Weapons of choice

A quarter of an hour later and hundreds of miles away the nose of the surveillance mace split open and ejected an object that looked very much like a Frisbee. Its mission done, the missile continued on across the home island of Honshu before diving down into the Sea of Japan and destroying itself.

The small whirring drone, a doughnut of superlight plasteel wrapped around a high-speed turbofan, deployed a series of antennae. Tiny doors swung open on the underside and long spools of microlight fiber dropped down from the ring.

A thousand kilometers to the south, the command center of the submarine HMAS Havoc was quiet as she lurked just below the waves with a high-gain antenna deployed. The boat's active and passive arrays were all operating at maximum return. The men and women on board were still and tense as the Havoc waited, like a predator. Signals from her telescoping mast pulsed across the sky, unheeded until they brushed past the tendrils of monobonded filament dangling beneath the drone.

The feed from Hashirajima came online at 2021.

"We have contact and control," said Lohrey as two screens lit up in front of her with a live feed from the Big Eye surveillance module. One screen carried multiple windows, showing a cascading series of numbers and letters. The other displayed three video windows. Infrared, low light, and a blank rectangle for full color.

Willet immediately recognized the outline of Hiroshima Bay and the Kure Naval District, but she waited while the CI cross-matched the incoming vision with its holomap banks.

"Target confirmed," said Lohrey. "I'm moving Big Eye south, Captain. We're about eighteen thousand meters north of the anchorage. We have a tailwind of one hundred fifteen knots. Should be there inside six minutes."

The scene relayed back from the drone was eerily beautiful. Six separate drone-cams panned wide to take in as much of the world below as possible. Willet could see the old castle city of Iwakuni sitting astride the Nishiki River with its back to the Renka and Rakan mountain ranges. Iwakuni was a major industrial center, but the wide-angle infrared cams transformed it into something ghostly and medieval, reminding her of the fantasy novels she'd read as a teenager.

The Seto-naikai, as the Japanese called the five water basins lying between Honshu, Shikoku, and Kyushu, were home to hundreds of islands. Willet silently wondered how many of them were populated at this time. Quite a few, she guessed, if only by antiaircraft gun crews, watching the skies over the home waters of the Japanese fleet. Dozens of them drifted across a large window displaying light-amplified video. They looked like small, irregular emeralds.

Small boats were clustered around some, probably belonging to fishing communities or one of the many villages devoted to harvesting salt from the shores of the Seto-naikai. As the drone moved away from the twisting, corrugated channels and inlets of Edajima Island toward Hashirajima itself, larger vessels began to appear. Destroyers and corvettes. Oilers, seaplane tenders, and torpedo boats. Minelayers and depot ships, submarines and sub chasers. She smiled at the thought of being pursued by the latter.

The first capital ship appeared on screen, and the Havoc's commander whistled softly.

"You sexy, sexy bitch. What d'you say, Chief?"

Her senior enlisted man, CPO Flemming, leaned forward to peer at the screen.

"Looks like a second-class cruiser, ma'am. Maybe the Kumano or Mogami."

Willet smiled at her chief petty officer.

"You should really get out more, Roy."

"Tried to pop outside for a quick smoke before, Cap'n. Got wet."

Big Eye was relaying footage of more and more capital ships. But not as many as Willet had expected.

"Have we got a full house, Ms. Lohrey?" she asked.

"Afraid not, ma'am. Looks like some of them shot through. Only two carriers visible so far."

Willet took up a position behind the intel boss. Lieutenant Lohrey danced her fingertips across a touch screen so quickly that they covered the brightly glowing surface in afterimages. Extra windows opened up, putting on view more cruisers and battleships, but refusing to display any carriers beyond the two flattips they'd already tagged.

At least two-thirds of the Combined Fleet was missing.

"Bugger," muttered Willet. "Okay. Comms. Burst transmission to Kolhammer, maximum compression. The fleet has either scattered or sortied. Havoc to engage remaining targets on schedule. Be advised there is a risk of encountering significant enemy surface units."

The warning sent, Willet returned to her tasking.

Hashirajima still presented an attractive target. At least a dozen very large warships and twice as many destroyers lay at anchor beneath the unblinking eyes of the drone.

"Weapons, designate the flattops."

"Targets assigned, ma'am," replied the dour Scot, Lieutenant Yates.