Weapons of choice

Judge looked worried, but he could only shrug in agreement. "Admiral, we can't assume anything about a process we don't understand. The phenomenon seems to have been… anomalous. Our relative positions got mixed up. For instance, the Havoc was closer, but the Siranui was ten thousand meters farther from us than she should have been when we emerged. It's possible the missing ships got scattered all over the globe. Or out into space. Or a hundred kilometers beneath the earth's crust. We simply don't know."

"Okay, then, we don't assume anything. What about Spruance's group? How badly are they hurting?"

Mike Judge flicked a glance at Dan Black and sucked in through his teeth with a hiss. "We fucked them three ways from Sunday, Admiral, if you'll pardon my French. Three cruisers are gone, the Yorktown, and the Hornet. That's more than seven, eight thousand dead, right there. They got maybe another thousand dead on the destroyers, five sunk, two going down right now. We can't rightly say anything about final casualty figures yet. They don't have any implants here."

Judge sounded morose. There was nothing Kolhammer could say in mitigation. He felt as awful as the executive officer looked and sounded. Curtis and Black were even more subdued. Although they stood near the center of the room, nobody looked directly at them.

"Okay, Mike," said Kolhammer. "For now we can only take the first steps. Search and rescue. Care for the wounded. How's that going?"

Judge stared out the blast windows as he answered. "Doc Francois over on the Kandahar is in charge of that, Admiral. We lost Preston when the liquid oxygen went up. She's the senior surgeon now. She's organized triage for both forces. We're taking the worst on our ships because we have the best facilities. The locals are doing what they can. They've got some of our medics on their ships now."

"And how's that working out?"

"No problems yet, but it's early. There is one other issue, of course."

Kolhammer rubbed his neck. "Midway," he sighed.

Black and Curtis stiffened.

"You told us you'd stand down any threat," Black reminded him.

"Admiral Spruance does want to know what we're going to do about it," said Judge, "since we pretty much crippled his ability to act."

"Do we know where the Japs should be at this point?" asked Kolhammer.

Judge leaned over a touch screen and danced his fingers across the surface. The lines and creases in his weathered face seemed unnaturally deep in dim red light of the flag bridge. Ensign Curtis shook his head in wonder as dozens of icons moved around the screen under the officer's fingers, sometimes opening out into windows full of scrolling text and numbers, sometimes expanding into pictures of men and women in various uniforms.

"I scanned the crew records," said Judge, as he pulled the files. "I took a couple of history majors off other duties, set them to work on the archives tracking the progress of the Japanese according to the books."

A screen next to Judge filled up with a map of the Pacific. The relative positions of the Japanese and American fleets were recorded from June 1 through June 7, 1942.

"The Nemesis arrays already have a good lock on a large body closing from the west, exactly where Admiral Nagumo should be at this time."

"When's the first strike due?"

Judge checked the flexipad. "At zero eight hundred hours on June third-that's today-the Second Carrier Striking Group under Admiral Kakuta will launch a diversionary attack on Dutch Harbor in the Aleutians. At zero five fifty-three on June fourth, the radar station at Midway will pick up the first wave of attacking planes, which will be over the island from zero six thirty to zero six forty-three."

Kolhammer nodded, satisfied with small mercies. "Okay then. We have a day and a half until the main attack. Let's work up a plan for a strike on the carriers heading for Midway. If we can't get any planes off, we'll take them out with missiles.

"We'll need to discuss all this at fleet command level first. Schedule a conference for the soonest possible time, invite Spruance and whoever he needs to bring along. We can chopper them over here. But let's get the search and rescue finished first. And I'd best have a talk with the acting CO of the Siranui well before the general conference."

"That'd be Sub-Lieutenant Miyazaki. You want to laser-link to him or talk face-to-face?"

"I think we'd best meet in my quarters, man-to-man. Show some respect."

"I think he'd appreciate that, Admiral," said Mike Judge. "He's likely to find it scarce around these parts for a long time."

Lieutenant Commander Black said nothing.

USS KANDAHAR, 0029 HOURS, 3 JUNE 1942

Captain Margie Francois paused for the first time in two and a half hours. It was just a moment's break.