Taylor Anderson - Iron Gray Sea

The Sea of Jaapan

February 2, 1944

The sky was corroded lead, cold and gray with splotches of white. It was lighter in the east, where the sun lingered behind the heavy blanket of cloud, but there was no chance it would make an appearance that day. Beneath the sky the sea roiled, a darker, more tempestuous reflection, and alone upon it-in all the world, it seemed- Mizuki Maru shouldered her way through the unkind swells. She was an old ship, smallish, and battered by a lifetime of toil. She’d done honorable service and carried honest freight for most of her many years, but her past few voyages had been of a different sort. She’d been engaged in carrying men-worn, beaten, wretched men-to the last place on earth they could possibly want to go.

If she’d had a soul, it would have broken and fled her to escape the suffering and misery confined within her sad, rusty hull. Particularly after the last voyage. It had been the worst of all. Only a few dozen of the more than five hundred prisoners of war she’d carried-Malays, Aussies, Dutch, Brits, and Americans-had ultimately survived, and it wasn’t because they were supposed to. At some point she’d vanished from the world where her Japanese masters made her carry such dreadful cargo and arrived on a world very much the same but entirely, fundamentally different. It was no less savage, however, and her crew-and the crew of the destroyer Hidoiame, which escorted her and a war-weary oiler-had murdered as many of her “cargo” as they possibly could. They’d then abandoned Mizuki Maru, damaged and sinking. Or so they thought.

That might’ve been the end of Mizuki Maru if that was all they’d done, but during the bloodthirsty massacre of her prisoners they’d taken ashore, the confused, possibly even frightened Japanese sailors also slaughtered the… people… of a small nearby village. They hadn’t been human, but they had been people, and, more important for Mizuki Maru, they’d been under the protection of a human Japanese man who’d finally realized that regardless of flags and emperors, his honor would no longer allow him to sit idly by.

Prodded by this atrocity against people who’d become his own, “Lord” Commander Sato Okada, formerly of the Japanese Imperial Navy and the mighty battle cruiser Amagi, and now Seii Taishogun of the newly established Shogunate of Yokohama, Jaapan, finally joined the human/Lemurian alliance that had destroyed his old ship. Now he lived for little more than revenge against those who’d murdered his “new” people, and to achieve it, he had to destroy others of his own race, his nation-but not his people anymore. For this, finally, he was prepared. At long last, there was no conflict, no sense of frustrated loyalty. His purpose was clear once more, as simple and pure as the cherry blossoms he would never see again. He and his mixed crew, Japanese and Lemurian “samurai” and the scattering of “American” Navy Lemurians, were dedicated to the common purpose of destroying Hidoiame and her oiler, and killing or bringing justice to everyone aboard them.

If Mizuki Maru had a soul, and it could find her where she’d gone across whatever gulf separated her from the world she knew, it would be at peace.

“Con-taact!” shouted the Lemurian bridge talker standing behind Okada, near the aft bulkhead. The striped, furry ’Cat wore headphones fitted awkwardly to his head, and a wiring harness trailed behind him. “Range, one fi’ seero seero!”

A chill swept down Sato Okada’s spine. That close? It can’t be the enemy! “ Bearing!” he snapped.

“Two two seero!”

Okada took a calming breath. There was no way his keen-eyed Lemurian lookouts would let them pass Hidoiame that close aboard. He strode to the port bridgewing and raised his binoculars, facing aft. Fish! he concluded at last as a long, dark object rose into view, then vanished behind a swell. Another of the giant… wrongful fish of this world, he thought. A spume of atomized spray burst skyward, joined by others, and he focused more carefully. A pack-pod? — of monstrous, air-breathing fish like none he’d seen before moved through the sea just like whales would have done-if there were whales. These had some kind of bony-finned, translucent sail protruding from their backs like epic swordfish, and he wondered briefly what it was for. He grunted. So many wonders he would love to explore someday, but they couldn’t distract him now. First, he had to attend to the far bigger business of revenge.

“We will reduce speed in case there are more of those creatures about,” he said brusquely. “We are already ahead of schedule. We will not be late for our ‘reunion,’” he added grimly.

“Ay, Lord,” cried the Lemurian helmsman. He was a “Jap ’Cat” to the “Amer-i-caan,” or “proper” Navy ’Cats aboard, who were happy to address Okada as Cap-i-taan, but the Japanese humans and Lemurians called him Lord. The engine room telegraph rang up two-thirds, and more bells rang as the dial swung in reply to the handle, while Okada slowly paced the bridge.

He’d arranged a meeting with the enemy destroyer, and, more specifically, her murderous Captain Kurita. Okada’s radio operator had been broadcasting in panicky distress ever since they entered these seas, claiming his ship was Junyo Maru — yet another vessel transported to this place. Kurita had finally risen to the bait and ordered them to cease their bleating. Once communications were established, they’d lured Kurita to a rendezvous with promises of food, supplies, parts, and ammunition. Mizuki Maru already resembled Junyo Maru in most respects, but her “mad cook,” who alone had defected with his ship, had recently seen Junyo Maru. His suggestions regarding color and the like were employed during Mizuki Maru ’s refit in the Maa-ni-la shipyards.

In addition to altering her appearance, she’d been armed with some of Amagi ’s salvaged secondary armaments that had been quickly shipped in from Baalkpan. A few of the guns showed, which was not unusual and should further allay any suspicions about her identity. But other weapons were hidden, and Okada hoped they’d come as a very unexpected surprise to the far more capable ship he considered his prey.

He contemplated Hidoiame for a moment. She was the twentieth-and last-of the Kagero class, commissioned in early 1941 as a Type A “Fleet” destroyer. He was familiar with her original specifications and had seen the ship herself before the Old War began. She was about 390 feet long, 35 feet wide, and displaced almost exactly twice as much as the overage USS Walker, the flagship of the “American” fleet on this world. She also carried twice the crew, and could probably make thirty-five knots. Again according to the almost pathetically reticent cook, however, Hidoiame had undergone alterations as the nature of the Old War evolved. She still carried twin-mounted 127 mm dual-purpose guns in turrets fore and aft, but he insisted that one aft-mounted turret had been replaced by another twin, 25 mm mount to augment her antiaircraft batteries, which brought the total number of twenty-fives to twenty-eight. As far as he knew, she didn’t have radar, but also admitted he didn’t really know what radar was. He was a cook.

She still carried a four-tube torpedo mount amidships, with four reloads, but her antisubmarine warfare (ASW) suite had been updated with the addition of improved sonar and more depth charges. Apparently, she’d sacrificed a third of her main surface battery to become more formidable against air and undersea targets, but those same antiair weapons would be devastating at the range Okada needed to achieve. He considered his main battery Hidoiame ’s equal, but radar or not, he had no integrated fire control of any sort, so he had to get close-and he had only four 25 mm mounts to a side. The way he saw it, he had to get his ship within knife-fighting range, and savage Hidoiame in the opening moments while he had the element of surprise. If at any time during his approach Kurita decided Mizuki Maru was anything other than what she claimed-or, worse, somehow recognized her-she and all aboard her were doomed.