Weapons of choice

The intel boss raised a finger, just like a child in class. "Captain? The Nagoya is missing, as well. There's no floating datum point, no debris of any kind. But fleetwide arrays logged signal deviance similar to the brownout incident, just prior to the neural event that seems to have taken out the surface elements."

Willet clamped down on a flash of anger, "Well, that's just excellent," she said quie

4

USS HILLARY CLINTON, 2249 HOURS, 2 JUNE 1942

"They're firing at us?" snorted Kolhammer.

Before anyone could answer, the sound of distant sledgehammer blows rang through the bridge.

"Jesus! They are shooting at us!" said Kolhammer. He started to shake his head, but a jag of pain stopped him cold. An ugly stain was settling into his shirt where he'd vomited a few moments earlier, but he paid it no heed. Commander Judge was doubled over and dry retching. Half the flag bridge crew was covered in their own bile and one or two had lost control of their bowels-if his sense of smell hadn't failed him.

So much else had-even daylight, it seemed. A deep void had enveloped the task force, and something had sailed out of it to attack them. Arrhythmic flickers of fire and lightning lit the darkened sea surface in stuttering monochrome.

His bridge was a disaster area. It hadn't taken a hit, but sailors lay everywhere. Some were passed out with their eyes open, putting out REMs like victims of a psy-war experiment. Others stood by their stations, their stiff, unnatural stance and glassy stares giving away how much effort that took. One man convulsed repeatedly in front of a large Silicon Graphics display until Commander Judge, composing himself for a moment, grabbed him by the shoulders and lowered him to the floor.

The Zone Time readout seemed to have skipped forward ten minutes. Or they'd been unconscious for that amount of time. And how did night fall? If that's what happened. Another far-off hammer blow belled through the structure of the giant carrier.

"Suffering Christ, is anyone still alive down in CIC?" Kolhammer shouted. Gray space bloomed in his vision, and he pressed both hands to his eyes. He had a terrible migraine, so that if he wanted to see someone clearly he had to tilt his head at an uncomfortable angle just to move them into the small part of his sight that wasn't affected. He wanted to curl into a ball, but instead he slowly rubbed his eyes.

"If we can't raise them on shipnet, would someone who can walk a reasonably straight line care to go find out what's happening down there?" he asked more calmly. "And let's get someone in here to police up this mess. Commander, do we have a location on Captain Chandler?"

"Making it happen," Judge croaked. He'd managed to stop heaving his guts out. "Last we knew, the captain was still on the flight deck, Admiral, with the catapult crew at number three."

Judge interrogated a touch screen, his hands still shaking. "Biosensors place him topside, but unconscious, sir. He's still down there."

"Send somebody to wake him up. He'll be really pissed off if he sleeps through an attack on his ship. What the hell is that anyway?" asked Kolhammer. "One of those Caliphate tubs. Those pieces of crap the Indonesians bought off the East Germans?"

And Christ, how much do we miss those clowns, he thought to himself. Great days. Not like this clusterfuck.

"Can't say yet, Admiral," said Judge, his head lolling a little as he caressed a touch screen. "Link's up to CIC, Admiral. And I've got a couple of medics heading for Captain Chandler now. Damage control reports we're taking hits, but the armor sheath is holding up well. Some penetration on C deck. We have casualties there."

Kolhammer glanced out the window, worried about Chandler, although he had no chance of seeing the ship's captain a couple of hundred meters aft. The flight deck was littered with crew in different-colored vests, most of them laid out cold. The task force commander could just make out aircraft directors in blue and yellow, mixed in with handling officers wearing yellow on yellow. Some were completely motionless, others were stirring, and a few were even managing to rise to their knees. A landing signals officer in white lay prone in the center of the main runway.

Through the effects of his migraine he could see a burning vessel some kilometers distant. Searching for a clearer view, he turned to face a big flatscreen that was displaying four feeds, all from low-light TV mast-cams distributed throughout the fleet. One window was devoted to a Frisbee-cam that remained in a static hover six thousand meters above the flag bridge. That screen offered the broadest view of the situation.