Final Impact (32 page)

On the
Nagano
jets of white-blue flame threw back the predawn darkness. It was both awesome and terrible, the power he was about to unleash and the sacrifice he was asking of the young men who had willingly turned themselves into his sword. The first fiery lance shot down the length of the ship’s deck. Yamamoto released a pent-up breath as it climbed away. He would never see the long, cigar-shaped plane again. It had a range of only 225 kilometers, enough to carry its payload of nearly fourteen thousand kilos of tri-nitroaminol explosive into the heart of the Soviet fleet, and no farther. The rudimentary ailerons, flaps, and stubby little wings did not provide for anything beyond the most basic maneuverability. The pilots would fly low, straight, and level for most of the distance before plunging their aircraft onto the decks of a targeted vessel at more than a thousand kilometers an hour.

All of the pilots were volunteers, mostly from the liberal arts faculties of the country’s universities. They had been trained to seek out American capital ships, concentrating on carriers, large troop transports, and any vessels sporting an unusual number of radar domes or antennae, on the assumption that these latter might be some retro-engineered version of the command and control vessels called Nemesis cruisers. There had been no time to retrain for a different opponent, so the
Ohkas
were flying off with the same instructions.

Yamamoto could only hope it would work.

D-DAY + 39. 11 JUNE 1944. 0346 HOURS.
HMAS
HAVOC,
PACIFIC AREA OF OPERATIONS.

“What the
hell
is that?”

“Not sure, ma’am. But it looks nasty.”

Lieutenant Lohrey interrogated the touch screen in front of her, pulling in tight on a view of the odd-looking Japanese carrier. Its runway appeared to have been fashioned into a ramp, a little like the last generation of British and French carriers used back up in the twenty-first. To Willet’s eye it was obviously a kludge, but the planes roaring down it were not. Somebody had invested a shitload of time and money in
them.

She leaned over Lohrey’s shoulder, anxious for a quick verdict, but it was her old boat chief, Roy Flemming, who provided the answer.

“It looks like a Yokosuka MXY-series special weapon, skipper. The Japs called ’em
Ohkas,
or Cherry Blossoms. Our guys knew them as
Baka.
Crazy bombs.”

While he spoke, Lohrey worked quickly, bringing up all of the files she had on the subject. She knew Master Chief Flemming well enough to trust his call. Back home he probably had a basement full of scale models of the things. And if she didn’t move quickly, he’d start lecturing on them.

“Okay. Got ’em,” announced the intelligence officer. “In the original time line, the
Ohka, Baka,
or whatever was produced by the First Naval Air Technical Arsenal, located in Yokosuka. Hence the name. They first appeared in combat on March twenty-first, nineteen forty-five, when fifteen Betty Bombers, carrying piloted rocket bombs attacked Task Group Five-Eight-Point-One. Or they tried to anyway. They got chopped by the air screen about a hundred klicks out before the Bettys could release.”

“So they started out as air-launched cruise missiles, with a
kamikaze
pilot to guide them in?” Willet said.

“Yup.”

“And now?”

“Looks like the Japanese have been working some mods,” she answered. The intelligence officer pulled up half a dozen still shots of the sleek, jet-powered aircraft they had spotted on the deck of the carrier. “The first versions of the
Ohka
ran off a solid fuel and had a range of about fifty-eight kilometers. Later on they switched to thermojets, and then, at the very end, to a turbojet tagged the Ne-Twenty and made by Ishikawajima-Harima Heavy Industries. They picked up range and speed, and there were plans for carrier-launched versions and even land-based models.”

Willet’s craggy, tattooed boat chief leaned in over the workstation with the two female officers. “If you don’t mind me, Captain, Ms. Lohrey?”

“Go ahead, Roy,” Willet said.

The master chief dialed up the maximum magnification on one of the stills, and they waited while rendering software cleaned up the image. Flemming narrowed his eyes to gun slits and sucked at his teeth. Willet suppressed a smile. All he needed to complete the scene was a big piece of straw between those teeth. He grunted and mumbled to himself, chewed at his lip, and scratched his thinning hair.

“This is no good, skipper. We’ve all been wondering why we haven’t seen any Japanese jet planes, like the German Two Sixty-twos. This is why, I reckon. They poured all the money into these things. Ms. Lohrey will be able to check the archive but as I recall, first time around they didn’t make more than handful of the later-series MXYs. Looks here like they’ve got a hundred or so, just on this one ship. And they’re independent. Don’t need a bomber to launch them. That makes them much trickier for the ’temps to deal with. Originally most of them were destroyed in transit before they launched. With these babies, Yamamoto’s got himself an over-the-horizon strike capability. The Russians are gonna get swarmed by these things. It’ll be like a mini-Taiwan.”

Willet, who had been leaning forward, straightened up and stretched her back muscles. “The Soviets had a pretty good air defense net over that fleet of theirs,” she said. “Nothing too flash, but it does the job, in context.”

Flemming nodded at the screen. “But these things are out of context, Captain. We’ve been watching them shoot down old prop-driven box kites. These
Ohkas
are cruise missiles, whichever way you want to cut it.”

Willet gave her intel boss a querying glance. “Amanda?”

“I’m with the chief, boss. I think the Sovs are gonna get it in the neck.”

Willet shrugged. “Oh well. Shit happens. I can see that worried look in your eyes, though, Chief. So fret not. I’m one step ahead of you. Amanda, cut this into a data package for Kolhammer and Spruance. Immediate flash traffic via Fleetnet. This is probably what’s waiting for them in the Marianas if that goes ahead. Chief, you said the Japanese originally worked on a land-based variant on this thing.”

“More’n that, Captain. They had blueprints for hiding these things in mountain caves—they were gonna shoot ’em out of the cliffs at the Yanks when they got close enough. Probably woulda done some real mischief.”

“Probably will, you mean.”

“Yeah. I do.”

Willet nodded. All around her the crew in the submarine’s Combat Center maintained their vigil on the fighting. Dozens of screens ran with low-light and infrared coverage of the battlespace. The result was an eerie scene.

On Hokkaido at least half a million men tore at each other across a sixty-five-kilometer front. In the waters offshore, the Soviet invasion fleet seemed unchallenged. Destroyers and light cruisers steamed up near the coastline to lend gunnery support to their comrades who were pushing inland. Overhead at least two dozen Russian fighters maintained a combat air patrol over the ships at all times.

“How long?” Willet asked.

“Not long at all,” Lohrey answered. “Those things are really moving.”

She nodded at a large screen to her right.

The
Havoc
’s Combat Intelligence had a fix on eighty-two rocket bombs screaming toward the Soviets in a long stream. Apparently there was no forming up into squadrons for the attack. The
Ohkas
just took off and made for the enemy at top speed.

“Amanda, as Captain Judge would say,
git-r-done.
”

D-DAY + 39. 11 JUNE 1944. 0351 HOURS.
PACIFIC AREA OF OPERATIONS.

As he sped toward his death, Corporal Chuji Asami could not shake the image of the girl, Reiko, who had tormented him so with her cat. Asami had always hated cats. It was only natural, having been born in the Year of the Mouse.

Around him the world had contracted to the cramped cockpit of the rocket bomb. The roar of the engine was so powerful, the tremors of the airframe so violent, that he felt as though he was trapped at the very center of an earthquake. Asami gripped the flight stick so tightly that his arms ached, and he tried to concentrate on following the long line of exhaust plumes that stretched out in front of the bubble canopy, like a string of shooting stars. But he seemed fated to face the end of his life pursued by the memory of Reiko, giggling as she chased him around the little noodle house in Chiran Town, holding her cat up like an evil charm.

Was it
his
fault that he couldn’t stand to be in the same room as the filthy animal? Could he help it if his face contorted and his flesh crawled at the very sight of the beast? How many times had he complained to Torihamasan? But his friends in the squadron thought it a great joke, and they encouraged the girl in her endeavors, roaring with laughter when Asami fell off his stool in his haste to escape the little troll and her pet. It was only natural that the girl’s parents would not discipline her, given the joy she brought to the Thunder Gods with her antics.

That’s what they were known as now. The Thunder Gods. Meteors screaming toward destruction. His friends. His leader, Lieutenant Uemura.

That would be Uemura, up ahead. One, two, three,
four
exhaust plumes. He was much older than the rest of the squadron. Twenty-five to Asami’s seventeen. A graduate of Rikkyo University, and a father, while most of the men did not even have girlfriends. Asami’s heart swelled with memories of how diligently the lieutenant had trained them, how he had looked after them as though they were his own family. He was a kind man, unusually so. He had taken all of his charges to one last meal at Torihama’s noodle house before they left Chiran for the fleet base at Hashirajima.

Uemura had produced a barrel of junmai-shu sake from somewhere—a rare treat in these hard times—and among them they had sipped to the last draft. Asami had been so drunk, he had not been able to change the records on the phonograph. And of course Reiki had waited until he was almost incapable of fleeing before suddenly leaping at him from the shadows with the cat in her hand. Such a shock had he received that he bumped his head on a low beam trying to get away. He could feel the gash rubbing against his goggles even now.

Everyone had roared with laughter, but Lieutenant Uemura had picked him up off the floor and shooed the cat away.

“A mouse you may be, Corporal Asami,” he’d said, laughing, “but soon the little mouse will terrify a great elephant. Yes?”

“Yes!” Asami had agreed, nodding his head so vigorously that a few drops of blood flew from the graze he had given himself.

“Then drink up, little mouse! You have earned it.”

The roar of his friends that night echoed still beneath the roar of his engines. Below, and away to the west, a low moon threw a curving scimitar of flickering light across the waters. Ahead of them, the volcanic peaks of the lower Kurils glowed a dim ruby red. To the east a new dawn hovered on the cusp of the world.

Asami wondered if Uemura was thinking of his family.

Masahisa Uemura’s heart ached. The lieutenant had fixed a small doll to his dashboard where he could see it easily. It belonged to his little daughter, Motoko, who had played with it in her crib, and it bore the marks of having been chewed and sucked and handled roughly by her. He intended to focus only on the doll as he plunged his rocket plane into the enemy. That moment, the ending of his life, could not be far away now.

As they approached the volcanic range that shielded them from the Russians his stomach felt like it was trying to rise up into his mouth. The
Ohka
’s airframe shuddered at it plowed into weird, contrary masses of air. He’d struck pockets of turbulence and thickness and strange, empty spaces that were less than nothing. The fiery peaks rushed toward him at an insane rate.

Life rushed away just as quickly. The life he would have led raising little Motoko. Her life, which he would never know, but for which he was about to die.

He craned around as far as could in the restricted confines of his flying coffin. As far as he could tell the men remained in position behind him. He felt better, thinking about that. They were good boys. The bravest of the brave, and he hoped he had trained them well. They were all that stood between the Japanese people, the emperor, and annihilation at the hands of the Communists. He was sure they would do their duty. If only he could be certain that it would mean anything—that the admiral’s gambit would pay off. After all, this was not the mission they had trained for.

As he swept through the gap between Kunashir and Iturup islands he caught his first glimpse of the invasion fleet: a dozen or more vessels anchored offshore, their running lights blinking in the gloom. With their speed it seemed they would be past the enemy’s lead elements well before he could respond, and indeed, the Communists fell behind him before he observed any reaction on their part. It was probable, however, that the last of the
Ohkas
would fly into a barrage from those ships as the crews realized an attack was under way.

Uemura wrested the plane around on a new heading, taking her a few degrees to the northwest, where the bulk of the Soviet armada lay ahead. He had a very short time left to spend in the same world as his wife and beloved daughter now. A quick check of his wings told him that the guidance lights were functioning properly. His men would be watching closely, trusting in him to lead them toward the quarry. They had been assigned the task of the striking at one of the two “helicopter carriers” identified as potential command centers for the invaders. Little was known of how the Soviet air defenses might perform against them, but hopes were high. They could not be anywhere near as advanced as the Americans or the Emergence barbarians.

Some of the Thunder Gods should get through.

To the left of his cockpit the northern shores of Hokkaido ripped past. He took a moment to savor the view. Soon he would have no time, and everything would pass in a blur. He sent his daughter a last prayer, reciting the lines of the letter he had left for her.