Weapons of choice

By closing one eye and tilting his head, Kolhammer could see that the ships were moving erratically, none of them keeping station, their wakes carving and crossing through the warm tropical waters with no design or purpose that he could discern. The wreckage of a burning ship, a big one, was close to sinking. One of the British trimarans was circling the kill with obvious intent. And there, much closer, was their own would-be executioner. A squat, blocky-looking gray ship. Small, a destroyer, or maybe a frigate. And old, judging by the black smoke that was spewing from the funnel amidships. She was steaming erratically, too, but there seemed to be more design behind her movement. As much as a fifteen- or sixteen-hundred-tonne ship could move like a rat in a trap, that's exactly what she looked like. Jinking hard to port for a minute, laying on speed for the Clinton, heaving to then veering away. Fire jetted constantly from her three gun turrets, two fore and one aft.

The Clinton's CI was screaming for attention, demanding autonomy and a Cooperative Battle Link with the other fleet Intelligences. But despite its insistence, very few human operators were filing damage reports or raising alarms. The ship seemed to be half asleep.

Kolhammer turned to the screen that was carrying video from the Combat Information Center. Lieutenant Kirsty Brooks was weaving about in front of the cam, looking as if she'd been poleaxed. Feeling a small measure of control returning to his rebellious nerves, Kolhammer stood slowly and looked from Brooks to the scene outside his bridge. Despite his restricted vision he could tell-even without the aid of sophisticated electronics-that a battle was beginning. Guns hammered in the dark, speaking to each other with angry flashes of light. Goose bumps crawled up his forearms and neck.

"What's going on, Lieutenant?" he asked as calmly as possible.

Brooks shook her head, blanched, and vomited discreetly to one side. "We… uh… have the hostile on screen now, sir."

Another window opened up. A hard, clear image filled it, of an old fossil-fuel-powered warship. As they watched, the ship's forward gun mount spoke, and a second later the same hammer blow sounded through the hull of the carrier.

"Admiral," said Lieutenant Brooks from the screen in front of him. "Sir, we have multiple contacts throughout the body of the task force. Presumed hostile. Sensors indicate gunfire and some torpedo launches. Buggy readings, sir, we can't get a fix on weapon types, but these are hostile forces. Kandahar, Providence, and the Siranui have all taken fire. Leyte Gulf is critical. I'm afraid the Fearless is gone, sir. Destroyed. Trident's CI has sent a data burst, which we're breaking down now." She examined a screen off to her right for a moment. "Definitely hostile, sir. We're getting a significant volume of fire. Little Bill wants you to release the codes for a mace run and to engage Metal Storm and the laser packs."

In his peripheral vision Kolhammer noticed a few men and women on the bridge quietly cursing and turning to each other. Some turned to the strip window, although the image on screen was far superior to anything the naked eye could make out. The little gray ship heaved over to present a broadside to the Clinton.

"Admiral," said Brooks. "We have indications that that ship has torpedo capability. They may be trying to bracket us, sir."

The fog in Kolhammer's mind began to clear rapidly as a cold wind blew through him.

"Lieutenant Brooks!" he barked. "Guns free! Autonomy Level One. Initiate a fleetwide CBL."

But it was too late.

HMAS MORETON BAY, 2247 HOURS, 2 JUNE 1942

Rachel Nguyen was running from Hell. She was naked and the breeze of her passage slipped over her body-no, over a six-year-old's body, burning the skin. Melting it. Flesh fell from her in long, sloughed-off lumps. The pain was excruciating. Searing and white. She was screaming as the road beneath her blistered feet jumped and rumbled and the air was torn by explosions. She was… her great-grandmother… in Vietnam during the war. A child fleeing an air strike called in on her village by a desperate platoon commander. Some long-dead boy from Dakota.

She knew, in her dream, exactly what she was running from. It was all behind her, but she could still see burning huts and twisted corpses, some smoking and wrenched out of any shape you could think of as human. She could see all the dead pigs and chickens, soldiers tearing at each other, using their guns as clubs. She ran and screamed, away from a rupture in the thin membrane separating her world from Hell, away from the demons who had come through the rip and eaten her friends and family and spewed War all over the world. Demons in the bodies of Americans and Vietcong, the limbs and heads and torsos mixed and matched and sewn together by trolls.