"This is serious." It was General Arima, and he'd just gotten the word from Tokyo himself. "They smashed our air defenses and just went away afterwards."

"How?" the industrialist demanded. Hadn't they told him that the Kami aircraft were invincible?

"They don't know how yet, but I'm telling you this is very serious. They have the ability to raid the Home Islands now."

Think, Yamata told himself, shaking his head to clear the cobwebs. "General, they still cannot invade our islands, can they? They can sting us, but they cannot really hurt us, and as long as we have nuclear weapons…"

"Unless they try something else. The Americans are not acting as we have been given to expect."

That remark stung the next Governor of Saipan. Today was supposed to have been the day on which he'd begin his campaign. Well, yes, he'd overestimated the effect his action would have on the American financial markets, but they had crippled the American fleet, and they had occupied the islands, and America did not have the ability to storm even one of the Marianas, and America did not have the political will to launch a nuclear attack on his country. Therefore they were still ahead of the game. Was it to be expected that America would not fight back somewhat? Of course not. Yamata lifted his TV controller and switched it on, catching the beginning of a CNN Headline News broadcast, and there was the American correspondent, standing right on the edge of some dock or other, and there behind him were two American carriers, still in their docks, still unable to do anything.

"What does intelligence tell us about the Indian Ocean?" he asked the General.

"The two American carriers are still there," Arima assured him. "They were seen both visually and on radar yesterday, within four hundred kilometers of Sri Lanka."

"Then they cannot really hurt us, can they?"

"Well, no, really they cannot." the General admitted. "But we must make other arrangements."

"Then I suggest you make them, Arima-san," Yamata replied in a voice so polite as to constitute a stinging insult.