>>6120027Looking down on the lands around Pearl Harbor from altitude, you scan for evidence of destruction through the black and white of FLIR. You spot a few depressions along Iroquois Point west of the bay that might be shell craters, but otherwise little enough. Yet the airport gates are all but empty of passenger liners. The civil airwaves are likewise empty of anything but a couple of local flights. And the military presence is striking. There are at least five CAP flights you can identify from listening to the radio, a second E-3 patrolling in the north, cargo flights bound in and out, a refuelling in process, helicopter patrols, and more. No other traffic at all delays Ruby Flight’s landings a moment.
On touchdown the two planes are directed onwards to Hickam, where they weave their way past a mighty flock of tactical and support aircraft, ultimately to an out-of-the-way hangar on the far side. The inside is brightly lit with all the power of high fluorescent hell lamps, and you find you can see normally, as if from the canopies of your planes, and you find yourself looking down their stubby noses at several rifle-armed Marines standing between you and a gaggle of Navy officers and ratings in the process of setting up folding tables, computers, and various other implements. Several such approach your planes cautiously, and once satisfied that they’re not about to open fire or explode, start to examine them in detail, taking extensive footage from both phones and proper cameras.
Eventually, a door on the other side of the hangar opens, and your planes are approached by a man in khakis and an upper Rear Admiral’s two silver stars. Tall and black and without a hair on his head, he carries himself with an air of due authority. His nameplate reads ‘Wells.’
With him is a small woman with a loose blonde ponytail, dressed rather too informally in baggy jeans and a white undershirt. A contractor, perhaps? But no, the more you look the more certain you are that this woman is a ship - a shipgirl. An old all-gun cruiser, if you had to guess, though what about her suggested that you couldn’t say.
One of the techs holds up a piece of posterboard with a frequency and the words ‘minimum power’ on it. Ah. So that’s how they expect you to talk.
“Testing, testing,” you say. A speaker placed on a chair between the two planes picks you up and you hear your voice ring through the hangar.
The admiral gives a faint, weary smile. “Hello, Enterprise,” he says. “You really have come back, haven’t you? I couldn't believe it when they told me. Oh, pardon me- I am Rear Admiral Thomas Wells, Commander, Carrier Strike Group 16.”
