Джон Шеттлер: Sea of Fire

Dear Readers,

This is the alternate history of the war in the Pacific, extracted from many volumes of the long Kirov Series and re-edited into one continuous narrative. The first 45 chapters of this history were presented in Volume I, Roll of Thunder , and this picks up right after the eruption of Krakatoa and the surprising new visitor it blew through the cracks in time.

Volume II for the Pacific War now continues with the story concerning JS Takami , the Battle of the Coral Sea, Halsey’s raid on the Marshalls, Japanese Operation FS and the landings on Fiji, the Battle of the Koro Sea, US Landing at Suva Bay, Karpov’s Landings on Sakhalin Island, and then the battle between Kirov and an unexpected challenger in the Sea of Okhotsk. Admiral Hara’s Indian Ocean Raid and the action against Somerville’s British Far East Fleet concludes this volume. There was then a huge gap of 66 chapters where I devoted most of the main series action to PQ-17, Rommel in North Africa, the fighting in Spain and Algeria, the plan to assassinate Sergei Kirov, Fall Blau on the east front, and the drive on Volgograd which took us to the end of 1943.

So this catchup on the Pacific action arrives in a timely manner, because I intend to continue with the Pacific War in the next regular series volume, 1943 . That entire novel is devoted to action on that front, and take up right where this volume concludes. With Fedorov and Karpov forging a new Alliance, Kirov moves south into the heat of the intense carrier duels between Halsey and the Kido Butai.

NeitherPavel Kamenski nor Anton Fedorov were at hand on the bridge of Takami that day to deftly explain what had just happened. If they had been there they would have said that the incredible power of that eruption must have ruptured the time continuum yet again, and that Takami was just in the wrong place at the wrong time in 2021 when it rounded Cape Merak and started into the Java Sea. The ship had been on a small international maritime patrol with the Australian Frigate Anzac out of Darwin. They escorted the LHD Canberra back to Darwin, conducted brief maneuvers in the Timor sea for ASW training, and then Anzac departed, also returning to Darwin.

Rising tensions with the action over Taiwan and the sharp engagement in the Pacific involving the US 7th Fleet had prompted the Allies to mount small security patrols like this with local assets in various theaters of the Pacific Region, and Takami had been stationed at Singapore. When Japanese fighters got pulled into the engagement off Hokkaido, tensions rose considerably. Being Japan’s newest and most capable Aegis Fleet Defense Destroyer, Takami should be home now, yet caught overseas when hostilities began, the ship was ordered to return to Singapore to form the heart of a new task force there. They skirted the southern coast of Java, transiting the Sunda Strait before it all happened. They simply sailed right out of the world they were born to, and would never be seen there again. Kamenski might have called it a gopher hole, but it was more like a sink hole in time, or a temporal fissure caused by that eruption in 1942.

Perhaps it was just happenstance that Takami sailed right through that fissure, which came and went, sometimes there, sometimes not. It may have required the ship to be at just the right angle and alignment, at just the right location and at an exact speed to work its magic that day, much like the strange alignment of another similar fissure along the stairwell at Ilanskiy. No one could really explain it, but there it was, and that sink hole swallowed the ship whole, dragging it inexorably back towards the source of that fissure, the detonation of Krakatoa in 1942.

The tension on the bridge was very thick, as heavy as the night around them, and as threatening as the low growl of the beast that had blasted its way up from the depths of the earth. Captain Harada could simply not make sense of what he was hearing, though he was grateful that Chief Engineer Oshiro had finally rebooted the ship’s systems, and they were fully active now. All vital stations were manned and ready, Sensors, CIC, Damage Control, the bridge crew alert, if somewhat edgy.

Lieutenant Fukada was standing very near the Captain’s chair now, and the two men were discussing something in low, hushed tones.

“Once we got systems up, SPY had contacts on every heading. There must be nearly 100 ships out here, most down near Jakarta and along the north Java coast.”

“There wasn’t that must sea traffic before that volcano blew its top. What’s the story here?” The Captain seemed very flustered. He liked things all lined up, every shift well assigned, every eventuality contemplated and prepared for, but this was a situation that no one on that ship could have ever expected.

“Could be search and rescue operations underway down there,” said his XO. That coastal area would have been hit very hard by the tsunami. Shipping could have been coming in while we were down and dark.”

“What about submarine threats?”

“Too much subterranean noise. It’s just loud as hell with that eruption under way. No way I can put Nakano on that station with a headset, good as he is. We’ll have to rely on the computers sorting the signals out.”

They had moved above a group of low lying islands north of Jakarta, once called Batavia, and the devastation they saw there was complete. The tsunami had been high enough to sweep completely over those islands, and they were little more than barren specks in the sea now, with every sign of life gone. With radar back up, they could easily see and avoid other ships in the vicinity, and the Captain put on some speed, steering 060 northeast towards Borneo. He was looking for open sea, trying to get out from under that ashfall, but it remained thick enough to preclude any thought of air operations with the single SH-60K helo aboard.

What bothered him most, however, was the discussion he had with the General they had fished out of the sea. Nothing the man said seemed to make any sense. Who was this man? He looked as though he had been pulled right out of the last war, uniform and all. Once things settled down, he confided his uncertainty to Fukada.

“I’m not sure what to make of our senior survivor,” said the Captain. “He says he’s commander of the 16th Army out here. Ever hear of that?”

“We’ve got five Armies,” said Fukada, “and we don’t number them. They just have regional names.”

“He was talking about troops from our 2nd Division being on Java.”

“Java? That division is in the Northern Army, stationed up on Hokkaido.”

“Right… Camp Asahikawa. I have friends there.”

“I think we’ve got a 16th Mech Infantry Regiment in the 4th Division,” said Fukada, “but there’s no way it would ever be on Java. Maybe this fellow is playing games?” Fukada folded his arms.

“He sure sounded convincing. All he could talk about was getting field reports from forward deployed units, arranging reinforcements from Singapore, as if some kind of big operation was underway down here.”