Turning Point (Kirov Series Book 22) by Schettler John

Author:Schettler, John [Schettler, John]
Language: eng
Format: azw3, mobi
Publisher: The Writing Shop Press
Published: 2015-12-27T05:00:00+00:00

Chapter 20

“Alright,” said the Captain. “We’ve been round and round on this, and nothing any of us have said will change the fact that most every ship we’ve seen out here should have been sunk or scrapped long ago. We can either believe it, or just say we’re all lunatics, but for the sake of this discussion, let’s just assume it is true.”

The ship’s senior officers were all gathered in the wardroom. First Officer Kenji Fukada sat next to the Captain, a steady figure of efficiency. With a logical mind and calm demeanor, the unsettling nature of the last 36 hours was weighing on him heavily. Many of the men had little or no sleep, and the tension on the ship was wound up fairly tight. The news had been hard for a man of his disposition to swallow, but he nonetheless harbored a secret delight in the thought that the ship models he had doted over as a boy, and still treasured as a navy man, had become real things on the seas not 20,000 meters off their starboard bow—as big as life.

Senior Lieutenant Hedeo Honjo, CIC Chief, was also in attendance, his implacable presence reassuring. A heavy set, thick necked man beneath short cropped hair, Honjo had a bullish aspect about him, and the temperament of a sumo wrestler. He was a distant relative of Shigeru Honjo, former commander of the Kwantung Army during the Mukden incident that led to the Japanese invasion of Manchuria, and a man who had been a close confidant of the infamous proponent of the “Strike North” strategy, Sadao Araki.

Junior Lieutenant Koji Nakano was a 22 year old wiry young man watching the Sonars on the ship. No legends surrounded him. He was not ever thought to have the ‘best ears in the fleet’ as Alexi Tasarov was aboard Kirov. He didn’t need the best ears in the fleet, he simply had the best sonar, and serviced radar systems that were second to none.

Nakano would team up with Senior Lieutenant Ryoko Otani, the senior ranking female on the regular bridge crew, and the eyes behind the screens of that AN/SPY-1 Phased Array Radar. Women in the navy first started exclusively as nurses, then moved to communications positions. A very few reached higher ranks of command, and women still made up no more than 6% of the SDF. Otani represented them well, a bright, intelligent woman who was well liked and often noticed by the other male officers. Her father was a navy Captain on a helicopter destroyer, so they minded their manners, but Lieutenant Otani could fend for herself in the largely male dominated seas, and it was her keen eye and radar systems that led the ship through these waters now.

Chief Engineer Ryota Oshiro was a pragmatic workman with a penchant for cleanliness and order. He kept his station that way, and prowled the ship’s engineering plants like a schoolmaster, imposing his rigid standard of excellence on all work completed. When the

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