Rising Sun

twin hulls had been reinforced and compartments made to store food, water, and other supplies, including a spare set of sails and an extra mast. The cabin just behind the single mast in the middle of the boat had been enlarged so they could fit inside in case of bad weather, although sleeping would be difficult for more than two people at a time.

“We need guns because of sharks,” he answered, “and I don’t necessarily mean the ones that swim in the sea. I’m thinking of the two-legged ones who might try to take the Bitch from us before we can leave, or jump us at sea. Tell me, does anyone in your real world know what we’re up to?”

“Not to my knowledge,” Amanda said. “You told us to keep it under our hats and that’s what we’ve done. If anybody’s followed us here or figured things out, I don’t know. What about here? Any of the locals suspect anything?”

Mack nodded. He’d already decided that Amanda, the quiet-looking one, was the smartest of the three and the leader. He wondered if she knew it yet.

“I don’t think any of my neighbors have noticed anything,” Mack said. “Fixing up the cat isn’t unusual, and I’ve been storing stuff at night so nobody should suspect that we’re preparing for the end of the world. As to the guns, I’ll be teaching you how to handle them just in case.”

“I hate guns,” Sandy said again with a shudder.

“You don’t have to like them,” Mack said, “just respect them and learn how to use them. It might just save your life.”

Amanda looked at him stonily. “Are you also suggesting that we save a bullet each for ourselves?”

Well, Mack thought, you figured it out. You are indeed the smart one. “If we’re about to be captured by a Jap warship, or if we’re dying of thirst or starvation, the choice’ll be yours, now won’t it.”

“When are we leaving?” Grace asked.

“Next Saturday’d be good. No sense waiting here any longer than we have to. Wait too long and the Japs’ll be crawling all over the beaches.”

* * *

The Japanese Zero was simply the finest plane in the world and it was flown by the finest pilots in the world. This was not only the opinion of twenty-four-year-old Ensign Masao Ikeda, but of everyone else who had half a brain, and that included the deluded Americans who’d been dying in large numbers because they’d underestimated Japan.

The official designation of the Zero was the A6M. The letter A indicated it was a carrier plane, the number 6 said it was the sixth model, and the M said it had been made by the Mitsubishi corporation. The Zero was a one- man fighter that could fly more than three hundred miles an hour, soar to more than thirty thousand feet in the sky, and maneuver on the proverbial dime. Ikeda’s plane had two 20mm Type 99 cannon and often carried a pair of 132 -pound bombs slung under her wings.

The Zero simply outclassed anything the Americans had sent against them so far, but there were rumors that the Yanks had newer and better planes coming into play. Let them, Ikeda thought. None would be better than the Zero. Let the arrogant Americans learn to die. They’d tried so hard to humiliate Japan and her revered emperor, they deserved nothing less.

Ikeda was proud beyond words to be a fighter pilot in the service of the emperor. Training had been more than grueling. Ninety percent of the pilot candidates had flunked out. The ones who made it through were the best of the best, the elite of the elite.

He’d heard some officers complain that too many good pilots were being dismissed because they weren’t quite excellent enough. Ikeda scoffed at that idea. The successful pilot candidates, like him, would be more than enough to slaughter the larger number of poorly trained Americans who thought that Japanese were ignorant, buck-toothed, and too nearsighted to fly a plane effectively. The Americans and British also thought that Japan could only produce junk, and both were paying terrible prices for their hubris.

Rigorous training had continued after his commissioning as a officer three years earlier so that now he and his plane were almost as one. The same was true of his comrades. No one could stand against them. They were modern samurai. They could not be beaten. They would bring honor and glory to Japan and the emperor.

Masao was not afraid to die, although he would not recklessly seek it out. Should it come to him in the course of battle then he would be at peace with his honor. He would have fulfilled his obligations to the code of bushido. Before leaving Japan, he’d left fingernail clippings and a lock of hair with his parents. Should he be killed and his body not returned, they and his little sister could honor him and themselves by enshrining his scant remains at the Yasukuni Shrine in Tokyo. He planned to live a long and prosperous life. However, death in war was a real possibility. He would not, of course, allow himself to be taken prisoner. The shame would be unendurable and his family would disown him. Should that remote possibility arise, he would endeavor to take as many Americans with him as he possibly could.

If the Zero did have a fault, it was a minor one in Ikeda’s opinion. There was no armor. It had been sacrificed for speed and agility. If hit, the plane was prone to burst into flames. Therefore, his fellow pilots all joked, don’t get hit. Avoiding enemy guns was not all that difficult as both the American planes and pilots were slow and awkward.

Nor did the pilots have parachutes. They’d been issued and their commanders had ordered the young Japanese eagles to wear them, but no true warrior would even think of it. If the plane was too badly damaged to make it back to base or be rescued, they would simply seek a target of opportunity and crash into it. Again, skeptics said that was a waste of highly trained pilots, but those who said that didn’t understand the code of bushido.

Ikeda longed for the chance to shoot an American out of the sky. He’d strafed a couple of planes on the ground at Pearl Harbor’s Hickam Field, along with trucks and fleeing personnel, but those did not count as true kills in his mind. His thinking was that he might as well have shot up as many parked cars.

This day he and a dozen others flying from the aircraft carrier Kaga were searching for ships that a scout plane reported had departed Honolulu at night. These were transports and freighters escorted by a cruiser and a pair of destroyers. Killing the three warships was a goal, but attacking the other ships was something that would usually be beneath him. However, he’d been informed that they were full of soldiers trying to flee Hawaii, which made them marginally worthwhile targets. He’d also been given specific orders and, while he could get away with not wearing a parachute, he could not refuse an assignment, however lowly. He and his fellow pilots would sink the lowly transports.

His radio crackled. Directions and orders were given. There were no American planes flying cover for the transports, which further frustrated Ikeda. At least a few Americans had attempted to stop them when they’d attacked Honolulu a couple of weeks earlier, but other Japanese pilots had destroyed them before Ikeda’s chance had come. Back on the Kaga, they’d boasted about how easy it had been, laughing that there weren’t enough Americans to go around, unintentionally humiliating the young ensign.

But now they were over the convoy. The American ships were in no formation to speak of. They were simply running away, now scattering in all directions as they spotted their attackers. Nor did the escorts have much in the way of antiaircraft guns. Only a few streams of tracers searched for them. Ikeda aimed at a transport and dropped his bombs. He cursed when splashes that hit near the ship’s hull told him he’d missed. One bomb might have been close enough to cause internal damage from the pressure of the explosion, but he doubted it. He would have to work on his bombing technique. It wasn’t easy for one moving object to hit another moving object unless they were very close to each other, which he now intended to do.

He swung his nimble plane around and lined up his cannon at a destroyer. He flew lower. He opened fire and walked the 20mm shells up to it and they ripped along the hull. He laughed and returned to attack the transport.

Ikeda exulted. This one is mine. He swung about and launched another deadly attack. The transport began burning and he could see scores of men jumping overboard. It was a sight being repeated throughout the fleeing enemy ships as the Americans were again being slaughtered.

He made another pass and now the American ship was disgorging hundreds of people, some of whom looked like civilians. If they were, so be it. They should not have been traveling with soldiers. Besides, they were Americans and it was the Americans who’d started the war by depriving Japan of her rightful place in the world by trying to contain her with insulting restrictions.

Ikeda decided that his target transport was a burning ruin and sought out another. He fired and heard only a click. He cursed again. He was out of ammunition. The Zero carried only enough 20mm shells for seven seconds’