Weapons of choice

At that a light, even stronger than the green rod in Anderson's hand, pushed back the gloom. Molloy was struggling around the door wedged into the desktop, and he was carrying another glowing object. It was the size of a small book, but it threw out a powerful light, reminding him of the moment in a movie theater when the dark screen suddenly lit up.

"What the hell is that?" asked Eddie Mohr.

"It's a flexipad," the Anderson woman answered from the far side of the gap.

A single shot rang out, somewhere in the distance. Before Evans could shout Mohr had cut him off, yelling at a full roar, "Knock it off, you blockheads! Cease fire! I'll personally clobber the first man who does that again."

"Thank you, Chief," said Captain Anderson.

Mohr said nothing in return, just glared. Moose finally popped out of the constricted space and tumbled to the deck. He carried the "flexipad" over to Evans like it was a live shell. His CO took the object, smearing sticky half-dried blood over the screen.

The rubberized casing felt odd, like nothing he'd ever touched before. The thing seemed light, but solid and kind of dense, too. He and Mohr stared at the screen, which showed something that looked like a weather map. But it was in motion, like a short movie, repeating again and again. As strange as it was, Evans could tell that it covered a thousand square miles of the Wetar Strait off Timor.

It was every bit as baffling as anything else they'd seen so far.

He couldn't shake the idea that he was staring through a small window hundreds of miles high, directly down onto the earth's surface. Overlaying the picture was a mass of thin red lines. The image shifted rapidly, like a movie spooling too quickly through a projector, allowing Evans to watch clouds moving through the strait.

Anderson's voice broke the spell.

"You need medical attention, Commander Evans. I can see that from here. We have a sixteen-bed hospital on the Leyte Gulf. It hasn't been compromised. The sort of injuries some of your men are carrying, it'd go a hell of a lot better for them to get treatment from us."

"You inflicted those injuries, Captain."

It was the first time Evans had addressed her properly.

"Yes, we did, Commander Evans. We've probably killed more than thirty of your men by direct fire belowdecks. I don't know how many have died elsewhere. Our defensive systems went offline, but Nix tells me some of them functioned independently anyway. Your casualties will be heavy, I'm afraid."

"You killed everybody on the bridge," he said, unwilling to mask his bitterness. "Shot the hell out of them. They were friends of mine."

Anderson let it pass. She ripped open a flap holding her vest in place and lay down her shotgun before stepping right up to the thin sliver of clear space through which they were forced to communicate.

"I'm sorry Commander. But you've killed an unknown number of my people, as well."

"Just fucking niggers and…," Seaman Molloy muttered, before a backhanded slap from Chief Mohr silenced him. Captain Anderson let that one slide, too.

"Who are you people?" Evans asked, his voice nearly cracking.

"I told you. We're Americans," Anderson replied. "Just like you."

8

USS HILLARY CLINTON, 2312 HOURS, 2 JUNE 1942

"This is Spruance! Who the hell are you? What's the idea of breaking in on my transmission. By God, you'd better have a good explanation, or you'll hang for this."

The voice filled the flag bridge of the USS Hillary Clinton, of a man long dead when Phillip Kolhammer had finished the last brush stroke on his model dive-bomber. Kolhammer listened in dread and wonder. In a way, that voice was more awful than the firestorm raging down on the flight deck.

He took a long breath before speaking.

"This is Admiral Phillip Kolhammer, United States Navy. Acting commander of the USS Hillary Clinton and task force commander of UNPROFLEET, operating under the mandate of United Nations Security Council Resolution Three Three One Two. I request that you cease fire, Admiral Spruance. There's been a terrible mistake. You are engaged with friendly forces. I say again, cease fire. We are American and Allied ships."

A stream of invective poured out of the bridge speakers. Kolhammer waited until it abated and repeated himself as calmly as he could. The forward laser pods destroyed another five-inch shell as he spoke, emphasizing his lack of success in getting through to Spruance. He watched a medic pull someone from the sea of flames that covered almost a third of the flight deck behind the ops tower. A dark, oily smear marked the passage of the body.

"Admiral Spruance," he repeated, "you are firing on an American-led force. We have ceased offensive fire. I request you do the same."

USS ENTERPRISE, 2314 HOURS, 2 JUNE 1942

In the cramped, fetid flag radio room of the Enterprise, Ray Spruance clamped his hand over the mike and spoke to the operator.

"Have you had any luck raising Pearl yet, sailor?"