Weapons of choice

"Heavy. Five to six thousand. Search and rescue are under way. No threats on the board. We're scanning clean to eight hundred kilometers."

"Okay. Round 'em all up before we're scattered to Hell and back."

Kolhammer became aware that Spruance had made his way over from the window. He looked shaken, but not nearly so much as Kolhammer himself felt.

"What the hell was that?" asked Spruance.

Kolhammer wasn't sure how to explain what had just happened. In the end he could only slump into his chair as the adrenaline backwash sluiced through his system, leaving him shaky and on edge. He threw his hands up, a small gesture of impotence.

"That was the future," he said.

EPILOGUE

The meeting of the Japanese war cabinet went late into the night. It wasn't a happy affair. Some faces were conspicuously absent. Many had perished at Hashirajima, and even though Yamamoto had repeatedly urged the imperial general headquarters to clear the anchorage, in some eyes he knew that he was somehow to blame for the disaster there. He didn't care. Some of these fools needed shooting in the ass before they realized what being at war really meant.

Still, even he had to admit some surprise at the raids on Luzon and Singapore. Not at the scale of destruction that had rained down on the emperor's forces in those places, but at the strange choice that Admiral Kolhammer had made. Yamamoto had half expected him to sail right into the anchorage of the Combined Fleet and sink every single ship there. Moertopo said he was more than capable of doing just that, and Yamamoto didn't doubt it for a moment. As an alternative he had wasted precious resources on strategically insignificant targets. It was curious, but the grand admiral didn't make the mistake of dismissing the action as mere folly. It revealed much about the nature of his new enemy and was thus something to be very carefully thought about.

Why would they do such a thing, when they could conceivably shatter their enemies instead? Did it say more about the men they were fighting, or the world they had come from? Was it a weakness he could exploit?

Still, these were questions for another day. At that moment ministers surrounded him, demanding to know how it was possible that the Americans had simply sailed into the heart of the empire and carried away their countrymen.

"Because we could not stop them," said Yamamoto, somewhat impishly.

The cabinet room exploded at that, but he waited them out and eventually calm returned.

"The Americans have made a terrible mistake," he said quietly when he had everybody's attention. "They have expended most of their precious weapons rescuing skeletons and camp whores. This tactical victory has cost them an overwhelming strategic advantage, as they shall soon see. I have fashioned a blade to drive through the heart of their fleet as it returns to Pearl Harbor."

Prime Minister Tojo spoke into the silence that followed that revelation.

"And that is why the Sutanto left Hashirajima, Admiral?"

Yamamoto nodded, explaining himself to everyone in the room.

"It is why most of the fleet has left. They are to cover the withdrawal of our forces from China and the invasion of New Guinea and the Australian mainland. We will deny the Americans their base for a counterattack in the Pacific."

He did not react to the sharp intake of breath around the table. To this point only he and Tojo had known of the plan.

"And what of Hawaii?" asked the prime minister.

"I have plans for them, too."

"Even with these supercarriers and warships there?" barked an army general. The army had never been supporters of the thrust to expand the empire southward. To Yamamoto's way of thinking they were fixated on Manchuria and the Communists. He had to suppress a mischievous smirk at the prospect of dragging them out of China, kicking and screaming.

"The Sutanto will destroy the Kolhammer force," Yamamoto promised, raising his hand against the inevitable objections. "Yes, she is one small ship, but she will sweep them away like a Divine Wind, a kamikaze."

"And when will we know?" asked Tojo.

"We still have sources in Hawaii," Yamamoto explained. "They will send word."

He leaned forward and smacked the table with his injured hand, slowly growling out his next words.

"But even if by some chance the Sutanto fails, and this Kolhammer survives, we will still forge on with our new plan, because we have no choice. You have all read the reports I gave you. You know where fate will take us if we do not change our path. We have allowed ourselves to be blinded to the real danger. It does not lie in Russia or China. It lies across the Pacific in the United States, and south in Australia where they will first build up their forces. We must defeat them there before they are too strong. We must take their base at Hawaii from them. And on the last day of this war we must stand in the Oval Office and put their crippled president to the sword.

"Because we have no choice."