Washington, District of Columbia

General George C. Marshall, USA (GENFOR)

Chief of Staff, United States Army

1041 Local Time, 19 JUN 1942

General Marshall nervously rapped his knuckles with the cap of his pen as he waited for a response. The hairs on his arms were standing up like tent poles. Every breath took effort. He had never felt so self-conscious—physically and emotionally. He had become a madman raving nonsense. Lord, preserve me. He looked up and met eyes with General Alan Brooke, the Chief of the Imperial General Staff. The Englishman’s entire face was frozen. His jaw was slightly distended and ajar. General Marshall could see the cogs in his opposite’s brain turn through his eyes. He dare not look at the Prime Minister.

“Ah, well—nevertheless,” Brooke responded dryly, flicking his wrist dismissively in the general direction of the American general while returning a blank, unamused stare. Marshall waited for him—or any of his colleagues—to finish that sentence, but the Englishmen—all four of them—refused to say anything.

The chosen American spokesman took a deep breath. “Gentlemen, I understand that this matter seems rather… erm… Ludicrous? But the President and I firmly believe that it merits disclosure, and discussion, as it does impose significant implications on our strategy for the coming year.”

“Th-the time-travelers?” Field Marshal John Dill, the British Military Representative to the Combined Chiefs of Staff, inquired in a struggling voice through raw confusion like a man wading through a chest-deep pool of crude oil.

“Yes,” Marshall replied to Dill without pausing even for a moment. He expelled the words from his mouth as if they were not his own. “Precisely, that is the matter. We are obligated to discuss it.”

General Brooke gave his reply, “I believe the next agenda item was ROUNDUP.” Dill and Brooke exchanged looks. None of the other British officers said anything. Vice Admiral Mountbatten had a truly horrifying grin slashed across his face as his eyes glittered with certainly awful thoughts. Marshall listened to the conference room’s clock tick. He exhaled deeply, rolling into a sigh that shook his whole body.

“Are you quite alright, General?” Field Marshal Dill.

No. The General thought himself. He exhaled. “Of course. This has come as a shock to us all. The President has authorized me to discuss the entirety of this matter; there are no secrets here. I believe that this matter ought to be addressed with all frankness and all due seriousness.”

“Ah, yes—all due seriousness.” The Prime Minister nodded along. “I believe we’ve done that.” He pointed a polite—but impatient smile at Marshall like a loaded gun. The general took a deep breath and shared a glance with Hap Arnold to his left and then with Ernest King to his right before looking down at his hands. They were both mortified. The three of them were burdened with the knowledge that no more than a score of men in Washington were privy. They had kept the circle tight to permit the United States and the United Kingdom to form a united approach. “Now…” The Prime Minster’s voice drew out from his lips, elongating that lone syllable into a soliloquy. “If ROUNDUP does not interest you, Your President—in his last dispatch—had mentioned that there had been something of a revelation among your number about GYMNAST?”

“Sir,” Admiral King started with all the seriousness of an undertaker, “This is not a prank or laughing matter. We are faced with an event that is beyond belief and every understanding, but we can in no way ignore it.” He stood up straight in his chair as if to make himself appear even more serious.

Churchill looked the venomous Admiral up and down thrice before he opened his mouth as if to speak before saying nothing. Instead, his jowls and mouth settled into a congenial smirk while his blue eyes flickered alight with a bittering harshness. He took in another ten seconds of torturous silence before he said a single word that cut worse than a thousand blades. “GYMNAST.”

There would be no united front.

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En Route to Baltimore Army Airfield

Prince George’s County, Maryland

Major General Hastings “Pug” Ismay

Chief Staff Officer to the Minister of Defence

1059 Local Time, 19 JUN 1942

“Pug….” The Prime Minister announced to his military adjutant,“…that was, well… oh-odd. It was odd.”

“Quite odd, Prime Minister,” the stocky aide replied without missing a beat. The interior of the white Packard was silent as both men looked out the windows. Ismay could see the emotion start to brew and the boil behind the PM’s grimace.

“I ha-have never in my life seen such self-serious men babble such utter! Such utter!” he was whipping himself into a fury, something altogether common of an occurrence. “Tripe! Utter tripe! The look in their eyes as they bade such nonsense at us—and that expectation that we might—no must!—take it seriously!” The general was surprised that the PM was this outraged—but then again, Ismay himself wasn’t sure what to make of this confession. The Prime Minister unfurled the button string around the portfolio they had provided him. With distressingly deft sausage fingers, the Prime Minister fished out a photograph. He snarled and unleashed a wave of guttural syllables—each one like a crack of a whip or the rumble of an engine, but all blended together—that could not have been meant for anyone’s comprehension but his own. “Madness. Utter madness.” The PM continued, fuming to himself. The general was merely scenery at this point. With the photograph fixed between his thumb and his index finger, its contents hidden from Ismay, the roiling anger erupted once more as he waved it around like a loaded pistol. “This! It’s a fakeee.” His eyes were burning like coals; he could melt iron with the raw contempt blasting out of them like beams of light, but his voice cracked. Ismay knew better; he knew when a man was trying to convince himself. “It must be!” There it was. “It’s rubbish—rubbish.” His voice faded and rattled in his throat. “I have never been so insulted in my life, and all my life I have been insulted. Mocked. Belittled. Gibed. Scorned more times than I can count. But this?" His voice trailed off, and he curled over like wilting flower, and for once Winston Churchill was not a symbol but a man—wounded by those he thought he could trust. The Prime Minister caught himself and straightened himself out. “This profanity I will not take this idly. I will wring what for from the President, so help me God! So help me God, Pug!”

He twirled the photo between his fingers as his temper faded. Round and round it went. Ismay had seen its contents only briefly during the meeting. It showed about a dozen strange ships photographed from the air at anchor in neat rows in a tropical harbor somewhere in Hawaii, allegedly. None of the designs were familiar. None of them seemed to make sense—the Prime Minister seemed offended that the Yank had deigned to pass those off as a “fleet from the future.” What would they come up with next? Rayguns? Rocketships? Robots? He kept the paper card twirling. “They’re lying, right?” Ismay did not say anything because he did not have an answer. “They have to be lying, Pug.” He spoke so quietly, like a church mouse asking for porridge. He folded over on himself again, curling his back like some great ape, rubbing the picture with his thumb. “They’re lying, Pug. Or they’re mistaken. They’re confused.”

“They must have quite active imaginations in their Pacific Fleet, Prime Minister,” the adjutant surmised. “To win such a smashing victory against the Jap and then this… I’d say that Nimitz must’ve a gas leak in his office somewhere.” He tried to put on a smile. “I think we must do our best to put this all behind us, sir. We have a war to fight.”

The Prime Minister scoffed, “Quite.” He smiled. “I am still going to give Roosevelt a working over.”

Ismay unfurled a grin like a waving battle flag, “Of course, sir. It’s only right.”

“God help us if he’s gone mad, too,” the PM replied with a familiar, relaxed acerbity. Ismay could see Churchill begin to relax. Which was good; he was half-worried that the PM would have a heart attack.

Ismay let out a deep sigh, and as he looked out the window, he let out an observation that was perhaps too candid. “I always thought that General Marshall was too much of a square for something like this.”

The Prime Minister’s visage curdled into an unpleasant, steely, grim resolve. It was a face that Pug was familiar with. “Indeed,” he spoke before turning outwards to gaze upon Maryland. “Odd.” He said nothing more for the ride.

Washington Union Station

Washington, District of Columbia

General George C. Marshall, USA (GENFOR)

Chief of Staff, United States Army

0912 Local Time, 21 JUN 1942

The President was helped into his wheelchair by Mr. Hopkins and Major General Watson as the Secret Service kept a tight perimeter. His arrival was kept quiet, not for the sake of security but because no one was quite certain how bad things would be on the President and Prime Minister’s return from Hyde Park. Reports of an icy or a testy mood would do no one any good.

The President cleared his voice as the gaggle of aides followed the great chieftains of the Atlantic Alliance to the exit, “Winston, I believe you might like to freshen up. I also need to discuss some issues with my advisors, and then we can lunch at mine perchance? I hear the stewards have something special for my return.” That great and terrible smile grew across his face with practiced, absolute sincerity. “My treat.” He laughed, and so did the Prime Minister.

That’s a good sign.

“Sounds wonderful, Mister President.” The PM replied. “How about around one?”

That’s a better sign.

“Perfect. See you then.” The President turned his head slowly toward Marshall with a smile that did not fade; it was stuck on his face like glue even as his eyes shifted in his head and turned wicked. “General Marshall, take a drive with me.”

Well, now that’s bad.

The General helped the President into one of the 1942 H-Series Armored Limousines. The ride to the White House was not a long one, but it immediately felt interminable.

“What in the fuck and all that is Holy did you say to them, George?” The words cracked from the President’s lips like lightning doused with vinegar.

Marshall was shocked, caught off guard, but not so much as to let it show. “The truth, Mister President,” he fired back with his typical coolness. He straightened his back out and returned a glare at the very edge of propriety back at the President.

“Some Gospel, George. Some Gospel.” The president fished out his cigarette case and produced one for himself. “Cigarette?” Marshall politely turned down the President. “I have become a damned toreador,” Roosevelt growled as he struck his lighter and put the flame to his cigarette. “We are lucky to not be gored right now, George. I have never seen Winston so mad. He was seeing red! And you know how much that man despises a communist!”

Marshall gulped without thinking. “That bad?”

“That bad,” the President replied bitterly before unleashing a dense plume of smoke and breath. “That woman…” The President chuckled just as bitterly, “GYMNAST was quite the ace in the hole. He bit on that like a piranha to bloody rare meat.”

“Mister President—Secretary Stimson, Admiral King, and I still are united in our belief that GYMANST is not an advisable course of action.”

“George,” the President’s voice was solemn as if he spoke in a language of ash and cinder as they approached the White House, “I agree to this in August, and so do you. After that fiasco in Dieppe.”

“In a different time, sir,” the General reminded the President.

Roosevelt smirked, “Not so different, George.”

Marshall shot the President a quizzical look. “Do you trust her judgment?”

The President scoffed with virulent dismissiveness, and gave an almost insult look back at the General. “No.” He turned the question around on Marshall, “Well, do you trust her information?”

A friend in need is a friend indeed. The words of Marshall’s stepson had written to him more than a decade ago in a private letter rang out through his head and his heart. He did not have the stomach to answer the President because they knew that they could not deny it.

The limousine came to a stop outside the White House. The President turned to Marshall again. They met eyes; Roosevelt’s face was totally relaxed and relieved of all pretense. The man of many masks was showing his true face. “BOLERO, GYMNAST, and WATCHTOWER shall be our priorities. We will take full advantage of what we can squeeze from those Strange Pineapples in Hawaii—however—if anyone breathes so much as a word about a Certain Force. I want them gibbeted.”

“Understood.” If anything, this was preferable to the General. “And Congress?”

The President shrugged as a Marine sentry opened the car door. “Preferably once our guests are home and we have more time to develop a more appropriate approach so as to avoid... well, doing this again.” That terrible grin, the one that swallowed worlds, appeared, “We shall burn that bridge when we get to it.” The President removed the cigarette from his mouth and let out a perfect ring of smoke into the air before then letting out a chuckle, “I only carry so many matches, dear General.”

2009 Massachusetts Ave. NW, Roosevelt Longworth Townhouse

Washington, District of Columbia

Alice Roosevelt Longworth

Former First Daughter of the United States

2232 Local Time, 25 JUN 1942

“I am going to kill Trudy Beekman if it is the last thing I do,” Alice Roosevelt growled to herself like a wildcat. Her words were directed at no one in particular, and they were swallowed up by a swirling mass of pristine black-and-white uniforms carrying silvered platters of every sort. The first daughter of Theodore Roosevelt was perched on a countertop in the kitchen like some kind of bird of prey observing a valley full of game. She downed her drink with a practiced violence, and the refreshed flute of champagne disappeared in one go and in the blink of an eye. “I at least have the decency not to let that Brit son of a bitch outdrink me in my own damned home.”

“We can’t have that, ma’am,” the head caterer, a handsome man about three decades her junior, replied as he refilled her glass of Pol Roger. He was wearing a wonderful smile. She was used to this game—but not in the mood tonight.

“Just leave the bottle, Jim,” she groaned as she massaged her ankle. “The audacity to say that I permit plus twos at my parties. She doesn’t live here! This is not her house!” A wrathful hrmph left her lips before she let one last broadside out, “No wonder her husband cheated with the governess.” She turned to the caterer, “Cut her off, and if she asks for anything, give her a flute of gasoline or piss—I don’t care which.”

Her usual maître d' stormed through the double doors into the kitchen like a raging bull, his face cherry red and his moustache bone white. “The Prime Minister’s party has just arrived.”

“How many?”

“Seven autos, twenty-three persons.”

“Christ.” Alice did the math in her head. “Jimmy, we’re going to need booze.”

“But we just went out an—” The caterer started to object.

“More booze,” she could be like her father if and when she wanted. Her voice carried like a pronouncement from Zeus. She was just missing the thunderbolt, and a damn shame, too, because she’d like to smite some dithering fool. “I better greet our esteemed guests before some spud-drunk Fenian wastrel Trudy Beekman picked off the street and into her bed spoils my party by having the first fight start so early.” Clad in the armor of her trade, she charged into the breach. Pale blue chiffon might not stop bullets, but what she was facing tonight was worse than lead—far more biting and far more toxic. With a painted smile and cool demeanor, she tore into the party like a whirling dervish, every weapon at her disposal availed and put to best use. She parried blows and interlopers alike, cutting through the swirling mass of men and women decked in cuirasses of Egyptian cotton, Vicuna wools, and Mulberry silks. She knew the faces and the names. She knew everyone, even the ones who hadn’t been invited—especially them.

There were too many people, too much noise. She had wanted a quiet affair—sedate and reserved—where she could ply her trade and crack the Englishmen open like walnuts for their money’s worth. There had been some mutterings, a murmur here and a whisper there, that something had gone wrong in Hawaii. A communications embargo had been raised just days after the pronouncement of the stunning victory against the Japanese off that atoll, Midway. It was unnerving, and one whisper had spread like a morning chill—that there had been no victory, that there had only been yet another calamity. Those fine gentlemen in that august boys’ social club, otherwise known as the United States Congress, were starting to ask questions about exactly what was going on.

“Winston, dear!” Alice proclaimed with outstretched arms.

“Mrs. Roosevelt, it has been too long.” She offered her hand, and he kissed it. It was another step to a familiar dance.

“Enchanté—as usual. And please, I told you to call me Alice.”

He chuckled politely. “In Wonderland, are we?”

“Well, you were always mad as a hatter, Prime Minister.”

This time he scoffed, and there was a glimmer on his face like someone had just stepped on his foot. “Some day more than others.” That was a curious response, she wanted more but did not want to make it too obvious.

“Drinking some mercury?” She kept up the game of biting sarcasm.

“Ha! That was a true laugh, she could tell. “I would prefer arsenic!” He japed.

That presented yet another opening for the Dowager Queen of the District, “You should ask Clem to serve you some.”

“The other Clem perhaps, but not mine.” He gave a final smirk before they continued with the rest of the introductions, all military men—some familiar, some not. It was a veritable arsenal of pips and crowns. She had done this song and this dance a hundred times before, but something was not quite right.

Alice would remain the consummate host until they revealed what was the catch, “Speaking of poison, Prime Minister—would you like to pick yours?”

“Whisky soda—”

She interrupted him, “Johnnie Walker Red Label.” She snapped her a finger, and a waiter, who had been waiting for this very signal, appeared with a silver platter with several flutes of Pol Roger and a single whisky soda.

“Am I that predictable?” The Prime Minister murmured.

Alice smiled, wicked and self-satisfied. “No, I am just that good.”

“You are certainly something, my dear.” The Prime Minister rejoined. “Now, you have other guests to attend.” He stopped himself before he said something, “Oh—do you know if Secretary Stimson has already arrived?” His delivery was wrong. That was not just a question that would happen to come to mind. Alice’s smile grew three sizes.

Bingo.

“Yes, I believe he arrived earlier.” She answers, full of attentive grace. Etiquette would be her stiletto tonight. “I think I saw him on the third floor with a full flight of silver birds.”

“Ah, wonderful. I believe I am obligated to say hello… and where might we ha—”

Alice answered before he finished speaking. “The study on the third floor will suffice.”

The Prime Minister gave his thanks and slunk off into the crowd, shaking hands and trading greetings while making his way deeper and deeper into the spider’s parlor they called the Second Washington Monument. Alice knew better than to shadow him too closely. This was her house, and she did have other duties to attend to. So she danced. She danced between the suits and skirts. Trading smiles and biting remarks with polite laughter and oh so much gossip.

There was a group of delightfully dour G-Men from the Bureau—very senior ones—including J. Edgar’s favored boy, Tolson. They should have been celebrating the arrest of the German saboteurs on Long Island, but they seemed to be in a decidedly more morose mood. They looked down at their drinks like they’d all lost the shirts off their backs to a cardshark.

The one sentence from one of the other G-Men, one senior in the Special Intelligence Service if Alice’s memory had not failed her, caught her attention. It was an off-hand comment, muttered under breath as Roosevelt breezed by like a ghost on the midnight breeze. “Who knew that pineapples could be Red.” They had her interest, but now they had her attention.

“Now, why is everyone chatting up pineapples?” Alice leaned and found a place among the G-Men. They were immediately unsettled finding the hostess pressed up so close, and she intended to keep them that way. She snatched the cigarette from one of them and took a drag, “You don’t mind, do you, dear?”

The agent froze. “Why, of course not, ma’am.”

“I’m not your mother, handsome,” she replied wolfishly. Ten painful seconds passed as she examined their faces intently and one by one. They said nothing. “Gentleman, I believe I asked a question.”

Tolson was unfazed, he was used to her tactics. He was a clever one. “Mrs. Roosevelt Longsworth, eavesdropping is quite rude. Particularly about matters pertaining to national security.”

“Oh,” she covered her mouth girlishly but let her eyes turn cruel and bitter. “Since when has the color of a pineapple pertained to national security?”

Tolson’s entire head twitched, and she saw his ears burn strawberry red. “Madam, I do not think that is an appropriate question.”

“What?” She laughed playfully. “Have we discovered Trosktky alive and well in Themiscyra with the Amazons?” They didn’t share her laugh. They said nothing. She looked around at them. They gave her nothing but stony faces. For the first time in a long time, she was the one who felt uncomfortable. She forced her composure back on like an ill-fitting sweater. “Well, this was illuminating. I must thank your Director for developing such voracious and vibrant imaginations.” She left before they could make any retort. Not that they did.

Alice moved upstairs, slinking between circles of dilettantes and courtiers—all she was missing was a few eunuchs and seneschals. Much of the talk was the same as it ever was. She did hear something interesting on the second floor.

A senior secretary from the British Embassy was chatting with a typist from Wild Bill Donavon’s outfit, “I’ve never seen so many angry words! I don’t know what they said, but I can say quite confidently that the Prime Minister was extraordinarily cross when he left for New York!” Alice hadn’t heard of any marital spats between Winston and Cousin Franklin spilling out into public like that—least of for someone to feel comfortable speaking about it in public.

On the third floor, the walls were lined with colonels of every sort from no less than five different nations. She said hello and traded a bit of small talk. She saw three burly Americans barring the way to the study—sentinels with sour faces. Well, now I have to find out what they’re saying. She continued down the hallway and turned down another empty hall—which contained another set of double doors to the study, the door to a bedroom, and a servant stair. Luck was with her as there was a waiter arranging some hors d'oeuvres on a guéridon trolley while carrying a platter with three glasses of whiskey in one hand.

The young man noticed her glaring at him and jumped out of his skin, “Madam Roosevelt. Can I help you?”

“Yes, my dear. Could you please go down to the cellar and fetch me a bottle of 1899 Chateau La Tour Blanche.” She did not own any such vintage. She didn’t particularly care if there weren’t any bottles of it in the country.

“Oh yes, of course, right away,” he started to head away with the platter still in hand, which gave Alice an idea.

“Leave the platter,” she ordered.

“Of course, ma’am,” the young thing left the platter on the trolley and gave Alice a confused, bashful parting nod.

Alice sauntered to the trolley. She picked up the first drink, rolled it around in the glass, and gave it a sniff. Old Fashion. She downed it in a gulp. She then looked at the second glass a repeated the process before flipping it around, got down on her knees with the cart concealing her from the hall, and pressed the crystal against the door.

“I don’t care what it is, Henry! It’s madness, all madness! We cannot lose this war on account of some-some Pineapple Disease ravaging the imaginations of your Pacific Fleet! So I beg you, please, do not raise this issue again.” The voice was faint and unclear, but Alice could surmise it was Winston.

Another voice replied one that Alice would know anywhere. “On that, Prime Minster, you, I, and the President are in complete agreement.” She had never heard Secretary of War Henry Stimson sound so tired. “I pray we will hear no more of distractions from that damned Molokai. I have had enough of a shock for a lifetime, Winston.”

“What do you mean, goodsir?”

Stimson laughed. It was deep and hearty, “It would do no good for me to tell. It's all nonsense anyway.” He repeated himself with a bitterness that even Alice could hear, “All nonsense.”

“Well…” the Prime Minister started. “…at least it’s all behind us.”

Map Room, 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, The White House

Washington, District of Columbia

General George C. Marshall, USA (GENFOR)

Chief of Staff, United States Army

1412 Local Time, 29 JUN 1942

“How long ago were you alerted?” The President drummed his fingers on the tiny desk in his precious Map Room.

General Marshall and the rest of the inner war cabinet were assembled. The General was feeling rather self-conscious, “Rou-Roughly forty-five minutes after receipt.” He was keeping his cool, but things were getting out of hand.

The President took a deep breath and then exhaled. He removed his reading glasses and pinched the bridge of his nose as he leaned back in his seat. This was the last thing he wanted—the last thing anyone wanted. “Well, do we know if anyone has read the thing?”

Admiral Leahy started to speak, but before any words left his lips, someone knocked on the door of the Map Room. That itself was a bad sign. The Marine Guard outside opened the door, revealing Grace Tully, the President’s Personal Secretary. “Mister President, Gentlemen, there’s a call for General Marshall—his secretaries are saying that there are eleven Senators in his waiting room, and they do not seem pleased.”

Mr. Hopkins burst out with an inopportune laugh, “Well, Mister President, I believe that answers that.”

The President buried his head in his hands, “It does.” He rolled backward and splayed over the back of his chair like a bored schoolboy. He took a few breaths. “Gentlemen now is the time for more damage control.” He exhaled heavily and straightened out in his seat. “Christ. If I have to hear another word about Hawaii in my life after this, it will be too soon.”

Over Monte Sacro, Gargano, Province of Foggia, Kingdom of Italy

Captain Jeffrey Banks, United States Marine Corps (CERFOR)

Marine Heavy Helicopter Squadron 85

2107 Local Time, SEPT 12, 1943

The trio of T411 turboshaft engines roared with the power of thirty-thousand horses. The rotors set a ceaseless beat, and the massive helicopter shook as they rolled over wooded hills and rocky ridges. The cockpit was doused in red light as Captain Banks peered through his AN/AVS-12 panoramic night vision goggles. The digital hybrid thermal-night optics showed the world in faded color and neon outlines.

“Two minutes,” he spoke into the intercom. He felt every anxious breath, the sweat under his gloves while his voice presented naught but cool confidence.

Four black PAVE LOWs thundered over forests and fields with a mere two and a half feet from the ground as they fanned out from staggered column to a line abreast. To their front was an escorting pair of AV-75G Diamondbacks. Banks was no lily-livered stick jockey, but this whole shebang had his asshole was fully clenched. He had been flying with HMH-85 since it was stood up as MARSOC’s special operations aviation unit (and 160th SOAR’s de-facto sixth line Battalion) in 2030. He had more combat flight hours than he cared to remember; that thought brought back memories of the magnificent clusterfuck that was Operation DANGEROUS FEATHERDUSTER back in ‘39, when they flew Shitters below rooftop level in the suburbs of Pyongyang.

Banks could make out low structures strung along the spine of a rocky ridge off in the distance: Monte Sant’Angelo. The strike package screamed toward it under a night sky that was not so tenebrous. Any other evening, it would’ve been a place of beauty—a place of pilgrimage—that overlooked the endless olive groves and rolling fields of the Tavoliere.

Tonight, the village had box seats to a Very Good Idea: Operation FRICTION, the seizure of the Foggia Airfield Complex. With over a dozen hard surface runways, it was home to the bulk of the Axis Forces’ advanced aviation in the region, some two hundred jet aircraft, and at least an equal number of high-performance super-props. But the complex was guarded by a regiment of EPIMETHEAN flak—without even so much as prox fuse ammo—two Class C PROMETHEAN radar stations and barely twenty operational night fighters. That was before the sun had dipped below the horizon; now, the Table of the Apulias was lit by fire as blood flowed like floodwaters.

Tracers raced up into the night sky behind the ridge. Flak burst like lightning. Shells and bombs rolled like thunder. Fire and flame of every sort betrayed the darkness. A dozen or more searchlights cast their irate illumination into the clouds in contempt of Allied air superiority. One guttered out, then another. A fuel bunker detonated with a burst of rapidly expanding melodrama.

The pathfinder elements from the American 82nd and British 1st Airborne Divisions were on the ground, sowing a whirlwind before the bulk of their formations arrived. With any luck, the joint Canadian-American 10th Special Forces Regiment had seized the largest OLYMPIAN-spec hard surface airfield Amendola as Banks and his flight made their final sprint to the target. The chutes flipped the table while the Not-Green Berets kicked the door open. A corps-sized formation would make landfall behind enemy lines without so much as touching a static line. It was a preternaturally refined twist on a classic airborne joint-combined forcible entry.

But Banks and his flight of blacked-out Shitters were doing something altogether different. Something of tantamount importance to the war in Europe. It was just two sentences—a pairing that dripped with dreadful consequence.

Secure Objective PEACH by any means—intact and in good condition. Under no circumstances should Objective PEACH remain in the possession of Axis Forces.

The flight continued to close to the target. An assault troop of the Forcemen loudly made their final kit checks. It was said that the Archangel Michael had visited this place thrice, but now the Devil’s Brigade was coming. The captain took a breath as he looked up at a belt of low, dark clouds streaming from the Adriatic. The meteorology guys promised the weather would hold. 

The voice of the air commander in Anvil Zero-One broke across the net—a smooth, deep southern drawl, “Hammer, Anvil. Initiate attack.”

The familiar voice of a Dog Soldier answered back, “Rog, Anvil. Beginning our run.” The pair of attack variants of the V-75 Cheyenne broke left before hooking right onto a parallel course with the ridge. A burst of triple-A from distant fighting reached up into the sky from the fighting behind the ridge, backlighting the town—a brilliant lash of over-euthanasic tracers doing their best to kill Zeus.  

Hammer Two lit off a pair of Super Zulu laser-guided rockets, the 128-pound weapons screamed out of their pod as the escorts let slip the dogs of war and opened fire with everything they had—and that was a lot. Each little tiltrotor had a lightweight ‘short’ 30-millimeter cannon in the nose and a pair of .50 caliber M2A2 heavy machine guns in its doors, along with two 19-round pods of APKWS guided rockets and two 4-rounder pods of Super Zunis. The ubiquitous JAGM was nowhere to be scene—their betters (and their algorithms) had decided such in-demand systems were overkill for this assignment. It was supposed to be a quick and easy romp.

The revolver cannons were set to their lowest rate of fire mode—600 rpm. Thop-thop-thop. Thop-thop-thop. It was a steady, unremarkable stream of death that saw rounds leave the barrel with hardly a flash—the result of electrothermal chemical ignition and hybrid polymer cases. The attack VTOLs hosed their point targets with a stream of continuous fire. It was one hell of a bolt from the blue.

With a flick, Banks zoomed his bird’s FLIR in toward their targets and saw a 37mm Breda analog triple-A mount get rendered down to slag, along with its crew. Half a dozen other targets were sent straight to hell in ten seconds. Sucks to suck, assholes. However, the focus of their escorts’ fury was the town’s largest hotel that G-2, AFHQ had assessed as the garrison’s CP. The modest structure collapsed in a cloud of black smoke and a shower of splinters.

“One minute!” Banks barked into the intercom as the Diamondbacks—their nacelles hinged up in vertical mode—continued to slap HE-DP into the streets and much the rest of the targets that photo-reconnaissance had kindly marked out for them. Gunny Baxter, Banks’ crew chief, repeated the warning as he helped the HSRT master ready the ropes. Canadians nervously traded looks as brilliant lines of tracers whipped out into the night. These boys had not heard of a helicopter six months ago, and now they were going feet-first into a fight from one while watching tiltrotors buzz about doing the devil’s work.

The Diamondbacks were so low that rotorwash was ripping tiles off roofs, ripples of red-orange ceramic were dancing in every direction. The Dog Soldiers were craziest pilots you could find, like the nuttiest of nutty HMLA goons or Kiowa drivers who whipped their birds like an ungodly combination of a rice rocket, a street racer, and a beat up white Camry with Maryland plates. The entire point of the tandem cockpit AV-75G was to provide round-trip armed escort for the Corps’ tiltrotors. That was originally supposed to be re-procured V-22 Charlie “ReVAMP” (Ospreys gutted and rebuilt using nacelles and engines from the joint H-47 Chinook and H-53 Stallion replacement, the V-81 Osage). HQMC chose to stick with V-22 despite its reputation as a budgetary expedient, only for the ReVAMP to cost more than just buying Osages from the start. Then, of course, came Gulf V and Second Sino and the Corps started buying CV-81s to replace their loses. However, that was all in the past of yesterday’s future.

“Thirty seconds!” Banks roared. The Axis in the village made their reply. A fusillade of ground fire erupted from figures spilling onto the streets and roofs. The bum-krak-krak of bolt-guns and the rattle of sub-guns plinked the side of Anvil Zero-Two as Banks updated his pos on the group net. The other birds were making their approaches, and a chorus of voices echoed callouts. It was going to plan even if it sounded like there was a lot more than a company-and-a-half of Italian infantry holed up on site.

Tony could plink away all they like, but they’d need something a bit heavier to bring down a Romeo Stallion. The MH-35R was not only a new build with Duracal metal-matrix composite construction, top-of-the-line engines, and all the kit and kaboodle expected for a SOF lifter; it also had ATLATL. The Advanced Tactical Lift Armor Technical and Life Extension Package was the gold standard for airborne armor. The ship’s vital systems were always, and its cabin could be, lined with graphene-laced imbricated composite inserts, allowing the aircraft to trade about 15% of its range for immunity from fire up to 14.5mm—just the thing to bring to a spicy LZ.

“DeLario, Jones!” Banks barked at his door gunners, “Drop some lead on those motha-fuckers!” The pair of Cert enlisted complied. Whips of ultramarine tracers burst from the M134A7 gatling guns, scything down the Axis shooters. They gave Banks the time to bring the aircraft over to their entry point. “Standby! Ready on ropes!”

Baxter pushed his head out the back, peering into the night with his NODs, “Clear to descend, Skip.” Banks pushed the aircraft lower, keeping it steady as the rotor wash bounced up the narrow streets, throwing up a bout of turbulence. “Hold! Hold! We’re good!” Gunny shouted.

Banks kept to the script, “Ropes down!” He’d done this show a million times, even if he had spent the last year training Gennies to fly bleeding-edge antiques. He kept his nerves and his focus on the task at hand. There were more bad guys than intelligence had expected, but Banks would not look a gift horse in the mouth.

“Rope on the deck!” Gunny Baxter and the Gennie HRST master took over, deploying two ropes out the back. The checklist proceeded like a cold call-and-response. Banks saw the three other Stallions in position, readying their assault teams. “First man off!”

“Second!” followed a moment later, and then came “Third!”

“Fourth! Team One Down!” and “Fifth!”

“Sixth!”

“Seven!” The firefight roared back to life. A hail of bullets slammed into the cabin. The gunners needed no command to reply. The noise of the gatlings was suppressed under the roar of a Diamondback unleashing a three second burst of 1500 rpm 30x113mmE damnation, like all the bells of Hell ringing at once.

“Seventh!”

“Eight!”

“Nin—”

A new burst of thunder overwhelmed the muffled intercom. It was flak. Something heavy. Something that could kill a shitter decked in ATLATL. The noise of the Chi-Com’s heavyweight, semi-autonomous PG-187 100-millimeter cannons was not something Banks would ever forget. His co-pilot wordlessly flicked the ship’s ECM alive and to full power. Rules of engagement straight from CERFOR had wanted to avoid this very switch flick. Every second they radiated could give the Axis reams of technical data to improve their defenses and weaken the Allies’ electromagnetic dominance.

“Flak, Flak, Flak!” One of the other shitters cried over the net.

“Tenth!” Baxter kept counting.

“They aren’t painting us, but it’s—” Lieutenant Cha started before the Stallion’s Laser/Radar-Warning Receiver came alive, an unwelcome unholy digital screech.

“Twelfth!”

“Divert to alternate. Divert. I say again. Divert,” the mission commander remained cool as his mission fell apart around him. There went the supposed easy smash-and-grab. They had expected a modest garrison without much, or any, PROMETHEAN equipment systems.

Banks prayed that the ECM and the swish RAM coating would be enough.

Muzzle flashes licked the sky at a continuous rate. There had to be a whole goddamn battalion of guns—but Banks had too much on his hands to be sure, “That shit is on fuckin’ automatic,” Cha growled.

“Gunny, Abort! Abort! Abort! We’re going alternate!” He saw a pair of figures drop below the ramp. Fuck. Anvil Two and Three swung out ahead of them, their rotors nearly kissing rooftops along the western face of the ridge, heading south toward the alternate LZ.

The luck ran out.

An explosion ripped open the starboard canopy and cheek of Anvil Two. It was a decapitation. A burning headless stump of a Stallion lost all control inputs and nosed straight down into a row of buildings. The $175 million irreplaceable aircraft was gone in seconds. They needed to get going, or they would be next. Gunny Baxter turned around and met eyes with Banks. The tone in the captain’s ear changed. One he knew all too well.

“We’re cle—!”

Too late.

Baxter disappeared in a flash that rocked the entire aircraft sideways. The blast rocked the aircraft sideways like they had been shoulder-checked and ripped a Hilux-sized hole in the cabin wall. In an instant, the interior was painted in blood, shrapnel, soot, and char.

“Abort! Abort!” The captain screamed as he fought to regain control of his aircraft and get it out of harm’s way. A second explosion swallowed his words as another round slammed into the Stallion. His display lit up with alerts and warnings. The helo’s third engine was gone. He didn’t have hydraulics to cut, but the fiber optics to the bird’s electro-mechanical actuators were bottlenecked. “Flares! Dump ‘em!”

Cha thumbed a button on the main console, activating their Hail Mary. A deluge of dumb flares and chaff burst from the rear of the aircraft as Banks slammed the throttle to full power. The aircraft’s two Air Nulka decoys screamed away, spreading out in the X-Y-and-Z axes, each generating an electromagnetic replica of their chalk. The third shot came a second later. It was low, detonating in the false returns of one of the Nulkas as the Shitter nosed forward and gained altitude.

“Anvil Zero-One, aborting. We’re taking large caliber triple-A, my number three engine is gone, EMA command response throttled at eighty-five percent—and I’ve got casualties.” The battle raged below as the Snake Eaters lit off three 66mm rockets in rapid succession. A muted fountain of flashes burst from a machine gun in the alley below them as an Italian HMG started spitting lead from a concealed firing position in a civilian building.

How many fuckin’ Eye-Ties are in this shithole?

“Anvil, it’s a fucking Flak Eighty—” The voice cut out. There was a flash. Banks saw the mangled form of an AV-75, shattered by a bouquet of MANPADS cutting across the discordant night. Every Diamondback was equipped with the Self-defense Active Defeat Laser System—a small laser for zapping MANPADS seeker-heads—but there were just too many. Ten dumb-as-bricks darts curled and twirled off into the night as the tiltrotor fell to earth wreathed in flame.

Banks’ Shitter banked and yawed—it struggled to listen to his inputs. He glanced back at the source of the mess through the FLIR on his HMD. He counted the gun bursts. Four guns. He saw a river of blackened figures running between the flashes.

Someone, something in the back of his mind, has a sense of humor. His lizard brain picked out a single figure standing still, holding something on his shoulder. Banks didn’t need any other warnings. The skipper jammed a finger into the console. The night grew yet brighter. The MANPADS man flinched, and a dart of fire blitzed into the night. Its seeker was immediately overwhelmed by the flares and slammed into a rooftop.

The cannon that had hit him missed its follow-up. The avalanche of electromagnetic countermeasures must’ve blinded the Kraut Skysweeper’s shit-ass fire control radar set—or Nazi gunners just sucked for shit. Another second later, a round missed by mere feet. Its fuse detonated in a shotgun blast that shredded someone’s lovely home.

“Gunny’s gone—same with the rope master and the Canuck platoon leader—I think.” Lieutenant Cha wearily reported to no one in particular.

“Fu—” The fifth round’s fuse worked as intended, sheering the aircraft’s tail off. It entered a spin. Cha and Banks fought to keep control of 40 tons—and lost. They were losing altitude and entering a counterclockwise spin. “Anvil Zero-One, going down. I say again, Anvil Zero-One is going down hard.”

The PAVE LOW clipped the roof of a rowhouse before slamming into the opposing street, bringing down the building around them. Inertia was not going to let them down easily. They rolled through the lightly built structure like a freight train and descended one story before coming out the other side with enough force to impale through the first floor of the next block. The final impact knocked Banks unconscious. The skipper of this shitter was out cold before his aircraft came to a stop.

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Near Amendola Air Base

Amendola, Province of Foggia, Kingdom of Italy

Major May Locke, United States Marine Corps (CERFOR)

Deputy-Executive Officer, 10th Special Forces Regiment (Combined, Airborne)

2109 Local Time, SEPT 12, 1943

“Boss, you know, I think she’s the one,” Corporal D’Antonio wistfully remarked, his eyes not even slightly directed at the road. The electric Willys Jeep whined as it weaved over the narrow olive orchard track in the forced twilight of flak and fires. The Jeeps and purloined Opel Blitzes hurled down the road without the help of their headlights at a somewhat unreasonable speed, led by three Super Jackal raiders. The leading vehicles—with six wheels and 300 horses from an adiabatic opposed-piston hybrid-electric powertrain—were kitted out with FN MAGs and miniguns in .30-06, an unholy union of future and past. The Boss provides. But they were late and needed to make up time. Locke silently thanked her past self, who had insisted that the regiment’s drivers be STARLIGHT qualified, and her Baby Snake Eaters, who had taken it upon themselves to steal enough NOD tubes so they could be properly kitted.

The Major was in the back, pushed into the corner, facing sideways. The suppressor-muzzle device of her mid-length M20 Enhanced Standard Carbine SOPMOD dug into the side of one, Generalmajor Paul Diechman, Chief of Staff of II Fliegerkorps (the Luftwaffe’s main operational command in Italy). The round-faced officer was still in shock, little more than blubber with a pale face and a gaping jaw in a grey uniform.

Major Locke snorted dismissively, “This is the third ‘the one,’ Michelangelo… That cute thing in Lompoc. The one with orange hair in Oran. She was well… need I say gyatt? You should take some time. Reflect on what you want because you’re clearly not finding it. I’ve said this before, Mikey: I can teach you technique, but I can’t give you spirit. You have to find that yourself.” She chuckled as she took a drag from her vape. She had precious few pods left; the liquid was worth its volume in gold.

“Was ist ‘gyatt?’” The fat Nazi interrupted sheepishly. He scowled at Locke, his face an ever-shifting mandapam of disgust and shame.

Shaw—the recce company’s Canuck commanding officer and the on-hand polyglot—annoyedly looked at his superior, “Need I translate?” He sighed wearily, “What does that even mean, ma’am?”

Locke spat a cloud of vapor into the Nazi’s face as she chuckled, speaking in her best German. She had one class in undergrad and a fling with a Bundeswehr attaché during a stint in the OSATO Secretariat in Osaka. “Attraktives Mädchen mit eine Wunderschön hintern.”

Both the Canadian captain and German general shot her a most awfully confused look. “Wovon in Gottes Namen redest du?” The German crowed as he batted away the vapor with bound hands. Locke, with a radio handset crammed between her ear and shoulder, said nothing but drove the barrel of her rifle into the side of the Nazi, who yelped and shut up. The present illuminating conversation was of secondary concern to her.

Columns of fire rose into the night sky from the Tortorella Airbase, where they had found the general. Locke was kicking herself that they had dropped most of his staff before someone had realized they’d shot up a bunch of HVTs on a command tour. At least that Canadian troop leader had kept some alive for the intel boys back in Oran. She made a mental note to keep an eye on that one, good material.

The Major was not too worried about Nazis or Fascisti. She was more worried about the good guys. They had lost three to blue-on-blue incidents coming back. There were paras everywhere, and they were as jumpy as the Jersey Devil skezzed out on bath salts. The charm of getting lit up by friendlies had decidedly worn off. She had taken the regimental reconnaissance company out to fight for information—ideally, seize radios and code books, but like a trip to Costco… things had escalated.

Locke was officially the regiment’s “deputy executive officer,” a wonderfully opaque billet and one that concealed the breadth of her station. This regiment was as much her’s as it was Colonel Frederick’s—to the chagrin of more than a few. She had retrained—remolded—the First Special Service Force into the best light infantry force outside of the Certain Force and to her old unit. The Mother of Snakes had her ways. They had called her Bitch—now most of them called her Boss.

“Five, this God. You’re clear on to perimeter, 500 meters,” the voice on the end of the radio crackled as they turned left onto a paved road. Locke switched channels and feathered the transmitted twice. The Jackals put the pedal to the metal; the Willys kept up, and the six Opel tractor-trailers filled with fifty-odd thousand gallons of avgas and JP-Nazi did their best to keep pace.

GOD was some pimple-faced chair jockey sitting in TABERNACLE—AFHQ’s central headquarters carved into Mount Murdjadjo under Fort Santa Cruz in Oran—running an RQ-20B Revenant. This drone—delightfully named Milwaukee Sober—had been in the air for fifteen and half hours, which gave Locke about thirty minutes of overwatch before it had to start its two-hour return flight to its home airfield in Sicily. However, GOD had a split focus—Locke was not her only angel.

There were three YAC-119 Shadows in the air over the Tavoliere. A river of lead flowing down from above the clouds heralded their presence. They had been rushed out from the Fairchild plant in Hagerstown, Maryland before they had finished their acceptance trials. The Gennies were shitting bricks, worried that FRICTION would backfire and compromise the entirety of PHALANX. So, they asked for all the help they could get—and that included four .30-06 and two 20-millimeter gatling guns slapped in a Boxcar. Even though their infrared and night vision optics were quaint, they were still the best night attackers outside of a Certain Force.

When the dawn rose, every Fascisti and Nazi in southern Italy would fear the night.

“Many thanks, Milwaukee. We app—” She stopped herself as something woke up on the promontory. Ribbons of tracers, flak bursts, and flames. Something burning fell from the sky. “Milwaukee—I’m seeing some heavy contact up on Objective PEACH. Can you get eyes? Over.”

“Rog, Five Delta.” The droner went quiet. “Oh.” He went quiet again. “We’ll get back to you. Out.”

“Fuck,” she hooked the handset back into the long range. She felt it in her bones—things were getting complicated. A dozen MANPADS ripped into the night and got something.

Shaw looked up at the mountain, and grimaced. “Christ,” he muttered.

She switched the radio to the regimental freak. “Snake Eater X-Ray, Snake Eater Five Delta. On final approach to Lemon. Eureka. I say again. Eureka. Over.”

The familiar voice of Colonel Robert Frederick, the regiment’s commander, hissed back over the mild static, “Five Delta, this is Six. Proceed directly to Hotel Two. Over.” He did not sound amused.

“Five Delta, a-firm. Out.” She flicked back to the battalion net, but before she started directing the convoy in, she told her driver, “Mikey, Hangar Two. Express.”

“Got it, boss,” he replied. “We goin’ up there?” He flicked his head toward the fires on the ridge.

Locke said nothing for a moment as the convoy zipped past the airfield’s main gate without as much as braking. A shadowy figure with a rifle and raised STARLIGHT NODs waved them through. The small guard house had been blasted to pieces—blood and bullet holes pockmarked what remained. The bodies of the dead Italian guardians had been policed into a neat row further back. The entire tableau was lit by burning wrecks over a half dozen armored cars and half-tracks, blazing like candles. The convoy whipped up the flames as they swished past. The corpses of these would-be rescuers of Amendola were splayed out, slain without so much as a whisper fired back at the entrenched company from the Regiment’s 1st Battalion that had greeted them.

As they swerved to avoid a burning Sd.Kfz. 231, the Jeep jumped like it had hit a speed bump. The flattened, splattered corpse splayed out on the road was visible in the flickering firelight. “Odds are,” Locke mumbled to no one in particular.

Torre dei Giganti, Castello Di Monte Sant’Angelo, Monte Sant’Angelo

Gargano, Province of Foggia, Kingdom of Italy

Major Tillman Von Feuchtersleben, Luftwaffe

Flakgruppe Tillman, Flak-Regiment 22, 1. Flak-Division

2120 Local Time, SEPT 12, 1943

The six 8.8 cm Auto-Flugabwehrkanone 43s continued their song—one tremendous note every one and a half seconds. Von Feuchtersleben’s adjutant was shouting over the wire telephone to get the guns to cease firing. They could not afford to waste their Elektrosicherung fused ammunition. Yet round counting was not at the forefront of the Major’s mind, the invisible was. Radar.

They had driven off a score of Allied aircraft and had killed no less than eight, perhaps even a dozen. Oh how they had lit up the sky like the stars had fallen. However, just minutes later, they had detected the distinct squawking of something that kept every Luftwaffe artillery officer up at night. Flakjäger. Abwehr said the Americans called the mission “Drunk Weasel” for some inscrutable reason, likely stemming from their negro-jewish depravity.

That is why the Major loomed over the shoulder of the chief operator of his battalion’s primary search radar. They were only radiating for thirty-second bursts, which OKL had estimated would be sufficient to prevent a lock by the Shrike—the radar hunting missile the Allies had just deployed to the field in the late summer. The results of this estimation had not been thoroughly tested and had been passed from on high with unclear sources, which was typical.

A pale-faced Gefreiter, who had taken a wound to one of his legs from machine gun fire, rested against the battlements with a tube on his shoulder. He eyed the empty sky with equal parts contempt and fear. That fiberglass tube appeared like a mere piece of plumbing, but it could fell dragons. Von Feuchtersleben and his staff had been suspicious of the new weapon after it had been foisted upon them by the Sonder Lehrkommando zur Besonderen Verwendung of the Reichsverteidigungsorganisation. They had been given almost no training, but the “Pm 313” had clearly been named Fliegerfaust for a reason. They had killed a dozen—no more than a dozen—Yankee “Drachen.” However, one thing did not sit right with Von Feuchtersleben. One of the technicians who had come with the weapons shipment from Peenemunde had called Pm 313 ‘Judeo-Bolshevik drivel.’

But how? Maybe the weasels aren’t the only ones that are drunk.

The Major took his eyes off this PPI display for a moment, but something caught his eye. His head snapped back, and a shiver flashed down his spine, “SCHIEß!” The enlisted operator shouted. The screen was consumed by a green-white blizzard.

“SHUT IT DOWN! DOWN! VERTDAMMT! TERMINATE ALL EMISSIONS! MY GOD SHUT IT ALL DOWN!” The Major’s voice rose to a bellow before he even realized it. The adjutant was on the field telephone, shouting to the gun crews. The technicians fluttered hither and thither to smother their high-power radar set. They would permanently damage the search radar if they moved out of sequence while deactivating it.

The missiles came screaming out of the dark—two quartets of barely visible white darts moving with blistering speed, streaking straight toward them.

Lockheed EF-89B Electro-Scorpion, Angel Baby, WW/43-1092

Gargano, Province of Foggia, Kingdom of Italy

Captain Hank “Henry” Ableton, United States Army Air Forces (GENFOR)

313th Fighter-Bomber Squadron, 35th Fighter Group (Tactical, Interdictor)

2121 Local Time, SEPT 12, 1943

Captain Ableton slammed his Scorpion into full reheat and banked hard to the left. The straight-wing fighter responded immediately as a little more than 30,000 pounds of thrust poured out from its pair of J57-P-2 turbojets. He dumped flares and chaff as he bled off what little altitude he had left and screamed back across the plains.

“Well, we get any Goose?”

“I—SHITFIRE!” His RIO, Flight Officer Ruturon Rettle, interrupted himself. “Now that’s a Goddamn hit! We got something. It’s cookin’ off!”

Ableton checked his mirrors, and sure enough, three plumes of fire and white-hot frag hung in the air, lifting off from one of the battlements. “Anything else? That just looks like one.” He depressed his radio transmitter, “Red Two, Red One—you see anything? My backseat tallies one hit.”

“Red One, Krauts must’ve killed the juice. Lost the music just as I pulled the trigger,” His frustrated wingman answered.

“Angel Danger, Red Flight. We are Arizona. At least three hit on target, defenses still operational. Over.”

Primary Afloat Command Plot, USS OKINAWA (LPVN-29)

Gulf of Taranto, Approx. 25 NMI South of Taranto, Kingdom of Italy

Rear Admiral Henry Izikawa, United States Navy (CERFOR)

Commander, Task Force 121 / Commander, Naval, Certain Forces, West

2136 Local Time, SEPT 12, 1943

Admiral Ikizawa looked down at the sandtable that stretched out before him. It filled the room like a huge billiards table glowing with symbols and showing the progress of PHALANX’s three component parts: AVALANCHE, BARDICHE, and FRICTION. It was game day, and everyone had come out for the team, but he was displeased as a sea of faces and figures chattered away and milled around the digital plot. PEACH was not just off schedule; it was slipping through their fingers. That would turn a tenuous political situation into something altogether more dire.

General Bernard Montgomery paced along one side stroking his chin and staring down at an blown-up insert showing BARDICHE’s progress. Dots denoting the IFF tags for a company of Raiders were making great progress seizing Taranto’s docks in tact, it was a Hell of a coup de main. “I bloody hate this,” Monty complained. “I can see everything. I see too much. Awful. Awful—You’ll kill my patience, Izikava.”

That was the fifth different way Monty had butchered Izikawa’s name in the last three hours. “General, respectfully, if you feel the urge to micromanage my landing force, I can put you on an LCAC or I can give you a fidget spinner.”

“When does ORCHARD’s Corps HQ make landfall?” Montgomery wisely switched subjects, though Ikizawa could already see the General angling to requisition the Big Boy VTOLs after they had deposited the Corps HQ and the FARP team.

“Heavy Metal is ten minutes out from Objective LEMON, sir,” one of the ops ratings answered.

Monty grinned, giddy at the speed of information, “What about the rest of ORCHARD Force?”

“63rd Transpo’ Group is arriving at LEMON now, and the rest of the 52nd Transport Wing is past phase line SUGAR.” The rating pinged markers on the main plot, strings of arrows were crossing the heel of the boot, and some were already at the spur. Most of these carried the supplies that would be needed to keep Ridgeway’s composite corps in the fight in the event that the weather cut off resupply. Even if the weather turned bad, they could run supplies with OLYMPIAN air assets, but Izikawa would rather not burn the flight hours or put irreplaceable assets on the line for milk runs.

“Hell of a mess on that mountain. Do we have night attack available?” The general inquired.

“We don’t, sir. They’re all Winchester—out of ordinance—or engaged.” The Air Ops officer answered, “We do have our reserve and the alert Cougars on the deck, but—”

“We need those for the bloody panzers,” the general surmised. He shook his head. Not to mention that the flak battery they’d missed at Monte Sant’Angelo was still partially active.

The admiral grimaced and turned to PACP’s air operations officer. “Michaelson, how much time does FALSE PROPHET have left on station?”

The young Cert looked up from his console, “About thirty. We lost an hour tanking PEACH Force. They still have full ammo, though…” He knew his boss well enough to know what the Gyrene’s Admiral was thinking.

“We’ve got an ELINT ping from Herman Goring at Battipaglia!” Yelped another plot operator, “It's fragmentary, but they’re in pocket,” his voice had already switched back to monotonous. There was a sigh of relief. They had not heard tell of the Luftwaffe’s armored division until now.

“Bloody well time!” A British voice complained.

The admiral scoffed as he turned to his CAG, a fullbird everyone called STARS. The blond prettyboy already had a handset wrenched from the console surrounding the main plot up against his ear: “Albie for IFR? Cougars for the Panzers?”

Izikawa nodded, “Get that shit rolling. If they have to pull off station to refuel, it’s better than a whole-hog RTB.” He rubbed his chin as he looked at the map, “Where is the relief Rev20 for the Foggia AO?” A runner brought him a bundle of printed dispatches, sending a shiver down Izikawa’s spine—he missed having everything just sent on a tablet.

“Delayed due to a mechanical issue. It won’t be a handoff,” STARS answered grimly.

A figure cut through the crowd and physically moved Hank’s flag aide out of the way. “Hank, they’ll need lift up that mountain if we want to keep the dream alive,” Colonel Sandy Serrano, commander of the 4th Raider Battalion, was agitated. It would not be apparent on first inspection, but Izikawa saw the flesh under the usually affable special forces officer's eye twitch.

Izikawa looked Sandy dead in the eye, “Michaelson?”

“Yessir?” The swabbie replied.

“Inform HEAVY METAL they are temporarily detached to 10th Special Forces.”

“Sir, don’t we need approval from Genera—” Izikawa flicked his eyes off of Serrano and focused a cold glare at Lieutenant Michaelson, who got the memo. “Understood, Admiral. I’ll have Comms send a dispatch to General Clark.”

“Sandy, let’s just hope she doesn’t propose anything insane.”

The Raider erupted in cackling laughter, killing all other noise in the plot, leaving only dead, awkward silence in its wake.

Regimental CP, Hangar Two, Amendola Air Base

Amendola, Province of Foggia, Kingdom of Italy

Major May Locke, United States Marine Corps (CERFOR)

Deputy-Executive Officer, 10th Special Forces Regiment (Combined, Airborne)

2145 Local Time, SEPT 12, 1943

Colonel Frederick sighed. “That is an insane idea, Major.” With a shaking head, he glared at Locke under the red light of covered lanterns, “The rest of Walker’s battalion up that mountain in those helo-copters that just got shot to Hell ‘n back?” His arms shot up in a familiar burst of exasperation as the droning of radial engines filled the night. “Madness!”

“Sir, I never said which air assets,” Locke stopped Frederick cold, causing him and the rest of the regimental staff to let out a beleaguered collective sigh. “PEACH is on that mountain, so are our men—and OLYMPIAN materiel in flagrante delicto.” The major pointed out of the hangar toward a trio of taxing C-54A Skymasters, “We already have one battalion of the 325th on the ground, and the 2nd Commando Brigade is still on schedule. My god, Fred, we have a battalion scheduled every twenty minutes. We have a free hand, and you know very well what is riding on this mission.” The building shook as a low whine rose above the din of the constant trickle of spluttering and coughing props. Locke smiled.

Perfect timing.

The radio on the table around which the regiment's senior leaders sat crackled to life. Frederick stopped before he could speak and looked forlornly at the box on the table between them. A violent hiss of static, a deluge of crackling gunfire, echoed into the hangar.

Villa Santi, Monte Sant’Angelo

Gargano, Province of Foggia, Kingdom of Italy

Sergeant James Alsup, United States Army (GENFOR)

I Company, 3rd Battalion, 10th Special Forces Regiment (Combined, Airborne)

2147 Local Time, SEPT 12, 1943

The roar of the suppressed T60E1 lit the interior of the villa—bathing the dead, dying, and damned in pulsing light and dancing shadow as smoke danced off the barrel and its tired suppressor. The gunner howled curses as the half-mad radio man snapped and started screaming, handset dangling in his paw, “We’re dead! We’re dead! Dead! We’re all going to die!”

The company’s first sergeant lifted the kid by his webbing and shook him like a mutt as he snatched the handset from him. He tossed the boy aside like an empty sack, “Enough of that shit, son,” he spat. His roaring voice was barely a whisper above the discord. He spoke calmly into the receiver, lost under the hail of gunfire. A rocket cut through the night and detonated. The radioman babbled in tears, a puddle of cloth and kit.

Dark blood pooled on the floorboards as the two orderlies triaged the wounded and whispered silent prayers for the dead. Sergeant Alsup helped the Marine SPADE, a master sergeant, to the stairs. He was the meanest one of the bunch of gravediggers. Alsup could not remember the sergeant’s name as his hands trembled and his mind raced. The SPADE pushed himself onto the stairs and immediately started to check himself for wounds. He groaned as he touched his thigh. The olive drab fabric was dark with blood.

The SPADE looked at Alsup, “Sergeant—do you remember the trauma care course?” Alsup nodded. “Good. Then TQ me, bro. I’ve got shit to do, and I ain’t got time to bleed.” The SPADE removed a tourniquet from his plate carrier and pressed it into Alsup’s hand. “If I pass out, it’s on you, dude.” He started tapping away on the flexible screen on his wrist, “The Boss’ll kill me if I die.” He seemed almost disinterested in his own death.

Alsup didn’t need to hear more. He slung his M2A1 Carbine to one side and started to apply the trauma care he had been taught with shaking hands. The little peashooter was thankfully light, and he knew it could kill, despite what the boys had thought. The bullet had not struck an artery and gone all the way through. Alsup’s hands were slick with blood, but the grim reaper on his shoulder would not die—at least not from this wound.

The company—rather two troops—had been pushed back to a small villa on the southwestern edge of the town. They had attempted to fight their way into the town after pushing from the alternate DZ—but it was no use. They had been thrown back by a furious counterattack. The Italians were fighting like hellcats with nothing to lose.

There were also Krauts. Lots of Krauts.

Sikorsky MH-53R Nightmare PAVE LOW V, Pizza Rat Stallion, #172334/YK 09

Gargano, Province of Foggia, Kingdom of Italy

Captain Jeffrey Banks, United States Marine Corps (CERFOR)

Marine Heavy Helicopter Squadron 466

2025 Local Time, SEPT 12, 1943

Captain Banks's consciousness returned in jerks and spurts, like waking from an unpleasant dream. He thoughtlessly unclipped his harness and flicked up his NODs. He fell forward about a foot and groaned as his gut slammed into the console. “Sam?” He turned and saw the corpse of his friend. Neck twisted and wrung. His body contorted in a final, awful pose. “Damn it, Sam,” he whimpered. A voice of sorrow and regret that he could not recognize as his own echoed in his mind. Blood was slick on his forehead. His eyes hurt. Everything hurt. His head pulsed with a pain that made him drowsy. His body moved without much instruction from his clouded mind. Hands reached and found his SERE kit. He opened the cockpit door and took a leap into the dark.

The sky was still lit by not-so-distant flames, and spats of gunfire barked into the night, some far in the distance, some worryingly close. Otherwise, the town was dark. it was quiet, and it was deserted. It didn’t seem like anyone was home—it almost felt like no one had ever lived here. There was something very, very wrong. The briefing had estimated that the population had merely been cordoned off from the convent that had been designated PEACHTREE.

He fell about three feet into a heap. His body was all out of sorts. His right shoulder was probably dislocated, and his left knee was not exactly happy either. The fresh pain was like a cold bucket of water. He instinctually reached for his thigh. He felt and drew his carbine—a snub-nosed rattler AR with a funny block suppressor-muzzle break. It had been billed as an M1 Carbine for a modern war; DOD had even renamed the damn thing to “M1 Close Defense Carbine” from its original designation of M29 Reduced Size Assault Rifle to prove the point. A shiver went down his spine. He might just have to test that comparison for himself.

“Movement!” A voice cried out.

Banks turned to face his executioner. He paused mid-movement as he brought the pistol to his shoulder. Since when do Italians sound Canadian?

“Another flyboy is alive!” The same voice corrected his first call.

“Baldree, you said they were both dead,” someone else snarled.

“Skipper? That you?” A third voice beckoned.

“DeLario?” Banks squinted at the face peering down at him from a second-story window. “You alive? Did Jones…”

“I’m here too, sir. Fucked up, but I’m here,” a distant Corporal Jones gruffly answered.

“Did Lee—”

Banks cut off DeLario, “He didn’t.”

“And he’ll be fuckin’ munted too if he stays out there,” The second voice said.

Banks shuffled toward the door of the house his Shitter had smashed through. Sam, why did you have to get fucking killed? Sally will—Fuck. Sally would never know what happened to her little brother. Sally would’ve already buried an empty casket, like all of their families. He tried the big oak door. “It’s locked, gentleman.”

“Baldree, get th’fookin door,” The voice finally registered; it was Cancuk’s colour sergeant—a tough son of a bitch.

At least he’s still alive.

Banks rested his head against the wooden door and took a deep breath.

THU-CRACK. THUMP. THU-CRACK. THUMP. THU-CRACK.

Banks turned toward the muffled crack. The cogs in his brain turned for a moment. He flicked down his NODs and felt sick as he looked underneath the wreck of his PAVE LOW. In faded colors, he saw that church mice were stirring. Figures moved down the street in a wedge formation, lighting up the wreckage of his aircraft with rounds and IR lasers as they advanced down the street without a single concern for who or what might be in the buildings. The finesse was plain to see—they moved with flawless synchronicity. It made him draw a blank, but it was certainly cinematic.

Who are these chucklefucks? He shouldered his baby AR. Thank God I’m a lefty, sorry Sister Irene. He flicked the selector off SAFE. “Sarge, those are our guys?” He asked upstairs.

There was a thunk at the door as Sergeant MacLeod shouted something obscene, his voice cut off by a BLOOP and a long burst from a T60 belt-fed. The figures fell to the cobbles like dropped dolls, crooked limbs canted into the air as the 40-millimeter grenade detonated, and a concerto of singing .276-43 rounds sliced through cloth and flesh. There was a shout to hold fire. It was done and dusted in a blink of an eye.

Banks pushed into the door as it finally swung open, toppling over the slip-of-a-thing Canadian. The captain caught the private with one hand and pulled him upright. The Canuck locked the door and hurried up after Banks, who trudged upstairs. DeLario nearly jumped him, hands full of detcord. Jones was prostrate on the floor with a compound fracture below his knee, along with two less wounded Forcemen and five corpses.

“Good to see you, Jaysohn,” Banks answered the hug with a hand pushing the face of the sergeant away from himself, “You rigging her to blow?” DeLario nodded. “Good. Keep working, we can’t stay here.” The adrenaline was starting to flow. He wasn’t used to getting shot at on the ground—and wasn’t really all that used to getting shot at in the air. “Sergeant, who the fuck were those guys?”

“Fook if I know.” The stocky Canadian was built like a bull, and had a finely combed walrus moustache affixed above his lip. “They aren’t that smart, but they’re mean. We reckon they have the Starlight.”

“I saw IR lasers, so almost certainly, yes—we need to get moving,” He paused, panting slightly, “Where the Hell are we?”

“South side of the place,” Sergeant MacLeod answered. “Radio is busted, but we can hear the gunfire easy enough. Rest of the company are that way.” He pointed east. He pointed out four of his men, “Beaker, Smythe, Other Mac, and Baldree go recover one of the bodies. Kinney, your team will cover.” The men wordlessly assented and went to the task. MacLeod and Banks unfurled their printed maps at the same time, and both produced wax pencils almost in unison. “Light,” the sergeant bid, and one of the enlisted enforcement clicked on a red-lensed pen light.

Banks had a working bearing and a marked map. The medic had set his shoulder back into place, which allowed the captain to help DeLario and two Canuck Snake Eaters lace the Shitter with what explosives they had at hand. Jones was still struggling to get a SERE radios to the right channel. The Sisyphean task of getting OLYMPIAN and PROMETHEAN technology to talk together was almost comforting. God knows he had experience with it. The captain made a little prayer, wishing for JADC2 and DiOS.

Five or ten minutes passed, and the party returned with a shredded corpse. There was a rumble in the distance, thunder. The unstill night was now muffled by the sound of a gentle rain.

Sergeant Beaker tossed something to Banks, which the captain failed to catch. It jumped right out of his hands and onto the blood-stained carpet. A cold shiver ran down Banks’s spine. Brick-like AN/PVS-5 night vision goggles rocked on the floor at his feet.

The dead soldier was in all black. He had a steel highcut helmet with rails and a unit insignia that Banks could not recognize alongside the twin thunderbolts that he did. He had a plate carrier and modern webbing, but only steel plates. One Forcemen held up an integrally suppressed modernized FG 42—an abomination of shitty polymer and not!KeyMod—in his hands.

Banks, patting his sweat-slicked hair that was now free of his flight helmet, shrugged and sighed. “Well, this is certainly a development.”

Forward Area Refuelling Point SQUEEZE, Amendola Air Base

Amendola, Province of Foggia, Kingdom of Italy

Major May Locke, United States Marine Corps (CERFOR)

Deputy-Executive Officer, 10th Special Forces Regiment (Combined, Airborne)

2150 Local Time, SEPT 12, 1943

The rain pittered and pattered as Major Locke walked across the tarmac toward four resting CV-84D Condors. The hairs on the back of her neck were rigid, and she felt the eyes staring daggers. She paid them no mind. Not even the rain phased her. Riding out a monsoon in a busted-ass hooch had raised her tolerance a lifetime ago.

The FARP crew moved with elegance and speed, a ballet of Gennies and Certs, OD ants in ponchos scurrying in the shadows between spotlights. They were a machine of flesh and blood—but they were not quiet—a constant stream of curses and orders rolled up like the tide. As soon as another cutting-edge antique touched the tarmac—guided by two AESA radars designed by the pilots’ would-be great-grandchildren—the refueling of another was completed. The C-54s and C-46s didn’t need to refuel and just waited for their turn to take back into the clouds and be free from this place of danger.

There was tension in the air. Gennies flying in the dark and the rain was not easy—least of all on a freshly captured airbase a hundred miles behind enemy lines. But everyone kept working.

“You men capable of taking these aircraft up that mountain?” Major General Matthew Ridgeway bade to four Cert aircrews crouching on the cargo ramp of the lead CV-84 Delta. The general was in his poncho, two black-fabric stars on his helmet’s cover, and a bridal trail of staff officers in his wake. Everyone was curious about A Certain Force, even if they had a constellation on their shoulders. Ridgeway had agreed to what Frederick and Locke proposed, but he was still uncertain.

“Yes, General, we are capable,” the detachment command rose from his squat and let his body unfurl to its full height. A face and form familiar to Locke loomed over the parachutist general. “Is the flak still operational?” That was a pointed question. Locke could see the Roc Rider’s rook slide across the verbal chessboard. He was positioning himself for a Directive 16(A) rejection.

Clever boy.

“FALSE PROPHET is on tap,” Locke interjected. She tipped her head with a brief smirk, “Lieutenant Colonel Adebayo.”

Five words upturned the Riders' mood in an instant. It was like someone had removed a knife from their throat. The ogre of a man, the commanding officer of Marine Heavy Tiltrotor Squadron 506 (VMH-506), smiled. “Never bet against Hank, eh?”

“Something like that, John,” Locke replied. She turned back toward Frederick and Ridgeway. The general was bewildered; Frederick nodded—doing his best to hide a wolfish grin.

“Hell of a way to die, May.” Adebayo said, “But we all gotta die sometime. We’re done fueling in twenty.” He looked down at his pilots, “Any objections?”

“Quoting Army? Addie, that’s some pussy shit,” one aviator, with a visage closer to a pair of worn saddlebags than a man, spat back, “Let’s get this fuckin’ circus on the road.”

Ridgeway leaned over toward Frederick, “They’re actually going to give…”

“She’s a broad, but she’s good at this,” Frederick answered. “Don’t ask how… beyond me.” Locke pretended that she didn’t hear.

“Christ,” Ridgeway looked Locke up and down once more like it was the first time meeting her. He outstretched his hand, “Just what are you?”

Locke accepted the handshake. “A weapon to surpass Metal Gear,” she answered coyly.

The General did not ask any more questions, impressed by an answer he did not understand in the slightest. “Give ‘em Hell.” He chuckled awkwardly.

The general and his staff turned back and trotted through the rain back to the main building where they had set up the Corps command post. Frederick and a few Berets remained under the cover of the Condor’s tail, looking up at her. This was her show now.

She raised two fingers to her lips and whistled. The shrill tone pierced the night and the sound of the rain. She shifted tones down, and at once, she had the attention of at least 1500 people. “SNAKE EATERS!” The words flowed sweeter than any litany, and the feet of the men she had trained moved swifter than any gale. “LET’S GO RESCUE A PRINCESS!”

Castello di Monte Sant'Angelo, Monte Sant'Angelo

Monte Sant'Angelo, Province of Foggia, Kingdom of Italy

Major Tillman von Feuchtersleben, Luftwaffe

Flakgruppe Tillman, Flak-Regiment 22, 1. Flak-Division

2212 Local Time, SEPT 12, 1943

“These fucking Italians,” the Sonderjäger Stabsfeldwebel growled, “Worth as much as pigshit at a piggery.” Major von Feuchtersleben stood awkwardly alongside the Alter Kämpfer as he attempted to strike a match on the butt of his Sturmbüchse fitted with a massive watchmeister scope. “At least in Astrakhan, the Romanians were good at dying. These shitstains can’t even die properly.” He jerked his head in the direction of a wounded Italian Regular being dragged back toward an aid station. The Major nodded along as if he agreed, but he just wanted to get this over with so he could return to the comparative safety of his busted command post.

He had come down from the castle to oversee the deployment of an experimental weapon. Four 27-millimeter cannons with a first-of-its-kind heat sight and advanced fire director. Of course, the heat sight and director had not actually been delivered when they accepted the prototype, but that was not much of a concern now. Two draft horses moved the mount down darkened Italian streets as the blackshirt garrison fired off another set of illumination shells. The 2.7cm Auto-Flak 43 was supposed to be a new standard “close-in defense weapon,” but tonight, it would be blooded as an assault gun.

Some of the Sonderjägers cursed as they snapped up their night glasses, recoiling in pain. The platoon moved in a line down one side of the street. They were all relaxed, almost nonchalant. These were all veterans of the fight against the Bolsheviks—and some were even veterans of the Great War too.

“Two fucking companies left, and they can’t kill a platoon of Jew Lover Americans. So we have to clean up their mess,” The Stabsfeldwebel continued, “Fucking invalids.” The SS officer at the head of the column raised a palm, and the troops halted. He motioned toward his ear and then upwards. Von Feuchtersleben looked upwards and focused his hearing, but there was nothing—the sound of gunfire was too near and too loud. “Shit,” the soldier muttered.

“What?” The Major asked, only to be hushed by two Sonderjägers.

“Maikäfer,” some whispered.

“What?” They shushed him again, this time violently. Rifles rose into the air; the relaxed men became still and tense—like archers pulling on a drawstring.

He heard it. It was a low buzz, like a fan or a toy aeroplane. The Major tilted his head and did his best to figure out the direction of the sound. He saw a bird moving in the mix of flare-light and smoke.

It wasn’t a bird.

Tillman moved to shout an order to bring the gun to bear. However, before his tongue could follow through, the mount was bathed in a circle of green spotlight showering down from the heavens. “Gott im Himmel,” he shouted. The gun started to burn as the horses started to lose control. He saw paint burst into flames. He saw metal burst into smoke and wither in front of his eyes. He felt his body and his mind freeze in fear that boiled up from his bones. He watched. It was all he could do. He had a sinking feeling that he was now the ant beneath something else’s magnifying glass.

The ammo. Oh.

His thoughts were interrupted as the Maikäfer dropped from above. With a rush of dazzling light, a rocket motor ignited as it sprinted to the earth. It burst into a grey cloud of smoke and fragmentation. The sympathetic detonation of 2.7cm bomb shells filled the street with noise and licks of flame. All of the air from his lungs was ripped out at once. The night was filled with screams as jägers collapsed to the cobbles and dying horses screeched. One horse folded over, its neck ripped open by fragmentation; the other was fighting for its life, blood rushing down its dapple coat. It got free of its tattered yoke and sprinted down the street. The commandos, with all the discipline of a half-mad mob, wildly opened fire into the sky as the green beam disappeared.

The sky above seemed to grow bigger and darker just as protection of the dark around them faded in the overwhelming light of fire. The quiet retreated as rumbling engines filled the air. The entire town had come to life with a maliciousness, a necromancer had woken the cobble from their long slumber.

Concussed and night-blind, von Feuchtersleben was yanked through a doorway into a house by one of the commandos as shouts echoed in one ear and out the other. He felt warmth spilling down his arm. He caught one last glimpse of the sky. There were things moving, shifting like scarabs under the flesh. The dreadful column of light poured down from the sky, a sickly pallid green, followed by ribbons of ultramarine lightning. There was something in the clouds, and it had stolen the Thunderbolt from Olympus.

Bell Textron-Lockheed MV-84U White Raven / PAVE PHOENIX, SKINWALKER, ? 93203 / NOAA N99RF

Above Monte Sant’Angelo, Gargano, Province of Foggia, Kingdom of Italy

Chief Warrant Officer Alleny “SCOOCH” Larenge, United States Aerospace Force (CERFOR)

Section One, Blue Detachment, Aviation Technology Office

2215 Local Time, SEPT 12, 1943

“Yeah, Guns, we got some squirters. Building with three chimneys at the T junction.”

“Lasing. That them?”

“Yep, you got’em. Reengage.”

Scooch Larenge’s voice was cold and calm. He saw the world in black and white, even if it was 4K. He didn’t feel much as he saw the blurry bolts of moving death zip out of his aircraft’s 50-millimeter cannon. He had flown this mission fifty times, though it was usually not quite as hectic as this. The crew was antsy—you could taste it. They had been waiting to get into the action, and they were not going to disappoint.

The single MV-84U was simultaneously prosecuting five targets: one with its onboard 500-kilowatt laser ‘designator’, one with its 120-millimeter automatic mortar, another with its 50-millimeter revolver cannon, and two more with a swarm of Switchblade Super 600 airborne loitering tactical munitions.

“Crew, can we get an update on that AD?” The co-pilot asked over the main channel.

“One second, Flight.” Captain Bryn took a second and pawed at his console, scanning the mountaintop village. His eyes effortlessly flicked over the battle damage tracker, cross-checking it with the active tags and what the FLIR and SAR were showing on the display. “All identified Triple-A is neutralized. You seeing radar emish, Flight?”

“Negative, Crew. I just don’t want this party bus to go down. Just kill anyone dude with a tube to be safe.”

“Way ahead of you, Flight.” The captain ended his call with an unsettling chuckle.

“These guys are all running for cover…” the ship’s third combat system officer, Marge, muttered over the channel, “What’s SAR-y Charlie showing?”

“MO’ up!” the crewwoman manning the NEMO-120 shouted.

“Uuuuuh, let’s prioritize the Eye-Ties near the friendlies in the two-story building with the three strobes on it.” Captain Bryn answered. “Yeah, let’s smoke those guys.”

Scooch saw movement. “Oh, I got movement, movement. In the white row houses, near the downed Stallion.”

“Yeah, I got it…” Captain Bryn replied, “I see it too. Do not engage. Those could be our guys…” Suddenly, something in the hands of the figures started to flash in infrared, “Oh yeah, that’s our guys.” A second later, the ship’s electro-optical targeting system used its two-way interrogator and confirmed the IR strobe was friendly. It even showed whose strobe it was.

Banks… Banks… is that Pizza Rat guy?

“Fuck! Ping!” Marge shouted, the White Raven’s targeting computer was sifting through all their real-time data to pick our priority targets. They called it Spidey Sense. “Tube! Tube! Tube! Northwest corner of the castle, one. Single foot mobile.”

That’s a brave dumbfuck.

“Smoke ‘em! Engage! Engage!” Bryn barked as he and Scooch swerved their targeting cameras that way. A figure was running along the wall of the castle with a tube on his shoulder. The CWO watched the 500 kW designation light up, set to its 25-centimer setting pulse. The figure fell into two stacks of smoking viscera. You could see him slop to the ground. There was a sympathetic detonation as the MANPADS warhead went off.

“Crew, Flight—storks on schedule, keep your eyes pea—.” He cut himself off mid-sentence, “Launch! Launch! Countermeasures!” The entire aircraft rocked as the pilots unleashed the throttles, and two active decoys and a trail of flares lept free.

“Uh, Boss—that wasn’t a MANPAD,” Scooch said over the intercom. His screen had turned to hell. He switched to the SAR view, and it was filled with noise. “That’s a lot of fuckin’ chaff.”

Bell Textron-Lockheed CV-84D Condor, It’s Always Sunny in Hell, #174198/MI00

Gargano, Province of Foggia, Kingdom of Italy

Major May Locke, USMC (CERFOR)

Deputy-Executive Officer, 10th Special Forces Regiment (Combined, Airborne)

2215 Local Time, SEPT 12, 1943

Major Locke loomed over Lieutenant Colonel Adebayo's shoulder like an unwelcome parrot. She wanted to catch the view as they were coming in. Monte Sant’Angelo was lit by flickering flames as smoke rose between the buildings, and more fire poured down from the PAVE PHOENIX. She patted John on the shoulder and filed back down from the cockpit into the cabin as the light went red. She nodded to Captain Shaw as he spoke to one of his troop commanders.

The men stirred and readied their weapons. There were hushed whispers, nervous looks, and even more nervous japes. These were not the same men who had met Locke with scorn and suspicion in January. They were blooded now, but fighting shocked checkpoint guards is a whole other ballgame than MOUT—at night—against an unexpectedly large and well-equipped enemy force.

The rumble of explosions rolled as FALSE PROPHET pounced on anything that moved. The Germans had gotten a sucker punch, but they would only leave this arena in a body bag. Major Locke would see to it.

The night was turned to half-day as the air over the village was filled with shimmering flakes and burning flares. “False Prophet, this is Heavy Metal Zero. We have enemy chaff in the air. Looks like they’re ready for us,” Adebayo’s voice crackled across the radio as Locke checked her gear. She was a motley mutt of a future that could never be and a past that was not her own. OD Green in a vintage cut with her plate carrier and parts of her old kit, but with more kit and fittings that were the best that the First Arsenal of Democracy could produce. She had one foot in the 1970s and another in the 2040s.

“Rog’ Heavy Metal, we’re in the blind. Set your SADLS to automatic. We’ll counterfire if they shoot. Best we can do at this time.” The PAVE PHONEIX commander’s voice reverberated in the ears of her Common Head And Ear Protection System helmet. CHAEPS—DOD had a sense of humor with that one—was made of a novel blend of polyethylene that gave it black tip protection at 70% of the weight of NG-IHPS.

The gunfire and explosions grew closer.

The rotors began to shift, and most of the Gennies looked like they were going to puke or shit themselves as the wizardry of future engineering willed the quad-rotor Hercules-sized transport to assume its helicopter-like form. There was a flood of movement as the crew pulled the jump doors open, letting a stream of frigid air, and in their place, they swung out a pair of miniguns. A masked, NOD’d, and leashed crewman readied the guns as a hand came to rest on her shoulder.

“Ma’am, sit the fuck down. Dying in a crash is my job, not yours,” the crew chief—a slender, acne-scarred Latino man in his late 30s—grumbled. Locke knew better than to argue with Addie’s people. It was bad luck and bad form, and she really shouldn’t be standing in the middle of the cabin like a philosophizing idiot.

“Footmobiles, ten o’clock low—moving onto the roof with the greenhouse,” the co-pilot said over the intercom. “Yeah, those aren’t ours—smoke ‘em.” The left door gunner opened fire first, then the right, and then the gunners from the three other transports. From a view out the escape hatch window, she could just make out rivers of tracers pouring down through the spitting rain.

The return fire came almost immediately—but—the cavalry had arrived.

Villa Santi, Monte Sant’Angelo

Gargano, Province of Foggia, Kingdom of Italy

Sergeant James Alsup, United States Army (GENFOR)

1st Troop, I Company, 3rd Battalion, 10th Special Forces Regiment (Combined, Airborne)

2215 Local Time, SEPT 12, 1943

Rain wasn’t the only thing falling.

A group of Italian soldiers disappeared underneath a burst of smoke and fire. The pattern of small explosions occurred all at once. The flash of light made Sergeant Alsup wince as his view of the world went white. The Eye-Ties were throwing all they had—even after their mortars had been silenced and one of their companies had been cut to ribbons. Three, maybe four, machine guns nested in the windows of the core village were spitting streams of curses in Carcano. 2nd Troop had seen Blackshirts (by their helmets) with Kraut weapons, but these guys were just regular Italian Army and totally outmatched.

The villa was smashed, large portions of the walls had been smashed open, and nearly everything with a line of sight from the Italians was pockmarked by bullet holes. They were running low on ammunition, but their fighting position was still intact. Alsup was lying flat on the kitchen’s tile floor, looking through a hole blasted through the brick wall by a Panzerfaust. Alsup saw the world in the grainy grey-green tint of his Starlight goggles. He fired one round at a time toward movement and at the enemy machine guns. He stopped firing as he saw a mortar shell drop from the sky and turn the end of a rowhouse into a smoking ruin and a sea of splinters screaming into the night sky that suddenly grew red-orange.

Long strings of red-orange flares filled the night along with clouds of shimmering metal. Tracers whipped through the air in a crisscrossing mess of color and violence, and then yet another color arrived, rivers of ultramarine blue cutting down from the sky like lines of light. The rhythmic thumping of rotor blades reverberated through everything—like the heartbeat of the world. One MG nest fell silent. Then another. Movement in the shadows stopped. The attack lifted like a passing storm.

“The Hell?” Someone shouted, with a tenor to the voice that screamed that he was half deaf, “Did we whip the bastards?”

“Shuddup, Wilson,” Captain Daugherty shouted back. “That’s our signal, boys! Angus, get to Rodgers and tell him to get ready to move his troop.” Alsup turned over on his belly and looked in the direction of the CO’s voice, confused. “We need to redivvy our ammo. I want us ready to move out in five.” The skipper slinked along the line in a crouched walk, whispering and giving out encouragement. “Jim, how much ammo do you have?” Daughtery asked when he finally got Alsup.

“I got half a mag of .23 in the rifle and one spare, and two smoke, and a frag,” Alsup answered.

Daughtery nodded and produced two more mags of .23-43 and a pineapple hand grenade, “Need water? How are you holding up?”

“Be better once we get off this mountain, Cap.”

“We’re getting there, Jim. We’re getting there.”

Parrocchia Santa Maria del Carmine, Monte Sant’Angelo

Gargano, Province of Foggia, Kingdom of Italy

Major Tillman von Feuchtersleben, Luftwaffe

Flakgruppe Tillman, Flak-Regiment 22, 1. Flak-Division

2217 Local Time, SEPT 12, 1943

The church was buzzing with frantic activity. Men carried arms and ammunition, including their last few Fliegerfaust rockets, down into the crypt—and the tunnels that had been created for this very purpose. The foundation shook, and dust from the rafters as another massive explosion rocked the village. Tillman sat awkwardly. His hands would not stop vibrating. He felt blood on his face and was unsure if it was his own or someone else's. His command was gone. He was a husk watching a one-sided screaming match.

“TUTTO MIO BATTALIOGNE!” The Tenente Colonnello was screaming at the very top of his lungs. His battalion was considered sufficiently loyal to be officially signed to the mission, but they were still disposable—not that he or his men had been told of that. His face was bright red, and his eyes were bulging. “PORCO STRONZO!”

“You are relieved,” Standartenführer Skorzeny replied coldly. The Italian didn’t need to wait for the translation and lunged at the Standartenführer. One of the spähjäger caught the officer by the scruff of his neck and slammed his face down onto the table, a few drops of blood dappled the map of Foggia. The praetorian pressed a rectangular, plastic-framed pistol to the base of the officer’s neck. Skorzeny growled as the room fell silent. The other Italians had moved their hands to their weapons.

“Porco Madonna—questo stronzo…” The Black Prince had not flinched, nor had his frogmen adjutants. “Calmati.” He shook his head, “Ora…” He jerked his head to the left, and the jäger let go of the army officer. Who straightened out just in time to be shot by the Black Prince. The corpses collapsed onto the table but slid backward to the ground, landing with a wet thump.

The commander of I Bersaglieri CC.NN Battalion “M” nodded energetically, “Si.”

“Now…” Skorzeny started again, his voice bristling with annoyance, as he turned and looked toward the passenger at the crypt, “Move OAK to the alternate location. And send the signal.”

An RVO Elektromaschinenschreiberp-Kampfpionier sat his station with a mass of radio and electronics. His fingers danced and unleashed a brief symphony of clicks and lacks.

Skorzeny rapped his knuckles on the blood-soaked table, “The pyres are lit. The fires will rage. Let us begin. Let us kill them all and be done with it.”

LZ Dog, East of Cimitero Comunale, Monte Sant’Angelo

Gargano, Province of Foggia, Kingdom of Italy

Major May Locke, United States Marine Corps (CERFOR)

Deputy-Executive Officer, 10th Special Forces Regiment (Combined, Airborne)

2217 Local Time, SEPT 12, 1943

The Condor landed with a thunk, rocking the entire aircraft. The cabin light flipped green, and the company dismounted out both jump doors and the rear ramp. It took thirty-five painful seconds for the CV-84 to empty out. The low rumble of the four T506 engines rose to a deafening roar as they unleashed 15,000 horsepower each. The massive blades summoned a hurricane amongst the soft rain.

The battalion waited, lying on the low grass and rocks—waiting for a storm of lead to reach out through the water. Tracers from distant gunfire bounced into the sky, and the occasional illumination flare rose into the night. However, the only thing Locke could hear was the sound of the pattering precipitation.

Locke rose from the ground like a phantom, making no sound. With the flick of one hand, she waved the entire battalion forward. They crept forward with a practiced bounding movement. Jingling gunners and A-Gs rustling forward with their T60s and belts of steel-cased ammo.

With another wordless gesture, Locke and the Regimental Reconnaissance Company split off through the cemetery. She lowered her AN/PSQ-60 SPIDER EYE mount. The panoramic display inside the four-eyed armored visor gave her vision in muted colors and neon highlights. Her men still trembled in amazement at equipment like PVS-7 while she saw the world with a digital heads-up display. Funny how things work out.

They moved in the shadows of dozens of mausoleums, homes to the dead in all sorts of shades and shapes. The rain kept falling, and the night was filled with the rustling of weapons and men. Whispers drifted between their ears as they moved ever forward. Death could be around any corner, but they still had yet to be welcomed.

As they cleared the cemetery, Locke froze. The sky glowed, and the village they had flown over was gone. Fire reached up toward the sky in flickering towers of orange, vomiting clouds of black smoke. White phosphorus, glowing white hot, drifted down like snow made of falling stars. Two-tone waves of grey smoke rolled forward from every street and alley, dipping and shifting in the wind and the rain. Half of the mass slithered on the ground, heavier than air, two feet deep—with another layer floating like cream on top. The sight made Locke sick to her stomach. A hundred memories flickered past her mind’s eye. Her heart wrenched as she thought of the wife she had left behind and the future they had lost. Flakes of debris and ashes flitted through the air above it. Her hand went to a pouch on her hip. She popped the tab and grabbed the contents.

The Forcemen, lit by orange flame, stopped. The light showed on their faces, ones covered in war paint so they did not gleam with the natural oils of humans but the stony-faced determination of soldiers. She felt eyes turn toward her as she removed the lower half of her CHAEPS, “Masks on!” A dozen noncoms and officers echoed her command, and three hundred men moved to grab the respirators from their pouches. Locke affixed the mandible armor and its respirator to her helmet. There was a hiss as the seal molded to her face and the pressure lock formed. She took one step forward, then two. She was consumed by the smoke. The Forcemen followed her.

This changed nothing. The clock was still ticking.

Hell had come to Monte Sant’Angelo. It would not save the monsters dwelling here from the Black Devils. If they wished to die in the dark amongst ash and cinder, she would happily oblige.

“D’Antonio!” She hissed back at the column of olive-drab soldiers pressed against the sides of the street. The RTO trundled up to her, his puppy-dog face concealed beneath an M50 gasmask. “You on the battalion net?” He nodded. “Okay, gimme the stick.” She grabbed the receiver and hit transmit, a violent explosion of static stung her ear. She called out to nothing. “Fuck! It’s fucked.” She whispered. She turned toward Shaw, at the back of the column on the other side of the street, “Shaw, your radio dead?”

“What!?” he replied too loud, overestimating how much his mask would muffle his voice.

“Is! Your! Radio! Jammed!” Locke fired back as the Forcemen nervously looked around, expecting a whole regiment of Italians to jump out of every opening.

“Oh,” he muttered and looked at his radioman, who was already working on the backpack-sized long-range. He said something that Locke didn’t catch.

The Corporal slashed his thumb across his throat, “Shit-bricked.”

Locke growled and powered up her wrist computer. The battery was doing alright, but they had all learned the hard way that a glowing wrist tended to make Certs easy to spot, and the Wehrmacht was always eager to collect the standing bounty for their heads. 10,000 Reichsmarks was a lot of money, after all. The first thing that she saw was a familiar warning bubble. Shit. They were getting jammed, and jammed by something that was wide-spectrum and high-powered. It had to be OLYMPIAN. Of course, it was. They must’ve prepared for a movement by a Cert force.

It was impossible to see more than a few feet through the smoke. Locke switched her SPIDER EYES to pure thermal, but couldn’t see anything. The smoke was clearly two layers, one soup, dense and ever-sinking toward the ground, and the other much more normal ashen fog. Both were clearly persistent. Too clever by half. No one would be able to see in this shit—not Gerry and not any eyes in the sky.

Locke cursed to herself and waved the column forward. She linked up with Shaw, and they decided to send runners to J and K Company. They would continue for Objective PEACHTREE. God willing, I Company would be able to link up with J Company and provide the battalion with rear area security.

“What if they come around us?” Shaw asked, fecklessly fanning smoke off the folded map in his hand.

Locke shrugged, “It’ll be a firefight.”

Shaw looked around toward the flames visible above the roofs, “Yeah, sure.”

The runners disappeared into the smoke, and the recce company moved forward. The lead troop had disappeared in the grey. The noise of the flames, the rain, and the hissing combination of the two elemental forces hid the sounds of their movement. There was just the soft crunching of boots on cobblestones like a broken metronome. They followed curved and jagged roads lined by empty houses. There was no one here. They kept going forward; there were only about 300 meters to PEACHTREE.

The machine guns opened fire first, the horrible buzzsaw whine of an MG 42. The company dropped to the ground into the soup, rifles leveled toward the direction of the contact. The lead troop returned fire. The noise of suppressed rifles and machine guns filled the street, punctuated by bloop tubes and LAWs. Bursts of light clawed through the smothering smoke and ash.

“Panzerfaust!” someone up ahead shouted, followed by a tremendous rush of noise as a rocket came screaming out of the smoke, parting it like a knife. It slammed into the side of a rowhouse behind them and exploded. The light did its best to punch through the layers of grey-orange smoke. Locke waved Shaw forward; the battalion command team she had commandeered stayed with her, and a small security detachment and the battalion FO/TAC party. Locke could barely see the tracers flitting back and forth like blaster bolts. They shifted the CP out of the way to a better position.

“This some Geonosis, bullshit,” she murmured to herself.

They were camped in an alley, Locke at the mouth looking down the street while squatting behind the stairs leading up to the entrance. She barely flinched as a suppressed full-power rifle went off overhead without any warning. The round streaked down the street into the smoke, chasing after a phantom Forceman. Locke’s hand went up to tell her command party to hold; she looked up and saw a shrouded barrel hanging over the ledge. With a few jerks of her head, her soldiers quietly readied their weapons—a mix of small arms, plus a couple of M79 GLs and one T60—as the gunman in the window complained under his breath in German.

D’Antiono, Locke, and four others wordlessly readied fragmentation grenades—just before the RTO yanked the pin from the baseball-shaped M27 grenade, Locke stopped him. She drew her last remaining M84 flashbang, wiggled it at the Forcemen, and pointed to herself. They nodded. She pulled the pin.

“Was?” The voice in the window murmured in German.

Locke waited for a second before chucking into the building. It went off, filling the room with light and noise. Her erstwhile students rose and hurled or rolled half a dozen frags into the structure.

“MILLER!” Locke cried to her leader of the battalion HQ’s security element, “STACK AND—” The grenades went off, blowing out the windows and sending curtains and grey-brown smoke out with a cloud of shrapnel and splinters. He got the memo, and a team of pipe hitters rolled up to the entrance. They blew the door off its hinges with a shorty shoty and rolled in a couple of grenades for good measure. The point man was armed with a cut-down M10 FAL, something that violated even the looser regs that Locke had suggested for the Regiment—so it's not like they’d need to use flashbangs when they had automatic dispenser.

“Bennet, Profroek,” she hissed at the huddle of olive-drab porcupines. Get moving, find Shaw, and tell him we have Germans. It looks like they’re special forces t—” The XO of the 2nd Battalion shot her an angry glare. “No fuckin’ Kraut regular has a semi- and a reflex suppressor, Bourne.” The Canadian nodded, stood up straight, and waved forward to bring a scratch fireteam into the building. She grabbed his arm, “Secure the first floor and then torch it. Don’t have the time or men for distractions, understand?”

“Crystal, sir.”

She patted him on the shoulder, “Go get ‘em, Tiger.”

Primary Afloat Command Plot, USS OKINAWA (LPVN-29)

Gulf of Taranto, Approx. 25 NMI South of Taranto, Kingdom of Italy

Rear Admiral Henry Izikawa, United States Navy (CERFOR)

Commander, Task Force 121 / Commander, Naval, Certain Forces, West

2230 Local Time, SEPT 12, 1943

The images emblazoned on the floor-to-ceiling LED screen were hard to parse; there was just so much smoke and fire. The rating managing the display fecklessly swapped between vision modes—and it was ironically the most clear without thermals. Monty was pacing ruthlessly up and down along the main plot.

“Can’t we just—” The British general started.

Izikawa cut him off, “No.” The Gennies’ heads once more collectively snapped toward the Sanei two-star. Monty was rearing to leap down his throat, but Hank continued to speak. “As I have said previously, it is my practice not to override commanders in the field unless or until they are making a clear mistake that endangers the operation or I possess information that they do not. Neither of those requirements are met. We are in the dark. They are jammed. General Ridgeway is deploying the Green Berets’ 1st Battalion with assets of the Certain Forces. I would remind you that FRICTION is his ballgame—unless and until I get a phone call from Oran, I will trust his judgment.”

“How—”

Izikawa cut Montgomery off again as the Englishman rose to his feet. His stark voice filled every corner of the room, every word annunciated with force to shaker the windows. “General Montgomery, you have no operational authority over my landing force. I report directly to AFHQ and Admiral Kaine. You are not the JFC here, sir.” His voice was filled with disdain. He had had enough of Montgomery for a few lifetimes. “I might only have two stars on my shoulders, sir, but I can still drop the sky on you, General.” He sat back down, “Now, I have three invasions to assist. This conversation is over. I will generously forget about it unless you would like to waste more of our time.”

Montgomery turned away from Hank. “How gracious of you, sir,” he scoffed and audibly rolled his eyes. “I will report this indiscretion to my government.”

“Goosefucker,” Hank mumbled under his breath. I oughta Worldstar the motherfucker. Where the fuck is Chucky Cheese when you need him? He turned toward one of his staff, “Spectrum, do we have any idea what kind of jamming that is?”

“It-it’s the same footprint as our INDIGO NIGHTMARE interdictor sets, but roughly forty-percent the effective strength,” The bespectacled twenty-something petty officer responded nervously.

Hank ran a hand through his hair. “They have anything that can punch through the noise?”

“You could mod a PRC-200 to spoof the jammer into thinking a repeated signal burst was friendly, but that would depend on the jamming unit still having STANAG 8563 anti-fratricidal jamming capes, which is a big if. And it would require crawling into the BIOS of the two-hundo.”

Izikawa looked at his console’s display. His eye lingered on the symbol for 4th Raiders, now with Darby Force and 3/1 Marines. “Well, let’s hope that the Spade with 10th SFR knows their way around a rootkit.”

Villa del Sole Nascente, Monte Sant’Angelo

Gargano, Province of Foggia, Kingdom of Italy

Major May Locke, United States Marine Corps (CERFOR)

Deputy-Executive Officer, 10th Special Forces Regiment (Combined, Airborne)

2300 Local Time, SEPT 12, 1943

Locke helped the Canadian Forceman drag a wounded soldier inside, “Hey, Bricky, I need you to finish with the bullshit and start transmitting.” She growled at Master Sergeant Hannover “Bricky” Brzezinski, who was currently guts deep into their sole AN/PRC-200 long-range mesh-net radio.

“Doing my best. This isn’t exactly like cutting a NewTok,” he spat back as he tapped away on his wrist computer with a bandaged hand as Locke and the Canadian brought the wounded soldier to the medics. “…but I’m close.”

Phrasing.

The battle raged outside the apartment they had commandeered as their new CP. Tracers raced through orange-hued smoke. Muzzle flashes could hardly be seen, masked by polluted air. They had pushed forward and regrouped with I Company without any friendly fire. However, there was a lot—lot—more than just a battalion of Italians and some Gucci Kraut flak. They were hemmed in by at least a battalion of German-kitted Italian-speaking fighters who seemed to know what they were doing and enough pre-sighted machine gun nests to make god weep. Her entire battalion was committed, save for a pair of spent troops covering their asses.

Comms were still down—and they weren’t coming back until they took down that jammer, which they only had a rough idea of where it was located. But today, good enough was, in fact, good enough if they could get a message back to Task Force 121. Every minute they fought this battle in the dark was another minute that the enemy force could use to maneuver against them. She didn’t have the men, but XVIII Corps would know something was wrong and would send reinforcements, especially since PAVE PHOENIX had seen everything.

Locke hated this feeling of helplessness. She had no more cards left to play, save for hurling her command element and exhausted walking wounded into the fray. She felt the smoke all around her, flowing in the windows as the fires continued to rage. They were not keeping to the schedule—not at all.

“Got it!” Bricky shouted. “I think,” he chuckled awkwardly. “Only one way to find out!”

“Only one way to find out,” Locke repeated back at him, smiling. “Mackensy, I need a grid reference for that fuckin bank with all the gun nests!”

God has a special providence for fools, drunkards, and the United States of America.

Combat Bridge, USS LONG BEACH (CSGN-42)

Gulf of Salerno, Approx. 30 NMI Southeast of Naples, Kingdom of Italy

Rear Admiral Jeduthun MacGregor, United States Navy (CERFOR)

Commander, Task Force 123 / Commander, Surface Action Group Seven

2303 Local Time, SEPT 12, 1943

“FLASH! FLASH! JUMPBALL.” One of the Combat crew shouted. “Designator SNAKE EATER FIVE DELTA. Waiting for confirmation and authentication.” The ensign cut himself off, “Signal from One-Two-One Actual—‘Jumpball Flash received at 2303 Lima is authentic, accurate, and time-sensitive. Priority One. Prosecute immediately.”

“Tarnations!” The baritone roll of Rear Admiral Jed MacGregor voice answered. He looked around, “We’ll let's see.” He tapped his tablet awake and smiled at an ABBA wallpaper before tapping through to the message. It was a text request for a fire mission, and a danger-close one at that. MacGregor unveiled a toothy grin before hurling more thunder from his lungs: “CRYSTAL PALACE!”

“Set conditions Crystal Palace, aye,” the TAO replied. A moment later, inch thick HY-200 Natick Plates snapped down, completely covering the windows and thrusting Long Beach’s combined CIC-Bridge, the ship’s absolute nerve center, into almost total darkness. The cavernous space was, for a moment, only lit by the dozens of computers that filled it before the window’s LED display matrix came alive, revealing the night sky beyond the best spark plasma sinistered high entropy alloy that the Pennsylvania of 2035 could produce.

“FIRE MISSION! FIFTEEN ROUNDS! TWELVE INCH! RAPID FIRE!”

Banco Monte, Monte Sant’Angelo

Gargano, Province of Foggia, Kingdom of Italy

Major Tillman von Feuchtersleben, Luftwaffe

Flakgruppe Tillman, Flak-Regiment 22, 1. Flak-Division

2305 Local Time, SEPT 12, 1943

“FALL BACK!” The American officer's voice was clear through the smoke: “GET BACK! GET DOWN! PULL IT BACK!” Major Tillman did not fully comprehend the words but understood the intent, even as a hellish fusillade of gunfire tore through their hellish surroundings. He coughed through the damp rag around his mouth—his gas mask having been destroyed along with most of his personal belongings.

Someone shouted something in Italian, and a cheer went up from the M Battalion blackshirts. One of the men, an ox of a man, picked up his MG 42 and started firing it from the hip as he waved forward and shouted encouragements.

They did not even hear the whistling before the first round impacted. Tillman did not even understand what was happening as he was wrenched off his feet and flung across the room, slamming spine-first into a doorframe. He vomited blood into his face mask as every ounce of air was pulled from his lungs, and the building fell down around him.

Scheiß.

Bell Textron-Lockheed MV-84U White Raven / PAVE PHOENIX, SKINWALKER, ? 93203 / NOAA N99RF

Above Monte Sant’Angelo, Gargano, Province of Foggia, Kingdom of Italy

Chief Warrant Officer Alleny “SCOOCH” Larenge, United States Aerospace Force (CERFOR)

Section One, Blue Detachment, Aviation Technology Office

2305 Local Time, SEPT 12, 1943

“Goddamn,” Colonel Frederick looked at the display, slack-jawed. Another 12-inch HC round from Long Beach came down from the night sky like a burning star and disappeared into the smoke for a moment before detonating, sending debris and smoke spinning into the air. They were trucking in at about 2.5 km/s. The blast wave was great enough to displace the persistent floating sludge like a puddle, the ripples were clear through the smoke.

FALSE PROPHET had returned on station after tanking and picking up a regimental command element from Amendola. They were itching for a fight.

They had barely said anything after the jamming hit. They had tried to find the transmitter without luck and had to pull off station. They were certain they were leaving those soldiers to die.

It seemed like Snake Eaters didn’t die easy—across time.

Comms shouted with a mix of anger and excitement, “WIDE-SPEC SPOOFER IS DOWN! CLEAR-WATER!” His voice changed at the drop of a hat, “All Snake Eater Elements, this is False Prophet. One times MV-84 Uniform orbiting at 7000. Armed with 1-1-0-0 rounds 50-mike-mike, 6-5 rounds 120-mike-mike, Buzzards, and JAGM. Playtime is One-Eight-Zero. Available for tasking. Be advised, Python is en route, twenty-mikes.”

Two minutes later, the radio crackled alive, and a distorted but reassuringly familiar voice answered back as more shells rained down into the flitting smoke and hellmire.

Villa del Sole Nascente, Monte Sant’Angelo

Gargano, Province of Foggia, Kingdom of Italy

Major May Locke, United States Marine Corps (CERFOR)

Deputy-Executive Officer, 10th Special Forces Regiment (Combined, Airborne)

2308 Local Time, SEPT 12, 1943

“FALSE PROPHET, THIS IS SNAKE EATER FIVE DELTA.” Locke shouted in the receiver as the battle raged all around her, “PING IS LIVE ON MY POS. FIRE MISSION. DEAD LIGHT DANGER CLOSE. ONE-ZERO-ZERO METERS AT 3-0-7 DEGREES. TROOPS IN COVER, GREY STONE BUILDING MARKED WITH A BLUE FLARE. I NEED YOU TO DROP THE SKY ON THOSE FUCKERS!”

She peeked out the window, her head barely peeking over the sill. The fires were growing more uncontrolled, the air was thin of oxygen and thick with clods of ash. Machine gun fire echoed every which way, a confused melee unfolding all around them. They had broken the back of the Fascisti special forces just after one of the blackshirt companies had come charging out of the smoke with bugles blaring, faces covered in dampened cloth. They now littered the cobblestone streets and the plaza.

“Roger, Snake Eater, Stone building with the blue flare. We’re acquiring.” The gunship commo echoed back at her.

“Watch your fire Prophet. Don’t you go killing any of my boys.” She growled, “I’m handing you off to my FO/TACs. God forgive me for this, but I owe you Aero fucks a beer.”

“Make it a case, ma’am,” False Prophet answered back as a 120mm mortar shell dropped from the sky and shattered the fortified butcher shop, a hurricane of 50mm shells following in its wake.

She thrust the PRC-200 receiver into the hands of the battalion’s senior FO/TAC—a recent addition from the training course in Lompoc. They were all sharp, but they weren’t quite one of hers. With comms restored, she had put the battalion into motion. They had been held up for too long. She would trust Bourne to manage the fight. He just needed to keep things together, which was well within his ability—plus, he wasn’t a chud like Walker.

“D’Antonio, let’s go get ourselves killed,” she chimed in a voice too sweet for the words it beckoned forth into the world.

“Ma’am?” The RTO spluttered back; he chased after her as she hurried down the stairs to the ground floor.

With a click and hiss, she removed her mask and mandible armor as she raised her fingerless glove to her lips. She whistled. That clarion call was heard over the din. The confused Forcemen looked back at her. She thundered, taking gulps of poisoned air; it felt like every breath was a hundred unfiltered cigs—she was lucky if it was just that, “BAYONETS! BAYONETS!” The cry went up, and her order flowed from man to man, from lips shouting under gas masks. She closed her own mask and shouted, “COME ON YOU SONS’A’BITCHES, I AIN’T WAITING TO BURN IN HELL! FOLLOW ME!” The small speakers in the mandibles boosted and distorted her voice. It sounded less like her and more like Dark Galadriel—which was hardly a bad thing.

She sprinted forward. For a moment, she could only hear her own breathing, her own footfalls. She dared not look back and be faced with the reality that she had built the relationship she believed she had with her men.

“Well, don’t let the Broad die alone!” A voice hollered with a familial kind of spite.

Locke was a panther, her feet barely touching the ground. The servos in her active warrior-web mobility exo-rig whined every so softly, like a mewling kitten. She cut a path through the smoke, leaving a gash through soup-smoke in her wake. The distant orange hues grew more and more defined as she hauled ass across the plaza. Where there ought to be a building, there was only a crater and cacophony of shattered timbers and detritus.

Her HUD pinged movement before her eyes could pick up on it. The last thing two Blackshirts saw was a faceless figure standing amongst greys and oranges with a rifle in her hand. She put two in the one who was standing and one into the wounded man he was helping up as he went for his sidearm. The standing one folded in half and slumped to the ground. The wounded one writhed for a moment, shrieked, and then stopped moving. She put one more into each of them. Memories of an IJA suicider on Cactus were still fresh in her mind.

She heard movement behind her, and her electronic ears flagged it on the HUD; she turned to one side and swung her body toward the threat. Corporal D’Antonio and a dozen Forcemen came charging out of the mist with bayonets fixed and rifles ready. The rest of the troop came through the smoke, step by step, revealing themselves, cold and calm—despite their fiery environs.

Locke took a knee alongside the troop captain, “Essig, take your One Element down these row houses, unhinge whatever’s left of the Blackshirts. Your Two Element will stay here, cover your asses, and guide in the rest of Romeo. Once enough of Recce’s here—they’ll join you. When you link up with Jig, lock the compound down on this side, okay? Got it?” Essig nodded.

Shaw and another platoon of Special Forces came moving through the smoke, “Shaw, we’re taking that convent—now.”

“Yes, ma’am. About bloody time.”

“Indeed.” She rose from one knee, “Box it in and break it down. We’re going through that wall.” She pointed to the side of a building.

The half-company dispersed to their objectives. Shaw stopped Locke, “May, are you quite sure about—”

“Sometimes you need to lead from the front. I’m not a full bird, after all. Got to live a little while I still can, John,” she replied with a smile.

“Very well, ma’am,” Shaw dutifully answered, clearly off-put by the smile on her face and her alarming chipperness. Even after kicking the ass of every officer in the Regiment, they still thought she was a flower to protect—or perhaps he just didn’t want her to get his men killed.

The air stirred with crackling fire, drizzling, and the dropping of bodies. The entire regiment had been drilled and drilled and drilled again in kill house after kill house. They were the best urban troops trained on this side of the shift, and they were showing it. They had been outnumbered at least three to one and held their own.

A knock-off Strela-2 popped and swooshed into the night sky, only to be swatted out of the sky by a laser. Whoever had fired it was then on the receiving end of a deluge of 50-mike-mike fused, raining down shrapnel like iron hail.

This was a rush job. They didn’t have a proper cordon, but they didn’t have the time to spare. At least PEACHTREE isn’t actively on fire. Locke watched three sappers wire up the shaped charges and half a reel of detcord against the wall that was probably older than the United States of America. They looked up to her as they finished their work. Down the road, a dead Italian tumbled backward out of a third-story window and splattered on the ground. The entry force snapped its head toward the scene, already tensing up for the breach.

“Just blow the fuckin’ thing already,” Locke said in a coldly annoyed tone. She tucked behind a piece of broken wall in what used to be a bathroom with the sappers. The senior sapper pressed the detonator, and a little jolt of electricity flowed down into the soup. A column of white-grey smoke exploded into the night, and the entry team hurled flashbangs into the newly blasted entrance.

“Doors are for pussies,” one of the sappers proudly announced before remembering the Major. “Present company excluded, ma’am.”

“How magnimous, Technical Sergeant,” she sighed as she joined the stack and rolled into the compound. There were no lights. Even the oil lamps had been snuffed. The entry teams had their starlight scopes—but those would only help in so much as there was some natural light to magnify, and they weren’t going to light themselves up with IR illuminators with NOD-equipped Nazis; Locke did not have the same limitations. SPIDER EYE had been optimized for zero natural light environments, crawling through sewers and bunkers and the like—real megacity deathmatch hours. They were going to have to take this place the hard way instead of just fragging everyone room. PEACH was worth nothing dead, actually it would be worse than that.

They had breached into an empty storeroom and immediately fanned out through a few more rooms—all deserted—before reaching a courtyard. Locke was pleased as she watched the Forcemen cut pies like real soldiers. They were a little sloppy, but still a far cry from where she found them. Still, she missed her Raiders. She snapped herself back to reality as she watched a stack blow the hinges of a door and breach the main church building.

The first three men entered, and someone opened up a bottle of undiluted hellfire. An absolute deluge of automatic gunfire ripped out as a dozen guns went full auto all at once. The soldiers flopped onto the ground, two still in the fight.

One of the lead men shouted, “Flash, Flash! I need a flash! Krauts 270!”

Another gunfight started in another portion of the complex.

Three flashbangs came sailing through the doorway a moment later. The rest of the breach team followed after they went off and unloaded with everything they had as they breached. Locke followed suit. The convent’s chapel was now in the process of a very thorough and rapid remodeling as two sections of German special forces—who had been lying in ambush for an entry from the front—turned their fury on the unexpected direction of their visitors.

One of the Germans staggered backward, trying to take off his NODs, and was shot by Locke and about three other Forcemen. His tattered corpse draped over a pew. The Germans were firing blindly—probably literally so. She domed two before a wounded German hit something, and a dozen floodlights filled the chamber with overwhelming white light as pea-soup slipped in from the open door and bullet holes. The light blinded both the Forcemen and the Super Krauts—but not Locke. Her PSQ-60s auto-gated and flipped to thermals. She dropped staggering, desperate black-clad fighters as they struggled to find their footing and come to their senses.

Her M20 ESC went click after she put three into one German crawling away between the pews. She calmly reloaded the rifle as another one staggered forward with a knife. She put one in his head and another in his groin.

By the time the breaching team came to their senses and more Forcemen joined them, Locke was doubling-taping SS corpses. The Forcemen secured the room, turned off the lights, and turned on their IR illuminators. She looked down at the thunderbolts and thought about raising the black flag, but the 10th Special Forces had already seen the War Refugee Board video briefing—the BLACKRIBBON one. They would do it on their own.

“Williamson,” Locke called out for this recce troop’s CO.

“Yes, ma’am?”

“Make sure we get a few survivors. I think OSS will be mighty curious about how these boys are trained and equipped.” She nudged one of the corpses before picking up an integrally suppressed MP5 look-a-like—or maybe it would be whatever the hell the shorty G3 was called. She checked the mag, and it was in some kind of modified 8mm Kurz, a knockoff .300 Blackout. “What a bunch of rachet shit, man.”

“Ma’am?” Williamson asked, confused.

“Not too many, though,” she added nonchalantly. She walked past him and rested a hand on his shoulder. “We don’t have facilities to accept them all,” she said, voice cold as ice. She did appreciate that those who did not hate her guts were scared of her.

The shouts of “Clear!” beckoned forth from across the convent.

A few minutes later, a voice from the basement shouted, “Major! You’re going to want to see this.”

She followed the voice and stepped down the darkened stairwell. Locke immediately saw why her attention was needed. The Forcemen were in the process of freeing the hostages. But are these the right hostages?

“Who are these people?”

“Dunno, ma’am,” the technical sergeant said. “Don’t look like principals, though.”

“I’d agree,” she answered before turning around. “D’Antonio!” She shouted up the stairwell. The RTO came running like a faithful puppy. “Who are these people?”

He relayed her question and exchanged a few sentences with an older man, “This guy is the uh… senior butler? These are the help, and some court retainers? I’d guess that’s what you’d call ‘em.”

“PEACH here?” She asked, already knowing the answer.

“No, ma’am. They got moved a little while ago, not sure how long, though.”

She grumbled incoherently before joking aloud, “Our fuckin’ princess is in another castle.” She thought that was cute, but it found no purchase with D’Antonio nor any of the Forcemen. They just gave her a very familiar confused glare.

“Do you think they moved them to the castle, or is this another uh refer—”

“Yes, and shut up. Gimme the mic.” She accepted the stick as she tapped her wrist computer awake and panned around the map of Mont Sant’Angelo.

“They say the Black Prince took PEACH with a German with a scar on his face and a lot of masked Germans and Blackshirt frogmen.”

“Oh, so it’s two messy bitches who love drama… Fuck me sideways.” She growled at D’Antonio. “Thank them for being cooperative, and that we’ll get them and their employer to safety.” She exhaled as she flicked around the map, “Where the fuck would I hide a short king and 30 HVTs—” she groaned. It was too fucking obvious. There was another hardened location built into this Godforsaken, Archangel visited shithole. “Hey, Mikey, wanna meet your namesake?”

“My great uncle?” The RTO answered, “But he’s from Tuscany—and he’s dead. Got kicked in the head by a mule at his sister’s wedding.”

Villa dei Mariti Ratti Bastardi, Monte Sant’Angelo

Gargano, Province of Foggia, Kingdom of Italy

Captain Jeffrey Banks, United States Marine Corps (CERFOR)

Marine Heavy Helicopter Squadron 466

2321 Local Time, SEPT 12, 1943

“Sir, when do you think they’ll come get us?” One of the younger Forcemen asked rather meekly.

Banks didn’t actually have a good answer. “They’ll get here when they get here.” They were exposed, and there was a Hell of a fight in this town. He felt slightly bad that they weren’t helping, but he was also not particularly interested in getting mixed up with a clusterfuck firefight in streets on fire. One of the burn pits was a few hundred feet away, unleashing a gargantuan column of the most foul-smelling smoke he had ever had the displeasure of experiencing.

“Stop your whinging!” Sergeant MacLeod groused. “We’ve been ordered to hold this position until relieved or until the other thing. So that’s what we’re going to do.” He turned to Banks. “…but we could do for an up—” He stopped speaking. There were sounds from the mire. Voices in the dark. Rustling of scores of men. Boots on cobbles and the rattle of watercans and ammunition. “Boys…” MacLeod checked the chamber of his rifle, “…get ready to defend yourselves.” Sets of STARLIGHT goggles descended like the faceplates of great helms. Banks gripped his own little carbine as the noise steadily grew. The voices were discordant, indecipherable. They could be shouts in German for all that Banks could make out. However, it kept growing closer.

“Is that… singing?” One of the Forcemen asked, utterly bewildered.

He wasn’t wrong. It definitely carried a tune.

They waited. It grew louder.

“PISTOLLLL PACKIN MAMAAAAA! LAYYYY THAT PISTOLLL DOWN!”

“Oh. Fuck.” Banks murmured to himself. “I fuckin’ died.” He turned to the person nearest him, “So, this is what Hell is like.” He let out a single stuttered laugh, “Weird.”

The Forceman was confused twice over, “What?”

“I thought’d remember the dying part?” Banks was unsure how he felt about the experience of dying, but this wasn’t what he was expecting. Maybe it was a mortar that he hadn’t heard?

“Sir?” The incredulous Forceman lifted his NODs, “Are you alright?”

“WE’RE THREE TOUGH GALS! FROM DEEP DOWN TEXAS WAY”

“I mean, besides dying, yeah,” Banks answered glumly.

“Sir, what are yo—”

“WE GOT NO PALS! THEY DON’T LIKE THE WAY WE PLAY!”

“You know, I didn’t expect Heaven to be Fallout: New Vegas themed.” He rolled over to one side and rose to his feet, “It’s a lot more kitsch than I was expecting.” The Cert started chuckling to himself. “At least it isn’t Johnny Guitar. I think I’d die all over again if I heard that song one more time in my life.”

“Yo, Jim,” DeLario put a hand on his shoulder and pointed out the window. “Cap, I don’t think we’re dead.” Lit by the fires that raced to heaven, Banks saw a single file line of olive-drab dressed soldiers marching along the sides of the street. They were singing through their gas masks as the rain drizzled.

Banks sighed enough to drain every ounce of air from his body. He pinched the back of his hand. It hurt. “Dawg, what the fuck is my life.”

DeLario nodded. “Reminds me, I have New Vegas on my PC back on Oki.”

One of the Forceman, perked up. “What’s a PC?”

Banks had one question, “The remake or the OG?”

The corporal laughed. “The remake! I’m not old like you, sir.” He caught himself, and his face curdled into terrified embarrassment, “Respectfully.”

“OH, LAY THAT PISTOL DOWN, BABE!”

“Fuck,” Banks sighed. I think it would be easier to understand this if I was dead.

Santuario di San Michele Arcangelo, Monte Sant’Angelo

Gargano, Province of Foggia, Kingdom of Italy

HRH Vittorio Emanuele Ferdinando Maria Gennaro di Savoia

Re d'Italia, Imperatore d'Etiopia, Re Degli Albanesi

2344 Local Time, SEPT 12, 1943

“Mon petit roi, at least we die together,” his wife Elena tried to comfort the King as a gun battle raged over their heads. He watched as one of the frogmen who lined the sanctuary tightened the grips on his German submachine gun. Yes, we’re going to die like the Romanovs. These bastards. He tightened his small hand into an equally small fist.

Castellano was dead, blood seeping from the bullet holes in his head. Marshall Badoglio was bleeding from a bullet to the gut and would surely die soon—he had been mistreated enough that his survival was amazing. Caviglia had lost one eye and could barely speak or move. How fitting that they would die together. Grandi had already been hanged along with most of the Grand Council of Fascism.

Duke Pietro d'Acquarone, the Minister of the Royal Household, had positioned himself nearby—ready to fling himself upon the King to use his body as a shield, no doubt. His close aids had circled the royal family—all of the King’s adult children and his grandchildren were assembled in one place. He shared a mournful look with his son.

One of the frogmen tried to speak into a metal box he held in one hand, “My Duke, come in? How do we proceed? Please respond.” He looked upwards, the whites of his eyes vibrantly set against the black of his face paint and his balaclava. The noise of the gunfire trailed off. There were handfuls of shots and a lot of rustling.

All of the heads in the room looked upward. Some of the more faithful of the hostages were praying. A few of the dead ministers’ families were in prayer. The princesses tended to the children and did their best to keep them calm as the tears flowed down their faces. The King kept a stoic face, but his facade was cracking and cracking fast.

One of the frogmen started shouting, “Let’s just get it over! Let’s get it done!” He slapped the side of his submachine gun. The children started wailing. Some of the other frogmen started shouting back at him, telling him to wait for orders. The officer seemed shocked that it would be his decision to make. The shouting continued until one of the Marshals’ adjutants rose and lunged at a gunman.

There was a noise—a tickling of metal on stone. The prostrate mass of limbs—the adjutant and the frogmen—froze as one, and then two, then three, and finally, four black grenades came skittering down the stairs at various speeds.

“Dear God, they’re going to kill us all,” the King muttered. His last thought would be to blame Mussolini—for this, the war—for everything. It was all his fault, and the bastard would not have the decency to kill him properly and let some filthy Americans do it. Even the frogmen seemed shocked.

Then light—and noise—and the stifling embrace of the Duke and the Queen.

Gunshots followed, voices shouting in Italian in strange accents, “Down! Down! Stay Down!” The gun battle was over before the King could claw himself out from his human armor. He looked up at a towering, broad-shouldered American staring down at him; his eyes were hidden behind bulbous glass and a gas mask. His hand clamped to the front a strange rifle that was smoking from an even stranger pipe affixed to its front. There were eight of the olive-drab figures, caked in ash and dust as the children wailed and the women flinched, expecting the coup de grâce.

The American soldiers made sure the frogmen were dead and finished searching the chamber. Moving fluidly, with a ballerina-like precision—unlike any soldiers he had ever seen, including the ‘ubermensch’ who had been their minders. He was confused when he saw a Canadian flag patch on one of their shoulders.

“Clear! It’s Clear!” One of them shouted up the stairs, “JACKPOT! And we need some medics! We’ve got wounded HVTs!”

Medics and more olive-drab ash-caked fighters came down the stairs. One even made a sign of the cross at the altar. At least that one knows his manners. They seemed to be talking to one slimmer but even taller figure in a different helmet and mask, one that hid their face. How can this one see? The King could not see this American’s eyes, but they were at least six-foot-four on a bad day—a full sixteen inches taller than him. They pressed on their mask and removed it and their helmet in one fluid movement.

A plume of blonde hair uncurled down like a rope.

“Porco Dio!” The words tumbled from his mouth before he could realize where he was. He made the sign of the cross and whispered a Hail Mary.

“D’Antonio, radio,” The Amazon—an honest-to-God Amazon was standing before the King—bid off one of the men with a large backpack. “Now, please, can someone find and kill that scar-faced som’bitch?” She turned to one of what was now clearly her men, “Prep them for evac. I want them masked and covered.” She paused for a second and groaned. She started murming to herself, like a madwoman. “When we get super cancer, they’re gonna say its not service related, aren’t they?”

“Regimental freak,” the man with her spoke as he handed her a cord and receiver attached to his large boxy backpack.

That puny thing is a radio?

She smiled down at the King with a grin that made him uncomfortable. “All Snake Eater call signs, this Snake Eater Five Delta. Jackpot. PEACH is secure and in friendly possession. I have visual P-ID confirmation on TOAD, YOSHI, and DAISY—full list to follow.”

Poti, Georgian SSR

Vitse-Admiral Filipp Sergeyevich Oktyabrsky, VMF

Commander, Black Sea Fleet

0701 Local Time, 31 JULY 1942

The sun was somewhere high in the sky, hidden by murky, miserable weather. There was a light drizzle interrupted by thunder—the thunder of distant battle. However, it was no longer so distant. The time was upon them. It was an impossible choice. But it had to be made. There was no one to save them. They would have to save themselves. Every remaining seaworthy vessel left along the Black Sea Coast of the Caucasus was assembled in Poti Harbor. The Fascist Armies had crossed the Galidzga and were now upon the K’olkhetis Lowlands. The wetlands would bog down the invaders to some extent, but the Red Army was in full retreat, totally spent after being smashed at Ochamchire and Grozny.

Vitse-Admiral Filipp Sergeyevich Oktyabrsky had made a choice that would likely condemn him. He had not heard from Moscow since the offensive began. He had not heard from General Tyulenev, the local front commander, in three days. He did not know if the Trans-Caucasian Front even still existed. He had been recalled from Sevastopol to direct naval operations in support of the troops blocking the road from Novorossiysk and to oversee the final evacuation of the fortress port from which he had left. He now knew why the Fascists had given up their offensive in Crimea. He bit his lip. He was gambling. He was gambling with thousands—tens of thousands—of lives and the largest concentration of Soviet naval power still in existence. Biting the side of his mouth with a pale grimace on his face, he looked down at the pocket watch clasped in his right hand and the transmitter held in his left. The time had come.

It was a simple order. Oktyabrsky raised his hand into the air and dropped swiftly in one movement. He pocketed the watch, his father’s watch, as he depressed the transmitter. Simultaneously from the loudspeakers and by the hand of his radioman over the wireless, a message was transmitted: “ALL VESSELS PROCEED!”

Oktyabrsky felt Dzerzhinsky lurch and begin to drag itself forward. She was one of the newest ships in the Red Fleet and also the largest ship ever built by the Soviet Union—a sleek 804-foot, 36,000-ton “cruiser.” She was at the head of a motley procession of war-weary workhorses, half-form sea-spawn ripped from docks before they were ready, and whatever civilian ships could be scraped together. Half a dozen cruisers, three destroyer leaders, fourteen destroyers, fifteen smaller guardships, forty-four submarines, sixty-three torpedo boats, eighteen merchantmen, and forty-nine other smaller civilian auxiliary craft. There were also the refitted old Tsarist dreadnoughts Parizhskaya Kommuna and Frunze—the latter was nominally a battlecruiser, but only in name. He also had the incomplete large cruiser Schors—sister to Dzerzhinsky—along with four incomplete light cruisers and four more incomplete destroyers.

As they got underway properly, Oktyabrsky produced his father’s watch. He anxiously tapped his foot on the floor of the old battleship’s bridge. Their first destination was Sevastopol. It would take a little more than half a day—fourteen or fifteen hours—to reach the port. They would need the cover of darkness to load the ships with every person they could carry and refuel what they could. The admiral felt his stomach curl. The die had been cast—before even this morning. He walked out onto the small wing behind the bridge and braced his hands against the rails. He was a loyal communist. A good sailor. A dedicated man. He hoped his actions would not be seen as cowardice or betrayal. He was not a bloody general; he would see his men live if he had the choice.

Once they’d embarked all that they could carry, they would not return to Georgia.

Thousands of starved, battered, and wounded soldiers could not stop the fascists that had already destroyed the Soviet forces along the Don, thrice. They would inevitably all become prisoners if they returned to Poti. So, they would sail to a place no one could anticipate. They would sail to a place that the Nazi would not think possible. Oktyabrsky would save the sailors of the Black Sea Fleet and the soldiers of the Separate Coastal Army. Once they left Sevastopol harbor, they would not stop until they were sunk or arrived at their destination.

He walked back onto the bridge; he put on his best smile and slapped the back of one of the young ensigns in the compartment. “It is a beautiful day, Vasily”

Confused, the young man looked back at him, “But comrade Admiral, this is awful weather.”

“Precisely, Vasily, it is beautiful. Fowl enough to stop fascist gnats from finding us… and sinking us.”

“Ah yes, comrade Admiral, I understand. Let us hope this beautiful weather holds.” Oktyabrsky smiled to hide his worry.

The weather would hold.

Dzerzhinsky

Sevastapol, Ukrainian SSR

Vitse-Admiral Filipp Sergeyevich Oktyabrsky, VMF

Commander, Black Sea Fleet

2002 Local Time, 31 JULY 1942

The Black Sea Fleet had been anchored off Sevastopol for little more than an hour and a half, and the titanic work of bringing tens of thousands of people on board the assembled flotilla. Oktyabrsky had disembarked immediately and proceeded to the command post of General-Major Ivan Yefimovich Petrov, commander of the Separate Coastal Army. The meeting was brief and cold. They both knew what they had to do.

The vice admiral stared at the loading below him. Again, he held his father’s watch in hand. Another choice had been made. General-Major Novikov’s reinforced 109th Rifle Division would stay behind and hold the inner perimeter as long as possible. Eight thousand men would stand and fight to the death.

A little after four in the morning, their task had been completed without incident. They had completed loading their vessels with as many people as possible. The run could begin. Leading the pack, the Dzerzhinsky began to sail south at twenty-three and a half knots. A great column of humanity streamed behind it under black clouds of funnel smoke.

The Black Sea Fleet would leave with 89,743 passengers. The ships of the Black Sea Fleet were swollen with the hell-tempered souls of Crimea’s fortress-port. Dzerzhinsky submerged underneath a deluge of flesh, her deck covered by men in stretchers held onboard by their unwounded comrades. Within the skin of the ship, nearly every passageway was clogged with masses of humans. The soldier, the sailor, and the farmer were cloistered in a ship of war transformed into an ark. On top of her crew of 1,148, she was filled with an additional 10,577 passengers—a total of 11,724 souls onboard. A sense of determination fell upon the crew like an oncoming breeze before a terrible and mighty storm; they would see these people saved, or they would all die together.

As Crimea faded from view and the sun began to rise over the horizon in the east. The vice admiral was paralyzed by what he saw cutting through thinning clouds. Aircraft. Nazi aircraft. A quartet of fighters, Me-109s. The yellow nose of one was unmistakable against the morning grey sky. Oktyabrsky’s stomach curled. A vision cut through Oktyabrsky’s mind; the Black Sea run red with blood.

Provisional Airfield No. 23

12 mi northwest of Mauripol, Ukrainian SSR

Generaloberst Wolfram Freiherr von Richthofen, OKL

Commander, Fliegerkorps VIII

0519 Local Time, 1 AUG 1942

Generaloberst Wolfram Freiherr von Richthofen had been woken from his sleep about an hour early, much to his annoyance. The annoyance faded once the boy-faced runner finally got to the reason why the general had been awoken. Then, a smile crossed his face like a burning cross.

Impeccably dressed and beaming, mostly thanks to his immediate inhalation of fresh coffee and some Fliegerschokolade, the general arrived at his command tent. Despite having his command directed to help the ongoing offensive against the Caucasus, Richthofen could not pass up the chance to strike at the Black Sea Fleet.

It was obvious what they were doing. They had evacuated some of their forces from Sevastopol. They were heading for Poti. They had risked such a daring run to grab hold of forces to be used in the defense of the Caucasus. A desperate gambit of using spent men to stop the inevitable. It was brave; it was also futile.

The general himself had plotted their course and, with the consultation of his staff, had figured when the largest portion of his tactical aircraft would be available; it would take six or so hours, but they would destroy the Black Sea Fleet before they could disembark their reinforcements at Poti. A competent and ruthless plan. One that would surely destroy the weaklings in their pathetic little boats.

One that would find nothing but empty water.

Dzerzhinsky

Bosporus, Istanbul, Republic of Turkey

Vitse-Admiral Filipp Sergeyevich Oktyabrsky, VMF

Commander, Black Sea Fleet

1403 Local Time, 1 AUG 1942

The Black Sea Fleet was not out of danger—far from it. They were going to bend the Montreux Convention to the breaking point. Oktyabrsky had given sufficient warning—eight days—under the terms of the Treaty, but had only announced the passage of two merchantmen, not the entire Black Sea Fleet. The risk that the Turks would open fire on them was low—but there—and he would rather risk internment than scuttle his command in Poti and Batumi. He would take the risk to continue the fight. The motherland would need these men and these ships in the future, just as they needed them now.

Oktyabrsky ordered a single message to be sent on repeat from the flagship:

THIS IS THE SOVIET VESSEL DZERHINSKY. AS PER OUR REVISED TRANSIT INSTRUCTION. WE ARE TRANSITING THE STRAITS OF BOSPORUS UNDER OUR RIGHTS AS A BLACK SEA POWER. WE FERRY WOUNDED, WOMEN, AND CHILDREN. OUR COMMUNICATIONS ARE DAMAGED AND WE CANNOT RECEIVE ANY REPLY. WE ARE UNABLE TO STOP FOR INSPECTION. CLEAR THE STRAITS.

Their updated strength was transmitted to the signal station at the entrance to the Dardanelles. Immediately, the Turkish Navy sent a reply demanding they stop, which Oktyabrsky ignored. Every mile they drew closer, the feeling in his stomach tightened. The Turks would be within their rights to open fire. With his field glasses, he could see a flurry of activity in the gun pits of the coast batteries. Every breath from every man on the bridge was pained. A hundred thousand men and women held their breath as the minutes dragged on. The Turks did not open fire.

The people of Istanbul were treated to a dazzlingly confusing and frightfully odd sight as a hundred Soviet vessels sailed through the strait in one continuous stream of steel. Looking backward, Oktyabrsky caught sight of Parizhskaya Kommuna. She resembled a chariot from hell rather than a warship. Her two large funnels belched a thick pall of tar-black smoke that choked the afternoon air, hauling ahead at a speed of twenty-five and a quarter knots—well over her test speed. Sparks flung themselves from the funnels and out into the air, an unplanned and unwanted pyrotechnic display. Thronging crowds clogged the embankments and quays of the city to welcome the red parade—or rather, to catch a glimpse. The passengers on the ships of the fleet cheered and waved, as amazed as the crowds of the city staring down at them.

The messages from the Turkish Navy picked up. They came nearly every minute, almost faster than they could be translated. Eventually, the messages petered out. The silence worried Oktyabrsky as he loomed over the signalmen in the radio room. There was still silence as they passed under the shadow of the Hagia Sophia. Oktyabrsky prayed, hoping this voyage would not become a funeral procession. It seemed as if someone had heard him.

As they entered the Sea of Marmara, they received a response. It was not the one Oktyabrsky feared. It was one he wouldn’t have dared hope for.

THIS TRANSIT SHALL BE PERMITTED. THE WAY IS CLEARED. YOU HAVE VIOLATED INTERNATIONAL LAW AND OUR GOVERNMENT WILL FILE A PROTEST WITH YOUR GOVERNMENT AND DEMAND JUST RESTITUTION. GOD BE WITH YOU.

The admiral smiled. Fortune favors the bold.

Palace of the Grand Master of the Knights of Rhodes

Rhodes, Italian Dodecanese

Ammiraglio di Squadra Inigo Campioni, RM

Governor of the Italian Aegean Islands

0737 Local Time, 2 AUG 1942

Governor Inigo Campioni, former commander of the Royal Italian Navy’s battlefleet, was seated at his dining room table, eating a light breakfast—some Schiacciata and about half a bottle of white wine. He was reading the newspaper, only occasionally taking a sip or a bite. In front of him, standing at attention, was his chief of staff, Generale di Brigata Roberto Sequi.

“Governor, if the reports are accurate, we must take action!”

“The reports are nonsense. Roberto, if you keep listening to radio news as you have been, you’ll rot your brains out your nose.”

Sequi rolled his eyes ever so slightly, “If there is even the possibility that it is true…shouldn’t we act?”

Campioni flicked down the newspaper, “Roberto, if there is a Soviet fleet of over a hundred vessels steaming past our defenses, and yet we have not received a single report from any of our forces—or the Germans, besides some…” he waved his hand dismissively in the air, “…foreign chatter on the radio from Istanbul—I will eat my boots. Both of them.”

“Sir!”

The admiral returned to reading, “Plus, if anything, this is Fliegerkorps X’s problem—not ours. Porco Dio! If the Bolsheviks are sailing past us now, those fucking Germans are the ones that really fucked it.”

Curtiss Kittyhawk Mk III, Electric Avenue, GA/F/FR444

Approx. 190 nmi North-North-West of Alexandria

Flying Officer Peter Toussaint, RAF

No. 112 Squadron, Desert Air Force

1530 Local Time, 2 AUG 1942

“Bloody hell, I can see them all on the decks from up here,” Flying Officer Peter “Froggy” Toussaint murmured as he looked down at the ragged, disorderly column of ships charging through the Med. Some of the smaller vessels looked dead in the water, with other vessels taking over their passengers. Every ship was coated with the fuzzy, miniature forms of people.

If they get so much as touched by Jerry… God. No. 112 Squadron had been scrambled, but instead of heading out to cover the forces at El Alamein, they’d been sent on what everyone had assumed was a wild-goose chase. Except, now, the veteran pilots found themselves looking at quite the gander. There must be thousands on those ships. Has Ivan gone mad? Froggy checked his fuel; they wouldn’t have much engagement time if Jerry showed his mug. That the Germans and Italians weren’t on this convoy like flies on sun-scorched ham mystified the pilot. Someone mucked this up beautifully.

His radio crackled to life in his ear, “Jerry’s here, boys. Look lively.” It was Squadron Leader Michael Grassley. “11 o’clock, right on our nose. I tally ten.” Toussaint’s eyes snapped in the direction of the call, and he spied the distinctive greenhouse noses of He-111 bombers—about a dozen, without so much as a single escort. It was strange of Fliegerkorps X to launch a raid as shoddy as this; they were supposed to be their elite ship-hunters. What is with Hans today? Can’t even muster a half-decent crack at a perfect target? Did they all wake up on the wrong side of the bed?

Fliegerkorps X Headquarters, Eleusis Aerodrome

Eleusis, Nazi Occupied Greece

General der Flieger Hans-Ferdinand Geisler, OKL

Commander, Fliegerkorps X

1515 Local Time, 3 AUG 1942

General der Flieger Hans-Ferdinand Geisler pressed the telephone received against his head as he rested his hand on his eyes. His staff surrounded his desk with anxious faces, sweat trickling down from his temple. “My fault? What a load of shit. How could this possibly be my fault!”   

The other end was silent. Hissing static filled Geisler’s ear. “Well…” Generaloberst Hans Jeschonnek, Chief of the Oberkommando der Luftwaffe General Staff, started to say something before his voice faded. He evidently had no idea what to say.

“Well, what, Hans?” Geisler seethed, “First, Fliegerkorps VIII doesn’t tell anyone about a goddamned fleet of Bolsheviks sailing to Sevastopol so that cock-munching hot-air balloon Ricktoffen can play dress up as his cousins! Our people in Istanbul, they didn’t send so much as a note—when Red battleships with an entire goddamned fleet came charging down through the Bosphorus!”

“General—"

“I am not quite done, not even slightly, Herr Oberstgeneral.” Geisler pulled rank, “Then-Then! The damned Italians, those bastards did nothing—nothing! As three score Bolsheviks sailed within what? A dozen miles of Rhodes?!” Geisler clenched his teeth so hard his jaw began to vibrate like a radial engine, “After all of this, it is my command, given thirty minutes to scramble at the break of dawn, yet not a single one of these incompetent bastards had a single clue! Not even a half guess where these Red sons of bitches were!” He slammed his fist on the desk, causing his staff to jump all at once, “And it is my fault, for what actually finding them?”

“Herr General…” Jeschonnek started again timidly, his tin voice barely audible over the static, “That is all very true, but the point remains…” Geisler heard the gulp of air, “You didn’t hit anything.”

I am ready to fucking retire.

Quarantine Anchorage, Outer Harbour

Alexandria, Egypt

Admiral Sir Andrew Cunningham, RN

Commander-in-Chief, Mediterranean Fleet

0031 Local Time, 3 AUG 1942

“Good God,” Sir Andrew Cunningham mused, “What will we do about this?” The head of the British Mediterranean Fleet looked on quietly as the Soviet battleship Parizhskaya Kommuna was towed to a mooring off the harbor’s Quarantine Anchorage by the large cruiser Dzerzhinsky. Cunningham found that somehow rather fitting. The Tsarist-turned-Bolshevik dreadnought had blown her engines about five miles from Alexandria. The luck of the Black Sea Fleet was not perfect, it seems.

There was the constant swirling ballet of small craft as the harbor was increasingly choked with ships. Red ships. A fleet of strangers arrived in a strange land. ABC had given the local commanders total discretion and as many resources and men as could be spared. No one was sure what kind of reception they would be met with, and so Mediterranean Command had assembled a scratch security brigade, 4th Battalion (Outram’s), 6th Rajputana Rifles; 1st Battalion, 9th Gurkha Rifles; and 1st Cape Town Highlanders had motored to Alexandria at double-time. Indians, Gurkhas, and South Africans, that’s quite the welcome wagon.

Rear Admiral John Edelsten, Cunningham’s chief of staff, gave the query a silent moment of thought. “Try and manage, I think, sir.”

Cunningham gave a soft snort of approval. “Christ, are we going to have enough food for these people?”

“Think shelter and water might be the biter, sir. Good Lord, haven’t the foggiest how Ivan might cope with this bloody desert, if you pardon me saying, sir.”

Cunningham sighed and scratched his head as one of the almost-light-cruiser-sized Soviet destroyers came to a stop and was swarmed with small craft, “Have we got anyone who speaks Russian? Or must we hope they’ve got some who speaks English?”

Edelsten shrugged, “Foreign Office says they are sending a man from Cairo, and we’ll get more within the next few days.”

That sent a shiver down ABC’s spine, “Tomorrow…” His voice trailed off as his thoughts wandered.

“The PM and Field Marshall Brooke get here? Quite right, sir. That’ll be quite a jolly bit of fun.”

Cunningham directed a broadside of side-eye at his deputy, “John, I believe you and I have a rather different definition of that particular word.”

Camp Red

El Giza, Cairo, Egypt

Major David Stirling, BA

Commanding Officer, Special Air Service

2012 Local Time, 24 AUG 1942

Major David Stirling glanced up before ducking into the tent ahead of him. He looked up at the Great Pyramids of Giza. They lay in an awe-inspiring silence as moonlight poured from the heavens. There was a cool breeze heading out to sea. He was tired, but it was beautiful. He moved the flap door, and without saying anything, he took one of the seats at a wooden table surrounded by figures in fatigues. Half he knew very well; they were his men freshly returned from a raid on Sidi Haneish. When they had arrived back, they’d been ambushed by a brigadier bearing an order from the Ministry of Smashing Ideas. He was so far unimpressed.

Lieutenant Colonel Guy Prendergast, Commander of the Long Range Desert Group, was likewise unimpressed, as were the other British officers and non-coms on his side of the table. The atmosphere was decidedly odd and rather tense, no one had quite wanted this meeting, but the men were also painfully curious about everything about these folks.

Things had changed a lot. Auk had been relieved, replaced by Alexander. Gott had been downed in the desert and was half-dead in a Cairo hospital; Montgomery had taken the Eighth. For their… Guests, the plan had apparently been to intern them, but a Smashing Idea struck the dear old Bulldog of Gallipoli. They just had to re-equip an entire corps’ worth of Reds with British kit. That would give the pretext for the British Mission in Washington to squeeze more Shermans from the Yanks, give the Eighth Army a battle-tested force, and, at the very least, give the Desert Fox someone else to shoot at. Stirling had even heard a Navy man tell of talk of using old 12-inch shells in those ghastly Soviet dreadnoughts—if they could make it work. In other words, utter and complete bloody madness.

He looked across the table and sighed. Their guests weren’t just Reds—they were red. The Egyptian sun had not done any of this lot any favors. An odd mix of dead-eyed, weary-eyed, and wild-eyed soldiers was before him. Allegedly, these were the best amongst their number, supposed to be the leading cadre for what had been asked of him; they sure didn’t look it. They were in ragged clothes, clothes horribly suited for a stroll in an arid field, let alone the bloody desert. None of them had weapons, and none of them had training with any British weapons.

Oh—and of course—of the fifteen or so in front of him, a grand total of two of them spoke any English at all—and even then, it was far from the King’s English. What exactly he was supposed to do with this lot, he wasn’t quite sure, but he guessed he was going to find out. He had asked for a Foreign Office man worth his salt in a tussle if he would take on a new Red Squadron; or at least someone who could speak Russian and wouldn’t immediately get themselves or Stirling’s men killed.

He turned to the informal leader of this group, “I heard you’re quite the shot.”

Staring back at him was a flushed-faced, burnt-skinned woman. Her black hair was tied back behind her head. Her name was Pavilichenkelov or something like that—Stirling couldn’t remember and didn’t really care, but apparently, she was the devil with a rifle. She had killed some three hundred of the Huns at Sevastopol and Odesa. They called her “Lady Death.” At least, that was the story.

A single oil lamp lit the room. It was a rather modest amount of light for the assemblage presented in its proximity, but even in the flickering radiance, Stirling looked into the eyes of this woman, and he saw a sharpness and determination. He liked that.

The Foreign Office man translated for him. Lady Death smiled. She removed the cigarette from her lips; and smiled not with a flash of mere teeth—but fangs, sharp and terrible. “Da,” The words left her lips, and Stirling understood that well enough.

Maybe this wouldn’t be so bad.

The Vatican, Vatican City State

Pope Pius XII

His Holiness, The Bishop of Rome and Pontifex Maximus

0906 Local Time, 15 JULY 1943

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“Who are they to order me around like a dog,” Eugenio Maria Giuseppe Giovanni Pacelli growled to no one in particular as he tapped his foot, waiting in the Regal Room of the Apostolic Palace. Today had been an odd day, and the Bishop of Rome felt as if it was only going to get worse. The Americans, British, and Canadians had landed on Sicily six days prior. The battle had not proceeded according to the plans of the Fascists or their Nazi allies, so much so that the King and anti-Mussolini members of the military had prepared to act.

But Il Duce had acted first.

In the wee hours of the morning, most of the Royal Family had disappeared into the ether—including the King himself. But the purge had not just been limited to the House of Savoy; those who had been involved in the brewing dissent in the Grand Council of Fascism and Commando Supreme had also disappeared. It had happened in a single night and had been total—absolute precision. This morning, Il Duce had taken the radio, announcing that he had saved the Monarchy from a botched pro-United Nations coup. Mussolini had announced the death of Maresciallo d'Italia Badoglio—the Conqueror of Abyssinia—claiming the coup plotters had him. The Pope knew full well that it was a lie. In response to this alleged coup, Mussolini had put the Royal Family in “protective custody.” What reports had reached the Holy Father painted a very different picture, one of a concentration camp at the heart of a holy site in Gargano.

Italy had lived through its Night of Long Knives, but the course of events had not stopped—even as the Holy Father waited in the Apostolic Palace. The Germans had surged more forces into Italy, joining with ‘politically reliable’ units in purging the dissenters. This was ‘military aid’ to their Axis ally, the Germans claimed, to protect the people of Italy from ‘Allied lies.’ This was bad enough, worse than the campaign of lies, a sea of altered photos and faked audio that had been washed through the country.

So now, the Patriarch of the Roman Catholic Church waited for the delegation from Reichspräsident Göring. Pius was not in a position to reject the Shadow Fürhrer—not with so many German soldiers in the city, not with lies embedded so deep in the ears of the people. Pius XII took a deep breath. Every step forward was a step into inky darkness; he was amidst a tidal pool of penumbral uncertainty. Every step could see him lose—and lose everything not just for himself, but for his flock. He had heard from his priests in Poland. He knew the truth even before the Allied leaflets and their awful photographs. However, the War Rescue Commission could not save the Catholic Church. Only their Father could.

The great doors of the salon opened, and a file of Germans soldiers in manicured black uniforms goose-stepped into the chamber. Each carrying a strange black rifle, unlike any Pius had seen. They were the very model of decorum, yet they marched into the hallowed halls of the Papacy as if it were their Fürhrer’s Chancellery. Pius boiled under his pious indifference, another slight, another outrage to be borne in silence. How much longer can I do nothing? How much longer before they take everything? The silence in the chamber was broken by the rhythm of shining black boots clacking one after another.

The Swiss Guard in the Salon Regia, in their striped tri-color uniforms and their silver Morion helmets, clutched their halberds tighter. They shifted uncomfortably, almost imperceptibly. The Commander of the Guard, decked in silvered armor above his colored tunic and trousers, gripped his sword by its hilt. They will not take me from this place. The Nazis had not mentioned such security; in fact, the Pope had expected Reichsminister Rippentrop—but this was something else entirely. They will not drag me to some Nazi Avignon. I will not be some prisoner to pagan butchers. His face revealed nothing; not a single drop of his fury rose to the surface as the Nazi honor guard lined the walls before him.

A voice in Italian announced, “Representatives of the Greater German Reich and the High Command of the Reich Defense Organization.”

Between the walls of blackguard Soldaten—Nazi men of six feet or more in manicured black uniforms—walked three figure, three dalmatian-uniformed men. They were Nazis, almost certainly, but unlike any Pius XII had had the displeasure of observing. They wore black pants with white coats and caps. They wore odd, incredibly odd, veils under their snow-white peaked caps. Each was made of white silk, or perhaps the finest cotton, with crude eyeholes cut from them. The closer they came, and the more Pius studied these men—the more confused the Pope became. They did not wear the same stark red armband as their fellow Nazis but instead wore a star-studded blue saltire on a field of red. It did not strike any resonance with His Holiness. What flag is that? However, something did strike a resemblance—something that almost forced a gasp from his lips.

The crest of their caps and their belt buckles bore no Nazi iconography. Instead, staring back at the Patriarch of the Roman Catholic Church were symbols with which he was intimately acquainted: the red cross of Saint George, the crossed keys of Saint Peter, and the Papal Tiara itself.

Who do these men think they are? Pius was aggrieved, horrified, and—above all else—confused. He struggled to contain the onrushing emotions as these strangers trod on his floors, seemingly unaware of the blaspheming profanity of their very disposition. The Swiss Guard noticed these strangers’ defilement of the symbology of their sainted Mother Church; confused eyes flashed; not even their practice and training could resist this. The Commander of the Pontifical Guard barely lifted his hand, but the Pope knew the signal. The Palace would not be defiled again so long as Heinrich Pfyffer von Altishofen still lived—not again, not twice on such a Godly man’s watch.

Soon, the doors that led into this chamber would be stacked with men of the Pontifical Guard in drab blue uniforms clutching automatic weapons. The Palatine Guard and the Papal Gendarmes would be alerted. If the profaning pagans wished to seize the Holy Father, they would first have to go through his sons—and a heavenly choir of singing nine-millimeter angels.

But for now, there was no sound in the salon besides the clacking of shined boots on the marble floors.

Clack. Clack. Clack.

These strangers in their strange attire approached and then kneeled before the Pontiff. “Holy Father,” their leader started in English. Pius held himself back from recoiling.

Oh God, they’re Americans? Curiosity bubbled over his horror. Not more of these abominable Americans?

“I wrote to you, your Holiness. I am the Leader of the Apostles here in Europe. They call me Cato.” The man announced triumphantly. He seemed so proud, so certain that he would be recognized.

Pius stared back blankly at him; he had no clue who this man was. There was an awkward silence as the leader’s words reverberated off the walls of the salon. These men beamed like they were meeting their idol, waiting for words of praise, no doubt. They would find none. Their joy started to fracture as a painful silence lingered, like a great weight on a weakened plate of glass. The cracks grew and grew, eyes darted to one side, a hand or face twitched nervously, and the steam of tension and anticipation rose from their ears. Pius could hear their thoughts and anxious doubts. He felt them hold their breath. These men would find no satisfaction here.

It appeared in his mind who these men were. They were the Reichsmagier—Hitler’s magicians. Those who were apparently from the future or some nonsense. They were brilliant men with unrivaled minds who had reshaped industry like clay and had brought forth new and terrible weapons of war in a tide of metal. Pius had no idea they were so odd. They were distressingly similar in temperament to the madman who had stormed his apartments the month prior babbling nonsense. Then again, people who claim to be from the future are seldom banal.

“Ah, yes. I receive many letters,” Pius replied in English, one of the seven languages he knew, “I bid my apologies to you. I do not remember yours.” Their leader seemed to deflate in front of the Pope. A racking nervousness descended over these strange men and their defiling habiliment. Rasps of panic filled their now-unleashed breathing. Why do they expect me to know them?

“Ah—well—we come to pay homage to you, Holy Father,” the man started up again, “We come to thank you.” Pius could not help but tilt his head, confused; he could not stop himself. The eyes of these men glimmered with recognition as if they knew him well. That unsettled his soul. “We would not be here without you.”

What? His heart screamed at him to recoil and send them away, now—but the voice in the back of his head wanted to know exactly what they were speaking of. He softly swallowed his doubts, “Pray tell what you mean, my child?”

“If not for the Concordat you signed with the Reich.” The man seemed almost giddy, and he spoke as if his words were obvious to anyone, “We would not have been so inspired. It was a transcendent work of sublime justice, Holy Father.”

What, by the grace of God, do they speak of? Pius’ eyes twitched toward the nearest guardsman, who seemed just as lost. Why do they speak of a treaty of man as if it were the word of God?

The man continued unabated. He was breathless in his eagerness as if the Father of the Mother Church was some baseball player or Hollywood starlet, “You are not like the Jew-Monger the Elevent—”

Pius slapped the man with the back of his hand. Hard. His rings drew blood, a small cut in the middle of the man’s cheek. The Reichsmagier’s eyes shimmered in shock. It looked like this man was about to burst into tears. Pius would tolerate many things, but to insult his honored predecessor—the man whom he had faithfully served as Secretary of State for almost a decade—was beyond the pale.

“Watch your tongue, boy.” Pius hissed like a broken steam valve, venom turning into hot gas as the entire room seemed to step onto needles and burst into widened eyes. Pius tolerated the Nazis. It was necessary to accommodate authoritarian governments to preserve his flock and the Mother Church, but this was something else entirely. Pius relaxed and returned to his saintly form. “Gentlemen,” The Pope politely but sternly replied to the silence, “Is there anything I might do for you?”

The leader of this trio gulped, petrified in fear. One of his brethren stepped forward, his voice hoarse and pointed, “We bid you—declare a Crusade against these so-called United Nations.” This one asked to smash the seven seals as if it was nothing, as if he was buying halibut from a fishmonger. “This is within your remit; it is in the interest of the Church and our white race it represents, as our Lord God demands.”

Pius’s eyes widened, “What?” This was not just madness—it was pure insanity. Pius XII physically took a step backward in awe and horror; the Pontifical Guard tensed, almost moving before a subtle twist of the Pontiff’s hand warded them off.

“A Crusade…” the second meekly reiterated, “A Crusade against the degenerate Negro-Jew-Bolsheviks and their cabal of sodomites. It is simple and necessary to preserve our faith and our white children from DEI, from SJW, from the woke, from the PC.”

Pius was incapable of speech for a moment, gobsmacked. The Holy Father stared at this odious toad of a man as if he were a mountain goat mounting a woman. “God forbids exaltation of one blood or race over another. He sees no color in his children, just his children,” Pius snapped back, “I cannot—will not do any such thing. I abhor this war. I only seek for it to end, not escalate.” He took a breath, “And I have no idea what these other shibboleths of yours mean.”

“But-but, Holy Father, if you do not act,” the third began to speak, panicked and confused, clearly terrified by how this conversation had gone so far, “our Church will be destroyed, violated, desecrated by the Second Vatican Council.”

Second Vatican Council? What? These men are completely insane. What do they even speak of? The salon was now filled with a perilous electricity. Eyes darted to and fro; hands drifted to weapons. Their Nazi guards were on the very edge, strung taut like black garrotes, eyes wide like those of a deer despite being wreathed in bandoliers of death and lead. Pius’ own Pontifical Guard just just as tensed, ready to pounce and shield their liege and ward.

“A Second Council? These men are mad,” Pius murmured under his breath in Portuguese before he shook his head and regained his senses, “Gentlemen, I am terribly busy and cannot linger. I have urgent duties that I must attend to. Is there anything else that I can do?” The Pontiff wanted nothing more than to leave this place.

“A photo?” the third Reichsmagier asked sheepishly. The Pontifical Guard froze; more than a dozen heads snapped toward the man. There was no cameraman with these Germans. Would this little man also ask for a pony and a bottle of champagne?

“Y-you have a-a camera?” Pius spluttered back, looking around, jinking from side to side, trying to see where these magicians had hidden one. He did not see a camera case on any of the men in white or their escorts. The Papal Guards were equally curious; Pius saw a few eyebrows dart up in suspicion.

“Oh yes,” answered the third as if it was clear where these cameras were waiting. The portly little man in his finery produced a rectangle of smooth black glass from his pocket. It looked like a strange paperweight. He tapped it, and it came to life with light. It was an electric device. Pius felt his eyes widen. He had never seen or even heard of such technology. They were wizards, if insane. The Papal Guard once again tensed, and their eyes darted to the Holy Father and then to their Commander. Pius subtly commanded them to hold with another subtle twist of his fingers while his hand remained at his side.

These—oddities—surrounded the Pope, two on his right, one on his left. The one on his left raised the black rectangle up into the air and instructed Pius to look at it. The Pope was amazed as he moved his eyes towards the device and saw a little moving picture of the four of them in the glass. He was without words. He smiled. The man tapped away at the device, and apparently took pictures of them.

“Should we do a silly one?” asked the third, before the second jabbed him in the ribs with a sharpened elbow. The Bishop of Rome had absolutely no understanding of what a ‘silly one’ would entail, and he had no interest in finding out.

“I beg your forgiveness, my children, but I have business to attend,” before the maniacs could protest, Pius bowed and left; he would not even give them a chance to kiss his ring or anything else of honor. He indicated towards the guard nearest the door to the Sistine Chapel; the door was swung open, and Pius slipped inside. His attendants followed him and found over a dozen Palatine Guard with their Mauser rifles at the ready and their commander, with his pistol drawn, pressed against the wall. Pius paid his men no mind. He walked past them, consumed in his thoughts. He murmured to himself in Italian. He played the interaction back through his mind like a moving picture show.

He stopped halfway down the aisle, leaning against a pew, “In the Name of Our Lord, that was some weird shit.”

Puget Sound, WA

Commander Mason Robertson, USN

Commander, USS Telesforo Trinidad (DDG-139)

0959 Local JUNE 4, 2042

Maso Robertson looked on at a sight he could barely watch, let alone comprehend. His eyes bulged, and the edges of his mouth curled ever so slightly. He felt his form gradually immersing into a viscous pool of horror. He had been the skipper of USS Telesforo Trinidad (DDG-139)—the Fightin’ Teletubby—for almost two years. He had previously been her XO when the previous skipper, Captain Simmerton, caught a neck full of frag off Taipei on the very last day of Second Sino. Mason had seen men and women braver than him die, but he had never seen something like this.

The tearing of flesh echoed over the quieted bridge. Every eye was affixed to the show plain before them. No one dared to whisper a word. They were frozen.

“Wha—” The skipper broke the silence before his voice faltered. He could not find the words, certainly not ones that befitted his post.

Maso’s new executive officer stopped eating and turned around, “What, sir?” The lieutenant commander removed the lemon from his mouth—the second lemon—leaving a full-size bite missing from the fruit, skin and all. He was eating them like an apple.

What kind of fuckin’ sicko eats lemons like that?

The skipper shot the newbie a half-glazed glare. “Miyake, do you normally start your morning with a… uh lemon?”

“Oh no, sir.” Lieutenant Commander Lane Miyake scoffed with a bright-eyed and bushy-tailed smile. Maso took a breath in relief and let his entire body relax, but it was a moment too soon. “I normally eat three.” The skipper deflated like a two-piece blue-coverall-wearing balloon as the XO produced a third lemon from his working uniform like a pocket egg.

Robertson looked away and slapped himself on the forehead. A “fuck me” escaped his lips with a defeated murmur.

“At least he won’t be getting scurvy, sir.” The ship’s master chief chimed from across the bridge. What was even more unsettling is that for the first time in the three years that Maso had worked with the chief, the SNCO was just as dumbstruck as everyone else. You’re not helping, Benny.

“Oh yeah, I definitely won’t be getting that again. No, sir,” Lane replied cheerily.

Robertson heard the necks snap toward Miyake as everyone on the compartment, and two more sailors in the passageway, shouted one word in unison: “WHAT?”

The skipper shook his head and looked out the bridge windows, trying to get past all of that. The sky was a smokey dove grey. The water was a dark blue, almost black. A bank of heavy, low clouds was rolling over the Olympic Peninsula. Trinidad was in the dead center—in the uncomfortably cloistered heart—of a great column of steel. His eyes panned across the Sound and saw ship after ship after ship, their flags fluttering in the cool morning breeze. The United States First Fleet had assembled under the mantle of Task Force 11/Composite Testing Force and was sortieing for the largest naval exercise since the end of the Second Sino-American War.

It was already a glorious exercise—in utter clusterfuckery. Roberston had a laundry list of complaints as long as his arm and as bitter as his coffee (they had run out of creamer, and he was having to drink it black). What had really got a bee in his bonnet was the sea-traffic controller back in Everett managing the procession. That fucker had separated Trinidad from the rest of DESRON 23. Why? Robertson had no idea. Maybe it was some long-standing beef he was hitherto unaware of. This would not be without precedence but hadn’t been an issue since the last time, when an older man had tried to stab him after a Bears-Packers game over an alleged ten-year grudge. The gentleman had been heaven-banned on the shattered remains of Facebook and mistook Maso for a replyguy bot who had spurned him. Regardless, the traffic on the water was a nightmare. They were loaded in like sardines. Task Force 11 could probably do a UNREP-congo line from one edge of the Sound to the other if they wanted. To make matters even worse, Trinidad was currently amongst the ships of Surface Action Group SEVEN. That made Mason uneasy. You could never trust Jed MacGregor’s cowboys to be even-handed; their tendency to pull Some Bullshit™ was legendary.

There was one image that was chewing at the cables in the back of his mind. The one that haunted any UNREP… collision. Except accidentally starting a game of bumper cars with a carrier battle group steaming right up your ass was a j-curve straight to a court martial and a new, interesting version of the Honda Point disaster. And Hell if Robertson was gonna put his ship back in drydock after he had just gotten her out of it. Fuckers just gave us a new goddamn bow. Don’t anyone be a mook and Clarke and Dawe us. The Teletubby hadn’t gotten eighteen battle stars without getting her hair mussed, and the post-war refit/repair had taken longer than expected. At least we aren’t missing the Fleet Problem.

That’s when the computer started squawking. Roberston glanced down at the nearest screen as the officer of the deck and the lookouts started barking back and forth. It seemed like someone was breaking the speed limit, and the sea traffic controller had pinged them and nearby ships with a warning. Mason didn’t even need to say a word. His crew were all old hands. They could run Trini through a hurricane in their sleep, and bad traffic was far from the most daunting challenge they’d faced.

The lanky skipper slowly rolled his head the the left, catching sight of the dark grey painted hull charging past, lunging through the water—halfway between a drunken dolphin and an Olympic swimmer. He saw the hull number, FFG-85. “Oh, of course, it’s fuckin’ him,” Maso snarled. “Goddamn battle-cat douche.” He strode across the bridge and out onto the port wing. Just barely outside, Mason bellowed, “FUCK YOU, HOP!”

The lookouts standing next to him jumped clear out of their skins, while the lookouts across the way on USS Monitor (FFG-85) went bug-eyed and darted inside the bridge. A moment later, Commander Derryl “Hop” McIver—the master and commander of the Moni—came striding out on the wing, a pipe hanging from his lip. McIver didn’t say anything back; he just flipped Robertson the bird. Maso replied two-fold. Hop laughed, and Mason smiled. That’s when Mason remembered that Hop owed him a hundred bucks from their last card game on Ulithi, a debt almost two years old.

“Poser bastards,” Mason groused. Fucker loves to cut a line.

Monitor was a Flight II Constellation-class Guided Missile Frigate. Though “Flight II” undersold things. She was actually, functionally, a different ship design on a new hull but the same components otherwise intended for the original Fincantieri designed Flight Is. That ‘new’ hull? Of course, it was a modified (cut and shut) Arleigh Burke hull. Which itself had originally been developed for Australia’s SEA 400 air defense destroyer in the mid-2000s which had brought back to life in a rush in 2025 to save beleagured FFG-62 program in the wake of First Sino. It was the same ship rush that had seen the Trini rushed into production in the largest DDG buy in US history (to that point). The program had cost something like $75 billion for forty ships and new infrastructure. However, both ships were now old news—despite being not even half way done with their 40 year service lives. The monsters of Fleet Architecture 2040 were all around them. The Slate Navy Babies rolled deep and rolled heavy. It had only taken more than a decade of brutal Navy infighting, half a trillion dollars or so, and a couple of wars to get there, too.

Mason grumbled to himself one last time before he stuck his hands in his puffy jacket and walked back inside. He somewhat resented that he had only served aboard pre-FAX 2040 combatants and now that was being shoved in his face at a clown show. FleetPro 36 had been put together in six weeks. It should’ve taken at least six months. It had been all chaos all the time. Trinidad’s refit had been sped up and pushed out of the dock with near wartime urgency, which OPNAV had described as an “added benefit” to “ensure retention of damage control and repair capabilities demonstrated under the CNO’s Demobilization and Retention Strategy.” Well, it was not a war, and it had caused enough headaches to collectively split a skull open like a watermelon. In fact, repair and refit schedules up and down the Pacific Coast had been mauled and would take at least a year to get back into something resembling order. It almost felt like an impromptu first strike, but surely no one in the Ocasio-Cortez Administration would be dumb enough to start a war, least of all one in the mold of Putin’s Tell-No-One-Thunder-Run.

Regardless, One Fleet had pulled it off. More than eighty ships were sailing from Puget Sound to regroup with another forty or so off Hawaii. This was probably the most melodramatic dick-wagging since the Allied Powers and the People’s Republic of China had signed the Malmö Accords in October ‘40. And there was just about the only person in the Navy patient and stubborn enough to pull off this circus. She was three miles ahead of Trinidad aboard USS Harriet Tubman (CVCN-84). She earned her name as a hot-headed tin-can driver in First Sino and Gulf IV. She was the Hero of Second Paracel—the up-jumped XO who had taken a squadron of ex-LCS Canberra-class light frigates into a gun duel with a PLAN surface action group after they’d both run out of missiles—and won. It was said she played dirty to get the Naval Act of 2030 through Congress as the Director of the Office of Critical Procurement. Not like Senator Cruz is around to deny the rumors. Not least of all, she had been COMBATPAC-ALFLT—Commander, Battle Force, Allied Fleet—for almost the entirety of Second Sino, nabbing US First Fleet and her third star after the war ended. Vice Admiral Kimberly Scott was not called “Kill Something” for nothing.

By the time Roberston returned to his chair, Miyake was on his third lemon. A shiver went down his spine. Christ, I forgot that Corpos are weirder than us. He looked at his watch. 1009. Should be out of Puget Sound in ten. Thank fuck. Can’t wait to get out of here.

Then, something outside the ship caught his eye. Fog.

He turned his head as one of the lookouts shouted on the radio something about the sea boiling. “The fuck is goin’ on over there?” Robertson muttered under his breath. It took him a moment to process what he was seeing. Great palls of fog were lifting off from the water like an art-house impression of a Halloween smoke machine.

BAYRUM? His mind started to race, thinking of MOPP suits and decon. The officer of the deck made the call and pulled in the lookouts. This can’t be natural. The skipper watched the fog lift over the bow and wash over the deck like a silent wave of grey-white smoke. It kept growing and growing, clawing up the ship. He saw something in the obscurant. A bubble of shimmering glass drifted through the air. The light warped through it. He could not believe his eyes. He was sure he was hallucinating. When the bubble collided with the off-center barrel of the deck gun, the sound of sheering metal on metal had the OOD shouting for the collision alarm as the fog grew ever higher. They were sinking into mirk and mire. But Roberston saw the 26-foot-long 5-inch steel barrel twist into a cavatappi-curl before his eyes with a bloodcurdling screech that made him wince. Then, there was nothing but endless grey out the window, a wall of pea-soup. He felt the claustrophobia he had trained out himself, drag itself upwards from gut into his thumping heart. He felt his pulse in his ears.

Mason took a deep breath, his mind filled with images of a ten-ship collision in a chemical attack. “Sniffers?” Requesting an update from the ship’s nuclear, biological, and chemical detection system.

“We’re green, and still maintaining positive pressure. No foreign agents in the air, sir,” one of the bridge crew replied. All eyes were locked on the wall. The collision alarm howled, but then it grew discordant. The sounds stretched and whined. It was out of tune. Both in his ear and so, so distant. It was all wrong. Everything was wrong. He felt like he was going to puke. He watched one of the bridge crew actually do so. His eyes began to water. He noticed that there wasn’t just fog outside. Countless spheres drifted amidst a sea of shimmering shards like broken, bubbles of molten glass warping everything around them. They flowed through the bridge windows like they weren’t there. He recoiled in his seat. Those around him started to notice them, too; Mason looked up and saw a wall of impossibility right in front of his eyes. He raised his hands to cover his face on pure impulse. He watched and felt the hair on his wrists—all over his body—stand up as if someone had yanked each strand individually.

Robertson opened his mouth, but no sound came out. He saw another wall of glass ahead of them. It felt like a minute passed, or maybe it was ten. He blinked his eyes, and he was lying on the floor of the bridge, his face pressed to the ground. He blinked again, and he was flung back in his seat. He felt like he was being pressed down into the faux-leather cushion. He was sinking. He looked to the chief; his face was pallid, he was wobbling, barely managing to steady himself by holding onto a console, and his eyes glazed. Roberston blinked again.

The sun almost blinded him. He raised a hand to shield his eyes. For a moment, he was not sure who he was, let alone where or when he was. He looked around at a cheering crowd surrounding the baseball diamond. It was Bon John Field on Majuro. He saw the faces of men and women who had been dead for years. He saw Captain Simmerton howling at him with a face the deep red of a cherry. He was surrounded by corpses. Maso remembered when he was. He remembered what happened at this ball game. “Didn’t I get hit in the fa—” The fastball smacked him in the jaw. The pain was real. He winced, and he was back in his chair, restrained and sliding backward in a void of endless void filled with the sounds of screaming metal and howling alarms. It stopped, and he was flung out of his chair and smacked his head straight into the ship’s phones. The last thing he heard before it went black was an explosion that vibrated the windows as his face fast approached them.

Roberston forced his eyes open as two young enlisted kneeled over him. He grabbed the first one by their shirt and tried to speak, his voice came out hoarse and wrong, “The ship… are we?” He noticed god rays cutting down through the windows. It was pure gold hanging in the air as the general quarters alarm screamed. “Help me up!” Maso barked.

“Sir, you should stay down until the doc has—” one of the ratings started.

“HELP ME UP,” Mason barked, already trying to bring himself to his feet. The sailors did as he bid. His head was ringing, and his vision was blurry. He felt the welt on his forehead pulsing, burning with enough heat to boil a 30-quart pot of water.

The ship was still there, and the fog was burning away. Rays of light were cutting through the grey, varying in size from pinpricks to train-tunnel. His stomach curdled as he looked beyond the fog and saw clear blue skies. Clear. Blue Skies.

He looked around the bridge and saw the rest of those present in various states of distress. The Chief was clutching his right eye and folded over. One rating was folded over in his seat, with two others trying to wake him. The OOD seemed completely fine, besides being horrified and totally overwhelmed. She was doing her level best. The sunlight grew brighter and brighter. It was sickening. It was a joke. It must be. It had to be.

“Miyake…” Roberstons croaked. He stopped as the chipmunk O-4. Turned toward him, blood was running from Miyake’s nose like someone had left a faucet running. There was more blood running down from his tear ducks, and Maso had never seen eyes so bloodshot.

“Sir,” the Lieutenant Commander spoke, unnervingly unperturbed. He did not appear to be in pain. He was unfazed. He pointed out the bridge windows. But then his voice changed; it rattled with the fear that Maso would hear from children when there was a monster in the closet or something awful on the news. “Where’s Canada?”

The horizon was empty. Only royal blue water, baby-blue sky, and slate grey ships filled the view. It was a panorama fit for a postcard; everything thing sparkled under a resplendent morning sun. Robertson felt something wet and warm creeping down his face. He touched just above his lips, and he looked down to see his fingertips painted in dark red blood. He had never been so afraid. “Well, shit,” the skipper murmured, the sound of his voice returning to normal mid-syllable.

Wardroom, USS Telesforo Trinidad (DDG-139)

Puget Sound, WA

Lieutenant Commander L.N. Miyake, USN

Executive Officer, USS Telesforo Trinidad (DDG-139)

1053 Local JUNE 4, 2042

Lieutenant Commander Miyake pressed a bag of frozen peas to his forehead. He had the headache of all headaches. He could feel his pulse in his eyeballs. He had made two more squeamish ratings faint when he walked into sickbay. The ship’s doctor had been sure he was a goner. Apparently not so. He didn’t feel too great, but it wasn’t too much worse than that time he got hit by a bus. He was seated in the wardroom along with the department heads, the command master chief, and the skipper. A lasflash from Tubman had pulled them off general quarters, but they had no more information than that.

No one was in particularly good shape. Miyake looked the worst off, but again, he had felt worse before. Commander Robertson looked like a walrus, with two wads of cotton shoved up his nose and a welt the size of a golf ball about an inch above his right eyebrow. Most of everyone else had awful headaches; CHENG said it was like the worst hangovers for the best party they had never attended. Chief Benny had had some blood vessels pop in his eye.

Miyake had been on the Trinidad for a week. He didn’t know everything, but he knew these people were professionals, almost all stone-cold Slate Navy axe-draggers—and they were scared. Frazzled in a way that Lane recognized. He’d been a flag aide at PACFLT when Second Sino had popped off in March 2037; he had seen a similar muted mix of panic, fear, and determination at Makalapa that awful day when the sky fell and people were running for the Civil Defense Complex.

“So, folks, what’s the damage?” Robertson sighed as he looked out the window, out to the disquieting paradise outside. It had been about twenty minutes, but he already looked twenty years older.

The ship’s doctor went first, “Lots of scrapes, headaches, and bloody noses. Five broken limbs, and a couple of dislocated shoulders, sir. Plus, some lacerations from the computer explosion in CIC. Worst is Miyake, you, and Valley. We are definitely going to need CT scans for everyone on board because I am not sure what might be lurking underneath.”

“Well, as things go, that isn’t too bad, Doc.” Robertson paused for a second. He squinted, “How the hell did Valley stab herself?”

“She didn’t, sir.” Doc groused, a non-alcoholic Natty Light pressed to his skull, “The entire tray scalpel went all Betelgeuse and flew across the G-damn compartment and pinned hand to the cabinet when she was getting the Icy-Hots out.”

Robertson just sighed into the table, “The fuck did you do to Shaq, Doc?”

“Think he might have done more than just that, sir.” Chimed in the ship’s CHENG. “I saw a wrench levitate for like thirty seconds.” She shook her head and scoffed. “This is fucked. I’ve never seen an RMA module implode. They we—they were like a crushed beer can. I didn’t even know they could do that! I didn’t sign up for Criss Angel Mindfreak, sir.” She took a deep breath, “But besides some wiring damage. The only significant is the port-side SPY-6 panel—and the deck gun. We can fix them aboard Ronnie, give or take about 48-hours. However—”

“We’re going to need to manually inspect every single weapon aboard,” started Weaps, dabbing his sweat-streaked, shiny-bald head with a napkin. “We are extremely lucky that nothing like whatever crushed the RMAs crushed the warhead on an SM-2 or god-forbid a TLAM.”

“—Or a turbine,” interjected CHENG.

Mason rubbed his temples, his face contorting, trying to process everything, “Was the fog laced with LSD? Are we tripping balls?”

“Sniffers would have picked that up, sir,” Lane replied. “Our CBRN suite got upgraded after those Tanzanian rebels used aerosolized fent during that nasty attack on the Perc naval station on Zanzibar in ‘35.”

The commander shot Lane a pained glare. “I was being rhetorical, XO.” He gutturally exhaled, “Fuck.” He turned toward the ship’s communications chief, “Comms, we heard anything since the lasflash from Moses?”

“N-no. No, sir.” The lieutenant was green, and he was really rattled. “Only Tubman and Redwood are radiating, and no one is squawking. Satcom is still toast. Astro-Nav and Mag-Nav are out of alignment and that’s crashing all kinds of stuff. The computers are crying at us. Never seen so many major systems faults, even in a cyberattack. We’re not sure what’s wrong. We’re in the dark, sir.”

Robertson shifted his body in Lane’s direction. “Miyake, you spent time under the Old Lady on Majuro, right?” Lane nodded. “How many times did she call a council of war with all her squadron commanders?”

Lane thought for a moment and was flooded with memories. He started his career as a real Corpo Navy type—proper Annapolis stock. That had changed after he was sent to work on the operations staff of Battle Force, Allied Fleet on Majuro in April of 2037. The atoll had been the forward-most main operating base in the Combined Pacific Command and was dominated by Slate Navy types after Scott was brought out of OCP in the wake of the worst defeat in US Navy history. It was a liminal space—a paradise with perpetual intermediate-range-ballistic precipitation—an ever-shifting sea of faces, ships, and units.

“Twice,” Miyake paused, “when she first arrived in theatre, and the night before Second Trench. Otherwise, it wasn’t her style. She usually preferred to—Oh—” He paused again. He gathered what Robertson was intimating. “It means it’s really bad.”

Robertson sighed, “That’s what I thought. I don’t even know what’s worse than…” He indicated out the porthole, “…could possibly even entail. But we’re in the suck now, so just keep lookouts ready and keep our ears and eyes open. And let me know if astro-nav or mag-nav starts working,” He sighed again as he looked up at Lane, “What a week, huh?”

Lane returned a blank stare, “Sir, it’s Wednesday.”  

Hangar, USS Telesforo Trinidad (DDG-139)

Puget Sound, WA

Commander Mason Robertson, USN

Commander, USS Telesforo Trinidad (DDG-139)

1214 Local JUNE 4, 2042

Commander Robertson looked on as the HV-81B Albatross made its final approach to Trinidad. The heavyweight tiltrotor was chugging along, its massive pair of engines hinged open and upwards, whipping up a small hurricane. The Albie was generally reserve for intra-fleet COD and search and rescue and just barely fit on the ass end of a Burke. This middle brother of the V-280 Valor family was bringing DESRON 23’s commodore to Trinidad. That made Maso’s skin crawl. An in-person briefing was never a good thing. Even worse, Maso looked past the VTOL, at a horizon that was growing a dark, stormy grey. The weather was only getting worse. It was bad vibes all around.

A moment after the ghost-grey tiltrotor came to rest and was fastened to the ship, two figures clambered out from its forward hatch. The first was who Robertson was expecting—the lanky figure, aged caramel skin, curled school-board-chalk hair, and class-A RBF of Commodore Milton “WR” Wójcik-Robinson. But following the Tallest Little Beaver was someone who caused Mason’s eyebrow to go crooked—the bald, squat form of a demon hidden in man-flesh. The fuck is Carly Jeung doing here?

Before Mason could salute, WR had extended his hand, forcing the skipper into a rapid, awkward salute-to-shake. “Maso,” WR had never before called Mason by his nickname, “We need to have a conversation with your wardroom. All of them.” Mason suppressed the urge to go bug-eyed. Oh, so it’s even worse than I thought.

“Of course, Dubber, sir,” Mason replied. Wójcik-Robinson grinned at his old nom de guerre. “And, uhhhh, Commodore Jeung—wasn’t expecting you, sir.”

Charles Entertainment Jeung was the ur-battle cat. The diminutive, bald, and rotund Korean-American Olympian sharpshooter made quite the odd pair with the spindly, grouchy Tallest Little Beaver. Carl Jeung was the definitive Slate Navy bomb-throwing partisan, perhaps Kill Something Scott’s most infamous protégé, and the como of the Long Beach SAG’s ESCRON. That combination would have killed most officers by now—but Jeung was not most officers.

“Neither was I, Robbo.” Of course, he got Mason's name wrong. “They put me on the wrong bird—but think of me as an independent authority.” He smirked; he was always smirking. Even when Carl Jeung frowned, his eyes were filled with mischievous smirk. He was like if someone had put the Cheshire Cat inside the skin of your joker Korean uncle.

Mason held back from rolling his eyes until he turned around and snapped his fingers at the rating nearest the intercom: “Mackenzie, call forward and get Lieutenant Commander Miyake to assemble the wardroom.” Mason turned back to Wójcik-Robinson and Jeung: “Gentlemen if you’ll please follow me.”

As the three officers darted through passageways and up and down ladders, Maso clocked a massive smile on WR. “How are you liking the refit? The Priests did a good job on her.”

“Damn right, sir. Can’t complain a lick.” Mason answered as he sprang up a ladder, “The new turbines are slick, the Super SPY-6 is a leap, and the new SEWIP V is mean as hell—and a damn sight prettier than slapping jowls on the ole gal. It’s a cryin’ shame we had to cut our point defense suite down, even after most of the deckhouse got replaced with Duracal, but them’s the break. Even then, we’ve got enough canned whoop-ass to hold our own against a heavy aviation brigade.”

“Dakka Doctrine don’t pull punches, Commander. What they’d leave you with?” WR inquired politely.

“Well we also have a pair of Id-Poo and Block II R2D2s. Plus, the standard two 50-mike-mike Super Bushmasters. Priest Point actually, let us keep the Cheese-wizz cus Jan Murelenski—”

The commodore interrupted. “That long-haired hipster, the wanna-be hippy?”

“The one! Yeah, he owes me a favor, technically, we don’t have CIWS on paper.”

WR was smiling. “You know, I thought you were always a stick in the mud; glad to see I was wrong.” The commodore loved few things more than the tactical acquisition of additional firepower. “I saw you got the pair of ADLs forward?”

“Aye, it’s an extra pair of two cell Mark 144s—they wanted to strip them off to save on weight, but I didn’t see reason to part with them.”

“Think OpNav pulled the guidance for that cut cus you bastards kept barking. L-O-L.”

“Damn, right, sir,” Maso flashed a toothy grin at the one-star. “Oh and of course, we also got the Hitman Mark 47 upfront—finally got one in this last B-FRAM. Well, we did until it got knocked out by… whatever the Hell is going on…”

“Yeah, we saw that flying in,” Jeung interjected, “Kinda hurt my soul seeing it and the whole uh…”

“Curly-cue? Yeah…” Maso chuckled, “All this firepower… It had me feeling like the captain of Weevee in ‘44.” WR’s mouth curled in displeasure. It was barely perceptible but sent a shiver down Maso’s spine.

“You know my first command was a Flight III. Sam Nunn.” WR stopped cold for a second. She went down at First Trench.” A pained grimace bubbled up. " I lost a lot of good friends that day.”

Maso looked back at the commodore, reflecting that sorrowful look, “We all did, sir.”

“I miss passageways like these.” WR continued, “You lose something on the Slate Navy Babies, too damn clean. They feel as if Amish Spock built an Ikea.” That analogy didn’t land with Mason, but he kept chugging toward their destination.

The wardroom was filled to the brim; almost every seat was taken by a warm body, and there were plenty of people standing, including a few hanging just outside the hatch in the passageway. There was a palpable air of anxiety, and that stirred up something in Robertson. Half of these people had been on Trinidad longer than him, another quarter came aboard with him, and the rest had seen their share of combat elsewhere in the fleet. They were not unblooded, but they were not unafraid.

WR and Jeung walked into the compartment and were met with confused looks. The room fell deathly silent, like an awkward funeral. WR cleared his throat, which caused a butter bar to almost jump, “Commander Robertson, you’re going to want to sit for this one too.” Mason traded looks with Ops for a second but kept on his feet. Wójcik-Robinson took a breath and shared a look with Jeung. “Folks—I…” His voice faltered immediately, “I think we’re all used to living through history, but…” He faltered. He searched for the words to proceed. The hairs on Mason’s arms stood up like tentpoles.

“Commodore,” Mason interjected, “Permission to speak freely?”

WR looked relieved. “Of course. And that goes for all of you. Dispense with the pleasantries. I’m here for real talk.”

Mason took a breath, “Stop beating around the bush and just drop the bomb, sir.”

WR covered his mouth with the crook of his hand, making his mind up before he continued, “We just got dropkicked two thousand miles across the Pacific and a hundred years into the past.” His voice didn’t falter once in that insanity. He had said it all without a hint of irony or sarcasm. Mason looked into his eyes and saw wells of alarm and tension like he almost didn’t believe what he had said. No, he didn’t want to believe it. Mason took a gulp of air.

“Fuck you, Milly.” Mason whipped his head around to see his Master Chief not even looking up from his cup of coffee. He was old salt stuff, knew Wójcik-Robinson from back in First Sino, and obviously was having none of it today.

“Benicio, I ain’t pulling your leg,” WR replied. “I wish I was. We are through straight the goddamn looking glass. And you know, if I wanted to jerk you off—I would’ve brought sandpaper.” The chief snorted dismissively but said nothing.

Mason started blinking rapidly, “This isn’t a joke?” He scoffed defensively, “It isn’t even possible.” His words were peppered by nervous looks to either side, hoping to find supportive faces. The rest of the wardroom was still, silent—processing.

Jeung sighed, “Yeah, we’ll we’re here. No sats in the sky, even the fuckin’ stars are in the wrong place. Someone whipped up the equation for stellar and drift, and we’re in June 1942.” He took a deep breath, “We’ve been able to generate reverse SAR images from the radar returns of what we thought were Group 4 UAVs… Those were Wildcats and Zeros, the whole works.” Maso went to interrupt, but Jeung cut him off. “One of the hummers from the Tub used its AQM-205 to get PID on some surface contacts.”

“And?” Robertson gave Jeung what he was looking for.

“The god-damned fuckin’ Kido Butai, Mason.” Jeung sternly enunciated the end of his sentence; his voice vibrated the walls of the deathly silent compartment. “The Old Lady doesn’t fuck around. She isn’t fucking around now. This is real.”

So, that’s why everything has been fucked.

A light bulb clearly went off in Miyake’s head, “Wait, sir, one hundred years back… Kido Butai… is it still the 4th? June 4th… 1942?” The entire wardroom snapped their heads toward Miyake before snapping back toward the commodores.

There was not a moment’s respite. “Yep,” Jeung answered flatly. For once in his life, he wasn’t smirking. His eyes were calm, piercing, and unflinching in their seriousness.

Fuck. Mason stumbled backward and planted his ass on a tabletop. Half of him wanted to laugh at this nonsense; the other half wanted to hurl.

One of the wardroom tried to speak up, “So does that mean—”

“Yep,” Wójcik-Robinson interrupted. He took a gulp of air and ran a hand over his hair. “We’re about one-hundred-fifty nautical miles northeast of the Battle of Midway.”

The entire wardroom had one response to that, “Fuuuuuuuuuuuuck.”

Mason’s mind raced with scattered, fragmented thoughts. Kids. Lucy. Mom. Dad. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. He raised a curled fist over his mouth. He felt the shifting motion of the ship now more than ever. His eyes widened and twisted in shock. He looked up at WR, who just gave him a hollowed, somber look.

Mason’s voice exited his lips with a harshness he had not heard in years; his eyes narrowed, and his heart steadied, “So, what the fuck is the plan, sir?” He needed to stop himself from spiraling, at least for now.

Jeung spoke up. “We have Wasp in the air, and they’re already providing cover to the Yorktown group.” He took a troublingly deep breath, “We’re having some uh problems programming our stand-off weapons. JTAPS is uh crashing.” Joint Target Acquisition and Programming System was the common program that OLYMPUS (the US’s joint all-domain command & control infrastructure) used as the backend infrastructure for programming guided weapons. It was what was used to tell the missiles where they were and where to go, and it was apparently not working.

Weaps spoke up. “What exactly do you mean by crashing, sir?”

“It keeps crashing.” WR replied curtly with a shrug, “It won’t accept our positioning data. Networks thinks that…” he gestured to their surroundings, “…all this might be triggering the cyberwarfare safeguards; JTAP’s defaulting back to inertial, which has us sailing through Vancouver Island and then… boom.”

“Oh,” Maso answered. “That’s bad.”

“It’s bad.” WR echoed with a sigh, “We’re looking for workarounds, and we’re also double-checking that our aircraft haven’t suffered any damage, like what happened to your Hitman 47.” He exhaled and rotated his jaw, “We also have gotten reports of what appears to be the bends.” Doc collapsed into his hands, “So you’re gonna have to do a full medical rundown. We do have hyperbaric chambers on Beaufort, plus technically Parche—and allegedly on the Zephyr—but seats are limited.”

“Got it.” The ship’s medical officer answered with grim resignation through gritted teeth. “I’ll do my best, but my options are limited.”

“I’m aware; just do what you can, Doc,” Mason replied, still yet fully accepting that this was actually happening.

Jeung started speaking again, with an unsettling seriousness, “Bottom line, ladies and gentlemen, is that the Old Lady wants a strike before this bomb cyclone can develop further.” He took a deep breath that rattled down his short frame. “That may not be possible, in which case we’re going to high tail it out of the path of this storm system. At the very least, our meteorology nerds have said that the atmospheric pressure and ambient temperature have stabilized, so it's unlikely to get worse—unlikely.” Jeung looked around with a frown on his face. Mason dislike that visage more than a smirk, a lot more. “From here on out, we are operating under the assumption there is no back, only forward. So that’s what we’re going to do.”

WR continued where Jeung left off, “We have been dealt a harsh hand by… only God knows what, but we’re going to play the best of it. We can do a lot of good, a historical amount of good. So, that’s what we’re gonna do. In good order and in keeping with the highest traditions of the Navy and Fleet Force.” There was quiet. Everyone was still processing the hammer blows. WR forced a smile, “Shit’s fucked. We’re going to do what we do best and unfuck it, just a little a bit.”

The ship’s greenest butter bar spoke up, “Sir, more of a question than a comment, but how are we really sure that this has actually happened?”

Main Bridge, USS Telesforo Trinidad (DDG-139)

Approx. 275 NMI North of Ellice Islands

Commander Mason Robertson, USN, CERFOR

Commander, USS Telesforo Trinidad (DDG-139)

0803 Local DEC 7, 1942

The skies of the South Pacific were a marbled grey, and the water was wine-dark. A strong breeze whipped up foamy white caps on all the waves. USS Telesforo Trinidad rocked with those waves but continued to charge ahead. Commander Robertson’s eyes were locked on an object off in the distance. Everyone on the bridge was staring out to sea in reverent silence.

It had been fifteen days since twenty-thousand Allied sailors had been sent to the bottom of the ocean. Twenty-thousand Japanese sailors had joined them. A dozen aircraft carriers had gone down within an hour, five with all hands. That blood had broken the seven seals. The ghosts of futures past had been unleashed.

A Certain Force, what the fuck kind of name is that?

Robertson was a man watching the Flying Dutchmen join his convoy. The scarred form of Enterprise (CV-6) charged through rough seas a mile to the west. It was now just one of two fleet carriers that the “General Forces” had left in the Pacific. The Big E had gotten brief repairs at Espiritu Santo, along with a new complement of aircraft and aircrews stitched together from the remnants of half a dozen carrier air groups. The ships of Composite Testing Force dwarfed the old straight-deck carrier’s swarm of escorts in this procession of vengeance.

The commander was struck by how quaint the legendary flattop was in comparison to the “Certain Force’s” supercarriers—USS Doris Miller (CVN-81), USS Harriet Tubman (CVCN-84), and USS Okinawa (LPVN-29). Big E’s teak flight deck had been repaired in a slapdash rush, but her gun line was still out of action. She had had the shit beaten out of her, yet she was still in better shape than USS Franklin (CV-13) or USS Saratoga (CV-3); they were being towed to Pearl, escorted by the battered remnants of Task Force Tare and the HMS Ark Royal, a ship—in the history that Mason knew by heart—should’ve gone down over a year ago.

Robertson turned and met eyes at his XO, “Whatcha listening to Lemonade?” Mason briefly cocked his head before his XO could reply, “You know what? Hit the aux, might as well drop a beat.” He smiled and returned to gawking at the Enterprise like a schoolboy at a museum, “Your taste in music is just about the only taste of yours that isn’t fucked.”

Lieutenant Commander Lane Miyake turned on the balls of his feet, a smile wide on his face, his last lemon of the morning consumed, and a single Bluetooth headphone in his ear. “Oh, you know how I like oldies, skipper.” He hooked his phone into the 1MC, already jury-rigged with an aux cord. A moment later, the main circuit echoed over their grim surroundings, the voice of Kesha dissonantly radiating over the dark waters and grisly sky.

“I hear your heart beat to the beat of the drums; Oh, what a shame that you came here with someone; So while you're here in my arms.”

A pair of F-27 Blackcats roared overhead. The huge arrowhead-shaped stealth sixth-generation air-dominance fighters shrieked. Their adaptive cycle engines glowed a soft blue-white. The wails of the jets grew distant as they cut up through the clouds like blackened spearpoints jutting into elephant-flesh. Mason took a deep breath as he shook his head gently. His mind drifted back to his home, his family—all that had been lost. He silently looked over the Pacific and the force that could shatter the Hosts of Heaven that lay in front of his eyes. The slight hint of a smile creased his face, pained with sorrow.

Gibraltar of the Pacific, eh?

“Let's make the most of the night like we're gonna die young.”

Mason looked, and he saw a black banner with thirty-five stars. Emblazoned on the tenebrous standard were eight words in stark white that echoed across the water like a shattering seal. It whipped through the air, dancing on the harsh wind—fluttering off the island of the USS Harriet Tubman (CVCN-84).

DEATH TO THE MASTER

GLORY TO THE SLAVE

We Have Engaged The Boche

Ahead of the planned invasion of Poland, the High Command of the Kriegsmarine (Oberkommando der Marine) dispatched the panzerschiffe (technically large heavy cruisers but dubbed pocket battleships by the press), Admiral Graf Spee, and Moltke to the South Atlantic. As soon as hostilities commence, they attack British and French shipping as individual but mutually supporting raiders.

However, the Allies do not sit idly by, and a game of cat and mouse rages for weeks until the three ships of Commodore Henry Harwood’s Force G—light cruisers Ajax and Achilles, and heavy cruiser Exeter—catch the slower Graf Spee on the morning of December 13.

The captain of Graf Spee, Hans Langsdorf, immediately realizes that his ship is in danger of being run down in an extended chase. He does not have the speed to flee; the British cruisers can skirt around him and fell his command with a thousand cuts. However, the Kapitän zur See has an ace up his sleeve—Moltke is just a hundred miles away. The two ships could kill or cripple the British cruisers without incurring much damage and then escape before heavier Allied units could arrive. Langsdorf signals Konteradmiral Oskar Kummetz on Moltke, asking for aid. The reply is immediate, “I shall close to you, do the same. We shall smash them once joined.”

Moltke and Graf Spee steam toward each other at 30 and 28 knots, respectively, closing the distance in about two hours. The British are none the wiser until a smudge of oily smoke rises on the horizon and the newer, faster, and more heavily armored “pocket battleship” presents itself. The table turns on Harwood in a matter of minutes. His speed advantage is cut in half instantly, and his plan to split the fire of Graf Spee by splitting Exeter off from Ajax and Achilles is made worthless. Harwood’s force is in immediate danger of being overwhelmed and annihilated by the two super cruisers—his only shield is speed, and that is something that the temperamental South Atlantic can take off him in the blink of an eye.

Harwood gambles with the last move left—he plays the same trick that the Germans had played on him and hopes that there would be someone waiting for him over the horizon. He tacks northwest at his best speed. At this point, Exeter is in a bad way, having received multiple hits from the 11-inch shellfire. She is beginning to list as her final operational turret disappears beneath a jet of flame—but she keeps up her top speed as Harwood, aboard Ajax, and Achilles haul around and begin to lay smoke to cover the beleaguered diminutive heavy cruiser. The Panzerschiffe switch fire to the light cruisers, and the dark waters are turned to a froth mix of white columns of churned water as the ships weave between shells at high speed, belching black clouds in the cloudless day.

Just as an 11-inch hit smashes into his flagship, Harwood sees smoke on the horizon. Part of his mind fears that it is yet another German raider. Someone in the crow’s nest shouts, “THANK FUCKING GOD! THEY’VE GOT WHITE PENNANTS FLYING!”

It is Force M—under the personal command of Vice Admiral George Lyons, CINC-South Atlantic—with the large heavy cruiser Defence, heavy cruiser Devonshire, and light cruiser Neptune. They have sprinted to the sound of guns. Defence has pushed her machinery to the very limit, exceeding her trial speed by three and one-quarter knots. The older Devonshire struggled to keep up with the homely “Ten-Year Fool.” The odds have swung sharply again, and now the Germans are faced with stark odds; they can neither outrun nor out-fight the combined might of the two cruiser forces.

Before Kummetz and Langsdorf can act, the massive cruiser steams headlong at the Germans, turning a textbook pursuit into a brutal, bare-knuckle bar brawl. She passes the crippled Exeter hidden by her own gunsmoke. Her first salvo brackets the newer Moltke as Ajax, Achilles, and Neptune begin to rain 6-inch shells upon Graf Spee, with some particularly dreadful shooting by Devonshire mostly providing ambiance. Defence strikes Moltke on her third salvo, beginning a deluge of 8-inch hits from her sixteen-gun main battery. While the other cruisers flit around the panzerschiffe like matadors, the large cruiser draws the attention of both Germans. The overbuilt Defence shrugs off the Germans’ 11-inch replies with ease—taking twenty-six hits, but not a one penetrates her armor.

Kummetz signals a withdrawal to Montevideo after the ugly Anglo super cruiser lands seven hits from a single salvo on his flagship. The British permit the Germans to quit the field. This is no act of mercy; Admiral Lyons merely gives the Germans more rope to hang themselves from—as steaming to his aid is Force K with two battlecruisers (St. Vincent and Renown), an aircraft carrier (Ark Royal), and three more heavy cruisers (Dorsetshire, Cumberland, Shropshire).

Arriving in Montevideo, the Germans take stock of their ships. A hit from Exeter has knocked out Graf Spee’s fuel purification plant. This means the ship cannot process its fuel stores into workable diesel made even worse by the fact her fuel bunkers had been pierced and mostly emptied. There is also the matter of Devonshire's sole contribution—a dud shell that pierced the left gun barrel in Graf Spee’s aft main battery mount. On the other hand, Moltke has not received any significant damage, thanks to her thicker armor. However, she has lost most of her secondary armament and suffered immense damage to her upper works—she enters Montevideo harbor with a scrap heap instead of a superstructure.

The British Embassy in Montevideo immediately starts purchasing all possible spare parts and diesel fuel to deny any resources to the Germans, even before they arrive in the harbor. The Axis ships are notionally limited to 72 hours in the neutral port, but that clock is set back 24 hours by any British or French flagged-vessel departing. The British use this loophole to force the Germans to remain in port. The Embassy also makes liberal use of unencrypted signals purporting to herald the arrival of Force K. Kummetz rejects the intercepts as false. He makes it clear that he intends to fight his way home or die in the attempt; a particularly nasty jibe about using Graf Spee as bait to give him the opportunity to punch through the British blockade sees Langsdorf depart Moltke without another word.

On the morning of December 18, the pair of Germans ships sally from Montevideo. Moltke makes a break for the open ocean and home. Graf Spee, with what fuel she has left, breaks for Buenos Aires, as Argentina would be unlikely to allow the British to pick her apart after being interned, something that could not be said of Uruguay.

They do not make it far.

Just one and a half hours after leaving Uruguay, a flight of five Fairey Swordfish torpedo bombers intercept Graf Spee as it limps along. The damaged ship barely has enough fuel to maneuver. One torpedo strikes her port side, which tears a gash into the ship and bursts the hasty patches on three underwater shell-hits from Action on December 13. Things get worse for Graf Spee as she loses steering and beaches on the Uruguayan coast 80 miles west of Montevideo. Langsdorf sees the crew evacuated and oversees the preparations to scuttle the ship. He remains aboard as the ship’s half-emptied magazines are detonated with scuttling charges.

Moltke, on the other hand, steams directly into the greatest concentration of British naval power South of Gibraltar. The battlecruisers St. Vincent and Renown both have the speed to run down the 30-knot panzerschiff and are also armed with the improved long BL 15”/50 Mk II gun. They are backed by three light cruisers (Ajax, Achilles, and Neptune), three heavy cruisers (Dorsetshire, Cumberland, Shropshire), a large cruiser (Defence), and a fleet carrier (Ark Royal). The panzerschiff has less than no chance. It is not a fight. It is an execution. St. Vincent’s third salvo hits Moltke’s forward triple turret twice. The ship disappears from view. Miles away, the crew of the Graf Spee watches another mushroom cloud unfurl upwards to the heavens on the horizon.

First blood in the war at sea had been drawn.

Curbstomp the Bismarck!

On May 18, 1941, the Kriegsmarine launches its largest surface raid of the war, code-name RHEINÜBUNG. Under the command of Vizeadmiral Günther Lütjens, the new battleship Bismarck sorties with two heavy cruisers (Admiral Hipper and Seydlitz), two panzerschiff (Mackensen and Lützow), and an aircraft carrier-surface raider-storeship (Graf Zeppelin).

Seydlitz joins the mission to appease Lütjen’s concerns that the force lacks mass. OKM considers adding the recently returned panzerschiff Admiral Scheer to the force, but it is decided that, like the working-up battleship Tirpitz, she would not be ready in time to deploy ahead of the invasion of the Soviet Union, Operation BARBAROSSA. Graf Zeppelin, though notionally an aircraft carrier, joins the raid without any aircraft as a surface combatant armed with sixteen 15cm guns and a storeship. Her aviation fuel tanks are filled with maritime diesel for the panzerschiffe, and her main hangar is filled with two thousand barrels of fuel oil, eight hundred rounds of 15cm and 20.3cm shells in crates, and 150 tons of additional dry stores. What few aircraft were ready to embark aboard the ship—intended for scouting—were withheld by the Luftwaffe after OKM did not think to ask for permission to use the carrier’s air wing personally from Hermann Göring.

The operation starts badly. The older panzerschiff Lützow runs aground while entering Grimstadfjord near Bergen. She is left behind. She is eventually freed a few days later after three failed air attacks by RAF Blenheims and limps back to Kiel for yet another period of repairs. On the same day as Lützow runs aground, May 21, Swedish sources inform the British Admiralty of a Nazi fleet movement: two cruisers and a battleship. Graf Zeppelin and Mackensen were delayed reaching Grimstadfjord and avoided being spotted by the coastal defense ship HSwMS Gotland. At this point, the battlecruisers HMS Hood and HMS Trafalgar, under Vice Admiral Lancelot Holland, are already steaming for the Denmark Strait with a half dozen destroyers to reinforce the heavy cruisers HMS Norfolk and HMS Suffolk, which are patrolling the passage. After the sortie is confirmed, Admiral Sir John Tovey, CINC of the Home Fleet, sails with the main body of the Home Fleet—the new battleship King George V, the refit Nelson-class battleship Drake, the new aircraft carrier Victorious along with five cruisers and six destroyers—further reinforced by HMS Repulse while they are underway. The Royal Navy’s other at-sea assets are put on high alert to cover nearby convoys—especially troop convoys—or join the hunt.

Norfolk spots the German task force on the evening of May 23 and is shocked to find their raiders in the company of a D-class panzerschiff and a carrier. Bismarck engages Suffolk after she ventures too close; both British cruisers retreat to the cover of nearby fogbanks, tracking the Germans via radar. The blast effect from this first engagement knocks out Bismarck’s radar. Lütjens orders Hipper to move ahead of the battleship to give radar coverage and detaches Mackensen and Seydlitz to force away their shadows so the main force can slink into the night.

There is a cat-and-mouse game in the dark as the two German cruisers try to force off their British observers, but Norfolk and Suffolk prove stubbornly difficult to catch or scare off. The pair of British cruisers, on either side of the raiding force, run circles around their pursuers and keep in radar contact as the Germans steam through the Strait.

In the early hours of the Morning of May 24, Hood and Trafalgar, with their escorts, arrive at a chaotic situation. The British cruisers are out of pocket, forced off station by the pursuit of Mackensen and Seydlitz. However, they are pushed right into the arms of the friendly battlecruisers while their pursuers stumble through the dawn’s early light. The British then proceed to stumble onto Bismarck just as Mackensen and Seydlitz cross the horizon to rejoin their compatriots.

There is no grace in the fight.

The British flagship, St. Vincent, assumes the lead ship (Hipper) is Bismarck, targeting her instead of the actual battleship; Hood avoids that mistake and engages the correct target. Norfolk and Suffolk start to fling 8-inch shells at Mackensen as soon as she and Seydlitz come into range. There is a cruiser melee between the battleship duel under grey skies and rough seas that makes the British destroyer advantage useless.

The British battlecruisers open fire first at 0552. They nominally possess a decisive firepower advantage over the Germans, with 20 large guns—twelve on Trafalgar and eight on Hood—against the German 8. However, due to the approach angle, Hood can only engage with A and B turret. Further, Hood is still armed with the older, shorter BL 15-inch Mark I as the ship had been denied a long-needed refit due to dockyard availability, high demand for fast capital units in the ‘30s, and the Treasury’s tight hold of the purse strings.

The ragged Mighty Hood lands the first hit of the day on Bismarck, and will eventually land two more. This first impact tears a massive hole in the German’s bow and pierces her forward fuel tanks, slowing the battlewagon and making her leave an oil slick. The German lands its first strike on Trafalgar soon after—after a delay caused by Admiral Lütjens refusing to give permission to fire—utterly obliterating one of Traf’s six-inch secondaries and starting a large fire aft.

As Trafalgar maneuvers to allow Hood to open up with her entire battery, a plunging 15-inch shell strikes and penetrates the joint between the face and roof plates of her B Turret. A jet of flame is seen screaming up into the air, towering at least eight stories. A lookout aboard Suffolk, shielding his face from shell splinters from a near-miss by Seydlitz, happens to see what happens next: the three forward magazines of the largest capital ship in the Royal Navy detonate either simultaneously or in rapid succession so as to appear to be one low-single-digit kiloton explosion (estimates vary from 1.5 to 4 kilotons of TNT).

Hood is swallowed by the mushroom cloud rising up from where Trafalgar had been. When she does not immediately sail out from it, Norfolk's horrified executive officer shouts, “My God! That’s got th—they’re both [fucking] gone!” That is taken as gospel by the ship’s captain and cruiser group commander, Rear Admiral Frederic Wake-Walker; both turn to see nothing but smoke and ash. Norfolk accordingly reports the loss of Hood and Traflagar to the Home Fleet.

“TRAFALGAR AND HOOD LOST VERY LARGE DETONATION 6001 HOURS.”

After Hood finally sails out from the mushroom cloud, guns thundering, it takes about ten minutes for another message to be relayed to Scapa Flow, correcting the erroneous report. In the meantime, the first report bolts across the Royal Navy (and the United Kingdom) like lightning. In less than an hour, the news reaches Birkenhead, where the battleship Prince of Wales is being re-outfitted, despite notionally being completed on April 7 after a fault was detected in her aft turret’s shell hoists. Her crew makes her ready to sail—without orders, without the left-most gun in Y turret, and a sizeable complement of Cammell Laird shipwrights still aboard. She gets orders to join the pursuit, “if possible,” as she is pushing off from her berth. She makes a shocking 29.5 knots while catching up to Rodney, who had been detached from convoy duty to join the hunt (damaging her boilers in the process).

Hood, Norfolk, and Suffolk are on the backfoot with the loss of Trafalgar. The mighty battlecruiser receives six 15-inch, five 11-inch, and six 8-inch hits; one 15-inch round wrecks her X (aft super-firing) turret. Suffolk and Norfolk savage Mackensen for only modest damage in return; the panzerschiff’s forward triple turret resembles Swiss cheese more than a gun mount. However, now outgunned and outnumbered, the British lay smoke and withdraw.

With Bismarck leaking large amounts of fuel and Mackensen badly damaged, Lütjens decides to disengage and steam for Brest over the objections of Bismarck’s captain, Ernst Lindemann, who wanted to finish off Hood and head for Bergen. Hipper and Seydlitz detach to carry on the raid. There was some consternation on the battleship over whether to send Graf Zeppelin with the cruisers or keep it with the battleship; Lütjens would make the fateful decision to keep the carrier with Bismarck in the hope that she could used to refuel the battleship in an emergency (something Lindemann believed would be a fool’s errand) and permit her to have a straight shot to the safety of Brest as opposed to try its luck with avoiding the British with the cruisers.

In the intervening hours, Hood prods and engages the Germans a few times before being forced back when Bismarck doubles back and closes to merge—a move to cover the departure of the cruisers. In the small hours of May 25, nine Swordfish torpedo bombers from Victorious, vectored in by Norfolk, make an attack on the battleship. One torpedo hits home on Bismarck, to little appreciable effect, the ship’s torpedo defense system doing its job.

Later that morning, the British lose contact with the Germans, and believing that he is still being shadowed, Lütjens sends a long radio message to OKM updating them on his situation, which the British use to triangulate his approximate position which confirms that he is on course for France.

The Home Fleet continues to close. Tovey's main force (King George V, Drake, Repulse, and Victorious) is reinforced by Rodney and Prince of Wales while Force H sails north from its position off Gibraltar with battlecruisers Renown and St. Vincent—Trafalgar’s sister ship—and the fleet carriers Ark Royal and Agincourt. Hood remains in the pursuit despite the damage dealt by Bismarck. The noose draws close even as the British fuel situation becomes critical; several destroyers are sent home, and replacement escorts are pulled from nearby convoys in a game of musical chairs. Yet, it appears as if the Bismarck might be able to escape as she briefly loses its cruiser shadows until an RAF Catalina spots the battleship.

Ark Royal and Agincourt—the largest aircraft carrier in the world—ready a Hail Mary night strike to sink—or at least delay—the two Nazi capital ships. Ark Royal launches 15 Swordfish, Agincourt launches 25. The first strike almost goes disastrously wrong when the Fleet Air Arm aviators attack Sheffield, the closest Royal Navy shadow. They fail to hit the cruiser—in large part due to the failure of the magnetic detonators on their aerial torpedoes. The two carriers relaunch their aircraft, but this time, Agincourt dispatches 30 of her 36 torpedo bombers. The canvas tide descends on Lütjens in fits and starts attacking in small packets for over an hour.

Bismarck is struck thrice. Two hits have little effect, but one hits astern and jams her rudder. Unobserved by the British, however, is a catastrophic explosion aboard Graf Zeppelin, and the ship goes down with all but 54 of her 1853-man complement. There are two main theories as to what transpired. One, that an errant torpedo from the last Swordfish attack had missed Bismarck and struck the carrier-raider; or two, there was a shell handling incident in the ship’s main hangar set off of the stores located there. The 1987 discovery of Graf Zeppelin by Robert Ballard—during his search for the Bismarck—would reveal a torpedo impact aft and the front quarter of the ship bowed outward by a massive internal explosion, therefore failing to settle the debate.

Bismarck is doomed. The entire British battle force readies for the final kill, including St. Vincent and Renown prematurely breaking off from Ark Royal and Agincourt. Repulse is dangerously low on fuel; her captain continues, fully understanding that his ship is likely to run out of fuel on the way back to port. Hood rejoins the Home Fleet; Tovey is horrified to see her scarred form and the crooked barrels hanging from her X turret.

Lütjens signals Berlin with his situation, “SHIP UNMANOEUVRABLE. ZEPPELIN BURNING AND ABANDONED. MACKENSEN TO PROCEED ALONE. WE WILL FIGHT TO THE LAST SHELL. LONG LIVE THE FÜHRER.”

In the night, British destroyers under Commodore Philip Vian make harrying attacks against the battleship but are confused to find a German carrier burning brilliantly and running in circles. Vian, aboard HMS Cossack, is recounted as saying, “Well, who the Hell did that? Because I’m bloody sure it wasn’t us!” upon seeing the ship blazing like a funeral pyre. Mackensen hobbles away into the night at a stately 26 knots toward France, slipping away from the British, who tunnel vision in on Bismarck. It will make it to Brest, but only after being attacked by several waves of torpedo and bomb-armed Swordfish, suffering several damaging hits on the way.

On the morning of May 27, Bismarck faces her doom.

Vengeance blows across the horizon like a spring storm as the Home Fleet arrives from the west with King George V, Prince of Wales, Drake, Rodney, Hood, and Repulse arrayed into a line of battle, white pennants flying in the morning sun.

Force H joins the action shortly after Rodney opens fire on Bismarck at 0847; Renown and St. Vincent close in from the north at their best possible speeds, nearly 31 knots. At this point, Admiral Tovey is in direct command of the greatest concentration of British naval power since Jutland (and the largest concentration of British capital surface combatants of the Second World War). He signals for Force H’s commander, Vice Admiral James Somerville, aboard St. Vincent to join the main line. Somerville replies two minutes later, still bearing down on the German on his original course.

“I CANNOT COMPLY. I AM ENGAGING!”

St. Vincent earns the sobriquet “St. Vengeance” as she closes to within 7,000 yards of the still operational German battleship. She lands entire 12-gun salvos into the body of the Bismarck time after time. Renown maintains her distance while the Home Fleet rains 15-inch and 16-inch shells on the German. Rodney, within 15 minutes, cripples the German with a single 16-inch hit; the shell impacts the back of Bismarck’s Bruno turret (forward super-firing), knocking it out—the explosion tears through the bridge, killing most senior officers, and knocking out the ship’s main fire control director.

As St. Vincent continues to close on Bismarck—the German shrouded by flames and her own gunsmoke—Tovey is said to have remarked, “Good God, does he intend to board her?!” The British land body-blow after body-blow. The German battlewagon is struck by no less than one thousand shells in less than an hour.

By 0933, the German battleship is burning from stem to stern and is listing heavily to port. She is out of action; her guns lay silent—left as twisted and contorted macabre sculptures of warped steel. Her Dora turret (aftmost) is shattered like a cracked-open skull, her armor plate torn away like tissue paper, and shell hoists exposed to seaspray. Most of her superstructure is completely shot away; what is left is shredded—one can look through Bismarck’s deckhouse by one of hundreds of new windows.

Tovey does not idle; with one last point-blank barrage delivered by St. Vincent and Rodney—including half a dozen 24.5-inch heavyweight torpedoes—he orders a withdrawal. The worst damage dealt to the British in this action has been dealt by their own hands—fratricidal blast effects from Rodney, Drake, and St. Vincent’s guns on their own fittings. The Home Fleet’s fuel situation is beyond critical. Repulse actually runs out of fuel off Devon and has to be towed into Bristol Harbor. Hood has empty fuel tanks when she arrives in Belfast; she remains there for immediate repairs before sailing for Halifax for her long-delayed refit, which will see her reconstructed along the lines of the Queen Elizabeth-class and HMS Renown. German air attacks damage the cruiser Sheffield and battleship Drake, but otherwise fail to repay the loss of Bismarck and Graf Zeppelin.

Mackensen reaches Brest in the small hours of May 28. Seydlitz and Hipper arrive in France on June 1; on their approach to France, the British submarine Pandora would hit Seydlitz with a single torpedo, adding yet another damaged ship to the laundry list of German naval assets bottled up in the French port.

The Bismarck has not just been sunk—it has been smote upon the water.

A Different Day of Infamy

The fateful morning of Sunday, December 7, 1941 finds the skies above Pearl Harbor filled with the aircraft of the Imperial Japanese Navy Air Service. In total, some 428 aircraft launched from the carriers Akagi, Kii, Soryū, Hiryū, Shōkaku, Zuikaku, Shōhō, and Zuihō will take part. As for the rest of the IJN’s carriers, the old light carrier Hōshō is with the Main Body, ready to cover the escape of the Kido Butai; while the new conversions Hiei and Haruna and the light carrier Ryujō are sailing south with the 2nd Fleet to cover operations in the Southern Resource Area; and the conversions Kongō and Kirishima are still outfitting in Kure and Kobe.

The United States Pacific Fleet is caught completely flatfooted as swarms of Kates, Vals, and Zekes descend upon them. In a stroke of luck, only a single carrier is at anchor. USS Ranger (CV-4), the world’s largest purpose-built carrier, is pier-side at Repair Basin No. 2, waiting to enter the newly completed Dry Dock No. 2 to fix a damaged screw. The damage would spare another carrier, as USS Enterprise (CV-6), escorted by USS Shiloh (CB-8), had picked up Ranger’s assignment to deliver VMF-211 to Wake Island. USS Lexington (CV-2) with USS Bunker Hill (CC-6) are also on a milk run, delivering VMSB-231 to Midway. USS Saratoga (CV-3) is in San Diego after a refit in the Puget Sound Navy Yard. Yorktown (CV-5), Wasp (CV-7), Hornet (CV-8), and Franklin (CV-13) are in the Atlantic. The other two emergency carriers, Bonhomme Richard (CV-12) and Reprisal (CV-14) are outfitting at the New York Shipbuilding Corporation and Fore River Shipyard, respectively.

There is a bloodbath along Battleship Row. California (BB-44) is sunk by two bombs and two torpedoes. Five torpedos strike Oklahoma (BB-37), and she capsizes. Maryland (BB-46) is damaged by two bombs. West Virginia (BB-48) is sunk by two bombs and seven torpedoes. Tennessee (BB-43) is struck by two bombs. Arizona (BB-39) detonates after her forward magazine is pierced by a 1600-pound AP bomb. Washington (BB-47), alongside BB-39, remains barely afloat after two torpedoes and bomb hits; fires from BB-39 spread to the ship, but she remains afloat. Nevada (BB-36) gets underway despite taking six bombs and a torpedo and is beached to avoid blocking the Harbor’s entrance. With Nevada underway, Concord is struck from both sides, taking eight torpedoes and six bombs; with rapid flood from both sides, the battle cruiser avoids capsizing and merely settles on the bottom. However, Valley Forge is not so lucky—she is struck by a half a dozen bombs and five torpedoes along her port side in a close pattern. Despite the best efforts of her crew, she capsizes at mooring X-3.

USS Ranger (CV-4), a priority target like the Concords, is swarmed by D3A Vals, which land six bombs on the carrier, but her crew refuses to permit the ship to sink. The Japanese aviators also attack the ex-battleship Utah, capsizing her with two torpedoes and damaging the dry-docked USS Pennsylvania (BB-38) with two bombs.

The morning ends with four battleships and two battlecruisers sunk; five battleships damaged (two lightly, three heavily); and one fleet carrier crippled; all for the loss of 34 IJNAS aircraft and five midget submarines. The traditional striking power of the Pacific Fleet has been smashed in just a morning.

Bloody, Bloody Java

With worsening conditions in the Pacific at the end of 1941, the British reinforce their Pacific forces in hopes of deterring the Japanese. To this end, the battleship Prince of Wales, battlecruisers Repulse and Prins van Oranje (having been serving escort duty on the South Atlantic), large heavy cruisers Defence and Theseus, and aircraft carrier Indomitable are dispatched to Singapore. However, Indomitable runs aground off Jamaica and is delayed by about a month.

The reinforcements arrive in Singapore on December 2. On the morning of December 8, the Japanese commence hostilities across the Pacific—including an air raid on Singapore. Later that day, Admiral Tom Phillips, Commander-in-Chief of the China Station and Eastern Fleet, sorties with Force Z to intercept a reported Japanese invasion convoy heading for Malaya, despite a lack of air cover. They are swarmed by aircraft of the IJNAS from Indochina on December 10. Prince of Wales, Repulse, and Prins van Oranje are all sunk despite masterful shiphandling by their crews; the rest of the force escapes, including the large cruisers.

With the Japanese invasion force already on Malaya and making startling advances and further air raids on the fleet anchorage, Allied naval units evacuate Singapore for Java. In total the new America-British-Dutch-Australian Command is comprised of the Dutch battlecruiser De Zeven Provinciën, British large cruisers Theseus and Defence, British heavy cruiser Exeter, four british light cruisers and two Dutch light cruisers, a Dutch destroyer leader, seven Dutch, four American, and nine British destroyers. In the following weeks, the remnants of the US Asiatic Fleet begin to arrive in Surabaya: eight more American four-stacker destroyers, the heavy cruiser Houston, and the light cruisers Boise and Marblehead.

January is a frustrating month for ABDACOM. Under the protection of airfields seized in their opening offensives, the Japanese methodically march across the Dutch East Indies. Lack of intelligence sees several Allied sorties against phantom invasion convoys, consuming now-limited stocks of fuel oil. While the heavy British units are on a wild goose chase near Sumatra, Task Force 5 deploys against a Japanese convoy heading for Balikpapan on the east coast of Borneo. However, Houston and several DDs are reassigned to convoy escort duties, leaving Marblehead, Boise, and six four-stackers for the sortie.

At one point, Task Force 5 passes the bulk of the IJN’s 4th Destroyer Flotilla and is challenged by signal light. The Americans do not reply, but the Japanese do not fire, assuming the ships are friendly. The Americans reach the Japanese transport and open fire first with their torpedoes to maintain the element of surprise for as long as possible. The inner ring of IJN minesweepers and sub-chasers around the transports confuse the American ships for friendly destroyers, the large cruiser Aso and the light cruiser Naka, and do not engage until after the Americans open fire with their guns. The main Japanese escort force is completely out of position, hunting the Dutch submarine K-XVIII, which coincidentally attacked just ahead of the appearance of the Americans, permitting the Yankees to sink 10 of 12 transports before slinking into the night.

In more good news for ABDACOM, the battlecruiser HMAS Tiger, along with the light cruisers HMAS Sydney and HMAS Perth, arrive in Surabaya on January 18. The cruisers immediately get to work escorting convoys, relieving the workload on their sister, HMAS Hobart, who has been in the theater since the beginning of the month. Sydney is fresh out of minor repairs in Ceylon after an engagement with the German armed merchant cruiser Kormoran alongside Defence in November. At the end of the month, ABDACOM is briefly reinforced by the aircraft carriers HMS Indomitable and HMS Hermes, escorted by the light cruisers Hermione and Scylla, and the five DDs. The carriers do not tarry, completing their assigned roles as aircraft ferries before beating a hasty retreat back to Ceylon.

February does not have an auspicious start with miscommunication and concerns of a lack of fuel leading to a task force led by Prins Van Oranje and USS Houston with the light cruisers Java, De Rutyr, Dragon, Danae, Marblehead, and Boise with the destroyer leader Tromp, and three Dutch and four American DDs sortie to intercept an invasion convoy without proper air cover. Japanese land-based bombers attack the force in the Makassar Straits, but are repulsed by an immense wall of anti-aircraft fire provided by the D-class cruisers and Marblehead, which were converted into the anti-aircraft ships in the late ‘30s. The battlecruiser Prins Van Oranje is, however, damaged by a single hit and several near misses, and the intensity of the air attacks makes the Allies withdraw.

As a direct result of this failure, there is a cataclysmic showdown between the Dutch Luitenant-Admiraal Conrad Helfrich and the American Admiral Philip Hart after the strike force returns. It ends with Hart de facto removed from command and Helfrich assuming ABDACOM’s naval billet. The Dutchman immediately goes about gathering sufficient fuel to put the entire force at sea to intercept and destroy the next invasion convoy.

On February 13, the Japanese—with fighting still going on in Singapore—launch a surprise airborne landing against Palembang on Sumatra, knocking out the main concentration of Allied airpower in the region ahead of a naval invasion. The inner defensive ring has been breached. This is the final showdown.

ABDACOM sorties in full force the next day. Helfrich leads the Striking Force from De Zeven Provinciën. The main body consists of the battlecruisers De Zeven Provinciën and Tiger; the large heavy cruisers Defence and Theseus; the heavy cruisers Houston and Exeter; the light cruisers De Rutyr, Java, Hobart, Perth, Boise, Marblehead, Dragon, Danae, and Durban; the destroyer leader Tromp; and 17 destroyers (6 American, 4 British, and 7 Dutch).

Within 48 hours, most of this force will be at the bottom of the Java Sea.

They do not reach Sumatra. The Japanese have come to them—looking for a fight.

With the British radars inoperable due to the climate and Dutch radars having never been installed as a cost saving measure pre-war, the only sign that things have gone wrong is the appearance of smudges of smoke on the western horizon. In short order, seven shapes (plus escorts) appear and are (mis)identified as Mogami and Agano-class light cruisers. The Allied force is surprised, but undaunted.

De Zeven Provinciën opens fire at 32,000 yards. The Japanese “light cruisers” then start to return fire—well in excess of the range expected of 6-inch gun ships. Finally, a member of HMAS Tiger’s bridge crew shouts. “Christ, those are all supers!”

It is the Close Cover Force of the Second Fleet under the command of Vice Admiral Ozawa Jisaburō—with the large cruisers Tsukuba, Tateshina, Tsurumi, and Tokiwa, the heavy cruisers Takao and Senjō, the light cruiser Yoshino, and 10 DDs. Realizing that their bulk of their light cruisers are out-ranged, Helfrich orders his force to close—but Ozawa uses his superior speed to kite the Allies, keeping his ships close enough to not be outranged by the battlecruisers but not so close to get into the effective range of the various Allied CLs. The Allies suffer several communication failures, leading to the Americans breaking formation and the British targeting the wrong ships. Tokiwa delivers first blood, striking Theseus and knocking out both her forward turrets and kills her entire bridge crew. Shortly after, Tateshina and Tsukuba begin to land repeat hits on De Zeven Provinciën—with little effect. Tiger and Tsurumi tear into each other, with the ships trade half a dozen hits in bloody five minutes. Ozawa’s is overmatched, but he is only playing for time, and it runs outs.

More ships arrive. Steaming from the north are four japanese battlecruiser (Atago and Ashitaka), four old heavy cruisers (Aoba, Kinugasa, Furataka, Kako), the light cruiser Agano, and nine destroyers. There is almost no gap between their arrival and the first column of water summoned by crashing 16.1-inch shells.

Hellfrich is in the middle of swirling spider’s web of inter-linked but independent IJN task units. Only two of the six IJN forces at sea will make contact—the heavy cruiser force screening the invasion force rushes to reinforce Ozawa but a garbled signal sends them off on the incorrect bearing (leaving the invasion fleet uncovered); the battleship force with the new Sado-class battlewagons and the monstrous Yamato are too late, delayed after complications while fueling and will fail to approach the Allies from the east; the supporting carrier division (Sōryū and Hiryū) are prevented from joining the battle due to the bad weather; the battlecruisers Tosa, Kaga, and their escorts were intended to sweep behind the Allies fail to do so in good time.

The weather beings to sharply turn for the worse as a storm blows in behind the IJN battlecruisers. A deluge of water and shells douses the Allies in rapid fashion. Defence and the crippled Theseus are left to fend off Ozawa’s supers as De Zeven Provinciën and Tiger try to fend off the Amagi sisters. The Japanese heavy cruisers and destroyers begin to close in and start to dump schools of Type 93 Long Lance torpedoes into the water. The screening Allied destroyer are mauled by the fish in the water Kortenaer, Fortune, Jupiter, and Alden destroyed within seconds of each other. Three Long Lances tear Java in half. Boise and Perth both take multiple 8-inch hits from the old Japanese CAs, but not before the American smashes the upper works of Kinugasa with a flury blows. Houston trades shots with Takao and Senjō, trading hits with the latter.

Plumes of thick smoke billow up from smoke generators and fires raging across massive oilslicks and shattered superstructure. A constant rising tide of gun-smoke rises to meet the falling rain of howling steel and near-tourential water. It is still hot and overwhelmingly humid as the sky is torn open. It is a desperate scene as the Allied forces collpases. Helfrich orders a general retreat before a salvo from Atago blows apart De Zeven Provinciën’s bridge—forcing her remaining command staff to the ship’s rear mounted Italian-style armored conning tower. Tiger remains untouched by battlecruiser fire but has suffered a littany of 10-inch and 8-inch hits, but not before cracking Tsurumi across the skull one last time, forcing the CB to withdraw, trailing oil like a bloodtrail. De Rutyr is destroyed by magazine detonation, likely caused by a hit from Tokiwa. Exeter is cut down by a combination of fire from Aoba and Takao. In this confused scene, Defence and De Zeven Provinciën—without intending—hold the door and allow the other elements of ABDACOM’s Striking Force to retreat into the thundering squalls.

The British large heavy cruiser goes down swinging, taking on three CB and five CA by itself. Durban slips beneath the waves from 8-inch shell holes and heavy seas as the mighty Ten Year Blunder spits blood into the face of her enemies, her secondaries firing at near point blank range at Tokiwa, killing her XO and half her bridge crew. Her final main battery salvo obliterates the destroyer Kagero. The ship goes down after recieving approximately three hundred rounds of 8 and 10-inch ammunition and eight Type 93 torpedoes. The Japanese supers begin to focus on the remaining light cruisers, finally cutting down Boise and sending Dragon to the bottom.

Tiger, Hobart, Marblehead, and the American destroyers are just barely able to remain in contact and breakoff together steaming east. Theseus leads Houston, Perth, Danae, plus two Dutch destroyers west towards Sunda. The remaining DDs that remain afloat (four Dutch and one British) make their stand with their flagship, it is unclear if this is intentional or because they did not recieve the order to withdraw. They are quickly overwhelmed and annhilated. The battlecruiser itself remains afloat but list badly and burning from stem to stern—but the Japanese lose sight of her in the rain.

apanese plans for a coordinate and thorough hunt are utterly disrupted when first light of the next morning, De Zeven Provinciën comes “charging” out of the rain in front of the re-assembling Japanese force—just 11,000 yards from Yamato. The nine most advanced capital units of the IJN open fire immediately in a panic. They finally put down the Flying Dutchmen after some apparent effort. However, the Allied flagship was likely abandoned and no longer under its own power at this point, but that did not deter the wall of Japanese shells from ripping her to pieces. A magazine detonation would finally, and definitively, send the Italo-British-Dutch battlecruiser to bottom.

However, this panic and confusion would allow the two fleeing Allied forces to make a clean break. In the darkness and the stormy weather, Tiger’s task force slips past the Japanese main battle line. They are detected by the force’s eastern-most picket just as they slip past, but they are mistaken for one Kondo’s damaged large cruisers. Theseus and her ilk make it to the Sunda Strait but are caught by Tosa and Kaga reinforced with several heavy cruisers. The battle lasts for several hours in the dark, Houston, Perth, and Evertsen are sunk. Piet Hein and Theseus are believed sunk but are able to limp back to Ceylon, by some miracle. Tiger and her force arrive at Darwin on the morning of February 16 and depart the next day for Brisbane—just narrowly avoiding the massed Japanese airstrikes that would follow.

The Battle of the Java Sea would go down in history as the worst defeat the Royal Navy had faced since the Battle of the Medway, an order of magnitude worse than the infamous Battle of Coronel. ABDACOM’s naval power had been wiped out in just 48 hours at a comparatively minor cost for the IJN.

Now I C You

What appeared to be a decisive and elegant Japanese victory had actually been closer to a farce. Operation SU—the Japanese plan to defeat ABDACOM—had actually intended to encircle and destroy the combined command while it was at anchor in Surabaya, a repeat of Operation AI, the attack on Pearl Harbor but prepared to sink the enemy forces if naval aviation failed to sink the fleet in harbor. However, the forces brought to bear—despite being penny-packeted—would be more than enough to crush ABDACOM. Though, it came at the cost of heavy damage to many of their special type cruisers and moderate damage to the battlecruiser Ashitaka.

Theseus and Piet Hein would reach Ceylon on February 20. The crippled large cruiser would be taken in for emergency repairs before leaving for the Home Islands in mid March. The much depleted Eastern Fleet is soon reinforced by the arrival of the strike carrier Quiberon, the armored carriers Illustrious and Formidable (though Illustrious would be redirected to other task and be unavailable), the refit fast battleships Warspite and Drake, and the large cruisers Hector and Hercules. They would bring with them Admiral James Somerville—new C-in-C, Eastern Fleet.

Somerville knows he is playing with a weakened hand, with almost all of the light forces that should be screening his heavy units at the bottom of the Java Sea. He divides his command into a Fast Force A and a slow Force B. The former includes the carriers along with Warspite, Drake, Hector, and Hercules escorted by the heavy cruisers Dorsetshire and Cornwall, the light cruisers Birmingham, Mauritius, and Gambia, and five destroyers. The latter is centered around the five Revenge-class battleships escorted by the refit light cruisers Enterprise, Emerald, and Caledon, and six destroyers.

Critically, British signals intelligence intercepts Japanese radio communications and extrapolates the time (April 1) and target (Ceylon) of a Japanese “carrier unit” raid, understanding this to be a force equivalent to an American carrier task force—i.e., two to three carriers escorted by cruisers and destroyers. As the defenses on the island brace themselves for the storm, Somerville develops a simple but daring plan: duck and parry.

Somerville moves the Eastern Fleet base of operations to Adu Atoll in the Maldives, out of harm’s way, and prepares a night counter-attack against the Japanese carriers with his radar-equipped Albacore torpedo bombers. His carrier force is extremely well-suited for this task, Quiberon is a “strike carrier” designed by Cammell Laid with a first strike against Wilhelmhaven in mind, and her aviators are amongst the best night pilots in the world, having taken part in Operation JUDGMENT, the Attack on Tarant in 1940. In total, the British have 94 Albacores—48 aboard Quiberon, 22 on Formidable, and 24 on Indomitable.

Japanese submarines scouting ahead of the raid fail to identify the new fleet base at Adu, and things are not improved when the scout carrier Shōhō is detached back to Japan to complete repairs after running aground near Palau a month earlier, thereby cutting the Kido Butai’s dedicated scouting capabilities by half.

But there is a profound miscalculation at the heart of Somerville’s strategy: he is, in fact, facing a carrier force three times stronger than he anticipates. He is not merely facing a lone carrier division but the entire Mobile Force protected by heavy surface units. Vice Admiral Nagumo Chuichi comes west with seven carriers—the six fleet carriers and the scout carrier Shōhō—along with one Amagi-class and both Tosa-class battlecruisers, and the four new Tsurugi-class large cruisers (Tsurugi, Kurama, Ishikari, and Azuma). British intelligence even correctly anticipates the IJN’s timetable—until it is scrambled by American carrier raids against Marcus Island and Lae-Salamaua.

The Mobile Force departs Sulawesi on March 26, instead of March 21 as the British were anticipating. Somerville sorties from Adu on March 30. British defenses are placed on high alert, but on April 1—the expected “C-Day”—Nagumo is nowhere to be found. Somerville repeats his search pattern on April 2, but Nagumo is still 1500 miles away, so the British make for Adu to refuel and rewater (the latter is particularly important for the aging R-class battleships with leaky boiler tubes). Somerville also detaches Dorsetshire and Cornwall back to Colombo as he prepares to begin operations in support of the invasion of Vichy Madagascar.

On April 4, an RCAF Catalina spots the screen of the Mobile Force and is able to relay its sighting of battleships and a single carrier back to Ceylon before being downed by the Japanese close air patrol. Somerville had barely just reached Adu Attoll when the Mobile Force was spotted and had barely begun refueling operations by the time the report actually reached him. He readies his forces to depart as soon as they are ready. Force A sets sail in the night, Force B in the Morning of April 5.

As Nagumo, unaware of the Eastern Fleet’s disposition, spots his aircraft for a strike against Columbo, British scouts continue to make contact with the outer elements of his force. These partial reports, and the first report from April 4, convince the British that the Japanese raiding force has relatively few flattops. Columbo is put on high alert as the six Japanese fleet carriers launch a strike package of 107 bombers (most of the Japanese torpedo bombers are loaded up with semi-armor piercing bombs instead of torpedos) and 43 fighters. British early warning radar fails to detect the incoming Japanese, but an air patrol of Fulmars spots the Japanese and, after briefly confusing them for friendly Hurricanes, raises the alarm. However, time is short and the British are just barely able to scramble their fighters into the air to defend Columbo and the nearby airbases from the incoming horde.

The Japanese are forced to fight their way through to the mostly empty harbor (every ship able to sail was ordered to scatter), where they inflict moderate damages on the port’s facilities and sink the armed merchant cruiser HMS Hector (not the large heavy cruisers) and the destroyer Tenedos. The British lose twenty-four aircraft (including an unlucky flight of six Swordfish ferrying themselves to Ratmalana) while the Japanese lose ten aircraft, with another twenty-two damaged.

While the Japanese are readying for a follow-up strike with their reserve of 63 D3A Val dive bombers—a C6A reconnaissance aircraft from Shōhō spots Dorsetshire and Cornwall as they steam unescorted back to rejoin Force A. Nagumo waffles on whether to follow-up on Columbo or strike the cruisers, he decides for the former; but also orders that his reserve B5N Kates, to be rearmed with torpedoes to deal with the cruisers. The Vals are joined by half a dozen Zeroes. The second strike runs into much better-coordinated opposition from the British, losing six and claiming eight losses. By the time the Kates are ready to prosecute Dorsetshire and Cornwall, the orbiting Jake is intercepted and destroyed by a pair of Fulmars from Formidable; it is downed before it completes an updated report, allowing the British cruisers to change direction and speed. Further searches fail to re-establish contact, and Nagumo estimates that the interceptors were launched from shore, not carriers.

In the early afternoon, Somerville launches eight Albacores on a sweep to establish a fix on the Japanese task force. At approximately 1630, a scout from Quiberon spots the Japanese carrier force steaming southeast just 100 nautical miles away; however it is unable to complete its report before its radio is destroyed, sending its location but not any details of the enemy force.

Somerville continues to deploy scouts as he continues on his bearing east, desperate to find purchase on something significant that he can strike with all his might. His trained night pilots with all their radar and eagle eyes only find a single large contact. It is identified as a carrier—the Shōhō. Somerville immediately spots and launches a strike as his forces continues to close, but he starts to get nervous. Shōhō is not a “carrier unit” in and of itself. He realizes that means that there are almost certainly more carriers out there.

In a dramatic combined assault, the first strike of Albacores tears into the Japanese formation—just three destroyers and the dimunitive carrier. As the guns on Warspite and Drake (joined shortly by Hector and Hercules) open up. The Japanese formation is sunk in minutes and is unable to even complete a warning to the rest of the force.

As dawn breaks, Nagumo is furious that he has lost contact with his scout force—who had fallen out of line to recover one last round of their own aerial reconnaissance. The day’s first scouts from the British find the Japanese fleet—but again are shot down before they can complete their report. This time, the radioman leads with the enemy composition, but fails to report their location. Somerville realizes he is not the hunter, but the fox and that there are up to six enemy carriers operating in his immediately vicinity. He realizes he has no choice but to cede the field to preserve his forces.

Nagumo spends his morning spotting a massive strike across all six of his fleet carriers. But, the order to launch never comes because relying on his second-rate scouts, he fails to find the Eastern Fleet.

Somerville’s fighter screen, with fighter interception assisted by the fleet’s radar-equipped ships, keeps the Japanese blind. Nagumo is not helped by the fact that he massively overestimates the range of the British fleet, so several scouts that could have discovered Somerville fail to spot him. Critically, a floatplane No. 2 from Atago launched on a bearing of 140 degrees fails to return, which convinces Nagumo and his staff that Somerville is operating to their south-southeast while he is actually to their west-southwest.

Nagumo spends April 6 and April 7 searching the seas to the southeast of Ceylon for the Eastern Fleet to no avail as Somerville sends Force B to Kenya and Force A to the western coast of India. On April 8 and April 9, Nagumo steams north and finally attacks Trincomalee on April 11. He finds an alert and ready, but less dense, defense waiting for him. Nagumo launches 132 aircraft at Trincomalee; in the resulting attack against the emptied harbor, the Japanese lose seven aircraft while shooting down 15 British fighters.

Nine unescorted Blenheim bombers manage to sneak up on Nagumo. They pierce the Kido Butai’s air patrol without being spotted, and while Hiryū does spot them as they close in, they fail to report their sighting until after the bombers have dropped their bombs around Akagi. They fail to hit the ship, but splinters from two near misses decapitate the ship’s pilot and wound Nagumo’s flag aid. Zeros swarm the retreating bombers but only manage to down four while losing two of their own. After this and an attack on shipping fleeing from Trincomalee along the coasts, Nagumo withdraws.

On April 8, unbeknownst to Nagumo, the submarine I-7, withdrawing from its patrol off the west coast of India, stumbles upon Force B as it steams toward safe harbor in East Africa. Force B’s escorting destroyers fail to classify the contact as a submarine after mistakenly engaging a pod of whales the day before. I-7 creeps closer, running deep, to a range of just 750 yards, and fires a full spread of six torpedoes. However, the sixth fish slams into a partially open external torpedo tube door and detonates. The submarine is obliterated as all of her remaining Type 95 torpedos cook-off. Three of her Type 95s strike Royal Oak in rapid succession. The battleship sinks in just six minutes, taking 789 of her sailors with her. I-7 fails to report before starting her approach; thus Japanese are not made aware of the sinking of Royal Oak until the AKKOROKAMUI Promethean signals intelligence program in mid-1943.

The Indian Ocean Raid was a fraught and exceptionally close-run fleet action for very little in return. The primary losses for the British were threefold: the loss of Ceylon as a safe fleet anchorage, the loss of merchant shipping, and the loss of Royal Oak. The loss of 110,000 tons of merchant shipping significantly throttled British logistics in Burma and would take over a year to be replaced by new construction. Ceylon would be used intermittently as a fleet base, and the Imperial General Staff would redeploy Agincourt to the Eastern Fleet in preparation for a possible follow-up invasion.

The Shōhō is a catastrophic outcome for the Japanese, and more particularly, the loss of her expert aerial scouts. The Kido Butai had lost one eye.

Somerville later recounts the battle succinctly in his memoirs: “We scorched the Jap Emperor’s beard and narrowly escaped the tiger’s claws.”

MO Problems

In the aftermath of Operation C, the Imperial General Headquarters agrees to a new course of action: the Navy readies itself for a decisive battle to destroy the American carrier forces in the Central Pacific; while the Army pushes ahead with its offensive into the South Pacific to cut the main sea lines of communication between Australia and the United States by establishing seaplane bases before capturing Port Moresby in the Territory of Papua.

Operation MO is incredibly complex. Five naval task forces are to pinwheel across the Solomon and Coral Sea under the command of Vice Admiral Inoue Shigeyoshi. There is a Tulagi Invasion Force, Moresby Invasion Force, Covering Force, Main Body, and Carrier Striking Force. The Main Body would consist of the old Furataka and Aoba class heavy cruisers, the large cruiser Ikoma (fresh out of repairs required after trading blows with Theseus in January) and the questionably effective light carrier Ryujō. The Striking Force, under Vice Admiral Takagi Takeo, would have the juniormost carriers in the navy, the 5th Carrier Division (fleet carriers Shōkaku and Zuikaku), and the 6th Carrier Division (the ex-battlecruisers Hiei and Haruna) and assisted what remains of the 4th Carrier Division, Zuihō. The IJN had hoped to send the 6th and 7th Carrier Divisions—all four Kongō-class conversions—but complications prevent this. Namely, repairs to Kongō from an engineering casualty—that occurred while attacking Rabaul earlier in the year and nearly caused a collision with Akagi—prove more difficult than expected while the worker shortages delay the re-commissioning of Kirishima (those workers were instead diverted to repair the much higher-value scout carrier Zuihō).

The Covering Force and Main Body first escort the Tulagi Force to its destination as it establishes a large seaplane base on the island before sprinting across the Solomon Sea to rejoin the Moresby Invasion Force as it hooks around the tip of Papua toward its target. All the while, the Carrier Striking Force covers the other forces as it sails north of the Solomons before entering the Coral Sea from the east.

The Japanese believe it is likely that there is to be at least one American carrier in the area of operations, and is extremely confident in their ability to weaken the US carrier forces ahead of their decisive battle.

The Allies are, of course, reading significant portions of the Japanese Naval Code and aware of their enemy’s plans. However, the US response options are limited. The USN notionally has six fleet carriers in the Pacific, with three more fleet carriers in the Atlantic. However, of the six in the Pacific, Ranger and Saratoga are still under repair from damage suffered during the attack on Pearl Harbor and from the submarine I-6, respectively. Enterprise and Hornet are operational but returning from the Doolittle Raid, leaving only Lexington and Yorktown available for operations in the South Pacific. In the Atlantic, Wasp is running convoys to Malta; Franklin and Bonhomme Richard are still working up (while providing air cover for trans-Atlantic convoys); and Reprisal is outfitting at Fore River. The Navy’s CV-9 fleet carrier and CV-23 light carriers are under construction but not near completion.

On May 1, Task Force 17 (Yorktown) under Rear Admiral Frank Fletcher is already operating in the area and is reinforced by Task Force 11 (Lexington and the large cruiser Ticonderoga) under Rear Admiral Aubrey Fitch, who have sortied from Pearl Harbor. Ticonderoga is the only fast capital ship available as the battle cruiser Bunker Hill and large cruisers Shiloh and Alaska are with Hornet and Enterprise. However, both task forces need to refuel and TF 17 completes first. After Admiral Fletcher, overall commander, is alerted to the Japanese landing on Tulagi, he decides to detach with just Yorktown and attempt to attack the landings. He orders TF 11 to regroup with Australian Rear Admiral John Crace’s Task Force 44 (a mixed Australian-American cruiser force including the now reparied battlecruiser HMAS Tiger) after it refuels.

On May 4, Fletcher launches a total of 60 aircraft against Tulagi in three waves, which sinks a destroyer and three minesweepers but otherwise fails to prevent the Japanese from establishing a seaplane base on the island. Critically, the IJN’s Carrier Striking Force cannot exploit the Americans’ premature reveal as a failed attempt to reinforce Rabual pushes back their timetable by a day and is in the middle of fueling when word of the attack on Tulagi reaches them. Furthermore, the Japanese incorrectly assume the Americans are operating to the east—not the south—of the Solomons, so Japanese aerial recon fails to spot Fletcher before he regroups with Lexington.

On May 5, Fletcher regroups with Task Forces 11 and 44, and radio intercepts informs him that the Japanese intend to arrive off Port Moresby on May 10. Fletcher deduces that the Japanese are likely to have carriers operating in support of the landing force and that they are likely transiting via the Jormand Passage (through the strait between the Louisiade Archipelago and Papau) to Moresby.

In the wee hours of May 6, Takagi rounds the tip of the Solomons and enters the Coral Sea from the west with his four carriers. Later that morning, a flying boat launched from Tulagi spots Task Force 17, but again, Takagi is in the middle of refueling and unable to put the report to use. He detaches his carriers forward under the command of Rear Admiral Hara Chūichi, certain that the next day will be the day of decisive action. Meanwhile, Fletcher is unaware of Takagi’s presence to his northeast as he refuels ahead of his planned interception of what he believes is a combined carrier-invasion force. After he finishes refueling, he detaches the fast oiler Neosho and destroyer Sims to hold station to the south, out of danger. On the night of May 6-7, the two carrier forces unwittingly come within 70 nautical miles of each other before the Japanese carriers turn north to rejoin the rest of the Striking Force.

Fletcher starts May 7 by detaching Task Force 44 to seal the Jormand Passage to prevent the invasion convoy from slipping through to Port Moresby while incorrectly looking for the main Japanese force north of the Louisiade. The Japanese launch an early morning wide area search. They report finding an American carrier and cruiser to their south-southeast at 0745. A second spotter, from a cruiser, confirms the report. After confirmation, Hara launches a huge strike—all of his 114 available aircraft.

Just after putting up their strike, a scout plane from the large cruiser Ikoma spots two carriers, four cruisers, and a battleship. Hara and Takagi are confused by this report but piece together that the American carriers might be operating in multiple units.

At 0815, Shortly after the Japanese spots his own force, Fletcher receives a report of “two carriers and four cruisers” operating to his north, heading toward the Jormand Passage. He orders an attack with available aircraft, believing this to be the primary enemy force. Just as the Americans start launching their attack at 0915, the Japanese attack arrives at the reported “enemy carrier” but are confused to find only a destroyer and an oiler operating alone. They break up and begin to search the area for their true target, not yet aware that their scouts had misidentified Sims and Neosho.

Just after the US attack finally is off the decks and heading toward its target, the scout that had relayed the location of the Main Body and Moresby Invasion Force arrives back aboard Yorktown and realizes his report had been transmitted incorrectly, as he had only seen two cruisers and two destroyers. Fletcher does not recall his strike, and that decision is ratified when a report at 1022 from a USAAF B-17 relays the presence of a carrier operating close to the report from earlier in the morning. Fletcher is certain he has found the main Japanese force. He is, of course, wrong.

At 1051, the impromptu scouts realize they had misidentified Neosho as a carrier. The Japanese now realize that the Americans are between their carrier strike force and the invasion convoy, leaving only the token air complement aboard Ryujō to protect over 5,000 troops. At 1115, the bulk of the morning’s strike is recalled, save for the 48 dive bombers that are ordered to sink Neosho and Sims. The two ships have no chance and are outright sunk in short order. Sims is hit by four bombs, while Neosho is struck by 11. The oiler is able to make a garbled report of the attack before it loses power.

The American attack spots the invasion convoy at 1040 and finds only a paltry close air patrol up to meet them. Lexington’s air group is the first to arrive and concentrate all their attention on Ryujō. The carrier is struck by three bombs and two torpedoes. As Yorktown’s air group arrives Ryujō is burning badly. Misidentifying Ikoma as merely a heavy cruiser, the Americans pile onto the carrier, scoring nine torpedoes and eight bomb hits, with one unlucky Zero on the deck struck directly by a 1,000-pound bomb. At 1210, VS-2’s commanding officer, Commander Robert Dixon, issues the call over the radio: SCRATCH ONE FLAT TOP! SIGNED BOB.

The Americans and Japanese recover their strikes. Believing that the enemy has more carriers operating in the region, Fletcher does not launch a follow-up strike on the invasion force as he will be unable to find and hit the other carriers before it is too dark. He keeps Task Force 17 under cloud cover to provide additional protection against detection. Inoue, back in Rabaul, orders the invasion force to withdraw north after losing its escorting carriers and orders Takagi to destroy the Americans.

The Japanese spot Task Force 44, but the floatplane inaccurately reports the presence of two carriers. Inoue vectors land-based bombers against the report, but they fail to deal any significant damage. They report the sinking of two battleships. However, the attack does force Crace to withdraw to avoid future air attacks. The Australian is out of contact with Fletcher, who maintains radio silence to avoid detection. Takagi and Hara, monitoring the traffic between Rabaul and the float-planes, are intent on a final, late-day strike at the alleged carrier force, knowing that it will return after nightfall. They launch more scouts at 1515, hoping to find the Americans.

A strike package of 22 dive and 31 torpedo bombers is launched without fighter escort at 1615, without a clear target. These are hand-picked, the best aviators in the Carrier Striking Force, and include seven D3A Val crews who have just returned from the five-hour marathon mission against Neosho. They are merely sent down a bearing of 280°—a wild goose chase. Unfortunately for the Japanese, they are picked up by the radars on TF 17. Fletcher takes the opportunity to vector 13 F4F Wildcats against the errant formation. The ambush achieves complete surprise, destroying 12 Kates and 5 Vals and scattering the Japanese aircraft. The Japanese strike leaders call off the attack shortly before the sun sets. Several Vals stumble upon TF 17 in the darkness, and they mistake them for their own carriers; they start to circle the flat-tops to land before the American anti-aircraft batteries open fire. Eventually, the surviving 36 aircraft reach the Japanese carriers, but two more are forced to ditch due to damage.

Fletcher heads west while Takagi steams to the north. The Americans ready a 360° search while the Japanese ready a dense search pattern to the south and west. Inoue formally pushes back the invasion of Port Moresby to May 12.

Both sides are determined to find their opponent as early as possible. The Japanese launch a mixed search pattern of 11 C6A Jakes from the carriers, three H6K Mavis float-planes from Tulagi, and four G4M Betty bombers from Rabaul. The Americans, operating under Fitch’s tactical control, launch 18 SBD Dauntless.

The inclement weather that had protected the Americans now shielded the Japanese as it moved north. However, at 0820, a Dauntless off Lexington spots the Japanese carriers through a hole in the clouds. Two minutes later, a Jake from Zuihō spots the Americans. The two forces are approximately 210 nmi apart as they rush to get their strikes into the air. The carriers steam toward each other to shorten the return leg for their attack aircraft. The Japanese launch a strike with 18 Zeros, 49 Vals, and 21 Kates at 0915; the Americans launch separate attacks, with six Wildcats, 24 Dauntlesses, and nine Devastators from Yorktown at 0915 and nine Wildcats, 15 Dauntlesses, and 12 Devastators from Lexington at 0925.

Yorktown’s dive bombers arrive first at 1032 and wait for their torpedo bombers to catch up before launching their attack. The only spot Shōkaku and Hiei—as Zuikaku, Zuihō, and Haruna are hidden by a rain squall—and jump them. Despite impressive maneuvering, the aviators score two 1,000-pound bomb hits on Shōkaku. Hiei—slower and less maneuverable than her purpose-built relative—is struck by three bombs and a torpedo. Both carriers are knocked from the fight before Lexington’s aircraft arrive on target. When Lady Lex’s aviators do arrive on the scene, approximately half of her SBDs are unable to find the Japanese through the bad weather. Those who do find the Japanese see two smoking carriers and Haruna running for the squalls. They score two more bomb hits on Shōkakū and two on Haruna, but the TBDs fail to score a single hit. One of the bombs that hit Haruna penetrates the ship’s port wing engine room before detonating, wrecking the space and causing her to lose speed.

TF 17 detects the incoming strike on radar at 70 nmi but incorrectly estimates their approach altitude, allowing the attackers to sail overhead of the CAP picket. Nine B5N Kates target Yorktown, but none of their torpedoes connect; the other 12 attack Lexington and score three hits. 20 Vals line up on Lexington and score two hits; the other 19 attack Yorktown, scoring a single hit and 16 near-misses.

In the span of about an hour, five carriers have been badly damaged, with two out-right crippled and potentially beyond saving (Lexington and Hiei). As the strikes are returning to their carriers, they run into each other—leading to a series of frenetic duels that destroy three more Japanese and American aircraft. Yorktown and Lexington (barely) are able to recover their aircraft. Zuikaku and Haruna both start to recover their own until Haruna’s steering linkage fails (one of the original components of the ship that was not replaced when she was re-engined due to time constraints), and the carrier lazily veers out of control.

Fletcher assesses that he has killed one, maybe two carriers, but not all. He is left with two heavily damaged carriers and two greatly depleted air groups against at least one operational enemy carrier. Even worse, with the loss of Neosho, he can no longer refuel at sea. Things are made worse when, at 1247, gasoline fumes in Lexington’s hangar are ignited by an errant electrical spark. The massive explosion rocks the ship and starts a massive fire. Fletcher is informed at 1422 by Fitch of reports of two undamaged enemy carriers. Fletcher makes the decision to withdraw. At 1442, another massive explosion rocks Lexington, followed by yet another at 1525. The fires are uncontrollably by 1538 and the crew begins evacuating at 1707.

Takagi is left with a single operational carrier (Zuikaku) and 37 operational aircraft, the majority of which are fighters (an additional thirty-five aircraft aboard Haruna are available but unable to be launched). Zuihō’s air complement is non-material, which proves frustrating to Takagi—who has an operational carrier with no aircraft he can meaningful use and an inoperational carrier with aircraft he cannot use. At 1210, Shōkaku detaches from the battle and sets course for Japan. Hiei limps in the same direction, but it is not clear if she can be saved. Takagi asks her captain, Komura Keizō, if the ship can be saved. Komura states she can, and she is, eventually, at the cost of 515 of her 1432-man crew. Haruna, while in no danger of sinking, must be towed until temporary repairs allow her to get back under her own power on the morning of May 9. The escorts of the Carrier Striking Force are dangerously low on fuel, some as low as 20%. Takagi informs Inoue that he cannot provide air cover for the invasion convoy, but he has sunk a pair of American carriers. Having spotted Task Force 44, Inoue recalls the transports and the rest of his forces. To add insult to injury, as the forces are withdrawing, Zuihō is ambushed by USS Tautog (SS-199) outside of Truk lagoon after it is delayed taking on fresh scout aircraft and is struck by three torpedoes—two of which function, shockingly, crippling the ship (the third suffers a circular run and forces Tautog deep).

The Americans have achieved a major strategic and narrow tactical victory but at a significant cost. The IJN has temporarily lost use of its two most modern carriers: Zuikaku and Shōkaku. One (Zuikaku) is due to Japanese air group regeneration doctrine. They also lose their second eye, Zuihō, a devestating blow to the short-term plans of the Navy. The loss of Ryujō is not materially significant, but the loss of many of her aviators is sorely felt when trying to regenerate Zuikaku’s air group. The Kongō-class carriers also confirm their squalid reputations with a meager performance. The price of this American victory is one carrier badly damaged and another sunk. Even in this, there is a silver lining. The failure of damage control practices aboard Lexington will be a lesson learned the hard way and ensuring that no other gas-fume explosions will occur on another carrier. And most important of all, the Japanese will not take Port Moresby. Their drive into the South Pacific is halted and will not resume until July with the landings on New Georgia and Guadalcanal—and the Invasion of Milne Bay.

A Very Different Midway

The Imperial General Headquarters was extremely divided on what to do next in early 1942 as it basked in its smashing successes in Malaya, the Philippines, and the Dutch East Indies. Admiral Yamamoto put forth a daring strategy to trap and kill the Pacific Fleet and extend the Japanese defensive perimeter further east by attacking a position they could not help but defend. Originally, the target was supposed to be Pearl Harbor but after the March 5 attack on the Hawaiian Islands by two H8K Emily flyingboats (Operation K) failed to achieve much damage and revealed the increased air defenses on the islands, the was revised to Midway Atoll. The operation would also include a feint attack against the Aleutians to conceal Japanese intentions and also prevent the United States from using the island chain to launch attacks against the Japanese-held Kuriles. Admiral Yamamoto would go so far as to threaten his resignation to ensure the operation was initiated. He would get what he wanted on April 16—a decision that would then be ratified by the Doolittle Raid stressing the need for a deeper defensive perimeter on April 18.

The formal authorization would be issued on May 5 with Navy Order No. 18.

The United States immediately notices the considerable uptick in communications traffic around the Home Islands. On May 7, FRUPAC (Fleet Radio Unit, Pacific) decrypts and translates the agenda for a Japanese aviation conference which includes such topics as “obtaining air superiority over a target” and “assisting in amphibious landings.” On May 9, FRUMEL (Fleet Radio Unit, Melbourne) intercepts signals that confirm the creation of a new “First Air Fleet Striking Force” and that a major fleet movement would begin on May 21. All of this would point toward an offensive in late May. On May 22, a deception operation by Fleet Radio Units would confirm that the target “AF” was Midway (though FRUs already had a good idea that AF was Midway). A further code breakthrough allows FRUPAC to pin down the date of the attack to June 4. This gives Admiral Chester Nimitz, CINC-PAC/PAO, ample time to reinforce Midway’s defenses and to prepare his carriers to ambush the IJN’s grand fleet trap.

However, there is first a game of musical chairs in American fleet command. Vice Admiral William Halsey, the seniormost carrier admiral and who Nimitz intended to fleet the forces at Midway, is forced into convalescence; his psoriasis has grown so severe that he could barely sleep, and he has lost nearly 20 pounds during the last six months, which he spent nearly constantly at sea. Halsey would suggest his cruiser force commander, Rear Admiral Raymond Spruance, to replace him. However, Nimitz would instead give overall command to Rear Admiral Fletcher—who was both more senior and more experienced in carrier operations. However, Spruance would still be given command of Halsey’s carrier task force.

Both Shōhō and Zuihō, the vaunted Eyes of the Fleet, will miss what is intended to be the most important naval battle since Tsushima. There is some discussion about delaying the operation until the Zuihō is rushed back into service, but Yamato fears the arrival of more American carriers and wishes to push his advantage to break the back of the American carrier fleet as soon as possible. Moreover, the fleet has enough floatplanes on its capital ships and cruisers to pick up the slack, but those pilots are not nearly as skilled as those aboard the scout carriers.

As per tradition, the Japanese battle force is over-dispersed and unable to mutually support with a peak of eleven separate task forces. This is, at least, in part an attempt to prevent detection—but that is already moot but obviously unknown to the Japanese.

On May 26, the Fifth Fleet (Northern Force) under Vice Admiral Hosogaya Boshirō sets sail for the Aleutians with a heavy cruiser, three light cruisers, nine destroyers, and three transports across two task forces. He is also covered by the Second Carrier Striking Force with the hot-off-the-presses light fleet carrier Jun’yō, along with one heavy cruiser, three light cruisers, and three destroyers. Boshirō will later be covered by the Guard Force detached from the Main Body of the First Fleet with the battlecruiser Tosa, two large cruisers, two light cruisers, and twelve destroyers.

On May 27, the First Fleet sets sail from Hashirajima. It is divided between a Main Body under Admiral Yamamoto and the First Carrier Striking Force under Vice Admiral Nagumo. The Main Body contains eight battleships, one battlecruiser, three large cruisers, the light carrier Hōshō, three light cruisers, two seaplane tenders carrying midget submarines, and twenty-one destroyers. The First Carrier Striking Force contains the 1st, 2nd, and 7th Carrier Divisions (Akagi and Kii; Soryū and Hiryū; Kongō and Kirishima), the battlecruisers Atago and Ashitaka, the large cruisers Tsurugi and Azuma, two heavy cruisers, a light cruiser, and a destroyer.

Also on May 27, the Second Fleet (Midway Invasion Force) under Vice Admiral Kondō sets sail from both Saipan and Hashirajima. The Midway Occupation Force, with four heavy cruisers, one light cruiser, twelve transports, and ten destroyers, sets sail from Saipan with the 2nd Combined Special Naval Landing Force and Ichiki Detachment of the 4th Infantry Regiment. They are joined by a Seaplane Tender Group with two tenders and a destroyer and the Minesweeper Group with four minesweepers and three subchasers. The Main Body of the Second Fleet has two large cruisers, four heavy cruisers, the carrier Haruna (she was repaired by Kure Naval Yard in just 96 hours), one light cruiser, and ten destroyers.

There is a further screen of ten submarines of the Sixth Fleet’s Advance Force serving as a picket line east of Midway on the approaches from Oahu.

The carriers Zuikaku, Shōkaku, Zuihō, Hiei, and Hiyō miss the battle as they are either under repair, without an air group, or not yet in commission. The battlecruiser Kaga (torpedoed by a Dutch submarine) and three large cruisers are also under repairs and are unable to join the battle.

The Imperial Japanese Navy estimates that the United States Navy has two to three operational carriers, erring closer to two after the presumed sinking of both Yorktown and Lexington at Coral Sea. However, Yorktown is not only not sunk she is back and ready for combat duty after just 72 hours of feverish work at Pearl Harbor. While the Japanese leave Zuikaku behind—which is otherwise operational—for lack of an air group, the Americans stitch together a new air group for Yorktown by grabbing whatever squadrons are to hand (plundering Saratoga’s orphaned air group in Hawaii) and even creating a new composite fighter squadron.

Nimitz, however, is acutely aware that he is at a numbers disadvantage. Ranger and Saratoga wrap up their repairs at Bremerton on May 22 and head for San Diego to embark their new air groups and rendezvous with their escorts, including the large cruiser Shiloh. Despite expediting their departure from the West Coast, they are not able to reach the battle area in time to contribute. While suboptimal, three Yorktown-class carriers and the aircraft launched from Midway would give the Americans parity with FRUPAC’s estimate of 4—or at most 5—enemy carriers.

Therefore, the Americans have to play with a weaker hand. Fletcher remains with Task Force 17 and Yorktown with two heavy cruisers, six destroyers, and the battle cruiser Bunker Hill. Spruance’s Task Force 16 has Enterprise and Hornet, along with five heavy cruisers, one light cruiser, nine destroyers, and the large cruisers Alaska and Ticonderoga. Twelve American submarines also form a barrier to the west of Midway with two additional patrol groups with seven other submarines.

Critically, a planned second seaplane mission to reconnoiter Pearl Harbor is scrapped (as the planned seaplane refueling point at French Frigate Shoals was discovered to be covered by USN ships). The submarine picket line is also late on the station, allowing TF 16 and 17 to reach their ambush position at “Point Luck” without being detected. However, Japanese signals intelligence does notice the huge increase in traffic around Midway and can even ascertain that at least one USN carrier task force could be out to sea, but these reports do not reach Nagumo because of strict radio silence.

On June 3, B-17s based from Midway attack the Midway Occupation Force heading from Saipan but fail to score any hits, but a follow-up night attack by PBY Catalinas damages a fleet oiler with a torpedo. To the North, the Second Carrier Striking Force launches an air raid against Dutch Harbor but the raid is disrupted by USAAF P-40s and does little damage.

On the morning of June 4, Nagumo launches his first attack against Midway with 159 aircraft (dive bombers from Akagi, Kaga, and Kirishima; torpedo bombers from Soryū, Hiryū, and Kongō) and puts up a preliminary air search. Not expecting to find anything he launches just eight search aircraft (two B5N Kates from Akagi, six Aichi E13A Jakes from Azuma and Tsurugi). Azuma Floatplane No. 3 is delayed by 30 minutes, with massive consequences. The Americans begin their own searches at 0430 with 10 SBD Dauntless scouts off Yorktown and 11 PBY Catalina seaplanes from Midway.

At 0534, one PBY spots the Japanese carriers and the inbound strike is spotted by another PBY at 0544. Midway’s bombers are sent in without escorts as the fighters remain over Midway to defend the islands. At 0620, the 21 F2A Buffalo and 7 F4F Wildcat fighters intercept the Japanese but have middling performance, destroying just 5 B5Ns and 2 A6Ms at the cost of 15 F2As and 2 F4Fs (and all but two aircraft no longer airworthy once they land). Midway’s reinforced anti-aircraft artillery destroys six Japanese aircraft. In total, the Japanese lose 16 aircraft destroyed and 21 aircraft damaged beyond repair. The strike does heavily damage Midway’s support facilities but fails to knock out Eastern Island’s runway. The attack command reports back to Nagumo that a second strike is needed if the Occupation Force is to land on June 7.

At 0710, the Midway’s attack aircraft begin arriving in penny packets.

The first to arrive are 6 TBF Avengers and 4 B-26 Marauders armed with torpedos. The strike is broken and annihilated, but not before two B-26s get dangerously close to Nagumo’s flagship, Akagi. One Maurader pulls off from an attack run and strafes the carrier, and the other, heavily damaged, very nearly slams into the carrier’s bridge.

Nagumo, against Yamamoto’s standing orders, decides to rearm his reserve aircraft to attack Midway at 0715 as it is clearly the greater threat to his carriers. He reaches this understanding because, by about 0700, most of his scouts had reached the end of the patrol path and had yet to report anything. Vitally, this is only for most scouts, as the delayed Azuma No. 4 was running behind schedule. So, of course, at 0745—about 30 minutes into the laborious process of rearming the strike aircraft—Azuma No. 3 reports “SIGHT WHAT APPEARS TO BE TEN ENEMY SURFACE UNITS” back to the fleet. Nagumo immediately countermands his order and has his reserve force re-armed for an anti-surface strike. Thankfully, only half of his B5N Kates would need to be re-armed for a second time, but the spare ordnance is left lying around the hangars of the aircraft.

Shortly after Azuma No. 3’s report at 0750, Spruance’s Task Force 16 launches a strike of 116 aircraft. The Americans’ inexperience and slow launch times actually prove to be a boon to them. They forgo a coordinated attack and just dispatch their squadrons as they launch. Spruance gambles on to hitting the Japanese first, just before they can put up a strike. However, Hornet’s skipper and CAG make a profound mistake, and their aircraft are sent off on the wrong bearing. At least, VT-8 breaks formation and returns to the correct bearing, though VS-8 and VB-8, with their F4F Wildcat escorts, continue on their infamous Flight to Nowhere.

Azuma No. 3’s report notably fails to include the composition of the enemy—it could be carriers or could be oilers. Not only that, but the location of the report is 60 miles off course, which adds to the confusion. Nagumo is faced with a fraught decision: he can either launch a partial-strength strike with his reserve aircraft or he can recover the strike aircraft coming back from Midway. He cannot do both at once. He has 15 minutes to make his decision at 0745, as it would take 45 minutes to spot and launch a strike (start launch before 0800) and 30 minutes to land the returning aircraft (begin landing at 0845 before the aircraft began to run out of fuel at 0915).

However, this is purely hypothetical because, at 0753, 16 USMC SBD Dauntlesses from Midway attack the Kido Butai, targeting Hiryū. The inexperienced pilots fail to hit the carrier. Again at 0810, the next penny packet attack arrives, this time it is 15 USAAF B-17 Flying Fortresses attacking from high altitude. At 0827, the last attack from Midway arrives—11 Marine Devastators, which target Atago, but they also fail to score a hit. Adding to the chaos, the submarine Nautilus makes an attack run against Ashitaka, but the battlecruiser dodges the torpedo, and then the destroyer Arashi is detached to run the submarine.

However, these consecutive penny packets ensure that Nagumo never has a window to launch an escorted strike against Azuma No. 3’s reported target and thus has no choice but to wait and recover the morning strike, lest he start The Decisive Naval Battle™ by having dozens, if not over a hundred, of his combat aircraft ditch into the drink.

At 0820, Azuma No. 3 again reports in, this time confirming the presence of a single carrier. However, it has actually spotted Spruance’s Task Force 16, which has two. At 0906, Yorktown launches her strike with 44 aircraft. Fletcher risks his reserves—the nine spare aircraft of VS-5 who had not launched on morning searches—after a new update from FRUPAC confirms the presence of no less than six carriers. Then, at 0917, in a bewildering move, Nagumo turns northeast onto a closing course, with the enemy throwing away his air groups’ range advantage. Nagumo, regardless, just needs one 45-minute window to spot and launch his strike.

He will not get one.

At 0925, VT-8 from Hornet—who made the fateful decision to change bearings and ditch their fellow aviators from CVG-8—make their attack run. They are cut to pieces as A6M Zeroes swarm over them like flies, and the entire squadron is shot down, with only a single survivor. At 0930, VT-6 from Enterprise attacks the First Carrier Striking Fleet, targeting Kii. The 14 TBD Devastators manage to release five torpedoes, none of which hit, at the cost of 10 aircraft (one of which had to ditch on the return leg). Just after Enterprise’s devastators are done, the 12 aircraft of VT-3 off Yorktown begin their own attack at 1000, escorted by 4 F4F Wildcats from VF-3. The American fighters, using the Thach Weave, are able to destroy 4 A6Ms while only losing a single of their own. Lieutenant Commander Jimmy Thach’s flight of fighters allows 11 TBDs to break for Hiryū—the only Americans to spot the carrier as it maneuvers through a rain squall. It also draws the attention of nearly all of the low-altitude CAP fighters, which in turn forces the A6M on high-altitude CAP to dive to intercept the TBDs, leaving the skies above undefended. Five Devastators are able to release their weapons against Hiryū, but again, they score no hits. In total, VT-3 and VF-3 lose 10 TBDs and 1 F4F but take down about 7 A6Ms.

Nagumo’s luck runs out at 1022. 58 SBD Dauntlesses appear overhead, approaching from two different directions, and begin their fateful attack. It is VB-6 and VS-6 under Lieutenant Commander Wade McClusky and VB-3 and VS-5 under the command of Lieutenant Commander Maxwell Leslie. It is a miraculous appearance and completely unplanned. McClusky had pressed on for just long enough while running low on fuel to find the destroyer Arashi returning to the carriers at flank speed. Leslie had been following VT-3 but had decided to approach from a different angle. There is nothing to prevent the steel and aluminum jaws of the United States Navy from closing on the neck of the Kido Butai.

McClusky plans to split his squadrons so that one takes Kii and the other takes Akagi, but McClusky violates doctrine, as the leading element should’ve attacked the further target (Akagi), but he instead leads VS-6 against the nearer one (Kii), so both squadrons attack the same ship. Realizing the error, Lieutenant Dick Best, commander of VB-6, takes his two wingmen to attack Akagi. Leslie, likewise, splits his squadrons between Kongō and Soryū. Hiryū and Kirishima remain hidden from view by rain squalls.

At 1025, as the aircraft begin their near-vertical dives, a pressure wave followed by a 70-foot-tall wall of granite-grey ethereal miasma comes screaming across the horizon at an altitude of 2,000 feet. Kii takes seven hits in rapid succession. Dick Best’s flight is hit directly by the pressure wave and fog, which forces one of his wingmen to miss narrowly. Best manhandles his aircraft and puts his bomb dead center through the Japanese flag emblazoned on Akagi’s forward flight deck. VB-3 walks four bombs down Soryū, starting at the island and going back toward the stern. VS-5 clips Kongō with two bombs along her stern and two amidships—in fact—hitting the same place twice.

Four carriers are burning badly as the American warplanes head for home, but the fire and smoke no longer command the attention of those present. Even Admiral Nagumo stands confused on the bridging and gawking at the horizon to the north. American and Japanese alike watch a storm system two-hundred-and-fifty miles away billow up into the heavens. They have no idea what they are seeing. Some think that a Krakatoa-level eruption has occurred. All of the theories are, of course, wrong.

The war has been irrevocably altered. History has forever been changed.

This is the Departure.

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Over the Philippine Sea, Approx. 100 mi West of Guam

Major Cameron “Change” Nicholls, United States Aerospace Force

Executive Officer, 23rd Fighter Squadron, 320th Fighter Wing

2231 Local Time, APR 10, 2037

The word HIEROPHANT would haunt his dreams.

Cameron was still processing what was happening. It was a blur. He had rushed to his aircraft and gotten it airborne before the first missile arrived. He had not even said goodbye to anyone. Half of the 23rd FS was still on the ground. They would not—could not—get airborne. There had been no cyberattack or zero-day exploit, only entropy. They had red-lined their aircraft during TIGER SHIELD ‘37, which was already the most intensive exercise in the history of the Osaka Treaty before it was extended by two weeks. Their maintenance schedules had come home to roost all at once and at the worst possible time.

If only the fuckers went a week earlier…

The game plan had been set for years, but it was already busted. They were supposed to cover Air Force B-21 smacking down any PLAN surface assets in the Philippine Sea. Now they were suposed to punch a hole through a wall of fires with a task force that had been assemble by physically shouting at whoever was available. This meant a ‘squadron’ of Australian and Japanese B-1C SLEP bombers (RAAF’s No. 445 Squadron and JASDF’s 101st Squadron) along with about half of the F-35A flying RAAF No. 75 Squadron. The planned buddy-squadrons, the 61st and 78th FS, were stuck in Misawa but Guam’s permentaly deployed 564th Bomb Squadron with their B-21A were cycling up into the air. Two composite squadrons (in addition to the usual base tenants) of stranded guest aircraft from seven countries were currently being organized on the fly and would be scrambled as soon as Change’s strike package was in the air. However, as he looked up toward the sky, he grimaced and doubted if they’d get the chance.

The State of the Marianas would defend itself with batteries of interceptor missiles and mountains of concrete while the three heavily armed TRIDENT-class advanced forward missile defense platforms—converted drilling rigs—held shut the gates of the Second Island Chain open until PACFLT and PACAF could arrive en masse. Despite the very rough start, America was readying the greatest display of air power since the Second Gulf War of 1991. Even now a colossal migration of war birds moving across the Pacific, Operation Return of Forces to Pacific, rushed to aid their sister squadrons scrambling out of Japan, the Philippines, and Taiwan. It included everything from brand-new bleeding edge F-26A Voodoo IIs and upgraded B-21B Raiders to ancient B-52J Stratofortresses and budget Air Guard-Reserve F-25A Warhawks.

They were in a precarious spot. It was a mess. Mainland Japan was getting pummeled. It was even worse for Okinawa. The Percs had yet to move against the Sorks—the Major did not know why but did not care right now. But above all else, he counted his lucky stars that he was with the 23rd FS not with the 23rd FW, the tripwire F-35As running out of the bunker complexes at Chiashan on Taiwan. Poor bastards. That island nation, still in the throes of a unprecedented domestic constitutional crisis, was fighting for its very life—and losing badly. You could just about walking across the strait and never touch the water with how much hurt was being slung.

Despite being confused and bleary-eyed, the scratch task force was still packed enough punch to bust down the Pearly Gates—and they had the unenviable task of saving the several Navies’ asses. Reagan and Kaga were on the wrong side of the First Island Chain. They were going to blast an exit for Exercise LIBERTY BANDIT so it could reach the cover of the Lawrence Chambers and Akagi carrier groups sortieing from Yokosuka. This half-hour-old game plan was already falling apart. Nicholls was not surprised. This was not his first rodeo. He had flown his first combat sortie on the last day of First Sino. He had been in the air over Iraq when MBS carved his name into history with nuclear fire. He had three kills—but he was not eager for more.

He took some solace in the fact—despite the small matter of being stuck in a waking nightmare—that he was sitting inside an information singularity with a whisper in his ear like Kassandra. King Raptor was a monster. Only two aircraft could even claim to match her, the spooky sisters, Voodoo and Blackcat.

The F-22C was the Aerospace Force’s Ship of Theseus—or, well, Plane of Theseus.

It all began after the formation of the Strategic Deterrence Fund in 2028. The budgetary partitioning of nuclear systems procurement and the subsequent decision that the Air Force would keep its budgetary top line—had freed the GDP of a few small nations. The Defense Production Board wasn’t happy with the NGAD timelines, and so they decided to authorize the “refit and re-procurement” of the existing F-22A fleet and the recommissioning of the Block 20 boneyard princesses. DAF had the King of the Sky skinned, gutted, and rebuilt from the studs up, using the techniques and tooling of the HAVE CAT F-35 upgrade program (The D, E, and F models) and the so-called “EA-18H” (which, of course, was actually a new twin-engine heavy-strike fighter in mode of a Vark or Vigi made out of F-35 parts shoved in the merest pretense of a Rhino/Growler skinsuit). The re-procurement, known as TERMINAL ADDRESS, had given the Raptors new ultra-high efficiency and extremely powerful A103 engines, increasing total thrust at full burner by 35,000 pounds. At the same time, they managed to shave off 9% of the air-frames empty weight thanks to the replacement of all conventional fasteners and the use of newly develop metal matrix composites and high entropy alloys, amongst other matsci breakthroughs. They also, of course, reskinned the aircraft with the latest ‘baked-in’ radar-absorbing material from the HAVE CAT Program. And that doesn’t even include the avionics upgrades. The multi-band APG-90 radar was shared with the “Hotel Hornet” and blew the old APG-85 out of the water. The aircraft also gained the same alphabet soup of sensors expected of a 5.5 Generation Fighter—EODAS, EOTS, MADL—the works. Nicholls saw the world from behind a gold-tinted canopy and through a full-color Gen V Helmet Mounted Display. He was King—or at least he was King until the NGADs hauling ass from Hickam showed up.

The 23rd FS was armed with a pretty standard mix: four AIM-260B Blackeye Joint Advanced Tactical Missiles and four ‘half-RAAM’ AIM-196A Peregrine Poly-Seeker Interceptors in the main bay, four more Peregrines in the side bays. They also had a pair of low-observability fuel tanks and weapons pods. That gave them one AIM-300A Phoenix II Long Range Engagement Weapon and an extra pair of Blackeyes. But in the rush, not everyone was able to get their weapon pods, and at least one of his pilots had loaded the wrong pod.

His wingwoman, Captain Samantha “Loose Duke” Florencia, had a weapon pod with two AIM-9X Sidewinders and an AIM-401C—an air-launched THAAD-ER anti-ballistic missile—meant for a Marianas Aerospace Guard Reserve F-15X Super Eagle.

It looked like any other evening over the Pacific: scattered banks of clouds stretched across the horizon, an endless sea of stars overhead, and a glassy wine dark mirror of Pacific waters underneath. It was beautiful. It was peaceful. There were no external signs that his eleven Raptors had already entered a Thunderdome of Nations. A two-thousand-mile-wide lethal game of flashlight tag had started before the first fighter and gone wheels up.

Hundreds of AESA radars—from budget knock-offs to the very bleeding edge of the blackest budgets—had started a rave of radiation. Pencils of invisible energy crossed hundreds of miles in fractions of a moment, piercing the night in search of the enemy. Radar-warning receivers struggled to sort low-probability detection searches from the noise. Computers sought to parse the ebb of the tide from ripples of wakes. Hundreds of aircraft were in the fight; hundreds more were rushing to join. They sought each other in the dark, hoping not to reveal themselves in the process.

But that darkness was not absolute.

They were in the shadow of a maelstrom of fire and light—the Battle of the East China Sea had begun this war and was in full swing. Jamming poured from support aircraft in an endless font of power, moving like electromagnetic squalls across the sky. Decoys and spoofing hoped to mask tankers, fighters, and drones. Incredibly powerful fire control and search radars shone in the dark like spotlights. Missiles of every sort streaked through the night. On both sides, information flowed freely between sensor and shooter, transmitted a thousand miles in the blink of an eye.

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USNS Sentinel (AFBM-3) was dead-center in the Philippine Sea, just off the “island” of Okinotorishima. Anti-ballistic missiles raced up into the heavens, scoring kill after kill as the entire Dong Feng ballistic missile family arced across the sky. Sentinel’s four panel SPY-10(V)3 LD-VHP multi-band radar array was powerful enough that Nicholls could pick it up at 600 miles with his onboard sensors, no need for battle management software there. It was a lighthouse amidst a storm, and the eye that revealed swarms of steel and silicon soaring across the Philippine Sea.

The platform was continually handling a dozen engagements across two hundred fifty miles simultaneously. As soon as they intercepted a track, another appeared. Sentinel was in a death match that had been rigged to lose. It was there to buy time. Buy them time. Once the strike package reached Okinotorishima, the heavies would climb and unleash three hundred AGM-158 cruise missiles at a host of pre-determined targets, with a reserve allotted for any targets of opportunity. That reserve was going to help break out LIBERTY BANDIT.

Nicholls watched as VLO tracks were picked up by the SDA’s PANOPTICON Space Architecture—a constellation of air and ground moving target indicator surveillance sats—and the 100-foot diameter FICKLE SICKLE long-range phased array on Luzon were classified in real-time. It was not good. The PLAAF had already rushed a not insignificant portion of its advanced aircraft into the Philippine Sea—an air division+ force of J-20 Fagin fighters, JH-20 Fizzle attackers, and H-20 Brigand bombers.

It made Nicholls uncomfortable. Why the hell are they here and not over Big T?

Countless drones and decoys filled the battle space. UCAVs had give up probing Sentinel and had started an attack on FICKLE SICKLE. The AN/FPS-147 array was covered in tick marks of incoming missiles and outgoing interceptors. The tracks turned grey as a missile track merged with the symbol for the radar. That radar had allowed them to see beyond the veil of the Chinese coastline. It was expected to be a goner—but not this fast.

In good news, Nicholls did not see any of the PLAAF’s potentially mythical Sixth Gen Fighter, the J-60 Fusebox. He, however, did see packets of unstealthy aircraft further west, behind the cutting-edge. They were a mix of YY-29 Merchant and YY-20 Muntjak tankers with J-16 Flanker November and J-10 Firebird fighters. He reckoned they were a follow-on force to continue the attack on the Philippine Air Force and their National Air Defense System.

He raised an eyebrow as he watched thirty contacts be classified as CJ-30 Shiver long-range cruise missiles; those were nasty fuckers, and heading right for Guam, but they were about an hour and a half away. There were dozens of other shorter-range air-launched super and subsonic cruise missiles coming from the direction tracks flagged as bombers heading for Sentinel, queued up by SDA search and track constellations.

“Apollo, Battlestar. Tack northwest,” The voice of their attendant Aerospace Force ground controller spoke. There was feedback, and Nicholls could pick up voices in the background. “We’re tracking terminal Scimitars that are too close for comfort on your current vector. Apologies for the delay; most of the staff only just got in.” Here meant Andersen’s Hardened Battle Management Center. Nicholls had been inside it a couple of times. It had seats equal to a dozen E-7 Wedgetail AWACS with a genuine whole-ass supercomputer stitching together the battlespace, all secure under forty feet of earth, concrete, and metal—with triple redundant communications infrastructure sufficient to send a message to Pluto even after the planet imploded.

The squadron lazily turned out of the way as the DF-26s fell from the heavens like shooting stars, fifteen miles off their wing. One missile was swatted from their air by a bolt of light rushing up from the Earth. It turned into a shotgun blast of red-orange debris. More THAAD missiles rose from Guam, racing into the heavens, proof that the 53rd State would not go quietly into that good night. Nicholls knew someone in the HBMC or the Nimitz Hill Annex Command Center was making some very unpleasant decisions about which missiles to engage and which to let through to preserve their quiver for the fight to come.

He was still parsing the reams of data from his squadron’s sensors when he nearly shit himself. “Battlestar, Apollo One. My EODAS has 1-7 extremely larger Screamers: Bullseye 0-3-0-5, 7-3 miles, low, Angels 1-0 and dropping, hot. They’re in-excess of Mach Three. Can we smoke these fuckers?” He tapped his MFD and warmed up his aircraft’s capacitor bank, “Torch is primed…” The missiles were bright enough that it was almost hard to look at them—a line of sunrises skipping across the Philippine Sea.

“Negative, Apollo. You will proceed to HANG FIVE with your strike package. Keep your noses clean and your pistols packed. We don’t have the playtime to spare. Sentinel does not know how much time they can buy us. Leave leakers to Thumper, Hot Dog, and Breakspear,” their handler sternly replied—referring to the state’s two Aerospace Force Guard-Reserve fighter squadrons and Guam’s missile defense system.

“Wilco, Battlestar,” Nicholls muttered, the spite barely hidden in his voice. He rocked his aircraft to one side and checked out the fast movers with his Mark I Eyeball. That jamboree was moving at a mile every nine and a half seconds. They were two minutes from Guam.

He saw ruin in the hieroglyphics glowing on his display. They were heading into Hell, and he could see everything. He had the eyes of OLYMPUS, America’s joint-combined battle management architecture.

He could see the ballistic missiles screaming above the Earth. Though he did not need OLYMPUS ZEUS to show him that, he could see the exo-atmospheric kills above his head. He could see F-15JXs screaming down out of Kyushu. He could see individual MANPADS flitting into the night from the fighting on the Sakishimas if he so wished or the PLASOF assault forcing breaching the Presidential Office Building in Taipei. He could see that there was no longer a JS Kaga (DDH-184). There was only a faded tag at her last reported position, marking the grave of a thousand sailors. He could see the hundreds of red air contacts over the East China Sea—PLAAF bomber brigades, seemingly without end, thrown against beleaguered ships and a bastion of blue in a sea of red—Okinawa. He could see the cataclysmic air battle already ending over Taiwan; ROCAF and 23rd FW would die fighting in the air, unlike so many American and Japanese aviators who could do naught but look up at the sky, angels shorn of their wings as Uncle Xi marshaled his hosts.

He could see it all—but yet could do nothing. They were outnumbered. It would be at least a few hours until airborne reinforcements could reach them. The Percs were sure to make the best use of this moment. So, the strike package would stay quiet and cover the bombers toward the release point. Frustrated Aeros said nothing as the last of the Bones and Raiders formed up—and they all plunged into the night. The heavies would break the dragon’s jaw, and their escorts would kill anything that hoped to stop them.

They would do their part.

Seconds crawled by and rolled into excruciating minutes. All the while, all he could do was watch people—people he might know—die. He watched as the nearest PLAAF tracks moved across his display, creeping closer and closer—remaining just out of the maximum range of SM-6s from Sentinel, forming up for an attack. He looked at his fuel state and bitterly watched as Andersen and Tinian’s tankers sprinted east, away from the fighting. Only three KC-48 Replenishers, the USAF’s blended-wing body low-observability tankers, were moving west toward their own rally points covered by two pairs of EB-3 Harbinger stealthy electronic warfare aircraft, which itself derived from legacy LockMart’s entrant to the stealthy KC-Z tender.

The radio crackled awake with a hiss, and Nicholls winced at the noise of blaring sirens. A monotone voice dispassionately repeated the same phrase that Nicholls could not believe: “Active Shooter Lockdown is now in effect. Security Troops to positions. Sappers in the wire. Base personnel shelter in place and alert BDOC to any unidentified persons or movements. Sappers in the wire. Active Shooter Lockdown is now i—” There was shouting in the background, and the mic went cold.

“Jesus Christ, what the fuck was that, Change?” One of his pilots asked over their local channel.

“Not a fuckin’ clue, but it ain’t good. Did the god’amn Chi-Coms get fuckers onto…” Nicholls's voice trailed off. There goes the plan. A whole lot of plans.

“Apollo, Battlestar.” Their operator was on the air again; there were a dozen hushed voices in the background and the rustling of movement. Nicholls could immediately pick up that the Aero was trying to hide his shaking voice. “You are to detach and prosecute multiple inbound Screamers designated Raid 3-5, say again, Raid Three-Five.” There were a couple of muffled pops in the background. He had never heard an air controller so rattled, not even when there were nukes in the air in ‘34. “Speed 3-7-5-0 knots, Bullseye 300, Angels 40, hot. I don’t know how much longer I have on the mic—we’re trying to work things out on our en—” The mic went cold.

“Battlestar, Apollo—say again your last? What the Hell is going on!?” Before he could say anything, his radar warning receiver started shrieking. “SPIKE! SPIKE! SPIKE!” Nicholls cried. He could scarcely believe the information on his display.

About 700 miles away, someone fired up an 8-megawatt X-Band AESA radar at 35,000 feet. What the fuck is a cruiser radar doing in the sky? The track had been classified as a YY-29 Merchant—a tankerized Comac C929—with six sisters and a gaggle of mixed UCAVs. Clearly, that was no mere Merchant and was several times more powerful than their standard KJ-3000 Mainlock AEW&C aircraft. He should have realized that there was something wrong with that; it was a lot of very precious aircraft in one place.

The bombers deployed their defensive Longshot drones, each equipped with a wide-spectrum, high-power jammer. Hide and seek was over.

“Battlestar, Apollo. We’ve spiked by an extremely high-power airborne radar—3-0-1, 6-8-5, Angels 35, flanking—marked Alert Six. Please advise,” Nicholls barked into his mic.

There was no answer.

“REZKENSKY, GET YOUR PEOPLE FUCKING MOVING,” the feedback from the mic made Nicholls flinch and almost made his eyes water. He looked down at their MFD, which showed it was Andersen’s HBMC on the horn with equal parts confusion and apoplexy. The horrifyingly distinctive muffled sounds of automatic weapons fire rattled in the background. “L-T! WE! ARE! LEAV—” the mic cut out.

“Uh… Battlestar stay again your last…” He asked tepidly as rage boiled up inside him. He repeated his request three more times with no response. “Fuck it!” He switched to the local channel. “Fights on! Guam is out of it. We’ll deal with this ourselves.” They were supposed to be fighting as one finely tuned cog of a greater digital machine, but now they were just a lone group amid a night of chaos. “Slag, you and your Panthers’ll screen the heavies and cover us. Let’s sucker punch these fuckers.” He growled, calling out to the Aussie F-35 commander. “Shinji and Soju, punch into burner and get to HANG FIVE A-S-A-P. Kill anything we have on track, then get the fuck out. Diaper, take your Raiders low, and clean up for the Bones. Sentinel can cover you better than we can. If you can, get on the horn to the Oki or Kasuga CAOC and tell ‘em that Anderson has sappers in the wire, and we’re in the blind. Any objections?”

“So, improvise?” The Aussie panther driver replied with unwelcome glibness.

“It’s all Jazz now, baby.” He looked out of his canopy toward his wingman. “Duke, ya mind smoking that fuckin’ Turbo-AWACS with that pointy rock of yours?” The track was at 35,000 feet, not even a third of THAAD-ER’s official minimum engagement altitude. But, not all that glitters is gold—and not everything that is official is true. Hitting a converted airliner with a kinetic kill vehicle designed to intercept an intermediate-range ballistic missile above the atmosphere was overkill, and he wasn’t really sure what would happen. Still, it should at least elicit some kind of reaction.

The aviatrix nodded and replied contentedly, “Wilco.” A moment later, the 21-inch-diameter ABM dropped free from its oversized weapons pod and ignited its solid motor with a flash of white and yellow. It hurtled upwards. It would be one hell of a lofted shot. He still did not know how she managed it. The weapons pods were triple-marked and looked completely different, and the small fact that Super Eagles were based on Tinian—a separate island. Whether it was a case of tactical acquisition or fuck-up was a conversation for another day.

A significant number of PLAAF officers experienced a significant emotional event as they saw a theatre-grade hit-to-kill missile appear at 40,000 feet off a probable F-22 contact. The Turbo AWACS directed its full attention towards Loose Duke and Change. It took about thirty seconds to burn through their stand-in jamming drones.

Well, that ain’t good.

The Chi-Com bomber raid, forming up at the edge of Sentinel’s missile envelope, turned toward them. His aircraft’s EODAS picked up the thermal bloom of two brigades of J-20s ascending sharply at full burner.

Please don’t have the resolution to be a fire control radar.

The Raptors wheeled west, kicked up into afterburner, and started to climb. They were going to put as much distance between them and the heavies as possible and climb to give their air-to-air missiles as much potential energy as they could muster. The F-35s would clean up anyone who got through and help the bomber’s direct energy defenses intercept any incoming missiles.

Now this is a goddamn fight. The adrenaline rush finally hit. The match was set.

It would take just seven minutes for the J-20s and F-22s to collide—and about half that time for the Percs to enter their maximum weapon range.

With a few clicks of his display, he put together an engagement plan with Sentinel’s CIC and started queuing targets for his squadron. OLYMPUS POSEIDON, backed by the super-computer on Sentinel, crunched numbers in a minute and developed an optimal firing solution, accounting for everything down to the pressure differential along the missiles’ flight-paths.

The 300-mile gap between the two forces started closing at a combined airspeed that was ticking close to Mach 4—almost a mile every second. They were tracking 67 J-20s, 16 JH-20s, and 3 H-20s. They were outnumbered nearly eight to one.

Four things happened in quick succession.

First: Duke shouted over the radio, “SMITE! SMITE! Something high power is lasin’ me!” Nicholls looked over and through his HMD and saw a blinding hash-grid of infrared energy blasting his wingwoman. His aircraft’s laser warning receiver had also been tripped by the sheer power of whatever it was. It was no direct energy weapon he had ever seen. It was a… LIDAR grid? The major dreaded to think how much juice and how big an emitter was needed to paint a target from a couple of hundred miles away.

Second: Someone on Andersen finally spoke up, with nothing but dreadful words to say, “All callsigns, this is Battlestar Actual. Authenticate Alpha Six Hotel. STATION BENT. I say again, ALLEY-OOP IS STATION BENT.” That was the air control wing’s commander telling everyone in the air that Andersen was compromised and incapable of landing aircraft or providing ground control. “Kilimanjaro will take what they can handle… Hickory is working on a solution…” He sounded tired, his voice rasped with one last awful word that he dread to speak. “Godspeed.”

Third: The three Perc bombers showed their cards—two dozen air-launch HQ-9D Gingseng Delta surface-to-air missiles appeared at 38,000 feet, screaming upwards on lofted trajectories. The bastards had just used a mix of extremely high-powered radar and LIDAR to negate their very low observability, but looking at his RWR and LWR, Change was confident that the Mega AWACS did not have a fire-control lock.

Fourth: The PANOPTICON tracks froze. At first, he didn’t notice it as he warned Duke that she wasn’t being lit up by a laser weapon—or at least not an obvious one. One update tick passed, then another. His stomach dropped. He looked up into the night sky. At first, he thought it was just a shooting star, but then he realized the sky was on fire.

“Oh, Jesus.”

The Heavens fell as the Raptors raced upwards. Hundreds of satellites were breaking up above them, and Kessler syndrome was in full effect with a new night sky of flaming stars. They were running out of options.

The Ginsengs didn’t worry Nicholls too much, but they probably meant those were electronic warfare Brigands. That complicated things, or at the very least, could complicate things. The X Band pencil beams and LIDAR grids dancing between his squadron’s aircraft did worry him. No—they terrified him. They were outnumbered. The wrong move would see his entire command killed and the bombers in his care intercepted. They were on the razor’s edge—with two hundred and seventy-five miles of blade ahead of them.

“Okay, Apollo, let’s force these bastards closer to Sentinel. Set ‘em up for hammer and anvil. Ready up on Phoenixes, release on my call.” The Phoenix was a massive weapon, and officially, the Raptor wasn’t even spec’d for it—it was supposed to be the domain of the Wasp, Super Eagle, and Raider. Nineteen of them streaked into the air in three seconds.

The Raptors jinked away from the merge and toward Sentinel, entering a shallow dive to pick up speed. Their side-aspect radar signature was worse than head-on, but every mile closer to Sentinel made the Americans more dangerous and the Percs more vulnerable and helped ensure that the Allied bombers with firepower enough to alter the balance of the Battle of East China Sea would slink into the night unmolested.

The PLA went loud and activated their jammers and radars. The EW kit aboard three of the Brigands and four of the Fizzles was extremely sophisticated, with much better performance than what was in the DIA estimates. Someone in the Central Military Commission had gambled with a lot of very expensive assets. The Americans’ displays were turned to hash. For a moment, the PLAAF officers were very pleased by their electronic warfare capes.

But only for a moment.

It took USNS Sentinel’s Large Diameter Very High Power array just eight seconds to burn through the cloud of defensive emissions equivalent to about nine TREE SHARK jamming pods at full power. Even as the sky fell, the multi-band radar aboard Sentinel was enough to burn through clouds of Heaven and get a lock on the face of God.

Chengdu Aircraft Corporation JH-20XZ Shénlóng Páoxiào, Nanning/339455

Over the Philippine Sea, West South West of Okinotorishima

Zhèng Shī Zhí / Kōngjūn Da Xiao Qin Zhaohui, People’s Liberation Army Air Force

Deputy Commander, 20th Special Division / Commander, 61st Air Brigade

~2300 Local Time, APR 10, 2037

Senior Colonel Qin growled as he saw the division’s defensive jamming evaporate. He was cozy in the back-seat of his electronic warfare aircraft. This was not what we hoped. Not great, not terrible. He did not care about the Allied bombers, tantalizing as they might be—though he could only see the “Bones.” His mission was to prove that offense was the best defense. Something of much, much greater value and import to the outcome of this newborn war than a squadron-and-a-half of strike aircraft. His orders were to watch over madness—a vigil for those who Dared to Die.

Lockheed-Vought, Sikorsky-Martin, Neo McDonnell Douglas F-22C King Raptor, Slop Gun, MR/08-4163

Over the Philippine Sea, East South East of Okinotorishima

Major Cameron “Change” Nicholls, United States Aerospace Force

Executive Officer, 23rd Fighter Squadron, 320th Fighter Wing

Nicholls tensed the muscles in his hand as he held the stick; he was sweating, but not about the PLA missiles. He was working out the math. He watched as tracks ticked closer to Sentinel. He pinged the battle station, who put his ticket on hold.

How helpful. Nicholls stared at a little swooshing circle on his display with abiding annoyance. They put me on hold. “Looks like I need to talk to the mana—”

His display showed a deluge of nanocomposite metals and graphene-laced silicon rising from Sentinel. Nine SM-8 Hypersonic Interceptor-Tactical and sixteen SM-6 Block IIIA Extended Range Active Missiles accelerated into the night, hurtling at both the oncoming fighters and the strike package they had abandoned. The Chi-Com pilots had a minute to choose whether to face the incoming Phoenixes or the Standards. They could only present their best aspect to one incoming threat. They chose to present their noses toward Sentinel—even if that meant they had to keep closing the distance.

“Execute.” Nicholls’s voice was cold as ice. “Torch it.”

Eleven Raptors turned about on command, wheeling onto a closing vector with the Percs. The hunted had become the hunters. They cut afterburners and rolled into supercruise, but they kept slowing to reduce their thermal signature as they entered the fight.

Now, they had to deal with the first wave of incoming.

Eleven gunports snapped open, unmasking prismatic emitters for the eleven AN/AEQ-6/LAU-8 TALISMAN high-energy lasers. The 75-kilowatt laser system was designed to be a drop-in/drop-out replacement for the M61 rotary cannon. You were lucky if you could squeeze out six shots before the capacitor bank fried itself; if not for that little foible, it would recharge one shot out of three after about two or so minutes.

His HMD and EODAS had tagged the incoming rain of supersonic telephone poles, even if it took an extra second to parse through the burning debris re-entering the atmosphere. Apollo Flight started blasting. The lasers appeared only on his HMD, relaying the information gathered by the aircraft’s EOTS and EODAS. It took about two seconds to achieve a hard kill. Most of the missiles did not explode; they merely veered off course and fell toward the ocean.

It was anticlimactic. There was no pomp or circumstance. Distant darts tumbled like failed sounding rockets. Some missiles tore themselves apart, while some just twirled and twirled, down and down.

It was down to ‘just’ 200 miles.

And it was their turn.

Eleven APG-90 multi-band AESA radars rose to full power in a snap. The Raptors did not fire, but they did bring death. Twenty-two exceptionally dangerous surface-to-air missiles streaked across the sky and were provided with almost ideal fire control data as they entered their terminal phase.

The Fagin and Fizzles began to volley PL-21 Asmodeus ramjet-powered long-range AAMs at their maximum range. The count started at sixteen and rose to 44 missiles in mere moments. Four per Raptor.

How judicious.

“Think these guys wanna kill us, Change,” one of his pilots astutely assessed their situation with the acumen one would expect of the Aerospace Force’s best.

Thirteen seconds after they unleashed their first volley, the Standards Eight HITs made their presence felt. They killed six Brigands—including two of the three EW birds—and two Fizzles.

Their APG-90s proved their worth, using exceptionally high-power and pinhead-diameter X-band pencils to permanently damage the multi-mode seekers of the incoming missiles even as they were in the ascent phase of their ballistic trajectories. The process took far too long for them to kill many this way, but every missile defeat was a victory.

They kept closing.

190 miles.

185.

They had a few minutes before the PL-21s came bearing down on them.

180 miles.

175 miles.

Bingo.

“RIPPLE! FOUR TIMES FOX THREE!” Nicholls shouted.

His Aeros joined him in a chorus of “Fox Three.”

Both his weapons pods opened up once more, each releasing a pair of two-stage AIM-260B Blackeye JATMs. 38 missiles were in the air in a few seconds. Three failed—one had a busted motor and just fell like an iron bomb, and the other two refused to accept guidance and just screamed ahead instead of racing upward in a lofted arc.

The Raptors cut their external weapons pods and fuel tanks as the SM-6s killed two H-20, six JH-20, and two J-20. His display had a dedicated button just to drop his stores. The explosive bolts ejected the pods from their pylons, and as they fell, switchblade wings snapped out from their dorsal mounting joints.

This was the work of an SAP, which started as GENTLE STEWARD—a way to recover ejected stores by having them glide back to the earth—but evolved into CLAVICUS VILE—a self-contained, low-cost decoy and spoofing system attached to the GENTLE STEWARD glide kit. The Raptors immediately turned their active electronic warfare systems to full, turning Chinese radar readouts into crystal blizzards. CLAVICUS VILE was not a smart system; it was primarily a reflector that allowed a jammer to “imprint” onto it, paired with the internals of a lower-spec diminutive of the MALD-J decoy/jammer. It was not particularly powerful, and it had only a few minutes of endurance, but it was also cheap. As the Raptors spat electromagnetic noise at their handicapable faux-wingmen, they ejected the pylons. Like doing The Wave, the bits of metal rippled down from the formation like a zipper falling apart.

They were now eleven clean King Raptors against a world of hurt.

They fired their next volley of JATMs at 150 miles and began to break formation as they diverted away. It was erratic, novel, and—above all else—a little bit deranged. Nicholls moved his ship below and in front of his wingwoman—the fourth man in a four-ship flight of decoys. As the Percs started to burn through the outer layers of jamming, they were greeted with returns suggesting that their enemy had quadrupled.

The LIDAR grid started smacking their aircraft like a limp relativistic spaghetti-wrist slap. He watched as the incoming PL-21s distributed themselves against the new targets for a moment, but they reapportioned themselves again—against real Raptors. Another three dozen ramjet missiles came screaming into the night, appearing on Nicholls's display.

They had volleyed. They had thundered. Now, they charged into death.

It was the longest minute of his life.

He was certain it was going to be his last.

Xi’an Aircraft Industrial Corporation KJ-5000E, Nanning/302101

Over the Philippine Sea, West South West of Okinotorishima

Fù Jūn Zhí / Kōngjūn Shao Jiang Cao Yuan, People’s Liberation Army Air Force

Director, Air Special Projects, National University of Defense Technology

Major General Cao had spent blood sweat and tears to get his program in the air. He had even arranged for one his rivals to be taken out and shot in one of President Xi’s later anti-corruption purges. It had been a monumental effort, a hail-mary to deny the American’s the advantages in very low observability—to break the veil and burn them out. It had cost nearly ten billion dollars for the nine total aircraft that had been procured. Four aircraft operating as one: one with a nose mounted megawatt class LIDAR array, one with with a megawatt class linear AESA, one with compute equal to a modest supercomputer and excess power capacity that it was designed to share with its equipped siblings with a wireless microwave power transmission system that they had tragically be unable to get working, and one for command and control. They had built two prototypes which were not fit for service, lost the first controller aircraft in a hard landing in poor weather, and had a compute aircraft detonate mid-air when thermal run away had caused fire that set off its fuel cells, but they had solved that problem.

He was seated next to the two non-exit door windows, with a view of the outside from his working station. The best seat in the house. The engagement with the Raptors had not gone as expected—they had pulled out several tricks. He was unsure how they had defeated the second wave of missiles, that they had the ability to damage seekers at a distance was alarming to say the least. However, tricks would not save them when they were under the micro—

He felt the orange streak cross his face. His eyes darted out the window as a tangerine bloom white hot, and the burst color cut through the gloom and refracted off the oil on his skin and melded with the brutal blue-light of his working display. The blast wave rattled the controller aircraft, which then yanked right into a hard turn and began to dive. The pilot shouted something over the ICS. Yuan felt his jaw go slack.

The pair of THAAD-ER Block II-ALI kinectic kill vehicles used their liquid-fuel Direction and Attitude Control System to radically adjust their terminal arc at the last possible moment. They went from debris to death with seconds to spare. The PLAAF pilots had not paid them any mind once it was apparent that they were not apparently in any immediate danger. Who would be at threat from a miss? The second KKV did, in fact, miss—blinded by a jacket of plasma. It would break up just after the KJ-5000F Mastermind compute aircraft. One hundred pounds of metal stuck the aircraft at Mach 6, enough to rip a Honda Civic-size hole just ahead of the starboard wing root. The entire right wing came free. The missile had broken the aircraft’s spine, the fuselage forward of the impact tore free as the wreckage tumbled down into the cloud bank two thousand feet below. There was a muted burst of red and orange light as the fuel cells detonated.

The air battle south of Okinotorishima was a cage match, and the lights had just gone out.

Lockheed-Vought, Sikorsky-Martin, Neo McDonnell Douglas F-22C King Raptor, Slop Gun, MR/08-4163

Over the Philippine Sea, East South East of Okinotorishima

Major Cameron “Change” Nicholls, United States Aerospace Force

Executive Officer, 23rd Fighter Squadron, 320th Fighter Wing

Not even the radar and electronic sniffers on the sole remaining EW H-20 could get a solid lock on the Raptors. The Americans were just too far away. The PL-21s started going in the wrong direction. The entire second salvo went wide as the Americans positioned themselves well outside the field of view of their seekers—the ramjet missiles would find nothing but empty air. The Percs, however, remained lit by the thirty-five-foot-diameter radar on Sentinel—the same as on the Yellowstone-class ballistic missile defense cruisers. The LREWs were fed with only the finest fire control data that Uncle Sam could provide, homing in on the aircraft most likely to be brigade and flight group commanders based on PLA standard formations.

Their TALISMAN once again started burning missiles out of the sky. However, they were not killing them fast enough. Twenty. Fifteen. Ten. Eight. Six. The F-22s began to maneuver violently as the ramjets sprinted toward the finish, jinking to avoid the field of view of the Raptors’ defensive lasers.

Two hit home—just as eleven Phoenixes found targets. The first Raptor lost in aerial combat fell toward the ocean. There was no chute. Another Raptor limped away with one engine. Nicholls ordered the pilot to retreat, divert to a KC-48, and then onto Iwo Jima or Wake Island if he could reach ‘em. The Phoenixes made eight kills—the last Brigand, one Fizzle, and six Fagin—plus two more damaged Fizzles.

One hundred miles.

The Chi-Coms volleyed off thirty, no—forty-six—more missiles, a mix of PL-15 and PL-20, after Apollo Two-Two was hit and began to limp away. The radars on the J-20s were still out of range; the JH-20s were another matter. They were getting close.

Sentinel once more began unleashing the fury of the tides in the form of thirty-two RIM-198 SM-7 Block IA, the solid rocket booster-equipped evolution of the RIM-162 Evolved Sea Sparrow Missile and replacement for the venerable Standard Missile Two. They were not targeted at the Chi-Com fighters. The battle station fired all thirty-two missiles at one of Screamer raids howling toward Guam. An entire brigade of J-20s broke from the fight and began to volley the rest of their long range missiles at the ESSM-MRs. The errant brigade accelerated almost irrationally, presenting a lot of primo rear-aspect shots for the american multi-spectrum seekers.

Nicholls realized that he had made a mistake as he saw three dozen stealth fighters turn away from him. He was not at the top of their list. He had missed the game they had been playing. But it was too late.

The first JATMs started to kill—seven more Fagin and two more Fizzle. Most, however, were targeted at the diverting J-20s and did not have the energy to reach their target.

The ordered action began to devolve into a game of back-alley shivings at 700 knots. Both sides had lost their air controllers. They had lost comrades. They were out for blood. They would get it and more. There was fire and smoke and death in the air as the remaining JATMs struck home. They were in a death match conducted over the horizon—well, at the very least, out of visual range. Death came by missiles barely half a foot or so in diameter of metal hurtling at multiples of the speed of sound. Nicholls directed his pilots as best he could, directing fire toward the remaining trio of Fizzles—whose more powerful radars, more advanced ECM, and larger weapons complement made them more dangerous than their distinguished predecessors.

Another Raptor fell—then another. They killed three more Fagin. Nicholls watched as those he had trained with for years died in seconds. He knew their kids. He had been at their weddings and been there for their divorces.

Memories were drowned in a blur of death and callouts as the human form struggled under the force of too-many Gs. It was a battle to survive as much as it was to kill.

Two more Raptors were overwhelmed by a flight-group-sized volley of PL-15s.

Eleven Fagin paid the price for that wound.

It looked like the Americans could win the fight. Then, the other J-20 brigade double-backed. They came at the Raptors with both barrels. Nicholls wrung every ounce of maneuverability from his aircraft. He lost count of how many he had dodged. The Raptor would probably be a write-off even if he landed it one piece; he was just about flying its wings off. But Nicholls did not care about the airframe; he just wanted to keep in the air. The longer he was alive meant that the PLAAF could shoot at him and not his aeros. However, every missile they dodged would see two more flung at them. It was a numbers game, and it had been stacked from the start.

Nicholls’s fuel state was critical. His TALISMAN was fried. His complement of eight AIM-197 CASH (Common Airborne Self-Defense Hit-to-Kill), small diameter kinetic self-defense missiles had been depleted. He had two more Peregrines left. He touched off one at the last Fizzle. He pitched his aircraft over to dodge a PL-21, dumping his last high speed decoy. He dodged yet another PL-15 coming from the other direction, touching off his last Peregrine in a snap counter-shot. All of his warning receivers were going crazy. His body was straining to keep awake, but he just didn’t have enough energy to avoid the next missile.

The PL-21 sliced through his left wing and detonated beside the horizontal stabilizer. His left engine was shattered, and the F-22C entered into a flat spin. He had no chance of recovery. He looked at where his wing used to be as he pulled the ejector handle. He was struck by cold winds going several hundred knots. His chute deployed without issue. He saw his aircraft disappear into a cloud bank. He followed suit. It was thick enough that he could barely see his hand in front of his face. By the time by the time he saw the Stygian waters of the Sea, his aircraft had been swallowed whole, as if it had never existed. A quarter of his squadron was dead.

He thought it was the sunrise just on the horizon, but it did not fade. It was a stream of meteors, glowing red hot from friction with the air. The Screamers tore across the sky like a hateful Phaeton, dragging darkness in its wake. He activated his rescue beacon and hoped that an HV-28 Kingfisher VTOLs from Sentinel or a Japanese US-2 amphibian would come to retrieve him and what other pilots who had managed to eject.

This fight was over, but his fight was not.

Dededo Village, Guam County, State of the Marianas

Major Benningham Harkon, United States Marine Corps

Assistant Special Agent in Charge for Criminal Investigations, Marianas Directorate

2259 Local Time, APR 10, 2037

“Get fahking lost, Murhhk,” Major Harkon hissed at the group of FCIS agents crouched behind the desks in the blacked-out office. This was not a surprise party for a retiring colleague. It was actually less awkward than that for Ben. The mixed cohort of civvies, marines, and sailors didn’t seem interested in turning tail. “I didn’t stuttah. Get fahking going before I shoot yah.”

“What about you?” Captain Murklyn Gibbs asked.

Harkon flashed his “Are you stupid” glare at the chubby-cheeked, bushy-tailed investigator. Murk got the memo. With their service pistols drawn, the agents crept toward the exit in a silent conga line. Harkon unholstered his own service weapon. He looked at it with disgust as suppressed shots rang out. They’re getting closer.

The Mateba Model 6 Unica glinted gently in the dark. His wife had gotten it for him as an anniversary present. He always carried it despite his disdain for revolvers; it would have broken Stacy’s heart to know her “Boston Togusa” didn’t want it, not that he had a real understanding of who the fuck ‘Togusa’ was. The damn thing just was about too expensive to bring to the range regularly—.44 Magnum was expensive as Hell, and he wasn’t a man to waste money.

He snuck into the hallway. It was clear. He grabbed a fire extinguisher and a fire axe before he snuck back to his office, and the building shook as a ballistic missile strike made planetfall. The sky outside was briefly lit by reds and oranges, one of a hundred false rises this night.

He looted his office for what could kill: scissors, a pair of old KA-BARS, a Fairbairn-Sykes dagger, and two handfuls of polymer-cased .44 SLAP rounds. He unloaded and reloaded his pistol, thinking about how the Reverand Father Bertrand Flanagan, his father-in-law, had loaded these P+++ rounds himself. Harkon hoped the deranged Jesuit hadn’t just turned his gun into a pipebomb. At least it wasn’t some godawful Auto Mag with the mall ninja rounds—the trend after the PLA had shown off the LB-1 bipedal combat robot; “Lu Bu” was, of course, a piece of shit, but that didn’t stop the Neo Fudd Industrial Complex from capitalizing on the panic about “Cyber Red Dawn.”

He snapped the cylinder close.

As firelight danced through the windows, figures flooded the floor. Hushed voices speaking Mandarin. The soft whine and deep clomps of heavy exo-rigs. The voices grew louder, their words slurred. Feet dragged on the tile. He hid behind a pillar. He knew he’d be out of sight. It was the best place in the office to cry and/or scream. For the first time in a long time, he regretted leaving the Center. He hoped Laf and Val were still alive—before he realized that was a dumb thought. Of course, they’re alive.

They passed the frosted glass that lined the FCIS office. Some of the figures tried to look through the opacity before staggering along. Harkon could see cupped hands. One smashed out the window and gave the open-plan office a quick scan. They continued onwards.

Harkon slipped out the side door behind the section, Mateba tucked into the front of his pants, axe in one hand and a fire extinguisher in the other. He took a breath and started running. He hurled the 20-pound extinguisher, sliding it like a curling stone across the tile. He put two SLAP rounds right through the face plate of a Can Opener as the trooper turned around. He put one more into the throat of the soldier next to him before putting a round right into the extinguisher. He dropped into a slide as a hail of gunfire tore the air above him. He saw the legs of another BK and swiped at them with the axe, catching the soldier in the shin.

The soldier wailed and collapsed to the ground. He put another round through the man’s head. Another soldier came charging through the white-powdery discharge. Harkon shot him through the heart. He stumbled forward and collapsed. With a flick of his wrist and fingers, Harkon grabbed the QSZ from a dead man’s holster. He disappeared into the extinguisher’s plume of aerosolized powder. He shot at the darkened shapes in the clouds. A massive metal man appeared from the powdered mist. Harkon rammed the pistol’s barrel into the man’s throat and pulled the trigger till it went click. There was a THUNK as the Can Opener collapsed to the ground.

One unlucky PLA-SOF officer got a KA-BAR in his windpipe. Harkon hurled another knife at a shape’s leg before he darted past the men struggling to orient themselves in the confusion. They shot in every direction, shouting incoherently in a mix of English and Mandarin.

As the cloud settled on the ground—leaving the floor a candy cane display of gore and white powder—Harkon was standing in between three wounded troopers, one on each side to his front and one behind him. They had eyes the size of dinner plates, purple lips, and a wobble in their legs.

The one to his right lunged forward and received the flat eye of the fire axe to his face for his troubles. He collapsed back to the ground as the one behind him and the one to the left charged. Harkon pulled the axe back, let go, and caught it near the shoulder, ramming the rubberized knob into the eye of the guy behind him before once again smacking the axe’s eye of the axe into the face of the final trooper.

He let the axe go for a second, catching it by the handle as the first trooper struggled to his feet. Harkon landed a blow powerful enough to sever the man’s leg just below the knee, pulling the axe back and slamming the poll of the axe into the face of the third man before driving the axe square into the helmet of the first man, much to Harkon’s surprise. There was a sickening crack as the man on the right stopped screaming. It was all one fluid movement, like the steps of a ballet—it seemed like Harkon was born with an axe in his hands. But really, he had just spent a lot of time in his youth wailing on snot-nosed rich kids with a hockey stick.

The staggering third man regained his composure in time to see Harkon leap on him with hands wrapped around the handle of his Fairbairn-Sykes. It was a decorative piece, a memento from his time with the red team before he left in the wake of the Coronado Crisis. It would still draw life’s blood. Harkon glared into the dying soldier’s eyes as he twisted the knife.

The second man stumbled forward, clutching his eye, trying to get to his feet. Harkon walked over to his service pistol and flicked open the cylinder, letting the spent polymer brass drop to the floor. Harkon loaded two SLAP rounds and drilled both of them into the PLA commando as the man regained his footing. He repeated the process and wordlessly reloaded the statement piece with a speed loader of .44 ball from his belt.

Figures breached the door from which the Chinese appeared. He fired two rounds of unsuppressed .44 Magnum. The pointman ducked back into the cover of the stairwell. The more noise he made, the more Percs he’d draw to him. It was better that way. Gunfire rang out from other places in the building—he could make out the sounds of Chinese rifles and machine guns set against pistols and PDWs. It was a concerto of different chattering and rattling tones, each with its own voice. He started to hear the noise of something else, something different, something familiar. It made his heart swell: smuzzled rifles and machine guns, American ones—and ones he knew well.

So they finally got their asses in gear, eh?

“Ben?” a voice called out from the stairwell. It was one that he knew all too well. “That you?”

“Laf,” Harkon replied without feeling. The better part of a troop from Marine Special Operations Reconnaissance Company 835 filed out from the stairwell, faces covered by PSQ-60 SPIDER-EYE NODs, decked out in full exo-rigs and with their antenna-strewn Night Hunter backpacks. An outsider would call them “Reapers,” but no one in the Operational Examination Center would be caught dead using that language. They were Rectors. SEAL Clubbers. Harkon’s right eye twitched. “Bunch fahkin’ cocksuckahs.” His old family. A kind of rolling thunder echoed, the distinctive report of someone doing a mad minute with a .416 bolt-gun, “Thaht explains where Val is.”

“Nice seein’ you too, cher,” Major Lafayette DuSaint said as he passed, patting Harkon on the shoulder. “Care to join?”

Harkon now wished that Laf had gotten himself killed, but only somewhat. “Do I look like I’m waiting for a hahnd-job or something?”

Agana Heights Village, Guam County, State of the Marianas

Captain Jackson Ramirez, United States Army Guard-Reserve

Commanding Officer, G Troop, 26th Marianas Cavalry (Light, Jungle)

0015 Local Time, APR 11, 2037

The Light Cavalry Combat Vehicle, affectionately known as “Razorback,” lept forward down the darkened suburban roads. Its hybrid electric power pack—set to silent running—made nothing but a low whine. Specialist Foley was behind the wheel with his PSQ-42 Neons lowered and the running lights blacked out. LICAV was based on the Geep, which itself was a product-improved derivative of the Infantry Squad Vehicle. Despite its paltry Duracal—Aluminum metal-matrix composite—armor package, it packed a tremendous punch: a lightweight 30mm revolver cannon, a pair of ATGMs, and an 8.6mm medium machine gun up top on the roof, with two more medium machine guns on arm mounts for the two scouts in the back.

“Push it! Push it!” The Captain repeated over the radio. Troop G had lost about half of their vehicles when the 294th Infantry Brigade’s motor pool got hit. Pooh Bear had dropped three DF-26s and about half a dozen YJ-18s on the place. He had only ever seen so much twisted metal once before, after the Battle of the Shatt al-Arab, when Joint Corps South crushed the IRGC’s Third Corps and the First Gulf Coast Army in the same afternoon. That was just days before the nukes dropped, he thought as he looked at the crimson metal band on his wrist. He scanned the horizon with the Razorback’s infrared gunsight, linked to his nods, searching for enemy Airborne Loitering Tactical Munitions. He didn’t have much armor to see through, but he could see through it. And the EW Razorback—three cars back—would drop the music the second someone tried to acquire them.

It was a miracle that the baker’s dozen Murder Geeps had avoided being acquired. They had even bypassed the Percs, but Pass Without a Trace wouldn’t last—not where they were going. A battle of fates roiled the heavens with light and fire—flames licked up to the clouds, smoke belched into the night, and gunfire rang out without ceasing like applause and a hundred damned church bells.

The convoy hit Guam Highway Route 7 without running into anyone. They hung a hard left, tires screeching. They then gunned it down Route 7 until they hung a hard right onto Sitt Street. They gunned it again. “Drop the hammer! All Victors ready up!” The Captain barked over the net. The 500 bhp adiabatic opposed-piston engine roared to life. He flipped off the safety for the vic’s “Super CROWS” remote weapon station.

There were shapes ahead of them. Dozens. Hundreds. “Brake! Brake! Brake!” Ramirez flinched. His left arm jutted across his driver’s chest on pure reflex. The engine went quiet—God bless smart idle—for a moment as the Captain made eye contact. Eye contact. With a PLA major in the process of drinking some soup. Liquid poured down the man’s face and combat jacket. This wasn’t a whole other company. This was an entire battalion. At least. The other lead vehicles of Troop G pulled up alongside—their crews just as gobsmacked. The moment of calm was long enough for the engine to tick over.

Then, Ramirez started blasting.

The Chi-Com field grade took a 30mm fused anti-drone round center mass. You could fit what was left of him into his MRE’s soup tin. The other gun trucks started firing, a torrent of steel and lead. Everything Ramirez looked at died; the CROWS was slaved to his NODs, a command link was after the Apache gunner sight—and it killed just as well.

“Enemy Front!” Ramirez shouted, “Foley, fucking punch it! Everyone light it up!”

Specialist Foley floored it and ran over three of the scrambling Chi-Coms. The scouts opened fire with their machine guns. It was chaos incarnate. People ran in every direction. More Razorbacks arrived, as some reversed, and others put the pedal to the metal in pursuit of their CO. The rockets and the buzzards screamed back with a wall of lead. One LICAV ate a rocket and exploded. Its stores of ammunition cooked off immediately, with enough force to send flames licking skyward like the devil’s tongue.

The Razorback flew forward toward the DOD High School’s football field. There were Chi-Coms everywhere. Ramirez didn’t care, and they drifted through tents and hooches. He let off a late-model Javelin, locked onto one of the fucking monstrous contraptions the Winnies had arrived in. The thing went up in a blue-green fireball, unleashing a sickening chemical odor and a pall of Super Cancer-looking smoke.

Their right door gunner, Corporal Allen, went silent. He slumped forward and then tumbled out of the vehicle. “Fuck! Joe!” the other gunner, Sergeant Dunn, shouted. Another LICAV disappeared in a flash of flame as they Tokyo Drifted through the encampment. The Chi-Com resistance was overwhelming; the sheer mass was unrelenting. A wall of tracers tore through two more vehicles.

“All Victors, proceed to Rally Point Burger Town. I say again, Disengage and push to Burger Town!” Ramirez ordered as he was pushed and pulled by inertia as Foley whipped the Razorback around like a hot hatchback. He took at least three rounds. His plate ate one, his helmet ate another, and another tore open his cheek.

The remaining vehicles withdrew from the school at full speed. He lost at least half of his force in about two minutes. He had no idea what had just happened, but he would take the rest of his company out and regroup with 1-294. They gunned it past the Governor’s Mansion. The PLA troops gave them queer looks as they flew past. Ramirez saw a five-star Red flag fluttering over the mansion and started shooting at anything resembling a Perc. Seven OD-green Geeps came screaming down the roads in a discotheque of muzzle flashes. The remaining EW truck set its Super CROWS to automatic and started popping the swarm of Perc buzzards that came chasing after them.

They drove straight through a raging fire between a company of Can Openers and 1st Battalion, 294th Marianas Infantry. Ramirez put his last 30-mike-mike round right through the spine of one of the powered armor troopers as they sped past. He recognized one of the American officers, Clark Dominguez—they had gone to high school together—who looked on in disbelief as the convoy punched right through the frontline.

They wheeled into Rally Point Burger Town—located in a new development behind the Mayor’s office. They drove past three M1230RA towed mounts, blazing into the night on automatic, cutting down the swarm of loitering munitions that had chased the troopers off the heights. “Whip the bitch next to those HEMTTs,” Ramirez ordered sternly, lazily pointing out a corral of trucks. Foley drifted the Razorback with one hand on the steering wheel. The little tactical vehicle shrieked and spun, sending plumes of tire smoke into the air. Foley had been thrown into the brig once for street racing—thank God he knew how to drive cars and not just crash them. They saddled alongside the HEMTTs after about one and a half 360s. Ramirez was unfazed. He made eye contact with the pimple-faced grunt squatting at the rear of the vehicles. They were loggie cretins—thank God. “You motherfuckers have any 30-mike-mike HE-DP?” They took a full three seconds before answering in the affirmative. “Good. Load her up.” He banged on the side of his LICAV.

He made eye contact with the crimson splatter that used to be inside Corporal Allen, now staining the rear seat and pooling down into the footwell. He growled something crude. He stepped out of the LICAV and removed his helmet. He had never sweat so much in his life, and he’d been nuked. He wondered how long he’d survived here without his heart medicine and more Prussian Blue, but realized he was getting ahead of himself.

“Oh,” he said to the loggies rustling up 30mm belts from their cornucopia of potential violence, “We’ll need red bellies for the MGs too.” One of the boys cracked open cans of belted 8.6x61mm piezoelectrothermal-chemical rounds. All their cases were OD green polymer, but everyone still called them by their original color codes. More gremlins appeared to feed bullets to their still-smoking guns as the troopers drank water and tended to their wounds. Ramirez made sure to send the worst off to the triage center down the street. The gun-battle in the shopping center and the state government complex raged around them, tracers bouncing up into the night sky along the missile duel that continued to thunder across the heavens. The XO of 1-294 came charging forward out of the swirling mass of support personnel sheltering under the protection of the battery of point defense cannons.

“Ramirez… Ramirez, you’re alive?” the Major grabbed the Captain by the shoulders. He was a tiny little pipsqueak of a man, but still tough as nuts. His face was bandaged, and he was clearly hopped up on something medicinal. “Ramirez… I need your troop as soon as it’s ready.”

“Where’s Mark?” Ramirez asked, inquiring about the battalion’s CO.

“Dead,” the XO answered. Without skipping a beat, he continued, “I need your troop as soon as it is reloaded. It’s critical.”

Ramirez sighed. There was no dodging it. “What do you have for us?”

“We have three Chi-Com HMGs holed up in a structure on the other side of the shopping center. They’re plastering Bravo in the Courthouse. I need them silenced and the building taken.” Ramirez had a feeling what was coming next. “Ramirez, take your men and secure the Taco Bell.”

Ramirez returned a blank stare, giving nothing. He took a deep breath. It would be a good place as any to die, well, except maybe Saipan. Ramirez hated his hometown. He turned to his men, who were all looking at him for guidance. They would cross the Pelennor Field for him. He did not know what he would say to the spouses, parents, and children of those who could not look at him now. He gave a nod.

What is a noble death if not dying in defense of the Doritos Locos Taco?

Yigo Village, Guam County, State of the Marianas

Staff Sergeant Eryk-Hayden Febbleweathers, United States Army

HHC, 100th Infantry Battalion, 442nd Infantry Brigade (Jungle), 25th Infantry Division

2234 Local Time, APR 10, 2037

The raid sirens were screeched into the night joined by the monotone repeated warning of “Incoming! Incoming!” Every few minutes, there would be the woosh of a missile launch, while it seemed like every few seconds, there was the howl of a jet screaming down one of Andersen’s two runways.

Febbleweathers looked on as two JASSDF B-1J and three USAF B-21B screamed down runway 6-L. The Japanese Lancers—derivatives of the B-1C “SLEP” program—went to full afterburner—cones of blue-hot fire jutting out from their A104-GE-2 variable cycle engines. They were orphaned from their squadron but lucky for it. Misawa and the rest of the JASSDF’s main installations were getting hammered. The Raiders trundled after their erstwhile cousins-in-law. The world’s oddest MITO lifted into the air as the twin 50-millimeter point defense cannons that sprinkled the perimeter let loose like distant, giant popcorn.

“Will you close the fuckin door!” The shrill voice of the battalion S-3 screamed. The side door of the shelter was dutifully sealed. The space was now only lit by dimmed red lights. The ventilation system hummed alongside the soft trilling of the shelter’s hardened fuel cell. HHC and Bravo Company hunkered in the HAS along with a dozen or so Aero wrench-draggers. One of the old-timers griped that this was just like Al-Assad—Febbleweathers wasn’t sure if he meant 2020 or 2034. Hay-Hay, as his friends still called him (he hated that name), was shifted forward toward the main doors of the shelter. Most people were lying on their bellies, ready for a direct hit or sitting criss-cross-apple-sauce like the substitute teacher had rolled out the TV cart.

A few minutes later, the concrete and Nanoc Steel structure shook as a DF-26 impact rocked the airbase. A bit of dust came free from the ceiling, raining down on the huddling mass of jungle-multicam. Then, another impact shook the bunker. Then, a third impact. The sky was falling on Guam tonight—this precipitation came in the form of both ballistic and cruise missiles. How lucky were they?

The noise that followed was like someone had dragged a rusty knife across the belly of some kind of sky god, a constant roll of tiny explosions and a shrill howl that made his bones vibrate. It came closer and closer until it was on top of them. Everyone took a deep breath. There was a popping of flares. The murmurs stopped.

It was a direct hit. They were dead.

The awful symphony of scrapping, screaming metal came as quite a shock. It was like a dog dying and a plane crashing all at once. The maintainers rose and readied to rush to a crashed-out FB-18H Wasp or F-35D Panther II.

“Crack the doors. We’re going out,” the senior Aero barked. There was a silent look traded between the soldiers. Most of them were not interested in getting killed by an opened door.

“Do it,” Febbleweathers’s CO growled.

The electrical motor attached to the towering tan-metal blast door whined, and the metal started moving as the repair team filed out. The battalion’s sergeant major loomed beside the opening as firelight illuminated his face. Febbleweathers was abreast of the SM, expecting to see a pilot burning to death in a fifty or hundred-million-dollar coffin.

Instead, he made eye contact with a PLA-SOF commando, checking his gear beside a char-blackened scramjet-whale-shark monstrosity. There were at least a dozen soldiers, all dressed in PLA-SOF’s awful digital four-tone tiger stripe and clutching tacticool QBZs and QJSs. Three were readying a handful of Fire Swallow loitering munition.

“The Fuck Is That?!” One of the grunts behind them shouted.

A soft breeze caressed his face as the battalion sergeant major flung himself forward, hands reaching forward like claws. He fell upon the nearest soldier like a fell beast and, without hesitation or remorse, plunged his thumbs into the man’s eye sockets.

“CHI-COMS!” The bearded Sanei noncom thundered as he rose from the maimed special forces soldier and lunged at the next one. He took a bullet to the shoulder but still managed to grab the next guy by the throat and slam him into the side of the massive transport thingamajig.

Three hundred—mostly unarmed—Americans charged out of the HAS. Some guys had gone to rustle up ammo in the interlude between the Okura Bombing, but there wasn’t much, and he didn’t know who had what. The incoming ballistic missiles had taken their attention away from small arms.

“ONE-PUKA-PUKA! GO FOR BROKE!” A platoon lieutenant screamed as he hurled himself at another SOF trooper. He collapsed mid-stride as the trooper dumped five rounds into him. A squad leader, a former lineman, slammed the killer with a flying tackle before the trooper could bring his rifle to bear. The SL proceeded to beat the Chi-Com to death with his high-cut helmet.

Shouts of “Percs!” and “Chi-Coms!” rolled like battle cries as an undulating mass of multicam crashed into the attackers like a tsunami. Febbleweathers snatched a red-dotted sidearm from the man whose eyes the SM had gouged out. He started popping shots into the Percs where he could. He watched a five-foot-nothing aero A1C slam the biggest wrench he had ever seen into the side of the face of a SOF trooper. The Chi-Com stumbled forward and fell to his knees. The Aero took another shot with her chosen weapon and caved the side of the trooper’s head in before Febbleweathers could shoot him.

The Percs were being torn to pieces—in some cases literally. The sergeant was still in shock. How is this happening? The fuck is happening? He looked on in confusion as a six-seven Chi-Com pawed like he was trying to scratch an itch at a fun-sized soldier holding onto his back. The twink bit into the Chi-Com’s neck, ripping out a solid hunk of flesh before spitting it onto the ground in a mouthful of blood.

“Jesus fuckin Christ!” Someone shouted. The towering members of Pooh Bear’s Baby Killers staggered forward a few steps, blood spurting from his severed carotid as his heart slowed. He collapsed forward, and the soldier flashed a blood-stained toothy smile to those around him.

“Man, what the fuck,” another soldier complained. “What the fuck is this.”

The battalion’s lieutenant colonel looked on in a daze, unsure as to how they had ended up here. The battalion missed their flight back to Schofield Barracks with the rest of the 442nd because TRANSCOM had forgotten to reschedule their return flight after the REFORT Exercises had gotten extended. He shook off the confusion and started to bark orders, “Police those weapons! One-Puka-Puka, I don’t think this will be the last of this,” he approached the wrecked landing doohicky. “The fuck…” He shook his head, “Basil, I sure hope you aren’t dead.”

Sergeant Major Basil Inouye rose from amongst three corpses, bleeding from his shoulder. His face was streaked with blood, cuts, and welts. “Not yet, sir,” he looked around at the mix of American and Chinese corpses. “We need ammo.”

“Teller, battalion freak,” the colonel bid his Sifu—CSFO2—as he looked across the dark. Fires started to light the night, and explosions flashed along the horizon and in the sky. The Comms-Systems-Fires Observer/Operator handed him the receiver: “All Saber elements, this is Saber Actual. Hostile—uh—” he looked over that scorched contraption, “air-landing elements are dropping on Alley-Oop. We have Percs within the wire. Stand by for further orders. Prepare to defend yourselves.”

The soldiers looked up and saw gleaming stars shrieking down from the night sky, lit by decelerating thrusters burning away into the night. One broke up as the propulsive landing thrusters kicked into even higher gear. Flares and charges lit the sky and fell like snow. Febbleweathers checked his tactically acquired sidearm. He had nine rounds and one in the chamber.

Gonna need more than that—but it’ll work for now.

Hagåtña Village, Guam County, State of the Marianas

Lieutenant Tia Alvarez, United States Navy

Acting Department Head, Mother Baby Unit, US Navy Medicine Readiness and Training Command Marianas

2215 Local Time, APR 10, 2037

“I cannot wait for Angela to get back from vacation, no cap,” Lieutenant Alvarez laughed, trying to put her mind at ease, “Put me back on Mercy. That hellhole is preferable to this—and I had to amputate some dude’s leg back in the day.”

“Tia, you could take it easy once in a while,” Ensign Reynolds chided, “I know entire departments that work less than you.” She glared at him. He gulped and gave a bashful nod before changing topics, “Another pot of coffee?”

“Dude, it’s 10 PM on a Friday. I need a drink.” After that comment, a young mother and swaddled baby who barely had a line of sight to the pair gave Alvarez a very disapproving look. She paid it no mind and just smiled and chatted with Reynolds before restarting her rounds. She did take him up on the fresh coffee.

Then her phone started blowing up. An MR Civil Defense Agency automated alert was pinned to the top. “Oh fuck.” She mumbled as she scrolled. The notifications came thick and fast, like autumn rain. Everyone started looking at their phones. One of the new mothers began crying. “The Reagan. Holy shit. It’s happening.” She could not believe it. Not even after seeing bits of an endless stream of videos from mainland China showing missiles lifting off into the night. She traded a forlorn, distant glace with Reynolds.

Two women went into labor—both several hours early.

The unit’s landline started ringing as people started moving. Their muscle memory over-whelmed the fear and the shock. They were now all on a very short, extremely ruthless timer. A lifetime’s worth of security briefings and contingency planning poured from the banks of her memory in an instant.

One of the staff nurses answered, “Ma’am, it’s for you.”

“This is Alvarez.” She held the phone to the side of her face, barely holding on—in more ways than one. She could feel the color leave her face.

“Where is Lieutenant Commander Memphis?” The voice of the Director of Nursing Services was calm yet laced with raw shock and exasperation. She was rattled. That shook Alvarez because DNS was a certified cool customer.

“She’s still on leave, ma’am.”

“Christ, well, Tia… Osaka has transmitted the Condition One alert. Skipper… Skipper has initiated Contingency Order 42.” Those phrases sent a shiver down her spine. It was real. There was a war on. “JRM has given the go word. Prep your patients for evac to Nimitz Hill CDEC, and get your people ready for triage.”

“Ma’am, I have two who just entered—”

“Move ‘em,” The voice cut her off, words stark and stern and annunciated with forceful precision. “They can push out those pinkies when they’ve got sixty feet of rock and flashcrete over their heads.”

“Yes, ma’am,” Alvarez replied. No point in arguing; DNS was correct. USNH was very likely on the target list; she excised that thought from her mind. “We’ll get it done.”

“Very well,” DNS said, “Good luck, Lieutenant, and Godspeed.”

“To you as well, ma’am.” Alvarez hung up and turned, “PEOPLE! WE ARE NOW AT CONDITION ONE. CONT-ORD 42 IS IN EFFECT. WE’VE ALL GOT A JOB TO DO. LET’S GET GOING!”

The entire building shook as several large explosions rocked the island, heralding the beginning of a waking nightmare.

The next twenty minutes were a blur. No one said much. Everyone had a glassy look in their eyes but moved about their duties without fuss or complaint. Any minute, the next wave of missiles would start to fall.

And they did.

Looking out the window, she saw bolts of light sprint down from the night. There was a tremendous fireball and pall of smoke—a brief, faint sunrise—the arrival of hell on earth. There was a brief rise in chatter, a verbalized disbelief after a collective flinch. The shockwave took a few seconds to reach the hospital, and the windows rattled as it passed. The patients were shaken—terrified. Alvarez passed windows and saw a missile explode as it screamed down from the heavens and watched more interceptor missiles rise over the horizon from the defensive batteries at Blaz, Hanlon, and Andersen.

The steel rain did not stop. The ambulances started arriving soon after.

“But Harrison, he’s—” one of the new mothers protested. “He’s at Hanlon, he’s—I need to know he’s okay.”

“Maddyn…” Alvarez got down on bended knee beside the wheelchair, “Harry is a smart, tough guy. He’s good at his job, and he knows that Lilbet here is waiting for him. You have to focus on her and you right now. That’s all you can control; don’t focus on what we can’t.” She smiled and patted Maddy on her shoulder. “Reggie here is gonna bring you down to the bus to the Civil Defense complex, and you’ll be safer there.”

An Army MP platoon, a FLTSEC det, some Transportation Company guys, and civvie cops were crowding the entrance—helping patients into buses and trucks. Alvarez looked on in disbelief as a line of olive-drab trucks screamed down Marine Corps Drive. It was an endless grim parade of High Mobility Air Defense Systems variants—guns, missiles, lasers—and all the support they’d need.

A NES launcher, a gun truck, and a pair of ammo carriers rolled up to the far side of the parking lot as Alvarez helped some of her patients onto a bus.

“What the fuck are they doing here?” Alvarez murmured.

“They’re here to cover the Hospital and the State Government Campus, ma’am,” one MP answered.

“Christ.” The wails of sirens came down the road, beams of red lights dancing over darkened buildings.

“Yeah…” The MP sighed. “Yeah.” The resignation in his voice was plain and horrifying.

The buses started rolling, the reassuring woosh of their brakes and then their electric motors' soft hum filled the night as another ballistic missile impacted near the horizon. The shockwave passed over them. Alvarez just looked at the column of fading red-orange flame with a blank face. Fewer people flinched this time.

Alvarez returned to their side of the second floor. She felt like a ghost in Pripyat; there was no one around. Most of the staff were helping clear out the first floor or helping to receive the first casualties of this war. They converted a place where families began into a place where god knows how many would die.

She looked out the window as she helped clear one of the rooms. There was a flash of light, and a missile screamed from the NES launcher. A MIM-162D Super SeaSparrow Missile left a plume of grey-white smoke in its wake as it tore into heaven. A moment later, another missile tore loose, and then another, all at a depressed trajectory.

Oh fuck.

“GET DOWN!” Her voice filled the floor and shook the window pane, “INCOMING!”

The gun truck woke up and started blastin’. Something detonated and fell apart just over the coast. The fuzzy shapes of a mixed pattern of CJ-30 subsonic and YJ-27 supersonic cruise missiles tore overhead the SeaSparrows got two. One slammed into the NES Launcher and detonated. The launch vehicle instantly turned into a burning hulk as the windows in the hospital shattered. The gun truck got one more, sending debris raining from the sky.

“LET’S MOVE PEOPLE! AWAY FROM THE FUCKING WINDOWS!”

She headed out of the room and started moving her people to their stations. As she ran through the halls, she saw the semi-automated gun mount twitch and elevate to its maximum extent. It went full send—a river of ultramarine tracers racing up into the sky. She saw a bolt of flame fall from the night, lighting the clouds as weaving embers danced and fell. The IRBM deployed loitering munitions descended as the main assembly crashed into the DOD High School. The HIMADS twitched and spat death as fast as it could. She heard the explosions. Each shook the hospital a little until there was a louder one—the gun truck fell silent.

There was a series of sequential tremors. She passed another row of windows as they finished readying the MBU. Explosions lined the horizon, and she ducked for cover, but they were hits in the wrong places around Hagåtña. The fuck are they aiming at? The state government?

The hospital lost power. After a second of darkness, the emergency generators flipped on. More ambulances and civilian cars rushed toward the hospital, the red light of sirens mixing with firelight.

The first patients started to appear. They got those that could still walk: a fireman with head trauma and blood-soaked bandages around his hand; a school teacher with a shattered arm, limping, supporting his husband with burns and smoke inhalation; someone’s abuelita deep in shock, with frag sticking out of her shoulder; soldiers that barely look like eighteen.

She sprinted past the windows again with a box of Med-Gel in one hand and a box full of gauze in the other. The sight of a flaming shipping container giving a haircut to the trees surrounding the cliff edge knocked off her feet. The night was not lit by long arcs of flares drifting down from the heavens alongside a stream of flamming alligator-headed creations. A stream that didn’t seem to stop. One decelerated too quickly and fell into the cliffside, sending a wall of flaming debris into the air like it hit a ramp. The doohickies came to a scrapping halt with retrorockets firing. The display had her jaw on the floor.

The side of one of the missiles—whatever it was—cracked open like a Spirit dropship. Men tumbled out of it with all the grace of a toddler tripping on their own feet. They staggered around for a minute, getting their bearings. They looked like they had just gotten out of a tumble dryer.

They weren’t Americans.

The MPs near the entrance started shouting. Then there was shooting. Alvarez wasn’t sure who started it. More pods came to a halt in the parking lot and surrounding area, spitting flares and sparks in every direction. One tore through parked cars like a shark through water. The LT watched a Civic be sent into the air and fall back on its roof.

The skipper came thundering down from Admin, a well-worn-looking M9 tucked into his waistband. “Those fuckers are BKs!” Hell unfolded around them as the assault force unloaded hundreds of rounds into the hospital building.

“What!”

“Fucking baby killers—goddamn Chi-Com SOF. They’re in the fucking kit, and—oh fuck…” He pointed out the window at shapes clambering out of an upturned drop-pod. Metal men. “Can Openers,” he murmured. The Chinese quickly forced the MPs inside of the hospital. “This is a cluster.” The PLA troops groggily stumbled about the lot. Tia and the Skipper watched a trooper in a set of GY-3 “Guan Yu” powered armor vomit dark liquid onto the asphalt. The man, decked out in AFV-grade composite-plate armored full-body exo-rig and carrying a QLZ-171 HMG like a rifle, staggered forward and started shouting. Most of the force turned toward the high school, but two score figures lurched toward the hospital complex, unleashing a whirlwind of lead.

“These bastards aren’t stopping.”

“Tia, I was with Bethesda off Zanzibar during the ‘Punitive Expedition,’ these guys make Prigozhniks look like Mother Theresa,” Skipper answered. He approached one of the landlines and pressed the intercom, “All personnel Cont-Order 42 Delta. Four-Two-Delta.” He took a deep breath and nodded to Alvarez to leave. She had to get our people out. He leaned against the wall and pressed his head to the off-white wall. He pressed a different button: “To the PLA Forces outside. This is Captain Aron Marcus, commanding officer of United States Naval Hospital Guam. I remind you of your obligations under the Law of Armed Conflict and International Humanitarian Law.” His words were drowned out by the gunfire.

He headed downstairs quick as a flash. Alvarez gathered her team and the wounded. There were whispers and whimpers as they started to move people to the evac tunnel. To think they had to use it. It was there to permit the movement of sick and wounded between the CDEC and the hospital, and there was now a motley stream of wounded and stained scrubs headed down the stairwell to the tunnels. The rat lines to the Nimitz Hill Civil Defense Emergency Complex had been built with the rest of the island’s thirty billion dollar civil and active defenses in the wake of First Sino. The first armed attacks against American Soil since 9/11 had opened the purse strings and paved the way for statehood.

There were six dead MPs in the lobby. One dead man’s leg was keeping the main door open. The PLA loomed outside, spitting lead and… wobbling. Are they drunk? One projectile vomited blood through a broken window on the floor. The Americans could only respond with eyes glazed over with bewilderment as they ducked for cover as the gunfire ebbed and flowed. The CO, XO, and DHS were crouched behind some cover with a wounded MP captain. Skipper waved her over.

“XO, Nadine—you’ll go with the evacuees.”

“Sir—” the XO started to protest.

“Captain ought to go down with his ship. I’ll try to stall them.” He looked over at Alvarez. “Lieutenant, you were an HMC before you went Mustang. Saw action in Fourth Gulf, right?” Tia nodded. “Rear loading bay—head there, and then you’ll have to hold them off the tunnels.” She nodded again. He was asking her to die with him. She was okay with that. “And Nadine, Mark… if you see them, tell Shae and the kids I’m sorry.”

Alvarez made a beeline for the loading bay. A train of hospital staff followed her. “Like hell, we’re gonna leave with everyone else,” one of the orderlies hissed. They passed the cart with refills of Isopropyl alcohol. Alvarez and two HM3s grabbed as many as they could carry and kept sprinting.

At the doors to the loading bay, there were half a dozen MPs with rifles at the ready, backed by a gun team with an M256 Minimi II squad automatic weapon splayed out on the floor. For a moment, she was worried they were going to shoot, but they waved the stampede of medical staff through. They passed the ramp down to the basement, where a line of stretchers and wheelchairs were heading down into the dark. There was also an LVSR, its bed slick with blood and covered in crates.

Three MPs were feverishly loading ammo into magazines.

“Which fuckin’ idiots brought a truck full of weapons to a hospital?” Alvarez snapped as she went to one of the crates and picked up an M26 Personal Defense Weapon System. The dinky pistol caliber carbine felt small in her hands. With a button press, the brace extended.

“They were hauling wounded from the JRM—were about leave when the fucking Percs dropped,” one of the MPs surmised.

“Well, shit,” Alvarez mumbled.

The MP platoon sergeant nodded, “Yeah.”

“Grab what you can. If they try to force their way into the hospital, we hold them until everyone evacuates…” She turned to MP PSG, “That thing have any explosives?” He shook his head. “Shitballs. Then…” She looked at the six-liter bottles of isopropyl alcohol and tore off a piece of her scrub’s sleeve, “…we go for arson.”

The machine gun fire continued. A bullhorn whined and shrieked with feedback. A voice in flawless RP spoke, “To the staff and patients of the so-called United States Naval Hospital Guam, you have committed Acts Harmful to the Enemy under Rule 28 of International Humanitarian Law. Your protection is forfeit. For your safety and the safety of your patients, you must surrender all military personnel immediately along with any known ethnic subversives including—” he started to list various prominent Guamanians—the Governor, members of Congress—the list got more baroque. He rattled off Twitter and NewTok handles.

What isn’t that the name of the Instagram dog lady?

She looked at one of the corpsmen, “Hey, Mikaela—you smoke like a chimney. Gimme your lighter.” The HM3 seemed offended, “Chica, give it.” It was one of those Snoop Dogg/Martha Stewart crossover weed lighters. It would work. Alvarez and a twenty-two hospital staff armed with plastic jugs and PCCs rushed back into the main building as an explosion rocked the hospital and the gunfire drew even closer. The primary lighting died, leaving only handfuls of emergency yellow lights flashing in the dark.

There were dead on the floor. Shots rang out in the dark. Screaming filled the halls. They were shapes in the shadows as they reached the primary stairwell access to the CDEC tunnel. Alvarez knocked, “This door secure?”

“Yes,” a voice meekly answered.

“Good, go secure the CDEC door and haul ass. Rest of the evac’ll go through the back,” Alvarez continued. “Don’t wait on us. Well, give you as much of a headstart as we can. Good luck.”

“Good luck, ma’am.”

Alvarez looked at the floor. Ensign Reynolds and two civies lay in a dark, almost black, pool of blood. There was movement. She and three others tucked into cover behind a reception desk. The whine of servos and thump of heavy footfall drew closer. There was more movement down the hall and the shriek of a civilian. The towering Can Opener turned to face her as Alvarez lit the jug of iso.

“HEY! SHITASS!”

With the world’s least impressive sidearm pitch, she hurled six liters of 95% isopropyl alcohol at a Perc covered in one-and-a-half-inch thick composite armor plates. The soldier dressed like a JSFcore knight watched the massive Molotov cocktail whirling at him. He raised an arm to shield himself. The plastic container cracked and broke open on his wrist plate, scattering liquid everywhere like a shitty water balloon. The still-burning wick ignited the mass of vapor in the air, and a wall of red-orange flame swallowed the soldier. He started screaming in Mandarin, his voice distorted by his speakers and growing more warped as the fire consumed him. A warbling voice of pain filled the hallway as firelight twitched and danced over the dead.

Her fire teams kept moving as the battle inside the hospital turned even more violent. They directed scattered groups of unarmed medical personnel and patients toward escape. They stumbled across the occasional dead Chi-Com and corpse after corpse of sailors and civies. Blood pooled on sterile tiles and was streaked on the walls. They had no means of communication—but they knew this place much better than Percs.

Two teams ambushed a Perc section outside of OR Two. The crossfire of 7.6x31mmP and lit IV bags filled with Purell was enough to do the job. They didn’t kill them all, but that wasn’t the objective. They just needed to keep the Percs spinning in circles until the Army could arrive—if the Army could arrive. They grabbed ammo and guns as they went. Alvarez grabbed as many Chi-Com grenades as she could find.

Alvarez grabbed the arm of the MP leading a group of insurgents who had taken arms on their own, “You seen the skipper?”

“He took a squad of MPs to the ER to get some trapped folks,” the MP answered.

“Okay, we’re gonna link up with him. You ought to pull back to the loading bay; they’ll need your help holding Winnie off the evac.” The MP was more kid than man. He was half terrified and half furious. “That’s an order, Specialist.” They slinked off into the shadow as machine guns rattled and rifles popped.

They made contact with a fire team of PLA-SOF in a hallway. All it took was a pair of grenades and high-tailing in the opposite direction of where they planned on going for them to punch through the cordon. They were running circles around the PLA assault force, literally. They ran into a group of operators vomiting black-red blood and bright yellow bile onto the floor. The Chi-Coms died before they even realized what was happening.

But she started to lose people. Michaels took a round to the head, losing most of his skull in the process. Andrews lost most of her arm to an FPV buzzard hurled down the hallway after them. She and two others retreated to the exfil. Another team got caught and killed outside the west bathrooms.

Her scrubs were ripped to shreds; she was covered with mixed webbing picked from dead PLA-SOF and MPs. Her feet hurt. There was blood all over her. There was blood under her fingernails. She could barely hear out of her left ear despite nearly every weapon in the hospital mounting a suppressor.

At another checkpoint they were jumped by a second fireteam of Percs. Two orderlies were gone in a moment. A grenade killed the checkpoint’s gun team before they could bring their QJY to bear. One of the other Percs lept at her, hurling her into the wall. She put three rounds into his stomach and one more into his chest, but he didn’t stop coming, trying to crush her windpipe before his lifeblood escaped. There was hate in his unequally dilated eyes. One of her HM2s was using a drip stand to beat another Perc to death; she reached toward him as her other hand ran down the chest rig of her would-be killer. She felt the pommel of a knife. He realized it, too. She drew the black steel dagger. He tried to move his arm but too quickly—his exo-rig misfired and snapped his left arm in completely the wrong direction, bone sticking out like a spike. She plunged the fighting knife through the side of his neck and ripped it forward, showering herself in blood. She drew the dead trooper’s handgun and dumped the entire magazine into the last remaining enemy.

She was now one of three.

They made it to the ER ward. Most of the ceiling was on the floor, and the walls had been hammered with bullets. Drywall and insulation were everywhere—as were the corpses. The Americans were stacked in a pile six high and five deep. There was brass and blood everywhere, streaks of red etched like an abstract mural on the floor; the surviving Percs were drinking water and catching their breath around a hasty command post—circled around their radioman. Alvarez saw a corpse in khakis with a silver eagle on its lapel—a face too mangled to make out. Her heart sank.

One of the PLA-SOF figures sat with a straight back, hands resting across his thighs, elbows angled outward like chicken wings. He looked important. Two lines, two stars. Dead motherfucker. He rose from his seat and shouted, revealing the badge of a political instructor. A typhoon of lead followed as the troopers unleashed down at Alvarez and her two last allies. Richardson was torn apart in the fusillade. The sound of actuators and boots thundered in her ears.

Alvarez removed the grenade belt from across her torso, pulled a pin, and hurled the bandolier into the ward as she darted to the opposite side of the arched entryway. She made eye contact with a very confused PLA noncom, who had caught the belt in one hand. Alvarez grabbed Mikaela as she went and turned a corner, pulling the HM3 along with her. The explosion filled the hallway with smoke and debris. The two surviving Americans, flat on the ground, turned around and started firing at the mix of heavily armored and normal-looking PLA-SOF. Scrambling for cover, the pair hurled isopropyl Molotovs, catching more Percs on fire.

They traded fire as more of the enemies rushed to the defense of their CP. One of them even fired a rocket launcher, which destroyed a portion of the waiting room for outpatient ortho. Though by the enraged shouting in Mandarin that Alvarez could barely make out, that was not exactly standard operating procedure. The Percs started hurling concussion grenades as one of the soldiers grabbed a fire extinguisher, only to get clipped by Mikaela’s QBZ. Alvarez took two rounds. The HM3 was also bleeding from bullets or fragmentation. Flashbangs finally incapacitated them as the Perc SOF swarmed them. Alvarez rolled on the floor, her vision almost gone—but enough to see the Percs put three rounds into Mikaela. Someone stopped another soldier from doing the same to her.

They dragged her back to the ER ward. They didn’t even bother to bind her hands as they packed the wounds to her left arm and shoulder. There was blood running down her face.

“You look quite frightening, Lieutenant,” the voice from the loudspeaker chided, “So, I will ask you nicely once—where is the bunker?”

Alvarez glared back at him, “What bunker?” She had no idea what he was talking about, but she did spot a flashbang hanging on his plate carrier. She rolled her head around. There a half a dozen men around her. One had three directional mines and about a half dozen frags all on his rig. He was a big motherfucker, and his lips were stained dark red—and was pale as a sheet.

“The command bunker, of course,” the political instructor laughed like he was looking through an obvious lie, “The one located underneath this facility.” One of the soldiers had a mass of red splotches all across his face—a mix of frostbite and second-degree burn.

“The what?” She exhaled, “Puto, what are you talking about?”

He extended his hand toward a table beside her seat. There was a beaker filled with scalpels and a blue liquid next to a container of Barbicide. “What is that line?” he laughed again. “We have ways of making you talk?”

“There isn’t a bunker here.”

“YOU LIE! BITCH!” He howled as he jumped to his feet. “We know the command and control complex for your laser weapons is located beneath this facility.” He sat back down after pacing for a moment, allowing his pretense of civility and composure to return. “Tell us, and this need not get violent.” His eyes were bloodshot and red at the edges.

Is this fucker cross-faded?

Alvarez looked toward the corpses stacked like cordwood. “Yeah, that…” She scoffed with disdain. Winnie in Chief didn’t like that. Is he actually on something? She looked at the other guys, and they looked all kinds of fucked up. “There is no bunker,” she insisted with a groan; everything hurt, and the adrenaline was starting to ebb.

The officer’s face turned beet red, “ARE YOU TELLING ME THAT THE WEAPON YOUR GOVERNMENT USED TO KILL YOUR MAJORIE TAYLOR GREEN IS NOT HERE?” The last time Alvarez checked, that bitch was still alive. He shouted at her in Mandarin for a straight minute, “CHINA IS NOT THE SHEEP!” and finally ended his tirade.

“Dude, what the fuck are you talking about?” She gasped.

He looked more confused than she did. He looked around as if he didn’t know what had happened but shook it off with the cool confidence of a sixteen-year-old who just tripped in front of his entire class, “We have evidence.” He chuckled, “We know it is here.” He produced printouts of a transcript of…

“A podcast?” It was called The Truth of the Situation. Alvarez recognized the name from somewhere. Oh. That shit. It was a Truth Social production with Bridge Colby, some Heritage ghoul, a Maoist White Nationalist Catgirl whose name she could thankfully not recall, and a natural language model with a Roger Stone Vocaloid.

He looked offended and returned the papers to their folder, “So it is the hard way.” He might’ve been brainpoisoned, but he had a mean left cross. He broke her nose, but he put a little too much force into the punch and was just close enough for something stupid.

She spat a geyser of blood into his face and grabbed him by the throat with one hand. “Hijo de puta!” Two of his soldiers pulled her off the officer almost immediately. An explosive string of curses flowed from her lips as she struggled.

“Fucking Yankee whore,” the lieutenant colonel spat right back into her eye.

She appreciated the moment as the look of smug superiority across his face melted as she waggled a black metal pin between her fingers. She wanted him to know it. She closed her eyes as he looked down at his vest. The flashbang went off, and she was just about deaf enough for the blast to only moderately completely-rock-her-shit. She could not see, but she still staggered to her feet. She cut her right hand as she wrenched the scalpels from the beaker. At the same time, with her left hand, she felt up the big guy till she found a grenade and yanked a pin. It came free with a click. His truckasaurus hand grabbed her wrist. She stabbed over her head at roughly where the dude’s head ought to be, leaving about five blades in whatever she hit. The massive hand recoiled as muffled sounds of screaming filled her shattered ears. As a blurry, battered view of the world returned, she saw the Chi-Com half-bird halfway to the floor, struggling to regain his footing. They were all dead, but she would make it count.

The last thing the Zhong Xiao saw was the blurred outline of a fistful of scalpels plunging into his right eye. A dozen hands coated in cold metal were all over her, trying to tear her away. There was shouting in Mandarin like it was from three rooms away. She twisted the bundle as the dead man’s head twitched, warm blood coating her clenched hand.

I hope it bought enough time.

The explosives went off.

The staff of the Memorial Continental Hall have spent the last twelve hours on a collective bender that will change history.

To keep their party going, some of the more adventurous staff procure industrial alcohol laced with various toxic additives as money runs thin and purloined drink runs dry. Eventually, the time comes for them to return to work. They attend to their duties with the grace and dexterity one could expect from those who are extremely drunk—or in the process of dying.

The decorations sag or remain unfinished. The food is badly prepared, with substitute ingredients bought with what little cash is left—everything else having been used to sustain the night’s bucolic buckaroo. Top-shelf alcohol is replaced with libations of questionable nature. Several statues and paintings have disappeared. Every flag in the building is gone, all lost at a game of basement craps.

One item in particular—a bouillabaisse—will be thrust into history. Rotten fish in the dish will officially be the source of the coming cataclysm, though historians will later agree that contaminated alcohol—floor polish in the punch—was the real trigger.

This soiree is not any shin-dig. It is the New Year’s Gala for the Conference on Arms Limitation—known to history as the First Washington Naval Conference.

Bad Fish Soup.

United States Secretary of State Charles Evans Hughes would later recount the events that followed:

I watched as Mr. Tomosaburō gave me the strangest look. He turned red and then green. The color of his face turned positively emerald as he expelled the contents of his stomach into my face. He was very apologetic afterwards, as was I.

Because, of course, my body replied in kind.

It was such a shame, the conversation was quite interesting. I could never muster the courage to broache that topic again after I attempted it once in the fall, at the Second Conference. I recognized the shade on his face and thought it best not to dreg up memories for fear of another geyser. God, the sting in my eyes.

In moments, the Gala turns from a genteel affair into the Swamp of Nurgle. Vomit coats the floor as diplomats and ministers slip and slide. No less than three members of the building's staff will be found dead. The Deputy Head of the French Delegation will crack his head open and nearly die. General Pershing will require hospitalization, along with approximately a third of all delegates and more than half of the staff.

Fingers are immediately pointed in every direction. Agents from every corner of the Federal Government—and the various nations attending—descend on the Memorial Continental Hall. However, no foul play can be ascertained. The primary vectors of malediction were the soup and the punch. The young man who had poured the floor polish into the punch was certain that it was vodka, but he was suffering from acute methanol poisoning and had mistaken the paint can of bootleg vodka for the paint can filled with floor polish. The man who had purchased the fish for the bouillabaisse dies during the day, but the fishmonger who sold him week-old striped bass will attest that he complained about “the others” using too much of the money on booze and that he was clearly intoxicated.

No purpose-made poison is identified, which relaxes tensions considerably. Out of embarrassment and wish to avoid scuppering the arms control talks, the details of the day are left blurry and downplayed. It was merely severe food poisoning caused by spoiled fish bought by a man who drank himself to death.

With most of the senior diplomatic staff of the nine powers incapacitated, the First Washington Naval Conference is closed with negotiations near completion, but still ongoing, for the Five and Nine Power Treaties.

The Nine Powers would reassemble on August 11th, 1922, at the hastily refitted Old Post Office Building.

The Republic Strikes Back

Work on the Nine Power Treaty is rapidly completed and the document is signed just eight days after the Second Washington Naval Conference convenes, most of the work completed in the interregnum.

However, unlike the Nine Power Treaty, there are several simmering crises with the Five Power Treaty—what would generally be known as the Washington Naval Treaty. The terms of the treaty were rather close to completion, and the stances of the powers have now been laid plain on the table.

Critically, work does not completely stop on the Washington Cherry Trees—ships laid down to provide leverage in negotiations or caught in flux—in the interregnum.

The Japanese battleships Nagato and Mutsu have been working up; their successors, Tosa and Kaga, continue a tepid outfitting process. The Naval General Staff ready the conversion plans for the battlecruisers Amagi and Akagi, and work continues slowly on the latter two Amagi-class, Atago and Ashitaka. The follow-on Kii-class fast battleships are laid down, and work begins, also tepidly. The Battle of the Katōs—between dovish civilian naval minister Katō Tomosaburō and hawkish admiral Katō Kanji—continues to rage, especially after word of the 5/5/3 ratio is leaked.

Similarly, the United States continues outfitting its three uncompleted Colorado-class battleships (Colorado, West Virginia, and Washington—Maryland having commissioned in July of 1921) but does not continue work on the South Dakota-class battleships and Lexington-class battlecruisers, except to prepare Lexington and Saratoga for their fated conversions.

The United Kingdom continues superficial work on the G3-class battlecruisers, laying the keel of four ships (Trafalgar, Agincourt, St. Vincent, Quiberon) and formally ordering four N3-class battleships, but they are not laid down.

The Italians delay their plans to convert the battleship Francesco Carricolo to a carrier pending the new treaty; The French scrap their Normandie-class battleships (save for Béarn, which is saved pending conversion).

Unexpectedly, the United States—who had been the instigator of the conference—goes on one last offensive. First off, they demand that they be able to complete their Colorado-class battleships, then they propose increasing the displacement limit for two carrier conversions up to 40,000 tons, and then they bring up a sore spot left unspoken by the draft treaty at the First Conference: HMS Hood.

Hood displacing 41,200 standard tons is in flagrant violation of the treaty’s limit of 35,000 tons for capital ships. The US demand is simple: if the British get a ship in excess of the treaty limits—they should get one too. They propose a category of “capital vessels for the purpose of trade protection exempt from certain qualitative limitations.” Namely, vessels of this class would be limited to 45,000 tons standard.

The US proposes that the United States and the United Kingdom each be permitted a single ‘Exempter’ vessel. The British refuse. The Americans then argue that if they cannot be compensated for Hood, the battlecruiser should instead be scrapped.

The Japanese delegation is initially horrified by this development, but they then spy that this fight has presented a golden opportunity. They approach the Americans with a bargain: They offer their support for the Exempter classification in exchange for a vessel of their own. The Americans, despite confusion at the offer and concern about underhanded maneuvering, accept.

The British still refuse.

The United States delegation makes a controversial ‘compromise’ offer. Japan would accept the treaty’s ratio of 5/5/3 without reservation, and in exchange, the Big Three—the United States, the United Kingdom, and the Empire of Japan—would be permitted two Exempter ships. The Americans would complete the Colorado class, the Japanese would retain the Nagato class, and the British would be able to construct four 35,000-ton battleships. The nations’ carrier special conversions would be limited to 40,000 tons (at the insistence of the United States).

The United States would be able to match Hood and salvage some elements of their 1917 shipbuilding program; the United Kingdom would get a new-build Exempter ship and continue to claim that they had the most powerful ship in the world; and the Empire of Japan would be able to claim parity (in Exempter ships). The increase in total displacement would also permit the Kingdom of Italy to complete Francesco Carricolo as a battleship, in so far as the country had the cash and the willingness to scrap its remaining pre-dreadnought battleships.

No one is happy, but everyone can live with it.

That is, until a coded dispatch from Tokyo arrives at their Embassy in Washington, one that the Cipher Bureau—the Black Chamber—intercepts, decrypts, and translates.

IF NOT POSSIBLE TO COMPLETE TOSA AND KAGA IN A FUNCTIONAL CAPACITY IN ADDITION TO COMPLETION OF EXEMPT BATTLE-CRUISERS HIS MAJESTY HAS INSTRUCTED HIS GOVERNMENT TO WITHDRAW FROM FURTHER NEGOTIATIONS IMMEDIATELY.

The Japanese broach the topic of the completion of Tosa and Kaga—ships that do not qualify as “capital vessels for the purpose of trade protection.” The sudden change of their government’s disposition comes as a shock to their delegates, especially the delegation head, but pressure by militarists in Tokyo—and an offhand comment by legendary Fleet Admiral and genro Tōgō Heihachirōto—allowed a few to seize the opportunity to attempt a change of policy. Tokyo would walk back these instructions—but not only after the chips had fallen.

Washington panics upon intercept of the missive. Their fragile compromise seems poised to collapse. Thus, the Americans hastily convene with the British in one of the most awkward sidebar discussions in diplomatic history. It is a disaster; the British even imply that they would no longer accept an Exempter-less draft and would indeed need a third exempt ship to permit it to at least be a class of two ships instead of a second one-off. The Americans have been hoisted on their own petard—and would now have to live with it.

The final compromise is a horrific kludge that bends the treaty to its very limit. The Americans permit the completion of Tosa and Kaga but as treaty-compliant vessels. The new ships must sacrifice the guns, armor, and machinery to reduce displacement from ~40,000 tons normal to 35,000 tons standard; this proves acceptable to the British and the Japanese delegations. The revision to permit the British and Americans to have three Exempter ships each proves much more controversial, but with revised, dovish instructions from Tokyo, the Japanese sign the deal. In the end, the Japanese end up with a slightly more favorable ratio of capital ships (11:18 instead of 9:15) while still retaining a treaty system to avoid future expenses (what the government was mostly interested in).

The final terms allow for fifteen capital ships of 35,000 tons and three capital ships of 45,000 tons for a total capital tonnage of 660,000 for the United States and the United Kingdom, with 150,000 tons for carriers. Correspondingly, the Japanese would be permitted nine capital ships of 35,000 tons and two Exempters for a total of 405,000 tons and 90,000 tons for carriers. While the French and Italians would be limited to 210,000 for capital warships (six vessels) and 60,000 tons for carriers.

In the end, the United States Navy got what it wanted, and a curled monkey’s paw it had not. However, they do not take this disaster is not taken lying down. The United States Navy will once more embrace one of its time-honored traditions to rectify things—bull-shiting money out of Congress and some creative definitions of what a “refit” is.

Nightmare Keel Rotation

The Japanese are both jubilant and exasperated. While they had gained and then lost parity in Extemper ships and had not reached their minimum desired ratio of 7:10, they have managed to narrow the gap and would enjoy a 7/7/6 ratio in post-Jutland capital ships for the time being. Luck has it that they would have more 16-inch gun-armed ships than the Royal Navy.

With the government not willing to push their luck with the new treaty system, the IJN take Kaga and Tosa back in a reconstruction down to 35,000 tons. This is achieved by removing their fifth turret and barbette, some machinery, and excluding the ship’s fuel and boiler feed, rendering the pair as widly inefficient repeat Nagatos. However, the Japanese government makes sure to carefully store all material removed from the ships… for future purposes.

Ashitaka and Atago are completed to the original Amagi-class specifications without significant alterations, despite Japan having the opportunity to add thousands of tons to reach the 45,000-ton limit for exempt ships. The Japanese government, mindful of allegations of cheating and the cost of reworking partially completed ships, refuses to rework the design—to the annoyance of many in the Imperial Naval General Staff.

Work continues on converting Amagi and Akagi into carriers. The decision to convert Amagi/Akagi instead of Atago/Ashitaka is controversial. Many argue that it would be better to convert the barely started ships instead of reworking a mostly completed design. However, the Government intervenes—fearful that they would be accused of cheating and mindful of the resources already spent on the conversion process.

Then, of course, disaster strikes. Literally.

The Great Kanto Earthquake of 1923 devastates Tokyo and the surrounding province, including the Yokosuka Naval Arsenal—wrecking the still-under-construction Amagi and Owari. The ships are wrenched from their keel blocks, warping their hulls beyond hope for repair. Thankfully for the Japanese, the fast battleship Kii—a derivative of the Amagi-class battlecruiser and the sistership to Owari—is still on the slipway in Kure Naval Yard, yet to be scrapped. In fact, Kii and Owari's unnamed sister ships No. 11 and No. 12—would not be scrapped or canceled until August 1924.

The nineteen turrets for Amagi, Akagi, Owari, and Kii would be parceled out, with ten being converted into shore batteries for the Imperial Japanese Army and the rest sent to deep storage.

Heart of a Lion, Face like a Dog’s Breakfast

The British, save for the Treasury, are quite pleased with the terms of the Five Power Treaty. Compared to the other two Big Three powers, their design process is simple and straightforward. There are many iterations, but the risk of the assassination is significantly lower, and requires no enthusiastic interpretations of what constituted a reworking of a design versus a completely new one.

For their four new battleships—Nelson, Rodney, Drake, and Hawke—the Admiralty selects a modified O3 design armed with nine 16-inch guns and displacing exactly 35,000 tons standard.1 The main departure from the O3 design is reworking the six-inch magazines to allow for increased machinery spaces and a design speed of 24.5 knots (functionally closer to 26). The Admiralty had preferred the F3 design, with a speed of 28 knots and armed with triple 15”/50 guns, but felt compelled to build ships armed with 16-inch guns for the sake of prestige—and to maximize their potential fighting power under the new limitations.

The British also decided to convert four carriers from capital ships, with the ex-G3 ships Agincourt and Quiberon selected for the UK’s special conversions, though the final version of these ships will only displace 36,000 tons to save more tonnage for purpose-built carriers in the future. Likewise, Courageous and Glorious are converted to carriers, but since they displace far less than the 30,000-ton limit for carriers, they are counted as “normal” carriers.

For their two exempt battlecruisers, the British chose to modify the nominally started Trafalgar and St. Vincent. The final design—E4—is, in many ways, merely an enlarged F3 versus a shrunk G3. The ships are 789’ long, displace 44,750 tons standard, and can reach a speed of 30 knots (740’/35,000 tons/28 knots for F3 and 856’/48,000 tons/32 knots for the G3); they are built with protection equal to their Nelson cousins. Their armament—three quadruple fifteen-inch guns in an all-forward arrangement—sets the class apart. These are a new type of gun, the BL 15-inch Gun Mark II with a longer 50-caliber barrel—opposed to the 42-caliber gun on the Mark I guns.

Several factors swing the Admiralty away from either the E3-16 or the E3-15 designs. The E3-15 design was considered not sufficiently armed for their size—not sufficient value for money—and overmatched by the Lexington and Amagi classes. There were also some in the Admiralty who doubted the viability of the new BL 16-inch Mark I gun (which would prove prescient).2 The single most important factor behind the adoption of the radical gun layout was future-proofing. Once they began building BL 15-inch Mark II guns, they could quickly and easily upgrade their forest of Mark I-armed ships with the new gun, increasing the lethality of their battle line without radically altering their weight.

As Admiral David Beatty, the First Sea Lord during the development of the E4 and O3 classes, put it in 1935:

With the Mark II we had a pocket aces in case the edifice of armament reduction came crashing down—as it bloody well has.

With the E4 design, even if the BL 15-inch Mark II was inferior to the likes of the US 16-inch/50-caliber Mark 2, Trafalgar and St. Vincent could simply overwhelm the target with a great volume of fire or escape with greater speed.

Legally, You Have to Say These Are The Same Ships

While the incumbent Japanese Government trembled at the thought of the other treaty powers calling them on their good fortune and the United Kingdom followed the rules of the Treaty to their best possible advantage—the United States Navy would bend the treaty to the very limit out of pure spite. They had been hoisted on their own petard, and they would not let that stand without recompense.

The USN selected three incomplete Lexington-class battlecruisers USS Constitution (CC-5) USS United States (CC-6)—the next most complete ships—and surprisingly, USS Ranger (CC-2), which was far less complete. This is because the General Board did not intend for the ships to completed as designed. In fact, the ships would be effectively new designs, with much work on CC-5 and CC-6 undone and then redone. This would become known to the Japanese as the “Battlecruiser Abuse.” To add insult to injury these “same” ships would be renamed (a second time for CC-4 and CC-5).3

Simply put, the General Board of US Navy, unable to build the squadron of heavily armed scouting ships it wanted, decided to stop kvetching and learn to love the Hood. Thus, the ships were rebuilt to the standard of “Scheme B” for Battle Cruiser 1919 (S-584-135). This design included eight 16”/50 guns, an angled 12-inch main belt, and 33 knots of speed on exactly 45,000 tons standard.

The Navy was only stopped from building three “Scheme D” ships (30 knots with a 12-inch belt and twelve 16”/50 guns on 47,125 tons) for fear of overshooting the maximum allowed displacement. The US was prepared to argue that they merely used the ships refit reserve of 3,000 tons during their construction. However, this would have almost certainly reignited the naval race—and more importantly, Congress had outright rejected the idea of giving half the funds needed for three Scheme D ships.

In fact, the Navy was only able to fund the reconstruction of the three ships—the Big Three—by dipping into other accounts and beseeching Congress for additional funds (which were not forthcoming). This ‘Puritan Program’ (named after USS Puritan (BM-1) ‘repaired’ into a new ship in 1874) nearly killed the Navy’s treaty cruiser build program.

With their extensive modifications and the complications with gathering more funds, Concord, Bunker Hill, and Valley Forge would commission after their elder half-sisters Lexington (CV-2) and Saratoga (CV-3). An aside, the class would technically remain the Lexington-class Battle Cruisers but would functionally be called the Concord-class—as CC-5 was the first ship laid down of the completed batch.

The Italians would scrap their four Regina Elena pre-dreadnought battleships with the dreadnoughts Dante Alighieri and Leonardo da Vinci to provide money and materials to complete the languishing Francesco Carricolo as a battleship. The Marine Nationale attempted to gather funds to complete a capital ship to counter the Carricolo, but those moves would stall almost immediately.

From London to Geneva and Back Again (Twice)

The Washington Treaty signed in October 1923 was obviously not a perfect document, and over the years, loopholes were exposed that required addressing, especially with regard to cruiser submarines, large destroyers, and aircraft carriers displacing less than 10,000 tons standard displacement. There was also much desire, especially in the British camp, to impose further qualitative restrictions to permit the construction of smaller, less expensive warships. The United States did not appreciate the potential budgetary wound that would be inflicted upon themselves if they were actually forced to build up to treaty requirements and wished to limit cruiser tonnage even further, something particularly unacceptable to the British and their global empire.

The first bout would be attempted in Geneva in 1927 and would prove a dismal failure.

Neither the French nor Italians attended; instead, they maintained that the proper venue was a League of Nations general disarmament conference (that conference would begin in Geneva in 1932).

This First Geneva Naval Conference in 1927 would mostly serve as a tourney ground for the United States and the United Kingdom to spar over cruisers with Japan attempting to get the best deal possible. It would end without an agreement.

However, these discussions—followed in 1929 by the inauguration of the new Hoover Administration—eventually led to a compromise on cruisers.

Thus, the Five Powers would assemble in January of 1930 and reach a new agreement. The loopholes would be closed, cruisers would be separated between heavy and light classifications, and the battleship holiday (pause on construction) would be extended for another five years. The powers would also relieve themselves of vessels in excess of the treaty’s numerical caps for (non-exempt) capital ships (15/15/9/6/6). There was an attempt to further reduce the cap on capital ships to 10/10/7/5/5, but this was vetoed by the French and Italians, who then also refused to sign the treaty.

The terms would set off a firestorm in Japan. The IJN was forced to retire two Kongo-class battlecruisers, leaving only Haruna in service; Hiei having been converted to a royal yacht and training ship in 1924 under the Washington Treaty. Extending the battleship holiday, reasonable under the economic conditions, also infuriated the Imperial Naval General Staff, who had just selected designs to replace the Fusō and Kongo classes. Japanese heavy cruiser construction would also have to be curtailed; their large “special type destroyers” were now treaty-limited; their clever plan to skirt requirements with under-10,000-ton carriers was also foiled.

These issues would lead to the resignation of the Chief of the Imperial Naval General Staff, Katō Kanji, over his refusal to attend a state dinner in honor of the American Ambassador to Japan. He would be replaced by Prince Fushimi Hiroyasu, another member of the anti-treaty Fleet Faction.4 In a bid to control the Fleet Faction after the attempted assassination of Prime Minister Hamaguchi, the new Prime Minister Baron Wakatsuki Reijirō appointed moderate, ostensibly liberal Admiral Mineo Ōsumi as the Minister of the Navy in late 1930.5

Baron Wakatsuki’s government, unable to control the Army and prevent the “Mukden Incident” from escalating into an invasion, would resign in late 1931. Prince Saionji Kinmochi, the last genrō and closest advisor to the Emperor, would ask conservative Rikken Seiyūkai leader Inukai Tsuyoshi to form a new government amidst the 1931 polycrisis. Inukai would form a minority government comprised of hostile factions. Despite a mandate from Prince Saionji to avoid drastic changes in policy and locked out of the Diet, the Inukai Government would be a watershed moment for Japan.

He takes Japan off the gold standard, deploys additional IJA forces to Manchuria and Tianjin, and issues a qualified denouncement of the Naval Treaties. Despite written instructions from the Emperor to not acquire to the militarists, Inukai accepts that the Army is out of civilian control and attempts to prevent the Navy from revolting. On the advice of Minister Mineo, the Government would attempt to forestall further radicalization in the Navy by denouncing the treaty system and unilaterally asserting quantitative parity—while also asserting that they would keep to the treaty system’s qualitative limitation.

Critically, the Japanese Government would follow up this declaration with a major expansion program for Japan’s naval industry and shipyards—but not actually fund a shipbuilding program, yet, save for a pair of experimental heavy cruisers, which the Diet was informed was merely like the cruiser Yubari from a decade prior.

Japan’s formal denunciation of the Washington and London Treaties is issued on December 29, 1931, forcing a conference of the contracting powers within the next year.

It seems with Rikken Seiyūkai’s triumph in the February 1932 General Election that Inukai had threaded the needle and overcome the odds. He is shot by radical junior naval officers in his office in May, six months after forming his government.

The horses were now out of the barn, and there would be no going back.

The denunciation of the treaty comes as a shock to Washington and London—and is met with… confusion at the contradictory nature of the move. The Japanese announce that they would leave the treaty—while saying they will still abide by its restrictions?

But the world does not stop.

The British and Americans make bilateral attempts to get the Italians and French to sign the London Treaty—and fail. Wider Anglo-American cooperation is sclerotic—with a single informal conversation between the two notional fellow travelers—with ill feelings from Geneva and the compromises of London at the forefront of both parties’ minds.

With Japan departing the treaty system and several intelligence reports stating that Japan had already funded doubling the displacement of their planned “10,000” ton carriers, the Hoover Administration attempted to re-establish deterrence. They would wave the bloody check. They would bluff that they were willing to bear the expense of starting a naval arms race during a severe recession to intimidate the Japanese back into the system. So, the Navy would get another “super ship.” Like the Concord-class before her, USS Ranger (CV-4) would be reborn on the stocks, turning from an “economical” 14,500-ton small carrier to a 30,000-ton monster. The Japanese would not be cowed so easily; they would make no reply. Ironically, behind the scenes, Ranger would ensure that Soryū and Hiryū would be built as “full” fleet carriers, as the debate had not actually been settled in the Imperial Naval General Staff.

In the Americans’ minds, one calculation stands above the rest: the treaty-mandated conference would begin in December 1932 and would likely last into 1933. If a new administration was elected in the 1932 US Presidential Election, the conference would likely conclude just before it was sworn in March. It would be potentially even worse if the conference continued as the newborn administration would not have been fully confirmed, and the newly elected Congress wouldn’t be required to assemble until December. Despite the concern, the Hoover administration presses on, dispatching Secretary of the Navy Charles Francis Adams III and Chief of Naval Operations Admiral William V. Pratt to London in November ahead of the conference, scheduled to begin on December 3, 1932.

The American hopes that they would find a united front waiting in London would not be realized. Instead, they are blindsided by British demands for a massive increase in qualitative restrictions—reducing individual battleship displacement to 25,000 tons standard and armament down to 12-inch guns. To make matters even worse, the British propose a huge increase in light cruiser tonnage without offsetting the increase with more heavy cruiser tonnage for the Americans.

These proposals land like a sack of potatoes at a blue-blooded wedding.

The Second London Conference lasts two and a half months. The Italians refuse to attend at all. The French delegation leaves in the first week of January. The Japanese delegation pushes strongly for a codification of its unilateral assertion of parity. Naval Minister Mineo hopes to keep the broken treaty system alive just long enough so that Japan can produce a significant qualitative edge with a quantitative draw before the US Congress can act.

The conference finally collapses in February, mainly because the outgoing Hoover Administration is under pressure from Congress—especially Democratic senators who were soon to take control of the chamber and would be needed to ratify a new naval treaty. Roosevelt himself makes it clear to the incumbent Administration that he intends Congress to go into full session in March and not wait until December.

The Second London Conference, much like the First Geneva Conference, ends in failure—primarily because the United States and the United Kingdom are unable to get past their own differences. However, dialogue continues between the two largest naval powers in the interim. Roosevelt himself is deeply invested in naval affairs, interested in keeping the treaty system alive, and is well acquainted with senior USN officers from his time as Assistant Secretary of the Navy during the Wilson Administration. The President sees preserving the treaty system as the best way to forestall an Anglo-Japanese Naval Agreement that would undermine American interests in the Pacific.

Newly minted Chief of Naval Operations William Standley and Secretary of the Navy Claude A. Swanson are directed to Geneva right after being confirmed. They would join the head of the American delegation to the World Disarmament Conference in Geneva, Norman Davis, for further consultation with the British.

The Second Geneva Naval Conference would begin as merely a sidebar to the much larger—and rapidly withering—World Disarmament Conference. It is in these first conversations that the US and the UK are finally able to reach a mutually acceptable compromise. The two great naval powers are on the same page as they bring in the other treaty powers in July 1933. The Japanese join in August and issue their opening bid. They would accept no less than quantitative parity and retroactive codification of their assertion of it, as they had at Second London. The United States and the United Kingdom have no interest in accepting this demand outright. However, the British are interested in some kind of compromise—but the United States, expecting a future conflict with Japan, is unwilling to budge.

The British are primarily interested in qualitative reductions for capital ships and a quantitative expansion of light cruisers. The French are also interested in reductions to capital ship tonnage and maximum guns so that their new Dunkerque-class would not immediately become obsolete. The Japanese also wish for quantitative reductions in “offensive” warships (battleships and carriers).

The United States would break through the chaff and maintain a united front with the British that would effectively dictate the terms of the treaty. This front was forged by consultations between First Sealord Ernle Chatfield by Chief of Naval Operations William Standley. The United States accepts several qualified compromises. They accept some qualitative changes—such as reducing maximum carrier displacement from 30,000 to 23,000 tons—without reservation. Maximum capital ship displacement remains at 35,000 tons, but maximum gun caliber is reduced to 14-inches, and in a key compromise with the British, the US accepts a limit of 8,000 tons and 6-inch guns for new cruiser construction—but acceptance is predicated on a key reservation. These new qualitative restrictions will only go into effect if all Five Powers ratify the treaty.

If any of the other powers refused to sign the new Treaty, the restriction of capital armament would revert back to 16-inch guns after a year. Likewise, if any party refused to sign the treaty, cruiser displacement would be raised back to 10,000 tons standard.

In compensation, the United Kingdom is permitted to retain an additional vessel for trade protection, so long as it is retained by a Commonwealth navy and operated in the Far East until new battleship construction begins. This provision is tailored to allow the Royal Navy to keep HMS Tiger as “a caged cat”—a heavy unit for the Royal Australian Navy. The last of the Splendid Cats was decommissioned in 1931 after the London Treaty was signed but was held off from the breakers after Japan withdrew from the Treaty System.

A final provision permits refits to be comprehensive—allowing changes to guns and armor, instead of limited to just additional protection against underwater and aerial threats and raises the limit of refit tonnage up to 5,000 tons—if any prior signatory (Japan) refuses to sign the new treaty.

The Japanese delegation, led by Rear Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto, makes one last push for a “common upper limit.” It is met with unanimous opposition. Accordingly, the Japanese delegates follow their orders from the Saito Government and withdraw from the conference.

The final elements of the treaty are the Safeguarding Clauses—generally referred to as Escalator Clauses—which would allow the signatories to meet and discuss potential revisions to the treaty to meet changing times.6

The Geneva Naval Treaty would be signed on 17th October 1933—just two days prior to Hitler’s withdrawal from the League of Nations.

Sound and Fury Signifying… Something? Potentially?

The Geneva Treaty—though often lost to the din caused by the German withdrawal from the League—was heralded as a significant success, especially after the dismal showing at London earlier that year. It also allowed the wider Geneva Conference to die a peaceful death with some accomplishment, even if it was much less than what was hoped for when it was begun.

The year 1934 would prove an inflection point.

Rumors continue of a Japanese “super cruiser” in the vein of the “pocket battleships” of the Reichsmarine. The Japanese deny the rumors, and instead claim that the ships are merely treaty-compliant heavy cruises—built in large, covered docks. Estimates by British and American intelligence put the ships at roughly 760-foot length and 60-foot beam, displacing approximately 15,000 tons.

There is the expectation that after these “heavy cruisers” are launched, the United States will call for a Four Power escalator consultation to provide revisions. The US Congress, in expectation of the cruiser escalator clause of the Geneva Treaty, passes the Vinson-Trammell Act (known as the First Vinson Act or the Naval Parity Act), authorizing funds for the US Navy to build up to its treaty-authorized tonnage to match the Royal Navy and keep pace with the Japanese Navy.

The Act would also provide seventy million dollars for the “refit” of USS Concord (CC-5), USS Bunker Hill (CC-6), and USS Valley Forge (CC-4). These refits would be closer to total reconstructions with new machinery and significant increases in deck armor and torpedo protection.

At the same time, the Admiralty in Britain proposes what becomes the “Chatfield Plan” for the modernization of the RN’s battle fleet: a 28-knot standard battle-line and the replacement of BL 15”/42 Mark I guns with the more powerful 15”/50 Mark II. HMS Warspite and the soon-to-be HMAS Tiger are the trial ships. Both ships receive an extended clipper bow and have their power plants replaced, allowing Warspite to reach 28 knots and Tiger to reach 30 knots. The ships also see significant up-armoring and entirely new superstructures. Tiger retains her BL 13.5”/45 Mark V guns with the majority of the United Kingdom’s spare barrels and ammunition gifted to Australia along with the ship herself. Warspite is the first ship to be up-gunned with the BL 15”/50 Mk II guns in new turrets with higher maximum elevation.

The Chatfield Plan is not formally adopted until 1936, but would eventually lead to the reconstruction of HMAS Tiger, HMS Warspite, HMS Queen Elizabeth, HMS Valiant, and HMS Renown. The four Nelson-class battleships receive major refits shy of total reconstruction; they are re-engined to reach 28 knots and fix the lingering issues with their turrets. Further, the United Kingdom would see anti-aircraft conversions and general refits for their older C/D/E-class cruisers.

However, the RN does not have unlimited dry dock space or money, so two Queen Elizabeth-class battleships (Malaya and Barham), both Trafalgar-class battlecruisers (Trafalgar and St. Vincent), HMS Repulse, and HMS Hood are not refitted. The two QEs and Repulse receive new turrets and guns; Hood’s planned “light refit” is put off thrice. The five Revenge-class battleships, scheduled for replacement with the Battleship 1936 class (what becomes the King George Vs), are not refitted at all.

In October, the Italian Regia Marina’s general staff make a fateful decision. There had been a furious debate on how to respond to France’s Dunkerque-class battleships; it is finally agreed that the 15-inch gun-armed battleship Francesco Caracciolo will be reconstructed while the two older Conte di Cavour-class battleships will be scrapped to provide raw materials to accelerate the construction of the new Littorio-class fast battleships. The Littorios will be armed with nine improved versions of the Caracciolo’s 15”/40 guns, though officially, they will be armed with 12-inch guns bored out and relined to 12.6-inch.

Then, on 29th December 1934, Japan unveils its Great Gamble.

Two sleek, long hulls of these “heavy cruisers” are launched on the same day from covered docks. International observers are immediately struck by how massive they appear—well over a hundred feet longer than any other treaty-era heavy cruiser. In fact, after some math, the observing British agent realizes the ships are longer than HMAS Tiger! However, they are certainly not battlecruisers; their beam is too narrow, and their draft is too shallow. In effect, they appear to be upsized Mogami-class light cruisers. Officially, the Japanese admit the ships came in overweight at 12,000 tons standard. When the Director of Naval Construction is informed of the specifications, his reaction is immediate: “NOT BLOODY LIKELY!”

Ikoma and Aso are met with perplexed shock in Washington and London. The ships are clear violations of the qualitative limits of the treaty, and technically, they are capital ships, but they are not so daunting as to make the Treasury or Congress actually terminate the battleship holiday. They are enough to upset the balance but not quite enough to bring the treaty system tumbling down.

It Appears My Superiority Has Led to Some Controversy

Ikoma and Aso are just shy of 760 feet long on a beam of 78 feet, displacing just under 18,000 tons standard. Their main armament is ten 25cm/55 Type 90 guns in five two-gun turrets, though the Type 90 is actually 254cm (10-inch). They are also equipped with eight dual 5”/40 Type 89 secondaries and four triple torpedo tubes and are armored to a cruiser standard with a 150mm angled belt and a 75mm deck. With 10 Kampon boilers producing 191,000 shaft-horsepower, they can reach 37 knots.

In Japanese nomenclature, the new class are Toko-gata Sōkō jun'yōkan or special type, large armored cruisers. They are neither battlecruisers—nor are they either Type A or Type B cruisers (heavy and light treaty cruisers, respectively). They are meant to fill the void between heavy cruisers and Amagi and Tosa-class battlecruisers left by the decommissioning of the Kongo-class battlecruisers. They are to be the apex predators of the IJN’s light forces with long teeth and long legs.

With their speed and sub-capital firepower, they would slash through the American screen at night and land the opening blow on the American battle line with their long-range torpedoes with the fleet’s other light forces to even the odds in the next day’s decisive surface action. Japanese planners estimated they could win the decisive battle if they could bring a force either equal to or at least two-thirds the strength of the Americans, the Special Type Cruisers were there to help ensure that ratio. Outside of the decisive battle, the ships could serve as commerce raiders (this was considered a misallocation of resources and effectively shelved) or to provide an overmatch against the American scouting and screening forces in all venues or conditions, save for an action against a Lexington-class battlecruiser—even then the IJN’s light forces would have the speed to escape if they could not win.

The ships needed armor to resist eight-inch shellfire (6 or 7 inches was considered sufficient) and speed to escape Concord and Bunker Hill (at least 34 knots, as the IJN considered the effective speed of the USN CCs to be 32 knots).

The special type cruiser would serve as a critical intra-fleet factional bargaining piece during the infamous “Whistling Settlement.” This settlement—named for a screaming tea kettle that either went off nine times during the conference or was not touched due to the tension in the air—would see the fruits of the coming naval rearmament meted out between the fleet’s factions. The compromises in the tea parlor that day would produce the contours of the 1934 Naval Armaments Supplement Programme (called the Maru Two or Circle Two Plan): the continued production of special type cruisers, the procurement of an improved 1930 design battleship, the refit of the Tosa-class into fast capital ships, the production of purpose-built fleet carriers, and the production of dedicated light carriers to serve a scouting and screen flattops.

The Carrier Faction would gain two purpose-built fleet carriers—what would become Soryū and Hiryū—and two dedicated scout carriers—Shōhō and Zuihō. These cruiser-carriers would serve as the main scouting platforms for the Combined Fleet, allowing the last two Mogami-class cruisers (Tone and Chikuma) to be completed as dedicated combatants. The fleet carriers Akagi would also be reconstructed with the lessons over the prior half-decade, following the ongoing reconstruction of Kii.

The fleet carrier had been planned to be the 17,500-ton hybrid G8 design with five 15.5cm guns (one twin and one triple). However, Ranger's supersizing and, more importantly, no longer having to keep up the pretense of a 10,000 design would see the two ships upsized to 22,750 tons. Interestingly enough, the chosen design—G9—would conform to treaty standards, save for the fact that it should not have existed at all. The two ships, with the extra displacement, would not suffer from being under-built like most of their contemporary designs, which allowed them to be constructed as an identical pair.

However, the Scouting Carriers—G8-D—would pick up where G8 and its preceding design, G6, had left off. The design was shrunk, permitting greater commonality with ongoing Mogami production. However, the two ships would have severe seakeeping and rigidity issues, which would necessitate a major reconstruction program in 1940, which would convert the mullet battle-carriers into flush deckers.

The Battleship Faction would be quite happy to accept four new battleships into the fold, using Hiraga’s planned Kongo-replacement from 1930 as a baseline to replace the aging Fuso and Ise-class battleships with a single, faster, better armored, and 16-inch gun-armed class. These would become the Sado-class battleships.

The Japanese would violate the battleship holiday but aggressively comply with treaty qualitative restrictions, in hopes of stringing along the Americans and the British. Though a bit slow, the ships were heavily armored and heavily armed—with better armor and more guns than the American treaty-compliant class of battleships. The Imperial General Staff would aim for a standard 26.5 knots for their battleline—the four Sados, the two Nagatos, and the next generation (the nascent super-battleship concept).

At the same, the Amagi-class battlecruisers would come out of their reconstructions, which included installing the new 16.1-inch guns developed for the new Sado-class battleships along with additional armor and torpedo defenses. Kaga and Tosa, which had just been refitted to their original design specifications, would return to the dock dry for total reconstruction—converting the ships into pseudo-Amagis. They would be 74 feet lengthened—a 30-foot stern extension and 44-foot bow extension—re-engined and up-armored. There was a significant kerfuffle over what to call the reconstructed capital ships, with some arguing that the Amagis should be reclassified as battleships while others argued that instead, the Tosas should be reclassified as battlecruisers. Eventually, the latter argument won out as it would delineate the fleet’s fast capital ships organizationally. The end result of this program would be a Japanese battleline divided between four fast (30 knots) and six slow (26.5 knots) heavy units, uniformly armed with a new, more powerful 16.1”/50 caliber gun.

These new battleship units would be financed and resourced, partly through decommissioning the older Kongo, Fuso, and Ise classes and partly due to improving economic conditions. The Fuso and Ise-class battleships would be scrapped outright, providing thousands of tons of materials for the new ships. However, Kongo-class would not be sent to the breakers immediately. Hiei would continue to serve as the Emperor’s yacht, Kirishima as a training vessel, Kongo as a target vessel; Haruna, the final vessel in service, would be decommissioned and stripped for materials. The Imperial General Staff would decide what to do with these aging ships at a later date.

Finally, the Maru 2 plan would authorize the construction of a full class of Special Type Cruisers. These would be modestly larger, with increased armor but less speed. In addition, the ships would have a new turret arrangement, modeled after the Sado-class battleships, with triples super-firing over twins—for the same battery over a comparatively shorter citadel.

The other Treaty Powers were utterly bewildered, especially the Americans and British. The Japanese had broken the battleship holiday—twice! Yet they maintained that they were still following the “spirit” of the treaty system despite the minor fact that the Ikoma-class cruisers were clearly in contravention of the text of the treaties; they were not only beneath the minimum displacement threshold (17,500 tons) set for capital ships under the Geneva Treaty but also obviously violating the 8-inch gun caliber and 10,000-ton displacement limit for cruisers. They were neither fish nor fowl, but certainly… something. The Japanese logic for how this did not violate their commitment to the qualitative limitations of the treaty was not compelling, settling on a national security need to resist American heavy cruisers and following the prescendent of the Deutschland-class panzerschiff. The Sado-class battleships, despite being more dangerous, were less concerning to the Americans and British because at least their construction would cause a temporary reduction in the IJN battlefleet, and they were not a particularly disruptive design, even if it was quite well-balanced, to begin with.

The United States summoned a consultation of the Treaty Powers in March 1935 to discuss the new ships. Neither the Americans nor the British were particularly interested in ending the battleship holiday, especially the British. It was generally agreed that refits could sufficiently counter new Japanese battleship production in so far as they were not particularly disruptive—like the Ikomas. There was much concern that Ikoma would collapse the treaty system. However, none of the other parties had an interest in allowing that eventuality to pass.

The remaining signatories agreed that a new classification of ships, sub-capital “large heavy cruisers,” was justified. The only real point of contestation was upper tonnage: The British wished for a band of 11,000 to 20,000 tons—while the Americans wished for an upper limit of 25,000 tons. Main armament would be limited to 12-inch guns to allow overmatch of the German panzerschiff and Ikoma (and because there was some disagreement over the actual caliber used on the Japanese ships). The French actually wanted an upper limit of 14-inch guns so that their Dunkerque-class battleships could retroactively qualify.

The final agreement was a limit of 20,000 tons, but 25,000 tons if Japan did not agree to abide by the limitations of the treaty. In a final inducement for the Japanese, total “super-cruiser” tonnage would be equal between all parties—two max-displacement ships per nation, a total tonnage of either 40,000 or 50,000 tons standard, depending on Japanese agreement. The Japanese would respond but only to say that they were already following all qualitative restrictions.

In response to the Sado-class, the US Navy would squeeze Congress for additional funding in 1935 for a major refit of the Tennessee-class battleships—following the refits of the Idaho-class battleships and Lexington-class battlecruisers. The refit would be comprehensive and see the ships’ twelve 14”/50 Mark 4 guns replaced with eight 16”/45 Mark 5 guns. Congress was notionally motivated by the Japanese ship program but was mostly interested in avoiding to expense of having to build new battleships to counter it. The would give money for refit but not construction.

The Navy wished its Mighty Nine—the two Tennessee, four Colorado, and three Lexington—to possess a uniform 16-inch main battery. There was even a proposal to refit the Mighty Nine with the new 16”/50 Mark 6 from the refit of the refits of the Big Three (Concord, Bunker Hill, and Valley Forge) that was ordered in 1934, but would prove to be too expensive and was canceled.

Somehow More Perfidious Albion

The British would broach another topic at the Consultation—how the Treaty Powers should engage with Nazi Germany. The British, wishing to bind Germany with an air armament control treaty, saw including Hitler’s Germany in the Washington Treaty System—as opposed to being limited by Versailles—as the first step toward that goal.

The French delegation went apoplectic at the implication that the British had entered negotiations with the Germans to accept their rearmament. They asserted the Treaty Powers should reject the German’s right to rearmament—Hitler’s government having renounced Versailles just days before the start of the Consultation—and that if they were to permit rearmament, it would have to be the result of a general disarmament conference. The Italians also wished for such matters to be settled by a global, general conference. The British wanted half a loaf—and one that covered their own ass. FDR would agree with the British assessment when meeting with their delegates; when he met with the French, he would agree that the British had gone too far; the Roosevelt Administration was deadset on getting the escalator clause invoked—Japan was their overriding concern—not Versailles and Germany.

In session, the Americans would steer the course back to the topics for which the consultation was called. The British would relent and concur that it appeared that the consensus wanted a general disarmament conference. The French would take this as the British had given up the issue.

The Baldwin Government and Nazi German would sign the Anglo-German Naval Agreement in June. Permitting a treaty-compliant German Navy 35% of the strength of the Royal Navy without consulting the French or Italians—and only notifying the Americans before the signing of the treaty. The Germans would only be permitted five treaty capital ships (versus six for the French)—the ratio excluding the Royal Navy’s 45,000-ton exempt ships.

The Germans would also secure British accession for 40,000 tons of additional large cruiser displacement as stipulated by the 1935 Washington Consultation, though this provision was exempt from the escalator clause and would not increase to 50,000 tons.

Livin’ in a Super-Cruiser World

With the 1935 Washington Consultation legalizing a new class of warship, only the Italians would not pursue a large heavy cruiser program. This is because the Italians did not see a need for a cruiser killer when they were already building fast battleships armed with nine 15-inch guns; even something like an Italian 12-inch gun armed anti-Dunkerque would merely siphon resources away from the Littorios. The Italian Navy would briefly reverse course in 1937 after realizing the danger posed by the Royal Hellenic Navy’s large cruiser program, but no design would be selected, and no work would be started.

The Americans would pursue a maximalist design—25,000 tons and 12-inch guns. The finalists were a six-gun (three twins) and a seven-gun design (two twins forward, one triple aft). The General Board would select the six-gun design, as it could have better armor protection and additional anti-air weapons, positioning the ships to be cruiser hunters and natural carrier escorts.

The sisters would be named Ticonderoga and Shiloh. House Naval Affairs Committee Chairman Carl Vinson attempted to veto the latter name but was rebuffed. The pair would be beleaguered by vibration issues their entire service careers due to the new skeg design used in the correction.7 However, the tribulations with Ticonderoga would ensure that the succeeding North Carolina, South Dakota, and Iowa-class battleships would avoid similar pitfalls.

While the US pursued a maximalist design, the British and French admiralties would try to aim for 16,000-ton designs—large, heavy cruisers instead of baby battlecruisers.

Well, the Royal Navy would originally aim for a 12,500-ton design—a modified County-class—to squeeze four vessels out of their allotted 50,000 tons. This would be rebuffed by the Treasury. The Admiralty would try again with three 16,000-ton ships, arguing that it would be less than the approximately £11 million cost of four smaller cruisers. The Treasury—fuming that the Government had supported the Chatfield Plan with money and not just words—would reject this second proposal. Finally, the Admiralty would propose a maximalist design that the Government would force the Treasury to pay for. This would actually end up being the most expensive option.

The Admiralty would get two ugly ducklings. They would displace not much less than a Repulse-class battlecruiser with better armor armor. However, unlike the Americans, the Royal Navy would not adopt a 12-inch gun and instead arm the ships with sixteen new extremely long BL 8”/60 Mk IX guns in four quad-turrets equipped to handle extra heavy armor-piercing shells. The ships would be able to manage 32 knots with battleship protection and enough guns to drown an enemy raider in shells. In short, the two ships, Defence and Black Prince, were built to hunt Pocket Battleships.

The French would settle on a 16,600-ton design—an enlarged Algerie with moderately improved armored and four triple (instead of twin) 8-inch gun turrets. The ships would begin work in 1936. The first two ships, République and Démocratie, would be completed before the start of the Second World War. République would be interned in Alexandria, while Démocratie would be seized by the Free French in Dakar along with the battleship Richelieu. The last ship, Liberté, would be near completion, outfitting in Brest during the Fall of France, and would make its way to internment in Toulon.

The Germans would eventually settle on a revision of the D-class panzerschiff that had begun work in 1934 before being canceled in favor of Scharnhorst and Gneisenau. Officially, the ships would displace 13,300 tons standard, ostensibly a modest revision on the Deutschland-class panzerschiff so that the Kriegsmarine could procure three under the terms of the Anglo-German Naval Agreement. The class—Mackensen, Von Der Tann, Moltke—would actually displace 23,580 tons standard.

There would be one last participant in the super cruiser race: the Greeks.

Sweating over the expansion of the Regia Marina and fearing the imminent start of Italian super-cruiser construction, the Royal Hellenic Navy would go shopping in Britain in 1936 for a prophylactic against the Italians’ existing and potential cruiser forces. The Director of Naval Construction would eventually settle on an 18,850-ton large cruiser using Vickers’ new 10-inch main gun. The Greeks would buy four; this would cause the Italians to actually consider procuring super-cruisers, but limited naval capacity and funds would scupper those plans after a brief moment of panic.

The first two ships, Salamis and Marathon, were outfitting in Alexandria in 1941 when Nazi Germany invaded Greece. The pair would be “donated” to the Royal Navy shortly after the British had seized them. In any case, there weren’t enough Greek sailors to crew them; before the Italian invasion of Greece had interrupted things, only the first elements of Marathon’s complement had arrived in Egypt. This cadre would be mixed into a scratch crew scrapped from any place where they could be scrounged. The two ships were commissioned as HMS Theseus and HMS Orpheus. The pair were thrown into action immediately. Orpheus would be sunk a month after commissioning during the Evacuation of Crete. The ship was badly damaged by multiple bomb hits before being torpedoed by an Italian submarine as she limped her way back to Alex. The other two ships, HMS Atalanta (ex-Plataea) and HMS Hercules (ex-Gerontas) would be completed in the United Kingdom and be manned by the repurposed crews of the old heavy cruisers HMS Hawkins and HMS Frobisher.

So An Italian and A Dutchman Walk Into a Bar

One nation absolutely terrified by the launch of Ikoma and Aso was the Kingdom of the Netherlands. The swift, large cruisers were seen as a particular threat to the light naval forces defending their colonies. The arrival of super-cruisers incited enough public outcry to force the government to take a significant increase in naval forces seriously. However, the Dutch did not have the infrastructure or industrial base to build capital ships.

So they went shopping, and they ended up at Italy’s doorstep.

They would go to Ansaldo and ask for a 25,000-ton ship with 12-inch guns. Ansaldo and the Italian Government would be more than happy to comply, using a modified version of the 1928 battlecruiser design. The Dutch and Italian Governments would sign a contract for three ships in 1935 for 250 Million Dutch Gilders (2 billion Italian Lira)—ƒ75 million per hull and ƒ25 million for infrastructure. The first hull would be built in Italy. The succeeding ships would be built in the Netherlands. However, 75% of the material and fittings would be sourced from the Italians, including all weapons, machinery, and armor.

The final design would be 26,500 tons, with twelve 12-inch guns in four triple turrets and eight twin 120mm guns as dual-purpose secondaries. They would have a 10-inch belt, a 4-inch deck, and be capable of 30 knots. The trio would be named Prins van Oranje, De Zeven Provinciën, and Gouden Leeuw.

The program started out controversial and only became more controversial as the Abyssian Crisis became the Second Italo-Ethiopian War. The contract provided a vast sum of material and foreign currency to the Fascist Regime—infuriating the British and embarrassing the Dutch.

In 1937, the Dutch Government succumbed to international pressure and canceled the contract after the launch of Prins van Oranje and the keel laying of De Zeven Provinciën at Rotterdamsche Droogdok Maatschappij. The Dutch would then sign a new deal with Vickers-Armstrong to complete the ships. The ships would be built in Rotterdam and outfitted in Newcastle. The British could not offer a 12-inch gun on a reasonable schedule but could offer older BL 15”/42 Mk I guns and turrets that were surplus to requirements due to the ongoing Chatfield Plan refits.

The ships would have a distinctive profile, as the Italians had already delivered all three conning towers to Rotterdam. The British didn’t believe such heavy structures were necessary but the Dutch insisted; thus, the ships would have a Littorio-style armored conning tower and a Queen Anne’s Mansion-style superstructure.

Prins van Oranje would be completed in 1939. De Zeven Provinciën would be outfitting in Newcastle, and Gouden Leeuw would be nearing her launch when Germany invaded the Netherlands. Prins van Oranje would be lost with Force Z while De Zeven Provinciën would be lost at the Battle of the Java Sea. Gouden Leeuw would be launched by the Germans under the name Derflinger, joining the latter half of Operation CERBERUS, being completed in 1943 with German weapons and equipment.

Despite the contract being canceled, the Italians would gain roughly 1 billion Lira in foreign currency and an additional billion Lira in materiel purchased by Dutch cut-outs (the Italians had purchased more material than needed to circumvent sanctions). This was equivalent to roughly three Littorio-class battleships. In fact, the program would fund the fifth ship of the class—Lepanto. The Dutch currency, paired with the sequential scrapping of the outdated Conte di Cavour and Andrea Doria classes, would allow the Italians to complete their new build battleships in an orderly fashion.

The Italo-Dutch contract would also provide the seed money for the Regia Marina’s follow-on class of battleships—and also a thirty-year legal case about restitution for defrauding the Dutch. More or less, these follow-on ships would be stretched and improved Littorios armed with twelve guns in four turrets. The Regia Marina wished for four ships but would only ever order two—Giulio Cesare and Marcantonio Colonna. The ships would stress Italian naval infrastructure and prove to be less maneuverable than hoped, earning them the nicknames “Porco Giulio” and “Ma Dona Colonna.”

In response to the accelerated construction of Italian capital ships, the French would attempt to match with their own construction of Richelieu-class battleships. However, the capacity of French docks was simply unable to cope with the demand. Thus, the French were only able to complete two ships—Richelieu and Jean Bart before the end of the war. Clemenceau would be hastily readied and launched amid the Fall of France, escaping to Casablanca, where it would duel with the third South Dakota-class sister, Massachusetts, in October 1942.

It’s Less Treaty Cheating and More Treaty Cuckolding

The Imperial Diet would ratify the 3rd Naval Armament Supplement Programme in 1936, which would fund a massive expansion of the Imperial Navy: two Shōkaku-class fleet carriers, two Yamato-class battleships, two Tsurugi-class special type cruisers, four Agano-class light cruisers, and the conversion of the mothballed Kongo-class battlecruisers into carriers; the plan would also expand the Imperial Japanese Navy Air Service and fund the construction of more support and escort vessels.

The Tsurugi-class large cruiser would see a significant increase in firepower, with a uniform five-turret battery of triple 25cm/55 caliber guns—a 50% increase in barrels—improved deck armor and underwater protection, an increased secondary battery of the new 10cm anti-aircraft gun, and even more torpedo launchers. They would more than straddle the line between large cruiser and battlecruiser. They were also better optimized to serve as carrier escorts with their enhanced secondary battery. However, due to the ambitious terms of the Maru 3 plan, the ships would not be laid down until 1937. The class would be thrust directly into the fires of the Pacific War, with Tsurugi and Kurama having their shakedown cruisers while escorting the Kido Butai to Hawaii.

The Japanese would also begin construction of their first class of light cruiser since the completion of the Sendai class in the 1920s. The Aganos were exceptionally light and exceptionally fast, closer to destroyer leaders than true cruisers—which is fitting of their role as destroyer squadron flagships. This would also see the IJN’s oldest light cruisers (both Tenryū cruisers and the first two Kuma cruisers) be temporarily moved into the reserves, though they would be reactivated in 1939 for conversion into either fast troopships (Tenryū and Tatsuta) or torpedo cruisers (Kuma and Tama).

1936 would also see the British and Americans finalize work on their first planned set of treaty battleships. One thing in the interim that became clear was that 35,000 was not sufficient tonnage for a symmetric (protected against its own armament) 16-inch gun-armed battleship.

The British would choose Design 15D—a 35,000-ton design with a 14.5-inch belt and 6-inch deck, nine BL 15”/50 Mk II guns in triple turrets, and a top speed of 28.5 knots. The British would begin construction as soon as the battleship holiday had ended—however, delays caused by industrial bottlenecks would plague the ships.

The United States Navy would nearly select a “Hood type” design with eight 16”/45 guns in four twin turrets. However, it was deemed insufficiently protected. Lessons from the construction of the Ticonderoga-class cruisers and a desire by the General Board for a symmetric ship would see voluminous numbers of iterations between 1934 and 1936.

The final decision was Scheme XXIII, selected in early 1937. The ship would reach 28 knots, barely, with boilers positioned above the turbines and a sharply inclined internal belt (which was only barely accepted). The ship would be armed with nine 16”/45 Mark 7 guns in triple turrets and ten 5”/38 twin mounts. This would all be achieved on a little over 36,000 tons with an overall length of 696 feet.

The Navy, influenced by its experience with the battlecruisers was keenly interested in ensuring the speed of the new ships. The refits of the Concords and the construction of Ticonderogas accelerated the development of more advanced boiler designs and helped maximize the efficiency of the machinery layout of the new designs. There was even a radical and optimistic proposal to use untested centrifugal jet turbines based on the 1930 Whittle patent to provide power for BB-55 and 56, in addition to boilers and geared turbines; however, the plan was considered incredibly impracticable, overly expensive, and was estimated to add at least years to the construction time.

In 1937, the United States, the United Kingdom, and France held another consultation to address a new set of concerns. Italy refused to attend after the Dutch withdrew from their Ansaldo contract and signed their new contract with Vickers-Armstrong but later assented to the proposals. The meeting convened in DC just weeks before the Marco Polo Bridge Incident.

The United States and the United Kingdom were in a bind—they were out of a carrier tonnage while Japan continued to build more flattops. The US was maxed out, while the UK had 7,000 tons but was only interested in building full-sized carriers. The US had come prepared to fight for a contrived argument to retroactively free up 25,000 tons by subtracting 5,000 tons of “refit” tonnage from each of its carriers. The British would just offer to increase carrier displacement by 46,000 tons to permit both nations to procure two more carriers. They, in particular, wanted to build a class of four armored carriers to replace Furious, Courageous, and Glorious (what would become the Illustrious-class carriers). The General Board was also quite relieved when the British flatly shot down President Roosevelt's proposal for a new category of “battle carrier” as a response to Shōhō and Zuihō and intelligence reports that all four Kongo-class battlecruisers were being converted in the mold of Shōhō.

The US Navy was confident that it could match two or three presumed additional battle carriers with a single fleet carrier. There was confusion over how many of the Kongos were to be converted. Haruna and Kirishima were likely. Hiei was considered probable, but Kongo was considered unlikely, with the assumption that she would remain a target ship. The US would order CV-7 shortly after the consultation and lay down the ship in 1937.

There was also the issue of battleship displacement. It was clear to all parties that maximum displacement needed to be increased; the requirements for reasonable deck armor and underwater protection had grown considerably since 1922—effective battle ranges had grown and so had torpedo warheads. The consultation would agree to lift the maximum displacement of battleships to 45,000 tons.

The Italians (retroactively) and the United States would be the only states to take advantage of the larger displacement. The Italian Littorios were already 40,000 tons; the follow-on Giulio Cesares would displace 49,900 tons standard and be the largest warships built in Europe until the French supercarrier Foch in the early 1960s.

The US Navy would request a 45,000-ton battleship for BB-57, but Congress would only provide the money and tonnage for ships of 40,000 tons per hull. These would become the South Dakota-class battleships.

The class would be armed with nine of the new 16”/50 Mark 8 guns. The Mark 8, a lightened version of the 50-caliber Mark 6 gun, was rapidly designed and built using much of the work completed by the clean-sheet 45-caliber Mark 7 gun used on the North Carolina class. The gun was originally ordered to refit the the Big Three so they could handle the new 2,700 super-heavy Mark 8 shell. Rapid refits from 1939 to 1943 would see the Big Three replace their 5”/25 pedestal mounts and remaining 6”/53 casemates in favor of a uniform secondary battery of twin 5”/38s. The same appropriations that funded these shallow refits would also be used to refit the old Omaha-class cruisers into anti-aircraft ships.

The new Mark 8 gun would be plugged into the still-under-construction South Dakota-class ships. The ships would also be equipped with ten twin 5”/38s mounts and have a maximum speed of 30 knots. Protection would be comparable to that of the North Carolina-class battleships. Most of the additional displacement would go to the extra deck armor and armor belt needed to protect a larger hull.

Continued Japanese super cruiser construction led the US to push for further super cruiser tonnage and an increase in the tonnage limits for the classification. The US wanted 35,000 tons. However, the British would negotiate that down to a ‘mere’ 30,000 tons for what was still a cruiser. The British did not have any interest in further large cruiser production but were perfectly happy to permit the USN to counter Japanese construction.

The US would begin construction on the Alaska-class large cruisers, with two in FY38 (Alaska and Guam), two in FY39 (Hawaii and Philippines), three in FY40 (Puerto Rico, Samoa, Virgin Islands), and one in FY41 (Sequoyah). However, only the first four vessels would be completed as large cruisers. The FY1940 ships would be converted into emergency aircraft carriers shortly after being laid down, while Sequoyah would be completed as an experimental “large command and control cruiser” or CBCC to integrate PROMETHEAN and OLYMPIAN-spec technologies to improve CERFOR and GENFOR interoperability.

The Japanese Diet would enact a 4th Naval Armament Supplement Programme in 1938, which would fund the final two ships of the Tsuguri-class special type cruisers, two additional Yamato-class battleships, two improved Shōhō-class light carriers, provide additional funding for the Kongo carrier conversions (which had proved more difficult and expensive than hoped), four Type B Yoshino-class light cruisers (improved Agano), and a raft of new destroyers.

Yamato and Musashi, the giants of the ocean, would be laid down earlier but have an otherwise unaccelerated development and construction (though the ships would be modified on the slipway after the INGS decided to abandon the mixed diesel/turbine powerplant. Shinano would be completed as a battleship in August 1942, and Owari would be substantially modified as Japanese industry strained to keep pace with their huge naval program. Joining her once sistership Kii, she would be converted into a carrier after tense deliberation in early 1942. When she was completed in late 1943, she would be the world’s first completed angled deck carrier.

The Japanese would also order a class of improved Agano-type cruisers to continue replacing their older Great War-style light cruisers. The Yoshinos would see a major increase in armament and armor over the Aganos, with roughly 2,000 tons of extra displacement. These new cruisers would allow the final three ships of the Kuma class to be converted into anti-aircraft cruisers.

Stalin For Time

In June 1933, after much wrangling, the Soviet Union authorizes the reconstruction of the Gangut-class battleship Frunze (originally named Poltava) into a battlecruiser. This work would be stopped no less than three time but would be complete in 1939 after six years. The ship—the Russian Empire’s first generation of dreadnought battleship—could hardly be described as a competitive battlecruiser with only a top speed of 27 knots, but nonetheless, was faster than her less reconstructed sisters. She would be attached to the Black Sea Fleet.

With the appearance of Large Heavy Cruisers on the naval scene, Stalin demands a fleet of large cruisers for the Soviet Union. In 1936 and 1937, several variations were drafted, with Project 25 (which started life as a small battleship) selected as a “large cruiser” despite displacing over 35,000 tons standard—more than a treaty battleship. The class would narrowly avoid being canceled after the purging of several of their designers. They would take form as the Dzerzhinsky class, with the lead ship followed by Lenin, Schors, and Avrora. Dzerzhinsky would be launched by Shipyard No. 200 Communard in Nikoyalev in 1940 and would be outfitting when the Nazis invaded in 1941. She would be missing some fittings and would only be commissioned in 1942. Lenin would be launched by Shipyard No. 1941 Marti in Leningrad and launched in late 1940; and never formally commissioned during the war but would be used in the defense of Leningrad. Schors would be launched in 1941 thanks to her shipwrights having cut their teeth reconstructing Frunze; she would be launched ahead of the Nazi advance on Nikoyalev and be used as an important high-speed troopship during the Black Sea campaign. Avrora would be roughly 40% complete when Nazi closed in on Leningrad, and much of the material gathered for her construction would be diverted to help build defensive works around the city.

Stalin would then order the construction of no less than 15 large battleships as a part of the 1938 Naval Works Programme. The ships, Sovetsky Soyuz class, would barely have begun work when the invasion of the soviet union began. However, due with the experience of more large ship production would lead to an accelerated schedule for the Chapayev-class light cruisers, Kiev-class destroyer leader, and Ognevoy-class destroyers. Notably, the cruisers Kuybyshev, Zhdanov, Ordzhinikidze, and Parkhomenko, plus the destroyer leaders Kiev and Erevan and destroyers Ognevoy, Ozornoy, and Otverzhdyonny would be 1938 Programme ships that would make the “Mad Run” of the Black Sea Fleet to Alexandria in August of 1942.

Panic! At the General Board

The War in Europe begins in September 1939 and kills the Treaty System.

USS Hornet (CV-8) is laid down that same month.

1940 is no better. In fact, the events of that year shake the United States to its very foundations. France, the greatest land power in Europe, had withstood four years of brutal fighting in the First World War. It is a sister republic to the United States. It collapses in just six weeks—against all expectations.

In the following weeks, Congress authorizes a 70% increase in the Navy’s displacement with the Two Ocean Navy Act. Franklin Roosevelt is nominated for an unprecedented third term as President. Then, to wrap, Congress enacts a peacetime draft for the first time in American history.

Then, another revelation—the Kongo-class battlecruisers had not been converted into fool-hardy, half-ass battle carriers; they had been converted into fleet carriers. US intelligence had originally assessed that only Kirishima, Hiei, and Haruna would be converted while Kongo would remain a target ship. But, much like how US intelligence assessed that the Nagato and Tosa class battleships were only capable of 23 knots for over a decade, this was not accurate. To make matters even worse, the same reports that had confirmed the nature of the Kongo class conversion program had spotted that the scout carriers Shōhō and Zuihō had been spotted in the middle of a work to extend their flight decks.

In 1940, the United States has six fleet carriers in service—Lexington, Saratoga, Ranger, Yorktown, Enterprise, and Wasp with one fleet carrier under construction, Hornet.

Japan also has six fleet carriers in service at this point—Akagi, Kii, Soryū, Hiryū, Zuikaku, and Haruna; but four more under construction—Shōkaku and Hiei were outfitting, Kirishima and Kongo were still undergoing reconstruction (the latter was proving particularly troublesome). While the IJN only has two light carriers in active service—Hōshō and Ryūjō (both of questionable value in 1940), they have two more under construction; Shōhō and Zuihō had returned to the yard to be converted into flush-deck carriers.

The General Board—heading off a push by the President to have at least a dozen light cruisers converted into light carriers—would instead propose converting the three FY40 large cruisers laid down into aircraft carriers. The General Board estimated that they could be completed ahead of the completion of the first CV-9 class fleet carrier, and would be overall inefficient (carrier less aircraft and with less protection) but otherwise acceptable in the role. With six large cruisers in production or already in the fleet, it was deemed that avoiding delays or disruption to light cruiser or heavy cruiser production was of greater value than three cruiser-killers. However, the President would extract the concession for a design study and funding for a new-build light carrier derived from the CA-68 heavy cruiser hull and powerplant for production starting in 1941 or 1942 as a counter-balance to the IJN’s new light carriers. Congress would fund both the CV-12 and CV-23 (later CVL-23) classes without protest.

Thus, in July of 1940, the USS Puerto Rico (CB-13) was reordered as USS Bonhomme Richard (CV-12), while the USS Samoa (CB-14) became USS Franklin (CV-13) and the USS Virgin Islands (CB-15) became USS Reprisal (CV-14).

The ships would have extremely short operational lives—sacrificed in the maelstrom of iron, fuel oil, and blood in the South Pacific. The ships would be commissioned in March 1942, December 1941, and July 1942 respectively. Franklin would be completed in exactly 24 months, commissioning two days before Pearl Harbor, and would spend the first half of 1942 alongside USS Wasp in the Atlantic. Bonhomme Richard would work up in the Atlantic before transferring to the Pacific after Midway, before being lost to a submarine attack in the fall covering a convoy to Guadalcanal. Reprisal would help cover the invasion forces during Operation SUPER GYMNAST before rushing to the Pacific ahead of Operation TRIDENT. Franklin would be the only ship of the class to survive 1942 at the cost of over half of her crew after the ship was struck by a trio of Yokosuka MXY6 Super Ohka anti-ship missiles.

In December 1940, the Navy ordered a follow-on batch of light carriers built from the hull up but using the hull and power-plant of the CA-68 class, on the expectation that CV-9 carriers could take longer than expected (which would be incorrect, and CVL-23 and CV-9 at roughly same speed). Competition for components would at first slow the construction of Baltimore-class heavy cruisers but would eventually lead to over-production that then would be used to great effect under the General Procurement Reorganization Program of the National Defense Act of 1943.

The refit of Shōhō-class carriers would be extremely efficient—and extremely high-priority—as they were the Combined Fleet’s primary generators for fleet scouting. It had originally been intended to stagger the refits, but the ships’ construction proved dangerously under-built, so both were returned to dock and refitted to full carriers, losing the questionable value of their three forward triple 15.5cm turrets. The ships and their invaluable scouts would be inopportunely expended. Zuihō would be sunk—more specifically blasted apart—by gunfire from the battleships Warspite and Drake assited by the large heavy cruisers Hector and Hercules. While her sister Shōhō would be torpedoed, but not sunk, shortly after the Battle of the Coral Sea—therefore leaving the Japanese carrier arm blinded ahead of the Battle of Midway.

Despite all the panic over the Kongo “fleet carriers,” the class would prove extremely temperamental. The ships were considered third-rate, and their crews were rated even worse. Even their machinery had reliability problems. In a notably embarrassing incident, Kongo had a boiler detonate while launching aircraft for the attack on Rabaul in January 1942; the ship would lose power and force Akagi to make a hard turn to port to avoid a collision. The resulting violence when the pair were reunited at Truk—after over a month—would kill nine. Kongo would be out of operation until the end of May and barely make it to the Battle of Midway. At the battle, Kirishima was destroyed by a single bomb hit, which set off three of her magazines in rapid succession. Kongo survived only because she had lost control of her steering and drove into a rain squall by sheer coincidence—dousing the raging fires and giving just enough time for the ship’s intoxicated chief engineer to get two boilers back online.

They would more than earn their derisive collective nickname, the “Four Boards of the Emperor.” This is both a reference to the “Four Swords of the Emperor,” the four Tosa and Amagi sisters—and the fact that Hiei had been the Emperor’s yacht.

The ships would displace as much as an Essex with an air group that was only one-half to two-thirds the size, three to four knots less speed, and with considerably inferior survivability. Admiral Jisaburō Ozawa, speaking after the war, would bitterly regret the decision to convert them, noting that if the IJN had scrapped them, the scrap displacement would’ve been equal to half a dozen Soryū-type carriers.

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LE RESTUARANT PANORAMIQUE, THIRD FLOOR ANFA HOTEL, CAMP ANFA

CASABLANCA, ALLIED-OCCUPIED MOROCCO

GENERAL ALAN F. BROOKE, BA

CHIEF OF THE IMPERIAL GENERAL STAFF

2322 LOCAL, 13 JAN 1943

“They’re bloody early, Pug,” General Alan Brooke’s eyes raced down the dispatch as annoyance blinked across his face. The American courier from the communications section loomed awkwardly at the edge of his table lamp’s glow. This restaurant was deserted. Brooke was the sole patron, having worked through dinner. It was only by the kindness of the head chef that the Chief of the Imperial General Staff was able to get something hot to eat. Behind the spotted-faced boy was Lieutenant General Hastings Ismay, the Prime Minister’s military adjutant, who seemed bemused to see Brooke alone. Brooke flicked to the second page of telegrams.

“Quite right, sir,” Ismay demurred.

Brooke answered with a short snort as he finished the dispatch. He glanced back at Pug, “The Prime Minister?”

Pug fished a cigarette from a crumpled pack, “Just finishing a meeting with Johnnie Walker.”

The Chief of the Imperial General Staff answered with a chuckle and another query, “Mountbatten?”

“Chewing cables in the radio room,” the round-faced general patted himself down, looking for a light. He produced a silver lighter from his pants. A wick of flame came to life after two strikes. He took a long drag, waiting for Brooke to reply.    

“Well—let’s fetch the PM,” Brooke checked his wristwatch. They had thirty-eight minutes. “I don’t believe I like this number, but when one must dance… best not to be late.” He hadn’t even had time to get out of his uniform or visit the villa he would be sharing with Admiral Sir Dudley Pound and Field Marshall John Dill—and now this.

A direct flight? That’s a damn fool’s run—and bloody how? General Marshall distinctly said his delegation took their only YC-69s. What else do they have that can cross the Atlantic in one go?

As Ismay and Brooke sauntered down the halls of the Hotel Anfa, they collected a bridal train of staff officers and assistants, confused as to what was going on. He felt less like a general and more like Mother Goose—and Christ, these goslings were ugly. As they walked the hall on the second floor, the air roared with the sound of aircraft, and the entire building shook. For a moment, the general’s heart stopped. He met eyes with Pug. They were both utterly confused. It took a moment until they realized that the aircraft were coming from the west and were heading east—unlikely to be German.

Brooke pointed at the door of the nearest room, “One of ours?”

“Yes, sir,” his adjutant answered.

“Good.” Brooke rapped on the door. Ten painful seconds passed before signs of life could be heard, and the door opened. The young officer was in horrible shape.

The general looked around him to see a squadron of sozzled officers sprawled every which way. The young captain attempted to salute as he recognized the Chief of the Imperial General Staff was outside his door.

“Might I borrow your telephone?” Brooke inquired politely, ignoring his uncouth surrounds. The captain squinted and retched but failed to vomit before bolting into the WC. The man gestured further into the room as he staggered inside the bathroom and fell to his knees. This was not the worst entreaty Brooke had received in his life, but it was certainly unique.

The CIGS stepped over a pair of unconscious lieutenants partially hidden under a liquor-stained top sheet as those still conscious rose to attention with all the grace of a grocer falling into a pyramid of soup cans. He took the room’s phone and dialed the radio room. There was a click as someone lifted the other line. “This is General Brooke. What the Hell was that?”

The phone hissed; there was a bit of a shuffle and hushed voices before a British officer answered in a prim voice, “Apologies, sir, those were some of the new Yank Mustangs. They’ve been scrambled to get some Me 110s coming over the desert on the deck to hit us…”

That confused Brooke greatly. How could they possibly know that? And if they do, why didn’t they tell us earlier? “What?” He stared at the receiver, hoping that a gorgon’s glare might spin truth from chaos. 

“Sir, the boys here are damned confused, even the Yanks—but someone must be confident enough to get them in the air and get them an intercept. Odd business, all of it.”

Brooke grunted his thanks as he hung up. His mind raced with worries that were far out of his control. He glanced at the bushel of stained shirts, a pile of contorted limbs, and a colonnade of not-so-ramrod-straight drunks. This was the last straw. Too much smoke and mirrors—and for too long. The Yanks had given up on SLEDGEHAMMER and ROUNDUP with no warning after fighting tooth and nail for months. There were the lights over Poland and the TRAILSPIKE raids. They couldn’t possibly have been telling the truth about the Pineapple Disease in Hawaii, could they? Time travelers? No, that had to be a bad joke. It had to be. Brooke shook the thought from his head as bitter thoughts of the Second Battle of Coral Sea mixed in his mind with all the whispers, all the confused reports. It was all too much. He refused to acknowledge it. He avoided thinking much about it for six months. He would continue to do so. He had too much to do to spend time musing about—responding to—the impossible.

War was never a certain thing, but this was something else entirely.

It reminded him of May 1940.

He left the room with a sigh and headed for the PM. Why can’t I be the one who is drunk?

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VILLA NO. 3 “MIRADOR,” CAMP ANFA

CASABLANCA, ALLIED-OCCUPIED MOROCCO

PRIME MINISTER WINSTON S. CHURCHILL

PRIME MINISTER OF THE UNITED KINGDOM / MINISTER OF DEFENSE

2329 LOCAL, 13 JAN 1943

“What in God’s name was that racket, Thompson? Are we under attack?” The Prime Minister crowed at his aide-de-camp, Commander Charles “Tommy” Thompson. He was still only clad in his nightclothes, having been roused from his premature slumber by the sounds of engines.

“I believe if we’re asking that question, it’s a no, Prime Minister,” his ADC answered. He had a sheepish look on his face, barely visible in the midnight gloom, “…but perhaps we should get to a raid shelter, sir.”

“Well enough…” The Prime Minister of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland galumphed into the sitting room and peered through the blinds. “Heavens! There are men in the garden! Tommy, give me your pistol!”

The commander’s demeanor changed in an instant. “Get back from the windows!” He is voice turned acrid and pointed, hissing like a coiled snake. “Now!” Churchill did as his aid bid and recoiled into the shadows with a hastily seized fire poker in one hand. Thompson darted back into his room to recover his service revolver and descended down from the first floor. “Get behind me, Prime Minister.”

He leveled his pistol at the door. Light from the Hotel trickled between the blinds, betraying the skulking specters drawing closer. There was a click as Tommy drew the hammer back on his Webly Mark IV. The forty-eight-year-old Commander had placed his finger on the trigger when the shadows knocked on the door and spoke with an American twang.

“Mister Prime Minister—I’ve just got the strangest telegram from my father.”

Churchill recognized the voice of the Hyde Park pup. “Tommy,” he started.

“Yes, sir?”

“Put down the gun and open the drinks cabinet.”

BEHIND VILLA NO. 3 “MIRADOR,” CAMP ANFA

CASABLANCA, ALLIED-OCCUPIED MOROCCO

GENERAL ALAN F. BROOKE, BA

CHIEF OF THE IMPERIAL GENERAL STAFF

2353 LOCAL, 13 JAN 1943

Splayed out along the back of the Prime Minister’s villa facing an elegantly manicured but otherwise empty grass yard were the war chieftains of the Atlantic Alliance. Most were plying themselves with drinks after a frightful jump from that squadron of brand-new P-51Ds.

“Are you quite sure that this telegram is correct?” Brooke asked General Marshall, who was seated, hunched over in a metal chair, nursing the dregs of a double the Yank had drained with truly terrible celerity.

“Yes.” The Chief of Staff of the United States Army answered bleakly. Admiral King and Lieutenant General Arnold seemed intent to out-smoke even the French, having worked through most of a pack of cigarettes each from a fresh carton that someone’s adjutant had procured for this late-night soiree. They hadn’t touched their drinks.

Arnold glared at his liquor with a bit of disgust, “Do you reckon this is the doing of a Certain Force, sir?”

Marshall scoffed, “Well, certainly, but I doubt it is her doing. You know it too, Hap.” He shook his head, “…like a boy with a rocket ship.”

“It seems we’ve been left out of something?” Brooke remarked to no one in particular. The PM appeared with President Roosevelt’s sons—Elliot and Franklin Jr. He stopped at the edge of the patio, slightly wobbling, in his velvet siren suit. “I hope this is not another elaborate jest, gentlemen. I do value my slumber.”

The night sky towered above them, somewhat clouded—a few stars peered down from the blackness. The light of the city dimmed by tonight’s bomber scare. It was actually quite pleasant, perfect for a cigarette and a sherry if only the mood were not so dour.

“Oh, you’ll finally believe soon enough,” Admiral King answered with a bitter chuckle. It made Brooke’s skin crawl.

General Brooke scratched at his ear, “What is that racket?” There was a distant sound—a low whine and a hoarse roar. General Marshall downed his drink. General Arnold and Admiral King finished their drinks simultaneously. The Joint Chief rose to their feet with sudden synchronicity. “Are those French air raid sirens?”

The noise continued to grow. “Sir, I don’t think those are—” It was not coming from Klaxons in the city but the sky. Brooke had never heard the like. The Chief of the Air Staff, Charles Portal, looked like he was about to speak but hesitated and only quietly mouthed something to himself.

Lieutenant General George Patton scratched his head and took a few steps onto the green, “What in the Goddamn is this? Some kind of bastard’s joke?” The general wore a pair of striped pajamas, heavy leather gloves, and a pistol belt.

White lights shifted behind the clouds, brightening the sky with a false dawn. The belt of clouds was cut open by shapes moving like sharks through the water. White hot jets of flame poured from three dark, angular monsters. They had no propellers. They moved slowly yet refused to crash. Dragons, at this time of year? Brooke took a step back and nearly tripped on the patio’s curb as he rested his palm on his pistol. He caught himself as Patton twisted to face the incoming threat, a gloved hand darting to the ivory handle of his .45 Peacemaker.

The light came all at once without warning. The aircraft bathed the hotel complex with overwhelming white-blue floodlights. Brooke shielded his eyes with a hand as they came yet closer. The center-most vehicle began a lazy turn, pointing its blunted, geometric hawk nose away from them. The flames withered the pristine green grass into blackened spikes and then ash in the blink of an eye. A plume of dust, dirt, and sand rippled outward in a wave of projectiles. Every man in the party was sandblasted and coated in a fine layer of grime in an instant, hands hastily placed over their faces to protect from debris and illumination.

The lights from the other flanking aircraft dimmed as a ramp at the rear of the center craft opened. The roar of its engine faded to a whine before dying altogether.

The assembled chieftains, who had hitherto been annoyedly relaxing in the Prime Minister’s back garden, took in the sight before them in total silence, gawking at like schoolboys who had just seen the boogeyman come out from underneath their bed. Brooke felt every beat of his heart and every breath from his lips.

“I believe we are about to meet whomever, or whatever, was hiding in Hawaii.” The Prime Minister began. He paused as he wobbled for a moment, “That—or someone switched my Red Label for absinthe.”

A spindly figure cut through the illumination. Backlit, His features disguised by the blinding flood lights. Brooke felt the hair on his arms stand to attention. He almost wanted to puke from the tension. The figure walked slowly. Their gait was that of a casual stroll, as if they were enjoying the attention. Perhaps they had forgotten an umbrella to twirl in their aerocraft. Other shadows started to creep from the craft. Their forms were indeterminate. Brooke resisted the urge to go for his own pistol.

“Gentlemen! It’s a wonderful night for a stroll, don’t you think?” The voice was clear and calm—and familiar. “Though, perhaps I owe you an explanation—but in due time!” Brooke was certain he had heard this man speak before; he shifted his head.

Of course. He knew that voice.

Another step forward and the features of Franklin Delano Roosevelt—moving without assistance or a limp—became visible to all those standing on the patio. A frozen Elliot Roosevelt dropped his glass of bourbon.

Shattered crystal spread across the floor. “Pa?” Franklin Jr. asked of the figure.

The world did not stop as the President embraced two of his three living sons. Brooke did not let his eyes linger on the reunion of a grieving family but on three figures who stepped into clear view in lockstep. Three Magi moving from the dark into the light.

There was Brooke’s American opposite, Admiral Leahy—the Chief of Staff to the Commander-in-Chief—and the President’s seneschal and emissary, Harry Hopkins.

And there was someone else. Someone Brooke had never seen before.

She—she—was wearing an alien navy-blue stand-collar uniform, distinctly American but all wrong. Three silver stars rested on her shoulders, and a rainbow of ribbons ran down her chest. Short with her features just barely showing the strains of time. She had short but dense curled hair and a constellation of small, fresh scars all across her face. But neither her sex nor her vestments drew Brooke’s focus.

Since when did the Yanks start going around giving coloured women three stars?

 “Oh Heavens,” the Prime Minister muttered, “It was the absinthe.”

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MESSERSCHMITT Me 325D-2 DOBERMÄNN, R52/01C No. 812

OVER THE NORTH SEA, APPROX. 230 NMI NORTHWEST OF BREMEN, GREATER GERMAN REICH

OBERST HERMAN GRAF, LUFTWAFFE

GESCHWADERKOMMODORE, JAGDGESCHWADER 52

1029 LOCAL, 17 JAN 1945

“Damned machine, shut up!” Oberst Herman Graf cursed to himself as he watched his Messerschmitt Me 325’s radar warning receiver flash alive for the sixth time in five minutes, filling his ears with shrieks that pierced his skull. The low-resolution radar display in front of him showed nothing other than the lumbering formation of USAAF bombers coming toward the Northwest German coast. He again broke radio silence, asking for guidance from a Junkers Ju 390E-2 Kran airborne controller circling over Jutland. They merely repeated the order to close and destroy the bombers. He growled in between heavy breaths under his breathing mask as he switched his RWR off, sick of its incessant yapping.

Close? We’re closing all right. You lazy lily bastards. He and his Jagdgescwhader, along with two (JG 25, 50) of the other five Dobbermänn wings (JG 25, 28, 50, 52, 53), had come up to meet the American bombers. They were closing at a kilometer a second. He looked out his canopy and scanned the sky. His dogs were screaming across the grey sky like avenging Valkyrie. There were about forty aircraft from his IV Gruppe and his stabschwarm in his immediate proximity. They were not supposed to push their aircraft beyond Mach 2.7, but no one was listening to that rule today (or most days).

They were armed with two L-40 ‘Skoll’ (Ru 374 X-13) semi-active long-range air-to-air missiles, four L-50 ‘Hati’ (Hs 366 X-12) infrared short-range air-to-air missiles, and a double barrel MG189 20-millimeter Gast-gun. His Dobbermänn did not have six MG 17 machine guns built into the wings, unlike earlier Me 325s. The Luftwaffe learned the hard way that 7.92x57-millimeter was not suited for the aircraft—that, and the fact it was such a bodge-job that it would tear the wings off of the jet at high speed.

He took a deep breath and looked back at his radar. He almost choked on his air. The American bombers were about 45 miles away, just out of the no-escape-range of their L-40s, but they had begun to accelerate—fast. The American wonder bomber, the B-52 Stratofortress, was supposed to be subsonic. This was a nasty wrinkle as his radar told him that these B-52s were accelerating past Mach 1 and disappearing below his radar horizon. These had been confirmed. What in the name of God is happening?

The radio came alive with shouts from his men before an order came growling from the Kran, “Knight, Warden. Release! Weapons Release!” Graf confirmed the order to his wing, and his men complied. They all chafed silently that they, knights of the sky, had been made serfs by soft men in their flying coffee houses. It was the right order, the Dobermänner was a wonderful aircraft, but it could not look-down/shoot-down.

We cannot allow whatever these are to escape.

The Kran’s talker spoke again, “All Knight elements, this Warden. Major American air movement. Multiple division strength. Fall Burnhilde initiated. Divert east, azimuth 90, maintain altitude 40,000, maintain speed 3,000.”

Colonel Graf switched his RWR back on, and it was still screaming about a frontal aspect lock. A moment later, his radar was consumed by a blizzard of jamming. What? He looked up and forward. He did not see the telephone pole-sized missile before it detonated just off to his left. Mein Gott. He looked and watched two of his command flight’s aircraft tumble out of the sky, torn to shreds by a single massive continuous rod blast. The fragments peppered his aircraft, and he screamed into his microphone for his men to take evasive action, but it was no use. The RWR was crying out, dozens of contacts. He started to see them. Shit.

Their aircraft were built for speed, not maneuverability. Graf wheeled his Dobbermän into a dive, and his wingman followed him. The next missile turned Graf’s wingman, the wing’s adjutant, into a dead man in the husk of shredded metal. Grey-black puffs of smoke dotted with twisted coffins of steel tumbled to the sea with all the grace of a dead bird. Graf listened to his men, all veteran pilots—most of them aces in their own right—turn into panic-stricken boys screaming into their radios.

Good, God. I’m sorry, Jola.

Colonel Graf did not see the missile which found its mark. He was consumed with trying to avoid that fate to notice its approach. The weapon’s fuse failed, but a little more than 3,000 pounds of steel, fuel, circuitry, and explosives flying at Mach 4 was more than enough to do the job. The colonel yanked back the ejector lever as he was pressed into his seat by the Dobermänn’s death spiral. The canopy came loose, and he was launched free into the wind. It nearly snapped his neck. The stabilizing parachute deployed but failed. The secondary stabilizer opened and worked. He released himself from his seat when the spinning stopped. His main chute worked. Mercy for the small things. He looked around as the last missiles detonated.

There were maybe a dozen white parachutes against the granite clouds. He looked down and saw movement over the water. Oh, God. Water. He recognized the objects, just barely. They looked like training drones. What has happened? What is this?

He touched his face, and when he checked his hand, he saw red blood. Shrapnel had pierced his jaw, and he now felt the blood flowing through his mouth. It was a bitter, iron taste as he looked down at the frigid waters, dark like a wine of a terrible vintage. He had no recourse but to curse those who had sent him and his men to their deaths, even if his shattered mouth would not comply.

COMBINED AIR OPERATIONS CONTROL, ALLIED AIR DEFENSE COMMAND

“MOUNTAINTOP,” CAMP GRIFFISS, BUSHY PARK DEFENSE ANNEX, RICHMOND-UPON-THAMES, UK

GENERAL OF THE ARMY FRANK M. ANDREWS, USAAF (GSF)

COMMANDER-IN-CHIEF, COMBINED ALLIED AIR FORCES

1029 LOCAL, 17 JAN 1945

General Frank Andrews across the main floor of Control—such an ominous name for a wondrous place. The digital screens glowed blue-white, revealing a stunning battery of information that was almost hard to believe. Every airborne aircraft from Trondheim to Taranto was tagged and cataloged. Every day he appreciated just how prescient the name “MOUNTAINTOP” had been for this bunker complex. Despite being more than 30 yards underground, it was as if he was standing on the peak of Olympus on a clear day. Except, the radars and the ELINT sensors the Combined Allied Air Forces had at their disposal could see far more than the human eye.

He was struck, as was often these days, about how much had changed in the last few years. It made him feel old, and he didn’t like that. He put out his cigarette with a slight tenor of ire in the movement of his arms and face. He looked up at the main display as a set of green arrowheads closed in on red arrows over the middle of the North Sea. It was a buffet of information for men used to mere morsels.

Andrews pressed a button on a small panel of microphones beside his seat, “Status?”

Control had a new conductor, a Cert Rear Admiral. He turned on his heels and faced the glass window of the conference room. The little Korean man had been an oddity, someone who smacked of ill-repute when Andrews had first met him. He understood now that Admiral Jeung was a terrifying creature, one with abilities that Andrews and his subordinates could not comprehend when they had first met him. Now they did, and they let the little bald man do his awful work.

“We’re in the green.” Jeung started, talking through a microphone on his lapel. “Lead elements of FREIGHT TRAIN and JACK KNIFE will arrive over Norway in the next five. STAR KILLER has begun their sprint to target, and FOX HUNTER’s birds are reaching the Foxbats… now. Display three.” One of the control crew tugged on the Cert’s shirt sleeve, “Apparently, we fried the auxiliary phone line, I’ll get someone on that now.”

Even his uniform was odd. The Certs wore stand-collar service uniforms; Jeung had removed his coat, revealing a collarless dress shirt. No necktie? How uncouth.

Andrews and the other officers in the conference room leaned forward together and looked through the glass panels in the table, which contained screens of their own. He pressed a button on the little panel and swapped it to three. He watched as the color-coded arrows collided and smiled ever so slightly as he saw red ones turn grey. These bastards had unleashed the Second Blitz and then massacred VIII Bomber Command. They were getting a taste of their own medicine.

“Bloody cold business, Frank,” Air Chief Marshal Sholto Douglas, CINC of the Allied Air Defense Command, surmised. It was. They’d sited this air battle with a cold and calculating precision. They lured the very best of the Luftwaffe, those who posed the greatest danger, both behind the stick and in the instruction room, over the North Sea so that every man they shot down was more or less certain to die.

If the missiles didn’t end them, Neptune’s frigid embrace would.

“Bastards deserve every lick they get,” answered General Carl Spaatz, the CINC of the Allied Strategic Air Forces. It was his men who had been massacred in the SAM Days of 1943, he had a grudge, and he was not above settling it. Andrews was with Spaatz. He would not settle for anything less than the destruction of the Jagdwaffe and the crippling of the Luftwaffe.

The display froze and began to chug into stop-motion. General Andrews pressed the transmitter again as the engagement ended, “How’d we do, Admiral?”

“Met expectations. 648 AIM-8 Golf, dud rate of about ten percent. 421 were targeted at 321 Foxbats, 274 kills across 289 hits, so pH was .68 and pK .65. That’s better than we estimated. VF-13 and VFQ-33 are closing on the stragglers, and the Lightnings from No. 12 Group should be on the scene in ten. We’re tracking 112 Matador, 265 Mace, and 239 Hound Dog. That’s a hair lower than expected, but…” Jeung smirked, “More than plenty. Phones are back, but we’re now seeing some processor lag on displays. I’d wager it’s from the Fireflies switching over from the Screechmakers to the Stormknights.”

Andrews gave Jeung a nod, “Well, let’s see if these Navy super-fighters are worth all the money we’ve spent on them.” Andrews simmered with annoyance. The AAF’s own advanced fighter-interceptor program had suffered delays. They still had the F-110 Spectre, but the F-112 Delta Scorpion was supposed to be their peerless interceptor. Even then, whenever the Seattle Project deigned to unrestrict the Delta Scoprion, the Combined Pacific Ocean Areas would get first dibs. Nimitz and Kenney needed the extra range more than them. Sorry for stealing your air tankers for two months, Chester.

Spaatz and Douglas were chatting while Andrews simmered. The crew manning the computers was abuzz with activity. The entire operation was an order of marionettes on marionettes. There were dozens of talker birds, EC-121 Warning Stars, alongside hundreds of ground-based Vector-Altitude Controllers. This concert was directing the striking arm of the USAAF and RAF—plus the other Allied air forces—toward their litany of targets. Is this what the grapes of wrath taste like?

Air Chief Marshall Trafford Leigh-Mallory, the CINC of the Allied Expeditionary Air Forces, was in some God-awful hamlet in Brittany the last thing he was told. His tour of the airfields had been going well—and was sorely needed after the AEAF’s tactical fighters had run themselves ragged. Allied air power had blunted Operation WOTAN, Ike’s lines might have had a gash carved through them by OB West, but they were still standing. The Germans and their Vichyite puppets had gotten lucky and played their hand expertly, but it was not enough. They never had enough forces to reach, let alone capture, the main Allied port at Bourdeaux. It had been quite the gamble.

After the surrender of Rommel at Toulouse, OB West had been led by Model, and his gamble had failed. He had failed to cut off or destroy any significant portions of the Allied Expeditionary Ground Forces. The monocle’d Nazi had achieved two things: he had drastically shortened the AEGF’s supply line and given their field commander a sufficient kick in the ass for them to accept PROMETHEAN refits, which had delayed throughout 1944. There was enough kit in British depots to equip them twice over. To be fair, it had taken the Second Blitz and Black Thursday for the Allied Air Forces to accept their own Best-Possible-Advice in toto.

The situation in France was stabilizing—they had not been broken—but still bad. The 93rd Infantry and 101st Airborne Divisions were cut off in the port city of La Rochelle, and they were struggling to get supplies to them. The seas were rough, and the Nazis had learned not to even go out for a piss without an iron umbrella. The Red Army was preparing another bevy of counter-offensives. The Free Nordic Army had intensified its sabotage campaign. Italy was a complete mess. The civil war between monarchists and republicans had not stopped, but neither had the preparations for the next Allied offensive. Now was the time for the next step, one for all of Europe.

They had their nose bloodied by the Fascist in 1943. They had fought that enemy to a stalemate and stopped the terror. They had spent 1944 honing their forces, developing their tactics, and strengthening their logistics. They had bided their time. Now, they would show those monsters in Berlin just exactly who they were facing. It had been the FOCUS of the CAAF over the last six months to prepare for this, even before the Royal Marine Division had initiated Operation ARSENAL with the landing on Jersey. What had begun under the shadow of the moon would now ring out under the blazing sun. Operation SHATTER POINT was less a military maneuver and more a final will and testament written in absentia for the Luftwaffe.

They had their Adlertag in 1940—they would have their Adlernacht in 1945.

CONSOLIDATED-VULTEE F-106A DELTA DART, FOR DAN, 666-S6 / 44-27559

STAVANGER, REICHSKOMMISSARIAT NORWEGEN

SENIOR FLIGHT OFFICER MARY-GENIEVE “JEZEBEL” LAROUX, USAAF (GSF)

666th FIGHTER-INTERCEPTOR SQUADRON (WOMAN), 666th FIGHTER GROUP (INTERCEPTOR, WOMAN)

1133 LOCAL, 17 JAN 1945

Missy LaRoux rolled her aircraft to give herself a better view as she crossed the coast. Looking down, she saw chaos, smoke and brimstone, on the streets of Stavanger. The city’s local operations center was an inferno. Well, never seen that before, she thought as she saw the distinctive delta-wing of a Me 304H Farmdart impaled through the facade of a massive church. Free Nordic Army Partisans, their Green Beret advisors, and the Super Force’s super bombers had done terrific work.

The aerodrome for Gruppe IV of Jagdgeschwader 5 had been designated “Stavanger Main” by the CAAF. It was one of three main interceptor bases in Norway. They were the ones who did the bulk of the interception work—only leaving the most dangerous and more important interceptions to the Foxbats running out of Germany proper.

The combined air and partisan raid had smashed the base. Craters pockmarked the main runways, and ribbons of tar-black smoke belched into the sky. Smote onto the concrete, left in ashen outlines, were the wreckage of dozens of jets. There was a pair of jets spread along the latter half of the main runway, destroyed while attempting to get off the ground. Missy counted wrecks as she scanned.

She scanned the horizon. Nothing had changed. The same three sets of plumes from the destroyed SA/L-2 Guideline sites greeted her. With the LOC destroyed, they would be blind and dumb even if they were still functional. Special Forces were very serious people and had done good work, and no one could dodge the fury of the Super Force. The Atlantikwall was strong and tall, a mighty thing, but it had become brittle and inflexible. It had to be. They built it fast, and they built it mean; but they didn’t have enough folks with the right skills. So, they centralized to ration out their egg-heads.

The door to Norway was open. She didn’t even have to turn the handle, only walk in.

So, this is what Europe looks like? Looks cold. Not as cold as Thule, though.

Missy was at the very tip of the 666th Fighter Group, escorting IRON HAND EF-105E Thunderscreeches of the 480th Bombardment Squadron (Suppression). They had come expecting a fight. Even coming in below the radar horizon, they’d expected Farmdarts. CAP screaming down the fjords, Guidelines from well-sited bunkers—at least some flak. Instead, they were greeted with smoke, still water, and silence.

“Chin, got anything?”

“Not a mouse, Jez.” Flight Officer Hazle “Chin” Ying-Lee, her wingwoman, replied.

Inside Chin’s ventral bay was a sensor the eggheads called EVIL EYE. Missy didn’t understand how the thing worked, but it was apparently good for sniffing out passive snoopers. They were both at about 800 feet, with another pair of Sixes about five miles north escorting another quartet of Wild Weasels. The Weasels were a few miles ahead, darting between valleys and fjords, guided by their backseaters.

“Well, I’ll call it.” Missy snapped her radio to her second preset, “Pontiac One-Two, Broad Devil Three.” The 666th FG had been assigned the designator BROAD, and the 666th FIS had gotten DEVIL. The charm had worn thin. “Stavanger Main is hard bent. I tally four-six Farmdarts dog on the ground, mostly How and George spec. Evil Eye is negat emissions. Southern Passage is clear. Say again. Southern Passage is clear. Over.”

“A-firm, Broad Devil Three. Passing word. We expect an air sweep in the next thirty. We’re already picking up Starfighters from Stockholm Main. Get ready, babs.”

The quartet of Sixes pushed over Boknafjord, chasing after the Thuds. Missy shifted in her seat and checked her instruments. Everything was all green, even as she felt her hands shake ever so slightly under her gloves. She took a deep breath. She learned to love flying from her grandfather. He was light-skinned enough to pass and had gotten inspired by Eugene Bullard when he was over in France. She’d gotten the same bug he got; even though her life had been spent serving tables and playing piano. She was one of only three African-American women aviators in the Army Air Forces and the only one of them rated to fly any ‘sonics, for now at least.

She looked into one of her rear-view mirrors and could just make out the hazy trails of exhaust as the southern pincer of FREIGHT TRAIN crossed the horizon. The dozens of F-106s of the 666th Fighter Group (Interceptor, Woman) were the southern pickets for the rest of the strike force.

Their strike package was down to “only” two wings of B-52 Stratofortresses now that the Peacemakers had dropped their doodads and turned back for their bases in Nova Scotia. Twenty-seven bombardment squadrons were on the deck, penetrating Graðr just south of Bergen. Eighteen squadrons of fighters escorted them—twelve F-106 and six F-110. The 364th Fighter Group (Tactical, Nisei) was escorting the rest of the 480th BS as the Thuds turned their ARMs toward the SAM batteries around Oslo. The Navy had gotten the plum job of clearing up the remnants of the Jadgwaffe’s screamers as the rest of the CAAF’s fighter corps scrambled out of England.

The talker on the 666th’s designated EC-121 transmitted again, “Broad Devil Group, Pontiac One. Pass from Motor City. FENCER. I say again, FENCER. Oslo SOC has transmitted a raid alert signal to Berlin CADOC. Major enemy air mobilization in progress. Increase to angels 30. Maintain position north 5-8 parallel. FREIGHT TRAIN Easy Main is diverting to Point Strong. Be advised friendly strike package JACK KNIFE operating to your northeast. No skinny on who or what, assume Cert. Verify IFF before engaging any bogeys from Bullseye 20 to 70. All contacts south of 5-8 parallel and east of 0-5 meridian are assumed bandits. B-V-R authorized, you’re all unrestricted. Happy Hunting.”

Those gotta be Certs. I thought they were just kicking in the door?

“Well golly, here it is,” Missy murmured to herself as she pulled her Six into a climb toward the rest of her squadron. Fuel was good, they had finished their last tanking cycle before the German long-range radars had burned through the jamming of their escorting EB-36s, and the formation had dove below the horizon.

Seems like it’s working. Overconfidence is a slow and insidious killer? My fanny it is.

The Nazis had bet their super jets and their pilots—their best hopes for keeping their pilot training regime—while the CAAF was betting some of their best and their best munitions. She’d never seen AAF maintainers or Army Service Forces ordies work so damn hard, and they always worked like dogs. Nearly two years’ worth of production, all for this moment, she’d heard that somewhere—no idea if it was on the level.

Chin and Jezebel regrouped with the other pair of forward Sixes as they punched into and through the clouds. This was home. The F-106 was built for high-altitude combat, not knife fights above the dirt. They kept their radars turned off. They would use their FLIR and the guidance of their EC-121 to deal with the incoming. First would be the alert fighters from Sweden. There were three fighter groups in Swedish-based JG 50, all flying older Me 304s. The Luftwaffe had maybe thirty or thirty-three fighter groups in Luftflotte Reich, plus another twenty-five or so in Luftflotten Two and Three that were likely to come out and play. They could get another ten or so from their bases in East German within a reasonable time; but their eastern front air forces—Luftflotten Four, Five, and Six—were stretched thin. They had their reserves in Luftflotten One and Eleven, but those were of negligible value at unimpressive readiness. Not all of these were ‘sonics—and a lot of ‘em were early Farmdart models, which were more dangerous to the Nazis driving ‘em than anyone in the CAAF. Still, it was quite the tide of screaming steel.

The Nazis had ballooned the size of the Luftwaffe beginning in mid-1942—adopting distinctly American tactics that the AAF themselves had barely decided to use. Their training regime had pivoted from quality to quantity at the flick of a switch. Missy had heard that was why ole Goering joined Himmler in that cockamamie coup.

Missy flicked the cover off her airframe master arm. She was armed for bear with six AIM-7D Sparrow, four AIM-9F Sidewinder, and 650 rounds of M43 20-millimeter API for the M6A1 Gatling gun below and behind her left foot.

They had to cover the heavies until they got to their release point south of Oslo. Then they had to cover them as they withdrew. Almost every ‘sonic fighter squadron would be routed toward them via Scotland and Northern England, but that would take time.

Colonel Jacqueline “Jack” Cochran, their group commander, spoke over their net, “Come on ladies, twenty minutes ‘till drop. Let’s show the Krauts just how the Devil’s Daughters say hello.”

Twenty minutes never felt like such a long time.

358 American fighters had to hold off the entire Luftwaffe for twenty minutes.

It was an even fight.

NORTH AMERICAN F3J-3 VINDICATOR, IRISH GOODBYE, #90021 / AK 209

OVER THE NORTH SEA, APPROX. 80 NMI NORTHWEST OF ESBJERG, REICHSKOMMISSARIAT DÄNEMARK

ENSIGN ROBERT “BOOTLEG” KENNEDY, USN (GSF)

FIGHTING SQUADRON THIRTEEN

1033 LOCAL, 17 JAN 1945

"Track is good. Lock!” Bobby Kennedy shouted at his stick, Lieutenant (Junior Grade) Cornelius “Connie” Nooy. Their Vindicator hurtled ahead at Mach 2.1 as they eased off full afterburner.

The Foxbats they had chased toward Jutland had turned around and were coming at them. They were a mean piece of kit, but no one could win a fight like this blind. It wasn’t 1942 anymore. They had the jammers, and the USAAF’s dirty trick had killed six of the Luftwaffe’s twelve Ju 390E Melon AWACS—out of a fleet total of no more than 30. It had cost them eight months of Talos production, but it had paralyzed the Luftwaffe’s main fighter directors, killed two-thirds of their best interceptors, and taken out about half of their Northern standing CAP.

VF-13 and VFQ-33 had to clean up the stragglers before the real show started over Norway. Thanks for making this easy, boys.

A moment later, Connie growled into his radio in response, “Ripple Fox One!” Three AIM-7D Sparrows slipped loose from the rails and streaked into the rainy sky. The Vindicator’s track-while-scan pulse-doppler radar tallied two targets.

They had been outnumbered four-to-one when the fight had started. Now it was only thirteen on twelve. However, alert fighters from the two major airfields on Jutland and the twenty-three airfields in Hannover and northwest Germany were now in the air and were likely to come out to play sooner rather than later. They needed to get this done so they could level the field again.

Only fifteen miles separated the two squadrons, and they were closing at a combined speed of over 4000 knots. They’d only spark up the fire controls when it would be too late to dodge. There was no shouting, only silence. No panic, only patience. These aces were supposed to be their best. They blustered like knights of old. Kennedy and his squadron mates had been trained—or retrained—in a different art of war.

Graðr, the Reich’s integrated air defense network, was excellent. It had strangled the Combined Bomber Offensive in its crib and killed hundreds of Allied aviators. It had allowed the Nazis to modernize their economy and their forces free from continuous bombing. Allied Expeditionary Supreme Headquarters, Operations Europe—SHOE—had been forced to only launch piecemeal strikes with ‘sonic bombers like the B-57 Super Canberra and the FB-105 Thunderchief.

Graðr’s long-range air defense missiles were in range if not for the defensive jamming from VFQ-33 and their AQM-34s. Even then, their main long-range SAM, the SA/L-5 Gammon, was designed to counter slow-moving bombers. That had not stopped the Bremen Sector Operations Center from getting spooked and firing off a dozen plus as the Talos/Firefly salvo appear on their radars. That salvo had only managed to shoot down three of their own Me 304s on CAP and then rain missiles onto the fish of the North Sea. It had made everyone in their squadron jump for a moment.

The Germans did not have the fuels, spare parts, or maintainers necessary to regularly conduct full mobilization drills. Graðr was brittle. They’d only fully mobilized their air defenses maybe twice in the time since it came online. There was rust on gears that had never really turned to begin with. Even then, they had defeated repeated attempts to smash down the great wall of Asgard. Today, however, was a new day in a new year.

The last Foxbats would find no satisfaction or revenge. The F3D-3Q Stormknights of Electronic Fighting Squadron Thirty-Three were armed with innocuous but expensive pods filled to the brim with electric fury and directed a swarm of angry and dangerous Firefly drones. German airborne radars were worth about as much as an umbrella in a hurricane. They could allegedly track-on-jam, but that was a lie—and one that could be exploited with ease.

VFQ-33 had sent the Foxbats howling after empty air while VF-13 came around their flank, ready to deliver the coup de grâce. The Black Cats’ second volley polished off the dregs of the three best fighting wings of the Luftwaffe. Bobby watched the final moments of dozens unfold on his tactical information display and his CTV. The tracks were in green hieroglyphics. King Tutt was in his plane—and Bobby could speak his language. His eyes swept up and toward the view from the aircraft’s infrared search and track. The grey-white vision was his sole view forward. His seat in the Vindicator didn’t really have much of a canopy, just a sunroof. Bootleg and Connie could claim five kills from six Sparrows. This was their first combat flight, and they were already aces, and the day was not over yet.

“Splash two!” You could tell that Connie was grinning, and so was Bobby. He relished the kill even though he was a God-fearing Catholic, like all his family. His hands did the Devil’s work, but these Nazi bastards had killed Joe in ‘43 and nearly killed Kick.

His mother's cries when the Navy man had come to their door still haunted him. He remembered how his father looked at him. Bobby and his father never got along, but he could read every unspoken word on his tear-streaked face and quivering lips. His father wished that it had been him—not Joe. Bobby had dedicated himself to one task. He would avenge his brother—not for his bastard father but for his mother. He knew it would not bring her peace, but there was no peace to be had, only war.

The voice of their squadron commander, Captain Dick “Akagi” Best, came over their radio frequency, “Packard One, Felix One. Grandslam. Requesting picture.”

“Felix One, P-Packard One.” Their Army Air Forces talker could barely hide his stress. “Wait one.” There was a painful pause, “Felix One, that is non-advisable. We’ve got a wall of bandits here. Uh-we, we are tracking at least three-nine-seven, hold on, four-six-four bandits. Wait one. We’re trying to clear our own picture.”

“Hot diggedy darn.” Connie groused on the aircraft’s intercom. They kept pointing toward Denmark. They had work to do, but parsing through the sea of contacts was hard enough. It was like finding a needle in a haystack.

Another pause lasted three minutes, “Packard, care to give us a bogey dope?”

“Hold on, Dick—Felix One,” there was another awkward pause as the Black Cats slowed and formed up. “Felix One, Packard. Target. Designate… Group two-three. Hostile, four-six contacts, Farmdart Dog. Bearing, bullseye one-three-zero. Range, one-five-one. Angels, three-two. Flanking southwest. Speed one-two-one-five.” Four squadrons of Nazi manned rockets, their Starfighter, were coming out to greet them.

“Packard, time to intercept?”

“Felix, ETI, five minutes.”

“Felix One, Firebreak One.” It was VFQ-33’s skipper, Commander Wallace F. Short. “Music is on, Akagi. We can lure them off you but burn through in… two-four-nine seconds. Don’t let ‘em splash us, Dick.” Short and Best had both been at Midway when the Navy had sunk three and damaged three more of the IJN’s eight big flattops. They were the old hands in a new war.

“Firebreak One, just keep the music on. I’ll buy ya a boilermaker in the O-Club.”

One of the other Black Cats called out on the net, designating a target. The aircraft had a limited ability to share illumination, allowing aircraft to share targets. Bobby chattered with the other RIOs to find the remaining Ju 390E Melon AWACS. They had snapped the tip of the Luftwaffe’s spear, and now they would take their eyes, or they’d be cats caught in a rat trap.

“Got ‘em, Boot?” Connie pressed. His breathing was heavy, rasping over the intercom.

Bobby’s mind was on his work. His eyes raced down a list of signature patterns that had been in the mission brief. It was their latest and best intelligence; letting it fly had been a gamble. Make it count, Bobby. He double-checked the other RIO’s work as he ranked the targets on his TID. A stopwatch, Joe’s stopwatch, was clasped in his palm.

“Think so…” Bobby answered as six high-power radars came alive over Jutland. Two of their guesses had been wrong, but now they knew. Dumb bastards.

Akagi came back, “That’s it, drop ‘em, boys.” The battle cry of Fox Three echoed from a dozen Vindicators as forty-eight AIM-47 Super Falcon active-seeker long-range air-to-air missiles surged toward Occupied Europe. Three failed to accept guidance from their launch aircraft’s AN/AWG-4 fire control radar as forty-five punched up to Mach 4 and soared up into the sky, disappearing into the clouds.

Bobby started the stopwatch. “This is for you, Joey,” he whispered.

“Felix One, this is Packard One. Firebreak diverting northeast.” The EW birds from VFQ-33 were turning and running. “ETI, three minutes. Position, zero-seven-seven. Range, five-eight. Angels, three-five. Flanking northwest.”

“One to group, break and engage on my mark. I’ve had it to here with this noise.” Best had hands of steel and was asking the same of his men. They were going to keep their noses, and their radars pointed toward Denmark to let their missiles get closer before they went pitbull and turned on their own seekers. Even as the Nazis barreled down on them, there was only an electromagnetic blanket preventing their demise at the hands of a bevy of missiles—one that was being stripped away every moment.

Every second felt like an epoch. The volume of his own breath nearly deafened Bobby. The silence was violent in its unpleasantness—an unwelcome, unraveling calm before the storm. The missiles were halfway over Jutland when their seekers turned active.

“Pitbull. Break.” Best’s voice did not falter. The Black Cats wheeled like the heavy horse of ages past. Connie pushed the nose up as he broke right and lifted the aircraft into an intense turn. The experienced pilot broke etiquette and shouted, “TALLY HO!”

Bobbie was slammed into his seat as he pressed his transmitter, “Packard One-Four, Felix Nine. Bogey Dope.”

Before one of the air controllers could answer, another aviator screamed over the squadron net, “SPIKE! MUD! THAT’S DANCEHALL! MUSIC’S GONE! ” Ground-based radars had burned through VFQ-33’s area jamming and had acquired them with their search radars.

“Felix, defend south, eleven missiles, bearing nine-three. Turntable.” The voice of the controller on Pontiac was stern and cold. He was no longer sweating the wall of Nazi jets. The squadron broke south, and they switched on their defensive jammers. The Nazi’s SA/L-5 was mostly a danger to slow movers at this range, but if the Luftwaffe could fire eight missiles, they would fire eight dozen if you gave them the opportunity. Bobby snapped awake Irish Goodbye’s AN/ALQ-7 DAPER self-defense jammer.

Hope this damn contraption works. He looked down at his watch. One minute and fifty-eight seconds. Their Falcons should have reached their targets. May chaos reign in the Devil’s Hall.

MESSERSCHMITT Me 304G-6 STERNENKÄMPFER, II22/35I, No. 9574

OVER THE NORTH SEA, APPROX. 85 NMI WEST OF ESBJERG, REICHSKOMMISSARIAT DÄNEMARK

OBERLEUTNANT HANS SCHENCK, LUFTWAFFE

3 STAFFEL, GRUPPE I, JAGDGESCHWADER 22

1042 LOCAL, 17 JAN 1945

“MEIN GOTT! EMILE! SCHEISSEEEEEAAAUUUGGGGHH—” The voice of the Ju 390E’s fighter director faded, replaced with the deafening sounds of shearing metal before a sickening pop and haunting static. A hiss that followed horror like a shadow.

Schenck looked down at his instruments. His eyes glazed over with fear. His gruppe had been chosen to sortie and engage the presumed American fighter wing operating west of Jutland. They were supposed to reinforce the Dobermänner fighting beneath the coward’s cloud of electric jamming.

Now there was only a desolate quiet on I Gruppe’s frequency. He switched his second preset channel, the Geschwhader frequency. There was only silence. He switched to the third and final preset, the emergency ground control director. The wall of noise made Schenck wince. He couldn’t make out any one voice, only a chorus of panic and desperation—full of rage and curses. There was a single desperate voice mewling for calm and order.

Scheiße. He switched the radio back to the gruppe channel and was treated to his Staffelkapitän swearing at the Gruppenkommandeur. “YOU JEW-DOG, YOU DID THIS! YOU BASTARD! YOU COWARD!”

“WHAT THE FUCK ARE YOU TALKING ABOUT?! GET OFF THE AIR, YOU PIG-BRAINED SHIT EATER!” The Major shouted in response. “Bavarian cow-fucker.” He seethed into silence, “Alright. One-Red and Four-Yellow activate your radars. Let’s see if we can find anything. No, verdammt electrics. Everyone energize your—” His voice cut off just as Schenck did as he was ordered.

The radar defaulted to search, 90° arc out to a range of 60 kilometers. Nothing. His breathing picked up. They were being vectored to intercept the American fighters, but there was nothing. How could there be nothing? They had the best fighters in the world. The best pilots in the world. The Dobermänner must’ve already broken the Yankee’s nose. This couldn’t happen. The Allied dogs could not hope to match the Reich. The war had changed in ‘43. They were going to win. They had to win. The Reich would not lie.

Schenck looked up and right toward the center of their formation. They were arrayed into four lines, about three hundred meters of altitude separating each Staffel. There was a smudge of black smoke. Schenk was no ace. He was no Red Baron or Hartmann. But he had seen enough combat over the eastern killing fields to know what that was.

Oh no. Engine burst.

The improved G model of the Me 304, with its larger shoulder-mounted wings, was an excellent fighting aircraft. The Junkers-RVO Jumo 79 turbojet, however, did still have the issue of detonating toward the end of its 400-hour depot service interval.

The radio was filled with swearing as voices cut each other off.

“Damnit! Anyone see a chute?”

“Was that a fish?” There were no contrails—the clouds were dense but grey enough that spotting a white dinner plate-diameter missile was possible. The aviator’s heart and eyes raced as they darted from side to side and down to his radar. Still nothing.

“Fish in the air?” The air seemed to tighten as the aircraft in the Staffel started to jink and put space between each other.

“My ex-wife says nothing! Anyone see any incoming?” Schenck double-checked his instruments. His aircraft’s forward and rear radar warning receivers were cold. That did nothing to ease his nerves—they weren’t reliable to begin with.

“I see a chute!”

“My radar has nothing! Where are these basta—” The voice was cut off as Schenck watched a white-metal dart race against a petrified-grey sky coming from the left.

There was no shrieking cry from the plane’s ex-wife. They had no side-aspect RWRs; such luxury was reserved for formations like Jagdgeschwader 52.

“FISH IN THE AIR! EVADE!” The gruppe’s adjutant howled into the radio before his aircraft came loose around him. The formation shattered like crystal glass. A dozen jets hurtled lifelessly toward the water as the others broke and dove away.

Flares and chaff exploded outward from the defending jets, screaming away from the scene of a murder. A third of their number, gone in an instant. When did their damned Flak-Raketen get this good? His Rottenführer’s aircraft was sheared in half, a mess of flame and broken metal. It plunged toward the sea before Schenk could react. His schwarm jinked left and down. He followed.

The adjutant did his best to reorganize the disordered fighters, howling into the radio. Their assailants did not remain hidden for long, which was odd. The Allies usually hid behind the horizon and their cowardly jamming. These ones came barreling out of the clouds, turning from specks into screaming devils. It was a squadron of de Havilland-English Electric Lightnings. Where are the Americans? The Starfighters punched into full reheat, their forward radar warning receivers screaming as loud as their engines.

The pilots bayed for blood as they released a wave of L-3 ‘Große Hati’ (Ru 311 X-7) semi-active missiles. Each Me 304G had three of the larger L-3 and a pair of smaller, newer infrared L-5 ‘Kleine Hati’ (Hs 307 X-9) heat seekers. Half of the Lanzenreiter went wide as a wave of jamming blinded their fire control radars.

The British aircraft continued to accelerate as they dumped chaff and fired back. The Anglo was still outnumbered by more than two to one but continued to close.

Schenk’s rear-aspect RWR lit up red. Its razor-sharp tone pierced straight through the headphones of his leather aviator’s cap. Well… shit. It switched from an air search alert to a fire control lock in a blink. The adjutant and Staffelkapitäne howled orders once more as his own aircraft bayed at him in a mix of tones and warnings. Their idyllic wedge of Prussian lancers once more turned to a swirling, diving mess of contrails, Düppel, and flares.

There was no grace or honor here.

Gravity strained Schenk as he pushed his aircraft to the limit to keep up with his rotte leader. They dove north before swinging south, nearly colliding into a schwarm from 2 Staffel—they had not been without a director for years. Schenk had only ever known the voice of a man in a Kran or in a bunker, vectoring him to an unsuspecting Red Air Force flight. He had always been the hunter. Now, he was prey.

Schenk dumped his remaining chaff. A Sparrow went wide astray for a moment before it snapped back to its senses. It came back around, proving itself more maneuverable than any rocket Schenk had seen. It acquired his rotte leader, who entered a jink without saying anything. The move forced Schenk to push his aircraft closer to the missile, which streaked over his canopy before the white spear detonated just under the leader’s right wing.

Schenk could not react before the frag impacted the front of his aircraft, shredding his radar and puncturing his body like a duck at a hunt. Every muscle tensed and flexed. The pain was sharp—white hot—before it overwhelmed his nervous system. The husk of his rotte leader’s Sternerkämpfer lifted up and seemed to float in place long enough to cleave his left wing off, detonating the Baby Hati on his wingtip.

His aircraft hurled into a flat spin. He felt himself fading into the shock that gripped his body. Ardenline snapped enough life into him to keep himself awake. He gave it opposite rudder, killed the engine, and a second later hit the drogue chute.

Blood flowed down his flight suit and over his seat. His head bobbed as red drops hit the front of the canopy. He had done his best to recover from the spin, and his aircraft was suspended in the air, descending with all the grace of a brick.

His eye caught the mirror on his canopy ribs. A pig-nosed pot-bellied Lightning was chasing after an easy kill, him. The cannon burst turned the aft quarter of his jet into tatters, yet it remained in one piece. His aircraft was an older airframe, built when the Reich’s metallurgy was at its prime.

A round of 30-millimeter detonated above his shoulder, just level with the neck. The frag and explosion removed a grapefruit chunk of flesh from where his collarbone and shoulder met. It tore the left side of his face as if he had been dragged on gravel. He felt blood pour down his face. His eye hung down on its nerve, tapping the side of his oxygen mask like a pendulum. Like one final insult, a large piece of shrapnel, probably from his own aircraft, severed his right hand at the wrist, leaving it dangling, clasped around the yoke.

The aircraft rolled left. He could no longer command his body, let alone his aircraft. He was master of nothing, not even his own expiration. His head was pointed to the west. A massive aircraft he had never seen before dove like a vulture after him. He still could not understand how this had happened.

FLIEGERHORST 8I—CELLE-WIETZENBRUCH

SOUTHWEST OF CELLE, EASTERN HANNOVER, GREATER GERMAN REICH

HAUPTMANN JOCHEM KOPP, LUFTWAFFE

FLIEGERHORSTKOMMANDANTUR CELLE

1145 LOCAL, 17 JAN 1945

"I DO NOT CARE ABOUT YOUR HOSES. GET THEM FUELED! IF YOU CANNOT GET THAT TRUCK STARTED, GET FUCKING SOME HORSES! I NEED THEM IN THE AIR! NOW!” Captain Jochem Kopp was in a fit of fury. The work before him and the airfield command unit was immense, and they had no time to spare. They had not even gotten a warning. The order was “go.” So, they were going. He felt his voice turn hoarse from shouting and felt sweat soaking through his uniform from sprinting. This is not how I wanted to spend my birthday.

Celle-Wietzenbruch was one of the Luftwaffe’s most prized possessions—a 1st Class aerodrome. It was home to Jagdgeschwader 1 and their Sternerkämpfer, a pilot school with a capacity of 400, and a technical campus with a capacity of 1600. They put their squadron of alert fighters into the air within two minutes. They were preparing I/JG 1 and III/JG 1 for a minimal interval take-off—a procedure they had only practiced at half this scale, but their orders were clear—send everything up and let the Krans and the Graðr Gau Operation Centers deal with them.

“HAUPTMANN!” A voice cried, Kopp pivoted on his feet and found a mechanic with a grease-smeared face waving at him from beside a nearby telephone box, the receiver wedged between his ear and shoulder, “IT’S BASE CONTROL. ADJUTANT GROSSE! URGENT!”

Kopp took a deep breath and once again broke into a sprint, only taking a moment to curse silently at his leather riding boots. “Kopp here. What is it, Major?”

“We’ve just lost Warden One, Three, Four, Seven, Eight, and Eleven. Ground control is overwhelmed. I need you here to put together a fighter director team. Get students from the school if you have to. We just—”

“AIR RAID!” A voice shouted from somewhere on the other line. “Batteries engaging. They’re too low! And fast!”

Kopp winced as Major Grosse dropped the phone. His voice became distant, “Scheiße, where are my Fliegerfaust teams? Get them deployed now… Damned Allied dogs.”

“We need to get the aircraft airborne!” Kopp shouted into the handset

Grosse picked up on his end, “What? No! They aren’t fueled!” A tremor of anger and fear reverberated in his voice. A K-75 (Pm 301 V-5) launch interrupted Grosse, one of the 10-meter-long missiles shot into the air in a plume of white smoke. More followed as Celle-Wietzenbruch’s three K-75 Wesser and K-125 (Pm 333 V-12) missile batteries began to scream into the sky. “Jochim, are you there?” The base’s adjutant pleaded as Kopp dropped the phone and sprinted toward the flight line.

The taxiways were loaded with Sternerkämpfer ready to launch as the ground crews finished readying the stragglers. He waved his arms and screamed at the top of his lungs, “GO! GO! RED START! RED START! GO, YOU BASTARDS!”

He saw the first Allied jet come over the horizon. It was unlike any aircraft Kopp had seen before—a blunted nose, a single underslung jet engine, and stubby delta wings. It took him a second to realize it wasn’t an aircraft. There was no cockpit.

What the fuck is that? Amerikanischer Maikäfer?

The weapon rolled onto its back and disgorged a continuous volley of small bomblets as it streaked down the runway. A second later, there were a pair of sonic booms.

Two?

He looked to his right and saw another missile moving perpendicular to the first. A third, on a parallel course to the second, came past. For a moment, the air was filled with spinning green tins and lily-white parachutes. There were hundreds of them. It almost looked like something out of a parade.

The second weapon slammed straight into the main base complex building. The tins came down and started to explode. One took out a fuel truck which burst into a cherry red fireball as the others produced smokey puffs of death. The third weapon slammed home. Jochim saw smoke rising from the technical campus. The first missile exploded a second later, no doubt at the pilot school.

His mind raced as he looked hopelessly at the flight line. The pilots froze as ground crew ran for cover. He watched the first Starfighter explode. The secondary explosion knocked him down, and he watched the chain reaction of fire and steel tear down the taxiway. Other aircraft at other points of the lines exploded. They burst like balloons. All of them were loaded with jet fuel, missiles, and cannon rounds. The ground crew ran straight into mines. They were torn apart. Bits of man and a storm of blood joined with raining jet fuel and aircraft parts. Shrapnel filled the air, singing a soprano ballad of woe as they whistled overhead. Smoke started to fill the sky as the base’s fuel began to burn.

The first two pilots tried to take off, only to see the runways smashed by the parachute bombs. Dozens of craters cracked through the concrete, leaving jagged heaves lifting into the air. The first Me 304 was struck directly by one of the mines and disappeared in a flash of fire. The gear of the second dipped into a crater and sent the rocketship-shaped fighter rolling down the runway before it burst into flames.

Barely thirty seconds ago, the air base was a testament to the Reich’s power. Now, it was a smoking charnel house covered in mines and cracked concrete. Blood flowed from Kopp’s ears, debris coated the ground, and shrapnel had torn his clothes. The captain moved to get on his feet. He kicked something. Something metallic.

Schieße.

NORTH AMERICAN F3J-3 VINDICATOR, IRISH GOODBYE, #90021 / AK 209

OVER THE NORTH SEA, APPROX. 95 NMI WEST OF ESBJERG, REICHSKOMMISSARIAT DÄNEMARK

ENSIGN ROBERT “BOOTLEG” KENNEDY, USN (GSF)

FIGHTING SQUADRON THIRTEEN

1044 LOCAL, 17 JAN 1945

“Fox Two!” Connie growled through gritted teeth. An AIM-9 came loose and bisected the Farmdart hanging from a drogue. It disintegrated without pomp or circumstance. This was not a dime-store serial. It was cold and dull. Flames, flesh, and falling steel rained around them toward an uncaring sea in a dreary sky.

That makes nine. They had four more Sidewinders left.

“BLOODY GOOD HUNTING!” A British voice cried out over the tactical radio channel—out of proper etiquette.

“Last aircraft, state callsign,” an annoyed Best growled in response.

“This is Red Martlet leader. You that rotten-mean Super Force?”

“Martlet Red One, this Pontiac One Actual. Stow that chatter. Pertinent transmissions only.” Their talker bird’s commander was on the net and did not sound pleased.

“It is bloody pertinent!” Crowed the Brit.

“Is this guy really arguing with a full-bird Valk?” Connie asked over the intercom.

“Sure seems like it,” Bobby answered.

“Store that noise.” The colonel seethed, “Felix, Martlet Red. Divert east. Bullseye 107. Full burner. 100-plus bandits are on track for intercept. We’re working on vectoring the 55th F-G and 376th F-G your way, but we’re still talking with their talker birds. Martlet Red, what is your fuel state?”

“Pontiac, Martlet Red. Ten minutes at full reheat. We need gas—and quick.”

“Affirm, Martlet Red. N-K-A-W-T-G. We’ve got tanker birds at Staging Point Niagara.”

“N-K-A-W-G-T? What is that tripe? When will you Yanks learn to speak words and not letters!”

The colonel replied the second after Red One finished speaking, “Right after we stop taking your dates for a drink.” The British commander didn’t reply.

The haphazard Allied formation turned toward the cavalry as two more fighter groups came screaming out from the other side of the Atlantikwall. They’d killed two fighter groups but didn’t have the fuel or ordnance to take on two more.

A few minutes later, the talker bird came back, alerting them of incoming friendlies. Crossing the horizon were two massive squadrons of F-98 Crusaders. The olive-drab fighters, with their hapless smile, came streaking overhead. They were armed to the teeth—a pair of Sidewinders on each cheek, their innermost weapon station had drop tanks, and there were Sparrows on the other four pylons.

“Happy Hunting! Give ‘em what for!” Akagi transmitted over the tactical frequency, “Enough game for everyone today.”

Another few minutes later, the Lightnings and Vindicators started to see the Allied pickets as they rocketed toward SP Niagara over Devil’s Hole. They were the 55th’s third squadron, more Crusaders. Bobby almost felt bad for them, that they were the ones left to hold down the fort. Maybe their time will come too.

The group flew through one last bank of clouds before they crested into the sunlight. The first sunlight they had seen in hours.

Staging Point Niagara was busy, filled with gleaming silver metal at work. A dozen KC-97 Stratotankers were partially occupied filling aircraft of various makes, mostly American F-100 Super Sabres, but there were a few of the RAF’s new Cyclone fighter-bomber, which they had rushed into production after the US had refused to export the F-110 Spectre. A set of six EC-121 Warning Stars made lazy circles in the sky as a pair of KC-132 Globemaster IIs approached from the north to refuel the KC-97s. It was an airport in the sky and a watchtower stationed to stop any German attempt that tried to interdict the stream of Allied aircraft heading to reinforce the fight over Norway.

BOEING B-52B STRATOFORTRESS, UNSTOPPABLE III, #44-83938 / L3 40 SBW

NEAR TØNSBERG, REICHSKOMMISSARIAT NORWEGEN

CAPTAIN HENRY “HAL” GRAHAM, USAAF

535th BOMBARDMENT SQUADRON, 381st COMBAT BOMBARDMENT GROUP (VERY HEAVY)

1152 LOCAL, 17 JAN 1945

Captain Hal Graham pulled his yoke back forcefully. His Big Ugly Fat Fucker’s eight engines were using the last of their water injection to give him every ounce of thrust as they rocketed up from below the radar horizon up to launch altitude. He looked at his altimeter. It read 33,324 feet. Only a little more.

“Little John, you ready back there?” He asked over the intercom, his voice shaking a bit. God, he was nervous.

“Everything is warmed up. Just give the word, skipper,” his bombardier replied.

Hal looked out the window and saw the air dancing with chaff. “How’s our eck-me holding up?” Trusting electrics was still madness—but they had no other option.

“Green! No way they can spike us. Firebees are putting out a whole lot of music,” his ECM officer shouted from the compartment behind the cockpit.

They hit 40,000 feet. Ahead of them, the previous flight of bombers was turning back toward Scotland, entering a shallow dive. He took a gulp of air, “John—hit it!”

“Weapons release! Bay opening!”

The aircraft lurched right and then left as the two pylon-mounted AGM-22B Orion air-launched ballistic missiles released, and their rocket motors ignited. They soared out into the clouds. The bomb bay opened a moment later, and the painfully slow process of deploying their payload of 8 AGM-42C Popeye missiles began.

“One away.” The aircraft shook, “Two away."

AGM-42 Popeye was a semi-ballistic inertially guided missile with a 300-mile range and a 1500-pound payload, procured under the HAVE SLEEP program. In this case, Unstoppable III’s cans of spinach were packed with 1500-pound penetrators.

“Foe Hammer Group, Chevrolet Two Three. Red Blow Through. Bandits bulleye, 1-5-9. Range, 3-1. Angels, 30. Speed, 1000. Hot. Say again. Hot. Nine contacts, Farmdart. Foe Hammer Disengage. Steer left for 3-4-0. Turntable. Anvil Frost is vectoring to defend.” This WASP Valk captain had been directing for the entire day and had remained calm and collected, though she told just them that Nazi jets had broken through and were heading to kill them.

How come we get to deal with the only sonsabitches not dumb enough to dive into a furball?

“Three away.”

“Negat, Chevrolet Two Three. This is Foe Hammer Six. Not giving up my run. Krauts can chew on it.” Not only did he want to complete the mission, but he also didn’t want to lug his payload of guided missiles back to Iceland. “Richardson! Son, get ready on that egg-beater!” The BUFF’s lone gunner was back alongside his ECM sergeant and controlled the M6A3 rotary cannon in their empennage by radar alone. “Handy, you got that noise on?”

“Yessir, music’s on!” the ECM man answered.

“Four away… Five away.”

As each missile dropped, their electric brains were updated with a precise location reference that the plane received from a magnetic navigation system aboard an RC-125 RIVET SIGHT at Staging Point Helmcken.

“Hell, me neither. Come and take it!” It was the voice of Foe Hammer Eight, the B-52 on his right. The rest of the squadron started squawking, they weren’t going to bail.

“Six away.”

“Last aircraft, state callsign,” The valk’s voice was smooth as ice, and just as cold.

"Seven away.”

The Texan at the helm of Eight was a man who Hal always thought had a few screws loose. It wasn’t much of a surprise when he answered with, “Can’t catch me, I’m the gingerbread man!”

“Eight away,” his bombardier chimed. “Bay doors closing… and closed!”

“Check’s here. Let’s dash!” Hal and his co-pilot began to turn their whale of a ship around, “Foe Hammer Six, Winchester. Breaking off.”

The three-ship flight of bombers turned away. Another three were climbing behind them, ready to take their place. The air vibrated with the sound and the movement of millions of dollars worth of munitions, hurtling toward Nazi Germany and Occupied Sweden. The target list was longer than Hal’s arm. His bomber’s targets were at a Nazi mine complex in Sweden, something about bunkers that made use of special dirt for computers. He fell asleep after hour one of the briefing and had been woken up, rather rudely, for hour three.

“Foe Hammer, Chevrolet Two Three. Bandits are splashed. I’ve a message for youse,” the Valk’s New Jersey accent crept through a practiced professionalism, “‘Send beers to 82nd F-I-S.’” Graham could hear her smile. He did as well. It was a damned sight better price than dying, “You’re cleared to Staging Point Victoria along Corridor Easy Tare Sugar Three One Six. Maintain 400 knots.”

LOCKHEED-GRUMMAN F-27B BLACKCAT, DIVORCE PAPERS, #200121 / NM 101

NEAR KARLSTAD, REICHSKOMMISSARIAT SCHEWDEN

COMMODORE HENRIETTA “BUNS” NAKAMURA, USN (CTF)

DEPUTY COMMANDER, AIR GROUP, CARRIER AIR DIVISION THIRTEEN / MISSION COMMANDER, JACK KNIFE

1152 LOCAL, 17 JAN 1945

The weather was downright awful. Flurries and pea soup. It was actually worse than what the weather nerds had estimated, that made Commodore Nakamura smile. This was just about the worst weather to fly through, which is exactly what they wanted. She took a deep breath under her air mask, she was nervous. Everyone was rusty, even her. The last time she had flown in something Pre-Departure was in ‘43. She had spent most of the last year flying Crusaders over the Volga before the Old Lady had blighted her with a star. She relieved and annoyed that she wasn’t flying—but she had a bigger role today, flying Sicko in the Basement of an F-27B Blackcat.

Only douchebags fly this shitbox. Guess I’m a douchebag now.

The bird was the squadron commander’s bird, the three seat variant of the Navy’s F/A-XX super predator. She was lucky that the CO of Fighter Squadron 191, Command Jack “Hoshi” Wigbrand, was a decent guy—even if he was a bit weird. She had taken his seat and he was riding wizzo—in the seat of a dead man. His Wizzo had gotten himself killed on a IRON HAND mission over Bourges.

It felt odd. She wasn’t a pussy driver. Her old ride, As Per My Last Email, was an Ultra Hornet but it had been lost to a bird strike last January; just two days after Buns had her F-98 Crusader, Comedy of Errors, shot out from underneath her above Stalingrad. That was a shitty week. Despite the fact Buns was locked inside the of fuselage of the aircraft without so much as window she had a better view than Hoshi and their pilot, Lieutenant Greighson “DASZON” Bartol, and their wondrous sapphire-lined canopy. She had CrystalDome—the Enhanced Controller Operational Environment System—which made the made EOTS and EODAS of the rest of the fleet look like a shitty Snapchat filter.

ECOES combined with the F-27B’s PYTHIA computer allowed Buns to look in any direction and see the outside world in 16k. She was in a glass bubble, a human placed into a super information bubble. The Basement earned its name because early model F-27s had solely relied on an augmented reality headset in a capsule light by two small main displays. Apparently, “being stuck in a zero natural light cave while going Mach 2.5” was unpopular. The CrystalDome was not for everyone. Buns has know more than one aviator or NFO who qualified for NGAD-N, only to have overwhelming vertigo and motion sickness once in the Basement. It was a bit too Minority Report for her, even if she’d never actually seen the movie, just a gag from an episode of American Dad she’d binged after being wounded in 2038 after getting into a tussle with a squadron of J-35s.

Currently, Buns’ eyes were locked onto a couple of highlighted red outlines about 25,000 feet above their formation—the last element of the final squadron of Sweden-based Me 304s. Don’t look down, Hans. Not that he’d see anything if he did. The Nazi jocks would never know that there had been 113 fast movers right under their noses.

She kept her eye on the radar and their location as spoke on the radio, “Crystal Ball to Div. Two minutes.” They were approaching their release point. They needed to get clear of those Starfighters before they made a sharp, short climb to altitude to give their standard ordnance additional range—then the fun would begin.

Operation JACK KNIFE was the largest concentration of OLYMPIAN airpower since Operation LEVIATHAN in December 1942, when the CTF unleashed an Alpha Strike on Truuk. Since then, the CTF had never operated more than a few flights at any one time. Spare parts were tight, and personnel were in high demand. The planning for this mission, under the wonderful name ARGENT PIXIE, had begun in September 1944. The run-up allowed AIRCERFOR to gather eleven squadrons: two F-27A/B Blackcat, four F-35F Panther II, three F/A-18H Wasp, and two EA-18R Howler.

“Daszon, Hoshi, it’s time. Let’s kick it!” Nakamura hit a physical button beside her PYTHIA display. It transmitted the same signal to each ship in JACK KNIFE, a one word message. Cassandra.

Go time.

Buns was pressed into her seat as the Blackcats’s pair of A100-GE-103 variable cycle engines went afterburning and cranked up to their max thrust, a combined total of 104,243 pounds. The NGAD-Ns came screaming out of the clouds first, followed by the Panthers and then the Ultras and their Howler sisters.

“Hoshi…” Buns started as they rocketed up.

“Nada.” He took a deep breath, “Lot of search. Nothing at us—yet.”

The Blackcat was a rocket ship, but the Panther, Wasp, and Howler weren’t slouches either. The Panther, particularly. It outwardly looked like an F-35 Charlie, but it was totally redesigned to utilize the next generation of advanced carbon composite, high entropy alloys, and ceramic matrix variable cycle engines. The Wasp, and its airborne electronic attack derivatives, could in theory beat a Panther—but not today. Having a main weapons bay with three AGM-158s came with trade-offs—and that wasn’t even counting the six weapons pylons loaded with stores.

PYTHIA had synced the radars and EO-DAS from the entire group to give her a clear picture of the skies for hundreds of miles. Buns had a crystal ball in her hands and a magic mirror on the wall. They had a better picture of what was happening to the Luftwaffe than the Luftwaffe—the benefits of a sensor supercluster.

There was pandemonium in the air and panic on the ground. The EW sniffers would record every transmission for the intel guys to chew through. Holding patterns were drifting toward each other. Hundreds of aircraft that should be heading to the furball over Southern Norway were burning fuel and waiting for more orders. The Sector/Gau Operations Centers had not received the order to move to their hardened shelters—if they even had them. Good. The mess turned even more chaotic as the BUFFs from FREIGHT TRAIN slung their regards at volumes that made Buns blush. Bold Orion was getting one hell of an opening number.

The Gennies ALBMs would hit targets deep in the Reich—especially their synthetic proppant refinery in Silesia. Their Popeye SLAMs were aimed at the Grängesberg-Blötberget REE complex, which was probably the Nazis’ most coveted asset outside of the Reich Defense Organization’s main facility at Peenemünde. They had taken over Sweden for it, and now—hopefully—they were going to lose it.

Hoshi, despite his squadron billet, was running Wizzo for Buns, an impressive act of humility. Especially since the Blackcat clan were usually the most condescending of douchenozzles. They called themselves Tomcat Eaters and were so shoved up their own asses that they burnt tongue on stomach acid. Buns, by trade, was a mere Ultra peasant to them. “Okay, we’re starting to get hit with search, concentrating on the Wasps. Not serious yet.”

Buns grimaced, “That’ll be the external stores.” It was to be expected, but so far, the Nazis had not demonstrated the capability to track Cert aircraft, with the exception of some short-range OLYMPIAN-grade air defense systems at critical nodes near Berlin, Grängesberg-Blötberget, Peenemünde, and the Ruhr.

She started scrolling through the aerial targets and tallying priority. She had a dozen Foxbats circling just north of Flensburg. They have to go. There was a pair of Melon AWACS taking off from their airbase near Schwerin.

“Okay, we’re getting a lot more X and S-Band our way. Increasing in power, they’ve got the scent.” Hoshi calmly relayed as JACK KNIFE wordlessly split from a single column into three wedges.

“Here we go.” Buns clicked away at her station before she hit transmit. The order was six words in all. The words were so sweet in her mouth that a smile creased her face under her mask, “So Hot You’re Hurting My Feelings.”

A dozen EA-18R fired up their CATARINA jamming pods. The electromagnetic hell-storm they unleashed on Europe jammed everything from PESA radars to shortwave radio. The “Ultra Hornet” might have been the Naval dump truck of the 2040s—but it had power for days and could sling more rock ‘n metal than a coked-up Atlas at a Foo Fighters concert. However, that still meant they had about five minutes at full tilt.

It took a second for PYTHIA to clear the fratricidal jamming, and she revealed just how they had kicked the nest. The lazy orbiters, free of their overwhelmed ground controllers, took no orders as an order to head north—at the same time.

Traffic, amirite?

As the Luftwaffe panicked and Graðr crumbled under its own weight, the Certs made use of their Sunday Punch. Weapons bays and pods opened. They let slip the dregs of their pre-Departure arsenal. Everything that hadn’t been bookmarked for emergencies or development programs. It was a motley wall of hurt, mostly AGM-158F Common Air-to-Surface Standoff Missile mixed with AGM-189D Supersonic Common Attack Missile-Extended Range and AGM-188B Stand-in Attack Weapons.

Now that they’d handed off their housewarming basket, they just had to say hello to the Luftwaffe on their way home.

CONSOLIDATED-VULTEE F-106A DELTA DART, FOR DAN, 666-S6 / 44-27559

NORTH OF KRISTIANSAND, REICHSKOMMISSARIAT NORWEGEN

SENIOR FLIGHT OFFICER MARY-GENIEVE “JEZEBEL” LAROUX, USAAF (GSF)

666th FIGHTER-INTERCEPTOR SQUADRON (WOMAN), 666th FIGHTER GROUP (INTERCEPTOR, WOMAN)

1207 LOCAL, 17 JAN 1945

The furball extended for at least fifty miles along the sides of the compass and across no less than 25,000 feet of altitude. The aircraft dogfighting at 20,000 feet not only had to keep a bead on their targets but watch for falling wrecks coming down from 40,000 or 50,000 feet. The brawl had reached a steady state of about four-hundred aircraft on either side. The Huns were losing ‘sonics as fast as the CAAF was rotating squadrons out of the fray to get them gassed up at Staging Points off Norway.

The growl in her ear finally grew to an annoying, but satisfying, fevered pitch. Missy pulled the trigger on her yoke, and the Foxtrot Sidewinder accelerated off the rail. The Messerschmitt 304-E, one with enlarged centered-mounted wings, was being chased by no less than eight Sixes. He tried to dive away. The Krauts thought speed was the best defense—but you can’t dodge a Mach 2.5 missile in a rocket ship that isn’t even hitting Mach 1. Missy’s AIM-9 got him, detonating just behind the wing. The aircraft crumbled and tore into two large pieces. The rest of his squadron was rendered into a ticker-tape parade of broken steel and burning aluminum.

Are these bastards really the Luftwaffe? They can’t fly for shit.

“Broad One to Group.” It was Colonel Cochran, “Gather ‘round, ladies—Motor City has a whole mess of bandits heading our wa—Hell with that—Farmdarts three o’clock low. Devil, up and at ‘em!” Missy’s four-ship flight kicked into full burner and pushed into a steep dive. “Harpy, loop south and kick ‘em in the ass. Angel, get in there and clock those Fuldas! Those ‘saders boys need some help.” Missy just caught a glimpse of Colonel Cochran at the helm of her two-seater F-106B, screaming into full burner toward the Fuldas with the rest of the 667th Fighter-Interceptor Squadron.

Two squadrons of missile-armed Farmdart Ables were screaming after a squadron of F-98 Crusaders fighting a pair of Henschel Hs 283 Fulda squadrons. The Fulda was an ugly, barrel-shaped fighter that, despite its looks, was damn quick (for a subsonic) and agile. The jocks in the Crusaders were holding their own, taking their time, killing the Fuldas with boom and zoom. What in His good name was Jack chattering about? The talker birds and Valks had handed off terminal intercept to their squadron and group commanders with their back-seater combat-intercept controller-officers.

“Punch straight through them!” Missy cried on the tactical channel. The freak burst with voices the second after she finished.

They tore straight into a tiered wedge of Farmdarts, slinging more than just words, going faster than the speed of sound. The Krauts scattered like rats, having tunneled vision on the Crusaders, as the four Sixes cut straight through their formation. Missy put her ship right between the wings of the leading Me 304s, lighting off another all-aspect heater in the process.

Missy got one with guns. The burst from the M6A1 Gatling caught the rocket just to the rear of the canopy. The aircraft lost control and slammed into its wingman, both were consumed in a fireball—one that nearly caught Missy. The air was now alight with chaff and burning magnesium as American and German flares filled the air. The squadron punched through the Farmdarts and looped straight into the furball-within-a-furball as the 665th Fighter-Interceptor-Squadron came back down from the south after the scattered Messerschmitts, who were now easy pickings.

Missy, still at full burner, dipped under Cochran’s F-106B by feet and spat a burst at a Fulda, which went wide. She re-acquired another and pulled the trigger. This time the 20-millimeter rounds blasted the cockpit, which was glazed pink as the jet dropped into a shallow, listless dive toward the dirt.

Fifteen Nazi jets were splashed in the first thirty seconds of the engagement. Missy had gotten her fifth kill. She was an ace and had the gun-camera footage to prove it.

Allied command and control had been reigned back to a minimum—allowing pilots to scratch that dogfighting itch, but the Krauts seemed to have lost their minds. Missy watched a Me 304 try to win a turn fight against an F-106 from the 665th. They 665th gal immediately got on his tail and put a Sidewinder down his exhaust before he could even complete one circle. Really, who taught these jokers how to fly?

The chatter on the tactical radio was constant—dozens of voices—often cutting each other off. Missy focused on her surroundings and not the noise. She kept her energy up as she took another pass at a Fulda, but one of the Crusaders got it with his gun.

The Farmdarts, or what remained of them, were running. The Barrels kept fighting as their numbers dwindled. One was able to put a 25-millimeter Gaust-gun burst into a Crusader. The American pilot punched out just as the Fulda pilot lost track of the ball and slammed his flying barrel into the spinning F-98C.

The entire clash lasted maybe three minutes, but at the end, there was a lone Fulda running for the deck and five Farmdarts breaking into a full sprint. Only the Fulda and two of the Farmdarts managed to get away as Cochran called the group back to order. She herself was interrupted by a talker bird.

A distinctively British talker overrode their frequency, “Broad Group, this is Voxhall Three. Clear bore. Friendlies incoming. Steer left for 0-2-0, climb to angels 40.”

“Voxhall Three, Broad One. Wilco.” Jack was none too pleased.

The RAF fighter group came into view a few moments later. They had just completed their final leg of travel on their U-shaped course from England to Norway. It was a Hell of a sight. They were arranged in perfect lines, like a cavalry troop ready for the bugle call. They were clearly organized by squadron—seven in total—two of the new ‘sonic Hawker Cyclone, three of the mainline subsonic Hawker Hunter, and two of the chunky Supermarine Scimitar.

“Will you look at that? They finally deigned to show up,” Missy mused. She looked down at her instruments—checking her fuel—for a moment before she looked back and saw a sky crisscrossed with contrails racing south. “Jiminy Crickets! Volley fire!”

The British had unleashed their Sparrows in two massive volleyed launches—clearly, something was coming for a fight. She smiled. She didn't have much gas left but not nearly so little as to turn down a fight.

BOEING EC-125F SENTRY, SKYGUARD DE VILLE, 543-J1 / 44-13213

STAGING POINT CUMBERLAND, OVER THE NORTH SEA, APPROX. 50 NMI WEST OF BERGEN

LIEUTENANT GENERAL JAMES DOOLITTLE, USAAFR (GSF)

GENERAL COMMANDING, OPERATION NORTHERN WIND / CHIEF OF STAFF, ALLIED EXPEDITIONARY AIR FORCES

1211 LOCAL, 17 JAN 1945

Jimmy Doolittle watched as the radar contacts on his display merged. It was a violent display of information—overpowering, really. It made him uncomfortable, actually. He almost knew too much. He felt like he was playing God or playing with tin soldiers, but it was real.

Seven hundred Luftwaffe fighters had given up on waiting for orders after they had lost their link to their ground controllers. They were heading for their fighters over Southern Norway. Thankfully the Luftwaffe’s attempts to vector fighters east, over Sweden, to bypass their fighter barrier had fizzled. The Nisei Spectres and Thuds had intercepted what few had gotten those orders.

The CAAF’s fighters had expended a lot of fuel and ordnance stopping the piecemeal attacks over the last half-hour. The BUFFs were finishing their runs and starting to head home, but they still needed to be protected. He would not allow the Allied Air Forces to suffer another Black Thursday.

He put on his headset and plugged it into the console, “Commodore Nasbee, do we have an idea of where JACK KNIFE is?” he asked via intercom.

“General, they’re still radio silent. We’re not getting much through their jamming, it’s all fratricidal, but we can’t help that right now, sir. Buns—Commodore Nakamura has a sense of drama, so she won’t be anything more than fashionably late.”

LOCKHEED-GRUMMAN F-27B BLACKCAT, DIVORCE PAPERS, #200121 / NM 101

NORTHWEST OF HALMSTAD, REICHSKOMMISSARIAT SCHEWDEN

COMMODORE HENRIETTA “BUNS” NAKAMURA, USN (CTF)

DEPUTY COMMANDER, AIR GROUP, CARRIER AIR DIVISION THIRTEEN / MISSION COMMANDER, JACK KNIFE

1224 LOCAL, 17 JAN 1945

Missiles were in the air before verification that the order to engage had been sent to the rest of the aircraft popped up on Bun’s PYTHIA display. That made her chuckle. Four Raytheon AIM-300 Phoenix II Long Range Engagement Weapons dropped free from Divorce Papers’ own bay less than a second after she pressed send.

Thirsty are we? I mean, yes.

Two were aimed toward the steel funnel trundling toward Norway, which had already had their clock cleaned by the RAF—but there were still hundreds of the second-line fuckers in the air. Someone needs to even the odds. Plus, Buns had gotten the greenlight from Cat Mitscher, still AIR/CERFOR, to use what munitions they took off with. Buns would happily take ‘Smoke ‘Em if You’ve Got ‘Em’ and run with it.

Plus, killing Nazis made it easier for them to punch back home.

BOEING EC-125F SENTRY, SKYGUARD DE VILLE, 543-J1 / 44-13213

STAGING POINT CUMBERLAND, OVER THE NORTH SEA, APPROX. 50 NMI WEST OF BERGEN

LIEUTENANT GENERAL JAMES DOOLITTLE, USAAFR (GSF)

GENERAL COMMANDING, OPERATION NORTHERN WIND / CHIEF OF STAFF, ALLIED EXPEDITIONARY AIR FORCES

1225 LOCAL, 17 JAN 1945

“Looks like one Hell of scrap is on us,” Doolittle noted to one of his Cert minders, Lieutenant Michelle Ro. She was at the station to his immediate right and had just finished a conversation with the skipper of an EC-121 talker bird and was now shifting down a list of who to call next.

“Sure sounds like it,” she didn’t even turn away from her screen, which was zoomed into a portion of the North Sea east of Aberdeen. Her voice was driving fighters from England along the sky bridge to Norway, ensuring the talkers handling the individual groups were working together and that no one was getting lost—or colliding.

Doolittle looked to his left to see his other minder, Senior Chief Petty Officer Leysohn Benton, go white. “Oh shit.”

“What is i—” Doolittle looked at his own screen to see dozens of missile contacts suddenly appear east of Jutland. “Oh shit.” He flatly answered his own question.

“Oh shit,” Ro chimed in, her screen reflecting the same data as Benton and Doolittle’s.

They were faster than anything he’d seen before, not American, nor German—almost certainly Cert. They call it OLYMPIAN for a reason, James. They raced across his display at Mach 4. That’s a lot of rockets, gee willikers.

“This Nakamura of yours sure knows how to make an entrance.”

CONSOLIDATED-VULTEE F-106A DELTA DART, FOR DAN, 666-S6 / 44-27559

NORTH OF KRISTIANSAND, REICHSKOMMISSARIAT NORWEGEN

SENIOR FLIGHT OFFICER MARY-GENIEVE “JEZEBEL” LAROUX, USAAF (GSF)

666th FIGHTER-INTERCEPTOR SQUADRON (WOMAN), 666th FIGHTER GROUP (INTERCEPTOR, WOMAN)

1226 LOCAL, 17 JAN 1945

All out of Sparrows, but not out of the fight. Missy pulled the trigger, and the burst of 20-millimeter AP-I caught the nose of the Farmdart that was daring enough to enter into a head-on with her Six. The pilot punched out as his Me 304 tore itself apart. He came free less one leg. Sorry, Hans. Don’t be a Nazi next time.

The furball had gotten a lot smaller and a lot denser. She rolled her aircraft over into a dive and watched a Supermarine Scimitar collide into a He 279 Faucet ground attack aircraft, which for some reason, had joined an air battle. As Missy dodged jets, an Fw 324 Fauna nearly got on her tail, but it got jumped by a pair of supersonic F-100 Super Sabres. Their M3A9 revolver cannons blasted the twin-engined delta-wing multi-role attacker into bits. Missy had lost track of her flight in the confusion—and voice radio was no use.

She was nearly bingo fuel, her last sidewinder was a dud on its rail, and she had maybe two more bursts of 20-mike-mike left—but she did have nine kills.

As she looped down and around, cutting through the cloud of jetwash, chaff, flares, and zooming planes—she looked at the continuing stream of German fighters. They had the qualitative and quantitative edge—but fighters tanking at a staging point or trucking over the North Sea were of little more than emotional support when five Jagdgeschwahders rolled in all at once.

She let off one more burst of 20-mike-mike at a smoking Farmdart. The grey smoke turned an inky black, but it continued to limp away. Missy turned west and looked over her shoulder.

Six Farmdarts exploded at once. Then another five. Then an array of Nazi fast movers, little more than dots, turned into puffs of black smoke.

What in the hell?

LOCKHEED-GRUMMAN F-27B BLACKCAT, DIVORCE PAPERS, #200121 / NM 101

WEST OF KRISTIANSAND, REICHSKOMMISSARIAT NORWEGEN

COMMODORE HENRIETTA “BUNS” NAKAMURA, USN (CTF)

DEPUTY COMMANDER, AIR GROUP, CARRIER AIR DIVISION THIRTEEN / MISSION COMMANDER, JACK KNIFE

1228 LOCAL, 17 JAN 1945

“LAS! LAS! LAS!” Nakamura painted the nearest Farmdart. It lasted two seconds before its main fuel tank ignited, and the aircraft crumbled and exploded.

The Blackcat’s 150 kW flashlight was the third most powerful airborne laser fitted to an aircraft in 2042, only surpassed by the Air Force’s LONE WARDEN 1500 kW laser fitted on a C-47 Dreamwarrior or the coke-fueled fever dream that was the PLAAF’s Laser Dragon 3000 kW laser fitted on a Comac CR 949.

LONE WARDEN had been close to a total failure; Yellowstone-class defense cruisers and Pallas-C missile batteries provided most of the homeland missile defense during Second Sino. The AL-2s sat on the tarmac like Dumbo without ears because of their constant issues with their power cells. That was still better than the Laser Dragon, as it exploded over the Forbidden City during President Xi’s birthday celebration in 2035.

As Buns acquired her next mark, Daszon howled, “Satan One, Fox Two!” An AIM-9Y Sidewinder Total Enhancement Package (STEP) came free from the bay and streaked after a Starfighter.

A scythe of ghost grey fury materialized in the clouds. Carrier Division Thirteen had fought this war by proxy, but no longer. They wracked up 174 kills in five minutes.

“Crystal Ball to div. RIP AND TEAR. KILL ‘EM ALL.”

Two of CVD-13’s elements turned left and hauled after the last elements of the Nazi reinforcements while Buns took her element—a squadron of Blackcats and three squadrons of Hotel Hornets—toward the furball.

She watched one enterprising Wasp driver descend on a Farmdart like a condor on a deer, letting off a long burst of etsy—electrothermal chemical—20-mike-mike, which sliced the Nazi F-104 in half. 20-millimeter AP-frag at 3 km/s will do that to ya.

Buns painted her next target, which disappeared into a ball of flames before bursting. The fight became a feeding frenzy as the Cert pilots tore apart the Luftwaffe. Buns began to pick off German jets that were ducking and diving in the furball.

Gennies, please, don’t light us the fuck up. That would be cringe.

COMBINED AIR OPERATIONS CONTROL, ALLIED AIR DEFENSE COMMAND

“MOUNTAINTOP,” CAMP GRIFFISS, BUSHY PARK DEFENSE ANNEX, RICHMOND-UPON-THAMES, UK

GENERAL OF THE ARMY FRANK M. ANDREWS, USAAF (GSF)

COMMANDER-IN-CHIEF, COMBINED ALLIED AIR FORCES

1850 LOCAL, 17 JAN 1945

Andrews clipped the end of a fresh cigar the commander of the Cuban Expeditionary Force had graciously gifted to him. He paid no mind to the main display as he struck a match and carefully lit the gran corona. He rose from his seat and stretched his back and neck before sitting back on the tabletop. The blue computer light reflected in the glazed painting hanging on the wall. It was the panorama of the Great War with the fall of the Red Baron at its center. It no longer felt inauspicious. Who the Hell decided on that painting anyway? Oh, it was Churchill, wasn’t it?

He exhaled a puff of smoke into a fine ring before rising to feet. He opened the glass door to the main floor.

“You can’t smoke here, sir.” Rear Admiral Jeung was already back to his antics.

“I am clearly not smoking, Admiral,” Andrews sternly replied. He took two more steps and scanned the room. Technically, he was not actively smoking the cigar, and the bastard Jeung had pulled enough stunts like that before. “How are we?”

“The staged withdrawal is going off without a hitch. Better than anyone expected. We haven’t got anyone on our heels. Somebody in Berlin finally pulled the plug.” Jeung almost sounded confused.

“Hmmm. What’s with the long face, Joseon?”

That landed like a slap on a date. Jeung looked at him as if the general was suffering moderate to severe rapid-onset mental retardation, “I’m from Torrance.” The entire room stopped working for a moment.

He heard someone behind him mutter, “Asshole.”

Evidently, he had been offensive. One never knew with the Certs, but they’d tell you when you did, “Oh, yes. Uh. Apologies. I didn’t take you for a Californian.” Andrews returned a confused, blank stare.

“I didn’t expect the Germans to give up and take the L.”

Andrews raised a quizzical eyebrow, “The L?”

“The loss,” Jeung answered.

“Ah.” Andrews hadn’t been one for understanding the Cert’s dialect, but he wasn’t that dense. “Well, we’ve gotta… grab that vee!”

“Uh…” Jeung scoffed awkwardly, “What kind of vee, sir?”

“Victory!” Andrews answered with a bit of petulance. It was obvious what he meant.

His adjutant leaned forward behind him, “The typical construction is double-u, for win.”

“Ah, well…” Andrews felt the back of his neck go red with a hint of embarrassment, “Nevertheless…”

“Yes, sir,” Jeung answered politely. He seemed to be holding in a smirk and a laugh.

“Combat assessment?”

“Our BDA people’ll need a week to gather the data, let alone process the stuff. But off the dome? We’re in the ballpark of a hundred losses on our side total, and no less than fifteen hundred on theirs—minimum. But, we have no solid idea of how many we got on the ground. I will say after JACK KNIFE’s ordnance started hitting targets—their SOCs shot down at least fifty of their own birds by accident.”

Andrews scoffed and then chuckled. “Heavens, we really turned their brisket.”

Jeung’s face turned stony, “You’ve gotta be punking me. No one says stuff like that.”

Andrews bristled at that comment, “I have no idea what you’re talking about, Jeung.” He pinched his nose and sighed, “But you people did excellent work today, and none of this would’ve been possible without your people. So, thank you.” He paused for a moment and patted his stomach, “Pardon me, I am in need of a smoke, a shit, and a sandwich.” He would match the Cert’s frankness with his own, “Care to join me?”

“I, uh- generally don’t share a toilet with someone, but if—” Andrews raised a palm at the Cert, Jeung smiled and chuckled, “I still have work here, sir. But I appreciate the offer for dinner. If I may, we—my staff—were planning a Korean-style BBQ for later tonight or tomorrow if you care to join us.”

“That is most tempting, but I am quite famished—apparently, a pack of cigarettes isn’t a satisfactory replacement for lunch.” Andrews offered a handshake, and Jeung accepted. He gave a tremendous handshake for such a small fellow. “Why are they all so damned strange,” he tutted to himself as he left.

COMBINED AIR OPERATIONS CONTROL, ALLIED AIR DEFENSE COMMAND

“MOUNTAINTOP,” CAMP GRIFFISS, BUSHY PARK DEFENSE ANNEX, RICHMOND-UPON-THAMES, UK

REAR ADMIRAL CHARLES E. JEUNG, USN (CTF)

CHIEF OF STAFF, CERTAIN CRITICAL FORCES-EUROPE / CO, SPECIAL PURPOSE TASK FORCE INTERCEPT

1851 LOCAL, 17 JAN 1945

“Oh, thank god. He’s gone,” Carl took a deep breath, as did every Cert in the room. “Jesus, Jenny, I thought he’d never leave.”

“Carl, you need to deal with your boyfriend,” Master Chief Petty Officer Jennifer Menedez chastised him. “Fuck ‘em or dump ‘em.”

Jeung pointed a raised eyebrow with more authority than a knifehand could ever dream of possessing at Menedez, “Excuse me, Chief?”

She went rigid. Her pupils turned to needles, “Everyone was thinking it, sir.” Menedez had gone to the same elementary school as him. Their mothers had terrified the PTA together. They’d enlisted together before Carl had gone mustang after First Sino. He might be a traitor, but never forgot his folks.

“Jesus Christ, Jenny,” Jeung put his head in his hand, “Do I look like Mint Tyler?”

“Good god, no—you’re nowhere near as hot,” she replied a little too quickly.

Jeung gave a confused look. He turned and looked down at his list of Many Things that he still needed to work through. “Do you think it would’ve been appropriate to Default Dan—”

“No,” every Cert in the room answered with a profound and shared exasperation.

Jenny put a tender hand on his shoulder, “The Old Lady herself said I had to kill you if you filed another 214-J, sir.”

“I think Kanto might actually if I do…” He shrugged, “but that’s a future Carl problem.”

On paper, beyond just testing the various “finish-line clincher” experimental ships, it was intended to show that the United States was turning its focus to Polar Affairs and the resurgent Russian Federation. Russia’s status has not completely recovered since its defeat in the Russo-Ukrainian War. The once-ailing nation has had its economic decline (at least temporarily) reversed by serving as “the untouchable factory” for the People’s Republic of China during Second Sino and the influx of Chinese emigrants to an ecologically transformed Siberia. In Russia’s desperation to reclaim its status and fill the PRC’s shoes, the “Last Frontier” of Siberia has become a Tower of Cyberpunk Babel. It is ground zero for the bleeding edge of banned, unorthodox, or otherwise unsavory technologies—combat cybernetics, neural augmentation, global regulation-testing autonomous weapons systems. It is the terrifying playground of aspiring corporate and national powers—supported by the Russian Federation and managed by the infamous Oboron, the Russian Defense Concern.

In short, the United States wishes to remind the Russian Federation that it has not gone complacent since the end of Second Sino.

The Composite Testing Force (Task Force 11) is the formation assembled for FleetPro 36-1 and is comprised of seven task groups: Carrier Battle Group Nine, Carrier Battle Group One, Surface Action Group Seven, Amphibious Landing Group Four, Advance Seabasing Group Two, and Submarine Flotilla Nine. In addition, the 1st Marine Advance Force is embarked aboard the amphibious task group.

The more than 80 vessels include three carriers, one strike cruiser, one missile test ship, one orbital launch platform, five cruisers, eighteen destroyers, nine frigates, ten destroyer escorts, four landing platform cargos, three landing transport docks, one hospital ship, one landing command ship, two landing ship bases, one landing ship cargo base, seven cargo ship docks, four fast transport docks, one seabase, two fleet tenders, two fast combat support ships, two dry cargo ships, one submarine tender, one research submarine, one guided missile submarine, three attack submarines, one hunter-killer submarine, one chartered support vessel.1

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Flagships and Capital Ships

Flight II Lexington Class class (United States subclass) Nuclear Command Carrier

USS Harriet Tubman (CVCN-84)

Dimensions: 1,316 ft (length) x 168 ft (beam at waterline), 312 ft (beam at flight deck)

Displacement: 175,000 tons

Complement: 7500

Missile Armament: 8x4 - Mark 57 Blister VLS Cells, 4x21 - Mark 149 Integrated Point Defense Weapon (RIM-116)

Kinetic Armament: 2x1 - 57mm/70 Mark 110 Close-in-Gun System, 4x1 - 50mm/60 Mark 48 Point Defense Cannon, 6x1 - 30mm/50 Mark 46 Machine Gun

Direct Energy Armament: 4 - 500 kW Mark 13 Direct Energy Weapon Mount, 4 - 150 kW Mark 149 Integrated Point Defense Weapon (Mark 10 HELIOS)

Other Armament: 8x6 - Flexible Integrated Defensive Launcher, 2x8 - Mark 36 Surface Vessel Defensive Torpedo Tubes

Aircraft: ~100 aircraft on deck, ~40 aircraft on LASH

The Harriet Tubman, lovingly referred to by its crew as “the Tub” or “the Big Tub,” is a unique stretched or “superheavy” variant of America’s current generation of aircraft carrier—the Lexington-class. The CVN-82 class adopted a new hull form in line with the CVN(X) program’s ideal ECBL (Enhanced Carrier Baseline) and a next-generation power plant, along with integrating new industrial practices and materials into the design to keep costs in line with current production. This new design could make the best use of the new carrier shipyard in Priest Point Naval Shipyard in Washington, the expansion of the older Newport News Naval Shipyard in Virginia, and the availability of the new N3D plasma molten salt reactor.2

The even greater dimensions of CVCN(X), originally designated CVB(X), enable the ship to host a massive air complement and a novel “Fleet Operation Center.” The Tub, simply put, is a sailing CINC-PAC packing a massive Sunday Punch.

Her size is so great that she does not merely embark on a Carrier Air Wing—she embarks two CVWs under the Navy’s sole Carrier Air Division (CVD). Her hangar alone is twice the size of those aboard a Nimitz-class carrier. Pushing her strike mass even higher is her Light Aircraft System Handling, an interlinked system of cranes, rails, and racks which allow smaller aircraft (generally drones) to be stored and maneuvers off the ground, inspired by the Swiss Flugzeugkaverne (Aircraft Caverns). Interestingly, Tubman carries fewer aircraft per square foot compared to her other LASH-equipped sisters. This allows Tubman to maintain a higher sustained combat sortie rate than the fleet’s other CVNs, which are generally optimized for massed Alpha Strikes. The ship has the fabrication, repair, and support facilities fitting her size and role—and is also equipped with a “modest and compact” exascale pseudo-quantum supercomputer ostensibly to provide the ship with processing power to handle theater-level on-the-fly logistics management, signals intelligence, and cyberwarfare, all from the front. As the Tubman was built after the start of the FIRESHIP Program, she is also extremely well-armed for self-defense.3

Tubman is the largest actively serving warship in the world and the largest warship built by the United States Navy.4 Initially, the ship was ordered as USS United States in response to the PLAN’s Type 005 superheavy aircraft carrier, Zhōnghuá, a nuclear-powered semi-trimaran design displacing well over 275,000 tons. When Zhōnghuá was unveiled in 2028—and revealed to already be under construction at a purpose-built superyard in Shanghai—Washington was caught totally off guard. The US Intelligence Community believed that the rumblings about a “superheavy carrier” were merely noise and that the Shanghai Yard was for extremely large oil and liquid gas tankers. In the following carrier panic, Congress would pass the Second Naval Infrastructure Act, and the Navy would rush to lay down a counter-superheavy carrier keel—with plans for two more—within months.

The United States and its planned sisters, Constitution and Independence, were smaller than Zhōnghuá, displacing “only” 175,000 tons. These original names would not last and were extremely controversial. Constitution was a lightning rod, as it was already in use by an actively commissioned warship; pure superstition would hold that having a United States and an America in the fleet was bad luck. This ‘CVB(X)’ program would almost immediately develop into a disaster, moving to construction without clear requirements or even a finished design. Mercifully, the ship was mostly cribbed from the Lexington-class CVNs; thus, despite cost overruns and a lack of a core concept with any more depth or nuance than “moar flattop,” the program was not a lost cause.

OPNAV and Congress had ordered something, but had no idea how to use it. In 2030, the program would fall under the “arbitration” of the Defense Production Board and its famed (or infamous) Office of Critical Procurement. The DPB would hone in on the idea of a mobile command post and support carrier, renaming the program ‘CVCN(X).’ The Type 005 would suffer similar issues and be loathed by the PLAN, earning it the nickname “dumpster baby.” Despite being much smaller than the Type 005, the sheer size of ‘CVCN(X)’ restricted the number of ports it could visit, though the sudden rise of ultra-heavy nanocomposite steel-hulled autonomous freighters would ameliorate this limitation over time.

In 2034, United States (CVCN-84) would be renamed Harriet Tubman (CVCN-84) after the 19th-century heroine and the recently lost USNS Harriet Tubman (T-AO-213). The previous Tubman earned renown equal to the tin cans of Samar during the Fifth Gulf War, saving an estimated 47,000 freedmen across 19 trips before being sunk. She was the last ship to leave Dubai before the nuclear exchange with 5,423 souls aboard, forty times her complement. En route to Iraq, she was attacked by Emirati F-16s and the dregs of the Royal Saudi Navy. After her escorts saw off all comers, three CAPTOR-type mines would strike Tubman, breaking her back. Her crew would fight for twenty-six hours, losing a quarter of their number before the ship was evacuated and sank in shallow waters in Kuwait Bay. Despite the immense loss of life among her own crew, Moses would not lose a single passenger.

Harriet Tubman would be a one-off; OCP would reorder Constitution and Independence as baseline Lexington-class supercarriers and change their names to Yorktown and Hornet. The pair would be renamed again while under construction in honor of USS Zumwalt (CG-1000) and USS Jimmy Carter (SSN-23), after those ships were lost early in Second Sino.

The issues caused by the more—transformational—ideas OPNAV had for the class (e.g. a zetascale supercomputer) taxed Priest Point Naval Shipyard to the limit. Even its experienced corps of shipwrights struggled to handle the demands of building a true superheavy carrier. Zhōnghuá would have an even more tortured construction and was temporarily canceled but reinstated to preserve national prestige. It would take the China State Shipbuilding Corporation’s Jiangian Yard No. 7 (built for just the Type 005) more than eleven years to construct the carrier. Zhōnghuá would only go on its shakedown cruise during Exercise JOINT SWORD 2037A. Over that same time period, Dalian Yard No. 1A alone completed work on the Type 003A carrier Hainan, completed both Type 003B and Type 003D carriers Guizhou and Shānxī, and began work on the Type 007 CV Jiangnan

“Moses” is considered the de facto flagship of the United States Navy, a point that is even begrudgingly accepted by hardcore Corpo Navy apparatchiks. She is an enduring symbol of American naval superiority, wartime hardship, and victory. During Second Sino, she was damaged at the First Battle of Mariana Trench but was quickly repaired and would serve as the flagship of the Commander-in-Chief, Allied Fleet—Admiral Marie Coriander.

As the flagship of the Composite Testing Force, Tubman is the headquarters for both Rear Admiral Jonathan Granger (Commander, Carrier Battle Group Nine) and Vice Admiral Kimberly Scott (Commander, United States First Fleet). The two are long-time friends, having met at OCS. They are an unlikely pairing. Scott is a small, fiery black woman who grew up shuttling between Detroit and Groton, the daughter of a sonarman. Granger is a seven-foot-tall, pallid-skinned, grey-eyed Lurch from Belleville, Pennsylvania, the son of Amish cobblers.

“The Grim Granger” is a methodical and steadfast leader, sometimes described as “a mountain that moves but does not flinch.” His calm during First Battle of the Mariana Trench is credited as forestalling total defeat. Granger (then the ship’s captain) and Coriander (then the battle force commander) took Battle Force Zulu into the heart of danger against the orders of Commander-Combined Naval Force-Pacific. Four supercarriers—Harriet Tubman (CVCN-84), Franklin (CVN-83), Lexington (CVN-82), and Nimitz (CVN-68)—and their escorts willingly revealed their position in a desperate rearguard action. They faced the full might of the PLAN after a decade-long naval arms race—eighteen PLAN carriers in five battle groups—to cover the retreat of the battered Battle Forces Midway and Quebec toward Hawaii. Granger and Coriander took a leap of faith, trusting their ships and their crews. It would pay off. Battle Force Zulu would blunt the PLAN—at the cost of the twice-overhauled Nimitz. The Battle of Wake Island would give enough time for Vice Admiral Chris “Chowda” Hill to arrive with Battle Force Leyte—the four Gerald R. Ford-class sisters—backed by a tidal wave of airpower scrambled from CONUS to force the assembled might of the PLAN back past the Marianas. First Trench, a fleet action that lasted an entire week, ended as a PLA tactical victory—but a strategic stalemate—in large part due to the time bought by Battle Force Zulu.

“Kill Something Scott” is a politico-bureaucratic lioness, the fusion of Zumwalt and Rickover. She is one of the famed heroes of the Second Naval Battle of the Paracel Islands, the largest surface action of the 21st Century. When in command, she is a Grant-on-Tide, an aggressive leader willing to use the mass to win a war of maneuver, dip her hands in blood if necessary, and trust her subordinates to carry out their missions within her vision of victory. With her prominence at Second Paracel and the Fourth Gulf War would become the standard-bearer for the famed “Revolt of Commanders” and their Sailors’ Charter reforms. After her political death in the wake of the Anzio Incident, she would be reborn as the mistress of intrigue and master of the Office of Critical Procurement, helping to shape the Naval Act of 2030’s Fleet Architecture 2040 (FAX2040). After the bitter failure at First Trench, she would be brought up as Commander, Battle Force, Allied Fleet at the insistence of Admiral Corriander and would go on to lead the planning for the Second Battle of the Mariana Trench—the largest naval action in history. A war hero in her own right for her service as a tin-can driver in First Sino and Fourth Gulf, she was rapidly promoted in her early career, but it would take until she was given COMBAT-ALTFLT for her to be promoted to flag officer, and her promotion to Vice Admiral would be delayed until after the war had ended.

Queen of the Seas, Conductor of Fleets.

Flight II Gerald R. Ford class Nuclear Fleet Carrier

USS Doris Miller (CVN-81)

Dimensions: 1,096 ft (length) x 134 ft (beam at waterline), 252 ft (beam at flight deck)

Displacement: 115,000 tons

Complement: 4400

Missile Armament: 3x4 - Mark 146 Adaptable Deck Launcher, 4x21 - Mark 149 Integrated Point Defense Weapon (RIM-116F)

Kinetic Armament: 3x1 - 50mm/60 Mark 48 Point Defense Cannon, 3x4 - 30mm/80 Mark 15 Block 2 Close-in-Weapon System, 6x1 - 30mm/50 Mark 46 Machine Gun

Direct Energy Armament: 4 - 150 kW Mark 149 Integrated Point Defense Weapon (Mark 10 HELIOS), 3 - 50 kW Mark 15 Block 2 Phalanx Close-in-Weapon System (Mark 6 HELIOS-L)

Other Armament: 6x6 - Flexible Integrated Defensive Launcher, 2x8 - Mark 36 Surface Vessel Defensive Torpedo Tube

Aircraft: ~85 aircraft on deck

The Doris Miller is the final ship of the Gerald R. Ford-class carriers. She is neither hated nor loved. Her career can be understood as respectable but not extraordinary. She missed the Fifth Persian Gulf War, and she served honorably during the Second Sino. She, however, never built up a legend like the USS Enterprise (CVN-80) or USS Coral Sea (CVN-74 ex-John C. Stennis). A part of Battle Force Leyte with her sister ships, she missed most of First Trench but would be there to turn the tide from total defeat to bitter stalemate. She lacks the strike mass of the Lexington-class carriers, but she is still a supercarrier—equipped with a ‘fighter’ carrier air wing—without pomp or frills.

Doris Miller’s inclusion in FleetPro 36 was a last-minute change ordered by the CNO, Fleet Admiral Coriander, to replace the USS John F. Kennedy (CVN-79) and her carrier group under Rear Admiral Analise Solae. This was a conciliatory move so that not all of the exercise’s task groups would be led by Slate Navy partisans. Miller was a natural choice. The carrier was based in Seattle, and its carrier battle group commander, Rear Admiral Jennifer Kaine, was the President of the Professional Naval Officers’ Society (PRONOS) and considered the successor to the de facto leader of the Corpo Navy faction, Vice Chief of Naval Operations, Admiral Matt Henwright.

The simplest appraisal of “Knock Out” is that she is considered a lucky ship that no one in their right mind would want to be assigned to. She is wonderful to look at and dependable in any situation, but terrible to have to work on—a ship run like it was straight out of the 2020s (derogatory).

“Kaine the Terrible,” the former skipper of the Dorie (a diminutive she detests), is an extremely competent officer. She is stern, unliked, uncompromising, and a deadly strict disciplinarian, effectively the embodiment of the Corpo reaction to the Slate Navy’s Sailors’ Charter and Fleet Architecture 2040. It was Kaine’s leadership that ensured that Miller avoided damage in the war, nor participated in a defeat, but also would see Miller skipped over by command. Part of her notoriety comes from the infamous “Furry Convention Incident.” Kaine, only an O-5, got into a fistfight with a red fox fursuit in the double-booked hotel convention hall. The fight ended when she kicked the furry down a flight of stairs. She would avoid assault charges but forever hold a grudge against the Slate Navy, who were assumed to have been behind the snafu. Regardless, Kaine is a steady hand and a good officer, but neither trusted nor liked, even by fellow Corpo partisans. Put simply, she is feared by some, respected by most, and loved by few.

Tightest Ship in the Fleet

Okinawa class Nuclear Landing Platform Aviation

USS Okinawa (LPVN-29)

Dimensions: 978 ft (length) x 213 ft (beam at waterline), 314 ft (beam at flight deck)

Displacement: 96,000 tons

Complement: 1500 (without embarkees or air element)

Missile Armament: 16x4 - Mark 57 Blister VLS Cells, 2x4 - Mark 146 Adaptable Deck Launcher, 3x3 - Mark 147 Offensive Adaptable Deck Launcher, 3x21 - Mark 149 Integrated Point Defense Weapon (RIM-116)

Kinetic Armament: 2x1 - 57mm/70 Mark 110 Close-in-Gun System, 4x1 - 50mm/60 Mark 48 Point Defense Cannon, 6x1 - 30mm/50 Mark 46 Machine Gun

Direct Energy Armament: 3 - 150 kW Mark 149 Integrated Point Defense Weapon (Mark 10 HELIOS)

Other Armament: 8x6 - Flexible Integrated Defensive Launcher, 2x8 - Mark 36 Surface Vessel Defensive Torpedo Tube

Aircraft: ~75 aircraft on deck

Other: 2 x LCAC-100 Ship-to-Shore Connectors, 2 x Maneuver Support Vessel-Medium

Okinawa, or Oki, is the newest carrier in the United States Navy and the culmination of the Navy’s so-called dirty little not-so-secret—the LPV. Originally type-classified as an LVA before the 2033 redesignation of amphibious force ships, they were sold to Congress and the public as a “tilt-rotor forward amphibious assault ship.” In reality, they were the Navy’s insurance policy, allowing two production runs of CVV-sized medium carrier classes to keep up with the breakneck pace of the PLAN's CV-63-sized fleet carrier construction program. The first ships were fitted for (but not with) catapults; but by LVA-20 Kitty Hawk (fourth ship of the LVA-17 Guadalcanal-class), it was decided to build the ships with their cats. Okinawa is a departure from the CVV / LPV concept and a return to something akin to a traditional amphibious assault ship. That is to say, she is a Forrestal-sized, nuclear-powered, well-deck, and angled flight deck-equipped CATOBAR amphibious warfare vessel. She has a gargantuan beam, not particularly fast, but extraordinarily heavily armed for a carrier. She is designed to be the centerpiece of an amphibious landing group and dual command center for at-sea and on-land operations to reduce friction during the Commander, Landing Force-Commander, Amphibious Transport Force transition.

Work began on Okinawa in late 2036 but was suspended to concentrate on the four Da Nang-class LPVs under construction (Da Nang-class saw incremental improvements and space for an extra catapult over the prior Guadalcanal-class). Work resumed late in the war and would continue into the peace. She was commissioned five days before New Year’s 2042, christened by the First Gentleman Riley Roberts.

“Iceberg” is considered something between an affront to God and an ugly duckling. Much of her crew are old hands, with experience going back to First Sino and who have served on LPHs (ex-LHD and LHA) and other LPVs. Yet, none of them is quite sure what to make of a ship that is all of those classes at once. One of the ships that the Fleet Problem was intending to trial, she has been put in the hands of the Navy’s most experienced amphibious warfare commander, Rear Admiral Henry Izikawa—the Father of the Andersen Express.

Hank Izikawa is a kindly, bookish officer whose demeanor belies his capabilities as a leader and inter-service manager. He is known for having exceptionally cordial and effective relationships with the Marine units attached to his command and terrible relationships with fellow Naval officers. His kindly manner is often misinterpreted as passiveness. However, attempts to bypass or undermine his command, especially bypassing to micromanage his landing force, turn the STEM dad into a malevolent force with a long memory and near-infinite reach. No one crosses Hank Izikawa, least of all someone on Team Blue. Izikawa spearheaded the execution of the Andersen Express, that miracle enterprise that kept the Sailors, Soldiers, Marines, and Aeros trapped on the 53rd State alive and in the fight during the Mariana Sieges. He was a key leader during Operation TROPIC FREEDOM, the liberation of Luzon. In the opening phase of the landings, USS America (LPV-6) was hit by a DF-21, killing the Commander, Landing Force, his deputy, and most of the CLF staff. This twist of fate would ignite a chain of events that would see then-Commodore Izikawa have the unique honor of being the only Naval Officer in history to personally lead an armored assault in what would become known as the “Rice Paddy Thunder Run,” the Battle of the Bitulok Valley.

The First Battle-Gator.

Long Beach class Nuclear Guided Missile Strike Cruiser

USS Long Beach (CSGN-42)

Dimensions: 853 ft (length) x 91 ft (beam)

Displacement: 31,000 tons

Complement: 400

Missile Armament: 48x4 - Mark 57 Peripheral VLS Cells, 24x4 - Mark 61 Centerline VLS Cells, 24x1 - Mark 61 MOD (Strat) Centerline VLS Cells, 6x1 - Mark 148 Adptable Box Launchers, 2x21 - Mark 149 Integrated Point Defense Weapon (RIM-116)

Kinetic Armament: 2x1 - 305mm/50 Mark 10 Strategic Gun System, 4x1 - 50mm/60 Mark 48 Point Defense Cannon, 6x1 - 30mm/50 Mark 46 Machine Gun

Direct Energy Armament: 2 - 500 kW Mark 13 Direct Energy Weapon Mount, 2 - 150 kW Mark 149 Integrated Point Defense Weapon (Mark 10 HELIOS)

Other Armament: 12x6 - Flexible Integrated Defensive Launcher, 2x8 - Mark 36 Surface Vessel Defensive Torpedo Tubes

Aircraft: 2 x hangars with space for 2 x large or 4 x medium VTOL aircraft

Long Beach—known by a litany of sobriquets including ‘Long Obit’ and ‘Long Bitch’— represents the very pinnacle of the US Navy’s surface warfare development. She and her five sisters are the largest combatants commissioned by the US since USS Guam (CB-2) in 1944 and the largest in-service combatants since the Iowa-class battleships were decommissioned in 1992. The class is the largest and most powerful warship in the world, with greater displacement and firepower than the Russian Navy’s last Kirov-class battlecruiser, the PLAN’s twelve Type 059 Taipei-class battlecruisers, the Marine Nationale’s six Republique-class “croiseurs de défense,” the Royal Navy’s three Type 91 Woodward-class cruisers, and the Japanese Maritime Self-Defense Force’s two Musashi-class ballistic missile defense destroyers.

The class holds the honor of being the first ship to be armed with a combined electro-magnetic assisted electrothermal chemical gun system, a hybrid system that allows for the benefits of both railgun and ETC technology. Long Beach and her first two sisters would be built with three 8”/55 Mark 71 Mod 5 turrets, while all succeeding ships of the class would be armed with two 12”/55 Mark 10 guns, navalized, automatic variants of the Army’s M1865 “Appomattox Annie” Strategic Long Range Cannon. The Mark 71 Mod 5 started life as the Navy’s “Hammerlock Program,” formally the High Energy Electrothermal-Chemical Gun System, before the Navy agreed to standardize on the Mark 10/M1865 chassis. The Mark 71 Mod 5 could fire 5” sub-caliber projectiles at speeds up to 3.5 km/s, while the Mark 10 can fire 8” sub-caliber projectiles at speeds up to 4 km/s; both can fire full-bore shells at speeds of 1.5-2.5 km/s.5

USS Las Vegas (CSGN-78), using her Mark 10s, is responsible for the longest surface-to-air gun kill in history, destroying a pair of J-15C STOBAR strike-fighters at a range of 152 nautical miles with a single AHEAD-pattern shell.

Famously described in the Office of Critical Procurement’s first public Congressional hearing as “eight-hundred-and-fifty-three-feet of fuck off and fuck you,” Long Beach has become a legend. In her career, she has earned twenty-two battle stars, more than the Big E of WW2. However, her beginnings are much less auspicious, starting out as a budget charade. OCP argued that the original contract for CSGN-42 had failed to be properly canceled due to a clerical error (a point that is debated), a failure that was grounds for OCP to take over the half-century-old program. It was subsequently used to operationalize existing work for a ‘conceptual’ heavyweight surface combatant.

As the first of what would become Fleet Architecture 2040, the Long Beach is a ship of many firsts. She was the first ship built with a plasma molten salt reactor (the N2D, rated for 300 MWe) and the first to be built with EM-ETC guns; though most of the technologies in her design had been tested aboard the USS Norton Sound (AVM-2) and USS Salisbury Sound (AVM-3) in the late 2020s.

She made her combat debut in the Fifth Gulf War in Operation DESERT TYPHOON. Her eight-inch ETC rifles proved to be as devastating as her vast missile battery, including at least one probable kill on a nuclear-tipped TBM. She alone could have cleared the Persian Gulf and is arguably the reason why the US facilities in Qatar and Bahrain were spared from nuclear annihilation. During the nuclear exchange, a mid-yield tactical nuclear weapon detonated off her bow, but the ship still continued to fight via CEC despite the partial loss of her onboard sensors suite. The considerable damage from surviving the nuclear blast forced a major refit, despite the ship being freshly commissioned This saw her N2D reactors replaced by the then-standard and more powerful N3D reactors and the installation of more powerful 12” guns like her newer sisters. Ironically, the second ship of the class, Las Vegas, would retain the class’s original configuration longer than the lead ship. Her old reactors would be repurposed and reused to re-engine the USS Midway (CVN-70, ex-Vinson) during her second RCOH.6 During Second Sino, the PLAN would claim to sink Long Beach no less than eight times (ergo, Long Obituary). While formally the flagship for Commander, Battle Force, Allied Fleet, Rear Admiral Scott would often detach Long Beach as a one-ship fire brigade and hoist her flag from USS San Francisco (CSGN-93) or USS Las Vegas (CSGN-78).

“Voltron” gained her callsign from an offhand joke in a meeting about her networked fleet defense-cooperative engagement management system and was promptly chosen as the program’s special access codeword (VOLTRON BLUDGEON). Long Beach is a ship of legends. However, the very hot-cold friendship between her former captain (her current SAG commander) and former XO (her current captain) is the stuff of legends—for decidedly other reasons.

Jeduthun MacGregor, the Commander of Surface Action Group Seven and former skipper of the Long Beach, is an interesting officer and an extremely odd man. He is a hipster of such ironclad commitment that he primarily talks in late-19th century New Englander vernacular (he is from suburban Colorado) punctuated by millennial slang and an unabiding love for ABBA. Despite being in his early 50s, his hair is bone white. He always wears a slightly out-of-regulation beard and peacoat, no matter the weather. No one is sure if it is a bit or straight-up psychosis at this point.

However, what he lacks in approachability, he makes up for in capability.

Jed MacGregor is one of the most skilled surface snipes in living memory. He is a flexible leader with immense will and a voracious intellectual who knows how to spot and develop talent. He is abrasive and baroque, but he never gives up and does not act in bad faith. His style is crystallized during the Anzio Incident. His study of PLAN builders’ plans allowed aged, reactivated Anzio to put a single 5” HE-VT shell into the amidship VLS battery of the rogue brand-new Type 059 Cruiser Taipei, splitting it in half. MacGregor followed up this nautical headshot by wringing every drop of firepower from his haggard cruiser, including two Mark 56 RAPTOR torpedoes from a jury-rigged launching system set by three press-ganged bubblehead torpedomen whom he had personally lightly kidnapped from Subic’s rec room. Anzio disabled six and sank four PLAN vessels in that action, only stopping after running out of missiles and losing most of her other weapons. Jed MacGregor is odd—no way around it—but he is a decent man and a trusted, tested war leader.

If We Can’t Kill It, It Can’t Die.

Liberty class Nuclear Advance Seabase

USS Ronald Reagan (ABN-4)

Dimensions: 1572 ft (length) x 577 ft (beam)

Displacement: 1,000,000 tons

Complement: 7000

Missile Armament: 4x4 - Mark 61 Centerline VLS cells, 6x21 - Mark 149 Mod 4 Integrated Point Defense Weapons (RIM-116)

Kinetic Armament: 4x1 - 57mm/70 Mark 110 Close-in-Gun System, 6x1 - 50mm/60 Mark 48 Point Defense Cannon, 4x4 - 30mm/80 Mark 15 Block 2 Close-in-Weapon System, 24x1 - 30mm/50 Mark 46 Machine Gun

Direct Energy Armament: 4 - 500 kW Mark 13 Direct Energy Weapon Mount, 6 - 150 kW Mark 149 Integrated Point Defense Weapons (Mark 10 HELIOS), 4 - 50 kW Mark 15 Block 2 Phalanx Close-in-Weapon System (Mark 6 HELIOS-L)

Other Armament: 12x6 - Flexible Integrated Defensive Launcher

Aircraft: ~40 aircraft on deck (space in hangars for ~20 at one time, only vertical lift)

Other: 12 x Mark 8 Advance Base High Capacity Printer-Fabricator, 2 x Mark 3 Mod 4 Methanol-to-Jet Synthesizer-Dehydrator Units (5,000 bbl per day), 75,000 tons of hard storage, 25,000 tons of ordnance storage, 500,000 barrels of JP-13/DF-13

The Advance Seabase Concept started out as a pipe dream in the mid-2020s. The hope was that with advances in power generation and forward sustainment, the USN could procure a “mobile Ulithi.” Instead of the offshore airstrip envisioned by the Mobile Offshore Base of the 2000s, this seabase would synthesize fuel from seawater, spin polymers from the glycerol of lab-grown meat, and host forward manufactories to repair anything at hand or produce nearly anything needed. They would provide a mobile supply base that could radically shorten Allied supply lines and defend itself by using the vastness of the Pacific as its shield.

More serious consideration for such a design would be given after satellites detected the construction of the Type 05 CVN superheavy in Shanghai at a specially built yard (such a large yard had, in fact, driven the first American interest). In the shipbuilding panic that followed, the United States launched a domestic program, the United States-subclass superheavy, while Japan ordered the Akagi-class Aviation Destroyers (DDV, a domestically built derivative of the USN’s LPV program). However, there was a belief in many corners that this approach was merely reactive. In response, PACSHIP—the Pacific Shipbuilding Corporation—would commission a “Special Research Group” to devise a counter to the Type 005. The conglomerate of OSATO members’ shipbuilding interests and concerns would be aided by the US’s Office of Critical Procurement. The study would controversially endorse a plan for a massive logistics ship.

The test article would be converted from the partially disassembled civilian drillship Deepwater Hercules, as the stripped vessel in legal limbo presented a lower opportunity cost than a full conversion of a new Reno-class self-propelled Auxiliary Repair Dock Medium (an OSATO/NATO common replacement for the WW2-era Oakland-class ARDMs). Hercules would be renamed USNS Artisan (AB-2) and operate alongside a mobile drydock, USNS Bozeman (ARDM-8), with joint OSATO crews. The experiment would last for sixteen months and have its final test in FleetEx 31-2. It would exceed all expectations, ratifying the Special Research Group’s proposal.

The Bozeman-Artisan Experiment would become the first step in a Nautical Manhattan Project, the progenitors of the largest military vessels ever constructed. One thing was made clear by the experiment: that the SRG had low-balled the size estimate of what was needed for an effective unitary seabase. Artisan would move into the reserves, while Bozeman would return to normal service as a mobile dock. OSATO would sign an agreement wherein the United States would shoulder the bulk of the cost of the program while other OSATO states would provide supplementary funding and technical assistance. The Daewoo Shipyard in Geoje, ROK, would build the massive vessels—effectively splicing together a single ship from two Baltimax hulls and a 160-foot wide drydock. Most technical components would be built in the United States or Japan. And since the US would shoulder the majority of the cost, they would maintain ownership of the vessels.

The seabases were originally named USNS Liberty (ABN-3), USNS Victory (ABN-4), and USNS Endeavor (ABN-5). The economic fallout of the Fifth Gulf War would nearly kill the program. However, the program would limp onwards with the hulls completed between 2035 and 2037 before crossing the Pacific for final outfitting at Priest Point Naval Shipyard.

At the beginning of Second Sino, with ROK maintaining de jure neutrality while de facto assisting OSATO under its ‘defensive non-belligerency,’ the vessels would be ‘seized’ by the United States and commissioned into the US Navy. Originally, the Ocasio-Cortez Administration planned to rename the vessels to USS Franklin D. Roosevelt, USS Harry L. Hopkins, and USS Frederick M. Vinson; however, after the loss of the USS Ronald Reagan (CVN-76) and USS George Washington (CVN-73) in the opening phase of the war, it was decided that the latter two would be named in honor the presidents and lost carriers, in a show of national unity and bipartisanship.

The Liberty-class remains the largest commissioned naval vessel in human history and amongst the largest vessels to sail—period. The seabases’ core mission is remarkably simple: replenish the replenishers and sustain the sustainers. To this end, they are built around a 1550-foot-long and 160-foot-wide drydock and can resupply a max of four AO, AKE, AOE, or AOF simultaneously alongside. Internally, they can notionally host and repair six DDG-51-sized destroyers; however, limited personnel aboard the base mean that generally fewer ships are usually embarked. The “outriggers” on either side of the drydock contain vast arrays of workshops and storage compartments; under the dock is a mix of ballast and fuel storage. The ship is powered by six N5D 1000 MWe super-reactors—three per outrigger. The ships are horribly overbuilt—caused by the relative novelty of bulk nanocomposite steel used in their construction—which permits them to sustain twenty-six knots.

A Naval Construction Regiment is embarked aboard each seabase to operate its fabrication facilities. The seabases are so large that only a handful of facilities are capable of anchoring them, so most resupply is delivered by AKE. Their stores are so immense that it would take months for them to be depleted, and many materials they can continue to produce so long as they have power running.

Their wafer chip and field-programmable gate array storage alone equal the GDP of a modest country, and each seabase possesses its own chip fab. The seabases also have four (two per outrigger) Mark 4 “Seascoop” Synthesizers-Dehydrators, which are capable of generating upwards of 10,000 barrels of DF-13 Methanol-DiMethyl Ethel blended diesel at full power (two-thirds of the ABN’s output)—which can then be converted to OSATO’s standard JP-13 jet fuel. Their advanced printer-fabricators are amongst the largest and most powerful in the world, allowing each seabase to produce everything up to replacement-quality turbine blades. Traditionally, the Seabase primarily manufactures spare parts and repairs damaged assets—earning them the nickname “the Islands of Misfit Toys.”

To protect such a massive investment of resources ($35 billion for the seabase without any of the goods aboard them), they are defended by a massive array of point defense weapons and the equivalent of 64 single-canister vertical launch cells. The ships also come equipped with nine Mk 46 Autonomous At Sea Tugs to maneuver traffic and a fleet of support drones to develop temporary forward anchorages.

Each seabase also has a dedicated air group for air transport and anti-submarine work, and a small escort dedicated defensive Patrol Squadron with two optionally crewed anti-submarine corvettes and ten uncrewed patrol ships. PATRON 11 (Night Dredgers) and Seabase Air Group 2 (Ole Gippers) are attached to the Reagan Seabase for FleetPro 36 to provide active close-in defense against uncrewed spar torpedoes, submarines, and low-end aerial threats in addition to EOD and VBSS capabilities.

The seabases have earned themselves a sordid reputation as the US Navy’s “transitory Tortugas” as the combination of floating city and massive quantities of materiel has led to a culture of semi-official bartering between other ships, ports, and within the seabase itself—and, of course, smuggling. The George Washington Seabase has the questionable honor of having the highest proportion of Fleet Security Force officers to crew and the greatest number of convictions in naval history shortly after she made her first equator crossing. The Neptune King would be arrested after being found in possession of eleven Komodo dragons, an adult bull moose, and an oil drum of kringle-flavored vodka. The FDR Seabase is usually considered the most even-keeled and responsible of the class, while the Reagan Seabase swings wildly between laser-focused competence and pandemonium at the flip of a switch.

The second Liberty-class Seabase was commissioned in 2038 and would be a keystone for the success of Operation HAMMERHEAD and victory in the Second Battle of the Mariana Trench. After the end of the war, the Washington Seabase was moved into the reserves, leaving the Reagan in the Pacific and the FDR in the Atlantic. “Nancy” was assigned to FleetPro 36 after it became clear that it would otherwise be logistically unfeasible to pull together the supply chains needed to support the exercise in the time crunch ahead of the Pacific Fleet. Reagan simply bulldozed all concerns.

In command of the Reagan Seabase is Rear Admiral Troy Holloway. He is the junior-most of the flag officers assigned to the CTF, having only recently fleeted up from Chief of Staff/Deputy Commander, 1st Naval Construction Division to Commander, Advance Seabasing Group 2/Commander, 1NCD. He is often called “the Dude” or simply “Admiral Man Bun” by his sailors, terms of either endearment or derision. Holloway is an atypical officer of Naval Construction Force stock. He is of two worlds: an ex-reserve officer in the Naval Construction Force, but with experience in the private sector in Silicon Valley and ARPA-I (Industrial), the sister of ARPA-E. He has the hallmarks of both a ‘Careerist’ (those who have served their entire career in the NCF, whether Slate or Corpo Navy) and ‘Conversion’ (those who were previously in the private sector or non-military government service). Despite a reputation as a mellow push-over, Holloway has acquitted himself well as an extremely effective leader of his seabase, bringing it to order while keeping it effective and contented. It is with his atypical—cordial and relaxed—demeanor that he is able to navigate the uniquely complex, often baroque, social mores and practices that define the hive of scum, villainy, and industry that is an Advance Seabase.

The Great Coven of the Adeptus Mechanicus.

Flight I Yellowstone class (Redwood subclass) Guided Missile Ship (ex-Ballistic Missile Defense Cruiser)

USS Redwood (AVM-4)

Dimensions: 774 ft (length) x 105 ft (beam)

Displacement: 48,000 tons

Complement: 500

Missile Armament: 32x4 - Mark 61 Peripheral VLS Cells, 12x4 - Mark 61 Centerline VLS Cells, 2x21 - Mark 149 Integrated Point Defense Weapon (RIM-116)

Kinetic Armament: 2x1 - 50mm/60 Mark 48 Point Defense Cannon, 6x1 - 30mm/50 Mark 46 Machine Gun

Direct Energy Armament: 1 - 500 kW Mark 13 Direct Energy Weapon Mount, 2 - 150 kW Mark 149 Integrated Point Defense Weapon (Mark 10 HELIOS)

Other Armament: 12x6 - Flexible Integrated Defensive Launcher, 2x8 - Mark 36 Surface Vessel Defensive Torpedo Tubes

Launch vehicle Complement: 2 - Rocket Lab Neutron, 2 - Rocket Lab Electron, 8 - Westinghouse-TRW Minotaur VII, 12 - ULA Theseus II

Aircraft: no hangars with space for 1 x large or 2 x medium VTOL aircraft

Formerly a Yellowstone-class ballistic missile defense cruiser, Redwood is a extremely peculiar vessel—an arsenal ship become the United States of America’s Sea Launch Commander. The ship has a vast array of vertical launch cells that remain either empty or used as storage for reloads for other combatants. Its main duties now are to serve as a command and control center and the at-sea vehicle assembly building for rockets to be launched from the mobile launch platform/seabase, USNS Artisan (ABL-1). The Yellowstone-class would be authorized under the terms of the Naval Act of 2025 to free up the surface combatants currently dedicated to defense BMD defense missions in Rota, Japan, and Guam and to affirmative slam shut the “VLS Gap” between the USN and PLAN. The class would use the Flight II San Antonio class LPD hull for the sake of expediency, but would be weaponized—equipped with three 35-foot S-band AESA arrays and the first “Growth VLS” vertical launch system cells—and use a modified version of the DD(X)/DDG(X) turbo-electric drive for enhanced speed and endurance.

As a part of the negotiations for the Comprehensive Nuclear Arms Reduction Treaty, the Young Administration would stand down the naval missile defense rotation at Rota. This left the Navy with three Yellowstone-class ballistic missile defense cruisers surplus to its requirements. Congress, with the Bernard Sanders National Defense Appropriation-Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2035, would mandate that at least one Yellowstone-class CBM be modified into an experimental test vessel for a proposed at-sea launch system. The provisions for a “National Reconnaissance Office Launch Combatant” would be enacted over the objections of both OPNAV and the NSRB. The CBMs were floated for conversion because the class was sparsely fitted, with much of their vast internal volume underutilized. Regardless, the Navy and NSRB would strive to keep the vessel’s original capability as a missile defense ship intact and eventually steer the program into the “Redwood-Artisan Afloat Launch Complex.”

Redwood was the obvious choice for the program as it had already been modified to fabricate high-altitude balloons and missile test targets, earning the ship the nicknames the “Clay Launcher” and the “Gulf Golfer.” She had also spent much of her career as the main ship for at-sea recovery of NASA crewed missions. In fact, she passed over for deployments to the primary BMD duty stations in Rota and Guam six times over her career, making only a single missile defense deployment before her conversion. This is all to say she was in extremely good condition.

She would be taken into hand in late 2034 for a refit at Graveline Naval Shipyard. This refit lengthened the ship by 90 feet. Though she would maintain her complement of large diameter 176 VLS cells (reserved for MDA’s Afloat Multi-Kill Interceptor known as ‘Killtacular’ for its five miniaturized kinetic kill vehicles), only the 48 cells in her forecastle would be retained in an active capacity. Her 128 peripheral VLS cells would be deactivated and stay that way—on paper. This was mainly because the entire ship was rewired, and the cells were not hooked back into the new system. These demilitarized cells would be used to carry reloads for escorts (though the ship-to-ship anchor-stabilization system for at-sea reloads would never be fitted).

The start of Second Sino would see Redwood’s refit paused so that she could rejoin the fleet. The ship would be deployed to San Francisco Bay, where she would be a regional air and missile defense network unto herself. She would later see use as an impromptu arsenal ship at the Second Battle of the Mariana Trench. With her deactivated cells hastily brought back online to carry scores and scores of ballistic missiles (causing not insignificant damage to the cells in the process) she would claim the honor of sinking the Type 006 CVN Xizang (scoring no less than twenty six hits on the carrier in two minutes) and several escorts, breaking the back of an entire PLAN Carrier Fleet Group.

After the war, the refitting would resume. Her distinctive payload assembly complex, her turtleback, was erected along the previously flush main deck of the ship, leaving only a modest landing pad quarterdeck. The ship’s structure was reinforced with high-end “Natick Plate” high entropy alloys to support the increased weight. New facilities include her large final assembly floor, a dozen clean rooms of varying sizes, a liquid propellants refinery, a solid propellant printer-fabricator, and a small modular molten salt reactor as an industrial power plant. The ship contains all of the materials needed to manufacture her own payloads—in addition to the final assembly of dissembled ready-use payloads.

The Navy’s interest in the program skyrocketed after Second Sino came to a close, and the value of forward and attritable C4ISR had been learned the hard way. During the war, NASA and Aerospace Force’s orbital lift capacity was extremely bottlenecked; the Navy found itself without its own lift capability and its specialist space infrastructure at the back of the line. Therefore the Afloat Launch Complex is, by and large, the most important test of the Fleet Problem, as Big Navy is unsure what is the ideal combination of launch vehicles and payloads. Therefore, the Redwood is filled with an eclectic collection of cube-sat constellations, a mix of mid-sized satellites, and high-altitude balloons. The Afloat Launch Complex has invested heavily in a common small multi-role satellite bus developed by the USG (SKELETON KEY) and a current-generation commercial microsat constellation (Marionette) to serve as a theatre-level Flexseal for JADC2.

Satan’s Cruise Ship.

Artisan class Advanced Launch Seabase

USNS Artisan (ABL-2)

Dimensions: 920 ft (length) x 160 ft (beam)

Displacement: 85,000 tons

Complement: 300 [100 ABL + 200 OXW]

Missile Armament: 2x4 - Mark 61 Centerline VLS Cells, 4x21 - Mark 149 Integrated Point Defense Weapon (RIM-116)

Kinetic Armament: 2x1 - 57mm/70 Mark 110 Close-in-Gun System, 4x1 - 50mm/60 Mark 48 Point Defense Cannon, 2x4 - 30mm/80 Mark 15 Block 2 Close-in-Weapon System, 6x1 - 30mm/50 Mark 46 Machine Gun

Direct Energy Armament: 4 - 150 kW Mark 149 Integrated Point Defense Weapon (Mark 10 HELIOS), 4 - 50 kW Mark 15 Block 2 Phalanx Close-in-Weapon System (Mark 6 HELIOS-L)

Other Armament: 12x6 - Flexible Integrated Defensive Launcher

Aircraft: no hangars with space for 1 x large or 2 x medium VTOL aircraft

Artisan is the other half of the Afloat Launch Complex—the Odyssey to Redwood’s Sea Launch Commander. Originally built as the drillship Deepwater Hercules for Transocean Ltd., she was purchased by a venture capitalist fund hoping to revolutionize at-sea resource extraction. It would eventually collapse into insolvency after it was revealed that the founders had spent no less $10 million of their $12 billion CapEx fund just on cocaine and Russian-sourced industrial chemicals for use as designer drugs. The US government would buy the ship under the auspices of testing Seabasing concepts alongside the USNS Bozeman (ARDM-8). After the completion of the experiment, she would be moved into the reserves before being drawn back into the fleet in 2035 to serve as the launching platform for Congress’s pet NRO Launch Combatant Program before being halted by Second Sino.

Artisan retains much of the factory-ship capabilities of her prior role, but instead of providing resources for the repair and sustainment of naval vessels, she is a floating rocket factory. She is responsible for the final re-assembly and limited manufacture of orbital lift vehicles and the final assembly of launch vehicles and payload. She has vast storage spaces for the components of her disassembled launch complement and the ability, like the Redwood, to produce both liquid and solid propellants.

Her primary launch vehicle is the Rocket Lab Neutron, branded the Neutron Defender by the company. It is a variant of the Block III modified to match DOD specifications for wartime usage and to supplement the Dominion Space Exploration (ex-SpaceX) Starship. Neutron Defender is famous for achieving a hard kill on the PLAAeF’s Heavenly Defender II space defense platform, the largest such entirely military space platform ever constructed, during Operation HAMMERHEAD. The ship has only two of these medium lifters, but has the ability to produce no less than two dozen second stages for the pair. These vehicles are launched from the primary launch pad at the stern of the ship, with their exhausting being vented into the ocean and moderated by a water deluge system.

Her forward launch pad consists of four staggered erector rigs for the platform’s three secondary launch vehicles: the Westinghouse-TRW Minotaur VII, the Rocket Lab Electron Prime, and the ULA Theseus II. The three launch vehicles are competing for the Afloat Launch Complex’s expendable launch vehicle contract, and the Navy is interested in maintaining a diverse launch portfolio to ensure launch capacity. These forward launchers are designed for a rapid reload and simultaneous launch (from the two staggered rigs). These goals, however, are not thoroughly tested and are generally considered… optimistic.

Minotaur VII is derived from the LGM-182 Peacekeeper II—formerly LGM-35B Ground Based Strategic Deterrent-Heavy—a heavy throw-weight ICBM developed in response to the PLA’s nuclear build-up in the ‘20s and subsequently decommissioned under the terms of the Comprehensive Nuclear Arms Reduction Treaty. The Electron Prime was chosen as the most affordable option from the variety of dedicated launch vehicles that entered into the competition and saw good service in Second Sino with a high launch volume. Finally, Theseus II is derived from Lockheed Martin’s Next Generation Interceptor anti-ballistic missile, with wartime overproduction having been converted to civilian lift vehicles following the signing of the Malmö Accords.

Stairway to Heaven.

Surface Combatants

Saratoga class Nuclear Guided Missile Fleet Cruiser

USS Bunker Hill (CGN-76), USS Khasham (CGN-79), USS Normandy (CGN-81), USS Missionary Ridge (CGN-87), USS Paracel Islands (CGN-91)

Dimensions: 710 ft (length) x 79 ft (beam)

Displacement: 18,750 tons

Complement: 250

Missile Armament: 8x4 - Mark 57 Peripheral VLS Cells, 18x4 - Mark 61 Centerline VLS Cells, 4x1 - Mark 148 Adaptable Box Launcher, 2x21 - Mark 149 Integrated Point Defense Weapon (RIM-116)

Kinetic Armament: 2x2 - 127mm/72 Mark 48 Dual Automatic Naval Gun System, 2x1 - 57mm/70 Mark 110 Close-in-Gun System, 2x1 - 50mm/60 Mark 48 Point Defense Cannon, 6x1 - 30mm/50 Mark 46 Machine Gun

Direct Energy Armament: 4 - 500 kW Mark 13 Direct Energy Weapon Mount, 2 - 150 kW Mark 149 Integrated Point Defense Weapon (Mark 10 HELIOS)

Other Armament: 6x6 - Flexible Integrated Defensive Launcher, 2x2 - Mark 34 Surface Vessel Integral Torpedo Tubes

Aircraft: 1 x hangar with space for 1 x large or 2 x medium VTOL aircraft

The Saratoga-class is the United States Navy’s definitive air defense combatant and the true successor to the Ticonderoga-class cruiser and a combat focused-successor to the Yellowstone-class cruisers. The ship is built on a reworked and extender version of the latter DDG(X) & DDG(Y) “flat ass” hullform (with a stern designed to accomdate peripheral VLS) and is powered by two N4D reactors, a smaller deriative of the N3D PMSR.7 This immense power reserve is used for an enormous 28’ diameter multi-band (both X and S band) SPY-10 AESA radar, a full-spectrum array of direct energy defense weapons, and a monstrous AN/SLQ-37 electronic warfare array.

Nicknamed “Barad-dûr” or simply “Barad” for the “all-seeing eye” of their integrated air defense suite and dark grey color. These air defense ships can sync the search and fire-control radars of an entire battle group, turning the formation into a ‘Voltron’ of air-missile defense, making the job of the battle group air defense coordinator much easier. An individual Saratoga possesses close to three times the weight of fire of her predecessor, and her expanded electronic warfare suite is nine orders of magnitude more powerful. They are well-liked by everyone save the Nuclear Power School faculty, who have had to train the new generation of surface nukes. They are dependable and highly capable, though not invincible. They can be overwhelmed as their various AD systems overheat from extended, high-intensity use.

Though the class was not yet in commission for the Fifth Gulf War, they were some of the first ships to see combat during the Second Sino. USS Philippine Sea (CGN-75), assigned to Exercise LIBERTY BANDIT, proved the worth of her clan in a single action. Her skipper, acting on his feet as CJ-200 Satyr high-hypersonic anti-ship cruise missiles screamed toward the battle group, overloaded the ship’s electronic warfare suite. In a fraction of a second, the lone ship fried the primary, secondary, and tertiary guidance systems of ten incoming sea skimmers, forestalling an immediate and cataclysmic defeat. The class proved to be matchless and irreplaceable assets for OSATO during the rest of the war. Accordingly, the US Navy has begun production of the Concord-class—originally the Flight IV Saratoga-class (the class was ordered in three batches of eight ships).

The Watchtower of the Free World.

Samuel B. Roberts class Guided Missile Destroyer

USS Samuel B. Roberts (DDG-157), USS Johnston (DDG-161), USS Hoel (DDG-162), USS Heerman (DDG-163), USS Lisa M. Franchetti (DDG-170), USS Jesse L. Brown (DDG-173), USS Peter M. Mitchell (DDG-174), USS Daniel Inouye (DDG-176), USS Paul X. Rinn (DDG-180), USS William D. Porter (DDG-186), USS Willis A. Lee (DDG-193), USS James V. Forrestal (DDG-199) USS Ashton B. Carter (DDG-200)

Dimensions: 560 ft (length) x 79 ft (beam)

Displacement: 11,500 tons

Complement: 185

Missile Armament: 8x4 - Mark 57 Peripheral VLS Cells, 6x4 - Mark 61 Centerline VLS Cells, 4x1 - Mark 148 Adaptable Box Launcher, 2x21 - Mark 149 Integrated Point Defense Weapon (RIM-116)

Kinetic Armament: 1x1 - 127mm/72 Mark 47 Automatic Naval Gun System, 2x1 - 50mm/60 Mark 48 Point Defense Cannon, 6x1 - 30mm/50 Mark 46 Machine Gun

Direct Energy Armament: 2 - 150 kW Mark 149 Integrated Point Defense Weapon (Mark 10 HELIOS)

Other Armament: 4x6 - Flexible Integrated Defensive Launcher, 2x2 - Mark 34 Surface Vessel Integral Torpedo Tubes

Aircraft: 1 x hangar with space for 1 x large or 2 x medium VTOL aircraft

The concept behind the Samuel B. Roberts is simple: what if we did the Arleigh Burke again on a new hull? The Office of Critical Procurement’s “Wet Office” and NSWC Carderock did exactly that with their DDG(Y), designing a smaller, less capable, and cheaper derivative of the DDG(X)—incidentally scuppering the Evans-class in the process. Once joking (and mocking) called the “Burke Flight X Program Office,” the ships were inspired in part by the ‘original’ Flight III Arleigh Burke proposals from the late 1980s—but they would end up a beloved and trailing blazing class of fighting ships.

Like all FAX2040 ships, the new destroyers are a mix of terrific advances in material sciences and energetics (Nanoc Steel, advanced non-polymer composites, and the Slate Haze Grey anti-corrosion radar absorbing paint, electrothermal-chemical guns, and multi-band radars) and thoroughly tested core mechanical systems (Integrated Power and Energy System and the DDG(X) hull-form). However unlike DDG(X), DDG(Y) had the luxury of being designed for production assisted by, or entirely by, the cacophony of industrial practices, technologies, and systems known as a “printer-fabricator.” This gave the class a decisive edge—that and the early Evans-class DDGs ironing out most of the kinks of DDG(Y)’s planned combat suite—over the Evans, the Constellation, and the Arleigh Burke. This also allowed the class to be repaired much faster than anticipated, surprising both the USN and PLAN. In one case, the Naval Station Everett would ‘print’ (direct laser deposition) an entire new bow for USS John F. Kerry (DDG-182) in a mere six days after the ship had the front “fallen off” from an errant mine.

In 2032, when Samuel B. Roberts was launched, the class was not the deadliest or most advanced combatant in the world—far from it. Scores of PLAN combatants, including their newest class of “future” destroyers, carried more weapons on larger hulls with larger radars. However, no other class of ship would match the reliability and dependability of the SBR. It is a class that a fleet, and a nation, can trust. It is the new gold standard. In the wake of Second Sino, the class has become the core of the USN battle force with rapid wartime production, loss of older combatants, and the final drawdown of remaining Flight I and Flight II Burkes into the reserves by the peace dividend. Production is not planned to end until the mid-2070s.

Of note, the USS Peter M. Mitchell (DDG-174) is named after Petty Officer Second Class Peter Maverick Mitchell—named after Tom Cruise’s Top Gun character—who was posthumously awarded the Medal of Honor during the Fourth Persian Gulf War. As an MH-60R Seahawk crewman, he rescued seventy-three service members under fire during the war in thirty-three different CSAR missions. He was mortally wounded during his final rescue. Mitchell’s Seahawk “Danger Four-One” had been tasked with rescuing downed Marine Raiders on the Iranian Coast. P02 Mitchell incurred sixteen wounds during the operation but was able to bring the final Raider aboard before he collapsed from blood loss.

The Anchor of the Free World.

Flight IIA Evans class Guided Missile Destroyer Leader

USS Reuben James (DLG-159), USS Stark (DLG-160)

Dimensions: 640 ft (length) x 79 ft (beam)

Displacement: 15,500 tons

Complement: 200

Missile Armament: 10x4 Mark 57 Peripheral VLS Cells, 4x8 - Mark 41 Centerline VLS Cells, 8x4 - Mark 61 Centerline VLS Cells, 4x3 - Mark 147 Offensive Adaptable Deck Launcher, 3x21 - Mark 149 Integrated Point Defense Weapon (RIM-116)

Kinetic Armament: 1x2 - 127mm/72 Mark 48 Dual Automatic Naval Gun System, 4x1 - 50mm/60 Mark 48 Point Defense Cannon, 6x1 - 30mm/50 Mark 46 Machine Gun

Direct Energy Armament: 3 - 150 kW Mark 149 Integrated Point Defense Weapon (Mark 10 HELIOS)

Other Armament: 4x6 - Flexible Integrated Defensive Launcher, 2x3 - Mark 30 Surface Vessel Torpedo Tubes

Aircraft: 1 x hangar with space for 1 x large or 2 x medium VTOL aircraft

The Samar Skippers—procured under the DDG(X) program—are a clan of warships that would help pave the way for the vessels that would overshadow them. Originally intended as the successor to the venerable Arleigh Burke-class destroyer to begin construction in the early 2030s, the brand new world born from the ashes of First Sino would see the class would be thrust into production immediately under CNO Franchetti’s Emergency Navigation Plan. The EMNAV Plan would see DDG(X) joined by a titanic acceleration of the timelines for Flight III Arleigh Burke DDG buys, orders for the first Yellowstone class CBMs, rapid development of an ‘improved’ Flight II Constellation FFG to fix the class’s simmering issues, and two new dedicated test ships. The first three vessels of DDG(X) would be built as de facto test items, with major differences between them: the first would be little more than a Flight III Burke on a new hull with the IPS from a Zumwalt. The second would have the class’s brand new IPES. The third would test a different ‘full breadth’ stern arrangement, what would become the “flat ass” of FAX2040. These ships—Evans, Copeland, and Kintberger—would serve as test ships that would test the propulsion, sensor, and weapon systems of the next generation of US Navy vessels alongside the purpose-built USS Norton Sound (AVM-2) and USS Salisbury Sound (AVM-3). The Navy would go from a single test ship (the ex-Paul F. Foster) to five in half a decade. Of the remaining six ships, three would be built as Flight II and three as Flight II— with the main difference being the P-VLS cells in the flat aft along the flight deck of the Flight IIA ships (and would become the progenitor of the Samuel B. Roberts and Saratoga hulls). In fact, Flight II and Flight IIA would begin construction at the same time in 2028 (DDG-154 Hathaway at the newly reopened Detroit Naval Shipyard and DDG-155 Kidd at Huntington Ingalls).

The planned run of forty-eight was cut to nine because the class was simply built for a world that no longer existed. Though good ships, they were simply too expensive and too slow to produce. DDG(Y), at less than half the price of the $4.25 billion pseudo-cruiser, was impossible to resist. The Evans-class would be redesignated as “Destroyer Leaders” in a move to accelerate DDG(Y) production by intentionally creating a “destroyer gap” with the PLAN. A blood feud between the DDG(Y) and DDG(X) program offices exists to this very day, as the former views the latter as stealing their work—and they’re not wrong.

The class would earn their spurs—and battle stars—during Gulf V and Second Sino. Copeland (DLG-152), for example, achieved the highest interception rate for ballistic missile defense during the nuclear exchange, saving millions of lives, and the USS Guadalcanal (LPV-17). USS Stark’s almost-last stand at the First Naval Battle of Wake Island during First Trench is also of note. Three ships were lost in Second Sino, with one more damaged beyond economical repair. Though oft considered a failure—the butt of jokes and a source of frustration—in the end, they were sorted out into dependable warships, overshadowed by their predecessor and successors.

The Lost and Forgotten.

Flight III Arleigh Burke class Guided Missile Destroyer

USS Telesforo Trinidad (DDG-139), USS Vincent R. Capodanno (DDG-146), USS Samuel Paparo (DDG-150)

Dimensions: 510 ft (length) x 66 ft (beam)

Displacement: 9,750 tons

Complement: 250

Missile Armament: 12x8 - Mark 41 Centerline VLS Cells 2x2 - Mark 145 Adaptable Deck Launcher, 2x3 - Mark 147 Offensive Adaptable Deck Launcher, 2x21 - Mark 149 Integrated Point Defense Weapon (RIM-116)

Kinetic Armament: 1x1 - 127mm/72 Mark 47 Automatic Naval Gun System, 2x1 - 50mm/60 Mark 48 Point Defense Cannon, (2x4 - 30mm/80 Mark 15 Block 2 Close-in-Weapon System)*, 6x1 - 30mm/50 Mark 46 Machine Gun

Direct Energy Armament: 2 - 150 kW Mark 149 Integrated Point Defense Weapon (Mark 10 HELIOS), (2 - 50 kW Mark 15 Block 2 Close-in-Weapon System (Mark 6 HELIOS-L))*

Other Armament: 6x6 - Flexible Integrated Defensive Launcher, 2x3 - Mark 30 Surface Vessel Torpedo Tubes

Aircraft: 1 x hangar with space for 2 x medium VTOL aircraft

The Arleigh Burke-class needs no introduction. They are the Fletcher-class of the 21st Century and the workhorse of the United States Navy. Many expected them to never cease production, and for several congressional hearings, it seemed like DDG(X) and DDG(Y) would be canceled in favor of a Flight IV DDG-51 with a 46’ plug to increase maximum displacement. However, the fact that DDG(Y) had been built with the Fifth Industrial Revolution in mind would ensure that the Burke line would not last forever.

The Flight III was intended to be the ultimate Burke, and in many ways it was, as it took the venerable hull to the very limits of its existing margins. The sub-class would be rushed into bulk production during and after First Sino, with a historic six hulls being laid down at Huntington Ingalls at once in March of 2025 (followed by the first two Evans in October). HII alone would slog through the final order of 17 Flight III destroyers, as Bath Iron Works took over and salvaged the flagging FFG(X) program. The ships of the class have—unsurprisingly—undergone several refits, with most units receiving a kind of B-FRAM (Burke Fleet Rehabilitation and Modernization). B-FRAM IV would even experiment with replacing the Burke’s traditional powerplant with a variant of the turbo-electric IPES, in addition to replacing their AEGIS battle management with the Navy’s POSEIDON iteration of the DOD’s unified OLYMPUS battle management system and installing additional weapon systems. The most recent B-FRAM V would actually have to reduce the point defenses of some ships to improve seakeeping; for example, pre-refit, Telesforo Trinidad was armed with no less than fifteen PD mounts of various makes and models.

Three of the famed class of 100 would be displaced during the Departure (another five narrowly avoided the same fate). These are USS Telesforo Trinidad (DDG-139), USS Vincent R. Capodanno (DDG-146), and the final ship of the class, USS Samuel Paparo (DDG-150).

The “Fighting Teletubby” is the oldest ship in the class, being laid down in the ‘Bayou Christmas’ of March 2025. She has gone through three B-FRAM—first after suffering damage from a Saudi C-901 anti-ship missile during Gulf War V, then again during Second Sino in 2038 after striking a “micro meteor” mine, and yet again from 2040 to 2042. She is considered one of the best fighting ships in the Navy; a lucky ship for her crew but a blight for her captain. Bad things happen to her skippers. Such bad luck includes eleven divorces, one murder-suicide, and four deaths in the line of duty in little more than a decade. Her current captain, the ship’s former XO, was field promoted after his skipper was decapitated by errant fragmentation from a 152mm howitzer shell on the last day of Second Sino. He died only thirty-six minutes before the war-ending ceasefire came into effect, the seventh to last person to die in Second Sino. Despite the localized bad luck, the ship has earned eighteen battle stars, surviving the Burning ‘30s in better shape than many of her contemporaries. She recently returned to the fleet after a deep refit, giving her a new lease on life and proving the venerable Arleigh Burkes are far from out of the fight.

Vincent R. Capodanno is named after two Medal of Honor recipients, one from the Vietnam War and one from First Sino—both chaplains killed attempting to save wounded Marines. She is one of the “Sansha Saints,” a run of ships named after those killed fighting on Sansha in the Paracel Islands. Samuel Paparo is the final ship of the class, though not the last ship, as DDG-149 Susan Collins would complete after Paparo due to a dispute over whether workers from BIW would be the ones to symbolically “complete” the ship named after the former Maine senator. DDG-150 would actually be originally ordered as USS Intrepid, but would be renamed after the commander of INDOPACOM during First Sino, who died just four weeks into his term as Chairman of the Joint Chiefs in a 2027 plane crash.

The Arleigh Burke is the defining symbol of American naval power for the early 21st Century. It is a beloved workhorse and able combatant, though its era has passed but it remains the gold standard for prime surface combatants.

B-52-upon-Sea

Flight II Constellation class Guided Missile Frigate

USS Lafayette (FFG-65), USS Pulaski (FFG-72), USS Macedonian (FFG-82), USS Guerriere (FFF-83), USS Monitor (FFG-85), USS Kearsarge (FFG-85), USS Hopper (FFG-95), USS Romney (FFG-99), USS Arleigh Burke (FFG-100), USS Congress (FFG-101)

Dimensions: 481 ft (length) x 66 ft (beam)

Displacement: 8,100 tons

Complement: 185

Missile Armament: 4x4 - Mark 61 Centerline VLS Cells, 2x2 - Mark 145 Adaptable Deck Launcher, 4x4 - Mark 146 Adaptable Deck Launcher, 2x3 - Mark 147 Offensive Adaptable Deck Launcher, 1x21 - Mark 149 Integrated Point Defense Weapon (RIM-116)

Kinetic Armament: 1x1 - 76mm/62 Mark 76 Automatic Naval Gun System, 2x1 - 50mm/60 Mark 48 Point Defense Cannon, 2x4 - 30mm/80 Mark 15 Block 2 Close-in-Weapon System, 6x1 - 30mm/50 Mark 46 Machine Gun

Direct Energy Armament: 1 - 150 kW Mark 149 Integrated Point Defense Weapon (Mark 10 HELIOS), 2 - 50 kW Mark 15 Block 2 Close-in-Weapon System (Mark 6 HELIOS-L)

Other Armament: 6x6 - Flexible Integrated Defensive Launcher, 2x3 - Mark 30 Surface Vessel Integral Torpedo Tubes

Aircraft: 1 x hangar with space for 2 x medium VTOL aircraft

Calling this design Flight II Constellation or “Improved Constellation” is a really quite the misnomer. The ships of the “FFG-62i” class have less in common with the FFG-62 than the FFG-62 had with its Italian FREMM progenitor. In a Hail Mary bid to save the overloaded design, newly-confirmed Secretary of the Navy Elaine Luria and CNO Franchetti ordered a draconia rebaselining of the frigate. Namely, following FFG-63 the class would abandon the modified FREMM hull and instead use existing work by Gibbs & Cox on a shortened Burke hull (proposed for Australia’s SEA 400 Air Warfare Destroyer program) to provide the ships with better seakeeping, stability, and future growth margins (actually make the design seaworthy). The rapid integration process would be overseen by Bath Iron Work and NWSC Caderock with the first ship of the new to be built by BIW, with Fincantieri Marinette Marine rejoining production at FFG-65, with the Navy retaining the option of giving FMM’s potential orders to Austal if needed. The Navy would get its expedited replacement for its Flight I Burkes… by building slightly different Burkes (and an upfront spend of just shy of 50 billion dollars for a bulk order of 20 hulls and expansion of supporting facilities).

Of the “original eight” frigates (those ordered before the rebaselining), only a single ship remains—USS Lafayette (FFG-65), the second of the new “flight.” The first two ships, FFG-62 Constellation and FFG-63 Congress would have extremely expedited construction schedules (FMM was desperate to avoid losing the rebaselined orders to BIW or Austal). However, the ships would have extremely middling careers, despite a dramatic start with Constellation’s heroic showing in Gulf War IV under the command of Commander Kimberly Scott. The lead ship would go on to sink after being struck by a Chinese heavyweight torpedo during the Anzio Incident, despite the titanic efforts of her crew. Congress… would not have such a career, effectively serving as a cutter-cum-training ship in the Caribbean. The ship had more pronounced trim and seakeeping issues compared to her sistership, and due to remarkably poor planning on the part of her captain would embarrassingly founder in Hurricane Dave in 2031 while trying to reach Mobile. Regardless, the class has earned their stripes in hard fighting in Gulf V and Second Sino—with the losses to show for it.

The class has seen several upgrades throughout their lifecycle, including a New Threat Upgrade refit program which, chiefly, replaced their 32 Mark 41 VLS cells with 16 larger Mark 61 VLS cells (equivalent to 64 Mark 41 cells) and upgraded the ships combat suite from AEGIS to OLYMPUS. The ships’ margins have also been put to good use with four 4-cell and two 2-cell ADLs and two 3-cell O-ADLs (the Adaptable Deck Launcher variant designed to accomdate the larger 28-inch canisters of the Mk 57 VLS). The class, only ever intended as an interrim design, would be sidelined by the production of Samuel B. Roberts-class destroyers and Ellington-class destroyer escorts. Particularly, as before their NTU, an Ellington DDE was better armed and nearly half the price and while the Roberts class DDG was roughly 50% more expensive, it had four times the punch. The design, however, did see considerable success in the export market—with 23 hulls sold to Egypt, Romania, Vietnam, Australia, Canada, Nigeria, Poland, and the United Kingdom (the Commonwealth buys were to replace lost Type 26 and Type 31 frigates during Second Sino).

While the CTF contains the oldest still afloat FFG-62i—the USS Lafayette (FFG-65) with her Marine National exchange officer XO—it also contains the last three ships of the class USS Romney (FFG-100), USS Arleigh Burke (FFG-100), and USS Congress (FFG-101). The frigate Arleigh Burke (which in and of itself was a controversial naming decision) is the flagship of the equally controversial Escort Squadron Eight under the even more controversial Commodore Charles Entertainment Jeung. The COMO is a protégé of Admiral Scott, serving as a gunner’s mate aboard her first command, USS Canberra (FF-30), during First Sino, before going through OCS. He was with Scott as a surface snipe aboard USS Constellation at the Anzio Incident and was headhunted by the Office of Critical Procurement. Jeung, an Olympic sharpshooter (who went viral with two golds at the 2024 Summer Games), put his expertise to use leading the team for the Mark 10 EM-ETC gun. While, the rest of class have had full careers doing the grunt worked needed to keep the United States the pre-eminent global naval power. For example, USS Kearsarge (FFG-85) would live up to her name and engage a PLAN Q-Ship raider (under the guise of a Panamax container ship) in a surface naval gun action in the Indian Ocean in 2039 during the PLAN’s failed bid to disrupt shipping lanes beyond the WEZ.

USS Guerriere (FFG-82) and USS Macedonian (FFG-83) have a sordid history for modern combatants. Macedonian was actually sunk by a PLAN intercontinental drone torpedo in 2037 but was refloated and brought back into service—before then being sunk during the infamous frogman attack on Yokosuka in 2039 but was recovered and returned to service once again. Similiarly, Guerriere was struck by six YJ-83, destroying almost all of her superstructure which was then rebuilt. In fact, even the naming of the two ships in 2026 ignited a minor diplomatic crisis between the United States and United Kingdom. The naming of new frigates after Royal Navy ships captured by United States Navy caused Leader of the Opposition, Kemi Badenoch, to crash out and acuse the Department of the Navy of insulting the United Kingdom. An offhand comment by former President Joe Biden to a local news covering the opening of a bagel shop in Wilmington—“They’re lucky we aren’t in a mood to capture more, I’ll tell you that much”—renewed the firestorm on the Opposition Bench and even caused grumbling in Whitehall. There was a move in the Commons to censor the former President, which was stopped when a simultaneous electric fire and errant lightning strike caused the Second Burning of Parliament. Former Prime Minister Starmer, then serving as Ambassador to the United States in the wake of his ouster just before the end of First Sino, would meet with President Biden to smooth over the mess; which would be over-shadow by the fact that the former PM inadvertenly spilled an entire pot of tea into crotch while on camera. The Rayner Ministry would eventually get the US “back” by naming the 7th ship of the Type 83 Bellerophon-class destroyers HMS Bladensburg (D41) after the battle that led to the sack of Washington. The ship would be temporarily canceled despite being more than halfway completed during Dehenna Davison’s brief minority government in 2035, one part of what would be called the Two Weeks Ministry, the Great British Fire Sale, or the Black Fortnight. It would be completed in 2039 during Prime Minister Ed Miliband’s wartime National Unity Government and be jointly christened by First Lieutenant Robert “Hunter” Biden II, actress Phoebe Waller-Bridge, and former Prime Minister Theresa May.

I’ve Got a Fever, and the Only Prescription is More Cowbell Burke.

Ellington class Destroyer Escort

USS Puller (DDE-1111), USS Edsall (DDE-1122), USS Riley (DDE-1138), USS Gee (DDE-1145), USS Daly (DDE-1149), USS Munro (DDE-1168), USS Taijeron (DDE-1175), USS Alvarez (DDE-1181), USS Walker (DDE-1185) USS Manoukian (DDE-1200)

Dimensions: 465 ft (length) x 55 ft (beam)

Displacement: 6,550 tons

Complement: 100

Missile Armament: 4x4 - Mark 57 Peripheral VLS Cells, 4x8 - Mark 41 Centerline VLS Cells, 4x1 - Mark 148 Box Launcher, 1x21 - Mark 149 Integrated Point Defense Weapon (RIM-116)

Kinetic Armament: 1x1 - 76mm/62 Mark 76 Automatic Naval Gun System, 2x1 - 50mm/60 Mark 48 Point Defense Cannon, 6x1 - 30mm/50 Mark 46 Machine Gun

Direct Energy Armament: 1 - 150 kW Mark 149 Integrated Point Defense Weapon (Mark 10 HELIOS)

Other Armament: 4x6 - Flexible Integrated Defensive Launcher, 2x2 - Mark 34 Surface Vessel Integral Torpedo Tubes

Aircraft: 1 x hangar with space for 1 x large or 2 x medium VTOL aircraft

The class is named after Captain James Ellington, the first ship’s captain to be killed in action since Lieutenant Junior Grade Warren R. Person, skipper of the USS Magpie (AMS-25), in 1950. Ellington was killed during the legendary Second Battle of Paracel Islands, where he led a force of six damaged Independence-class light frigates into a surface action against a superior PLAN at night, holding the field despite losing two-thirds of their numbers, to protect the exposed amphibious transports supporting the slugfest on Sansha Island. With the rebaselining of FFG(X) into the Baby Burke, the USN was without a true light surface combatant to provide mass low-end ASW and AA escort capabilities to the fleet. OPNAV struggled between choosing a manned or unmanned vessel for the role, but would eventually agree to “yes” and accept a family of systems under the DE(X) program also known as Project TIN CAN.

The USV side of the program (and its precusors) would remain a mess, with three different roughly 750-1,000 ton MUSV classes (Vigilance, Ronoake, and Giuseppe Abregado) already in production and at least two more to be selected under DE(X), one general purpose and one anti-submarine warfare design. Eventually the Navy would transition the program into optionally manned “patrol corvette picket” (frigate had fallen out of favor after the pains of FFG(X), and to separate the program from FFG-62i) designated PCC, in the 2,000 to 4,000 ton range. This would result in Vigor Industries Speaker-class anti-submarine corvette picket and Gibbs & Cox’s Senator-class corvette picket—however the designs would be handed off to numerous shipyards across the country. The transparent logrolling naming convention was a hail Mary by OPNAV and OCP to get the program funded in the face of congressional reticence (because of the Navy’s mixed record with LUSVs).

For the manned side of DE(X), the USN selected a heavily modified version of the RAN Vampire light frigate (derived from the Improved Mogami FFM) as the crewed combatant for TIN CAN, to be built by both Austal USA and Mitsubishi Heavy Industries Galveston. The design would be win the contest for OSATO’s Common Escort Force program, beating out Japan’s Chikuma (itself a Mogami FFM deriative), the British-Danish Arrowhead 150 (derived from the Type 31), Spanish Alfa 6000, German MEKO A-300, and French FDI, and Korean FFX-V. The DE(X) design would include much improved inherent damage control principles, a modified ‘flat ass’ stern to accomodate the American practice of larger diameter strike P-VLS along the flight deck, a 76mm ETC main gun, and use a single rotating SPY-10 multi-band array. The ships were originally ribbed by many surface snipes as “Seven Fiddy Benjamins,” as the new “DDE” (a choice which itself was met with some outrage by the fleet) was costed at 750M USD (FY 2032 USD in a pri-fab yard) and fitted for a crew of one hundred. However, the class would quickly earn reputation as good seaboats and for a hardiness not found in their Japanese progenitors (the original Mogami FFMs would suffer badly in the first weeks of Second Sino).

The DDE is the most numerous surface combatant of the United States Navy since the Fletcher-class destroyers of WW2 fame, with 133 hulls produced by 2042, mostly in new yards along the Great Lakes and an additional 83 hulls produced for the Allied Powers and/or member nations of the Osaka Treaty Organization.

Despite being small and cheap compared to the rest of FAX2040, the Ellington-class is not to be underestimated. USS Gee (DDE-1145), named after USMC Sergeant Nicole Gee, who was killed at Abbey Gate during the Kabul Airlift, shows just how tough the tin cans can be. Gee was escorting a convoy of Andersen Express APDs, but before they reached the line of departure, the convoy was jumped by the Type 099 (09-IX) SSN 444, the most advanced submarine in the PLAN’s inventory. The first shot by 444 destroyed the escorting submarine RANS Waller (SSN 84). Gee counter-launched with three RUM-139F, at which point 444 dumped its torps and VLS cells. The APDAs broke into their sprint toward Guam as Gee flung itself toward the attacking “Super Papa.” The DDE lit off her air defense magazine at the blind-fired YJ-18C anti-ship missile as 444 turned to flee—having mistaken Gee for a much less capable Arafura-class OPV. Gee’s third RUM-125 Sea Lance II would hit and cripple 444 just as the SSN’s second torpedo detonated under her bow. The front of the escort tore free as Gee engaged the remaining errant cruise missiles. All of the hull forward of the superstructure was ripped down like a distended jaw and would snap off under the force of water. Gee would then finish off the SSN with a Mark 56 RAPTOR medium-weight torpedo from one of her SVITTs. The crippled destroyer escort then reversed to the David M. Shoup (a forward staging base at Chuuk Lagoon) to install a carbon-composite coffer dam to permit ahead travel before making a run back to Naval Advance Base Majuro. After additional field repairs, the ships would make a long and solitary sprint for Brisbane, firing off the last of her armament to answer a call for fire from the 2/23 Battalion Interdiction Team on New Georgia, who had engaged a depleted PLANMC brigade. Gee would be repaired using the bow from the under-construction Anzac­­-class destroyer escort, HMNZS Moa (FF 112 ).

Kill Something’s Tin Cans.

Amphibious Warfare Vessels

Chosin class Landing Platform Cargo (LPKN)

USS Chosin (LPKN-118), USS Inchon (LPKN-119), USS Khe Sanh (LPKN-120), USS Korengal (LPKN-121)

Dimensions: 1,170 ft (length) x 190 ft (beam at waterline), 230 ft (beam at flight deck)

Displacement: 117,000 tons

Complement: 400 (without embarkees)

Missile Armament: 4x8 - Mark 41 Centerline VLS Cells, 2x21 - Mark 149 Integrated Point Defense Weapon (RIM-116)

Kinetic Armament: 3x1 - 57mm/70 Mark 110 Close-in-Gun System, 2x1 - 50mm/60 Mark 48 Point Defense Cannon, 2x4 - 30mm/80 Mark 15 Block 2 Close-in-Weapon System, 4x1 - 30mm/50 Mark 46 Machine Gun

Direct Energy Armament: 2 - 150 kW Mark 149 Integrated Point Defense Weapon (Mark 10 HELIOS), 2 - 50 kW Mark 15 Block 2 Close-in-Weapon System (Mark 6 HELIOS-L)

Other Armament: 4x6 - Flexible Integrated Defensive Launcher, 2x8 - Mark 36 Surface Vessel Defensive Torpedo Tube

Aircraft: 1 x hangar complex with space for 30 x large VTOL aircraft

Other: 1 x Mark 3 Common Integrated Printer-Fabricator, 2 x LCT-10 Landing Craft Tank, 2 Maneuver Support Vessel-Light. Plus either 1 x Maneuver Support Vessel-Medium (Aviation variant) or 1 x LCT-10 Landing Craft Tank, 3 x LCAC-100 Ship-to-Shore Connectors, and 16 x Patrol Boat, Littoral (Assault variant)

The Landing Platform Cargo is an abomination, born of the fickle whispering wills of the Good Idea Fairy at OPNAV and NAVSEA. The class began as a high-speed transport, a mere replacement for the Algol-class fast vehicle cargo ships. The original design was an N4D PMSR-powered “sprinter RO/RO” capable of high speeds for swift trips and repeated brief runs into contested environments to significantly increase logistical throughput in austere environs via a small well deck.

However, this “simple” design would become something profoundly different, known ubiquitously as “Drowners” by the Marines destined to sail in them. The first step in this journey was NAVSEA uprating the ship’s structure from conventional naval steel to Nanoc Steel, the global standard for nanocomposite steel. After re-examining the design, NAVSEA realized that the design was comically overbuilt. This permitted them to walk backward into a revision of the infamous MPF (2010) “mega-amphib” napkin design. They embraced the coincidence and redesigned the ships into the largest amphibious assault vessels ever built. Congress jumped at the idea, thinking they could save money, happily accepting the monsters that could carry the same load as seven of the Navy’s MPF(X) designs in four hulls; plus, the LPKNs have the tensile strength to operate the heat of V-87 ultra-lift quad-tilt rotors transports and the F-35B/E.8

The Defense Production Board came incredibly close to overriding OPNAV and ordering the completion of the ships as simple high-speed cargo ships; however, the start of Second Sino pushed the newly reorganized Defense Production Board to keep the hulls under construction since issues over yard space and money evaporated.

The ship’s berthing is located in their huge sponsons, this and the number of embarkees led to rather ascetic accommodations. Those baseline conditions led to the ships being dubbed “Drowners” by the Marine embarkees. To tackle this discontent, OPNAV authorized the ships’ galleys to operate under licensed brands (crewed by US Sailors)—including KFC, Taco Bell, Burger King, Five Guys, McDonald’s, Popeyes, and Randy’s BBQ (a local chain owned by the program manager’s wife’s brother’s husband’s sister’s husband, who is currently in prison for wire fraud and smuggling marmosets in the United States).

USS Chosin (LPKN-119) would be delivered in time to see service in Second Sino, bringing reinforcements to Operation LIBERTY, the Liberation of Taiwan, in 2040. The ship’s time at the front was truly unremarkable, right up to the moment when it was hit directly by a DF-21. Chosin shrugged off the blow as USS Fallujah (LHA-8) was nearly lost by similar damage in the same attack. Even with that feat, their reputation has not recovered from their first impressions, and the Navy has still yet to develop a doctrine of how to handle a set of four titanic assault ships that can carry a division-sized MAGTF while keeping pace with a sprinting carrier group.

The Pascagoula Frankengator.

Flight III San Antonio class Landing Transport Dock

USS Compton (LPD-53)

Dimensions: 775 ft (length) x 105 ft (beam)

Displacement: 35,000 tons

Complement: 225 (without embarkees)

Missile Armament: 4x4 - Mark 146 Adaptable Deck Launcher, 2x21 - Mark 149 Integrated Point Defense Weapon (RIM-116)

Kinetic Armament: 2x1 - 57mm/70 Mark 110 Close-in-Gun System, 2x1 - 50mm/60 Mark 48 Point Defense Cannon, 6x1 - 30mm/50 Mark 46 Machine Gun

Direct Energy Armament: 2 - 150 kW Mark 149 Integrated Point Defense Weapon (Mark 10 HELIOS)

Other Armament: 3x6 - Flexible Integrated Defensive Launcher

Aircraft: 1 x landing deck with space for 6 x medium VTOL aircraft, 1 x hangar with space for 2 x medium VTOL aircraft

Other: 2 x LCAC-100 Ship-to-Shore Connector

The Flight III San Antonio-class represents a return to a high-end amphibious warfare vessels, instead of the “cost friendly” inclination of their Flight II predecessors. They are faster and larger, with additional spaces dedicated to command and control to act as an amphib squadron leader.

The ships have more space for vehicles, larger holds for materiel and cargo, more berths for embarkees, more beds for the wounded, and more stations for command and control. It has more. It is also considerably faster than its predecessors, thanks to a modern IPES powerplant and its higher length-to-beam ratio.

USS Compton has had an honorable career, being thrust directly into Second Sino. It served primarily in the Solomon Campaign before moving on to assisting in the South East Asia Campaign, moving troops and materials to the OSATO troops in Vietnam and the Aligned Malaysian Resistance Organizations. It is also the reigning champion of the Puget Drag Race, an unofficial title for the fastest time to clear the Admiralty Inlet starting from Naval Station Bremerton.

The Standard, No Excess or Exaggeration

Flight IR San Antonio class Landing Transport Dock

Flight IIR San Antonio class Landing Transport Dock

USS Anchorage (LPD-23), USS Philadelphia (LPD-32)

Dimensions: 684 ft (length) x 105 ft (beam)

Displacement: 25,000 tons

Complement: 250 (without embarkees)

Missile Armament (Flight IR): 2x8 - Mark 41 Centerline VLS Cells, 2x21 - Mark 149 Integrated Point Defense Weapon (RIM-116)

Missile Armament (Flight IIR): 4x4 - Mark 146 Adaptable Deck Launcher, 2x21 - Mark 149 Integrated Point Defense Weapon (RIM-116)

Kinetic Armament (Flight IR): 1x1 - 57mm/70 Mark 110 Close-in-Gun System, 2x1 - 50mm/60 Mark 48 Point Defense Cannon, 3x4 - 30mm/80 Mark 15 Block 2 Close-in-Weapon System, 6x1 - 30mm/50 Mark 46 Machine Gun

Kinetic Armament (Flight IIR): 1x1 - 57mm/70 Mark 110 Close-in-Gun System, 2x1 - 50mm/60 Mark 48 Point Defense Cannon, 2x4 - 30mm/80 Mark 15 Block 2 Close-in-Weapon System, 6x1 - 30mm/50 Mark 46 Machine Gun

Direct Energy Armament (Flight IR): 2 - 150 kW Mark 149 Integrated Point Defense Weapon (Mark 10 HELIOS), 3 - 50 kW Mark 15 Block 2 Close-in-Weapon System (Mark 6 HELIOS-L)

Direct Energy Armament (Flight IIR): 2 - 150 kW Mark 149 Integrated Point Defense Weapon (Mark 10 HELIOS), 2 - 50 kW Mark 15 Block 2 Close-in-Weapon System (Mark 6 HELIOS-L)

Other Armament: 2x6 - Flexible Integrated Defensive Launcher

Aircraft: 1 x landing deck with space for 5 x medium VTOL aircraft, 1 x hangar with space for 1 x medium VTOL aircraft

Other: 2 x LCAC-100 Ship-to-Shore Connector

The first two flights of the San Antonio-class amphibious assault ship are the beating heart of the United States Navy’s amphibious fleet. The ships would have a total run of 53 vessels—8 for Australia, 6 for Japan, and 39 for the United States. They are well-rounded and extremely dependable, having served in every stage, conflict, and theater of the Sino-American Cold War.

All ships have undergone refit programs to extend their services, enhance their survivability, and improve their capabilities. This includes the installation of the 16 VLS cells that the Flight I examples were fitted for but not with (this occurred during and after First Sino) and the installation of Mark 70 Payload Delivery System and eventually Mark 146 Box Launchers aboard the Flight II ships. Like much of the navy, the ships would see significant increases in the rest of their defense arsenal, with particular emphasis on defense against small boats and drones.

The two examples with the fleet have had starkly different careers. USS Anchorage (LPD-23) is famously known as “Scar” in the fleet. It has suffered battle damage no less than twenty-three times in its career—a legend of bad and good luck in equal part. Most damage has not been severe—for example, its first battle damage was during First Sino, a single YJ-62 hit while operating off in the Paracel Islands. Even the damage it suffered during Gulf V from a nuclear blast was only minor. However, the ship was once at the very knife’s edge when it was struck by a heavy-weight torpedo launched by a Type 095 SSN during Second Sino; the ship’s captain, having recently left her position as the Chief of Staff to Rear Admiral “Kill Something” Scott, would drown and die attempting to reach the bridge, only to be resuscitated. It is a ship that refuses to die despite the best efforts of the fates.

On the other hand, USS Philadelphia (LPD-32) has spent most of her career helping to save lives rather than helping to end them. The ship has assisted in rescue, relief, or recovery operations in the wake of over a dozen calamitous natural disasters, both at home and abroad. This includes the Great Niger Delta Oil Spill and the aftermath of the Great Eruption of Mount Etna. There is a running joke in the fleet that the Philly is a Coast Guard ship, not a Navy ship. There had actually been plans to convert one LPD into a search-and-rescue and disaster relief platform, but the Coast Guard was not interested in investing the capital for overkill. However, she did see combat in Second Sino, making several supply runs to besieged Vietnam, participating in the relief of the Mariana Sieges, and the Liberation of the Sakishima Islands.

Not by Grace, But By Grit

Battle Mountain class Cargo Ship Dock

USNS Atlanta (T-AKD-257), USNS Missoula (T-AKD-259), USNS Sioux City (T-AKD-264), USNS Dayton (T-AKD-266), USNS Milwaukee (T-AKD-267), USNS Ceritos (T-AKD-275), USNS Marlene Dietrich (T-AKD-290)

Dimensions: 973 ft (length) x 128 ft (beam)

Displacement: 65,000 tons

Complement: 100 (without embarkees)

Missile Armament: 2x4 - Mark 146 Adaptable Deck Launcher, 2x21 - Mark 49 Guided Missile Launcher (RIM-116)

Kinetic Armament: 2x1 - 50mm/60 Mark 48 Point Defense Cannon, 2x4 - 30mm/80 Mark 15 Block 2 Close-in-Weapon System, 6x1 - 30mm/50 Mark 46 Machine Gun

Direct Energy Armament: 2 - 50 kW Mark 15 Block 2 Close-in-Weapon System (Mark 6 HELIOS-L)

Other Armament: 2x6 - Flexible Integrated Defensive Launcher

Aircraft: 1 x multi-mission hangar complex with space for 10 x medium VTOL aircraft

Other: 2 x LCU-1700 Landing Craft Utility

The Military Sealift Command would finally receive new ships to replenish the aging stock of the Maritime Prepositioning Force and supplant the civ-spec purchases from First Sino in the form of the Battle Mountain-class Cargo Ship Dock. The design is derived from NASSCO’s New Kanaloa-class CONRO cargo ships and has a little bit of everything. It is designed with a well-deck capable of handling two LCU-1700 landing craft, a landing deck/hangar area sufficient for ten medium-sized vertical lift aircraft, roll-on/roll-off capacity for ~300 vehicles, and space for 540 TEUs. The class has been procured in large numbers and is the backbone of the Military Sealift Command.

Beginning production in the late 2020s, they would be some of the first warships to be built with printer-fabricator components in mind, allowing them to be built quickly and for less than their competitors. A single Battle Mountain, though less survivable than a mil-spec San Antonio-class LPD, delivers more capability at about 40% of the cost. Later, San Antonio-class derivatives would integrate the techniques pioneered with the Battle Mountain-class to drastically decrease costs. Like all modern ships of the USN, the class can be armed with missiles; in most cases, up to four Mark 145 Launchers around the deckhouse, usually armed with RIM-162 Super Sea Sparrow anti-air missiles, but some ships have been known to keep at least a few tubes loaded with Precision Strike Missiles for on-the-tap fire support.

Black ‘n White Taxi

Alexander A. Vandegrift class Landing Ship Base

USS Alice M. Hanlon (LSB-22), USS David H. Berger (LSB-29)

Dimensions: 904 ft (length) x 164 ft (beam)

Displacement: 160,000 tons

Complement: 300 (without embarkees)

Missile Armament: 2x8 - Mark 41 Centerline VLS Cells, 2x21 - Mark 49 Guided Missile Launcher (RIM-116), 2x3 - Mark 147 Offensive Adaptable Deck Launcher

Kinetic Armament: 2x1 - 155mm/55 Mark 18 Joint Common Magazine Gun System, 2x1 - 50mm/60 Mark 48 Point Defense Cannon, 2x4 - 30mm/80 Mark 15 Block 2 Close-in-Weapon System, 6x1 - 30mm/50 Mark 46 Machine Gun

Direct Energy Armament: 2 - 50 kW Mark 15 Block 2 Close-in-Weapon (Mark 6 HELIOS-L)

Other Armament: 4x6 - Flexible Integrated Defensive Launcher

Aircraft: 1 x deck for 10 x large VTOL aircraft

Other: 1 x Mk 2 Mod 4 Fleet Support Fabricator, 2 x LCU-1700 Ship-to-Shore Connector, 4 x Maneuver Support Vessel-Light, 4 x Maneuver Support Vessel-Medium

Vandegrift-class is the follow-on to the Lewis B. Puller­-class landing ship base (ex-expeditionary staging bases). The ships of the “Vandy” class have a greater beam—the same as the Alaska-class tankers the designs are derived from. The class also has a substantially reworked below-flight deck multi-mission area and a ballast system like the Montford Point-class expeditionary transfer dock. The multi-mission deck in the Vandegrift-class is subdivided into seven separate well decks. Combined with the ballast system, it allows the ship to carry a large number of landing craft or other vessels. Its nanocomposite steel structure permits the ballast system and flight deck combo and allows the class to operate much larger and hotter VTOLs. So, the ships can operate as F-35B/G lily pads referred to as “Cougar pads.” With these capabilities in mind, the class is designed to serve as command-and-control vessels, as seabase logistics hubs, and ferries for extra ship-to-shore connectors (or unmanned surface/subsurface craft), not as primary assault ships.

Generally, the ships operate in “gator packs” of three—with two LSBs and one LSBK. This force, with escorts, is capable of providing a major mobile seabasing node for supporting dispersed operations of stand-in forces across the weapon engagement zone or allowing the rapid concentration and movement of forces for decisive action. They can be nodes in a network fighting a war of skirmishes, or they can deliver a massed, singular blow against a key target. They are also quite well armed with the mandated FIRESHIP self-defense missile cells, a pair of automatic 155mm deck guns compatible with standard NATO 155mm artillery shells, and two 3-cell Mark 147 Offensive ADLs for anti-ship/strike missiles. They are unrivaled workhouses of the Navy’s amphibious and littoral operations. 

The Unsinking Tip of the Spear.

Albert J. Herberger class Landing Ship Cargo Base

USS Ann C. Phillips (LSBK-34)

Dimensions: 1,004 ft (length) x 164 ft (beam)

Displacement: 230,000 tons

Complement: 400 (without embarkees)

Missile Armament: 2x8 - Mark 41 Centerline VLS Cells, 1x21 - Mark 149 Integrated Point Defense Weapon (RIM-116)

Kinetic Armament: 2x1 - 50mm/60 Mark 48 Point Defense Cannon, 3x4 - 30mm/80 Mark 15 Block 2 Close-in-Weapon System, 6x1 - 30mm/50 Mark 46 Machine Gun

Direct Energy Armament: 1 - 150 kW Mark 149 Integrated Point Defense Weapon (Mark 10 HELIOS), 3 - 50 kW Mark 15 Block 2 Close-in-Weapon System (Mark 6 HELIOS-L)

Aircraft: 1 x deck for one medium VTOL aircraft, 1 x improvised deck for 6 large VTOL aircraft

Other: 2 x Mk 2 Mod 4 Fleet Support Fabricator, 4 x LCU-1700 Landing Craft Utility

A derivative of the Vandegrift-class Landing Ship Base, utilizing the same hull form stretched for further cargo capacity. The class’s concept is simple, but the execution is impressive. They are floating depots. A sustainment nexus for forces deployed in expeditionary advanced base operations. Their near-unrivaled cargo capacity is paired with medium speed, thanks to a high-density integrated electric propulsion system. A lone LSBK can support a brigade-sized element, usually alongside a gator pack. The ship’s ten ultra-heavy deployment davits and UNREP stabilization system allow it to conduct loading and unloading operations from up to ten SSCs simultaneously.

The class is a product of lessons learned during First Sino. The USMC learned the hard way in the Paracel Campaign that EABO fights could last longer than expected. They were not the brief but decisive actions of World War Two but grinding slugfests demanding more munitions than expected. The need for persistent direct sustainment became one of the USMC’s biggest asks—but it would take until the Naval Act of 2030 for the need to be filled with a purpose-built class.

America’s Sailing Costco: Killer Deals for Killer Fights.

Brooklyn class Fast Transport Dock

USNS San Juan (T-APD-30), USNS Anaheim (T-APD-30), USNS Rancho Cucamonga (T-APD-37), USNS Honiara (T-APD-42)

Dimensions: 447 ft (length) x 94 ft (beam)

Displacement: 2,500 tons

Complement: 45 (without embarkees)

Missile Armament: 1x4 - Mark 146 Adaptable Deck Launcher, 1x11 - Mark 15 SeaRAM Close-in-Weapon System (RIM-116)

Kinetic Armament: 1x1 - 57mm/70 Mark 110 Close-in-Gun System, 2x1 - 50mm/60 Mark 48 Point Defense Cannon, 1x4 - 30mm/80 Mark 15 Block 2 Close-in-Weapon System, 4x1 - 30mm/50 Mark 46 Machine Gun

Direct Energy Armament: 1 - 50 kW Mark 15 Block 2 Close-in-Weapon System (Mark 6 HELIOS-L)

Other Armament: 12x6 - Flexible Integrated Defensive Launcher

Aircraft: 1 x multi-mission hangar complex with space for 12 x small VTOL aircraft, flight deck with space for 4 x medium VTOL aircraft

Other: 2 x Mk 7 Expeditionary Support Fabricator, 12 x Super Orca Autonomous Underwater Vehicle, or 8 x Roadrunner Fast Infiltration Combatant Craft, or 6 x Patrol Boat, Combat Infiltration Mark III “Medellín”

America welcomed the APD back into the world after nearly a century of absence in 2031. The first ship, USS Brooklyn (T-APD-25), was originally ordered as a Flight III Spearhead-class Expeditionary Fast Transport (EPF), but her contract was modified so that the ship could serve as a dedicated test-bed for combat infiltration and resupply of Stand-in Forces. She was designed for one purpose—to run blockades.

Shaped by the experiences—the successes and the failures of First Sino—dedicated Combat Resupply and Infiltration (CRINF) vessels were highly sought after by some in the USMC, but budgetary constraints (and the Navy’s unwillingness to engage with the concept or give up yard capacity) would prevent those desires from being realized. Their chance would come in late 2028 when the Navy decided to cut its orders for Flight III Spearheads down to eight from an originally planned twelve. Hoping to keep the line hot at Austal USA, the Navy would assent to the APD program. Congress was more than willing to accept the reprogramming. Four ships would be delivered relatively slowly over the next several years to keep the workforce in gear.

The line would be thrown into overdrive after the start of Second Sino in 2037, as the demand for high-speed shipping skyrocketed. A total of 87 APD-pattern ships would be produced, most of which were general-purpose derivatives—not specialized CRINF platforms. APDs of all sorts would provide critical speed to the logistical backbone of the Allied Powers’ fleets and forces. The Brooklyns would play an especially pivotal role in keeping the American garrisons on Guam and Saipan alive and fighting during 2037 and 2038 until the Mariana Sieges were lifted.

They made the Andersen Express, Operation TOKYO SUNRISE, possible.

The class would be used in the Solomons Campaign as raiding vessels. Famously, they would allow a battalion task force formed from the USMC’s 2nd Raider Battalion and the Australian Army’s 2nd Commando Regiment to destroy nearly four dozen PLAAF aircraft on Bougainville’s infamous Airfield No. 7—built with slave labor from Allied POWs. The No. 7 raid would see nearly eighteen hundred, mostly Australian and French POWs, recused from a base of about 5,000 PLA by an Allied force of about 800 moved by four APDs, escorted by four destroyers (one Japanese, one British, two Australian), two frigates (one American, one Aotearoan), and two cruisers (one French, one American).

The Brooklyn-class has four major design changes from the Spearhead-class. First, the class was lengthened substantially by 110 feet (over 30%). The class was built with an integrated electric propulsion system that more than doubles their range, increasing speed to 45 knots and considerably cutting the ship’s acoustic signature. With a ‘flush enclosed hangar,’ the ships have a much increased working space and an enlarged landing platform. However, this comes at the cost that air ops are throttled by the ship’s twin elevators. The ship is fitted with a large aft boat ramp and two forward moonpools to allow the deployment of its seaborne CRINF equipment.

The ships’ crew does not actually perform the CRINF operations; those are executed by an embarked Combat Resupply Company from a Marine Combat Resupply Infiltration Battalion—the legendary MCRIBs. A typical CRIB is task-organized with four companies: two Assault Companies operating twelve KARGO-II UAVs and eight 80’ Roadrunner Fast Infiltration Combatant Crafts, one Support Company with the KARGOs and twelve Super Orca AUVs, and one Infiltration Company with six 123’ Patrol Boat, Combat Infiltration optionally crewed self-propelled semi-submersible.

The Super Orca is a venerable multi-mission platform that allows APDs to be used as mine warfare platforms or to resupply the most exposed Stand-in Forces. Roadrunners are a general-purpose infiltration craft, based on NAVSOC’s SEALION-II “stealth boats.” They can be used for combat resupply, as they can be armed with up to half a dozen heavy or medium machine guns, but are generally used to make the bulk of the “milk runs.” Often, all of one APD’s Roadrunners will be used as escorts, while the other ships’ FICCs are used as cargo haulers. The PBCIs are almost universally known by the unofficial moniker “Medellín”—in dubious honor of Pablo Escobar’s drug empire. The large Medellín crafts enable long-range, high-speed, high-mass, low-observability resupply missions. It was designed by examining the USCG’s inventory of seized cartel subs and then integrating those lessons learned into the ubiquitous 94’ optionally-crewed multi-mission Patrol Boat, Littoral (PBL) design. There are even stories that HQMC secured asylum for five cartel engineers if they helped design the system.

The APDs, in practice, traditionally operate as the “touching arm” of an LSB-LSBK forward staging group. With the large amphibs serving as motherships for APDs, who then operate as CRINF motherships in their own right. This massively increases the reach and throughput of the Fleet Force’s logistics apparatus while still protecting its largest amphibious forces from direct danger. They keep the Marines fed and fighting, no matter how bad things got—no matter how many Js in the air or Types on the surf.

Speed, Silence, and Smuggling

Auxiliaries and Tenders

Ben Moreell class Nuclear Fleet Tender

USS Ben Moreell (AOFN-17), USS Lynde D. McCormick (AOFN-20)

Dimensions: 991 ft (length) x 128 ft (beam)

Displacement: 94,000 tons

Complement: 650

Missile Armament: 2x8 - Mark 41 Centerline VLS cells, 4x21 - Mark 149 Integrated Point Defense Weapon (RIM-116)

Kinetic Armament: 2x1 - 50mm/60 Mark 48 Point Defense Cannon, 6x1 - 30mm/50 Mark 46 Machine Gun

Direct Energy Armament: 4 - 150 kW Mark 149 Integrated Point Defense Weapon (Mark 10 HELIOS)

Other Armament: 6x6 - Flexible Integrated Defensive Launcher

Aircraft: 1 x hangar with space for 2 x large / 4 x medium VTOL aircraft

Other: 3 x Mk 3 Fleet Support Fabricator, 2 x Mark 2 Mod 3 Methanol-to-Jet Synthesizer-Dehydrators (500 bbl per day), 2,000 tons of hard storage, 5,000 tons of ordnance storage, 240,000 barrels of JP-13/DF-13

The Moreell-class represents a plain and simple flex on the People’s Liberation Army Navy. The PLAN would achieve quantitative carrier parity with the United States, but to achieve this, they would comparatively under-invest in their auxiliary force. All knew of this Achilles heel, and the assumption that the PLAN would not attempt to sustain all their carrier mass at sea was a key error that laid the ground for the near disaster of the First Battle of the Marianas Trench. The US would accelerate carrier production and invest in Landing Platform Aviation not!carriers, but they would not try to match PLAN carrier construction like-for-like, instead they would create the Objective Fast Replenishment Program. The US would build twenty nuclear-powered fast logistics ships—eight N3D Plasma Molten Salt Reactor-powered Moreell-class AOFNs and twelve turbo-electric IPS-powered Richard M. Nixon-class AOEs (They would actually be built with reactors). This alleged hi-lo mix was in addition to at-pace AKE and AO production. The USN’s “Fast Replenishment Force” alone would end up being a third larger than the PLAN’s entire inventory of at-sea replenishers.

An AOFN is not merely a supply ship; it is part replenisher and part fabricator. They have the endurance to keep pace with a carrier battle group at a full sprint or outrun most threats. They have five times the hard storage and twice the munition storage of the older Supply-class AOE. The 50-ton wafer chip storage alone is mind-boggling, let alone the hundreds of tons of powdered alloys or the Lockpoint-process spinners for at-sea carbon composite production.

The ships are built around three Mark 3 Common Integrated Printer-Fabricator, USG-produced industrial printer-fabricators—which are best described as robotic auto-adaptive additive-and-CNC-manufacturing workshops. They are capable of building anything they need to build anything they want. The ships have a modest fuel-storage capacity that is paired with an equally modest at-hydrocarbon production facility. Every Moreell is equipped with three Mark 2 Mod 3 Seascoops, which can produce a maximum of 1,500 barrels per day of DF-13.

Each AOFN is embarked with a Naval Depot Battalion from the Naval Construction Force. While technically “Seabees,” they are not “CBs.” Instead, they are “DBs” or “Debbies” (to distinguish them from their Construction Battalion and Acorn siblings). They run the ship’s printer-fabricators and synthesizers, can be deployed as surge damage control parties, and can develop temporary forward anchorages with the help of the ship’s small complement of autonomous vehicles. In short, a Moreell is arguably worth more and more highly prized than a nuclear fleet carrier.

Logistics is Victory, Victory is Logistics.

Richard M. Nixon class Fast Combat Support Ship

USS Kamehameha (AOE-12), USS Colin L. Powell (AOFN-13)

Dimensions: 876 ft (length) x 106 ft (beam)

Displacement: 67,000 tons

Complement: 250

Missile Armament: 2x4 - Mark 145 Adaptable Deck Launcher, 2x21 - Mark 149 Integrated Point Defense Weapon (RIM-116)

Kinetic Armament: 2x1 - 50mm/60 Mark 48 Point Defense Cannon, 6x1 - 30mm/50 Mark 46 Machine Gun

Direct Energy Armament: 2 - 150 kW Mark 149 Integrated Point Defense Weapon (Mark 10 HELIOS)

Other Armament: 6x6 - Flexible Integrated Defensive Launcher

Aircraft: 1 x hangar with space for 2 x large / 4 x medium VTOL aircraft

Other: 4 x Mk 4 Compact Field Fabricator, 1,000 tons of hard storage, 2,500 tons of ordnance storage, 160,000 barrels of JP-13/DF-13

The Richard M. Nixon-class fast replenishment ships are an extremely controversial bunch. The decision to rename the lead ship and thus the class would occur while AOE-11, then named Neosho, was roughly one-third complete. However, the true controversy lies with the decision to alter the ships’ power plants.

The classes would originally be built around the Integrated Power and Energy System designed for the DDG(X) class destroyers, to allow for simplified construction, lower operating costs, and better fuel efficiency. Thus, these AOEs would be cheaper, faster, and longer-ranged than comparable conventional designs. However, the Good Idea Fair would not rest, and after work began on Neosho, the DoN would proceed with a design study on converting the ships to “partial nuclear power” by replacing half of the ship’s four turbines with a N4D plasma molten salt reactor. This had already been done ashore when testing the N4D reactor and IPES—and had even be done aboard the USS Salisbury Sound (AVM-3). The Navy would get enough money from Congress for a proof of concept test—Neosho. Part of this gambit involved OpNav renaming the oilers after various figures to curry favor with the new Young Administration and as many factions of Congress as possible. To avoid the existing Congressional caps on nuclear surface vessels, “Tricky Dick” would never be designated an AOEN. This would actually alienate several members of HASC, and eventually, with a turn over in Congress and new budget priorities the Nixon remain the sole “half-breeder nuke” of the class.

The Navy had initially planned to procure six new AOEs and four of the even higher-end AOFNs. The original six AOE orders would be infamous for their choice names: Richard M. Nixon, Kamehameha, Colin L. Powell, Von Steuben, Henry A. Kissinger, and Martin Luther King Jr. Within half a decade, both orders would be doubled. Unlike the AOFNs, the AOEs are not truly factory ships; they are merely high-speed supply ships with a modest ability to fabricate replacement parts, no more capable in that envelope than any other modern replenishment ship.

Tricky Dick from SCAT Rides Again

Sitting Bull class Dry Cargo Ship

USNS Benjamin O. Davis (AKE-20), USNS Sally Ride (AKE-22)

Dimensions: 796 ft (length) x 106 ft (beam)

Displacement: 54,000 tons

Complement: 200

Missile Armament: 2x4 - Mark 145 Adaptable Deck Launcher, 2x21 - Mark 149 Integrated Point Defense Weapon (RIM-116)

Kinetic Armament: 2x1 - 50mm/60 Mark 48 Point Defense Cannon, 6x1 - 30mm/50 Mark 46 Machine Gun

Direct Energy Armament: 2 - 150 kW Mark 149 Integrated Point Defense Weapon (Mark 10 HELIOS)

Other Armament: 4x6 - Flexible Integrated Defensive Launcher

Aircraft: 1 x hangar with space for 2 x large / 4 x medium VTOL aircraft

Other: 2 x Mark 4 Small Common Integrated Printer-Fabricator, 8,000 tons of ordnance or hard cargo storage, 45,000 barrels of JP-13/DF-13

The Sitting Bull-class Dry Cargo Ship, formerly known as AKE(X), is the US Navy’s current generation of dry at-sea replenishment ship and the successor to the USN’s venerable Lewis and Clark-class AKEs. The ships are dry-cargo optimized derivatives of the John Lewis-class oiler. The first five ships were powered by maritime diesel engines like most auxiliaries, but all succeeding ships have been powered by the Navy’s Economical Integrated Propulsion System, a cost-saving focused iteration of the Navy’s standard turbo-electric drive system. This gives the ships the ability to keep pace with amphibious transports and most of the ships of the so-called “Slow Navy.”

The class have seen good service and hard fighting. Nine of the twenty-seven ships of the class were lost in the fighting of either Gulf IV or Second Sino, plus one ship was sunk in a collision with a 300,000-ton ultra-heavy cargo ship off Long Beach in 2041. A further nine vessels of the class were delivered to partner navies, including the Royal Navy, Republican Australian Navy, the Japanese Maritime Self-Defense Force, and the Royal Canadian Navy.

Lockwood class Nuclear Submarine Tender

USS Rahm Emanuel (ASN-47)

Dimensions: 771 ft (length) x 106 ft (beam)

Displacement: 34,000 tons

Complement: 600

Missile Armament: 4x4 - Mark 41 Centerline VLS Cells, 2x21 - Mark 149 Integrated Point Defense Weapon (RIM-116)

Kinetic Armament: 2x1 - 57mm/70 Mark 110 Close-in-Gun System, 4x1 - 50mm/60 Mark 48 Point Defense Cannon, 6x1 - 30mm/50 Mark 46 Machine Gun

Direct Energy Armament: 2 - 500 kW Mark 13 Direct Energy Weapon Mount, 2 - 150 kW Mark 149 Integrated Point Defense Weapon (Mark 10 HELIOS)

Aircraft: 1 x hangar with space for 1 x large / 2 x medium VTOL aircraft

Other: 3 x Mark 3 Common Integrated Printer-Fabricator

The Lockwood-class mission profile is simple: expeditionary forward sustainment of subsurface combatants. Unlike the Richard O’Kane-class submarine tenders—formerly AS(X)—these ships are not intended to anchor in safe harbors to quarterback attack boats; they are instead designed to be constantly at or beyond the line of contact. They are, in fact, capable of supplying three nuclear submarines at one time—one along each side and one in its massive ventral moonpool. It can even resupply the latter while underway. The ship is extremely automated, so that despite being nearly 50% larger by displacement than the Emory S. Land-class tenders, it requires 40% less crew. The ships are designed for extreme endurance, only intended to return to port to replenish supplies that cannot be replenished at sea and swap to an alternative crew, like a ballistic missile submarine. To enable this forward presence, the two ships in the class are built around very low observability, with most of the systems utilized aboard being pioneered aboard the SHALLOW PRAYER special access program. The VLO design of the ship entails that the various automated cranes and gantries used to replenish boats at sea are kept concealed until deployed, a RCS-reducing design and construction (it has the RCS of a small fishing vessel) with the capability to actively modify that RCS signature at will to present as civilian merchant or cruise ship, and an active disruption array intended to conceal the ship from IR sensors (however this proved less effective than hoped. The class’s showstopper remains its Multi-Mission Underway Replenishment System—developed under the SAP AVALON GLOMAR—the 500-foot by 48-foot moonpool that dominates the keel of the ship. The actual moonpool hanger itself is not massively tall, with merely reasonable headroom over the height of open external tube doors of an SSGN; there is the exception of “The Slot” (the most polite of its nicknames), which has space for the sail of a submarine to rest comfortably inside the ship to permit the reloading sub to act as a remora and be reloaded while underway.

ASN-47 would originally commission in mid-2036 under the name Fluckey (after Rear Admiral and Medal of Honor recipient Eugene B. Fluckey). The Big Fluck would actually commission ahead of the notional lead ship of the class, Lockwood, and be immediately deployed to 7th Fleet in Japan after her shakedown cruise.

She would only be in Japan for barely two months before the first day of Second Sino, after which she would be the forward-most OSATO surface vessel (reaching even further into the WEZ that some covered surveillance ships while transiting the East China Sea), resupplying the big SSGNs as they returned from Operation DOOLITTLE in the days after the destruction of the Reagan-Kaga carrier group. In this role, she would become the de facto flagship of what would be dubbed Task Force Nemesis, the two Submarine Squadrons based out of Naval Activity Ōminato (Three and Five). This would be a critical role in the first weeks of the war, as the SUBPAC headquarters was heavily damaged in the first long-range strikes on Hawaii. This first patrol would be the shortest of the war, ‘only’ 59 days.

Fluckey’s third patrol would be her longest of the war, 413 days total days underway. In fact, during the length of the war, she would only spend ninety-six days in port. The US would learn after the decisive orbital-dominance/industrial-cyber-sabotage of Operation UPPERCUT in 2039 that the PLAN had yet to successfully detect Fluckey (or at least discriminate her as a target). She would be discovered at least once by a Philippine fishing trawler. The civilian ship proceeded to file a false report to PLA authorities in the Philippines on behalf of the tender. The false location and heading sparked panic in the Central Military Commission, which feared the coming of a second DOOLITTLE. In response, they mobilized three carriers, two SAGs, and a bomber division. In the resulting stampede from Ningbo, the Type 06 CVN Shanghai rammed and sank the Type 059 strike cruiser Chongqing. To this day, the bridge wing of ASN-47 is dotted with the kill marking for the cruiser. Her sistership, Lockwood, would be detected and intercepted by the PLAN (actually the China Coast Guard) in the South China Sea while supporting resupply operations to Vietnam across “The Gap,” south of the Spratlys in 2038. ASN-46 would engage the Type 056 corvettes Feiyu and Nan'ao and the Zhaotou-class cutter Nansha. Lockwood, hiding in thick fog and EW jamming, would ambush the Chinese, blowing Nansha out of the water with three heavyweight torpedoes before blasting apart the corvettes at incredibly close range, at about 4,000 yards, with her cannon armament.

In 2038, USS Fluckey would be controversially renamed in honor of Rahm Emanuel by a Congressional rider authored by Rep. Mike Quigley attached to that year’s defense supplemental. The decision to name the ship after Emanuel, who had served as US Ambassador to Japan from 2022 to 2037 and had been killed when the Okura Tokyo’s Legacy Tower had collapsed onto the US Embassy, would be met with voicerfous resistance from the Navy, the ship’s crews, and many local Chicago politicians but heavily supported by members of the infamous “kingmakers of the Diet” and Rahm’s closest allies in Japanese politics, the Constitution of Japan Defense Party.

Now, under the name USS Rahm Emanuel, ASN-47, would begin a new phase of its career, which the Navy dubbed proactive materiel exploitation. Its first mission saw the tender successfully disable (still classified but understood to be a mix of AUVs, jamming, cyber-exploitation, and combat divers) and then seize the Type 043 large uncrewed submarine 381. This feat would be repeated on two more Type 043 “sailless” drone submarines before moving onto larger prey under the SAP OUTER HEAVEN. First, the Type 095B attack submarine 426 disappeared on patrol in July 2038. A belated four months later, the Central Tracing Agency of the International Committee of the Red Cross reported that 63 members of the 426 had been taken prisoner. After the war, a brief interview of a surviving crew member with a dissident journalist in Hangzhou revealed that the submarine had been disabled by a pair of strange CAPTOR-style mines before being boarded while underwater by an American UDT team and then snatched by Rahm Emanuel. OUTER HEAVEN would have one more mission, that remains shrouded in mystery and controversy. This follow-up mission in March 2039 targeted the Type 096A nuclear ballistic missile submarine 436. It is unclear what went wrong, but during the seizure of the boomer, the entire crew of 436 died from asphyxiation shortly after the boat berthed under Rahm Emanuel. The main theorized explanations are (1) an attempt by the crew to kill the boarders by switching the boat’s highly controlled air supply to exclusively inert gases instead of an oxygen mix or (2) the UDT team released an incapacitating agent intended to subdue holdouts without compromising the ship, which proved fatal. Regardless, Emanuel’s captain and the CO of Underwater Demolition Team Thirteen (JSOC’s combat diver element and successor to SEAL Team Six) were removed from command following this incident.

The ship has had extremely mixed luck since the end of the war, with two collisions and two skippers removed from command (one for drunkness while on duty at an exercise and one for soliciting sex from a United States Senator in a Denny’s bathroom). The name change remains extremely controversial, and it’s common to find letterhead, coasters, challenge coins, and other memorabilia retaining the name Fluckey aboard the ship and in possession of her crew. In fact, before FLTPRO 36, a group of Representatives from Chicago, the Douglass Commonwealth, and Maryland were in the middle of a procedural fight to get the ship’s name back to USS Fluckey.

The Arsenal of Atlantis, Blight of Bastards.

Eldorado class Landing Command & Control Ship

USS Denali (LCC-22)

Dimensions: 775 ft (length) x 105 ft (beam)

Displacement: 40,000 tons

Complement: 350 (without embarked command staff)

Missile Armament: 4x4 Mark 61 Centerline VLS Cells, 6x1 - Mark 148 Adaptable Box Launchers, 2x21 - Mark 149 Integrated Point Defense Weapon (RIM-116)

Kinetic Armament: 2x1 - 57mm/70 Mark 110 Close-in-Gun System, 2x1 - 50mm/60 Mark 48 Point Defense Cannon, 6x1 - 30mm/50 Mark 46 Machine Gun

Direct Energy Armament: 2 - 500 kW Mark 13 Direct Energy Weapon Mount, 2 - 150 kW Mark 149 Integrated Point Defense Weapon (Mark 10 HELIOS)

Other Armament: 4x6 - Flexible Integrated Defensive Launcher

Aircraft: 1 x landing deck with space for 6 x medium VTOL aircraft, 1 x hangar with space for 2 x medium VTOL aircraft

The LCC(X) program has its beginning in a mechanical casualty and fire that crippled USS Mount Whitney (LCC-20) in 2032. After the incident, the Navy decided to replace its aging—thoroughly geriatric—pair of command ships. The in-production Flight III San Antonio-class LPD would be selected as the hull for the new ships. They would also follow the cue of the Portsmouth-class hospital ships and Flight 0 America-class amphibious assault ships, and their well and vehicle decks would be eliminated in favor of more internal volume for shipboard facilities.

The pillars of this design were simple: capability and endurance. To achieve this, the ships are powered by a single N4D plasma molten salt reactor integrated into a bog-standard turbo-electric IPES powerplant; this is modeled on the successful conversion of the test ship Salisbury Sound (AVM-3) to nuclear power using a commercial small modular reactor and the success of the sole conversion of the AOE(X) program to “partial nuclear power” (the Richard M. Nixon). Therefore, the ships have unlimited range and endurance that is only limited by their food stores—which are unusually large for a surface vessel. In fact, the ships have their own Industrial Protein Incubator—for lab-grown synthetic meats—so they notionally have near-limited food sustainability.9 Functionally, the ships have quality food for 90 days—comparable to an SSN’s endurance—for a crew of about 1000. The ships can support up to 2000 passengers but usually operate with a complement of about 1500 (including crew).

The three—Eldorado (LCC-21), Denali (LCC-22), and Blue Ridge (LCC-23)—would be laid down in 2034, 2035, and 2036, respectively, and all see service in Second Sino. Eldorado would see service as the flagship for General Sakakibara “Tiger” Takahashi (JGSDF) in his role as Commander, Allied Ground Forces from his appointment to the end of the war. Blue Ridge has a bizarre history as, for the final year of the war; the United States Navy would have two ships named Blue Ridge—both LCC-19 and LCC-23. The elder Blue Ridge remained in service past its planned retirement in 2038, continuing as the flagship for Allied Naval Forces, Japan (an administrative command), and the United States Seventh Fleet, while the newer Blue Ridge—known as Two Ridge—would serve as the flagship for the South Pacific Command and the United States Eight Fleet operating out of Brisbane. Denali would honorably serve as the command ship for the entire Combined Pacific Command, though she was mostly used as an administrative annex to COPAC’s headquarters in Hawaii.

The ships are regarded as extremely plum assignments. Their accommodations are not only some of the most comfortable but also the ships’ unused bunks mean there is even more space for the embarked complement. They also have particularly luxurious creature comforts, including a hot tub and sauna (sometimes incorrectly described as a full-service spa) and two coffee shops—a Dunkin and a Starbucks. There is generally a rivalry between the sailors over their chosen shop, which has occasionally led to scuffles. The two wardrooms are, however, best described as steak “house-esque,” and as the ships were designed after the controversial decision to revise General Order 99, they do, in fact, have a wine (and liquor) store.

Denali was attached to FleetPro 36 to serve as “home plate” for the exercise’s umpires and planning shop. As such, she would have most of the reporters who were assigned to follow the fleet to the exercise, about twenty (including crew), as the rest were planned to join the exercise—once it formally began off of Hawaii.

Pleasure Palace Planning.

Portsmouth class Hospital Ship

USS Beaufort (T-AH-23)

Dimensions: 684 ft (length) x 105 ft (beam)

Displacement: 30,000 tons

Complement: 525 (without embarkees)

Other Armament: 2x6 - Flexible Integrated Defensive Launcher

Aircraft: 1 x landing deck with space for 5 x medium VTOL aircraft, 1 x landing deck with space for 2 x medium VTOL aircraft, 1 x hangar with space for 1 x medium VTOL aircraft

While the United States Navy’s eight Bethesda-class hospital ships have proven to be true workhorses, the demands of the Sino-American Cold War, the lessons of First Sino, and the resources made available by economic growth and increased military budgets would see the Navy aim for a high capacity complement to go along with the high mobility T-EMS family (later re-designated T-AHF). The Portsmouth-class is the result of that request.

They are derived from the Flight II San Antonio-class landing transport dock, except it has been modified to replace its wheel deck and vehicle storage with more medical and storage space. The ships have twelve cutting-edge, partially-automated operating rooms and six fully-automated operating rooms, compared to twelve ORs aboard the old Mercy-class or three ORs aboard the Bethesda-class. The ship also has a capacity of 100 ICU beds with 300 ward beds in normal operating conditions and a surge ward capacity of 600; this compares with 80 ICU, 400 ward, and 500 surge beds on a Mercy-class ship, and 20 ICU, 52 ward beds, and 48 surge beds on a Bethesda-class.

The USN would procure four examples of the class: Portsmouth (T-AH-21), Guam (T-AH-22), Beaufort (T-AH-23), and Bremerton (T-AH-24). The Navy would organize them into four Medical Alfoat Groups, centered around a single T-AH and two T-AHF. This formation could be deployed in a piecemeal fashion to respond to multiple missions or for the full force to be concentrated in response to a single crisis.

One ship of the class, USNS Bremerton, was lost in Second Sino. It is unclear if it was lost to a mine (disputed if it was of OSATO or PLA origin) or a PLAN submarine. Her sinking in the Coral Sea would be the second-largest single loss of life aboard a US vessel during the war, only exceeded by the sinking of the Ronald Reagan.

Errands of Mercy Never End

Argent class Research, Survey, and Support Vessel

MV Argent Zephyr

Dimensions: 827 ft (length) x 103 ft (beam)

Displacement: 47,000 tons

Complement: 400 (without embarkees)

Missile Armament: 4x4 - Mark 61 MOD Peripheral VLS Cells, 2x11 Mark 15 SeaRAM Close-in-Weapon System (RIM-116)

Kinetic Armament: 1 - Mark 21 Mod 3 Special Purpose Large Diameter Multi-Role Electromagnetic Accelerator, 2x1 - 50mm/60 Mark 48 Point Defense Cannon, 2x4 - 30mm/80 Mark 15 Block 2 Close-in-Weapon System, 6x1 - 30mm/50 Mark 46 Machine Gun

Direct Energy Armament: 4 - 500 kW Mark 13 Direct Energy Weapon Mount, 2 - 50 kW Mark 15 Block 2 Close-in-Weapon System (Mark 6 HELIOS-L)

Other Armament: 10x6 - Flexible Integrated Defensive Launcher, 4 - 673mm Torpedo Tubes

Aircraft: 1 x multi-mission hangar complex with space for 12 x large VTOL aircraft

Other: 2 x Mk 2 Mod 5 Blk II Fleet Support Fabricator, 4 x Mark IX Special Purpose Observation Craft, 8 x Mark VIII Special Medium Assault Craft, various drones

Project SHALLOW PRAYER is one of the world’s best, worst-kept secrets. Argent Zephyr is the eighth hull of Pan Pacific’s line of seven exploration cruise ships, “Argent Cruises.” Pan Pacific Seaways, PanPac, was formed in 2026 and chartered under the Pacific Community in the wake of First Sino, along with the Pacific Shipbuilding Corporation. The United States hoped to use PanPac to rebuild the Merchant Marine by bypassing the dregs of the Jones Act and to provide cover for new “oceanographic research” ships. Expectations were that PanPac was a temporary institution that would fizzle out, but it would rapidly grow and become the third largest shipping in the world, with over 600 vessels, within a decade.

Key to this success was that PanPac signed several sweetheart deals with PacShip—and ended up cornering the market on ultra-heavy Nanoc Steel-hulled high-speed container ships; its ties with the Hyundai Group and HMM would ensure its rapid rise in the world of maritime shipping and help rebuild the strength of American commercial shipyards. PanPac would also become the critical cash flow (though less than hoped) for the development of the Pacific Community—a key pillar of OSATO support in the region.

Part of this indirect infrastructure program was the construction of three covered docks and a massive expansion of the Port of Alaska in Anchorage. This was paired with the launch of PanPac’s new exploration cruises. Argent Cruises would eschew most traditional ports of call, instead anchoring off-shore to allow curated exploration of unique or endangered environs.

Argent Cruises would have four of their new ships built in Korea and the rest built in Alaska. Argent Cruises has seven names: Argent Vigil, Argent Sentinel, Argent Observer, Argent Zephyr, Argent Monsoon, Argent Kaiāulu, Argent Katabatia—there are eight hulls. Painstaking effort was put into the ships to make them outwardly identical—when Argent Katabatia collided with a cargo ship in 2032, requiring the replacement of nineteen external composite hull panels, the other ships would also have the exact same panels replaced. Crews rotated between the ships regularly, often with little warning. The line was known for changing its decorations/themes while underway.

Thousands of happy customers are certain that they have been aboard Argent Zephyr. They are mistaken. The ship is no mere cruise ship, as she was intended to be the replacement for MV Ocean Trader II, the Joint Special Operation’s Command at-sea staging base (though Ocean Trader would not actually be retired). It is a floating Batcave and a whisper on the wind. China Coast Guard was certain that one of the Argent Cruises line was an intelligence ship but were never been able to confirm their suspicions—despite dozens of searches over half a decade. Leaks would reveal that the Ministry of State Security reached the conclusion that every Argent-class vessel was a spy ship.

The ruse de guerre was never supposed to last more than a few years, but because the ship had access to all of PanPac’s AIS codes (along with codes illicitly procured by the Hyundai Group), it would last much longer—until 2039. The ship trades skin often, and with the semi-autonomous nature of much of PanPac’s fleet, it is easy to be able to schedule hand-offs while mixing in rotations of the Argent ship name. The ruse is designed to allow the ship to blend into civilian traffic and deceive interlopers at first or second glance. Even after having its cover blown by a Bellingcat story, officially, the US has only confirmed that the ship has “undergone modifications necessary to support oceanic and environmental research.” Since then, she has remained a contract vessel operating under the Military Sealift Command.

Despite looking outwardly identical to her sisters, she is a totally different beast. Her windows—many of which are not windows—are aluminum oxynitride composite as strong as steel that, along with a composite-plated hull, is a part of the ship’s Active Detection Minimization System (ADMS). The panels can be ‘charged’ (a simplification of an otherwise complicated process) to allow the ship to change its radar returns and thermal emissions at will. When paired with the ship’s dazzling array of jamming and spoofing equipment, it allows the ship to appear as if normal, then disappear with ease. Despite every outward indication that she is conventionally powered—she is powered by two N4D plasma molten salt reactors, the same as a Saratoga-class cruiser.

Four vessels of the Zephyr-class would be commandeered during the war and fitted with defensive armaments—SeaRAM and CIWS. However, SHALLOW PRAYER is much more heavily armed, with her other weapons concealed like a WW1 Q-ship. Her flight deck (notionally built for the next generation of civilian jet VTOLs that fizzled commercially) is equipped with an elevator to a multi-mission hangar bay that extends nearly the entire length of the ship. She is the only USN surface vessel armed with heavyweight torpedo tubes. She has a large moonpool and the ability to fabricate uncrewed systems at sea. The crown jewel of this weapon complement is her “spinal launcher” (hidden in the ship’s false exhaust), derived from the Navy’s EMALS aircraft catapults, that can fling drones, various guided munitions, or 18-inch sabot’d guide-glide projectiles with up to 175 MJs of force (five times more powerful than the Navy’s first railgun).

Argent Zephyr is a work of art and an indicator of the sheer scale of resources given to JSOC. She is not solely a special warfare support ship; she is also equipped with every instrument and tool the National Underwater Reconnaissance Office has available.

Thus, the ship is, in effect, a surface-dwelling sister to Parche, Jimmy Carter, Halibut, and Narwhal and the Navy’s other ‘oceanographic research’ ships that also happens to be an arctic capable stealth nuclear expeditionary/forward staging base for JSOC’s super squirrel activities. This included at least three raids on the Chinese mainland that had not been disclosed, even in 2042. Thanks to her advanced composites and advanced Nanoc steel hull, she is Polar Class 3—capable of year-round operation in second-year ice, which may include multi-year ice inclusions.

In her primary role as a JSOC’s advance forward staging base, she is known as “Point Blank.” She is functionally the at-sea home for the Marine Corps’ special mission unit, the Fleet Force Operational Examination Center—known as the Center or Det Three. Officially, Zephyr joined FleetPro 36 to provide a real-time environmental assessment for the hasty exercise, as the class was built with substantial laboratory infrastructure; in an unofficial capacity it is understood that she is also to provide covered transport for the attached JSOC elements of the exercise as the United States’s primary covered sea transport, Ocean Trader III, is in the yard for a scheduled maintenance availability.

You Didn’t See Anything

The Submarines

Parche class Nuclear Research Submarine

USS Parche (SSRN-861)

Dimensions: 620 ft (length) x 46 ft (beam)

Displacement: 32,000 tons

Complement: 200 (without embarkees)

Torpedo Armament: 4 - 533mm Torpedo Tubes

USV: two Mark 14 SDVs (80-foot), eight Mark 12 SDVs (40-foot)  

Parche, named after the legendary Cold War boat, is the successor to USS Jimmy Carter (SSN-23) along with the Virginia Subsea and Seabwarfare sisters Halibut and Narwhal. Based on a stretched Columbia-class hull, she was built from the keel up as an SOF insertion and an underwater intelligence-gathering platform. She is the largest submarine ever built by the United States and one of the most decorated, especially considering the relative brevity of her service career.

The Navy’s capacity for seabed warfare capabilities would not keep up with demand during Second Sino, especially as Jimmy Carter would be lost on Day Zero. Therefore, Parche would only spend forty-seven days in port during wartime. Parche would almost always complete multiple missions in the same run, including deploying a group of stand-in-forces with her SDVs, resupplying other SIFs, taping undersea cables, and planting mines in strategic waterways. She would earn a total of eleven Presidential Unit Citations and thirteen battle stars.

She would be assigned to the Composite Testing Force along with MV Argent Zephyr, though neither would be assigned to FleetPro 36, despite official scheduling. The pair would be tasked with a real-time climate/environmental assessment of the war games and deep sea climate research. The unofficial no-bullshit story is Parche was attached to provide counter-surveillance against whoever might be interested in shadowing the exercise (the Chinese, Indians, and Russians).

Big Boat, Little Shadow.

Marianas Class Nuclear Guided Missile Submarine

USS Maine (SSGN-835)

Dimensions: 580 ft (length) x 43 ft (beam)

Displacement: 24,000 tons

Complement: 155

Missile Armament: 24x7 - Launch Payload Tubes

Torpedo Armament: 4 - 533mm Torpedo Tubes

Maine is the fourth purpose-built SSGN derivative of the Columbia-class SSBN. She is built with two extra quad-packed missile tubes for a total of twenty-four. The class has further cost-saving measures compared to the Block I/IA/IB/IC Columbia boats, but not as many as the Block II boats built after the Comprehensive Nuclear Arms Reduction Treaty. Her missile tubes can either accommodate seven 25” diameter weapons (BGM-109 TLAM or BGM-209 HLAM), three 36” diameter missiles (BGM-200 LRHW) for a maximum of 168 missiles, or a TACKLE BOX underwater uncrewed vehicle deployment system.

Maine and her captain, William Jones (who would later become the Commander of Submarine Flotilla Nine), would distinguish themselves as the lead ship and overall mission commander, respectively, for Operation DOOLITTLE at the onset of Second Sino.

Within 30 minutes of the Okura Bombing, the USN’s four forward-deployed SSGNs would sortie and launch the first major Allied attack of the conflict. The four boats would aim to even the short-term odds by weakening PLA local superiority until the Allied Powers could mass sufficient forces in the region. Marianas (SSGN-831) and Puerto Rico (SSGN-833) would hammer PLA’s amphibious forces as they massed in the cross-channel ports for the invasion of Taiwan. At the same time, the Virgin Islands (SSGN-834) would attack the East Sea Fleet’s anchorage at Ningbo, and Maine would do the same for the North Sea Fleet’s anchorage at Qingdao. The PLA had prepared for this moment—one that they had dreaded and relished in equal parts since the bloody beating they suffered on the final day of First Sino—for more than a decade. Their missile defenses would acquit themselves well, blunting damage that would have otherwise crippled the invasion force and South Sea Fleet. However, the defenses around Qingdao would fail—and do so theatrically.

The Shangdong air defense district commander panicked as a dozen anti-radiation seekers were picked up in the night over the Chinese mainland. In a desperate bid to save his radars and missile launchers from what he was certain was a massed IRON HAND operation that had bypassed his long-range search and discrimination sensors, he ordered his entire command’s radars switched off and relocated. Only a handful of battery commanders refused the authenticated order from the regional operations center, fearing recriminations for disobeying direct orders. However, the incoming anti-radiation missiles weren’t AGM-188B Stand-in Attack Weapons from F-35s screaming towards Beijing; they were a few Tomahawk Anti-Radiation Missiles fired ahead of a swarm of their convention siblings. Captain Jones had staggered his launch, hoping to punch a hole through the local IAMD net. Much to the surprise of everyone involved, nearly the entire sector air defense grid just… turned itself off.

“Bayonets” broke the back of the North Sea Fleet by itself, crippling the best of the PLAN—their Type 004 CVNs. Of the four Type 004s, two were crippled (Jilin and Beijing), one sank but was later refloated and returned to service (Zhejiang), and one was destroyed in a single massive magazine explosion (Hebei). In addition, four of the PLAN’s heaviest combatants—their Type 059 strike cruisers—were knocked out (Ningbo, Moskva, Guangzhou, Shenzhen)10. A further two SSNs, five SSKs, eight DDGs, three CGs, and eleven FFGs would be heavily damaged or sunk before being re-floated—though not all would reenter active service.

Rear Admiral William Jones—Commander, Submarine Flotilla Nine—himself is a cantankerous, desperado figure without many close friends. He is an older style of office, preferring the company of an empty bar and a stiff drink to conversation. His acerbic manner and things like cheating at card games have him marked as a kind of scoundrel. However, for some, it becomes apparent this is more affectation than reality. To his few friends, the Medal of Honor recipient is a profoundly empathetic figure burdened by the weight of the deaths by his hand and those few precious friends and colleagues he has lost. As COMSUBFLOT-NINE, he is the United States First Fleet’s senior submariner, riding shotgun for FleetPro 36.

Liberty’s Frontline, Liberty’s Avenger.

Mako class Nuclear Attack Submarine

USS Swordfish (SSN-864), USS Nautilus (SSN-871), USS Daggertooth (SSN-886)

Dimensions: 400 ft (length) x 34 ft (beam)

Displacement: 9,500 tons

Complement: 135

Missile Armament: 3x7 - Launch Payload Tubes

Torpedo Armament: 4 - 533mm Torpedo Tubes

The Mako is a product improved derivative of the Virginia-class attack submarine, based on the Virginia Block VI, the “normal” (non-VPM-centric) follow-on to the Block Vs. The class is built around the new S11G reactor and a high-entropy alloy hull, which allows for greater stealth and greater performance. They are finely tuned multi-purpose boats able to serve as an attacker, SOF hauler, or TLAM chucker. They, like their Virginia sisters, are the bread and butter of the Silent Service and were vital to the success of the Allied Powers in Second Sino.

The three boats present in Seattle are not the only ones assigned to the Fleet Problem; the rest of Submarine Squadron Three (three more attack submarines) deployed ahead into the Salish Sea. The six boats of Submarine Squadron Eleven were intended as a Red Team and were forward deployed to Hawaii. The boats assigned to the CTF have all performed at least two combat patrols, sinking a combined tonnage of just shy of 3.6 million tons of displacement. USS Nautilus (SSN-871) has the honor of being the first submarine to sink another submarine in Second Sino, the Type 095 SSN 423. USS Daggertooth holds the honor of the last kill of Second Sino, the Type 071 LPD Longhu Shan. The latter was the source of intense controversy as the vessel was flagged as a hospital ship but had been taking place in “combat operations,” firing at sub-launched reconnaissance drones.

The Wolves of World War III.    

Barracuda class Nuclear Hunter Killer Submarine

USS Barracuda (SSKN-24)