HIMS Musashi
Hashirajima, Japan
20th April 1942
The hammer had fallen, just as he had known it would. Admiral Yamamoto studied the reports of the attacks on Japanese shipping and knew the truth. From the Dutch East Indies to the holy waters of Japan herself, ships had been swept from the sea with ease. He’d always known that the enemy possessed vast capabilities in undersea warfare, but now… now only a couple of transports had survived crossing the ocean over the last two days.
The map was an intimidating one, even for someone who’d witnessed naval combat first hand. Of seventy transports, freighters and converted ships transporting soldiers, resources and weapons around the empire, only two had survived. Ships in dock, of course, hadn’t been attacked… until they’d ventured out of dock. He was mortally certain that one of the accused nuclear submarines lurked outside Hashirajima, waiting for the Musashi or one of the few remaining capital ships to poke their noses outside the anchorage.
“Now what do we do?” He asked himself. There was an answer, the same one that had occurred to him before, but it was proving hard to arrange it. He was certain if he could meet with the Emperor, he could have convinced Hirohito to end the war… before Japan starved. However, in order to ‘protect the Emperor’s person,’ two battalions of the army were dug in around the Royal Palace, backed up by the forces assembling for the defence of Japan.
“Bastards,” he scowled. The British and their Australian lapdogs hadn’t followed the strategy of waiting patiently for the Japanese to starve. Instead, they had launched brutal and powerful attacks all along the Dutch East Indies and the Solomon islands, including Truk, one of the most important naval bases in the Japanese Empire. A major British force – as opposed to the Australians who were fighting most of the war in the Indies – had landed and after a short brutal battle taken the base, although not in working condition. The Dutch East Indies had lost most of their defenders to attacks from the air; the bunkers that the original history had recommended building had been blown open by bunker-buster bombs, each one so big it required an entire aircraft to carry it.
He shook his head. The writing was on the wall for anyone with eyes to see it. Japan imported much of her food and all of her oil… and they no longer had the ability to transport it around. At the rate that ships were being lost, Yamamoto estimated that the entire merchant marine would be sunk within two weeks at most, and then Japan would starve. Already, there were signs that all was not right, but without the massive bombing campaign that had struck at Japan during the first history.
Yamamoto shuddered. The images from that history had been shocking, but the news of the Deathcloud had been worse… and the news of the firebombs deployed against Japanese troops in jungle environments had been worst of all. If those weapons were deployed against Japanese cities, their wooden and paper construction would burn rapidly… and exterminate large sections of the population.
The war was over and Japan had lost, but did the Army realise that? No! Yamamoto clenched his fist in frustration; the Army believed in the final battle, in which Japanese military might and will would sweep the British from the seas. They pointed to the future history, in which a typhoon had devastated the Allied positions in 1945 after Japan had surrendered, as proof that surrender was out of the question.
Yamamoto chuckled bitterly. There was no way that Japan was going to survive until 1945. If they made it to 1943 without either revolution or collapse he would be astonished. Without the firebombing campaign, the Army could still claim that Japan was winning… but the truth was slowly leaking its way out, spurred on by the thousands of deaths from the two major sea battles. The Army spoke of a final redoubt in China – and had moved thousands of key personnel over to Korea and China – but with the new submarine campaign, they would no longer be able to supply their new colony. The industry they’d moved over the winter would have to be enough… and Yamamoto knew that it wouldn’t be enough.
“But how do we end this war?” He asked, and knew the only answer was impossible. There was no way of contacting the Emperor; the Army had been reluctant to risk civil war by attacking the Navy, but at the same time they kept him a prisoner onboard Musashi, perhaps hoping that the British would end his life for them. Or, perhaps, they thought he could still be useful.
“Fat chance,” Yamamoto said. Ambassador Yurina Sato, a Japanese woman from the future and his lover, had introduced him to the phase. The limits of his abilities had been made very clear when he ordered nine destroyers to escort a convoy to China; the entire force, destroyers and transports, had been sunk. Even the Russians were being attacked; he knew that their Far East Fleet had lost two ships to British submarines.
He looked up at a different map, the location of naval forces around Japan. He knew that he had enough battalions of naval infantry to defend the anchorage, should the British – or the Army – come for it, but not enough to break into the Royal Palace. The Army held all the reins of power – and Yamamoto knew that there was no way of winning the war.
We’re going to lose everything, he thought grimly.
Ambassador Yurina Sato had never cared for the Sailor Moon look, choosing to believe the American who had claimed that the look – and some of the truly disgusting pornography that had come out of Japan – was a symptom of a deep-rooted cultural decline. Yurina had never understood it; what possible pleasure could someone get from watching a rape – even if the woman had agreed to be raped on film – or from animal-human hybrid sex. And that was just the beginning of films and pictures that were darker than anything else and banned in many counties.
Still, in her Japan, she’d worn a neat jacket and a miniskirt, allowing men to look at her legs. It short-circuited their thinking processes; many Japanese men were unable to admit that a woman might be able to think for herself. As long as she was beautiful and decorative, they would let her do whatever she liked… and Yurina had taken full advantage of them.
She shook her head as she walked back up the gangplank, ignored by all. It wasn’t quite as bad as being in Afghanistan, where she’d had to wear a Burka and keep back from the men in public, but it wasn’t what she was used to. It was something of a relief – once she’d become powerful enough, she’d no longer had to use her body as a weapon – but it was irritating. Apart from Yamamoto, no man in Japan took her even remotely seriously, and she had never cared for wearing the traditional woman’s dress.
The gunmetal-grey corridors of the battleship almost seemed like home to her, after spending so long aboard, and she half-hoped that the British wouldn’t destroy it. Her lover, Admiral Yamamoto, had never been able to understand it – it was not as if the British had run out of weapons to deploy against the huge ship. A nuclear warhead would have melted it like ice in the sun, if all else failed, and she knew that she was always at risk while she was onboard the ship.
“The Lady Yurina,” the guard announced, opening the hatch to the stateroom. The crew of the Musashi were kind to her; they knew that she was the admiral’s woman and possessed influence, if not power. It was typical of Imperial Japan; women only possessed power through their bodies and minds.
“Welcome back,” Yamamoto said. He spoke in English, to keep their conversation private. Only a handful of the crew could speak English. “What did you think of the town?”