John Birmingham - Weapons of choice

"It's a blessing we've even got the Yorktown at all," he said.

That seemed harsh. Don Lovelace was the XO of Fighting 3, the Yorktown's squadron of twenty-five portly but rugged F-4F Wildcats. Or he had been, till another pilot had screwed up his landing and jumped the barrier the first afternoon out of Pearl, crashing into the plane ahead and killing one of the most experienced pilots in the whole task force. The Yorktown's VF3 was less a squadron than a pickup team, thrown together at the last moment before the big game. They'd never flown together, and for some this would be their first time on a carrier. Lovelace was supposed to have whipped them into shape.

"It still would have been good having Lovelace." Black shrugged. "Zeros are gonna eat those boys up. Chew us all up, given a chance."

"Jimmy Thach will knock them into shape," Spruance said. "Or close enough anyway. We have to cut the cloth to suit our budget, Commander. Pearl performed miracles getting the Yorktown ready in three days. I know the pilots are green, and their planes are no match for the Japs, but that doesn't matter. We have to beat them anyway."

Their return journey had brought them back to the ship's island superstructure, which offered some shelter against the wind that was blowing across the deck. The rise and fall of the swell was also much less evident here. The time was coming up on 2245. They would blow tubes in a few minutes, and the working day would end for most of the crew. Black was already dead tired. He had eaten breakfast at 0350.

In a few days, he knew, he'd just be dead. Or so exhausted as made no difference.

He wondered how Spruance did it. How he kept running like a windup toy, seemingly capable of absorbing every piece of minutiae and fitting it into his grand battle scheme. They'd been discussing the relative merits of the Zero and the Wildcat, massaging the comparisons, the Zero's greater range and maneuverability, the Wildcat's higher ceiling, the Zero's lack of armor, the Wildcat's steel plating and self-sealing fuel tanks. The admiral turned to him now, a rare, soft smile playing across his thin, severe features.

"Still worried that they might sucker punch us again at Pearl, Commander?"

This time it was Black who was quiet for a few seconds. At a special briefing in Spruance's cabin, earlier that day, he had asked the admiral what would happen if the Japs bypassed Midway and made straight for Hawaii, which lay open and defenseless. Spruance had stared at him for a full half minute before offering his reply-that he hoped they would not.

Black had been startled by that reply-and more than a little disturbed. Unless Spruance knew something his subordinates did not, he was relying heavily on faith-which Black considered a poor basis for strategic planning.

Now the admiral seemed on the verge of saying something more when an earsplitting crack knocked them both to the deck and left them gasping for breath. Black felt as though he'd been nailed by a jab to the guts.

The gusting wind that had been tugging at their clothes died down. It was curious, though-it didn't just drop off. It stopped dead. It almost seemed to Black as if it was "different air." That didn't make sense, he knew, but he couldn't shake the feeling. It smelled and tasted different, too; vaguely familiar in a way, earthier, heavier. Like air in the Tropics, which always seemed laden with the weight of rot and genesis.

The night had been very dark, with low cloud cover, no starlight, and banks of dense fog. Even so, Black had the distinct impression of being wrapped, however briefly, in a denser, closer form of darkness. A rush of unsettling, half-formed, almost preconscious abstractions clawed at him. He had the sensation of being trapped in a tight, closed space, what he imagined it would feel like to be stuck in a downed plane as it sank in thousands of fathoms of black water.

Then they both became aware of a rising clamor of shouts and cries, coming from above. Lookouts in the superstructure, up on Vulture's Row, were screaming and gesturing wildly down to the sea on the starboard side.

"I think somebody's gone overboard," coughed Black, still struggling for breath.

"Come on," Spruance said, with some difficulty.

They hurried forward, around the base of the island and the antiaircraft mounts, only to be confronted by a sight that stopped them cold.

"Holy shit," said Black.

There, less than a hundred yards away, lay a ship of some sort. A foreign vessel for sure, completely alien, its bow was angled away from the Enterprise, opening up a gap as they plowed through the foaming breakers. She was lit well enough that they could make out her strange lines. The decks of the vessel were mostly clear. There was an island of sorts, but it was located squarely in the center of what would have been the runway. It was raked back, like a shark's fin, with no hard edges visible anywhere on its surface. Only one line of windows was visible, within which he could make out strange glowing colors and lights, but no people.

As his mind adjusted to the outrage, he began to take in more detail. The forward decks seemed to be pockmarked with the outlines of elevators, but they were ridiculously small, each no more than a few yards across. There was one small gun emplacement, a ludicrous-looking little cannon, with the same strange, raked contours as the bridge. As the angle of divergence increased and the warship pulled away from them, Spruance pointed to the outline of what had to be an aircraft elevator down toward the stern. But it made no sense. Any plane attempting to take off there would crash into the bizarre-looking island on the vessel's centerline.

"Oh, Lord," muttered Spruance, as the ship peeled away at nearly thirty degrees now, exposing her stern to their gaze. A Japanese ensign flew there. Not a Rising Sun, to be sure, but a red circle on a field of white.

The name printed beneath read SIRANUI, Japanese for "unknown fires," if Black recalled correctly. He was aware of a Kagero-class destroyer just so named, which had been launched in June 1938. This thing, however, which was easily more than half the length of the Enterprise, was no Kagero-class bucket. It looked like something out of Buck Rogers.

"What the hell is that thing?" asked Black, in the tone of voice he might have used if he'd seen a large, two-headed dog.

"I'm not sure what it is," Spruance replied, regaining his composure, "but I know who it is. Better put on your Sunday best, Commander. I think our guests have arrived early."

As the mystery ship quietly slipped into the night, a Klaxon aboard the Enterprise sounded the alarm.

And then, the horizon exploded.

Suddenly they were beset by madness on all sides. To starboard, the eerie Nipponese ghost ship receded into darkness. To port, there was a volcanic eruption about ten miles distant. It was a few seconds before the thunder reached their ears, but they could see clearly enough what was happening as the light of the explosion was trapped between a heaving sea and the thick, scudding clouds that pressed down from above.

Black shook his head, determined to remain calm. But as his eyes darted to and fro across the surface of the ocean, his mind was insulted by the monstrous visions they encountered there.

In the flat, guttering light of the distant inferno Black could see more enemy vessels, none that he recognized, most of them freakish cousins to the thing that had just peeled away from the Enterprise. There was one ship-maybe a thousand yards distant-well, he simply refused to believe his own eyes. As it crested a long rolling line of swell he could have sworn the thing had two, maybe even three hulls. It was difficult to be sure under these conditions, but he simply could not shake the afterimage. It was either a ship with three hulls, or three ships somehow joined and operating in perfect harmony.