Weapons of choice

Sixty medics, three-quarters of them 'temps, had embarked at New Caledonia, when they'd rendezvoused with the convoy of troop transports and converted passenger liners for the long run to the South China Sea. They plowed along between two antique Royal Navy destroyers and the three modern ships, of which only the Trident was really a fighter. Their course took them through some of the same waters they'd crossed on their way to Timor in the twenty-first century. Like many of her colleagues she was past being bothered by a fractured sense of deja vu. It was there all the time now, like your heartbeat.

Nobody had spoken on the bridge for a while. The tension was building as they rounded the northern tip of Sumatra and laid on steam for the objective. Even so, they were restricted to the speed of the slowest ship in their group, a Dutch liner, the Princess Beatrix. She made twenty-one knots, which wasn't bad, Nguyen supposed. But even the Ipswich could break thirty at a gallop, and she was a sea pig, loaded down with 2 Cav's armor and attack choppers.

A half-moon illuminated the ships and their phosphorescent wakes.

"Won't be long now," said Captain Sheehan.

Nguyen checked her threat boards out of habit. She needn't have bothered. They weren't about to be swarmed by Chinese sea skimmers. A screen at her station, one of three, displayed the threat bubble out to a thousand kilometers, courtesy of the battle link with the Nemesis arrays of HMS Trident. Seven aircraft were being tracked and three surface contacts, further down the Strait of Malacca toward Singapore. The stealth destroyer's sensor and weapons suites were infinitely more powerful than anything she had to play with. When the shit hit the fan, there'd actually be very little for her to do. The Trident's Combat Intelligence would take control of all of Nguyen's defensive systems and wield them as one with its own.

She wondered what the crews on the old ships made of it all. She didn't even know what they'd been told of the mission. Perhaps nothing. No sane man from this time would willingly steam into the heart of the Japanese empire. Rachel used a trackball to train a mast-mounted cam on the nearest vessel, a New Zealand hospital ship, HMZNS Christchurch. She smiled at the image of three sailors lined up against a railing on the forecastle. She could see them quite clearly through her night vision lens. They were swapping a single pair of binoculars, pointed first to the Trident, then to the Australian catamaran. They seemed less interested in HMAS Ipswich. It was a more conventional-looking ship.

Captain Sheehan appeared at her shoulder.

"You have to wonder what they make of this."

A tone in Nguyen's earpiece told her that Trident had locked onto a possible hostile aircraft.

"Message from Captain Halabi, sir," the communications officer announced. "Two potentially hostile aircraft have changed course, and are moving in our direction."

"Acknowledged," said Sheehan.

Lieutenant Nguyen stretched her neck and back muscles. Her seat was comfortable, but she'd been sitting in it for hours.

She watched her main screen as the two contemporary destroyers piled on speed and hove to. The ships were visible in four separate windows.

"They're placing themselves between the threat and the convoy," said Sheehan.

"What's the point?" asked Nguyen.

Sheehan patted her on the shoulder.

"You really don't have salt water in your veins do you, Lieutenant?"

HMS TRIDENT, 2143 HOURS, 20 JUNE 1942

"What are those ships doing?" Halabi demanded.

She was in the CIC, below the waterline, but she could see the destroyers on any number of screens through the center.

"Their job, Captain," said Rear Admiral Sir Leslie Murray.

"No, they're not. Tell them to resume position. I can't have your bloody ships tearing all over the ocean. Everybody holds position and everybody gets to go home in one piece."

The mood in the CIC was thoroughly unpleasant. Sir Leslie was entirely to blame for that. He'd insisted on coming, even produced a cable from Winston Churchill ordering him aboard the Trident. Halabi had relented, against her better judgment, and had been regretting it every day since.

A Welsh voice rang out. "Contacts will be within visual range of the convoy within five minutes, ma'am."

"Targets acquired and missiles on the rack, Captain."

Halabi was disinclined to waste two perfectly good antiair missiles to bring down a couple of canvas-and-balsa-wood kites. She ignored Murray's irritating presence to her left and thought it through. They were deep in Japanese-controlled waters. The aircraft had probably been vectored onto them after coast watchers had spotted the convoy. They were passing through one of the most populated archipelagos in the world. This wasn't really a stealth operation.

Halabi checked the mission clock on the main screen.

The advance teams were already on the ground in Singapore. They'd been there for nearly a day.