way: “We’ve cut back too much, sir. Our people are strung out very thin.”
“They are simply not as capable as we think they are. That is a thing of the
pnitl.” Raizo Yamata said. He was dressed in an elegant silk kimono, and sat
on Ihc floor at a traditional low table.
The others around the table looked discreetly at their watches. It was ap-
proaching three in the morning, and though this was one of the nicest geisha
houses in the city, the hour was late. Raizo Yamata was a captivating host,
however. A man of great wealth and sagacity, the others thought. Or most of
them.
“They’ve protected us for generations,” one man suggested.
“From what? Ourselves?” Yamata demanded coarsely. That was permit-
led now. Though all around the table were men of the most exquisite good
manners, they were all close acquaintances, if not all actually close friends,
and all had consumed their personal limit of alcohol. Under these circum-
ftlances, the rules of social intercourse altered somewhat. They could all
ftpcak bluntly. Words that would ordinarily be deadly insults would now be
accepted calmly, then rebutted harshly, and there would be no lingering ran-
cor about it. That, too, was a rule, but as with most rules, it was largely theo-
retical. Though friendships and relationships would not end because of
words here, neither would they be completely forgotten. “How many of
U»,” Yamata went on, “have been victims of these people?”
Yamata hadn’t said “barbarians,” the other Japanese citizens at the table
noted. The reason was the presence of the two other men. One of them, Vice
Admiral V. K. Chandraskatta, was a fleet commander of the Indian Navy,
currently on leave. The other, Zhang Han San-the name meant “Cold
Mountain” and had not been given by his parents-was a senior Chinese
diplomat, part of a trade mission to Tokyo. The latter individual was more
easily accepted than the former. With his swarthy skin and sharp features,
Chandraskatta was regarded by the others with polite contempt. Though an
educated and very bright potential ally, he was even more gaijin than the
Chinese guest, and the eight zaibatsu around the table each imagined that he
could smell the man, despite their previous intake of sake-, which usually
deadened the senses. For this reason, Chandraskatta occupied the place of
honor, at Yamata’s right hand, and the zaibatsu wondered if the Indian
grasped that this supposed honor was merely a sophisticated mark of con-
tempt. Probably not. He was a barbarian, after all, though perhaps a useful
one.
“They are not as formidable as they once were, I admit, Yamata-san, but
I assure you,” Chandraskatta said in his best Dartmouth English, “their
navy remains quite formidable. Their two carriers in my ocean are enough to
give my navy pause.”
Yamata turned his head.’ ‘You could not defeat them, even with your sub-
marines?”
“No,” the Admiral answered honestly, largely unaffected by the eve-
ning’s drink, and wondering where all this talk was leading. “You must un-
derstand that this question is largely a technical exercise-a science
experiment, shall we say?” Chandraskatta adjusted the kimono Yamata had
given him, to make him a real member of this group, he’d said. “To defeat
an enemy fleet, you must get close enough for your weapons to reach his
ships. With their surveillance assets, they can monitor our presence and our
movements from long distance. Thus they can maintain a covering presence
on us from a range of, oh, something like six hundred kilometers. Since we
are unable to maintain a corresponding coverage of their location and
course, we cannot maneuver them out of place very easily.”
“And that’s why you haven’t moved on Sri Lanka yet?” Tanzan Itagake
asked.
‘ ‘It is one of the considerations.” The Admiral nodded.
“How many carriers do they now have?” Itagake went on.
“In their Pacific Fleet? Four. Two in our ocean, two based in Hawaii.”
‘ ‘What of the other two?” Yamata inquired.
‘ ‘Kitty Hawk and Ranger are in extended overhaul status, and will not be
back at sea for one and three years, respectively. Seventh Fleet currently has
all the carriers. First Fleet has none. The U.S. Navy has five other carriers in
commission. These are assigned to the Second and Sixth fleets, with one
entering overhaul status in six weeks.” Chandraskatta smiled. His informa-
tion was completely up to date, and he wanted his hosts to know that. “I
must tell you that as depleted as the U.S. Navy may appear to be, compared
to only-what? five years ago? Compared to five years ago, then, they are
quite weak, but compared to any other navy in the world, they are still im-
mensely strong. One of their carriers is the equal of every other aircraft car-
rier in the world.”
“You agree, then, that their aircraft carriers are their most potent
weapon?” Yamata asked.
“Of course.” Chandraskatta rearranged the things on the table. In the
center he put an empty sake bottle. “Imagine that this is the carrier. Draw a
thousand-kilometer circle around it. Nothing exists in that circle without the
permission of the carrier air group. In fact, by increasing their operating
Icinpo, that radius extends to fifteen hundred kilometers. They can strike
somewhat farther than that if they need to, but even at the minimum distance
I demonstrated, they can control a vast area of ocean. Take those carriers
uway, and they are just another frigate navy. The difficult part of the exercise
is taking them away,” the Admiral concluded, using simple language for the
industrialists.
Chandraskatta was correct in assuming that these merchants knew little
uhout military affairs. However, he had underestimated their ability to learn.
The Admiral came from a country with a warrior tradition little known out-
side its own borders. Indians had stopped Alexander the Great, blunted his
army, wounded the Macedonian conqueror, perhaps fatally, and put an end
lo his expansion, an accomplishment the Persians and Egyptians had singu-
larly failed to do. Indian troops had fought alongside Montgomery in the
defeat of Rommel-and had crushed the Japanese Army at Imphal, a fact
that he had no intention of bringing up, since one of the people at the table
had been a private in that army. He wondered what they had in mind, but for
the moment was content to enjoy their hospitality and answer their ques-
tions, elementary as they were. The tall, handsome flag officer leaned back,
wishing for a proper chair and a proper drink. This sake these prissy little
merchants served was closer to water than gin, his usual drink of choice.
“But if you can?” Itagake asked.
“As I said,” the Admiral replied patiently, “then they are a frigate navy.
I grant you, with superb surface ships, but the ‘bubble’ each ship controls is
far smaller. You can protect with a frigate, you cannot project power with
one.” His choice of words, he saw, stopped the conversation for a moment.
One of the others handled the linguistic niceties, and Itagake leaned back
with a long “Ahhhh,” as though he’d just learned something profound.
Chandraskatta regarded the point as exceedingly simple-forgetting for a
moment that the profound often was. However, he recognized that some-
thing important had just taken place.
What are you thinking about? He would have shed blood, even his own,
to know the answer to that question. Whatever it was, with proper warning,
it might even be useful. He would have been surprised to learn that the others
around the table were churning over exactly the same thought.
“Sure are burning a lot of oil,” the group-operations officer noted as he
began his morning brief.
USS Dwight D. Elsenhower was on a course of zero-nine-eight degrees,
east by south, two hundred nautical miles southeast of Felidu Atoll. Fleet
speed was eighteen knots, and would increase for the commencement of
flight operations. The main tactical display in flag plot had been updated
forty minutes earlier from the radar of an E-3C Hawkeyc surveillance air-
craft, and, indeed, the Indian Navy was burning a good deal of Bunker-
Charlie, or whatever they used now to drive their ships through the water.
The display before him could easily have been that of a U.S. Navy Carrier
Battle Group. The two Indian carriers, Viraat and Vikrant, were in the center
of a circular formation, the pattern for which had been invented by an Amer-
ican named Nimitz almost eighty years earlier. Close-in escorts were Delhi
and Mysore, home-built missile destroyers armed with a SAM system about
which information was thin-always a worry to aviators. The second ring
was composed of the Indian version of the old Russian Kashin-class destroy-
ers, also SAM-equipped. Most interesting, however, were two other factors.
“Replenishment ships Rajaba Gan Palan and Shakti have rejoined the
battle group after a brief stay in Trivandrum-”
“How long were they in port?” Jackson asked.
“Less than twenty-four hours,” Commander Ed Harrison, the group-op-