Harry Turtledove - End of the Beginning

“The Americans are moving more or less along the path we anticipated,” Genda went on. “A sampan just east of the ones the Yankees have been attacking spotted their ships and broke radio silence to deliver the warning. The signal cut off abruptly before the message was completed.”

Saburo Shindo knew what that meant. The Yankees had spotted the sampan or traced the signal. Some good men, some brave men, were dead. Yasukuni Shrine held some new spirits.

“It appears the U.S. fleet may be somewhat larger than we expected,” Commander Fuchida said. “We shall engage it even so, of course. The more damage we do to it, the harder the time the Americans will have landing on Oahu. Banzai for the Emperor!”

“Banzai! Banzai!” The cry filled the briefing room. Shindo joined it.

“Oahu has received the sampan’s signal,” Genda said. “Mitsubishi G4Ms are airborne, and will assist us in our attack on U.S. forces.”

More Banzai! s rang out. Shindo joined those, too, though less wholeheartedly. The G4M was fast for a bomber, and could carry a large load a long way. There its virtues ended. It was gruesomely vulnerable to enemy fighters; with gallows humor, G4M pilots called their plane the one-shot lighter for the ease with which it caught fire. And a good deal of combat had proved high-level bombers had to be lucky to hit ships moving far below. Some of the G4Ms doubtless would carry torpedoes, but their pilots didn’t have the practice carrier-based B5N2 fliers got.

“Range to our targets is about three hundred kilometers,” Fuchida said. “We want to strike as fast as we can, before they are fully prepared.”

“Suggestion, sir!” Shindo’s hand shot into the air.

“Yes, Lieutenant?” Fuchida said.

“We ought to fly a dogleg to the east or west before proceeding against the enemy,” Shindo said. “That way, he won’t be able to follow the reciprocal of our course back to the ship, whether he picks us up visually or with his fancy electronics.”

The idea seemed to take Fuchida by surprise. He talked with Genda in voices too low for Shindo to make out what they were saying. Then, with some reluctance, he shook his head. “If we had worked this out with Shokaku beforehand, it would be a good ploy. But we can’t break radio silence to discuss it, and we can’t have our planes arriving over the target after hers. A coordinated attack is vital.”

“Yes, sir.” Shindo wished he’d thought of it sooner, but he could see that Fuchida’s reply made at least some sense.

Genda added, “Even if the Americans get through, I believe our combat air patrol should be able to handle them. Their torpedo bombers are waddling death traps, and we will be more alert for their dive bombers.”

Last time, Akagi had been damaged, Zuikaku badly damaged. Shindo hoped Genda wasn’t being too optimistic. But the powers that be weren’t wrong when they said a quick, hard blow would serve Japan best.

“I’ll be with you,” Fuchida said. “Remember-carriers first. Everything else is an afterthought. Strike hard, for the Emperor’s sake. Banzai!”

“Banzai!” Shindo shouted along with the rest of the fliers. “Banzai!”

A SCOWLING REGULAR NAVY LIEUTENANT COMMANDER PROWLED the front of the Bunker Hill ’s briefing room. He sipped from, of all things, a glass of milk as he paced. No one laughed at him. It soothed his ulcer, which he’d got perhaps not least from contemplating the idea of a fleet carrier full of Reserve pilots.

“The Japs know we’re here,” he said without preamble. “One of their damn little picket boats got off a signal before we sank her. Odds are good we’ll be seeing bandits before too long. They’ll get their strike in on us before we can hit them. That means we probably have to take a punch and then knock them cold. Are you up for it, gentlemen?”

“Yes, sir!” Joe Crosetti’s hungry howl was one among many. He’d been waiting for this day more than a year and a half, since December 7, 1941. Now the Japs seemed likely to be within arm’s reach, or at least within Hellcat’s reach-at last. The urge to go out and hit them all but overwhelmed him.

After another swig from that glass of milk, the briefing officer said, “Well, you’d better be. Your aircraft have cost Uncle Sam a nice piece of change. So has your training, such as it is.” He had a long nose, excellent for looking down. “Add in whatever you happen to be worth and it comes to quite a sum. Try to bring it back-unless you find a good reason not to, of course.”

That last sobering sentence reminded Joe this wasn’t a game. They were playing for keeps, and there might be reasons not to come home. He refused to worry about it. He didn’t think it would, or could, happen to him.

“Questions?” the briefing officer asked.

Nobody said anything for a little while. All Joe wanted to know was, Where are the Japs? The briefing office couldn’t tell him that, not yet. By the looks on the other fliers’ faces, they felt the same way. Then someone asked, “Sir, what do we do if we run into enemy planes on the way to their ships?”

That was a good question. Attacking the Japanese aircraft along the way might make it harder for the Japs to strike the U.S. carriers here, but it would also lessen the Americans’ chances of knocking out the enemy carriers. The briefing officer frowned. “You’ll have to use your best judgment on that, gentlemen. If you think you can hurt them, do it. If you think you’ll have a better shot at their carriers by avoiding contact, do that.”

Joe turned to Orson Sharp and whispered, “Whatever we do, we get the credit if it works out and the blame if it doesn’t.”

“What else is new?” Sharp whispered back, a response more cynical than he usually gave.

“For now, take your places in your aircraft,” the briefing officer said. “You don’t have long to wait. I’d bet my life on that.” He was betting his life on how well some of the pilots could do against a foe who had smashed U.S. fliers whenever they met.

Not this time, Joe thought fiercely as he hurried to his Hellcat. The F6F wasn’t a particularly pretty plane. The big radial engine gave it a blunt nose, like that of a prizefighter who’d stopped too many lefts with his face. A Jap Zero looked a lot more elegant. But the Hellcat had almost twice the horsepower, more firepower with its battery of heavy machine guns, sturdier construction, self-sealing fuel tanks, and good armor protecting the pilot. The pilot. The words weren’t an abstraction to Joe, not any more. That means me.

He raced across the planking of the flight deck and scrambled up into his plane. He slid the canopy shut and dogged it. The cockpit smelled of leather and avgas and lubricants: intimate odors and mechanical ones, all mixed together. Joe longed for a cigarette, but smoking around oxygen and high-octane gas was hazardous to your life expectancy.

Sailors in yellow helmets and thin yellow smocks worn over their tunics stood by to direct the planes’ movements when they took off. Sailors in red helmets and smocks waited near the carrier’s island. They were crash crews and repairmen. The only men in blue helmets and smocks-the sailors who handled the planes while static-left on the flight deck were the pair poised to take away the chocks that secured the lead Hellcat in its place.

“Pilots, start your engines!” It wasn’t the voice of God roaring through the loudspeakers, but that of the executive officer. On the Bunker Hill, as on any ship, the skipper was God, and the exec was his prophet.

Joe knew a horrid fear that his engine wouldn’t catch, that he would have to stay behind. But it roared to life with the others. The prop blurred into near-invisibility. Joe eyed the instruments. It wasn’t a test this time; he wasn’t sitting in a simulator or a lard-butt trainer. This was for all the marbles.