Weapons of choice

Evans shook his head at this new turn of events. He drew a deep breath and tried to shout a reply, but his dry, cracked throat failed him. Chief Mohr took out his hip flask again and thrust it at the officer. Evans took a quick swill and tried once more. He was surprised at how weak his voice sounded.

"This is Lieutenant Commander Peter Evans of the USS Astoria. Identify yourself properly, and explain what the hell is going on here."

He could hear other members of the Astoria's crew whispering to each other in the brief silence that followed.

Then the woman's angry voice drowned them out. "I say again, this is Captain Daytona Anderson of the USS Leyte Gulf. You have boarded our ship and killed U.S. naval personnel. That enough explanation for you, asshole?"

Evans got Mohr to help him over to the crack through which Willie Stolz had been shot. He yelled into the gap. "Listen, lady. If the Japs are putting you up to this, just forget it. I'm sorry for your situation, but we're not laying down for anyone."

Muted cheers drifted into their bunker from somewhere off to starboard. Or what he thought was starboard.

"Listen, you macho jerk, you're going to get yourself and the rest of your crew killed for no good reason. We're not Japanese. We're Americans. You hear me? Americans."

Chief Mohr leaned over and said quietly, "That sounds like a black woman to me, Commander."

He was right, Evans realized. That was what threw him about the voice. It was black, like one of those Harlem jazz singers.

"What're you trying to pull, lady," he called back. "There's no such ship as the Leyte Gulf, and if there was, the captain wouldn't be a dame. You just put Tojo on the loudspeaker, if he knows any English. I'll take a surrender from him."

The cheers of his crewmates were punctuated by a good deal of laughter this time. Anderson didn't reply, and he wondered if she'd been hustled away by her captors.

Clancy and Nix crouched on either side of the aperture giving on to Evans and his men. Both men had set their night vision to the soft emerald of low-light amplification. Infrared was useless. There were simply too many heat sources bleeding into the fused mayhem of junk metal. Sparks cascaded from shorted-out wiring. Steam vented from ruptured pipes in brilliant ruby-red geysers, and small spot fires burned all around them, adding a hot smoke haze to the saturated air.

Clancy hand-signed to Anderson. Did she want them to work around though the maze of scrap and attempt to subdue the targets?

The captain shook her head. She cut power to the small bullhorn in her left hand.

"The way you guys look," she subvocalized, "they'd take you for a couple of Nazis."

A chip implanted just below her jawline picked up the vibrations and converted them into a narrowcast quantum signal. Nix and Clancy heard their commanding officer's words in their helmets as clearly as if she'd spoken at normal volume in a quiet room. Nobody else heard anything.

"Just keep it tight and try not to waste anyone" she continued. "I'll try again."

That amplified voice boomed out again.

"All right, Commander Evans. I'm coming forward with my CPO and Specialist Nix. Are you in the head that intersected our weather station?"

Evans's eyes went wide at that. They were definitely hunkered down in a john and he figured that yes, maybe the science lab stuff could be weather equipment of some sort.

Mohr just looked at him as if to say What next?

"Yeah. I guess so," replied the Astoria's acting CO.

"We're coming armed. You fire on us and Clancy will pop a frag through that crack as easy as the round that killed your other guy a minute ago. Be nice if he didn't have to do that again."

Crouching low, Moose Molloy tried to muscle into the gap with his Springfield, but Mohr placed a size twelve boot on his shoulder and stopped him cold. Evans thumbed back the hammer on his pistol, but kept it pointing down at the floor. A moment later he could just make out movement in the gloom and clutter of shadows on the other side of the gap. Three figures slowly resolved out of the darkness. A thin, weak shaft of diffused white light, thrown out by the source somewhere behind the toilet door, barely picked them out.

"That you, Evans?" the woman asked, her voice at normal volume now. She seemed to be speaking directly to him. But how did she know where he was in all this blackness?

"Yeah," he croaked. "It's me."

"I'm going to break a glo-stick," she said. "You'll hear a sort of snap and a green tube will appear just in front of you. It'll glow bright enough for you to make us out a little easier."

Evans, Mohr, and Molloy heard a crunch, like someone stepping on glass. A faint green line began to glow on the far side of the gap. Within seconds it threw off enough light to illuminate the figures who had approached them. Evans was aware of Molloy, stiffening beside him and adjusting his grip on the old Springfield.