Weapons of Choice

by John Birmingham

  She needed some rest.

  Francois dragged her flexipad out of a coat pocket with fingers that felt numb except for a small tingling at their tips and found Commander Wassman on shipnet.

  “I’m taking four hours, Helen,” she said. “You have the floor.”

  Her new deputy nodded brusquely in the small screen. Wassman’s locator chip placed her down in the burns unit.

  “Got it, ma’am. If I might, Captain? You need more than four hours. I can catch an extra shift. I had a whole half night’s sleep.”

  The chief surgeon didn’t bother arguing.

  “Thanks. I’ll take an extra two. Call me if I’m needed.”

  As she signed off an alarm sounded in the distance, calling for a crash team. Francois checked her pad: a cardiac arrest in the next ward. She brought the patient’s file up. An eighty-five-year-old white female from Cabanatuan.

  Not a chance, she thought. The wrinklies, it seemed as if they just gave up on you as soon as they realized they were safe. It was like they’d had something to prove, getting out of that shithole, and then they checked out.

  Her eyes burned as she headed back to the temporary cabin she’d taken. The short walk took her through a corridor so crowded with civilians and refugees and a disorderly mix of military personnel that she could have been in the emergency room of a public hospital. She closed the door of her small quarters with relief.

  The girl was on her bunk, playing with a Mars Landing Barbie one of the marines had dug up from somewhere. She hadn’t spoken again since the camp, but warm and washed and safely tucked up in bed, she favored Margie with a genuine smile.

  “Hello, darlin’,” said Francois.

  She knew from talking to other inmates of Camp 5 that the little girl’s name was Grace, and that was all. Nobody knew anything about what had happened to her parents.

  The child looked much less feral than she had on Luzon. She was still underweight, and she couldn’t stand having the lights out, but Francois was pleased with her progress.

  “Would you like a drink, Gracie? Some bug juice?” She smiled.

  The girl nodded.

  Francois poured her a cup of the vile-tasting cordial.

  She stroked Gracie’s thin, blond hair as she drank. She really needed to sleep, but now that she was back in the cabin and the kid was awake, she didn’t think she’d be able to. She didn’t like palming her off on anybody else, and truth be known, Grace threw a fit whenever she tried.

  As she stroked Grace’s forehead, which was still scarred by deep cuts and bruises, the girl suddenly grabbed her hand. Her little voice was no more than a squeak.

  “My daddy stayed with General MacArthur to help keep the lights on.”

  Francois’s heart leapt. She hadn’t expected anything like this for weeks, maybe months. It was the best thing she’d heard in days. She positively beamed, until the girl spoke again.

  “Mommy and Daddy aren’t coming back, are they? They shot my mommy, I think.”

  Her momentary spasm of joy died. She couldn’t find an answer that wouldn’t crush the little mite’s spirit. Part of the reason she was cruising the edge of exhaustion was all the extra time she’d put into trying to get a line on what might have become of the girl’s family. Now, it seemed, she had an inkling of their fate. She arranged her features as neutrally as she could.

  “I don’t know, honey, but I think maybe they’re with God now. Did someone tell you about your mom?”

  The girl’s lower lip trembled and her eyes filled with tears. She shook her head. Margie, choking up, too, rubbed her cheek.

  “But the thing is, darling, I know your mom and dad are happy now, because if they’re looking down from Heaven, they can see you’re safe here with us. And all they would ever want in the world is for you to grow up safe.”

  Grace gathered her composure by means of three gulping breaths. When she could talk without crying she looked into Margie’s eyes. “When I grow up,” she said, “I want to be a United States Marine, just like you.”

  Margie pursed her lips and nodded. She patted down Grace’s hair, kissed her forehead, and turned away.

  “Excuse me for just a second, sweetie,” she said thickly.

  She jumped up and hurried out into the corridor.

  When the door to her cabin was closed, she sank to the floor and burst into tears.

  The fierce heat reminded Kolhammer of the days they’d spent off Timor preparing for deployment. He was a universe away from that now. But home seemed as tangible as the salt in the air. Einstein had told him it really was that close; that his wife and home were closer to him than the shirt on his back. But Kolhammer peered through dark sunglasses at the huge straggling convoy of antique vessels, a scene that appeared nearly medieval to his eyes, and he knew that he would never see Marie again.

  He kept one eye on the screen where an icon representing the Sutanto plowed toward them from the east. When they rendezvoused, the Indonesian would have to turn around and cover her tracks, but he couldn’t blame them for not wanting to spend another minute out there on their own. They’d had a hell of time of it, judging by the video the Raptors had brought back. The little tub had been comprehensively shot to hell. He had to admit that he might have been wrong about them, though, because they’d fought through.

  “Thinking of home, Admiral?” asked Spruance.

  Kolhammer had forgotten he was there, so quiet had Spruance been the last half hour. Like most of them, with the worst behind them, he seemed content to gaze into the heat shimmer that was obscuring the horizon. Choppers thudded between the modern ships, redistributing casualties, supplies, and medical personnel as needed. Combat air patrol roared off the Clinton and the Kandahar at regular intervals. But the threat bubble was clear. Apart from those tin cans chasing the Sutanto, they’d had only two passing contacts with the Japanese: a submarine that had been killed before it knew it was in danger, and a faint return off a large body of iron far away to the north.

  Yamamoto was wisely keeping his distance.

  Kolhammer didn’t reply to Spruance immediately. He was exhausted and half hypnotized by the loping passage of the old cruise liners and troopships that carried most of the liberated POWs.

  “Home?” he mused aloud. “I suppose so.”

  “We’ll be there soon,” said Spruance.

  Kolhammer rubbed at the bristles sprouting on his cheeks. He wondered when he’d have to go back to shaving with a razor instead of just using wipe-away gel.

  “You’ll be home soon, Admiral,” he said. “And all of these poor bastards—”

  He indicated the transports with a wave of the hand.

  “—but we won’t be going home for a long time. If ever.”

  The blank sheets of paper annoyed Halabi. She’d been staring at them for half an hour, willing the right words to come. But try as she might she just couldn’t come up with the correct words for writing a condolence letter to the great-grandparents of a sailor killed in action, decades before he’d been born. There had been well over a thousand men and women on the Fearless. It was tempting to give up. But even though it was frustrating and the situation was more than a little bizarre, she knew the dead sailors’ relatives needed to know what had happened. Nevertheless she was quietly grateful when a knock sounded at the cabin door.

  “Enter,” she said, instantly regretting it when the doleful countenance of Rear Admiral Sir Leslie Murray appeared. She composed her features as equably as she could.

  “I am sorry, Sir Leslie, are you still having trouble getting through to London? I’ve asked my communications officer to prioritize your messages.”

  Murray looked ill. The bags of loose flesh below his eyes seemed even deeper than normal, and he carried his shoulders with a pronounced stoop. Halabi assumed it was from having to drag his corpulent frame around a working ship for a change. When he twisted from side to side in a bizarre, unknowing parody of a workout video instructor, she kept a smile from her lips onl
y by force of will.

  “Please sit down, sir,” she said, paying him the compliment of his rank. They both knew where the real power lay on board the Trident.

  “No, no. I shall only be a short time bothering you,” he said. “Are you busy, then?”

  His fat fingers played with the polished buttons of a dress tunic.

  “I have some letters to write. To next of kin, if I can find them,” answered Halabi.

  “Ah, right, good show then. Not too many I hope.”

  “I happen to regard one as too many, Sir Leslie.”

  “Quite right, quite right.”

  He remained standing, obviously uncomfortable. Halabi had grown used to his inability to look her in the eye. But he was even more distressed by her company than usual. Determined to wait him out, Halabi slowly tapped her pen on the blank writing paper, but it quickly became unbearable. The man seemed totally conflicted. Just as she was about to mouth some inanity, to fill up the dead space between them, he suddenly blurted out an apology.

  “Look, I’m terribly sorry,” he said, almost gobbling as he spoke so quickly. “But I feel I’ve been somewhat unfair, and well, I just wished to compliment your crew on the work they did in Singapore. It was a top-rate performance, in the finest traditions of the Royal Navy.”

  Halabi couldn’t help it. Her jaw dropped open and she took a little while to snap it closed.

  “Well, thank you, Sir Leslie, I shall see to it that your, uhm, kind words are distributed via shipnet.”

  She could feel another excruciating silence ballooning as soon as she was finished. Murray was still finding it hard to look her in the eye. His gaze flicked around the small room, and she remembered that it was the first time he’d ever been in her cabin. She wondered if he was uncomfortable being in the small space with a woman.

  “Is there something else, Sir Leslie? You look like a man trying to cough up a fish bone.”

  He colored deeply. His loose lips flapped once as a retort rose and died, unspoken.

  “I . . . I’ve just received word from one of the transports, the Princess Beatrix. My son-in-law is aboard. He was with the colonial office in Singapore. He’s in a quite terrible state . . .”

  The rear admiral took in a ragged breath, his shoulders hitching once, involuntarily. Murray seemed to find something fascinating on the highly polished toes of his shoes. Halabi waited for him to continue, but nothing more came. She was suddenly very uncomfortable sitting down while he stood over her, an unstable tower of grief, only just buttressed against total collapse by years of practice at squeezing his emotions into a tight little ball that might somehow be dry swallowed with gritted teeth and a small grimace.

  She pushed herself up and fetched a bottle of springwater and a drinking glass from a small refrigerator by her bunk.

  “And your daughter?” she asked, as she cracked open the lid on the Evian bottle.

  Murray staggered forward and collapsed in the chair she’d just vacated. For a horrible moment she feared it might slide out from beneath him on its wheels, but his large frame butted up hard against the edge of the desk as he dropped his head into his hands. Spasms wracked his whole body as a low moaning sound, more animal than human, emanated from somewhere deep within his chest.

  Halabi knew enough of inconsolable loss to dispense with platitudes. She simply laid a hand on the back of his hot neck and measured the violence of the emotional quake ripping through his body against the sparse memories of her own private losses. Her fingers looked extraordinarily dark against the rear admiral’s pale pink skin.

  The bruise on her thigh was going to be a good couple of months fading completely, which ticked her off. Yeah, but what are you gonna do? Julia tied up her sweatpants and contemplated the painful gym session ahead of her. She was carrying a load of minor injuries and disfigurements from the job on Luzon.

  They were of trivial significance, though, when measured against the material she’d gathered. This was going to be her first story for the “old” Times.

  Word was out.

  With the Singapore and Luzon task forces safely reunited and heading for Pearl, the Allied governments had finally released news of the Transition. For someone like Julia who’d grown up in a world of instant, global news access, it was unbelievably frustrating. She had no idea what sort of reaction had greeted the news at home.

  At home?

  Well, she figured she’d best get used to the idea. Grabbing her towel from where it lay at the end of her bunk, she hesitated. She couldn’t help herself. A telegram lay in the jumble of clothes and field equipment on top of her unmade bed, and she picked it up to read for maybe the tenth time.

  MISS DUFFY . . .

  She’d stopped snorting at that on the fourth reading.

  WELCOME. NYT OFFERS SENIOR STAFF POSITION. NEEDS 3000 WORDS ON ‘TRANSITION,’ 2000 WORDS ON POW RAID ASAP.

  She’d said yes, of course, after they’d agreed to take Rosanna on, as well. Dan had been right. They were so desperate to sign her up, they’d cop to anything.

  Dan.

  A sharp pang of regret stabbed at her. She shouldn’t have been such a jerk before Luzon. She’d been anxious and jonesing for her chillers and she’d ripped him up for no good reason. He was a good guy, a great fucking guy, and she just knew that she’d blown it with him.

  Rosanna said Dan had watched the vid of her wasting that Jap in Manila over and over and over. It was really spooky, she’d said. In the end Rosanna had been too busy to get pissed and she’d ignored him as he compulsively replayed the footage. She hadn’t even noticed when he’d finally drifted away.

  Julia folded up the telegram, for once failing to marvel at the way it felt, with its crisp paper crunch. Like something out of a museum. Tightness clenched at her throat and she cursed herself for the weakness. Next fucking thing she’d be get all teary and . . .

  “Hey.”

  Dan!

  He stood there in the doorway, looking nervous and tentative. She didn’t stop. She didn’t think. She just spun around and flew into his arms with such force that they nearly tumbled into the corridor outside.

  “I’m sorry, I’m so sorry,” she said, unable to stop repeating herself. A flood of tears and nonsense burst from her as his arms stiffened then relaxed, and pulled her into his chest.

  “So am I,” said Black.

  Damiri didn’t understand at first. Kolhammer seemed to be leading a convoy of dozens of ships, many more than had been in the force off Timor, but a brief laser-linked message from the carrier explained the presence of so many contemporary vessels. It made no difference to his plans, he decided. He might just kill a few more unbelievers, and there was nothing wrong with that.

  Smoke plumes from the older ships filled the sky as they drew closer. The beautiful, lilting prayers of his shipmates drifted up from below as they prepared to enter Paradise. The few Japanese on board had been banished below decks and he supposed they were making whatever arrangements their false god-emperor required of them. With so few of his former colleagues volunteering for this mission, the Japanese had been invaluable in keeping the ship running at a very basic level, and in coordinating arrangements with their own departed comrades on the three IJN vessels.

  Out of respect for their help, Damiri had asked if any wished to surrender their will to Allah in the last hours of their life, but all had declined. He shrugged. There was no saving some people.

  To still the drumbeat of his heart as the fatal moment drew closer, Damiri stepped out of the bridge into the fresh air and took inventory of the “damage” to the ship. Bullet holes, torn metal, scorch marks, shattered glass, broken masts and one particularly impressive shell burst had convincingly scarred the Sutanto. She looked like a veteran warship now—just the sort of thing to impress stupidly sentimental Westerners who, of course, could not know that Yamamoto’s engineers had meticulously crafted every scratch and dent back at Hashirajima. Before packing the ship to the gunnels with high explosive.
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  He wondered how closely the Americans were reading the bogus ship’s log he’d zapped over to them as soon as they drew into laser-link range. The answer came within a few minutes.

  “Have you seen this, yet?” asked Commander Judge.

  The lanky Texan was leafing through a printout of the Sutanto’s log on the bridge of the supercarrier.

  “Nope, not yet,” Kolhammer said. “Something up?”

  He watched on screen as the Sutanto passed the lead ship in the convoy, Halabi’s stealth destroyer, HMS Trident. True to form, the Brits turned on a full salute. Just as typically, the Indonesians responded in a really half-assed manner, with almost nobody on deck to return the gesture. Although, given how badly shot up the boat looked, he could understand that.

  “Ask the Sutanto to come around onto our heading,” he said. “We don’t need them threading their way through the convoy. They’ll run into someone for certain.”

  As an ensign relayed the order, Judge walked over chewing his lip.

  “It says here they only woke up five days ago, Admiral. Damiri has no idea how long they were out, but it couldn’t have been that long, could it? They’d have died of starvation or thirst.”

  Kolhammer eased himself up out of a slight slouch. The Pacific stretched away forever under a diamond-hard sky. Not a single cloud floated over the dozens of ships beating their way back to Pearl.

  “Well, what’s the elapsed time on the ship’s clock?”

  Judge flipped over a couple of pages. He never looked happy dealing with hard copy.

  “A hundred and thirty-three hours,” he said. “Close enough to six days, which don’t work for me, since we’ve been here for weeks now.”

  Admiral Spruance joined them from his perch by the lee helm.

  “Is there a problem?”

  Kolhammer chewed his lip.

  “Ensign, why is the Sutanto still coming on? She should have changed her heading by now?”

  “Sorry, sir, they have the orders.”

  Judge examined the printout as though he’d been handed a three-dollar note.