A private vomited; a sergeant slapped him across the face. Fumihiko concealed his own vomit, grateful that he was no longer the newest man in the platoon. Sergeant Hitoshi ruled the platoon with a rod of iron, and he was hardly the worst in the army.
“Land,” the pilot shouted. Fumihiko looked up as best as he could; sure enough, a dark shrouded land could be seen. Suddenly, a streak of light sliced through the air, blinding the platoon, and slammed into a larger transport. The explosion blasted the ship out of the water.
The platoon gasped as the boat rocked wildly. Sergeant Hitoshi said nothing; perhaps they were allowed some concern when it seemed as if they would all plunge into the cold waters. Another streak of light appeared, then another, but they all missed the tiny boat, out for bigger targets. A green flare flickered in the sky and Fumihiko saw Australia for the first time. It was a beach, just a beach.
“Out, now,” Sergeant Hitoshi bellowed, forcing them out. Warm water lapped around their ankles as the platoon jumped overboard, holding their weapons high, and splashed through the water to reach the beach. A single gunshot rang out, and another, and then they stopped.
“Forward, don’t stop,” a Captain shouted. The man needed no urging; they ran forward and headed into the land beyond the beach. There was very little light and no sign of Australians… before a hail of fire pinned them down.
Sergeant Hitoshi bellowed commands. Fumihiko jumped up and fired a burst from his rifle, the new weapon that the armouries had been turning out, and then ducked as a machine gun focused in on him. An explosion rang out as a grenade detonated, blasting the machine gun and its user away.
“They’re running,” someone shouted. Fumihiko smiled, convinced that the man was right. How could the cowardly white men hope to stand against the steel of Japan? Sergeant Hitoshi blew a whistle and the platoon reassembled. A great deal of confusion ran through the ranks until all of the platoons were carefully sorted out.
“Get unloading,” Sergeant Hitoshi bellowed, as the first of the transport ships sailed up to the beach. They were tiny lifters, moving back and forth from the big ships hanging off shore. An explosion illuminated the beach as a missile struck one of the transports and destroyed it. “Move, damn you!”
Fumihiko jumped to obey. Once the supplies had been unloaded, they could proceed overland towards Darwin. He smiled; he’d heard stories about white women and couldn’t wait to see if they were true.
No Japanese tactical commander worth his stripes would dream of not being in the first wave, even with the new and deadly weapons available to the enemy. General Masaharu Homma, the victor of the Dutch East Indies, knew more about the new British weapons than most of his people, and had decided that being on the ground was safer. His staff, which had been dispersed among five different ships, was being reassembled and he’d set up a command post in a commandeered hotel.
He scowled. Why did he have the feeling that events were not going according to plan? They’d landed against less opposition than he’d expected and the Australians had run…
He shook his head. They hadn’t run; they hadn’t been there at all. All his troops had encountered was a small number of troops, fighting to slow the Japanese down. All three of the main landing sites were reporting the same; an almost unopposed landing. Homma didn’t like it at all; he knew the westerners and knew their strengths. The AEF in the First World War had been one of the toughest forces in the trenches, and nothing had really changed there. They should have been capable of putting up a better fight than this.
The night wore on. Thousands of troops came ashore, along with a handful of small tanks. After their disastrous defeat in Malaya, Homma had been reluctant to bring them along, as the German-provided weapons would provide sufficient anti-tank firepower. The War Cabinet had overruled him; the tanks might just remain useful, and besides, they weren’t doing anything just sitting back in the East Indies.
New reports came in and Homma started to understand what had happened. The small collection of towns had been stripped of anything that might prove useful, including transport and fuel. Almost all of the civilians, those who hadn’t attempted to remain and defend their property, had been evacuated from the town. There would be no slave labour to build defences like there had been before, in the Philippines.
“We have to march on Darwin at once,” Homma said finally. Certain radio signals were dispatched through the confusion, ordering the second force east of Darwin to begin its own advance. “We need to keep them running, prevent them from forming a proper defence line.”
His colonels bowed and set off to get their regiments moving. Homma felt a centre of cold ice form in his heart; he knew that events were not going to plan at all. For a long moment, he thought about abandoning the beachhead, or even digging in, but he had studied the last attempt to try anything as big as invading a whole country – Gallipoli. No, speed was of the essence; they had to act before the enemy regrouped and counterattacked.
He glared into the terrain revealed by the rising sun. Somewhere within that wilderness, he was certain; Australians were watching him, and waiting…
Philip Orozco and Samuel Broderick were not Australians, but otherwise Homma was correct; there were people watching all the likely landing sites. Unlike the Australian defenders, who were now retreating in good order, the two SAS men were under orders to observe only – no heroics.
“Bastards,” Broderick snapped suddenly. One of the sensors, a robot bird that was undetectable to Japanese technology, had picked up on the fate of the only Australian to be taken prisoner. The Japanese summarily beheaded him. “They’re worse than the fucking ragheads.”
“Now, now,” Orozco said. “What sort of example is that for the young men we have to educate?”
Broderick fixed him with a deadly glare. The twenty-two strong SAS reserve force had been sent to Australia to train a new group of Australian SAS; they hadn’t expected to be at ground zero of an invasion. The SAS had been parcelled out across some of the more likely landing zones, just to watch and see what the Japanese were doing.
“We’re supposed to bring them up to be killers,” he snapped, and transmitted orders to the drone hanging high overhead. They’d been ordered to act under 2015 stealth protocols – acting on the assumption that the enemy had the same detection equipment as they did – and the burst transmission was almost impossible to detect unless someone was looking out for it. The drone relayed it up to the satellite, which bounced it back down to Canberra.
“It’s going to be a long time before anyone says nice things about them,” Orozco said calmly. “Think we should just melt down the swords this time?”
“No argument there,” Broderick said. He glared at the transmitter; the Field HQ hadn’t given them any instructions. “How long do you think it will be before they reach Darwin?”
Orozco considered the matter thoughtfully. The Australian transport network wasn’t anything like as capable as it had been in 2015. The Australians had also removed any transport that might have been found along the coastline, hopefully. Given the size of Australia, it was hard to be certain.
“Two, three days?” He guessed. “They’re only… what? Fifty kilometres from Darwin?”
“I suppose,” Broderick said. “I wish that they had GPS up and running at the moment.”