collins-class boats, which came into service in the nineteen nineties," explained Willet. "They utilize the same teardrop hull shape and X rudder arrangement. They're much bigger, though. Eight and a half thousand tonnes. Ninety-five meters in length, with a twelve-meter diameter-that's about three hundred feet by forty feet to you."

As she spoke, the ghostlike submarine underwent a rapid series of inversions and optical modifications, its gray sharklike skin melting away from one end of the cigar-shaped hull to the other. Various decks and sections detached themselves and grew larger in a separate quadrant of the hologram field. Nimitz and Fraser watched, enthralled, as a chunk of the foredeck disengaged itself and twisted in space to reveal a forest of rockets.

Willet continued. "All the extra real estate accommodates a vertical launch missile system on the forward deck and eight torpedo tubes in the bow. The tubes can launch torpedoes, of course, antiship missiles, mines, or miniature submersible vehicles for special operations work. The vertical tubes carry a full suite of much heavier sea surface and land-attack munitions, all delivered by extended range cruise missile. All sensors and weapons are totally integrated via a Nemesis Two quantum array battlespace management system, so that each of those delivery options, eight tubes and a dozen missile silos, can independently engage a separate enemy in separate theaters."