Debt of Honor

want options. I want multiple opening positions for both sides. I want end-game scenarios. I want likely responses on their part to theoretical military moves on our part. Most of all,' he said directly to the NIOs, 'I want a feel for their nuclear capacity, and the conditions under which they might feel the need to make use of it.'

'What warning will we have?' The question, surprisingly, came from Cook. The answer, surprisingly, came from the other NIO, who felt the need, now, to show something of what he knew.

'The Cobra Dane radar on Shemya still works. So do the DSPS satellites. We'll get launch warning and impact prediction if it comes to that. Dr. Ryan, have we done anything—'

'The Air Force has air-launched cruise missiles in the stockpile. They would be carried in by B-1 bombers. We also have the option of rearming Tomahawk cruise missiles with W-80 warheads as well for launch by submarines or surface ships. The Russians know that we may exercise that option, and they will not object so long as we keep it quiet.'

'That's an escalation,' Cook warned. 'We want to be careful about that.'

'What about their SS-19's?' the second NIO inquired delicately.

'They think they need them. It will not be easy to talk them out of 'em.' Cook looked around the table. 'We have nuked their country, remember. It's a very sensitive subject, and we're dealing with people motivated by paranoia. I recommend caution on that issue.'

'Noted,' Ryan said as he stood. 'You know what I want, people, get to work.' It felt a little good to be able to give an order like that, but less so to have to do it, and less still in anticipation of the answers he would receive for his questions. But you had to start somewhere.

'Another hard day?' Nomuri asked.

'I thought with Yamata gone it would get easier,' Kazuo said. He shook his head, leaning back against the fine wood rim of the tub. 'I was wrong.'

The others nodded curt agreement at their friend's observation, and they all missed Taoka's sexual stories now. They needed the distraction, but only Nomuri knew why they had ended.

'So what is going on? Now Goto says that we need America. Last week they were our enemies, and now we are friendly again? This is very confusing for a simple person like me,' Chet said, rubbing his closed eyes, and wondering what the bait would draw. Developing his rapport with these men had not been easy because they and he were so different, and it was to be expected that he would envy them, and they him. He was an entrepreneur, they thought, who ran his own business, and they the senior salarymen of major corporations. They had security. He had independence. They were expected to be overworked. He marched to his own drum. They had more money. He had less stress. And now they had knowledge, and he did not.

'We have confronted America,' one of their number said.

'So I gather. Isn't that highly dangerous?'

'In the short term, yes,' Taoka said, letting the blisteringly hot water soothe his stress-knotted muscles. 'Though I think we have already won.'

'But won what, my friend? I feel I have started watching a mystery in the middle of the show, and all I know is that there's a pretty, mysterious girl on the train to Osaka.' He referred to a dramatic convention in Japan, mysteries based on how efficiently the nation's trains ran.

'Well, as my boss tells it,' another senior aide decided to explain, 'it means true independence for our country.'

'Aren't we independent already?' Nomuri asked in open puzzlement. 'There are hardly any American soldiers here to annoy us anymore.'

'And those under guard now,' Taoka observed. 'You don't understand. Independence means more than politics. It means economic independence, too. It means not going to others for what we need to survive.'

'It means the Northern Resource Area, Kazuo,' another of their number said, going too far, and knowing it from the way two pairs of eyes opened in warning.

'I wish it would mean shorter days and getting home on time for a change instead of sleeping in a damned coffin-tube two or three nights a week,' one of the more alert ones said to alter the course of the conversation.

Taoka grunted. 'Yes, how can one get a girl in there?' The guffaws that followed that one were forced, Nomuri thought.

'You salarymen and your secrets! Ha!' the CIA officer snapped. 'I hope you do better with your women.' He paused. 'Will all this affect my business?' A good idea, he thought, to ask a question like that.

'For the better, I should think,' Kazuo said. There was general agreement on that point.

'We must all be patient. There will be hard times before the good ones truly come.'

'But they will come,' another suggested confidently. 'The really hard part is behind us.'

Not if I can help it, Nomuri didn't tell them. But what the hell did 'Northern Resource Area' mean? It was so like the intelligence business that he knew he'd heard something important, quite without knowing what the hell it was all about. Then he had to cover himself with a lengthy discourse on his new relationship with the hostess, to be sure, again, that they would remember this, and not his questions.

It was a shame to have to arrive in the darkness, but that was mere fortune. Half of the fleet had diverted for Guam, which had a far better natural harbor, because all the people in these islands had to see the Japanese Navy—Admiral Sato was weary of the 'Self-Defense Force' title. His was a navy now, composed of fighting ships and fighting men that had tasted battle, after a fashion, and if historians would later comment that their battle had not been a real one or a fair one, well, what military textbook did not cite the value of surprise in offensive operations? None that he knew of, the Admiral told himself, seeing the loom of Mount Takpochao through his binoculars. There was already a powerful radar there, up and operating, his electronics technicians had told him an hour earlier. Yet another important factor in defending what was again his country's native soil.

He was alone on the starboard bridge wing in the pre-dawn gloom. Such an odd term, he thought. Gloom? Not at all. There was a wonderful peace to this, especially when you were alone to keep it to yourself, and your mind started editing the distractions out. Above his head was the faint buzz of electronic gear, like a hive of slumbering bees, and that noise was soon blanked out. There was also the distant hum of the ship's systems, mostly the engines, and air-conditioning blowers, he knew, shrugging it off. There were no human noises to trouble him. The captain of Mutsu enforced good bridge discipline. The sailors didn't speak unless they had reason to, concentrating on their duties as they were supposed to do. One by one, Admiral Sato eliminated the extraneous noises. That left only the sound of the sea, the wonderful swish of steel hull parting the waves. He looked down to see the fan shaped foam whose white was both brilliant and faint at the same time, and aft the wide swath was a pleasant fluorescent green from the disturbance of phytoplankton, tiny creatures that came to the surface at night for reasons Sato had never troubled himself to understand. Perhaps to enjoy the moon and stars, he told himself with a smile in the darkness. Ahead was the island of Saipan, just a space on the horizon blacker than the darkness itself; it seemed so because it occulted the stars on the western horizon, and a seaman's mind knew that where there were no stars on a clear night, then there had to be land. The lookouts at their stations atop the forward superstructure had seen it long before him, but that didn't lessen the pleasure of his own discovery, and as with sailors of every generation there was something special to a landfall, because every voyage ended with discovery of some sort.

And so had this one.

More sounds. First the jerky whirs of electrical motors turning radar systems, then something else. He knew he was late noticing it, off to starboard, a deep rumble, like something tearing, growing rapidly in intensity until he knew it could only be the roar of an approaching aircraft. He lowered his binoculars and looked off to the right, seeing nothing until his eyes caught movement close aboard, and two dart shapes streaked overhead. Mutsu trembled in their wake, giving Admiral Sato a chill followed by a flush of anger. He pulled open the door to the wheelhouse.

'What the hell was that?'

'Two F-3S conducting an attack drill,' the officer of the deck replied. 'They've been tracking them in CIC for several minutes. We had them illuminated with our missile trackers.'

'Will someone tell those 'wild eagles' that flying directly over a ship in the dark risks damage to us, and foolish death to them!'

'But, Admiral—' the OOD tried to say.