John Birmingham - Weapons of choice

And randomly scattered on the crucible of the seas all around them were more products of the same Stygian foundry. Over there, he was certain, there was another double-hulled monstrosity, bursting through a black wall of water. To the north lay more ships like the beast that had sidled up to them before. And there, way off the port bow, were two flattops, both of them large enough to be fleet carriers. One was a real behemoth.

"Commander!"

Black was shocked out of his reverie by the harsh call.

"We've got work to do, Commander," Spruance barked. "A hell of a job, too, unless you want your grandchildren eating raw fish and rice balls."

Bells rang and Klaxons blared. Thousands of feet hammered on steel plating as men rushed to their stations on nearly two dozen warships.

The first gun to fire was a 20mm Oerlikon on the Portland. It pumped a snaking line of tracer in exactly the wrong direction. Forty-millimeter Bofors, pom-poms, and dozens of five-inch batteries soon joined it, until a whole quadrant of the sky seethed with gunfire.

Spruance and Black raced up to the bridge, tugging on helmets and vests, as the big guns of the Midway Task Force began to boom. Huge muzzle flashes from eight-inch batteries lit up the night with a chaotic, strobe effect. The bridge was in an uproar with a dozen different voices calling out reports, barking questions, and demanding answers where-as yet-there were none.

"Get the bombers away, as quickly as possible," Spruance ordered.

"VB-six is ready to roll, sir."

"Coming around to two-two-three."

The plating beneath their feet began to pitch as the big carrier swung into the wind. Black could only hope that none of their destroyer escorts would be run down by the unexpected course correction. This is insane, he thought, dogfighting with twenty-thousand-ton ships. He braced himself against a chart table in a corner of the bridge, and tried to make sense of the chaos around them. There were hundreds of guns firing without any sort of coordination. They were going to start destroying their own ships very quickly if that went on.

As soon as the thought occurred to him, it happened. The cruiser New Orleans attempted a ragged broadside at that spectral Japanese ship that had just "appeared" to starboard, a few minutes earlier. The volley completely missed its target, but at least two shells slammed into an American destroyer a few hundred yards beyond. Black cursed as the little ship exploded in flames.

"We're going to need better gunnery control," he yelled at Spruance. "I'll get on it."

The admiral turned away from the sailor he had been addressing and nodded brusquely. Black charged back out of the bridge, heading for the radio room.

USS HAMMAN, TASK FORCE SEVENTEEN, 2243 HOURS, 2 JUNE 1942

The Sims-class destroyer Hamman was nearly swamped by the wave that surged out from the giant ship that suddenly appeared eighty yards away, as if from nowhere. The men on the bridge, who had all gasped at her arrival, now groaned like passengers on a roller coaster as their vessel yawed over and threatened to roll down the face of the wave. As the Hamman finally swung back through the pendulum to right herself, the officer of the watch, Lieutenant (junior grade) Veni Armanno, was tossed bodily through the air and into the solid casing that housed the ship's compass, dislocating his shoulder. He swore through the tornado of pain that blew through his upper body, and wrestled himself back to his feet with his one good hand.

"You all right, sir?" someone asked.

"Doesn't matter," he said. "Sound to general quarters. Get the captain up here now. Radio the Yorktown and find out what's happening."

"Lieutenant," called out a petty officer from the radio shack. "We've just had a message from the Enterprise, sir. It's the Japs…"

Armanno couldn't make out the next words. They were lost in the volly of curses from the bridge crew.

"Put a sock in it!" he said loudly.

Gesturing insistently, the petty officer announced an order that had come from task force command.

"We're to engage the enemy, sir."

"Captain True's been injured sir," reported another seaman. "Lieutenant Earls is on his way."

Wish he'd get here, thought Armanno. "Get me the gunnery officer," he ordered. "We haven't got much, but let's give her everything we do have. Helm, put another four hundred yards between that thing and us. We'll stick some torpedoes into her, see how she likes that."

The deck began to tilt again as the destroyer came around on her new heading, plunging into a hectic, crosshatched swell. Armanno felt dizzy with the pain in his shoulder. He desperately wanted to crawl outside and prop himself up against a bulkhead until the ship's surgeon could tend to him, but the vast, iron mountain of the enemy ship-Where in hell did it come from-nailed him in place.

"Guns ready, sir."

Armanno didn't hesitate.

"Fire!"

All four of the ship's five-inch mounts roared as one. Good work, thought Armanno in a distant, abstract way.

Three blooms of dirty fire blossomed on the sheer steel wall of the target. One dud, Armanno thought as he heard the front and rear 20mm cannon open up, painting the walls of that towering fortress with whipping lines of tracer. A dazzling shower of sparks fell to the sea like fireflies, marking the impact of the tracers.

The men around him cheered as another brace of five-inch shells screamed across the short distance between them. All four exploded this time. Armanno was certain he could hear the steel rain of shrapnel on the Hamman's plating. He could feel his muscles tensing as he urged the ship's boilers to give them more steam. He needed to get far enough away to use the torpedo tubes. Their target had to be a Jap carrier, probably the Akagi, she was so damn big.

How the hell did she get here?

Doesn't matter, he told himself. They'd snuck up on them again. Just like at Pearl. But this time they'd been stupid enough to get into a street brawl with Veni Armanno. He might have grown up on an olive grove outside Santa Monica, but his blood was still Sicilian, and it boiled as quickly as anyone's from the old country.

"Pour it, boys!" he yelled into the speaker tube connecting the bridge to gunnery control. "Give 'em hell. Just a little bit longer and we'll be able to stick a few fish up Tojo's ass."

Armanno turned back to the fantastic scene that lay outside the blast windows, just as another salvo ripped into the side of the enemy carrier. It was like riding out a hurricane, minus the wind and rain. The whole of the ocean was lit with lightning flashes as hundreds of guns hammered at the Japs. Thunder rolled over them constantly, and the sea was thick with erupting geysers of foam and water, illuminated from within by the explosions that raised them.

"Lookit that fuggin' thing would you," yelled a voice thickened by years of smoking.

Armanno grabbed a pair of binoculars and followed the seaman's pointing finger. The world was even more confused and unstable when viewed through the glasses. They emphasized every movement of the violently pitching destroyer. Still, he managed to catch a few short glimpses of a ship that reminded him of a giant manta ray slipping across the surface of the ocean. It was hard to tell, being thrown about so much, but there didn't appear to be any guns on the deck. He wedged in tighter against the corner of the bridge and tried to keep the sleek, alien shape steady within the field of the glasses. The twinned lens circles shuddered as the Hamman's two forward turrets coughed long spears of flame and smoke into the night again.

The Japs weren't firing at all, at least not that he could make out.

"What the hell is this?" Armanno asked himself.

"Lieutenant, we're coming up on range for the torpedo launch."