"He took one with him, though," said Molloy respectfully. "You see him coming in, Commander? That Jap got one right through the heart? That was Chief Kelly did that, sir. Woulda put them army sharpshooters to shame, sir."

"Okay, sailor," grunted Evans, still reeling from Molloy's heavy blow. "Better give me a report."

Molloy gave him a look that said he'd never had to report to anyone more important than Chief Kelly, but then he straightened his shoulders and gathered his thoughts. Clearly there weren't that many of them, but his bovine features grew even more ruminative than usual.

"Well, Commander, we come in through the hole in the bunkroom. We had a lot of trouble finding our way around. We shot a few Japs, turned out to be niggers, and I'm sorry but I think we shot a few ladies they had as sex slaves, too… Probably better for them that way, though."

As Moose was talking, the volume of incoming fire grew alarmingly, forcing him to raise his voice. Evans was going to ask him about the black men and the women, whether anyone had thought to search them for ID, when Seaman Stolz screamed. A very large chunk of his chest disintegrated in a hot red shower that splashed over his shipmates.

He was dead before what was left of him slumped to the deck.

"Damn. I told you!" yelled Molloy. "Didn't I, Commander? They shot him through that little crack there."

He jammed his rifle into the space, loosed off a round in reply, then wrestled it out with some difficulty just before the response came in. Three rounds passed through and smacked into a solid-steel bulkhead just over the spot where Evans had crouched down and curled as tightly as possible. He was totally mystified by what he saw. The bullets impacted the metal surface with dry puffs of powder, leaving no dent and almost no residue. You had to wonder how they'd killed Stolz. Evans resisted the urge to lean over and scrape away some of dust that clung to the point of impact. But he'd already decided it wouldn't be worth his life.

It was hard enough to hear anyone talk, let alone to think this situation through calmly and rationally with the harsh thunder of battle going on all around him. Mohr had told him nearly a hundred men were fetched up against dozens of barricades or blockages like Molloy's, pouring as much lead into the enemy as they could, given the Japs nearly supernatural ability to pick them off with those fucking shotgun blasts. Between the fearful roar of that battle and the agony building from his own wounds, Evans feared the situation was entirely beyond him.

He was only Navy Reserve, after all. In civilian life, where he'd been blissfully and ignorantly employed until recently, he was a math teacher at small school in upstate New York. He'd joined the reserve in the early thirties, when work was hard to come by. He'd made some fine friends out of it, and the young ladies of Cherrybrooke village did like a man in uniform. But this… this was getting out of hand.

He was tempted to give in to the creeping grayness, to just fall unconscious and let someone else figure it all out, when the strangest thing happened. The storm of fire coming in at them abruptly ceased.

And then there came a loud crackling sound, like static over a ship's speaker. And an amplified voice boomed out. A female voice, with a clearly recognizable American accent, but unfamiliar in its pitch and tone.

"This is Captain Daytona Anderson of the United States Navy Ship Leyte Gulf. Cease fire and identify yourselves immediately."

Evans looked over at Eddie Mohr, who seemed just as stunned as he was. The chief petty officer shrugged and shook his head.

"It's one of their camp whores," hissed Molloy. "You can't trust her, sir. She's been brainwashed."

"Shut up, Moose," growled Mohr, before turning back to Evans. "Well, sir?"

Evans shook his head at this new turn of events. He drew a deep breath and tried to shout a reply, but his dry, cracked throat failed him. Chief Mohr took out his hip flask again and thrust it at the officer. Evans took a quick swill and tried once more. He was surprised at how weak his voice sounded.

"This is Lieutenant Commander Peter Evans of the USS Astoria. Identify yourself properly, and explain what the hell is going on here."

He could hear other members of the Astoria's crew whispering to each other in the brief silence that followed.

Then the woman's angry voice drowned them out. "I say again, this is Captain Daytona Anderson of the USS Leyte Gulf. You have boarded our ship and killed U.S. naval personnel. That enough explanation for you, asshole?"

Evans got Mohr to help him over to the crack through which Willie Stolz had been shot. He yelled into the gap. "Listen, lady. If the Japs are putting you up to this, just forget it. I'm sorry for your situation, but we're not laying down for anyone."

Muted cheers drifted into their bunker from somewhere off to starboard. Or what he thought was starboard.

"Listen, you macho jerk, you're going to get yourself and the rest of your crew killed for no good reason. We're not Japanese. We're Americans. You hear me? Americans."

Chief Mohr leaned over and said quietly, "That sounds like a black woman to me, Commander."

He was right, Evans realized. That was what threw him about the voice. It was black, like one of those Harlem jazz singers.

"What're you trying to pull, lady," he called back. "There's no such ship as the Leyte Gulf, and if there was, the captain wouldn't be a dame. You just put Tojo on the loudspeaker, if he knows any English. I'll take a surrender from him."

The cheers of his crewmates were punctuated by a good deal of laughter this time. Anderson didn't reply, and he wondered if she'd been hustled away by her captors.

Clancy and Nix crouched on either side of the aperture giving on to Evans and his men. Both men had set their night vision to the soft emerald of low-light amplification. Infrared was useless. There were simply too many heat sources bleeding into the fused mayhem of junk metal. Sparks cascaded from shorted-out wiring. Steam vented from ruptured pipes in brilliant ruby-red geysers, and small spot fires burned all around them, adding a hot smoke haze to the saturated air.

Clancy hand-signed to Anderson. Did she want them to work around though the maze of scrap and attempt to subdue the targets?

The captain shook her head. She cut power to the small bullhorn in her left hand.

"The way you guys look," she subvocalized, "they'd take you for a couple of Nazis."

A chip implanted just below her jawline picked up the vibrations and converted them into a narrowcast quantum signal. Nix and Clancy heard their commanding officer's words in their helmets as clearly as if she'd spoken at normal volume in a quiet room. Nobody else heard anything.

"Just keep it tight and try not to waste anyone" she continued. "I'll try again."

That amplified voice boomed out again.

"All right, Commander Evans. I'm coming forward with my CPO and Specialist Nix. Are you in the head that intersected our weather station?"

Evans's eyes went wide at that. They were definitely hunkered down in a john and he figured that yes, maybe the science lab stuff could be weather equipment of some sort.

Mohr just looked at him as if to say What next?

"Yeah. I guess so," replied the Astoria's acting CO.

"We're coming armed. You fire on us and Clancy will pop a frag through that crack as easy as the round that killed your other guy a minute ago. Be nice if he didn't have to do that again."

Crouching low, Moose Molloy tried to muscle into the gap with his Springfield, but Mohr placed a size twelve boot on his shoulder and stopped him cold. Evans thumbed back the hammer on his pistol, but kept it pointing down at the floor. A moment later he could just make out movement in the gloom and clutter of shadows on the other side of the gap. Three figures slowly resolved out of the darkness. A thin, weak shaft of diffused white light, thrown out by the source somewhere behind the toilet door, barely picked them out.