Final impact

He sipped at a glass of hot sweet black tea, and worried about the things that could go wrong. He wasn’t so much concerned about the Japanese as he was with the potential for an unwanted contact with the Allied forces. The intelligence reports he’d seen, of the force Spruance had assembled to take the Marianas, was the stuff of nightmares. Multiple carrier battle groups, swarms of guided missile frigates and destroyers, staggering tonnages of capital ships-all of them equipped with what the Americans quite rightly called Advanced Technology.

And of course, at the heart of it, Kolhammer’s rebuilt task force. The Clinton. The Kandahar. The Siranui. And the dozen or more vessels specially constructed for their so-called Auxiliary Forces in Los Angeles and San Diego. Yumashev had read the reports. The firepower contained within that one group-just a subset of Raymond Spruance’s armada-would be enough to shatter Yumashev’s entire fleet within a matter of minutes.

Even putting aside the magical powers of the “Nemesis” radars, the quantum processors, and the inhuman Combat Intelligence that could control every aspect of a battle, Yumashev had no doubt that the comparatively primitive electronics systems that had become standard equipment on the U.S. Navy’s contemporary vessels would be years beyond the systems on his own ships. He wasn’t complaining, mind you. His ships had proved more than adequate against the Japanese. Without the new radar sets he would have taken much worse damage at the hands of the kamikaze maniacs. And he had taken a terrific pounding in the first few assaults.

They were winning, though, and-

“Admiral. An alert, sir. Fast-moving planes approaching from the south.”

“The south?” he replied. “But there is…never mind. Bring the fleet to general quarters and prepare to receive the enemy.”

Horns and Klaxons blared. Bells rang and men shouted orders as Yumashev searched the southern skies for the danger. He saw them almost right away, and his heart began hammering painfully.

Coming over the jagged ranges of the southernmost Kuril Islands he could see dense clumps of bright white stars. They grew in size and number as he watched.

A single line of tracer fire reached up from a ship on picket duty. Then another and another. As he watched, fascinated and horrified, one of the shining comets fell away from the cluster and dived into the little destroyer. A massive fireball consumed the source of the tracer fire, which ended instantly.

All around him, voluble but tightly controlled chaos ruled as his men reacted to the attack. Without needing to say a word himself, he heard orders shouted to vector the combat air patrol onto the incoming raiders. Another voice issued commands that brought the full weight of the fleet’s antiaircraft artillery to bear. Technical officers relayed information from the ship’s electronic sensors as it became available.

“A hundred-plus hostiles…”

“No surface combatants…”

“No subsurface threats…”

“Incoming airspeed estimated at one thousand kilometers per hour…”

Yumashev’s brows climbed skyward at that.

One thousand kilometers an hour!

This was no ordinary kamikaze attack out of Sapporo. These were jet-powered planes. Perhaps even rockets.

For a terrible second he wondered if the Allies had decided to strike directly at him. They couldn’t be happy at the prospect of Japan falling under Soviet control, and in the last twelve months the Pacific Fleet had prepared any number of scenarios involving combat with the Americans. The results always went badly.

But as soon as the thought occurred to him, he dismissed it. From his own studies he knew that when Kolhammer struck, the target rarely had a chance to respond, or even to take evasive action. For all of the surprise of this attack, he still had a chance to fight back. Yamamoto had not enjoyed the same luxury when the missiles from the Havoc caught elements of his fleet in Hashirajima, just two years ago. By all accounts the Japanese had had no idea what was happening as they died.

For that reason alone he suspected he wasn’t fighting Spruance, or Kolhammer. No, he was certain this was the Japanese grand admiral.

Yamamoto.

“So, my friend,” he said quietly to himself. “You did not go south after all.”

It was, all things considered, a beautiful sight.

As the lower Kurils fell away behind the Ohka, Lieutenant Masahisa Uemura took the briefest of moments to appreciate the vista that stretched out before him. One enemy ship was already ablaze, struck amidships shortly after it opened fire on them. Engulfed from stem to stern in flames, it slipped beneath his wings.