Yates acknowledged her order as she drew another box around a slightly smaller vessel. It looked like a heavy cruiser rather than a battleship. She magnified the image on screen, closing to a virtual distance of six hundred meters. Wisps of smoke drifted from the stacks in the low-light display. Blooms of rose-colored radiance leaked from the funnels on the infrared view. Willet compared the image with archival shots running on an adjacent screen.

“And that looks the Kitikami,” she said. “Mr. Yates, you’ll probably kill yourself a couple of admirals if you take her out.”

“Nice work if you can get it, ma’am.”

The captain leaned over and touched the screen with her wand, confirming her targets, as crewmembers seated up and down the command center began to report.

“Targets acquired. Strobing and designated.”

“Payload online, Captain. No countermeasures. Nothing on the threat boards.”

“All links feeding, Captain. Clean vision to weapons.”

“VLS ready and missiles hot, ma’am.”

Willet checked the time. Three minutes to go. Silence settled on the small group of men and women. Those members of the crew not directly concerned with the attack or with attending to the boat’s own defensive systems watched on screens throughout the vessel. In the corner of each monitor a red time hack counted down.

Willet felt a presence beside her. It was the Havoc’s exec, Commander Grey.

“Do you mind, Captain?” he asked quietly.

“No, of course not,” she answered, her own voice just as subdued.

Grey spoke softly, almost to himself. “Vengeance, deep brooding over the slain, had blocked the source of softer woe; And burning pride and high disdain, Forbade the rising tear to flow.”

Chief Flemming threw the young officer a glance, his own rough-hewn features giving nothing away as the time hack counted down to zero.

00.03

00.02

00.01

00.00

Nobody pressed any buttons. The sequence was already programmed. The boat shuddered as it absorbed the energy of the missile salvo lifting off.

The defensive sysops redoubled their watchfulness, lest the launch give them away. But the radar screens remained empty, and the threat boards glowed green.

Captain Willet worked the screen, pointing, clicking, and defining a small box that took in the bridge of the largest battleship. The green-tinted image expanded to fill the whole display, resolving itself quickly from pixelated ambiguity into a picture as sharp as the original image. She repeated the process. The control center remained still and silent as the screen filled with a slightly fuzzier but still-detailed image of two men on a gantry outside the bridge itself. The figures were smoking and chatting. Willet wondered if she would see their reactions as the missiles approached. She’d had that experience before, but after two minutes they disappeared into a hatchway. When they failed to show themselves again, she returned to a standard top-down perspective from six hundred meters virtual.

HASHIRAJIMA ANCHORAGE, 2036 HOURS, 20 JUNE 1942