Judge checked the flexipad. “At zero eight hundred hours on June third—that’s today—the Second Carrier Striking Group under Admiral Kakuta will launch a diversionary attack on Dutch Harbor in the Aleutians. At zero five fifty-three on June fourth, the radar station at Midway will pick up the first wave of attacking planes, which will be over the island from zero six thirty to zero six forty-three.”

Kolhammer nodded, satisfied with small mercies. “Okay then. We have a day and a half until the main attack. Let’s work up a plan for a strike on the carriers heading for Midway. If we can’t get any planes off, we’ll take them out with missiles.

“We’ll need to discuss all this at fleet command level first. Schedule a conference for the soonest possible time, invite Spruance and whoever he needs to bring along. We can chopper them over here. But let’s get the search and rescue finished first. And I’d best have a talk with the acting CO of the Siranui well before the general conference.”

“That’d be Sub-Lieutenant Miyazaki. You want to laser-link to him or talk face-to-face?”

“I think we’d best meet in my quarters, man-to-man. Show some respect.”

“I think he’d appreciate that, Admiral,” said Mike Judge. “He’s likely to find it scarce around these parts for a long time.”

Lieutenant Commander Black said nothing.

USS KANDAHAR, 0029 HOURS, 3 JUNE 1942

Captain Margie Francois paused for the first time in two and a half hours. It was just a moment’s break.

As chief combat surgeon of the Eighty-second MEU, her first priority had been to get her own medical staff back online, then the Kandahar’s defensive sysops, then the ship’s most critical naval personnel and the 3 Batt staff officers.

Then the casualties began to arrive, some caused by the Transition, like the kitchen hand suffering third-degree burns from collapsing onto a gas oven, and a marine who’d gone headfirst down a hatch between decks, breaking his spine. Shortly after that, the first shells had hit the ship, and her real work had begun, patching up torn and broken bodies.

There was no real lull between that and the arrival of the first survivors from Spruance’s task force. The newcomers had filled all one hundred beds in the Kandahar’s hospital, and still they came; burns, amputations, compound fractures, split skulls, crushed limbs, ripped torsos. Hundreds of men had swallowed oil, some had lungs half full of contaminated seawater. Many screamed, some moaned quietly. The hospital smelled of charred flesh, blood, shit, and fear. When an orderly handed her a tube of chilled fruit pulp the contrast between the sweet, fresh taste and the charnel house atmosphere of the ward came as a smack in the face.

A brief sense of dislocation took hold, and she stopped for a few seconds to observe the scene.