Weapons of choice

"No sir, I do not," Kolhammer replied. "In your position, I wouldn't either. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof, and all I can offer you is our presence. Here we are. Myself. The colonel. Captain Halabi. Our flight crew and helicopters. You ever seen a helicopter before, Admiral? No? I didn't think so. The ships of our task force are some twelve thousand meters to the southwest-that's about six nautical miles. As alien as the helicopters might appear to you, those ships will be even stranger. You're free to inspect any of them. To ask any questions you might care to ask. But every minute you waste doing that, more of your men die in the water. You can see with your own two eyes, right now, that we don't belong here, this is not our place-"

"You're damn right about that," Spruance said. "Go on."

"I'd suggest that you come back with us. The Seahawk ride, and a few minutes aboard the Clinton, and you'll…"

Spruance actually laughed at him, a short flat bark that left no doubt what he thought of that suggestion.

"All right," Kolhammer persisted. "You could send someone in your place. Someone you trust, but can afford to lose, to put it bluntly."

Spruance worked his jaw, staring past the strange interlopers at the even stranger aircraft in which they had arrived. Before he could respond, a deep voice spoke up from behind him.

"We'll go, sir," said a Lieutenant Commander Black.

In fact the man seemed less than happy about the idea, but beside him, a much smaller and greener-looking ensign was doing a fair impersonation of a young man who might just shatter into a thousand pieces if denied a chance to fly one of those "Hiller-Copters."

"You sure about that, Dan?" asked Spruance.

"Hell, the only thing I'm sure of is that we haven't seen a copper mine worth a damn anywhere around here. So I guess you can do without me, if you have to. And Ensign Curtis here, well, I don't think I'd care to leave him behind, sir. The crying would keep us up nights until the end of the war. Besides, he's the only man on this ship seems to know what those things are."

Black indicated the two choppers with a tilt of his head.

While Spruance was weighing their offer, Karen Halabi stepped forward.

"If I may, Admiral?"

Both Kolhammer and Spruance answered. "Yes?"

Halabi smiled, trying to arrange her handsome Eurasian features as innocently as possible. "My exec has things well in hand back on the Trident. I am more than happy to remain here while these two officers cross deck to the Clinton. And I've brought some materials that might help us sort all this out."

She offered Spruance the two books she had carried over. As he examined them like unexploded bombs, she fished a flexipad out of her jacket.

"I also downloaded some files from Fleetnet that the admiral might care to examine. Some history vids. Victory at Sea and The World at War. And a V-three-D colorized rendering of Casablanca."

"Excellent," said Kolhammer. He'd heard that this young woman had advanced quickly through the ranks of her service, and he was beginning to understand why. She was proving herself more adaptable than many other officers he had met over the years. That was the left-handed gift of ceaseless war, he supposed. It was a savagely effective form of natural selection.

"What do you say, Admiral?" asked Kolhammer, turning back to Spruance. "Time is short."

"You don't need to remind me!" his opposite number snapped. "We'll have the Japanese navy knocking on the door at Midway any minute now. And when they find out what's happened tonight, I imagine it'll be the Devil's own job keeping them from Pearl, too."

"As I said before," Kolhammer assured him, "we understand our responsibilities, and will do whatever is necessary. But right now, we have a hell of a mess to clean up right here. Men are still dying."

"And will your friends on the Siranui do whatever is necessary to defend American soil from their ancestors?" Spruance asked frostily.

Well, that was progress of a sort, thought Kolhammer, who chose to ignore the bitterly sarcastic tone. He knew now that Spruance must have caught a close-up view of the Japanese stealth cruiser to know her name.

"The Siranui," he replied in as level a fashion as he could, "suffered a direct hit on her bridge. The captain and many of his senior officers were killed there, while they lay unconscious, suffering from the effects of the trip here. The cruiser is now under the command of Sub-Lieutenant Maseo Miyazaki, and he has slaved her combat functions to the… computing machine that helps run the Clinton. That is to say, the Siranui is under American control. They can't warm up a coffeepot without my say-so. I didn't ask them to do that. Lieutenant Miyazaki suggested it, and I agreed, in the interests of reducing tensions between our two forces."