Weapons of choice

Ali Moertopo nearly laughed out loud, but that would have been fatal. Instead he restricted himself to a small, disingenuous smile. He knew only too well that, were these animals to take dominion over his homeland, they would construct a slave state rivaling the Caliphate's ugliest tyranny. Now was not the time, however, to deliver a critique of fascist Japan's risibly named "co-prosperity sphere."

Now was the time for lying through his teeth. The long run would have to take care of itself.

"Do not imagine," Moertopo said, "that just because my government found it convenient to enter into an alliance with the United States, we did so happily. The policies of the Americans reduced my country to ashes and bone, picked over by madmen and ignorant savages. Clearly any patriot would leap at any opportunity to avoid that outcome."

Moertopo was surprised at how easily this rubbish spilled from his lips. Still, he had to convince Kakuta and Hidaka that they had found a powerful and trustworthy ally. One who wouldn't need to be kept under close and constant guard.

Curiously, he had the impression that Hidaka was the one to convince. The older man seemed so overwhelmed by events that he was ready to dance with any devil. Behind his smile, however, Lieutenant Commander Hidaka regarded Moertopo with all the benevolence of a hungry shark.

"If I understand you then, Lieutenant, you would propose an alliance?" Hidaka inquired.

Ali arranged his features as credibly as possible. I would offer you my firstborn on a plate, he thought, if that's what it took to get your boot off my throat. Whether I deliver is another matter.

When he spoke, however, it was to say, "I can offer nothing until I have consulted with Captain Djuanda. But I cannot imagine he would forgo such a unique opportunity to set history right." He grinned wolfishly. Or what he hoped was wolfishly.

The admiral seemed satisfied. Hidaka, too, was appeased, but seemed to retain a certain reserve.

Working the archipelago under an old pirate like Djuanda, Moertopo had developed a smuggler's sense for risk and opportunity. Both lay in front of him, but the risk seemed much greater. Best to give an impression of avarice, colored by a longing for vengeance and not a little stupidity. Nobody feared an idiot, after all.

The midshipman reappeared with a box of one-use Promatil syringes. Moertopo jabbed himself, then ordered the middie to distribute them among the members of his crew.

Kakuta spoke again, holding the flexipad as if it were a Ming vase.

"Your library, Lieutenant? You implied you have information in here"-the idea of a library in a box evidently bewildered him-"that would help us avert a disaster. Time is of the essence. We need to know what to do."

"I cannot tell you what to do," Moertopo replied through Hidaka. "That is not my place. I can only tell you what we know of the battle, through our archival files. Any decisions are yours to make."

He didn't feel up to the task of explaining a distributed information system like the Web to a couple of rubes whose idea of a computer had stalled at the abacus. And he certainly didn't want to give them the keys to the kingdom. His knowledge of history was patchy. What details he knew of the battle at Midway came mostly from the Tom Cruise miniseries he'd watched on a pirated media stick. But he did understand the enormous power of the United States, even in this era. And he flattered himself that he understood their culture, too. Better than these two, at any rate.

America could lose Midway, and even Pearl Harbor, and it would prolong the war, but not change the outcome. As a people the Americans were a strange mix of sophistication and barbarism. They wouldn't feel avenged until Japan had been burned to the ground. Within a few years they would detonate atomic bombs over Hiroshima and Nagasaki. It was inevitable that the Japanese would learn about that from the ship's files, or more likely from one of the crew.

They might react by suing for peace. More likely they would engage in a race for the weapon themselves. And they would lose. Everybody lost when they fought the Americans, didn't they?

He sighed and reached for the flexipad. But before he could bring up the data his hand was stayed by the sounds of a struggle and a scream just outside the wardroom.

Besides Moertopo, only two men capable of working the Combat Information Center were conscious. One of them was a systems engineer named Damiri. Ten minutes after coming to, he opened a file containing stored radio intercepts, picked up by the Sutanto's passive arrays while he'd been unconscious. The CIC was immediately flooded with a graphic audio tableau of the hostilities near Midway.

He lunged for the control panel. A Japanese marine took the sudden movement as a threat, shouting, and pulling Damiri back by the hair. The guard threw one arm around the Indonesian sailor's neck, attempting to drag him away from the console while still holding his rifle in the other hand.