Weapons of choice aot-1 Read online

  Harry, still tingling from a Promatil flush, kept his own counsel, and the other submariners who had gathered in front of the bloc remained silent as well. Willet seemed inordinately calm, poised there in her gray coveralls. Lieutenant Lohrey, her intel chief, was swallowing frequently. And the boat's XO, Commander Conrad Grey, seemed unable to blink while he stared fixedly at the display. Aside from Willet, only the chief, the oldest, saltiest member of the crew, seemed less than completely bewildered. He just looked pissed off. And he always looked pissed off, in Harry's opinion, so what was to notice?

  "Is that the Leyte Gulf?" asked Harry, for want of anything better to say.

  "Aye," said Flemming. "And she's been well mounted."

  A seaman spoke up from a bank of workstations that lay beyond the periscope. "Flash traffic on Fleetnet, Captain Willet. Trident's CI with another data burst."

  "About fucking time," muttered Flemming.

  "Language, Chief," Willet scolded gently. "We have royalty present."

  "Oh, for fuck's sake!" Harry said, rolling his eyes.

  "Opinions, suggestions?" Willet asked, throwing the floor open to her officers and guest. "Clock's ticking. Chief Flemming, you care to guess why a museum piece would suddenly sail off a memory stick and do something as perverse as that?" She nodded toward the ethereal copy of the Leyte Gulf and the old cruiser.

  "No, ma'am," he answered. "I would not."

  "You figure it has anything to do with the mace strike, or whatever it was, a few minutes ago?"

  "Seems likely."

  "You think the Chinese pulled something tricky?"

  "No idea, Captain. Can't think of anyone else to blame, though."

  "You think we're in the shit?"

  "There's every chance in the world of that, ma'am."

  "I think so, too, Chief." She sighed.

  Everybody stared endlessly at the hologram as though they were trying to decipher a challenging puzzle. While they were thus engaged, Willet pulled her personal flexipad out of a breast pocket in her coveralls and tapped out a command. A panel of the data cube switched from a scrolling text readout to an old black-and-white two-dimensional photograph.

  "That looks just like the ship in the bloc," said Harry.

  "It is the ship in the bloc," replied a somber Flemming. "The USS Astoria. CA-Thirty-four. I've got her mounted at home in the billiards room. My Savo Island display. Along with the Vincennes, the Quincy, Chicago, and Canberra. That last one was ours," he added, looking straight at Harry. "HMAS Canberra. Sunk in Iron Bottom Sound at the Battle of Savo Island, ninth of August, nineteen forty-two."

  Nobody said anything in reply. Harry simply stared at the holobloc as though it might be booby-trapped. The naval personnel looked by turns confused, intrigued, and sick.

  "All right then," Willet said, sharply enough to snap everyone out of their daze. "Weapons!"

  "Yes, Captain!"

  "Give me firing solutions for the forward tubes focused on all non-task-force vessels. Do not, I repeat, do not arm the torpedoes. But full countermeasures are authorized.

  "Comms?"

  "Aye, Captain?"

  "Reopen a link to the Trident. When they have a spare second, I need to confer with Captain Halabi. Keep hailing our own ships and fleet command. Intel?"

  "Yes, ma'am."

  "Assets?"

  "We have links intact fleetwide, Captain," said Lieutenant Lohrey. "We're streaming from the drones, mast mounts, and topside Nemesis arrays. We've lost some airborne feed, and all the satellites."

  "Start farming it out, Amanda. When you have a clue, get back to me."

  The intel boss raised a finger, just like a child in class. "Captain? The Nagoya is missing, as well. There's no floating datum point, no debris of any kind. But fleetwide arrays logged signal deviance similar to the brownout incident, just prior to the neural event that seems to have taken out the surface elements."

  Willet clamped down on a flash of anger, "Well, that's just excellent," she said quie

  4

  USS HILLARY CLINTON, 2249 HOURS, 2 JUNE 1942

  "They're firing at us?" snorted Kolhammer.

  Before anyone could answer, the sound of distant sledgehammer blows rang through the bridge.

  "Jesus! They are shooting at us!" said Kolhammer. He started to shake his head, but a jag of pain stopped him cold. An ugly stain was settling into his shirt where he'd vomited a few moments earlier, but he paid it no heed. Commander Judge was doubled over and dry retching. Half the flag bridge crew was covered in their own bile and one or two had lost control of their bowels-if his sense of smell hadn't failed him.

  So much else had-even daylight, it seemed. A deep void had enveloped the task force, and something had sailed out of it to attack them. Arrhythmic flickers of fire and lightning lit the darkened sea surface in stuttering monochrome.

  His bridge was a disaster area. It hadn't taken a hit, but sailors lay everywhere. Some were passed out with their eyes open, putting out REMs like victims of a psy-war experiment. Others stood by their stations, their stiff, unnatural stance and glassy stares giving away how much effort that took. One man convulsed repeatedly in front of a large Silicon Graphics display until Commander Judge, composing himself for a moment, grabbed him by the shoulders and lowered him to the floor.

  The Zone Time readout seemed to have skipped forward ten minutes. Or they'd been unconscious for that amount of time. And how did night fall? If that's what happened. Another far-off hammer blow belled through the structure of the giant carrier.

  "Suffering Christ, is anyone still alive down in CIC?" Kolhammer shouted. Gray space bloomed in his vision, and he pressed both hands to his eyes. He had a terrible migraine, so that if he wanted to see someone clearly he had to tilt his head at an uncomfortable angle just to move them into the small part of his sight that wasn't affected. He wanted to curl into a ball, but instead he slowly rubbed his eyes.

  "If we can't raise them on shipnet, would someone who can walk a reasonably straight line care to go find out what's happening down there?" he asked more calmly. "And let's get someone in here to police up this mess. Commander, do we have a location on Captain Chandler?"

  "Making it happen," Judge croaked. He'd managed to stop heaving his guts out. "Last we knew, the captain was still on the flight deck, Admiral, with the catapult crew at number three."

  Judge interrogated a touch screen, his hands still shaking. "Biosensors place him topside, but unconscious, sir. He's still down there."

  "Send somebody to wake him up. He'll be really pissed off if he sleeps through an attack on his ship. What the hell is that anyway?" asked Kolhammer. "One of those Caliphate tubs. Those pieces of crap the Indonesians bought off the East Germans?"

  And Christ, how much do we miss those clowns, he thought to himself. Great days. Not like this clusterfuck.

  "Can't say yet, Admiral," said Judge, his head lolling a little as he caressed a touch screen. "Link's up to CIC, Admiral. And I've got a couple of medics heading for Captain Chandler now. Damage control reports we're taking hits, but the armor sheath is holding up well. Some penetration on C deck. We have casualties there."

  Kolhammer glanced out the window, worried about Chandler, although he had no chance of seeing the ship's captain a couple of hundred meters aft. The flight deck was littered with crew in different-colored vests, most of them laid out cold. The task force commander could just make out aircraft directors in blue and yellow, mixed in with handling officers wearing yellow on yellow. Some were completely motionless, others were stirring, and a few were even managing to rise to their knees. A landing signals officer in white lay prone in the center of the main runway.

  Through the effects of his migraine he could see a burning vessel some kilometers distant. Searching for a clearer view, he turned to face a big flatscreen that was displaying four feeds, all from low-light TV mast-cams distributed throughout the fleet. One window was devoted to a Frisbee-cam that remained in a static hover six thousan
d meters above the flag bridge. That screen offered the broadest view of the situation.

  By closing one eye and tilting his head, Kolhammer could see that the ships were moving erratically, none of them keeping station, their wakes carving and crossing through the warm tropical waters with no design or purpose that he could discern. The wreckage of a burning ship, a big one, was close to sinking. One of the British trimarans was circling the kill with obvious intent. And there, much closer, was their own would-be executioner. A squat, blocky-looking gray ship. Small, a destroyer, or maybe a frigate. And old, judging by the black smoke that was spewing from the funnel amidships. She was steaming erratically, too, but there seemed to be more design behind her movement. As much as a fifteen- or sixteen-hundred-tonne ship could move like a rat in a trap, that's exactly what she looked like. Jinking hard to port for a minute, laying on speed for the Clinton, heaving to then veering away. Fire jetted constantly from her three gun turrets, two fore and one aft.

  The Clinton's CI was screaming for attention, demanding autonomy and a Cooperative Battle Link with the other fleet Intelligences. But despite its insistence, very few human operators were filing damage reports or raising alarms. The ship seemed to be half asleep.

  Kolhammer turned to the screen that was carrying video from the Combat Information Center. Lieutenant Kirsty Brooks was weaving about in front of the cam, looking as if she'd been poleaxed. Feeling a small measure of control returning to his rebellious nerves, Kolhammer stood slowly and looked from Brooks to the scene outside his bridge. Despite his restricted vision he could tell-even without the aid of sophisticated electronics-that a battle was beginning. Guns hammered in the dark, speaking to each other with angry flashes of light. Goose bumps crawled up his forearms and neck.

  "What's going on, Lieutenant?" he asked as calmly as possible.

  Brooks shook her head, blanched, and vomited discreetly to one side. "We… uh… have the hostile on screen now, sir."

  Another window opened up. A hard, clear image filled it, of an old fossil-fuel-powered warship. As they watched, the ship's forward gun mount spoke, and a second later the same hammer blow sounded through the hull of the carrier.

  "Admiral," said Lieutenant Brooks from the screen in front of him. "Sir, we have multiple contacts throughout the body of the task force. Presumed hostile. Sensors indicate gunfire and some torpedo launches. Buggy readings, sir, we can't get a fix on weapon types, but these are hostile forces. Kandahar, Providence, and the Siranui have all taken fire. Leyte Gulf is critical. I'm afraid the Fearless is gone, sir. Destroyed. Trident's CI has sent a data burst, which we're breaking down now." She examined a screen off to her right for a moment. "Definitely hostile, sir. We're getting a significant volume of fire. Little Bill wants you to release the codes for a mace run and to engage Metal Storm and the laser packs."

  In his peripheral vision Kolhammer noticed a few men and women on the bridge quietly cursing and turning to each other. Some turned to the strip window, although the image on screen was far superior to anything the naked eye could make out. The little gray ship heaved over to present a broadside to the Clinton.

  "Admiral," said Brooks. "We have indications that that ship has torpedo capability. They may be trying to bracket us, sir."

  The fog in Kolhammer's mind began to clear rapidly as a cold wind blew through him.

  "Lieutenant Brooks!" he barked. "Guns free! Autonomy Level One. Initiate a fleetwide CBL."

  But it was too late.

  HMAS MORETON BAY, 2247 HOURS, 2 JUNE 1942

  Rachel Nguyen was running from Hell. She was naked and the breeze of her passage slipped over her body-no, over a six-year-old's body, burning the skin. Melting it. Flesh fell from her in long, sloughed-off lumps. The pain was excruciating. Searing and white. She was screaming as the road beneath her blistered feet jumped and rumbled and the air was torn by explosions. She was… her great-grandmother… in Vietnam during the war. A child fleeing an air strike called in on her village by a desperate platoon commander. Some long-dead boy from Dakota.

  She knew, in her dream, exactly what she was running from. It was all behind her, but she could still see burning huts and twisted corpses, some smoking and wrenched out of any shape you could think of as human. She could see all the dead pigs and chickens, soldiers tearing at each other, using their guns as clubs. She ran and screamed, away from a rupture in the thin membrane separating her world from Hell, away from the demons who had come through the rip and eaten her friends and family and spewed War all over the world. Demons in the bodies of Americans and Vietcong, the limbs and heads and torsos mixed and matched and sewn together by trolls.

  She ran but the road beneath her was moving, back toward the village, accelerating like a moving sidewalk of sand and gravel. She tried to run faster, but her legs were so small and thin. She tripped and the road came rushing at her face.

  There were no stones to bite into her cheeks. No sand or grit on which to choke. The road surface was smooth and cool. And sort of… wet.

  She gasped, pulling in a mouthful of air, as though she hadn't breathed in a very long time. Like when she was a kid and she had those stupid competitions with her brother Michael, to see who could swim the farthest without surfacing. He was such a dick sometimes.

  And he was gone now. Lost.

  Her thoughts were disordered. Confused. Michael was home in Sydney, not lost.

  In a rush it came to her. She had passed out on the table. Probably from exhaustion. Knocked the dregs of her coffee all over her notes. Oh, just great! How long had she been out? Not long or that sergeant, the one with the huge plate of sausages, he would have rushed over.

  She had a serious headache, though. She'd been out long enough for that. And God it's bad! Like a migraine. Worse even. Jeez, did I have an embolism or what? A stroke? And where is that guy? she thought, looking around, a little pissed off. Why didn't he help?

  She tried to stand, and three things happened. A brutal spike jagged through her head, her legs folded up, and a wave of nausea swept over her. She clamped her hand to her mouth as she dropped toward the floor, but it was no use. Everything came out under pressure, squirting through her fingers.

  Embarrassment, shock, and fear swept over her all at once. What happened? Maybe the Chinese, or the Rising Jihad, had hit them with something. A neutron bomb? A transsonic device?

  Not the latter, anyway. Not at sea.

  Cramps shot up her legs and she began to shiver uncontrollably, curling into a ball on the deck and dry heaving for nearly two minutes. For fuck's sake! she whimpered. What is this?

  Whatever it was, she tried to haul herself out into a passageway, where somebody might at least trip over her.

  Then, all at once, the shivering and the nausea passed. The headache remained-she was sure now it was a migraine-but the other effects, symptoms, whatever, were gone. As though someone had thrown a switch.

  Rachel lay, breathing slowly for a minute before climbing to her feet. The migraine had made her dizzy and she had to grab the table to help herself up, but it was just a screaming headache now. Nothing more. She was about to stagger off to sick bay when she heard the first shells detonating close by in the water.

  USS KANDAHAR, 2247 HOURS, 2 JUNE 1942

  Colonel Jones, sitting astride Hannon's chest, just had the man's arms locked down with his knees when he heard and felt the impact of a shell somewhere on the Kandahar. He would have sworn someone had hammered the decking just under his feet. He yelled at Chen to hold the lieutenant's mouth open while he fished in there trying to hook on to the tongue. Hannon had swallowed it during the blackout. He ignored the shrieking whine in his ears and the chisel banging deep into his frontal lobes. He bit down on the bile that threatened to come bursting up out of his mouth and he somehow kept up a reassuring conversation with Chen, who was close to bugging out.

  Another shell struck the Kandahar, more of a wrecking ball this time, throwing them all off-balance just as Jones muttered, "Gotcha,
" and snagged Hannon's tongue out with a slick pop. The marine stopped bucking beneath him and began to suck in great shuddering drafts of air. Jones flipped him over just before a mother lode of chewed-up burger and fries came out.

  "God damn!" yelled Chen, who got hosed.

  "Make sure he doesn't choke on that mess, son," Jones said as he clawed his way onto his feet. He knew for sure now that they were under attack. No idea by whom or with what, though. You had to figure it was some kind of neural disrupter, given the effects, but those prototypes weren't even out of the labs in the States. And the dinks were still ten years behind in development. Once you eliminated Beijing, however, what then? Ragheads didn't have the delivery platforms, and never would.

  The ship seemed to pitch beneath his boots like they'd run into a force-niner. But he knew that was his inner ear, because Chen's coffee rested undisturbed in its mug on the mess table. He fumbled for his flexipad, tried for a link to the bridge, and got nowhere. Same with the CIC, security detail, and the sick bay. Shipnet was unaffected-so there was no electromagnetic pulse-but nobody was answering. Probably all rolling around in their own puke.

  Another dense, metallic boom sounded somewhere nearby. The hell with this, thought Jones, gathering his composure and what he could of his balance. Somebody had to get on the stick or their families were all going to be getting a folded flag and a visit from the grief counselors.