Джон Шеттлер - Sea of Fire

Chief Engineer Ryota Oshiro was a pragmatic workman with a penchant for cleanliness and order. He kept his station that way, and prowled the ship’s engineering plants like a schoolmaster, imposing his rigid standard of excellence on all work completed. When the entire ship’s electrical systems went down, he was ceaseless in restoring order, for every light shined with the borrowed light of his energy, and he kept things running with unfailing dedication to his craft—much to the chagrin of the section crews that had to serve under him. Well done was never good enough for Oshiro. It was either done right, with excellence, or it was done again until that standard was achieved.

Lieutenant Michi Ikida was the ships Navigator. A quiet man, he was always lost in his maps and charts, and often reported directly to Chief Oshiro on plotted courses so the engineering section could gauge probable fuel usage and engine output requirements for the mission. Otherwise he kept to himself, and a few friends he had below decks with the Warrant Officers.

Lastly there was Katsu Kimura, the sturdy Sergeant in charge of ship’s security. Far from the stern and rock like aspect of a man like Sergeant Troyak, KK was an amiable man, liked by everyone on the ship. He had a well-developed sense of humor that often led him into ill-considered pranks. But when it came to managing the Marine contingent, he was all business, all brawn, and the men respected and relied on him, looking up to him as the leader he was.

Assuming this was all true, everyone there had living ancestors at large in this world now. That was the most unsettling thing to think about. Somewhere, out there, were their grandfathers or great grandfathers for the younger crew, though with no one over the age of 33, their parents would have been born well after the war ended. So there was no chance any of them would ever meet their father or mother here as a young man or woman, but the famous “Grandfather Paradox” was alive and well in their minds. For now, they all had a bigger fish to fry here as they gathered around the wardroom conference table—what were they going to do?

In 2021 Japan had healed from the convulsions of WWII, coming to terms with what had happened on one level, whitewashing it on another, and with vast segments of Japanese society simply forgetting it all in the neon glow of cell phones and digital wonders. For some it was all a regrettable skeleton in the history of their nation, not thought of any more than an American citizen might bother themselves with dark memories of Wounded Knee, the Trail Of Tears, and the genocidal treatment meted out to native Indians, or the depravity that was inherent in institutional slavery that was a part of American history until the mid 1860s.

So it was not surprising that official recounting of the history of WWII was presented in softened language, where the Rape of Nanking was referred to as “an incident which led to the killing of many Chinese.” Most accounts of the war were rather dry and emotionless. There were no war heroes to be elevated, no sense of nationalism, no glorification of the military. History books in Japan that crewmen on the Takami had carried around with them in school were not patriotic narratives. For some, the war was seen as a disastrous mistake, and one that was never fully repented. For others it was a war of liberation against Western Imperialism. It was not unusual then, that a cross section of the crew on Takami would find a fairly wide range of opinions on the war.

But now these men and women were in that war, and they could not escape the inexorable gravity of those momentous days that would compel them to a decision on what they should do about it. Because they could do something about it with the ship beneath their feet. It was not a question of whether or not they could bring themselves to act, but one of how they should act, and it would not be an easy decision.

“Now we can sit out here on the edge of things for only so long,” said the Captain. “This Imamura fellow down in sick bay will be wanting us to weigh anchor at Balikpapan tomorrow, and the sight of this ship easing into the harbor is going to roll a few eyes, that’s for sure.”

“We can fly him over,” said Fukada. “Ashfall here is negligible, and the helo can get him over there easily enough with Honjo’s men as a nice little escort.”

“And they will roll eyes at that as well,” said the Captain. At 33, he was the oldest man on the ship, coming to his new post here that very year, for Takami was commissioned in February of 2021. “What if someone panics and opens fire on the helo?”

“We can radio ahead,” Fukada suggested. “Tell them we’ve rescued their General Imamura, and that he will be flying in on a very special aircraft. Impress upon them that no one is to fire at this aircraft. We can even give them the exact ETA at Balikpapan.”

“I suppose that might work,” said Captain Harada. “Now we get to the deeper question in all of this. Is he their General Imamura, or ours as well?”

There was a silence as the other officers digested that.

“You’re asking what side we’re on?” said Fukada.

“Correct. I don’t want to get technical here and cite Article 9 of the Constitution, but this is something we’ll have to decide, and soon. We have no way of knowing if we’ll ever get back to our day… Hell, we still don’t even know how this happened.”

“The volcano,” said Chief Engineer Oshiro sullenly. “Remember that report we got on the Russians up south of the Kuriles when the other one erupted?”

“You mean the Demon Volcano on Iturup Island?” said Fukada,

“Right. That was just three days ago, and we got that SITREP yesterday indicating the Russian flagship and two other ships went down in that eruption. Now this one goes off, and look what happened here to us.”

“You’re suggesting the same thing happened to the Russians?”

Oshiro scratched his head. “Well, it might explain the other SIGINT traffic we’ve picked up on shortwave.” He looked at Ensign Hiroko Shiota, the other woman on the bridge at communications. At only 20 years, she had just made the ranks of Santo Kaii, technically a 3rd Lieutenant, or a position the Navy might call an Ensign until she made 2nd LT.

“Ensign, what is he talking about?” Captain Harada folded his arms, waiting. He had not been informed of any new message traffic.

“I received a coded signal an hour ago sir,” said Shiota. “It didn’t make any sense, until I realized it must have been transmitted in the Japanese Naval Code of this era. So I programmed that into the computers, and—”

“You programmed the entire Japanese Naval Code into our SIGINT dBase?”

“Yes sir. It only took a couple hours. I was going to bring you the results when this meeting was called.”

“She was still working on the damn thing in the officer’s mess,” said Chief Engineer Oshiro. “I got curious.”

“I see… Well Ensign, what does this message say?”

“Ship movement orders for a task force forming in the Sea of Japan. I think it has to do with the Russians sir.”

“The Russians?”

“Sir… I’ve been listening on other radio traffic concerning combat operations underway in the North Pacific. It was mixed in with all the other traffic, but this new code caught my attention. From what I can make of it, that theater is hot now—a shooting war, and there were at least two intercepts referring to the use of naval rockets.”

“Naval Rockets?”

“Aye sir. That was the exact phrase used. Ships were to be alert to the usage of enemy naval rockets, and screen capital ships accordingly.”

“That was in the message stream?”