CHAPTER 2
The cabin door swung open, revealing the two Japanese officers. Standing at attention as though they’d expected the intrusion, the two short men stood primly, hats cocked, their khaki uniforms unnaturally immaculate in the dull light streaming in from the corridor, beards closely trimmed, hair neatly slicked back without a single errant strand. Try as he might, the doctor genuinely could not tell one from the other. The two officers could have been brothers, or even twins. And then there was that smell; too many unfamiliar spices mixed with the slight after-scent of sweet rice wine.
“I have news,” said the captain stiffly, wasting not a word. “Germany has withdrawn from the war effort. Our orders are to return to port for an orderly surrender to Allied forces. Gentlemen, I regret we cannot return you to your homeland.”
“Not acceptable,” said the foremost Japanese officer, speaking with a faint British-accented German, his face betraying no emotion. “You will proceed to Japan and complete your mission.”
“The war is over for Germany,” said the captain, letting a slight measure of formality slip from his intonation. “I know this puts you in a difficult position, but we would be in violation of our orders to continue.”
“You will complete your mission,” repeated the Japanese officer, cold and insistent.
The captain whipped off his wool cap and stepped into the cabin, pushing his face within inches of the closest officer, scowling with intense displeasure. The Japanese soldier didn’t so much as blink.
“I did not choose this,” whispered the captain. “So long as I have breath in my lungs, I would in no way willingly submit myself, this ship, or its crew to humiliation before our enemy. But I will say this — I shot dead the last man to question my orders. I advise that you do not make the same mistake.”
“My… apologies… for any offense,” the officer said, narrowing his eyes as his twin stood motionless behind him.
“Accepted.” The captain stepped back and returned his own cap to his head. “And please understand, I must confine you to these quarters for the remainder of the voyage.”
The foremost Japanese officer nodded, not in agreement, but in acceptance of a fact he could not change.
“I request my katana,” the stony Japanese officer said.
“Whatever for?” blurted out the doctor before the captain could respond.
The Japanese officer tilted his head a millimeter to address the doctor.
“There is no German translation for the practice,” he said. “We are honor-bound to perform the act of seppuku.”
Doctor Goering shivered, remembering the reference from an old pulp-printed adventure novel from his youth. Seppuku — the act of honor-bound suicide rather than capture, a self-inflicted stomach-cutting, followed by decapitation by an attendant.
“Denied,” the captain said.
“A pistol, perhaps. And two bullets.”
“Also denied. Any reasonable requests will be reasonably accommodated. But I will not aid you in your deaths, honorable as your intentions may be. Gentlemen — if there is nothing further, I bid you goodbye.”
Without waiting for a reply, the captain backed out of the cabin, shut the door, and locked it from the outside. The doctor followed him back to his cabin, where they sat at the small table. The doctor watched as the captain reached into his desk drawer and retrieved a cloudy glass bottle of plum schnapps and then poured the dark amber liquid into two tumblers.
“What now?” Doctor Goering said, accepting his drink with a measure of relief. “You think they’ll cause trouble?”
“Denying swords and guns will hardly stop them,” said the captain. “These Japanese always carry cyanide salts for such events. Perhaps a pill or powder. But it will be less messy, less of a distraction to the crew.”
“We must search the room,” began the doctor, his cynicism falling away for a moment to reveal a zealous young medic from another war long since passed.
The captain shook his head. “We will return in two hours’ time,” he said. “We will find our Japanese passengers unconscious or dead. You will attempt to revive them— unsuccessfully. Their bodies will be interred at sea in accordance with their customs. I’m not of a mood to argue, my learned friend. The matter is closed.”
“I suppose it is their way,” muttered the doctor.
“Good,” said the captain, raising his glass. “Then, let’s drink.”
“To what?” asked the doctor. “The end of this savage war? To our dishonorable survival?”
“Let’s drink to the ambiguity of peace.”
“I’ll let that be your toast,” said the doctor, smirking. “Mine is far less philosophical. I drink to fewer amputations… and more howling babies.”
The glasses clinked together, and for one perfect moment the doctor allowed his thoughts to return to home. The local train, chugging merrily along the Warnow River. The sagging green door of his rural farmhouse. His grown daughter smiling for the first time since the invasion of Poland, her husband now returned from the Eastern front. His wife, standing in the kitchen with her daffodil-yellow apron and—
The dim light above them flickered and died. The captain swore as he jumped to his feet, the cloudy schnapps bottle falling to the floor and shattering. He threw open the cabin door to a darkened hallway. No lights shone from the corridor, save for a handful of battery-powered emergency lamps slowly flickering to life in the hands of quick-acting crew.
“Damnable Japs!” he shouted, not caring who heard him. “They’ve cut the power cables in their quarters!”
How—? thought the doctor as he sprang to his feet.
“I’m going to flay them,” the captain shouted, stomping towards their cabin. “And if they live, they’ll spend the rest of the cruise in the torpedo tubes.”
The captain yelped when he touched the lock to the cabin door, yanking his hand back. Doctor Goering caught a glimpse of the smoking lock, still glowing with a smoldering ember red and realized it’d been melted from the inside. The captain put his hand on the butt of his pistol and kicked the metal door open, revealing the immaculately clean, empty room inside. “Where are they?” he roared.
Hearing no answer, the captain shoved a midshipman out of his way as he stomped back to his unlocked cabin, white-hot anger palpable in every step. The door cracked open before him, light spilling from within. Without warning, a glinting steel blade pierced out of the slit between door and wall, sticking the captain just below his right ear and cleanly exiting the back his neck, expertly severing his cervical vertebra. The captain stood stone-still for a heartbeat, eyes frozen open, mouth stuck in a grimace. His hands fell limp at his sides, unable to staunch his own fatal wound. The sword slid out with a gushing of blood, spraying across the walls and the deck as the captain collapsed, his neck spitting gouts of red fluid from the frayed rubbery ends of a severed jugular artery.
The two Japanese officers burst from the captain’s cabin and armory, both now clad in black rubber gas masks, the round glass lenses of the masks flashing with the reflection of the harsh emergency lamps, brandishing stolen MP-40 submachine guns in one hand and their samurai swords in the other.
The unarmed German crew scattered, channeling themselves down the main corridor as the foremost of the two Japanese opened fire with a deafening fully automatic burst of bullets. Blinding muzzle-flashes burned into the doctor’s retinas as he cowered behind the fleeing men. Three crewmen were cut down in the space of a single heartbeat, screaming as bullets plunged into their exposed backs, their chests bursting open with rents of blood and viscera, twisting and spasming as they fell to the deck.