Weapons of Choice - A Novel

Zusatztext “This is an excellent combination of near future military SF and alternate history! and a riveting story to boot.” —Eric Flint! author of 1632 and 1634: The Galileo Affair “This book has everying: time travel! the British royalty! things that go boom! and unrelenting action. Read the opening at your own risk: you won't be doing anything else until you finish it.” —Sean Williams! co-author of Heirs of Earth and Star Wars: Force Heretic: Reunion Informationen zum Autor John Birmingham is the author of Emergence, Resistance, Ascendance, After America, Without Warning, Final Impact, Designated Targets, Weapons of Choice, and other novels, as well as Leviathan, which won the National Award for Nonfiction at Australia’s Adelaide Festival of the Arts, and the novella Stalin’s Hammer: Rome . He has written for The Sydney Morning Herald, Rolling Stone, Penthouse, Playboy, and numerous other magazines. He lives at the beach with his wife, daughter, son, and two cats. Klappentext On the eve of America's greatest victory in the Pacific, a catastrophic event disrupts the course of World War II, forever changing the rules of combat. . . . The impossible has spawned the unthinkable. A military experiment in the year 2021 has thrust an American-led multinational armada back to 1942, right into the middle of the U.S. naval task force speeding toward Midway Atoll-and what was to be the most spectacular U.S. triumph of the entire war. Thousands died in the chaos, but the ripples had only begun. For these veterans of Pearl Harbor-led by Admirals Nimitz, Halsey, and Spruance-have never seen a helicopter, or a satellite link, or a nuclear weapon. And they've never encountered an African American colonel or a British naval commander who was a woman and half-Pakistani. While they embrace the armada's awesome firepower, they may find the twenty-first century sailors themselves far from acceptable. Initial jubilation at news the Allies would win the war is quickly doused by the chilling realization that the time travelers themselves-by their very presence-have rendered history null and void. Celebration turns to dread when the possibility arises that other elements of the twenty-first century task force may have also made the trip-and might now be aiding Yamamoto and the Japanese. What happens next is anybody's guess-and everybody's nightmare. . . .Chapter 1 East Timor, Zone Time: 0942 Hours, 15 January 2021 The Calihate spy, a Javanese carpenter known simply as Adil, resettled himself against a comfortable groove in the sandalwood tree. The small, shaded clearing in the hills overlooking Dili had been his home for three days. He shared it with an aged feral cat, which remained hidden throughout the day, and an irritable monkey, which occasionally tried to shit on his head. He had considered shooting the filthy animal, but his orders were explicit. He was to remain unnoticed as long as the crusaders were anchored off East Timor, observing their fleet and sending reports via microburst laser link, but only in the event of a "significant development." He had seen nothing "significant" in seventy-two hours. The infidel ships were lying so far offshore they were often lost in haze and distance. Only when night fell did he have any real chance of seeing them, and even then they remained little more than a blurred constellation of twinkling, faraway lights. Such was their arrogance they didn't bother to cloak themselves in darkness. Jets roared to and from the flight deck of their carrier twenty-four hours a day. In deepest night the fire of the launches appeared to Adil as though God Himself had lit a torch on the rim of the world. Occasionally a helicopter would appear from the direction of the flotilla, beginning as a small, indistinct dot in the hot...

Product details

• Authors: John Birmingham
• Publisher: Ballantine
• Languages: English
• Product format: Paperback
• Released: 26.04.2005
• EAN: 9780345457134
• ISBN: 978-0-345-45713-4
• No. of pages: 512
• Dimensions: 107 mm x 173 mm x 28 mm
• Series: Axis of Time Trilogy; Axis of Time; Axis of Time
• Subject: Fiction > Science fiction, fantasy