(Side Story / Not Main Plot)
January 13
Time rewound to yesterday.
At 11:00 p.m. on January 13, 2026, in the Pacific Ocean, the Ryukyu Islands were lined with American military bases.
Among them, Kadena Base was the largest U.S. Air Force installation outside the American mainland with rapid-response combat capability. It housed the 18th Wing of the 5th Air Force and deployed F-15 fighters, AWACS aircraft, KC-135 tankers, and more, with the capacity to station roughly a hundred aircraft of various types.
Since the outbreak of the virus, this had been the safest place in all of Japan.
Isolated overseas, blessed with ideal conditions, the U.S. forces stationed there had suffered relatively little during the initial wave of infections. Add to that the Japanese who had fled there instead of to Shikoku, along with elements of the Self-Defense Forces, and the place had seemed impregnable.
But now they were trapped there.
Like Kyoko's neighbors, they had become prisoners of the sea.
At this moment, the entire base reeked of thick blood. Bloodstains and wreckage were everywhere.
The hospital was already overflowing. Even outside it, the ground was covered with wounded men lying haphazardly on blankets.
They groaned weakly. Military doctors worked in rotating shifts to keep them alive, while the operating rooms nearby ran at full capacity without pause.
You might have thought they were infected.
They were not.
They had just come through a battle.
A one-sided battle.
With the satellite network collapsed, their only link to the mainland was through undersea cables. But Washington was overwhelmed with its own disasters. The politicians back home wanted nothing more than to issue a dozen urgent orders to drag all overseas forces back, and ocean transport and resupply had all but ceased.
Humanity's great steel fleets—massive cargo vessels of hundreds of thousands, even millions of tons—had been attacked at sea by infected marine life. The damned Apostles had sent the submarines under their control to attack every ship indiscriminately. Warships were faring no better. Because of the solar magnetic storm, their precision electronics had been degraded to something closer to Cold War standards.
During the sortie on January 4, U.S. warships operating out of Okinawa were hit by torpedoes. After the base lost its last remaining naval power, Okinawa was finished.
Unlimited submarine warfare had driven these island-bound survivors into terror.
They were blockaded there, and the situation was dire.
Radio, radar, radar-guided systems—gone. With electronic components damaged, all the tools built for beyond-visual-range warfare were effectively dead. Only optical guidance still worked, and even that barely.
In response to Okinawa's call for help, the Global Management Committee dispatched a massive relief fleet from Kure Harbor: two Izumo-class ships, two Atago-class destroyers, two Takanami-class destroyers, four Akizuki-class destroyers, the American USS George Washington (CVN-73), USS America (LHA-6), two Arleigh Burke-class destroyers, several submarines, and transport ships carrying supplies and troops bound for Shikoku.
Or perhaps, some joked, they were going out to subdue some unknown sea monster.
Or perhaps the old navies of the dead had risen from the depths again.
At 3:00 p.m. on January 13, the combined Japanese-American fleet arrived in the waters near Okinawa.
The fleet advanced in a circular formation. At its head was the Nimitz-class George Washington.
With radio gone, communication between ships relied on signal lamps and flags.
It was a bizarre sight: a fleet from the twenty-first century using tactics out of the previous one.
Like humanity entering the space age, only to install a feudal-era church aboard a starship.
On the side deck of one of the Takanami-class destroyers, several radar operators who no longer had radar to operate were peering at the distant sea through binoculars.
"Yamamoto, look over there. I think I see smoke."
"What the hell are you talking about? Lemme see."
Yamamoto snatched the binoculars and looked east across the water.
There was nothing there.
Not even a patch of floating debris.
Realizing he'd been had, he turned and lightly punched Komatsu.
"You bastard. Even Admiral Yamamoto gets fooled by you?"
Komatsu burst out laughing.
"If you're Yamamoto, then who was the one who crashed the plane?"
The others nearby laughed too.
The current Maritime Self-Defense Force had no real reverence for the old Imperial Navy. Even rank-and-file sailors casually joked about its admirals.
Then a stern voice cut through the laughter.
"You lot call yourselves soldiers? Stand straight!"
The sailors froze.
Coming toward them was an elderly officer, and at once they hurried into formation.
"Captain Itō Seiichi, radar team group three reporting!"
"You've forgotten wartime discipline already? Even the fools walking around on the ground show more order than you."
The men hung their heads and said nothing.
How was an army like this supposed to win a battle?
Itō was furious, but because it was wartime, he restrained himself.
"I'll deal with you after we return to port safely. For now, hold your positions properly. Understood?"
They nodded at once.
"You should feel ashamed. The navy is the sort of branch that can lose everything in a single afternoon."
"We are a maritime nation. This is exactly when a navy is needed. The world situation is changing by the hour, and no one knows what comes next. The future will be shaped by people like us."
"My grandfather fought in these waters too, not far ahead of us. He showed the world that our people have never feared sacrifice."
"I do not understand why everyone keeps speaking as though our defeat is already certain. As though the waters off Okinawa are destined to become our grave."
"Operation Kikusui failed in those days. But this time, the Americans are our allies. Victory lies in our hands—"
As the captain went on and on, the sailors below endured it with poorly concealed boredom.
Strictly speaking, they were not soldiers so much as uniformed civil servants. Ever since the war, Japan no longer had a true military in the old sense.
Captain Itō, though, came from a family that had served in the navy for four generations. His bloodline still lived in those older traditions.
For ordinary enlisted men like these, the attitude was simple: ring the bell, pass the day, do the job. If not for the crisis, many of them would have left the service already.
Just as several of them were on the verge of tuning out completely, disaster struck.
Far off on the horizon, several flashes appeared and vanished in an instant.
Then came the sustained thunder of large-caliber naval guns.
From the observation station, a sailor screamed into a loudspeaker:
"Gun flashes detected! Bearing forty degrees ahead! Distance thirteen thousand yards!"
Alarm sirens shrieked through the fleet.
The sailors and the captain alike were startled into motion. Men scattered for cover. Ships began maneuvering. In the chaos, Yamamoto's cap flew off and dropped into the sea.
The enemy's first salvo did not hit the Takanami-class destroyer.
All of the heavy shells landed near the flagship.
Captain Itō ran toward the bridge at once. Inside, the executive officer was already directing evasive maneuvers.
"Didn't intelligence report no enemy surface forces? What's the flagship signaling?"
"The observers still can't visually identify enemy ships. The accompanying aircraft have already moved toward the bombardment zone. The flagship hasn't sent a signal yet."
"Tell the gunnery crews to prepare. The moment we identify them, return fire."
A traditional naval man to the core, Itō straightened his disordered uniform as he issued commands.
A moment later, the executive officer spoke again.
"Flagship signal by flag: follow their movement. They've raised the Z flag."
At that, Itō immediately ordered the same flag raised aboard his own ship, then shouted to the officers around him:
"Gentlemen, exert yourselves to the utmost—this battle shall be ours!"
Four carriers in the task force began launching aircraft. More than a hundred planes circled overhead and formed up.
Then the second enemy salvo arrived.
Huge pillars of water rose around the Takanami-class destroyer.
After the spray fell away, Yamamoto finally saw it:
black smoke on the distant horizon.
Nearby allied ships were already returning fire. Their missile launchers, deprived of solid target data, could not release guided missiles, but ship-mounted rockets streaked out like fireworks, and the main guns had begun firing.
The Takanami-class destroyer joined them.
Men swarmed across the deck. The crew worked in frantic chaos.
Then the captain's long voice rang out:
"Hard to port!"
The destroyer followed the ship ahead and began turning.
Suddenly, a tower of fire erupted nearby, followed by a deafening explosion.
One of the Akizuki-class destroyers had been penetrated by a shell. It detonated the torpedoes in its own magazine and blew apart in a catastrophic secondary explosion.
The shockwave and heat blast threw men off their feet across nearby decks. Ships veered sharply to avoid debris.
Yamamoto nearly went into the sea. Only by clinging to the railing like a monkey did he save himself, while Komatsu beside him almost went overboard.
Spitting seawater from his mouth, Yamamoto raised his binoculars again.
And then he saw the fleet attacking them.
Tombs of the sea.
Ships of the past.
Warships of another age.
Now risen as demons from the ocean floor.
Through the narrow naval telescope, the great ship loomed like a mountain, its bow marked with the imperial chrysanthemum.
In the waters off Okinawa, who else could it be?
"Yamato... It really is her. And behind her..."
Yamamoto could not believe his eyes.
The warships of the old era had come back for revenge.
The Takanami-class destroyer opened fire on Yamato, but missed.
And it was nothing like anyone had imagined.
These resurrected warships were not rusted hulks covered in barnacles and sea growth. The damage of their previous sinkings had been erased. Instead, every inch of them was covered in black-red organic matter that made them look hideously alive.
Modern warships, thin-skinned despite their sleek designs, could not endure the punishment of old heavy-caliber guns. The Aegis systems were useless against enemies like these. Their vaunted stealth meant nothing to opponents who seemed to ignore it entirely.
On the bridge, Itō was equally shaken.
He had barely begun to speak when a 203mm shell slammed into the side of his ship and threw him to the deck.
Above the black-red fleet, American and Japanese aircraft descended into attack runs.
Anti-aircraft guns roared.
Several F-35s successfully landed missile hits on Yamato, but the battleship repaired itself as though some supernatural damage-control system were at work. It simply would not sink.
One aircraft after another was blasted from the sky.
Flying infected creatures joined the battle as well.
Fifth-generation fighters, capable of supersonic speed, fell in droves before relics of the Second World War.
Then Yamato's 460mm guns struck the allied flagship.
The carrier's deck exploded. Aircraft were hurled hundreds of meters into the air.
The enemy was on an entirely different tier.
It was like a battle game match where one side had been thrown into a hopelessly mismatched bracket.
Both Izumo-class ships were sunk.
The two American carriers were sinking.
Numerous aircraft were shot down.
Half the destroyers were sent to the bottom.
Humanity was utterly defeated.
With the flagship destroyed, the remaining escorts fled in panic.
The sea filled with wreckage.
Survivors who had not yet drowned were attacked by infected marine life.
The waters ran red.
The Okinawa operation had failed.
Watching the routed remnants flee, several beautiful women aboard the black-red fleet smiled with terrifying delight.
Then a fashionably dressed little girl leapt up from the sea.
Behind her, a gigantic black shadow rose from beneath the surface—
a monstrous infected whale, covered in black-red matter, its crimson eyes horrifying to behold.
"Yamato," the little girl said, "you are merely one fragment of my divided consciousness. Do you intend to defy me, your mother body?"
Yamato lowered her head with the graceful bearing of a lady.
"I naturally would not dare disobey your will, Mother Body. But I dare even less to defy the command of the Divine Mother. My hatred for humanity cannot be calmed."
She looked nothing now like the bloodthirsty monster she had been in battle.
"I told you all again and again—I wanted total annihilation. I ordered you to wait until the ones hiding on the island tried to evacuate by sea before opening fire. What exactly did you do?"
"That was not the Divine Mother's command. And I have already been split apart from you—I am no longer part of you. We are equal Apostles now."
Yamato's voice was ice-cold.
The Mother Body was clearly furious.
She turned away in rage and stormed off, throwing one last threat over her shoulder.
"We are irreconcilable enemies of mankind. Tonight's Pearl Harbor raid—you will lead the vanguard!"
But because the Mother Body wore the form of a little girl, her fury came off as strangely lacking in menace. If anything, it had an odd, jarring cuteness to it.
The small girl walked into the whale's open mouth and vanished.
That evening, in the main conference room at the Hawaiian Committee headquarters—
"Chairman Dick Sarah, the report from the Japanese division has arrived. Please review it."
An elderly man, clearly European in appearance, took the intelligence packet. The secretary withdrew, and all eight committee members were present, along with representatives from the major nations.
"Ladies and gentlemen," Dick Sarah began, "I assume you have all read the battle report from today's Philippine Sea operation submitted by the Japanese division. We have also intercepted the enemy's operational plan. I am therefore initiating the highest-level contingency protocol. Threat assessment: maximum."
He paused and looked around the room.
"Who is in favor? Who is opposed?"
Before the last word had fully left his mouth, the room exploded.
"Chairman Dick Sarah, from my perspective the use of nuclear weapons is absolutely necessary. I approve."
A deep male voice rang out, immediately followed by another.
"We need to show those monsters exactly what we're made of. I support it."
There was very little argument.
Only a small minority objected.
The resolution passed cleanly.
"The motion is approved," Dick Sarah said. "I will submit it for final authorization at once."
He struck the gavel on the desk, silencing the room.
After adjournment, he headed immediately for the final stage of nuclear launch authorization.
Inside a secure chamber, he spoke with the leaders of the five major powers. The remote conference lasted barely five minutes.
When he emerged, he was walking briskly, almost lightly, launch codes in hand.
"They approved it," he said. "Without hesitation. At this point, dropping a nuclear weapon is as easy as throwing out the trash."
The people waiting outside burst into cheers.
At 5:03 a.m., humanity's reconnaissance aircraft discovered the black-red fleet and a vast school of infected marine creatures on the sea near the Marshall Islands.
The reconnaissance plane was shot down, and contact was lost.
At 6:18, they were detected again near Bikini Atoll.
At 6:34, three Ohio-class ballistic missile submarines in the surrounding waters launched multiple UGM-133 Trident II missiles armed with nuclear warheads.
At 6:37, nuclear fire blossomed.
Enormous volumes of seawater were flash-vaporized, and the Bikini waters—silent for decades—once again gave rise to towering waves born of atomic detonation.
Join here to read ahead.
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